At least two more US soldiers died in Iraq within the last 24 hours. For what?Well over 700 soldiers have died so far, over 600 of these deaths have occured since the incredible shrinking _resident declared "Mission Accomplished!" Now stories of US-perpetrated torture and massacres have begun to surface. And are you safer today than you were on September 11? No. You are in greater danger. Because the incredible shrinking _resident's disasterous policies have only swollen the ranks of Al Qaeda-style terror groups and drained away our intel and military resources into the quagmire of Iraq. Joe Wilson's name, of course, was scrawled on the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes awhile ago. Hopefully, his book will circulate among enough of us to contribute to the Electoral Uprising that is coming in November 2004.
Ambassador Joseph Wilson, www.buzzflash.com: I wrote
my article only after I had given the government
several months, both in terms of talking to people
close to the Administration, as well as some people
within the Administration, and by talking on
background to the press. I urged the government to
come clean with this story that was patently not true.
I did so because I fully understood that it is a
penchant of this Administration, and it is a modus
operandi of Karl Rove, to attempt to destroy the
messenger who brings bad news.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/04/int04023.html
April 30, 2004
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Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, Author of "The Politics
of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed
My Wife's CIA Identity."
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
"I did my civic duty and held my government to account for statements it had made. The government
acknowledged that the sixteen words about Iraq
purchasing uranium from Niger did not rise to the
level of inclusion in the State of the Union Address.
And then the Administration went out to savage my
family and myself.... Somebody close to the President
of the United States decided that in order to defend
Bush’s political agenda, that individual or
individuals would violate the national security of the
country and expose my wife’s name and her profession.
That was absolutely unexpected. That this government
would take a national security asset off the table,
working in an area that is of primordial importance to
the national security of the United States – the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the
hands of rogue states and non-state actors."
Ambassador Joe Wilson
Okay, for the umpteenth time, let's get this straight:
In order to send a message to any Bush Cartel
whistleblowers and truth tellers, Karl Rove or Scooter
Libby (or both) authorized the outing of a CIA
operative. But this wasn't just any CIA operative.
This was a woman who specialized in tracking the
illicit trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Well, the WMD-specializing outed CIA agent was Valerie
Plame. Why was she outed and our national security
threatened by the Bush Cartel? Because her husband,
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson, had the temerity to
reveal that the Bush Cartel mischaracterized a key
piece of alleged (i.e., phony) evidence that Saddam
Hussein was purchasing nuclear material from the
nation of Niger (not to be confused with Nigeria).
So, America's national security has been jeopardized
because a man who showed heroism in the diplomatic
corps told the truth about the Bush Cartel and the
Bush Cartel sought revenge.
The story is mind boggling, and it is even more
tragically ironic as you read the details in this
personal memoir by Ambassador Joe Wilson, "The
Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and
Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity-A Diplomat's Memoir."
Ambassador Joe Wilson is, like Richard Clarke, one of
the heroes of our time.
* * *
BuzzFlash: You have a new book coming out titled, "The
Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and
Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity." Could you start off
by telling us a little bit about what’s in your book
and why you decided to write it?
Ambassador Wilson: The book is the story of my foreign
service career, which included service in Iraq during
the first Gulf War, as well as many other postings in
Africa and in Europe. And of course, it deals a lot
with the debate and the run-up to this second war in
Iraq, and the positions that I took in the run-up to
the invasion.
I guess the part that everybody’s interested in is the
trip I took out to Niger on behalf of the
Administration, to check out whether there was any
truth to the allegations that Iraq had attempted to
purchase significant quantities of uranium. I detail
what the Administration did or rather did not do with
my report from Niger, and how I responded to what I
felt was a lie in the President’s State of the Union
Address that needed to be corrected. I did my civic
duty and held my government to account for statements
it had made. The government acknowledged that the
sixteen words about Iraq purchasing uranium from Niger
did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of
the Union Address. And then the Administration went
out to savage my family and myself.
BuzzFlash: You were a member of the diplomatic corps
for many years. In fact, the first President Bush
praised you for your heroism and your work when Iraq
invaded Kuwait.
Ambassador Wilson: That’s correct, and he made me an
ambassador to two African countries.
BuzzFlash: Tell us what was your experience like in
Iraq at the time just before Saddam invaded Kuwait in
the first Gulf War?
Ambassador Wilson: I was based in Baghdad, and I was
in charge of the embassy. Our ambassador, April
Glaspie, had left the post on vacation and
consultations. We were watching as the Iraqi troops
started massing along the Kuwaiti border. We were
giving it our best shot to corroborate information. We
had Saddam’s assurances that he had no intention of
invading Kuwait so long as there was a negotiating
process ongoing. And then, of course, he violated that
pledge that he had given to Ambassador Glaspie.
Shortly thereafter, the Iraqi government took about
150 Americans hostage and about 400 hostages in total
from other countries including French, British,
Japanese, and Germans. We went around and offered
another 65-70 Americans safe harbor in our diplomatic
quarters, and we housed them and fed them, and took
care of them so that they would not be taken hostage
by Saddam. And then we worked for the following six
months between the invasion of Kuwait and the sort of
counter-attack which we called Desert Storm to get all
Americans out of harm’s way. And we were successful.
We lost two Americans over those six months – one who
was an employee of the embassy who died of a cerebral
hemorrhage the night of the invasion of Kuwait, and
the other was an American businessman who died of a
heart attack several days after the invasion.
BuzzFlash: People such as yourself who make a career
in the State Department are known as people who don’t
rock the boat. Let’s talk about what compelled you to
write the column in The New York Times that dispelled
the Niger uranium accusation that Bush included in his
State of the Union Address. You had to know before you
submitted that column that there would be consequences
both personally and professionally.
Ambassador Wilson: First of all, I had been retired
for several years from government. But secondly, with
respect to this idea of diplomats not rocking the
boat, I think it’s important to understand that the
American diplomatic service is full of people who are
patriots, and who serve their country with great
distinction. These people carry out their government’s
foreign policy irrespective of which party happens to
be in power at any given time. Now that means that
they are generally very bright and very knowledgeable
about the practicality of doing international
relations and foreign policy, since most of them spend
a good part of their career overseas.
I wrote my article only after I had given the
government several months, both in terms of talking to
people close to the Administration, as well as some
people within the Administration, and by talking on
background to the press. I urged the government to
come clean with this story that was patently not true.
I did so because I fully understood that it is a
penchant of this Administration, and it is a modus
operandi of Karl Rove, to attempt to destroy the
messenger who brings bad news.
It was important that the government correct the
report that Iraq obtained uranium from Niger. And it
was important that if, in fact, the government was
going to come after me, which I fully understood they
would, that the story was fully understood by the
American people before they in fact destroyed the
messenger. In urging the government to come clean on
this Niger business, I was doing nothing more and
nothing less than any American has been taught from
social studies in seventh grade -- it is the
responsibility of any American citizen in our
democracy. We have checks and balances, and we have
rights, and we have protections to ensure that we hold
our government accountable for its actions. And that’s
exactly what I was doing.
Now understanding that they would come after me, I
didn’t feel that I had anything personally to worry
about. After all, as you correctly pointed out, the
former President Bush had called me an American hero
and had written me any number of laudatory handwritten
letters. What did shock me and I think shocks most
Americans was what this Administration decided when
they couldn’t discredit me to their satisfaction.
Somebody close to the President of the United States
decided that in order to defend Bush’s political
agenda, that individual or individuals would violate
the national security of the country and expose my
wife’s name and her profession.
That was absolutely unexpected, that this government
would take a national security asset off the table,
working in an area that is of primordial importance to
the national security of the United States -– the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction into the
hands of rogue states and non-state actors. Yet for
some reason, either because they wanted to discourage
other people from stepping forward and telling the
truth, or out of simple revenge, as was reported in
the Washington Post, this government decided that it
would go ahead and take that national security asset
off the table.
It was truly un-American. It was a betrayal of the
country, irrespective of whether they can prosecute
this through conviction. It was treasonous and clearly
the act and the subsequent pushing of the story, and
trying to sort of promote this lie, was un-American in
every sense of the word.
BuzzFlash: When the Administration falsely claimed
that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium from Niger, I
think some people in their minds didn’t fully
understand what that meant. It seems to me that most
people thought that meant the transfer of a suitcase
of highly explosive material or something. And in
reality, what we’re talking about was a very
large-scale operation.
Ambassador Wilson: Sure. We’re talking about 500 tons
that would have had to cross the Sahara Desert, been
loaded onto a ship in West Africa, transported to some
destination, and then further transported into
Baghdad. Five hundred tons is a lot of poundage.
BuzzFlash: And essentially that could not happen
without somebody noticing something, right?
Ambassador Wilson: That’s correct. And I lay all that
out in the book and why I concluded that it could not
have happened.
BuzzFlash: Right now, the Department of Justice
investigation into the national security leak that
exposed your wife is in the hands of a U.S. prosecutor
from the Northern District of Illinois. And Attorney
General Ashcroft has claimed that he is no longer
involved in the case. Is there anything that you can
add about the status of the Department of Justice
investigation, since there’s essentially been no real
media coverage of this important national security
issue?
Ambassador Wilson: Let me just say that the
investigation is in the hands of the professionals.
The prosecutor is a career prosecutor whom I hold in
the highest esteem, and the FBI people who are looking
into this are also professionals. So long as they’re
handling it, I know for a fact that they’re doing
everything they can to get to the bottom of it. Now
the fact that they haven’t yet been able to get to the
bottom of it suggests that there is a fair amount of
covering up and stonewalling going on over at the
White House, despite the President’s claim that he
wanted his senior government officials to cooperate.
Either he has no control over them, or they’re just
simply not doing it.
We’re not talking about hundreds of senior government
officials in this case. We’re talking about a few who
have both the means -- i.e., a national security
clearance that gives them access to the sorts of
conversations, and the building, where they might find
these secrets -- and the motive and political agenda
to carry this out. And finally that they have
sufficient seniority that a senior reporter in
Washington would actually listen to what they had to
say.
BuzzFlash: You are a member of a club of individuals
that include Richard Clarke, John O’Neill, John
DiIulio -- people who have come forward to tell the
truth about the Bush Administration, and then are
smeared as liars. It seems that there’s something
Orwellian about this practice. And the Bush
Administration’s strategy is clearly to attack the
messenger and not refute the message. What’s your
advice to other individuals who are thinking of coming
forward with information that they think would be
vital for the American public to know about the
Administration?
Ambassador Wilson: I’ll tell you the ones that I’m
most proud of, as I look out at this, are the Jersey
girls -- the widows of those Americans who gave their
lives in the World Trade Center. These brave women
have insisted since 9/11 that the U.S. government come
clean on what it knew before the attacks and what it
might have done to prevent this from happening. I
think that they have been profiles in American
courage. And it sickened me when I saw them savaged by
Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard in a television
appearance, and then subsequently in a Wall Street
Journal editorial by Dorothy Rabinowitz.
But what I have to say to people who might come
forward is that one of the great things about our
democracy is freedom of the press. And if we don’t
exercise that, we run the risk of losing it. One must
always keep one’s government under control. The
government serves the people -- not vice-versa.
BuzzFlash: Do you think that the Bush Administration
is just exercising raw brute power by trying to
silence people like yourself or is there some greater
good that they foresee in trying to strike voices such
as yours down?
Ambassador Wilson: It’s hard to see what greater good
they achieve by lying to the American people and then
ruthlessly trying to destroy those who call them on
their lies.
BuzzFlash: You’re continuing to speak out on behalf of
the truth and democracy. And the White House would
want you to just go away into your private life. After
everything you’ve been through, how do you forge on
when the attacks on you are relentless?
Ambassador Wilson: Because this is my country, and it
is a great country, and the American people have every
right to know what their government is doing and what
their government has done with the false pretenses
under which this government launched this war on Iraq.
And trust me when I tell you that once this battle is
won, I have every intention of retiring back to
private life.
BuzzFlash: Ambassador, thank you so much for your
time. We appreciate it.
Ambassador Wilson: My pleasure.
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
It's The Media, Stupid.
Timothy Karr, www.mediachannel.org: "Sinclair
Broadcast Group on Thursday ordered its eight ABC
affiliates to pre-empt Friday's "Nightline" broadcast
of the reading of the names of US military personnel
killed in Iraq, saying the program is "motivated by a
political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of
the United States in Iraq...If the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's track record of political contributions is any indication, executives at the company may have their own "political agenda."
According to The Center for Responsive Politics, an
organization devoted to tracking political
contributions by individuals, PACs and corporations,
Sinclair executives give overwhelmingly to Republican
causes and candidates. Of the top twenty TV and Radio
companies to make political contributions in 2004,
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, is among the most
conservative, giving 98 percent of its $65,434 in
political contributions to GOP candidates."
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert187.shtml
Broadcaster's Own 'Political Agenda' Plays Part in
Nightline Snub
By Timothy Karr
MediaChannel.org
NEW YORK, April 29, 2004 -- Sinclair Broadcast Group
on Thursday ordered its eight ABC affiliates to
pre-empt Friday's "Nightline" broadcast of the reading
of the names of US military personnel killed in Iraq,
saying the program is "motivated by a political agenda
designed to undermine the efforts of the United States
in Iraq."
The political leanings of Sinclair executives also may
have played a part in the company's decision to block
the popular ABC news program. In 2004, Sinclair
executives gave 98 percent of their political
contributions to GOP candidates.
In a fax to press Thursday, the Baltimore-based media
company, whose holdings include 62 local TV stations,
said that by airing Friday's Nightline program, "ABC
is disguising political statements as news content."
During the ABC News broadcast, anchorman Ted Koppel
will read aloud the names of more than 500 U.S.
service men or women who have lost their lives in the
war, as a corresponding photo appears on the screen
along with that person's name, military branch, rank
and age. In an emailed statement, ABC News
"respectfully disagreed" with Sinclair's view of the
program saying that Nightline "is dedicated to
thoughtful and balanced coverage and reports on the
events shaping our world with neither fear nor favor
-- as our audience expects, deserves, and rightly
demands."
If the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's track record of
political contributions is any indication, executives
at the company may have their own "political agenda."
According to The Center for Responsive Politics, an
organization devoted to tracking political
contributions by individuals, PACs and corporations,
Sinclair executives give overwhelmingly to Republican
causes and candidates. Of the top twenty TV and Radio
companies to make political contributions in 2004,
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, is among the most
conservative, giving 98 percent of its $65,434 in
political contributions to GOP candidates.
By comparison, Clear Channel Communications, the
conservative radio colossus run by longtime Bush
cronies Tom and Steve Hicks, has given only 75 percent
of its 2004 contributions to Republicans; Democratic
candidates have received the remaining 25 percent of
Clear Channel's political largesse.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics,
Sinclair CEO and President David Smith personally gave
$2,000, the maximum individual contribution, to
President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. Smith has
yet to reply to MediaChannel's request for comment on
his company's political leanings.
John Dunbar of the nonpartisan Center for Public
Integrity said, "I fell out of my chair when I read
Sinclair's statement." Dunbar, whose organization
monitors and reports upon the influence of money over
politics, considers Koppel's reporting to be
politically moderate. "Based on what Sinclair did,
it's impossible not to see where their political
interests lie," he said.
The broadcasting giant reported first quarter
preliminary results for net broadcast revenues reached
$158.3 million. The Q1 increase over last year --
about $4 million more than the company expected --
came in part from $1.3 million in additional political
advertising revenues in key election states such as
Ohio, Florida, West Virginia, Illinois and Maine,
where Sinclair owns stations.
-- Timothy Karr is Executive Director of
MediaChannel.org
© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.
It's The Media, Stupid.
www.dailyhowler.com: Al Qaeda plots around the world, hoping to destroy your society (more below). And Maureen Dowd—at our greatest newspaper—is concerned because a White House candidate doesn’t make his own peanut putter sandwiches! She draws her inanity from
the profile penned by Wilgoren, of course.
How inane—how ill—are Wilgoren and Dowd? As Wilgoren
wrote in yesterday’s profile, “[e]very modern
presidential candidate has a factotum, or ‘body
man,’”—a guy who serves as personal assistant to the
candidate himself. But for reasons only she can
explain, Wilgoren zeroed in on Kerry’s assistant,
painting him as Kerry’s “butler,” his “glorified
valet,” who exists because John Kerry “is comfortable
being catered to.” (Like Katharine Seelye’s report
about Kerry’s war record, Wilgoren’s imagery mimics
RNC spin. She also lards her slimy piece with
homoerotic imagery.) Why, the “butler” even makes
Kerry’s sandwiches, the troubled Wilgoren “reported.”
Today, this screaming trivia makes its way to the top
of Maureen Dowd’s worried piece.
Break the Bush Cabal's Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh042904.shtml
LET THEM EAT PEANUT BUTTER! The Washington press corps
is deeply disordered. Here—let the New York Times show
you:
THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 2004
LET THEM EAT PEANUT BUTTER: Ask yourself a simple
question: What kind of “letters editor” would actually
publish the following text? This letter receives
prominent display in today’s New York Times:
To the Editor:
As a Vietnam veteran, I know the value of serving our
country in time of war. The medals are personal
service decorations awarded to us by our country for
serving with honor.
The medals John Kerry received represent an award
earned in battle. But with only fingernail scrapes to
show for his three Purple Hearts, it’s no wonder Mr.
Kerry was so willing to throw medals away.
Which of our servicemen now serving overseas would
want a commander in chief who has so little regard for
the medals they have earned that he would throw them
away, for political reasons? Truly they would have no
respect for him.
COOK BARELA
Riverside, Calif., April 26, 2004
Barela, of course, is a consummate rube, of the kind
found in every society. But what kind of journalist
would publish this letter—a letter whose “facts” are
so blatantly bogus? In fact, no one has ever so much
as claimed that Kerry had “only fingernail scrapes to
show for his three Purple Hearts.” Last week, the
claim that he received such a scrape when he got his
first Purple Heart was shown to be blatantly false.
But a week later, what does the great Times do? An
editor receives this idiotic letter—and incredibly, he
puts the letter in print! The Times of course knows
the letter is false. But how many readers will know
this?
Readers, only a fool could fail to see the truth in
this morning’s Times. The Washington press corps is
deeply disordered—in effect, mentally ill—and the
Times is quite eager to prove it. We principally speak
of Maureen Dowd’s column, which plays off Jodi
Wilgoren’s “profile” on the front page of yesterday’s
Times (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/28/04). Why do we use
the term “mentally ill?” At a time of building
national peril, Dowd is concerned about this:
DOWD (pgh 1): So let’s see. What’s our swell choice
here?
(2) A guy who mimed being a fighter pilot on a carrier
versus a guy who mimed throwing his medals over a
fence?…
(5) A president who can’t go anywhere without his vice
president to give him the answers versus a candidate
who can’t go anywhere without his campaign
butler/buddy to give him peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches?
Al Qaeda plots around the world, hoping to destroy
your society (more below). And Maureen Dowd—at our
greatest newspaper—is concerned because a White House
candidate doesn’t make his own peanut putter
sandwiches! She draws her inanity from the profile
penned by Wilgoren, of course.
How inane—how ill—are Wilgoren and Dowd? As Wilgoren
wrote in yesterday’s profile, “[e]very modern
presidential candidate has a factotum, or ‘body
man,’”—a guy who serves as personal assistant to the
candidate himself. But for reasons only she can
explain, Wilgoren zeroed in on Kerry’s assistant,
painting him as Kerry’s “butler,” his “glorified
valet,” who exists because John Kerry “is comfortable
being catered to.” (Like Katharine Seelye’s report
about Kerry’s war record, Wilgoren’s imagery mimics
RNC spin. She also lards her slimy piece with
homoerotic imagery.) Why, the “butler” even makes
Kerry’s sandwiches, the troubled Wilgoren “reported.”
Today, this screaming trivia makes its way to the top
of Maureen Dowd’s worried piece.
What does Dowd have on her mind today? George Bush
can’t answer questions about 9/11. And John Kerry
doesn’t make his own sandwiches!
Of course, inanity has been this corps’ stock-in-trade
over at least the last dozen years. When you read your
paper each day, you read the work of a vacuous press
which is happy to display its Millionaire Pundit
Values—a press corps addicted to trivia and inanity.
While Osama plotted in the summer of 2001, they rubbed
their thighs about Chandra Levy. Meanwhile, they’ve
turned your elections into trivia festivals, built
around earth tones, Love Story, dog pills, blow-jobs.
Now we’re handed our current fare. What is the
headline on Dowd’s piece? “Guns and Peanut Butter,” it
says.
And yes, simply put, it’s an illness. Even faced with
growing peril, the Wilgorens, the Dowds—and the
letters editors—simply can’t stop their incessant
group clowning. Are there real topics Dowd might have
explored? At one point, after all, she writes this:
DOWD: Communing with the Higher Father and the
Almighty, President Bush has either stumbled into a
Holy War or swaggered into one.
In their new book, “The Bushes,” Peter and Rochelle
Schweizer, who interviewed many Bushes, including the
president’s father and his brother Jeb, quote one
unnamed relative as saying that W. sees the war on
terror “as a religious war”: “He doesn’t have a P.C.
view of this war. His view of this is that they are
trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians
will strike back with more force and more ferocity
than they will ever know.”
Does Bush have some sort of religious view which
Americans ought to know more about? We don’t know, but
this passage from the Schweizers’ book is hardly the
first indication. Bush has made several odd statements
recently, including those made to Bob Woodward,
statements which produced this exchange when the
author did 60 Minutes:
WOODWARD: The president still believes, with some
conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing,
that he has the duty to free people, to liberate
people, and this was his moment.
MIKE WALLACE: Who gave George Bush the duty to free
people around the world?
WOODWARD: That’s a really good question. The
Constitution doesn’t say that’s part of the
commander-in-chief’s duties.
WALLACE: The president of the United States, without a
great deal of background in foreign policy, makes up
his mind and believes he was sent by somebody to free
the people, not just in Iraq, but around the world?
WOODWARD: That’s his stated purpose.
WALLACE: Right.
WOODWARD: It is far-reaching and ambitious, and I
think will cause many people to tremble.
It will cause many people to tremble! But what has
made Bush believe that “he was sent by somebody to
free the people, not just in Iraq, but around the
world?” It was fairly clear that Woodward and Wallace
believed—based on Bush’s statement about serving a
“higher father”—that the president might feel a
religious calling when he makes these surprising
statements. At any rate, Bush’s new belief is quite a
shift from his “humble foreign policy” of Campaign
2000, and when he talks about “the duty to free people
around the world,” that seems to suggest a different
mission than ridding the world of WMD. Does George
Bush feel a religious mission which Americans need to
hear discussed? We don’t know, and we never will,
because your press corps will never dare ask him.
Instead, Dowd’s headline talks about peanut butter. Is
she concerned about global war? Yes, but she’s also
concerned about John Kerry’s sandwich, the one we read
about on page one on yesterday’s inane New York
Times..
Their focus on trivia is an addiction—a raging,
millionaire’s mental illness. Their opinion leaders
are multimillionaires, and they do behave like a
perfumed court—like Marie Antoinette’s inner circle.
As they’ve long shown, they are impervious to serious
thought, as their class has always been. And they
continue to clown at a dangerous time, at a time that
imperils the world.
While they clowned about Gary Condit, Osama’s men were
tooling those planes. And now, as they clown about
peanut butter, Osama’s men are still at work. And what
will happen to your country because Wilgoren and Dowd
set the tone? Let us finally tell you your future:
Osama’s men will come with a bomb (see below), and
they’ll destroy an American city. American society
will end on that day. And when it does, you can think
of Wilgoren and Dowd—and you can think of the “letters
editor” who laughed in your face with that letter
today. They’ve made a joke of your discourse for
years—while your enemies hunt for a bomb. There is
little chance those enemies won’t succeed, because
screaming idiots—screaming idiots—have long been in
charge of your discourse.
History makes it crystal clear—those who clown will be
destroyed. Marie Antoinette’s posse lost their fine
heads. A larger disaster awaits you and yours. Let
them eat peanut butter, the Times says.
REMEMBER, CASSANDRA WAS RIGHT: Richard Gephardt, on
Hardball last November:
GEPHARDT: What are we worried about? We’re worried
about an A-bomb in a Ryder truck in Washington, in St.
Louis, in L.A. It can’t happen. We have to prevent it
from happening. It cannot happen.
“We have to prevent it from happening,” Gephardt said.
But readers, it won’t be prevented from happening if
we clown about peanut butter! We can’t put idiots in
charge of vital functions—and idiots currently run our
press corps. Go out and spend a dollar today. Let the
Times show you it’s true.
TINA BROWN, FULLY SANE: Yes! This disordered
discussion really occurred on last night’s Hardball.
Chris Matthews rapped about medals v. ribbons with RNC
chief Ed Gillespie (MSNBC transcript, including
quotation marks):
MATTHEWS: It turns out later that they were not
his—they were his service ribbons, which he now says
last night were the same as medals. What’s wrong with
him saying they’re medals if they’re ribbons, or
they’re both the same thing?
GILLESPIE: Because what he said was, he said, “Well, I
never implied that I threw my own medals.”
MATTHEWS: But he threw his ribbons, though.
GILLESPIE: He did. But hang on one second. Because he
said, I never implied that I threw my own medals. And
then he said on an interview on television—
MATTHEWS: Channel 4.
GILLESPIE: Yes. He said, “I threw my medals.” So
there—
MATTHEWS: OK. What happened was—I agree with you. I’m
with you on this but here’s the problem.
GILLESPIE: Can I finish the rest?
MATTHEWS: You’re arguing—you’re arguing about a third
of a century ago and a local Channel 4 reporter here
in Washington, WRC, saying you threw your bronze and
your star and he said beyond that and then he said
other ribbons, other medals, right? But he didn’t
actually say, “I threw my bronze and my—and my
silver.”
GILLESPIE: What she said was, you threw your Bronze
Star, your Purple Heart and your Silver Star, and he
said, “That’s right, and then a few other medals.” And
so the fact is he said—
MATTHEWS: But he said he threw away those ribbons.
GILLESPIE: But then fine. Then later on he said…
In a dangerous world, that discussion is insane. But
Matthews has hosted discussions like this for year
after year after year. By the way: True to the way
your discourse works, neither Matthews nor Gillespie
had a transcript of Kerry’s 33-year-old comments. Each
man kept misstating Kerry’s remarks. This is the way
the clowning clown Matthews has treated your lives for
seven years. (Happy anniversary, Chris!}
Yes, this is a form of illness, but they insist on
indulging it. They’ve built your discourse around this
nonsense for at least the past dozen years. Four years
ago, it was earth tones, Love Story, dog pills and
Love Canal, with RNC shills like Katharine Seelye
coming up with strange “misquotations,” and with
screaming mimis like Matthews lying in your face each
night (for one extended example, see THE DAILY HOWLER,
11/18/02). You must see this for what it is. And you
must understand that this bizarre group will never go
away until forced.
But one person—one—is quite sane today. In this
morning’s Washington Post, Tina Brown lays it out nice
and clear:
BROWN: The Republican attack machine—again—has made
the right calculation: Hit ’em with trivia. Bait the
hook with the absurd “issue” of whether it was medals
or ribbons that Kerry hurled over the wall when he was
a 27-year-old hothead. Then watch the media
bite—they’ll do it every time—and let Kerry rise to it
and blow it. Presto, a thrice-wounded, decorated war
hero running against a president who went missing from
the National Guard is suddenly muddying up his own
record on the morning talk shows. Shades of 2000, when
Bush jokily bowled oranges down the aisle of his
campaign plane while Gore argued about whether he did
or didn’t say he invented the Internet.
Tina is wrong on one point; Gore almost never
discussed the endless inanity about invented the
Internet. (Gore was criticized for not taking on the
endless trivia. Today, Kerry is being criticized for
having done so.) But the press corps flogged invented
the Internet for two solid years, feigning concern
about Gore’s troubling character, and they flogged
other fake inventions—Love Story, Love Canal, doggy
pills, earth tones—as they made a vast joke of your
lives.
“Hit ’em with trivia,” Brown derides. But why does the
press corps luv such talk? In October 2000, Margaret
Carlson explained. Carlson appeared on the Imus show
to discuss press coverage of Bush and Gore’s first
debate. As she noted, Gore was being slammed as a liar
because of a few exceptionally trivial misstatements.
(To state the obvious, most of Gore’s alleged
“misstatements” weren’t misstatements at all.)
Meanwhile, much larger howlers were being
ignored—misstatements by Bush about policy matters.
Speaking with Imus, Carlson explained the double
standard. Here she was, explaining why Bush’s groaners
were being ignored:
CARLSON (10/10/00): You can actually disprove some of
what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and
get out your calculator or you look at his record in
Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun, to disprove
Gore.
Amazing, isn’t it? (And perhaps you can sense the
“liberal bias.”) According to Carlson, the press was
trashing Gore over trivia because it was “easy” and
“fun” to do so! The millionaire pundit kept talking:
CARLSON: I actually happen to know people who need
government, and so they would care more about the
programs, and [less] about the things we kind of make
fun of…But as sport, and as our enterprise, Gore
coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining
to us. And we can disprove it in a way we can’t
disprove these other things.
The press was chasing trivial errors because it was
“greatly entertaining.” Meanwhile, they were ignoring
Bush’s serious errors because they weren’t as easy to
disprove! According to Carlson, Candidate Gore was
being flogged because it was “entertaining” and “fun.”
The coverage of this election was “sport,” Carlson
amazingly said.
Much of what Carlson said this day was disingenuous,
of course. In fact, it was perfectly easy to
“disprove” much of what Bush was saying (see THE DAILY
HOWLER, 9/4/03). But on this day, Carlson gave an idea
of why you’re reading fake letters in today’s Times,
and why you’re reading about peanut butter. Brown is
quite sane, but she’s also polite, so let us say it
one more time: Your Washington press corps is deeply
disordered. Wilgoren and Dowd are eager to prove it.
There’s no sign they ever will stop.
TODAY’S OTHER CONSUMMATE FOOL: Today’s other
consummate fool is the Washington Post’s Richard
Cohen. Peanut butter makes his lead paragraph. Cohen
is part of a vacuous elite—pampered, perfumed,
overpaid, fat and happy. These people can’t grasp the
damage done by the trivialization of your discourse.
And Cohen, of course, is scolding Kerry because he
dared fight back this week. Understand how these
people “think.” Gore is wrong when he doesn’t fight.
Kerry is wrong when he does.
Cohen is a screaming fool. But it’s good to be Cohen,
squire of New York, overpaid and over-praised. As a
matter of fact, it will be good to be Richard Cohen
until al Qaeda comes to New York and puts an end to
all New Yorkers’ lives.
Here is another powerful example of the 9/11 families' extraordinary courage, conscience and clarity of mind as they provide the moral leadership so lacking in the "US mainstream news media" and its propapunditgandists...The "war on terror" is NOT the strength of the incredible shrinking _resident's administration, it is the SHAME of his administration...John O'Neill, Richard Clark, Sibel Edmonds, Colleen Rawley, Roger Cressy, Rand Beers and others have shown great courage and principle, so have a handful of Senators and Congressmen...But it is the 9/11 Families and in particular the "Jersey Moms" that have done the hard work. Whether or not the 9/11 Commission will meet the real challenge (i.e. underscoring the pre-9/11 failures of Condileeza Rice, John Ashcroft, the VICE _resident and in particular the incredible shrinking _resident in de-emphasizing the Al Qaeda threat to pursue their own agenda) is still not known...We will only know when and if their final report is released or leaked...in July...
Monica Gabrielle, Los Angeles Times: But I want to know the whole ugly truth. My husband, Richard Gabrielle, died on the 103rd floor of Tower 2 that day; I want to know what was done beforehand to prevent it from happening, and I want to know what we're doing to prevent it from happening again. My great fear is that their answers will never find their way to the public. I can't be at the meeting. I'm not allowed in. But if I were, this is what I would ask...
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gabrielle29apr29,1,4950041.story
COMMENTARY
'I Want to Know the Ugly Truth'
By Monica Gabrielle
Monica Gabrielle is a member of the Family Steering Committee. Website: www.911IndependentCommission.org
April 29, 2004
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will sit down this morning with the entire 9/11 Independent Commission to give their account of events leading up to Sept. 11 — a day that took the life of my husband, along with 3,000 other innocent people. Bush and Cheney will appear together because they refuse to appear separately. It will be behind closed doors because they don't want to speak publicly. There will be a "note taker," no recorded transcript.
But I want to know the whole ugly truth. My husband, Richard Gabrielle, died on the 103rd floor of Tower 2 that day; I want to know what was done beforehand to prevent it from happening, and I want to know what we're doing to prevent it from happening again. My great fear is that their answers will never find their way to the public.
I can't be at the meeting. I'm not allowed in. But if I were, this is what I would ask.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For President Bush:
1. Why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack on our own soil?
2. On the morning of 9/11, who was in charge while you were away from the National Military Command Center? Were you informed or consulted about all decisions made in your absence?
3. At what time were you made aware that other planes were hijacked in addition to Flight 11 and Flight 175? What was your course of action?
4. Beginning with the transition period between the Clinton administration and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information about terrorists, possible attacks and targets did you receive?
5. Please explain why no one in our government has yet been held accountable for the failures leading up to and on 9/11.
6. From May 1 until Sept. 11, 2001, did you receive any information from any intelligence agency official that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack this nation on its own soil? That terrorists were planning to use airplanes as weapons? That New York City landmarks were being targeted?
7. What defensive measures did you take in response to pre- 9/11 warnings and/or threats from 11 nations about a terrorist attack, many of which cited an attack in the continental U.S.?
8. From May 1, 2001, until Sept. 11, 2001, did you or any agent of the U.S. government carry out any negotiations or talks with Bin Laden, an agent of Bin Laden or Al Qaeda?
For Vice President Cheney:
1. On Sept. 11, when did you first become aware that the U.S. was under attack?
2. The Hart-Rudman report, released in January 2001, predicted a terrorist attack within the U.S. Yet the White House set aside report recommendations and announced in May that you would study the issue of domestic terrorism. Apparently, responsibility was then passed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency director. Congress had been willing to support the recommendations. What happened?
3. Besides ensuring the succession to the presidency, is there a defense protocol in the event our nation is attacked? What is it and was it followed?
4. What subsequent actions did you take to defend our nation?
a. Did you have open lines with the Secret Service, NORAD, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense?
b. Who was in the Situation Room with you?
c. Was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld or anyone at the Pentagon informed that we were under attack? If so, at what time was the Pentagon informed? If not Rumsfeld, who?
d. Why wasn't the Pentagon defended?
e. Did you consult with President Bush about all decisions?
5. Please describe any discussions/negotiations between the Taliban and either public or private agents before Sept. 11 regarding Bin Laden and/or rights to pass a pipeline through Afghanistan, or any other subject pertaining to Afghanistan.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
Article licensing and reprint options
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
Of course, the incredible shrinking _resident will not provide "testimony" because it will not be under oath...and, although the NYTwits (who would have done the country a great service if they had used a calculator in fact checking their own stories on the theft of Fraudida in 2000)are to be commended for this Editorial, and as bizarre (and embarrassing) as it is that the incredible shrinking _resident and the VICE _resident have insisted on appearing together, it is unfortunately NOT the worst capitulation to the White House's demands, the most egregious (and least publicized) "condition" is that only ONE PERSON will be taking notes. Yes, the 9/11 Commissioners former Senators, Governors and high ranking US officials will not be allowed to take their own notes...Who is that one person? What is going on in this country? Will the 9/11 Commission refuse to pull its punches in its final report? Will it tell the whole truth that has already come to light about the failures of Rice, Ashcroft, the VICE _resident and the incredible shrinking -resident himself? "Out, out damn spot!"
NYT Editorial: It would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous...The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/opinion/29THU1.html--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 29, 2004
The President's Testimony
t would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous.
The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")
Given the White House's concern for portraying Mr. Bush as a strong leader, it's remarkable that this critical appearance is being structured in a way that is certain to provide fodder for late-night comedians, who enjoy depicting him as the docile puppet of his vice president.
Mr. Bush's reluctant and restrictive cooperation with the panel is consistent with the administration's pattern of stonewalling reasonable requests for documents and testimony and then giving up only the minimum necessary ground when the dispute becomes public. Today's testimony will be in private in the White House, away from reporters or television cameras. The session will not be recorded, and there will be no formal transcript. The president's aides have defended this excessive degree of secrecy with the usual arguments about protecting highly classified information and not wanting to establish dangerous precedents.
The idea that the panel may wring from Mr. Bush some comment that may endanger national security is ridiculous. The commission, led by the respected former Republican governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, has already heard, in public, from the leaders of the nation's top intelligence agencies, the secretary of defense and Mr. Bush's national security adviser. It seems highly unlikely that the president knows secrets more sensitive than they do. If he did, he would certainly be free to go off the record while discussing them.
The president's aides have also been arguing that making the event anything more than a "meeting" or informal discussion would establish a pattern that future chief executives would be forced to follow. That is true, in a way. If Mr. Bush or any of his successors have the tragic misfortune to be in command at a time when terrorists strike the country, killing thousands of innocent civilians, they should be expected to cooperate with the official investigations, and to do so in a way that puts their statements on the record and into history.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
At least 10 more US soldiers died in Iraq over night. For what? And for whom?
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) quoted in the
Chicago Tribune: "I think a lot of veterans are going to be very angry at a president who can't account for his own service in the National Guard, and a vice president who got every deferment in the world and decided he had better things to do, criticizing somebody who fought for their country and served," Kerry told the Dayton Daily News. "I think it's
inappropriate. I think it shows how desperate the
Republicans are. They don't have a record to run on.
They have a record to run away from."
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
CAMPAIGN 2004
Kerry zeroes in on Cheney draft record
Senator criticizes VP's 5 deferments
Advertisement
By Jill Zuckman
Tribune national correspondent
April 28, 2004
CLEVELAND -- In a campaign unusually focused on the
Vietnam War, Sen. John Kerry trained his criticism on
Vice President Dick Cheney Tuesday, saying it is
"inappropriate" for Cheney to criticize his military
service when he "got every deferment in the world and
decided he had better things to do."
A day after Cheney questioned Kerry's credibility on
national security, the Massachusetts senator went
after the vice president--in addition to President
Bush--as he took his campaign bus tour from
economically depressed Youngstown to the shores of
Lake Erie. Though Kerry met with two unemployed people
and stopped by a construction site to greet workers
here, the Democrat's focus shifted for a second day in
a row to questions of military service.
"I think a lot of veterans are going to be very angry
at a president who can't account for his own service
in the National Guard, and a vice president who got
every deferment in the world and decided he had better
things to do, criticizing somebody who fought for
their country and served," Kerry told the Dayton Daily
News. "I think it's inappropriate. I think it shows
how desperate the Republicans are. They don't have a
record to run on. They have a record to run away
from."
>From 1963 to 1966, Cheney received five deferments:
four student deferments while attending the University
of Wyoming and one for having a child. "I had other
priorities in the '60s other than military service,"
Cheney told a reporter in 1989.
Kerry's campaign also released a document posing nine
"unanswered questions" about Bush's service in the
National Guard, asking why he hasn't proved that he
showed up for service in Alabama, whether he received
special treatment to get into the Guard, and why he
specifically requested not to be sent overseas, among
others.
During a fundraiser in Cleveland on Tuesday night,
Kerry continued his assault, complaining that the Bush
campaign had spent "about $70 million just trying to
destroy me."
"They want you to believe that John Kerry, who put the
uniform of his country on voluntarily, who felt an
obligation to go to Vietnam when so many others
didn't, who stood up and fought for our country, they
want you to believe that somehow I'm not strong for
the defense of our nation," Kerry said.
But the White House said Tuesday that Kerry's service
was not the subject of criticism.
"No one is questioning his military service," said
White House press secretary Scott McClellan. "Sen.
Kerry's service in the military is commendable. No one
is questioning his service in the military. Let's be
clear on this."
At a briefing with reporters, McClellan would not say
whether the president stood behind comments made by a
key adviser, Karen Hughes, that were critical of
Kerry's anti-war protests more than three decades ago.
The president, speaking at a veterans' medical center
in Baltimore, did not address the issue.
The White House declined to say whether the president
endorsed the comments made Monday by Cheney at
Westminster College in Missouri. Kerry on Tuesday
accepted an invitation to speak at the college Friday
after the school's president expressed dismay at the
partisan tone of Cheney's remarks.
McClellan, however, downplayed those concerns.
"I think a spirited discussion about how a president
leads in the war on terrorism and how a president acts
to protect the American people should be at the
forefront of the debate in this election," he said.
Meanwhile, the Bush campaign continued to make its
case that Kerry has voted against "the very weapons
systems that are helping our troops fight and win the
war on terror," according to spokeswoman Nicolle
Devenish.
Late Tuesday Kerry said that when Cheney was secretary
of defense under President George H.W. Bush, "he
bragged and led the effort to cut the military."
Earlier, Kerry spokesman David Wade said Bush
officials are questioning the senator's military
service, as well as his patriotism and commitment to
defend the nation. The Bush campaign has also launched
a $10 million advertising buy this week accusing Kerry
of opposing essential weapons.
"These are loathsome attacks," Wade said. "Cheney had five deferments for the Vietnam War and he's going to question John Kerry's commitment and ability to keeping American troops safe?"
Though Kerry once said he did not want to make Bush's
National Guard service an issue, Wade said the attacks
on Kerry's patriotism had forced him to fight back.
The contretemps between the two campaigns became
especially heated Monday as Republican officials
questioned whether Kerry actually threw his medals and
ribbons over a fence during an anti-war demonstration
in 1971, or threw other people's medals.
Over the years, Kerry's answers have been somewhat
varied, leading Republicans to accuse him of lacking
credibility. On Monday, as he campaigned in
Pennsylvania, Kerry said he no longer had his ribbons,
but still retained his three Purple Hearts as well as
his Silver Star and Bronze Star.
- - -
Cheney's military deferments
Dick Cheney received five deferments from the military
draft between 1963 and 1966.
Sept. 1959: Enters Yale.
June 1962: Withdraws from Yale.
Jan. 1963: Enters Casper College in Wyoming. Receives
first student deferment.
May 1965: Cheney earns his bachelor's degree from the
University of Wyoming. While there, his student
deferment was renewed twice.
Fall 1965: Enters graduate school at Wyoming and
receives another deferment.
Jan. 1966: Receives fifth deferment under a provision
exempting men with children from military service when
his wife becomes pregnant.
July 28, 1966: Cheney's first child, Elizabeth, is
born.
Jan. 1967: At 26, Cheney is no longer eligible for the
draft.
Sources: The Associated Press, The Yale Daily News
Chicago Tribune
JJeff Zeleny of the Tribune's Washington Bureau
contributed to this report
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
Another major scandal being kept off the air waves because of the complicity of network news organizations...Did intelligence from this hacking reach the White House? Well, hmmm....
Eric Lichtblau, New York Times: The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into accusations that Republican Congressional aides stole sensitive Democratic memorandums, and the department has tapped David N. Kelley, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, to lead the politically charged case, officials said Monday...In March, the Senate sergeant-at-arms concluded in a 65-page report that two Republican staff aides had engaged in widespread, unauthorized and possibly illegal spying by reading Democratic strategy memorandums on a Senate computer system.
Save the US Constitution, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/politics/27PROB.html?pagewanted=print&position=
April 27, 2004
Justice Dept. Opens Inquiry on Memo Theft
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
ASHINGTON, April 26 — The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into accusations that Republican Congressional aides stole sensitive Democratic memorandums, and the department has tapped David N. Kelley, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, to lead the politically charged case, officials said Monday.
The decision to bring in Mr. Kelley, rather than have prosecutors in Washington pursue the case, came after lawmakers from both parties urged the Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor to avoid the appearance of a conflict.
The department said in a letter dated Monday that it was confident that Mr. Kelley would conduct the investigation "in a thorough, fair, impartial and professional manner." Several leading Democrats applauded his appointment, with Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York saying it was "a very good first step."
The opening of the criminal inquiry increases the significance of the case, which has provoked open hostilities between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in their continuing battle over President Bush's judicial nominations.
In March, the Senate sergeant-at-arms concluded in a 65-page report that two Republican staff aides had engaged in widespread, unauthorized and possibly illegal spying by reading Democratic strategy memorandums on a Senate computer system.
Over at least 18 months, the aides improperly read, downloaded and printed 4,670 files concerning Democratic tactics in opposing many of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees, the report said, and some of the material was leaked to conservative groups supporting the nominees and news media outlets.
The sergeant-at-arms suggested that the unauthorized spying could have violated laws against the receipt of stolen property and lying to investigators, among others. The report also suggested that many other Republican aides might have been involved in trafficking in the stolen documents, and Democrats have questioned whether officials at the Justice Department and the White House were also privy to the material in working to support Mr. Bush's nominees and derail Democratic opposition.
The two aides implicated in the affair have both left the Senate. One, Manuel C. Miranda, who had worked for both the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and Senator Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has defended his conduct in numerous interviews, saying he was able to access the computer memorandums because of Democratic negligence in securing them, not because of any theft or criminal wrongdoing.
Some conservative groups have said that the memorandums reveal ethical improprieties by the Democrats in colluding with liberal groups to block Mr. Bush's nominations. But there is no indication that this will be an element of the criminal inquiry by Mr. Kelley, officials said.
Mr. Hatch, who said in March that he was "mortified" by the ethical breach, said through a spokesman on Monday that he "has every faith" that the Justice Department and Mr. Kelley's office "will do the right thing here."
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the judiciary panel, also welcomed the Justice Department's decision, saying, "With the powers available to a federal prosecutor, this matter can now be more thoroughly investigated, so that those who engaged in criminal conduct may be brought to justice."
Senator Schumer said that while Mr. Kelley, a Democrat, was an independent and capable prosecutor "without conflicts," Attorney General John Ashcroft should still remove himself from oversight of the case to avoid any potential conflicts.
A Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity said, "Ashcroft has a potential conflict on many levels because he has a personal relationship with many of the Republican senators and he has direct control over Justice Department employees who may become involved in the investigation."
Mr. Kelley's office declined to comment. While the letter sent Monday by the Justice Department said that Mr. Kelley had been assigned to the case, it left open whether he would have the type of broad autonomy given to the prosecutor in another politically sensitive case involving the leak of a C.I.A. officer's identity.
In that case, Mr. Ashcroft recused himself after months of complaints from Democrats, and his deputy gave the United States attorney in Chicago, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, authority to conduct an independent investigation.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
2+2=4
Lynn Landes, www.ecotalk.org: Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using BOTH computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80% of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Both ES&S and Diebold have been caught installing uncertified software in their machines.
http://www.ecotalk.org/UrosevichBrothers.htm
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
Lynn Investigates ...
Go back to Voting Machine Webpage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two Voting Companies & Two Brothers Will Count 80% of U.S. Election - Using BOTH Scanners & Touchscreens
by Lynn Landes 4/27/04
Voters can run, but they can't hide from these guys. Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using BOTH computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80% of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
Both ES&S and Diebold have been caught installing uncertified software in their machines. Although there is no known certification process that will protect against vote rigging or technical failure, it is a requirement of most, if not all, states.
And, according to author Bev Harris in her book, Black Box Voting, "...one of the founders of the original ES&S (software) system, Bob Urosevich, also oversaw development of the original software now used by Diebold Election Systems."
Talk about putting all our eggs in one very bogus, but brotherly basket.
Even if states or counties hire their own technicians to re-program Diebold or ES&S software (or software from other companies), experts say that permanently installed software, called firmware, still resides inside of both electronic scanners and touchscreen machines and is capable of manipulating votes. For those who are unfamiliar with the term 'firmware', here's a definition by BandwidthMarket.com: "Software that is embedded in a hardware device that allows reading and executing the software, but does not allow modification, e.g., writing or deleting data by an end user."
The ability to rig an election is well within easy reach of voting machine companies. And it does not matter if the machines are scanners or touchscreens, or are networked or hooked up to modems.
So, for those states and counties who think they're dodging the bullet by not buying (or not using) the highly insecure and error-prone touchscreen voting machines (which will process 28.9% of all votes this year), a huge threat still remains - computerized ballot scanners. They will count 57.6% of all votes cast, including absentee ballots.
And don't count on recounts to save the day. In most states, recounts of paper ballots only occur if election results are close. The message to those who want to rig elections is, "rig them by a lot." In some states, like California, spot checks are conducted. But, that will not be an effective way to discover or deter vote fraud or technical failure, particularly in a national election where one vote per machine will probably be enough to swing a race.
Although touchscreens have been getting the bulk of negative publicity lately, electronic ballot scanners have a long and sordid past, as well. Electronic scanners were first introduced into U.S. elections in 1964, and ever since then a steady stream of reports of technical irregularities have caught the attention of scientists, journalists, and activists, most notably the 1988 report, Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying, by Roy G. Saltman, and the 1992 book, Votescam: The Stealing of America, by Jim and Ken Collier.
Even though there are several foreign and domestic corporations involved in the U.S. vote counting business, ES&S and Diebold clearly dominate the field. ES&S claims that they have tabulated "56% of the U.S. national vote for the past four presidential elections", while a Diebold spokesperson told this writer that the company processed about 35% of U.S. electronic vote count in 2002.
But, is there any real difference between Diebold and ES&S? Perhaps not.
Bob Urosevich is currently president of Diebold. Todd is vice president of ES&S. In 1999, American Information Systems (AIS), purchased Business Records Corporation (BRC) to become ES&S. AIS (1980) was formerly Data Mark (1979). Both AIS and Data Mark were founded by the brothers Urosevich. In 2002 Diebold acquired Global Election Systems. Global was founded 1991, which itself acquired the AccuVote system the same year. Bob Urosevich is a past president of Global.
Of course, most interested observers don't believe that the Urosevich brothers are the real brains behind their respective operations. For information on their financial backers, check out Chapter 8 of Bev's book - blackboxvoting.com, and my webpage - ecotalk.org/VotingMachineCompanies.htm.
Diebold and ES&S have been involved in countless election irregularities over the years, involving both ballot scanners and touchscreens. But, it seems that they've always managed to finesse a happy ending for themselves. Now, it appears that at least Diebold might be in real trouble.
On April 22, 2004, Jim Wasserman of the Associated Press (AP) reported, "By an 8-0 vote, the state's (California) Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that (Secretary of State) Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County...In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that a secretary of state's office report released Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of Diebold in California, be forwarded to the state attorney general's office to consider civil and criminal charges against the company."
Interestingly, no one in the U.S. federal government seems to be paying attention...as usual. There is no federal agency that has regulatory authority or oversight of the voting machine industry - not the Federal Election Commission (FEC), not the Department of Justice (DOJ), and not the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The FEC doesn't even have a complete list of all the companies that count votes in U.S. elections.
Once again we are witness to an 'eyes closed, hands off' approach to protecting America. The 2004 election rests in the private hands of the Urosevich brothers, who are financed by the far-out right wing and top donors to the Republican Party. The Democrats are either sitting ducks or co-conspirators. I don't know which.
My mantra remains - Vote Paper Ballots, Ditch the Machines.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lynn Landes is one of the nation's leading journalists on voting technology and democracy issues. Readers can find her articles at EcoTalk.org. Lynn is a former news reporter for DUTV and commentator for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Contact info: lynnlandes@earthlink.net / (215) 629-3553
The Emperor has no uniform...
Wesley Clark (D-NATO): Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for service, should have the decency to respect those who did serve — often under the most dangerous conditions, with bravery and, yes, with undeniable patriotism.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/opinion/28CLAR.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 28, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Medals of Honor
By WESLEY K. CLARK
ITTLE ROCK, Ark.
When John Kerry released his military records to the public last week, Americans learned a lot about Mr. Kerry's exceptional service in Vietnam. They also learned a lot about the Republican attack machine.
The evaluations were uniformly glowing. One commander wrote that Mr. Kerry ranked among "the top few" in three categories: initiative, cooperation and personal behavior. Another commander wrote, "In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action, Lt. j.g. Kerry was unsurpassed." The citation for Mr. Kerry's Bronze Star praises his "calmness, professionalism and great personal courage under fire."
In the United States military, there's no ideology — there are no labels, Republican or Democrat — when superiors evaluate a man or woman's service to country. Mr. Kerry's commander for a brief time, Grant Hibbard, now a Republican, gave Mr. Kerry top marks 36 years ago.
Now the standards are those of politics, not the military. Despite his positive evaluations, Mr. Hibbard recently questioned whether Mr. Kerry deserved one of his three Purple Hearts.
In the heat of a political campaign, attacks come from all directions. That's why John Kerry's military records are so compelling; they measure the man before his critics or his supporters saw him through a political lens. These military records show that John Kerry served his country with valor, and that those who served with him and above him held him in high regard. That's honor enough for any veteran.
Yet the Republican attack machine follows a pattern we've seen before, whether the target is Senator John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 or Senator Max Cleland in Georgia in 2002. The latest manifestation of these tactics is the controversy over Mr. Kerry's medals.
John Kerry was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for his service in Vietnam. In April 1971, as part of a protest against the war, he threw some ribbons over the fence of the United States Capitol.
Republicans have tried to use this event to question his patriotism and his truthfulness, claiming he has been inconsistent in saying whether he threw away his medals or ribbons. This is no more than a political smear. After risking his life in Vietnam to save others, John Kerry earned the right to speak out against a war he believed was wrong. Make no mistake: it is that bravery these Republicans are now attacking.
Although President Bush has not engaged personally in such accusations, he has done nothing to stop others from making them. I believe those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for service, should have the decency to respect those who did serve — often under the most dangerous conditions, with bravery and, yes, with undeniable patriotism.
Wesley K. Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate, was commander of NATO forces from 1997 to 2000.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
The Emperor has no uniform...
www.johnkerry,com:
Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores?
Col. Albert Lloyd Said A Report >From Alabama To Ellington Should Have Been Filed. Where Is That Report?
Why Did Bush Miss His Medical Exam In 1972?
Where Are The Complete Results Of The Required Investigation Into Bush’s Absence From The Exam?
Why Did Bush Specifically Request To NOT Be Sent Overseas For Duty?
Why Does The White House Say Bush Was On Base When Bush’s Superiors Had Filed A Report Saying He Was Gone For A Whole Year?
Why Is The Pentagon Under Orders To Not Discuss Bush’s Record With Reporters?
Where Are Bush’s Flight Logs?
Why Hasn’t Bush Himself Demonstrated That He Showed Up For Service in Alabama?
Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores?
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0427b.html
KEY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Bush’s Record In The National Guard
April 27, 2004
For Immediate Release
“If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have. I'm not going to stand around and let them play games.” -- John Kerry, NBC News, 4/26/04
Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores?
Col. Albert Lloyd Said A Report >From Alabama To Ellington Should Have Been Filed. Where Is That Report?
Why Did Bush Miss His Medical Exam In 1972?
Where Are The Complete Results Of The Required Investigation Into Bush’s Absence From The Exam?
Why Did Bush Specifically Request To NOT Be Sent Overseas For Duty?
Why Does The White House Say Bush Was On Base When Bush’s Superiors Had Filed A Report Saying He Was Gone For A Whole Year?
Why Is The Pentagon Under Orders To Not Discuss Bush’s Record With Reporters?
Where Are Bush’s Flight Logs?
Why Hasn’t Bush Himself Demonstrated That He Showed Up For Service in Alabama?
Bush Has Said He Used No Special Treatment To Get Into The Guard. How Does He Explain The Fact That He Jumped Ahead Of 150 Applicants Despite Low Pilot Aptitude Scores?
“There was no special treatment.”
--Then-Gov. George W. Bush [Dallas Morning News, 7/4/99]
FACT: With Family Connection, Bush Got Coveted Slot in Texas Guard Shortly After Graduating from College.
A family friend of Bush’s father pulled strings to secure Bush’s spot; Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard after his student deferment ran out when he graduated from Yale in 1968. Before he graduated, Bush personally visited Col. Walter “Buck” Staudt -- the commander of the Texas Air National Guard -- to talk about the Guard. After Bush met with Staudt, he applied and was quickly accepted -- despite a waiting list of over 150 applicants. Staudt recommended Bush for a direct appointment, which allowed Bush to become a second lieutenant right out of basic training without having to go though officer candidate school. The direct appointment also cleared the way for a position in pilot training school. [New York Times, 9/27/99; Houston Chronicle, 10/10/92; Los Angeles Times, 7/4/99]
FACT: Bush Scored in 25th Percentile on Pilot Aptitude Test. When Bush applied for the Guard, his score on the Air Force pilot aptitude section, one of five on the test, was in the 25th percentile, the lowest allowed for would-be fliers. [Dallas Morning News, 7/4/99]
FACT: No Shortage of Pilots in Texas Guard. Although a Bush spokesman claimed Bush was fast-tracked because the Guard needed pilots, Charles C. Shoemake, a chief of personnel in the Texas Guard from 1972 to 1980 remembered no such shortage. “We had so many people coming in who were super-qualified,” Shoemake said Texas Guard Historian Tom Hail said there was no apparent need to fast-track applicants. “I’ve never heard of that,” he said. “Generally they did that for doctors only, mostly because we needed extra flight surgeons.” [Los Angeles Times, 7/4/99]
Col. Albert Lloyd Said A Report From Alabama To Ellington Should Have Been Filed. Where Is That Report?
FACT: Col. Lloyd: Guard Records Should Include Evidence Of Alabama Service. Lloyd also said he did not know whether Bush performed duty in Alabama. “If he did, his drill attendance should have been certified and sent to Ellington, and there would have been a record.” [Boston Globe, 5/23/00; AP, 6/24/00]
FACT: White House’s Own Expert Said Bush Should Have Done More. According to the Globe, “the White House included with the documents a memorandum from a Texas Air National Guard personnel specialist stating that the documents prove that Bush had a ‘satisfactory year’ for ‘retirement/retention’ purposes between May 27, 1972, and May 26, 1973. But that specialist, retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert C. Lloyd Jr., acknowledged in an interview last night that he evaluated Bush using the lower of two measures for rating Guard service. Guardsmen, he said, needed to serve more days to meet minimum-training requirements than to meet the lower threshold to receive retirement credit for the year. ‘Should he have done more? Yes, he should have,’ Lloyd said of Bush, who was a fighter-interceptor pilot. ‘Did he have to? No.’” [Boston Globe, 2/11/04]
Why Did Bush Miss His Medical Exam In 1972?
FACT: Bush Was Suspended From Flight Duty For Failing To Take Mandated Medical Exam.
On September 29, 1972, Bush was officially suspended from flying for missing his annual medical examination. The orders note that Bush’s suspension is authorized under the guidelines presented in Air Force Manual 35-12 Para 2-29m, which reads that Bush’s local commander “will direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination.” [Aeronautical Orders, Number 87, 29 Sept 72; AFM 35-13, Para 2-29m]
Where Are The Complete Results Of The Required Investigation Into Bush’s Absence From The Exam?
FACT: The order suspending Bush from flight duty stated: “Verbal orders of the Comdr on 1 Aug 72 suspending 1STLT George W. Bush…from flying status are confirmed…Reason for Suspension: Failure to accomplish annual medical examination. Off will comply with para 2-10, AFM 35-13. Authority: Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13. [Aeronautical Orders, Number 87, 29 September 1972, emphasis added]
Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13: “When a Rated Officer Fails To Accomplish a Medical Examination Prescribed by AFM 160-1…(1)The local commander who has authority to convene a Flying Evaluation Board will direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination. After reviewing the findings of the investigation, the local commander may convene a Flying Evaluation Board or forward through command channels a detailed report of the circumstances which resulted in the officer’s failure to accomplish a medical examination, along with a recommendation that the suspension be removed. (2) The individual’s major command will forward the report along with the command recommendation to USAFMPC/DPMAJD, Randolph AFB TX 78148 for final determination.” [Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13, emphasis added]
Why Did Bush Specifically Request NOT To Be Sent Overseas For Duty?
FACT: Bush’s Application Indicated Bush Did Not Volunteer for Overseas Duty. On Bush’s application to the 147th Fighter Group at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, Bush was asked what his “Area Assignment Preferences” were. Bush checked the box beside “Do Not Volunteer” for overseas duty. [Application for Extended Duty With The United States Air Force, 5/27/68]
Why Does The White House Say Bush Was On Base When Bush’s Superiors Had Filed A Report Saying He Was Gone For A Whole Year?
FACT: Bush’s Superiors Were Unable to Evaluate Him for a Full Year, Saying he “Has Not Been Observed at This Unit…”
May 2, 1973: Bush’s superior officers William D. Harris Jr. and Jerry B. Killian, wrote on his yearly evaluation form, “Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report,” and that a “civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying status with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama.” [AF-77, 2 May 73, emphasis added]
…But the White House Claims Bush was on Base the Same Day Superiors Filed Report.
White House release says Bush paid on May 2, 1973, the very day his superiors reported, “Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report.” [2nd Q 1973 pay record]
FACT: Bush’s Superior Officer Says He Would Have Known If Bush Had Reported for Duty.
November 12, 1973: Rufus G. Martin signed a report on Bush’s evaluation, saying Bush was “Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 April 73.” [AF-77a, 12 Nov 73, emphasis added]
Boston Globe: “But retired colonel Martin, the unit's former administrative officer, said he too thought Bush had been in Alabama for that entire year. Harris and Killian, he said, would have known if Bush returned to duty at Ellington.” [Boston Globe, 5/23/00, emphasis added]
Why Is The Pentagon Under Orders Not To Discuss Bush’s Record With Reporters?
FACT: Freedom of Information Officers Under Orders From Senior Pentagon Officials To Ignore Requests on Bush Files. According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, “at the National Guard Bureau, now headed by a Bush appointee from Texas, officials last week said they were under orders not to answer questions. The bureau's chief historian said he couldn't discuss questions about Bush's military service on orders from the Pentagon. ‘If it has to do with George W. Bush, the Texas Air National Guard or the Vietnam War, I can't talk with you,’ said Charles Gross, chief historian for the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C. Rose Bird, Freedom of Information Act officer for the bureau, said her office stopped taking records requests on Bush's military service in mid-February and is directing all inquiries to the Pentagon. She would not provide a reason. Air Force and Texas Air National Guard officials did not respond to written questions about the issue. James Hogan, a records coordinator at the Pentagon, said senior Defense Department officials had directed the National Guard Bureau not to respond to questions about Bush's military records.” [Spokane Spokesman-Review, 3/14/04, emphasis added]
-30-
The Emperor has no uniform...
CNN: Lautenberg pointed to a poster with a drawing of
a chicken in a military uniform defining a chickenhawk
as "a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone
else fights it." "They shriek like a hawk, but they have the backbone of the chicken," he said. "The lead chickenhawk against Sen. Kerry [is] the vice president of the United States, Vice President Cheney," Lautenberg said. "He was in Missouri this week claiming that Sen. Kerry was not up to the job of protecting this nation. What nerve. Where was Dick Cheney when that war was going on?"
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/28/lautenberg.kerry/index.html
Defending Kerry, senator blasts 'chickenhawks'
Lautenberg criticizes Cheney for questioning record
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg on
Wednesday called Vice President Dick Cheney "the lead
chickenhawk" against Sen. John Kerry and criticized
other Republicans for questioning the Democratic
presidential contender's military credentials.
But Sen. John McCain, a decorated war hero and former
prisoner of war, scolded Lautenberg for attacking the
Bush administration during the Iraq conflict and said
it was time to "declare that the Vietnam War is over."
In a scathing speech on the Senate floor, Lautenberg,
D-New Jersey, said that he did not think politicians
should be judged by whether they had military service
but added that "when those who didn't serve attack the
heroism of those who did, I find it particularly
offensive."
Lautenberg pointed to a poster with a drawing of a
chicken in a military uniform defining a chickenhawk
as "a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone
else fights it."
"They shriek like a hawk, but they have the backbone
of the chicken," he said.
"The lead chickenhawk against Sen. Kerry [is] the
vice president of the United States, Vice President
Cheney," Lautenberg said. "He was in Missouri this
week claiming that Sen. Kerry was not up to the job of
protecting this nation. What nerve. Where was Dick
Cheney when that war was going on?"
Lautenberg chastised members of the Bush
administration for being overly eager to go to war
when they had not been willing to fight themselves. He
quoted a Cheney interview from the 1980s that he had
"other priorities" in the '60s than military service.
In a speech Monday at Westminster College in Fulton,
Missouri, Cheney attacked Kerry's votes in the Senate
to cut weapons programs, his opposition to the 1991
Persian Gulf War and recent comments that the war on
terror should not be thought of primarily as a
military operation.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday
that Cheney criticized Kerry on policy issues and said
that "no one is questioning his military service."
But Lautenberg compared Cheney's remarks with the GOP
campaign against former Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia
Democrat whose defeat in 2002 has been a sore spot to
many in his party.
"Max Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam and they
shamed him so, that he was pushed out of office
because he was portrayed as weak on defense. Where do
they come off with that kind of stuff?" he said.
He also criticized President Bush for declaring an end
to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003.
He showed a picture of Bush giving a speech on the
deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with the banner
"Mission Accomplished" in the background.
"The mission accomplished was to get a picture that
could be used in an election campaign," Lautenberg
said.
Since that speech, 587 U.S. troops have died in Iraq,
including 415 from hostile fire.
Lautenberg also criticized the president for saying
"bring 'em on" to Iraqi insurgents.
"I served in Europe in World War II," he said. "The
last thing I wanted to hear from my commander in
chief, or my local commander, is dare the enemy to
launch attacks against us."
McCain, the next senator to speak, said he had planned
to discuss an Internet tax moratorium bill but that he
felt he needed to address Lautenberg's remarks.
He said reasonable differences of opinion existed
about the handling of the Iraq war but that the Senate
should focus on making the operation successful.
"What are we doing on the floor of the Senate? We're
attacking the president's credentials because of his
service that ended ... more than 30 years ago," McCain
said. "I think that's wrong. I wish we'd stop it. I
wish we'd just stop, at least until the fighting in
Iraq is over with."
He called for a bipartisan approach to "seeing this
thing through because we cannot afford to fail."
"At least could we declare that the Vietnam War is
over and have a cease-fire and agree that both
candidates -- the president of the United States and
Sen. Kerry served honorably -- end of story? Now let's
focus our attention on the conflict that's taking
place in Iraq, that is taking American lives as I
speak on this floor," he said.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/28/lautenberg.kerry/index.html
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Well, you probably missed it...I almost hope you did...This morning on SeeNotNews, while talking about the "problem" Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta)faces in "dealing" with "charges" about his military record and anti-war activism in the Vietnam era, the cable news network's "senior political analyst" Bill Schnooker said that there are "serious questions" about the incredibly shrinking _resident's National Guard service during Vietnam and that they would have "caused him problems IF they had been known during the 2000 campaign." Of course, they were known. But the "US mainstream news media" and its propapunditgandists refused to beat the drum on the issue as they have quite willing beaten the drum now for the Bush cabal and against JFK...It's the Media, Stupid...A few weeks ago, the incredible shrinking _resident had his "service record" released. All it really told us was that he had some dental work done in Alabama (and it wasn't even done to remove scrapnel from his gums), but hey, as the incredible shrinking _resident enjoys saying about his tax cuts, "it's your money."
Terry McAuliffe: "Why should we believe a word Dick Cheney says about John Kerry - especially when it comes to defending our country? For four years, Dick Cheney hasn't been straight with the American people. Why would he start now?
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the guy who took a year to finally admit to America that the Bush Administration had sent our troops to war in Iraq without the body armor they needed.
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the guy who told us there was "no doubt" that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction and that he "knew" Saddam Hussein had ties with Al-Qaeda. We now know neither was true.
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the former head of Halliburton who rewarded his old buddies with over $7 billion in no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq. But his old buddies rewarded America by overcharging us for gas and rewarded our troops by skimping on basic services like clean working conditions and safe food.
"You remember Dick Cheney. When John Kerry was risking his life for his country in Vietnam, Dick Cheney was getting deferments because, in his words, he had "other priorities than military service." And he feels qualified to tell us that John Kerry won't do whatever it takes to defend America?
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.democrats.org/news/200404260001.html
DNC releases text of McAuliffe letter to Bush
Elizabeth Alexander Named Press Secretary to Chairman McAuliffe
DNC Faults Bush for Legacy of Secrecy and Stonewalling
more…
Apr 26, 2004
DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe delivers speech on Vice President Dick Cheney's record
"I understand it's been a difficult few months for the Republican Party.
"This week is no different - the Bush Administration faces more questions from the 9/11 commission, the Supreme Court case on Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, and the anniversary of George Bush standing on an aircraft carrier behind a banner that read "Mission Accomplished."
"After a year without a primary opponent, a $100 million war chest, and one of the most intensely negative ad campaigns we've ever seen, our friends at the Bush-Cheney campaign thought they'd be on the road to victory by now.
"Instead, they're on the run. They've wasted $50 million on an ad campaign where truth was the first casualty and it hasn't even made a dent in the polls. They refuse to change course on almost every problem facing America, leaving our troops alone, our country in debt, and our middle-class working harder and harder for less and less. And, with each day that passes, they give more Americans fewer reasons to trust what this President says.
"The Republicans are desperate to hold on to power. And we all know that when it comes to the Republican Party, desperation is usually followed by distortion and distraction.
"Last week, we saw the Republican attack machine go back to their favorite playbook when they criticized John Kerry's tour of duty in Vietnam. Apparently, two tours in Vietnam, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and Three Purple Hearts weren't good enough for the folks who never miss a chance to say that military service shouldn't be an issue in this campaign. Just today, they are trying to attack John Kerry for protesting the Vietnam War when he came home. A protest, even John McCain said he had the right to make.
"They had attacks, but we had the facts, and we released them for all to see: John Kerry is a decorated war hero who risked his life trying to save the lives of others. His records say so, his superiors say so, and the band of brothers he served with say so. End of discussion.
"But for the Republicans, twisting the truth into distracting attack is like a bad habit they just can't break. That's why today, Dick Cheney, the Bush Campaign's Attack Dog-in-Chief, is kicking off a week-long ad campaign that will question John Kerry's commitment to defending the country he risked his life for.
"The American people deserve better. And that's why I'm calling on Dick Cheney to call off the Republican attack dogs' attempts to smear John Kerry's service to America and his commitment to defending it as President.
"What's really amazing about today's attacks is this: while I know that the Republicans have had a tough few months, I didn't know that things had gotten so bad over there that they feel the need to keep using Dick Cheney to attack John Kerry's record on defense.
"Why should we believe a word Dick Cheney says about John Kerry - especially when it comes to defending our country? For four years, Dick Cheney hasn't been straight with the American people. Why would he start now?
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the guy who took a year to finally admit to America that the Bush Administration had sent our troops to war in Iraq without the body armor they needed.
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the guy who told us there was "no doubt" that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction and that he "knew" Saddam Hussein had ties with Al-Qaeda. We now know neither was true.
"You remember Dick Cheney. He's the former head of Halliburton who rewarded his old buddies with over $7 billion in no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq. But his old buddies rewarded America by overcharging us for gas and rewarded our troops by skimping on basic services like clean working conditions and safe food.
"You remember Dick Cheney. When John Kerry was risking his life for his country in Vietnam, Dick Cheney was getting deferments because, in his words, he had "other priorities than military service." And he feels qualified to tell us that John Kerry won't do whatever it takes to defend America?
"Finally, with the latest set of misleading attack ads beginning today, I hope you'll remember this about Vice President Dick Cheney:
"When he was Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney consistently proposed massive cuts to weapons programs that our troops are using right now in Iraq.
"In fact, Dick Cheney tried to kill over 81 weapons programs, and tried to gut the Army's M-1 tank, the B-2 bomber program, the AH-64 Apache Helicopters, and the F-16 aircrafts.
"He called for the closure of 72 domestic military installations, and the reduction of 500,000 active-duty military personnel and 200,000 reservists. Time and time again, he has voted to cut funding for the Veterans Administration, forcing our Veterans to fight for the health care and benefits they earned and were promised by this Administration.
"Our friends at the Republican National Committee have not been shy about telling us that the weapons systems I just mentioned were crucial to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet, as Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney wanted them cut. John Kerry stood tall against no-bid contracts for Halliburton - Dick Cheney cut funding for weapons programs CRUCIAL to our troops' success in Iraq today.
"Why did Dick Cheney propose all these defense cuts over the course of his career? We may never know. Perhaps he had "other priorities" those times too.
"But what we do know is this: George Bush has sent Dick Cheney to kick off a misleading ad campaign attacking John Kerry's commitment to defending America. And Dick Cheney is still able to stand by with a straight face and watch these attacks unfold.
"With all that time Dick Cheney spent in that bunker and in those secret energy task force meetings, sometimes it's hard to remember all the tall tales he's been telling. But we remember Dick Cheney - and he's the last guy who should be lecturing John Kerry about how to defend America and keep the faith with those who wear the uniform.
"It's time for Dick Cheney to call off the Republican attack dogs. The American people have better things to do with their time than listen to more misleading attacks from a man who has been misleading them from the day he took office.
"We saw what the Republican attack dogs did to Senator McCain in 2000. We shockingly saw what they did to Max Cleland in 2002. We remember how their ads put his face next to Osama bin Laden's and told America that a triple-amputee who fought in Vietnam would not defend the security of his country.
"That was outrageous. That was wrong. And it will not happen again.
"We will not let this multi-state, muilt-million dollarsmear campaign triumph over the truth. The issues facing America in 2004 are too important.
"If the debate is who can best keep this country safe and secure, we will remind every voter that John Kerry served as a Naval officer, faced combat, was wounded multiple times in Vietnam, saved lives and was awarded three purple hearts, a silver star and a bronze star for his service.
"If the debate is who can best keep this country safe and secure, we will remind every voter that following September 11th, the world was united with us in fighting terror.But this President pushed that good will aside and dropped an Iron Curtain between America and the rest of the world. His policies have made us more isolated, more vulnerable, and less secure than before — and Dick Cheney's misleading attacks today and this unprecedented smear campaign are nothing more than a desperate attempt to distract us from that central fact.
"But we won't let them attack to distract. We won't let them run from their record. And this November, we will help John Kerry lead a stronger America in a better direction."
At least three more US soldiers died in Iraq over the last 24 hours. For what? The Emperor has no uniform...Meanwhile, the "US mainstream news media" has sunk to a new low in running with the bogus "controversy" about the military record and anti-war activism of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta). Of course, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) has also sunk to a new low. This Sunday morning on SeeBS Fork The Nation, McCain had an opportunity to defend the man he calls friend, and indeed a fellow war hero, from the rapid pit bull attacks of the same Bush cabal machine that slimed his own wife and daughter in the 2000 Carolina primary, but McCain wimped out and equated the service records of JFK and the incredible shrinking _resident, saying that both "served honorable." What happened to John McCain? I do not think he is a coward. I do not think he is a fool. How can he allow this visciousness to go unchallenged from someone in the Republican Party?
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): "If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have," Kerry told NBC News in an interview. "I'm not going to stand around and let them play games."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004, Defeat Bush (again!)
Kerry Demands Bush Prove Guard Service
2 hours, 56 minutes ago
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WHEELING, W.Va. - John Kerry (news - web sites), a
decorated Navy veteran criticized by Republicans for
his anti-war activities during the Vietnam era, lashed
out at President Bush (news - web sites) on Monday for
failing to prove whether he fulfilled his commitment
to the National Guard during the same period.
Conservative critics have questioned whether Kerry
deserved his three Purple Hearts for battle wounds, an
issue the Democratic presidential candidate sought to
put to rest last week by releasing his military
records. On Sunday, a top Bush adviser criticized
Kerry for leading anti-war protests after he returned
from the battlefield.
"If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that
through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation
about whether or not he showed up for duty in the
National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to
have," Kerry told NBC News in an interview. "I'm not
going to stand around and let them play games."
Kerry's direct criticism of Bush's Guard record
reflected an aggressive strategy to challenge the
president. It came as Vice President Dick Cheney (news
- web sites) used a speech in Missouri to question
Kerry's fitness to be commander in chief, and the Bush
campaign launched a $10 million television ad campaign
criticizing Kerry's Senate votes on weapons systems.
During the primaries, Kerry often deflected questions
about Bush's military service although when asked in
February whether Bush had fulfilled his Vietnam-era
commitment, the Democrat said, "Just because you get
an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that
question."
In 1992, as Democratic candidate Bill Clinton (news -
web sites) faced criticism for avoiding service in
Vietnam, Kerry said, "We do not need to divide America
over who served and how. I have personally always
believed that many served in many different ways."
Democrats have questioned whether Bush fulfilled his
obligations to the National Guard in spite of White
House claims that he completed his duty
satisfactorily. Bush joined the Texas Air National
Guard in 1968 and transferred to the Alabama Guard in
1972 while working on a political campaign. How often
Bush reported for duty in Alabama is unclear.
Bush supporters have tried to turn Kerry's service in
Vietnam — a centerpiece of his Democratic campaign —
against him even as they say they honor his service to
his country. Kerry released his medical records when
questioned about the extent of his war wounds,
including a report showing he still carries shrapnel
in one leg.
That criticism silenced for the moment, Bush adviser
Karen Hughes turned to what Kerry did after returning
from Vietnam. Hughes said Sunday she was offended by
Kerry's anti-war activities in 1971 and accused him of
not throwing back his medals when he and other
veterans protested in Washington.
"He only pretended to throw his," Hughes said in a CNN
interview. "Now, I can understand if, out of
conscience, you take a principled stand, and you would
decide that you were so opposed to this that you would
actually throw your medals. But to pretend to do so —
I think that's very revealing."
Kerry has never said he pretended to throw away his
medals. For years, he has said that he threw his
ribbons over a fence at the Capitol, not his three
Purple Hearts, Bronze Star and Silver Star. He also
has said that after the protest he threw the medals of
two other veterans.
Nearly 800 veterans "gave back" their medals, ribbons,
dog tags and other military items during a protest in
April 1971. However, a tape of a television interview
Kerry gave shortly after the protest suggested he had
claimed that he also threw his medals.
In the exchange, aired Monday by ABC and published in
The New York Times, an interviewer asks Kerry, "How
many did you give back, John?" Kerry responds, "I gave
back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine." The
host then notes that Kerry had won the Purple Hearts,
and Bronze and Silver stars. Kerry says, "Well, and
above that, I gave back my others."
Kerry told ABC on Monday that the terms ribbons and
medals were interchangeable. He accused Republicans of
trying to discredit his presidential campaign with a
"phony controversy."
"The U.S. Navy (news - web sites) pamphlet calls them
medals," he said. "We referred to them as the symbols,
they were representing medals, ribbons. Countless
veterans threw the ribbons back."
Kerry was asked to reconcile two explanations for why
he didn't throw his own medals: He told The Washington
Post in 1985 it was because he didn't want to
personally, and told the Boston Globe in 1996 that he
didn't have time to go home and get them.
"I've expressed that there was great, sort of, sense
of wrenching about the whole thing," Kerry said. He
noted that the anti-war veterans were conflicted over
whether to throw them, and although they voted to do
so, "I threw my ribbons. I didn't have my medals. It's
very simple."
The controversy over the medals overshadowed the start
of Kerry's three-day bus tour of four manufacturing
states that are expected to be pivotal in this year's
election — West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Michigan. Kerry began the tour in Wheeling, W.Va.,
with a speech accusing Bush of failing to enforce
trade rules that protect U.S. workers.
___
On the Net:
Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com
At least three more US soldiers died in Iraq over the last 24 hours. For what? The Emperor has no uniform...Meanwhile, the "US mainstream news media" has sunk to a new low in running with the bogus "controversy" about the military record and anti-war activism of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta). Of course, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) has also sunk to a new low. This Sunday morning on SeeBS Fork, McCain had an opportunity to defend the man he calls friend, and indeed a fellow war hero, from the rapid pit bull attacks of the Bush cabal machine that slimed his own wife and daughter in the 2000 Carolina primary, but McCain wimped out and equated the service records of JFK and the incredible shrinking _resident, saying that both "served honorable." What happened to John McCain? He is not a coward. He is not a fool. How can he leave this onslaught go unanswered?
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): "If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have," Kerry told NBC News in an interview. "I'm not going to stand around and let them play games."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004, Defeat Bush (again!)
Kerry Demands Bush Prove Guard Service
2 hours, 56 minutes ago
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
WHEELING, W.Va. - John Kerry (news - web sites), a
decorated Navy veteran criticized by Republicans for
his anti-war activities during the Vietnam era, lashed
out at President Bush (news - web sites) on Monday for
failing to prove whether he fulfilled his commitment
to the National Guard during the same period.
Conservative critics have questioned whether Kerry
deserved his three Purple Hearts for battle wounds, an
issue the Democratic presidential candidate sought to
put to rest last week by releasing his military
records. On Sunday, a top Bush adviser criticized
Kerry for leading anti-war protests after he returned
from the battlefield.
"If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that
through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation
about whether or not he showed up for duty in the
National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to
have," Kerry told NBC News in an interview. "I'm not
going to stand around and let them play games."
Kerry's direct criticism of Bush's Guard record
reflected an aggressive strategy to challenge the
president. It came as Vice President Dick Cheney (news
- web sites) used a speech in Missouri to question
Kerry's fitness to be commander in chief, and the Bush
campaign launched a $10 million television ad campaign
criticizing Kerry's Senate votes on weapons systems.
During the primaries, Kerry often deflected questions
about Bush's military service although when asked in
February whether Bush had fulfilled his Vietnam-era
commitment, the Democrat said, "Just because you get
an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that
question."
In 1992, as Democratic candidate Bill Clinton (news -
web sites) faced criticism for avoiding service in
Vietnam, Kerry said, "We do not need to divide America
over who served and how. I have personally always
believed that many served in many different ways."
Democrats have questioned whether Bush fulfilled his
obligations to the National Guard in spite of White
House claims that he completed his duty
satisfactorily. Bush joined the Texas Air National
Guard in 1968 and transferred to the Alabama Guard in
1972 while working on a political campaign. How often
Bush reported for duty in Alabama is unclear.
Bush supporters have tried to turn Kerry's service in
Vietnam — a centerpiece of his Democratic campaign —
against him even as they say they honor his service to
his country. Kerry released his medical records when
questioned about the extent of his war wounds,
including a report showing he still carries shrapnel
in one leg.
That criticism silenced for the moment, Bush adviser
Karen Hughes turned to what Kerry did after returning
from Vietnam. Hughes said Sunday she was offended by
Kerry's anti-war activities in 1971 and accused him of
not throwing back his medals when he and other
veterans protested in Washington.
"He only pretended to throw his," Hughes said in a CNN
interview. "Now, I can understand if, out of
conscience, you take a principled stand, and you would
decide that you were so opposed to this that you would
actually throw your medals. But to pretend to do so —
I think that's very revealing."
Kerry has never said he pretended to throw away his
medals. For years, he has said that he threw his
ribbons over a fence at the Capitol, not his three
Purple Hearts, Bronze Star and Silver Star. He also
has said that after the protest he threw the medals of
two other veterans.
Nearly 800 veterans "gave back" their medals, ribbons,
dog tags and other military items during a protest in
April 1971. However, a tape of a television interview
Kerry gave shortly after the protest suggested he had
claimed that he also threw his medals.
In the exchange, aired Monday by ABC and published in
The New York Times, an interviewer asks Kerry, "How
many did you give back, John?" Kerry responds, "I gave
back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine." The
host then notes that Kerry had won the Purple Hearts,
and Bronze and Silver stars. Kerry says, "Well, and
above that, I gave back my others."
Kerry told ABC on Monday that the terms ribbons and
medals were interchangeable. He accused Republicans of
trying to discredit his presidential campaign with a
"phony controversy."
"The U.S. Navy (news - web sites) pamphlet calls them
medals," he said. "We referred to them as the symbols,
they were representing medals, ribbons. Countless
veterans threw the ribbons back."
Kerry was asked to reconcile two explanations for why
he didn't throw his own medals: He told The Washington
Post in 1985 it was because he didn't want to
personally, and told the Boston Globe in 1996 that he
didn't have time to go home and get them.
"I've expressed that there was great, sort of, sense
of wrenching about the whole thing," Kerry said. He
noted that the anti-war veterans were conflicted over
whether to throw them, and although they voted to do
so, "I threw my ribbons. I didn't have my medals. It's
very simple."
The controversy over the medals overshadowed the start
of Kerry's three-day bus tour of four manufacturing
states that are expected to be pivotal in this year's
election — West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and
Michigan. Kerry began the tour in Wheeling, W.Va.,
with a speech accusing Bush of failing to enforce
trade rules that protect U.S. workers.
___
On the Net:
Kerry campaign: http://www.johnkerry.com
Do not be distracted...Keep your eyes on the
prize...Tell everyone who cares...The "war on
terrorism" is not the strength of the incredible
shrinking _resident's White House, it is the SHAME of
the incredible shrinking _resident's White House...
Andrew Buncombe, Independent: The Bush administration
will today seek to prevent a former FBI translator
from providing evidence about 11 September
intelligence failures to a group of relatives and
survivors who have accused international banks and
officials of aiding al-Qa'ida.
Sibel Edmonds was subpoenaed by a law firm
representing more than 500 family members and
survivors of the attacks to testify that she had seen
information proving there was considerable evidence
before September 2001 that al-Qa'ida was planning to
strike the US with aircraft. The lawyers made their
demand after reading comments Mrs Edmonds had made to
The Independent.
The Bush administration has been put on the back
foot by allegations that senior officials - perhaps
even Mr Bush himself - were provided with considerable
information warning of an imminent attack by al-Qa'ida
and that they failed to act. Mrs Edmonds said
yesterday: "What are they are afraid of? If I am not
allowed to give evidence, the families will not get
the information I have; that will be that."
She said it was wrong for the Bush administration
to claim it wanted a full investigation. "If there is
transparency, there is going to be accountability and
that is what they don't want."
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up & the Iraq War Lies, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://truthout.org/docs_04/042704A.shtml
Lawyers Try to Gag FBI Worker over 9/11
By Andrew Buncombe
Independent UK
Monday 26 April 2004
The Bush administration will today seek to prevent a former FBI translator from providing evidence about 11 September intelligence failures to a group of relatives and survivors who have accused international banks and officials of aiding al-Qa'ida.
Sibel Edmonds was subpoenaed by a law firm
representing more than 500 family members and
survivors of the attacks to testify that she had seen
information proving there was considerable evidence
before September 2001 that al-Qa'ida was planning to
strike the US with aircraft. The lawyers made their
demand after reading comments Mrs Edmonds had made to
The Independent.
But the US Justice Department is seeking to stop
her from testifying, citing the rarely used "state
secrets privilege". Today in a federal court in
Washington, senior government lawyers will try to gag
Mrs Edmonds, claiming that disclosure of her evidence
"would cause serious damage to the national security
and foreign policy interests of the United States".
Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who had top
secret security clearance, claimed this month that
while working in the FBI's Washington headquarters,
she saw information proving senior officials knew of
al-Qa'ida plans to attack the US with aircraft months
before the strikes. She has provided sworn testimony
to the independent panel appointed by President George
Bush to investigate the circumstances surrounding 11
September.
Mrs Edmonds was subpoenaed by the law firm
Motley-Rice, which represents hundreds of families who
are taking civil action against a number of banks and
two members of the Saudi royal family for allegedly
aiding al-Qa'ida.
Her lawyer, Mark Zaid, said last night: "The FBI
wants to shut her up completely." He said it was
ridiculous to claim that everything Mrs Edmonds knew
had national security implications. Rather, he said,
the FBI wanted to silence his client to save its
embarrassment.
The Bush administration has been put on the back
foot by allegations that senior officials - perhaps
even Mr Bush himself - were provided with considerable
information warning of an imminent attack by al-Qa'ida
and that they failed to act. Mrs Edmonds said
yesterday: "What are they are afraid of? If I am not
allowed to give evidence, the families will not get
the information I have; that will be that."
She said it was wrong for the Bush administration
to claim it wanted a full investigation. "If there is
transparency, there is going to be accountability and
that is what they don't want."
-------
At least five more US soldiers have died this weekend in Iraq. That's over 100 in April so far, and over 700 since this foolish military adventure. For what? Not to "fight terrorism," it has only swelled their ranks. Not to seize "WMDs," there were none. Not to bring "democracy" to the Middle East, we will only allow a "democracy" that does our bidding. Yes, five more young US soldiers have died. For what?
Here is another name for the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes...His story is very bad news for the incredible shrinking _resident...And it from the front page of the Wall Street Journal...
Michael Phillips, Wall Street Journal: On a Friday afternoon last April, a couple of weeks after he returned from Iraq, Marine Lt. Col. Steve Brozak walked into the town hall here and changed his voter registration from Republican to Democrat...A social moderate and fiscal conservative, he's emerging as the Democrats' dream challenger to an entrenched Republican. The son of immigrants, he's an investment banker specializing in biotechnology companies and a Marine who has served three years on active duty and 18 years in the Reserve, including brief volunteer deployments to Haiti, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq...Jim Bird, a white-haired 85-year-old who called the waitress "Honeybun," opened his wallet and handed Mr. Brozak a card. It read "Silver Star Association," a testament to Mr. Bird's bravery in Italy in World War II. "I'm a registered Republican who is thoroughly disgusted with what's going on in Washington," he said. "That's why I'm here."
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108250044928188538,00.html
April 21, 2004
PAGE ONE
A Marine Jumps Party Lines to Join Democrats in Trenches: The Battle for Military Vote Plays Out in House Race In a New Jersey Suburb
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 21, 2004; Page A1
WESTFIELD, N.J. -- On a Friday afternoon last April, a couple of weeks after he returned from Iraq, Marine Lt. Col. Steve Brozak walked into the town hall here and changed his voter registration from Republican to Democrat.
That put Mr. Brozak in the middle of Democratic efforts to chip away at Republicans' political strength on national-security matters. With Vietnam veteran John Kerry at the top of the ticket and unease growing over the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and terrorism, Democrats are hoping to tap a new constituency: members of the military and veterans, who vote overwhelmingly Republican.
It's a mission being embraced by the 42-year-old Mr. Brozak, now running for Congress in a well-to-do swath of suburban New Jersey. A social moderate and fiscal conservative, he's emerging as the Democrats' dream challenger to an entrenched Republican. The son of immigrants, he's an investment banker specializing in biotechnology companies and a Marine who has served three years on active duty and 18 years in the Reserve, including brief volunteer deployments to Haiti, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq.
"Unfortunately, not many members of Congress know what it is to serve," Mr. Brozak told a dozen aging veterans at the Reo Diner in Woodbridge recently. But, he added, "they're very quick to commit" U.S. troops to combat.
Jim Bird, a white-haired 85-year-old who called the waitress "Honeybun," opened his wallet and handed Mr. Brozak a card. It read "Silver Star Association," a testament to Mr. Bird's bravery in Italy in World War II. "I'm a registered Republican who is thoroughly disgusted with what's going on in Washington," he said. "That's why I'm here."
Mr. Brozak's uphill bid to unseat an incumbent comes at a crucial point in the presidential campaign. While Mr. Bush is running even with Mr. Kerry, pro-Bush strategists fear that a failure to demonstrate progress in Iraq could lead a decisive bloc of Republicans and independents to lose confidence in the president's leadership. If that happens, the beneficiaries could include dark-horse candidates such as Mr. Brozak.
At the same time, some observers say there's little evidence so far that Mr. Bush is in trouble with military voters. "People have been looking for Bush to lose the hearts and minds of the military," says Duke University political scientist Peter D. Feaver, a former Navy reservist and Clinton national-security aide. "When you look at systematic data, it doesn't show up."
Mr. Brozak isn't against the Iraq war, and he opposes a withdrawal. But, like Mr. Kerry, he criticizes the Bush administration for failing to assemble an overwhelming international coalition for the invasion, saying the effort to rebuild Iraq may be doomed by inadequate forces and inept planning. His opponent, Mike Ferguson, who was elected in 2000 and didn't serve in the military, is playing up his support of Mr. Bush. "I've stood shoulder to shoulder with the president and with my colleagues in the Congress as we wage this war on terrorism," he says.
Mr. Ferguson's aides say they aren't worried, and that constituents are more focused on their boss's staunch support for tax cuts than on foreign-policy debates. For years, New Jersey's 7th district has sent Republicans to the House.
Mr. Brozak, who plans to retire from the Reserve May 1, began turning against the Republican Party during the South Carolina primary in 2000, when a Bush ally accused Sen. John McCain of neglecting his fellow Vietnam veterans. Mr. Brozak grew even angrier in 2002, when Republican Saxby Chambliss, aided by President Bush, defeated Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland in a bitter campaign. Ads for Mr. Chambliss implicitly questioned the patriotism of Mr. Cleland -- who lost three limbs serving in Vietnam.
When Mr. Brozak decided to change his party affiliation, the only person he told ahead of time was his father, an immigrant who had piloted a fighter plane in a brief uprising against the Nazi occupation of his native Yugoslavia and wound up in a slave-labor camp. Later, he found himself discussing the war with a Marine buddy, who told Mr. Brozak he sounded as if he were campaigning. The idea stuck, Mr. Brozak says, and he decided to discuss running with New Jersey and national Democrats.
These days, Mr. Brozak is especially angry about the administration's treatment of National Guard and Reserve troops, the traditional weekend warriors who now find themselves deployed for years. Within the next few months, 70% of the 7,000 members of the New Jersey Army National Guard will be on active duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sinai Peninsula or elsewhere -- a higher share than at any time since World War II.
In the Marines, Mr. Brozak served as an infantry commander and public-affairs officer. His last post was as liaison with companies whose employees had been called up for duty. When he went to Kuwait and Iraq a year ago, he accompanied a survey team assessing how deployment affects citizen-soldiers. The survey found a third of the troops expected to pay a heavy price: lost jobs, lost businesses, lost promotions, lost income.
"As bad as it is for people in this economy, it's twice as bad for the guard, reserve" and active-duty military, Mr. Brozak told a political action committee of service-academy graduates at a meeting last month aboard the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. Despite legal safeguards, many of them aren't guaranteed a job when they return, he says. He believes the regular military should be beefed up to take the stress off the part-timers.
Mr. Brozak says he has been fortunate with his small investment bank, Westfield Bakerink Brozak, which researches and invests in medical devices and biotechnology. Whenever he has been called up for active duty, his partner has taken up the slack.
The 33-year-old Mr. Ferguson is also stressing his concern for the troops. He visited Baghdad for several hours in January and hand-delivered fourth-graders' letters to the soldiers. He highlights his votes to raise military salaries, combat pay and family-separation allowances. And he is reaching out to the New Jersey National Guard troops who are about to be called up. "There are people doing extraordinary work and making extraordinary sacrifices," Mr. Ferguson says.
Mr. Ferguson's aides say the congressman, who won 58% of the vote in 2002 after a squeaker in 2000, hasn't started campaigning in earnest yet. He had raised $1.3 million, as of March 31.
Nonetheless, a poll paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in February suggested Mr. Ferguson is vulnerable. The poll, which the Democrats won't release, convinced them that voters would welcome a candidate who, like Mr. Brozak, supports abortion rights and boasts military and business credentials.
Mr. Brozak, who had raised just under $150,000 at the end of last month, estimates it will cost up to $2 million to mount a credible campaign in the pricey New York-area media market. If Mr. Brozak's poll numbers look good in September, the Democratic campaign committee plans to spend as much as $1 million in independent advertising and other support.
To broaden his message, Mr. Brozak, in remarks in Cranford recently, talked of unemployment, taxes and health care.
But it's his experience in uniform that gives him an opening with voters. At the Reo Diner, Bob Borst of Rahway, a 71-year-old Korean War veteran who usually votes Republican, told Mr. Brozak that he's "going Democratic" this time. "We're losing too many boys," he said.
Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com1
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108250044928188538,00.html
It is unfortunate that the NYTwits did not seem as concerned about "Making Votes Count" in 2000-2001 when they could not even get the simple arithmetic right in their own stories and participated through the complicity in the Theft of a Presidential Election...For which we will never forgive them. Perhaps if they made the story of John O'Neill front page news....Ah, but the odds are they wouldn't get the story straight...It is afterall, or has become the "Newspaper of Revision." However, it is significant that they are speaking out on the situation in California...
NYT Editorial: More disturbing than these equipment breakdowns was the failure of machine manufacturers to have voting machines properly certified. It is not hard to program a computer to steal an election. A crucial safeguard is review of the software and hardware by federal and state monitors. But according to the report, the manufacturers regularly flouted the certification law. Many changes were made at the last minute, introducing the possibility of vote tampering, or simple malfunctions. "The result was a choice between using equipment that had not been fully tested and approved, or using no equipment at all," the report found.
Mr. Shelley's second report singles out Diebold, a leading manufacturer, as particularly blameworthy. Among other serious charges, it says that last year Diebold installed uncertified software in all 17 of the counties it served without notifying the secretary of state, as the law requires.
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/24/opinion/24SAT1.html
MAKING VOTES COUNT
A Compromised Voting System
Published: April 24, 2004
California's secretary of state, Kevin Shelley, is expected to decide in the next week whether the state's electronic voting machines can be used in November. His office has just issued two disturbing studies — one on machine malfunctions in last month's primary, another on misconduct by one of the nation's leading voting machine manufacturers — that make a strong case against the current system. Refusing to certify the state's electronic voting machines at this late date is a serious step, but there are compelling reasons for Mr. Shelly to decertify some, and perhaps all, of them.
Electronic voting is no doubt the wave of the future, but it is being rolled out with too little thought, and without the necessary safeguards. The two new California reports, which are online at www.ss.ca.gov, provide strong evidence that this is the case. The study of electronic voting in the March 2 primary describes a slapdash system that falls far short of the minimum standards for running an election. A critical machine part failed on Election Day, causing more than half of the 1,038 polling places in San Diego County to open late and an unknown number of voters to be turned away. Faulty equipment in another county miscounted 13,300 ballots that had been mailed in. There were also widespread reports of teenagers' "rebooting" machines for poll workers who could not operate them, a clear security breach.
More disturbing than these equipment breakdowns was the failure of machine manufacturers to have voting machines properly certified. It is not hard to program a computer to steal an election. A crucial safeguard is review of the software and hardware by federal and state monitors. But according to the report, the manufacturers regularly flouted the certification law. Many changes were made at the last minute, introducing the possibility of vote tampering, or simple malfunctions. "The result was a choice between using equipment that had not been fully tested and approved, or using no equipment at all," the report found.
Mr. Shelley's second report singles out Diebold, a leading manufacturer, as particularly blameworthy. Among other serious charges, it says that last year Diebold installed uncertified software in all 17 of the counties it served without notifying the secretary of state, as the law requires.
The answer to all of these problems is a "voter-verified paper trail," a paper record that the voter can check for accuracy. This paper trail will guard against computer tampering by creating a hard copy of votes that can be compared to the electronic results in a recount. Mr. Shelley has already directed that by 2006, every electronic voting machine in California must produce a paper trail. Now he must decide what to do about this year's election.
A state advisory panel has urged Mr. Shelley to bar the use of one model of Diebold machine whose certification was improper; 15,000 of them are in place in four California counties. Based on the two reports, this is the correct course. Diebold's record does not inspire the sort of confidence voters deserve. Equally important, banning these machines is the only way to make it clear that the certification laws must be followed scrupulously.
The harder question Mr. Shelley faces is whether to ban all electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper trail, as many voting experts, and some state legislators, are urging him to do. His obligation to ensure that voting machines function properly and inspire voter confidence argues for a total ban. To do otherwise is to risk Election Day meltdowns, and another presidential election in which voters lack faith in the outcome.
There is the practical question of whether an alternative system can be perfected in six months. It may be possible, by using a combination of more reliable machines and paper ballots, and perhaps some electronic machines fitted with printers. Given the short time frame, the best course is to proceed on two tracks: to work to put in place a system in which every vote creates a paper record, but to keep the existing electronic machines as a fallback.
Bad decisions by voting machine manufacturers and local election officials have left California with a seriously compromised election system. Mr. Shelley's job now is to make it as reliable as reasonably possible by November.
Politics is ugly. That's why Dick Morris understands it so
well. You may not respect Morris as a person, but you
have to respect him as an analyst. He is not always
correct. No one is...But he is damn good...Ask Bill
linton...In Thursday's LNS, you read James Zogby,
America's most credible and independent political
pollster offering his analysis, i.e. the 2004 election
is "Kerry's to lose." Now here is Morris' take on the
2004 election, posted, interestingly, on Zogby's site.
Dick Morris, Zogby Sound Bite: One of the (very few)
immutable laws of politics is that the undecided vote
almost always goes against the incumbent...More bad
news for Bush: Democrats usually grow 2-3 points right
before Election Day as downscale voters who have not
paid much attention to the election, suddenly tune in
and "come home" to their traditional Democratic Party
moorings. Remember, virtually every poll (except
Zogby) showed Bush slightly ahead of Al Gore as the
2000 election approached - yet Gore outpolled Bush by
500,000 votes...Women disagree with the entire Bush
strategy of fighting terrorism. Offered a choice
between "letting terrorists know we will fight back
aggressively" and "working with other nations," men
opt for fighting aggressively by 53 to 41 percent
while women want us to work with other nations instead
by 54 to 36 percent - a gender gap of 30 points.
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://zogby.com/Soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=8053
Dubya In Trouble
BOTH of the polling organizations that track the presidential race in daily surveys have concluded that the contest has settled into a stalemate. Scott Rasmussen reports that for eight of the last nine days, President Bush has gotten 45 to 46 percent of the vote, while Sen. John Kerry ranged from 44 to 46 percent. John Zogby shows Kerry ahead by three and reports little movement either way. This "tie" is terrible news for the Bush camp.
One of the (very few) immutable laws of politics is
that the undecided vote almost always goes against the
incumbent. Consider the past seven presidential
elections in which an incumbent ran (1964, '72, '76,
'80, '84, '92, and '96) - that is, look at the final
vote versus the last Gallup or Harris polls. My
analysis shows that the challengers (Goldwater,
McGovern, Carter, Reagan, Mondale, Perot, Clinton, and
Dole) got 85 percent of the undecided vote. Even
incumbents who won got only 15 percent of those who
reported that they were undecided in the final polls.
So . . . when Bush and Kerry are tied, the challenger
really has the upper hand.
More bad news for Bush: Democrats usually grow 2-3
points right before Election Day as downscale voters
who have not paid much attention to the election,
suddenly tune in and "come home" to their traditional
Democratic Party moorings. Remember, virtually every
poll (except Zogby) showed Bush slightly ahead of Al
Gore as the 2000 election approached - yet Gore
outpolled Bush by 500,000 votes.
I had thought - and hoped - that Bush could open up a
big lead in the two months after Kerry locked up the
Democratic nomination. After all, Kerry is, in fact,
way too liberal for the average American voter. But
Bush's negative ads - though good, plentiful, and on
target - lost their impact in April.
What happened? Iraq. The surprising casualties of this
disastrous month let Kerry skate by the avalanche of
attack ads relatively unscathed. And by now, Bush may
have lost the ability to define Kerry
Lying behind the bad news for Bush is his inability to
appeal to women in the campaign. His "stand firm"
press conference last week was entirely male-oriented.
His tough words and determination to defend the cause
of the "fallen" resonated well with men but crashed
among women.
The genders see the War on Terror in totally different
terms. Rasmussen reports that men, by 51 percent to 36
percent, say that the U.S. is safer than it was before
9/11. But women are evenly divided, with 41 percent
feeling more safe and 42 percent, less.
Women disagree with the entire Bush strategy of
fighting terrorism. Offered a choice between "letting
terrorists know we will fight back aggressively" and
"working with other nations," men opt for fighting
aggressively by 53 to 41 percent while women want us
to work with other nations instead by 54 to 36 percent
- a gender gap of 30 points.
To bounce back, Bush obviously has to staunch the
bleeding in Iraq. But he also has to appeal to women
voters as he did in 2000.
Then, he was a "compassionate conservative" committed
to leaving "no child behind." Now he needs to speak of
the human toll exacted by Saddam Hussein when he ran
Iraq. He should speak about saving the children of
that beleaguered nation. At home, he has to explain
why a democratic - or at least a stable - Iraq means
more safety for our families. He should discard the
military-macho rhetoric and the bureaucratic
references to American "credibility" and focus on
values, human beings, children and hope.
If Bush permanently alienates women by his words and
tone in the War on Terror, he'll throw away the issue
that he needs to carry him into a second term.
(4/20/2004)
- By Dick Morris, The New York Post
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Where is Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona)? When will he
stand up on the floor of the US Senate and denounce
the Bush cabal's shameless attacks on the highly
distinguished and decorated military record of Sen.
John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta)? The "vast reich wing
conspiracy" is behaving like a rapid dog cornered by
animal control officers...red state Rapidlican Rep. Sam Johnson called JFK "Hanoi John" on the floor of the House...they are lashing out in all directions now...The dregs of the US Senate, including Trent Lott (R-KKK), Saxby Chambliss (R-GoForgia) and Norm Coleman (R-SmallPlanesota) are trying to derail, distract and discredit the 9/11 Commission (established through legistaltion co-authored by McCain) by calling for Jamie Gorelick (D-DoJ) to be forced to testify and/or resign...And it is only April...What do you stand for Sen. McCain? Where is your backbone now? Remember Carolina in 2000? John Kerry is your friend, and a fellow hero. They are attacking him now. The 9/11 Commission is your creation. They are trying to destroy it. In Carolina, in 2000, it was your wife they attacked? How long? How long?
Thomas Lang, Columbia School of Journalism: How many ways can the press distort the picture painted by John Kerry's military service records? Yesterday, we hoped we had nipped this one in the bud with our report on the press's consistent failure to track down just what the U.S. Navy's policy was for awarding Purple Hearts and for reassigning troopers in Vietnam who received
three Purple Hearts. Alas, today, the Washington
Times' fatally-wounded coverage of Kerry's
newly-released service records makes yesterday's
various media bloopers look like journalism at its
finest...In short, little in Hurt's rambling,
accusatory article is remotely on the mark, other than
his description of the discrepancy between Kerry's
Personnel Casualty Report from March 13, 1969 and the
Bronze Star citation issued for Kerry's actions that
day. Even for a reporter in a hurry, it almost takes
an extra effort to get this many things wrong-- but
Hurt seems to have pulled it off.
Cleanse the Whitehouse of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000456.asp
Fact Check
April 22, 2004
Hurt In The Fog of War
By Thomas Lang
How many ways can the press distort the picture
painted by John Kerry's military service records?
Yesterday, we hoped we had nipped this one in the bud
with our report on the press's consistent failure to
track down just what the U.S. Navy's policy was for
awarding Purple Hearts and for reassigning troopers in
Vietnam who received three Purple Hearts.
Alas, today, the Washington Times' fatally-wounded
coverage of Kerry's newly-released service records
makes yesterday's various media bloopers look like
journalism at its finest.
In the fourth paragraph of Charles Hurt's Times
report, we get our first hint of who Hurt is going to
rely on to build a case that Kerry's military record
is somehow flawed. Hurt quotes one Mel Howell, a
retired Navy officer who flew helicopters in Vietnam,
but who apparently never served with Kerry, as saying,
"Most of us came away with all kinds of scratches like
the ones Kerry got but never accepted Purple Hearts
for them."
As Lt. Mike Kafka, a U.S. Navy spokesman, told us
yesterday, in line with official U.S. Navy
documentation, wounded combatants neither nominate nor
award themselves Purple Hearts. The Purple Heart is
awarded only after a commander determines that a
soldier or sailor has incurred a wound inflicted by
the enemy and forwards a recommendation to his
superiors.
One paragraph later, Hurt errs more explicitly,
writing that it was the award of his third Purple
Heart on March 13, 1969, "that let Mr. Kerry request a
transfer out of Vietnam and into a desk job eight
months before his tour expired." Again, as we noted
yesterday, Navy regulations at the time specified that
any trooper wounded three times be reassigned outside
of Vietnam (soldiers, including Kerry, did get to
request specific new assignments). Such a reassignment
could be stopped only by a soldier's request.
Next, Hurt turns to one Charles Kaufman, who Hurt
describes as a retired Air Force captain now living in
Germany "whose job once was to submit military award
requests" to analyze a discrepancy in Kerry's war
records. (The Personnel Casualty Report (PDF) on Kerry
from March 13, 1969 does not correspond in every
particular with the injuries described in a Bronze
Star citation (PDF) that Kerry was awarded for action
that day.) Nowhere does Hurt note that Kaufman served
in the Air Force, while Kerry served in the U.S. Navy.
Nor did they ever serve together. He does note,
however, that Kaufman declares of Kerry's wounds, "I
don't want to say it's a lie, but it isn't true," and
"his Bronze Star medal citation appears to be based on
an injury he did not receive."
According to Lt. Kafka, the U.S. Navy spokesman, the
Bronze Star is awarded for bravery, independent of any
wounds a soldier may or may not suffer in battle.
Hurt then moves on to veterans who "say [Kerry's]
record is too good to be true." One veteran, Ray
Waller, is identified as "a combat medic in the
Marines" who "was responsible for determining whether
injuries warranted Purple Hearts." Waller tells Hurt
he doesn't "remember anybody getting three Purple
Hearts and leaving [Vietnam], even within six or eight
months" of service. He adds, "if they did, it was
very, very rare."
However, as noted above, Navy medics neither award
Purple Hearts nor recommend others for a Purple Heart.
Commanders do that based on, as US Navy guidelines put
it, confirmation of medical treatment by "the doctor
that provides medical care."
The expansive Waller goes on to tell Hurt that he had
"never heard of" a shrapnel injury so minor that it
did not require a tetanus shot and time off which had
led to a Purple Heart. As Lt. Kafka notes, however,
the written "Purple Heart Criteria for the U.S. Navy"
does not list either a tetanus shot or time off due to
injury as a requirement for receiving a Purple Heart.
Finally -- having apparently run out of sources who
weren't there, or were there at a different time, or
were in another branch of service -- Hurt winds up his
piece by launching a trial balloon of speculation
attributed to no one at all:
One possible reason why Mr. Kerry racked up so many
battle awards in such a short period of time might be
the command structure. Because awards are generally
recommended by superiors, Mr. Kerry's bosses would
have relied on accounts of the action from Mr. Kerry
and his underling crew mates.
And because injuries warranting Purple Hearts are
verified by medics -- or corpsmen -- it would have
been a soldier inferior to Mr. Kerry who was in charge
of determining the seriousness of his injuries.
Got that? It was up to corpsmen reporting to Kerry to
determine if the boss deserved a medal. In a way,
that's true, in that a wounded officer is going to be
treated by a medic. But no one thinks that calls into
question every Purple Heart ever awarded to such
officers.
In short, little in Hurt's rambling, accusatory
article is remotely on the mark, other than his
description of the discrepancy between Kerry's
Personnel Casualty Report from March 13, 1969 and the
Bronze Star citation issued for Kerry's actions that
day. Even for a reporter in a hurry, it almost takes
an extra effort to get this many things wrong-- but
Hurt seems to have pulled it off.
If Campaign Desk ever gets around to awarding its own
commendations, Hurt is a prime candidate for our
tinfoil star.
Posted 04/22/04 at 05:08 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are getting close now...very close...Will the "US
mainstream news media" dare explore the
interpenetrating business relationships between the
House of Bush, the House of Saud and the House of Bin
Laden? Probably not. Of course, they could ask Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong
Delta) for some background. JFK led the US Senate BCCI
investigation...Yes, he is not only a warrior, he is a
prosecutor...We are getting close now, very
close...Will the story of John O'Neill be told? Probably not. Will
the the contents of the 28 blacked out pages in the
Congressional 9/11 report be revealed? Maybe.
"Out, out, damn spot"
Center for American Progess: Now, with esteemed journalist Bob Woodward reporting that the Bush administration and top Saudi officials agreed to manipulate oil prices in conjunction with the 2004 election, President Bush's passivity towards Saudi Arabia is raising disturbing questions. Why won't the
administration exert serious pressure on the regime
both on oil and terrorism policy? Why does the
president continue to refer to Saudi Arabia as "our
friend" when the country has potential ties to the
9/11 terrorists? Why, as author Daniel Benjamin
reported, did the administration weaken efforts to
scrutinize potential Saudi money-laundering schemes
before 9/11? A look at the president's "deep personal
ties with Saudi officials" – and his financial
connections to the Saudi royal family and powerful
Saudi businessmen – may provide clues.
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=47995#7
UNDER THE RADAR
SAUDI ARABIA
Under the Influence
As a presidential candidate in 2000, then-Gov. George
W. Bush promised that, if elected, he would use the
full weight of the White House to pressure
oil-producing countries to increase production if
there was a gas-price crisis. He charged, "The
president of the United States must jawbone OPEC
members to lower the price" and promised that as
president he would "convince them to open up the
spigot to increase the supply." Yet, when Saudi Arabia
led the fight within OPEC last month to cut production
and raise prices, the president "refused to lean on
the oil cartel" and refused to even "personally lobby
OPEC leaders to change their minds." Now, with
esteemed journalist Bob Woodward reporting that the
Bush administration and top Saudi officials agreed to
manipulate oil prices in conjunction with the 2004
election, President Bush's passivity towards Saudi
Arabia is raising disturbing questions. Why won't the
administration exert serious pressure on the regime
both on oil and terrorism policy? Why does the
president continue to refer to Saudi Arabia as "our
friend" when the country has potential ties to the
9/11 terrorists? Why, as author Daniel Benjamin
reported, did the administration weaken efforts to
scrutinize potential Saudi money-laundering schemes
before 9/11? A look at the president's "deep personal
ties with Saudi officials" – and his financial
connections to the Saudi royal family and powerful
Saudi businessmen – may provide clues.
BUSH'S PERSONAL FINANCIAL TIES TO SAUDIS RUN DEEP:
According to various sources, Bush has been awash in
Saudi money for years. Journalist/author Craig Unger
in his new book "House of Bush, House of Saud" traced
millions "in investments and contracts that went from
the Saudis over the past 20 years to companies in
which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent
positions - Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the
Carlyle Group among them." According to the Boston
Herald, that includes a $1 million gift from Prince
Bandar to the Bush Presidential Library in Texas.
THE BCCI-BUSH-SAUDI-TERRORIST NEXUS: The Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which was
investigated by Congress in the 1980s, appears to be
at the nexus of the Bush-Saudi connection. It's
principal was Khalid bin Mahfouz, a man USA Today
reported was among Saudi businessmen who, even after
the U.S.S. Cole attack, "continued to transfer tens of
millions of dollars to bank accounts linked to
indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden." Under Mahfouz
(who was later indicted for his actions at BCCI), the
Wall Street Journal noted in 1991 that there was a
"mosaic of BCCI connections surrounding Harken Energy"
and "number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings
with Harken — all since George W. Bush came on board."
And according to U.S. officials who investigated the
bank in the 1980s, "BCCI was the mother and father of
terrorist financing operations." A secret French
intelligence report "identifies dozens of companies
and individuals who were involved with BCCI and were
found to be dealing with bin Laden after the bank
collapsed. Many went on to work in banks and charities
identified by the United States and others as
supporting al Qaeda."
WAS BCCI'S INDICTED PRINCIPAL A BUSH BUSINESS BACKER?:
Author Kevin Phillips, a top Republican strategist
under President Nixon, reported in his new book, "Bush
made his first connection in the late 1970s with James
Bath, a Texas businessmen who served as the North
American representative for two rich Saudis (and Osama
bin Laden relatives) - billionaire Salem bin Laden and
banker and BCCI insider Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath put
$50,000 into Bush's 1979 Arbusto oil partnership,
probably using bin Laden-bin Mahfouz funds." Also of
interest: Former CIA Director James Woolsey testified
to the Senate on 9/3/98 that Mafouz's sister was
married to Osama bin Laden. And according to the
conservative American Spectator, "Bush has given
conflicting statements about Bath's investment in
Arbusto, finally admitting to the Wall Street Journal
that he was aware that Bath represented Saudi
investors."
BUSH CAMPAIGN TIES TO THE SAUDIS: A 12/11/01 Boston
Herald report found that "a powerful Washington, D.C.,
law firm with unusually close ties to the White House
has earned hefty fees representing controversial Saudi
billionaires as well as a Texas-based Islamic charity
fingered last week as a terrorist front." The
influential law firm of Akin, Gump, whose partners
"include one of President Bush's closest Texas
friends, James C. Langdon, and Bush fundraiser George
R. Salem," has represented three wealthy Saudi
businessmen – BCCI's Mahfouz, Mohammed Hussein
Al-Amoudi and Salah Idris – "who have been scrutinized
by U.S. authorities for possible involvement in
financing Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network."
WHY THESE TIES ARE IMPORTANT: Charles Lewis, executive
director of the Center for Public Integrity, told the
Boston Herald "that these intricate personal and
financial links have led to virtual silence in the
administration on Saudi Arabia's failings in dealing
with terrorists like bin Laden" and in oil policy. He
said, "It's good old fashioned 'I'll scratch your
back, you scratch mine.' You have former U.S.
officials, former presidents, aides to the current
president, a long line of people who are tight with
the Saudis, people who are the pillars of American
society and officialdom. So for that and other reasons
no one wants to alienate the Saudis, and we are
willing to basically ignore inconvenient truths that
might otherwise cause our blood to boil. We basically
look away. Folks don't like to stop the gravy train."
The Woodward interviews yesterday with Larry Clueless
and Wolf Bluster of SeeNotNews are significant. The
SeeBS Sixty Minutes interview was last Sunday. The
White House has been distorting the truth in his book
all week. But Woodward has not capitulated, AND
SeeNotNews had him on prime-time to counter the White
House spin. Yes, there is a fracture developing in the
"US Mainstream News Media." The Bush cabal's grip on
power is weakening...Therefore, it is a very dangerous
time...
CNN: Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan's assertions that he did not learn of President Bush's decision to launch war on Iraq before Secretary of State Colin Powell are false, journalist Bob Woodward told CNN on Friday. "For some reason, Bandar wants to fuzz this up," said Woodward, whose book "Plan of Attack" tells of a meeting in early January 2003 in which Vice
President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld briefed Bandar on war plans..."Bandar called
me last night," he added. "Woke me up -- a quarter of
12. And we went through this. And I said, 'What are
you doing?'
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/23/woodward.bandar/index.html
Woodward: Saudi envoy trying to 'fuzz up' meeting He says Bandar told him he thought Iraq war was imminent
Friday, April 23, 2004 Posted: 7:15 PM EDT (2315 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan's
assertions that he did not learn of President Bush's
decision to launch war on Iraq before Secretary of
State Colin Powell are false, journalist Bob Woodward
told CNN on Friday.
"For some reason, Bandar wants to fuzz this up," said
Woodward, whose book "Plan of Attack" tells of a
meeting in early January 2003 in which Vice President
Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
briefed Bandar on war plans.
He said Bandar woke him up with a late phone call
Thursday night and ended up acknowledging that
Woodward's description of the meeting was accurate.
Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, has
said Woodward was correct when he said he attended a
meeting at the White House on a Saturday -- two days
before Powell was told of the decision to go to war.
But Bandar said this week on CNN's "Larry King Live"
that Woodward missed an element.
"Both Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld
told me before the briefing that the president has not
made a decision yet, but here is the plan," Bandar
said.
"Not true," Woodward told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "In this
meeting you have the secretary of defense saying --
according to the secretary of defense's own words --
'you can take this to the bank; this is going to
happen.' And I interviewed the president, and we spent
a long time going over that meeting and the meeting
with Colin Powell.
"And the president is the one who said, like to Colin
Powell, 'time to get your war uniform on.' That's not
a maybe. That's: War is coming. It could not have been
clearer. For some reason Bandar wants to fuzz this up.
"Bandar called me last night," he added. "Woke me up
-- a quarter of 12. And we went through this. And I
said, 'What are you doing?' "
Woodward said Bandar told him that he had officially
been told that a decision had not been made, but that
the White House had made it clear the decision was in
fact made.
"I said, 'Well, the issue here is when you left that
meeting did you think the president had decided on
war?' Woodward told CNN. "Bandar said 'absolutely.' "
Woodward is not caving in to the White House Thought
Reform...It is probably less of a sign of personal
redemption for Woodward than it is a sign of a deep
fracture developing in the Bush Cabal stranglehold on
the "US Mainstream News Media." The WASHPS, in
particular, represent a closed circle of interests, a
power elite, THE establishment (yes, it is real and
tangible, Chomsky has denlineated it). Woodward is the
court hagiographer. This Establishment has become very
*uncomfortable* with the incredible shrinking
_resident and his Cardinal Richileiu (Cheney), his
Torquemada (Ashcroft) and his Custer (Rumsfeld)...They
have become *unseemly* Their methods have become
*unsound* The Bush cabal are making a *mess* That
closed circle of interests, the power elite, THE
establishment, has turned on the Bush Cabal...That is
where Woodward's strength is coming from...And,
frankly, it is probably more powerful than personal
redemption...
Eric Alterman, The Nation: The Administration has reacted to this revelation with(a) dishonesty: On CBS's Face the Nation, Condoleezza Rice tried to argue that "resources were not taken from Afghanistan." This is false--Bush removed Special Forces from Afghanistan in 2002 to send them to Iraq, as David Sirota of the Center for American Progress notes; and (b) disingenuousness and more dishonesty: White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy told an
interviewer that the "significant buildup" in the
Persian Gulf region before the war was not necessarily
preparation for an invasion. (Apparently it was in
preparation for a regional swim meet, to be held on a
date yet to be determined.) Duffy also said the
Administration wanted to be ready to aid weapons
inspectors. This is ridiculous. The record
demonstrates that the White House went out of its way
to undercut the weapons inspectors in order to justify
its obsession with war. For the past year, the
goofball President of the United States and his
Defense Secretary have been denying that inspectors
were ever even allowed inside Iraq--something that
goes all but unreported in the US media because
reporters apparently find it too weird (see my last
column).
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040510&s=alterman
column | Posted April 22, 2004
STOP THE PRESSES by Eric Alterman
Woodward Returns
Well, Bob Woodward has partially redeemed himself. His
last book, Bush at War, read like a superhero comic
book mistranslated from its original Serbo-Croatian.
Everyone in the Bush Administration was portrayed as
they might have wished: brave, steadfast, determined
to protect America from evildoerdom, no matter the
cost.
Because Colin Powell and his aides evidently decided
to tiptoe off the reservation in preparation for their
long-overdue departure, the new book, Plan of Attack,
has texture. There are conflicts. Not everybody can be
right about everything. And while the book does gloss
over many of the Administration's most nefarious
characteristics--its serial dishonesty with Congress
and the media, for instance--the trust Woodward earned
with his hagiographic first account put him in good
stead to expand our understanding of how these people
go about making their catastrophic decisions and then
denying them. Here's what I learned:
1. For foreign policy purposes, Dick Cheney is
President: Cheney wanted this war from way back when;
it was Bush who needed convincing. As Slate's Tim Noah
points out, "The closest Woodward comes to showing
Bush making a final decision is when Bush pulls
Rumsfeld aside in early January 2003 and says, 'Look,
we're going to have to do this I'm afraid. I don't see
how we're going to get him to a position where he will
do something in a manner that's consistent with the UN
requirements, and we've got to make an assumption that
he will not.'" When the President is not around,
Administration officials refer to Cheney as "the Man,"
as in, "The Man wants this" or "The Man thinks that."
2. That's too bad, because unfortunately Cheney is
nuts. As Powell puts it, Cheney was in the grip of a
"fever," no longer the "steady, unemotional rock that
he had witnessed a dozen years earlier during the
run-up to the Gulf War. The vice president was beyond
hell-bent for action against Saddam. It was as if
nothing else existed." Woodward gives us the
backstory: Cheney, confirmed by his equally fevered
aide "Scooter" Libby, repeatedly pitched--as he does
today--the apparently imaginary meeting between
Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague.
Powell/Woodward aptly term this contention "worse than
ridiculous." It goes on. "Cheney would take an
intercept and say it shows something was happening.
No, no, no, Powell or another would say, it shows that
somebody talked to somebody else who said something
might be happening. A conversation would suggest
something might be happening, and Cheney would convert
that into a 'We know.'"
3. Rumsfeld's Pentagon, led by Paul Wolfowitz and
Douglas Feith, caught Cheney's nutty fever too. The
war party in the Pentagon was no less obsessed than
Cheney and Libby with finding the nonexistent link
between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Powell considered them to
be "a separate little government" and referred to them
as the "Gestapo office."
4. George W. Bush cannot be bothered to listen to the
views of those with whom he disagrees, even
(particularly?) people who clearly know a great deal
more about the topic than he does and hold Cabinet
responsibility for it. Bush told Woodward that when he
saw Powell for twelve minutes in the Oval Office on
January 13, 2003, it was "not a meeting to have a
discussion. This was a meeting to tell Colin Powell
that a decision had been made and that the president
wanted his support."
5. Which is also too bad, because Bush lives in a
dream world. This from the transcript of Larry King
Live,:
WOODWARD:...I said, OK, you've found no weapons of
mass destruction, and one of my bosses at "The Post"
said, The question is, did you deceive us or were you
deceived? And I got two very emphatic, No. No.
KING: On both?
WOODWARD: On both.
6. The United States Constitution is meaningless to
these people: The Bush Administration decided to lay
out $700 million on a "massive, covert public works
program" in Kuwait in 2002, even though, as Woodward
aptly notes, they did not inform Congress. This is a
violation of Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the
Constitution, which vests the power of the purse in
Congress, along with various statutes that bar the
executive from unilaterally moving money out of areas
explicitly mandated by spending bills. It is,
moreover, an explicit violation of the post-9/11
emergency supplemental bill, which gave the President
discretion to direct the $40 billion it appropriated
but specifically required him to "consult with the
chairmen and ranking minority members of the
Committees on Appropriations prior to the transfer" of
any funds. There is no evidence of any such
consultation, and indeed the White House is not
claiming any exists.
The Administration has reacted to this revelation with
(a) dishonesty: On CBS's Face the Nation, Condoleezza
Rice tried to argue that "resources were not taken
from Afghanistan." This is false--Bush removed Special
Forces from Afghanistan in 2002 to send them to Iraq,
as David Sirota of the Center for American Progress
notes; and (b) disingenuousness and more dishonesty:
White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy told an
interviewer that the "significant buildup" in the
Persian Gulf region before the war was not necessarily
preparation for an invasion. (Apparently it was in
preparation for a regional swim meet, to be held on a
date yet to be determined.) Duffy also said the
Administration wanted to be ready to aid weapons
inspectors. This is ridiculous. The record
demonstrates that the White House went out of its way
to undercut the weapons inspectors in order to justify
its obsession with war. For the past year, the
goofball President of the United States and his
Defense Secretary have been denying that inspectors
were ever even allowed inside Iraq--something that
goes all but unreported in the US media because
reporters apparently find it too weird (see my last
column).
There's plenty more in Plan of Attack, like the Saudis
playing with our elections and stuff, but those are
the lowlights. Read it and weep.
Remember, 2+2=4. If the Bush cabal is allowed to say
that 2+2=5, than the US Constitution and the
democratically elected government it guarantees us is
finished. 2+2=4. Read Orwell, check on your voter
registration, encourage your friends to do the same.
Get out the vote in November. Our best hope is that
the turnout and the majority vote in this national
referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and
COMPETENCE of the incredibly shrinking _resident is so
overwhelming that there is no ambiguity to be
exploited...
Kim Zetter, Wired: The voting panel also recommended to Shelley that he ask the state attorney general to examine the possibility of bringing civil and criminal charges against Diebold for violating California election codes, which state that vendors cannot change software without notifying the secretary of state's office. The codes also say that no vendor can install
uncertified software on voting systems.
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Eleciton,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,63179,00.html
Diebold Machine May Get Boot By Kim Zetter
Story location:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63179,00.html
11:56 AM Apr. 22, 2004 PT
SACRAMENTO, California -- A California voting systems
panel recommended Thursday that the secretary of state
decertify an electronic voting machine made by Diebold
Election Systems, making it likely that four counties
that used the machines will have to find others for
the November election.
The panel said the state should decertify the Diebold
TSx. The TSx was used for the first time in California
during the March primary in Kern, San Joaquin, Solano
and San Diego counties. Kevin Shelley, California's
secretary of state, has until April 30 to decide
whether to act on the panel's recommendation. The
state must give counties a six-month notice to take
machines out of commission before an election.
The panel discovered last November that Diebold had
installed uncertified software on the machines.
The voting panel also recommended to Shelley that he
ask the state attorney general to examine the
possibility of bringing civil and criminal charges
against Diebold for violating California election
codes, which state that vendors cannot change software
without notifying the secretary of state's office. The
codes also say that no vendor can install uncertified
software on voting systems.
"This doesn't solve the problems," said Tab Iredale, a
Diebold developer. "It just sets a tone of
confrontation at a time when we should be working
together to address issues with the certification
process."
Diebold spokesman David Bear said the company intends
to try to resubmit the TSx machines for federal and
state certification before the November election.
Members of the voting-systems panel have said they no
longer want to certify machines under the pressure of
an impending election. But a spokesman for the
secretary of state said Diebold will not be barred
from resubmitting for certification.
Deborah Hench, San Joaquin County's registrar of
voters, expressed surprise at the panel's move. She
said she had no idea what her county would do if
instructed not to use the TSx machines in the November
election. For the March election, the county borrowed
optical-scan machines from other counties and from
Diebold. If the secretary of state agrees to decertify
the TSx, the counties will have to scramble to find
optical-scan machines, and there might not be enough
to go around.
Diebold Election Systems President Bob Urosevich was
forced to defend his company's business practices
Wednesday at a contentious meeting in Sacramento
before the panel. Urosevich, accompanied by a defense
lawyer and a public relations consultant hired
specifically to see the company through its California
crisis, worked hard to convince the panel that the
company has reformed its ways and can be trusted to
conduct elections.
But members of the panel appeared to disagree with the
company's claims, saying repeatedly that Diebold had
been less than forthcoming during the state's nearly
five-month investigation into its practices, often
producing "frivolous" documents or responding slowly
to state queries.
Remember, 2+2=4. If the Bush cabal is allowed to say
that 2+2=5, than the US Constitution and the
democratically elected government it guarantees us is
finished. 2+2=4. Read Orwell, check on your voter
registration, encourage your friends to do the same.
Get out the vote in November. Our best hope is that
the turnout and the majority vote in this national
referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and
COMPETENCE of the incredibly shrinking _resident is so
overwhelming that there is no ambiguity to be
exploited...
Jim Wasserman, Associated Press: California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday. By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and
Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the
use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold
has performed poorly in California and its machines
malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election,
turning away many voters in San Diego County.
Thwart the Theft of a Second US Presidential Election, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
URL:
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi file=/news/archive/2004/04/22/financial1458EDT0107.DTL
Don't use Diebold touch-screen voting machines
JIM WASSERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, April 22, 2004
©2004 Associated Press
(04-22) 18:17 PDT SACRAMENTO (AP) --
California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen
voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from
the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday.
By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and
Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the
use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold
has performed poorly in California and its machines
malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election,
turning away many voters in San Diego County.
The recommendation affects 15,000 Diebold touch-screen
machines in San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin
counties.
Thousands more machines made by Diebold and other
manufacturers in 10 other counties are unaffected,
although the panel is to make a recommendation
regarding them next Wednesday.
The panel's decision has national implications for the
voting machine maker, coming as states plan to spend
billions of dollars to upgrade election equipment in
the wake of the disputed 2000 presidential election in
Florida.
If Shelley follows through with the recommendation,
the affected counties would have to revert to paper
ballots, specifically those marked by filling in ovals
which are read by electronic scanners. The prospects
of starting anew just months before a presidential
election prompted outcries from more than a dozen
voting officials statewide who would have to buy
voting booths, ballot boxes, marking supplies, card
readers and more scanners while retraining poll
workers.
"We sold all of our voting booths to Los Angeles
County. We sold our surplus card readers to smaller
counties," said Riverside County Registrar of Voters
Mischelle Townsend, who estimated costs of reverting
to paper at $2.5 million.
Diebold was disappointed and disagreed with the
recommendation, said its marketing director, Mark
Radke. The company will quickly write a report
outlining its objections to Shelley, who has until
April 30 to make a final decision.
The vote doesn't affect thousands of Diebold optical
scan machines that read marked ballot cards in 17
counties. Nor does it affect an earlier generation of
4,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in Alameda and
Plumas counties.
In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that
a secretary of state's office report released
Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of Diebold in
California, be forwarded to the state attorney
general's office to consider civil and criminal
charges against the company.
Diebold Election Systems is an affiliate of Ohio-based
Diebold, Inc., a leading ATM machine maker supplying
banks in North and South America.
Panel member Marc Carrel, an assistant secretary of
state, said he was "disgusted" by Diebold, which has
"been jerking us around." The company, he said, has
disenfranchised voters in California and undermined
confidence in the new and developing technology of
touch-screen voting.
Local elections officials in Kern, San Diego and San
Joaquin counties, which use Diebold's newest
touch-screen machines said they were surprised and
confused.
"I don't understand how they can say they didn't work
well," said San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters
Debbie Hench, who argued that the county's March
election was largely problem free. The county bought
1,626 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5.7 million.
This decision will be a "step backward" for Kern
County, said Registrar of Voters Ann Barnett, who
bought 1,350 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5
million.
San Diego County Registrar of Voters Sally McPherson
said the county spent almost $30 million for its
10,200 Diebold machines and officials there "believe
in touch screens. We were prepared to move forward."
A secretary of state's report on the March 2 elections
found that 573 of 1,038 polling places in San Diego
County failed to open on time because Diebold voting
machines malfunctioned. Voters were told to go
elsewhere or come back.
Regardless of what happens in California, the head of
Diebold Inc. told shareholders Thursday that the
company is not considering getting out of the
elections business.
Chairman and CEO Walden W. O'Dell told reporters after
an annual shareholders meeting that "we will help in
California if we are allowed. If we are not, we won't.
I think whatever goes on in California is separate
from what goes on in other states. Each state will
make their own decisions."
O'Dell said the North Canton, Ohio-based company
remains confident the machines are safe and secure.
California panel members, however, cited a litany of
alleged problems with Diebold in recent months,
including its sale of machines to the four counties
without federal and state certification, last-minute
software fixes before the March election and
installation of uncertified software in voting
machines in 17 counties.
"In my view we need a clean slate with this vendor,"
said panel member John Mott-Smith, chief of the
state's elections division. "Most of the big problems
in the March election came with Diebold equipment.
People did not get to vote because these things did
not function and that's not acceptable."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the Net:
Diebold Election Systems: www.diebold.com/dieboldes/
Read the bills to ban paperless electronic voting this
November, SB 530 and SB1723, at www.legislature.ca.gov
California Secretary of State: www.ss.ca.gov
True Majority: www.truemajority.org
©2004 Associated Press
More evidence that Fraudida was not an anomaly but
rather what the Bush cabal has planned for our
future...BTW, he study that the US Civil Rights
Commission issued after the Theft of the 2000
Presidential Election is one of the most important
documents in US history. Of course, it was almost
wholly ignored by the "US mainstream news media" and
smeared and maligned by the "vast reich wing
conspiracy" that intimidates the "US mainstream news
media" and its propapunditgandists...The LNS has
stored hard copies of it in case it "disappears" from
the Internet...Remember, 2+2=4
Andrew Gumbel, Independent: The United States may be
on the way to another Florida-style presidential
election fiasco this year because legislation passed
to fix the system has either failed to address the
problems or has broken down because of missed
deadlines and unmet funding targets. Such is the
conclusion of a damning new report by the US
Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan government
body which previously looked into the Florida mess and
found alarming evidence of voter disenfranchisement
among poor and minority groups, incorrectly compiled
voter rolls and other glaring irregularities. "Many of
the problems that the commission previously cautioned
should be corrected yet prevail ... Unless the
government acts now, many of those previously
disenfranchised stand to be excluded again," the
report said.
Thwart the Theft of a Second US Presidential Election,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=513967&host=3&dir=70
US heading for another election fiasco as reforms fail
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
22 April 2004
The United States may be on the way to another
Florida-style presidential election fiasco this year
because legislation passed to fix the system has
either failed to address the problems or has broken
down because of missed deadlines and unmet funding
targets. Such is the conclusion of a damning new
report by the US Commission on Civil Rights, a
bipartisan government body which previously looked
into the Florida mess and found alarming evidence of
voter disenfranchisement among poor and minority
groups, incorrectly compiled voter rolls and other
glaring irregularities. "Many of the problems that the
commission previously cautioned should be corrected
yet prevail ... Unless the government acts now, many
of those previously disenfranchised stand to be
excluded again," the report said.
The commission's criticisms focused on the failure to
implement President George Bush's Help America Vote
Act (Hava), passed in October 2002, which promised
$4bn (£2.3bn) to help states overhaul antiquated
voting machinery - notably the notorious punchcard
devices that caused so much trouble in Florida - and
sought to set up a nationwide system of provisional
voting for people who believe they have a right to
vote but find themselves omitted from the official
list.
It said that out of 22 key deadlines that have come
and gone since the act's passage, only five have been
met. Most seriously, an oversight committee designed
to advise states on streamlining their voting
procedures and implementing the act's provisions was
not appointed until last December, 11 months behind
schedule. Most states are unlikely to make reforms
before the presidential election on 2 November.
In addition, the Bush White House has consistently
proposed less money than promised by the act, so
states that have passed their own reform legislation
have found themselves crucially short of money for
implementation.
On signing the act 18 months ago, Mr Bush said: "When
problems arise in the administration of elections we
have a responsibility to fix them. Every registered
voter deserves to have confidence that the system is
fair and elections are honest, that every vote is
recorded, and that the rules are consistently
applied."
Almost half of the states have requested exemptions
from updating their voting equipment, and 41 out of 50
have requested extensions until 2006 to consolidate
voter registration lists at state level so they can
more easily be checked for accuracy. "It will be
difficult if not impossible for states to build the
necessary election infrastructure by November," it
concluded.
The commission report can only heighten the anxieties
of an electorate already alarmed by a growing
controversy over touchscreen voting machines being
introduced - with Hava money - in many parts of the
South and West. The machines make meaningful recounts
impossible and rely on software developed by companies
with strong ties to President Bush and his Republican
Party. California is expected to decide this week
whether to decertify its touchscreen machines.
The debate over the health of America's electoral
procedures is turning into a partisan fight, with
Republicans dismissing the concerns as Democratic
politicking unworthy of serious examination. When the
Commission on Civil Rights convened an expert panel in
Washington this month to discuss its report, the
Republican Party delegation walked out before the
proceedings began, one panel participant, Rebecca
Mercuri, a Harvard University voting machinery expert,
said.
In Florida during the 2000 election, thousands of
eligible, predominantly black, voters were erroneously
identified as former felons and purged from the voter
rolls by a private company hired by Katherine Harris,
who acted as the state's top electoral official and
also as co-chair of George Bush's state campaign
committee.
Also in Americas
_______________________________________________
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Website: http://www.mindspace.org/liberation-news-service/
Manage your subscription to this list:
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700 + US soldiers have died in the incredible
shrinking _resident's foolish military adventure in
Iraq. The release of the incredible shrinking
_resident's National Guard service file leaves many
more questions unanswered. And yet, the incredible
shrinking _resident's operatives are attacking Sen.
John F. Kerry's highly distinguished and decorated
record of heroism in combat...Well, where is Sen. John
McCain (R-Arizona)? Will he speak out? He must rise on
the floor of the US Senate to denounce these disgraceful
attacks, just as JFK has repeatedly condemned the
attacks made not only on former Sen. Max Cleland
(D-GA), but also on McCain himself in 2000..
Terry McAuliffe, DNC Chairman: "...we welcome any
opportunity to contrast Kerry's distinguished record
of service as a Naval officer who faced combat and was
wounded in Vietnam to Bush using his family
connections to get placed in the Texas Air National
Guard, requesting to not be sent overseas and then not
even bothering to show up for duty or even fulfilling
his required length of service. Simply put, Kerry has a proud record of sacrifice and service whereas Bush has a record of cashed-in connections and evasion."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.democrats.org/news/200404210001.html
Apr 21, 2004
Statement by DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe on GOP
Attacks on Kerry's Military Service
Washington, DC — In response to numerous Republican
surrogates attacking John Kerry's military record, the
Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)
today issued the following statement, contrasting
Kerry's proud record of sacrifice and service to
George W. Bush's own record of "evasion and cashed-in
connections." In addition, the DNC research department
released a side-by-side comparison of Kerry and Bush's
military service.
"Since Bush himself is in no position to criticize
John Kerry on his military service, he has opted
instead to let others do his dirty work for him. But
whether he's making this charge himself or relying on
surrogates, we welcome any opportunity to contrast
Kerry's distinguished record of service as a Naval
officer who faced combat and was wounded in Vietnam to
Bush using his family connections to get placed in the
Texas Air National Guard, requesting to not be sent
overseas and then not even bothering to show up for
duty or even fulfilling his required length of
service. Simply put, Kerry has a proud record of
sacrifice and service whereas Bush has a record of
cashed-in connections and evasion."
2+2=4...At least for John Zogby...Here is a rare
reality-check in one of the US's two most important
newspapers...And remember, you wouldn't know it if you
were watching the TV and radio network news
broadcasts, but Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) is
leading in 8 of the 12 major national polls...
John Zobgy, Washington Post: First of all I think the
following red states are very much at play: New
Hampshire, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida and
possibly Arizona. I think the following blue states
are in play: Pennsylvania, Oregon and Minnesota. There
are more reds than blues I think are in play this
year. As for New Mexico, even though it was very very
close in 2000, I think that both the growing Latino
vote and the presence of Richardson as governor will
probably carry the day for Kerry. I think this
election is John Kerry’s to lose. Which is not to say
that he can’t rise to the occasion.
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/04/sp_politics_zogby042204.htm
Recent Polls
John Zogby
Zogby International
Thursday, April 22, 2004; 12:30 p.m. ET
Are the recent poll numbers showing President Bush
ahead of Kerry a sign that his $50 million ad blitz is
working? How accurate are polls this far from the
election? What is happening in the battleground
states?
John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International,
discussed the newest polling numbers, his data and the
2004 election.
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain
editorial control over Live Online discussions and
choose the most relevant questions for guests and
hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer
questions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington, D.C.: Your poll of 4/18 showed Kerry up by
three and this was one day before The Washington Post
poll showing Bush up by five. What gives? Are the
pollsters and pundits going to get it all wrong AGAIN
this election year!?
John Zogby : I haven’t gotten it wrong. I have gotten
the presidential elections almost perfect. 1996 was
within a couple of tenths of a percent, I had the Gore
victory in the popular vote in 2000 and nailed almost
all of my elections in 2004 – the primaries. I don’t
think that you should look at pinpoint precision, I
think you should look at how close the polls are to
each other. If you look at mine and the other two we
are all in the margin of error.
_______________________
New York, N/Y.: When a polls margin of error is plus
or minus 3 percent, what exactly does this mean? For
example, a poll says Bush 48 Kerry 45, does it mean
that Kerry could be at 48 and Bush at 45 or can Kerry
be at 43 with bush at 51?
John Zogby : You are right, it actually means both.
The person with 48 percent can be at plus or minus
three, same with the person at 45 percent. So
translated, it can be as much as a six point spread.
_______________________
Baltimore, Md. : Part of the reason for Kerry's poll
drop might be the fading of the economy as an issue,
with Iraq dominating the news and reports of job
growth and other positive economic signs. But what
evidence is there that the economy remains a major
problem for the president, especially in crucial
Midwestern swing states (like Ohio), where job losses
have been heavy and recovery is slow?
John Zogby : The premise that you start with I think
is wrong because my poll has Kerry ahead with no drop.
My poll also indicates that the economy by 10 points
is the number one issue – 30 percent. When voters say
the economy is the issue, they are not saying because
it is good. I still have one in five voters who tell
me that they are afraid of losing a job in the next 12
months and one in four voters in households earning
$75,000 or more. Voters don’t measure their lives in
trillions and billions of dollars. Essentially the
economy will be a major issue in this campaign and
offer Kerry an opportunity in some of the battleground
states like Ohio, Missouri, West Virginia, etc.
_______________________
Key West, Fla.: Dear Mr. Zogby:
First, let me say that since the 2000 Presidential
Election you are the only pollster that I trust. You
stated that Gore would win the popular vote and you
were right. Personally, I think that Gore won Florida
but that's a different matter. Here is my two-part
question: What states did President Bush win in 2000
that John Kerry has a decent chance to win and what
states did Al Gore win in 2000 that President Bush has
a decent chance to win? Also, I realize that the
election is six months away but if you were a betting
man who do you think is going to win and why? Thanks
John Zogby : Good questions. First of all I think the
following red states are very much at play: New
Hampshire, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida and
possibly Arizona. I think the following blue states
are in play: Pennsylvania, Oregon and Minnesota. There
are more reds than blues I think are in play this
year. As for New Mexico, even though it was very very
close in 2000, I think that both the growing Latino
vote and the presence of Richardson as governor will
probably carry the day for Kerry.
I think this election is John Kerry’s to lose. Which
is not to say that he can’t rise to the occasion.
_______________________
Stockton, Calif.: How long does an event or series of
events generally take to make a noticeable effect on
the candidates' standings in natonal polls? Is it
immediate or is there lag time? (Examples: large buys
on television; major players testifying before a
commission; capture or death of important enemy
leader)
John Zogby : Good point. I operate by a 48-hour rule.
Unless it’s a Kennedy assassination or 9/11, which
would have an immediate effect, most other events
generally take 48 hours to gestate. Meaning it takes
that long to talk about it, see the talking heads,
discuss it at the water cooler or hairdresser. With
that said I think you are going to see very little
fluctuation from now to Nov. 2nd. I think we are
evenly polarized, pretty hardened and I think there
are pretty few swing voters out there.
_______________________
Mt. Lebanon, Pa.: Ralph Nader -- a man rising in the
polls and raising money. But during the recent months
the media circus said he wouldn't be a factor this
time and it was all ego and pathos. Cue the clowns and
balloons.
Which is right here? A candidate on the move or hubris
and hooey?
And if momentum is working here -- did he get that
from the Deaniacs, third parties, his own base, or
working a philosopher's stone?
By the way, I'm a Vietnam Era Vet who contributed to
Dean and have now moved on to Nader -- not a Deaniac
by any means.
For your insights and analyses: Thanks much.
John Zogby : I think that both those arguments are
wrong. I think that what is making Nader’s numbers as
high as they are – and it is 3 points in my poll – are
voters who are not with the Democrats who are on the
left, would ordinarily not vote. There is a fraction
of that 3 percent who want to see Kerry move to the
left. Nader will be on the ballot on fewer states, but
even if he captures only 25 percent of the vote he got
in 2000 he could still hurt Kerry in some closely
competitive states.
_______________________
Concord, N.H.: John:
Have you polled on any aspect of a military draft
recently?
John Zogby : I have not, but here is what I think. I
don’t believe any candidate will touch it with a
ten-foot pole. And I also believe that the greater
intensity is with the opposition to the war and that
could generate a higher turnout among 18-25 year olds,
especially woment.
_______________________
Baltimore, Md.: Why is that your "brand" as a pollster
seems to get more respect from pundits and
politicians? Conservatives, especially, seem to hold
you in high regard, even though I am sure your
questions and methodology have no built-in bias. Can
you explain your credibility? Thanks.
John Zogby : Well, I think it is a number of things.
One is that I did have a reputation for getting some
very high profile races closer than many of my
colleagues. Secondly, even though personally I have
never hidden the fact that my politics are on the very
left, my numbers don’t reflect it. That was enough for
people like Rush Limbaugh and others like Bill
O’Reilly and Shawn Hannity to label me as honest. And
then, thirdly, I think some of it has to do with the
fact that there is a Zogby behind the Zogby poll. So
instead of the AJAX Polling Firm, there is a real
person and analyst who carries the same name as the
brand. I hope that answers the question.
_______________________
Charlotte, N.C.: Have you done any polling in
battleground states? Can you tell us anything about
these states at this stage of the game?
John Zogby : I have not in battleground states,
however I have seen other polls and right now it is
razor thin in so many of them. Fior example Bush and
Kerry trade leads in New Hampshire. Bush is ahead by a
few points in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The two
are tied in West Virginia. They trade leads in
Florida. Etc. It is like that and I think it will
continue to be.
_______________________
Mineola, N.Y.: The great journalist Walter Lippman in
his famous book "Public Opinion" discussed polling as
being potentially insidious because poll results can
actually affect public opinion as opposed to reflect
it.
Do you believe polls accurately reflect opinion at a
point in time or do the impact public opinion? Also,
can polls be easily manipulated by one campaign or
another to impact news coverage?
John Zogby : Another very good question. In all
honesty I think we accurately take a snapshot of
public opinion. It is very much like a photographer
taking that snapshot of a moment in time. In many,
instances if not most instances, I think that the
snapshot confirms conventional wisdom. I don’t think
you need a poll to tell you that this race is close
just as I don’t think you needed a poll to tell you
that Reagan was going to defeat Mondale in a landside.
The good thing about a poll is that it grounds us. We
all tend to hangout with people who agree with our
views and then we extrapolate on the broader public
what we learn within those circles. Example: “how can
you say Bush isn’t leading by 50 points, everyone I
know is voting for Bush” – that sort of thing. I don’t
think the polls impact anymore on how people vote than
conventional wisdom does. And even though there are
differences in the polls from time to time – for
example, Monday – I think anyway you slice it, this is
a very close race.
_______________________
Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mr. Zogby -- last week CNN-Gallup and
WAPO-ABC released polls showing Bush with a 4-6 point
lead, while you (whose polls I put much more stock in)
released a poll showing Kerry with a 3 point lead.
Presumably, this does not come from the margin of
error -- how is your selection technique different
from the other two polls?
John Zogby : It really isn’t very different. I use
listed telephone numbers instead of random digit
dialing. At times I apply a weight for political party
identification while at other times I don’t. But
again, I think the polls are much closer to each other
than they are apart and I would ask this question –
after the two weeks that the president has had do
people really believe he got a bump in the polls?
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: What do you think of sites like the
Iowa Electronic Markets that predict elections by
simulating stock markets? They claim to be more
accurate than polls -- is this right?
John Zogby : They were up until 2000 when they had
Bush leading by about six points. It is interesting. I
watch it. But we are all in this kind of business
humans, not gods. So we all have our moments when we
are right and unfortunately some moments when we are
wrong. But it sure as hell is fun playing this game.
_______________________
Arlington, Va.: Do you see any difference in the
effectiveness of a candidate's own ads versus those
produced by an independent interest group like
Moveon.org? Is one type of ad better at swaying voters
than the other?
John Zogby : Needless to say, the 527 ads are
certainly more hard hitting, but in both instances I
think the ads are mainly reinforcement mechanisms,
meaning their greater impact is reinforcing support
among the base for each candidate. That is why you are
not really seeing any big bumps for any candidate.
_______________________
Milwaukee, Wis.: I read your list of blue states in
play. What about Wisconsin?
John Zogby : I have a map right in front of me and I
think Wisconsin stays blue –- it is the economy.
_______________________
Rochester, N.Y.: I believe you've done some
international polling, particularly in the Middle
East. Which countries do you find more pro-U.S. (or at
least less hostile)? Do you think the theocracy in
Iran has produced a pro American backlash?
John Zogby : Those are very good questions.
Unfortunately Arabs and Muslims are very alienated. I
am going in the field in the next couple of days in
six Arab countries and I don’t believe I am going to
see any increase in favorability toward the United
States anywhere. If anything one might argue that the
numbers are a little more favorable to the U.S. in
Lebanon because of a heavier Christian population and
because of the significant number of relatives and
family members who are Lebanese and live in the U.S.
But lets not kid ourselves, public opinion of the U.S.
is down in Lebanon too.
I think it had produced a pro-American backlash until
Iran was labeled as part of the Axis of Evil and that
created a counter backlash.
_______________________
College Park, Md.: You've received some criticism for
polling methods, particularly for only doing daytime
polling and for not calling back if there is no one at
home. What are the statistical differences between
your methods and those who do call at night and call
back? Why did you decide to poll the way you do?
John Zogby : That is so ridiculous. I don’t do only
daytime calling. 70 percent of our calls are between 5
p.m. and 9 p.m. I used daytime calling to convert
people who are not reached in the evening and we do no
less than three call backs to people who have not been
reached initially.
Some of my colleagues have been critical and I have
been critical of theirs, but my methodology is sound.
_______________________
Kalida, Ohio: Will the selection of Kerry's vice
president change any of the polling in certain
battlegrounds States? Example Richardson in New Mexico
and Florida. Thanks.
John Zogby : Sure, Kerry has to decide if he is going
to chose a running mate that will help him in a few
states or help him in complimenting or supplementing
an image. The Richardson choice could be a good one
which could help in Arizona as well. The Gephardt
choice, which I think would be the strongest choice,
could certainly help tip Missouri, Ohio or even West
Virginia. An Edwards choice would be more an image
choice and a decision by Kerry to run a national
campaign. So I don’t see Edwards helping to carry any
southern state.
_______________________
Fairfax, Va.: Could we see a reverse of 2000 in this
year's election with Kerry winning the electoral vote
and losing the popular vote?
John Zogby : Oh in this election you can have many
types of combinations like that. We are even more
closely matched blue versus red than we were four
years ago.
_______________________
Columbia, Md.: What must Kerry do to define himself
with voters?
John Zogby : As he did in the latter weeks of the
primary campaign he has got to define himself in
bumper-sticker terms. I am a veteran. I can win. Here
is where I stand: one, two, there. He is a very bright
candidate and perhaps a bit too thoughtful on issues.
One comes away with a sense that he is very nuanced
and very philosophical but he needs to sharply focus
on who he is and where he stands.
_______________________
John Zogby : Thanks for a lot of very good question.
Look forward to doing this again. Feel free to visit
my website at zogby.com.
_______________________
The National Council of Churches is expressing "grave
moral concern" about the Bush cabal's efforts to
undermine the Clean Air Act...The incredible shrinking
_resident has failed this country...NATIONAL SECURITY,
ECONOMIC SECURITY and ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY...All
three issues, not one or the other, will decide this
election...
Associated Press: The National Council of Churches
argued that planned changes to power plant regulations
will allow major polluters to avoid installing
pollution-control equipment when they expand their
facilities. "In a spirit of shared faith and respect,
we feel called to express grave moral concern about
your 'Clear Skies' initiative -- which we believe is
The Administration's continuous effort to weaken
critical environmental standards to protect God's
creation," the council wrote in an advance copy of the
letter provided to The Associated Press.
Save the Environment, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/04/22/churches.bush/index.html
Church group slams Bush on Clean Air Act
SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- A national group of
Christian leaders is sending a scathing letter to
President Bush to coincide with Earth Day, accusing
his administration of chipping away at the Clean Air
Act.
The National Council of Churches argued that planned
changes to power plant regulations will allow major
polluters to avoid installing pollution-control
equipment when they expand their facilities.
"In a spirit of shared faith and respect, we feel
called to express grave moral concern about your
'Clear Skies' initiative -- which we believe is The
Administration's continuous effort to weaken critical
environmental standards to protect God's creation,"
the council wrote in an advance copy of the letter
provided to The Associated Press.
The New-York based group, which represents 50 million
people in 140,000 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox
congregations, said it was sending its two-page letter
to the president on Thursday, as people all over the
country celebrate Earth Day. It took out a full-page
ad in The New York Times, scheduled to run in
Thursday's editions, calling on Bush to leave the
Clean Air Act's new source review rules in place.
The Environmental Protection Agency did not
immediately return calls seeking comment Wednesday,
but the agency has defended the rule changes proposed
in August. EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt has called
it "the biggest investment in the air quality
improvement in the nation's history."
The proposal would cap emissions and allow polluters
to buy and sell pollution allowances, but
environmental groups complain the new system would be
far too lenient. In December a federal appeals court
temporarily blocked the new rules from taking effect,
agreeing with more than a dozen states and cities that
contended the changes could cause irreparable harm to
their environments and public health.
"The people we talk to, both inside and outside the
administration, say ... that these changes will in
fact weaken, not strengthen the Clean Air Act," said
the Rev. Bob Edgar, a United Methodist minister and
the church council's general secretary.
"And we will in fact have dirtier air and less
compliance," said Edgar, who served six terms in
Congress in the 1970s and '80s, representing a
suburban Philadelphia district. The council is urging
ministers across the country to talk about the
problems of air pollution during this week's services.
Monica Myers, pastor at Seattle's Northwest Christian
Church, a Disciples of Christ congregation, said she
doesn't plan to bash Bush in her sermon Sunday.
Instead, she said she'll simply remind her
congregation that pollution and other environmental
problems tend to affect the poor more harshly than
those who can afford to live in places far away from
polluting factories or toxic waste sites.
"I want to emphasize that their faith should direct
them as they vote," she said. "Responsible Christians
should weigh the teachings of Jesus Christ, especially
as they speak of those who are poor and marginalized."
The council joined the Evangelical Environmental
Network in a "What would Jesus drive?" campaign in
2002, urging the auto industry to adopt stricter
emissions standards and calling on SUV owners to
switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles.
The US Congress has passed two supplemental appropriations totaling $160 billion since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The cost of the recent decision to keep 20,000 US soldiers in Iraq for an extra three months will be an additional $700 million. Estimates are that it will cost another $50 billion to $75 billion to sustain operations in Iraq for this year. But the White House and the Pentagon are avoiding the subject...CNN reports: "The Bush administration has failed to provide a realistic assessment of how much the war in Iraq will cost taxpayers, lawmakers charged Wednesday. That charge, leveled by Democrats and Republicans, came as Pentagon officials spent a second day on Capitol Hill talking about the situation in Iraq."
But, hey, as the incredible shrinking _resident was fond of observing during the debate about his disasterous tax cuts: "It's your money!"
Of course, the financial cost of this foolish military adventure is not the only truth that they want to keep from you. As the LNS reported months ago, the Pentagon bans photographs of the flag-drapped coffins of the 700+ US soldiers that have been shipped home from Iraq, and even more cravenly, the capitulating, complicit "US mainstream news media" has allowed the ban to go unchallenged. The cable TV news networks, the major city newspapers and the wire services should be suing the US government..BUT Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker, defied the ban. She took such photos. The Seattle Times defied the ban too. It published her photos. Silicio was fired...Her name will be scrawled on the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes...Her photos have a life of their own now -- not in the "US mainstream news media" unfortunately, and disgracefully, but in the Internet-based Information Rebellion...
Hal Bernton, Seattle Times: A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times...Her photograph, taken earlier this month, shows more than 20 flag-draped coffins in a cargo plane about to depart from Kuwait. Since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the United States. That policy has been a lightning rod for debate, and Silicio's photograph was quickly posted on numerous Internet sites and became the subject of many Web conversations. Times Executive Editor Michael R. Fancher yesterday appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" news show with U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supported the Pentagon policy prohibiting such pictures.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001909527_coffin22m.html
Woman loses her job over coffins photo
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
TAMI SILICIO
Flag-draped coffins are shown inside a cargo plane April 7 at Kuwait International Airport, in a photograph published Sunday. The photographer said she hoped the image would help families understand the care with which fallen soldiers are returned home.
A military contractor has fired Tami Silicio, a Kuwait-based cargo worker whose photograph of flag-draped coffins of fallen U.S. soldiers was published in Sunday's edition of The Seattle Times.
Silicio was let go yesterday for violating U.S. government and company regulations, said William Silva, president of Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio at Kuwait International Airport.
"I feel like I was hit in the chest with a steel bar and got my wind knocked out. I have to admit I liked my job, and I liked what I did," Silicio said.
Her photograph, taken earlier this month, shows more than 20 flag-draped coffins in a cargo plane about to depart from Kuwait. Since 1991, the Pentagon has banned the media from taking pictures of caskets being returned to the United States.
Tami Silicio's photo fueled a debate over a U.S. policy on casket images.
That policy has been a lightning rod for debate, and Silicio's photograph was quickly posted on numerous Internet sites and became the subject of many Web conversations. Times Executive Editor Michael R. Fancher yesterday appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" news show with U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., who supported the Pentagon policy prohibiting such pictures.
As a result of the broader coverage, The Times received numerous e-mail and phone calls from across the country — most of which supported the newspaper's decision.
Pentagon officials yesterday said the government's policy defers to the sensitivities of bereaved families. "We've made sure that all of the installations who are involved with the transfer of remains were aware that we do not allow any media coverage of any of the stops until (the casket) reaches its final destination," said Cynthia Colin, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Maytag also fired David Landry, a co-worker who recently wed Silicio.
Silicio said she never sought to put herself in the public spotlight. Instead, she said, she hoped the publication of the photo would help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home.
"It wasn't my intent to lose my job or become famous or anything," Silicio said.
The Times received Silicio's photograph from a stateside friend, Amy Katz, who had previously worked with Silicio for a different contractor in Kosovo. Silicio then gave The Times permission to publish it, without compensation. It was paired with an article about her work in Kuwait.
Silicio, 50, is from Edmonds and previously worked as an events decorator in the Seattle area and as a truck driver in Kosovo. Before the war started, she went to work for Maytag, which contracts with the Air Mobility Command to provide air-terminal and ground-handling services in Kuwait.
In Kuwait, Silicio pulled 12-hour night shifts alongside military workers to help in the huge effort to resupply U.S. troops. These workers also helped transport the remains of soldiers back to the United States.
Her job put her in contact with soldiers who sometimes accompanied the coffins to the airport. Having lost one of her own sons to a brain tumor, Silicio said, she tried to offer support to those grieving over a lost comrade.
"It kind of helps me to know what these mothers are going through, and I try to watch over their children as they head home," she said in an earlier interview.
Since Sunday, Silicio has hunkered down in Kuwait as her employer and the military decided her fate.
Maytag's Silva said the decision to terminate Silicio's and Landry's employment was made by the company. But he said the U.S. military had identified "very specific concerns" about their actions. Silva declined to detail those concerns.
"They were good workers, and we were sorry to lose them," Silva said. "They did a good job out in Kuwait and it was an important job that they did."
Landry, in an e-mail to The Times, said he was proud of his wife, and that they would soon return home to the States.
Will the shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader
redeem himself and salvage his legacy -- before it is
too late? The LNS hopes so, but doubts it. Meanwhile,
here is another name for the John O'Neill Wall of
Heroes: Denise Giardina, founder of West Virginia's
Mountain Party. Like Noam Chomsky (yes, Noam Chomsky),
she understands what another four years of the Bush
cabal would mean...The difference between Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) and the incredible shrinking _resident begins with the tens of thousands if not millions of deaths and goes on from there...The shell-of-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader got 22K votes in New Hampsire in 2000, Gore lost New Hampshire to Bush by 7K votes, the electoral college votes from New Hampshire would have cancelled out the winning edge give to Bush with Fraudida's stolen electoral college votes. In Fraudida, BTW, where the shell-of-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader spent the final days of the 2000 campaign, Gore allegedly lost by approx. 500 votes (although many thousands were thrown out), while the shell-of-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader got 90K+ votes. If even one third of those who voted for the shell-of-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader in either New Hampshire or Fraudida have voted for Gore, we would not be where we are today...We would not have abandoned the Kyoto Accords, we would not have trashed the Middle East peace process, we would not have invaded Iraq, we would not have torn up the ABM treaty, we would not have trashed the opportunity for peace and disarmament on the Korean pennisula, the EPA would not have been prostituted, we would not have gutted the Federal surplus and plunged the US into debt, we would not have suffered a phoney "energy crisis" in California and Conan the Deceiver would not be Governor of California, and oh yes, 9/11 itself might not have happened...
Paul Nyden, Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail: Last
week, Giardina called Nader’s 2000 campaign “extremely
unfortunate. But I am in a state of shock that Nader
is running again. It worries me that something I did
might make it possible for him to get on the ballot
this year.” In a letter she plans to send to Mountain
Party supporters, Giar-dina wrote, “Nothing could
better illustrate the need for a local alternative
than the 2004 governor’s race. A Mountain Party
candidate will provide an alternative to Republicrat
Coal candidates. “Having said that, I am appalled at
the attempt to add Ralph Nader as a presidential
candidate on the Mountain Party ballot,” her letter
states. Vince George, Giardina’s campaign manager in
2000, is working to get Nader’s name on the ballot
this year. “I would feel horrible if this happened. I
also think it would be a real mistake for the Mountain
Party. There would not be a Mountain Party on the
ballot today if we had not run that gubernatorial
campaign. “I have not regretted that until now,”
Giardina added. “The Bush administration is such a
dangerous administration. We’ve got to get this guy
out. Then we can get back to normal. “Because of the shallowness of the media, especially television, there are a lot of uninformed people who are going to vote for Bush. If a small percentage of people are not practical and vote for Nader, it could be enough to throw the election.”
Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://sundaygazettemail.com/news/Other+News/2004041713/
Back to Gazette-Mail
Mountain Party’s Giardina doesn’t back Nader
Sunday April 18, 2004
By Paul J. Nyden
STAFF WRITER
Third-party candidate Ralph Nader has asked West
Virginia’s Mountain Party to nominate him for the
presidency. But the party’s former gubernatorial
candidate doesn’t want that to happen. Author Denise
Giardina helped found the Mountain Party in 2000 and
ran for governor that year. Her novels include
“Storming Heaven” and “The Unquiet Earth” about the
struggles of miners in the southern coalfields. “I
decided to run as a third-party candidate to establish
a statewide independent party so people discouraged
about the political process would have a place on the
ballot. But I did not see national politics as part of
that,” she said last week. Giardina received 10,228
votes for governor, about 2 percent of the vote, in
2000. Any party winning at least 1 percent of the vote
gets an automatic place on the state ballot in the
next election. Today, some Mountain Party members hope
delegates to their upcoming convention — to be held
May 1 at Jackson’s Mill near Weston — will nominate
Nader for president. If the party does not, Nader will
have to collect about 14,000 valid signatures to win a
place on this fall’s ballot. To guarantee 14,000 valid
signatures, a typical petition drive would try to
collect at least 18,000 signatures. The Mountain Party
Constitution sets up 17 voting districts — one in each
State Senate district. Each district can have up to
four voting delegates at the Jackson’s Mill
convention. A majority vote of delegates determines
who gets the party’s statewide nominations on the
November ballot. Last week, Giardina called Nader’s
2000 campaign “extremely unfortunate. But I am in a
state of shock that Nader is running again. It worries
me that something I did might make it possible for him
to get on the ballot this year.” In a letter she plans
to send to Mountain Party supporters, Giar-dina wrote,
“Nothing could better illustrate the need for a local
alternative than the 2004 governor’s race. A Mountain
Party candidate will provide an alternative to
Republicrat Coal candidates. “Having said that, I am
appalled at the attempt to add Ralph Nader as a
presidential candidate on the Mountain Party ballot,”
her letter states. Vince George, Giardina’s campaign
manager in 2000, is working to get Nader’s name on the
ballot this year. “I would feel horrible if this
happened. I also think it would be a real mistake for
the Mountain Party. There would not be a Mountain
Party on the ballot today if we had not run that
gubernatorial campaign. “I have not regretted that
until now,” Giardina added. “The Bush administration
is such a dangerous administration. We’ve got to get
this guy out. Then we can get back to normal. “Because
of the shallowness of the media, especially
television, there are a lot of uninformed people who
are going to vote for Bush. If a small percentage of
people are not practical and vote for Nader, it could
be enough to throw the election.” To contact staff
writer Paul J. Nyden, use e-mail or call 348-5164.
Back to Gazette-Mail
© Copyright 2003 Sunday Gazette-Mail
King Abdullah, another name for the "International
Leaders" section of the John 0'Neill Wall of
Heroes...Abdullah's father, BTW, the late King Hussein
is on record as having considered Bill Clinton as the
American President who had done the most (and he had
worked with them all personally since Eisenhower) for
world peace in general and Middle East peace in
particular...Sadly, his son has to deal with the
incredible shrinking _resident, who has done te most
damage to world peace in general and Middle East peace
in particular...SeeNotNews, AnythingButSee, SeeBS,
NotBeSeen and Faux News will not spend any time on
this story tonight. It is too damning...But it is just
one of many...The incredible shrinking _resident is
now presiding over an incredible shrinking "coalition
of the witless." Spain and Honduras have withdrawn
from it. Thailand, Singapore and the Netherlands and
others will probably soon withdraw from it...The
almost unnanimous good will and cooperation of the
world community post-9/11 has been wholly
squandered...Even long-standing Arab allies in the
Middle East are distancing themselves from the US in
significant and unprecendented ways...The entire
planet (except for Al Qaeda which is already on record
as wanting Bush over Kerry) is praying for REGIME
CHANGE here...We are almost alone...Will the US
electorate drink the cool-aid that the Bush cabal has
concocted for it?
Ewen MacAskill, Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian (UK): A growing rift between America and the Arab world was exposed yesterday when two Middle Eastern allies delivered damaging rebuffs to President George Bush's policies in the region. King Abdullah of Jordan flew home from the US after abruptly canceling a meeting planned for today with the president in Washington. The king's move came as the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, said there was more hatred of Americans in the Arab world today than ever before.
Restore the Timeline, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0421-02.htm
Published on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 by the
Guardian/UK
Arab Ally Snubs Bush Amid 'Unprecedented Hatred' for
US
by Ewen MacAskill in Jerusalem and Suzanne Goldenberg
in Washington
A growing rift between America and the Arab world was
exposed yesterday when two Middle Eastern allies
delivered damaging rebuffs to President George Bush's
policies in the region.
King Abdullah of Jordan flew home from the US after
abruptly canceling a meeting planned for today with
the president in Washington. The king's move came as
the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, said there was
more hatred of Americans in the Arab world today than
ever before.
The White House scrambled on April 20, 2004 to mend
diplomatic fences with Jordan's King Abdullah, who
abruptly postponed a meeting with President Bush
because of concerns over the U.S. stance on the Middle
East. King Abdullah is seen in San Francisco April 16.
Photo by Kimberly White/Reuters
King Abdullah and Mr Mubarak are two of the most
moderate leaders in the Middle East and the two
normally closest to the US.
King Abdullah's cancellation was in retaliation for Mr
Bush's support last week for a plan by the Israeli
prime minister, Ariel Sharon, in which he offered to
pull out of Gaza in return for US recognition of
illegal settlements on the West Bank and an end of the
right of 3.6 million Palestinians to return to Israel.
Mr Mubarak cited as reasons for the increased hatred
Israel and the US occupation of Iraq. In an interview
with Le Monde published yesterday, he said : "After
what has happened in Iraq, there is an unprecedented
hatred. What's more - they [Arabs] see Sharon act as
he wants, without the Americans saying anything".
The Jordanian government said yesterday it was seeking
clarification of US intentions towards Israel and the
Palestinians before agreeing to a new meeting with Mr
Bush.
Mr Bush's administration yesterday tried to play down
the rift with one of its few allies in the Middle
East. The secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the
White House remained committed to a negotiated
settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, and
was not acting in the interests of the Jewish state.
"I think people will see over time that the US is
committed to the welfare and benefit and the hopes and
dreams and aspirations of Arab nations," he told
reporters,
Pressure on King Abdullah to make a gesture has been
building in Jordan, half of whose population is made
up of Palestinians.
There has long been a threat of an Islamist militant
backlash, a point reinforced yesterday when the
Jordanian government said it had killed three
militants in a shootout in the capital, Amman.
A Jordanian government spokeswoman, Asma Khader, said
yesterday that King Abdullah, who had been in the US
for a business conference, still wanted to meet Mr
Bush but felt more time was needed to prepare for it.
A palace statement said the meeting would not be held
"until discussions and deliberations are concluded
with officials in the American administration to
clarify the American position on the peace process and
the final situation in the Palestinian territories."
The Arab League, which represents all Arab countries,
welcomed the king's decision to cancel his meeting.
Ali Muhsin Hamid, its London ambassador, said Mr
Bush's statement had reduced US-Arab relations to a
level comparable to 1967.
The countries are trying to get a resolution through
the UN condemning the assassination of the Hamas
leader, Abdel-Aziz Rantissi. About 40 countries have
spoken in the debate so far, all of them - other than
the US - critical of Israel.
Mr Sharon secured his deal with Mr Bush partly through
brinkmanship, sitting at Ben Gurion airport for three
hours last week and threatening to cancel his
Washington visit. Mr Bush caved in.
But similar tactics by King Abdullah are unlikely to
achieve the same result. The palace statement said the
king had written to Mr Bush before his meeting with Mr
Sharon saying the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza had to
be part of an overall peace plan, not an alternative
to it. But Mr Bush ignored his plea.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
###
The Emperor has no uniform...Another US soldier died today in Iraq. For what? The "war on terrorism" is not the strength of the incredible shrinking _resident's White House, it is the SHAME of the incredibly shrinking _resident's White House...Give us Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) and Gen. Wesley Clark (D-NATO) together on the ticket. They will hurry from the right and the center to join us in the Electoral Uprising, and on the left, Michael Moore, Madonna and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-Harlem), all Wesley Clark supporters, will drown out the-shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader...
E.J. Dionne, Jr.: The current president's standing on terrorism and security has been dented by the situation on the ground in Iraq, the early findings of the 9/11 commission and one book after another calling into question Bush's decision-making on the war. Kerry's approach also marks a break with the patterns of the past. Kerry is said by his advisers to believe that the Democrats made a crucial mistake in 2002 by largely ducking terrorism and foreign policy. Democrats thought they could win by trying to shift the focus of the election to domestic issues: the economy generally, and prescription drugs for the elderly and a patients' bill of rights in particular.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16797
E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Washington Post Writers Group
04.20.04 Printer-friendly version
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The war candidate
Kerry reverses status quo, positions Dems as security party for 2004
WASHINGTON -- Here is the biggest surprise of the 2004 election so far: It is John Kerry who is eager to talk about terrorism and national security, and President Bush's campaign that is trying to quash a far-reaching debate on these issues.
It wasn't supposed to be this way, at least according to the conventions of presidential politics. Usually it's the Republicans who try to change the subject to foreign policy.
Ronald Reagan in 1984 and the first President Bush in 1988 both did exceptionally well among voters who said that international questions and toughness on defense were central to how they cast their ballots. Just a few months ago, George W. Bush was expected to have the same advantages on the same issues.
But the contours of the election have been altered by events, and by Kerry's reading of the 2002 midterm election results.
The current president's standing on terrorism and security has been dented by the situation on the ground in Iraq, the early findings of the 9/11 commission and one book after another calling into question Bush's decision-making on the war.
Kerry's approach also marks a break with the patterns of the past. Kerry is said by his advisers to believe that the Democrats made a crucial mistake in 2002 by largely ducking terrorism and foreign policy. Democrats thought they could win by trying to shift the focus of the election to domestic issues: the economy generally, and prescription drugs for the elderly and a patients' bill of rights in particular.
The strategy failed because the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 guaranteed that even among voters primarily concerned with bread-and-butter questions, terror and war loomed as genuine fears.
"Terrorism and national security are going to be the constant backdrop of the election," said one top Kerry adviser. While domestic issues will still be decisive for most voters, the aide said, Kerry recognizes "that a candidate needs to make clear he understands that the president's first job is to protect the nation."
In making his case against Bush, Kerry has several advantages over the 2002 Democrats. Because the course of the war in Iraq has been much more difficult than the administration predicted, voters outside the Republican base are more open to criticisms of the president than they were two years ago.
In 2002, by contrast, many Democrats -- especially those running in states that Bush carried in 2000 -- felt intimidated by the president's high standing in the polls and obligated to embrace his terrorism policies. This created a vicious cycle for Democrats and a virtuous cycle for Republicans. If even Democrats were saying that Bush's policies against terror were right, most voters had little basis for thinking otherwise.
Moreover, the argument two years ago was carried out on a highly general level -- whom could voters trust to be "tough" enough on terror? Bush's lieutenants had hoped the argument would stay on the same abstract plane this year.
But this election is now about the practical results of Bush's policies. When it came to Iraq, did the administration know what it was getting into and plan effectively? Was it honest with the public, and itself, about the costs of the enterprise? Was it mistaken in not seeking more international support in advance? Thanks to the findings of the 9/11 commission, parts of the public are also questioning whether Bush had effectively organized the government in advance to prevent attacks.
This creates middle ground on which Kerry can challenge specific judgments made by Bush without necessarily breaking with all of Bush's objectives.
Thus Kerry during his Sunday "Meet the Press" appearance: "Our diplomacy has been about as arrogant and ineffective as anything that I have ever seen. ... I think that I can fight a far more effective war on terror. I will build alliances and cooperation. I will make America safer."
Bush's campaign is trying to discredit any criticisms of the president. After Kerry spoke, Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot said the Democrat had offered only "conditional support for the troops" by refusing to say if he'd vote for further financial support for the war if Bush requested it. Racicot also accused Kerry of demonstrating "a disturbing lack of judgment" and a failure to understand "the murderous ideology of our enemies."
The Bush campaign wants to recreate the dynamic of 2002 and render criticism of Bush's antiterror policies illegitimate and unpatriotic. Kerry wants Bush held accountable for the decisions he made. The side that wins this definitional war is likely to win the election. For more, please visit the E.J. Dionne, Jr. archives.
Because the course of the war in Iraq has been much more difficult than the admin-istration predicted, voters outside the Republican base are more open to criticisms of the president than they were two years ago.
(c) 2004, Washington Post Writers Group
Cooked poll data is powerful, but it is not enough. They need compromised voting machines to thwart the coming electoral Uprising...And, of course, they have been working on it for quite awhile...It is a Diebolic scheme...
Ian Hoffmen, Tri Valley Herald: Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc. warned in late November that its use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda County violated California election law and broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda County. Soon after, a review of internal legal memos obtained by ANG Newspapers shows, Diebold's attorneys at the Los Angeles office of Jones Day realized the McKinney, Texas-based firm also faced a threat of criminal charges and exile from California elections...Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer, Diebold continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at least two of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday primary, when e voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at the polls.
Restore the Integrity of the Electoral Process, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2095693,00.html
Article Last Updated: Tuesday, April 20, 2004 - 2:27:57 PM PST
Diebold was aware of shortcomings early
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
Attorneys for Diebold Election Systems Inc. warned in late November that its use of uncertified vote-counting software in Alameda County violated California election law and broke its $12.7 million contract with Alameda County.
Soon after, a review of internal legal memos obtained by ANG Newspapers shows, Diebold's attorneys at the Los Angeles office of Jones Day realized the McKinney, Texas-based firm also faced a threat of criminal charges and exile from California elections.
Yet despite warnings from the state's chief elections officer, Diebold continued fielding poorly tested, faulty software and hardware in at least two of California's largest urban counties during the Super Tuesday primary, when e voting temporarily broke down and voters were turned away at the polls.
Other documentation obtained by ANG shows that the latest approved versions of Diebold's vote-counting software in this state cast doubt on the firm's claims elsewhere that it has fixed multiple security vulnerabilities unearthed in the last year.
"In California those issues can be addressed," said Diebold spokesman David Bear. "They were addressed in Maryland, and they could be changed in California."
California elections officials said they are perplexed that Diebold apparently has not changed practices since a December audit revealed uncertified software running in every county that it serves.
"Diebold may suffer from gross incompetence, gross negligence. I don't know whether there's any malevolence involved," said a senior California elections official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I don't know why they've acted the way they've acted and the way they're continuing to act. Notwithstanding their rhetoric, they have not learned any lessons in terms of dealing with this secretary (of state)."
The memos show that for months, Diebold attorneys at Jones Day have been exploring ways to keep the nation's second-largest electronic voting provider from losing an eighth of the national market.
Jones Day partner Daniel D. McMillan declined to comment on the content of the documents except to confirm they were internal papers from his office. He warned against drawing conclusions from the firm's memos.
Diebold's legal team appears to have been exploring whether California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has the power to investigate the company's practices. The memos reflect an argument that the regulations by which California approves voting equipment for elections may never have been properly codified and are unenforceable.
Diebold's Bear said his company is cooperating with Shelley's office.
"I've been working with the SOS, and we're hopeful we can move forward and the advantages of electronic voting can be continued to be offered to the citizens of California," he said. "We will continue to work with state and local elections officials to address any and all elections issues."
The law firm's memos reflect a corporate defense firm on a $500,000-a-month campaign to protect Diebold.
It is a critical moment for Diebold, for electronic voting in California and for at least some of the 19 counties statewide that purchased Diebold voting systems for more than $50 million.
On Wednesday, state elections officials begin debating their advice to Shelley on whether to disallow some or all Diebold voting systems, or all touch-screen voting machines, from the November elections.
What Shelley decides will be a test of state authority over makers of the computers that will determine the electoral votes in California and other states. His decision also could send two of California's largest counties -- Alameda and San Diego -- scrambling for other ways to count votes six months from now.
Voting experts say the industry's factories and printing plants probably can handle the extra demand for replacement voting machines and paper ballots, given at least three months' notice. But Shelley's decision also could unleash a barrage of lawsuits that could mire orders of equipment and ballots in legal wrangling over who will pay for them.
At the center of those battles will be Jones Day. The firm's internal memoranda show its attorneys considered the idea of calling a new bit of uncertified voting software "experimental." State rules say local governments can use entire experimental voting systems without state approval.
The lawyers also presented California officials who were seeking documents from Diebold with sweeping confidentiality agreements designed to hide flaws in Diebold software as much as its intellectual property.
In drafts of a Feb. 13 letter to state regulators, Diebold's attorneys declared that Diebold makes no changes to electronic devices that the company and its predecessor have been programming for at least five years.
The drafts show they staked out a firm position that a critical piece of Diebold's voting system -- its voter-card encoders -- did not need national or state approval because they were commercial off-the-shelf products, never modified by Diebold.
But on the same day the letter was received, Diebold-hired techs were loading non-commercial Diebold software into voter-card encoders in a West Sacramento warehouse for shipment to Alameda and San Diego counties.
"They were still crunching and working on that software in the middle of February," said James Dunn, who worked as an assembly technician in Diebold's Sacramento warehouse.
More than 600 of the devices froze or displayed unfamiliar screens and error messages on the morning of Election Day, for failure rates of 24 percent in Alameda County and about 40 percent in San Diego County.
Diebold Elections executives were told in October by state officials to ensure every piece of its voting systems was fully tested and approved by national and state authorities.
But Diebold resisted, arguing that the encoders did not need testing and approval because they were a "peripheral" device on its voting systems and that the devices were common, commercial products.
That was true for the hardware. But not the software.
In fact, Diebold engineers were writing and rewriting the software at DESI headquarters in Texas and in Sacramento, supplying the latest versions two weeks before the encoders failed at high rates in the Super Tuesday presidential primary.
Diebold eventually sent a sample of the encoders to an outside laboratory, but it did not have time for more than cursory testing.
The encoders were the only way that poll workers were trained to create cards that let voters call up digital ballots on Diebold's touch-screen machines at more than 2,000 polling places in Alameda and San Diego counties. Dunn says he is not surprised.
As he and other techs raced to assemble the encoders out of tablet-PC screens, batteries and card-writing bases shipped to Sacramento from factories in Asia, Diebold officials kept supplying new versions of the software.
In addition, the hardware components often failed to mate well, resulting in frozen screens. And when the batteries lost power, the devices lost their internal clock and operating settings, often Diebold's software as well.
Dunn blames Diebold's rush to get the devices into the March2 elections and the lack of standard quality controls in assembling and configuring them. No instructions, no checklists, no tracking system.
An outspoken tech complained about the poor quality controls and the failure of the devices when sapped of power.
"He was gone. They fired him," Dunn said. "The attitude among the others there was, 'I don't care how screwed up these things are, I'm going to keep quiet. I'm not going to get fired.'"
A Diebold software engineer pressed her superiors to allow testing of all the devices before they were shipped to Oakland, San Diego and elsewhere, but the tests -- successful creation of voter cards -- were performed only on the last 10 percent to 15 percent of the devices, Dunn said.
"I got the feeling that the whole thing was rushed, that the products were brought to market too fast, and they did it because they had to get products to these counties before the election and they weren't ready," he said. "It wasn't fully developed. It was still prototyped, and they were out of time."
Alameda County had paper provisional ballots on hand at polling places for use in lieu of the disabled touch screens. At least 14 polling places ran out and turned away voters. San Diego County relied on one of Diebold's latest features, electronic provisional ballots, so larger numbers of voters were turned away at the polls.
Diebold's claims to California elections officials, through its attorneys, that it does not modify the encoder software is blatantly untrue, according to Dunn and electronic-voting opponent Jim March.
"That's a lie," March said.
Last year, Seattle-based journalist Bev Harris found nine versions of Diebold encoder software on an unsecure Internet site. Software engineers such as March have been marveling at their multitude since.
"When you vote, you are inserting a memory card containing up to 128k of God-only-knows what. With no oversight, the 'smart cards' could contain some very stupid stuff indeed, or even deliberate subversion," he said.
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com .
It's the Media, Stupid.
Zach Fox, Daily Trojan: For each press conference, the White House press secretary asks the reporters for their questions, selects six or seven of the questions to answer and those reporters are the only ones called upon to ask their questions during the press conference, Suskind said. This system makes it so that the president has answers already prepared for questions that he knows will be asked, Suskind said...Suskind also said that the White House uses intimidation to force writers into only writing favorable stories about the administration.
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US
Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.dailytrojan.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=656561
Bush's press conferences too scripted, author says
Two noted journalists arguing about Bush policies are
featured in discussion.
By Zach Fox
Published: Friday, April 9, 2004
Article Tools: Page 1 of 1
Media Credit: Steven Tai | Daily Trojan
Insider. Ron Suskind talks to a student about issues
in his book, which has garnered national attention.
Ron Suskind, author of the recent controversial book
on former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and Michael
Barone, senior writer for the U.S. News & World
Report, argued politics in a heated discussion as part
of the Annenberg series "Dean's Open Forum," on
Thursday.
The forum was hosted by Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the
Annenberg School for Communication, and featured an
open discussion about the possible outcomes of the
upcoming presidential election and the current
policies of the Bush administration, including the
handling of the press and the war in Iraq.
One of Suskind's most severe critiques of Bush was not
only Bush's lack of press conferences but also his
management of those conferences.
For each press conference, the White House press
secretary asks the reporters for their questions,
selects six or seven of the questions to answer and
those reporters are the only ones called upon to ask
their questions during the press conference, Suskind
said.
This system makes it so that the president has answers
already prepared for questions that he knows will be
asked, Suskind said.
"He needs unmanaged time in front of the nation right
now," Suskind said. "The White House has to engage in
a way that it hasn't engaged in before."
Suskind also said that the White House uses
intimidation to force writers into only writing
favorable stories about the administration.
"If you write something the White House doesn't like,
they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something
like you did today, nobody from the White House will
ever talk to you again,'" Suskind said. "(The White
House is) pissed, and ... angry."
Barone said Suskind's evaluation of the press'
relationship with the White House must be taken into
perspective considering that "90 percent" of the press
corps is Democratic.
Suskind called Barone's estimation of the press'
political affiliation "absurd."
Barone rebutted with an evaluation of how the press
treats different administrations.
"The press corps is not lenient to the Democrats, as
we found out during the Clinton administration, but
they are consistently anti-Republican," Barone said.
Both of the speakers agreed that the Bush campaign has
developed a streamlined message for the press.
"You only need to make one phone call, and you've
heard everyone's story," Barone said.
Barone and Suskind slightly differed on the issue of a
campaign's unified message in that Barone said that
the Clinton campaign also had a policy of everyone
having the same information - though it was less of a
centralized message than that of the Bush campaign.
Suskind said that he could call 30 people in the
Clinton administration and get different information
so that he could discover the truth.
Suskind also made the distinction that the press is
adversarial to Bush because he lied about policy,
whereas Clinton lied about personal issues but never
about policy.
Cowan introduced Barone to the audience by saying that
there is "nobody more knowledgeable about American
politics." Barone is editor of "The Almanac of
American Politics."
Suskind was introduced as a Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist and the author of the controversial book
"The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White
House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill."
Barone began the discussion by offering an analysis of
voting trends for the upcoming presidential campaign.
The upcoming election looks very much like the 2000
election in that it was possible that a candidate
could again win the popular vote but lose the
electoral vote, Barone said.
The election will come down to the 17 swing or
"target" states that will receive the most attention
from candidates, Barone said. California is not
considered to be one of the 17 target states, so the
Bush campaign will not spend money on advertising in
the state.
"California is an expensive state, and (the Bush
campaign has) only got $180 million," Barone said.
The Republicans have already won the race for control
of the House of Representatives, but the race for the
Senate could be interesting, Barone said.
The current breakdown of the Senate is 51 Republicans,
48 Democrats and one Independent, while the House of
Representatives has 228 Republicans, 205 Democrats and
one Independent.
Since there are multiple seats that are up for
election, the majority could go either way with the
Democrats possibly picking up as many as three seats
or the Republicans gaining as many as four seats,
Barone said.
Barone predicted that the Republicans would gain one
seat and maintain control of the Senate.
The discussion also touched on the testimony of
Condoleezza Rice early Wednesday morning and on the
situation in Iraq.
"The casualties we've had (in Iraq) are much more like
the casualties for training during peacetime than
during war," Barone said.
Suskind said again that Bush needs to have more
unmanaged time in front of the press to explain the
war in Iraq.
"Bush is not good at what he needs to do right now,"
Suskind said.
Barone also said that Bush needs to have a frank
address to the nation on the state of the war in Iraq.
"The president needs to do the type of explaining that
Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did," Barone
said.
Suskind also briefly addressed the controversy over
his book and the involvement of O'Neill in the
publication of his book.
Since the discussion mainly focused on the war in Iraq
and how Bush handled the situation, the speakers'
closing comments summarized their thoughts on those
issues.
Some writers have likened the war in Iraq to the
Vietnam War, and this misconception arises because the
media "suffers from a lack of historical perspective,"
Barone said.
On the other hand, Suskind focused on his view of Bush
in his closing comment.
"I am not pro-Bush or anti-Bush," Suskind said. I am
pro-facts."
Woodward's "Plan of Attack" reveals that the
incredible shrinking _resident "informed Prince
Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States,
before telling his own Secretary of State."
How can Secretary of Stone Calm 'Em Powell sleep at
night? He is a better man than Clarence Thomas, or I
guess I should say he *was* a better man than Clarence
Thomas...
Center For American Progress: The war in Iraq diverted
critical resources from the fight against al Qaeda.
Woodward's book reveals that President Bush ordered
Secretary of Defense Rumseld to secretly draw up plans
to invade Iraq less than two months after the
terrorist attacks on 9/11. Rather than finishing off
al Qaeda and bin Laden, President Bush changed focus
to a fight a less immediate threat in Iraq. And in his rush to war he informed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, before telling his own Secretary of State.
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=3456
Powell Spills Goods on Flawed Iraq War
April 19, 2004
In Bob Woodward's latest book, "Plan of Attack,"
Secretary of State Colin Powell confirms what critics
of the war in Iraq have known all along. The Bush
administration – against the strong desires of most of
the world community – sent the United States to war
under false pretenses, based on distorted
intelligence, and with no hard plan for dealing with
the aftermath. Powell understood best what other Bush
administration officials chose to ignore: the United
States would not be greeted as liberators in Iraq and
it would not be a cost free war.
The Bush administration trumped up intelligence about
weapons of mass destruction to win public support for
an ideological war in Iraq. Secretary Powell received
the unfortunate charge of presenting the Bush
administration's bogus intelligence assessment to the
U.N. Security Council just prior to the U.S. invasion
last year. Unfortunately for Powell and the nation, we
now have independent confirmations that Iraq did not
possess weapons of mass destruction and was not in
collusion with al Qaeda prior to our invasion.
The war in Iraq diverted critical resources from the
fight against al Qaeda. Woodward's book reveals that
President Bush ordered Secretary of Defense Rumseld to
secretly draw up plans to invade Iraq less than two
months after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Rather
than finishing off al Qaeda and bin Laden, President
Bush changed focus to a fight a less immediate threat
in Iraq. And in his rush to war he informed Prince
Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the United States,
before telling his own Secretary of State.
The administration failed to plan for the aftermath of
war and has created a terrorist front in Iraq where
none existed before. Secretary Powell correctly
assessed the risks in Iraq. Less than three months
before transferring sovereignty to Iraqis, the Bush
administration still has no concrete political plan
for the nation and is quickly losing control of
security on the ground. Rather than decreasing threats
of terror in Iraq, President Bush's unwise war has now
created a central front for terrorists determined to
kill Americans.
Daily Talking Points is a product of the Center for
American Progress, a non-partisan research and
educational institute committed to progressive
principles for a strong, just and free America.
CREDIBILITY? COMPETENCE? CHARACTER? Yes, the
incredible shrinking _resident fails on all three
counts...But clearly it is even worse than that...How
long will the leadership of the Republican Party front
for this belligerent, troubled man and his cabal?
Robert Dreyfuss, www.tompaine.com: Yesterday in The Washington Post and on 60 Minutes, Bob Woodward presented a terrifying picture of a president obsessed. Bush demonized Saddam, creating a Manichean
world in which America was a God-inspired nation
combating the Beelzebub-led hell of Iraq. It's not
clear whether Bush believed—like LaHaye—in the
necessity of a climactic struggle with Satan's legions
from Babylon, but the president's crusade had all the
same fervor...Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any
advice? "I asked the president about this. And
President Bush said, 'Well no,' and then he got
defensive about it," says Woodward. "And then he said
something that really struck me. He said of his
father, 'He is the wrong father to appeal to for
advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in
terms of strength.' And then he said, 'There's a
higher father that I appeal to.'"
Perhaps Bush believes that he has a pipeline to God,
that he can ask God for advice about which wars to
launch. By all accounts, however, his real father—the
earthly one, not the imaginary one in the sky—was
against the war. Or, perhaps Bush mixed up God and
Dick Cheney.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10267
God Made Me Do It
Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in
Alexandria, Virginia, who specializes in politics and
national security issues. He is currently working on a
book about America's policy toward political Islam
over the past 30 years.
Is Dick Cheney God? If you read the Gospel According
to Woodward, it's clear that the president seems to
think so.
A few months ago, I wrote a profile of the Rev. Tim
LaHaye for Rolling Stone. LaHaye is the author of Left
Behind, the best-selling series of books on the End of
the World, a hyped-up version of alleged Biblical
prophecies that predict that Jesus Christ will return
to earth after a climactic battle between God and
Satan at Armageddon. Satan, of course, happens to set
up his headquarters in Babylon, just south of where
Baghdad is today. LaHaye is a highly influential
organizer of the Christian right—he founded the Moral
Majority and the secretive Council on National
Policy—and he helped elect Bush by swinging skeptical
Christian-right leaders behind him in 2000. LaHaye and
his fundamentalist flock often equated Saddam with the
Antichrist—literally, not figuratively. In Rolling
Stone, I speculated that LaHaye's weird beliefs might
have influenced the president, a born-again Christian
whose decision to go war in Iraq seems to have been
directed as much at Satan as against Saddam.
Maybe I was right.
Yesterday in The Washington Post and on 60 Minutes,
Bob Woodward presented a terrifying picture of a
president obsessed. Bush demonized Saddam, creating a
Manichean world in which America was a God-inspired
nation combating the Beelzebub-led hell of Iraq. It's
not clear whether Bush believed—like LaHaye—in the
necessity of a climactic struggle with Satan's legions
from Babylon, but the president's crusade had all the
same fervor.
Apparently he talked to the wrong father. Reports
Woodward and 60 Minutes:
Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? "I asked
the president about this. And President Bush said,
'Well no,' and then he got defensive about it," says
Woodward. "And then he said something that really
struck me. He said of his father, 'He is the wrong
father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go
to, to appeal to in terms of strength.' And then he
said, 'There's a higher father that I appeal to.'"
Perhaps Bush believes that he has a pipeline to God,
that he can ask God for advice about which wars to
launch. By all accounts, however, his real father—the
earthly one, not the imaginary one in the sky—was
against the war. Or, perhaps Bush mixed up God and
Dick Cheney. Woodward makes it startlingly clear that
Cheney was the driving force behind the Iraq
misadventure. But for Bush, war in Iraq wasn't
Cheney's will, it was God's:
Going into this period, I was praying for strength to
do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to justify
the war based on God. . . Nevertheless, in my case I
pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as
possible. And then of course I pray for personal
strength and forgiveness.
Says Woodward, succinctly, of Bush: "He's not an
intellectual." He's not. But Woodward makes clear that
Bush is perfectly capable of disguising his godly work
from people who disagree, such as Colin Powell, who
wasn't told of the decision to go to war even after
war planning was well underway:
And there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before
Thanksgiving, Nov. 21, 2001. This is 72 days after
9/11. This is part of this secret history. President
Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes
Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes
him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door
and says, "What have you got in terms of plans for
Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you
to get on it. I want you to keep it secret."
There's lots more in the book. It ought to be required
reading for anyone planning to cast a vote in
November. With at least 11 more Americans killed this
weekend, with well over a thousand Iraqis killed since
April 1, with U.S. troops poised for massive assaults
on Najaf and Fallujah, with Iraq's Governing Clowncil
crumbling fast, with civil war looming in Iraq,, and
with the growing possibility that the crisis in Iraq
could spill over into Iran and Syria, too, Americans
are asking: How did we stuck in this mess? Woodward
has answered that question better than anyone else so
far.
Published: Apr 19 2004
When will the "US mainstream news media" start asking hard, real, pressing questions about the House of Bush, the House of Saud, the House of Bin Laden, BCCI, Harken, etc.? When will the US Senate drain the cesspool? When will the contents of the 28 blanked out pages of the Congressional 9/11 report be revealed? What is happening in this country?
Al Gore said it best one night in Tennessee several weeks ago during the Democratic primary season: "He BETRAYED this country!"
2+2=4
Bloomberg News: Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S.
has promised President George W. Bush the Saudis will
reduce oil prices before this November's election to
help the U.S. economy, according to Bob Woodward,
author of a new book about the Iraq war. Oil prices
are ``high, and they could go down very quickly,''
Woodward said last night in an interview on CBS's ``60
Minutes.'' ``That's the Saudi pledge,'' said
Woodward. ``Certainly over the summer or as we get
closer to the election they could increase production
several million barrels a day and the price would drop
significantly.''
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0419-01.htm
Published on Monday, April 19, 2004 by Bloomberg News
Saudi Envoy Promised Bush a Drop in Oil Prices Ahead of Election
WASHINGTON - Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. has
promised President George W. Bush the Saudis will
reduce oil prices before this November's election to
help the U.S. economy, according to Bob Woodward,
author of a new book about the Iraq war.
Oil prices are ``high, and they could go down very
quickly,'' Woodward said last night in an interview on
CBS's ``60 Minutes.''
``That's the Saudi pledge,'' said Woodward.
``Certainly over the summer or as we get closer to the
election they could increase production several
million barrels a day and the price would drop
significantly.''
US President George W. Bush walks outside the Oval
Office at the White House. Saudi Arabia's ambassador
to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, promised Bush
that his country would lower oil prices before the
November 2 presidential election, according to the
author of a new book on the war in Iraq. (AFP/File/Tim
Sloan)
In his book, titled ``Plan of Attack,'' Woodward also
says that the ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan,
was given advance information about plans to invade
Iraq by Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The Saudis trimmed their output by 1 million barrels a
day in the first quarter, according to Bloomberg data.
Crude oil has risen 15 percent to more than $37 a
barrel this year. The rise in crude has helped send
gasoline prices to a record average of $1.79 a gallon
in the U.S., according to the AAA, formerly the
American Automobile Association.
The record gasoline prices may blunt the economic
benefits of President Bush's tax cuts and become an
issue in the presidential election. Democratic
candidate John Kerry, 60, a four-term Democratic
senator from Massachusetts, cited higher gasoline
prices as one reason for a rising `misery index'' he
released last week that he said shows Bush's economic
policies have hurt working families.
Bandar Briefed Before Powell
Bandar learned of the attack plans on Jan. 11, 2003,
two days before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
was told of the decision, according to Woodward.
In a meeting on Jan. 11 with Cheney, Rumsfeld and
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Bandar was shown a map laying out plans for
attacking Iraq, Woodward writes in the book. The map
was marked TOP SECRET NOFORN, meaning the classified
material wasn't to be shown to non-U.S. officials,
according to Woodward.
At the meeting Bandar asked for assurances that Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein wouldn't survive the war as he
did the 1991 Persian Gulf War led by Bush's father,
President George H.W. Bush. Cheney responded, ``Prince
Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast,'' according to
Woodward.
Bandar said he would take the message to the Saudi
leadership if he got the same information he had just
received directly from Bush. On Jan. 13 Bandar was
called to meet with Bush, who said: ``Their message is
my message,'' said Woodward. Powell was told of Bush's
decision the same day.
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter and
the most influential member of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps a third of
the world's oil.
OPEC on March 31 agreed to reduce its production
quotas to keep prices from dropping.
Before the March 31 meeting in Vienna at which OPEC
announced it was cutting its quotas, Saudi Arabia's
oil minister, Ali al- Naimi, said that the kingdom was
already implementing its share of production cuts for
April.
© 2004 Bloomberg L.P.
###
Eleven more US soldiers (at least) have died in Iraq this weekend. The death toll for US soldiers has now risen to 700 (at least). For what?
MEANWHILE, the so-called "war on terrorism," both pre-9/11 and post-9/11, is not the strength of the incredible shrinking _resident's White House, it is the SHAME of the incredible shrinking _resident's White House. It is no surprise that the only former Clinton-Gore official on the 9/11 Commission, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, was SLIMED by John Ashcroft (R-Misery) in an attempt to divert attention from his glaring pre-9/11 FAILURES and that subsequently she has been hit with a call for her resignation from a former Clinton Impeachment House Manager and deluged with death threats and hate mail, including a telephone bomb threat on her home. Why no surprise? Well, the evidence is compelling, and damning for the incredible shrinking _resident. It includes the testimony of former National Security counterterrorism official Richard Clark (R-Reality), former Acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard as well as thousands of pages of Clinton-Gore documents and the work of the Hart-Rudman Commission. The overhwhelming preponderance of evidence underscores the simple fact that Clinton-Gore took the threat more seriously and did more about it than the incredible shrinking _resident and his "team." The Clinton-Gore "principles meeting" on Al Qaeda that were discontinued by the incredible shrinking _resident's "team" were evidence of the Clinton-Gore commitment to immediate, stop-gap measures to overcome the systemic disconnect between intelligence and law enforcement, the Hart-Rudman commission recommendations for Homeland Security were evidence of the Clinton-Gore commitment to coming up with a long-term solution to the systemic disconnect. The "principles meetings" were discontinued by the Bush "team," the Hart-Rudman report was dismissed by the Bush "team" and in her 9/11 Commission, Rice shamelessly cravenly belittled and besmirched the success of the Clinton-Gore effort to thwart the "Millenium" attack(s)...
Here are some important perspectives and new developments on the 9/11 Commission investigation...
Pre-9/11 Files Show Warnings Were More Dire and Persistent, By DAVID JOHNSTON and JIM DWYER, New York Times, 4/18/04: The new information produced by the commission so far has led 6 of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Mr. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission."
Terrifying reading, St Petersburg Times Editorial, 4/18/04: The commission's work inevitably represents a threat to much of Washington's power structure, so it is not surprising that some powerful forces would attempt to discredit the commission's work. The Bush administration, which fought the creation of a commission for more than a year, has since tried to limit its funds, block its access to documents, force an early deadline on its work and limit testimony from White House officials. (President Bush's insistence on having Vice President Dick Cheney accompany him during his only private interview with the commission is perhaps the most bizarre of the administration's restrictions.)
Letter from Project On Government Oversight (POGO) to Hon. Thomas K. Kean, Chairman, Hon. Lee H. Hamilton, Vice-chairman, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 4/14/04: Yesterday the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) made public the attached internal email from staff assigned to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It details the U.S. military's refusal to heed concerns that terrorists might try to strike domestic targets with hijacked airliners. In April 2001, five months before the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, NORAD officials wanted to develop a strategy and simulation to respond to a scenario wherein terrorists commandeer a commercial aircraft and fly it into the Pentagon. As the email reveals, aides to the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to authorize this type of exercise because these senior military officials deemed such an attack as "too unrealistic."
In light of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice's testimony before the Commission and press reports saying the United States intelligence pipeline offered no insight into how or with what terrorists might strike domestically, we urge the Commission to investigate this matter and ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff why it prohibited NORAD from preparing for what we now know was a very likely, and very deadly terrorist strike.
(http://www.pogo.org/p/homeland/hl-040402-homelandsecurity.html)
As the LNS has observed, the 9/11 Commission's genteel treatment of Ashcroft and Rice, it's failure to explore in public the stories of John O'Neil, Sibel Edmonds and others, its cursory and inadequate treatments of the secret, post-9/11 Saudi flights out of the US and Ashcroft's switch from commercial flights in the summer of 2001, are deeply disturbing. But there is still hope that the 9/11 Commission is holding its fire and will lower the boom on Rice and Ashcroft in particular, in its final report.
Here is Jamie Gorelick's dignified, substantive response, with five devasting counterpoints to Ashcroft's desperate attack...
Jamie Gorelick, Washington Post: At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that "the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents" and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo. This is simply not true.
First, I did not invent the "wall," which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it. In a nutshell, that law, as the courts read it, said intelligence investigators could conduct electronic surveillance in the United States against foreign targets under a more lenient standard than is required in ordinary criminal cases, but only if the "primary purpose" of the surveillance were foreign intelligence rather than a criminal prosecution.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20786-2004Apr17.html
The Truth About 'the Wall'
By Jamie S. Gorelick
Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page B07
The commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has a critical dual mission to fulfill -- to help our nation understand how the worst assault on our homeland since Pearl Harbor could have occurred and to outline reforms to prevent new acts of terrorism. Under the leadership of former governor Tom Kean and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the commission has acted with professionalism and skill. Its hearings and the reports it has released have been highly informative, if often disturbing. Sept. 11 united this country in shock and grief; the lessons from it must be learned in a spirit of unity, not of partisan rancor.
At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that "the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents" and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo. This is simply not true.
First, I did not invent the "wall," which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it. In a nutshell, that law, as the courts read it, said intelligence investigators could conduct electronic surveillance in the United States against foreign targets under a more lenient standard than is required in ordinary criminal cases, but only if the "primary purpose" of the surveillance were foreign intelligence rather than a criminal prosecution.
Second, according to the FISA Court of Review, it was the justice departments under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1980s that began to read the statute as limiting the department's ability to obtain FISA orders if it intended to bring a criminal prosecution. The practice of prohibiting prosecutors from directing intelligence investigations was first put in place in those years as well. Then, in July 1995, Attorney General Janet Reno issued written guidelines that spelled out the steps FBI intelligence agents and criminal investigators and prosecutors needed to follow when sharing information. The point was to preserve the ability of prosecutors to use information collected by intelligence agents.
Third, Mr. Ashcroft's own deputy attorney general, Larry Thompson, formally reaffirmed the 1995 guidelines in an Aug. 6, 2001, memo addressed to the FBI and the Justice Department. Ashcroft has charged that the guidelines hampered the department's ability to pursue terrorists Zacarias Moussaoui, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in August 2001, but his own department had endorsed those guidelines at the pivotal time.
Fourth, the memo I wrote in March 1995 -- which concerns information-sharing in two particular cases, including the original World Trade Center bombing -- permits freer coordination between intelligence and criminal investigators than was subsequently permitted by the 1995 guidelines or the 2001 Thompson memo. The purpose of my memo was to resolve a problem presented to me: facilitating investigations on both the intelligence side and criminal side at the same time. My memo directed agents on both sides to share information -- and, in particular, directed one agent to work on both the criminal and intelligence investigations -- to ensure the flow of information "over the wall." We set up special procedures because of the extraordinary circumstances and the necessity to prevent a court from throwing out any conviction in those cases. Had my memo been in place in August 2001 -- when, as Ashcroft said, FBI officials rejected a criminal warrant of Moussaoui because they feared "breaching the wall" -- it would have allowed those agents to obtain a criminal warrant without fear of jeopardizing an intelligence investigation.
Fifth, nothing in the 1995 guidelines prevented the sharing of information between criminal and intelligence investigators. Indeed, the guidelines require that FBI foreign intelligence agents share information with criminal investigators and prosecutors whenever they uncover facts suggesting that a crime has been or may be committed. The guidelines did set forth procedures, but those procedures implemented court decisions and, as noted, were reaffirmed by the Ashcroft Justice Department.
The Patriot Act, enacted after 9/11, together with an unprecedented appeal to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, paved the way for the Justice Department to permit largely unrestricted information-sharing between intelligence and criminal investigators because the law changed the legal standard that had given rise to the guidelines in the first place. The Patriot Act says that electronic surveillance can be conducted in the United States against foreign threats as long as a "significant purpose" -- rather than the "primary purpose" -- is to obtain foreign intelligence.
This history has all been well-rehearsed in publicly available briefs, opinions and reports, all available to the 9/11 commission. I have -- consistent with the policy applied to all commissioners -- recused myself from any consideration of my actions or of the department while I was there. My fellow commissioners have spoken for themselves in rejecting the call by a few partisans that I step aside based upon false premises. I have worked hard to help the American public understand what happened on Sept. 11. I intend -- with my brethren on the commission -- to finish the job.
The writer is a member of the 9/11 commission and was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration from March 1994 through March 1997.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
NOTE to Senator John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): Yes, John. This tone is the right tone. Do not flinch, do not parse, do not pull any punches. Speak for the soldiers, speak for the firefighters, speak for the 9/11 Families. Shine the bright white light of truth on the incredible shrinking _resident. But you must be ready to pick up the lightening rod of the Bush cabal's pre-9/11 INCOMPETENCE, you must be ready to call for the RESIGNATIONS of Rice and Ashcroft over 9/11 and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney over Iraq. You must be willing to either speak to their egregious mistakes which will hopefully be documented in the 9/11 Commission's final report due in July, BUT you must also be ready to speak to their egregious mistakes and FAILURES if the 9/11 Commission wimps out or breaks apart. Do not be afraid of speaking about their pre-9/11 failures. Yes, it is prudent to wait for the 9/11 Commission to finish it work and hopefully produce a report worthy of the suffering of the 9/11 Families, but once the end game is played out you must pick up the lighenting rod either way. 9/11 is the shame of this White House, not its strength. The 2004 US Presidential election is a national referendum on the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the incredible shrinking _resident revolves, indeed, around the issue of SECURITY: NATIONAL SECURITY, ECONOMIC SECURITY, SOCIAL SECURITY, ENVIRONMENTAL SECUITY...There is an Electorate Uprising coming in November...
Dab Balz, Washington Post: "Home base for George Bush in this race, as you saw to the nth degree in his press conference, is terror," Kerry told about 100 donors at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York. "Ask him a question and he's going to go to terror," Kerry said. "And everything he did in Iraq, he's going to try to persuade people it has to do with terror, even though everybody here knows that it has nothing whatsoever to do with al Qaeda and everything to do with an agenda that they had preset, determined. That's where they're going to go."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show
Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15951-2004Apr15.html
Bush Uses 'Terror' as A Fallback, Kerry Says U.N. Role in Iraq His Idea, Senator Adds
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 16, 2004; Page A04
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., April 15 -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) accused President Bush on Thursday of exploiting the war on terrorism, saying the president has tried to draw links between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network for political purposes. He vowed to convince voters that he can do a better job than Bush in fighting to keep the country safe.
"Home base for George Bush in this race, as you saw to
the nth degree in his press conference, is terror,"
Kerry told about 100 donors at a Democratic National
Committee fundraiser in New York.
"Ask him a question and he's going to go to terror,"
Kerry said. "And everything he did in Iraq, he's going
to try to persuade people it has to do with terror,
even though everybody here knows that it has nothing
whatsoever to do with al Qaeda and everything to do
with an agenda that they had preset, determined.
That's where they're going to go."
Kerry's criticism drew another swift reply from Bush's
campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, who said Kerry's
"reckless allegation" demonstrates "a profound
misunderstanding" of the global war on terrorism and
the threat facing the United States.
"On a day when Osama bin Laden again threatened the
United States and our allies, it is disturbing to
realize that John Kerry neither recognizes nor
understands the murderous ideology of our enemies and
the threat that they pose to our nation," Racicot said
in a statement.
On a busy day that took Kerry from the morning New
York fundraiser to Washington for an appearance at
Howard University and a private meeting with Cardinal
Theodore E. McCarrick, and then to New Jersey for
another fundraiser, the presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee repeatedly attacked his opponent
and the Republican Party on terrorism, taxes and the
economy.
Continuing to draw differences with Bush over Iraq,
Kerry accused the administration of now embracing his
calls for giving the United Nations a significant role
in overseeing the creation of a new government. But
for the second day in a row, Kerry, who prides himself
on his expertise in foreign policy, repeatedly
misnamed the U.N. special representative, Lakhdar
Brahimi, who is helping to negotiate the terms of the
transfer of power to the Iraqis on June 30. Kerry
referred to him as "Brandini."
"What you're seeing already is the administration is
essentially trying to implement my strategy without
admitting they're implementing my strategy," he said.
"They've got Brandini over there, and he's
negotiating. They've basically turned over the
decision of what they're going to turn over the
government to, to Brandini -- whatever he creates. . .
. And they're desperately trying to avoid a visible
public transfer of authority to the U.N., because that
would be an admission of failure in the way they've
approached it."
Republicans said Kerry's latest criticism of Bush was
especially ill-timed because of the new bin Laden
tape, but Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said the
issue was not whether the nation is united in its
determination to bring bin Laden to justice but what
she called Bush's shifting rationale for going to war
in Iraq.
Saying even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell agreed
there was no link between al Qaeda and Iraq before the
war, Cutter said Iraq has now become a breeding ground
for terrorists. "This president has to decide what the
mission is in Iraq and how we're going to achieve that
goal instead of challenging John Kerry's patriotism
and his commitment to the security of this nation,"
she said.
At Howard University, where Kerry held a
question-and-answer session with students, he sought
to rebut charges by the Bush campaign that he would
raise taxes significantly as president by asserting
that despite Bush's tax cuts, most middle-class
Americans have seen their overall tax burdens rise
because the weak economy has forced state and local
governments to raise taxes and colleges to raise
tuition.
After the campus event, Kerry met with McCarrick for
about 45 minutes, at Kerry's request. Campaign
officials declined to provide any information, with
Cutter calling it "a private meeting between a man and
a member of his clergy."
Kerry, who is likely to be the first Roman Catholic
presidential nominee since John F. Kennedy in 1960,
supports abortion rights, which puts him at odds with
the church's position. McCarrick heads a church task
force addressing the issue of what to do about
politicians who openly disagree with the church's
teaching.
Some Catholic prelates have criticized Kerry, and
Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said he would
not want Kerry to take communion in his archdiocese.
On Easter, McCarrick defended the bishops' right to
criticize Kerry during an interview with "Fox News
Sunday," saying, "It's an issue, yes."
McCarrick said Kerry "certainly should follow the
teachings of the church" but stopped short of saying
he would recommend denying communion to Kerry. "I
would want to get to talk to him, get to see him and
get to understand him before I would make a decision
like that," he said.
Staff researcher Brian Faler contributed to this
report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Retired US Marine General Anthony Zinni's name was
scrawled on the John O'Neill Wall of Heroes during the
long desperate months in 2002-2003 while the Bush
Cabal geared up for its foolish military adventure in
Iraq. Zinni continues to speak out...The Emperor has no uniform...
Rick Rodgers, San Diego Union Tribune: Retired Marine
Gen. Anthony Zinni wondered aloud yesterday how
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be caught off
guard by the chaos in Iraq that has killed nearly 100
Americans in recent weeks and led to his announcement
that 20,000 U.S. troops would be staying there instead
of returning home as planned. "I'm surprised that he
is surprised because there was a lot of us who were
telling him that it was going to be thus," said Zinni,
a Marine for 39 years and the former commander of the
U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems
they were going to see. How could they not?"
For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be unleashed. "I think that some heads should roll over Iraq," Zinni said. "I think the president got some bad advice."
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20040416-9999-7m16zinni.html
Retired general assails U.S. policy on Iraq
Warnings ignored, says retired Marine
By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
April 16, 2004
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni wondered aloud
yesterday how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could
be caught off guard by the chaos in Iraq that has
killed nearly 100 Americans in recent weeks and led to
his announcement that 20,000 U.S. troops would be
staying there instead of returning home as planned.
"I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was
a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to
be thus," said Zinni, a Marine for 39 years and the
former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone
could know the problems they were going to see. How
could they not?"
At a Pentagon news briefing yesterday, Rumsfeld said
he could not have estimated how many troops would be
killed in the past week.
Zinni made his comments during an interview with The
San Diego Union-Tribune before giving a speech last
night at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc
Institute for Peace & Justice as part of its
distinguished lecturer series.
For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that
an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more
dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because
of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be
unleashed.
"I think that some heads should roll over Iraq," Zinni
said. "I think the president got some bad advice."
Known as the "Warrior Diplomat," Zinni is not a peace
activist by nature or training, having led troops in
Vietnam, commanded rescue operations in Somalia and
directed strikes against Iraq and al Qaeda.
He once commanded the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
at Camp Pendleton.
Out of uniform, Zinni was a troubleshooter for the
U.S. government in Africa, Asia and Europe and served
as special envoy to the Middle East under the Bush
administration for a time before his reservations over
the Iraq war and its aftermath caused him to resign
and oppose it.
Not even Zinni's resumé could shield him from the
accusations that followed.
"I've been called a traitor and a turncoat for
mentioning these things," said Zinni, 60. The problems
in Iraq are being caused, he said, by poor planning
and shortsightedness, such as disbanding the Iraqi
army and being unable to provide security.
Zinni said the United States must now rely on the U.N.
to pull its "chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq."
"We're betting on the U.N., who we blew off and
ridiculed during the run-up to the war," Zinni said.
"Now we're back with hat in hand. It would be funny if
not for the lives lost."
Several things have to happen to get Iraq back on
course, whether the U.N. decides to step in or not,
Zinni said.
Improving security for American forces and the Iraqi
people is at the top of the list followed closely by
helping the working class with economic projects.
But it's not the lack of a comprehensive American plan
for Iraq nor the surging violence that has cost allied
troops their lives – including about 30 Camp Pendleton
Marines – that most concerns Zinni.
"In the end, the Iraqis themselves have to want to
rebuild their country more than we do," Zinni said.
"But I don't see that right now. I see us doing
everything.
"I spent two years in Vietnam, and I've seen this
movie before," he said. "They have to be willing to do
more or else it is never going to work."
Last night at the Kroc institute during his speech
"From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table:
Preventing Deadly Conflict," Zinni detailed the
approach he believes the United States should take in
the Middle East.
He told an overflow crowd that the United States tries
to grapple with individual issues in Middle East
instead of seeing them as elements of a broader
question.
"We need to step back and get a grand strategy," he
said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Rogers: (760) 476-8212;
rick.rogers@uniontrib.com
NOTE to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): Thank you for this brave statement...Unlike so many others, you have shown courage and defiance. It is of vital importance to the future of this country and the world itself that you remain steadfast. You are the right man for this hour, despite their attempts to portray you as a Dole or a Dukakis...Remember, John, where you came from...You are a WARRIOR, you are a PROSECUTOR, you are a man of toughness and compassion...Remember who you are, and the US electorate will respond to you no matter what assails them between now and the day of reckoning in November...
Reuters: Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry, lashing out at the White House's "twisted sense of ethics and morality," accused Republicans on Friday of distorting his record and attacking his patriotism..."I'm tired of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a bunch of people who went out of their way to avoid their chance to serve when they had the chance," the Massachusetts senator said. "I'm not going to listen to them talk to me about patriotism. I've seen how these people in the White House today, in their twisted sense of ethics and morality, don't think twice about challenging John McCain and what happened to him as a prisoner of war," he said in reference to attacks by President Bush (news - web sites) in 2000 on his Republican primary rival McCain, an Arizona senator.
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040416/pl_nm/campaign_kerry_dc
Kerry Hits Back at White House, Defends Patriotism
1 hour, 58 minutes ago Add Politics to My Yahoo!
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry (news - web sites), lashing out at the White House's "twisted sense of ethics and morality," accused Republicans on Friday of distorting his record and attacking his patriotism.
Kerry, at an outdoor rally on the University of Pittsburgh campus, used an American flag and the national anthem to fire back at Republicans who charge he is weak on defense for voting against some weapons systems and an $87 billion bill to pay for operations in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites).
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, pointed out Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and political adviser Karl Rove did not serve in the military.
"I'm tired of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and a bunch of people who went out of their way to avoid their chance to serve when they had the chance," the Massachusetts senator said. "I'm not going to listen to them talk to me about patriotism."
"I've seen how these people in the White House today, in their twisted sense of ethics and morality, don't think twice about challenging John McCain and what happened to him as a prisoner of war," he said in reference to attacks by President Bush (news - web sites) in 2000 on his Republican primary rival McCain, an Arizona senator.
Kerry, who has tried to make his military experience a centerpiece of his campaign, is in a tight battle with Bush for the White House more than seven months before the November election.
Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, said Kerry's judgment in his voting record on defense and security was in question, not his patriotism.
"The fundamental difference in this election will be between President Bush's steady leadership in the war on terror and John Kerry's consistent political opportunism on the war on terror," Schmidt said.
Kerry has come under heavy attack from Bush and Republicans, who have launched tens of millions of dollars of advertising trying to paint him as a waffling, traditional tax-and-spend Democrat.
QUOTES STAR SPANGLED BANNER
"They don't think twice about trying to pretend to America that I somehow don't care about the defense of our nation," Kerry said, paraphrasing wording in the Star Spangled Banner including reference to "political bombs" bursting in the air.
"When I look up, that flag is still there and it belongs to all Americans," he said, pointing to a flag near the stage. "Not to them, not to a party. It belongs to us."
Kerry told the crowd of more than 5,000 that "asking questions about the direction of our country is patriotism."
The Bush campaign said on Thursday that it is cutting back its advertising by two-thirds, which Kerry said was designed to "distort" his record. Kerry told reporters he believed he had withstood the early Republican charge.
"They're out 50 million bucks and they got nothing for it," Kerry told reporters on his campaign plane on Thursday night.
The rally in Pittsburgh, which featured a performance by rocker Jon Bon Jovi, concluded a week-long tour of college campuses where Kerry plugged his programs to make college more affordable.
He appeared in Pittsburgh on the same day the powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, opened its annual convention in town. More than 50,000 gun-lovers packed the downtown convention center to sample what organizers billed as "Four Acres of Guns and Gear."
Cheney will make the keynote speech at the convention on Saturday, but Kerry did not mention the gun issue during his appearance.
The NRA has not made an endorsement yet but is certain to back Bush in November over Kerry, who supports the federal ban on assault weapons and a waiting period and background checks for the purchase of handguns.
The incredible shrinking _resident led the US into
this foolish military adventure with LIES about Saddam
possessing WMDs and being in cahoots with Osama bin
Laden. Of course, there were no WMDs. (And none have been
planted -- yet.) Nor was Saddam ever in cahoots with
Osama bin Laden -- indeed, they were sworn enemies.
(No "intelligence breakdowns," the Bush cabal was
warned of these facts by the UN, our allies and our
own CIA.) In painful irony, however the Bush cabal's
disasterous occupation and the neo con wet dream that
spawned it has turned Iraq into an Al Qaeda breeding
ground, launching pad and barrel for shooting US
soldiers. It may also lead to WMDs in the hands of Al
Qaeda. But will the "US mainstream news media" (e.g.,
the cable news networks and their propapunditgandists)
or your elected representatives in Congress have the
courage, indendence or clarity of mind to provide the
CONTEXT and the CONTINUITY needed to grasp the
implications of this unnecessary Mega-Mogadishu and
all that will flow from it? Unlikely. Will Sen. John
F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta)? He better.
Associated Press: Some Iraqi nuclear facilities appear to be unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrapyards.
The International Atomic Energy Agency sent a letter
to U.S. officials three weeks ago informing them of
the findings. The information was also sent to the
U.N. Security Council in a letter from its director,
Mohamed ElBaradei, that was circulated Thursday.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3981804,00.html
Probe Shows Iraq Nuke Facilities Unguarded
Thursday April 15, 2004 8:16 PM
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Some Iraqi nuclear facilities
appear to be unguarded, and radioactive materials are
being taken out of the country, the U.N.'s nuclear
watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite
images and equipment that has turned up in European
scrapyards. The International Atomic Energy Agency
sent a letter to U.S. officials three weeks ago
informing them of the findings. The information was
also sent to the U.N. Security Council in a letter
from its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, that was
circulated Thursday.
The IAEA is waiting for a reply from the United
States, which is leading the coalition administering
Iraq, officials said.
The United Sattes has virtually cut off
information-sharing with the IAEA since invading Iraq
in March 2002 on the premise that the country was
hiding weapons of mass destruction.
No such weapons have been found, and arms control
officials now worry the war and its chaotic aftermath
may have increased chances that terrorists could get
their hands on materials used for unconventional
weapons or that civilians may be unknowingly exposed
to radioactive materials.
According to ElBaradei's letter, satellite imagery
shows ``extensive removal of equipment and in some
instances, removal of entire buildings,'' in Iraq.
In addition, ``large quanitities of scrap, some of it
contaminated, have been transfered out of Iraq from
sites'' previously monitored by the IAEA.
In January, the IAEA confirmed that Iraq was the
likely source of radioactive material known as
yellowcake that was found in a shipment of scrap metal
at Rotterdam harbor.
Yellowcake, or uranium oxide, could be used to build a
nuclear weapon, although it would take tons of the
substance refined with sophisticated technology to
harvest enough uranium for a single bomb.
The yellowcake in the shipment was natural uranium ore
which probably came from a known mine in Iraq that was
active before the 1991 Gulf War.
The yellowcake was uncovered Dec. 16 by
Rotterdam-based scrap metal company Jewometaal, which
had received it in a shipment of scrap metal from a
dealer in Jordan.
A small number of Iraqi missile engines have also
turned up in European ports, IAEA officials said.
``It is not clear whether the removal of these items
has been the result of looting activities in the
aftermath of the recent war in Iraq or as part of
systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of their
locations,'' ElBaradei wrote to the council.
The IAEA has been unable to investigate, monitor or
protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the U.S. invaded
the country in March 2003. The United States has
refused to allow the IAEA or other U.N. weapons
inspectors into the country, claiming that the
coalition has taken over responsibility for illict
weapons searches.
So far those searches have come up empty-handed and
the CIA's first chief weapons hunter has said he no
longer believes Iraq had weapons just prior to the
invasion.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
What is happening in this country? The complicity and
capitulation of the "US mainstream news media" has
never been more starkly revealed. The story of John
O'Neill is not the only glaring ommission from the
line of questioning followed by the 9/11 Commission
during its public hearings on the pre-9/11 activities
of the DoJ, the FBI and the CIA. The story of Sibel
Edmonds and her colleague also went unexplored.
Richard Ben-Veniste (D-Truth and Reconciliation), who
all too often seems to be the only one of the
Commissioners with any sense of what the real issues
look like, did invoke the name of Sibel Edmonds as
well as the name of John O'Neill, signally the LNS
hopes that there will be substantive treatment of both
of these compelling stories in the 9/11 Commission's
final report...It is unfortunate that the US has to
rely on the courage, common sense and caring of the
9/11 families to lead the national debate, but that is
where we are...Unless the 9/11 Commission surprises
soon or is really holding its fire for the final
report, the verdict of history will be that they
choose to shore up the Establishment and the current
White House, instead of fighting for the future of the
country (like John O'Neill, Sibel Edmonds, Colleen
Rawley, Richard Clark and yes the 9/11 Families
Steering Committee) by being willing to retell the
recent past without flinching. The fate of so much and
so many hangs in the balance...
James Ridgeway, Village Voice: Despite the best
efforts of the Jersey Girls, leaders of the 9-11
Family Steering Committee, no member of the 9-11
commission this afternoon asked FBI chief Robert
Mueller embarrassing questions about two former FBI
translators who claim to have knowledge bearing on the
attacks. One of them says she is being suppressed and
can't talk because Attorney general John Ashcroft has
placed a gag order on her. Instead, the commissioners
lauded Mueller for his running of the agency, which
only yesterday they were bitterly attacking as
incompetent and ineffective. Today one commissioner
after another lavished praise on Mueller.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0415/mondo10.php
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
FBI Whistle-Blowers Go Unheard: 9-11 Commission disregards survivor families' interests
April 14th, 2004 4:30 PM
Plane Truth Among Questions Still Up In The Air Is Why
Our Jet Fighters Weren't
Shock and Disgust British officials blast U.S. for its
'HAM-fisted overkill' in Iraq
Daily Condi A closer look at Rice's testimony
Say What?
Breaking: Correcting Condi
Condi's Pre-Testimony Primer Looking ahead to
Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9-11 panel
9-11 Hearings Get Partisan "Prior to 9-11, the FBI did
not have an adequate ability to know what it knew."
ASHINGTON D.C.—Despite the best efforts of the Jersey
Girls, leaders of the 9-11 Family Steering Committee,
no member of the 9-11 commission this afternoon asked
FBI chief Robert Mueller embarrassing questions about
two former FBI translators who claim to have knowledge
bearing on the attacks. One of them says she is being
suppressed and can't talk because Attorney general
John Ashcroft has placed a gag order on her.
Instead, the commissioners lauded Mueller for his
running of the agency, which only yesterday they were
bitterly attacking as incompetent and ineffective.
Today one commissioner after another lavished praise
on Mueller.
Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste briefly alluded to
accusations by the translators, and said he would
pursue it in private.
In particular the Jersey Girls wanted the commission
to closely question Mueller about Sibel Edmonds, a
former FBI translator, who is openly challenging the
agency's veracity in the 9-11 investigation. Attorney
General John Ashcroft has put a gag order on Edmonds
by making her internal complaint to the inspector
general secret. Soon after she came out publicly,
Edmonds was fired.
She subsequently told the commission that the FBI had
information that an attack using airplanes was being
planned before September 11. "Some of our group has
met several times with Edmonds, and from what we can
tell, we think her claims are extremely credible,"
Lori van Auken, one of the leaders of the Jersey
Girls, told The Voice. "So much so that some of our
group hand walked her in to testify before the 9-11
commissioners."
They are also eager to find out more about the
unconfirmed story of a second FBI linguist, Behrooz
Sarshar, who claims he translated for an FBI informant
with information on a supposed Al Qaeda plot to attack
the U.S. with planes back in April 2001. "Some of the
group have also met with Sarshar," said van Auken.
"His claims seem to back up what Edmonds is saying."
Edmonds came to attention most recently following
Condoleezza Rice's assertion in a Washington Post
op-ed piece that the White House had no specific
information on a domestic threat or one involving
planes as "an outrageous lie. And documents can prove
it's a lie," according to Edmonds.
Edmonds, a Turkish American, has been a citizen for 10
years and speaks Farsi, Turkish, and Arabic. The FBI
assigned her to translate documents seized by agents
in its post–9-11 probe. "President Bush said they had
no specific information about September 11, and that's
accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific
information about use of airplanes, that an attack was
on the way two or three months beforehand and that
several people were already in the country by May of
2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat
we were facing."
In 2002, then–Senate Judiciary Committee chairman
Patrick Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley, a senior
member, asked John Ashcroft about Edmonds's statements
to the committee in a closed briefing that she was
told by a superior "not to translate important,
intelligence-related information, instead limiting her
translation to unimportant and innocuous information."
She also claimed her superior had previous contacts
with one of the people whose work she had been
prevented from translating.
The FBI, the senators noted at the time, "verified
that this monitor indeed failed to translate certain
material properly, but has attributed the failure to a
lack of training as opposed to a malicious act."
The Justice Department inspector general has been
looking into the case over the last two years, and
still has not produced a report. Ashcroft, on the
advice of Mueller in 2002, invoked the "state secret
privilege," making the entire matter secret, "to
prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive
national security information." That effectively put a
gag order on Edmonds.
Among other things, she now suggests one translator
sent to Guantánamo by the FBI "was not even qualified
in basic English." She is questioning whether
translators handling terrorism-related information are
so poorly trained they can't make competent sense of
what they are translating.
A second FBI whistle-blower case involves another
former FBI translator, Behrooz Sarshar, who left the
agency in 2002. He supposedly translated an interview
between an Iranian source, once a member of the Shah's
secret police, with two FBI agents in which the
informant told the agents he had heard in Afghanistan
of an Al Qaeda plot to attack the U.S. in a suicide
mission with planes. Details of the story were first
reported by the WorldNetDaily website.
Eight more US soldiers have died in Iraq, bringing the
toll to 93 for April so far. For what?
You will hear much about involving the UN from both
the incredibly shrinking _resident and the
shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Tony-Blair as well as
Secretary of Stone Calm 'Em Powell...But here is what
the UN is saying about them...It is not likely that
you will hear this harsh criticism on the air waves,
or from the forked tongues of the propapunditgandists
who carry the Bush cabal's water...The ONLY way out of
this quagmire is REGIME CHANGE here in the US...Our
NATIONAL SECURITY, ECONOMY SECURITY and ENVIRONMENTAL
SECURITY depend on it...
Jonathan Steele, Guardian: The UN's adviser on Iraq made a surprising attack on Washington's handling of its year-long occupation last night, condemning the detention of prisoners without trial or charge and offering a withering analysis of America's governance of the country. Lakhdar Brahimi, a respected veteran diplomat who used to be the senior UN representative
in Afghanistan and now serves as special adviser on
Iraq to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, also
criticized the Americans for their onslaught on
Falluja.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/0415-07.htm
Published on Thursday April 15, 2004 by the
Guardian/UK
Annan Adviser Attacks American Occupation and Bremer's Tactics
by Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
The UN's adviser on Iraq made a surprising attack on
Washington's handling of its year-long occupation last
night, condemning the detention of prisoners without
trial or charge and offering a withering analysis of
America's governance of the country. Lakhdar Brahimi,
a respected veteran diplomat who used to be the senior
UN representative in Afghanistan and now serves as
special adviser on Iraq to the UN secretary general,
Kofi Annan, also criticized the Americans for their
onslaught on Falluja.
"The cordoning off and siege of a city is not
acceptable," he said. His comments, on a day when the
US said that another eight of its soldiers had died,
were unexpectedly sharp.
Mr Brahimi is known as a cautious diplomat in public,
but he made it clear he was speaking in the name of
most Iraqis.
After a 10-day visit to Iraq, he prefaced his
catalogue of American mistakes by saying: "We heard of
many grievances which need to be addressed."
Mr Brahimi made it clear he thought it a grave mistake
for the US to have dismissed thousands of qualified
professional people, including teachers, doctors and
engineers, simply because of their links with the now
outlawed Ba'ath party.
He said sacking former army officers had caused
problems.
There was only a crumb of comfort for Paul Bremer, the
US administrator of Iraq, who is reeling from the
hostage seizures, the collapse of security in large
parts of the country, the failure to subdue the
largely Sunni city of Falluja, and the uprising by
radical Shi'a militias, all in the space of the past
two weeks.
Mr Brahimi gave a clear endorsement of the US plan to
appoint a prime minister as Iraq's chief executive and
disband the governing council and supported the June
30 deadline for the handover.
Most of the 25 members of the council appointed by the
US last July have been arguing for it to double its
size and remain after the transfer of sovereignty.
They will find it hard to resist their demise now it
has UN backing.
Massoud Barzani, the council's current president, who
stood alongside Mr Brahimi at yesterday's press
conference, joked nervously when asked if he agreed.
"Our life began before the establishment of the
governing council. Our life will continue," he said.
Mr Brahimi said he was "confident" a caretaker
government could be in place by June 30. He suggested
a national conference should be held in July to
promote "national dialogue and national
reconciliation." It could elect a consultative
assembly to work alongside the new government until
elections next January.
His visit was severely restricted by the collapse of
security and his team only managed to visit the
northern city of Mosul. He made it clear that if the
UN returns to help prepare for elections, it will need
security guarantees.
As he made his comments there were more clashes
between Sunni insurgents and US marines in Falluja.
Witnesses said an air strike hit the Hay al-Dubat area
at dusk. Four civilians and two rebels died in
overnight fighting.
Iraqi mediators said they had extended the
much-violated truce for 48 hours. They had achieved an
agreement under which the Iraqi police would return to
duty and US forces would withdraw.
Army officers said eight more US soldiers had died in
combat, bringing to 93 the number killed in action in
April.
In Baghdad US soldiers fired on looters raiding a
military lorry, killing or wounding several. In Mosul,
four civilians were killed by a rocket aimed at a
police station. A rocket hit the Sheraton hotel in
central Baghdad yesterday, where foreign contractors
are staying, but caused no casualties.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
###
Even with a tightly scripted and docile "White House Press corp" to provide comic relief, the incredibly shrinking _resident is a liability and only hurts his cause whenever he opens his mouth. So what would drive Karl Rove to dare putting the incredibly shrinking _resident on prime time TV? Fear of this story breaking out on the air waves. We understand why the _resident got on the boob tube that night, to provide cover for Ashcroft, but what we still do not understand is why the 9/11 Commission held its fire. We hope it is because they hae their eyes on the prize, and want to deliver a real report to the US electorate and get it out there in print and on-line before the national referendum on the incredibly shrinking _resident's CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER in November.
Cam Simpson, Chicago Tribune: Former interim FBI chief Thomas Pickard testified Tuesday that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft didn't want to hear about terrorism when Pickard tried to brief him during the summer of 2001, as intelligence reports about terrorist threats were reaching a historic level... Pickard told commissioners that Ashcroft told him he did not want to hear about terrorist threats after just two briefings in the summer of 2001... But Pickard wasn't the only one who portrayed Ashcroft as disengaged on terrorism. Commission investigators said Dale Watson, the former head of counterterrorism at the FBI, told them "that he almost fell out of his chair" when he saw a May 10, 2001, memo from Ashcroft on Justice Department budget priorities "because it made no mention of counterterrorism."... Investigators also said Ashcroft's budget for fiscal year 2003 "did not increase counterterrorism funding over its pending proposal for fiscal year 2002." They also said Ashcroft turned down an appeal from Pickard for more funding--an appeal that Ashcroft formally rejected on Sept. 10, 2001.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://truthout.org/docs_04/041504D.shtml
Ashcroft Ignored Terrorism, Panel Told
By Cam Simpson
The Chicago Tribune
Wednesday 14 April 2004
WASHINGTON - Former interim FBI chief Thomas Pickard testified Tuesday that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft didn't want to hear about terrorism when Pickard tried to brief him during the summer of 2001, as intelligence reports about terrorist threats were reaching a historic level.
Ashcroft flatly denied the charge Tuesday in testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks and blamed the Clinton administration for creating bureaucratic hurdles that impeded the nation's defense against the assaults. He portrayed himself as taking decisive action against Osama bin Laden and portrayed his predecessors as weak, charging that former President Bill Clinton failed to authorize bin Laden's assassination.
Despite his sometimes pointed attacks, Ashcroft told commissioners that his goal was "not to add to the nation's considerable stock of pain, but to heal our wounds."
His nationally televised, sworn testimony capped a day in which official after official blamed other people and factors beyond their control for problems that commissioners believe made the nation vulnerable to the worst terrorist attacks in its history.
In addition to his testimony about Ashcroft, Pickard said he didn't know why his 56 local FBI chiefs across the nation didn't do more in the summer of 2001 after he asked them to do so, though commissioners said virtually none of those officials recalled such orders.
Louis Freeh, who headed the agency for almost eight years before retiring in June 2001, blamed legal impediments and a lack of resources, while also suggesting the CIA should have done more to alert him that two Al Qaeda members who would become hijackers were in the country.
Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, said, "We didn't have enough people to do the job and we didn't have enough money--by magnitudes."
The commission members also heard their own investigators lay out a series of missteps at the FBI that Thomas Kean, the panel's chairman, called "an indictment of the FBI" that stretched "over a long period of time." But witnesses rejected calls for the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency, with Freeh saying that "you would, in effect, be establishing a secret police."
The possible creation of such an agency is expected to be a hot topic of debate when CIA Director George Tenet and current FBI Director Robert Mueller testify before the commission Wednesday.
In a prime time news conference Tuesday, President Bush said he would be open to any suggestion about structural reforms. "What I'm saying is, let the discussions begin, and I won't prejudge the conclusion," Bush said.
"I will encourage and foster these kinds of discussions, because one of the jobs of the president is to leave behind a legacy that will enable other presidents to better deal with the threat that we face."
Ashcroft dove straight into one of the debates that has played out before the commission--whether the Clinton White House authorized the assassination of bin Laden or merely said that he could be killed only in the event that an attempt to capture him turned into a gunfight.
`Web of Requirements'
"Let me be clear," Ashcroft said, "my thorough review revealed no covert action program to kill bin Laden."
Instead, agents and operatives were "crippled by a snarled web of requirements, restrictions and regulations that prevented decisive action," Ashcroft testified, adding that even "if they could have penetrated bin Laden's training camp, they would have needed a battery of attorneys to approve the capture."
Ashcroft testified that little more than a month after assuming office he told National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that he wanted to "fix covert authorities to allow for decisive, lethal action" against bin Laden.
But under questioning, Ashcroft couldn't point to anything he did to pursue or enact such a plan after his meeting with Rice.
He said he believed Tenet was handling it as part of a broader review.
And two commissioners, Democrat Richard Ben-Veniste and Republican Fred Fielding, suggested that the panel recently received a previously undisclosed--and highly classified--document showing that Clinton may have authorized just such a strike.
Ashcroft said he was unaware of it. And despite what he called his own thorough review, Ashcroft acknowledged under questioning from Fielding that he couldn't recall what documents he was given, where they came from or whether his staff briefed him on the issue.
Pickard told commissioners that Ashcroft told him he did not want to hear about terrorist threats after just two briefings in the summer of 2001.
But when it was his turn, Ashcroft fired back, testifying, "I did never speak to him saying that I did not want to hear about terrorism."
Ashcroft, answering extensive questions in public for the first time about his actions before the attacks, also said: "I care greatly about the safety and security of the American people and was very interested in terrorism, and specifically interrogated him [Pickard] about threats to the American people."
Ashcroft's former deputy, Larry Thompson, told reporters after Tuesday's hearing that he did not recall Ashcroft cutting off discussions of terrorism during any of the briefings he attended with the men.
Ashcroft Called Disengaged
But Pickard wasn't the only one who portrayed Ashcroft as disengaged on terrorism.
Commission investigators said Dale Watson, the former head of counterterrorism at the FBI, told them "that he almost fell out of his chair" when he saw a May 10, 2001, memo from Ashcroft on Justice Department budget priorities "because it made no mention of counterterrorism."
The day before, Ashcroft had testified at a Capitol Hill budget hearing that terrorism was his top priority.
Investigators also said Ashcroft's budget for fiscal year 2003 "did not increase counterterrorism funding over its pending proposal for fiscal year 2002." They also said Ashcroft turned down an appeal from Pickard for more funding--an appeal that Ashcroft formally rejected on Sept. 10, 2001.
But Ashcroft testified that he requested 50 percent increases two years in a row for the FBI's troubled technology program.
When he wasn't on the defensive, Ashcroft was pointing at his predecessors.
He said the Clinton Justice Department never briefed him during or after the transition between the administrations on a counterterrorism plan written after successful efforts to detect and disrupt plots during the millennium celebration.
He saved his sharpest criticism for legal barriers that he said blocked intelligence and law-enforcement officials from sharing critical information. Although previous witnesses also have pointed to these problems, including Rice, Ashcroft blamed Clinton's Justice Department for creating "a wall" separating law enforcement and intelligence operations.
He called it "the single greatest structural cause" of Sept. 11.
Ashcroft also testified that "somebody did make these rules. Someone built this wall."
In dramatic fashion, he then declassified a 1994 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, a Democrat on the 10-member panel who was the deputy to Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno.
He said Gorelick's memo, written to offer guidance on a pending terrorism prosecution in New York, created the "basic architecture for the wall."
Gorelick did not question Ashcroft about his actions or his assertions. Commission staff members said she has formally removed herself from any discussions of actions that she was personally involved with.
But Slade Gorton, a panel member and former Republican senator, sharply questioned Ashcroft about what he did to take down such barriers before the attacks during his first seven months in office.
Gorton also cited an Aug. 6, 2001, memo in which Ashcroft's deputy left the same rules largely intact. Staff investigators said there were no substantial changes under Ashcroft until after the attacks.
And more and more stringent requirements also came from a special federal court regulating intelligence, investigators found.
`Totally Dedicated People'
While witnesses were pointing fingers, Kean, the panel's chairman, was zeroing in on the countless missteps at the FBI that he said were identified by his investigators.
Although he said he knew there "are totally dedicated people" throughout the FBI, he also said, "The agency doesn't work very well, and hasn't worked very well for a long time."
Reno said she recognized problems at the FBI and tried to work through them, despite resistance at the agency, which has zealously guarded its independence.
She said she passed a stack of memos to Ashcroft on the issue during the transition. But she also testified, "I don't blame anybody. I'm responsible. If somebody wants to be responsible it's going to be me because I tried to work through these issues while I was attorney general and time ran out on me."
Freeh said the nation was not prepared to properly confront the threat until after the Sept. 11 attacks, and defended his former agency against virtually all of the commission's attacks.
Freeh said he believed there was one thing that could have prevented the assaults, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
"Sept. 11, had we had the right sources overseas or in the United States, could have been prevented," he said. "We did not have those sources. We did not have that telephone call. We didn't have that e-mail intercept that could've done the job."
Black, who headed the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, echoed Freeh and others by pointing to a lack of resources. He said the CIA only got new infusions of cash when it worked so hard that all funds were exhausted, or when it was too late.
"It's a constant track," he said. "Either you run out, or people die. When people die, you get more money."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/11 Commission: FBI `Hobbled'
Two 9/11 commission staff reports released Tuesday describe the FBI's difficulties in focusing its resources on counterterrorism.
May 1998
FBI issues a five-year strategic plan making national and economic security, including counterterrorism, its top priority for the first time in FBI history.
1998-2001
FBI's counterterrorism spending remains constant after the bureau's counterterrorism budget tripled in the mid-1990s.
1999
Counterterrorism and counterintelligence divisions created to focus FBI on national security missions.
2000
External review of the FBI finds that twice as many agents are devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism.
May 10, 2001
Justice Department identifies reducing gun violence and reducing drug trafficking as top priorities for the 2003 budget. The commission's staff reports that FBI counterterrorism head Dale Watson "almost fell out of his chair when he saw the memo because it made no mention of counterterrorism."
Summer 2001
According to one staff report, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said "he did not want to hear this information anymore" when Thomas Pickard tried to brief him about terrorist threats. Ashcroft denied Pickard's account.
Sept. 10, 2001
Ashcroft rejects interim FBI director Thomas Pickard's appeal for further counterterrorism funding in the budget.
-------
Source: 9/11 commission staff statements Nos. 9 and 10.
-------
Jump to TO Features for Thursday April 15, 2004
It's the Media, Stupid.
Norman Solomon, www.commondreams.org: When the anchor of public television's main news program goes out of his way to tell viewers that he's setting the record straight about a recent historic event, the people watching are apt to assume that they're getting accurate information. But with war intensifying in Iraq, a bizarre episode raises some very troubling concerns about the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
Break the Bush Cabal Stranglehold on the "US Mainstream News Media," Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0415-09.htm
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Featured Views
Published on Thursday, April 15, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
How the "NewsHour" Changed History
by Norman Solomon
When the anchor of public television's main news program goes out of his way to tell viewers that he's setting the record straight about a recent historic event, the people watching are apt to assume that they're getting accurate information. But with war intensifying in Iraq, a bizarre episode raises some very troubling concerns about the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
Here's what happened:
During a panel discussion April 7 on the NewsHour, while battles raged in close to a dozen Iraqi cities, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel referred to the American authorities' closure of a newspaper that had served as a megaphone for the anti-occupation Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr. "The immediate problem we have to remember is we started this ... with the aggressive policies towards Sadr that came from us, shutting down his press," Col. Sam Gardiner said.
The program's anchor spoke next.
Jim Lehrer: "The reason we shut down his press is because it was calling for violence and anti-American --"
Col. Gardiner: "Sure."
Lehrer: "I just want to get that on the record."
But Lehrer's comment -- ostensibly setting the record straight -- was at odds with the available factual record about Sadr's newspaper. In sync with other news accounts, the New York Times had reported two days earlier that "the paper did not print any calls for attacks."
I contacted the NewsHour and asked whether Lehrer's statement had been based on information contrary to what had been reported in the April 5 edition of the Times. If so, I asked for any citation that backed up his assertion. Or, if Lehrer did not have such a citation, I asked if there were plans for an on-air correction to set the factual record straight on the program (which reaches nearly 3 million viewers across the United States each night).
In reply to my inquiry, a NewsHour spokesperson cited two articles: A Chicago Tribune piece, dated April 5, said that "the pro-Sadr newspaper Al Hawza was shut down ... for allegedly printing false information that incited violence against the coalition." And an April 6 New York Times piece said that the Sadr newspaper "was closed last week after American authorities accused it of printing lies that incited violence."
The NewsHour spokesperson, Lete Childs, told me: "I hope these two articles help you understand the citations for Jim Lehrer's statement to Col. Gardiner."
But the two articles that the NewsHour cited only seemed to underscore the disconnect. Apparently, the NewsHour staff hadn't been able to find a single source to back up Lehrer's on-air statement that "the reason we shut down his press is because it was calling for violence." And the NewsHour did not provide any explanation for why, in sharp contrast to the flat-out report in the New York Times that "the paper did not print any calls for attacks," Lehrer had gone on the air and claimed that it did.
I reached the reporter in Baghdad who'd written the Chicago Tribune article, Vincent Schodolski, and asked if he was aware of any evidence that the American authorities shut down Al Hawza because it was "calling for violence." Schodolski replied: "I have no other citations than the reasons given by the CPA itself." My search of the official Web site for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq, turned up briefings and news releases with references to Sadr's newspaper -- but no backup for what Lehrer had said on the air.
At a March 30 press conference, Dan Senor of the CPA charged that Al Hawza had tried to "incite violence." That was very much in keeping with what the April 5 New York Times reported -- that while "the American authorities said false reporting, including articles that ascribed suicide bombings to Americans, could touch off violence," nevertheless "the paper did not print any calls for attacks."
Lehrer's refusal to correct his evident error is especially striking because he had emphasized his incorrect statement on the air by immediately adding: "I just want to get that on the record." (My request to a NewsHour spokesperson for a direct comment from Lehrer did not yield any statement from him.)
When I asked whether a decision had been made, one way or the other, about doing a correction on the NewsHour to set the factual record straight, the last piece of stone in the damage-control wall moved into place. I got the message: "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer stands behind the 'Iraq: What Now?' discussion segment from April 7 and will not be making a correction."
Journalists should scrutinize U.S. government spin, not contribute to it.
Here we have what some people believe to be the nation's most credible news program compounding a factual error by refusing to make a correction.
First-rate journalists change history. But not this way.
Norman Solomon is co-author, with foreign correspondent Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You."
###
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The 9/11 Commission's two days of public hearings on
the pre-9/11 activities of US DoJ, FBI and CIA have
concluded. The name of John O'Neill was bravely
invoked by Richard Ben-Veniste (D-Truth and
Reconciliation) at the beginning of Tuesday's hearing,
but that's it. There was no exploration over the
disturbing questions that swirl around John O'Neill's
resignation from FBI Counterterrorism in the Summer of
2001. There is nothing more disturbing in all of this
miserable business. What happened on Tuesday, April
13, 2004? Why didn't the 9/11 Commission lower the
boom on Attorney General John Ashcroft (R-Misery) for
his well-documented indifference to the threat from Al
Qaeda prior to 9/11? Why is the "US mainstream news
media" ignoring the fact the either Ashcroft or his
chief accuser Tom Pickard perjured themselves? And
most importantly, why wasn't the story of John O'Neill
examined in public and under oath? What is on the 28
blacked out pages of the congressional 9/11 report?
Even the Saudis have asked to have it declassified.
What has happened in this country? If the "US
mainstream news media" is too timid or too complicit
to provide you the CONTEXT and CONTINUITY you need,
the LNS will, if the 9/11 Commission is unable to open
this file, the LNS will...Here is the October 2002 PBS
Frontline documentary on John O'Neill. It is
excellent, and sadly it is all there is except for a
New Yorker (which I will also forward you this
morning) and the French best-seller Forbidden
Truth..."Out, out damn spot!"
"The Man Who Knew," PBS Frontline: John had heard the alarm bells, too, and we used to talk about it. And he knew that there was a lot of noise out there and that there were a lot of warnings, a lot of red flags, and that it was at a similar level that they were hearing before the millennium, which was an indication that there was something going on. And yet
he felt that he was frozen out, that he was not in a
capacity to really do anything about it anymore
because of his relationship with the FBI. So it was a
source of real anguish for him.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat (again!)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/etc/script.html
Program #2103
"The Man Who Knew"
Air date: October 3, 2002
The Man Who Knew
Produced and Directed by:
MICHAEL KIRK
Co-Produced and Reported by:
JIM GILMORE
Written by
MICHAEL KIRK
September 11
3,025 Murdered
One of them knew it was going to happen
JERRY HAUER, Dir. Emergency Mgmt. NYC '96-'00: The
night before he died, he had said to me, "We're due,
and we're due for something big."
NARRATOR: His name was John O'Neill. And long before
the world knew about Osama bin Laden, FBI agent
O'Neill was obsessed with him.
TEDDY LEB: He was among the first people to see the
bin Laden threat.
NARRATOR: He warned of Al Qaeda.
TEDDY LEB: He said that we're at war with these
people.
NARRATOR: He warned of the threat to the United
States.
TEDDY LEB: And we better not take them for granted
because they are here to hurt us.
NARRATOR: But people at FBI headquarters thought John
O'Neill was too much of a maverick and they stopped
listening to him.
JOE CANTAMESSA, FBI Special Agent NYC: You could be
flagged as a problem, and your career could pretty
much be over.
NARRATOR: Last summer, O'Neill left the FBI and took a
new job as head of security at the World Trade Center.
JOE CANTAMESSA: Of all the places to go to work, and
of all the ways that you could lose your life.
NARRATOR: Tonight FRONTLINE investigates the internal
power struggle at the heart of the FBI's failure on
September 11th.
NARRATOR: There was after the horror of September 11th
the inevitable question: Did anyone in the government
know?
The move from Chicago to headquarters was a big
promotion for Special Agent John O'Neill. He'd be the
chief of the counterterrorism section. He drove all
night from Chicago and went straight to the office on
a Sunday morning.
September 5, 1995
He'd just arrived when the White House called.
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
It was a Sunday morning and I was in my office and I
was reading intelligence. And I saw a report that
indicated that the man who had plotted the World Trade
Center bombing in 1993, the ringleader, Ramzi Ahmed
Yousef --
Subject: Ramzi Ahmed Yousef
Plots:
WTC bombing
Pope assassination
Pacific airline bombings
Place of Birth:
Kuwait?
Pakistan?
Iraq?
UAE?
RICHARD CLARK: He was about to move within Pakistan.
And there was a small window, a closing window, to
catch him. And so thinking there might be somebody at
the FBI on a Sunday morning, I called.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
It's sort of typical -- I mean, you know, John in the
office on a Sunday. John, a new job, was going to get
his feet on the ground and get himself settled in and
was going to make sure that he was -- if that was his
job, he was going to be the expert in it in short
order.
NARRATOR: O'Neill had made his reputation
investigating white-collar crime, drug rings and
abortion clinic bombings.
Subject: John P. O'Neill
Age: 43
1976: Baltimore -- White Collar Crime
1991: Chicago -- Drugs and Organized Crime
1994: Task Force Abortion Clinic Violence
RICHARD CLARKE: I said, "Who's this?" And he
responded, "Well, who the hell are you? I'm John
O'Neill." And I explained, "Well, I'm from the White
House, and I do terrorism. And I need some help." And
I told him my story on the classified phone line.
And he went into action, and over the course of the
next two or three days, he never left the office. He
worked the phones out to Pakistan. He worked the
phones to the Pentagon. He works the phones at the
State Department.
NARRATOR: O'Neill was new to the counterterrorism
game. In 20 years, he'd chased a lot of bad guys but
nobody like Ramzi Yousef.
MARY JO WHITE, U.S. Atty. So. District of NY '93-'02:
Yousef is one of the most dangerous people on the
planet -- very smart. Getting him and incapacitating
him was a significant public safety issue, and John
O'Neill recognized that, was not about to take no for
an answer anywhere before he was taken into custody.
RICHARD CLARKE: O'Neill put together an arrest team
that managed to catch Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in Pakistan
just before he moved into Afghanistan, which would be
been beyond our reach. It was a pretty intense couple
of days, but it worked.
NARRATOR: At headquarters, down in the SIOC -- the
situation room -- they waited for word from New York
that Yousef was in the lock-up.
LEWIS SCHILIRO, Director of FBI NYC '98-'00: When we
loaded him on the helicopter, he had been blindfolded.
It was a very clear night -- very, very clear --
sometime in January. And one of the agents asked me if
he could take the blindfold off Yousef, and I said,
"Sure. Go right ahead." And it was ironic because as
he finally focused his eyes, we were right adjacent to
the World Trade Center, and he kind of focused in on
that. And of course, one of the agents sitting next to
him gave him a little bit of a nudge and said, "Do you
see? It still stands?"
And Yousef, in no uncertain terms, said, "It would not
have been had we had more funding." And I looked at
him at that point. Really, just the way that he said
that, the coldness of it, is something that I'll
probably never forget.
NARRATOR: For the next six years, O'Neill and his
agents would follow the bloody and complex trail from
Ramzi Yousef to Osama bin Laden. He'd painstakingly
pieced together bits of information gathered from
sources around the world, sources who would sometimes
become close friends. One of them was a journalist.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: He was one of those rare birds
that -- inside a government, who had access to highly
classified information, and yet also understood that
talking to a journalist was not necessarily a
violation of any rules, and it could actually be
helpful on both sides.
NARRATOR: In analyzing the information about Ramzi
Yousef, Isham said his friend, O'Neill, saw a
different sort of terrorist with a new kind of
mission.
CHRIS ISHAM: The picture was still fuzzy -- I mean, it
was by no means sharp -- that there was an emerging
global Islamic fundamentalist terrorist network that
was becoming more and more engaged in the objective of
attacking American targets.
MARY JO WHITE: When Yousef fled from the Trade Center
bombing in 1993, among the places he went, really
right before he was apprehended in Pakistan, was to
the Philippines, where he was mixing the bombs to blow
up, you know, 12 jumbo jets in a 48-hour period, and
was not far away from at least attempting to carry out
that plot, which would have resulted in thousands of
deaths in two days.
NARRATOR: For Agent O'Neill, the trail of Ramzi Yousef
was an introduction into the sophisticated and
interconnected world of the new terrorism.
JAMES WOOLSEY, CIA Director '93-'95: We now know that
he was planning an operation to crash a dozen American
airliners virtually simultaneously with bombs. Now,
one version of this, I believe, from the Philippines,
has it that he was planning on crashing one of the 12
not in the Pacific but into the CIA headquarters in
Langley. What's interesting is whether that was part
of his plan or not. If you look together at crashing
airliners and at Ramzi Yousef's plot to blow up the
World Trade Center in '93 by explosives, what happened
in September 11th, 2001, is some kind of a weird
amalgam of those two Ramzi Yousef plots.
NARRATOR: Another of O'Neill's friends worked in the
upper reaches of the Justice Department.
FRAN TOWNSEND: John completely throws himself into
this. He's reading everything he can get his hands on
about radical fundamentalism. He's already got in his
mind this is a major and long-term problem for us that
we are ill-equipped to deal with, not because we lack
the commitment to deal with it, but because it's a
mindset he's now read. He's studied it.
NARRATOR: From the beginning, O'Neill obsessed about
the details of the Ramzi Yousef case. He dug into that
plan to blow up the planes, known as the Bojinka plot.
Investigators had found a connection with the World
Trade Center bombing that led to Yousef's
co-conspirator, Ahmad Ajaj, and a terrorist training
manual with a title that would translate into "Al
Qaeda" --"the base."
They uncovered a list of phone numbers called by
Yousef and other World Trade Center conspirators from
their safe houses. One of those numbers belonged to
Osama bin Laden, identified by an early CIA report as
an "Islamic extremist financier."
RICHARD CLARKE: I think if you ask most terrorism
experts in the mid-1990s, "Well, what about this man,
bin Laden?" most people in the mid-1990s would have
said, "Ah, yes, the financier, the terrorist
financier." What O'Neill said was, "No, this man is
not a financier. The money is money for a purpose. The
purpose is building a worldwide terrorist network
based out of Afghanistan, the point of which is going
after the United States and after governments friendly
to the United States, particularly in the Arab world."
NARRATOR: Once convinced bin Laden was a threat to
America, O'Neill began a campaign within the FBI to
sound the alarm.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT, Deputy Director FBI '97-'99: The
first time I ever heard the name Osama bin Laden was
from John O'Neill. And John O'Neill was very much
aware of who he was, who his group was, Al Qaeda.
NARRATOR: Over time, Robert "Bear" Bryant would become
second in command at the FBI and a supporter of John
O'Neill.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: He was a person that I had
immense personal regard for, and we could argue like a
couple of thieves in the night over issues because we
were both hard-headed. We were both a little bit
Irish, and he much more so than I. And we had strong
opinions about things, and we could get into it really
quick.
NARRATOR: O'Neill argued for a plan that would
represent a seismic shift in the way the FBI had
always operated. He would give authority to a new,
more analytic agent who would have enhanced technology
to fight the new terrorism. That directly threatened
the dominance of the group who held sway over the
culture, the criminal division.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: From his point of view, it was
very clear what had to be done. You would basically
have a whole branch of the FBI that would be -- not be
touched by the criminal side.
NARRATOR: The criminal side -- the J. Edgar Hoover
G-men who carried the guns and made cases and arrests.
The man who would eventually lead the criminal
division, Tom Pickard, aggressively competed with
O'Neill for the attention of the director, Louis
Freeh.
Subject: Louis J. Freeh
1974: J.D. Rutgers Law
1975: Agent FBI
1981: Federal Prosecutor
1991: Federal Judge
1993: Director FBI
NARRATOR: As a former street agent himself, Freeh
identified with the criminal division, and Tom Pickard
was a long-time friend. O'Neill's counterterrorism
section was on the FBI's radar, but just barely.
JOE CANTAMESSA, FBI Special Agent NYC: A lot of people
don't realize that a year prior to the first bombing
of the World Trade Center, all but one squad was
eliminated or reconsolidated in New York, so -- and we
were the flagship office that had most of the
counterterrorism issues. We were pretty much scaling
back. And while we would never close the program, it
certainly was given much less resource support, and
the thought -- and the threat was thought to have been
diminishing.
NARRATOR: To reinvigorate the counterterrorism effort,
O'Neill would try to muscle his way through the
bureaucracy that surrounded Louis Freeh. But in that
struggle, O'Neill's personal style got in the way.
They said he was too intense, pushed too hard, had
what they called "sharp elbows."
JOE CANTAMESSA: We often talked and joked about the
fact that we weren't really in the club, and we really
didn't care. And that was something that John and I
had shared on occasion. And there is a difference
between those people who spend time in an organization
and are happy to make it to the top and have never
rolled over a stone or created a problem or solved a
problem, you know, just to carefully run through, and
be there and be promoted. John was not like that.
NARRATOR: O'Neill just didn't do anything the FBI way.
Where at the end of a long shift, they went home to
their families --
MICHAEL SHEEHAN, Chief Counterterrorism, State Dept.
'98-'01: He was the type of guy who'd put his arm
around you and take you out to dinner, and smoke
cigars and drink whiskey with at the end of the day,
and really -- and talk about all the issues in great
depth. And he -- that's -- he took this -- the
business -- his business beyond the work hours and
well into the evening, or he'd like to do that.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's evenings were spent at
Washington's watering holes with a network of spies --
CIA, DIA, NSC and foreign intelligence officers.
JERRY HAUER, Dir. Emergency Mgmt. NYC '96-'00: John
tended to be a little more flamboyant than a lot of
the traditional agents in the FBI. I think there were
jealousies. John did know everybody all over the
world. John could pick up a phone and talk to somebody
in an embassy in a foreign intelligence service
anywhere in the world, and they all knew him.
NARRATOR: And in the buttoned-down FBI, O'Neill was
considered too flashy.
FRAN TOWNSEND: It was the presentation. It was the --
as he would call it, it was the "package." They
resented sort of the Burberry suit and the white
pocket square and the expensive tie and the Bruno
Magli shoes. You know, this wasn't the bureau.
CLINT GUENTHER, FBI Agent NYC - Counterterrorism: I
kind of thought he was kind of a dandy. You know, he
was impeccably dressed and looked like his fingernails
were polished and his hair swooped back. And a bunch
of us kind of, you know, started to call him the
"Prince of Darkness."
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: He worked both ends of the
candle pretty hard. We had a morning briefing every
morning at 7:30, and sometimes he would come in late.
And I told him I wanted him there. I don't care if he
came in his slippers and pajamas, be there. And he
was.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's days were spent analyzing
fragments of information. There was the story about
two of Ramzi Yousef's Bojinka co-conspirators, Wali
Khan Amin Shah and Abdul Hakim Murad. In 1995, Murad
told a story of Middle Eastern pilots training at U.S.
flight schools and of a proposal to divebomb a
jetliner into a federal building. It was a tantalizing
bit of information. Agents were dispatched but then
withdrawn. The investigation languished.
JAMES KALLSTROM, Director FBI NYC '95-'97: I had a
fairly low opinion of headquarters throughout my whole
career. It seemed like, you know, the headquarters was
a very negative place, where they would find a million
reasons why you couldn't do something, as opposed to
why you could do something. It was not the type of
place where you always felt you were getting a lot of
assistance.
John was the opposite of that. John you could talk to,
and you could tell John what you needed and John would
get it.
NARRATOR: James Kallstrom was the powerful boss of the
FBI's New York office. Watching from a distance, he
saw O'Neill's attitude and expertise make enemies
among the group that surrounded Louis Freeh.
JAMES KALLSTROM: Yeah, I'm sure there was some
jealousy in the bureaucracy. There always is. You can
get by with some sharper elbows for a while, but you
need to be right a lot. You know the old saying, "When
you run with the wolves, don't trip," you know? You
can have those types of character traits -- you really
need to have those to get the job done sometimes --
but there'll always be a comeuppance in bureaucracies
if you exercise that too much and you don't restrain
it.
NARRATOR: At headquarters there were those in the
upper reaches of the bureaucracy who looked for ways
to wound O'Neill. A whispering campaign began about
O'Neill's personal life. There was one version:
married his high school sweetheart and had a couple of
kids. Then there was the truth.
FRAN TOWNSEND: John had been separated from his family
for some time. And I think John would have said to you
his family suffered as a result of that, as a result
of his devotion to his job.
VALERIE JAMES: I think the FBI was his mistress. He
loved it. He loved it more than he loved any woman in
his life. He loved it.
NARRATOR: And he loved Valerie James.
VALERIE JAMES: Very first time I saw John, I did
something I had never done before and will never do
again. I sent him a drink. He just had the most -- he
was standing at the bar, and he had the most
compelling eyes I had ever seen.
NARRATOR: She had her own children, and after a while,
they started calling him "Dad." He hinted he might
marry their mom. The trouble was, he hadn't told her
he was already married.
VALERIE JAMES: I didn't know that for two or three
years. And someone that John worked with in the FBI's
wife told me, and it was bad. I was shocked. You know,
my family was shocked. I loved him. It had been two or
three years, by that point. What are you going to do,
you know?
NARRATOR: There weren't exactly FBI regulations
against O'Neill's behavior, but there were unwritten
rules of the road, and the whisperers said O'Neill's
lifestyle made him unfit for his sensitive job.
VALERIE JAMES: John's brilliant. He's a guy that gets
it. He is working on this incredible stuff day after
day that he can basically talk to none of us about. He
can talk to very few, some people in law enforcement.
He can't even tell any of his peers about what he's
working on, it's that intense. Does a man like that
come home and eat roast chicken and mashed potatoes
every night? You know, I think his whole life needed
to be complicated. I think he was complicated.
NARRATOR: O'Neill said he could care less what the
bureaucrats thought. The only one he was concerned
about was Louis Freeh.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
Louis Freeh is extraordinary, in the sense of being
sort of a regular person, very committed to his
children and his wife. He wasn't one to be out late or
wasn't a big drinker, wasn't -- that was not his style
at all.
NARRATOR: O'Neill figured a personal connection to
Freeh was out of the question. He'd have to find
another way to make his case about reorganizing the
FBI.
Then, after Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia blew up
the U.S. Air Force barracks known as Khobar Towers,
O'Neill saw his chance. Both O'Neill and Freeh got
deeply involved, taking 14-hour plane rides to Saudi
Arabia, time enough for a sustained O'Neill terrorism
tutorial.
From the beginning, O'Neill's cop instincts told him
the Saudis weren't fully cooperating. They were hiding
something.
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
On at least one occasion, John told me that he
believed that the Saudis were telling us one thing but
doing another, and that he tried to persuade the
director of the FBI of that, but the director wanted
to believe that the Saudis were cooperating.
NARRATOR: Finally, on a flight back to Washington,
O'Neill decided to give Freeh a piece of his mind. The
way they tell the story at the bureau, O'Neill uttered
an indelicate phrase, telling his boss the Saudis were
blowing smoke up a particular portion of the
director's anatomy.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: He never told me the precise
words, but I can hear John saying them. I -- you know,
I think that he felt that the Saudis were definitely
playing games and that the senior officials in the
U.S. government, including Louis Freeh, just didn't
get it.
NARRATOR: The story has it that Freeh didn't
appreciate the bluntness. The two flew home in silence
for 12 hours.
FRAN TOWNSEND: If that was what John said, and he said
it in that indelicate a way, it wouldn't surprise me
that Freeh would have viewed that as inappropriate and
therefore disrespectful. If John said it in that way,
it wouldn't surprise me if Louis chose not to sort of
deal with him while he was in that mood.
NARRATOR: Louis Freeh has reportedly denied this
story, but declined FRONTLINE's request to talk with
us.
And as to the substance of the dispute between Freeh
and O'Neill, over at the White House, where they
always thought Iran was behind the bombing, they
eventually learned the truth about the way the Saudis
were acting.
RICHARD CLARKE: Well, it turns out that the Saudi
government had a suspicion that it was Iran, and the
Saudi government didn't really want the United States
to conclude that it was Iran and go off and start
bombing Iran. So the Saudi government decided at a
very high level to give the United States and the FBI
only a little bit of cooperation, not the full
picture.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's instincts had been right, but it
was a Pyrrhic victory.
JOE CANTAMESSA, FBI Special Agent NYC: Well, remember
about this being in the club I mentioned? You have to
be a little bit of a minimal threat to the
organization and the director and the management
structure. John, because of his aggressive posture,
his aggressive nature, his willingness to go forward
when it may not be politically correct -- I think a
few people were just uncomfortable with John's
aggressive style.
NARRATOR: But for every enemy O'Neill made at
headquarters, it seems he'd made an ally elsewhere.
One of them, in the midst of her own struggle with
Louis Freeh and the headquarters bureaucracy, he kept
secret.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
The attorney general had seen John at meetings, knew
he was an expert from his position at the FBI. And she
would frequently say, "Well, what does John think?"
There were times I was sitting in her office, and
she'd ask that, and I'd say I didn't know. And she
said, "Well, call him."
And literally, I would be dialing John's cell phone
from the attorney general of the United States'
office. And you know, he'd get on the phone, "Hi. How
are you?" And I'd -- "Look, I'm in Ms. Reno's office."
And so if she wanted to know, she knew she had the
ability to reach out to him. This made him, in
fairness, a little bit uncomfortable. He knew that
this would not have been looked upon kindly by other
people in the bureau.
NARRATOR: Around Washington, O'Neill's allies and
drinking buddies began to warn him that he should take
his Al Qaeda crusade to a field office. He should
leave headquarters.
JERRY HAUER, Dir. Emergency Mgmt. NYC '96-'00: You got
to be careful whose toes you step on, particularly in
Washington, because there are some pretty big shoes.
And he created some headaches for himself at
headquarters because he did manage to step on some
toes.
VALERIE JAMES: He told me that was the most intense
time he spent with the FBI. I mean it burnt John out.
Do you know how Jimmy Carter looked when he started
office and the pictures of him afterwards, how he
aged? I felt that that -- I said it to John. I felt
that job aged John.
NARRATOR: There was an opening in the New York City
division. The boss up there, Jimmy Kallstrom, was also
a tough guy, a thorn in Washington's side. He grabbed
O'Neill -- saved him, really. At headquarters, they
were happy to see him go, and on January 1st, 1997,
John O'Neill moved to New York.
It was a promotion, assistant special agent in charge
of counterterrorism and national security. He'd be in
charge of a team of about 350 agents. And best of all,
it was in New York.
JAMES KALLSTROM, Director FBI NYC '95-'97: New York
was the flagship office of the FBI. It's where it
happens, in New York. I mean, that's where you wanted
to be if you were an FBI agent. So it's only natural
that John O'Neill, who's -- you know, his whole life
was the FBI, from what I could see -- would want to be
in New York.
NARRATOR: In the New York office, they were still
piecing together the evidence in the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing. They also had new information that bin
Laden had been involved in the shooting down of two
American Black Hawk helicopters in Somalia. The
confession of captured Al Qaeda member Jamal Ahmed
al-Fadl told of Osama bin Laden's efforts to develop
chemical weapons, buy weapons-grade uranium and to
spread the Al Qaeda network into Europe.
O'Neill was working to connect all these dots with the
powerful U.S. attorney Mary Jo White.
MARY JO WHITE, U.S. Atty. So. District of NY '93-'02:
I had a reputation of being fairly autonomous also,
and not being afraid to rattle cages to get things
done, and he had that reputation, too. And so when he
came to New York, he wanted to try to get us both off
on the right foot and, you know, not have those two
cage-rattlers, you know, work at counter-purposes.
NARRATOR: U.S. Attorney White was among the first of
his allies in Manhattan. His forays into the night
added more. He connected with many of them at the
epicenter of the New York scene, Elaine's.
ELAINE KAUFMAN, Owner: He's a lovely man, intelligent,
easy to talk to, very well groomed. He wasn't a
braggart. He was low-key. Because I know some of the
others, they tell you they just saved the whole world
out there. But he never spoke like that.
CHRIS ISHAM: Elaine's has a very hierarchical seating
structure. And sort of the tourists and the peasants
are relegated to the back end of the restaurant, and
you simply don't want to be there. And there are about
seven or eight tables in the front. John always made
sure that he was in one of those front tables because
he understood the importance of being completely
wired, and he felt in order to be wired, he needed to
be in the front of the restaurant, not the back of the
restaurant.
ELAINE KAUFMAN: It's like George Plimpton. I mean,
he's George Plimpton on the job. There's no place that
George can't sit. And so it was with John. He could
sit anyplace he wanted. He was the Big Kahuna.
NARRATOR: O'Neill would return to the office often
after midnight. He might have a scrap of information
or a new name.
CLINT GUENTHER, FBI Agent NYC - Counterterrorism: John
always feared that somehow we would miss something. He
would be after his investigators to make sure they
covered every base, and woe be you if you failed to
cover everything.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's investigators now had more
evidence about one of the conspirators in that Bojinka
plot of Ramzi Yousef. Wali Khan Amin Shah admitted
involvement in a plot to assassinate President
Clinton. The plot had links to bin Laden.
CLINT GUENTHER: Under John's investigative leadership,
he pressed his investigators to try to look for the
ties, look for the -- any connectivity between these
organizations. This larger picture turned out to be Al
Qaeda.
NARRATOR: O'Neill was becoming obsessed, haunted by
the specter of bin Laden.
JOHN P. O'NEILL, Jr.: My dad had a lot of video of
Osama bin Laden. Whatever was out there was actually
in his apartment. He studied him several times,
watched the videos, I know, several times.
VALERIE JAMES: He would watch videotapes. He would
read whatever material he could get his hands on. We
had a fax in the house. People would fax him
information all the time. John would sit in bed or sit
on the couch or wherever and constantly underline
everything.
CHRIS ISHAM: By then, bin Laden was in Afghanistan.
And I organized through some channels to do an
interview with him, which took shape in the early '98
through spring of '98. The interview actually happened
in May of '98 with John Miller.
NARRATOR: And some of O'Neill's information helped
Isham and correspondent John Miller draw up their
questions.
JOHN MILLER, Correspondent, ABC News: I wanted to ask
-- did he either -- Mr. Bin Laden, either finance or
order the World Trade Center bombing, because of the
Ramzi Yousef association? Because of the association
is why I would want to ask that. But would you ask him
now if we could ask that before he starts again?
NARRATOR: O'Neill couldn't wait to get his hands on
the tape.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: He wanted to see everything. He
was, well, "I need to see the whole thing. I need to
see the whole interview."
INTERPRETER: He says he doesn't know.
JOHN MILLER: Oh. So [unintelligible] issue. Disregard.
CHRIS ISHAM: I said, "Well, you know, we have this
whole thing about outtakes, and, you know, it -- you
know, it may sound stupid, but we, you know, really
can't give you all the outtakes of the interview." He
says, "No, you don't understand. I have to see the
whole interview." It was like he wasn't taking no for
an answer.
NARRATOR: O'Neill finally saw the entire interview on
the ABC News Web site.
CHRIS ISHAM: He was obsessed by him. I think there's
no question about it. He always knew that there was so
much more that he didn't know, and that's what spooked
him. What spooked him and what really used to drive
him crazy was what he didn't know and how much was out
there that he didn't know.
NEWSCASTER: [August 7, 1998] Two bombs, minutes apart,
exploded without warning Friday outside the U.S.
embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania."
LEWIS SCHILIRO, Director of FBI NYC '98-'00: We had
turned on the TV, watching CNN. And John O'Neill put
it together in relatively short order and was
convinced, in his own mind, that Al Qaeda was behind
that.
MARY JO WHITE: I had the same immediate reaction. What
I did was to call both Lew Schiliro and the attorney
general and I think John O'Neill. And I, in
particular, having been enmeshed in bin Laden and Al
Qaeda, was our immediate reaction.
LEWIS SCHILIRO: And it was really the first time ever
that I began to at least focus in on, really, the
significance of Osama bin Laden.
NARRATOR: Two American embassies had been bombed in
east Africa virtually simultaneously.
MICHAEL SHEEHAN, Chief Counterterrorism, State Dept.
'98-'01: That clearly was the event that changed bin
Laden's profile dramatically because it was such a
major event. Two embassies blown up simultaneously
over 500 miles apart in the continent of Africa was
not expected. Most of the attacks previous to that
were in the Middle East. This was in a part of the
world we didn't expect. Two embassies done
simultaneously showed a great deal of sophistication
in the organization. So this was a major event.
NARRATOR: But at headquarters, the brass were engaged
in a procedural dispute.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
We're in the command center, and people are being
pulled in. I'm over there. There's all sorts of senior
bureau people there. Everybody's coming together. And
the reason this becomes a significant question almost
immediately is because the FBI's got to deploy people
overseas. They're going to deploy people initially to
Kenya and Tanzania. And who's going to be the on-scene
commander?
NARRATOR: O'Neill believed his experience and
expertise made him the obvious choice to lead the
investigation as the on-scene commander.
FRAN TOWNSEND: And he really wanted to roll up his
sleeves and get into it, and wanted to be there and
wanted responsibility. He believed the New York field
office had the greatest depth of expertise of anybody
in the country on this issue. And if it's al-Qaeda,
how could you send anybody else but the people who
know the most?
NARRATOR: But down in the SIOC, there were those who
wanted to cut New York and O'Neill out. On the QT,
Townsend called O'Neill.
FRAN TOWNSEND: And he was -- to say angry,
disappointed, hurt -- there becomes this bureaucratic
arm-wrestle over who's going to be the office of
origin.
NARRATOR: O'Neill desperately needed the help of U.S.
Attorney Mary Jo White.
MARY JO WHITE, U.S. Atty. So. District of NY '93-'02:
He and I were both very adamant that the New York
field agents who were most knowledgeable about bin
Laden and the Al Qaeda organization get over to Africa
as quickly as possible as the investigation was
unfolding because those first few days are often the
most critical to whether you capture somebody or not
or figure out who's involved.
And he and I certainly shared the view that you need
the folks who know what they're looking at in charge
of, or very much in the thick of the investigations.
FRAN TOWNSEND: I'm basically sitting at the SIOC, at
this point, as the attorney general's representative.
And so I'm running back and forth across Pennsylvania
Avenue twice a day to brief her, say, "There is
tremendous consternation about who's going to be the
office of origin." You'd think it would be bigger
things than that but you're -- in the early going,
we're involved in that discussion.
NARRATOR: The attorney general decided to stay out of
it. Fran Townsend and Mary Jo White couldn't win the
argument. And as it happened, O'Neill's other ally,
Deputy Director Bear Bryant, was out of cell phone
range, on vacation.
So the head of the criminal division, one of those men
in Louis Freeh's inner circle, Tom Pickard, was
temporarily in charge. He decided the New York team
would not take the lead in the investigation,
Washington would. And John O'Neill would not get
command.
FRAN TOWNSEND: This is the World Series, and he's
gotten benched. And that's exactly how he feels about
it. And he is very hurt, very upset about it. And
bitter.
NARRATOR: O'Neill hit the phones. He ended up venting
to Bear Bryant.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT, Deputy Director FBI '97-'99: I
said, "You're going to have a stroke." He was so
intense.
INTERVIEWER: This is the first guy you heard the word
Al Qaeda and bin Laden from. Shouldn't he be there?
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: Well, he wasn't.
INTERVIEWER: But that wasn't your decision. I got a
feeling that wasn't your decision.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: Well, he wasn't there.
INTERVIEWER: It wasn't your decision, was it?
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: He wasn't there.
NARRATOR: After a couple of weeks, O'Neill's belief
that Al Qaeda was responsible for the bombings turned
out to be right. Headquarters reversed itself and gave
the investigation to O'Neill's New York team. But
Washington refused to send O'Neill himself. Stuck in
New York, he had to be content to learn as much as
possible long-distance from his agents.
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
You'd go into John's office, and on the wall there
would be a chart with lines connecting phone numbers
in the United States and phone numbers in the Middle
East and phone numbers in Africa -- names. This guy
was involved in this case, and he talked to that guy
over in that case.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's agents in east Africa had found
another training manual nearly identical to the one
found in the World Trade Center bombing. One
cooperating witness revealed that bin Laden was
planning to send operatives to the U.S for pilot
training. A computer found in a raid showed hundreds
of targets around the world already surveilled and
approved.
O'Neill's agents identified a man named Mohamed
Rasheed Daoud al-'Owhali. He led them to a safe house
in Yemen that acted as a kind of terrorist telephone
exchange, relaying messages to and from bin Laden in
Afghanistan.
[www.pbs.org: Explore the full map of connections]
RICHARD CLARKE: Certainly, after the embassy bombing
in Africa in '98, it was very obvious that what John
was saying was right, that this was more than a
nuisance, that this was a real threat.
But I don't think everyone came to the understanding
that it was an existential threat. Question was, "You
know, this group is more than a nuisance, but are they
worth going to war with? After all, they've only
attacked two embassies, and maybe that's a cost of
doing business. This kind of thing happens. Yes, we
should spend some time and some energy trying to get
them, but it's not the number-one priority we have."
NARRATOR: O'Neill's message still hadn't gotten
through, and yet he had come to believe Al Qaeda had
infiltrated the United States.
He had studied the videotapes of bin Laden's training
camp in Afghanistan. He knew thousands of Al Qaeda
fighters had been exported throughout the world. His
police contacts in Germany, Spain, Italy were tracing
their movements. But he could not convince
headquarters that they were in the United States.
CLINT GUENTHER, FBI Agent NYC - Counterterrorism: He
fully believed that they had moved in and had cells
here for a long time, that groups were coming in from
various parts of the world. And we couldn't really
find out what they were about, but we could see
movements of groups into this country.
CHRIS ISHAM: John understood that this was a global
operation and that if we were going to get a handle on
this, we had to work very, very closely with liaison
services, such as the British, the Jordanians and the
Egyptians and the Yemenis and the French.
RICHARD CLARKE: What John O'Neill was trying to do was
to get a momentum going in the FBI to look seriously
for those cells, to look for the connections, which,
frankly, most FBI offices were not doing. It was not
one of the priorities of most FBI field offices.
NARRATOR: At headquarters, as he prepared to retire,
Bear Bryant tried one last push of the reorganization
plan he and O'Neill had been talking about for years.
It would emphasize new ways of gathering and passing
on information about groups like Al Qaeda.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: The trouble with the FBI, it
never knew what it knew. I mean, it had information,
but it never got to the right places. And that goes to
automation. That goes to, you know, analysts. It goes
to a lot of things.
NARRATOR: The reform plan meandered up the ladder at
the FBI, through the Justice Department, the Congress
and the White House. But it was never enacted.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: It was never funded. It was just
-- it was put in the back burner somewhere.
INTERVIEWER: By?
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: I don't know. I left in '99. I
left in December of '99. The thing I saw was that it
was never properly funded. Whether it's priorities or
whatever, I don't know. I wasn't there.
[www.pbs.org: Read the complete interview]
NARRATOR: At just this time in New York, a new crisis
was emerging that would eventually get the entire
bureau's attention. O'Neill's international contacts
were on full alert about the upcoming millennium
celebrations, and O'Neill was lobbying for a
full-blown FBI response in the United States.
MARY JO WHITE: The millennium, not only because of
what that represented symbolically -- which, again,
raises its danger value tremendously -- but also
because of intelligence we were getting throughout our
government -- had us all extremely concerned.
NARRATOR: From the New York SIOC, O'Neill and his team
began to track a case that proved his theory that Al
Qaeda had infiltrated the United States. An Algerian
national, Ahmed Ressam, had been arrested on the
border between Canada and the state of Washington.
Among his possessions they found bomb-making material
and maps. He had circled the Los Angeles airport on
this one.
RICHARD CLARKE: We had always talked about the
possibility that there were Al Qaeda cells in the
United States, and we had looked for evidence. And we
had encouraged FBI offices other than John O'Neill's
office in New York to start looking for evidence.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
Anybody who's anybody, who could be anybody related to
this, we're watching. We're -- the entire FBI is
mobilized.
NARRATOR: The agents dug into the details of the plot.
From the plan to blow up the Los Angeles airport,
another trail led from Boston to a planned attack in
Jordan. There were other conspirators in Seattle,
Brooklyn, and Manhattan, where O'Neill was worried
about the massive New Year's Eve celebration in Times
Square.
LEWIS SCHILIRO: Certain documents were found on
Ressam's possession, documents that indicated a New
York connection -- in fact, a pretty strong connection
to New York.
FRAN TOWNSEND: John's frankly terrified. New York
presents a real target to him. He's got the New York
City Police Department, he's got hundreds of agents
working. He's got all kinds of things in his world of
work that he's got to worry about.
NARRATOR: O'Neill personally hit the streets, seeking
fast-track warrants and pushing the investigative
envelope. One of Ressam's co-conspirators lived in New
York. Abdel Meskini was supposed to deliver money and
a cell phone to Ressam. O'Neill's agents arrested him.
MARY JO WHITE: Arrests were made that, had they not
been uncovered, the plot had not been uncovered and
those arrests made, we could have had horrific
tragedies around the millennium.
NEWSCASTER: We have two million people -- two million
people -- compressed in this small area here in
mid-town Manhattan. No incidents in --
NARRATOR: O'Neill was one of those two million people.
If Al Qaeda struck here, this was where he wanted to
be.
FRAN TOWNSEND: We were in the SIOC. The attorney
general was there. And we waited for midnight with
sort of bated breath on the East Coast. And he called
in to the SIOC, and we put him on speakerphone, and he
clearly couldn't have been any more pleased that we
had gotten through it.
LEWIS SCHILIRO: And I remember talking to John shortly
after midnight. There was a sense of accomplishment.
We had just made the arrests in the Ressam spin-off.
And you know, certainly, we believed that we got
everybody that we needed to find, but you know, you're
never really 100 percent sure of that.
RICHARD CLARKE: And so I think a lot of the FBI
leadership for the first time realized that O'Neill
was right, that there probably were Al Qaeda people in
the United States. They realized that only after they
looked at the results of the investigation of the
millennium bombing plot. So by February of 2000, I
think senior people in the FBI were saying, "There
probably is a network here in the United States, and
we have to change the way the FBI goes about finding
that network."
NARRATOR: If the bureau was finally going to
reorganize itself to take on terror, O'Neill wanted
significant influence in that process. He needed a
highly visible, powerful platform. As it happened,
Jimmy Kallstrom's old job, head of the New York
office, was open. O'Neill pulled out all the stops and
made a play for it.
FRAN TOWNSEND: He couldn't stop himself. He
desperately wanted that job. He really wanted that
promotion. And it would have been unlike John to want
something and not really throw himself into it.
NARRATOR: O'Neill aggressively lobbied. But there were
some administrative problems on his record. He'd lost
a bureau cell phone and a Palm Pilot. Then there was
the time his old Buick broke down. Val was with him.
He figured he'd just pop into an FBI safe house to
pick up a bureau car. He'd take her home, and that
would be that. But headquarters called taking the car
"unauthorized use of government property." And letting
Val use the bathroom at the safe house was considered
a security breach.
VALERIE JAMES: John went through a couple of really
bad years here. The first really bad year was in 1999.
And I believe that was the first year that the car
issue came up. And it was hideous. It was horrendous.
NARRATOR: Headquarters initiated a formal inquiry.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT, Deputy Director FBI '97-'99: I
think what happens in the FBI -- it's a very
militaristic society, and you have to -- if you're
being investigated by OPR, Office of Professional
Responsibility, there's a question, they don't want to
promote somebody that's got a cloud over them, even a
minor thing like a vehicle.
NARRATOR: Bear Bryant, O'Neill's biggest supporter at
headquarters, had retired. Louis Freeh promoted his
long-time friend, Tom Pickard, to deputy director. It
was not good news for Agent O'Neill. It was Pickard
who decided O'Neill would not lead the investigation
in east Africa, and now Pickard and Freeh decided John
O'Neill would not get the big job in New York.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: John was somebody that the
bureaucrats were not always pleased with because they
felt that he wasn't marching to their tune, that he
was too ambitious and too -- that he operated out of
the box too often. And this was an FBI that believed
very much, under the Freeh regime, of operating within
the box. This was a guy that was constantly pushing
the envelope, when the envelope didn't want to be
pushed. And so the envelope fought back.
NARRATOR: At 48, it looked like the bureaucracy was
sending John O'Neill a message. The old-timers had
seen it all before.
ROBERT "BEAR" BRYANT: My daddy always said don't kill
your mavericks. They might save your life some day,
and they're the ones that will always have the great
ideas. So try to take care of them. And John was a
maverick. A brilliant maverick.
NARRATOR: The buzz around the New York office was that
the new boss, Barry Mawn, wasn't keen on keeping
O'Neill around.
BARRY MAWN, Director FBI NYC '00-'02: I had heard
stories that, you know, he was "Mr. New York," that he
was the FBI in New York. And so if you needed anything
or wanted anything, you had to go through John. And he
was also -- I think he enjoyed being -- having the
contacts liaison, being a power broker, the Elaine's.
I think John enjoyed all of that.
NARRATOR: Mawn had all but made up his mind to move
O'Neill out of the New York office.
FRAN TOWNSEND: Barry was a skeptic. He had heard sort
of the headquarters gossip about John O'Neill's style,
But it was funny. I can remember saying to John,
"Barry doesn't stand a chance. If you decide to win
him over, you'll win him over. You just have to -- if
you put your mind to it, you know very well you'll do
it." And I used to tell John, John was his own best
advocate, when he put his mind to it.
BARRY MAWN: There was a knock on the door, and John
was holding two beers. And he said, "Well I understand
you're an Irishman, and you like to drink beer. These
are for you." So I laughed and said, "Well, you got
that correct." And he said, "Well, where are we at?"
referring to the relationship between us.
[www.pbs.org: Read more O'Neill anecdotes]
CHRIS ISHAM: John loved the bureau. He loved the FBI.
And he also felt that there was a lot that he could be
doing for the FBI and that, given the war on terrorism
was escalating, it wasn't in any way getting resolved,
it was getting worse and not better.
BARRY MAWN: He wanted to stay in New York. He said, "I
will be your most loyal supporter, and all I ask in
return is that you be supportive of me in my efforts."
And so I said, "Well, we got a deal. And we'll go
forward." So I -- we went forward, and essentially, he
lived up to his agreement, and I believe I lived up to
my agreement.
FRAN TOWNSEND: Bless Barry. I give him credit. Barry
saw John O'Neill's talent. He saw past the sort of --
the package issue, if you will, the style issue. And
Barry recognized John's enormous contribution and how
bright John was. And Barry came to rely on John.
NARRATOR: As the weeks wore on, and just as that
investigation about the car incident seemed a thing of
the past, headquarters ordered O'Neill to attend a
conference of other agents in Florida.
VALERIE JAMES: We were meeting in Bal Harbor at the
Marriott. John came in. He is just -- I don't remember
seeing John as distraught as he was this night. What
has happened? He told me he left his briefcase in this
room of 150 FBI agents and got a phone call, couldn't
hear on his cell phone, so he just walked outside to
take his call. Walked back in, his briefcase was gone.
He was completely freaked.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's bag contained classified
documents. Taking them out of his FBI office was
against the rules.
FRAN TOWNSEND: It's one of those moments I remember
where I was. I remember what I was doing and because I
could -- John was a -- you know, you used to say he
swaggered. You know, he had all this -- he exuded
self-confidence. And I could hear the fear in his
voice. I could hear his throat tighten. I could hear
he was wound that he had lost -- that this bag was
gone. And he knew -- even if there had been nothing in
it, his sense was, because the bureau had come down
hard on him the time before for something stupid, that
even if it was nothing more than he lost bureau
equipment, he was going to get -- this was going to
become a federal case. This was going to be a big deal
in terms of the bureau, and it was going to be used to
hurt him.
NARRATOR: Hours later, the bag was retrieved.
Fingerprint analysis showed the documents hadn't been
tampered with. But the damage was done.
RICHARDCLARKE: John always wanted to be thought of as
being close to perfect. At the end of any meeting, he
would hang around and say, "How'd I do? What can I do
better next time? What am I doing wrong?" And of
course, he was doing nothing wrong. He was doing
everything spectacularly well. But he always wanted to
do better. He always needed that reassurance.
And for him to be criticized for something like the
suitcase -- the briefcase incident, whatever the truth
value of that incident was, it hurt him a lot because
he always wanted to be thought of as close to perfect
-- perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed -- and didn't
want anybody to think that he was in any way not the
number-one guy in terms of performance.
NARRATOR: At headquarters, they pounced. Upstairs,
they said that O'Neill was getting sloppy, burning the
candle at both ends. Carrying around classified
documents was a serious problem. The FBI's Office of
Professional Responsibility began a criminal
investigation.
BARRY MAWN: I knew it wasn't good. He knew it wasn't
good. He felt that this would probably be used by some
of the detractors -- unnamed detractors at
headquarters that would use this against him.
NARRATOR: O'Neill was in real trouble. He hired a
lawyer and hunkered down to save his job.
FRAN TOWNSEND: He was consumed by this job, and the
job turned on him. When he would make some foolish
mistake, they came down awfully hard on him. Given
what his contribution was, given what he had
sacrificed, there was a sense of entitlement. And it's
a terrible sense of unfairness. "Why? Because you
don't like that I had a drink at Elaine's? You don't
like my suit?" Well, because -- and he really -- he
really felt people -- he didn't -- people above him --
his view was people above him felt threatened by him,
by his expertise, and so didn't really want him
around.
NARRATOR: As the criminal investigation against
O'Neill dragged on inside the FBI, he and his team
began noticing increased telephone activity from that
safe house in Yemen. One intercepted message,
confirmed by millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, said bin
Laden was planning a "Hiroshima-type" event.
O'Neill had his agents paying attention to American
embassies, especially in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and
U.S. military targets because an Egyptian informant
had told them an American warship would be hit by Al
Qaeda.
Then, on October 12th, 2000, Al Qaeda struck. The
guided missile destroyer USS Cole was the target of a
suicide mission. Seventeen sailors died.
BARRY MAWN, Director FBI NYC '00-'02: John came to me
and said "It's Al Qaeda," and I totally agreed with
him. And he said, "You got to get to the director, and
we got to get this so the New York office responds
initially.''
NARRATOR: At headquarters, down in the SIOC, there was
once again strong resistance to the idea of sending
O'Neill and his crew from New York to Yemen. It took
hours for Barry Mawn to convince Director Freeh to let
New York take the lead and to authorize O'Neill as the
on-scene commander.
INTERVIEWER: Washington Headquarters of the FBI happy
that O'Neill was going?
BARRY MAWN: My recollection is that I got questioned
on it. "Is John the best guy to send?" And I had no
hesitancy and said, "Absolutely, he's the best guy to
send."
INTERVIEWER: Why would they have said that?
BARRY MAWN: Well, again, I think it kind of goes back
to a little bit of the history John had with some of
the folks back there, that there was probably some
questioning as, "Well, do we want to send O'Neill?"
And "He does have sharp elbows" or "His style may be
-- " they were concerned that he wasn't the best guy
to go, and that you needed someone more of a diplomat
to -- in my view, to a certain extent, is when you
have a major incident like that, you really don't need
a diplomat at that particular point in time. You need
somebody that knows what to do and is going to do it
and get it done.
NARRATOR: Headquarters gave in to Mawn. This time,
O'Neill was named on-scene commander in charge of the
Yemen investigation.
FRAN TOWNSEND: And he was like a kid. He couldn't have
been any more excited. I can remember him leaving the
office to go to his apartment to pack a bag to go. And
he was so pleased. He said, "This is it for me." You
know, "I needed this. I needed this." And in some
ways, he believed it was a vindication of him, and
that the bag incident wasn't that important, because
if it had been that important, they wouldn't have sent
him, if the bureau thought it was that important.
NARRATOR: O'Neill and the members of his rapid
deployment team immediately headed for Yemen. O'Neill
knew time was of the essence. The Al Qaeda attacks had
been coming more frequently.
CHRIS ISHAM: This was a case that he was really
pushing hard on, that he understood that this wasn't
just a venue where they set off a bomb, that there
were connections between Yemen and east Africa, and
Yemen and Afghanistan, and Yemen and Europe, and that
there were -- this was very much of an important
operational base for these guys, and that if he could
illuminate that base, that he could begin to really
put a dent in this network.
NARRATOR: But when he got to Yemen, O'Neill discovered
how hard his task was going to be.
MICHAEL DORSEY, Naval Criminal Investigative Service:
It's much like living in a 14th-century or a
15th-century country, listening to sporadic gunfire
from AK-47s. And certainly, Yemen was bin Laden's back
yard. That's where he was from. That's where his
family is from. That's where he lived. And we
recognized that. It was very difficult to get
information out of the Yemeni security forces to
actually cooperate with us initially. They were
suspect of the U.S. government being in their
territory and what our ultimate purposes were.
FRAN TOWNSEND: They're in impossible conditions, the
agents. They don't have anyplace to sleep. He's got
agents sleeping on the floor. They're working
ridiculous hours. It's hot as all get-out. And you're
in an impossible -- and it's in a hostile environment.
MICHAEL DORSEY: We had to move in caravans from the
hotel out to the Cole, or from the hotel to some of
the sites where we believed the terrorists and their
support network had been. And those were in caravans
of NCIS-FBI personnel, all armed, surrounded by Yemeni
security force personnel. So these caravans would be
8, 10, 12 cars long. It was certainly announcing our
presence. Any time we went somewhere, everybody in
that city knew who we were and where we were going.
And it gave us an uneasy feeling.
NARRATOR: To protect the hundreds of investigators on
the ground, O'Neill and American military commanders
wanted to show the Yemenis a forceful presence -- guns
ready, perimeters established. But much to O'Neill's
surprise, that approach quickly angered the American
ambassador, Barbara Bodine, who felt his actions were
harming U.S.-Yemeni government relations.
Subject: Amb. Barbara K. Bodine
Age: 53
Career Diplomat
Postings: Hong Kong
Thailand
Iraq
Kuwait
Yemen
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
You had an ambassador who wanted to be fully in
control of everything that every American official did
in the country and resented the fact that suddenly
there were hundreds of FBI personnel in the country
and only a handful of State Department personnel. She
wanted good relations with Yemen as the number-one
priority. John O'Neill wanted to stop terrorism as the
number-one priority. And the two conflicted.
FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general '95-'01:
This results in meetings between the attorney general
and State, FBI, C.I.A. and Justice. But Ambassador
Pickering is at it, the undersecretary, and the
attorney general. Things are getting raised to that
kind of a level, this has become such a bone of
contention between them.
RICHARD CLARKE: Almost all of us who were following
the details in Washington, whether we were in the
Justice Department, the FBI, the White House, the
State Department, the Defense Department -- almost all
of us thought that John O'Neill was doing the right
thing.
NARRATOR: But not the higher-ups at the FBI.
BARRY MAWN, Director FBI NYC '00-'02: There may have
been people at FBI headquarters that were going, "See?
I told you so." You know, "John does upset people and
get them upset. And maybe he wasn't the right guy."
But that's -- I mean, that's all childish gossip and
rumoring, as far as I'm concerned.
NARRATOR: But on the ground in Yemen, the law
enforcement agents saw a very different John O'Neill.
MICHAEL DORSEY: I think he developed a real sense of
closeness with the senior Yemeni officials. They
referred to him in Arabic as "Alach [sp?]," which is
"the brother," and oftentimes referred to him as "the
commander" or "your commander." They had a real sense
of appreciation for his seniority in the U.S.
government and for what he represented. And I knew
that they came to trust John.
NARRATOR: For six years at the center of the FBI's
counterterrorism effort, O'Neill and his team had
built the evidence on the mounting bin Laden threat:
failed plots to kill hundreds of Americans in Jordan,
Ressam's explosives headed to LAX, an aborted Al Qaeda
plot to blow up another American warship, the USS The
Sullivans, and now the Cole. The Yemenis finally
agreed to let the FBI join in the interrogation of one
of their most prominent suspects, Fahad al Quso.
O'Neill and his agents believed al Quso knew about bin
Laden's desire to videotape the destruction of the
Cole, and possibly a whole lot more. O'Neill worked
his newly developed Yemeni police officials and old
allies in the CIA.
NARRATOR: He had come to believe that some Yemeni
officials were not being forthcoming about information
from al Quso and other suspects. It was the Khobar
Towers investigation all over again.
But the weeks were taking their toll. O'Neill needed a
break. He'd get back to al Quso after he returned from
New York at the first of the year.
VALERIE JAMES: I have to tell you, when John came home
-- he got home, I think it was two days before
Thanksgiving because he kept telling me he was going
to try to be home for Thanksgiving. He -- John had
dropped 20, 25 pounds.
NARRATOR: In New York, he plotted his return to Yemen.
He had taken a Yemeni police delegation on a tour of
Elaine's and other hotspots. He was working them,
trying to get unfettered access to al Quso and what he
knew. But then he was told he wouldn't be allowed to
return to Yemen. Ambassador Bodine denied his visa.
CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: I mean, John was not rational
on the topic of Ambassador Barbara Bodine. He was -- I
mean, "livid" would be putting it mildly. I mean, one
can't forget that John was -- he very American, but he
was also very Irish.
INTERVIEWER: And that means?
CHRIS ISHAM: That means when he got hot, he got hot.
And he was hot. There's no question about it. I think
he felt that she was on the wrong side.
NARRATOR: Ambassador Bodine would not grant
FRONTLINE's request for an interview. She was quoted
in The New Yorker magazine. "The idea that John or his
people or the FBI were somehow barred from doing their
job is insulting to the U.S. government, which was
working on Al Qaeda before John ever showed up. This
is all my embassy did for 10 months."
For weeks, the ambassador had been making the case
against O'Neill, even lobbying Louis Freeh. Finally,
her accusations had their intended effect.
Headquarters supported her decision not to let O'Neill
back into Yemen.
BARRY MAWN: John was upset. She was bad-mouthing him.
She had caused a stir at headquarters. I actually
think John was more disappointed that our headquarters
didn't back us, as far as sending him back and taking
a stronger stand with the State Department.
Eventually, our headquarters said, "Well, let's try
and work around not having John go back." And so
that's what I had to do.
NARRATOR: So O'Neill would not be in Yemen. The
investigation slowed to a crawl.
MICHAEL SHEEHAN, Chief Counterterrorism, State Dept.
'98-'01: I watched with dismay as the issue of the USS
Cole completely disappeared from the U.S. scene,
completely -- again, in a new administration. It was
just not on their agenda. Clearly, it was not on the
agenda of the Congress, the media or anyone else.
Again, it went into oblivion.
NARRATOR: By spring, intelligence about Al Qaeda
forces in Yemen convinced O'Neill they were about to
target his agents. O'Neill pleaded with Barry Mawn to
pull them out, and Mawn agreed. O'Neill's
investigation in Yemen was effectively over.
[www.pbs.org: More on the FBI, CIA and Yemen]
CHRIS ISHAM: We don't know what would have happened if
John could have done his job in Yemen and had really
had the full back-up to go and to really push in Yemen
and what kind of networks he could have exposed. But
you know, we do know there were Yemenis involved in
the attacks of September 11th. So is it possible that
if he had been able to really open up that network and
really expose that network, that he could have in some
way deterred the tragedy of September 11th? I don't
think we know, but it's sad because we won't know the
answer to that. But I think there is a fighting -- he
would have had had a fighting chance if he'd been able
to do his job.
NARRATOR: By early summer of 2001, other intelligence
services were putting the Bush White House on full
alert. Every single indication was that Al Qaeda was
planning a major attack on the United States.
RICHARD CLARKE: In June of 2001, the intelligence
community issued a warning that a major Al Qaeda
terrorist attack would take place in the next many
weeks. They said they were unable to find out exactly
where it might take place. They said they thought it
might take place in Saudi Arabia. We asked, "Could it
take place in the United States?" They said, "We can't
rule that out."
And so in my office in the White House complex, the
CIA sat, briefed the domestic U.S. federal law
enforcement agencies, Immigration, Federal Aviation,
Coast Guard, Customs -- and the FBI was there, as
well, agreeing with CIA -- told them that we were
entering a period where there was a very high
probability of a major terrorist attack.
NARRATOR: In New York, O'Neill was also convinced Al
Qaeda had picked a target. But he was by now more
marginalized than ever at the FBI. And so in July of
2001, when that memo from the Phoenix office pleading
for investigations of flight schools made its way to
headquarters, it was not passed on to O'Neill or Mawn
in New York, nor was the struggle that August of the
Minnesota office to investigate the alleged 20th
hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui.
The most sophisticated office in the FBI, the office
that, under O'Neill, had been dealing with these
matters for six years, apparently was out of the loop.
CHRIS ISHAM: John had heard the alarm bells, too, and
we used to talk about it. And he knew that there was a
lot of noise out there and that there were a lot of
warnings, a lot of red flags, and that it was at a
similar level that they were hearing before the
millennium, which was an indication that there was
something going on. And yet he felt that he was frozen
out, that he was not in a capacity to really do
anything about it anymore because of his relationship
with the FBI. So it was a source of real anguish for
him.
NARRATOR: O'Neill's after-hours reveries around
Manhattan took on a morose quality. He knew it was
time to go. But where? His friend at the White House,
Dick Clarke, had an idea.
RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism '92-'01:
Shortly after the Bush administration came into
office, the question came, "Well, who would you
recommend to do the terrorism job?" And I came up with
four or five names. The first name that came to mind
was John O'Neill.
NARRATOR: But the job required Senate confirmation.
The FBI would have to endorse him, and O'Neill knew
better than to believe they would. And then, 13 months
after that briefcase incident, with the investigation
still open, a well-placed leak to a newspaper made
sure his government career was over.
FRAN TOWNSEND: The New York Times is now starting to
ask questions about that incident both at the
headquarters level and at the New York field office.
In spite of sort of Jimmy Kallstrom and others trying
to persuade The New York Times that somebody had an
agenda here, this was really sort of ill-motivated, it
was clear that they were going to run with it.
VALERIE JAMES: And that was the final nail in John
O'Neill's coffin that they were going to use to have
him retire.
INTERVIEWER: Did he know who did it?
VALERIE JAMES: He suspected.
INTERVIEWER: Did he confront them?
VALERIE JAMES: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: And what happened?
VALERIE JAMES: It was completely denied. The person
that he felt did it said, "Absolutely not. Wouldn't
want to hurt you in any way, shape or form."
INTERVIEWER: It's been reported that was Tom Pickard.
VALERIE JAMES: That's who John felt it was, Tom
Pickard. And John really never knew. He was out to get
John for a long time, and John never really knew why.
NARRATOR: At the time, Tom Pickard was interim
How could the 9/11 Commission fail to explore the
story of John O'Neill in the context of its
investigation of pre-9/11 activities of the US DoJ,
the FBI and the CIA? What is happening in this
country? What is in those 28 blacked out pages from
the congressional 9/11 report? Even the Saudis have
requested that the incredible shrinking _resident
declassify them? But most people don't remember
that...CONTEXT, my friends, CONTEXT and
CONTINUITY...The LNS distributed this story when it
first came out, here it is again, if the "US
mainstream news media" refuses to provide you the
CONTEXT and the CONTINUITY you need, the LNS will, if
the 9/11 Commission is incapable of opening up this
file, the LNS will..."Out, out damn spot!"
Lawrence Wright, New Yorker: During the next six years, O'Neill became the bureau's most committed tracker of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network of terrorists as they struck against American interests around the world. Brash, ambitious, often full of
himself, O'Neill had a confrontational personality
that brought him powerful enemies. Even so, he was too
valuable to ignore. He was the point man in the
investigation of the terrorist attacks in Saudi
Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen. At a time when the
Clinton Administration was struggling to decide how to
respond to the terrorist threat, O'Neill, along with
others in the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., realized that Al
Qaeda was relentless and resourceful and that its
ultimate target was America itself. In the last days
of his life, after he had taken a new job as the chief
of security for the World Trade Center, he was warning
friends, "We're due."
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/020114fa_FACT1
THE COUNTER-TERRORIST
by LAWRENCE WRIGHT
John O'Neill was an F.B.I. agent with an obsession: the growing threat of Al Qaeda.
Issue of 2002-01-14
Posted 2002-01-14
The legend of John P. O'Neill, who lost his life at
the World Trade Center on September 11th, begins with
a story by Richard A. Clarke, the national coördinator
for counter-terrorism in the White House from the
first Bush Administration until last year. On a Sunday
morning in February, 1995, Clarke went to his office
to review intelligence cables that had come in over
the weekend. One of the cables reported that Ramzi
Yousef, the suspected mastermind behind the first
World Trade Center bombing, two years earlier, had
been spotted in Pakistan. Clarke immediately called
the F.B.I. A man whose voice was unfamiliar to him
answered the phone. "O'Neill," he growled.
"Who are you?" Clarke said.
"I'm John O'Neill," the man replied. "Who the hell are
you?"
O'Neill had just been appointed chief of the F.B.I.'s
counter-terrorism section, in Washington. He was
forty-two years old, and had been transferred from the
bureau's Chicago office. After driving all night, he
had gone directly to headquarters that Sunday morning
without dropping off his bags. When he heard Clarke's
report about Yousef, O'Neill entered the F.B.I.'s
Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) and
telephoned Thomas Pickard, the head of the bureau's
National Security Division in New York. Pickard then
called Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney for
the Southern District of New York, who had indicted
Yousef in the bombing case.
One of O'Neill's new responsibilities was to put
together a team to bring the suspect home. It was
composed of agents who were working on the case, a
State Department representative, a medical doctor, a
hostage-rescue team, and a fingerprint expert whose
job was to make sure that the suspect was, in fact,
Ramzi Yousef. Under ordinary circumstances, the host
country would be asked to detain the suspect until
extradition paperwork had been signed and the F.B.I.
could place the man in custody. There was no time for
that. Yousef was reportedly preparing to board a bus
for Peshawar. Unless he was apprehended, he would soon
cross the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, where he would
be out of reach. There was only one F.B.I. agent in
Pakistan at the time, along with several agents from
the Drug Enforcement Administration and the State
Department's diplomatic-security bureau. "Our
Ambassador had to get in his car and go ripping across
town to get the head of the local military
intelligence," Clarke recalled. "The chief gave him
his own personal aides, and this ragtag bunch of
American law-enforcement officials and a couple of
Pakistani soldiers set off to catch Yousef before he
got on the bus." O'Neill, working around the clock for
the next three days, coördinated the entire effort. At
10 A.M. Pakistan time, on Tuesday, February 7th, SIOC
was informed that the World Trade Center bomber was in
custody.
During the next six years, O'Neill became the bureau's
most committed tracker of Osama bin Laden and his Al
Qaeda network of terrorists as they struck against
American interests around the world. Brash, ambitious,
often full of himself, O'Neill had a confrontational
personality that brought him powerful enemies. Even
so, he was too valuable to ignore. He was the point
man in the investigation of the terrorist attacks in
Saudi Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen. At a time when
the Clinton Administration was struggling to decide
how to respond to the terrorist threat, O'Neill, along
with others in the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., realized
that Al Qaeda was relentless and resourceful and that
its ultimate target was America itself. In the last
days of his life, after he had taken a new job as the
chief of security for the World Trade Center, he was
warning friends, "We're due."
"I am the F.B.I.," John O'Neill liked to boast. He had
wanted to work for the bureau since boyhood, when he
watched Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., as the buttoned-down
Inspector Lewis Erskine in the TV series "The F.B.I."
O'Neill was born in 1952 and brought up in Atlantic
City, where his mother drove a cab for a small taxi
business that she and his father owned. After
graduating from Holy Spirit High School, he got a job
as a fingerprint clerk with the F.B.I. During his
first semester in college, he married his high-school
sweetheart, Christine, and when he was twenty their
son, John P. O'Neill, Jr., was born. O'Neill put
himself through a master's program in forensics at
George Washington University by serving as a tour
guide at the F.B.I. headquarters. In 1976, he became a
full-time agent in the bureau's office in Baltimore;
ten years later, he returned to headquarters and
served as an inspector. In 1991, he was named
assistant special agent in charge in the Chicago
office. In 1994, he received the additional assignment
of supervising VAPCON, a national investigation into
violence against abortion providers. The following
year, he transferred to headquarters to become the
counter-terrorism chief.
John Lipka, an agent who met O'Neill during the VAPCON
probe, marvelled at his ability to move so easily from
investigating organized crime and official corruption
to the thornier field of counter-terrorism. "He was a
very quick study," Lipka told me. "I'd been working
terrorism since '86, but he'd walk out of the Hoover
building, flag a cab, and I'd brief him on the way to
the White House. Then he'd give a presentation, and
I'd be shocked that he grasped everything I had been
working on for weeks."
O'Neill entered the bureau in the J. Edgar Hoover era,
and throughout his career he had something of the
old-time G-man about him. He talked tough, in a New
Jersey accent that many loved to imitate. He was
darkly handsome, with black eyes and slicked-back
hair. In a culture that favors discreet anonymity, he
cut a memorable figure. He favored fine cigars and
Chivas Regal and water with a twist, and carried a
nine-millimetre automatic strapped to his ankle. His
manner was bluff and dominating, but he was always
immaculately, even fussily, dressed. One of his
colleagues in Washington took note of O'Neill's
"night-club wardrobe"—black double-breasted suits,
semitransparent black socks, and ballet-slipper shoes.
"He had very delicate feet and hands, and, with his
polished fingernails, he made quite an impression."
In Washington, O'Neill became part of a close-knit
group of counter-terrorism experts which formed around
Richard Clarke. In the web of federal agencies
concerned with terrorism, Clarke was the spider.
Everything that touched the web eventually came to his
attention. The members of this inner circle, which was
known as the Counter-terrorism Security Group
(C.S.G.), were drawn mainly from the C.I.A., the
National Security Council, and the upper tiers of the
Defense Department, the Justice Department, and the
State Department. They met every week in the White
House Situation Room. "John could lead a discussion at
that level," R. P. Eddy, who was an N.S.C. director at
the time, told me. "He was not just the guy you turned
to for a situation report. He was the guy who would
say the thing that everybody in the room wishes he had
said."
In July of 1996, when T.W.A. Flight 800 crashed off
the coast of Long Island, there was widespread
speculation in the C.S.G. that it had been shot down
by a shoulder-fired missile from the shore. Dozens of
witnesses reported having seen an ascending flare that
culminated in an explosion. According to Clarke,
O'Neill, working with the Defense Department,
determined the height of the aircraft and its distance
from shore at the time of the explosion, and
demonstrated that it was out of the range of a Stinger
missile. He proposed that the flare could have been
caused by the ignition of leaking fuel from the
aircraft, and he persuaded the C.I.A. to do a video
simulation of this scenario, which proved to be
strikingly similar to the witnesses' accounts. It is
now generally agreed that mechanical failure, not
terrorism, caused the explosion of T.W.A. Flight 800.
Clarke immediately spotted in O'Neill an obsessiveness
about the dangers of terrorism which mirrored his own.
"John had the same problems with the bureaucracy that
I had," Clarke told me. "Prior to September 11th, a
lot of people who were working full time on terrorism
thought it was no more than a nuisance. They didn't
understand that Al Qaeda was enormously powerful and
insidious and that it was not going to stop until it
really hurt us. John and some other senior officials
knew that. The impatience really grew in us as we
dealt with the dolts who didn't understand."
Osama bin Laden had been linked to terrorism since the
first World Trade Center bombing, in 1993. His name
had turned up on a list of donors to an Islamic
charity that helped finance the bombing, and
defendants in the case referred to a "Sheikh Osama" in
a recorded conversation. "We started looking at who
was involved in these events, and it seemed like an
odd group of people getting together," Clarke
recalled. "They clearly had money. We'd see C.I.A.
reports that referred to 'financier Osama bin Laden,'
and we'd ask ourselves, 'Who the hell is he?' The more
we drilled down, the more we realized that he was not
just a financier—he was the leader. John said, 'We've
got to get this guy. He's building a network.
Everything leads back to him.' Gradually, the C.I.A.
came along with us."
O'Neill worked with Clarke to establish clear lines of
responsibility among the intelligence agencies, and in
1995 their efforts resulted in a Presidential
directive giving the F.B.I. the lead authority both in
investigating and in preventing acts of terrorism
wherever Americans or American interests were
threatened. After the April, 1995, bombing in Oklahoma
City, O'Neill formed a separate section for domestic
terrorism, but he concentrated on redesigning and
expanding the foreign-terrorism branch. He organized a
swap of deputies between his office and the C.I.A.'s
counter-terrorism center, despite resistance from both
agencies.
"John told me that if you put the resources and
talents of the C.I.A.'s counter-terrorism center and
the F.B.I.'s counter-terrorism section together on any
issue, we can solve it—but we need both," Lipka
recalled. In January, 1996, O'Neill helped create a
C.I.A. station, code-named Alex, with a single-minded
purpose. "Its mission was not just tracking down bin
Laden but focussing on his infrastructure, his
capabilities, where he got his funding, where were his
bases of operation and his training centers," Lipka
said. "Many of the same things we are doing now, that
station was already doing then."
The coöperation that O'Neill achieved between the
bureau and the C.I.A. was all the more remarkable
because opinions about him were sharply polarized.
O'Neill could be brutal, not only with underlings but
also with superiors when they failed to meet his
expectations. An agent in the Chicago office who felt
his disapproval told me, "He was smarter than
everybody else, and he would use that fine mind to
absolutely humiliate people."
In Washington, there was one terrorist-related crisis
after another. "We worked a bomb a month," Lipka
recalled. Often, O'Neill would break for dinner and be
back in the office at ten. "Most people couldn't keep
up with his passion and intensity," Lipka said. "He
was able to identify those people who shared his work
ethic, and then he tasked the living shit out of them,
with E-mails and status briefings and phones and
pagers going off all the time, to the point that I
asked him, 'When do you sleep?' " O'Neill began
acquiring nicknames that testified to his
relentlessness, among them the Count, the Prince of
Darkness, and Satan.
But many in the bureau who disliked O'Neill eventually
became devoted followers. He went to extraordinary
lengths to help when they faced health problems or
financial difficulty. "He was our Elvis—you knew when
he was in the house," Kevin Giblin, the F.B.I.'s head
of terrorist warning, recalled.
O'Neill's tenure in the F.B.I. coincided with the
internationalization of crime and law enforcement.
Prior to his appointment as the bureau's
counter-terrorism chief, the F.B.I. had limited its
involvement to operations in which Americans had been
killed. "O'Neill came in with a much more global
approach," Lipka told me. One of his innovations was
to catalogue all the explosives used by terrorists
worldwide. "He thought, When a bomb goes off in the
Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, even though no
Americans were killed, why don't we offer our
assistance, so that we can put that information on a
global forensic database," Lipka said. Since 1984, the
F.B.I. had had the authority to investigate crimes
against Americans abroad, but that mandate had been
handicapped by a lack of coöperation with foreign
police agencies. O'Neill made a habit of entertaining
every foreign cop or intelligence agent who entered
his orbit. He called it his "night job."
"John's approach to law enforcement was that of the
old Irish ward boss to governance: you collect
friendships and debts and obligations, because you
never know when you're going to need them," Clarke
told me. He was constantly on the phone, doing favors,
massaging contacts. By the time he died, he had become
one of the best-known policemen in the world. "You'd
be in Moscow at some bilateral exchange," Giblin
recalled, "and you'd see three or four men approach
and say, in broken English, 'Do you know John
O'Neill?' "
The need to improve relationships with foreign police
agencies became apparent in November, 1995, when five
Americans and two Indians died in the bombing of an
American-run military-training center in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia. The F.B.I. sent over a small squad to
investigate, but the agents had scarcely arrived when
the Saudis arrested four suspects and beheaded them,
foreclosing any opportunity to learn who was behind
the operation.
In the spring of 1996, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, who had
supported a plot by Al Qaeda against American soldiers
in Somalia four years earlier, arrived at the American
Embassy in Asmara, Eritrea. The C.I.A. debriefed him
for six months, then turned him over to the F.B.I.,
which put him in the witness-protection program. Fadl
provided the first extensive road map of the bin Laden
terrorist empire. "Fadl was a gold mine," an
intelligence source who was present during some of the
interviews told me. "He described the network, bin
Laden's companies, his farms, his operations in the
ports." Fadl also talked about bin Laden's desire to
attack Americans, including his ambition to obtain
uranium. The news was widely circulated among members
of the intelligence community, including O'Neill, and
yet the State Department refused to list Al Qaeda as a
terrorist organization.
On June 25, 1996, O'Neill arranged a retreat for
F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents at the bureau's training
center in Quantico, Virginia. "We had hot dogs and
hamburgers, and John let the C.I.A. guys on the firing
range, because they never get to shoot," Giblin
recalled. "Then everyone's beeper went off." Another
explosion in Saudi Arabia, at the Khobar Towers, a
military-housing complex in Dhahran, had killed
nineteen American soldiers and injured more than five
hundred other people, including Saudis. O'Neill
assembled a team of nearly a hundred agents, support
personnel, and members of various police agencies. The
next day, they were on an Air Force transport plane to
Saudi Arabia. A few weeks later, they were joined by
O'Neill and the F.B.I. director, Louis Freeh.
It was evening when the two men arrived in Dhahran.
The disaster site was a vast crater illuminated by
lights on high stanchions; nearby lay charred
automobiles and upended Humvees. Looming above the
debris were the ruins of the housing complex. This was
the largest bomb that the F.B.I. had ever
investigated, even more powerful than the explosives
that had killed a hundred and sixty-eight people in
Oklahoma City in 1995. O'Neill walked through the
rubble, greeting exhausted agents who were sifting the
sand for evidence. Under a tarp nearby, investigators
were gradually reconstructing fragments of the truck
that had carried the bomb.
In the Khobar Towers case, neither the Saudis nor the
State Department seemed eager to pursue a trail of
evidence that pointed to Iranian terrorists as the
likeliest perpetrators. The Clinton Administration did
not relish the prospect of military retaliation
against a country that seemed to be moderating its
anti-Western policies, and, according to Clarke, the
Saudis impeded the F.B.I. investigation because they
were worried about the American response. "They were
afraid that we would have to bomb Iran," I was told by
a Clinton Administration official, who added that that
would have been a likely course of action.
Freeh was initially optimistic that the Saudis would
coöperate, but O'Neill became increasingly frustrated,
and eventually a rift seems to have developed between
the two men. "John started telling Louis things Louis
didn't want to hear," Clarke said. "John told me that,
after one of the many trips he and Freeh took to the
Mideast to get better coöperation from the Saudis,
they boarded the Gulfstream to come home and Freeh
says, 'Wasn't that a great trip? I think they're
really going to help us.' And John says, 'You've got
to be kidding. They didn't give us anything. They were
just shining sunshine up your ass.' For the next
twelve hours, Freeh didn't say another word to him."
Freeh denies that this conversation took place. "Of
course, John and I discussed the results of every trip
at that time," he wrote to me in an E-mail. "However,
John never made that statement to me. . . . John and I
had an excellent relationship based on trust and
friendship."
O'Neill longed to get out of Washington so that he
could "go operational," as he told John Lipka, and
supervise cases again. In January, 1997, he became
special agent in charge of the National Security
Division in New York, the bureau's largest and most
prestigious field office. When he arrived, he dumped
four boxes of Rolodex cards on the desk of his new
secretary, Lorraine di Taranto. Then he handed her a
list of everyone he wanted to meet—"the mayor, the
police commissioner, the deputy police commissioners,
the heads of the federal agencies, religious and
ethnic leaders," di Taranto recalled. Within six
months, O'Neill had met everyone on the list.
"Everybody knew John," R. P. Eddy, who left Washington
in 1999 for a job at the United Nations, told me. "You
would walk into Elaine's or Bruno's with him, and
everyone from the owner to the waiters to the guy who
cleaned the floor would look up. And the amazing thing
is they would all have a private discussion with him
at some point. The waitress wanted tickets to a
Michael Jackson concert. One of the wait staff was
applying for a job with the bureau, and John would be
helping him with that. After a night of this, I
remember saying, 'John, you've got this town wired.'
And he said, 'What's the point of being sheriff if you
can't act like one?' "
O'Neill was soon on intimate terms with movie stars,
politicians, and journalists—what some of his
detractors called "the Elaine's crowd." In the spring
of 1998, one of O'Neill's New York friends, a producer
at ABC News named Christopher Isham, arranged an
interview for a network reporter, John Miller, with
Osama bin Laden. Miller's narration contained
information to the effect that one of bin Laden's
aides was coöperating with the F.B.I. The leak of that
detail created, in Isham's words, "a firestorm in the
bureau." O'Neill, because of his friendship with Isham
and Miller, was suspected of providing the
information, and an internal investigation was
launched. The matter died down after the newsmen
denied that O'Neill was their informant and
volunteered to take polygraphs.
In New York, O'Neill created a special Al Qaeda desk,
and when the bombings of the American embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania occurred, in August, 1998, he was
sure that bin Laden was behind them. "He was pissed,
he was beside himself," Robert M. Blitzer, who was
head of the F.B.I.'s domestic-terrorism section at the
time, remembered. "He was calling me every day. He
wanted control of that investigation." O'Neill
persuaded Freeh to let the New York office handle the
case, and he eventually dispatched nearly five hundred
investigators to Africa. Mary Jo White, whose
prosecuting team subsequently convicted five
defendants in the case, told me, "John O'Neill, in the
investigation of the bombings of our embassies in East
Africa, created the template for successful
investigations of international terrorism around the
world."
The counter-terrorist community was stunned by the
level of coördination required to pull off the
simultaneous bombings. Even more troubling was the
escalation of violence against civilians. According to
Steven Simon, then a terrorist expert at the N.S.C.,
as many as five American embassies had been
targeted—luck and better intelligence had saved the
others. It was discouraging to learn that, nearly a
year before, a member of Al Qaeda had walked into the
American Embassy in Nairobi and told the C.I.A. of the
bombing plot. The agency had dismissed this
intelligence as unreliable. "The guy was a bullshit
artist, completely off the map," an intelligence
source said. But his warnings about the impending
attacks proved accurate.
Moreover, key members of the Al Qaeda cell that
planned the operation had been living in one of the
most difficult places in the Western world to gain
intelligence: the United States. The F.B.I. is
constrained from spying on American citizens and
visitors without probable cause. Lacking evidence that
potential conspirators were actively committing a
crime, the bureau could do little to gather
information on the domestic front. O'Neill felt that
his hands were tied. "John was never satisfied," one
of his friends in the bureau recalled. "He said we
were fighting a war, but we were not able to fight
back. He thought we never had the tools in place to do
the job."
O'Neill never presumed that killing bin Laden alone
would be sufficient. In speeches, he identified five
tools to combat terrorism: diplomacy, military action,
covert operations, economic sanctions, and law
enforcement. So far, the tool that had worked most
effectively against Al Qaeda was the last one—the
slow, difficult work of gathering evidence, getting
indictments, hunting down the perpetrators, and
gaining convictions.
O'Neill was worried that terrorists had established a
beachhead in America. In a June, 1997, speech in
Chicago, he warned, "Almost all of the groups today,
if they chose to, have the ability to strike us here
in the United States." He was particularly concerned
that, as the millennium approached, Al Qaeda would
seize the moment to dramatize its war with America.
The intelligence to support that hypothesis was
frustratingly absent, however.
On December 14, 1999, a border guard in Port Angeles,
Washington, stopped an Algerian man, Ahmed Ressam, who
then bolted from his car. He was captured as he tried
to hijack another automobile. In the trunk of his car
were four timers, more than a hundred pounds of urea,
and fourteen pounds of sulfate—the makings of an
Oklahoma City-type bomb. It turned out that Ressam's
target was Los Angeles International Airport. The
following day, Jordanian authorities arrested thirteen
suspected terrorists who were believed to be planning
to blow up a Radisson Hotel in Amman and a number of
tourist sites frequented by Westerners. The Jordanians
also discovered an Al Qaeda training manual on CD-ROM.
What followed was, according to Clarke, the most
comprehensive investigation ever conducted before
September 11th. O'Neill's job was to supervise the
operation in New York. Authorities had found several
phone numbers on Ressam when he was arrested. There
was also a name, Ghani, which belonged to Abdel Ghani
Meskini, an Algerian, who lived in Brooklyn and who
had travelled to Seattle to meet with Ressam. O'Neill
oversaw the stakeout of Meskini's residence and spent
much of his time in the Brooklyn command post. "I
doubt he slept the whole month," David N. Kelley, an
assistant United States Attorney and chief of
organized crime and terrorism for the Southern
District, recalled. A wiretap picked up a call that
Meskini had made to Algeria in which he spoke about
Ressam and a suspected terrorist in Montreal. On
December 30th, O'Neill arrested Meskini on conspiracy
charges and a number of other suspected terrorists on
immigration violations. (Meskini and Ressam eventually
became coöperating witnesses and are both assisting
the F.B.I.'s investigation of the September 11th
attacks.)
O'Neill was proud of the efforts of the F.B.I. and the
New York Joint Terrorism Task Force to avert
catastrophe. On New Year's Eve, he and his friend
Joseph Dunne, then the Chief of Department for the New
York City Police, went to Times Square, which they
believed was a highly likely target. At midnight,
O'Neill called friends at SIOC and boasted that he was
standing directly under the giant crystal ball.
After the millennium roundup, O'Neill suspected that
Al Qaeda had sleeper cells buried in America. "He
started pulling the strings in Jordan and in Canada,
and in the end they all led back to the United
States," Clarke said. "There was a general disbelief
in the F.B.I. that Al Qaeda had much of a presence
here. It just hadn't sunk through to the organization,
beyond O'Neill and Dale Watson"—the assistant director
of the counter-terrorism division. Clarke's
discussions with O'Neill and Watson over the next few
months led to a strategic plan called the Millennium
After-Action Review, which specified a number of
policy changes designed to root out Al Qaeda cells in
the United States. They included increasing the number
of Joint Terrorism Task Forces around the country;
assigning more agents from the Internal Revenue
Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service
to monitor the flow of money and personnel; and
creating a streamlined process for analyzing
information obtained from wiretaps.
Many in the F.B.I. point to the millennium
investigation as one of the bureau's great recent
successes. A year earlier, O'Neill had been passed
over when the position of assistant director in charge
of national security became available. When the post
of chief of the New York office opened up, in early
2000, O'Neill lobbied fiercely for it. The job went to
Barry Mawn, a former special agent in charge of the
Boston office. As it happened, the two men met at a
seminar just after the decision was announced. "I got
a knock on the door, and there was John holding two
beers," Mawn recalled. O'Neill promised complete
loyalty in return for Mawn's support of his work on
counter-terrorism. "It turns out that supporting him
was a full-time job," Mawn said.
O'Neill had many detractors and very few defenders
left in Washington. Despite occasional disagreements,
Louis Freeh had always supported O'Neill, but Freeh
had announced that he would retire in June, 2001. A
friend of O'Neill's, Jerry Hauer, of the New
York-based security firm Kroll, told me that Thomas
Pickard, who had become the bureau's deputy director
in 1999, was "an institutional roadblock." Hauer
added, "It was very clear to John that Pickard was
never going to let him get promoted." Others felt that
O'Neill was his own worst enemy. "He was always trying
to leverage himself to the next job," Dale Watson
said. John Lipka, who considers himself a close friend
of O'Neill, attributes some of O'Neill's problems to
his flamboyant image. "The bureau doesn't like
high-profile people," he said. "It's a very
conservative culture."
The World Trade Center had become a symbol of
America's success in fighting terrorism, and in
September, 2000, the New York Joint Terrorism Task
Force celebrated its twentieth anniversary in the
Windows on the World restaurant. The event was
attended by representatives of seventeen
law-enforcement agencies, including agents from the
F.B.I. and the C.I.A., New York City and Port
Authority policemen, United States marshals, and
members of the Secret Service. Mary Jo White praised
the task force for a "close to absolutely perfect
record of successful investigations and convictions."
White had served eight years as the United States
Attorney for the Southern District, and she had
convicted twenty-five Islamic terrorists, including
Yousef, six other World Trade Center bombers, the
blind cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and nine of
Rahman's followers, who had planned to blow up the
Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the United Nations
headquarters, and the F.B.I. offices.
O'Neill seemed at ease that night. Few of his
colleagues knew of a troubling incident that had
occurred two months earlier at an F.B.I.
pre-retirement conference in Orlando. During a
meeting, O'Neill had been paged. He left the room to
return the call, and when he came back, a few minutes
later, the other agents had broken for lunch. His
briefcase, which contained classified material, was
missing. O'Neill immediately called the local police,
and they found the briefcase a couple of hours later,
in another hotel. A Montblanc pen had been stolen,
along with a silver cigar cutter and a lighter. The
papers were intact; fingerprint analysis soon
established that they had not been touched.
"He phoned me and said, 'I gotta tell you something,'
" Barry Mawn recalled. O'Neill told Mawn that the
briefcase contained some classified E-mails and one
highly sensitive document, the Annual Field Office
Report, which is an overview of every
counter-terrorist and counter-espionage case in New
York. Mawn reported the incident to Neil Gallagher,
the bureau's assistant director in charge of national
security. "John understood the seriousness of what he
had done, and if he were alive today he'd tell you he
made a stupid mistake," Gallagher told me. Even though
none of the information had been compromised, the
Justice Department ordered a criminal inquiry.
Mawn said that, as O'Neill's supervisor, he would have
recommended an oral reprimand or, at worst, a letter
of censure. Despite their competition for the top job
in New York, Mawn had become one of O'Neill's
staunchest defenders. "He demanded perfection, which
was a large part of why the New York office is so
terrific," Mawn said. "But underneath his manner, deep
down, he was very insecure."
On October 12, 2000, a small boat filled with C4
explosives motored alongside a U.S. destroyer, the
Cole, which was fuelling up off the coast of Yemen.
Two men aboard the small craft waved at the larger
vessel, then blew themselves to pieces. Seventeen
American sailors died, and thirty-nine others were
seriously wounded.
O'Neill knew that Yemen was going to be an extremely
difficult place in which to conduct an investigation.
In 1992, bin Laden's network had bombed a hotel in
Aden, hoping to kill a number of American soldiers.
The country was filled with spies and with jihadis and
was reeling from a 1994 civil war. "Yemen is a country
of eighteen million citizens and 50 million machine
guns," O'Neill reported. On the day the investigators
arrived in Yemen, O'Neill warned them, "This may be
the most hostile environment the F.B.I. has ever
operated in."
The American Ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, saw
things differently. In her eyes, Yemen was the poor
and guileless cousin of the swaggering
petro-monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Unlike other
countries in the region, it was a constitutional
democracy—however fragile—in which women were allowed
to vote. Bodine had had extensive experience in Arab
countries. During the Iraqi invasion and occupation of
Kuwait, she had been the deputy chief of mission in
Kuwait City, and she had stayed through the
hundred-and-thirty-seven-day siege of the American
Embassy by Iraqi troops until all the Americans were
evacuated.
Bodine, who is on assignment from the State Department
as diplomat-in-residence at the University of
California at Santa Barbara, contends that she and
O'Neill had agreed that he would bring in a team of no
more than fifty. She was furious when three hundred
investigators, support staff, and marines arrived,
many carrying automatic weapons. "Try to imagine if a
military plane from another country landed in Des
Moines, and three hundred heavily armed people took
over," she told me recently. Bodine recalled that she
pleaded with O'Neill to consider the delicate
diplomatic environment he was entering. She quoted him
as responding, "We don't care about the environment.
We're just here to investigate a crime."
"There was the F.B.I. way, and that was it," she said
to me. "O'Neill wasn't unique. He was simply extreme."
According to Michael Sheehan, who was the State
Department's coördinator for counter-terrorism at the
time, such conflicts between ambassadors and the
bureau are not unusual, given their differing
perspectives; however, Bodine had been given clear
instructions from the outset of the investigation. "I
drafted a cable under [then Secretary of State]
Madeleine Albright's signature saying that there were
three guiding principles," Sheehan said. "The highest
priorities were the immediate safety of American
personnel and the investigation of the attack. No. 3
was maintaining a relationship with the government of
Yemen— but only to support those objectives."
O'Neill's investigators were billeted three or four to
a room in an Aden hotel. "Forty-five F.B.I. personnel
slept on mats on the ballroom floor," he later
reported. He set up a command post on the eighth
floor, which was surrounded by sandbags and protected
by a company of fifty marines.
O'Neill spent much of his time coaxing the Yemeni
authorities to coöperate. To build a case that would
hold up in American courts, he wanted his agents
present during interrogations by local authorities, in
part to insure that none of the suspects were
tortured. He also wanted to gather eyewitness
testimony from residents who had seen the explosion.
Both the Yemeni authorities and Bodine resisted these
requests. "You want a bunch of six-foot-two
Irish-Americans to go door-to-door?" Bodine remembers
saying to O'Neill. "And, excuse me, but how many of
your guys speak Arabic?"
There were only half a dozen Arabic speakers in the
F.B.I. contingent, and even O'Neill acknowledged that
their competence was sometimes in question. On one
occasion, he complained to a Yemeni intelligence
officer, "Getting information out of you is like
pulling teeth." When his comment was translated, the
Yemeni's eyes widened. The translator had told him,
"If you don't give me the information I want, I'm
going to pull out your teeth."
When O'Neill expressed his frustration to Washington,
President Clinton sent a note to President Ali
Abdullah Saleh. It had little effect. According to
agents on the scene, O'Neill's people were never given
the authority they needed for a proper investigation.
Much of their time was spent on board the Cole,
interviewing sailors, or lounging around the
sweltering hotel. Some of O'Neill's requests for
evidence mystified the Yemenis. They couldn't
understand, for instance, why he was demanding a hat
worn by one of the conspirators, which O'Neill wanted
to examine for DNA evidence. Even the harbor sludge,
which contained residue from the bomb, was off limits
until the bureau paid the Yemeni government a million
dollars to dredge it.
There were so many perceived threats that the agents
often slept in their clothes and with their guns at
their sides. Bodine thought that much of this fear was
overblown. "They were deeply suspicious of everyone,
including the hotel staff," she told me. She assured
O'Neill that gunfire outside the hotel was probably
not directed at the investigators but was simply the
noise of wedding celebrations. Still, she added that,
for the investigators' own safety, she wanted to lower
the bureau's profile by reducing the number of agents
and stripping them of heavy weapons. Upon receiving a
bomb threat, the investigators evacuated the hotel and
moved to an American vessel, the U.S.S. Duluth. After
that, they had to request permission just to come
ashore.
Relations between Bodine and O'Neill deteriorated to
the point that Barry Mawn flew to Yemen to assess the
situation. "She represented that John was insulting,
and not getting along well with the Yemenis," he
recalled. Mawn talked to members of the F.B.I. team
and American military officers, and he observed
O'Neill's interactions with Yemeni authorities. He
told O'Neill that he was doing "an outstanding job."
On Mawn's return, he reported favorably on O'Neill to
Freeh, adding that Bodine was his "only detractor."
An ambassador, however, has authority over which
Americans are allowed to stay in a foreign country. A
month after the investigation began, Assistant
Director Dale Watson told the Washington Post,
"Sustained cooperation" with the Yemenis "has enabled
the F.B.I. to further reduce its in-country presence.
. . . The F.B.I. will soon be able to bring home the
F.B.I.'s senior on-scene commander, John O'Neill." It
appeared to be a very public surrender. The same day,
the Yemeni Prime Minister told the Post that no link
had been discovered between the Cole bombers and Al
Qaeda.
The statement was premature, to say the least. In
fact, it is possible that some of the planning for the
Cole bombing and the September 11th attacks took place
simultaneously. It is now believed that at least two
of the suspected conspirators in the Cole bombing had
attended a meeting of alleged bin Laden associates in
Malaysia, in January, 2000. Under C.I.A. pressure,
Malaysian authorities had conducted a surveillance of
the gathering, turning up a number of faces but, in
the absence of wiretaps, nothing of what was said. "It
didn't seem like much at the time," a Clinton
Administration official told me. "None of the faces
showed up in our own files." Early last year, the
F.B.I. targeted the men who were present at the
Malaysia meeting as potential terrorists. Two of them
were subsequently identified as hijackers in the
September 11th attacks.
After two months in Yemen, O'Neill came home feeling
that he was fighting the counter-terrorism battle
without support from his own government. He had made
some progress in gaining access to evidence, but so
far the investigation had been a failure. Concerned
about continuing threats against the remaining F.B.I.
investigators, he tried to return in January of 2001.
Bodine denied his application to reënter the country.
She refuses to discuss that decision. "Too much is
being made of John O'Neill's being in Yemen or not,"
she told me. "John O'Neill did not discover Al Qaeda.
He did not discover Osama bin Laden. So the idea that
John or his people or the F.B.I. were somehow barred
from doing their job is insulting to the U.S.
government, which was working on Al Qaeda before John
ever showed up. This is all my embassy did for ten
months. The fact that not every single thing John
O'Neill asked for was appropriate or possible does not
mean that we did not support the investigation."
After O'Neill's departure, the remaining agents,
feeling increasingly vulnerable, retreated to the
American Embassy in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. In
June, the Yemeni authorities arrested eight men who
they said were part of a plot to blow up the Embassy.
New threats against the F.B.I. followed, and Freeh,
acting upon O'Neill's recommendation, withdrew the
team entirely. Its members were, he told me, "the
highest target during this period." Bodine calls the
pullout "unconscionable." In her opinion, there was
never a specific, credible threat against the bureau.
The American Embassy, Bodine points out, stayed open.
But within days American military forces in the Middle
East were put on top alert.
Few people in the bureau knew that O'Neill had a wife
and two children (John, Jr., and his younger sister,
Carol) in New Jersey, who did not join him when he
moved to Chicago, in 1991. In his New York office, the
most prominent pictures were not family photographs
but French Impressionist prints. On his coffee table
was a book about tulips, and his office was always
filled with flowers. He was a terrific dancer, and he
boasted that he had been on "American Bandstand" when
he was a teen-ager. Some women found him irresistibly
sexy. Others thought him a cad.
Shortly after he arrived in Chicago, O'Neill met
Valerie James, a fashion sales director, who was
divorced and was raising two children. Four years
later, when he transferred to headquarters, in
Washington, he also began seeing Anna DiBattista, who
worked for a travel agency. Then, when he moved to New
York, Valerie James joined him. In 1999, DiBattista
moved to New York to take a new job, complicating his
life considerably. His friends in Chicago and New York
knew Valerie, and his friends in Washington knew Anna.
If his friends happened to see him in the company of
the "wrong" woman, he pledged them to secrecy.
On holidays, O'Neill went home to New Jersey to visit
his parents and to see his children. Only John P.
O'Neill, Jr., who is a computer expert for the
credit-card company M.B.N.A., in Wilmington, Delaware,
agreed to speak to me about his father. His remarks
were guarded. He described a close relationship—"We
talked a few times a week"—but there are parts of his
father's past that he refuses to discuss. "My father
liked to keep his private life private," he said.
Both James and DiBattista remember how O'Neill would
beg for forgiveness and then promise better times.
James told me, "He'd say, 'I just want to be loved,
just love me,' but you couldn't really trust him, so
he never got the love he asked for."
The stress of O'Neill's tangled personal life began to
affect his professional behavior. One night, he left
his Palm Pilot in Yankee Stadium; it was filled with
his police contacts all around the world. On another
occasion, he left his cell phone in a cab. In the
summer of 1999, he and James were driving to the
Jersey shore when his Buick broke down near the
Meadowlands. As it happened, his bureau car was parked
nearby, at a secret office location, and O'Neill
switched cars. One of the most frequently violated
rules in the bureau is the use of an official vehicle
for personal reasons, and O'Neill's infraction might
have been overlooked had he not let James enter the
building to use the bathroom. "I had no idea what it
was," she told me. Still, when the F.B.I. learned
about the violation, apparently from an agent who had
been caught using the site as an auto-repair shop,
O'Neill was reprimanded and docked fifteen days' pay.
He regarded the bureau's action as part of a pattern.
"The last two years of his life, he got very
paranoid," James told me. "He was convinced there were
people out to get him."
In March, 2001, Richard Clarke asked the
national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, for a job
change; he wanted to concentrate on computer security.
"I was told, 'You've got to recommend somebody similar
to be your replacement,' " Clarke recalled. "I said,
'Well, there's only one person who would fit that
bill.' " For months, Clarke tried to persuade O'Neill
to become a candidate as his successor.
O'Neill had always harbored two aspirations—to become
a deputy director of the bureau in Washington or to
take over the New York office. Freeh was retiring in
June, so there were likely to be some vacancies at the
top, but the investigation into the briefcase incident
would likely block any promotion in the bureau.
O'Neill viewed Clarke's job as, in many ways, a
perfect fit for him. But he was financially pressed,
and Clarke's job paid no more than he was making at
the F.B.I. Throughout the summer, O'Neill refused to
commit himself to Clarke's offer. He talked about it
with a number of friends but became alarmed when he
thought that headquarters might hear of it. "He called
me in a worked-up state," Clarke recalled. "He said
that people in the C.I.A. and elsewhere know you are
considering recommending me for your job. You have to
tell them it's not true." Clarke dutifully called a
friend in the agency, even though O'Neill still wanted
to be a candidate for the position.
In July, O'Neill heard of a job opening in the private
sector which would pay more than twice his government
salary—that of chief of security for the World Trade
Center. Although the Justice Department dropped its
inquiry into the briefcase incident, the bureau was
conducting an internal investigation of its own.
O'Neill was aware that the Times was preparing a story
about the affair, and he learned that the reporters
also knew about the incident in New Jersey involving
James and had classified information that probably
came from the bureau's investigative files.The leak
seemed to be timed to destroy O'Neill's chance of
being confirmed for the N.S.C. job. He decided to
retire.
O'Neill suspected that the source of the information
was either Tom Pickard or Dale Watson. The antagonism
between him and Pickard was well known. "I've got a
pretty good Irish temper and so did John," Pickard,
who retired last November, told me. But he insisted
that their differences were professional, not
personal. The leak was "somebody being pretty vicious
to John," but Pickard maintained that he did not do
it. "I'd take a polygraph to it," he said. Watson told
me, "If you're asking me who leaks F.B.I. information,
I have no idea. I know I don't, and I know that Tom
Pickard doesn't, and I know that the director
doesn't." For all the talk about polygraphs, the
bureau ruled out an investigation into the source of
the leak, despite an official request by Barry Mawn,
in New York.
Meanwhile, intelligence had been streaming in
concerning a likely Al Qaeda attack. "It all came
together in the third week in June," Clarke said. "The
C.I.A.'s view was that a major terrorist attack was
coming in the next several weeks." On July 5th, Clarke
summoned all the domestic security agencies—the
Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard,
Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
and the F.B.I.—and told them to increase their
security in light of an impending attack.
On August 19th, the Times ran an article about the
briefcase incident and O'Neill's forthcoming
retirement, which was to take place three days later.
There was a little gathering for coffee as he packed
up his office.
When O'Neill told ABC's Isham of his decision to work
at the Trade Center, Isham had said jokingly, "At
least they're not going to bomb it again." O'Neill had
replied, "They'll probably try to finish the job." On
the day he started at the Trade Center—August 23rd—the
C.I.A. sent a cable to the F.B.I. saying that two
suspected Al Qaeda terrorists were already in the
country. The bureau tried to track them down, but the
addresses they had given when they entered the country
proved to be false, and the men were never located.
When he was growing up in Atlantic City, O'Neill was
an altar boy at St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church. On
September 28th, a week after his body was found in the
rubble of the World Trade Center, a thousand mourners
gathered at St. Nicholas to say farewell. Many of them
were agents and policemen and members of foreign
intelligence services who had followed O'Neill into
the war against terrorism long before it became a
rallying cry for the nation. The hierarchy of the
F.B.I. attended, including the now retired director
Louis Freeh. Richard Clarke, who says that he had not
shed a tear since September 11th, suddenly broke down
when the bagpipes played and the casket passed by.
O'Neill's last weeks had been happy ones. The moment
he left the F.B.I., his spirits had lifted. He talked
about getting a new Mercedes to replace his old Buick.
He told Anna that they could now afford to get
married. On the last Saturday night of his life, he
attended a wedding with Valerie, and they danced
nearly every number. He told a friend within Valerie's
hearing, "I'm gonna get her a ring."
On September 10th, O'Neill called Robert Tucker, a
friend and security-company executive, and arranged to
get together that evening to talk about security
issues at the Trade Center. Tucker met O'Neill in the
lobby of the north tower, and the two men rode the
elevator up to O'Neill's new office, on the
thirty-fourth floor. "He was incredibly proud of what
he was doing," Tucker told me. Then they went to a bar
at the top of the tower for a drink. Afterward, they
headed uptown to Elaine's, where they were joined by
their friend Jerry Hauer. Around midnight, the three
men dropped in on the China Club, a night spot in
midtown. "John made the statement that he thought
something big was going to happen," Hauer recalled.
Valerie James waited up for O'Neill. He didn't come in
until 2:30 A.M. "The next morning, I was frosty," she
recalled. "He came into my bathroom and put his arms
around me. He said, 'Please forgive me.' " He offered
to drive her to work, and dropped her off at
eight-thirteen in the flower district, where she had
an appointment, and headed to the