The Chair-Herding Pictures

Winter Reading

2008-05-01T17:35:00.000-07:00

Admittedly, I haven’t written much for the past few months. But I have been reading.

Armed Madhouse, by Greg Palast. The elections, the hurricane, the war, No Child Left Behind, voter IDs and why the Republican presidential candidate in 2008 could have a six million vote edge right now, today.

“Caging lists” are used to target registered voters through first-class mailings. Those who don’t respond can be challenged at the voting booth. Sounds fair, right? John Doe isn’t at that address. Guess what, John Doe might not be at that address because he is in Iraq. He also stands a chance of challenge if he lives in a senior citizen center or a transient facility or within a certain zip code — meaning a black neighborhood.

Then there are the “felon” purges, when registered voters are struck from the rolls because their names appear in a list of felons. Sounds good, right? Felons can’t vote.

Oh, but in some states they can! And why not? If they have served their sentence, on what basis is their right to vote further denied? Even if one believes that felons shouldn’t be allowed to vote, can one justify purging someone like me from the rolls because of a list of felons from another state?

I have a very common name; there were four Jerry Smiths in my sixth grade class. Is there a bad Jerry Smith out there who shares some variation of my name? Is that why I can’t vote? If the issue is a Constitutional right, who has the burden of proof? Should I have to prove that I am not that other guy, or should the state be required to prove that I am?

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I’m not worried at all about being disenfranchised — I’m a middle-aged white man! My name doesn’t sound black or Latin or Muslim or Native American or foreign in any way.

Not to change the subject, but the Supreme Court recently upheld an Indiana law on voter identification. In my opinion, a specialized voter ID amounts to a poll tax, which I thought was un-Constitutional. But I digress. Armed Madhouse is a great book. Try to grin as you read.

No Logo, by Naomi Klein. The apotheosis of branding, first as a marketing strategy and then as a model corporate structure. The Nike corporation is a perfect example. Nike sells a vision of sport. Nike doesn’t make any shoes or shirts; those are produced in foreign factories were labor is cheap and human rights are cheaper. Hey, free market, right?

The branding battle continuously encroaches on the very notion of public space. Imagine one extreme of the public/private property-rights “spectrum,” that point along the continuum where every cubic foot of space is privately owned and controlled. In such a world, there is no public space. Now you understand the drive to privatize public assets.

The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler. What will the passing of “cheap” fossil fuel prices bring? How high must fuel costs rise before they impact the price of “cheap” products from China? How about “cheap” crops? How about “cheap” plastic bags?

(Kunstler and Palast have differing perspectives on “peak oil.” However one dates the doom, fossil fuels clearly represent a finite resource with significant externalized costs. Oil production will decline at some point, but “cheap energy” will decline long before that.)

Freedom Evolves, by Daniel C. Dennett. Consciousness, free will, morality.

Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, by Susan Blackmore. I was about half-way through Freedom Evolves when I put it down to read Blackmore’s very short introduction. Then I returned to Dennett’s book.

Bush v Gore 2000. The decision is available online. You know, I’m funny about details. The first thing I noticed was its full title. Gore is correctly identified as Albert Gore, Jr. But President-to-be Bush is incorrectly identified as George W. Bush. I thought everyone knew his daddy was also named George.

Through crooksandliars.com, I found a link to an excellent explanation of the ruling. It is clear, informative, even humorous — except for the fact that it’s true. The decision should resolve any questions you might have about the 2000 election, the 2004 election, or the 2008 election yet to come.

(Incidentally, in an interview on CBS, Justice Antonin Scalia declined to discuss the decision. “Get over it,” he said. “It’s so old by now.” In the same interview, he denied that torture constitutes cruel and unusual punishment because, he explained, torture isn’t punishment.)

Care for some π?

This question came up at a party: When mathematicians calculate pi, how do they do it? What are they dividing into what? I didn’t know, so I looked it up.

Of course, an ancient Greek did it first. Using a sexagesimal mathematical system (based on the number 60), Archimedes investigated pi by inscribing regular polyhedrons inside and outside a unit circle.* As the number of sides of such polyhedrons increases, their peripheries approach pi.
Many people have learned to approximate pi by dividing 22 by 7. The result is a repeating decimal greater than pi but close enough for ordinary purposes. A German mathematician named Ludolph van Ceulen honed the parameters of pi down to a region between 22 divided by 7 and 223 divided by 71. The first 35 digits of each approximation were carved on his tombstone.

More recent mathematicians have calculated pi down to a surrealistically long series of digits. Still, Archimedes’s achievement stands out.

Pi, or something very like it, in sexagesimal notation.

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* The number 60 has many factors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. And of course, 6 times 60 equals 360 — the number of degrees in a circle.

It never ceases to amaze me how much the ancient Greeks figured out and how much the later European Christians systematically forgot. The Dark Ages were dark for a reason. The Greeks established that the world was round. The proof is simple. They knew the moon orbited the earth, and they arrived at good approximations of the relative sizes of the earth and the moon. All that knowledge was stamped out after Christians were no longer the oppressed but the oppressors.

The Trap

2007-11-26T00:47:00.000-08:00

Q: What do Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, the Central Intelligence Agency, Milton Friedman, game theory, the Cold War, R. D. Laing, Prozac, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Isaiah Berlin, Henry Kissinger, al Qaeda, Michael Ledeen, economic models of human interactions, and shock therapy have in common?

A: They are all part of a remarkable series of B.B.C. documentaries on social engineering by filmmaker Adam Curtis: The Century of the Self,* The Power of Nightmares, and The Trap. Curtis examines the evolving theories of human motivation as they have been applied by admen, politicians, and intelligence agencies over the last 80 years. The result is a broad and disturbing view of the beliefs behind modern social control mechanisms.

From Sigmund Freud to market theories to fundamentalism, notions held by humans about humans have grown ever more abstract and therefore ever more removed from human experience. Furthermore, widely held beliefs have a certain Pygmalion effect** whether or not they are true. Therefore, they present the risk of incestuous influence — the tendency of institutions to believe their own propaganda or to craft stories to promote narrow interests. Organizational principles in one sphere of human activity do not necessarily carry over into other realms. For example, game theory used by the U.S. and Russia to reduce the threat of nuclear war was based on the assumption that an opponent will always cheat. (If the goal was to avoid war, I’m not sure the Russians were our “opponents”; but that is a question for another time.) Curtis shows how market models of control based on a similar assumption — that people are entirely motivated by self-interest — lead to atomization of society and denial of community.***

So, as the world hurtles backward to 1984, take some time to watch Curtis’s films. After all, if both the “good guys” and the “bad guys” knowingly benefit from the same belief system, maybe it’s time to rethink the system.

The Century of the Self:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

The Power of Nightmares:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

The Trap is available at:

http://adamcurtistrap.blogspot.com/

and

http://www.goodreads.ca/adamcurtis/

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* See “Why Are We In Iraq,” The Chair-Herding Pictures, 3/21/2007
** In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a prince of Cyprus and a sculptor. He fell in love with a statue of a woman he named Galatea. The goddess Aphrodite granted Pygmalion’s wish and brought the statue to life.
*** It also invites corruption. Consider Enron. Executives were rewarded for improving the company’s bottom line, but that did not lead to efficiency. It led to executives gaming the system to maximize personal profits. They made a killing by killing the company.
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Lies My TV Told Me

2007-11-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

A week or so ago, while I was watching WTTW in Chicago, the station ran a “teaser” — a preview of an upcoming show. Commentator John Callaway had interviewed Tim Weiner about Weiner’s new book, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. But when I heard them talking about President John Kennedy, my heart sank. The anniversary of Kennedy’s murder was approaching. I realized that it was time once again for main-stream media to smear the Kennedys.

Weiner offered the ridiculous claim that we will probably never really know what happened to J.F.K. and denied that declassified files shed any new light on the assassination, thereby proving he hadn’t done any homework. Then he accused John and Robert Kennedy of using the C.I.A. to threaten or kill foreign leaders.

Callaway didn’t do any homework, either. He did not, for example, ask Weiner about C.I.A. officer Everette Howard Hunt, Jr.’s confession in the case. He did not ask about any of the Agency figures identified by Hunt, like Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis, William Harvey, and David Atlee Phillips. Callaway did not ask about Phillips’s admission, nearly thirty years ago, that the so-called “Mexico City” trip made by the alleged assassin was a fabrication. Other officers or assets have confessed knowledge of or participation in the assassination, but Callaway didn’t ask about any of them.

The Central Intelligence Agency killed President John Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy. After extensive investigations, the Agency exonerated itself in each case and reporters have duly reiterated the C.I.A.’s findings for decades. So, if you missed Callaway’s interview, don’t worry. There will be more such exercises in news fiction next year, around Thanksgiving.

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Rapture Ready

2007-10-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

I didn’t do much writing over the summer, but I still tried to keep up with events. Here are four more items to ponder.

No End in Sight
And no end in the planning stages either. You can watch the trailer at:

http://www.noendinsightmovie.com/

I won’t try to summarize the entire film here, but I can give you something of its flavor. When U.S. occupying forces took no action to protect Iraqi museums, many irreplaceable treasures of antiquity were stolen. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rather infamously explained it all away by saying that “stuff happens.” His indifference to the looting of a culture speaks volumes — in English or Arabic.

That indifference extends all the way down to security contractors muscling their way through Iraq. The film includes a video taken by “security contractors” through the back window of their car as they drove around Baghdad randomly shooting at cars behind them. Hey, it was fun! The shooters even added a rock music sound track.

Trashed
This is the story of garbage — the garbage we dump, the garbage we breathe, the garbage we eat, the garbage we pay for, the garbage we generate to process garbage, etc. Watch the trailer at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgtLjHEKlnE

As the saying goes: Out of sight, out of mind. That’s definitely true of trash. To see what you’re missing, go to

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

and see the work of Chris Jordan. His images make the magnitude of our consumption crisis all too clear.

(Below: detail from Chris Jordan’s picture of 2,000,000 plastic bottles, the number used in the United States every five minutes.)

But of course, after the Second Coming, we won’t have to worry about trash, either in the form of plastic bottles or non-believers.

Rapture Ready
What god wants and who he wants to do it to are critical to the protection of Israel so it can be destroyed in Armageddon when Jesus returns — or something like that. Visit

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/rapture-ready-the-unauth_b_57826.html

and watch Max Blumenthal’s film about the conference of Christians United for Israel. Senator Rick Santorum was there, along with former Representative Tom Delay. Asked about the Second Coming, Delay replied, “I live for it. I hope it comes tomorrow.” Senator Joseph Lieberman called C.U.F.I. founder John Hagee a modern-day Moses. Apparently, the Christians United for Israel believe the modern day Pharaoh is in Iran. To them, the conclusion is obvious. To me, the conclusion is terrifying.

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Water, Water Everywhere

2007-10-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

I know I haven’t written much recently. I spent a lot of my summer painting instead. Generally speaking, painting is much more spiritually rewarding than reading the news. Nevertheless, I was still paying attention. Here is one of the topics that caught my eye.

Thirst
You think water is nature’s gift to life? Why do you hate capitalism so much? Learn more at:

http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2004/thirst/about.html

I haven’t seen Thirst, but the details online are provocative. I was reminded of another documentary, The Corporation, which touched on the issue of water rights. In 2000, Bolivia tried to privatize the water supply of its third largest city, Cochabamba, by selling the system to a consortium of foreign companies, including Bechtel in the U.S. The poor in Cochabamba, living on $2 a day, would have to pay one fourth of their income for water. The contract was so broadly worded that it effectively outlawed the collection of rain water for drinking. Proponents claimed such an interpretation of the law was unenforceable. Alas, the enforceability of a given law often depends on the number of police available, not the idiocy of the law. Riots ensued; some people died; and the government backed down.

Privatizing water is all the rage these days. Last July, I found this snippet of news (left) on Democracy Now!

In August, my older brother informed me of another news item involving water — the letters “PWS” which appear on labels of Aquafina, bottled water from Pepsi. PWS stands for Public Water Source. Aquafina is municipal water in convenient (?) plastic bottles with only a modest mark-up of 7000%.

Water is essential for life; but the number of people on earth continues to rise, and the amount of clean, fresh water continues to fall. Is water a right? Or is it just another commodity?

Invictus

2007-09-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

On April 19, 1995, the north face of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. Five days later, the front page of Advertising Age carried an article titled “The End of Innocence” and listed other stories inside:

“Invisible enemy”: ...compares consumer reaction now and during the Persian Gulf War. Page 3
“America has gaping wound”: But the carnage in Oklahoma City will galvanize us. Page 18
“Loose Lips Sink Ships”: How about stirring public with World War II theme? Page 42
“This changes nothing”: Bob Garner says Americans will let their guard down again. Page 43

Timothy McVeigh was a decorated veteran of the Persian Gulf War, the latest version of which we are fighting today; and disclosures in 1995 about Pearl Harbor rendered the “stirring…World War II theme” suspect. In “Road to Paranoia” (New Yorker, 6/19/1995), Michael Kelly decried “fusion paranoia” — a phenomenon that arose in connection with the Iran-hostage-contra-cocaine affair. Incredibly, it seems that both “right” and “left” wingers believed a secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran had influenced the U.S. elections in 1980.

Convicted in 1997, Timothy McVeigh wanted an appeal and a new lawyer. His attorney, Stephen Jones (left), had been appointed by the court; and there was friction between the two men. Jones, believing that the accused has a right to confront his accusers, argued that he was denied a chance to question F.B.I. informant Carol Howe — a key witness in the case — or present evidence of a wider conspiracy. It would not have exculpated McVeigh, but it might have made people think. After the trial, the Chicago Tribune carried a front page article about the “fringe rants” of a cover-up, implying some sort of “center” where folks don’t fuss over details.

The early and easy simplifications of McVeigh have become uneasy over time. Who do you think he was? In a letter to the Union Sun and Journal in Lockport, New York, McVeigh wrote in part:

At a point when the world has seen communism falter as an imperfect system to manage people, democracy seems to be headed down the same road. No one is seeing the ‘big’ picture.

Maybe we have to combine ideologies to achieve the perfect utopian government. Remember, government sponsored health care was a communist idea. Should only the rich be allowed to live long? Does that say that because a person is poor, he is a lesser human being; and doesn’t deserve to live as long, because he doesn’t wear a tie to work?

What kind of talk is that? At his sentencing on August 14, 1997, McVeigh “sat down without exchanging the usual handshake with Mr. Jones,* who afterward would not comment on their relationship.” (The New York Times, 8/15/1997) McVeigh addressed the court before sentence was passed, but he didn’t say much.

I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, ‘Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.’ That all I have.

According to The New York Times, McVeigh’s remarks were so fleeting and “so cryptic that families of the bombing’s victims were not sure what he meant.”

“‘I don’t know if he was referring to the Waco deal or what,’ said Roy Sells, 63, a retired Air Force employee whose wife, Leora, was among the 168 people killed in the explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

“‘I wish he would’ve quoted something from his own heart instead of out of somebody’s book,’ Mr. Sells said.”

McVeigh’s remarks might have sounded cryptic to Mr. Sells, but how did they sound to lawyers and judges in the federal system? After all, McVeigh was a man arrested with quotes from our founding fathers in his possession. Isn’t it at least possible that he quoted Brandeis because those words did convey what was in his heart?

Those words came from Olmstead v U.S. (1928), a Prohibition conspiracy case. Federal agents had obtained wiretap evidence by violating state laws, but federal laws did not exclude evidence acquired illegally. To Brandeis, that was an affront to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.

Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring a terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face…

Brandeis noted that when the Bill of Rights was adopted, “’the form that evil had theretofore taken’ had been necessarily simple. Force and violence were then the only means known to man by which a government could directly effect self-incrimination.” Technology had changed that. Surveillance no longer required breaking down doors and rummaging through drawers.

Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet…Whenever a telephone line is tapped, the privacy of the persons at both ends of the line is invaded, and all conversations between them upon any subject, and although proper, confidential, and privileged, may be overheard.

I have no doubt of McVeigh’s guilt. However, his reference to the example set by government bothers me. Were any of the conspirators linked to federal agencies? Was it a “sting” operation; was it entrapment; or was it something worse? The similarities between the Murrah Building bombing and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center are disconcerting, as is the Waco connection. Investigative records on Waco were housed in the Murrah building.

But what concerns me most of all is the Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Bill of 1995, forerunner of the Patriot Act. The legislation had been proposed by the F.B.I., the agency with so many informants in so many controversial cases. The Bill called for expanded powers of federal agencies to monitor domestic groups. It sought to criminalize activities protected under the First Amendment, streamline the appeal process, grant broad and exclusive executive authority to designate individuals or groups as offenders, and eliminate habeas corpus for designated suspects. It was stalled in Congress before the Oklahoma bombing. After that, President Clinton used the bombing to argue for the Bill. He got it in 1996, but without some of the most coveted powers. Then came 9/11 which, we are told, changed everything.

Six years later, U. S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while on his way out, was still seeking authority to “fast-track” execution appeals. He served a similar function in Texas under then-Governor George Bush, Jr., who took office in January of 1995. Will Gonzales’s replacement be more circumspect?

In a hand-written statement before his execution, Timothy McVeigh printed a poem by William Ernest Henley, titled Invictus.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted on state and federal charges, so the authorities clearly perceived a conspiracy. Does that mean the case was solved?

I think McVeigh was the captain of his soul, but I don’t know under what flag he sailed. Nobody else has been charged in the bombing. Two possible JD2 matches died in custody, which strongly suggests that some people genuinely believed in the existence of John Doe #2 and urgently wanted to find him. Whether they wanted to prosecute him or silence him is an open question.

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* Jones, in collaboration with Peter Israel, wrote Others Unknown: The Oklahoma City Bombing Case and Conspiracy, first published in 1998, revised in 2001. As a law student in 1964, Jones was a personal assistant to Richard Nixon, but he was also a friend of Alger Hiss, the first U.S. representative to the United Nations and an alleged Soviet spy. (In the early 1950s, Congressman Nixon was a driving force in the investigation of Hiss. Hiss was acquitted of espionage and then convicted of perjury in his espionage trial. A F.B.I. informant was the key witness in the case and a typewriter which may or may not have been found was the critical physical evidence.) According to Jones, McVeigh obstructed his own defense and a wider conspiracy was behind the Oklahoma bombing.

The Deadline for Withdrawal

2007-08-18T00:45:00.000-07:00

Trentadue Who?

2007-08-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

I can remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. I was at work; I had just walked in the front door. Customers and employees were gathered around the tv; a friend of mine, almost in tears, told me what had happened. On the screen, medical personnel were running away from the site of the attack as the announcer explained the discovery of a second bomb inside the building, and later a third. It was April 19, 1995. The north façade of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was a pile of rubble. I remember thinking that people still trapped in the wreckage might die if help could not arrive in time. I also remember thinking something even worse — that the other bombs were set specifically to kill rescue workers.

Suspicion immediately fell upon Muslim extremists. After all, hadn’t they bombed the World Trade Center in 1993?* The Oklahoma story, however, took an unexpected turn when a state trooper stopped a car without a license plate. The driver admitted that he had a gun and a knife and he surrendered them. Why? He was Timothy McVeigh, a veteran of Desert Storm and definitely not a Muslim. Earlier that morning, he had become the worst mass-murderer in U.S. history. Presumably, he was making his escape; but he wasn’t speeding. Why did he give up his gun? Why didn’t he just shoot the cop and drive on?

And then there was the question of John Doe #2. A sketch of him based on witness accounts (below left), received wide media coverage. Another sketch of him (below center) became evidence at McVeigh’s trial. John Doe #2 had a muscular build and a dragon tattoo on his left arm. But McVeigh’s accomplice, a farmer named Terry Nichols (below right), wasn’t muscular and didn’t have a dragon tattooed on his arm, raising an obvious question. Who was John Doe #2?

Evidently, he was nobody. The hunt for him ended when authorities determined that the JD2 story didn’t pan out. There was no John Doe #2.

McVeigh and Nichols were convicted in separate trials. In 2001, McVeigh was executed. Then, very quietly, the hunt was on again; and the F.B.I revealed that Nichols had agreed to help identify the previously non-existent John Doe #2.

Whoever John Doe #2 was, he wasn’t the man on the left, Kenney Trentadue. Trentadue was stopped at the Mexican border on June 10, 1995, for driving on a suspended license. He was also wanted for parole violations. On August 18, he was transferred to Oklahoma City. Three days later, he seemingly committed suicide in his cell.

Reporter James Ridgeway, writing for Mother Jones magazine, presents the story of Kenney’s brother, Jesse Trentadue, a lawyer in Utah. Kenney’s body was covered by bruises, with slashes on the throat. Jesse wanted to know why. Several Freedom of Information Act filings and a dozen years later, Jesse has pieced together enough details of his brother’s death to put it in context. The evidence is not encouraging.

It was murder by interrogation. Kenney fit the description of John Doe #2; the Bureau tried to get information out of him that he didn’t have. And he wasn’t the only JD2 match to die in custody. Worst of all, federal informants apparently had relayed information about the bombing before the attack.

The John Does who bombed the Murrah Building are at large, and the truth about the bombing remains hidden from the public. Jesse Trentadue has exposed part of the cover-up, but it is likely to be a long time before full disclosure is compelled.

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* An excellent question. See A Higher Reason, The Chair-Herding Pictures, June 30, 2006. The bomb used in the 1993 attack on the Trade Center was built by a F.B.I. informant named Emad Salem. Salem recorded his telephone conversations with the targets of the investigation and with his F.B.I. handlers. He couldn’t understand why the Bureau failed to prevent the attack.
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Out for a Stroll

2007-08-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

Non-Remembrance of Things Past

2007-07-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

The attorney’s performance was amazing. Asked at the eleventh hour to aid the defense in a civil case, he quickly had the plaintiff’s witnesses, and the plaintiff himself, stumbling to correct their tales. But the judge wasn’t interested. It was a slander case brought by an itinerant preacher, Oliver Brindley “The Walking Bible” Owen (aka Jerry Owen), against KCOP-TV in Los Angeles. As far as Judge Jack A. Crickard was concerned, the circumstances surrounding the issue, especially the secrecy and malfeasance of the Los Angeles police, were off limits. Crickard found for the plaintiff. He ordered KCOP to pay $35,000 for reporting Owen’s possible involvement in the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy. The defense attorneys, Michael Wayland and Vincent T. Bugliosi, lost. Yes, in 1975, Vincent Bugliosi, the man who had prosecuted the Charles Manson murder conspiracy, suspected a cover-up in R.F.K.’s death. He also faced a judge who didn’t want to hear it.

Owen’s connection to the assassination is too complex to relate here. But essentially, evidence indicated that Owen had a pre-existing relationship with Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the man falsely convicted of killing Senator Kennedy. Owen had arranged to meet Sirhan outside the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the murder, ostensibly to sell him a horse. Bugliosi managed to bring out some information about Owen, but Crickard effectively prevented disclosure of key details. Bugliosi noted in his closing argument for KCOP that:

we are talking about a conspiracy to commit murder, a conspiracy to assassinate someone who was a major candidate for the presidency of the United States, a conspiracy the prodigious dimensions of which would make Watergate look like a one-roach marijuana case.

In fact, before the trial, when another judge had ordered a review of the ballistics evidence in R.F.K.’s death, Bugliosi told the press:

Gentlemen, the time for us to keep on looking for additional bullets in this case has passed. The time has come for us to start looking for the members of the firing squad that night.

Vincent Bugliosi had no trouble recognizing a cover-up in Senator Kennedy’s assassination. And he learned that searching for the truth brought ridicule, not praise. A few weeks after the Owen vs. KCOP trial, he announced his candidacy for district attorney, pledging to uncover the facts in Robert Kennedy’s murder. The Los Angeles Times opposed him, claiming that “Bugliosi believes he has an emotional issue that he can exploit” in his quest for office. Bugliosi lost the election.

Three decades later, Bugliosi has redeemed himself; and he is no longer a conspiracy buff. This year, he published Reclaiming History: the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Weighing in at 1,612 pages, Reclaiming History is nearly twice as long as the Warren Report on President Kennedy’s murder. Drawing out the lie at greater length, however, doesn’t make it true. It remains an embarrassment of errors, omissions, and faulty reasoning.

Bugliosi appeared on the Colbert Report (6/21/2007) to promote his work, and he began by listing a number of “facts” which are simply not facts at all. And since Bugliosi is convinced that alleged assassin Lee Oswald acted alone, I couldn’t help wondering how he explains C.I.A. officer Everette Howard Hunt, Jr.’s confession in the J.F.K. murder. Alas, the topic never came up. Colbert cracked jokes; and Bugliosi responded in kind, calling Colbert a “clone of Oliver Stone.”

It was an odd remark considering Bugliosi’s work on the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Maybe, I thought, Stone is a clone of Bugliosi! — the young Bugliosi who recognized when a case was fixed.

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For an extensive account of Oliver Owen and Bugliosi’s role in the case, see The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: the Conspiracy and Coverup, by William Turner and Jonn Christian. It is full of information on the crime and praise for Bugliosi. Has Vincent forgotten the Walking Bible?

Sometimes, coincidences seem to stretch out forever, don’t they? For example, Oliver Owen had a friend named Gail Aiken. One of her brothers was William Bremer, Jr., who was convicted of a confidence swindle. His lawyer was Ellis Rubin. Rubin later represented Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Virgilio Gonzalez after they were caught in the Watergate Hotel.

Gail had another brother, Arthur, the man who shot presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972. Everette Howard Hunt, Jr., of J.F.K. assassination fame and another Watergate burglar, was sent to search Arthur’s home after the shooting to find evidence implicating the Democrats. But Arthur Bremer turned out to be merely another lone nut seeking fame. Like Lee Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, Arthur Bremer supposedly really wanted to kill Richard Nixon, but settled for another victim instead. It’s amazing how many lone assassins in America wanted to kill Richard Nixon but ended up killing somebody else.
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Let Justice be Undone

2007-07-27T22:29:00.000-07:00

George Bush, Jr. commuted the sentence of Irving Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jr., thereby supposedly incurring the ire of both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats complained that Junior was simply making good on a deal; Republicans insisted that Scooter should have a full pardon. Wasn’t it punishment enough that he had to pay a $250,400 fine, that he may never be able to practice law again, that he may face probation? And didn’t Bill Clinton grant a bunch of pardons just before he left office?

Within days of his sentencing, Libby had paid his fine; and commutation may exempt him from probation. What bothers me, however, is the matter of his license. Exactly what kind of law does “Scooter” practice?

Yes, Clinton issued a lot of pardons before he left office. But who were the beneficiaries? He did not pardon Leonard Peltier, who certainly deserves it.* He did, however pardon Marc Rich, a billionaire international commodities trader. In 1983, Rich was indicted for tax evasion and for trading with Iran during the hostage crisis. His ex-wife had donated to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Library, but the Republicans were curiously uninterested. They insisted Rich was innocent. In any case, he really didn’t need Clinton’s mercy. He’d been living splendidly abroad since his indictment; he just couldn’t enter the United States without facing possible arrest. The pardon ended his torment.

Naturally, Rich had top-notch representation; his attorney was Irving Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jr. When Clinton issued the pardon, Libby was on the phone congratulating poor Mr. Rich.

Rich, incidentally, had been indicted by then-U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani. Today, Giuliani is a 9/11 hero and a Republican presidential candidate who agrees with Bush’s decision to commute the sentence of Rich’s lawyer. Libby, you may recall, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case, where the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative following evidence on weapons traffic was disclosed to retaliate against her husband because he contradicted the administration’s claim of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases prior to the 2003 invasion. Thankfully, Libby didn’t lie about a sexual indiscretion, or he would have been in real trouble.

Libby has clearly travelled in powerful circles for a long time, so it’s hard to know exactly how many backs are being scratched here. Unfortunately, that’s often the case. To “heal the nation” three decades ago, President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon might have committed while in office. (Believe me, the list is longer than “Watergate.”) And out-going President George Bush, Sr. pardoned Caspar W. Weinberger and others for the Iran-hostage-contra-cocaine operation.

Luckily, they weren’t caught in any lies about sexual indiscretions, or they might have been thrown in the pokey.

Do Presidents ever pardon deserving petitioners? Of course, although I fear that practice is in decline. Do Presidents ever abuse their power? We elect them in the hope that they will do what is right. But their conception of right and ours often vary.

The Libby controversy has brought renewed attention to presidential powers to override court decisions or by-pass the judicial system entirely. A tit-for-tat argument about which President freed the most people misses the point. Who is getting off the hook? By pardoning Rich and commuting Libby’s sentence, didn’t Bill and George serve the same constituency?

* Peltier was falsely convicted of killing two F.B.I. agents on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in 1975. See In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen.

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And Now for Something Completely Different

2007-05-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

What has eight arms, three hearts, and blue blood?

Give up? Here are some more clues. It has W-shaped pupils, and each eye has two foveae instead of just one. And it comes in too many colors to list.

Still give up? I’m not surprised. I had no idea what that thing might be before I saw the NOVA program on cuttlefish, “Kings of Camouflage.” I was amazed.

In “normal mode,” so to speak, a cuttlefish looks like a small, brownish-grey squid. But if it wants to look like a piece of coral, that’s no problem.

The cuttlefish isn’t actually a fish. It’s a mollusk without a shell. It can change the texture and shape of its skin to produce the appearance of spikes. It has some 20 million pigmentation sacks in its skin layers, each independently controlled by muscles to expand or contract. It can be pink or yellow or neon blue, or all three at the same time. It can literally make waves of color ripple through its body.

But that’s not what I wanted to write about. I intended to write about beliefs held by humans concerning bees and C.C.D., or colony collapse disorder. On April 24, 2007, Bill Maher mentioned C.C.D. on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. On the Late, Late Show, Craig Ferguson made some jokes about C.C.D.

Bees are dying at an alarming rate. By some estimates, colonies have declined by 60% or more in the United States; and Europe has also been affected. Bees simply abandon the hive; they fly away and die. And humans need bees. Bees are our friends in the never-ending battle against starvation. Bees pollinate flowers which produce crops used to feed livestock and humans. Bees are vital for other reasons. No more bees, for example, means no more apples, which means no more apple seeds, which means no new apple trees. And humans need trees. Trees are our friends in the battle against global warming because trees love carbon dioxide. They pull it right out of the atmosphere.

A presentation before U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture, listed ten possible causes of C.C.D. The culprits include known bee parasites and viruses, hive management and feeding, lack of genetic diversity in queen bees, chemicals and pesticides in the environment, and so forth. Unfortunately, although those factors could adversely affect the health of a hive, they are not known to cause the classic symptom of C.C.D. — abandonment of the hive.

There are indications, however, that the increasing number of man-made electromagnetic fields in the environment may interfere with the bee’s navigational systems. A German study suggests that cell phone radiation has a significant effect on bees. That’s what most of the jokes on tv were about.

I certainly don’t know what causes C.C.D. But I know many of the factors detailed to the House committee are the result of human actions. And I know humans have a long history of underestimating “lower” animals.

Is it absurd to speculate that bees might be sensitive to part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can’t sense? Think about the cuttlefish. It shimmers with color even though it is color-blind! How is that possible? With two foveae in each eye, the cuttlefish can detect variations in the polarization of light — something humans can’t do without external contraptions. Humans have no sensory organ for thermal radiation, but pit vipers do. That’s how they find their prey. Butterflies can see light in the ultraviolet range of the electromagnetic spectrum — another feat beyond the powers of the human eye. There is growing evidence that loggerhead turtles navigate by sensing variations in the gravitational field of the earth.* They have no specific sensory organ to detect the field, but the capacity may depend on magnetic ions in the animal’s nervous system.

Bees are vastly more important to our survival than cell phones and wireless internet connections. Humans, regrettably, are notoriously arrogant about our abilities and dismissive of the natural world around us. If man-made electromagnetic fields are responsible for colony collapse disorder, will we admit it in time to avert disaster?

*See, for example, “Magnet-induced disorientation in hatchling loggerhead sea turtles”
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The Mighty Wurlitzer

2007-05-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

C.I.A. officer David Atlee Phillips called it The Mighty Wurlitzer. Put in a quarter and it would play your favorite tunes over and over, across the nation, for years on end.

He was referring to the Agency’s influence on mass media, the ability to plant a story in a variety of outlets and then just keep repeating it as if it was true. In newspapers and magazines, on television and radio, through a shifting array of advocates, a thousand times a day, as though it was widely accepted, for decades if necessary. And if the Agency preferred silence, the Wurlitzer could do that, too. Deafening silence.

(Left: a 1971 Wurlitzer 3500 “Zodiac” jukebox.)

Silence is what we heard when Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. died. He named names in the assassination of President Kennedy, all of them connected to the C.I.A. He didn’t merely tell his son about the plot; he made a twenty-minute cassette recording about the murder to be released after his death. An excerpt is available now on the internet; reportedly, the entire tape will be out soon.

A.B.C., N.B.C., and C.B.S. have insisted for nearly 45 years that the official fairy tale of John Kennedy’s murder was true. The New York Times, putatively the nation’s paper of record, has pushed the story just as long. Other news outlets have done the same. Now that Hunt has joined the list of operatives who have confessed, the networks and the newspapers have nothing to say.

In 1978, David Atlee Phillips admitted that a key part of the C.I.A.’s cover story — the “lone-assassin’s” trip to Mexico City — was false; the evidence was fabricated. Phillips was in a position to know since he helped create that tale. Mainstream media still hasn’t reported it. C.I.A. contract agent Robert Morrow wrote a book about his role in the murder. It’s a pretty bad book, but that’s not the point. Morrow’s confession never turned up on the six-o’clock news.

After Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, was released in 1991, Chauncey Holt came forward with his confession. Mainstream media responded by laughing him off and calling Stone paranoid. More than twenty years ago, C.I.A. asset Marita Lorentz testified in open court about her knowledge of Hunt’s part in the murder. Don’t tell me; let me guess. You’ve never heard of Marita Lorentz. For some reason, the Mighty Wurlitzer doesn’t mention her.

The list of confessors doesn’t stop there; but in all likelihood, you’ve never heard of them. For years, authorities have claimed that if a conspiracy had existed, someone would have talked by now. Well, several people have talked; but the Wurlitzer continues to play the old single, “No Confessions.”

Of course, there are more recent numbers on the Wurlitzer play list. A favorite these days is “We Didn’t Lie,” the soulful plaint of Agency innocence in the intelligence plot leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Former C.I.A. director George Tenet received the Medal of Freedom for his service to his country. On Sixty Minutes (4/29/2007), Tenet delivered a powerful rendition of “We Didn’t Lie”; but it lacked sincerity. A group of former intelligence officers sent a letter to Tenet about his complicity in the pre-war deception. You can read their letter on the internet, but it hasn’t gotten any play on the Wurlitzer. I have excerpted a paragraph below. After noting the C.I.A.’s collaboration with the British to “fix” the intelligence around the Iraq war policy, the writers added:

By your silence you helped build the case for war. You betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld. Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States. Instead of resigning in protest, when it could have made a difference in the public debate, you remained silent and allowed the Bush Administration to cite your participation in these deliberations to justify their decision to go to war. Your silence contributed to the willingness of the public to support the disastrous war in Iraq, which has killed more than 3300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Former intelligence officers think there was some sort of arrangement to deceive the American public? Whose side are they on?

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The Politics of Amnesia

2007-05-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

I watched roughly twenty-five minutes of the Republican presidential candidates debate before I walked away in disbelief. I cannot fathom their world. With an exception now and then, they all struck me as disconnected from reality.

Do I exaggerate? Later in the evening, when my blood pressure returned to normal, I looked around on the internet for more details about the event. Consider the picture on the left.

The men with their hands raised are Senator Sam Brownback, Representative Tom Tancredo, and former governor Mike Huckabee. The assembled candidates had been asked who among them did not believe in evolution.

Long ago, when humans didn’t know about the theory of evolution, we still bred dogs to produce desirable traits. How did we do it? Now we live in an age when scientists are manipulating D.N.A., the very stuff of evolution. Yet three of the Republican contenders do not believe in evolution. Isn’t that rather like owning a computer and disputing the rules of addition? If they don’t believe in evolution, what do they think stem cell research is all about?

It wasn’t a real debate, of course; the candidates could not engage one another or elaborate on complex matters. I didn’t take notes, and many of the men on that stage were unfamiliar to me. Nevertheless, I recognized that they expressed broad agreement on key positions of the current Republican party. That’s what frightened me. I saw ten men afflicted with ideologically induced Alzheimer’s disease running for the Oval Office.

For instance, the debate was held in the President Ronald Reagan Library; and each candidate took an opportunity to remark upon, or lay claim to, the Reagan legacy. There was talk of Reagan’s optimism, his vision of America as a shining city on a hill. There was talk of family values and tax cuts.

A wittier wag than I once observed that we have to record history or we won’t know what we’re repeating! But that doesn’t mean everyone reads history. Republicans remember Reagan’s tax cuts and forget what followed. The man behind the numbers was David Stockman, who later wrote a book about the optimistic assumptions used to make the budget look good. The result was a $2 trillion gap between the “Rosy Scenario” and actual economic performance. George Bush, Sr. said, “Read my lips; no new taxes.” Still, when the budget went south, he supported more federal revenues. And his party attacked him! But Republicans today don’t recall that. They only recall how Reagan cut taxes.

Reagan made a deal with the Axis of Evil: the Iran-Israel-contra-cocaine operation. The U.S. raised a mercenary army to attack Nicaragua, a country that has never attacked us. Reagan described the mercenaries as “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.” The army was funded in part by drug money from protected cocaine traffic in the U.S. But today’s Republicans don’t recollect that, either. All they remember is that Reagan cut taxes.

I heard China mentioned in the debate at least twice — once as a future threat and once as a nation using unfair trade practices. Has anybody told Wal-Mart? More to the point, the U.S. is currently borrowing roughly $50 billion per month, the bulk of it from Japan and China. Has anybody warned George Bush, Jr. that we have become dependent upon a trading partner that is our enemy?

We’re borrowing this money, of course, because we cut taxes and started the most expensive war in our history. If China wasn’t loaning us money, we wouldn’t be in Iraq today. I have noted in the past the neo-con goal of controlling China’s access to oil. Is China a threat because they might attack us, or is China a “threat” because shortsighted leaders in the U.S. are selling us off at a furious clip?

I heard talk in the debate of recent Republican successes — the proscription drug plan was cited as an example. I was stunned. That law was written by lobbyists who low-balled the costs and prevented the government from negotiating prices. It was legalized larceny, yet it was touted as a triumph of Republican leadership.

Naturally, candidates tried to distance themselves from the administration, but that doesn’t mean they embraced reality. South still isn’t up and right still isn’t sideways. We can’t afford another President spreading the Disney theory of history. We need someone better than that.

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Why Are We In Iraq?

2007-03-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Why are We in Vietnam?, by Norman Mailer, was published in 1967. His protagonist is a Texas teenager on a hunting trip in Alaska before he is sent to fight on the other side of the world. The Dallas Times described it as “[a] shattering social commentary…The book is a tour de force, a treatise on human nature, society, and war in flip disguise.”

No such book has yet been written about Iraq, so the task has fallen to me. My protagonist, D, is the son of illegal aliens, brought to the United States in the early 1920s and educated in Indiana. A gifted student with an interest in medicine, he becomes a prominent psychologist just as the ideas of Sigmund Freud are taking hold in the United States. In the aftermath of World War II, D is recruited by the U.S. Army to assist in a massive study of returning veterans. D corresponds with Anna Freud and takes a job with Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, the father of public relations. In 1951, when Bernays is hired by United Fruit to build public support for a coup in Guatemala, D advises C.I.A. officer Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. on propaganda operations in the target nation.

D becomes wealthy with his own public relations firm. He also works for the C.I.A. occasionally, assisting in domestic operations. Meanwhile, the idea of controlling society by countering destructive subconscious impulses is replaced by another concept: Docility produced by manufacturing and then sating consumer desires, giving the population a sense of choice and self-worth. D sees no contradiction in this paradigm shift; he has long since internalized the belief that the ruling elite, although comprised of individuals, is somehow free of the primitive emotions that motivate everyone else. When the paradigm changes again with the rise of the human potential movement, D unhesitatingly finds a way to turn that into an ad campaign. In the course of his career, D never encounters a theory of human behavior that he can’t use for the benefit of his clients.

At the age of 75, he is consulted on ways to sell the first invasion of Iraq to the American public. He comes up with the pitch that Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait had dumped premature babies out of incubators and sent those incubators to Iraq. It works like a charm. Seven months before the second invasion, he succumbs to pneumonia. He dies believing that democracy is dangerous because ordinary people cannot be trusted to make informed, responsible decisions. For their own good, people must be given the illusion of choice without the prospect of choice.

I have no intention of writing the book I’ve described. But I did grow up in America during the ascension of Freudian thought. My stepfather was a clinical psychologist and my mother was a psychiatric nurse. For a time, my family lived in an apartment building for hospital staff on the grounds of Longcliff State Hospital, the largest state hospital in Indiana. I also grew up in the late stages of the Red Scare propaganda campaign that led to the invasion of Vietnam.

And unfortunately, Edward Bernays and Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. are not figments of my imagination. Nor is Anna Freud. More distressing, people like D certainly exist. Throughout the ages, business and government have sought techniques to manage public perceptions.

True or false or a bit of both, all models of motivation accepted by a significant faction of any society wield influence, if only because they have a Pygmalion effect. Even so, some general principles have been understood for centuries. Fear and secrecy, for example, have long been known to influence behavior.

Baseball season approaches, so I will close with a baseball analogy. Wrigley Field in Chicago is the home of the Chicago Cubs. It’s an old stadium with regularly spaced columns to support the upper decks. If you end up sitting behind one of those columns, you have an obstructed view. You may have to lean left or right to follow a play; you may miss a key play completely.

Mass media consolidation is building a Media Wrigley Field with much wider columns so all but prime ticket holders will have an obstructed view of the field.

If you can’t wait for my non-existent book, you can still watch a remarkable four-part series by the B.B.C. titled “The Century of the Self,” about the advent and success of modern public relations — or perception management or whatever spin is called these days. The series is available through Google video at the following addresses.

Part 1 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2637635365191428174
Part 2 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-678466363224520614
Part 3 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6111922724894802811
Part 4 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1122532358497501036

Our founding fathers thought that a successful democracy required an informed public. Suppose they were right. How, then, are we to judge our democracy today?

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Madam Secretary, Why Don't They Love Us?

2007-03-20T20:11:00.000-07:00

On Fox News Sunday (2/25/2007), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained why Congress should not reconsider the 2002 authorization of discretionary force granted to George Bush. Jr.:

“It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.”

The implied camparison between Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein is absurd. Hitler conquered Europe, invaded Russia, and killed millions. Hussein was steam-rolled twice and captured in a hole in the ground. The Roosevelt administration did not have to invent stories about German and Japanese aggression to sell a war. And there was no resolution that “allowed” us to prevail or which gave President Roosevelt extraordinary war powers.

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The next day, Congress declared war against Japan. Three days later, Germany delivered a declaration of war to the State Department’s European Division under Secretary of State Cordell Hull (left), one of Rice’s predecessors. Congress declared war against Japan and Germany in the quaint, pre-9/11, Constitutional way.

U.S. Presidents did not determine post-war plans for Europe. Over Republican opposition, Congress approved the Marshall Plan and President Truman signed it in 1948. It was named after General George Marshall (right), former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who became Secretary of State in 1947.

The U.S. occupied Germany and Japan through the early 1950s, but the Germans and Japanese did not shoot U.S. troops or plant roadside bombs. Now, flash forward. Through war and economic sanctions, the U.S. has killed more Iraqis than former U.S. client, Saddam Hussein, who was overthrown and hanged in a soap episode you can download on the internet. Inexplicably, some Iraqis are still targeting their liberators and anyone connected to those liberators. I don’t understand, Madam Secretary. Why don’t they love us?

A Short Correspondents Course

2007-01-30T22:21:00.000-08:00

It’s one of the most dramatic and important movies ever made in America; I’ll never forget the first time I saw it. The year was 1975; Geraldo Rivera was the host of the tv show Goodnight America. One night, comedian and black activist Dick Gregory appeared with researcher Robert Groden. They were there to discuss a film shot twelve years earlier by a Dallas dress manufacturer named Abraham Zapruder. In 26 seconds, using a home movie camera, he captured the assassination of President John Kennedy. A month after Australian tv aired the film, Rivera showed it to America for the first time.

The Zapruder film proved beyond question that a conspiracy was behind the murder. Yet the general public didn’t have a chance to watch that film as a motion picture until 1975. True, Life magazine had published a few selected stills from the movie. However, the movie is nearly 500 frames long. A series of disconnected, individual images simply doesn’t convey motion, which is what movies are all about. When the Zapruder film is seen as a motion picture, the effect is visceral. I can still recall the collective gasp of the studio audience when they saw the President’s head thrown back and to the left in a spray of blood.

But in 1975, Rivera had already been marginalized by his sensationalist style. The assassination itself had been marginalized, and the film really didn’t tell people anything they didn’t already suspect. It wasn’t a big story anymore.

Besides, big stories that lack official validation don’t “make” media careers; they tend to damage careers. Newsweek reporter Robert Parry broke the U.S.-Iran-contra story. The government denied it, and Parry lost his job. As it turned out, Parry was right; but he didn’t get his old job back. San Jose Mercury reporter Gary Webb cracked the U.S.-contra-cocaine connection. The paper back-tracked under political pressure; Webb was transferred to the suburbs to report on high school sports. Now, consider Bob Woodward and the Watergate scandal. Navy lieutenant Woodward had served in the Nixon White House before he abandoned his promising career to become a reporter. He was a rookie on the metro beat of the Washington Post when he landed a small story that turned into a huge one. As luck would have it, he had a secret source in the White House codenamed Deep Throat.

Robert MacNeil, of P.B.S. MacNeil/Leher news fame, was a younger man once. He worked for N.B.C. in 1963; he was on the press bus in Kennedy’s fateful motorcade. He heard shots and he got off the bus. He was photographed along with several other people at the west end of the grassy knoll, looking at the railroad tracks that ran by Dealey Plaza. He walked around; he talked to people. In search of a pay phone, he requested directions from a young man leaving the Texas School Book Depository who directed MacNeil to the building across the street. That young man apparently was the alleged assassin. MacNeil later suspected that a conspiracy had taken Kennedy’s life, but N.B.C. didn’t agree.

Retired C.B.S. newsman Dan Rather was younger once. He was on the west side of the railroad tracks when Kennedy was shot. Rather was involved in C.B.S.’s attempt to buy the Zapruder film the next day. He was the only reporter who saw the movie before it was “disappeared” for a dozen years. He described it on the air for C.B.S. Although his location at the time of the shooting and his viewing of the Zapruder film made him a potentially critical witness, Rather was not called to testify by the presidential commission investigating the murder.

After Rivera broadcast the film, Rather was criticized for his 1963 account. In fact, he had reported details which do not appear in the film as we know it today. What could he do? Forced to reconcile his memory of 1963 with the extant movie in 1975, he conceded that he must have made some mistakes. Decades later, when puzzling documents on George Bush, Jr.’s Air National Guard service emerged, Rather was again attacked for apparent mistakes.

I once thought that Dan Rather lied in 1963. Now, I think he told the truth, which might be why he wasn’t called as a witness. Today, it’s the movie I question. I think that in 1975, Rather held unfounded assumptions about that film, as most people did, including myself.

The same kinds of forces which frustrated public understanding in 1963 live on in 2007. Major events still touch people in a myriad of ways.

Rivera’s 1986 special about the excavation of a tunnel in Chicago once used by the Capone gang was a dud. Al Capone’s secret “vault” held nothing more than dirt and a bottle of gin. On the other hand, I found Rivera’s reports from New Orleans after hurricane Katrina genuinely moving. Nevertheless, he is a strident voice on the right. As a FOX war correspondent in 2001, he proclaimed he was “[i]tching for justice, or maybe just revenge.” He was a strong supporter of the invasion of Iraq, and he was criticized for some of his reports. On a radio program in Florida last December, after mumbling about a “midget” and a “slimeball,” he announced that he was ready to fight M.S.N.B.C. newsman Keith Olbermann! Rivera said he would make a pizza out of Olbermann.

Olbermann responded in part by saying that he could remember when Rivera used to be somebody. I can, too.

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The Death of a Dangerous Man

2007-01-30T22:15:00.000-08:00

One of the most influential criminals of our time has died of pneumonia at the age of 88.

He had his fingers in several significant pieces of history that we know of, and probably others that we don’t. He was so successful that he is generally not even thought of as a criminal. He was C.I.A. officer Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. (Seen left in a photo from the 1960s.)

Hunt was in charge of the propaganda campaign accompanying the 1954 coup in Guatemala. The U.S. organized the coup, codenamed Operation Success, at the behest of the United Fruit Company to protect their holdings in Guatemala.

Hunt played a similar role in Operation Zapata, the invasion of Cuba in 1961. The C.I.A. initially assisted Fidel Castro’s insurgency against Fulgencio Batista, who had lost the support of the Cuban military. The scheme was to then replace Castro with another version of Batista. The flip-flop took on added urgency after Castro arranged to buy oil from Russia. President Eisenhower authorized the first black ops against Cuba in 1959. Zapata was supposed to take place before the 1960 elections so Vice-President Richard Nixon would be swept into the Oval Office on a wave of patriotic fervor. But preparations for the invasion bogged down, and Nixon lost the election. Zapata then became an operation against the incoming administration.

Hunt is best known for his role in the Watergate affair — the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. As I noted last month (“A Free Man,” The Chair-Herding Pictures, 12/28/2006), Hunt and senior C.I.A. officer James McCord were the key figures in the operation against Nixon.

But Watergate wasn’t Hunt’s only crime during Nixon’s presidency. During the Pentagon Papers controversy in the early 1970s, Hunt forged diplomatic cables to make it appear as though President John Kennedy was behind the assassination of Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, murdered less than three weeks before Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas.

Which brings us to Hunt’s most important and least publicized crime. On November 21, 1963, Hunt and Frank Sturgis (also of Watergate fame) arrived in Dallas to deliver the rifles used to kill Kennedy the next day.

Evidence of Hunt’s role emerged in the course of a libel suit he brought against Liberty Lobby. In 1978, Liberty Lobby published an article about a C.I.A. document concerning the need to arrange an alibi for Hunt for the day of Kennedy’s assassination. Hunt sued, and he prevailed at first. But by the time Liberty Lobby’s appeal came to trial in 1984, they had a lot more information to work with. Under informed cross-examination, Hunt’s C.I.A. witnesses crumbled. His only non-Agency witnesses were his three children, who were between the ages of 10 and 13 when Kennedy was killed. Hunt claimed he was at home with them on the day of the assassination, and together they watched the television coverage over the weekend. Yet by Hunt’s own account, his children didn’t remember that. In fact, when his children first learned of allegations of his involvement in the assassination, they confronted him and demanded to know if the accusations were true. His children were not called to testify on his behalf. The jury found for Liberty Lobby.

Shortly before Abraham Lincoln’s death, he wrote a letter in which he expressed his fear for the future of our country. As a result of the Civil War, “corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

The huge increase in military spending brought about by World War II led President Eisenhower to warn us of “unwarranted power” wielded by the military/industrial complex. His successor was killed under conspicuously suspicious circumstances, and the war which followed was our longest war. Until recently, it was also our most expensive war. Today, we see increasing “corporatization” of the military and the government ostensibly for the sake of efficiency but actually to remove them from democratic control. In the face of massive debt, we see corporate figures with government titles spending obscene amounts of money for unarmored vehicles and voting machines that can’t count.

What we cannot see, though it certainly exists, is the small army of men like Everette Howard Hunt, Jr., ever ready to confuse power with patriotism.

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Privileged Victims

2007-01-11T21:42:00.000-08:00

Suppose I punch you and steal five bucks because I’m trying to pay off a gambling debt. Now, suppose you punch me and steal five bucks because you hate people like me. Which crime deserves the harsher sentence?

That is the issue behind laws which create special classes of perpetrators and victims for otherwise comparable transgressions. I slugged you and I got two weeks because I only wanted money. You slugged me and you got a year because of what you thought. Is that equal protection under the law?

Which brings me to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The privileged victims are not of any particular race or religion. Instead, the victims are “animal enterprises,” such as the Huntington Life Sciences company in the United Kingdom which conducts experiments on animals for the manufacturers of cosmetics, cleaning solutions, or other products.

A group called Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was very successful in its efforts against Huntington Life Sciences. SHAC used letter-writing campaigns, email campaigns, and so forth to propagate its views. Through its website, SHAC publicized demonstrations against Huntington, its customers, and its employees. SHAC also reproduced letters from anonymous contributors who claimed to have engaged in illegal activities. Several suppliers stopped doing business with Huntington, which went into debt. Because Huntington has a lab in New Jersey, federal charges in the U.S. were brought against SHAC.

The SHAC Six were the first people to be prosecuted under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992, and they were convicted in March of this year. But they were not found guilty of pouring blood on mink coats or releasing captive research animals. They were convicted of conspiring to inspire others to commit crimes. They were not convicted for what they did; they were convicted for what others have done or might do.

The New Jersey branch of the American Civil Liberties Union entered the case as amicus. Observing that criminal acts had occurred, the A.C.L.U. wrote that

[t]he court neither found that SHAC or its leaders engaged in the illegal activities or that SHAC “directs” the actions of the activists who undertook illegal acts “within the scope of their actual or apparent authority” from SHAC. Had the court been able to find as such, the court could have rightly entered an injunction. However, the judge did not enter an injunction based on that analysis. Rather, he found that SHAC incited “imminent lawlessness.” For the factual basis, he relied on the fact that SHAC “endorsed” illegal activities and posted information about the illegal activity, which the court said thereby encouraged more illegal activity. The ACLU-NJ argues that allowing an injunction to issue based on individuals’ “endorsement” of other people’s illegal activities, is improper and a violation of free speech and freedom of the press.

The National Lawyers Guild opposed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, ostensibly written to strengthen the Protection Act, because existing laws already protect businesses from offenses like trespass or vandalism. Furthermore, the language of the Act is unconstitutionally broad and vague. It could be interpreted to outlaw legal, expressive speech, silence whistleblowers, or criminalize boycotts. The Act violates the Fourteenth Amendment because it treats individual offenses on arbitrary grounds.

Animal rights activists are not widely understood or defended. Consequently, they present a good target for bad laws. The Animal Enterprise Protection Act “protects” an industry from legal activities by encroaching on the Constitution, which is why the right-wing favors it. If you can protect the profits of one industry, why not every industry?

Where is all this heading? On November 27, Newt Gingrich addressed a banquet in Manchester, New Hampshire. Here are some excerpts:

This is a serious, long term war. And it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country.

…we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech…

It will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous…

I want to suggest to you that we right now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of the threat.

Gingrich said he is not a candidate for the presidency. However, he is

seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be President, it will happen.

It’s always fear with the Republicans these days, isn’t it? The sales pitch is never hope or progress. If we don’t privatize Social Security, benefits will be cut. If we don’t attack, we’ll be attacked. If we don’t torture prisoners or suspend habeas corpus, Americans will die. To preserve free speech, we may have to end it.

Remember, terrorists can be anybody — eco-terrorists, narco-terrorists, al Qaeda, religious organizations, ordinary citizens opposed to the U.S. regime, right-wing bombers, “dangerous” bloggers, or anyone designated a terrorist by the Oval Office. It is anybody’s guess how the far right might construe “suspect” places. But Gingrich truly is talking about a level of supervision beyond your worst nightmares. So he has to convince you that there is an imminent threat.

The greatest threat we face, however, doesn’t spring from “terrorists.” The threat comes from Newt Gingrich and others who are chipping away at the First Amendment while promising to defend it, along with the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments. The tag line is always the same: Hurry, hurry; be afraid. Give up your rights before terrorists steal them.

Fear and prejudice can be effective motivational tools, but they are not amenable to reason. The way to preserve liberty is with more liberty, not less. The best defense against bad ideas is better ideas in the marketplace of ideas. When a government seeks to limit speech, it’s always a bad sign. It is an admission that the government has no faith in its professed ideals or confidence in the support of its people. And that really is something to fear.

Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I’m afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.
—Orleans Parish District Attorney Earling Carothers [Jim] Garrison, Playboy, October 1967, vol. 14, no. 10

____________________

A Free Man

2006-12-28T19:06:00.000-08:00

President Gerald Ford died a free man at the age of 93, on the day after Christmas in 2006.

Ford attained his high position after President Richard Milhous Nixon’s first Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, resigned under a cloud of corruption investigations in his home state. Nixon selected then-Congressman Ford to be Vice-President. Nixon resigned under a cloud of suspicion in 1974, and Ford became President. He then granted Nixon a pardon.

Ford has been praised for his unpopular and supposedly courageous decision to pardon Nixon and “heal the nation.” But the nation wasn’t ill and didn’t need to be healed. The media huffed and puffed about a constitutional crisis, but no such crisis existed. Ford’s action served primarily to forestall public awareness of the Watergate affair and the involvement of the C.I.A. With one exception, all of the Watergate burglars were Agency officers or assets. The two men running the show, Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. and James McCord, were career intelligence officers with the highest clearance. The C.I.A. provided the burglars with money, disguises, electronic equipment, and lock-picking expertise. To this day, most people have no idea what Watergate was about.

Ford installed George Herbert Walker Bush as Director of Central Intelligence in the critical period preceding the House Select Committee on Assassinations inquiry into the murders of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Nixon’s chief-of-staff, H. R. Haldeman, noted that the C.I.A. obliterated a mountain of evidence connecting the Agency to Kennedy’s assassination. (Haldeman, H. R., with Joseph DiMona, The Ends of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, New York, Time Books, 1978, pp. 39-40)

And Ford didn’t merely pardon Nixon for Watergate; Ford issued a blanket pardon for any crimes Nixon may have committed as President.

I can think of at least one crime Nixon may have committed as President: The U.S.-backed assassination of Chilean President Salvador Allende on 9/11/1973. Nixon’s economic efforts to “make the [Chilean] economy scream” brought hardship to Chile but failed to unseat Allende. The alternative approach, killing him, worked better.

Allende’s successor, Augusto Pinochet, recently died a free man while under investigation for “disappearing” thousands of “dissidents.” Some of the victims were foreigners from the U.S., Spain, or France. During a visit to France 28 years after Allende’s murder, Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was invited by the authorities to respond to certain inquiries. Kissinger promptly fled to Italy. Nixon died a free man in 1994. Henry Kissinger isn’t getting any younger; and he will most likely die a free man under a cloud of suspicion.

In 1963, 50-year-old Congressman Ford was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to serve on the Warren Commission which oversaw the federal investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy. The Commissioners classified important evidence for 75 years. Commissioner Allen Dulles had served for nine years as director of the C.I.A.; he was fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Newsweek magazine described Gerald Ford as “the C.I.A.’s best friend in Congress.”

The Warren Report became the most discredited document ever printed by the Government Printing Office, a record previously held by the Roberts Commission Report on the attack against Pearl Harbor.

When Indonesia was preparing to invade East Timor in 1975, their primary concern was U.S. opposition which might have led to the withholding of arms shipments to Indonesia. That December, Ford met Indonesian President Sukarno and gave him the green light. Ford then flew to Guam to deliver a speech on the anniversary of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor — as Indonesia began the surprise carnage in East Timor. The death toll in East Timor, considered as a percentage of the total population, was worse than the slaughter visited upon Europe by Adolph Hitler.

Yes, Ford did grant amnesty to U.S. citizens who went to Canada to escape the draft during the invasion of Vietnam. But that lone positive gesture was more than offset by the damage he did.

Gerald Ford died a free man at the age of 93, on the day after Christmas in 2006.

____________________

24

2006-12-19T05:35:00.000-08:00

Even if you’ve never seen the tv series 24, you can easily grasp the idea behind it. A terrorist group is planning to unleash a deadly attack within the next 24 hours. Starting with scanty intelligence, U.S. security agencies are in a race against time; and counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer will take any action necessary — including torture — to get the information he needs to protect our country.

The ticking time bomb story has become a staple of right-wing political discourse. The Bush team used it to justify the invasion of Iraq by warning that we couldn’t wait for proof of Iraqi weapons programs to come in the form of a mushroom cloud. Why, to hear the administration tell it, we may be forced to invade Iran soon for the very same reason.

The notion of impending calamity is routinely enlisted to support a range of policies and procedures. And the context is always described in numbingly familiar terms: We have no time to lose; we must act even if the consequences are uncertain because the threat, however nebulous, is dire.

It certainly makes exciting television, with a cliff-hanger every 60 minutes. The real world, however, usually doesn’t follow the script.

Ten months ago, I wrote about Alfred McCoy’s appearance on Democracy Now, when he talked about techniques of torture. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and he is the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Later, I worked on a review of a book by Sam Harris titled The End of Faith, which offers an argument for torture. In October of 2006, my study came full circle when I found “The Myth of the Ticking Time Bomb,” an article by McCoy in The Progressive.

Harris’s account is a version of the ticking-time bomb story described by Professor Allen Dershowitz, of Harvard Law School. Authorities have captured a terrorist with information about a nuclear device set to detonate in New York City. The suspect won’t talk and time is running out. Who could doubt that torture would be justified?

From there, Dershowitz asks if it wouldn’t be better for torture to be permissible under a regulatory warrant. Such warrants, issued by officials acting on the record, would simultaneously meet our intelligence needs while limiting abuse of torture. After all, duly constituted figures would never authorize the sort of methods employed at abu Ghraib, would they?

Unfortunately, experience has shown that Dershowitz’s faith in government officers is misplaced. George Bush, Jr. ordered the C.I.A. to establish secret prisons to circumvent U.S. law. If torture warrants proscribed certain practices, what would prevent a second dose of secrecy to get around those restrictions?

In The Progressive, Alfred McCoy deconstructs the ticking time bomb logic. First, he writes, the story rests on a number of unstated assumptions about the nature of intelligence work. Several improbable circumstances must arise for the Dershowitzian torture scenario to develop.

Second, the story assumes that useful intelligence can be gathered by employing torture. Over the centuries, however, that simply hasn’t been the case. Nearly two thousand years ago, Roman jurist Ulpian noted that the strong will resist and the weak will say anything to stop the pain. Christians once used torture to extract amazing confessions of witchcraft even though there are no witches.

Third, and perhaps most important in the current political environment, the torture of one suspect quickly becomes a rationale for torturing others. That progression occurred in the Battle of Algiers, when the French arrested one third of the male population of the Casbah and subjected most of them to torture. Arrest enough people and you do increase your chances of catching a bad guy. The French also summarily executed 3000 captives. They broke the resistance in Algiers and were nevertheless defeated. The C.I.A.’s Phoenix program in Vietnam produced tens of thousands of deaths. Nevertheless, Vietnam won.

So the choices are clear. Major success from limited, surgical torture is a fable, a fiction. But mass torture of thousands of suspects, some guilty, most innocent, can produce some useful intelligence…but at what cost?
—Alfred W. McCoy

Which leads to the fourth point in McCoy’s article: the political price of coercion. Torture undermines domestic and international support for the war whether it is in Algeria, Vietnam, or Iraq. Torture tells the world that the torturers deserve to be attacked.

McCoy’s fifth point addresses an unexpected motive behind the push for torture. Ironically, it was outlined in a Cold War C.I.A. document about Russia.

When feelings of insecurity develop within those holding power, they become increasingly suspicious and put great pressures upon the secret police to obtain arrests and confessions. At such times, police officials are inclined to condone anything which produces a speedy “confession,” and brutality may become widespread.

Viewed from that perspective, Bush’s authorization of torture may tell us more about his psychological makeup than our actual security needs.

The U.S. now holds hundreds of prisoners of no particular importance. The administration is reluctant to free them because they will reveal what they have endured, and that will damage U.S. prestige for years to come. Detaining them indefinitely blatantly violates the precepts we are supposedly defending. The solution in Vietnam, if it could be called that, was pump and dump. Find out what the detainee knows, even if it is useless, and then kill him.

Torture, “legal” or otherwise, always invites killing. The conclusion, item number six in McCoy’s account, is grim. If we will not renounce torture, then we must

…either legalize this brutality, à la Dershowitz and Bush, or accept that the logical corollary to state-sanctioned torture is state-sponsored murder, à la Vietnam.

____________________

The Ice Man

2006-12-06T01:10:00.000-08:00

It’s a long story, but I’ll try to make it quick. According to The Observer, December 3, 2006 (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1962643,00.html) —

The Immigration and Customs Executive, part of the Department of Homeland Security, hired an informant for an operation against a group of traffickers. The informant, Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, aka Lalo, was a former Mexican police officer who left the force to deal cocaine. He started working for us, so to speak, in 2000; and he gave information to the I.C.E., the D.E.A., the F.B.I., and the B.A.T.F. He successfully infiltrated the drug ring. His drug bosses enlisted him for the murder of a lawyer, and Lalo was wearing a wire. It was first degree murder, and the I.C.E. could hear the victim pleading for his life.

That information eventually reached the U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General. I.C.E. continued using Lalo, but the other agencies didn’t know that. Over the course of his work, Lalo was paid $220,000. And he killed a dozen more people. In 2004, in a case of mistaken identity, Lalo killed Luis Padilla, a U.S. citizen unconnected to the dealers; and I.C.E. had recordings of the event.

The drug bosses tried and failed to kill a D.E.A. agent; and Lalo was in contact with the would-be killers as the attempt unfolded. I.C.E. debriefed Lalo but wouldn’t allow the D.E.A. to question him. Sandy Gonzalez, the D.E.A. agent in charge of the El Paso office, wrote a letter to I.C.E. holding them responsible for Lalo’s murder spree. Gonzalez noted that I.C.E. had gone to “extreme lengths” to protect a “homicidal maniac.”

I.C.E. and the Department of Justice wanted to keep a lid on the story. Gonzalez, a 30-year veteran of the D.E.A., was told he would be downgraded. If he retired quickly and quietly, he would be given a positive reference for future employers. Otherwise, things might not be so positive. He resigned and then filed a lawsuit.

A gunman in El Paso tried to murder Lalo but missed and killed an innocent bystander instead. Lalo was taken into protective custody; and then I.C.E. began deportation proceedings against their valued informant to send him to Mexico, where he would certainly be killed. For now, he is in prison fighting to stay in the U.S. The drug boss he killed for cut a deal with the feds. He pleaded quilty to trafficking and all of the murder charges against him were dropped.

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One-Sided Bipartisanship

2006-11-20T17:29:00.000-08:00

The elections were barely over when the media wondered aloud if the new Democratic majority in Congress would work in a bipartisan fashion and refrain from vindictiveness or retaliation. The questions implied that all the political shenanigans of the past few years were directed against the Democrats who might now seek retribution. In reality, the Republicans have conspired against the entire nation. It is justice, not revenge, which demands a reckoning.

The administration lied to Congress, to the American people, and to the entire world to justify a pre-planned invasion of Iraq. They used the war to line the pockets of their friends and to rationalize attacks on the Constitution. Republicans excluded Democrats from the legislative process. They wrote laws in the dead of night, published them in the wee hours of the morning, and voted on them before lunch — all in an effort to eliminate bipartisanship. When they could not stop inquiries into abu Ghraib, they limited their investigation to twelve hours of discussion. By comparison, they spent over one hundred hours investigating President Clinton’s Christmas card mailing list.

Now that they have lost control of Congress, they say the Democrats must play fair, the Democrats must work with the Republicans. Hooey. The Republicans didn’t mind stirring up animosity when they spent seventy million dollars and two years investigating Clinton’s sexual indiscretions. But oh, the Democrats must not investigate the deceptions which led to the mess in Iraq or the massive fraud which followed because that would be wrong, that would be divisive.

The lame-duck Congress wants to end oversight of the money spent in Iraq. Proposed legislation would close the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction by October 1, 2007. Why? Because he was doing his job. Democrats are already preparing a bill to restore the Office, but that merely proves they are unwilling to work with the Republicans. And should they get that bill through Congress, Bush will not sign it.

Some time back, a group of models were featured in an ad campaign against the fur industry, but we won’t get to see that anymore. Consider the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, to Strengthen the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. The A.E.T.A. expands criminalization of animal-related activism, permitting prosecution of anyone involved in legal, non-violent actions that cause the “loss of profits” for “animal enterprises.” Bush is expected to sign the Act, and all those models will become terrorists.

Even if you think those animal rights people are loonies, is it really a good idea to start “protecting” businesses from actions which are not crimes? How long will it be before citizens who protest major polluters or boycott genetically engineered foods are also defined as “terrorists”? It is dangerous and irresponsible to throw that word around; and Republicans these days simply cannot be trusted anywhere near the word “profit.”

So how did this happen? Late on Friday night, November 10, the Act was added to the House calendar for the following Monday — so it could be passed on a voice vote alone with limited discussion. There’s bipartisanship for you! The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is a direct assault on the First Amendment to the Constitution; but for the neo-cons’s brave, new plutocracy, the only amendment that really matters is the Fifth.

After the elections, the C.I.A. admitted the existence of a directive signed by Bush ordering the Agency to establish prison facilities outside the United States. The purpose obviously was to circumvent U.S. law. If Democrats say that, however, pundits on the idiot box will question why the Dems hate America so much.

Our “diplomat” in the United Nations, John Bolton, was a recess appointment; but Bush is trying once again to push Bolton’s nomination through the Senate before the new Congress convenes. Ninety-five percent of Bush’s judicial appointments were confirmed; only the most extreme were denied seats on the federal bench. Bush has renominated them while Republicans still control Congress.

Disgraced majority leader Tom Delay, on his way out the door, expressed the true feelings of his fellow Republicans when he said, “It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.”

A slicker defense of hostility to the public good can scarcely be imagined.

The elections are barely over, and I’m already tired of the media mouths who insist the Democrats must behave. Does anyone seriously believe Bush will change course simply because he’s wrong? The Senators and Representatives defeated on November 7 will do everything they can to prosecute the war against the United States before their terms expire. They have nothing to lose, a lot to gain, and no principles to stand in the way.

____________________

Prohibiting Prohibition

2006-11-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

As a police officer in 1966, Norm Stamper, by his own account, enjoyed drug busts. He liked kicking down doors for a half a bag of marijuana or even a single seed. At the academy, he had learned the importance of drug arrests; and he worked hard to bump up the statistics.

“But after about fourteen months on the job, having had a principled prosecutor slap me upside the head and question my understanding of the Constitution, I began to understand that the seventeen or nineteen-year-old kid I had in the back seat of my police car was not a criminal at all.”

Forty years later, Stamper has a valuable and controversial perspective.

“I think the Drug War has been arguably the single most devastating, dysfunctional, harmful social policy since slavery.”
—Retired Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper

When the Nixon administration declared a War on Drugs three decades ago, Jack Cole was an undercover officer infiltrating groups of young people and college students. On weekends, when the kids were out of classes or off work, one of them might ask the others if they wanted to get high. Cole’s job was to ask that question if no one else did.

“If somebody simply passed a marijuana cigarette to me, they became a drug dealer. That hand-held marijuana cigarette would send that person to jail for seven years. Over a thousand young people went to jail as a direct result of what I did out there as one undercover agent, something that I’m certainly not proud of today.”
—Retired New Jersey State Police Lieutenant Jack Cole

The United States outlawed alcohol, and alcohol became a big money-maker for organized crime. Prohibition dramatically raised the level of violence on our streets as mobsters fought for control of the market. Our new prohibition, the drug war, has achieved the same result for a new generation of gangsters. Dealers don’t shoot their customers; they shoot other dealers. The innocent victims are the people who happen to get in the way of the bullets.

“Drug legalization is not to be construed as an approach to our drug problem. Drug legalization is about our crime and violence problem.”
—Retired Tonawanda Police Captain Peter Christ

Directly and indirectly, we all pay for the madness. The incarceration rate of black males in South Africa under apartheid in 1993 was 851 per 100,000. In the U.S. under drug prohibition in 2004, the incarceration rate was 4919 per 100,000. In many states, felons cannot vote; so the drug war is disproportionately disenfranchising the black community.

The huge amounts of money involved present the obvious potential for corruption of law enforcement. The huge number of arrests means more prisons, which has fueled a drive for privatization of prisons, which in turn has led to corporate influence in legislative and judicial processes. Private prisons hire lobbyists to push for mandatory minimum sentences to increase the prison population. We spend $69 billion on the Drug War every year, and we are nowhere near victory.

Syracuse city auditor Mitch Lewis studied the effectiveness of his city’s drug enforcement expenditures. He concluded that they weren’t effective.

“If we really want to improve our urban neighborhoods, the most important thing that we could do — the single most important thing that we could do — is end the war on drugs.”
—Syracuse City Auditor Mitch Lewis

Prohibition doesn’t work. It’s time to prohibit prohibition.

Want to learn more? Check out LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, at:

http://www.leap.cc/

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Reeling in the Net

2006-11-03T21:11:00.000-08:00

News, maps, entertainment, recipes, art, videos, music — all of this and more can be found on the internet. Increasingly, business is conducted on the internet; people use online banking services. And as electronic media merge, the internet will play an even greater role in our lives.

The core of electronic communication is the transmission lines, the wires that connect us. Those wires represent a basic system of our modern infrastructure, just as the interstate highway system links our cities, just as water and electrical utilities join individual homes into communities. Those same wires, however, represent a point of attack and control.

The past decade has seen a tremendous surge in media consolidation which has meant the end of thousands of small town newspapers and radio stations. Now, the phone and cable companies have their eyes on the next venue, the internet. There are proposals before Congress to give telephone and cable companies indirect control over the content of the internet by allowing them to create a two-tiered rate structure for information traveling the net.

We’ve been here before. There was a time when there were no oil pipelines, and railroads were the primary oil carriers. John D. Rockefeller’s company, Standard Oil, achieved preeminence through kickbacks to the railroad companies so they would charge higher rates for his competitors. A similar process led to the dominance of the Associated Press after the development of wire services.

For years, the telephone companies have stymied faster and more reliable public access to the internet. A decade ago, they were granted tax breaks and price hikes to finance a new fiber optic network. You’ve already paid for the network that they never built. Now they’re back, promising again to modernize the net — this time in exchange for control of it.

The stakes are high. The internet is not merely the conveyor of entertainment or financial services; it is the most powerful tool for advancing democracy since the invention of the printing press. The internet doesn’t merely bring the world into your home; it allows you to reach out to the world. Blogs and websites — right wing and left — have become such a force in political discourse that mainstream news outlets which once joked about the net now rely upon it. The scope of citizen participation may shift if net neutrality is not established.

What is net neutrality? Think of the electrical outlets in your home. They don’t discriminate between the appliances you use. The outlet in your kitchen works the same way for your toaster as it does for your microwave. Net neutrality means that the transmission facilities work the same for text traffic or videos, advertisements or emails.

The first effort to seize the net failed thanks to an outpouring of protest from groups across the political spectrum. Millions of Americans called, faxed, and emailed their representatives to support net neutrality. But with the coming elections and the possibility of a lame-duck Congress — and the certainty of a lame-duck President — the threat has grown more ominous. Outgoing Senators and Congressmen with nothing to lose and a lot to gain might well side with the telephone and cable companies. If they pass a bill ceding overall transmission control to a few big companies, is there any doubt that George Bush, Jr. will sign that bill?

The decisions made today will affect our society for decades to come. Don’t let politicians take the short view, and don’t assume they’ll do the right thing. The period from November to February may be critical to the future of media in this country. So call, write, fax, or email your representatives. Tell them you don’t want a variable rate program. Tell them the internet is a common carrier and should stay that way.

To learn more, watch “The Net at Risk”

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html

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An Open Letter to the Editor of The Progressive

2006-10-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, The Progressive ran an article by Matthew Rothschild dismissing conspiracy theories about the attacks of September 11, 2001. ("Enough Conspiracy Theories, Already," October 2006, p. 39) Rothschild lauded the work of Popular Mechanics's editors James Meigs and David Dunbar and the computer simulation of the Pentagon crash made at Purdue University.

On September 11, 2006, Democracy Now aired a debate pitting Meigs and Dunbar against Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas. Avery and Bermas created the film Loose Change, which examines many of the questions surrounding 9/11. Meigs's and Dunbar's performance was telling. They did not present a single photo, video, audio file, chart, or transcript in support of their position. They didn't even show any of the pictures from their website, no doubt because of the problematic nature of those pictures. The Purdue simulation was seriously flawed. It did not take into account any of the six exterior walls penetrated on 9/11. Worse, it depicted two physical impossibilities — treating the wings of American Airlines Flight 77 as essentially rigid bodies moving into the building at the same angle they presented when attached to the plane.

I sent a letter to the editor of The Progressive. Of course, I could not address all the mistakes in the article; but I could rebut a central premise. Thus far, The Progressive has not acknowledged receipt of my letter. I have reproduced it below.

Pooh-poohing 9/11 conspiracy theories, Matthew Rothschild (October 2006) quoted Napoleon to the effect that malice should not be construed where incompetence is likely, thereby declaring a host of federal agencies incompetent.

Enough coincidence theories already. The truth is that large conspiracies are usually not kept secret. They are merely kept safe from prosecution.

In 1995, the U.S. declassified critical documents on Pearl Harbor. They prove beyond peradventure of doubt that the U.S. cracked Japan’s codes a full year before the day that will live in infamy. The U.S. intercepted and decoded nearly all of Japan’s attack related messages — including the Imperial order sending the First Air Carrier Fleet to Hawaii. Indeed, in October of 1940, the U.S. began planning to provoke just such an attack. The U.S. knew to the day and to the hour when the bombs were going to fall. In the opinion of the high command, Pearl Harbor was a small price to pay for future U.S. interests in the Pacific.

George Bush, Jr., Henry Kissinger, and others declared 9/11 the new Pearl Harbor because it was the new Pearl Harbor.

____________________

Building a Better Bang

2006-10-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

U.S. ordnance of all sorts is still killing people in Vietnam, and it will be killing Iraqis for years to come. On September 20, 2006, the United Nations reported that more than 250,000 unexploded cluster bombs — made in the U.S.A. — now litter Lebanon. According to David Shearer, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, three people per day die from the ordnance.
(http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/20/1412233)

Small cluster bombs, such as the BLU-3, project fragments which can maim or kill. But cluster bombs can also be used to deliver chemical weapons.

Left: BLU-3 cluster bomblet, also called a “Pineapple” bomb, used in Vietnam.
Right: Cut-a-way view of Honest John warhead holding Sarin bomblets, circa 1960.

Last fall, jouralists from the Italian television station R.A.I. reported U.S. use of white phosphorus during the attack on Falujah in 2004. Now, R.A.I. is reporting accusations that the Israeli military used an experimental weapon against Palestinians in Gaza. The device produces major shrapnel wounds which can maim or kill — and it can cause severe burns.
(http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/145208)

Apparently, the weapon is similar to a U.S. Dense Inert Metal Explosive, or DIME. The DIME is advertized as a “low collateral damage” weapon because its impact field is relatively small. It is, so to speak, a “precision” cluster bomb. The small impact field, however, is much more intense than that of a typical cluster device. In short, detonated in a crowd, a DIME will wound fewer people than a BLU-3, but the wounds will be much worse. It’s a better bang for the buck. Science marches on.

____________________

The Deployment

2006-10-15T22:15:00.000-07:00

Last week, I wrote about retired Colonel Sam Gardiner’s appearance on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. (“Phase Two,” The Chair-Herding Pictures, 10/8/2006) Gardiner said that war plans against Iran were already well underway and that the “go-ahead” order had already been given by the White House.

According to The Nation (9/21/2006) —

...the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major “strike group” of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran’s western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

The Daily Press, (Hampton Roads, Virginia) reported that the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower sailed from Norfolk Naval Station on October 4, bound for the Middle East. Reportedly, the strike force includes the USS Anzio (a guided-missile cruiser), the USS Ramage and USS Mason (destroyers), and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News.

Maybe the deployment is a bluff. Then again, maybe the administration is prescient. If Iranian terrorists strike the U.S. just before the November elections, we will be able to retaliate promptly.

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Why Does Habeas Corpus Hate America So Much?

2006-10-13T04:55:00.000-07:00

Near the end of September, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. George Bush, Jr. had previously declared the Act critical for our country’s protection; but he did not sign the Act immediately, perhaps because a scandal erupted over a Congressman from Florida who had sent sexually charged internet messages to Congressional pages.

The Military Commissions Act raises a two-fold defense of the United States; so of course, it was opposed by Democrats. The first provision permits the torture of captives by enabling George Bush, Jr. to define torture as non-torture. After World War II, for example, the U.S. prosecuted Japanese war criminals for “water-boarding” Americans. Now that we are water-boarding prisoners, it’s clear that the practice isn’t really so bad. Besides, we need every technique at our disposal to save the nation.

Incredibly, during debate over the Act, Senator Hillary Clinton dredged up our own Revolutionary War, when George Washington led his troops across the Delaware River. Insurgents held by Britain had been tortured and murdered. Washington faced a decision on the treatment of troops captured by his own rebel forces. He issued this order —

Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren.

In the post-9/11 world, we can only wonder why George Washington hated America so much.

The second defense created by the Military Commissions Act is the elimination of habeas corpus — the silly notion codified in 1215 that a prisoner has the right to appear in court and demand the state show cause for his imprisonment. The Act does away with that pre-9/11 nonsense, prompting Keith Olbermann of M.S.N.B.C. to ask why habeas corpus hates America so much.

Alas, there is a problem. An obscure document called the Constitution permits suspension of habeas corpus only in the event of domestic insurrection or foreign invasion. But let’s face it, 9/11 changed everything. If we support the Constitution now, then the terrorists have won.

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Phase Two

2006-10-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

More than a year before I began this blog, I wrote to an email group about U.S. plans to attack Iran reported by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter. Two respondents dismissed my account on the doubtful grounds that Ritter was simply opposed to George Bush, Jr., the U.S. was not conducting military operations against Iran, and Bush had denied such plans. Of course, Bush once denied plans to attack Iraq, even while preparations were nearing completion.

Soon after Ritter’s disclosure, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that the White House had authorized action against Iran and U.S. covert operatives were already at work inside Iran.

Last month, a new voice joined the discussion. Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner has taught strategy and military planning at the National War College, the Air War College, and the Naval War College. In The Situation Room on C.N.N., Wolf Blitzer asked how close the administration was to “giving that go-ahead order” against Iran —

Gardiner: It’s been given. In fact, we’ve probably been executing military operations inside Iran for at least eighteen months…The first [objective] was to gather intelligence…The second has been to prepare dissident groups for phase two, which will be the strike, which will come as the next phase, I think.

The administration has declined to answer questions from Congress about the so-called emerging threat from Iran. There are sources on Capitol Hill who believe the Bush team is circumventing Congressional oversight or authority — again. According to Gardiner, U.S. Naval forces have been alerted for deployment.

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Pieces of the Past

2006-09-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, Trans World Airlines Flight 800, a Boeing 747, exploded minutes after takeoff and plunged into the Atlantic. Debris from the crash was dredged from the ocean floor, and substantial portions of the plane were reassembled.

Five years ago, American Airlines Flight 77 flew into the Pentagon; and United Airlines Flight 93 exploded in an abandoned strip mine near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In each case, the crash site was seemingly well defined. The remains of Flight 77 in particular should have been relatively easy to recover since the plane was inside a building. To date, no photos of either plane under reconstruction have surfaced. The 9/11 crash investigations were controlled by the F.B.I. The National Transportation Safety Board has not and will not issue reports on any of the planes involved in 9/11.

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The Kettle Pot Calling Black

2006-09-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

George Bush, Jr. has achieved a certain fame for his occasionally peculiar language. After 9/11, for example, he talked about a new crusade, apparently forgetting how the old Crusades turned out. Campaigning in 2004, he lamented that rising insurance costs mean some gynecologists cannot practice their love for women. And last month, during the anniversary of the ongoing Katrina disaster, he granted an interview to Brian Williams of M.S.N.B.C. Williams mentioned Junior’s trips to Kennebunkport to visit his father, President George Bush, Sr. Some members of Bush, Sr.’s administration (including, reportedly, Bush, Sr. himself) are against Junior’s middle-east policies. So Williams asked if there was any tension between father and son.

Bush: My relationship is adoring son.
Williams: Do you talk shop?
Bush: Sometimes, yeah, of course we do. But, uh, uh, but — that’s a really interesting question. I mean, it’s kind of conspiracy theory at its most rampant.

It’s impossible to say whether Bush was leaping to a conclusion or slipping, so to speak, to a Freudian. Either way, it sounded odd.

Recently, Bush and figures in his administration have adopted another term from the anti-American right: “Islamofascism.” It’s perfect. It’s evocative and it doesn’t quite mean what it says — two common features of propaganda.

To understand how propaganda works, consider a related example. Before the U.S. attack on Iraq, Saddam Hussein was compared to a famous Catholic, Adolph Hitler. Hitler was a battered child who hated his father and, as an adult, pursued two investigations (ultimately inconclusive) into the possibility that his paternal grandfather was a Jew. Jews, of course, have been persecuted by Catholics for centuries. The Church did not excommunicate Hitler and remained notoriously silent on the excesses of his regime. Yet, when Hussein was called the new Hitler, the public did not conclude that Hussein was Catholic.

“Islamofascism” welds two emotionally charged words into one counter-articulate brand. The result is an all-purpose synonym for anti-Semitism, insurgency, resistance to U.S. intervention, terrorism, or anything else the administration might care to insinuate. Anything, that is, except genuine fascism.

Former Nixon counsel John Dean appeared on M.S.N.B.C. to discuss recent statements from Donald Rumsfeld. Dean mentioned that conflating terrorism with fascism runs against earlier administration claims that terrorism is not state-based because fascism is state-based. The core switcheroo of the Islamofascism smear, however, was not addressed. It’s not about religion, and it’s not about a clash of cultures or opposition to the U.S.

Fascism, as Benito Mussolini once explained, should be called corporatism because it combines the powers of state and business.

The U.S. military has been buying up supplies of the vaccine Tamiflu at $100 per dose to protect U.S. soldiers if a bird flu pandemic develops. No one actually knows if Tamiflu is effective against bird flu, but one thing is clear. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was chairman of Gilead Sciences, which developed Tamiflu. He’s a major stockholder of Gilead. He stands to make a lot of money from the decision to buy Tamiflu for the Department he heads. And “Rumsfeld isn’t the only political heavyweight to benefit from the demand for Tamiflu.”* There’s a word for that.

Four “contractors” were killed in Faluja, and the U.S. took revenge on the entire city. The men were “security personnel” from a company called Blackwater USA. F.E.M.A. hired Blackwater for security in post-Katrina New Orleans. Not surprisingly, information on Blackwater operations in Iraq is hard to find; but apparently, the Blackwater deal came through a series of companies which track back to Halliburton. Dick Cheney was the C.E.O. of Halliburton before he became Vice-President. He promptly held secret meetings with oil company executives to divvy up the oil fields in Iraq — seven months before 9/11 and two years before the invasion of Iraq.**

Our nation’s energy policy was written by politicians and businessmen who were conspiring to seize Iraq’s oil. There’s a word for that.

The Bush team doesn’t mind being fascists, but they’re not stupid. They know “fascist” is a title best bestowed on others. And let’s face it, “Christianofascism” sends all the wrong signals. Besides, it doesn’t roll well off the tongue.

* http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/
** A lawsuit won the release of maps and a list detailing the progress of negotiations with interested companies. See: http://www.judicialwatch.org/iraqi-oil-maps.shtml
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The Anniversary

2006-09-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

Today marks the anniversary of a terrible tragedy in our history when violence struck a nation. Yes, thirty-three years ago Chilean President Salvador Allende was assassinated.

Five years ago, of course, a significant event occurred in New York City; and today is almost the anniversary. Yes, on 9/10/2001, the family of Chilean General Rene Schneider filed a lawsuit against former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, accusing him and others of complicity in Schneider’s assassination. The suit didn’t get much coverage, however. The next day, it was pushed off the front page by major national security stories.

General Schneider was a strong supporter of Chile’s constitution, so he opposed military action against then president-elect Allende to keep him out of office. Schneider wasn’t supposed to die; the plan was to kidnap him. But when his car was ambushed on October 22, 1970, he drew a pistol to defend himself and was shot several times at point-blank range. Allende became President in November.

The United States spent a lot of money trying to prevent Allende’s election and worked diligently to undermine his government. The U.S. attacked Chile’s economy with measures designed — in President Nixon’s memorable phrase — “to make the economy scream.” Two groups within the military, aided by the U.S., organized a coup; and Allende was finally eliminated by gunfire on September 11, 1973.

(The Schneider lawsuit wasn't Kissinger's only problem in 2001. He took a trip to France that year and found himself confronted one evening by police officers bearing a request for answers to certain inquiries. Apparently, France has some questions about U.S. involvement in the Allende coup, which led to the murder of French citizens in Chile. So Kissinger flew to Italy. It seems that Kissinger may never be able to visit France again without risking arrest.)

September 11 also happens to be the anniversary of another historic occasion — this one in a theater in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1906, before an audience of three thousand, Mahatma Gandhi proposed a strategy of nonviolent resistance against South Africa’s racist policies. Twenty-four years later, Gandhi ignited India's nonviolent resistance to British rule.

Happy Anniversary.

Innovative Emergency Management

2006-08-31T05:40:00.000-07:00

A year ago, I wrote at length about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s inadequate and inept response to Hurricane Katrina. By doing too little too late, F.E.M.A. turned a natural calamity into a man-made disaster.

The Bush administration tried to deflect criticism by arguing that the Louisiana state government and the city of New Orleans were primarily responsible for the mistakes which led to the deaths of more than 1,500 people. Katrina, however, hit three states, making it a federal problem from the very beginning. And as details emerged, it became clear that the administration had ignored warnings from hurricane experts and civil engineers. In remarks eerily similar to the claim five years ago that nobody had anticipated the use of airliners to attack buildings, George Bush, Jr. claimed that nobody had anticipated a breech of the levees holding Lake Pontchartrain. In fact, a White House teleconference video proved that he had been warned of precisely that eventuality.

But the deeper story of F.E.M.A.’s failure remained hidden until this week, when Democracy Now aired a report by Greg Palast on the emergency evacuation plan prepared before Katrina struck.

The government contracted a private company, Innovative Emergency Management, to generate the plan. After all, as the right-wing is so fond of saying, private enterprise is more efficient than government. I.E.M. received $500,000 for their efforts.

Unfortunately, the exact nature of their efforts is unclear. F.E.M.A. reportedly contends that they never received an evacuation plan from I.E.M. When Palast visited I.E.M. headquarters in Baton Rouge to request a copy of the plan, company officials responded by calling security.

Perhaps one day I.E.M.’s work will become known. In any case, another hurricane season is upon us; and there will be hurricanes next year and the year after that and the year after that. So the government has hired a firm to analyze what went wrong in 2005. It’s a little company in Baton Rouge called Innovative Emergency Management.

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The United States of Amnesia pt. 1

2006-08-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

NBC and FOX, September 11, 2001

Near Shanksville, Pennsylvania

The audio file accompanying this post, and the images below, come from NBC and FOX television reports on the crash of United Airlines Flight 93.

Some of the statements on those broadcasts were difficult to reconcile with the apparent nature of the tragedy. How could a plane dive into the ground and produce a debris field with a radius of three or four miles? Why did a witness at the site say he saw "nothing that you could distinguish that a plane had crashed there"?

My luck was no better. I couldn’t see any sections of wings or fuselage. I couldn’t see the crumpled hulks of the plane’s engines. I couldn’t see the severed and charred tail section of the plane lying nearby like a toppled cross of accusation. I couldn’t see any indication of the raging fireball produced by the plane’s fuel. I couldn’t see any drink trolleys or passenger seats or suitcases. I couldn’t see any bodies. I couldn’t see any evidence of a plane crash at all.

Obviously, I was wrong, just like the reporters and the witnesses. The plane must have crashed with such force that it buried itself in that small hole and was reduced to dust. I guess back then, I didn’t know much about plane crashes.

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The United States of Amnesia pt. 2

2006-08-12T00:12:00.000-07:00

CNN, April 19, 1995
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the attack on the Murrah Building

I can recall watching television coverage of the rescue effort and seeing medical workers running from the building when other bombs were discovered. It was terrible to imagine that a survivor in the wreckage could die because help was delayed.

But as it turned out, there were no other bombs. The only bomb involved was the one that had been sitting in a truck parked in front of the building. I guess in Oklahoma back then, the Department of Justice; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; and the Oklahoma City bomb squad didn’t know much about bombs.

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The United States of Amnesia pt. 3

2006-08-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

KNOP Radio, 12:30 p.m., November 22, 1963
Dallas, Texas

Why were people, including police officers, running to the fence on the grassy knoll at the northwest end of Dealy Plaza? After all, the shots came from the sixth floor of a building at the northeast end of Dealy Plaza. I guess in Texas back then, they didn’t know much about guns.

Remember the Maine

2006-07-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, 7/5/2006, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! reported on U.S. government planning for intervention in Cuba upon the death of Fidel Castro.

In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented a summary of Operation Northwoods to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. An excerpt from that document appears above. The Chiefs outlined a number of plans to create a pretext for an attack against Cuba, including a “Remember the Maine” scheme. During Cuba’s war for independence from Spain, the U.S. sank one of its own ships, the Maine, in Havana harbor and blamed it on Spain. The public was outraged; the result was the Spanish-American War of 1898. That is how we acquired Puerto Rico and, for a while, the Philippines. In 1962, the U.S. military remembered the Maine and was considering some variations of the scam.

The Chiefs pondered a “Communist Cuban terror campaign” in the U.S. — shooting some people or staging bombings. With spectacular irony, they noted: “Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”

Of course, the military was not the only federal entity developing plans to deceive the American public. The Central Intelligence Agency was thinking along similar lines, and some declassified material on their activities has surfaced. But for now, I want to focus on one item of Operation Northwoods — the downing of a commercial passenger plane and the loss of all aboard.

Witting passengers with fraudulent papers would board a plane. That plane would fly toward Cuban airspace, followed by a drone plane carrying a bomb. The passenger plane would descend below radar range and proceed to a military base in Florida. The drone would transmit a “May Day” message and then explode. Alternatively, a U.S. fighter could be “jumped” by MIGs from Cuba. In either scenario, the Navy could:

In 1959, a Marine radar operator defected to the Soviet Union. After he returned to the United States, he became the sole member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans and then allegedly killed President John Kennedy. The Marine was killed by a Dallas nightclub owner named Jacob Rubenstein — aka Jack Ruby. In the investigation which followed, Ruby told the Warren Commission about a trip he took to Cuba in 1959, “during our good times:”

Was in harmony with our enemy of the present time. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Government was wanting persons to help them at that particular time when they threw out the dictator. [Fulgencio] Batista. (Warren Commission Volume 5, p. 202)

What? The U.S. government wanted people to help Castro overthrow Batista?

Fulgencio Batista lost the support of his own military and therefore the support of the U.S. intelligence community. The idea — in Washington — was to replace him with a transitional figure who would then be supplanted by another Batista.

Castro’s first offense was the purchase of oil from Russia. When U.S. companies in Cuba refused to refine the oil, Castro nationalized the refineries. This was followed by nationalization of other U.S. businesses, including establishments run by organized crime. President Eisenhower authorized covert operations against Cuba in 1959. Operation Zapata, the invasion at the Bay of Pigs, was supposed to be the “October Surprise” of 1960, vaulting Vice-President Richard Nixon into the White House. But the plans were not completed in time; the invasion was postponed; and Zapata was transformed into an operation to compel military action by the incoming administration. President Kennedy refused overt U.S. military aid to Operation Zapata in 1961. He refused to invade Cuba during the missile crisis of October, 1962; and he was planning withdrawal from Vietnam. Killing Kennedy in 1963 turned out to be far more cost effective than killing Castro.

On the day Kennedy was gunned down, a full-page, black-bordered advertisement appeared in the Dallas Morning News, listing a dozen loaded questions for the President. (Warren Commission Exhibit 1031, Warren Report, p. 294) The last question was this:

Why have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the “Spirit of Moscow”?

Promulgated in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine was a declaration of U.S. regional hegemony. Turning away from that creed, Kennedy opposed interests which had profited from Latin America and plagued Latin America for over a century. Meanwhile, similar circumstances — an illegitimate government, an agriculture-based economy, and drug traffic — existed in other locales of increasing U.S. involvement, Mexico and Vietnam.

Look at the broad picture. After a spate of assassinations in Mexico in 1994, former Mexican President Carlos Salinas (and strong supporter of the Free Trade Agreement) took an extended vacation abroad. His sister-in-law was arrested in Switzerland when she tried to withdraw $80 million from one of her husband’s various numbered accounts under false names. The Swiss had targetted the account for investigation of possible money laundering.

Salinas ended up in Ireland, where he granted an interview to a reporter from The New York Times (1/31/1997). He described a tremendous power struggle in Mexico, and added an amazing personal note. When his wife became pregnant, the couple went to Cuba so their daughter could be

“born in a country of dignified people who love their sovereignty.”

What on earth did he mean by that?! Isn’t Mexico a sovereign nation? Why didn’t he choose to have his daughter born in the United States?

Fidel Castro was born in 1926; he will certainly die one day. The contest for the sovereignty of Cuba has already begun in Havana and Washington, D.C.

Is there anything, anything at all, that we wouldn’t do gain control of Cuba?

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Why Kill Hugo Chavez?

2006-07-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

The reason is simple. Tar sand.

If one counts the known reserves of light and heavy crude oil, Saudi Arabia has the most oil, followed by Russia, Iraq, Iran, and so on. But, if one counts the known reserves of extra-heavy crude — sometimes called tar sand, oil sand, bituminous sand, or non-conventional oil — Venezuela has the most oil.

Tar sand is a mixture of bitumen, clay or sand, and water. Bitumen and extra-heavy oil are types of petroleum which have been degraded by bacteria and other contaminants. Collecting extra-heavy oil is more like strip-mining than drilling, but squeezing the oil out of tar sand is very expensive. So recovering oil from tar sands is only economically feasible when the price of oil is high. And rumor has it the price of oil has been high lately.

Northern Canada also has huge reserves of oil sands; but they’re frozen, making them even more expensive to process. (Although as a friend of mine pointed out, they may not be frozen much longer.) The oil sands of Venezuela are much warmer and friendlier all the way around.

Hugo Chavez has been promoting a stable oil price of $50 a barrel — higher than the old $40 price but lower than the current price of $70. With oil at $50 a barrel, sustained processing of oil sands is possible. Even if you don’t believe that today’s leading oil producers have passed peak production, they’re going to sooner or later. Sooner or later, if we remain hooked on oil, we’ll be sucking it out of the sand in Venezuela.

Marion Gordon (Pat) Robertson claims that Venezuela has nuclear weapons and is planning to attack the United States. Venezuela has somehow managed to steal our tar sand and is on the verge of becoming the most important oil-producing nation on earth for decades to come. The evidence is clear. Chavez must be a Marxist terrorist.

There is another reason to kill Chavez; he has been cooperating with Fidel Castro. That alone is enough to convince many people of Chavez’s treachery, but the damning details still warrant close attention. For example, Cuba and Venezuela have been generating international pressure to bring 78-year-old Luis Posada Carriles to trial sometime before he dies. Long ago, Carriles received military training at Fort Benning in Georgia. As a U.S. intelligence asset, Carriles was the man behind the 1976 terrorist attack which brought down a Cuban airliner, killing everyone on board. Carriles is in the United States; the U.S. has refused to extradite him; and he is seeking political asylum here. Obviously, we cannot permit any foreign country, especially Cuba, to put one of our assets on trial for mass murder. Therefore, Chavez is a terrorist; and we must defend ourselves.

The most insidious Cuban-Venezuelan conspiracy, however, is so dark and malevolent that even Chavez’s worst critics are loathe to mention it. Through Operation Miracle, Venezuela has been flying poor people with cataracts from Latin American countries to Cuba for surgery to improve or restore their sight. Venezuela pays for the surgery and the transportation. Worse, Chavez wants to expand the operation into the United States and Africa, so that poor people who suffer from cataracts can have free surgery.

Chavez is obviously a madman who must be stopped. It may become necessary for us to discover that Osama bin Laden is hiding in Venezuela, if that’s what it takes to create public support for the occupation of Caracas.

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My Old Flag

2006-07-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

A Higher Reason

2006-06-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

Let me begin with an acknowledgment that I’m thirteen years behind on this story. I’ve learned a great deal, however, in the past two weeks.

Emad A. Salem is a former Egyptian Army officer. According to attorney William Kunstler, Salem claimed that he was a body guard for President Anwar Sadat when Sadat was assassinated in 1981 — a claim the Egyptian government denies.

Reportedly, Salem at one time received money from Kahane Chai, an organization created after the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane essentially advocated a theocracy in Israel. He favored laws prohibiting missionary work in Israel, banning sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews, and evicting Muslims. He founded the Jewish Defense League and a political party, Kach. Kach and Kahane Chai were eventually outlawed by Israel and the U.S. as terrorist groups.

Apparently, Salem began working with the F.B.I. in 1991, while El Sayyid Nosair stood trial for Kahane’s murder. Nosair was acquitted. He was retried for conspiracy in the killing and was convicted. In 1993, Nosair stood trial in another important case which is the topic of this account.

Salem, acting as a F.B.I. informant, secretly recorded his meetings with the subjects under investigation. He also secretly recorded 40 conversations with his F.B.I. handlers. The existence of those recordings was disclosed at trial, and the government produced transcripts. Alas, by some oversight, the government was not entirely forthcoming. Salem made astonishing statements which were duly discounted by the F.B.I. An unidentified investigator in the case characterized Salem’s claims as figments of his imagination. Portions of the tapes which incriminated the defendants were leaked to A.B.C. Peter Jennings reported them; they were played on Nightline. Other parts of the tapes which suggested Bureau complicity in the crime were kept secret.

Now that you have glimpsed the background, take a good, hard look at the foreground. Emad Salem was the key figure in the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Do you remember the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman? Do you recall Mohammed Salameh, who signed his own name to rent the Ryder truck used in the attack? Before the bombing, he reported the truck stolen to the rental agency and the police. After the bombing, he tried to get a refund of his deposit and was arrested. Everyone wondered how he could be so stupid.

I wondered that myself. But in 1993, I was deeply immersed in a study of political assassinations in the United States. I didn’t follow the details of the Trade Center bombing; I didn’t read about the trial.

Today, as I wade into reports about the bombing, they sound terribly familiar. The Roberts Commission, which “investigated” Pearl Harbor, has come back from the dead to explain once again how we were taken by surprise. The Warren Commission, which “investigated” the assassination of President Kennedy, has been reassembled to explain the Magic Bomb in the basement.

Ralph Blumenthal, writing for The New York Times, presented damning descriptions of Salem’s tapes. (“Tapes in Bombing Plot Show Informer and F.B.I. at Odds,” 10/27/1993, p. A1. “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast,” 10/28/1993, p. A1.)

A correction was added on 10/29/1993, indicating that the Bureau transcripts “do not make clear the extent to which the Federal authorities” knew in advance that the Trade Center was the target. That doesn’t ring true, unfortunately. Talking to an agent, Salem said:

Guys, now you saw this bomb went off and you both know that we could avoid that…

Do you deny your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center?

The explosion killed six people and wounded more that 1000 others. Salem expressed his incredulity and sorrow over the Bureau’s failure to prevent the attack:

You were informed. Everything is ready. The day and the time. Boom. Lock them up and that’s that. That’s why I feel so bad.

According to Blumenthal:

The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. headquarters in Washington about the bureau’s failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev.

“He said, I don’t think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York office to go to Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him.

Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem’s account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the New York people: “Well, of course not, because they don’t want to get their butts chewed.”

That kind of talk doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

One of Salem’s phone calls to F.B.I. Agent John Anticev is available online. Go to http://www.answers.com/topic/emad-salem Scroll down to the bibliography, click on the “longer clip” from WBAI Radio, and listened closely. Salem talks about being honest with “the lady” — Agent Nancy Floyd. He submitted receipts (!) only to discover later that his expenses were in question. Anticev implies that the problem is a only a bureaucratic issue because some of the expenses are “a little out of the ordinary”:

Salem: Okay. I don't think it was. If that what you think guys, fine, but I don’t think that because we was start already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center. It was built by supervising supervision from the Bureau and the DA and we was all informed about it and we know what the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant! What a wonderful great case!

Anticev keeps his language general; he merely argues that the process naturally takes a little more time. He assures Salem that the money will come:

Forget about one supervisor or one ASAIC or whatever. We’re doing this for a higher reason. We know what we’re doing, and we know what it’s gonna mean in the future…We know what we’re doing, and at the end we’re gonna at least be able to look at each other and say “We tried the best we could.” You know, not for the government. The government is a very, you know, uh, uh, what do you call, unidentifiable thing, you know. It’s a, it’s not, sometimes it’s one person affecting you; sometimes it’s some bureaucratic things. But we’ll still know what we did. And we’re still gonna, we’re not gonna leave you out in the cold regarding funding and payments and, you know…

I don’t know what higher reason Agent Anticev had in mind. But a quick survey of the wider perspective is not encouraging.

• Apparently, a police officer in New York City advised Salem on how to negotiate with the government for more money.

• Three of the four defendants in the bombing were denied counsel of their choice. Rahman’s attorney, for example, was appointed by the court. Her name is Lynne Stewart. In 2002, U.S. Attorney General John Ascroft announced charges against her for violating “Special Administrative Measures” — SAMs — which are now used to control lawyer-client communications in national security matters. In 2003, she was indicted for aiding a terrorist organization. She was convicted in 2005. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said that Lynne Stewart, like the Constitution, is a victim of 9/11.

• After the bombers were convicted, they hired William Kunstler and his partner, Ronald Kuby, who were limited by the court in what they could say about the case and barred from their clients’s sentencing hearing. Their view of the tapes was profoundly troubling. Salem has vanished inside the witness protection program. Kunstler said that Salem was the conspiracy, that Salem set up everyone. According to Kuby, the tape recordings reveal that Salem assembled the bomb. In his conversation with Agent Anticev, Salem alluded to the new story about how, when, and where the bomb was constructed. Ralph Blumenthal wrote that “the transcripts reflect an effort to keep Mr. Salem as an intelligence asset who would not have to go public or testify.”

• The F.B.I. came under scrutiny for it’s handling of evidence in the Trade Center case and the 1995 attack on the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City and several other cases. A 1997 report by the Justice Department strongly criticized the bomb unit for scientifically inaccurate analyses slanted against defendants. A key witness in the Oklahoma case was a F.B.I informant, Carol Howe, who did not testify at the trial of Timothy McVeigh.

• Some of the Trade Center defendants were trained by the C.I.A. during the Afghan conflict with Russia. Sheikh Rahman apparently was connected to Pakistani forces operating in Afghanistan. He was on a security watch-list when he came to the U.S., but he was given a green card. He visited a mosque in Jersey City, and Salem tried to recruit members of that mosque. Thus, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey was involved in the investigation. That attorney was Michael Chertoff, now head of Homeland Security.

• Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was convicted in the 1993 W.T.C. bombing. His uncle, incidentally, was trained in the United States as an engineer. Yousef’s uncle is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, allegedly one of the men behind the 9/11 attacks.

What really happened on February 26, 1993? I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago, the name “Emad Salem” meant nothing to me. I’ve developed an interest in him since then; but I’m fifty-five years old, so there’s a good chance I will die of old age before all the significant details emerge. I have the sinking feeling, however, that I’ve seen this movie before; and I’m afraid I know how it ends.

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Some suggestions on where to look for additional information:

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70810FD3E5B0C758DDDAD0894DF494D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fF%2fFederal%20Bureau%20of%20Investigation%20
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/9704b/index.htm
http://www.cnn.com/US/9510/terror_trial/update/
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/11/1545229
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?offset=80&s=oldest&query=JUSTICE%20DEPARTMENT&field=org&match=exact
http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel1012.html
http://pdr.autono.net/kunstler_wtc.html
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Headlines

2006-06-02T23:42:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy recently, so I haven't had the energy or inclination to write. But that doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention. Here is an abbreviated list of topics that have caught my eye.

The Department of Justice ended its inquiry into the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program essentially because the N.S.A. doesn’t want to be investigated. The N.S.A. refused to grant security clearance to D.O.J. investigators. (Washington Post, 5/11/2006) George Bush, Jr., who ordered the N.S.A. to violate federal law, could order the Agency to obey the law instead; but he has already promised not to do that. During his State of the Union Address, when he insisted domestic spying would continue, Republicans gave him a standing ovation.

The Attorney General of the United Kingdom has called for the closure of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo. He said, “The historic tradition of the United States as a beacon of freedom, of liberty, and of justice deserves the removal of this symbol.”

Computer experts are concerned about a flaw in the security system for Diebold touch-screen voting machines that could allow hackers into the machines without leaving a trace. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Hopkins University, called the flaw “the most serious thing I’ve heard to date…”

And just in time for the elections!

The G.O.P agreed on a tax bill which will increase the federal deficit by another $70 billion. (Washington Post, 5/9/2006)

An Israeli art student arranged for an exhibit at Brandeis University of 17 pictures made by Palestinian children. Several pictures included depictions of The Wall. After four days, the exhibit was removed. Complaints about the exhibit included the charge that it was not “balanced” by pictures from other perspectives. One viewer reportedly wondered if the point of the exhibit was to show how Palestinian children had been politicized by their elders.

“Balance” is a very subjective determination. Imagine a show of Jewish art from German concentration camps. Would anyone object, or even notice, if it wasn’t “balanced” by positive images of German life? Suppose the Brandeis exhibit contained a picture by an Israeli child of his uncle killed by a bomb. Would that provide balance? What about a drawing of an olive grove?

The idea that Palestinian parents must have influenced the work of their children is doubtful in at least one very important respect. Palestinian children grow up next to The Wall. They draw pictures on The Wall; they kick soccer balls against The Wall. They do not need their parents to remind them of its existence.

And finally:

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a video game scheduled for release in October. It is based on the extremely successful Left Behind series of books by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. The game is set in New York City, in the end times. Players win points by converting New Yorkers of all sorts — gays, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, etc. — or by killing those who resist.

The game is being promoted by evangelical Christian Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life. Warren’s book has sold over 13 million copies.

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What Were We Going To Teach Them About Fire?

2006-06-02T23:24:00.000-07:00

Michael Herr was a correspondent in Vietnam and the author of Dispatches, a penetrating examination of the American experience in southeast Asia. He wrote the narration of Captain Benjamin Willard for Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s stunning movie about Vietnam. Herr was also a co-auther, with Stanley Kubrick and Gustav Hasford, of Full Metal Jacket.

Here is an excerpt from Dispatches:

Prayers in the Delta, prayers in the Highlands, prayers in the Marine bunkers of the “frontier” facing the DMZ, and for every prayer there was a counter-prayer — it was hard to see who had the edge. In Dalat the emperor’s mother sprinkled rice in her hair so the birds could fly around her and feed while she said her morning prayers. In wood-paneled, air-conditioned chapels in Saigon, MACV padres would fire one up to sweet muscular Jesus, blessing ammo dumps and 105’s and officers’ clubs. The best-armed patrols in history went out after services to feed smoke to people whose priests could let themselves burn down to consecrated ash on street corners. Deep in the alleys you could hear small Buddhist chimes ringing for peace, hoa bien; smell incense in the middle of the thickest Asian street funk; see groups of ARVN with their families waiting for transport huddled around a burning prayer strip. Sermonettes came over Armed Forces radio every couple of hours, once I heard a chaplain from the 9th Division starting up, “Oh Gawd, help us learn to live with Thee in a more dynamic way in these perilous times, that we may better serve Thee in the struggle against Thine enemies…” Holy War, long-nose jihad like a face-off between one god who would hold the coonskin to the wall while we nailed it up, and another whose detachment would see the blood run out of ten generations, if that was how long it took for the wheel to go around.

And around. While the last falling-off contacts were still going on and the last casualities being dusted off, Command added Dak To to our victory list, a reflexive move supported by the Saigon press corps but never once or for a minute by reporters who’d seen it going on from meters or even inches away, and this latest media defection added more bitterness to an already rotten mix, leaving the commanding general of the 4th to wonder out loud and in my hearing whether we were or weren’t all Americans in this thing together. I said I thought we were. For sure we were.

Michael Herr was obviously deranged. How could he have called our noble effort in Vietnam a jihad?

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Outsourcing Justice

2006-04-24T11:21:00.000-07:00

After four private security contractors were killed in Fallujah in March 2004, the U.S. retaliated against the entire city. U.S. forces even used white phosphorous, to horrific effect.

Now, the families of the slain guards are suing the guards’s employer, Blackwater USA, for contractual violations which allegedly endangered the men. For instance, the escort mission they were on was supposed to have three men in each car. But only two men were in each car, meaning that each vehicle lacked a rear gunner.

It costs money to hire guns. But how much — and who pays?

Scott Helvenston, one of the Blackwater men killed in Fallujah, was paid $600 per day. Blackwater billed a company in Kuwait $800 per day for Helvenston’s services. In turn, the company in Kuwait billed a Cypriot company, E.S.S., which reportedly got the contract from Kellogg, Brown, and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. And Halliburton got the job from us.

Suppose each link in the chain made $200 per day for its part in outsourcing Helvenston’s job. That’s $600 for Helvenston; $1000 for the middle-men.

It’s easy to see why business favors a volunteer army and privatization of the military. After all, isn’t business always more efficient than government?

To glimpse the true nature of the enterprise, however, forget about the money and watch the legal shenanigans. Purely for the sake of argument, assume that some actionable fault led to the death of Helvenston and the others. So what?

When Iraq was under the control of the Coalition Provisional Authority, U.S. contractors were exempted by decree from Iraqi laws. And Iraq is clearly in no position to enforce its laws over anybody today. Blackwater USA is not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice; and apparently, U.S. law does not apply because the assumed offense occurred outside the United States.

Imagine for the moment that Helvenston and the others were never sent on that fateful mission. Imagine instead that a Blackwater supervisor simply walked up to them and gunned them down. So what? Who could arrest him? What jury, if any, would hear the case? What law did he break?

George Bush, Junior oversaw the creation of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which authorized viceroy Paul Bremer to issue such decrees. On April 17, 2006, Bush spoke at John Hopkins University and took questions from the audience. A student briefly summarized the controversy surrounding the legal status of private military contractors. “I would submit to you,” the student said, “that this is one case [where] privatization is not a solution:”

…Mr. President, how do you propose to bring private military contractors under a system of law?

And Bush replied:

Yeah, I appreciate that very much. I wasn’t kidding. I was going to — I pick up the phone and say, Mr. Secretary, I’ve got an interesting question. This is what delegation — I don't mean to be dodging the question, although it’s kind of convenient in this case, but never — I really will. I’m going to call the secretary and say you brought up a very valid question, and what are we doing about it? It’s — that’s how I work.

We are outsourcing justice. In the United States of America, we are outsourcing justice itself. So when we run out of it here at home, we’ll only have ourselves to blame.

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The Sinful Messiah

2006-04-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

They were Christians in the ordinary sense. They believed that Jesus is the son of god and he is in heaven. They believed in Biblical prophecies concerning end times and salvation. In particular, they studied Revelations, which tells of a great book at the hand of god, bound with seven seals. Only the Lamb of God can open the last seal.

They believed that seven messiahs would come before the end of the world, and the last would be the sinful messiah. That did not mean he would deliberately sin. It simply meant that, unlike Jesus, the seventh messiah would not be without sin. He would be an ordinary man, born into sin as we all are. He will father twenty-four children who will fall to the armies of Babylon. They will be killed by fire and will preside as angels in heaven.

I don’t hold any of those beliefs; I think they’re all nonsense. But the Branch Davidians had a right to their beliefs.

Like thousands of people in Texas, they bought and sold guns. There’s a lot of money to be made buying weapons which appreciate in value; and there are a lot of gun dealers in Texas. All gun dealers “stockpile” weapons; that stockpile is called an inventory. Many of the Davidian neighbors owned multiple weapons. Furthermore, when Jesus was arrested, he told his followers not to resist. But he also said that henceforth, he who was without a sword should take up a sword.

I think that story is ridiculous. But under the Constitution, Davidians had the right to believe it; and they had the right to keep and bear arms.

Congressional budget hearings were approaching. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was planning a dramatic raid to demonstrate how vital the Bureau was to the security of the nation. They were investigating a Christian commune in Texas that sold firearms. On February 28, 1993, the B.A.T.F. was not outgunned. They had three helicopters carrying armed men; they had nearly eighty men armed and armored. They had video cameras and fax machines. They had media contact phone numbers. They were ready.

Incredibly, however, they didn’t have contact information for ambulances or hospitals. When the B.A.T.F. took casualties, they had to ask a reporter to call for help. They simply never imagined they would meet resistance. After all, they were only serving a search warrant. There were no charges at that point, and the Bureau had already avoided an opportunity to inspect the suspect premises. They were going to search Mount Carmel, and they were going to get it on tape.

The Davidians had lived at Mount Carmel for decades; some had been born and raised there. Some had left home, as children do, and some had returned. Some were white; some were black. Wayne Martin, one of the first black graduates of Harvard law school, lived at Mount Carmel. A family of six had moved from England to Waco to learn about the seven seals. There were grandmothers and grandfathers at Mount Carmel. As a “branch” of Seventh Day Adventists (“advent” meaning the second coming of Christ), the Davidians didn’t feed their children junk food or sit around the tv. When lots of people live together, they need a big kitchen; they have to do laundry. The Davidians recycled material from old 1950s cottages on the site and built a large home. They added a small gymnasium which did additional duty as a church and a rehearsal space. On February 28, approximately 130 Davidians lived at Mount Carmel. When the B.A.T.F. attacked, Wayne Martin called 9-1-1.

Vernon Howell, also known as David Koresh, was the spiritual leader of the Davidians. The B.A.T.F. could have detained him on one of his trips into town, but they didn’t. For that matter, a Davidian neighbor who seemed to have an interest in Davidian beliefs was, in fact, an undercover B.A.T.F. agent named Robert Rodriguez. He was at Mount Carmel on February 28, and he left shortly before the raid in an effort to stop it.

Four agents and two Davidians were killed outright in the raid. Another died of his wounds; another was later killed in a field some distance from the home. The Davidians were charged with the murder of federal agents. The F.B.I. took over the investigation and the crime scene. Some Davidians surrendered to authorities, or surrendered their children to safe care. Others did not.

On April 19, 1993, fire consumed Mount Carmel. Nine Davidians escaped the flames. Seventy-six others, including a score of children, did not.

Eleven Davidians were subsequently tried and acquitted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. If you don’t recall the blaring headlines — “Davidians not guilty!” — that could be because there were no such headlines. The acquittals seemingly didn’t merit much coverage.

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Hide-and-Seek History

2006-04-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations in February 2003 to make the case for an invasion of Iraq. He advanced a number of claims, including statements about Iraq’s nuclear threat, which turned out to be untrue. In September 2005, he expressed regret over the episode, saying that it had damaged his reputation. Though he accepted responsibility for his presentation, he blamed his mistakes on lower-level intelligence personnel.

Now, Powell reportedly contends that he and State Department experts never believed Iraq was a nuclear threat.

On the day of Powell’s U.N. address, a British Defense Intelligence Staff document undermining his account of Iraq and al Qaeda was leaked to the press, reportedly as retaliation from a group within British intelligence who were angered by the selective use of information to support pre-determined decisions. Later, the “Downing Street Memos” emerged, confirming an agreement between England and the U.S. to “fix” intelligence around the decision to attack Iraq.

Why was contradictory information coming out of England? I thought Britain was, if not America’s ally, certainly Bush’s ally. Is there a faction of British intelligence opposed to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s policies? What’s going on?

In this short essay, and in subsequent installments, I hope to convey a sense of what’s going on — the myriad ways in which modern intelligence agencies may function. My focus will be on the C.I.A. because a great deal is known about past Agency operations. But the C.I.A. isn’t the only U.S. agency with covert capabilities. Furthermore, there are other countries in the world — England, for instance — with clandestine agencies.

A surprisingly relevant example comes from Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when the C.I.A. provided him with inflated estimates of Soviet military spending to justify Reagan’s military budgets.

When the estimates finally came into question, the Agency reviewed the process by which such estimates are generated. A string of former Directors, including George Herbert Walker Bush, Sr., provided information and somewhat disturbing conclusions. The C.I.A., they said, is so secretive and compartmented that it is not possible for a Director to know everything the Agency is doing.

Obviously, that assessment could be viewed as self-serving because it smacks of plausible deniability: All of them could claim that they never wittingly passed false information to the President.

On the other hand, the assessment is plainly true, which leads to an unpleasant thought. It is an admission that, to an uncertain degree, intelligence is out of control. Or to put it another way, control doesn’t reside where one might think.

It is commonly assumed that the C.I.A. works for the President. The interaction, however, is vastly more complicated than that. At the risk of over-generalizing, it is more accurate to say that the intelligence community works for shifting alliances within the ruling elite. If a President enjoys the support of a significant faction of the elite, then the C.I.A. will generally work for him. If a President is opposed by the powers that be, the C.I.A. will oppose him, too.

Within those parameters, there is a broad range of possibilities. Consider a recent controversy, George Bush, Jr.’s apparent declassification of portions of a national intelligence estimate (N.I.E.) to rebut critics of the invasion of Iraq. Supposedly, Bush did not authorize the information to be leaked to reporters, though it is difficult to see how he expected to influence public opinion if the public could not learn about the estimate. In any case, the debate over his power to selectively declassify material overshadowed a much larger issue. The leaked information was inaccurate, and intentionally so, to justify the planned invasion. Several key administration claims — the Niger uranium story, the aluminum tubes story, the mobile laboratories story and more — were known to be suspect before Powell’s U.N. address and before Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address. And of course, the related exposure of C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame is still under investigation.

The federal intelligence apparatus is not a monolithic entity. A number of agencies generate intelligence, and loyalties can be split in many ways. The entire “weapons of mass destruction” story looks very much like an example of agencies in conflict, and the bad guys won. The administration demanded falsified evidence. C.I.A. Director George Tenet assured Bush that the case against Iraq was a slam-dunk while Agency analysts were reaching the opposite conclusion. Once it became clear to the public that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, what happened? The administration blamed the C.I.A. for faulty intelligence; and Bush gave Tenet a medal!

The U.S. intelligence apparatus went through similar gyrations over the Tonkin Gulf incidents in 1964, when Vietnamese P.T. boats supposedly attacked a U.S. ship on the high seas. The cover-up of that hoax continues to this day, as evidenced by last year’s disclosure of a National Security Agency report on the Gulf of Tonkin intelligence.*

And in the mid-1990s, the U.S. declassified material on Pearl Harbor that proved beyond doubt the “surprise attack” was no surprise.**

In the examples related above, prevailing intelligence coalitions supported executive agendas; but that hasn’t always been the case. Sometimes, in service to narrow interests, elements of the intelligence community have attacked sitting Presidents. And sometimes, Presidents have used intelligence coalitions to manipulate the people.

Our government is composed of three branches regulated by various checks and balances because our founders understood that every one of us lives every day with an internal system of checks and balances which cannot be relied upon to produce right behavior.

Since our revolution, and particularly since World War II, intelligence entities have grown so numerous and capable that they constitute a fourth branch of government. We live in a grey world of half-heroes and half-villains, a world of deniable decisions based on debatable information from anonymous sources. Time after time after time, hidden forces dramatically affect events in ways the public never learns — or learns only when it was much too late. We can’t “vote the bastards out” thirty years after the fact. And most of them aren’t elected officials anyway.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote about the growing centralization of government functions and the risk of drastic change in the political processes of the country. It was not an idle concern. The need for an informed citizenry, able to balance trust and skepticism, has never been greater — because today, as ordinary citizens, we simply cannot know who the intelligence community is serving at any given moment.

Overestimating the power of secrecy is an error, but underestimating it is a danger. Secrecy may be required from time to time, but it always presents a threat to democracy. It defeats citizen participation by turning us into spectators at a shadow play.

* “Operation Plan 34-A,” The Chair-Herding Pictures, 12/8/2005
** “A Small Price to Pay,” The Chair-Herding Pictures, 8/29/2005
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At Our Mercy

2006-04-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

Marine General Anthony Zinni served the U.S. for thirty-five years. After retiring, he co-authored a book with Tom Clancy titled Battle Ready (2004) about the invasion of Iraq. Commenting on preparations for the attack and the invasion’s subsequent conduct, he wrote that:

I saw at a minimum true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility — at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption.

It was said we couldn’t wait for a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud. The administration ignored a decade of planning and dismissed troop level estimates out of hand. Reconstruction was a get-rich-quick scheme for contractors; most of the money just disappeared. The Iraqi army was disbanded, creating a power void at the federal level even as we claimed to be supporting a new Iraqi government.

On Meet the Press last week, Zinni described an administration mired in efforts to re-write history:

We just heard the Secretary of State [Condoleezza Rice] say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes; these were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policy made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They’re the ones that perform the tactics on the ground. They’ve been magnificent. If anything saves us, it will be them.

Pre-invasion claims about Iraq were ridiculous. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no military capabilities. Hussein’s army:

…had caved in. It was nothing like the Gulf War; it was a shell of its former self. We knew we could go through it quickly. We had stripped away his air defenses. He was at our mercy.

All of the Iraqi people were at our mercy. They still are.
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At Canaan's Edge

2006-04-04T00:09:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently gave me a book to read — At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68, by Taylor Branch (2006). It’s a big book, the third volume of a trilogy described in the jacket notes as a “masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy.” That may be true.

Branch won a Pulitzer Prize for his second work in the series, Parting the Waters. The New York Times Book Review noted that At Canaan’s Edge contained “[c]ompelling portraits placed in the excitement of a period when oppressed and powerless people moving together changed themselves and their country profoundly and permanently.”* The Washington Post Book World called it “remarkable, meticulous…with the most complex and unsentimental version of King and his times yet produced.”

King’s strengths made him a towering figure in our history, the more so because his weaknesses remind us that he was a human being. A hagiography of the man would merely distort his achievements. But a hagiography of his killers is worse.

I skipped to the Epilogue to see how the story ended. And there I found the official myth, beautifully encapsulated, just as if it was true. More than a decade after Loyd Jowers’s confession, seven years after his trial, after Coretta King asked President Clinton for a Truth Commission and was rebuffed (See "Coretta," The Chair-Herding Pictures, 2/5/2006), Taylor Branch has learned nothing. The King family declared the lone assassin innocent. Branch dismissed that conclusion as the product of “fantastic theories grounded in dogma…” Who needs facts when the “fantastic theories” smear will do?

Realizing that most people are unfamiliar with the many questions surrounding King’s murder, I will not attempt to detail them here. I assume that Branch operated in good faith and that his errors concerning the killing of Dr. King arose from ignorance rather than deceit. However inadvertently, Taylor Branch wrote an elegant summary — indeed, a defense — of a lie. I hope the rest of the book is better.

* The scope of that change is somewhat in doubt following black disenfranchisement in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 2004, not to mention the Katrina swindle. When Iraq held elections, poling facilities were set up in the United States to help Iraqis here vote. But the government will not establish poling arrangments for displaced New Orleanians to vote in the coming primary and general elections.
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Democracy, Debt, and Signing Statements

2006-04-02T22:39:00.000-07:00

• “Starve the beast.” That’s the expression created by hyper-right-winger Grover Norquist for the strategy to eliminate federal programs opposed by the far right. “I don’t want to abolish government,” he told Mara Liasson on National Public Radio. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

The right talks about smaller government as if that is automatically a good thing. Is it? If a tsunami devastates the east coast in 2008, do we want the federal government to sit on its hands because small government is best? I certainly hope a bird flu pandemic never materializes. But if it does, do we want the National Centers for Disease Control to watch from the sidelines because they don’t have enough money? Suppose taxes are cut repeatedly in the course of an indefinite war. Might the citizens eventually be compelled to choose between Social Security and national security?

Governments, according to the Declaration of Independence, derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Thomas Jefferson, the author of that quaint formulation, also believed that the national debt undermines sovereignty because debt limits options. Debt forces upon future generations obligations to which they did not and could not consent. That is precisely why the anti-American right is driving the country deeper and deeper into debt. They want to “starve the beast” by establishing national peonage.

• When a President signs a bill into law, he may also issue a signing statement presenting his interpretation of the law and its enforcement. Such statements, once relatively rare, have been issued with increasing frequency in the past three decades, and particularly in the past five years. Since taking office, George Bush, Jr. has turned signing statements into a showdown on Constitutional powers. Ostensibly on constitutional grounds, with little fanfare and less press coverage, Bush has dismissed some 600 provisions of laws that he signed into effect.

He hasn’t vetoed anything. But in statement after statement, he has offered the opinion that as President, he simply is not bound by this clause or that provision. He signed the McCain anti-torture bill along with a statement exempting elements of the executive branch at his discretion. He renewed the so-called Patriot Act with a statement that the executive branch was not bound by the Act’s reporting requirements. He contends that if a law impairs the performance of his duties, he doesn’t feel obliged to obey it.

Presidents, however, don’t have the last say on such matters. In olden times, that was the province of the Supreme Court. In olden times, Congress ratified treaties, declared war, and made laws “necessary and proper” for the execution of presidential powers.

Step back for a moment and imagine some other President — an evil, non-Bush President in the future. Do you believe that evil President should be able to pick and choose the laws he will enforce and obey? Does that sound like democracy to you? Do you think that’s what our founders had in mind?

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George the Fourth

2006-03-27T00:02:00.000-08:00

When the administration’s widespread, illegal wiretapping program was exposed, George Bush, Jr. admitted it on tv. He promised to continue it. There was no debate about whether he flaunted the F.I.S.A. provisions; he simply took the position that as President, he can violate the law.

Congress, of course, is controlled by Republicans; so Congress caved in. Rather than dispute George Bush, Jr.’s claim of privileged status, Congress proposed changes in the law which would essentially make executive requests for warrants voluntary. Republicans and Democrats submitted questions about the intercept operation to Bush’s Department of Justice, and the Department of Justice responded, in part, with this:

Just as one President may not, through signing legislation, eliminate the Executive Branch's inherent constitutional powers, Congress may not renounce inherent presidential authority. The Constitution grants the President the inherent power to protect the nation from foreign attack, and Congress may not impede the President's ability to perform his constitutional duty.*

The executive branch’s opinions are certainly relevant; but theoretically, they don’t have the last say. Theoretically, the constitutionality of laws is determined by the Supreme Court. Since no case turning on this issue has yet reached the Court, the validity of Bush’s defense cannot be assumed merely because he wishes it. As the facts currently stand, he is a confessed felon. He is in favor of the new guidelines and committed to ignoring them. When he signed the Patriot Act reauthorization earlier this month, he added a statement that he was not required to comply with the Act.

I simply do not believe that James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and the rest of our founders contemplated extraordinary war-time powers for an executive who could then start wars purely as a device to gain more control. I don’t think they were that stupid. And as I recall, they were generally opposed to monarchy.

* See http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/ for 3/25/2006 for links to the Justice Department pdfs and the Boston Globe report on Bush’s signing statement. The article is titled "Administration tells Congress (again) — We won't abide by your 'laws'"
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Honest Abe

2006-03-15T05:42:00.000-08:00

Obeying Whenever Possible

2006-03-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor spoke at Georgetown University on March 9, 2006, about Republican proposals for “judicial reform.” The suggestions include extensive impeachment of judges, limitations on jurisdiction, and even the elimination of some courts through budget cuts. Such schemes undermine the independence of judges, she said, and pose a direct threat to the Constitutional freedoms of all Americans. The experiences of developing nations and former Soviet states have shown that judicial reforms prompted by blatantly partisan politics allow tyranny to arise.

When the administration’s broad domestic spying operation was belatedly exposed, polls indicated overwhelming public opposition. Even Republicans expressed concerned and talked about an investigation. But investigating is exactly what they didn’t do. Instead, they adopted new guidelines for eavesdropping, demanding executive requests for warrants only “whenever possible.”

President Eisenhower once wrote that the Constitution means what the Supreme Court justices say it means. But in a democracy, the federal government is also obligated to accept those responsibilities “which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken.” With those thoughts in mind, ask yourself what you believe the Fourth Amendment means:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Given the secrecy surrounding the administration’s activities, it may be years before a legal challenge to the guidelines makes its way to the Supreme Court. If that happens, the ideological disposition of the justices will be a critical factor.

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Sedition!

2006-03-12T23:54:00.000-08:00

Laura Berg (left) is a Veterans Administration nurse in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She’s been a V.A. nurse for fifteen years, specializing in mental health emergencies of veterans. More than a decade ago, she worked with veterans of the Persian Gulf invasion; and she deals today with soldiers returning from Iraq.

She found that veterans from other wars were also affected by the invasion of 2003. Even some World War II veterans experienced increased aggressiveness, nightmares, or anxiety. Six months ago, like millions of other Americans, she watched the massive failure of federal response unfold in the wake of Katrina. So she sat down at home to write a letter to a local paper, The Alibi, criticizing the Bush administration for its handling of Iraq and Katrina. She called on citizens to “act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”

The V.A. reported her letter to the F.B.I. Her computer at work was seized in case she had used it to write her letter, which would have been a misuse of government property. The computer was found innocent and was returned, but Berg learned that she was under investigation for sedition.

Sedition is a thought-crime, the advocacy of the violent overthrow of government. The Sedition Act of 1798 further outlawed “false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States” along with writing that defamed the government or brought it into disrepute. Section 3 of the 1917 Espionage Act prohibited “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.”

The Sedition Act of 1798 expired in 1801; the 1917 provision was repealed in 1921. In retrospect, it seems incredible that such manifestly un-Constitutional laws were ever enacted; but it is frightening to realize that the notion of sedition is still alive. Laura Berg did not bring the Bush team into disrepute; they did that themselves. Was her letter disloyal? No, quite the opposite. Can anyone at the Justice Department distinguish between “forcefully” and “forcibly”? Let us hope. I would hate to think that she is under investigation simply to intimidate her — and others — into silence.

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Civil War in Iraq? Mission Accomplished!

2006-03-05T06:21:00.000-08:00

William F. Buckley, Jr., editor at large for the far-right National Review, has declared defeat. “One can’t doubt,” he wrote on 2/24/2006, “that the American objective in Iraq has failed.” According to Buckley, the Bush administration operated on the assumptions that Iraqis would transcend their differences, cooperate to end insurgent violence, and pursue a society with religious freedom. But that hasn’t happened. And Mr. Bush, as “military leaders” are sometimes compelled to do, must “acknowledge a tactical setback, but…insist on the survival of strategic policies…And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.”

Despite the troubles in Iraq, the administration:

can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia…

In Buckley’s estimation, it would be better for Americans to concede defeat in Iraq than to abandon the principles which impelled us. “The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.”

These claims, coming from a former C.I.A. operative who worked to undermine the Mexican government in the early 1950s, have no credibility.

By Buckley’s own account, he spent a year working under Everette Howard Hunt, Jr., one of the worst of the worst. Hunt is most famous for his Watergate caper with fellow C.I.A. officer James McCord against Richard Nixon, but Hunt has a lot of other dubious achievements. He was propaganda officer for the 1954 coup in Guatemala and the 1961 invasion of Cuba. In the mid-1980s, he sued Spotlight magazine over an article about his alleged involvement in some unpleasantness in Dallas, Texas — and lost. I’m not trying to convict Buckley by association. I’m merely noting that whatever he learned from Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. couldn’t be good.

And that makes me question Buckley’s concern for his metaphorical shrine to American idealism. What ideals does he have in mind? Toppling legitimate foreign leaders to replace them with thugs? Rigging elections? Building a better plutocracy? Raising mercenary armies and paying them with drug money? In the name of freedom and democracy, the U.S. has worked tirelessly against freedom and democracy in Latin America and elsewhere. We always have high-sounding excuses for supporting tyrants and butchers.

Buckley thinks we must preserve the “strategic policies” behind our invasion of Iraq. He doesn’t say what those policies might be, perhaps because they are insufficiently uplifting. The terrible reality is that we have no exit strategy for Iraq because we don’t plan on leaving. (Why else are we building permanent bases there?) If the United States converted to renewable energy sources tomorrow, the neo-cons would still press for occupation of Iraq, with an eye on Iran. Modern armies run on oil, and the neo-cons anticipate a lot of wars in the future. They want their hands on the oil spigot to thwart future adversaries — like Europe and China.

When we were defeated in Vietnam, some commentators lamented that our noble cause had gone tragically awry. But it was never a noble cause; it was a war built on lies from the very beginning — just as the invasion of Iraq was the bastard child of government deceit. The idea that civil war in Iraq represents a failure of U.S. policy presumes that the U.S. wants stability. Is there any reason to believe that?

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A Man Without a Country

2006-02-23T20:37:00.000-08:00

I attended Northwest High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, also known as Naptown, the biggest small town in the world. A couple of decades earlier, as it happens, Kurt Vonnegut went to Shortridge High School in Indianapolis.

Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five and numerous other works, once promised not to write another book. Fortunately, he went back on his word and wrote A Man Without a Country, a splendid little volume (143 pages) filled with more wisdom than most books manage at twice the length.

A Man Without a Country isn’t about any one subject. But if it was, that subject would be the qualities of men from what Vonnegut calls the freshwater states, gathered around the Great Lakes as a defense against the coastal conceits of New York and California. Self-taught men like Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, and a locomotive fireman from Terre Haute, Indiana, named Eugene Victor Debs.

And then there was Powers Hapgood, also from Indianapolis. Hapgood graduated from Harvard and became a coal miner, urging the men to organize. He was testifying in court on a labor dispute one day when the judge asked him:

“Mr. Hapgood, here you are, you’re a graduate of Harvard. Why would anyone with your advantages choose to live as you have?” Hapgood answered the judge: “Why, because of the Sermon on the Mount, sir.”

On Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, Vonnegut has this to say:

Want a taste of that great book? He says, and he said it 169 years ago, that in no country other than ours has love of money taken a stronger hold on the affections of men. Okay?

According to Vonnegut, Christianity and socialism “prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”

About Stalin’s shuttered churches, and those in China today: Such suppression of religion was supposedly justified by Karl Marx’s statement that “religion is the opium of the people.” Marx said that back in 1844, when opium and opium derivatives were the only effective painkillers anyone could take. Marx himself had taken them. He was grateful for the temporary relief they had given him. He was simply noticing, and surely not condemning, the fact that religion could also be comforting to those in economic or social distress. It was a casual truism, not a dictum.

When Marx wrote those words, by the way, we hadn’t even freed our slaves yet. Who do you imagine was more pleasing in the eyes of a merciful God back then, Karl Marx or the United States of America?

Vonnegut fought in World War II against that shining example of Christianity, Adolph Hitler. Vonnegut was captured, imprisoned near Dresden, and somehow survived the fire-bombing which killed 135,000 people. Indeed, he was forced to help bury the dead.

Looking at life today, he sees that we are hated and feared around the globe. We dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of race or religion, but because of their social class. He sees a society run by well-heeled C-students who don’t know history and can only guess what science is about. He sees the O’Reilly Factor and The New York Times declaiming on the weapons of mass destruction we were certain to uncover in Iraq. “So I am a man without a country,” he writes, “except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times.”

I, too, am a man without a country, except for librarians and progressives and freshwater men like Lincoln and Debs and Kurt Vonnegut.

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A Short Course in Evil

2006-02-18T22:40:00.000-08:00

Senator John McCain was a younger man once, and he fought in Vietnam. He was captured and tortured; he experienced pain. In the course of debate last year over his bill prohibiting torture, McCain said that if he was faced with being physically or psychologically tortured, he would rather be beaten.

Sleep deprivation can make a victim susceptible to confusion and manipulation. (Alleged assassin James Ray was coerced with sleep deprivation, and it didn’t produce a single mark on his body.) Physical torture may prompt a victim to speak, but it may also stimulate resistance and an urge for revenge. He might lie just to make you stop. Drugs may scramble the brain and render communication meaningless. If you really want to break a man to pieces, you must attack his mind and soul. Psychological torture leaves wounds that don’t heal.

What follows is a summary of the work of Professor Alfred McCoy, the author of A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. He was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, 2/17/2006.

ALFRED McCOY: Well, if you look at the most famous of photographs from Abu Ghraib, of the Iraqi standing on the box, arms extended with a hood over his head and the fake electrical wires from his arms, okay? In that photograph you can see the entire 50-year history of C.I.A. torture. It's very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are extended for self-inflicted pain. And those are the two very simple fundamental C.I.A. techniques, developed at enormous cost.

…Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University, a brilliant psychologist, had a contract from the Canadian Defense Research Board, which was a partner with the C.I.A. in this research, and he found that he could induce a state of psychosis in an individual within 48 hours. It didn't take electroshock, truth serum, beating or pain. All he did was have student volunteers sit in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones — earmuffs — so that they were cut off from their senses, and within 48 hours, denied sensory stimulation, they would suffer, first hallucinations, then ultimately breakdown.

…And if you look at many of those photographs, what do they show? They show people with bags over their heads. If you look at the photographs of the Guantanamo detainees even today, they look exactly like those student volunteers in Dr. Hebb’s original cubicle.

Now, then the second major breakthrough that the C.I.A. had came here in New York City at Cornell University Medical Center, where two eminent neurologists under contract from the C.I.A. studied Soviet K.G.B. torture techniques; and they found that the most effective K.G.B. technique was self-inflicted pain. You simply make somebody stand for a day or two. And as they stand — okay, you’re not beating them, they have no resentment — you tell them, “You’re doing this to yourself. Cooperate with us, and you can sit down.” And so, as they stand, what happens is the fluids flow down to the legs, the legs swell, lesions form, they erupt, they separate, hallucinations start, the kidneys shut down.

…[S]everal of those photos you just showed, one of them with a man with a bag on his head, his arms are straight in front of him, people are standing with their arms extended, that’s self-inflicted pain. And the combination of those two techniques — sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain — is the basis of the C.I.A.’s technique.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about the many forms of physical torture employed in the Soviet prison system; but the purpose of such cruelty usually had little to do with acquiring real information, since the victims were going to be convicted no matter what they said. Torture was employed to make the victims implicate others and sign confessions — or to amuse the interrogators.

Torture twists the perpetrator as well as the victim. Specialist Charles Graner is now in prison because of his actions at abu Ghraib. But before the torture scandal erupted, when he was confronted by a colleague, Graner explained, “The Christian in me says it’s wrong, but the corrections officer [in me] says, ‘I love to make a grown man piss on himself.’”

Torture techniques were refined at Guantanamo with the addition of psychologists who would participate in interrogations and identify the fears and phobias of individual prisoners. Something very like that was described by George Orwell in his great, dystopian novel 1984. The protagonist, Winston Smith, had a fear of rats. He was finally broken when his head was confined in a small cage and his tormentor was about to release a rat into the cage.

When most people imagine torture, they envision fingernails ripped out, electrodes attached to genitals, or good old-fashioned beatings. They don’t really know how fine the line is between sanity and madness; they can’t conceive of prisoners so bent and crushed that they will inflict more pain on themselves than their captors will. But that happened at abu Ghraib. A newly disclosed video shows a victim confined in a canvas bag chained to a wall. His head alone is free as he rocks back and forth, smashing his forehead against the wall.

McCOY: Look, at the start of the war on terror, the Bush administration ordered torture. President Bush said right on September 11, 2001, when he addressed the nation, “I don't care what the international lawyers say. We’re going to kick some ass.” Those were his words, and then it was up to his legal advisors in the White House and the Justice Department to translate his otherwise unlawful orders into legal directives…

They dithered with the definition of “severe” pain, deciding that severe meant “just short of death.” They insisted that torture was bound up with the intent of the perpetrator. If the torturer is seeking information, then he is not committing torture. They inserted a provision in the McCain anti-torture legislation permitting a long-discredited line of defense — if the torturer believes he is following a lawful order, he is not culpable. He’s just following orders.

Finally, in an amendment to the McCain bill, the administration declared that for the purposes of the act, Guantanamo is not part of the United States.

And that, dear reader, is how evil becomes law in a “democracy.” McCain’s bill to prohibit torture became a law to protect torturers. George Bush, Junior can declare anyone a suspect. The suspect can be held indefinitely without charges at a military facility outside the country. We can do anything we want to him. The suspect can be tried by a secret, military court and summarily executed.

You say that doesn’t sound right? Why do you hate America so much?

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Strange Notions from Disturbed Individuals

2006-02-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

After two invasions, we are occupying Iraq. The current administration has taken the position that in time of war, certain presidential decisions are unreviewable by Congress or the courts. Two new judges sit on the Supreme Court. The drive to privatize Social Security has stalled temporarily, but its proponents understand that individual battles do not a war make.

General Dwight David Eisenhower, the Allied Commander in the Atlantic Theater in World War II, certainly knew that. He was later elected President, and he probably still knew that.

On the left side of the accompanying photo, Arthur Eisenhower is holding Roy. On the right side, Edgar is standing behind Dwight. In later years, Dwight corresponded with Edgar; and they discussed many issues. Below are excerpts from a letter to Edgar dated November 8, 1954. For some reason, it sounds disturbingly familiar today. What is the system of checks and balances in government? What are the powers and responsibilities of government in a democracy?

Dear Ed,

I think that such answer as I can give to your letter of November first will be arranged in reverse order — at least I shall comment first on your final paragraph.

You keep harping on the Constitution; I should like to point out that the meaning of the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is. Consequently no powers are exercised by the Federal government except where such exercise is approved by the Supreme Court (lawyers) of the land…

Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this — in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything — even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

…A year ago last January we were in imminent danger of losing Iran, and sixty percent of the known oil reserves of the world. You may have forgotten this. Lots of people have. But there has been no greater threat that has in recent years overhung the free world.

…You also talk about "bad political advice" I am getting. I always assumed that lawyers attempted accuracy in their statements. How do you know that I am getting any political advice?…[W]hy don’t you just assume I am stupid, trying to wreck the nation, and leave our Constitution in tatters?

That’s quite a letter, isn’t it? Dwight still held quaint beliefs that the people play some role in a democracy and the Supreme Court decides the constitutionality of laws. What was he thinking? Recent events have convincingly demonstrated that if you simply keep controversial activities out of the legal system entirely, courts cannot review them!

Besides, Republicans don’t believe in Eisenhower anymore. His Farewell Address to the nation warned of the growing military-industrial complex; in early drafts of the speech, he called it the military-industrial-Congressional complex — a formulation which more directly pointed at federal corruption. But right-wing historian Paul Johnson, the author of Modern Times, declared the complex “largely mythic.” And even if it wasn’t mythic, it evidently didn’t prevail since, as President Ronald Reagan explained:

You have to remember, we don’t have the military industrial complex that we once had, when President Eisenhower spoke about it. (1/5/1983)

Which leads me to Theodor Seuss Geisel. In the 1920s and 30s, he produced advertising artwork for Ford, General Electric, N.B.C., and other companies. Then he began drawing editorial cartoons — hundreds of them. In World War II, he worked on propaganda for the Army, which found animated movies to be an effective means of indoctrinating enlisted men.

Yes, Dr. Seuss wrote childrens’s books — Horton Hears a Who (an allegory about occupied Japan) and Yertle the Turtle (about Hitler). He also penned The Cat in the Hat (freedom and responsibility) and The Lorax (protecting the environment). Geisel was a complex man. Along with buck-toothed images of slanty-eyed Japs squinting through thick glasses, he created cartoons against racism and anti-Semitism. And in 1942, he drew this:

Reactionaries in Congress swinging a wrecking ball at the social structure of America? Ridiculous, isn’t it?

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Uigher Update

2006-02-17T21:47:00.000-08:00

Last August, I wrote about the plight of two Chinese Muslims, Abu Bakker Qassim and A'del Abdu Al-Hakim. ("Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Justice," 8/27/2005):

In 2001, they fled China and set out for Turkey in hopes of finding work. Then came 9/11. They were in Pakistan when the U.S. attacked Afghanistan. We had a bounty on “terrorists” — $5000 a head. Someone in Pakistan saw $10,000 of easy money, tipped off the U.S.; and we bought them in January of 2002.

In early 2005, without the benefit of counsel, they stood trial in a military court and were found innocent. Nevertheless, they remain captives.

The U.S. will not send them to China, where they would face discrimination at best and quite possibly incarceration. But we won’t set them free, either. We won’t let them live in the civilian community at Guantanamo, and we won’t let them live in the United States. The reason is clear enough. Out of prison, they will be free to talk about what happened in prison, and that we will not permit.

After I wrote about Qassim and Al-Hakim, I learned that there are at least five Uighers at Guantanamo; and it appeared that all of them are completely innocent. By other accounts, there are between 15 to 22 Chinese Muslims jailed at Guantanamo.

On February 16, 2006, the A.B.C. evening news belatedly aired a report about the Uighers at Guantanamo. The story confirmed that five are being held and that when two of them “had a chance to defend themselves,” they were acquited. A.B.C. did not mention that their “chance to defend themselves” was a secret trial or that their lawyer, Sabin Willet, only learned about it after it was over.

To its credit, the network noted U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson’s opinion that the Uighers’s indefinite confinement is unlawful, as well as his finding that he does not have the power to release them. Unfortunately, A.B.C. did not include Willet’s assessment. “It's a bizarre conclusion,” he said, “to have a judge say the executive branch is acting illegally, but he can't do anything about it.”

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George Will Not

2006-02-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

Hopelessly conservative pundit George Will wrote an editorial for the Washington Post titled “No Checks, Many Imbalances.” (2/16/2006, p. A27) In it, he pondered future Congressional authorizations of presidential military powers. If the Bush administration prevails with its doctrine of presidential powers, why would any future President bother to consult Congress? According to the neo-con view of the executive branch of government:

…whenever the nation is at war, the other two branches of government have a radically diminished pertinence to governance, and the president determines what that pertinence shall be.

George Will also questioned the position that the President is the only agent for the nation in foreign affairs:

That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution’s plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of all presidential powers. Those powers do not include deciding that a law — FISA, for example — is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” (Emphasis in the original)

And then, Will threw his argument away. Rather than have Congress assert its Constitutional powers, rather than have Congress perform its constitutional responsibility to declare war, rather than have the executive faithfully execute the laws of the land, Congress should revise the laws to accommodate George Bush, Junior:

with language that does not stigmatize what he has been doing, but that implicitly refutes the doctrine that the authorization is superfluous.

Implicitly refutes? Why not explicitly? And what does he mean when he speaks of “language that does not stigmatize” prior felonies? George Will will not get it; he refuses to get it. The checks and balances of our system can only be defended through application, not abdication.

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Spreading Democracy

2006-02-17T21:07:00.000-08:00

Kenneth Starr is accused of sending fake letters on behalf of a client, Michael Morales, to governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Morales is scheduled to be executed for the rape and murder of a teen-age girl 25 years ago. The letters, ostensibly from five jurors in the case, requested clemency for Morales. According to a spokesman for the California Attorney General, the jurors all denied writing the letters or talking to the defense investigator who supposedly secured their signatures. Kenneth Starr, the prosecutor in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, is the dean of the Pepperdine School of Law.

Tony Blair has promised an investigation of British soldiers who were caught on video beating four Iraqi youths. (Three are shown in the sequence above. The fourth was brought in moments later, and several more soldiers joined in the fun.) It is impossible to determine with any precision the ages of the victims; but they are clearly much shorter than their captors, suggesting that they are fairly young. One soldier wearing a helmet butted heads with a victim; another soldier apparently kneed the boy in the face. Four or five soldiers set upon him in earnest. All the boys were beaten with clubs. One of them was kicked in the groin while he was held face down on the ground by two men who were punching him.

The video apparently was made by a corporal who was cheering the soldiers on. “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! You’re gonna get it! Yes, naughty little boys! (Laughter)” The boys can be heard crying, “No, no, please.” The cameraman mocks them, saying “Oh, please, don’t hurt me.”

The video is available at crooksandliars.com for February 12, 2006. It is not a beautiful thing to see.

In a related story, 60 new photos have been released documenting the abuse of prisoners at abu Ghraib. Although similar to pictures already available, the new photos reveal graphic images of sexual humiliation and torture along with new incidents of murder. The pictures are available through World News Australia, but they have not yet been shown by American media outlets. Link Link

The final lesson in democracy comes from Palm Beach, Florida. In recent county elections, right-wing media mouth Ann Coulter voted in the wrong precinct — and not by accident. In fact, she gave a false address when she registered to vote in 2005 and signed the registration form certifying that the information she provided was true.

It is a felony to vote knowingly in the wrong precinct. Falsifying a voter registration form can result in a fine of up to $5000 and a maximum jail sentence of five years.

It’s going to be hard for her to blame this on President Clinton, but I’m confident she’ll find a way.

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Who Teaches Hate?

2006-02-11T08:45:00.000-08:00

I collect or write far more pieces than I disseminate. Here are two items from the archives.

• Proponents of neo-con policy in the middle east often talk about schools in the region where children are taught jihad and hatred of foreigners. That was certainly the case in Afghanistan, where schoolchildren studied militant Islamic teachings in texts illustrated with pictures of tanks, guns, and bullets.

The United States knew about those books because the United States produced those books. To stir resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. covertly supplied textbooks filled with violent images. The Washington Post published the details four years ago.

The Washington Post account reminded me of coloring books in the early 1970s. The F.B.I. was cracking down on the Black Panthers, and one complaint against the Panthers concerned coloring books which contained violent images of blacks killing policemen — evidence of the Panthers’s contempt for law and order.

In fact, the coloring book idea came from Panther Mark Teemer and was rejected by the Panther leadership. However, the F.B.I. acquired the book and was quite interested. The Bureau added drawings, changed some captions, and mailed copies of the “Black Panther Coloring Book” all around the country to discredit the Panthers.

• Obviously, the U.S. had a good reason to invade Iraq twice. Saddam Hussein was a beast who gassed his own people at Halabja in 1988. Who could doubt it?

Well, the Defense Intelligence Agency doubted it. Stephen C. Pelletiere was a C.I.A. political analyst on Iraq during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. (“A War Crime or an Act of War?”, The New York Times, 1/31/2003) According to Pelletiere, the D.I.A. concluded that Iranians gassed the Kurds at Halabja in the course of a battle to capture the Darbandikhan dam. Pelletiere noted that:

Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system of dams and river control projects, the largest being the Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In the 1990’s there was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.

Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades — not solely by controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party is driven from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American companies.

Professor Pelletiere spoke at Saint Bonaventure University on January 29, 2003. Video excerpts from that lecture are available at The Information Clearing House — Part One and Part Two. His discussion of Halabja is in part two.

You can also read Amy Goodman’s interview with John Stauber (co-author of Weapons of Mass Deception) and Stephen Pelletiere.

Stephen Pelletiere is obviously misguided. Why, only yesterday, I received a coloring book in the mail from Iran which clearly shows Iraqi forces gassing Kurds. I used purple for the gas to heighten the dramatic effect.

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The Enabling Acts

2006-02-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

The country was torn by political divisions; a dramatic attack on the capitol itself just six days before the elections raised tensions and fears. The President received emergency powers to protect the nation, including the power to suspend civil liberties and habeas corpus; but the government required additional tools for the fight. A new law granted temporary legislative powers to the executive branch. Able to rule by decree, Chancellor Adolf Hitler finally had the authority necessary to save the homeland.

On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building, the seat of German government, was destroyed by arson. The fire was portrayed as the beginning of a communist revolution. With the fate of the nation at stake, the Enabling Act “to remedy the distress of the people” came to a vote. The Act was a model of concision, less that 250 words long (in English) and complete with a “sunset” provision. Hitler spoke in favor of the measure, promising to use the powers of his position only for vital issues and emphasizing the Christian nature of the German culture. The Act passed by a vote of 441 to 84. Only the Social Democrats voted against it, and they wouldn’t be around much longer anyway.

Of course, no one could have foreseen that the ongoing threats facing Germany would compel two formal extensions of the Act. By then, Hitler’s opponents had been eliminated; and the legislature was a vestigial organ of government. Thus, it was with uncanny prescience that Joseph Goebbels wrote after passage of the Enabling Act:

“The authority of the Führer has now been wholly established. Votes are no longer taken. The Führer decides. All this is going much faster than we had dared to hope.”

In a 1934 speech, Rudolph Hess explained his support for Hitler by declaring that the Führer was “the instrument of the will of a higher power.”

While it is comforting to know that Hitler took power legally and expeditiously, that’s not what I wanted to write about. I had in mind an entirely unrelated topic, a 2001 memo on presidential powers written by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.

After analyzing the text of the Constitution and the history of relevant cases, Yoo concluded that:

the President has the plenary constitutional power to take such military actions as he deems necessary and appropriate to respond to the terrorist attacks upon the United States on September 11, 2001…

Military actions need not be limited to those individuals, groups, or states that participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon…

Furthermore, neither the War Powers Resolution nor the Joint Resolution:

can place any limits on the President’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make. (Emphasis added.)

In a footnote, Yoo observed that in exercising his military powers:

the President’s decisions are for him alone and are unreviewable.

There it is in a nutshell. This argument, in one form or another, underpins the neo-conservative view of the unitary executive. With no limits on the President’s determinations of the threat or methods of response, and no review possible by Congress or the courts, what can he not do? Jail people indefinitely? Have them tortured? Order searches without warrants? Can he force people into slavery?

And if the war drags on as promised, what will the next Presidents do? On February 2, Donald Rumsfeld delivered a speech before the National Press Club titled “The Long War” in which he explained that the so-called war on terror could last decades. If there are no limits on presidential powers in time of war, and the war goes on indefinitely, isn’t the President effectively a dictator?

Alas, it seems I have digressed again. I actually intended to write about a psychology paper by Florette Cohen and Daniel M. Ogilvie of Rutgers University; Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College; Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona; and Tom Pyszczynski of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

The paper is titled “American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election.” Commenting on the impact of the bin Laden video which appeared shortly before the 2004 elections, the authors noted that:

From a terror management perspective, the United States’ electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction.

In other words, the voters were reminded that they could be killed. Dick Cheney reiterated the message, implying that his re-election was a critical factor in preventing future terrorist attacks. The authors wrote that:

Allegiance to charismatic leaders may be one particularly effective mode of terror management. In Escape from Freedom, Eric Fromm (1941) proposed that loyalty to charismatic leaders results from a defensive need to feel a part of a larger whole, and surrendering one’s freedom to a larger-than-life leader can serve as a source of self-worth and meaning in life. Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, 1973) posited that when mainstream worldviews are not serving people’s need for psychological security, concerns about mortality impel people to devote their psychological resources to following charismatic leaders who bolster their self-worth by making them feel that they are valued participants in a great mission to heroically triumph over evil.

Well, that’s exactly what left-wing academics would say, isn’t it? And in any case, another video from Osama bin Laden has been released, promising more attacks. Elections are coming. That should be uppermost in my mind; but for some reason, I’ve been thinking about the Constitution Restoration Act. It would forbid federal court review of certain cases decided by an element of government’s acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law.

The idea of criminalizing judicial review is brilliant; and I have no doubt Bush, Jr. would sign the Act if it passed. But it still requires legislators willing to vote for it — courageous men who will dismantle the antiquated system of checks and balances created by our paranoid founders. And we need judges prepared to uphold the Act, at least initially, or submit to it as the case may be — judges with a strong view of broad executive authority. That’s why I sat down to write about neo-con notions of a permanent Republican majority. It’s probably possible with electronic voting machines, but why would they wish such a thing?

____________________

Coretta

2006-02-05T22:29:00.000-08:00

News accounts have paid tribute to Coretta King and her husband, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. On matters of great importance, however, modern American media have an irritating way of saying very little at great length. You can digest the details in the newspapers and on tv; but the photos were cropped long ago and the most important passages were deleted.

The first U.S. military intelligence files on the King family were opened in 1917. Spy operations were initiated against black social organizations and especially against black churches, which were viewed as prime sources of information about the black community. Three generations of the King family produced ministers who served the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. It was inevitable that they would fall under scrutiny.

In 1917, the government was concerned that the Huns would turn our colored people against us in World War I — a notion that reeks of white guilt and the suppressed recognition that the black community harbored legitimate grievances. Domestic spying continued in World War II because the Japanese might have roused our negroes. And during the Vietnam War, of course, we faced the danger of communists stirring up our blacks. When you ponder the issue of warrantless domestic surveillance today, remember that there are black Muslims; and they are very high on the list of those who must be watched.

The military intelligence file on Martin Luther King, Jr. was opened in 1947, when he was eighteen. He was considered a curiousity rather than a threat until 1957, when he attended the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. He was watched ever more closely after that. When Dr. King was in New York, he was monitored by 108th Military Intelligence Group, in Los Angeles by the 115th, in Washington by the 116th, in Europe by the 66th, and so on. When he visited Memphis in March and April of 1968, his hotel room was bugged by the 902nd M.I.G. Civil rights organizations in Memphis were infiltrated by the 111th M.I.G. In April of 1968, there were at least three military operations underway in and around Memphis, Tennessee.

On April 4th, 1968 — one year to the day after his first major speech against the war in Vietnam — a joint operation involving the Memphis police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Army killed Dr. King.

A “lone assassin” named James Ray was duly convicted and the cover-up went into high gear. In a memo dated March 11, 1969, F.B.I. Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach wrote:

… I would like to suggest that the Director allow us to choose a friendly, capable author, or the Reader’s Digest, and proceed with a book based on this case.

A carefully written factual book would do much to preserve the true history of this case. While it will not dispel or put down future rumors, it would certainly help to have a book of this nature on college and high school library shelves so that the future would be protected.*

The F.B.I. launched a smear campaign to defame Dr. King and marginalize critics of the investigation, starting with Coretta. DeLoach suggested a friendly media contact should be told that Coretta King and Ralph Abernathy were “plotting” to garner media attention and “keep the money coming in to Mrs. King” by claiming a conspiracy was behind the assassination.

For a quarter of a century, details of the killing steadily emerged, only to be downplayed or ignored. Then, in December of 1993, on Prime Time with Sam Donaldson, Loyd Jowers confessed his role in the murder of Dr. King.

Jowers was a former policeman turned restauranteur. He once owned Jim’s Grill, on South Main Street in Memphis. The back door of Jim’s Grill opened onto a vacant lot overlooking the Lorraine Motel where King was shot. Jowers said he was paid $100,000 for his help by Memphis businessman Frank Camille Liberto. Jowers alleged the involvment of James Barger, his former partner on the force, and officer Earl Clark, a long-time friend of Jowers. Jowers also alleged the participation of Marrell McCullough, from the 111th M.I.G., working as an undercover Memphis policeman. You’ve already seen a picture of McCullough and you didn’t even know it. He’s on Andrew Young’s left in the photo above.

Although Jowers had confessed to a capital offense for which there is no statute of limitations, he was not questioned by Memphis authorities or the F.B.I. Why generate a record? Jowers was old and ill. All they had to do was wait.

But there was still Coretta King.

The King family declared that James Ray was innocent, and Coretta King asked President Clinton for a new, open inquiry into the death of her husband — a Truth Commission, modeled on the reconciliation process adopted in South Africa to heal the wounds of apartheid. Instead, the Justice Department conducted a narrow inquiry that answered no questions and attacked critics. “Shut up,” the Department explained. In some quarters, Coretta King was characterized as a pathetic figure who had fallen under the spell of conspiracy theorists. On the 30th anniversary of the assassination, The New York Times claimed falsely that Ray had admitted firing the shot which killed King. The paper bemoaned the doubtful “fact” that:

A certain awkwardness attends this year’s commemoration. The King family, which remained in Atlanta for services there, has embraced Mr. Ray’s claim of innocence and his contention that he was, at most, an unwitting tool of a conspiracy that authorities have either failed to uncover or refused to unmask… (Steve Barnes, “Young and Old, of Varied Colors, Honor Dr. King,” The New York Times, 4/5/1998)

Who would find the King family’s position awkward?

The King family filed a civil suit against Jowers, seeking $100 in damages. On December 8, 1999, Jowers was found guilty. The New York Times reported the verdict on December 9, on page A23, next to the weather and the national classified ads. The story concluded with a broad slap at the King family, the judge, the attorneys, and the jury by quoting author Gerald Posner**:

It distresses me greatly that the legal system was used in such a callous and farcical manner in Memphis. If the King family wanted a rubber stamp of their own view of the facts, they got it.

On December 10, the Times ran a second article with more psycho-babble from Posner. People “want to embrace the sweeping conspiracy theory” because “it matches the stature of the man and somehow gives even more meaning and power to his death.”

James Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998. Loyd Jowers died on May 20, 2000.

Coretta King died on January 31, 2006. Sadly, it is a measure of her importance that in the years to come, she will be intermittently and respectfully ridiculed when the subject of her husband’s murder arises.

____________________
* The Bureau selected Gerold Frank, who wrote An American Death — the King assassination equivalent of the Warren Report on the murder of John Kennedy.
** Posner wrote Killing the Dream — the King assassination equivalent of the House Select Committee’s 1979 report on the murder of John Kennedy.

Laws and Disorder

2006-01-27T22:30:00.000-08:00

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, described all too well the Soviet penchant for secrecy and its debilitating effects upon the fabric of society. Secrecy destroys the sense of community. Secret courts, secret prisons, and secret trials turn the law into a boot on the neck of the people. Freedom of speech and of the press is replaced by the right to petition the government from your cell. If a confession is all that is needed to put you away for a decade, or forever, the prosecutor doesn’t worry himself about evidence. And if even a confession is superfluous, questioning is merely an opportunity for the interrogator to have a little fun.

The Soviet system of state terror did not spring into existence overnight. It developed gradually and logically and always, of course, to defend the homeland.

By Executive Order in November of 2001, George Bush, Jr. granted himself the power to compel a military trial for any non-citizen he deems to be engaged in terrorism. The suspect would not have the protections ordinarily afforded prisoners. The trial could be secret; the evidence could be secret; and the suspect would have no right of appeal. If found guilty, he could be executed. (“End-Running the Bill of Rights,” Washington Post, 11/16/2001, p. A46)

The Bush administration, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, authorized warrantless searches of U.S. citizens — to defend the homeland, of course. Our new attorney general, until recently a counsel for George Bush, Jr., contends that torture is permissible. Alberto Gonzales argues that even without the Patriot Act, George Bush, Jr. has the authority to violate the law.

Four Muslims who were held without charges after 9/11 and then deported have returned to the U.S. to pursue a lawsuit against the government. They claim they were beaten, verbally abused, forbidden to contact their families or attorneys, and held captive even after they were cleared. When not in court, the men must remain in their hotel and may not speak about their case. So much for the First Amendment.

Last year, we learned that the Central Intelligence Agency had operated secret prisons in former Soviet client states — indeed, in former Soviet prison facilities. When the Agency’s activities were exposed, the nameless victims were moved to new dungeons, apparently in north Africa.

In a major address delivered on May 26, 2004, former Vice-President Al Gore discussed the circumstances which led to the abuses at abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere. (An audio clip from his speech follows.) Gore noted the possibility that 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in custody. More recent information, unfortunately, suggests that the number is closer to 100.

Enlisted personnel were placed under the control of civilians who were not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and who had been granted immunity from prosecution. A civilian contractor could commit murder or rape or bank robbery without fear of arrest. Last year, a video emerged from Iraq. Private security guards had filmed themselves as they drove around Baghdad shooting at randomly selected cars.

Iraqi General Abed Hamed Mowhoush turned himself in to U.S. forces on November 10, 2003. Sixteen days later, he was killed. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, Jr. put a sleeping bag over Mowhoush’s head, covered his mouth, and sat on his chest until he died. On January 23, 2006, Welshofer was convicted of negligent homicide. He was fined $6000 and sentenced to 60 days of house arrest — although he is allowed to work and attend church. Before Welshofer murdered Mowhoush, the Central Intelligence Agency brought in Iraqi assets to beat the general. A secret witness, hidden from view in court, testified at Welshofer’s trial. Defense attorney Frank Spinner asked his client about the C.I.A. and then apologized for the error. Mere mention of the C.I.A. was not permitted.

In this country not so long ago, whites enjoyed effective immunity for crimes committed against blacks. A distressingly large number of people accepted that situation as proper and even moral.

The Bush administration has launched a war against the United States of America, and they are winning. They claim immunity; they say the laws don’t apply to them. It is a measure of how far we have fallen that we can speak seriously of “authorizing” criminal acts. Our nation’s founders rebelled against such arrogance; but today, we as a people are much smaller and far more timid. Kill just a few of us, and the rest will rush to surrender their privacy, their rights, and the futures of their children.

____________________

A Few Good Men

2006-01-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

Lawrence Colburn and Hugh Thompson (photo left) and Glenn Andreotta

Hugh Thompson was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, flying a reconnaissance mission for a ground operation. His task was to draw fire so the enemy’s position would be exposed. But nothing happened. He and his crew — Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, flew without incident, watching women and children leaving a village, apparently heading to the market. It was a quiet day.

It was so quiet that when they left to refuel, they did not request any backup. On their return to the village, however, they saw bodies on the roads and in the ditches. Many of the people they had seen leaving the area were dead or dying. The crew couldn’t figure out what had happened. There had been no artillery fire since early that morning; there had been no gunship fire and no enemy fire. They passed a wounded woman and marked her position with a smoke grenade, expecting medical assistance to arrive. But it was May 16, 1969, at My Lai. As they watched from above, a captain reached the woman, kicked her, stepped back, and shot her.

Landing by a ditch where dozens of people lay dead or dying, Thompson spoke to a soldier, telling him that those people had to be helped, that they had no weapons, that there were no draft age males among them, that they were clearly civilians. The soldier agreed; and as the helicopter lifted off, the soldier opened fire.

So when Thompson, Colburn, and Andreotta saw U.S. troops approaching a bunker where Vietnamese were hiding, Thompson landed between the bunker and the troops. A lieutenant said he was going to use grenades against the position, but Thompson had a better idea. He would get the people out. And “[i]f you fire on these people when I’m getting them out…my people will fire on you.” He called in a gunship to evacuate the Vietnamese.

Later that same day, Andreotta spotted movement in a ditch filled with bodies. The crew landed and rescued an eight-year-old boy.

In 1998, Thompson, Colburn, and Andreotta were awarded the Soldier’s Medal for their actions that day. Andreotta was not present because he was killed less than a month after My Lai. Thompson and Andreotta eventually returned to Vietnam where they met two of the women they had saved — and the boy, now a man, they had plucked from death.

One soldier, Lieutenant William Calley, stood trial for the massacre at My Lai. He was sentenced to life in prison. He spent three days in the stockade. President Nixon commuted the sentence to house arrest and granted a pardon three years later.

Hugh Thompson was interviewed for a 1998 documentary, “The Sound of the Violin in My Lai.” He said:

I’m just real sorry that my crew could not have done more. I’m extremely sorry for my fellow Americans for what happened. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t war. And I pray to God something like this never happens again.

Thompson died of cancer on January 6, 2006.

Ernest Johnson, Jr. was at a North Carolina military base when word of My Lai broke out. The massacre, the unrest at home, and the stories he heard from returning Marines convinced him that he could not go to Vietnam. He spent 37 years on the run. Using the name McQueen, he was living with his girl friend in Fort Worth when he was discovered and arrested for desertion. Johnson said, “I just decided I didn’t want to be a part of killing anybody. That’s as plain as I can say it.” Johnson faces the possibility of three years in prison.

Lawrence Colburn learned about Johnson in the course of an interview for Democracy Now. Colburn expressed a desire to contact Johnson.

And the war in Vietnam continues. Every year, hundreds of Vietnamese are killed or wounded by U.S. ordnance. A farmer uncovers an artillery shell, and it kills him. A child finds a canister from a cluster bomb, and it kills him. It is estimated that 300,000 tons of unexploded ordnance remain in Vietnam.

We have irradiated Iraq. We have dropped cluster bombs in cities all over the country. If we leave Iraq tomorrow, we will still be killing Iraqis for years to come. Victory is ours.

____________________

The Mexican Mystery Tour

2006-01-11T00:34:00.000-08:00

Recently, a few people have asked me about a new film, Rendezvous with Death, concerning the assassination of President John Kennedy. According to filmmaker Wilfried Huismann, Lee Harvey Oswald either volunteered or was recruited to help Cuban intelligence kill Kennedy. Seven weeks before the murder, Oswald went to Mexico City where he met a Cuban agent and was paid $6,500. The assassination investigation was short-circuited out of fear that the public would clamor for war when they learned Castro was behind the crime.

There is, of course, a big problem with that explanation: There is no evidence that Lee Oswald killed anybody.

The stories of Oswald in Mexico City are as baseless as every other aspect of the lone assassin fairytale. Supposedly, the Central Intelligence Agency photographed Oswald when he visited the Russian and Cuban embassies. But the photo of “Oswald” disclosed by the C.I.A. (left) looks nothing like Oswald. Supposedly, the C.I.A. intercepted and recorded Oswald’s telephone calls to the embassies. But after the assassination, when F.B.I. agents who had interrogated Oswald heard the Mexico City tapes, they unanimously agreed that the voice on the tapes was not Oswald’s.

The claim that Oswald was paid $6,500 came from a man identified only as “D” by the Warren Commission. “D” said that in September of 1963, he overheard a conversation in the Cuban embassy between two men, one “a tall, thin Negro with reddish hair, obviously dyed, who spoke rapidly in Spanish and English...” “D” identified the second man as Oswald. They were joined by a third man, a Cuban, who handed money to the Negro as Oswald listened to the Negro’s claim that he wanted “to kill the man”:

Oswald replied, “You’re not man enough, I can do it.” The Negro then said in Spanish, “I can’t go with you, I have a lot to do.” Oswald replied, “The people are waiting for me back there.” The Negro then gave Oswald $6,500 in large-denomination American bills, saying, “This isn’t much.” (Warren Report, pp. 307-308)

Mexican authorities, however, told the U.S. that “D” had admitted his story was a fabrication. Reportedly, “D” said that he had never seen Oswald anywhere and that his account was intended to facilitate his entry into the U.S. so he could participate in operations against Castro. He hoped his story would prompt the U.S. to “take action” against Castro.

“D” insisted that his retraction was coerced by the Mexicans. But the alleged date of his Oswald sighting, September 17 or 18, was ruled out by evidence that Oswald was in Louisiana on those dates. Besides, Oswald spoke English and Russian. How could he have had such a conversation in Spanish? And why would Castro’s agents meet Oswald at the consulate, which they would expect to be under surveillance? To further complicate matters, “D” turned out to be a Nicaraguan intelligence agent named Gilberto Alvarado Ugarte. In 1963, Nicaragua was under the thumb of Anastasio Somoza, who enjoyed the support of the U.S.

Although the Warren Commission rejected “D’s” account of Oswald and the Cubans, the Commission adopted a version of that same story involving Oswald and the Russians later in September. Credible eyewitness testimony indicated that Oswald was in Dallas at that time, not Mexico City; but the Warren Commission was undeterred. Oswald, it was said, may have met Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov, reportedly in charge of assassinations in the Western Hemisphere — which brings us to another absurdity from Huismann’s film. The investigation, it is claimed, was cut short because of concerns that if the public learned of Cuba’s role in the assassination, they would demand retaliation that could lead to war. Nevertheless, the Commission pondered the far more dangerous possibility of Russian involvement in the murder.

Some Cubans were certainly connected to the assassination, but they were anti-Castro Cubans, not pro-Castro Cubans. And there are still more problems with the Mexican Mystery Tour, but I won’t detail them here. I will simply close with a conversation between President Lyndon Baines Johnson and F.B.I. Director John Edgar Hoover on the very day of the assassination. Johnson asked if there was any new information about Oswald’s trip to Mexico, and Hoover replied:

No, that’s one angle that’s very confusing for this reason. We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet Embassy using Oswald’s name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man’s [Oswald’s] voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy down there…

Really? Someone was impersonating Oswald? Whatever for?

I'm a Zappatista!

2006-01-11T00:08:00.000-08:00

Fascism should more properly be called
corporatism because it combines
the powers of business and state.
— Benito Mussolini

Yes, it’s true. Frank Zappa was an inventive and prolific musician; so I jumped at the chance to see a video of him from 1986, when he appeared on Crossfire to discuss censorship. You can watch the video, too, at:

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/zappa_crossfire_1986.mov

(Note: For reasons which passeth my understanding, I haven't been able to directly link to that address. To find the video, go to crooksandliars.com for 1/10/2006 and scroll down the page to find the link and a picture of Zappa. Alternatively, copy this address and paste it into the address window.)

Zappa was chided when he expressed his concern that the country was heading toward a fascist theocracy. Unfortunately, he was right. Twenty years later, the United States is clearly fascist and leaning ever closer to theocracy.

I won’t attempt to summarize the program. Frank Zappa was perfectly capable of articulating his position, and you can make your own assessment. But I do want to comment about the show’s hosts. On the right, literally and figuratively, was Robert Novak, who replaced Patrick Buchanan. Novak left C.N.N. last fall in the ongoing controversy over his role in exposing Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative. He is now a special correspondent for FOX, where he continues to dissemble on the subject of Plamegate.

Tom Braden was on Crossfire representing the left. But, as is so often the case in programs such as Crossfire, he was not actually a leftist. He simply wasn’t as far right as Novak. Perhaps that is why Novak didn’t “out” Tom Braden! That’s right, Thomas Wardell Braden, the author of Eight is Enough, worked for the Agency. For a time, he was the head of the International Organizations Division which infiltrated academic and political groups in Europe. He also ran the C.I.A.’s covert cultural division and was a key figure in the C.I.A.’s domestic labor activities. His intelligence connections were described in The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (1999), by Francis Stonor Saunders, and mentioned briefly by Laurence Zuckerman in a New York Times review of Stonor’s book:

In one of the book’s many amusing codas, Mr. Braden goes on in the 1980’s to become the leftist foil to Patrick Buchanan on the CNN program ‘Crossfire.’ (3/18/2000, p. A17)

____________________
Incidentally, Timothy Leary appeared on Crossfire in 1982. Braden concluded that Leary had led a “wasted life.” Leary later declared that the spectrum of views on Crossfire ran from the left-wing of the C.I.A. to the right-wing of the C.I.A. I agree, but then, I’m a Zappatista.

O'Reilly's War on Christmas

2006-01-05T22:39:00.000-08:00

It has been said that truth is the first casualty of war. No one knows that better than Bill O’Reilly who has been killing truth whenever it rears its ugly head.

O’Reilly was on the David Letterman show on Tuesday, 1/3/2006, where O’Reilly continued his campaign against honesty. He claimed that an elementary school in Wisconsin changed the words of “Silent Night” and had the children sing:

“Cold in the night. No one in sight. Winter winds whine and bite. How I wish I was happy and warm. Safe with my family out of the storm.” They replaced the words to “Silent Night” with that.

O’Reilly made it sound as if some demented folks in Wisconsin were trying to destroy their childrens’s Christmas spirit. In fact, the song is from a 1988 Christmas musical for children titled The Little Tree’s Christmas Gift. The play is about a small, scraggly tree on Christmas Eve. He’s the last tree on the lot, and he yearns to be with a family on Christmas. But time is running out. Who will adopt the little tree?

You can read about the play (which is more than O’Reilly did) at:

http://delrich.home.mindspring.com/tree.html

Follow this heartwarming "tree tale," as it delivers its strong Christmas message of happiness, hope and love.

Bill O’Reilly believes Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. Someone should remind O’Reilly of the Ninth Commandment — thou shall not give false witness against thy neighbor.

____________________

Above the Law

2005-12-26T19:09:00.000-08:00

On April 20, 2004, George Bush, Jr. told reporters:

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.

In fact, Bush had already ordered the National Security Agency to establish domestic wiretaps without warrants.

After the wiretap scheme belatedly surfaced this month, the administration went into defense mode. In radio and tv addresses, Bush said that Congress had authorized such activity after 9/11. Dick Cheney declared that in the post-9/11 world, warrantless domestic surveillance was constitutional.

Unfortunately, neither claim is true. Congress can not and did not grant Bush the power to conduct illegal domestic spy operations; and as far as I can recall, the 9/11 hijackers did not amend the Constitution.

Cheney has further suggested that Bush is merely restoring powers eroded by Watergate and Vietnam:

Watergate and a lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the 1970s, served, I think, to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective, especially in the national security area. Especially in the day and age we live in…the president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy.

Cheney’s assessment is unfounded. Presidential powers increased with U.S. involvement in Vietnam, particularly following the Gulf of Tonkin hoax. And while Watergate damaged Richard Nixon’s individual presidency, it did not diminish presidential powers in general.

Even right-wingers normally indifferent to Bush’s crimes are bothered by illegal domestic spying. Neil Steinberg wrote:

The president keeps saying how dangerous our enemies are, how they are out to harm us — no doubt. But how does that translate into his seizing the ability to wiretap Americans, contrary to the rule of law? There are already legal mechanisms in place to tap first and get a warrant later, so the argument of urgent need is false. (Chicago Sun-Times, 12/21/05, p. 24)

George Will, famously right-wing, titled his column for 12/21/05 “Bush wrong to OK spying without going to courts, Congress.”

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, resigned in protest of Bush’s secret wiretaps.

Violations of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) provisions carry jail terms and fines. When Bush appeared on tv to justify his actions, he essentially confessed to multiple felonies. He became, in the view of former Nixon counsel John Dean, the first President to publicly admit impeachable offenses. Barons online agreed, calling for the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the matter “and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.”*

___________________

December 8, 1980

2005-12-08T22:30:00.000-08:00

Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football

Operation Plan 34-A

2005-12-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

The intelligence community was pleased with President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Although their activities in Southeast Asia ultimately destroyed his presidency, he was not directly targeted. He was, so to speak, collateral damage.

A few details help place the Johnson administration in proper context. In August of 1964, Americans were enraged after North Vietnamese P.T. boats twice attacked a U.S. ship in international waters. Within days, the Tonkin Resolution gave Johnson significant, new war powers. Cam Rahn Bay was chosen as the site of a naval installation. A company in Texas, Brown and Root, got the contract to dredge the bay. When the horrors at Con Son prison were exposed, Brown and Root got the contract to build a new prison. Kellogg, Brown and Root, today a subsidiary of Halliburton, is building a new prison in Iraq and a new facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Nearly a decade after the Tonkin incidents, the Pentagon Papers revealed that the Resolution had been written by “Administration” figures, otherwise unidentified, months in advance. President Johnson was able to respond quickly with air strikes because the targets had already been selected.

But there were no attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin. The incidents were the result of Operation Plan 34-A, set in motion in December of 1963. 34-A included commando raids against North Vietnam, bombing runs of U.S. planes flown by Thai pilots, kidnappings, and so on. The goal was to provoke an attack by the North Vietnamese or to create the appearance of such an attack.

In fact, the U.S. recruited Vietnamese commandos for Op Plan 34-A. Many were captured and held prisoner for years. Eventually, surviving commandos brought a suit for compensation. In 1996, they dropped the suit in exchange for $12 million from the Defense Department. The measure was sponsored by a decorated war veteran, Senator John Kerry. The agreement also provided money for participants of Op Plan 35-Alpha. Nobody in Washington wanted to see our former agents testifying in court about the hoax that stampeded the country to war. And in anticipation of your question, I have no idea what 35-Alpha was.

On October 31, 2005, The New York Times ran a lengthy article about a classified National Security Agency study concerning the Gulf of Tonkin attacks. The study found that intercepted Vietnamese transmissions connected to the Tonkin incidents were falsified in a round-about fashion. According to the study, original translation errors and other mistakes created a misleading picture. Mid-level personnel, otherwise unidentified, recognized the problem but did nothing to correct it because they favored military action. According to the study, President Johnson and top officials at the N.S.A. did not know about the deception. Stop me when this starts to sound familiar.

The Bush administration has kept the full N.S.A. study secret, lest the public recognizes unflattering parallels between pre-war intelligence in Vietnam and pre-war intelligence in Iraq.

____________________

Whiskey Pete

2005-12-02T10:25:00.000-08:00

“’Willy Peter,’ make you a believer.”

In the passage above, war correspondent Michael Herr was quoting a soldier in Vietnam. Today, soldiers call it Whiskey Pete; but it still means the same thing. “W.P.” White phosphorus. And it will make you a believer.

Below are stills from the Italian documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre. showing white phosphorus fired from helicopters over Fallujah on November 8, 2004:

White phosphorus is a white or yellowish waxy solid which reacts strongly with water and oxygen. It may land on your clothes with little effect; but if it lands on your skin, it will ignite and burn at a ferociously high temperature. It can char your flesh; it can burn you down to the bone. You can extinguish it by plunging the affected area under water. But take the affected area out of the water and the phosphorus will relight. If you inhale it, it will burn inside you.

Photos of the victims are horrific. Men, women, and children, often with their clothes largely intact, are turned into hideous masks of scorched leather. Others look as though they have melted. By comparison, the dead dogs in the street look peaceful. Dogs don’t have sweat glands, so their skin is naturally drier than human skin; and dogs are also protected by fur. But they can still inhale Whiskey Pete, and it will make them believers.

The U.S. initially claimed that white phosphorus was used only for illumination or camouflage. But the video of those helicopters over Fallujah is hard to argue away, and the U.S. has now admitted using white phosphorus against “enemy combatants.”

Whiskey Pete, unfortunately, doesn’t appreciate the subtle differences between an enemy combatant and a bird or a baby.

In Vietnam, we used napalm — jellied gasoline. In Iraq, we use MK 77 — jellied aviation fuel with added oxidizers for enhanced combustion. Clearly, aviation fuel is not gasoline; so reports of napalm in Iraq are obviously unfounded. Besides, we only use MK 77 against enemy combatants.

We have abandoned whatever moral high ground we might have held years ago. We took over Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers and made them ours. We have murdered prisoners in our custody, in violation of international conventions which we ignore anyway and in violation of U.S. law. Four contract mercenaries were killed in Fallujah, and the U.S. took revenge on the entire city. We have irradiated Iraq with depleted uranium as surely as if we had used dirty bombs. And now, we have found chemical weapons in Iraq. They are located in U.S. munitions, and we are using them to save the Iraqis from the threat of chemical weapons.

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St. Augustine on Empire

2005-12-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

from: The City of God

Book IV, chapter 4:

And so if justice is left out, what are empires except great robber bands?

For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by a social compact, and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon.

If by repeatedly adding desperate men, this plague grows to a point where it holds territory and establishes centers of power, seizes cities and subdues peoples, then it more conspicuously assumes the title of kingdom, and this title in now openly granted to it, not because it has given up on greed but because it does all this with impunity.

A certain pirate whom Alexander the Great had captured gave him an elegant and true reply. When the emperor asked him by what right he molested the seas, he answered with definite independence: “The same right as you when you molest the world. Because I do this with a small ship, I am called a pirate. You do it with a large fleet and are called an emperor.”

Book III, chapter 14:

This lust for domination brings many evils down upon the human race and grinds it down.

Book V, chapter 12:

First it was their love for liberty, later their love for domination as well.

Once they had freedom, the greed for riches that followed became so great that freedom seemed too little by itself unless they were also seeking domination over other peoples.

Two Quotes on Exporting Democracy to the Middle East

2005-11-13T10:01:00.000-08:00

Last week, voters in Dover, Pennsylvania unseated school board members who supported the teaching of “intelligent design.” On his tv program, The 700 Club, Marion Gordon (Pat) Robertson warned Doverites not to expect any help from god should disaster befall them in the future:

I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God; you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. And I’m saying — I'm not saying they will; but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, then don’t ask for His help because he might not be there. (11/10/2005)

In San Francisco, voters passed a ban on military recruiting at public high school and college campuses. Bill O’Reilly explained the consequences on FOX Radio:

…You know, if I’m the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, “Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds! Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it! We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.” (11/8/2005)

One can only hope that if San Francisco is ever actually under attack, Bill O’Reilly’s indifference will be tested.

Libby by the Numbers

2005-10-31T22:32:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, the grand jury investigating the C.I.A. leak indicted Irving Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Jr. on obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements, and two counts of perjury. The full text of the indictment is available at:

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/documents/libby_indictment_28102005.pdf

As indictments go, this one is surprisingly long and detailed. The first thirteen pages concern Count One, Obstruction of Justice. The essence of the case comes down to three paragraphs.

Libby Indictment, P. 5, ¶ 9 —
On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson’s wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

In June of 2003, The New Republic ran an article online about the so-called “sixteen words” in George Bush, Jr.’s State of the Union Address, when he claimed that Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Niger.

Libby Indictment, P. 6, ¶ 13-14 —
Shortly after publication of the article in The New Republic, LIBBY spoke by telephone with his then Principal Deputy and discussed the article. That official asked LIBBY whether information about Wilson’s trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the Vice President had sent Wilson. LIBBY responded that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure telephone line.

On or about June 23, 2003, LIBBY met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. During this meeting LIBBY was critical of the CIA, and disparaged what he termed “selective leaking” by the CIA concerning intelligence matters. In discussing the CIA’s handling of Wilson’s trip to Niger, LIBBY informed her that Wilson’s wife might work at a bureau of the CIA.

In July of 2003, according to the indictment, Libby had a conversation with a senior White House official identified only as Official A. Official A told Libby that Robert Novak was going to write an article about Joseph Wilson’s wife.

Libby learned about Plame from the Vice-President of the United States, who got the information from the C.I.A. Plame’s work for Counterproliferation while employed by an Agency front was an obvious indicator that she was under cover. Libby clearly knew the information was sensitive, as evidenced by his unwillingness to discuss Plame with his deputy on a “non-secure” telephone line. And finally, Robert Novak — who actually “outed” Plame in the press — apparently discussed Plame with Official A, not Libby, before writing about her. In other words, the real source of the leak has yet to be identified.

Who is Official A? I don’t know, but I could venture a guess: Karl Rove. The source of the leak is still under scrutiny and Rove is, too. Even if Rove only confirmed Plame’s status to a reporter who acquired the information elsewhere, that would have been a violation of Rove’s non-disclosure agreement and should have been cause for dismissal. In 2003, George Bush, Jr. declared that anyone in his administration involved in the leak would be removed. Rove is clearly involved and yet he remains in the White House.

If, as alleged, Libby made false statements and committed perjury, why did he do it? The simplistic answer coming from the right-wing, the “Senator Hutchinson scenario,” is that Libby merely made a mistake. He forgot some point or he tried to correct some detail after initially providing other testimony. That seems unlikely given the sensitive and high-profile nature of the case.

There are two other possibilities: he lied to protect himself from prosecution under anti-espionage laws or he lied to protect his boss.

At a press conference on October 28, Fitzgerald made it clear that the Plame leak didn’t only jeopardize Valerie Plame. The damage, he said, “wasn’t done to one person. It wasn’t just Valerie Plame. It was done to all of us.”

Amy Goodman interviewed Larry Johnson for Democracy Now (10/31/2005). Johnson is a former C.I.A. analyst and former Deputy Director of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism. He described the entire affair — the Niger forgeries and the propaganda campaign leading to war — as a covert operation by the Bush administration against the American people.

Jimmy Carter

2005-10-21T00:57:00.000-07:00

Former President Jimmy Carter at the American University, September 19, 2005

Agent Judy?

2005-10-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

I confess that I felt some sympathy for New York Times reporter Judith Miller when she went to jail. At the time, all I knew was that she had information concerning C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame and didn’t publish it. Pressed for the name of her source, Miller refused to talk and went to the slammer for contempt of court. She became a champion of the free press. For her principled stance, she received an award two days ago from the Society of Professional Journalists. She called for a federal law to shield reporters from judicial sanctions.

But her appearance there was controversial. The American Society of Journalists and Authors had planned on giving Miller its Conscience in Media Award. But the A.S.J.A. changed its mind. It is no longer clear exactly what principle she was defending when she defied the court. In a way, it’s no longer clear exactly who she was working for.

After all, Miller wasn’t protecting a whistleblower exposing government misdeeds. Miller was protecting Irving Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Allegedly, Libby was part of an effort to retaliate against a whistleblower. Two days after Miller’s third conversation with Libby, the Plame leak surfaced in a column by right-winger Robert Novak.

Ostensibly, Miller went to jail to protect the principle of reporter-source confidentiality. But as it turned out, Libby had already given her permission to reveal his name. So why did Miller essentially lock herself up for 85 days?

If there is one place you can be confident your mail will be monitored, it’s jail. While Miller was incarcerated, Libby wrote to her, telling her that no other journalists have identified him as a source. In surprisingly poetic language, he urged her to leave jail and return to life. He wrote about the fall leaves. Aspens, he wrote, turn in clusters because their roots connect them.

Before the U.S. launched its attack on Iraq, Miller wrote a series of articles supporting the notion that Saddam Hussein had proscribed weapons and was seeking material for nuclear weapons. (The search for evidence of Iraqi uranium purchases involved Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame.) After the invasion, Miller was embedded with a unit looking for weapons in Iraq. Her accounts featured loud claims and quiet disclaimers. Pre- and post-invasion searches found no chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. On Sunday, October 16, The New York Times ran a 5,800-word account of the Miller saga — including information about dissent within the Times over the handling of Miller. The New York Times has admitted that several of her stories were wrong and has criticized itself for failing to scrutinized them more carefully.

The fault, unfortunately, runs deeper than that.

After the invasion, while Miller was filing stories about weapons that were never found, she had security clearance. At least, that’s what she says. The C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency deny her claim. The C.I.A. and the D.I.A., however, would deny connections to Miller whether or not she worked for them. In any case, they aren’t the only intelligence entities in the federal government.

If Miller’s claim is true, she may have had access to classified information which she could not reveal and which refuted the accounts she was writing. Worse, Miller might have been granted clearance precisely so she could be used as a conduit — so Libby could tell Miller about Plame without violating espionage laws.

Since Miller’s release from prison, her memory has become hazy. Although the name “Valerie Flame” [sic] appears in the notebook she kept on Libby, Miller can’t recall now who told her about Plame or if she was told that Plame was a covert agent. The Times article ended on an uncertain note:

The Times incurred millions of dollars in legal fees in Ms. Miller’s case. It limited its own ability to cover aspects of one of the biggest scandals of the day. Even as the paper asked for the public’s support, it was unable to answer its questions. (Emphasis added.)

When Plame was “outed,” so were her employers. The company she worked for was exposed as a likely intelligence front, necessarily casting suspicions about the possible intelligence connections of other employees. Ordinarily, intelligence agencies prepare a net damage assessment when an operation is “blown.” Viewed from that perspective, Randi Rhodes, at Air America radio, has reported what may be the most telling detail of all. According to Rhodes, no damage assessment followed the Plame leak.

Who Shot John?

2005-10-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

Every fall, as the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination approaches, a new account exculpating his killers emerges. So I was not surprised by the story on page 22 of Rupert Murdock’s Chicago Sun-Times — “Mob boss ordered JFK hit, book says.” (Jim Ritter, 10/10/2005)

The new book is JFK and Sam, by Antoinette Giancana, Dr. John Hughes (neurologist), and Dr. Thomas Jobe (psychiatrist). The essence of the story comes from Antoinette, the daughter of Sam Giancana, an organized crime figure of some renown. According to the authors, Sam Giancana helped rig the 1960 election in Chicago in expectation of John Kennedy’s future cooperation. But J.F.K reneged on the deal, sending his brother — then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy — after the Mafia boys. Sam, it is claimed, retaliated.

To Jim Ritter’s credit, he cites William Brashler’s criticism. Brashler, arguably a top authority on Sam Giancana, is the author of The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana (1977). Brashler interviewed Antoinette for his book and concluded that she knew next to nothing about her father’s business.

To Ritter’s shame, he also cites the assessment of Ruth Ann Rugg, of the Sixth Floor Museum at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. Ritter writes that “[c]onspiracy buffs have proposed 250 theories” about the assassination, but Rugg says the only credible account is the lone gunman story. A drifter named Lee Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, re-defected to the U.S., and killed the President. Alas, many people find it hard to accept the fact that an insignificant loner could so affect history. “We want to believe that there was more to it, that there were huge forces involved.”

Pop psychological diagnoses, unfortunately, are poor substitutes for facts. The presidency, for instance, wasn’t the only office contested in 1960. Here in Chicago, Democrat Benjamin Adamowski was successfully fighting organized crime. After a dispute with Daley’s machine, Adamowski bolted the party and ran for state’s attorney in 1960 as a Republican. Organized crime had a strong interest in defeating Adamowski, so they worked to get out the vote.

Did that help J.F.K.? Yes. Does that mean gangsters backed J.F.K.? No. As a Senator in the late 1950s, John Kennedy served on the [John] McClennan Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management. Robert Kennedy was the committee’s chief counsel. His sharp questioning of Sam Giancana made headlines. His war with Jimmy Hoffa became legendary. Robert Kennedy wrote about organized crime in his book, The Enemy Within, where he described organized crime as the Private Government. His book was published in February of 1960, months before his brother received the Democratic nomination. The Kennedys’s pursuit of mobsters was well documented. Are we really to believe that Giancana and Hoffa wanted the Kennedys to hold high office?

Incidentally, Senator John Kennedy was elected President by a razor-slim majority in the popular vote. Yet in the electoral college, where Illinois had 27 votes, he beat Vice-President Richard Milhous Nixon by 84 votes. If Kennedy had lost Illinois, he still would have carried the electoral college by 30 votes. Winning Illinois certainly didn't hurt J.F.K., but the state was not as critical as Kennedy critics claim.

In my previous post, Free the Files, I noted the success of the 1992 Assassination Records Collection Act. One result was the declassification of F.B.I. documents on the surveillance of Giancana before, during, and after the 1960 elections. Supporters of the-mob-did-it story don’t quote those documents, and it’s not hard to understand why. Those documents don’t contain anything to support the claim that mobsters backed J.F.K. And federal investigations uncovered no evidence that mob bosses knew in advance about the assassination, discussed it with anyone, or hired anybody to pull the triggers.

In the process of rebutting JFK and Sam, the Chicago Sun-Times advanced the equally silly story that a disgruntled loner did the deed. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Lee Oswald killed anyone. By way of clarification, I will close with the questions posed by New Orleans Parish District Attorney Earling Carothers (Jim) Garrison, the only man to bring a trial in the murder of the President. Could the mob send Oswald to Russia and get him back? Could the mob change J.F.K.’s motorcade route in Dallas? Could the mob illegally remove J.F.K.’s body from Dallas and arrange a military autopsy in Washington, D.C.? Could the mob appoint a presidential commission to classify the evidence for 75 years? Could the Russians do that? The Cubans? Who did that?

____________________

Free the Files

2005-10-15T08:02:00.000-07:00

(Written in June of 2005)

Millions of movie-goers left Oliver Stone’s JFK wondering what the ¡*≠∂#?÷! they had just seen. The film prompted so much interest and outrage that thousands of people called their representatives in Washington, demanding to know if it was true that the government still held secret evidence in the case.

It was true.

Congress responded with the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Decades of secrecy were undone by the Act which declared that “All government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure.” The Act created a review board charged with compiling and releasing the largest possible collection of assassination-related materials — including transcripts, photos, films, audio recordings, and physical evidence. The review board also acquired material from foreign countries, several states and municipalities, and numerous individuals. By the time the board expired in 1998, they had assembled an archive of more than 4,500,000 pages covering a breath-taking range of subjects: organized crime; U.S. policy on Cuba and Vietnam; federal investigative procedures; local, state, and federal corruption; prominent politicians; and on and on. Because of the release process established by the board, the archive continued to grow even after 1998.

It was the most successful declassification process in the history of mankind. That’s probably why you never read about it in the newspapers; it doesn’t set a good example. Imagine a panel of librarians, historians, and archivists empowered to review and declassify documents on, say, contra-cocaine. That could ruffle some feathers.

In 1963, there were no laws to compel disclosure. J.F.K.’s killers had a reasonable expectation of official secrecy for the foreseeable future.

The files make it terribly clear, in extensive detail, that the “facts” in the case were bent, nudged, fudged, folded, spindled, mutilated, smeared, ignored, twisted, destroyed, or just plain made up — or classified. It’s doubtful a lone assassin could have arranged all that. Perhaps others were involved.

Federal investigative records on the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. remain secret until the year 2029.

In the fall of 2001, the Congressional Black Caucus was preparing an act to release the evidence in the assassination of Dr. King. But then came 9/11, our new Pearl Harbor, and the attention of Congress was diverted.

Last May, Representative Cynthia McKinney introduced H.R. 2554 to create the sort of disclosure process which proved so successful in the Kennedy case. Hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of pages of material on King’s murder are being kept hidden from the public.

Conspiracy theories are occasionally pooh-poohed for a seemingly obvious reason: How could all those involved possibly keep a secret like that? The answer, of course, is that they couldn’t; and they knew it. There’s a huge amount of review and editing that must take place to support the operation. Intelligence agencies, particularly in so-called open societies, recognize that total secrecy is the ideal; but it’s not something they count on. Fallback positions must be part of the plan. Delaying tactics must be part of the plan.

Control the investigation, classify the details, and let the public complain. If anyone does, call them names for a decade. Resist; string it out. Play it right, and you can even use belated disclosures to demonstrate your openness and concern.

The organizing principle, at every level, is the conscious diminishment of accountability. Organized crime operates on the very same principle.

In 1994, Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was killed by a lone assassin who later confessed. A second investigation exposed the first and sought other conspirators, including the man who videotaped the crime. A third investigation went after the second; a fourth went after the third, and so on and so on. After seven special prosecutors, the investigation of the actual murder has long since ground to a halt.

The former President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas, left the country for a protracted vacation. His sister-in-law was arrested in Switzerland while trying to withdraw $80 million from one of her husband’s numerous accounts under false names. The account was already being monitored by the Swiss who suspected it was a conduit for laundered drug money.

In the essentially single-party state of Mexico in 1994, two factions fought it out for control. It was a stalemate, except in one respect. Colosio was still dead.

Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a lone assassin who confessed. The whole thing was caught on tape. The government investigated; the lone assassin defended himself badly; and subsequent revelations have raised serious questions. If the Israeli public wins full disclosure in 2020, Rabin will still be dead.

In 1995, to much media silence, critical U.S. documents on Pearl Harbor were released. Every aspect of the official story from 1941 has been, so to speak, blown out of the water. The United States intercepted and decoded a wealth of pre-attack messages; the Navy tracked the Japanese fleet from its assembly point in the Kuriles to the staging area north-west of Hawaii. In fact, fourteen months earlier, the Office of Naval Intelligence had laid out an eight-step plan to provoke an attack on Pearl. The men and ships at Pearl were considered a small price to pay against future U.S. interests in the Pacific.

We can’t undo the history of Dr. King’s death, but it still belongs to us. Our tax dollars paid for every single file that we are not allowed to read today.

So, write or email your Representatives, Senators, newspapers, tv stations, or just inform others. You don’t have to be an expert in the case. Just tell them that there’s a better way to spend our money. Support H.R. 2554. Free the files. We’ve waited long enough. King’s killers are beyond our justice, but an incomplete truth is still better than a total lie.

____________________
The text of H.R. 2554 is available at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-2554

A man named James Ray supposedly confessed to shooting Dr. King. Ray was tried and convicted.

But Ray never confessed to shooting Dr. King. He said he was part of a criminal conspiracy to run guns with a man named Raul. (And, no, I did not just misspell “Raoul.”) Ray’s lawyer made it clear that if King died as a result of the smuggling conspiracy, Ray shared guilt for the actions of Raul and others unless Ray could prove he was not witting.

Defense, however, was not on the defense attorney’s mnd. No witnesses were cross-examined by anybody at Ray’s trial. The prosecution made an opening statement; Ray’s attorney agreed with the prosecution and asked the jury for a 99-year sentence. The jury retired to reach a verdict and deliver it to the court. The whole thing took about four hours.
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Burn, Baby, Burn!

2005-10-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

There’s an interesting commercial running on Chicago television these days. An announcer says that a few years ago, politicians in California seized control of electricity production and held down the price of energy — while, the “true cost” of electricity kept rising. The abbreviation “ICC” and the name “Com Ed” appear on the screen, apparently as parts of newspaper articles. According to the commercial, power shortages and skyrocketing prices hit California because the politicians ignored independent experts. The announcer warns his listeners that Chicago doesn’t need a California-style crisis.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the commercial is completely misleading. In reality, the problem was Com Ed’s fuel supplier, Enron. Enron energy traders engineered the crisis to drive up prices and make money. Office telephone conversations recorded by Enron and finally disclosed in 2004 made it abundantly clear exactly what happened. (An audio file of two C.B.S. broadcasts is available upon request.) To create blackouts and brownouts, Enron figures periodically ordered generators to be shut down. They talked about stealing millions of dollars per day; and they laughed about poor, old “Grandma Millie”:

…now she wants her f**king money back for all the power you charged right up — jammed right up her a** for f**king $250 a megawatt hour.

And when wildfires threatened power transmission lines, Enroners were cheering for the fires. “Burn, baby, burn!” one trader said. “That’s a beautiful thing.”

Enron and the Justice Department tried to prevent release of the Enron tapes. Lawyers for Enron claimed the recordings merely proved that traders sometimes talked like Barnacle Bill the Sailor. But the recordings leave no room for doubt. An extensive, corporate criminal conspiracy defrauded the public of hundreds of millions — perhaps billions — of dollars. And not just in California, but along the entire west coast. The perpetrators knew precisely what they were doing. When the racket was exposed, they talked about cleaning up their act and trying to avoid jail time.

A number of Enron figures faced charges, including C.E.O. Kenneth Lay, a major contributor to George Bush, Junior’s political campaigns. In 2000, there was talk of Lay being appointed Secretary of Energy in a Bush administration; but the collapse of Enron buried Lay’s chances of a career in public service.

So, what is the commercial really about? The ad displays a website address:

www.illinoiscore.org

Unfortunately the website is rather vague about Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity (CORE). CORE is a group of businesses, organizations and individuals, otherwise undefined, who support a competitive marketplace and economic development. CORE will reach out to “key policymakers” to facilitate “a unified and effective impetus for progress.”

Supporting progress is admirable, but defining progress is problematic. Click on CORE’s link to taking action and you learn nothing. Instead, you find a form to fill out so you can become a CORE member, presumably to receive information later about the organization you just joined. You can download a CORE brochure with another membership application, but you still won’t find out about CORE’s objectives.

Deregulation was sold in California as a way to get government off the back of business — to unleash the power of the market to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Deregulation achieved exactly the opposite result.

Public utilities must be regulated because your Grandma Millie, on a fixed income, still needs electricity; and my Uncle Eugene needs heating oil for his home. Make no mistake. The champions of deregulation know what they’re doing. They’ve been spouting the language of deregulation for so long, however, that we sometimes forget why regulations were instituted in the first place. The reason is simple. There are thieves in the world. There are even thieves who wear suits and run big companies.