[Liberation News Service]: LNS Post Coup II Supplement )12/11/04)

[richard power]

At least five more US soldiers have died in Iraq. For
what? The neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich.
Nothing more. No, the world is not safer. No, the
Iraqi people are not free. No, the US will not control
the last few decades of the world’s oil flow. The war
in Iraq is worse than immoral, worse than illegal
under international law, it is insanely stupid. It was
insanely stupid in its inception, insanely stupid in
its execution, and insanely stupid in its
perpetuation.
Here are twenty-one pieces (some news, some op-ed)
that highlight the national state of emergency that
the US regimestream news media continues to CONCEAL
from and LIE to you about, and that the Democratic
Party leadership (in particular, John Kerry) have
cravenly and cowardly refused to confront...
This LNS Post Coup II Supplement is organized into six
sections: Theft of 2004 Election, Bush Abomination’s
#1 Failure (National Security), Bush Abomination’s #2
Failure (Economic Security), Bush Abomination’s #1
Failure (Environmental Security), Complicity of the
Corporatist News Media and More Names for the John P.
O’Neill Wall of Heroes…These six categories represent
the only real agenda to pursue, moving forward: Free
Press in the US (i.e., Media Reform), Democracy in the
US (i.e., Election Reform), National Security
(Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris and Clarke’s Against All
Enemies), Economic Security (fiscal responsibility,
e.g., debt reduction), Environmental Security (i.e.,
renewable energy resources, the fight against global
warming) and the Defense of Those Who Speak Out in
Resistance (e.g., the John P. O’Neill Wall of
Heroes)…There is no other realistic agenda, anything
else (the “traditional” Democratic agenda in
particular) is nothing more than denial and
co-dependency…
Donate to www.blackboxvoting.org, www.moveon.org,
www.buzzflash.com, www.truthout.org and
www.mediamatters.org.
Do not donate to the Democratic Party unless it joins
the Resistance – for REAL (as in “our lives, our
fortunes and our sacred honor”) The Kerry capitulation
is unforgivable, so is Sen. Harry Reid’s remarks about
accepting Scalia as Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, so is the attack on Michael Moore by Al From of
the DLC…No, do not give the Democratic Party one more
penny until it shows up in the streets and in the
courts where the *civil* war is already underway…BUT
do not fall into the revisionist thinking of those
like John MacArthur who says, in the Providence
Journal, “I am sorry I didn’t vote for Ralph Nader.”
We are at a very dangerous juncture in the Resistance.
John Kerry has betrayed us, but this tragic fact does
not re-cast the betrayal of that
shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader. His
betrayal of all that is good in 2000, and his feeble
attempt to repeat that betrayal in 2004 still stand on
their own as acts of ignominy. Just because Kerry too
fails to understand the national state of emergency or
refuses to risk what he would risk in resisting does
not lessen the egregious wrongs of the
shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader. Both the
shell-of-a-man-formerly-known-as-Ralph-Nader and Kerry
should both be ostracized, and indeed equated, for
their betrayals.

  
The Theft of the 2004 Election:

Mark Crispin Miller, www.buzzflash.com: As you know
(and way too many others don't), Rep. John Conyers
recently held open hearings in the US Congress, on the
all-important subject of the voting in Ohio on
November 2nd. There was a lot of harrowing testimony
on the tricks and tactics used there by Bush/Cheney to
suppress as many Democratic votes as possible, and to
exaggerate Ohio's electoral support for the regime. 
It was a public inquiry of towering importance, and
not only because it was (allegedly) Ohio that gave
Bush just enough electoral votes to win. Ohio matters
more than anyone can say, because what went down there
went down not only in Ohio. There is in fact abundant
evidence--strong evidence--suggesting that Team Bush
pursued that crooked twofold strategy throughout the
nation. In other words, they used a broad variety of
means to trash the Kerry vote and to exaggerate the
Bush vote, and did so everywhere they could. 
Now, this being a democratic republic (or so we've all
been taught), you'd think that Conyers' charges -- and
the hearing -- would get a lot of coverage in the
press. 
And yet the New York Times, our nation's "newspaper of
record," did not even mention it, much less cover it.
The hearings were on Wednesday. There was no word of
it in Thursday's paper, nor any word, belatedly, in
Friday's. (Thursday's Times did run a couple of long
stories on the electoral situation in Ukraine, but
none on the quite similar, and -- to Americans --
vastly more important story here at home.) 
Such silence is bizarre. It's deeply wrong. In fact,
it's un-American. For what public issue could there be
that matters quite as much as the integrity of our
elections? What, then, could possibly explain, or
excuse, the Times' failure even to note Conyers'
hearings? For that matter, what explains the Times'
thorough indifference to this crucial subject? Like
all American news outlets, the Times is obligated, by
the First Amendment, to attempt to keep its readership
informed about the government, so that the government
is answerable to us, its ultimate custodians. Rather
than deal squarely with the ever-mounting evidence of
massive fraud by the Republicans, the Times instead
has merely ridiculed those raising questions, as if
such patriotic citizens were laughably insane. 

Bob Fertik, www.democrats.com: On Friday December 10
two certified volunteers for the Ohio Recount team
assigned to Greene County were in process recording
voting information from minority precincts in Greene
County, and were stopped mid-count by a surprise order
from Secretary of State Blackwell’s office. The
Director Board of Elections stated that “all voter
records for the state of Ohio were “locked-down,” and
now they are not considered public records.”
Are we entering Watergate territory? Remember the
coverup was worse than the crime.
Just in the nick of time, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI),
ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is
taking his ongoing investigation of Ohio election
fraud to Columbus on Monday for a "2004 Election
Forum." Conyers will be joined by Congressmembers
Maxine Waters (D-CA), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH),
and Ted Strickland (D-OH), along with Rev. Jesse
Jackson, attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and John Bonifaz,
and other Ohio leaders. The forum will address new
evidence of election irregularities and fraud in Ohio,
the issue of Ohio electors meeting while recounts and
litigation are pending, and to discuss legislative and
other responses to the problems. 
First, this is a direct slap in the face to Ken
Blackwell, since Columbus is where his office is. How
will Blackwell respond?


www.fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com: On Friday
December 10 two certified volunteers for the Ohio
Recount team assigned to Greene County were in process
recording voting information from minority precincts
in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count by a
surprise order from Secretary of State Blackwell’s
office. The Director Board of Elections stated that
“all voter records for the state of Ohio were
“locked-down,” and now they are not considered public
records.” 
The volunteers were working with voter printouts
received directly from Carole Garman, Director, Greene
County Board of Elections. Joan Quinn and Eve
Roberson, retired attorney and election official
respectively, were hand-copying voter discrepancies
from precinct voting books on behalf of the
presidential candidates Mr. Cobb (Green) and Mr.
Badnarik Libertarian) who had requested the recount. 
One of the goals of the recount was to determine how
many minority voters were unable to vote or denied
voting at the polls. Upon requesting copies of
precinct records from predominantly minority
precincts, Ms. Garman contacted Secretary of State
Blackwell’s office and spoke to Pat Wolfe, Election
Administrator. Ms. Wolfe told Ms. Garman to assert
that all voter records for the State of Ohio were
“locked down” and that they are “not considered public
records.” 
Quinn and Roberson asked specifically for the legal
authority authorizing Mr. Blackwell to “lock down”
public records. Garman stated that it was the
Secretary of State’s decision. Ohio statute requires
the Directors of Boards of Election to comply with
public requests for inspection and copying of public
election records. As the volunteer team continued
recording information from the precinct records in
question, Garman entered the room and stated she was
withdrawing permission to inspect or copy any voting
records at the Board of Elections. Garman then
physically removed the precinct book from Ms.
Roberson’s hands. They later requested the records
again from Garman’s office, which was again denied. 

Greg Palast, DemocracyNow!: See, 93,000 votes were
tossed on the floor, never counted. We’re not talking
recount here, we’re talking never count. 93,000 votes
are called spoiled. 155,000 votes called provisional.
More absentee ballots tossed. And supposedly George
Bush won by 119,000. Folks, now what’s going on here?
Whose votes were not counted that were twice the Bush
margin of victory? Just, you know, was it random?
Well, not exactly. Overwhelmingly the votes not
counted, not counted, were cast in African American
precincts. These are very Black votes, see, and when I
use the term “overwhelmingly,” the non-counted votes
cast into the machines but not counted for technical
reasons – when I say “overwhelmingly Black votes,”
that is not my phrase. That’s from Dr. Mark Salling of
Cleveland State University who’s been investigating
this for the ACLU, and the statisticians and
demographers say it’s overwhelmingly Black votes which
are not counted. The technical term is “spoiled”
votes. Okay, now, how do votes spoil? Do you leave
them out of the fridge? What do you do? These are like
undervotes, overvotes – they use those technical
terms, and in Ohio it’s hanging chads. We’re back to
that. Dimpled chads, pregnant chads. Because Ohio is
the last state in America to use the old punch card
system for 75% of the vote. You’ve heard a lot about
the dangers of blackbox voting. I want to talk to you
about good old-fashioned punch card voting. 93,000
votes tossed in the garbage out of Black precincts.
How? Okay? Because when – just like in – Black voters,
Black neighborhoods get the bad schools, they get the
bad hospitals, they get the bum voting machines, see?
And their votes go in the garbage. And they know it.
In fact, it should be against the law. And, in fact,
it is. The ACLU sued the State of Ohio for a racist
ballot counting system. They sued five states. Okay?
Before the election. Before the election, four states
said, “Well, gee, we’re kind of embarrassed. Yeah,
we’re losing thousands of Black votes.” And they all
agreed to fix the machines before the election, but
one state. The Secretary of State of Ohio said, “Yes.”
He said, ‘Yes, I know that the machines we use in Ohio
eliminate tens of thousands of Black votes on bad
machines.’ The only -- the only state that said,
‘Yeah, we'll fix them after the inauguration.’

William Rivers Pitt, www.truthout.org: Some scattered
observations from my notes of the proceedings:
Rep. Nadler: The right to vote and to have the votes
counted is indispensable. Confidence in our election
processes is on the wane, and the stability of our
government is threatened. We do not have the luxury of
waiting to fix all this, as the next national election
comes in two years. 
Rep. Scott: The complaints were not limited to Ohio.
In his state of Virginia, some 500 complaints were
made by voters. In his own district, voters were given
ballots that did not have his name on them. 
Rep. Watt: The basic premise of our democracy is the
vote. If it is broken, it must be fixed, and we must
institutionalize a process that continually evaluates
the way we run elections. If we can deliver ballots to
rural voters in Afghanistan on the backs of donkeys,
surely we can make sure our elections are free and
fair here in America. 
Ralph Neas (President, People for the American Way):
In Cuyahoga county, Ohio, there were fewer voting
machines available to the voters during the
Presidential election than there were during the
primary election. Secretary of State Blackwell, he of
the paper-weight obstructionism, wins the Katherine
Harris award this time around. There should be
prosecutions over all this, and people should go to
jail. 
Cliff Arnebeck (Chair, Common Cause Ohio): The fraud
must be fixed. It must be fixed now, and not in the
future. People cannot and will not accept a fraudulent
election for the office of President. The best
precedent that can be set is to state flatly that
people will not tolerate fraud, and will not ‘move on’
until the problems are repaired. How can we, with a
straight face, talk about democracy in Iraq when we
cannot guarantee democracy here at home? 
Shawnta Walcott (Zogby Inc.): This election has
created an unprecedented level of suspicion that
things did not go as they should have. Zogby Inc.
wants to see a blue-ribbon panel created immediately
to investigate the claims made at this hearing.
Rep. Jackson: We must have a standardized national
voting process and take the matter out of the hands of
individual states, which can keep the process
"separate and unequal." We must have a constitutional
amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. How can
people argue that the right to own a gun is implicitly
stated in the constitution, and then turn around and
say it is acceptable to have the right to vote only be
‘implicit’ in the constitution?
It was this last point, made over and over again by
Reverend Jesse Jackson, that drew the most applause
from the audience and attention from the Congressmen.
In demanding a constitutional amendment cementing the
simple right to vote, Jackson spoke of the long line
that reached from Selma, Alabama to Ohio, and into
this room. "This is not about who won or lost," he
said. "This is about participating in democracy. The
2004 election is not past-tense. We are not whining.
It is time to take this struggle to the streets and
fully legitimize this struggle." 
Bob Fertik, www.democrats.com: My favorite moment was
when John Bonifaz of the National Voting Institute
resoundingly declared if a recount shows Ohio should
have sent  "a different set of electors, that set of
electors will meet, and will cast their votes for
President. And if that happens, the U.S. Congress will
receive the votes of two competing slates of electors.
One slate will be chosen by Mr. Blackwell. The other
will be chosen by the will of the people."
Of course, if that happens, "we the people" will have
to exert our will by surrounding Congress on January 6
when they decide which Electors to accept - and which
President to inaugurate - taking our cue from the
people of Ukraine. 
As for Rove-controlled media coverage, if you rely on
the Washington Post, the event didn't happen (Demand
an explanation from Michael Getler
ombudsman at washpost.com 202-334-7582. If you rely on
the NY Times (which didn't think American Democracy
important enough to send its own reporter - write
Daniel Okrent public at nytimes.com), the event was
completely insignificant.
Wayne Madsen, Online Journal: An exhaustive
investigation has turned up a link between current
Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a
customized Windows-based program to suppress
Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a
Florida computer services company with whom Feeney
worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist
while he was Speaker of the Florida House of
Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush
administration.
According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint
Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy
Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc.,
during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program
to "control the vote." At the time, Curtis was of the
opinion that the program was to be used for preventing
fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach
County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when
the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the
computer program was going to be used to suppress the
Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic
registrations.
According to Curtis, Feeney and other top brass at
Yang Enterprises, a company located in a three-story
building in Oviedo, Florida, wanted the prototype
written in Visual Basic 5 (VB.5) in Microsoft Windows
and the end-product designed to be portable across
different Unix-based vote tabulation systems and to be
"undetectable" to voters and election supervisors.
Bev Harris, www.blackboxvoting.org: Why the Feeney
vote-rigging story sounds like disinformation, as
Wayne Madsen writes it
The story hangs together better at BradBlog.com. 
ABOUT DISINFORMATION: Like a good lie, it has elements
of truth. Trouble is, the truth in Madsen's story
doesn't relate to the nuts and bolts of the story. 
DISINFORMATION IS DANGEROUS TO THE CLEAN VOTING
MOVEMENT: Getting the facts is tedious, unexciting
work, consisting of auditing and personal interviews,
and it takes time. Many Americans want a magic bullet,
a single shot that will blow the lid off everything at
once. 
That's risky. If the mainstream media continues to be
bombarded with stories that sound credible, but
aren't, when the real thing comes down the pike it
will be ignored. 
While MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and I had a run-in
recently, I agree with Olbermann's earlier critique of
the Madsen homeland security story, and this new
Madsen story is just as weak. Most of both Madsen
stories are bait and switch. Madsen wanders all over
the place, recapping unrelated information from real
news agencies, piggybacking onto their credibility,
with only the most tenuous ties to what he is actually
trying to prove. The work done on BradBlog is much
more focused, and Brad seems to be a responsible
researcher. 
The Bush Abomination’s #1 Failure: National Security

Michael Scheuer, LA Times:  The agency did its job,
but higher-ups endangered the nation.
The Central Intelligence Agency is the best place to
work in the United States. No federal agency has a
smarter, more dedicated or harder-working set of
individuals than the CIA's women and men. I had
intended to work at the CIA for the duration of my
career, and I left it with deep regret and a great
sense of personal loss. I was neither forced out nor
pressed to resign. Resigning was my decision alone. 
 I cannot state these facts more clearly, and I
fiercely deny the accusations that I am a disgruntled
former employee. I am, however, a disgruntled American
- one who decided that being a good citizen was no
longer compatible with being a good member of the
CIA's Senior Intelligence Service. 
I do not profess a broad expertise in international
affairs, but between January 1996 and June 1999 I was
in charge of running operations against Al Qaeda from
Washington. When it comes to this small slice of the
large U.S. national security pie, I speak with
firsthand experience (and for several score of CIA
officers) when I state categorically that during this
time senior White House officials repeatedly refused
to act on sound intelligence that provided multiple
chances to eliminate Osama bin Laden - either by
capture or by U.S. military attack. I witnessed and
documented, along with dozens of other CIA officers,
instances where life-risking intelligence-gathering
work of the agency's men and women in the field was
wasted. 
Because of classification issues, I argued this point
only obliquely in my book "Imperial Hubris," but it is
a fact - and fortunately, no American has to depend on
my word alone. The 9/11 commission report documents
most of the occasions on which senior U.S. bureaucrats
and policymakers had the chance to attack Bin Laden in
1998-1999. It is mystifying that the American public
has not been outraged over these missed opportunities.


Richard Clarke, DemocracyNow!: In order to liberate
the city to hold an election we destroyed the city
where 300,000 people had called their home. Again, not
exactly what the administration has told you. They
have told you we liberated it to have an election but
the reality is we have destroyed it. The third thing
that has happened recently is the president continues
the appointments of his new Cabinet. His new Cabinet,
which is, if the old Cabinet was a closed circle, this
Cabinet is an infinite dot. They are keeping Donald
Rumsfeld. They are appointing as the attorney general
someone who participated in drafting memos saying the
torture was permitted. So the man who is now
protecting our civil liberties believes torture is
permitted. They have at the head of CIA a Republican
politician. And they have now appointed as secretary
of Homeland Security a man who totally failed in his
mission in Baghdad to help create a police department.
The fourth thing that I would note in recent days is
the administration discussing the Iranian Nuclear
Program. Now, there may well be an Iranian Nuclear
Program. And if there is, that should be a source of
concern for all of us. But who in the world, who in a
punitive coalition, who in the United Nations, will
believe us when we go to them again and say that a
country in the Middle East is building a nuclear bomb
and we have to do something about it? Nonetheless,
word is leaking out of the Pentagon that orders have
gone to central command to update the contingency plan
for hostilities against Iran. We all need to watch
this space very carefully and very closely. Because
while we do have to worry about Iranian-sponsored
terrorism and Iranian nuclear programs, we also have
to make sure that we do not repeat the mistake of
Iraq.

Le Nouvel Observateur Editorial: The Russian President
took a shot at United States' policy Saturday, evoking
a "dictatorship coated in beautiful pseudo-democratic
phraseology."
Rssian President Vladimir Putin took a shot at the
"globalization" policy of the United States, without
naming it, when he evoked an international affairs'
"dictatorship coated in beautiful pseudo-democratic
phraseology" during a speech published Saturday
December 4th by the Russian presidency. 
 "The new century is often called the century of
globalization. That bears within itself possibilities
for economic and scientific progress(...) At the same
time the attempts to transform a pluralist
civilization with many faces created by God (...)
according to the principles of a unipolar world seem
extremely dangerous," the Russian president declared
during a three day visit to India. 
The Russian president warned against the development,
within this framework, of "all the threats" that
"terrorism, large-scale criminal activity and drug
trafficking" constitute. 
Robert Scheer, LA Times: And despite the exposure of
the Khan black market ring, nothing has changed: In a
White House meeting Friday, Bush honored Musharraf -
who since seizing power has purged his country's
Supreme Court and rewritten its constitution - as a
"courageous leader." 
The administration again hastened to explain that
Musharraf was vital in the three-year effort to
capture Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," as Bush
frequently has proclaimed. How embarrassing then, when
hours later Musharraf conceded in a Washington Post
interview that Bin Laden's trail had grown completely
cold but that the arch-terrorist is still very much
alive and functioning. 
Musharraf complained that attempts to pin down Bin
Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives had been seriously
undermined by what he politely called "voids" in U.S.
troop commitments to the area, which are equal to a
mere 15% of the U.S. forces in Iraq. The U.S. strategy
instead has been to rely on Pakistan's military to
trap Bin Laden, a dependence that Bush administration
officials have cited while refusing to pressure for
access to Khan. 
Musharraf complains that calls for international
access to Khan show "a lack of trust" in Pakistan, but
his real problem is the scientist's enormous
popularity as the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb
program. Khan "has been a hero for the masses," said
the general who has survived several assassination
attempts and faces the possibility of a revolt if he
tilts too far toward the West. 
Meanwhile, Bush is so eager to cater to Musharraf that
he is even championing the dictator as key to the
creation of a democratic Palestinian state "that is
truly free. One that's got an independent judiciary;
one that's got a civil society; one that's got the
capacity to fight off the terrorists; one that allows
for dissent; one in which people can vote. And
President Musharraf can play a big role in helping
achieve that objective." 
Edmond Lococo, Bloomberg: Armor Holdings Inc., the
sole supplier of protective plates for the Humvee
military vehicles used in Iraq, said it could increase
output by as much as 22 percent per month with no
investment and is awaiting an order from the Army. 
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday
the Army was working as fast as it can and supply is
dictated by ``a matter of physics, not a matter of
money.'' 
Jacksonville, Florida-based Armor Holdings last month
told the Army it could add armor to as many as 550 of
the trucks a month, up from 450 vehicles now, Robert
Mecredy, president of the company's aerospace and
defense group said in a telephone interview today. 
``We're prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per
month,'' Mecredy said in the interview. ``I've told
the customer that and I stand ready to do that.'' 

Daily Kos: From CNN (And I'm not even discussing the
part where that shameless failure Rumsfeld tried to
play down the importance of  the armor. Bastard!!!):
Rumsfeld replied that, "You go to war with the Army
you have," not the one you might want, and that any
rate the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle
armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible.
Oh really, Mr. Secretary? Well, that's pretty strange
because seven months ago, standing next to Rumsfeld,
General Myers said we only needed six more months to
get everything done that needed to be done (link):


The Bush Abomination’s #2 Failure: Economic Security
CNN MoneyLine: Hit by rising health care and energy
costs, employers announced more than 100,000 job cuts
in November, capping the first three-month stretch
above that level since early 2002, an outplacement
firm said Tuesday. 
Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said companies
announced 104,530 job cuts in November, up 5.1 percent
from a year earlier and 2.6 percent from October.
The September through November totals mark the first
time that announced job cuts have topped 100,000 for
three or more straight months since January to April
of 2002, the firm said.
"Higher health care and energy costs for employers and
employees are definitely taking a toll. Companies are
being forced to enact more cost-containment measures
to protect profits," the firm's CEO John Challenger
said in a statement.
Anthony Chan, senior economist at JPMorgan Fleming
Asset Management, said the numbers -- especially the
increase in announced layoffs from a year earlier --
were a "bit of a concern" given the recent weakness in
the job market.

The Bush Abomination’s #3 Failure: Environmental
Security

John F. Harris, Washington Post:  Former president
Bill Clinton chided supporters to stop "bellyaching
and whining" about the political obstacles and begin a
new effort to 
address the intertwined problems of energy dependence
and global warming.
Speaking at a day-long symposium he sponsored at New
York University,  the former president said he was
distressed that the energy issue's  link with both
national security and environmental degradation
received  "almost no serious discussion" among the
candidates or the media in the  just-ended
presidential campaign, even though this "may have a
bigger  impact on America and the world than virtually
all the things that were  debated."
Clinton has vowed to use his platform as an
ex-president to promote  the issue of reducing
consumption of old energy sources  such as  petroleum
and coal that produce the most "greenhouse gases." At
the same time,  he has stressed the importance of
reducing U.S. reliance on unstable  Middle Eastern
governments – a dependence he says complicates the
fight  against terrorism.
Reuters: Calling humanity a threat to the planet,
Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai urged
democratic reform and an end to corporate greed after
becoming the first African woman to collect the Nobel
Peace Prize on Friday.
She said sweeping changes were needed to restore a
"world of beauty and wonder" by overcoming challenges
ranging from AIDS to climate instability.
Maathai founded a campaign that has planted 30 million
trees across Africa in a bid to slow deforestation.
"Activities that devastate the environment and
societies contistem," Maathai, 64, told an audience of
about 1,000 people including Norway's King Harald and
Queen Sonja.
"I call on leaders, especially in Africa, to expand
democratic space and build fair and just societies,"
she said.
"Further, industry and global institutions must
appreciate that ensuring economic justice, equity and
ecological integrity are of greater value than profits
at any cost," she said. She said grassroots citizens'
movements should be encouraged

The Complicity of the Corporatist News Media:

Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star: The other night on
ABC News Nightline, Ted Koppel asked National Public
Radio war correspondent Anne Garrels, who has been in
Iraq throughout the war, "When you hear people in this
country, Anne, say, look, the media is only giving the
negative side of what's going on there, why don't they
ever show the good side, what do you tell 'em?" 
"I tell them that there isn't much good to show," she
replied, describing how even military commanders have
only bad news to share. 
Two weeks ago on CNN, Time's Michael Ware, who has
been covering Iraq for two years, gave an alarming
account of being trapped in his Baghdad compound,
which is regularly bombed and encircled by "kidnap
teams." 
He reported that the U.S. military has "lost control"
and that Americans are "the midwives of the next
generation of jihad, of the next Al Qaeda." 
At the end of the exchange, anchor Aaron Brown warned,
"(O)ther people see the situation there differently
than Michael. We talk to them as well." 
Kate Moran, The Day:  Elliot criticized the press for
not sufficiently challenging the Bush administration's
hyperbolic claims about the weapons threat in Iraq.
Condoleezza Rice, he said, was able to peddle fear
that the “smoking gun” in Iraq could be a “mushroom
cloud.” 
Safer, an editor and correspondent for “60 Minutes”
for three decades, perceived that reporters had soaked
up the mood of cautiousness and deference to the White
House that he said infected Congress in the wake of
the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. 
Even for those reporters inclined to be critical,
Safer said, disproving the Bush administration's
claims about weapons of mass destruction was a nearly
impossible task. Safer said the president could assert
the danger in Iraq but that the press had little means
to investigate such a claim outside “the best
testimony of weapons inspectors.” 
As Safer sees it, news outlets have lost credibility
in part because readers do not associate them with a
human face, of the kind that Katharine Graham of The
Washington Post presented to the world during the
Watergate era. Increasingly, he noted, the media are
owned and controlled by sprawling corporations, such
as Viacom, Disney and General Electric. 


Two More Names for the John P. O’Neil Wall of Heroes:

Dana Priest, Washington Post: A senior CIA operative
who handled sensitive informants in Iraq asserts that
CIA managers asked him to falsify his reporting on
weapons of mass destruction and retaliated against him
after he refused. 
The operative, who remains under cover, asserts in a
lawsuit made public yesterday that a co-worker warned
him in 2001 "that CIA management planned to 'get him'
for his role in reporting intelligence contrary to
official CIA dogma." 

Amy Goodman & Juan Gonzalez interview David DeBatto,
DemocracyNow!: AMY GOODMAN: Well, your piece at
salon.com, called "Whitewashing Torture" was quite
something. Tell us what happened to Sergeant Frank,
known as 'Greg,' Ford? 

DAVID DEBATTO: Well, apparently, Ford, who as you
said, was stationed in Samarra, Iraq, which is about a
hundred kilometers north, or so, north of Baghdad in
the spring of 2003, had witnessed what he calls
repeated incidents of torture and abuse over
approximately two to three week period of Iraqi
detainees by his fellow intelligence operatives in
Samarra. After confronting the team leader several
times without success, he eventually did go to his
commanding officer, as you mentioned, Captain Artiga
in an attempt to file a formal complaint for an
investigation of these incidents. Unfortunately,
according to Ford, instead of an investigation being
conducted, within about a day-and-a-half later, he
was, in fact, strapped to a gurney, put on a C-130,
and flown initially to Kuwait and eventually to
Landstuhl, Germany, where he then underwent a series
of psychological evaluations in Germany and also at
two bases in the United States for approximately eight
months. 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, what was the upshot of that? I
mean, I would assume if he was medevaced out there'd
have to be some paperwork to explain why he was being
medevaced out and what his problems were. 
DAVID DEBATTO: Absolutely, and what happened in this
case, and I reviewed literally dozens if not hundreds
of -- of documents on the case: There were no orders.
There was no medevac order, which is required by the
army, when you do send a soldier out of anywhere,
really, when there's a medical issue. There were no
regular or standard sets of orders, which again are
required by army regulations whenever a soldier leaves
one area and is sent to another. Not only that, but
reviewing all of the medical documents, including the
original document or diagnosis from the psychiatrist
in Iraq and following him all the way through the
other evaluation, every army psychiatrist diagnosed
Sergeant Ford as completely normal with absolutely no
psychological or mental health issues whatsoever. 
AMY GOODMAN: David DeBatto explain what happened when
Sergeant Ford went and reported the abuse, right
through to the first psychological analysis of him. 
DAVID DEBATTO: Well, according to Ford, he was given
about thirty seconds to change his mind and retract
his allegations by Captain Artiga. He refused to do
so, and immediately he was allegedly stripped of his
weapon and M-16, and his ammunition by the company
first sergeant. He was also assigned a 24-hour escort,
or what he considered to be a guard to literally
shadow him until further notice, and that was a senior
counter intelligence agent who also figures in the
piece later as a witness to all of this. Shortly
thereafter, he was ordered to report to an army
psychiatrist on the base in Iraq to undergo what's
known as combat stress evaluation for people that are
having some difficulty handing emotionally the -- the
stress of combat. What happened after that is the --
one of the most interesting points of the story, I
think. The army psychiatrist that saw Sergeant Ford
apparently (and I've reviewed her report) deemed him
to be completely normal, and sent that report back to
Captain Artiga. When Captain Artiga saw the report
from the psychiatrist he was, according to a witness,
Sergeant Marciello, "livid." He didn't accept the
report. He stormed back over to the army psychiatrist,
and according to the witness I have, literally forced
her, browbeat her and intimidated the psychiatrist to
change her evaluation to read 'mentally unstable,' and
ordered her to ship Sergeant Ford medically out of the
country to receive a psychological evaluation in
Germany. 

Restore the Republic!



http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/12/ana04029.html

December 11, 2004
  
The New York Times Ignores the Voting Problems

A SPECIAL BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS 
>From Author and Professor Mark Crispin Miller 

Dear BuzzFlash Readers and Americans Concerned About
the Preservation of Democracy: 

As you know (and way too many others don't), Rep. John
Conyers recently held open hearings in the US
Congress, on the all-important subject of the voting
in Ohio on November 2nd. There was a lot of harrowing
testimony on the tricks and tactics used there by
Bush/Cheney to suppress as many Democratic votes as
possible, and to exaggerate Ohio's electoral support
for the regime. 

It was a public inquiry of towering importance, and
not only because it was (allegedly) Ohio that gave
Bush just enough electoral votes to win. Ohio matters
more than anyone can say, because what went down there
went down not only in Ohio. There is in fact abundant
evidence--strong evidence--suggesting that Team Bush
pursued that crooked twofold strategy throughout the
nation. In other words, they used a broad variety of
means to trash the Kerry vote and to exaggerate the
Bush vote, and did so everywhere they could. 

Now, this being a democratic republic (or so we've all
been taught), you'd think that Conyers' charges -- and
the hearing -- would get a lot of coverage in the
press. 

And yet the New York Times, our nation's "newspaper of
record," did not even mention it, much less cover it.
The hearings were on Wednesday. There was no word of
it in Thursday's paper, nor any word, belatedly, in
Friday's. (Thursday's Times did run a couple of long
stories on the electoral situation in Ukraine, but
none on the quite similar, and -- to Americans --
vastly more important story here at home.) 

Such silence is bizarre. It's deeply wrong. In fact,
it's un-American. For what public issue could there be
that matters quite as much as the integrity of our
elections? What, then, could possibly explain, or
excuse, the Times' failure even to note Conyers'
hearings? For that matter, what explains the Times'
thorough indifference to this crucial subject? Like
all American news outlets, the Times is obligated, by
the First Amendment, to attempt to keep its readership
informed about the government, so that the government
is answerable to us, its ultimate custodians. Rather
than deal squarely with the ever-mounting evidence of
massive fraud by the Republicans, the Times instead
has merely ridiculed those raising questions, as if
such patriotic citizens were laughably insane. 

Soon after Election Day, several other US papers
likewise tried to laugh off the innumerable glitches
and anomalies that mainly favored the Republicans. For
instance, the Baltimore Sun and Boston Globe at first
derided the whole issue -- and then recanted, in
effect, by running serious articles about the growing
likelihood of systematic fraud. And yet the Times has
never come around. Except for one stern editorial, our
leading national daily has all but ignored the
controversy raging everywhere; and as the Times has
gone, of course, so has the TV news, which also
downplayed the Conyers' hearings, or tuned them out
entirely. (The hearings did run, uninterrupted, on
C-SPAN.) 

Let's not let them get away with it. We should do all
we can to get the Times' attention, so that it will
cover this enormous story thoroughly, upfront and
every day. Let them hear from you, right now. 

Contact them by phone, by fax, by email; by mail, or,
if you're in New York, just drop in briefly to express
your views about the paper's shocking
irresponsibility. If you're a subscriber, do consider
canceling that subscription--and be sure to tell them
why. 

Let them know how much you care about American
democracy, which they have put at risk, because they
haven't done their job. 

Sincerely, 

Mark Crispin Miller 

A SPECIAL BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Mark Crispin Miller is author of many books, including
"The Bush Dyslexicon" and "Cruel and Unusual:
Bush/Cheney's New World Order." He is the writer and
star of "A Patriot Act." 

Contact the New York Times:

Executive Editor Bill Keller at 212/556-7799
Fax to News Department at 212/556-7614
E-mail News Department at national at nytimes.com

If these numbers don't work, the general number is
212/556-1234

Write the New York Times at:

Bill Keller
Executive Editor
New York Times
229 W. 43rd St., NY, NY, 10036-3959 

The public editor is Daniel Okrent, at
public at nytimes.com 

* * * 

BuzzFlash Afternote: After reading Mark Crispin
Miller's letter of outrage about the lack of the New
York Times coverage of the Conyers' hearings, we
searched Nexis, which includes an online archive of
New York Times articles. Using the keyword "Conyers,"
we found no items in the last week and only two in the
last 30 days. The two pieces in the last 30 days are
quite telling. One was a letter from a reader who
lambasted the New York Times for its story: "[Your
articles,]'Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are
Quickly Buried' (front page, Nov. 12) and ''Mostly
Good Reviews for Electronic Voting'' (news article,
Nov. 12) rush to judgment prematurely." The reader
admonished the Times: "It is essential that Congress
heed Representative John Conyers' call to
investigate."

And the other item mentioning Conyers in the last 30
days of the NYT? Why it was the November 12th article
the reader was complaining about: "Vote Fraud
Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried."

Now, it's your turn to let the old media know that you
value democracy and you wish that they did to. 

http://blog.democrats.com/node/1887

Stolen Election 2004: Saturday Update
by Bob Fertik on December 10, 2004 - 11:06pm.
Ken Blackwell is trying to cover up the Stolen
Election!

Blackwell Locks Out Recount Volunteers

On Friday December 10 two certified volunteers for the
Ohio Recount team assigned to Greene County were in
process recording voting information from minority
precincts in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count
by a surprise order from Secretary of State
Blackwell’s office. The Director Board of Elections
stated that “all voter records for the state of Ohio
were “locked-down,” and now they are not considered
public records.”

Are we entering Watergate territory? Remember the
coverup was worse than the crime.

Just in the nick of time, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI),
ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is
taking his ongoing investigation of Ohio election
fraud to Columbus on Monday for a "2004 Election
Forum." Conyers will be joined by Congressmembers
Maxine Waters (D-CA), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH),
and Ted Strickland (D-OH), along with Rev. Jesse
Jackson, attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and John Bonifaz,
and other Ohio leaders. The forum will address

new evidence of election irregularities and fraud in
Ohio, the issue of Ohio electors meeting while
recounts and litigation are pending, and to discuss
legislative and other responses to the problems. 

First, this is a direct slap in the face to Ken
Blackwell, since Columbus is where his office is. How
will Blackwell respond?

Second, Conyers & Co. are firing a shot across the bow
of the Electors, who will be meeting that very day to
cast their 20 crucial votes for Bush. Does this mean
Conyers will lead the challenge to Ohio's Electors on
January 6 - and challenge the legitimacy of Bush's
"victory"? Stay tuned...

The recount will begin on Monday, and county officials
are already complaining about the cost. But Harvey
Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis put the estimated $1.5
million cost in context:

that money represents less than 0.1% of the $200
billion minimum figure the Bush Administration will
spend to "bring democracy to Iraq." The litany of
fraud and manipulation that has surrounded the 2004
Ohio election is staggering ... and growing.  Its
footprints are posted in part at http://freepress.org
and numerous other web sites.    

The Ohio election, which will determine this most
heavily contested of all US presidential campaigns,
has no credibility with tens of millions of Americans
and hundreds of millions the world over. 

Simply put:  if this government can't spend $1.5
million to re-check its own presidential vote counts,
it has no credibility as a proponent of global
democracy. 

It also betrays US history. 

Wasserman & Fitrakis also debunk the argument that the
recount "won't change the outcome"

a true electronic investigation might well throw the
vote to Kerry.  There are more than enough Ohio votes
stashed in electronic machines with no paper trail to
change the victor.  The range of other dubious events
surrounding this election far exceeds the mere 116,000
margin now being claimed for Bush.

W&F also make the case for a re-vote:

As for a re-vote, this controversial step has been
made necessary by the stunning contempt shown people
of color and other residents of the inner city.  As
widely reported, misallocation of voting machines and
other problems made it virtually impossible for tens
of thousands of Ohioans to vote November 2.  Waits of
three to eleven hours in the pouring rain are not a
reasonable price for casting a ballot, especially when
those costs are levied in a discriminatory fashion.  

We will never know how many tens of thousands of
Ohioans were turned away at the polls, were forced to
leave before voting, or never went once they heard how
long the lines were.  This was a de facto denial of
the Fifteenth Amendment right to vote, as surely as
were the poll tax and literacy tests of the Jim Crow
south. 

As co-chair of Ohio's Bush-Cheney campaign, Ohio
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who officiated
over this election, was clearly a partisan.  Without a
re-vote to restore the rights of all Ohioans, this
election's stench of manipulation will fester through
the history books as surely as all those staged in
Stalin's Soviet Union. 

Ukraine has now taken the obvious step of re-running a
national election so that its fledgling democracy can
maintain its credibility.  Ohio can do no less.

http://fairnessbybeckerman.blogspot.com/2004/12/blackwell-locks-out-recount-volunteers.html
 
Ohio Election Fraud (Formerly "Fairness") 
Before the Ohio Election Fraud, this blog was entitled
"Fairness". Since November 2, 2004, a day that will
live in infamy, this blog has been devoted exclusively
to fighting the crimes committed against the citizens
of Ohio, and against our American way of life, in the
2004 "election". 

December 10, 2004
  
Blackwell Locks Out Recount Volunteers

Subject: Blackwell Locks Down Ohio Voting Records 

Ohio Election Investigation Thwarted by Surprise
Blackwell Order 

Dayton, Ohio Friday December 10, 2004 

On Friday December 10 two certified volunteers for the
Ohio Recount team assigned to Greene County were in
process recording voting information from minority
precincts in Greene County, and were stopped mid-count
by a surprise order from Secretary of State
Blackwell’s office. The Director Board of Elections
stated that “all voter records for the state of Ohio
were “locked-down,” and now they are not considered
public records.” 

The volunteers were working with voter printouts
received directly from Carole Garman, Director, Greene
County Board of Elections. Joan Quinn and Eve
Roberson, retired attorney and election official
respectively, were hand-copying voter discrepancies
from precinct voting books on behalf of the
presidential candidates Mr. Cobb (Green) and Mr.
Badnarik Libertarian) who had requested the recount. 

One of the goals of the recount was to determine how
many minority voters were unable to vote or denied
voting at the polls. Upon requesting copies of
precinct records from predominantly minority
precincts, Ms. Garman contacted Secretary of State
Blackwell’s office and spoke to Pat Wolfe, Election
Administrator. Ms. Wolfe told Ms. Garman to assert
that all voter records for the State of Ohio were
“locked down” and that they are “not considered public
records.” 

Quinn and Roberson asked specifically for the legal
authority authorizing Mr. Blackwell to “lock down”
public records. Garman stated that it was the
Secretary of State’s decision. Ohio statute requires
the Directors of Boards of Election to comply with
public requests for inspection and copying of public
election records. As the volunteer team continued
recording information from the precinct records in
question, Garman entered the room and stated she was
withdrawing permission to inspect or copy any voting
records at the Board of Elections. Garman then
physically removed the precinct book from Ms.
Roberson’s hands. They later requested the records
again from Garman’s office, which was again denied. 

Ohio Revised Code Title XXXV Elections, Sec. 3503.26
that requires all election records to be made
available for public inspection and copying. ORC Sec.
3599.161 makes it a crime for any employee of the
Board of Elections to knowingly prevent or prohibit
any person from inspecting the public records filed in
the office of the Board of Elections. Finally, ORC
Sec. 3599.42 clearly states: “A violation of any
provision of Title XXXV (35) of the Revised Code
constitutes a prima facie case of election fraud
within the purview of such Title.” 

Contact Information: Joan Quinn (937) 320-9680, (916)
396-9714 – cell Katrina Sumner (937) 608-5861

Wednesday, December 8th, 2004
Investigative Reporter Greg Palast on the "Apartheid
Ballot Counting System in America"

Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3       
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell certified
President Bush's reelection on Monday, we hear an
address by investigative reporter Greg Palast about
the disenfranchisement of black votes in the Nov. 2nd
election. [includes rush transcript] 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
President Bush secured his reelection Monday after
Ohio's Republican secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell
certified the victory by a margin of 119,000 votes.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said
Monday that the presidential voting was widely
perceived as "very free and fair." 
But questions remain over the fairness of the Nov. 2nd
election. At a forum on Capitol Hill yesterday, voting
rights advocates reminded attendees of the more than
414,000 calls made to national hotlines monitoring
complaints about the election. Among those calls,
according to a new report from the Common Cause
Education Fund, were many accounts from Ohio. 

Yesterday at the New York Society for Ethical Culture
investigative reporter Greg Palast spoke about the
fairness of the election. 


Greg Palast, investigative reporter speaking at the
New York Society for Ethical Culture on December 7,
2004.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT 
This transcript is available free of charge, however
donations help us provide closed captioning for the
deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank
you for your generous contribution. 
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: Well, at the same forum that Richard
Clarke spoke at last night at the New York Society for
Ethical Culture, investigative reporter Greg Palast
also spoke, who has investigated the 2000 election for
the BBC and continues to do that work in Ohio. He
spoke about the fairness of the 2004 election. 

GREG PALAST: I actually came here tonight to warn you
that there are cooks and cranks and crazies out there
on the internet who think that John Kerry won. Now, I
know because one of those articles on the internet
called “John Kerry Won” on tompaine.com, I wrote it.
To warn you. But you have to understand, I mean, some
things – well, maybe you can explain this to me. See,
this is – I got the CNN exit polls, and it said that
in Ohio that Kerry defeated Bush among women 53 to
47%, and among men, by – Kerry defeated Bush by 51 to
49%, so who’s the third sex that put our president
over the top? So I thought I’d investigate, which is
unusual. See, I’m a reporter. My reports appear on BBC
Television. I’m a mainstream guy, as they say. And for
the big newspaper of Britain, I used to have – the
Guardian Observer, I have – I used to write George
Orwell’s old column there, and he’d enjoy this, though
that information. And so I wrote a story called,
“Kerry Won: Here’s the Facts.” And I got a – I
actually got a letter, an e-mail, from the New York
Times. Here it is. They wanted to follow – they wanted
to investigate! Cool! And they asked me, question 1,
asking BBC investigative reporter, they said, “Are you
a conspiracy nut?” Question 2: “Are you a sore loser?”
Question 3: there is no question three, that was the
end of the interview. And so they ran a story on the
front page saying, “Internet Theories of Bush Loss
Easily Debunked.” Okay, but see, that – remember the
subtitle called – of “Kerry Won” – “Here’s the Facts.”
And since they won’t tell you, I thought maybe I’d
share them tonight. And here’s the facts. See, George
Bush was declared victor today, by the way, by a
Secretary of State of Florida, who – uh, Mr. Blacksick
-- and of, excuse me, I said Florida. You know,
Florida of the North. I was just in Colu—you know, New
Kiev, Ohio, two days ago so I get confused. And, of
Ohio, Mr. Blackwell, he certified the election today.
It’s very convenient for him because he’s both
chairman of the republican campaign and the person in
charge of the vote count, so he’s wearing two hats. I
understand he has two heads, but I’ll investigate.
But, see, he certified the vote, but not all the
votes. See, 93,000 votes were tossed on the floor,
never counted. We’re not talking recount here, we’re
talking never count. 93,000 votes are called spoiled.
155,000 votes called provisional. More absentee
ballots tossed. And supposedly George Bush won by
119,000. Folks, now what’s going on here? Whose votes
were not counted that were twice the Bush margin of
victory? Just, you know, was it random? Well, not
exactly. Overwhelmingly the votes not counted, not
counted, were cast in African American precincts.
These are very Black votes, see, and when I use the
term “overwhelmingly,” the non-counted votes cast into
the machines but not counted for technical reasons –
when I say “overwhelmingly Black votes,” that is not
my phrase. That’s from Dr. Mark Salling of Cleveland
State University who’s been investigating this for the
ACLU, and the statisticians and demographers say it’s
overwhelmingly Black votes which are not counted. The
technical term is “spoiled” votes. Okay, now, how do
votes spoil? Do you leave them out of the fridge? What
do you do? These are like undervotes, overvotes – they
use those technical terms, and in Ohio it’s hanging
chads. We’re back to that. Dimpled chads, pregnant
chads. Because Ohio is the last state in America to
use the old punch card system for 75% of the vote.
You’ve heard a lot about the dangers of blackbox
voting. I want to talk to you about good old-fashioned
punch card voting. 93,000 votes tossed in the garbage
out of Black precincts. How? Okay? Because when – just
like in – Black voters, Black neighborhoods get the
bad schools, they get the bad hospitals, they get the
bum voting machines, see? And their votes go in the
garbage. And they know it. In fact, it should be
against the law. And, in fact, it is. The ACLU sued
the State of Ohio for a racist ballot counting system.
They sued five states. Okay? Before the election.
Before the election, four states said, “Well, gee,
we’re kind of embarrassed. Yeah, we’re losing
thousands of Black votes.” And they all agreed to fix
the machines before the election, but one state. The
Secretary of State of Ohio said, “Yes.” He said, ‘Yes,
I know that the machines we use in Ohio eliminate tens
of thousands of Black votes on bad machines.’ The only
-- the only state that said, ‘Yeah, we'll fix them
after the inauguration.’ Now, see, we have to talk
about here is when we talk about votes not counted, I
just want to -- on radio you’re going to have to look
at this chart now so imagine with me. There's a big
line, see? If you think Ohio is unusual, if you think
Ohio is unusual, here’s the problem. See this big bar
there, that's the number of Black votes which aren't
counted in America and the little bar, that’s the
number of white votes which are not counted in
America, see? And if you are a Black person -- now
where is this from? Yes, it’s true, you can get it on
the internet, but it's actually from Appendix 14 of a
report, this important information of the U.S Civil
Rights Commission that found that if you are a Black
person in America, the chance of your vote being
tossed in the garbage -- you cast your vote and it's
thrown away -- the chance of it being thrown away is
800% higher than if you are a white voter, okay? See,
and it kind of adds up with 2 million votes which are
discarded in America, half of them by Black voters, 1
million Black votes not counted in America. We have an
apartheid ballot counting system in America. And we
ain’t talking about it. Okay? But now we’re going to
talk about it, alright? That's not all. There’s
provisional ballots, see? So the fix this year is
supposed to be provisional ballots. The republicans
had a plan for that, too. There were 155,000 of them.
2 million votes were not counted in the 2000 election,
now we're pushing up maybe towards 3 million votes,
because we have something called provisional ballots,
back of the bus bogus ballots. Who gets those ballots?
No points for guessing Black vote. Overwhelmingly,
30,000 ballots were handed out, provisional ballots
were handed out to Ohio. Urban, as they say, in other
words, Black voters, who supposedly voted in the wrong
precinct, knowing that those ballots would never, ever
be counted. Now, how did this happen? How did all
these voters end up with ballots. Well, I was going to
show you something on a machine tonight. Something our
office received one night, Oliver Shykles, our
researcher on the elections, received one night
something over the internet through our e-mail. And by
the way, if you ever have – if anyone ever has any
documents someone wants to shred that says
“confidential,” “secret,” whatever, go to
gregpalast.com. Don’t waste it. We’ll use it. Someone
sent us lists. By the time we're done, 30-40,000
names. Golly gee, called caging lists. If you go down
the caging list, something interesting. They were all
names of voters in African American precincts. This
list was put together and handed to the chairman of
the Republican National Campaigns – of the state
campaigns and the Republican National Committee. What
are they doing with these names of the Black folk? We
asked the Republican National Committee chiefs and
State Committee chiefs on BBC Television: what are you
doing with these lists of Black voters -- of voters?
We didn’t tell them it was Black voters. We just
showed them the list of voters. “Oh, those are the
lists of our donors.” Oh, I said. Well, we went
through -- Leni von Eckardt is one of our researchers
-- went through the list, and golly gee, several of
those addresses were homeless shelters. So you get a
lot of money for the Bush-Cheney campaign from the
homeless shelters. Then they said, “Okay, oh, no, no.
We’ve checked again. We just wanted to check to see if
people had changed their address.” Every expert told
us there was one reason. Because they had a plan, a
secret plan, to challenge hundreds of thousands of
voters nationwide. That's what those lists were. They
were target lists, challenge lists, ok? Now, by the
way people that they were going to challenge, just
because their address changed, that doesn't remove
your vote. I mean, Leni went through and found out
there were several of them whose address had changed
from Black districts because they had gone to Baghdad.
These were Black soldiers who had been shipped out.
The republicans planned en masse to remover them from
the voter -- to prohibit their votes from being
counted. So you had hundreds of thousands of votes
thrown in the garbage by this plan. Now is that
against the law? It's not against the law to go to
Baghdad at the commander-in-chief's command. You don't
lose your vote. But you know what is against the law?
Profiling Black voters for challenge.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Palast, investigative journalist
with the BBC, made the film Bush Family Fortunes: The
Best Democracy Money Can Buy. This is Democracy Now!
Greg Palast, speaking last night at New York Society
for Ethical Culture along with Richard Clarke. 

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire
program, click here for our new online ordering or
call 1 (800) 881-2359.

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire
program, click here for our new online ordering or
call 1 (800) 881-2359.
  

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120904W.shtml

Author's Note | To read my blog report from the
hearing today, please go here. Statements made and
then placed on the record during the hearing can be
found here. - wrp
    From Selma to Ohio: A Report from the Conyers
Hearing 
    By William Rivers Pitt 
    t r u t h o u t | Report 
    Wednesday 08 December 2004 
    It looked for all the world like a real hearing.
Along the far wall were arrayed Congressional
Representatives from the Judiciary Committee. Before
them at a long table sat witnesses and experts in
front of microphones, prepared to give testimony on
the record. Behind the witnesses sat row upon row of
everyday citizens who came out to watch the
proceedings; the crowd was so large that an overflow
room needed to be opened on another floor. Along both
walls were arrayed more than a dozen television
cameras. 
    It looked like a real hearing but it wasn’t,
because despite the issuing of invitations by the
Democratic Minority members to their GOP Majority
brethren on the Judiciary Committee, not one
Republican congressman bothered to show up or give
their blessing to the proceedings. Judiciary staffers
from the Minority office told me the GOP majority
would not even allow this hearing to be videotaped on
the television equipment that came with the hearing
room, and so they were forced to pester C-SPAN into
showing up. They did, along with a number of other
media outlets, but the effect was a quieting of the
entire event. 
    In the official sense, then, this was not a true
Congressional hearing. It bore no weight in law. One
cannot overstate, however, the importance of what took
place in room 2237 of the Rayburn House Office
Building today. In this place was discussed the very
future of participatory democracy in America, and the
serious problems that future holds if the allegations
of vote fraud in Ohio and elsewhere which were the
subject of this hearing, are not dealt with in
immediate and dynamic fashion. 
    It all began with a letter from Rep. John Conyers
to Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell. In that letter,
Conyers described a long series of irregularities in
the Ohio Presidential election that amounted to an
accusation of fraud. The letter was the basis for
today’s hearing, and made sure to invite Blackwell to
participate. It is worth noting that Blackwell did not
show up today. 
    The hearing itself was a showcase for both fact
and passion. The witnesses, the Representatives before
them, and the crowd that filled the room lit the place
up with a concerned electricity. Some believed the
irregularities and outright fraud which marred the
Ohio vote require immediate redress, a successful
completion of which could come to overthrow the
results of last month's election. Others saw the
hearings as a gift to their children and the future, a
means to ensure that any and all elections to come
will not suffer the kind of nonsense that afflicted
both November of 2004 and November of 2000. 
    Jon Bonifaz, general counsel for the National
Voting Institute, is bringing a lawsuit against
Secretary of State Blackwell in order to bring about a
full recount of the vote in Ohio. He said of the
hearings today, "I think this moves the ball forward
with respect to demonstrating that people in this
country, throughout this nation, demand a full
accounting of what happened on election day, and
demand that all votes be properly counted. Until we
get to that point of all votes being properly counted,
we cannot declare this to be a legitimate election." 
    Some scattered observations from my notes of the
proceedings: 
    Rep. Nadler: The right to vote and to have the
votes counted is indispensable. Confidence in our
election processes is on the wane, and the stability
of our government is threatened. We do not have the
luxury of waiting to fix all this, as the next
national election comes in two years. 
    Rep. Scott: The complaints were not limited to
Ohio. In his state of Virginia, some 500 complaints
were made by voters. In his own district, voters were
given ballots that did not have his name on them. 
    Rep. Watt: The basic premise of our democracy is
the vote. If it is broken, it must be fixed, and we
must institutionalize a process that continually
evaluates the way we run elections. If we can deliver
ballots to rural voters in Afghanistan on the backs of
donkeys, surely we can make sure our elections are
free and fair here in America. 
    Ralph Neas (President, People for the American
Way): In Cuyahoga county, Ohio, there were fewer
voting machines available to the voters during the
Presidential election than there were during the
primary election. Secretary of State Blackwell, he of
the paper-weight obstructionism, wins the Katherine
Harris award this time around. There should be
prosecutions over all this, and people should go to
jail. 
    Cliff Arnebeck (Chair, Common Cause Ohio): The
fraud must be fixed. It must be fixed now, and not in
the future. People cannot and will not accept a
fraudulent election for the office of President. The
best precedent that can be set is to state flatly that
people will not tolerate fraud, and will not ‘move on’
until the problems are repaired. How can we, with a
straight face, talk about democracy in Iraq when we
cannot guarantee democracy here at home? 
    Shawnta Walcott (Zogby Inc.): This election has
created an unprecedented level of suspicion that
things did not go as they should have. Zogby Inc.
wants to see a blue-ribbon panel created immediately
to investigate the claims made at this hearing. 
    Rep. Jackson: We must have a standardized national
voting process and take the matter out of the hands of
individual states, which can keep the process
"separate and unequal." We must have a constitutional
amendment guaranteeing the right to vote. How can
people argue that the right to own a gun is implicitly
stated in the constitution, and then turn around and
say it is acceptable to have the right to vote only be
‘implicit’ in the constitution? 
    It was this last point, made over and over again
by Reverend Jesse Jackson, that drew the most applause
from the audience and attention from the Congressmen.
In demanding a constitutional amendment cementing the
simple right to vote, Jackson spoke of the long line
that reached from Selma, Alabama to Ohio, and into
this room. "This is not about who won or lost," he
said. "This is about participating in democracy. The
2004 election is not past-tense. We are not whining.
It is time to take this struggle to the streets and
fully legitimize this struggle." 
    The importance of the presence of Reverend Jackson
was described best by Cliff Arnebeck. "If you look at
who was here," said Arnebeck, "you had leaders from
the generally white political reform movement, and
leaders from the black civil rights movement. This is
a powerful coalition. We are not talking about one
group having dominance over the other, but a real
partnership of the traditional political reform
community with the traditional civil rights community,
and Reverend Jackson is the one that proposed it, has
initiated the organization of it." 
    "Jesse Jackson, as you could see today, is giving
tremendous moral leadership to this," continued
Arnebeck. "He has tremendous credibility. This is a
man who walked with Dr. Martin Luther King in the long
civil rights struggle that we honor so much in our
history now. This is the man who was holding Dr. King
when he died. I was sitting right next to him when he
talked about the fact that there aren't members of
Congress with children dying in Iraq, and tears were
in his eyes. This is a man who feels this stuff
deeply, and when he talks about what is at stake, he
means it in the deepest part of his being. It shows,
and people respect that, and I feel privileged to be
associated with him in this struggle." 
    The hearing today took place in a unique moment in
our history. Election fraud and voter
disenfranchisement are not new in our history, but
have been as much a part of the process as campaign
buttons and baby-kissing. The fact that the
electorate’s voting habits are becoming more clearly
drawn, and the fact that so many were watching like
hawks after Florida in 2000, means that the
standard-issue fraud which has always existed now has
a bright light shining upon it, and means the new
kinds of fraud involving electronic machines and
computer tabulators are likewise suffering intense
scrutiny. In this moment, that bright light means the
problems, both new and old, can and must be addressed,
repaired, and purged from our democratic process. 
    Aspects of the hearing could have been better.
There was a lot of heat from the panelists and from
the crowd, but not nearly as much cold data delivered.
Had the forum presented that cold data, had the forum
made an irrefutable case, the process to come would
have been better served. The data was there – the
panelists came armed with reams of paper and facts –
but needs to be more fully delivered to the public at
large. There were also grumblings among the assembled
about why it was that Dennis Kucinich was not in
attendance, about why Howard Dean chose this day to
hold a press conference that sucked some of the media
oxygen out of the hearing room, and about why no Kerry
campaign people or Senate staffers made any kind of
public appearance at the event. 
    There was also a moment of deep frustration when
the Representatives opened the floor to general
questions from the audience. This led to something
that always seems to happen when liberals and
progressives get in a room together. Person after
person came to the microphone not to ask questions,
but to pontificate at length on whatever crossed their
minds. As usual, this stole time from people who
actually had questions, and led to a watering-down of
the information at hand. When Conyers gently prodded
people to move it along, some got openly aggressive
and angry, despite the fact that they were riding
roughshod over the stated process. Rep. Frank finally
had to lay down the stomp on the quickly-unwinding
process. The open forum could have been a beneficial
addition to the hearing, but became in the end a waste
of valuable time. 
    At the end of the day, the hearing was a
beginning, a chance for those fighting this fight to
look upon one another and know they are not alone.
Rep. Conyers and his fellow Congressmen are to be
commended for putting the process in motion. The most
striking moment came when the hearing ended, and all
of the people assembled began embracing one another.
They had made their voices heard, they knew they were
not alone, and it smelled like vindication in there
when all was said and done. 
    The hearing was a beginning. There will be more,
especially in Ohio. The lawsuits will continue. Rep.
Conyers intimated today that he might object to the
seating of the Ohio Electors when the certification
process begins. The protests will continue to grow
across the country. Perhaps, if we can follow through
and accomplish the cleansing of our democratic
process, we will look back on this day in room 2237 of
the Rayburn House Office Building and know that yet
another popular movement towards achieving that more
perfect union began here, in this time, and in this
place. 
________________________________________
    William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and
international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq:
What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know' and 'The
Greatest Sedition is Silence.' 
  http://blog.democrats.com/node/1847/print
  Jump to TO Features for Thursday December 9, 2004   

Stolen Election 2004: Thursday Update
by Bob Fertik on December 9, 2004 - 10:11am.
I traveled to Washington for the House Judiciary
Committee Democratic forum on Ohio election problems.
The event was broadcast by C-Span and Pacifica Radio,
and there were a dozen more cameras capturing every
word. Here are 30 minutes of video highlights and text
highlights from William Rivers Pitt and Nero Fiddled.
My favorite moment was when John Bonifaz of the
National Voting Institute resoundingly declared if a
recount shows Ohio should have sent 
"a different set of electors, that set of electors
will meet, and will cast their votes for President.
And if that happens, the U.S. Congress will receive
the votes of two competing slates of electors. One
slate will be chosen by Mr. Blackwell. The other will
be chosen by the will of the people."
Of course, if that happens, "we the people" will have
to exert our will by surrounding Congress on January 6
when they decide which Electors to accept - and which
President to inaugurate - taking our cue from the
people of Ukraine. 
As for Rove-controlled media coverage, if you rely on
the Washington Post, the event didn't happen (Demand
an explanation from Michael Getler
ombudsman at washpost.com 202-334-7582. If you rely on
the NY Times (which didn't think American Democracy
important enough to send its own reporter - write
Daniel Okrent public at nytimes.com), the event was
completely insignificant.
Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the top Democrat on the
House Judiciary Committee, convened a hearing to
examine accusations of voting problems in Ohio. Many
of the election complaints, such as disparities in
vote totals and a shortage of voting machines in
Democratic-leaning urban precincts, have already been
cited and explained.
Cited - yes! In a 34-point letter that Conyers sent to
Ken Blackwell, seeking an explanation. Explained - no
way! Blackwell didn't respond to Conyers' letter, and
didn't attend the hearing despite being invited.
Instead, his mouthpiece issued a two-sentence
dismissal, showing his utter contempt for Democracy:
"Ohio had a great election. There were issues with
long lines but I think you'll find the entire country
experienced delays,"
spokesman Carlo LoParo said, dismissing reports of
Election Day irregularities.
One key person who did not testify at the hearing was
Clint Curtis, who wrote a computer program in 2002 to
"flip the vote" at the request of Florida House
Speaker Tom Feeney. BradBlog says Curtis was in the
room and "swarmed afterwards." While in DC,
Curtis met this morning with a U.S. Senator's office
to discuss what he claims to know about a certain
aspect of his case. We're being purposely vague on
details here, as we've been asked, so as not to spook
anybody out there in particular.
Curtis also met with Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Government (CREW), the group that filed the
ethics complaint against Tom DeLay. If Curtis has the
goods, CREW has the lawyers to expose it and demand
accountability.
Curtis did begin to tell his story to a national
audience through interviews on Air America Radio's
Unfiltered and the Thom Hartmann show.
Far away from the limelight, former Congressman Dan
Hamburg (D-CA) and his wife Carrie Hamburg were
arrested in Columbus after attempting to deliver a
letter about voting irregularities to Secretary of
State Ken Blackwell.

http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120604Madsen/120604madsen.html
Special Report 
Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine
operation paid for "vote switching" software
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.
December 6, 2004—The manipulation of computer voting
machines in the recent presidential election and the
funding of programmers who were involved in the
operation are tied to an intricate web of shady
off-shore financial trusts and companies, shady
espionage operatives, Republican Party politicians
close to the Bush family, and National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) contract vehicles.
An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link
between current Florida Republican Representative Tom
Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress
Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a
Florida computer services company with whom Feeney
worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist
while he was Speaker of the Florida House of
Representatives, and top level officials of the Bush
administration.
According to a notarized affidavit signed by Clint
Curtis, while he was employed by the NASA Kennedy
Space Center contractor, Yang Enterprises, Inc.,
during 2000, Feeney solicited him to write a program
to "control the vote." At the time, Curtis was of the
opinion that the program was to be used for preventing
fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach
County, Florida. His mind was changed, however, when
the true intentions of Feeney became clear: the
computer program was going to be used to suppress the
Democratic vote in counties with large Democratic
registrations.
According to Curtis, Feeney and other top brass at
Yang Enterprises, a company located in a three-story
building in Oviedo, Florida, wanted the prototype
written in Visual Basic 5 (VB.5) in Microsoft Windows
and the end-product designed to be portable across
different Unix-based vote tabulation systems and to be
"undetectable" to voters and election supervisors.
Yang, an engineering and computer services company
subcontracted to NASA prime contractors like Lockheed
Martin, was founded in 1986 by Dr. Tyng-Lin (Tim)
Yang. Granted minority-owned "Section 8A" and
woman-owned preferential status by the U.S.
government, Yang's clients also include the Florida
Department of Transportation (DOT). Yang's President,
Li-Woan (Lee) Yang, is Tim Yang's wife. Feeney was the
registered agent for another Yang company, Y & H
Greens, Inc., a company that was dissolved in 1988 and
operated from the Yangs' residence on Merritt Island.
The Yangs also serve as co-trustees for an entity
called Yang of Merritt Island, Ltd., founded on
January 31, 2000, and also run from their residence.
In the autumn of 1999, Curtis, who served as a sort of
technology adviser for Yang, first became aware of
Feeney's interest in election rigging. Curtis said at
one meeting, Feeney "bragged that he could reduce the
minority vote and deliver the election to 'George.'"
At the same meeting, according to Curtis, Feeney said
he had "implemented a list that would eliminate
thousands of voters that would vote for Democratic
candidates" and that "a proper placement of police
patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much
as 25 percent."
Feeney's desire to manipulate the vote would be
manifested in his home base of Volusia County in the
2000 presidential election. According to The
Washington Post, at 10 p.m. on election night, Al Gore
was leading Bush in Volusia County by 83,000 to 62,000
votes. One-half hour later, Gore's vote total had been
reduced by 16,000 to 67,000 and an obscure Socialist
candidate saw a sudden surge to 10,000 votes in a
precinct with only 600 voters. The information on the
Volusia optical scanner voting anomalies came from a
leaked internal Diebold memorandum. In the end, Bush
won Florida and the White House by a mere 537 votes in
the most controversial U.S. presidential election in
history. 
Feeney had long been a voice in Florida GOP politics.
He was gubernatorial candidate Jeb Bush's running mate
in 1994, a race in which Democratic incumbent Lawton
Chiles defeated Bush. Chiles once referred to Feeney
as "the David Duke of Florida politics."
In 2002, Feeney asked Curtis if he could develop a
touch screen voting machine "flip flop" program.
According to Curtis, Feeney asked him, "Can you write
a program to flip votes around on touch screen
machines?" Curtis said Feeney wanted the program to
merely reduce votes in heavily Democratic areas and
flip Republican votes to 51 percent and keep Democrat
votes to 49 percent. Curtis added that Feeney "did not
want to win by a lot." In return, Curtis said Feeney
offered him "big jobs." Curtis's main tasks at Yang
were to develop the Florida DOT's Electronic Document
Management System. He also worked on the Project
Pipeline Information System at another one of Yang's
major clients, Exxon Mobil's Coral Gables facility. 
Curtis said he developed the voting program and
eventually handed off his prototype to Feeney. The
program was also reviewed by Curtis's senior coder,
Hai Lin (Henry) Nee, who according to Florida
Department of Transportation sources, was an illegal
alien working in the United States. According Curtis,
not only did Nee review the vote switching program
code but he constantly downloaded sensitive data to
his computer from NASA's computers. Nee, according to
Curtis, moonlighted at an Orlando company called Azure
Systems, described by The Orlando Sentinel as a "three
person engineering firm" and one of a number of
companies linked to Ting Ih-Hsu, a former Lockheed
Martin employee. At the same time Nee was reviewing
Yang's vote switching program, he was also being
investigated by U.S. federal investigators for
illegally shipping Hellfire missile parts to China.
Oddly, although U.S. law enforcement agents had put
Nee and his associates under surveillance for illegal
exports of technology to China in 1999, he and his
colleagues were not arrested until March of this year.
Curtis claimed that Yang's corporate bosses stressed
that the company had "unlimited" sources of money that
came "mostly" from China. According to Florida DOT
employees, House Speaker Feeney pressured their agency
to give money to Yang for nonexistent software. The
sources also revealed that Feeney was aware that Yang
was employing a number of illegal aliens on State of
Florida and federal contracts.
Feeney's ties to Yang paralleled similar close ties to
NASA. Feeney's wife Ellen has worked as an engineer
for NASA's Kennedy Space Center since 1985. Jeb Bush
ensured that Florida's 24th Congressional District was
redrawn so that Feeney would have an easy time in his
2002 race against Democratic opponent Harry Jacobs.
According to Florida state officials, who spoke on the
condition anonymity, 500 Yang employees at the Kennedy
Space Center were paid for their time when they agreed
to picket against Jacobs. In addition, NASA
administrator Sean O'Keefe, according to the same
sources, lobbied extensively for Feeney within NASA.
In addition, O'Keefe and his close friend and former
Pentagon boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, made
campaign appearances for Feeney at the Kennedy Space
Center.
Feeney's close ties to Jeb Bush and Cheney paid off.
In 2002, he was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives in a race that also saw the
re-election of Jeb Bush. Early in "vote switch's"
development stages, Feeney had told Curtis that he
wanted the program "made to control Palm Beach" in
2002. Palm Beach County's Election Supervisor was
still the controversial Theresa LePore, nicknamed
"Madam Butterfly," who designed the infamous
"butterfly ballots" in the 2000 election. LePore had
once been an employee of Saudi multi-billionaire Adnan
Khashoggi, a Saudi link that is tied to a huge
multi-billion tranche of money distributed throughout
off-shore trusts, accounts, and corporations with
interlocking directorships that are controlled by Bush
interests in Houston. It was this Bush-controlled
money cache, originating in the East, and known in
Houston by the name "Five Star" and other cryptonyms
that was, according to U.S. intelligence insiders,
used to fund the rigging of the 2004 election.
When he arrived in Congress, Feeney was given a seat
on the House Science and Technology Committee, which
oversees NASA's operations. Feeney was also appointed
to the important House Finance and Judiciary
Committees. He was also given a clean bill of ethical
health by Florida's Ethics Commission, a panel that
has a Republican majority.
After Feeney's ascension to Congress, Yang's
questionable billing activities with its Florida DOT
contract came to the attention of Ray C. Lemme, a
seasoned senior investigator with the Florida DOT
Inspector General's Office and a combat veteran of the
Vietnam War. Lemme had a lot of evidence to suspect
that Yang was overbilling the DOT for "millions."
After discovering Yang's dirty laundry, Curtis went to
work for the DOT. Mavis Georgalis, the DOT's
contracting officer for the Yang contract, was also
aware of improprieties with the contract. As a result
of pressure from the Florida State House, both Curtis
and Georgalis were eventually fired by the DOT because
of their complaints about the Yang contract. Someone
was obviously trying to send Curtis a message when, on
August 14, 2002, he discovered that someone poisoned
his pet Pomeranian dog, Emily. Lemme was forced to
stop his official investigation of Yang for similar
reasons. However, he decided to continue an
"unofficial" investigation of Yang and its practices
on the side. It was a fateful decision.
According to DOT employees familiar with the Yang
case, Lemme was aware that it was Jeb Bush who
personally shut down his investigation of Yang. Lemme
also leaked details concerning his investigation to
the Daytona Beach News Journal. The investigator had
previously requested a full audit of the Yang contract
with the DOT, a request that was denied. Lemme also
became aware of something else outside the framework
of the DOT contract—that Yang had been involved in
producing a prototype vote switching program for use
with touch screen voting machines and that Tom Feeney
was in on the scam. The last time Clint Curtis spoke
to Lemme, he remembers the silver haired investigator
excited about where his case was leading. Lemme told
Curtis that the cover up of Yang was coming from "as
high up as I could imagine" and that he had "proof"
that was "shocking."
On Sunday, June 29, 2003, evidence indicates that
Lemme drove from Tallahassee to Valdosta, Georgia, the
home of Moody Air Force Base. A motel receipt
indicated that Lemme checked in at the Knight's Inn
off Interstate 75 at 6:49 p.m. Lemme's wife said that
her husband left home for work on Monday, June 30, at
5:15 a.m., an hour earlier than usual. According to a
Leon County Sheriff's report, Lemme's wife said she
received a voice message after she returned home at
6:45 p.m. on Monday. The message was from her
husband's supervisor, Bob Clift, who informed her that
earlier in the day, at 6:15 a.m., Lemme called into
work, left a message, and said he would not be coming
to work that day. Clift said he was checking up on Ray
Lemme. Mrs. Lemme called Clift and told him that her
husband was not at home. Mrs. Lemme told police that
her husband was working on a "big case." Mrs. Lemme
filed a missing person report with the Leon County,
Sheriff's Office. Clift later determined that Ray
Lemme made his earlier call to work at 6:15 a.m., one
hour after he supposedly left his home for work, from
a pay phone at the junction of Interstate 10 and
Highway 1 in Jefferson County, Florida. Shortly after
11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 1, the maid assigned to
clean Lemme's room—132—received no answer when she
knocked. The door was locked. There was no response
when the maid called the room's telephone. The hotel
manager then called the police.
The following is from the Valdosta Police Detective
Report filed by Detective Craig Spencer and dated July
1, 2003: "On July 1, 2003 at approximately 1330 hours,
I received a page advising me to be en route to
Knights Inn at 2110 West Hill Avenue in reference to
an unattended death." When Spencer and other police
officers and detectives arrived at the motel, the
manager told them that the occupant of Room 132, Ray
Lemme, was to have checked out by 11a.m. The officers
yelled through the slightly ajar door but received no
answer and they discovered the upper swing latch was
locked. The officers used a special tool provided by
the motel to open the swing latch lock. Spencer said
that one of the officers entered the room and found a
suicide note and then proceeded to the bathroom where
Lemme was found dead in the bathtub.  Police also
discovered that the inside of Lemmes's left elbow—the
cubital tunnel—was slashed. There were spurts of blood
on the wall but no blood found on the floor. A belt
possibly used as a tourniquet and a double- edged
straight razor blade were found on the side of the
tub. A bath towel was unfolded and neatly placed on
the floor next to the tub. 
Later on July 1, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
Crime Laboratory in Moultrie informed the Valdosta
Police that based on the "suicide" details, no autopsy
would be performed on Lemme. Unlike Florida, Georgia
does not perform mandatory autopsies. A doctor, with
25 years' clinical experience, who was interviewed for
this story claimed that the circumstances of Lemme's
death appeared to him to be a classic "mob hit." If
the Leon County Sheriff missing person report is to be
believed, it is clear that someone other than Lemme
checked into the Valdosta motel on Sunday evening
using his name. Clearly, the Leon County Sheriff's
report contains a number of details that directly
conflict with facts found in the Valdosta Police
report. In addition, the Lowndes County, Georgia,
Coroner's report fails to indicate an estimated time
of death based on a full medical examination—it
surmised that the time of death was the same time as
indicated on the suicide note: 8:10 a.m. on July 1.
An empty manila folder and a blank legal pad notebook
were found on the hotel room's desk along with an
undated and unsigned suicide note written on lined
paper, which lacked any identifiable fingerprints,
from Lemme's day planner. The note merely contained
the time 8:10 a.m. with the following notation: "I
love my family (family underlined once) with all my
heart. I am sorry. I am depressed and in pain. Mary
Ann (Lemme's wife), I love you." ("I love you"
underlined twice). It was certainly not indicative of
a person who was ecstatic that he was finally going to
nail a long investigation that involved vote rigging,
overbilling, and fraud abetted by the very top
political leadership in Tallahassee. Interestingly,
the last number on Lemme's pager (an 850 960-XXXX)
ended with the number "911." It is also interesting
that Lemme's watch, when discovered by the police, was
stopped at 12:34 p.m. on June 30–a possible indication
that Lemme was trying to convey the time of a possible
in extremis situation. Also, Lemme's Florida driver's
license was in his room while his wallet was in the
glove box of his car, which was parked in front of the
room. Two motel receipts were found in Lemme's room by
the police. One was a check-in receipt dated June 29
and timed at 6:44 p.m. The other was a receipt,
without a notation of check-in or check-out, dated
June 30 and timed at 6:54 a.m. A witness told police
that Lemme's car was parked in front of his room on
the afternoon of June 30.
Sergeant Eugene Bell of the Valdosta Police Department
interviewed a 39-year old female guest who was staying
in Room 236 over the weekend. She and her daughter
noticed three men standing in the parking lot across
from Lemme's room at 8 a.m. on the morning of July 1.
The behavior of the men made the guest suspicious
enough that the woman initially believed the men were
engaged in a drug deal. According to the police
report, the camera used to photograph the crime scene
was later discovered to have a defect in the flash
memory card. The defect resulted in no usable
photographs being submitted with the official police
report.
Lemme was no stranger to Florida politics. His wife,
Mary Ann, worked as a secretary for Martha Walters
Barnett, a partner with the politically-connected
Holland & Knight law firm in Tallahassee, where she
specializes in campaign finance and election law and
government contracts. Another Holland & Knight
partner, Ginny Myrick, was appointed by Jeb Bush as
the vice chair of the Florida Community Trust, a state
land acquisition and grant program. Although
officially a bipartisan law firm, even Democrats
working for Holland & Knight largely support Jeb Bush.
In addition, Bill McBride, Bush's Democratic opponent
in the 2002 gubernatorial race and a Holland & Knight
partner who had defeated former Attorney General Janet
Reno in the Democratic primary amid reports of voting
irregularities from around the state, commented that
his race against Bush "may be the Democrats' race to
lose."
The NASA connection to the money trail that is linked
to the development of the vote switching program is of
particular note. When the first sketchy details of the
vote switching operation emerged, a Houston-controlled
money tranche associated with an offshore entity
called Five Star Trust, registered in the Isle of Man,
was reported by high-level intelligence sources
familiar with past Bush-related covert activities to
be behind the operation. Five Star has been connected
by these informed sources to have originated in 1983,
when deposed Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos,
Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, and then-Vice
President George H. W. Bush were allegedly looking for
a repository for an estimated $3 billion in looted
Philippine gold and gems. Since that time, Five Star's
accounts are said to funnel more funds from Saudi
Arabia as well as cash reserves hidden away in
offshore artificial shells by Enron before it
collapsed. What is not yet certain is whether Sean
O'Keefe, the NASA administrator and close Cheney
friend who supported Feeney's and Yang's activities in
Florida, facilitated the transfer of Five Star funds
from Houston to Cape Canaveral using contract vehicles
of both the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers to
disburse the funds to the principal players. A NASA
insider in Texas said he has long suspected large
amounts of money have been moved into the United
States and that these transfers involved NASA and
Saudi and Chinese money sources.
There is additional information that the election
rigging principals connected to the State of Florida
and Jeb Bush may have also tried to use contractors
tied closely to state contracts to parlay the touch
screen software into Maine, which has proportional
distribution of its electoral votes by congressional
district, and Ohio, the key state in 2004. The
information was provided by insiders in Tallahassee
who are close to offices involved in procurement by
the state government.
Sources close to U.S. intelligence pointed to a $29.6
million check supposedly issued on October 22, 2004,
by Laurentian Bank in Montreal, Canada, that was
rumored by intelligence circles to have been used to
pay for the technicians who developed the software to
rig the election. The computer voting machine
technicians and maintenance personnel involved with
the rigging were reported to have included Russians,
Mexicans, and Brazilians.
According to Laurentian Bank, the check, a U.S. dollar
"money order," is a bogus instrument tied to Nigerian
scamming activities. Laurentian Bank said that a U.S.
dollar money order would never be for amounts over
$1,000 and any higher amount would be in the form of a
bank draft that would require the signature of two
senior bank officers. In addition, the bank would
never use a cell phone number (514-588-5569) on their
checks. The payer on the "check," Equity Financial
Trust of Toronto, is said by the Canadian Fraud Office
to be involved with Nigerian scammers.  In fact, the
Canadian Office of the Superintendent of Financial
Institutions reports that Equity Financial Trust,
Toronto, Ontario "may be violating provisions of the
Bank Act (Canada) or other Canadian financial
institution regulations" and "may also be conducting
unauthorized banking transactions in the United
States."
 

The payee on the "check," Five Star Investments, Ltd.,
once registered on the Isle of Man, is a Lexington,
Kentucky-based entity tied to Marion "J.R." Horn,
convicted in 2002 by Judge Joseph M. Hood of the U.S.
District Court for Eastern Kentucky for wire fraud. He
was also ordered to serve time in Buckner Federal
Penitentiary, North Carolina for a "mental study." He
eventually served an unusually light 18-month sentence
while on parole for another fraud case. When
interviewed by a researcher for this article, Horn
expressed surprise that the check his lawyer in Nassau
was waiting to clear a bank in New York, was, in fact,
a fake. According to CIA documents obtained from the
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Five
Star Trust may have, in fact, had a past relationship
with Horn. According to Offshorebusiness.com, Five
Star Trust has been linked with an "illegal" bank. 
The connection of Enron money and Nigerian scammers to
Five Star is intriguing because of a September 23,
2004, Houston Chronicle report that said Enron was
involved in an off-the-books deal to invest in
Nigerian power generation barges. Tina Trinkle, a
former Merrill Lynch banker, said she was asked not to
do the normal background checks for such a business
deal.
A former Justice Department prosecutor who
investigated the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI) said that the bogus check and
those responsible for it are typical "feints" used to
mask actual clandestine money movements from law
enforcement investigators. In addition, the former
prosecutor said the purported check lacked the
necessary SWIFT codes in the numbers found at the
bottom of the check to facilitate the movement of
money through international financial networks. He
said that in his experience as a prosecutor, the name
"Five Star Trust" came up in relation to the covert
activities of the Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA-connected
activity that was involved in covert activities in
Australia and South East Asia.
Five Star entities, active and dissolved, have been
discovered in the Isle of Man, the island of Nevis,
the Bahamas, Florida, Kentucky, and Texas. Other Five
Star-related entities stored large sums of money in
the Cook Islands, according to U.S. intelligence
sources, and these funds were directly linked to
Khashoggi and BCCI. Khashoggi also approached top
Nigerian leaders in 1982 to set up a company there
that would deal exclusively in minerals. According to
knowledgeable insiders, Khashoggi used a company
called Triad to hammer out lucrative international
deals on precious minerals. In 1994, Five Star
Investments, Ltd., the entity tied to Horn, attempted
to buy International Standards Group ISG), Ltd., a
consulting company based in Boca Raton, Florida.
According to the Palm Beach Post, Horn was the person
who proposed the acquisition.  ISG was also the target
of a bid by UMI, Inc., a mortgage banker based in
Coral Gables, Florida. The Palm Beach Post was never
able to determine the source of UMI's cash.
Phony checks are not the only telltale signs
associated with some of the various Five Star
entities. Another bogus document, a bogus UN customs
declaration for a shipment to a "Counter Terrorist
Unit" in Lagos, Nigeria, was also obtained in the
investigation of this story. 
 

Horn has had a running battle with the CIA over
allegations that he is owed money for his past
activities on behalf of the agency. Although Horn has
produced a number of dubious documents to support his
claims, one of the names mentioned in documents filed
in U.S. court in Washington, DC is that of E. Warren
Goss, an actual attorney in Boulder, Colorado. It has
not been established if E. Warren Goss has any family
connection to Porter Goss, the current CIA director.
In a September 17, 2003, declaration by Marilyn A.
Dorn, Information Review Officer in the Directorate of
Operations at the CIA, in response to Horn's Freedom
of Information Act request, it was determined that the
agency had no records containing the names "Five Star
Trust" or a reported subsidiary, "U.S. Mortgage and
Trust (Bahamas)."  Dorn reported that no records
containing references to either entity were discovered
but that two documents, cables—"field traffic
consisting of one and a half pages and eight partial
lines of message text, respectively, dating from the
early 1980s"—were responsive to Horn's request. It is
interesting that the CIA admits the time frame because
the genesis of Five Star Trust was 1983, when,
according to U.S. intelligence insiders, then-Vice
President Bush authorized a Boeing 747 with a special
"carriage" to airlift several tons of gold bars from
Clark Air Force base in the Philippines to LaGuardia
Airport in New York.
The gold bars were then transported to the
International Diamond Exchange Vaults near Rockefeller
Center. A CIA proprietary firm called Oceaneering
International of Houston was reportedly involved in
airlifting some of the gold from the Philippines, in
addition to sealifting the remainder to Oregon. After
George W. Bush's victory in 2000, the last of the gold
in New York was moved to UBS Bank in Zurich. Marcos
and Khashoggi set about to create Five Star Trust in
1983 as a means to create a vehicle to use the
Philippine wealth to create and funnel fungible
assets. In 1989, Five Star Trust was officially
established in the Isle of Man by a Houston-based
attorney who was a close friend of the Bush family.
The CIA's explanation of its decision to withhold the
release the two cables was partly based on the use of
cryptonyms–artificial words used as substitutes for
the actual name or identity of a "person,
organization, or project."  The CIA statement
continues: "when obtained and matched with other
information, a cryptonym possesses a great deal of
meaning for those who are able to fit it into the
proper cognitive framework." The denial of Horn's FOIA
request also stated that the two responsive documents
could "reveal the existence or location of covert CIA
field installations in multiple foreign countries." In
addition, the CIA stated that release of the documents
in question would "reveal specific and sensitive
subjects in which the CIA is or was interested."
Finally, disclosure of the requested documents was
denied because of "foreign relations." The agency
emphasized that, "in carrying out its legally
authorized intelligence activities, the CIA engages in
activities that if known by foreign nations, could
reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to U.S.
relations with affected or interested nations."
The story of this corruption is nothing new. What is
new is the purpose. The use of this old and covert
tranche of money for a special Bush operation to deny
the American people their right to a free and fair
vote was not the typical illegal sale of arms to a
terrorist nation, the overthrow of a foreign
government, or the payment of bribes to foreign
potentates. It was a high crime in every
constitutional sense. The target was the American
political system and not just in 2004 but also in
2003, 2002, and 2000. The scandal goes right up to the
White House and the Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee.
It involves an extremely crooked Florida national
politician and other Florida state government
officials. And, as with all modern American political
scandals, we have at least one dead body, a number of
whistleblowers and anonymous "Deep Throats," powerful
but corrupt politicians, counterfeit and real
documents, con men, and a money trail tied to
off-shore foreign bank accounts.
People may wonder why a group of intelligence insiders
would come forward to a non-major media outlet with
such tantalizing information at this time. The
corporate-beholden media cannot be trusted to report
such a news story. A common theme from all the
intelligence and ex-intelligence officials with whom I
have communicated is that George W. Bush made a major
mistake in attacking and purging the clandestine
service of the CIA. The "agency," which extends far
beyond the confines of Langley, Virginia, is having
its revenge. It has willingly exposed a portion of a
traditional clandestine CIA money route to expose the
vote scam that was used to ensure Bush's election.
The clues, for example, the bogus check, were conveyed
to us as exactly that—clues. Those markers pointed to
the illegal nature of the covert money flows. The
connections between NASA contracts, Texas, and Florida
were additional clues to one of the major sources of
the money used for the vote rigging. There were a
number of roads that led to the same destination. But
that is the nature of covert intelligence. Some
patriotic and brave people, who have served in silence
for a number of decades, have chosen their country
over a corrupt family and administration. It is now
time for the constitutional process to begin.
Rectification of the criminal conspiracy that denied
John Kerry and John Edwards the White House must begin
in Ohio, and extend to Florida, California, Texas,
Georgia, and other states where votes were flipped by
computers from the Kerry to the Bush column. Past
elections must also be investigated and those who were
done in by this fraud, namely, people like Max
Cleland, Gray Davis, Al Gore, and others must also
have their day in court.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative
journalist and syndicated columnist. He is the author
of "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates."
www.blackboxvoting.org
TUESDAY DEC 7 2004: 
Why the Feeney vote-rigging story sounds like
disinformation, as Wayne Madsen writes it
The story hangs together better at BradBlog.com. 
ABOUT DISINFORMATION: Like a good lie, it has elements
of truth. Trouble is, the truth in Madsen's story
doesn't relate to the nuts and bolts of the story. 
DISINFORMATION IS DANGEROUS TO THE CLEAN VOTING
MOVEMENT: Getting the facts is tedious, unexciting
work, consisting of auditing and personal interviews,
and it takes time. Many Americans want a magic bullet,
a single shot that will blow the lid off everything at
once. 
That's risky. If the mainstream media continues to be
bombarded with stories that sound credible, but
aren't, when the real thing comes down the pike it
will be ignored. 
While MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and I had a run-in
recently, I agree with Olbermann's earlier critique of
the Madsen homeland security story, and this new
Madsen story is just as weak. Most of both Madsen
stories are bait and switch. Madsen wanders all over
the place, recapping unrelated information from real
news agencies, piggybacking onto their credibility,
with only the most tenuous ties to what he is actually
trying to prove. The work done on BradBlog is much
more focused, and Brad seems to be a responsible
researcher. 
======================================== 
In my original critique, I raised questions about the
Feeney vote-manipulation story; some of them related
to Madsen's work. Brad Friedman, the author of
BradBlog and the primary researcher for more credible
work on Curtis, answered my original questions here. I
have updated this section. 
1. Madsen's article implied that Curtis's vote-rigging
program was used in elections. Brad Friedman correctly
points out that the Clint Curtis affidavit explains
that he designed a prototype and did not put it into
machines. (Many people have written vote-rigging
prototypes, and the writing of a program doesn't prove
anything about the integrity of the 2004 election.)
The issue then becomes: Are Curtis's allegations about
Tom Feeney correct? 
- Documents do confirm that Curtis worked for Yang
Enterprises, and that Feeney was involved with Yang.
Documents do not confirm that Curtis met with Feeney
and discussed vote-rigging. Curtis names witnesses in
his affidavit, which is a good sign. The witnesses
have not confirmed the story, yet. 
2. I mentioned a second problem, in that several of
the Florida counties used different software in 2000
than they do now, and that various Florida counties
use different manufacturers and different systems.
Writing one program that would tamper with ES&S punch
cards and Diebold optical scans at the same time is
unrealistic. However, since Curtis says he did not
insert the software into any voting system, this is
(almost) a moot point. 
- The counties Curtis alleges Feeney wanted to rig
were Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach. The first two
used punch cards in 2000, switched to ES&S
touch-screens in 2002, and used ES&S touch-screens in
2004. Palm Beach County used the infamous "butterfly
ballot" in 2000, and switched to Sequoia touch-screens
in 2002, and used those also in 2004. The Sequoia
system has significant differences from the ES&S
system, and the same software would not likely work
for both 
- Note that the Wayne Madsen article does a bait and
switch when he discusses Volusia County. He starts by
saying it is Feeney's district, and then actually goes
on to report a story broken by Black Box Voting in
October, 2003, about minus 16,022 votes for Bush in
Volusia -- which appears to have nothing to do with
the Feeney story. BradBlog takes care not to draw
conclusions that aren't supported. 
3. The techniques used to program a vote-rigging
system in the affidavit by Clint Curtis still have
some technical problems. Candidate-switching is not
difficult, and there are a number of ways to
accomplish it. Programmers have pointed out the the
use of VB5 doesn't match use of Unix systems, but
several programmers I spoke with were unaware that the
Sequoia touch-screens, used in Palm Beach, create
their ballots from WinEDS, and that program runs on
Windows, and is so replete with security problems that
the state of Texas refused to certify it. Now, when I
get a high-speed document scanner, I'll post the Texas
FOIA documents that show how susceptible the Sequoia
WinEDS program is to tampering. 
4. Most political shenanigans are not conducted by the
candidate himself, but by operatives. It is certainly
possible for a politician to hold several meetings in
which he commits a felony in front of several
witnesses, but that's not usually how it is done. A
more common technique is an envelope full of cash left
in a drawer of an operative, with at least one,
sometimes more, buffer layers between the operative
and the politician. 
Clint Curtis says Feeney himself had meetings to
directly discuss election rigging software. Could
happen, certainly, but this seems unusual. 
But this gets a bit more interesting. As I was
checking this out, I got a report from someone
completely unrelated, on an entirely different kind of
vote-manipulation endeavor, and Feeney's name came up
in that, too. So the issue of Feeney's behavior is
about as clear as mud. 
5. The author says it will be difficult to write a
program that will escape notice if the source code is
examined. That's not quite true. 
I originally wrote that putting a trigger into a
program can involve a very small amount of code, hard
to detect -- and you can comment the code such that it
looks like it is there for another purpose. Also, the
certifiers do a slipshod job of code analysis, and you
could probably drive a greyhound bus through their
examination of the source code. 
But I've been receiving e-mails from programmers that
point out something even more obvious: by slipping the
rig into a .dll, a program that runs in the background
in the operating system (which is never examined at
all) you can certainly achieve vote-rigging and
survive a source code review. 
Programmers pointed out to me that Curtis, as a
programmer, should have known that. However, according
to his affidavit, Curtis got his degree in Political
Science and History, not computer science. He was
apparently a self-trained programmer. I won't go into
the technical merits more here, because if he didn't
put the program into voting systems, they aren't
relevant. 
6. Now, my most significant objection to the story,
which goes to Curtis's credibility, still involves his
statement on the affidavit saying that he filed a
"QUITAM" whistleblower suit, that is "pending." First,
he doesn't spell it correctly. The correct spelling is
two words, "Qui Tam." Next, Qui Tam cases MUST be
filed under seal. If a Qui Tam is filed in Florida,
both the evidence and the existence of the case must
be sealed, and only the Florida Attorney General can
unseal it. 
People have written to me to explain that Curtis did
file a whistleblower suit, but did so a day after the
deadline. That is not a Qui Tam, but an
employment-related suit. In his affidavit, Curtis
refers to filing lawsuits two different places. One is
an employment suit, the other is a "QUITAM" suit. I
found documentation of the employement suit and its
dismissal, but saw no documentation at all about a Qui
Tam suit. That means it's either still under seal, and
therefore, by talking about it, Curtis just
invalidated the suit and violated a court order, or
there is no Qui Tam suit. 
Please do show it to me, if you can find it in the
dockets and it has been unsealed. 
Black Box Voting board member Jim March and I filed a
Qui Tam suit in California in November 2003, against
Diebold Election Systems. Using a California law, we
refused to seal the evidence, but still had to keep
the existence of the case under seal. It did not come
out from under seal until the California Attorney
General got the court to unseal it, and the Associated
Press covered the unsealing of the case. You cannot
keep the unsealing of a Qui Tam case away from the
press. The press has mentioned no FDOT Qui Tam. 
This goes directly to Curtis's credibility. I was not
able to get hold of him today, and I will keep trying
tomorrow, so that we can learn the answer to this. 
There are two other credibility-checking questions I
need answered. First, a small scrambled egg on my
face: I wrote "Court documents refer to a judgment
against Curtis for copyright infringement. Actually,
the court documents referred to might have been papers
filed by an opposing party, i.e. Yang Enterprises,
alleging the copyright infringement without proving
it. According to the Daytona News-Journal, Yang says
Curtis was "successfully sued" over copyright
infringement. 
Parsing words here: "successfully sued" may mean there
was a judgment entered, but according to Brad
Friedman, Curtis says the case was settled out of
court without either side paying the other. ("Each
side paid their attorney's fees and went their merry
way.") "Successfully sued" could also mean an
out-of-court settlement in which Curtis paid a
settlement to the other party. It is really stretching
it to interpret "successfully sued" as simply filing a
case. The term "successfully sued" could be a smear by
Yang or Feeney, or it could be that Curtis didn't
fully disclose the problems with the copyright
infringement case. 
Because this goes to credibility, and in this case
credibility is extremely important, the next two
questions that must be answered are: Who was the
former employer and what were the real terms of the
settlement or judgment? 
One more credibility test: When Curtis lived in
Illinois, he ran for office as a Republican. While
discussing his run for office in a letter to the
Bloomington Pantagraph he accused a local attorney of
stealing $28,000. The accusation might be accurate,
since it apparently was an embezzlement, and those are
much more common than people realize. I'd like to know
the names of the attorney and the injured party. 
My gut tells me -- but this is only speculation --
that Curtis was correct in blowing the whistle on the
attorney for misappropriating $28,000. I say that
because I've seen written up several financial fraud
cases, met the embezzlers, it happens frequently. If
he blew the whistle on a $28,000 theft and his charges
were correct, that would shore up his credibility on
the Feeney story. 
I announced on a national radio show Friday that I
will be happy to take what you folks throw at me, if I
am wrong on these points. In the mean time, because
the implications of this story are so significant, I
think we need to continue to exercise caution and get
the story to the point where it is truly bulletproof. 
-- Bev Harris # # # # #

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120604E.shtml
  Why I Resigned from the CIA 
    By Michael Scheuer 
    The Los Angeles Times 
    Sunday 05 December 2004 
The agency did its job, but higher-ups endangered the
nation.
    The Central Intelligence Agency is the best place
to work in the United States. No federal agency has a
smarter, more dedicated or harder-working set of
individuals than the CIA's women and men. I had
intended to work at the CIA for the duration of my
career, and I left it with deep regret and a great
sense of personal loss. I was neither forced out nor
pressed to resign. Resigning was my decision alone. 
    I cannot state these facts more clearly, and I
fiercely deny the accusations that I am a disgruntled
former employee. I am, however, a disgruntled American
- one who decided that being a good citizen was no
longer compatible with being a good member of the
CIA's Senior Intelligence Service. 
    I do not profess a broad expertise in
international affairs, but between January 1996 and
June 1999 I was in charge of running operations
against Al Qaeda from Washington. When it comes to
this small slice of the large U.S. national security
pie, I speak with firsthand experience (and for
several score of CIA officers) when I state
categorically that during this time senior White House
officials repeatedly refused to act on sound
intelligence that provided multiple chances to
eliminate Osama bin Laden - either by capture or by
U.S. military attack. I witnessed and documented,
along with dozens of other CIA officers, instances
where life-risking intelligence-gathering work of the
agency's men and women in the field was wasted. 
    Because of classification issues, I argued this
point only obliquely in my book "Imperial Hubris," but
it is a fact - and fortunately, no American has to
depend on my word alone. The 9/11 commission report
documents most of the occasions on which senior U.S.
bureaucrats and policymakers had the chance to attack
Bin Laden in 1998-1999. It is mystifying that the
American public has not been outraged over these
missed opportunities. 
    In the most memorable and cloying moment of the
9/11 commission's public hearings, former White House
terrorism advisor Richard Clarke apologized to the
American people for the failure of the U.S.
intelligence community to protect them. This statement
has become, like the 9/11 report, American scripture -
carved in stone, literally true and unquestionable. 
    Clearly, Clarke had the duty to apologize for the
government's ineffectiveness as regards terrorism, but
I reject his intimation that the clandestine service
failed the nation. 
    Now, I must add that I was never charged with
deciding whether to act against Bin Laden. That
decision properly belongs solely to senior White House
officials. However, as a now-private American citizen,
it is my right to question their judgment; I am
entitled to know why the protection of Americans -
most selfishly, my own children and grandchildren -
was not the top priority of the senior officials who
refused to act on the opportunities to attack Bin
Laden provided by the clandestine service. 
    Each of these officials have publicly argued that
the intelligence was not "good enough" to act, but
they almost always neglect to say that they were
repeatedly advised that the intelligence was not going
to get better and that Bin Laden was going to kill
thousands of Americans if he was not stopped. 
    At each opportunity provided by the clandestine
service, senior bureaucrats and policymakers decided
not to act. The 9/11 report documents the fact that
the chances to capture or attack Bin Laden were passed
by because there were worries that shrapnel might hit
a mosque and offend Muslim opinion; that a United Arab
Emirates prince meeting Bin Laden clandestinely in the
Afghan desert might be killed; and that the CIA might
be accused of assassination if Bin Laden was killed in
an effort to capture him. 
    Of course, it is not my opinion but that of the
American people that counts. Perhaps a starting point
is for Americans to ask why no member of Congress'
Graham-Goss investigation or the Kean-Hamilton
commissioners ever directly asked Clarke, former
national security advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger,
CIA Director George J. Tenet, former FBI Director
Louis J. Freeh, former Secretary of State William S.
Cohen or any of the rest of the witnesses why they
never erred on the side of protecting Americans; why
international opinion was ultimately more important
than the Americans who leaped from the World Trade
Center; and why the intelligence was "good enough" to
save the life of an Arab prince dining with bin Laden,
but not "good enough" to cause the government to act
on behalf of Americans. 
    At day's end, it may be worth pausing the
intelligence reform process long enough to determine
what role personal failure, bureaucratic warfare -
which the Department of Defense continues waging today
- and a lack of moral courage played in getting the
United States to 9/11. Lacking this accounting, the
debate over intelligence reform will, I believe,
simply lock into place a bureaucratic mind-set that
believes intelligence is never "good enough" to take a
risk to protect the lives of Americans

Last Updated: December 9, 2004 11:41 EST  

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/08/1520204

Wednesday, December 8th, 2004
Fmr. Counterterror Chief Richard Clarke on Intel Bill,
Iraq and the Threat of Another Attack on the U.S.

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As the House approves the biggest overhaul of the
country's intelligence agencies in half a century we
hear an address by former counterterrorism chief
Richard Clarke. [includes rush transcript] 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The House voted yesterday to approve the biggest
overhaul of the country's intelligence agencies in
half a century. 
The legislation will implement key recommendations
made by the Sept. 11 commission and create a new
director of national intelligence with strong budget
powers to oversee 15 spy agencies. It also creates a
new counterterrorism center that would plan and help
oversee operations. 

The bill passed with a 336-75 vote after being
sidetracked by House Speaker Dennis Hastert due to
concerns over issues surrounding military intelligence
and immigration. The Senate is expected to pass the
bill today where it will be sent to President Bush for
his signature. 

The bill is the second major government overhaul since
the Sept. 11 attacks following the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security. The legislation
stalled last month and appeared dead for the year, but
found new life under pressure from families of victims
of the Sept. 11 attacks. 

During the 9/11 hearings last March, controversy
swirled over the testimony of former Counterterrorism
Chief Richard Clarke. Clarke was the only person to
apologize to the families of the victims of 9/11 and
his testimony came amidst a political firestorm over
the publication of his book Against All Enemies. The
book accuses the White House of ignoring the threat
posed by al-Qaeda leading up to 9/11 and that Bush
wanted to strike Iraq immediately after the attacks,
despite no evidence that Baghdad was involved. 

Clarke is widely viewed as a leading figure in
national security circles. He held top posts under
every president since Reagan and served as both
President Clinton and President Bush's top
anti-terrorism official. 

Yesterday he spoke at the New York Society for Ethical
Culture at an event co-sponsored by openDemocracy.net,
DEMOS, Democrats.com and Pacifica Radio's WBAI. 


Richard Clarke, speaking at the New York Society for
Ethical Culture on December 7, 2004.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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you for your generous contribution. 
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

AMY GOODMAN: Last night as the House was voting on the
bill, Richard Clarke spoke at the New York Society for
Ethical Culture. The event was co-sponsored by, among
others, Pacifica radio station WBAI. 

RICHARD CLARKE: I have agreed tonight to do the
impossible, which is to talk about where we go from
here in the war on terrorism and Homeland Security in
15 minutes or less. Since that is impossible, let me
instead refer you to this lovely little book which was
published a few weeks ago by the Century Foundation,
which is called Defeating the Jihadists. This talks
about the things that we should do for the next four
years in Homeland Security and in the war on terrorism
and in the protection of civil liberties. The Century
Foundation has this available for download on the
Internet at the Century Foundation, www.tcf.org, and
if you download it, it’s free. Or, you can buy it on
www.amazon.com and all the proceeds go to the
Foundation. So, in my remaining time, let me comment
briefly on things that we have seen in the last few
weeks in the war on terrorism and in Homeland
Security. First, today, we have seen the unusual,
which are press reports on an assessment of the
situation in Iraq by the CIA'S Station Chief in Iraq.
Normally those things are top-secret and no one ever
sees them. But for some reason this one has made it
out into the public. And what the CIA’s outgoing
Station Chief; the man who is leaving the job there
after some time in Baghdad, his assessment is that
things are going very badly in Iraq and that we could
end up with a civil war. Please note this is not what
the president has told you. This is not what Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld said even this week. But within
the government, within the classified world, the
assessment is things are going very badly indeed. That
will not come as a shock to you. Yesterday, we had an
attack on the American consulate in jeddah. That
indicated two things, I think. First of all, that Al
Qaeda, or some variant of it, is alive and well
although the president would tell you it is on the
ropes. The second thing it told me was some of the
motivation, because the group that did the attack
yesterday called itself the Fallujah Brigade. You may
remember Fallujah; it was the city that we had to
liberate in order to hold elections. If anyone has
seen Fallujah since we liberated it, and film of
inside Fallujah is very hard to get because the United
States Military is not allowing journalists in very
much. But some film has made its way out of Fallujah.
Fallujah might participate in an election in January,
but not in January of 2005. In order to liberate the
city to hold an election we destroyed the city where
300,000 people had called their home. Again, not
exactly what the administration has told you. They
have told you we liberated it to have an election but
the reality is we have destroyed it. The third thing
that has happened recently is the president continues
the appointments of his new Cabinet. His new Cabinet,
which is, if the old Cabinet was a closed circle, this
Cabinet is an infinite dot. They are keeping Donald
Rumsfeld. They are appointing as the attorney general
someone who participated in drafting memos saying the
torture was permitted. So the man who is now
protecting our civil liberties believes torture is
permitted. They have at the head of CIA a Republican
politician. And they have now appointed as secretary
of Homeland Security a man who totally failed in his
mission in Baghdad to help create a police department.
The fourth thing that I would note in recent days is
the administration discussing the Iranian Nuclear
Program. Now, there may well be an Iranian Nuclear
Program. And if there is, that should be a source of
concern for all of us. But who in the world, who in a
punitive coalition, who in the United Nations, will
believe us when we go to them again and say that a
country in the Middle East is building a nuclear bomb
and we have to do something about it? Nonetheless,
word is leaking out of the Pentagon that orders have
gone to central command to update the contingency plan
for hostilities against Iran. We all need to watch
this space very carefully and very closely. Because
while we do have to worry about Iranian-sponsored
terrorism and Iranian nuclear programs, we also have
to make sure that we do not repeat the mistake of
Iraq. The fifth thing is actually something more
hopeful. Perhaps by the time we leave here tonight the
House and Senate will have passed the 9/11
Commission's recommendations. And those
recommendations are not merely what the press has told
you about, changing organizational designs for the
Intelligence community. Also in the bill are some
extremely important measures, such as increasing the
United States’ government's participation in what the
9/11 Commission called the battle of ideas. Secondly,
increasing economic support for Islamic countries in
need such as Pakistan and Yemen where we need to build
schools other than those that teach killing. Thirdly,
the bill creates a national commission to preserve our
civil liberties. This is very different than what the
president signed in his executive order which was an
in-house panel made up of people from within the
administration who would only comment on civil
liberties when asked. This legislation creates an
independent commission with the power of subpoena to
have oversight on all U.S. Government activities that
might infringe on our civil liberties. This brings me
to the title of my book. I often get asked at events
like this why the title of the book is Against All
Enemies. It is because I fear that people are using
the threat of terrorism to undermine our civil
liberties. And, therefore, I think we need to remind
people of the oath of office that the president has
taken and that all federal officials have taken. An
oath of office written in the constitutional
convention in Philadelphia over 200 years ago. An oath
of office that requires federal officials to say that
they will preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution against all enemies, foreign and
domestic. We all hope there will never be another
terrorist attack in the United States. But there could
be, since we have not eliminated the terrorist threat.
Instead, we have gone off and made it worse by
invading Iraq. There could be, because we are
stimulating people to join terrorist organizations by
our activities in Iraq. There could be because we are
spending money destroying Iraq rather than creating
homeland security here at home. And if there is
another terrorist attack, there will be people in the
Congress who will attempt to use that terrorist attack
as a basis for a Patriot Act 2, which will erode our
civil liberties if passed. So the one thing I ask all
of you tonight, is that if that happens, if there is
another terrorist attack, this time let us react
differently than we did after 9/11 when we all closed
ranks and all shut our mouths and shut our minds. Let
us the next time remind federal officials of their
oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies,
foreign and domestic. 

AMY GOODMAN: Former Counterterrorism Chief Richard
Clarke speaking in New York last night as the House
voted to overhaul the nation's intelligence system. 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120704H.shtml
Putin Denounces American "Dictatorship" in Guarded
Language 
    Le Nouvel Observateur | Editorial 
    Sunday 05 December 2004 
The Russian President took a shot at United States'
policy Saturday, evoking a "dictatorship coated in
beautiful pseudo-democratic phraseology."
    Russian President Vladimir Putin took a shot at
the "globalization" policy of the United States,
without naming it, when he evoked an international
affairs' "dictatorship coated in beautiful
pseudo-democratic phraseology" during a speech
published Saturday December 4th by the Russian
presidency. 
    "The new century is often called the century of
globalization. That bears within itself possibilities
for economic and scientific progress(...) At the same
time the attempts to transform a pluralist
civilization with many faces created by God (...)
according to the principles of a unipolar world seem
extremely dangerous," the Russian president declared
during a three day visit to India. 
    The Russian president warned against the
development, within this framework, of "all the
threats" that "terrorism, large-scale criminal
activity and drug trafficking" constitute. 
    "Geopolitical Games" 
    "A dictatorship, especially a dictatorship in
international affairs, does not settle, and has never
settled, these types of problems, even if that
dictatorship is coated in beautiful pseudo-democratic
phraseology," Vladimir Putin continued during his
speech, which he pronounced Friday at the Nehru
Foundation and had published Saturday by [Russian]
presidential services. 
    "Only a balanced system based on international law
and the international community's ability to fulfill
all these norms without exception can lead us to
resolution of the difficult missions that confront
humanity," Vladimir Putin added. 
    After evoking the situation in Iraq, the Russian
president continued, deeming that there could not be
"two weights and two measures." 
    "With regard to the anti-terrorist struggle, there
cannot be two weights and two measures. All the more
so, as terrorism must not be used as an instrument for
any 'geopolitical games,'" he said. 
    Iraq 
    Russia regularly accuses the United States and the
European Union of welcoming Chechen representatives
whom Russia considers to be terrorists. 
    Great Britain has given Akhmed Zakaiev, the London
emissary of Chechen Independence Movement President
Aslan Maskhadov, political refugee status. Washington
has done the same for Ilias Akhmadov, Aslan
Maskhadov's representative in the United States. 
    Vladimir Putin expressed his worry over the
"escalation of violence" in Iraq. 
    Russia is "convinced that stabilization of the
situation is possible only thanks to the development
of a dialogue between Iraqis (...) and supports the
UN's desire for a normalization of the situation." 
    Recalling his attachment to respect for a
political process in Iraq, Vladimir Putin deplored
"the continuation of intensive combat." 
    "All that could seriously put into question the
possibility of conducting honest and democratic
elections in Iraq at the beginning of the year (2005)
as planned," he said. 
    "Global Stability" 
    He also evoked the presidential election organized
in Afghanistan in October, emphasizing that Russia
"knew how difficult were the conditions under which
they were held." 
    "We started from the principle that (this
election) could not, objectively, allow the interests
of the principal political forces to be taken into
account in a balanced way," he said. 
    The Russian president finally considered that
"Russian-Chinese-Indian cooperation outside bloc logic
will offer a contribution of the greatest importance
to global stability and progress." 
    Vladimir Putin left New Delhi Saturday afternoon
for Bangalore in Southern India. 
Pakistan and the True WMD Threat 
    By Robert Scheer 
    The Los Angeles Times 
    Tuesday 07 December 2004 
    If it had been even a primitive nuclear weapon
that hit the World Trade Center three years ago,
hundreds of thousands of people would have died
instead of fewer than 3,000, and the free society we
enjoy almost certainly would have been a casualty as
well. In the shock of that moment, the administration
probably would have created a national network of
detention camps for suspected terrorists, and military
retaliation might have included the launch of nuclear
missiles with the capability of killing millions. All
of which is exactly why it was so terrifying to read
in an investigative article in the Los Angeles Times
on Saturday that our "allies" in Pakistan, who have
done so much to spread nuclear weapons technology in
recent years, are still capable of doing so. 
    "Senior investigators said they were especially
worried that dangerous elements of the illicit network
of manufacturers and suppliers would remain undetected
and capable of resuming operations once international
pressures eased," The Times reported. The article
dissected the inability of investigators worldwide to
fully penetrate the illicit nuclear weapons bazaar,
which was run until last year by Pakistan's top
nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. 
    Khan is currently under the protection of
Pakistan's military dictator, President Pervez
Musharraf, the same man who pardoned Khan and refuses
to allow foreign investigators to speak with him. Yet
it was Musharraf whom President Bush spent the weekend
praising and accommodating. 
    As The Times article made clear, what "officials
call the world's worst case of nuclear proliferation"
- in which sophisticated nuclear technology was
supplied to Libya, Iran and other rogue nations -
never would have been possible without the support of
the Pakistani military. This is the same complex and
powerful organization that made Pakistan a
dictatorship in a 1999 coup by Musharraf. Yet within
two years of this coup, Bush dropped U.S. sanctions
against Pakistan, showing clear disregard for
international nonproliferation restraints. The
rationale then and now was Pakistan's alleged support
in the "war on terrorism" after 9/11. 
    And despite the exposure of the Khan black market
ring, nothing has changed: In a White House meeting
Friday, Bush honored Musharraf - who since seizing
power has purged his country's Supreme Court and
rewritten its constitution - as a "courageous leader."

    The administration again hastened to explain that
Musharraf was vital in the three-year effort to
capture Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," as Bush
frequently has proclaimed. How embarrassing then, when
hours later Musharraf conceded in a Washington Post
interview that Bin Laden's trail had grown completely
cold but that the arch-terrorist is still very much
alive and functioning. 
    Musharraf complained that attempts to pin down Bin
Laden and his Al Qaeda operatives had been seriously
undermined by what he politely called "voids" in U.S.
troop commitments to the area, which are equal to a
mere 15% of the U.S. forces in Iraq. The U.S. strategy
instead has been to rely on Pakistan's military to
trap Bin Laden, a dependence that Bush administration
officials have cited while refusing to pressure for
access to Khan. 
    Musharraf complains that calls for international
access to Khan show "a lack of trust" in Pakistan, but
his real problem is the scientist's enormous
popularity as the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb
program. Khan "has been a hero for the masses," said
the general who has survived several assassination
attempts and faces the possibility of a revolt if he
tilts too far toward the West. 
    Meanwhile, Bush is so eager to cater to Musharraf
that he is even championing the dictator as key to the
creation of a democratic Palestinian state "that is
truly free. One that's got an independent judiciary;
one that's got a civil society; one that's got the
capacity to fight off the terrorists; one that allows
for dissent; one in which people can vote. And
President Musharraf can play a big role in helping
achieve that objective." 
    What balderdash. None of those conditions of a
free society exist in Pakistan, nor are they likely
any time soon in U.S.-occupied Iraq. 
    Yet while we chase the chimera of democratizing
the Islamic world through the use of force, the true
cost of this crusade can be measured by our
indifference to our original justification of the Iraq
invasion: stopping the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction. 
    And there's no margin for error here. Next time
the terrorists could take Manhattan and a whole lot
more. 
  -------
  Jump to TO Features for Wednesday December 8, 2004  
 
 
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120804W.shtml



http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aMGdbQCSwiRg&refer=home#
 
 
Armor Holdings Could Boost Humvee Armor Output 22%
(Update2) 
Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Armor Holdings Inc., the sole
supplier of protective plates for the Humvee military
vehicles used in Iraq, said it could increase output
by as much as 22 percent per month with no investment
and is awaiting an order from the Army. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday
the Army was working as fast as it can and supply is
dictated by ``a matter of physics, not a matter of
money.'' 

Jacksonville, Florida-based Armor Holdings last month
told the Army it could add armor to as many as 550 of
the trucks a month, up from 450 vehicles now, Robert
Mecredy, president of the company's aerospace and
defense group said in a telephone interview today. 

``We're prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per
month,'' Mecredy said in the interview. ``I've told
the customer that and I stand ready to do that.'' 

Insurgent attacks on the vehicles with homemade bombs
and rocket-propelled grenades are accounting for as
much as half of the more than 1,000 U.S. deaths and
9,000 U.S. wounded in Iraq, according to Congressional
estimates. 

President George W. Bush said concerns raised by
soldiers in questions to Rumsfeld yesterday in Kuwait
are being addressed,'' Bush said in response to a
reporter's question. ``We expect our troops to have
the best possible equipment. If I were a soldier
overseas wanting to defend my country I'd want to ask
the Secretary of Defense the same question, and that
is are we getting the best'' equipment, he said.
``They deserve the best.'' 

`Hillbilly Armor' 

U.S. troops preparing for deployment to Iraq told
Rumsfeld yesterday they are salvaging armor from
landfills to install ``hillbilly armor'' on their
Humvees. Rumsfeld replied that ``you have to go to war
with the Army you have.'' 

Armor Holdings has already boosted output from 60
vehicles a month a year ago, said Mecredy, 58. As a
result of the increased output, Armor Holdings has cut
the price for the armor its supplies for the trucks to
$58,000 per vehicle, from $72,000 per vehicle a year
ago, Mecredy said. 

Shares of Armor Holdings rose 66 cents, or 1.6 percent
in New York Stock Exchange composite trading at 11:34
a.m. 

When he was asked about current production yesterday,
Rumsfeld wasn't sure of the exact figure saying ``it's
something like 400 a month are being done.'' 

``It's a matter of production and capability of doing
it,'' Rumsfeld, 72, said. 

Tesia William, a spokeswoman for the Army Materiel
Command, which handles the armored Humvee program, had
no immediate comment on the status of orders. 

Production of the armor needs to be coordinated with
output of the actual trucks by AM General LLC of South
Bend, Indiana, Mecredy said. AM General spokesman Lee
Woodward also said that truck output could also be
increased. 

``If they ordered more trucks, we'd build more
trucks,'' Woodward said. ``We're not close to
capacity. It might take some time to ramp up but we
can do it.'' 

Woodward declined to provide exact details on
production capacity. 

The main reason there isn't enough armor is because
the military has underestimated its own needs, said
Meghan Keck, spokeswoman for Senator Evan Bayh, an
Indiana Democrat. Bayh wrote a letter to Rumsfeld in
October calling for a more accurate estimate of Humvee
needs. 

``If the Army would be up front about the number of
Humvees needed, the companies would be able to set
their production accordingly to meet the need,'' Keck
said in a phone interview. 

To contact the reporter on this story:
Edmond Lococo in Boston at  elococo at bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Rob Urban at  robprag at bloomberg.net.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/8/183113/048
Rumsfeld and friends lie and mislead on vehicle armor
by mikepridmore 
Wed Dec 8th, 2004 at 15:31:13 PST

>From CNN (And I'm not even discussing the part where
that shameless failure Rumsfeld tried to play down the
importance of  the armor. Bastard!!!):
Rumsfeld replied that, "You go to war with the Army
you have," not the one you might want, and that any
rate the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle
armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible.

Oh really, Mr. Secretary? Well, that's pretty strange
because seven months ago, standing next to Rumsfeld,
General Myers said we only needed six more months to
get everything done that needed to be done (link):


Diaries :: mikepridmore's diary :: 
A soldier put it bluntly to Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen.
Richard Myers at a town-hall meeting in Iraq last
week: "The question is, are we going to get up-armored
Humvees?" The soldier, who identified himself as a
member of a unit operating in "five of the six red
zones in the country," noted that the doors on their
Humvees "are not as good as the ones on the up-armored
Humvees. . . . We lost some soldiers due to them."
Another soldier asked, "Do we foresee an increase
across the board so we maybe can get more additional
armored kits, or armor, hazard pay, weapons, basic
health and comfort items for soldiers overseas?" 
Gen. Myers's answers were not encouraging. He said
there are about 1,400 vehicles that still need armor
plating in Iraq, and although production is ramping
up, the military can turn out only enough armor kits
for about 220 to 225 vehicles a month. At that rate it
will take six months to meet the military's combat
needs. "It's not a matter of resources; it's a matter
of how fast can we build these things and get them
over here," he said.

Myers made it sound like the military was building
them itself and he purposefully misled on the numbers.
 Instead of  1,400 underarmored vehicles, the real
number was a lot closer to 12,000.  From April 2004, a
month before the Myers statement, on msnbc.com: 
When Hart died in a small-arms ambush in mid-October,
the Army had no official plan to "retrofit" most of
the 12,000-odd Humvees in Iraq. This in spite of
continuing attacks on convoys and complaints from
combat units that they were taking unnecessary
casualties in the thin-skinned Humvees. 
Until late last month, the Army's official guidance on
the issue of hardening Humvee armor was a
recommendation to troops to put sandbags on the
floorboards to deaden the impact of mine explosions.
Some soldiers say the military should have addressed
the issue much more quickly. 
"They don't like calling attention to things like
this, but the problem was obvious right away," says a
U.S. Marine officer in Iraq who asked not to be
identified. "The war mutated from armored combat into
a guerrilla campaign, and suddenly the tanks were
parked and we moved out into the population without
much protection." 
When the Army did announce plans to armor 8,400 of the
Humvees now in the country and replace another 4,400
with purpose-build armored versions, the news was
presented as a logical response to changing
conditions.

Comparing the Rumsfeld statement with the Myers one we
can see one major difference.  Myers said "it's a
matter of how fast we can build these things..." 
Myers implied the army was building them but Rumsfeld
said the Army was pushing "manufacturers of vehicle
armor."  That might not look like much difference but
it points out where the real bottleneck is.  Instead
of making the armor a topmost priority, which would
mean doing whatever it takes in the short term to make
sure our troops get what they need as fast as is
really possible, we are allowing some armor producer
to be proprietary and set the terms based on their own
productivity schedule.  The contractor in question is
O'Gara Hess & Eisenhardt, a subsidiary of Armor
Holdings. INC.  You can read their announcement on
their website here or you look at a snapshot from
January 2004 on the website of Connecticut congressman
here.  But to get the full effect you need to look at
the 12/18/03 quote from the 12/14/03 Newsday here:
American troops are dying in Iraq and suffering
amputations and other massive injuries while they
confront the Iraqi insurgency in Humvees not designed
to withstand front-line combat.... 
The Army's sole contractor for putting the armor
plating on the standard Humvee chassis, Armor Holdings
Inc., is hiring 150 workers at its Ohio plant but
won't go to round-the-clock shifts until February. 
Peak production won't come until April, when the
company hopes to make 220 armored Humvees a month....

That is the production number Myers was referring to
in May 2004 when he misled the press on the number of
vehicles that needed armor, while Rumsfeld stood
smilingly by and no doubt chuckled at the clever lie. 
All those unemployed people in Ohio and they couldn't
add more than 150 workers even temporarily?  Soldiers
dying and/or losing limbs for lack of vehicle armor
and people begging for jobs in the very state where
the armor is supposed to made and yet this is the best
BushCO could do for our troops? Lying murderous
damnable jackasses!!!! 
But you have yet to hear the best part.  Even though
the commanders on the ground in Iraq were allowing
soldiers to do their own retro-fitting in country for
a time (see this MSNBC article from April 2004), an
October 2004 AJC article says that such has been
officially discouraged:
When the insurgents in Iraq began targeting convoys
with roadside bombs and ambushes, troops complained
about a lack of armored Humvees and armor plating for
larger trucks. The Pentagon ordered more armored
Humvees, but when troops devised their own armor
plating, Army officials stopped them from using it. 
The Army Reserve's 428th Transportation Company, out
of Jefferson City, Mo., received a donation of 13,000
pounds of specially fabricated steel plates for its
unarmored trucks before it left for Iraq. But the Army
discouraged the unit from taking the plates along,
because they did not meet military specifications.

For more on this, see the 12/18/03 post quoting AP
here:
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Fearing roadside bombs and
sniper bullets, the members of the Army Reserves'
428th Transportation Co. turned to a local steel
fabricator to fashion extra armor for their 5-ton
trucks and Humvees before beginning their journey to
Iraq earlier this month. 
But their armor might not make it into the war,
because the soldiers didn't get Pentagon approval for
their homemade protection. 
The Army, which is still developing its own add-on
armor kits for vehicles, doesn't typically allow any
equipment that is not Army-tested-and-approved, Maj.
Gary Tallman, a Pentagon spokesman for Army weapons
and technology issues, said Thursday. 
"It's important that other units out there that are
getting ready to mobilize understand that we are doing
things" to protect them, Tallman said, "but there's
policy you have to consider before you go out on your
own try to do something." 
The possibility that soldiers could be denied extra
protection because of an Army policy has outraged some
of the friends and neighbors who tied to help the
Missouri reserve unit. 
"I think it's the stupidest thing I ever heard of,"
said Virgil Kirkweg, owner of the Jefferson City steel
company that rushed to meet the local reserve unit's
armor request. "I just hope the government is not dumb
enough to make them go out there without something
that's going to protect them somewhat." 
The 72 vehicles operated by the 428th Transportation
Co. aren't designed for battle and so have thin metal
floorboards and, in some cases, a canvas covering for
doors....
Last May, when Myers threw out that lie about needing
six months to do only 1,400 vehicles, Duncan Hunter,
one of the nuttiest nuts on the GOP tree but still
able to see the occasional truth, was saying this
(link): 
This country hasn't lost its industrial base yet, and,
as House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter noted
recently, many steel mills in America are operating
well below their capacity. So there's little reason
armor plating couldn't be quickly rolled out if it
were a priority.

Frankly, it seems obvious to me that we could have put
some kind of temporary plates in the humvees and other
vehicles while waiting for the specialized stuff from
that one plant in Ohio.  But protecting a proprietary
contract has taken precedence over protecting American
troops.  I hope there is a special place in hell for
those who made this choice, knowing all the while it
would cause some of our soldiers to be maimed and
killed unnecessarily, and lied to make us believe they
were being more responsible than they actually were. 
And I'm betting some money changed hands along the way
too, lining the pockets of some of the main bad actors
in this ugly tragedy.  But that story will have to
wait until I have something more concrete than
absolute disgust to go on. 
As a side note, I've looked at pictures of the humvee
armor plates and I practically grew up in a factory
that had a foundry, so I do have some firsthand
experience with what those kind of guys can make.  I'm
guessing that Missouri steel mill made something that
worked really well and, if allowed to do so, could
have outfitted the whole damn Iraqi motor pool with
workable armor by now.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/07/news/economy/jobless_challenger/index.htm?cnn=yes
Job cut plans accelerate
Survey: Firms set 104,530 November cuts, ending first
3-month stretch at that level since '02.
December 7, 2004: 2:52 PM EST 
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Hit by rising health care and
energy costs, employers announced more than 100,000
job cuts in November, capping the first three-month
stretch above that level since early 2002, an
outplacement firm said Tuesday. 
Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said companies
announced 104,530 job cuts in November, up 5.1 percent
from a year earlier and 2.6 percent from October.
The September through November totals mark the first
time that announced job cuts have topped 100,000 for
three or more straight months since January to April
of 2002, the firm said.
"Higher health care and energy costs for employers and
employees are definitely taking a toll. Companies are
being forced to enact more cost-containment measures
to protect profits," the firm's CEO John Challenger
said in a statement.
Anthony Chan, senior economist at JPMorgan Fleming
Asset Management, said the numbers -- especially the
increase in announced layoffs from a year earlier --
were a "bit of a concern" given the recent weakness in
the job market.
"We may be hitting a soft patch in fourth-quarter
hiring," he said, pointing to last week's
disappointing November jobs report. "But I think we'll
snap back when we hit next year."
The telecommunications and auto industries were among
the industries with the heaviest job cut announcements
over the last three months, Challenger said in its
report.
U.S. employers have announced 930,690 job cuts this
year, down 19 percent from the same period a year
earlier.
But if December cuts reach 69,310, it will mark the
fourth straight year with 1 million cuts announced by
U. S. employers, Challenger added.
The report also noted that a new Business Roundtable
survey of CEOs at major companies found that 20
percent expect employment to fall in the coming
months, up from 12 percent in the previous survey.
Challenger said the economy's biggest worry is that a
"large number of lower-middle class and middle-class
Americans struggling to make it paycheck-to-paycheck
will be short of discretionary income during the
holiday shopping season."
In addition to job cuts, the pace of job creation has
been sluggish during the current expansion. The number
of jobs created since the last recession ended in
November 2001 has been the lowest of any economic
recovery in the United States since World War II.
"We've fallen far short of prior economic expansions,"
said JPMorgan Fleming's Chan. "We're about 5-1/2
million (jobs) short of where would be today if this
were a typical expansion."
But, Chan added, "hopefully we'll see at least 2.5
million new jobs created next year."
The U.S. economy has added 2.04 million jobs this
year, as measured by the Labor Department's monthly
surveys of non-farm payrolls.
Job growth slowed sharply in November after a strong
October, the department reported last week. And even
with the strong October, job growth over the last six
months has averaged 152,000 a month, about what's
needed to keep up with population growth.   
Clinton Urges Effort  to Address Energy
 
 By John F. Harris
 
  Former president Bill Clinton chided supporters to
stop "bellyaching 
and whining" about the political obstacles and begin a
new effort to 
address the intertwined problems of energy dependence
and global warming.
 
 Speaking at a day-long symposium he sponsored at New
York University, 
the former president said he was distressed that the
energy issue's 
link with both national security and environmental
degradation received 
"almost no serious discussion" among the candidates or
the media in the 
just-ended presidential campaign, even though this
"may have a bigger 
impact on America and the world than virtually all the
things that were 
debated."
 
 Clinton has vowed to use his platform as an
ex-president to promote 
the issue of reducing consumption of old energy
sources  such as 
petroleum and coal that produce the most "greenhouse
gases." At the same time, 
he has stressed the importance of reducing U.S.
reliance on unstable 
Middle Eastern governments -- a dependence he says
complicates the fight 
against terrorism.
 
 At yesterday's event, he brought together a roster of
former top 
officials in his administration, as well as prominent
outsiders such as 
Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez, who has
spoken often on 
energy issues, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.),
who is sponsoring 
energy legislation with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
 
 Although the former president was not  expressly
addressing  fellow 
Democrats, his  remarks seemed to carry an implicit
message to his party: 
that it can become more aggressive on  energy issues
without undue 
political consequences.
 
 Clinton came into power in 1993 less attuned to
environmental issues 
than many other Democrats, including his vice
president, Al Gore. Over 
the course of eight years, however, he came to talk
with much more 
frequency and more evident passion about global
warming and other issues. 
His remarks yesterday were laced with references to
that history.
 
 His initial backing of a tax on energy known as the
BTU tax, Clinton 
recalled, caused him to "get my head handed to me" in
Congress in 1993 
before he withdrew the proposal. The "measly" 4.3 cent
tax on gasoline 
that was enacted instead may have been the biggest
factor in the 
Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, he said. In
1997, his administration 
negotiated a global accord in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce
greenhouse gases.  
But amid widespread complaints in Congress that the
treaty would put 
the United States at a competitive disadvantage,
Clinton never pushed to 
win Senate approval. President Bush soon renounced the
treaty.
 
 This history, he suggested, has left both parties in
Washington in a 
mind-set of blame-casting. "Okay, so Kyoto was not
perfect," he 
acknowledged, adding that for Democrats "it's time to
stop worrying about 
whether the current administration will change its
mind" and start looking 
for other ways to address energy-related problems.
 
 Clinton said the argument that global warming does
not exist is now so 
discredited that it is no longer acceptable "in polite
society" to make 
that  case, but that it is still "okay if you don't do
anything about 
it."
 
 Politicians, Clinton suggested, may be slow to
recognize that 
constituencies are building for innovative proposals
that will promote 
conservation and cleaner technologies  such as solar
power. "I think this is 
becoming a bipartisan issue in America," he said.
 
   
Peace prize winner sounds alarm over planet

OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- Calling humanity a threat to
the planet, Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai
urged democratic reform and an end to corporate greed
after becoming the first African woman to collect the
Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
She said sweeping changes were needed to restore a
"world of beauty and wonder" by overcoming challenges
ranging from AIDS to climate instability.
Maathai founded a campaign that has planted 30 million
trees across Africa in a bid to slow deforestation.
"Activities that devastate the environment and
societies contistem," Maathai, 64, told an audience of
about 1,000 people including Norway's King Harald and
Queen Sonja.
"I call on leaders, especially in Africa, to expand
democratic space and build fair and just societies,"
she said.
"Further, industry and global institutions must
appreciate that ensuring economic justice, equity and
ecological integrity are of greater value than profits
at any cost," she said. She said grassroots citizens'
movements should be encouraged.
Maathai collected a gold Nobel medal and a diploma to
a standing ovation. She separately receives a cheque
for 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.48 million).
The Nobel Prizes were set up in the 1895 will of
Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel, 10 years before
Norway won independence from Sweden.
Maathai will use the cash to expand her Green Belt
Movement around the world.
"We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds
and in the process heal our own," she said.
Her tree-planting movement, led mostly by women, aims
to produce firewood, building materials and to slow
deforestation. Kenya has lost about 90 percent of its
forests in the past 50 years.
The movement also works for women's rights, democracy
and peace.
Maathai said a stream where she used to see frogs and
tadpoles as a child 50 years ago had dried up. "The
challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and
give back to our children a world of beauty and
wonder," she said.
Maathai dismissed critics who say environmentalism has
too little to do with peace to warrant the Nobel
accolade.
"The state of any country's environment is a
reflection of the kind of governance in place, and
without good governance there can be no peace," she
said.
"This year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has
evidently broadened its definition of peace still
further," said committee chairman Ole Danbolt Mjoes,
noting past prizes to politicians, anti-communist
dissidents or human rights workers.
In an interview with Reuters, Maathai brushed aside
her past suggestions that the deadly AIDS virus might
have been the result of a laboratory experiment gone
awry.
"I really don't know. I really don't have any idea.
I'm not an expert in this field," she said. She also
denied suggesting that scientists might have created
the virus as a biological weapon against Africans.
Prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature
and economics were handed out in Stockholm on Friday.


________________________________________
Copyright 2004 Reuters. All rights reserved.This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,
or redistributed.
 
 

 

 
Find this article at: 
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/12/10/nobel.awards.reut





http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1209-24.htm

Published on Thursday, December 9, 2004 by the Toronto
Star 

U.S. Media Still Hiding Bad News From Americans 
by Antonia Zerbisias
 
And now the good news from America's accomplished
mission in Iraq ... 
The other night on ABC News Nightline, Ted Koppel
asked National Public Radio war correspondent Anne
Garrels, who has been in Iraq throughout the war,
"When you hear people in this country, Anne, say,
look, the media is only giving the negative side of
what's going on there, why don't they ever show the
good side, what do you tell 'em?" 
"I tell them that there isn't much good to show," she
replied, describing how even military commanders have
only bad news to share. 
Two weeks ago on CNN, Time's Michael Ware, who has
been covering Iraq for two years, gave an alarming
account of being trapped in his Baghdad compound,
which is regularly bombed and encircled by "kidnap
teams." 
He reported that the U.S. military has "lost control"
and that Americans are "the midwives of the next
generation of jihad, of the next Al Qaeda." 
At the end of the exchange, anchor Aaron Brown warned,
"(O)ther people see the situation there differently
than Michael. We talk to them as well." 
The next day, when the interview was repeated, anchor
Carol Lin closed with, "And of course there are others
who disagree with that." 
Never mind that those others never had Iraqi sand in
their shoes, let alone been under fire there. 
"Freedom is on the march!" "We're making progress!"
"The terrorists will do all they can to disrupt free
elections in Iraq, and they will fail." 
These are just some of the slogans that U.S. President
George W. Bush now spouts, while the American cable
channels duly carry his speeches live and the American
print media give them front-page play. 
Not that they aren't sneaking in a little bad news,
mind you. But not much. This week, we learned, mostly
via a text crawl at the bottom of the screen, that the
milestone of 1,000 U.S. troops killed in combat had
been reached. 
If you blinked, you would have missed news of a
Pentagon "strategic" report to Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld revealing that U.S. actions "have not
only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite
of what they intended." 
There was a bit in some newspapers about a damning
classified cable from the Central Intelligence
Agency's station chief in Baghdad that painted a
dismal picture of Iraq's economic, political and
security prospects. 
And, while it got notice when published in October,
there's been no follow-up on a study in an esteemed
British medical journal suggesting that up to 100,000
civilians had died since the invasion. No follow-up,
that is, except to trash the research. 
It figures that, on Tuesday in Camp Pendleton,
California, all media eyes were on Bush giving a
rousing crowd-pleaser, urging "every American to find
some way to thank our military and to help out the
military family down the street." 
That while yesterday Rumsfeld was in Kuwait,
dismissing concerns from troops about a lack of
armour. "You go to war with the army you have," he
said. 
Want to guess whose comments got better play? 
"Biased coverage in Iraq; Bad News Overwhelms The
Good," asserted the Washington Times last week. 
"If you trust most media accounts fed to American
viewers and readers, Iraq is an unmitigated disaster,"
began Helle Dale of the right-wing Heritage
Foundation, insisting that "40 per cent of Iraqis say
their country is (now) better" and "at least 35 per
cent want the United States to stay." 
Dale exhorted readers to check all the wonderful
progress being catalogued by the U.S. Agency for
International Development (http://www.usaid.gov),
which, if you examine carefully, doesn't contain that
much good news at all. 
For example, compare and contrast one vaguely-worded
USAID report from last spring with another from last
week and you'll see the dirty water situation has not
much improved. 
Still, Dale claims, "Much of this good work you will
never find reported, precisely because no news is good
news for much of the U.S. media." 
Well, here's a positive piece of media news from Iraq:
Farnaz Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal reporter whose
harrowing private e-mail to friends describing the
hazards of Baghdad made international news, is back on
the war beat after what many suspected was a
month-long suspension. She returns despite vicious
criticism from the right that she is too "biased" to
work there — just because she felt it was a deadly
situation. 
But then, what would she know? 
She's just there, in very real danger of getting
killed. Stateside, she's threatened with being shot
down, along with other reporters, just for telling the
truth. 
Antonia Zerbisias' column appears every Thursday in
the Toronto Star. 
© 2004 Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. 
###



http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1206-09.htm

Published on Monday, December 6, 2004 by The Day (New
London, Connecticut) 
Two Veteran Journalists Critical Of Today's Media
Coverage
Objectivity Seen As False Ideal That Hampers
Reporters' Work

by Kate Moran
 
STONINGTON, Connecticut — What is the state of
journalism in this country when the national press,
historically disparaged as the “liberal media,” gets
pilloried by both the right and the left for its
flabby coverage of politics and the war in Iraq? 
Morley Safer and Osborn Elliott, two doyens of the
news business, met at the community center Sunday
night for a conversation in which they questioned why
reporters cling to a false ideal of objectivity that
prevents them from being critical and skeptical
purveyors of the news. 
In a talk sponsored by the Stonington Free Library,
the two colleagues and old friends discussed how to
fortify coverage in an era when news outlets are so
obsessed with being even-handed that their stories
take the shape of point-counterpoint rather than an
incisive examination of an issue. 
“We've heard a lot of criticism of the election
coverage — or non-coverage — by the right and the left
alike,” said Elliott, the Stonington Borough resident
and former editor of Newsweek. 
Elliot criticized the press for not sufficiently
challenging the Bush administration's hyperbolic
claims about the weapons threat in Iraq. Condoleezza
Rice, he said, was able to peddle fear that the
“smoking gun” in Iraq could be a “mushroom cloud.” 
Safer, an editor and correspondent for “60 Minutes”
for three decades, perceived that reporters had soaked
up the mood of cautiousness and deference to the White
House that he said infected Congress in the wake of
the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. 
Even for those reporters inclined to be critical,
Safer said, disproving the Bush administration's
claims about weapons of mass destruction was a nearly
impossible task. Safer said the president could assert
the danger in Iraq but that the press had little means
to investigate such a claim outside “the best
testimony of weapons inspectors.” 
As Safer sees it, news outlets have lost credibility
in part because readers do not associate them with a
human face, of the kind that Katharine Graham of The
Washington Post presented to the world during the
Watergate era. Increasingly, he noted, the media are
owned and controlled by sprawling corporations, such
as Viacom, Disney and General Electric. 
The two journalists were particularly harsh in their
criticism of Rupert Murdoch, the media baron they
faulted for focusing on profit at the expense of good
journalism. 
Murdoch's preoccupation with the bottom line is
symptomatic of what Safer and Elliott said afflicts
news corporations as a whole. With the cost of keeping
correspondents abroad, they said, coverage of
international affairs can get short shrift. 
“It's why we're the most ill-informed nation about the
rest of the world,” Safer said. 
Safer, who covered the Vietnam war for CBS News, said
the American press has not done enough to convey the
image this country has around the world. He watched
the political conventions this summer from Europe and
said he cringed at the “awful bravado” he heard in
speeches from members of both parties. 
He said the candidates seemed little aware that their
conventions were broadcast around the world. By taking
two minutes to acknowledge the international audience,
Safer said, the candidates could have dispelled the
air of superiority they emitted with their
exhortation, “God bless America,” a statement that he
said seemed to be code for “God bless us and screw
you.” 
“This country looks arrogant, foolish and scary from
overseas,” said Safer, who has a weekend home in
Chester. 
Safer criticized the press for turning election
coverage into a “beauty contest” in a year when
reporters had vowed to focus on substantive issues. He
was frustrated that the press collectively branded
John Kerry “boring and lugubrious” when discussion
never should have turned on questions of personality. 
Yet Safer, who wore his liberal leanings on his
sleeve, also faulted Kerry for failing to convey a
coherent message and a strong sense of conviction. He
said this lack of a compass was partly the legacy of
Bill Clinton, the president who succeeded by
“co-opting the Republican agenda” and leaving his own
party “in disarray” with nothing to stand for. 
Both Safer and Elliott praised the correspondents who
have toiled in deadly conditions in Iraq to file vivid
stories about the war. 
Safer said covering Vietnam was a “cakewalk” by
comparison. During that war, he felt safe walking
through villages known to be hotbeds of the Viet Cong
resistance. While reporters had virtually unlimited
access in Vietnam, “hitchhiking” across the country on
military helicopters, Safer said correspondents in
Iraq have to dive on the floor of their cars while
drivers navigate war-torn streets. 
While Safer had reservations about “embedding”
correspondents in military units, a practice new to
the Iraq war that he said restricts a reporter's
perspective, he conceded that there are few other ways
to travel somewhat safely in a country teeming with
violence. 
To groans from the audience, Safer said he thinks the
situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate. 
“This war is going to be more of a lingering disease
than Vietnam,” he said. “I do not see any resolution.”

© 1998-2004 The Day Publishing Co.
###


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49647-2004Dec8.html

Officer Alleges CIA Retaliation
Lawsuit Says Agency Urged False Reporting on Iraqi
Arms

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 9, 2004; Page A02 

A senior CIA operative who handled sensitive
informants in Iraq asserts that CIA managers asked him
to falsify his reporting on weapons of mass
destruction and retaliated against him after he
refused. 

The operative, who remains under cover, asserts in a
lawsuit made public yesterday that a co-worker warned
him in 2001 "that CIA management planned to 'get him'
for his role in reporting intelligence contrary to
official CIA dogma." 


 
"Our mission is to . . . report the facts," Anya
Guilsher, a CIA spokeswoman, says of the agency.  
 
 
The subject of that reporting has been blacked out by
the CIA, and the word "Iraq" does not appear in the
heavily redacted version of the legal complaint, but
the remaining language and context make clear that the
officer's work related to prewar intelligence on
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. 

In the lawsuit, the officer asserts that CIA managers
retaliated against him for refusing their demands by
beginning a counterintelligence investigation of
allegations that he had sex with a female asset and by
initiating an inspector general's investigation into
allegations that he stole money meant to be used to
pay human assets. 

Those investigations, the lawsuit asserts, were
"initiated for the sole purpose of discrediting him
and retaliating against him for questioning the
integrity of the WMD reporting . . . and for refusing
to falsify his intelligence reporting to support the
politically mandated conclusion" of matters that are
redacted in the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit marks the first public instance in which a
CIA employee has charged directly that agency
officials pressured him to produce intelligence to
support the administration's prewar position that
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a grave and
gathering threat, and to suppress information that ran
counter to that view. 

"Their official dogma was contradicted by his
reporting and they did not want to hear it," said Roy
Krieger, the officer's attorney. 

Anya Guilsher, a CIA spokeswoman, said the agency
could not comment on the lawsuit but added, "The
notion that CIA managers order officers to falsify
reports is flat wrong. Our mission is to call it like
we see it and report the facts." 

Critics of the Iraq war have asserted the
administration pressured analysts and operators to
produce information that bolstered the
administration's case for invading Iraq. Congressional
investigations did not find evidence to support that
charge, but found that the CIA did not have enough
spies in Iraq and that the analysis of the highly
circumstantial evidence was mischaracterized as firmer
than it was. 

No biological or chemical weapons have been found in
Iraq. A subsequent CIA-led investigation found that
Iraq was nowhere near producing a nuclear weapon, as
the administration had asserted. 

The unnamed operative is a 23-year officer of Middle
Eastern descent who spent much of his career on secret
and covert operations to collect intelligence on and
interdict weapons of mass destruction, the lawsuit
says. 

In 2002, the lawsuit says, the CIA officer "attempted
to report routine intelligence" from a human asset
"but was thwarted by CIA superiors." It goes on to say
that he was subsequently approached by a senior desk
officer "who insisted that Plaintiff falsify his
reporting," and that when he refused, the "management"
of the CIA's Counterproliferation Division ordered
that he "remove himself from any further 'handling' "
of the unnamed asset, who is referred elsewhere in the
document as "a highly respected human asset." 

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in
Washington on Friday and placed in the public court
docket yesterday after a judge said it could proceed
using a pseudonym for the plaintiff, says his
superiors falsely promised him that they would report
his findings to President Bush and falsely claimed
that they had disseminated some of his other reports
through normal channels. 

In 2003, the lawsuit says, the CIA officer learned of
the counterintelligence investigation of allegations
that he was having sex with a female asset. Five days
later, it says, he was told that a promotion was being
canceled "because of pressure from the DDO [Deputy
Director of Operations] James Pavitt." 

Pavitt declined to comment. 

In September 2003, the CIA placed the officer on
administrative leave without explanation, the lawsuit
says. Eight months later, it says, the inspector
general's office advised him that he was under
investigation for "diverting to his own use monies
provided him for payment to human assets." The
document says the allegations were made by the same
managers who had asked him to falsify reports. 

In August 2004, he was terminated "for unspecified
reasons," the lawsuit says. It requests that his
employment, salary and promotions be restored and that
the CIA pay compensatory damages and legal fees. 

In a letter to CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo
dated Dec. 6, Krieger requested a meeting between the
officer and CIA Director Porter J. Goss because of
"the serious nature of the allegations in this case,
including deliberately misleading the President on
intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction." 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/09/1516228

Thursday, December 9th, 2004
Intel Agent Strapped to Gurney and Flown Out of Iraq
by U.S. Army After Reporting Torture of Detainees

Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3       
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A veteran sergeant who told his commanding officers
that he witnessed his colleagues torturing Iraqi
detainees was strapped to a gurney and flown out of
Iraq - even though there was nothing wrong with him.
We speak with the reporter - former U.S. Army
counterintelligence agent David DeBatto - who broke
the story. [includes rush transcript] 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the past few weeks, the number of different
account of torture and abuse by the United States has
been staggering. Here is a quick run-down of some of
the most recent: 
- The Pentagon warned intelligence specialists as
recently as June not to report the abuse of Iraqi
prisoners. 

- FBI agents witnessed US soldiers abusing detainees
at Guantanamo Bay as early 2002 but the Pentagon did
little to investigate the complaints. 

- New photographs emerge showing U.S. soldiers abusing
Iraqi detainees as early as May 2003. 

- The U.S. government argues it has the right to use
evidence gained by torture in deciding whether to
detain people at Guantanamo Bay. 

- U.S. generals in Iraq were warned more than a month
before the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged that detainees
were being beaten and abused in Iraq. 

- The Red Cross accuses the U.S. pf physical and
psychological torture at Guantanamo. 

- The US government is leasing a special Gulfstream
Jet to transport detained suspects to other nations
that routinely use torture in their prisons. 

Those are just some of the latest accounts of torture
and abuse in the press over the last weeks. Over the
next four years, more are certain to emerge with the
nomination of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General.
Gonzales helped pave the legal groundwork that led to
the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib. In 2002 he
claimed in a memo that the war on terrorism renders
obsolete portions of the Geneva Conventions. 

But perhaps the most extraordinary story of torture
and abuse is the one we will hear about today. 

On June 15, 2003, Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford, a
counterintelligence agent in the National Guard
stationed in Samarra told his commanding officer,
Capt. Victor Artiga, that he had witnessed five
incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at
his base, and requested a formal investigation. 

Thirty-six hours later, Ford, a 49-year-old with over
30 years of military service in the Coast Guard, Army
and Navy, was ordered by U.S. Army medical personnel
to lie down on a gurney. He was then strapped down,
loaded onto a military plane and medevac"d to a
military medical center outside the country - even
though there was nothing wrong with him. 

We are joined right now by the reporter who broke the
story. 


David DeBatto, author and former U.S. Army
counterintelligence agent who served in Iraq. He is
currently working on a a four-part fiction series "CI
Team Red: An Army Counterintelligence Novel", which is
due out in May 2005.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT 
This transcript is available free of charge, however
donations help us provide closed captioning for the
deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank
you for your generous contribution. 
Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

JUAN GONZALEZ: We're joined today by the reporter who
broke that story. 

AMY GOODMAN: David DeBatto is with us, author and
former U.S. Army counter-intelligence agent. He served
in Iraq as well. He's currently working on a four-part
fiction series called, CI Team Red: An Army
Counter-Intelligence Novel. It's due out next year.
Welcome to Democracy Now!. 

DAVID DEBATTO: Thank you for having me. 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, your piece at salon.com, called
"Whitewashing Torture" was quite something. Tell us
what happened to Sergeant Frank, known as 'Greg,'
Ford? 

DAVID DEBATTO: Well, apparently, Ford, who as you
said, was stationed in Samarra, Iraq, which is about a
hundred kilometers north, or so, north of Baghdad in
the spring of 2003, had witnessed what he calls
repeated incidents of torture and abuse over
approximately two to three week period of Iraqi
detainees by his fellow intelligence operatives in
Samarra. After confronting the team leader several
times without success, he eventually did go to his
commanding officer, as you mentioned, Captain Artiga
in an attempt to file a formal complaint for an
investigation of these incidents. Unfortunately,
according to Ford, instead of an investigation being
conducted, within about a day-and-a-half later, he
was, in fact, strapped to a gurney, put on a C-130,
and flown initially to Kuwait and eventually to
Landstuhl, Germany, where he then underwent a series
of psychological evaluations in Germany and also at
two bases in the United States for approximately eight
months. 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, what was the upshot of that? I
mean, I would assume if he was medevaced out there'd
have to be some paperwork to explain why he was being
medevaced out and what his problems were. 

DAVID DEBATTO: Absolutely, and what happened in this
case, and I reviewed literally dozens if not hundreds
of -- of documents on the case: There were no orders.
There was no medevac order, which is required by the
army, when you do send a soldier out of anywhere,
really, when there's a medical issue. There were no
regular or standard sets of orders, which again are
required by army regulations whenever a soldier leaves
one area and is sent to another. Not only that, but
reviewing all of the medical documents, including the
original document or diagnosis from the psychiatrist
in Iraq and following him all the way through the
other evaluation, every army psychiatrist diagnosed
Sergeant Ford as completely normal with absolutely no
psychological or mental health issues whatsoever. 

AMY GOODMAN: David DeBatto explain what happened when
Sergeant Ford went and reported the abuse, right
through to the first psychological analysis of him. 

DAVID DEBATTO: Well, according to Ford, he was given
about thirty seconds to change his mind and retract
his allegations by Captain Artiga. He refused to do
so, and immediately he was allegedly stripped of his
weapon and M-16, and his ammunition by the company
first sergeant. He was also assigned a 24-hour escort,
or what he considered to be a guard to literally
shadow him until further notice, and that was a senior
counter intelligence agent who also figures in the
piece later as a witness to all of this. Shortly
thereafter, he was ordered to report to an army
psychiatrist on the base in Iraq to undergo what's
known as combat stress evaluation for people that are
having some difficulty handing emotionally the -- the
stress of combat. What happened after that is the --
one of the most interesting points of the story, I
think. The army psychiatrist that saw Sergeant Ford
apparently (and I've reviewed her report) deemed him
to be completely normal, and sent that report back to
Captain Artiga. When Captain Artiga saw the report
from the psychiatrist he was, according to a witness,
Sergeant Marciello, "livid." He didn't accept the
report. He stormed back over to the army psychiatrist,
and according to the witness I have, literally forced
her, browbeat her and intimidated the psychiatrist to
change her evaluation to read 'mentally unstable,' and
ordered her to ship Sergeant Ford medically out of the
country to receive a psychological evaluation in
Germany. 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, your report indicates that
Sergeant Ford is not the only American soldier to
undergo this kind of treatment. Could you talk about
that? 

DAVID DEBATTO: Sure. Well, according to the account,
or the stories that I found, there were, according to
a very senior army psychiatrist, there -- he treated
in Landstuhl, Germany at least three or four soldiers
from Iraq that had been sent to him under very similar
circumstance, namely, that they had made allegations
of abuse or mistreatment in Iraq against their fellow
soldiers and had been shipped to Landstuhl from Iraq
in order to receive psychological evaluation. There
was another report I came across at, I believe, Fort
Campbell, Kentucky last year where a decorated officer
from the first Persian Gulf War had made some
allegations of -- of wrongdoing against the army. He
was also put into a locked mental ward on an army base
here in the United States for a long period of time,
and I believe is still trying to fight that issue
right now. 

AMY GOODMAN: You describe in the piece that you did in
salon.com about Sergeant Ford called, "Whitewashing
Torture" that when he first reported the allegation to
his commanding officer, to Captain Victor Artiga, that
he had witnessed five incidents of torture and abuse,
Artiga said to him: "You have thirty seconds to
retract this charge and we'll pretend this meeting
never happened," or -- or not -- or he would be in
trouble, and he continued to make the allegations. 

DAVID DEBATTO: Absolutely. And -- and again, the
Captain Artiga apparently followed through on his
threat by seizing his weapons. I believe he also
threatened to, or in fact did, suspend his security
clearance which for an intelligence operative is the
end of his career, and then did have him undergo the
psychological evaluation. Artiga apparently coerced
the psychiatrist to change the evaluation to read
'mentally unstable' and Ford was very unceremoniously,
again literally strapped to a gurney and forced onto a
C-130 by medical personnel and flown, without orders
of any kind, to Germany where he underwent eight
months of being in mental -- locked mental wards on
army bases, all of which deemed him to be completely
normal. 

JUAN GONZALEZ: And what is his situation today? 

DAVID DEBATTO: Well, eventually, in February of this
year, 2004, he was given an honorable discharge from
the army and actually retired with over thirty years
of service. Currently, he is looking into filing any
number of civil and criminal charges against the
officers involved. He's contacted the F.B.I., the
department of the army's Office of the Inspector
General, as well as the army's C.I.D., or Criminal
Investigations Division; and all three agencies to my
knowledge and research have initiated criminal and
administrative investigations into this matter. 

AMY GOODMAN: And where does he work now? 

DAVID DEBATTO: Sergeant Ford, or Frank Ford, is
actually a corrections officer at Fulsom State Prison
in California, where he is nearing retirement. 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for
being with us and ask you, finally: You're an unusual
writer. You, yourself, former U.S. Army counter
intelligence agent who served time in Iraq. Does what
Sergeant Ford describe to you resonate at all with
your own experience? Why did you end up writing this
piece? 

DAVID DEBATTO: Actually, it didn't. I personally never
saw anything like that in my experience in Iraq,
fortunately. But when I got back and, of course, Abu
Ghraib hit the media, I was absolutely appalled
because this flies in the face of any -- any
professional intelligence officer or worker that I've
ever known; and if any of us are -- are more disgusted
with this, it's the professional intelligence agents
that know right from wrong or should in any event. I
hooked up with Frank Ford after a year of not really
speaking to him and decided that this story just needs
to be told, and I -- I am a writer by career now, and
it was very, very difficult to get through the -- the
shield of the military, but I just felt it had to be
told. 

AMY GOODMAN: Well, David DeBatto, I want to thank you
very much for being with us. Again, he is himself a
former U.S. Army counter-intelligence agency served
time -- agent, served time in Iraq, and has written
this piece at salon.com about Sergeant Frank Greg
Ford. 

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