From Newsweek via truthout.org :
America's Secret Police?
By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Thursday 12 April 2006
Intelligence experts warn that a proposal to merge two Pentagon intelligence units could create an ominous new agency.
A threatened turf grab by a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit is causing concern among both privacy experts and some of the Defense Department's own personnel.
An informal panel of senior Pentagon officials has been holding a series of unannounced private meetings during the past several weeks about how to proceed with a possible merger between the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a post-9/11 Pentagon creation that has been accused of domestic spying, and the Defense Security Service (DSS), a well-established older agency responsible for inspecting the security arrangements of defense contractors. DSS also maintains millions of confidential files containing the results of background investigations on defense contractors' employees.
The merger was initially suggested by a government commission set up to recommend military base closures last year. The commission said that the Pentagon could achieve some savings by relocating both CIFA, now housed in a building near Washington's Reagan National Airport and DSS, headquartered in nearby Alexandria, Va. The panel suggested moving the two agencies to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., where FBI training and laboratory facilities are also based.
The Base Realignment and Closure Commission also suggested that the Pentagon could "disestablish" CIFA and DSS and "consolidate their components into the Department of Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency."
Pentagon officials began discussions about merging the two after the commission issued its recommendations. An initial round of meetings about the merger, however, failed to come up with a plan. In the meantime, CIFA, a mysterious and secretive unit created in 2002 and charged with making Defense counterintelligence efforts more effective, became the subject of two public controversies.
The first erupted late in 2005 when documents surfaced indicating that CIFA (whose mission, according to its own officials, is supposed to be limited to analysis of counterintelligence data produced by other agencies) was discovered to have put together a database that included reports on anti-administration demonstrators, including peace activists protesting alleged "war profiteering." (NEWSWEEK's Michael Isikoff reported on this in depth earlier this year in this story.) CIFA and Pentagon officials subsequently assured Congress in writing that CIFA's activities would be more carefully focused in the future on genuine potential terror threats to defense facilities and personnel and that data collected on legitimate peaceful protestors would be destroyed.
Another controversy over CIFA took hold during the corruption scandal surrounding former San Diego congressman Randall (Duke) Cunningham, who before he resigned in disgrace earlier this year, had been a member of both the House Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee. Federal prosecutors alleged Cunningham used his congressional influence to direct CIFA to grant defense contracts to a company called MZM. Earlier this year, Cunningham and MZM's former president, Mitchell Wade, both pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. (The CIFA contracting probe has been covered in depth by investigative blogs Warandpiece.com and TPMMuckracker.com, as well as The Washington Post.) Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gregory Hicks said the CIFA contracting issue was the focus of a continuing "review by appropriate organizations within the Department [of Defense] and it would be premature to discuss any possible outcomes of that review."
As stories about the CIFA scandals circulated earlier this year, talk about merging the controversial unit with the less controversial DSS appeared to stall. But in the past few weeks, Pentagon officials said, such discussions have regained momentum, with an informal committee led by Robert Rogalski, a deputy to Stephen Cambone, the under secretary of Defense for intelligence, meeting regularly to discuss the agencies' consolidation.
But both Pentagon insiders and administration critics remain queasy about the merger idea. Some veteran officials recall that DSS itself became the subject of unwelcome public attention during the Clinton administration when political appointees in the Pentagon press office got hold of the DSS security file on Linda Tripp, the disgruntled bureaucrat who blew the whistle on President Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The file contained reports about an embarrassing incident from Tripp's past that were leaked to the media. The Pentagon Inspector General investigated, and security procedures surrounding the security files supposedly were improved.
Both Pentagon insiders and privacy experts fear that if CIFA merges with, or, in effect, takes over DSS, there would be a weakening of the safeguards that are supposed to regulate the release of the estimated 4.5 million security files on defense-contractor employees currently controlled by DSS. Those files are stored in a disused mine in western Pennsylvania.
According to one knowledgeable official, who asked for anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject, since its creation CIFA has on at least a handful of occasions requested access to the secret files stored in the mine without adequate explanation. As a result, the source said, DSS rejected the requests. A merger between CIFA and DSS would weaken those internal controls, the source said.
A CIFA merger with DSS could also alter the job responsibilities of the 280 inspectors employed by DSS to inspect security arrangements and procedures at defense contractors' offices. According to the official source, these inspectors are responsible for making sure that contractors have taken proper measures to protect classified information. But if DSS merges with CIFA, there are fears that CIFA will pressure the DSS inspectors to expand their mandate to include inspecting contractors to see if they are protecting information that could be considered "sensitive but unclassified" - a term the Bush administration has tried to use to expand restrictions on access to government records. Security professionals regard that expansion as too elastic and open to misinterpretation. By acquiring control of the DSS inspector force, a merged CIFA-DSS would also have something that CIFA at the moment claims not to have, which is a force of field investigators. Today CIFA has to rely for raw field reports on other defense and military intelligence agencies, such as branches of Army, Navy and Air Force intelligence.
Defense analyst and Washington Post blogger Bill Arkin, who first brought allegations about CIFA's domestic spying to light, says that in its efforts to trying eliminate waste and better coordinate intelligence activities, "we are creating an American military secret police that is clearly acquiring way too much information and way too much power."
But Cindy McGovern, a spokeswoman for DSS, maintains that even if CIFA does merge with DSS, officials will not be able to get access to secret security files unless they have a "legitimate need and we verify that ... People who have access to these records need to have a verified need, a legitimate bona fide need." Asked how many times CIFA requests for access to DSS files were turned down because of lack of adequate justification, McGovern said she did not have that information at hand. Hicks, the Pentagon spokesman, said there was "no clear answer" to this question, adding: "There are protocols in place to request information that CIFA follows, but there is no quick grasp as to how many times or instances that has been sought."
In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, Hicks added: "The Defense Security Service takes the release of personnel files and the information contained therein very seriously ... For the purposes of disclosure and disclosure accounting, the Department of Defense is considered a single agency. Notwithstanding, disclosures of DSS records within DOD are only authorized when a justifiable official need for the information exists. These same safeguards would apply in the event of a merger with CIFA."
Wrap...
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Air Force Nurse sues...hope she wins!!!
From Seattle Post Intelligencer via truthout.org :
Decorated Air Force Nurse, Barred Over Lesbianism, Sues
By Mike Barber
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Thursday 13 April 2006
In 1993, Maj. Margaret Witt was a poster woman for the Air Force's flight nurse recruiting program.
In her career of 18-plus years, the decorated operating room and flight nurse from McChord Air Force Base earned stellar reviews for her work, which included helping to evacuate the nation's wounded troops and humanitarian missions to aid civilians.
In 2003, President Bush awarded her the Air Medal for her Middle East deployment and, later, the Air Force Commendation Medal, for saving the life of a Defense Department worker.
Less than a year later, after an Air Force investigation, Witt, a reservist, was drummed out.
Her offense: a committed relationship, but with another woman, a civilian, from 1997 to 2003.
On Wednesday, Witt, 42, challenged her forced discharge in a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Tacoma against Air Force officials and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The lawsuit, filed with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, seeks to prevent Witt's discharge, citing her First and Fifth amendment protections of free speech and due process.
"I've been a proud Air Force nurse and officer for the past 19 years" mostly with the 446th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at McChord, Witt said, appearing in uniform in Seattle. She was flanked by her lawyers, ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan, and Jim Lobsenz, an ACLU volunteer lawyer from the Seattle firm Carney Badley Spellman.
"My objective is to go back to my unit and serve my country and help the injured troops - who need me at this time," Witt said, her major's oak leaves, blue and white chief flight-nurse wings displayed on her uniform, along with a small insignia on her left sleeve that read "Sept. 11, 2001."
Lobsenz in 1990 successfully took the case of openly homosexual Army Staff Sgt. Perry Watkins of Tacoma to the US Supreme Court, forcing the Army to re-enlist Watkins. He said he is optimistic about Witt's case.
An Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon said Wednesday that the service could not comment on the lawsuit.
In general, though, Congress created the law upon which the policy is based and would have to change it to alter the Defense Department's policies, the spokesman said.
"A service member's sexuality is considered a personal and private matter. We expect all service members to be treated with dignity and respect. We conduct extensive, recurring training to eliminate harassment of all types," the spokesman said in a printed statement.
Overall discharge rates for homosexual conduct in all branches of the military have declined from 0.6 percent in 1998, or 1,145 of 192,382 discharges, to 0.3 percent in 2004, or 653 of 196,993 discharges, according to Pentagon figures.
No one has a definitive reason for the decrease, the spokesman said.
Air Force Instruction No. 36-3209, section 2.20, says service members "shall be discharged" if they "engaged in, attempted to engage in or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts" or "made a statement that he or she is homosexual or bisexual."
Congress, in enacting the 1993 law that President Clinton called the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, claimed that gay and lesbian service members would hurt unit cohesiveness and readiness.
However, 24 other nations allow openly gay soldiers, including such close US allies as Australia, Israel and Britain, as well as other NATO nations, Lobsenz said. US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan routinely serve with those nation's gay troops, he said.
Witt had kept her private life private. Or so she thought.
"Some allegations were made and an investigation was started," Witt said flatly. "I certainly didn't tell them."
Witt, who in civilian life works as a physical therapist, nurse and volunteer firefighter, said she was stunned when suddenly confronted in November 2004 following an Air Force investigation begun that summer into her relationship.
The officer who was ordered to tell her broke down and cried, she said. Witt was ordered to go, keep quiet and not tell anyone why.
"I couldn't even say goodbye," she said.
After 18 years of service, Witt was told she could no longer report for duty, no longer be paid and no longer earn points toward retirement. Her promotion to lieutenant colonel was moot.
Last month, the Air Force, which has unfilled positions of flight nurses, sent her final discharge papers.
All that, court papers say, despite performance reviews that lauded how she stepped up to many and new responsibilities and was an excellent mentor often sought out by students and peers.
One review called her an "outstanding squadron and Air Force representative - hand-picked to coordinate humanitarian mission and patient transport with multiple civilian, military, government and DOD agencies assuring continuity of care."
Her citation for the Air Medal, signed by Bush, notes that "her commitment to mission readiness and unrivaled clinical skills ensured the delivery of outstanding medical care to 140 patients during 18 sorties on C-130, KC-135 and C-17 aircraft while operating in an austere, hostile environment."
In 1993, the Air Force used her photograph in brochures used to recruit nurses.
Caplan, her lawyer, said indications are that many of Witt's troops are with her still.
"We know from people we have talked to in her unit that she is known as a superb officer, nurse and leader," Caplan said. "Even if she had to wear a patch saying her sexual orientation to get back in, they want her back."
Witt said she never wanted this attention but decided to sue after receiving her discharge letter March 6.
"I'm a very private person. I did my job to the best of my ability. I did it well. I don't think of the big picture," she said.
"It's just a waste of a good nurse, particularly now."
Wrap...
Decorated Air Force Nurse, Barred Over Lesbianism, Sues
By Mike Barber
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Thursday 13 April 2006
In 1993, Maj. Margaret Witt was a poster woman for the Air Force's flight nurse recruiting program.
In her career of 18-plus years, the decorated operating room and flight nurse from McChord Air Force Base earned stellar reviews for her work, which included helping to evacuate the nation's wounded troops and humanitarian missions to aid civilians.
In 2003, President Bush awarded her the Air Medal for her Middle East deployment and, later, the Air Force Commendation Medal, for saving the life of a Defense Department worker.
Less than a year later, after an Air Force investigation, Witt, a reservist, was drummed out.
Her offense: a committed relationship, but with another woman, a civilian, from 1997 to 2003.
On Wednesday, Witt, 42, challenged her forced discharge in a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Tacoma against Air Force officials and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The lawsuit, filed with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, seeks to prevent Witt's discharge, citing her First and Fifth amendment protections of free speech and due process.
"I've been a proud Air Force nurse and officer for the past 19 years" mostly with the 446th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at McChord, Witt said, appearing in uniform in Seattle. She was flanked by her lawyers, ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan, and Jim Lobsenz, an ACLU volunteer lawyer from the Seattle firm Carney Badley Spellman.
"My objective is to go back to my unit and serve my country and help the injured troops - who need me at this time," Witt said, her major's oak leaves, blue and white chief flight-nurse wings displayed on her uniform, along with a small insignia on her left sleeve that read "Sept. 11, 2001."
Lobsenz in 1990 successfully took the case of openly homosexual Army Staff Sgt. Perry Watkins of Tacoma to the US Supreme Court, forcing the Army to re-enlist Watkins. He said he is optimistic about Witt's case.
An Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon said Wednesday that the service could not comment on the lawsuit.
In general, though, Congress created the law upon which the policy is based and would have to change it to alter the Defense Department's policies, the spokesman said.
"A service member's sexuality is considered a personal and private matter. We expect all service members to be treated with dignity and respect. We conduct extensive, recurring training to eliminate harassment of all types," the spokesman said in a printed statement.
Overall discharge rates for homosexual conduct in all branches of the military have declined from 0.6 percent in 1998, or 1,145 of 192,382 discharges, to 0.3 percent in 2004, or 653 of 196,993 discharges, according to Pentagon figures.
No one has a definitive reason for the decrease, the spokesman said.
Air Force Instruction No. 36-3209, section 2.20, says service members "shall be discharged" if they "engaged in, attempted to engage in or solicited another to engage in a homosexual act or acts" or "made a statement that he or she is homosexual or bisexual."
Congress, in enacting the 1993 law that President Clinton called the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, claimed that gay and lesbian service members would hurt unit cohesiveness and readiness.
However, 24 other nations allow openly gay soldiers, including such close US allies as Australia, Israel and Britain, as well as other NATO nations, Lobsenz said. US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan routinely serve with those nation's gay troops, he said.
Witt had kept her private life private. Or so she thought.
"Some allegations were made and an investigation was started," Witt said flatly. "I certainly didn't tell them."
Witt, who in civilian life works as a physical therapist, nurse and volunteer firefighter, said she was stunned when suddenly confronted in November 2004 following an Air Force investigation begun that summer into her relationship.
The officer who was ordered to tell her broke down and cried, she said. Witt was ordered to go, keep quiet and not tell anyone why.
"I couldn't even say goodbye," she said.
After 18 years of service, Witt was told she could no longer report for duty, no longer be paid and no longer earn points toward retirement. Her promotion to lieutenant colonel was moot.
Last month, the Air Force, which has unfilled positions of flight nurses, sent her final discharge papers.
All that, court papers say, despite performance reviews that lauded how she stepped up to many and new responsibilities and was an excellent mentor often sought out by students and peers.
One review called her an "outstanding squadron and Air Force representative - hand-picked to coordinate humanitarian mission and patient transport with multiple civilian, military, government and DOD agencies assuring continuity of care."
Her citation for the Air Medal, signed by Bush, notes that "her commitment to mission readiness and unrivaled clinical skills ensured the delivery of outstanding medical care to 140 patients during 18 sorties on C-130, KC-135 and C-17 aircraft while operating in an austere, hostile environment."
In 1993, the Air Force used her photograph in brochures used to recruit nurses.
Caplan, her lawyer, said indications are that many of Witt's troops are with her still.
"We know from people we have talked to in her unit that she is known as a superb officer, nurse and leader," Caplan said. "Even if she had to wear a patch saying her sexual orientation to get back in, they want her back."
Witt said she never wanted this attention but decided to sue after receiving her discharge letter March 6.
"I'm a very private person. I did my job to the best of my ability. I did it well. I don't think of the big picture," she said.
"It's just a waste of a good nurse, particularly now."
Wrap...
Here's a special book....
Do go to David Jebb's website--link below--and read the rave reviews.
http://thethirteenthtimezone.blogspot.com/
And don't forget to read his profile! He's a man of many parts.
Here's a short description of his book:
Former Police Sergeant just published his action-adventure novel THE THIRTEENTH TIME ZONE. The Thirteenth Time Zone tells the story of one man’s search for peace and enlightenment after serving as a rogue cop in San Diego’s worst gang-infested neighborhoods. Exhausted, conflicted and with a contract on his life, Owen “Blue” Drew impulsively takes a leave of absence, and begins a journey around the world, transforming his heart and changing him forever.
Wrap...
http://thethirteenthtimezone.blogspot.com/
And don't forget to read his profile! He's a man of many parts.
Here's a short description of his book:
Former Police Sergeant just published his action-adventure novel THE THIRTEENTH TIME ZONE. The Thirteenth Time Zone tells the story of one man’s search for peace and enlightenment after serving as a rogue cop in San Diego’s worst gang-infested neighborhoods. Exhausted, conflicted and with a contract on his life, Owen “Blue” Drew impulsively takes a leave of absence, and begins a journey around the world, transforming his heart and changing him forever.
Wrap...
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Sleeper Cells? Know the definitions....
From Strategic Forecasting, Inc :
Framing the 'Sleeper Cell' Argument
By Fred Burton
Sleeper cell.The very phrase conjures up an image of evil plotters burrowing deep into the fabric of a society, hiding under deep cover until they are called upon to strike at an unsuspecting host. Because it is a "sexy" phrase that arouses deep emotions and commands attention, it is frequently used in the public sphere. In fact, it has so much currency that Showtime even created a dramatic series called "Sleeper Cell" -- and you knew people would watch it on the strength of its name alone.
Psychologically, it is the word "sleeper" that arouses the greatest angst in the post-9/11 context -- the world by now has grown familiar with the concept of "terrorist cell," and that phrase no longer carries the emotional impact that the word "sleeper" does. As a result, the term not only is used frequently, but also often is used incorrectly -- not only by reporters and academics, but even at times by senior officials with agencies like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, in testimony before the U.S. Congress and in other public statements.
The issue is not one of mere semantics; the overuse of the phrase "sleeper cell" tends to blur important distinctions and contribute to general confusion about the nature of the jihadist threat the United States is fighting. Precise language is needed both for clear-eyed analysis and more effective defense and counterterrorism efforts.
Defining a 'Sleeper'
In simple terms, a sleeper is an operative that is infiltrated into the society, or even into the government, of a targeted country -- there to remain dormant ("sleep") until being activated, perhaps by a prearranged signal or a certain chain of events.
The concept of a sleeper operative dates back to the Cold War. In that context, a sleeper would be an officer working with a foreign intelligence service -- which would exercise maximum care in infiltrating him into the target country, to avoid detection by counterintelligence and security forces. The operative could be tasked with carrying out acts of sabotage if war should break out between the country that deployed him and the target country, but barring that, his job was to do nothing but blend into society, until the time came to act.
A sleeper differs from what the Soviets (and now the Russians) would refer to as an "illegal", or what the CIA calls a "NOC" (an officer under "non-official cover"), in that a sleeper is not to take immediate operational activity, but rather must remain dormant until activated.
There are great dangers in submerging a sleeper operative for long periods in a target society, so intelligence agencies are very particular about what kinds of people are selected for such assignments. Such operatives must be mentally prepared for the stress they will endure in infiltrating the country, as well as capable of enduring the monotony of being in place for years without engaging in operational acts and without betraying their true identity or purpose. Only highly disciplined people qualify for such assignments.
Moreover, extensive training in operational tradecraft is needed; any contact between the operative and deploying government is extremely risky for the mission, so a highly sophisticated command-and-control system is needed for communication. This requirement would be multiplied in the case of a sleeper cell, given the need to avoid rousing suspicions or linking members of a cell together.
In short, an operation involving a sleeper must be -- by definition -- a long-term, strategic project that may take years or even decades to reach fruition. Great vision, sophisticated planning and deep reservoirs of patience are required of the government or group that prepares and deploys such agents, which are assets to be held in reserve until a time of great need. In the Cold War context, sleeper operatives were a fallback or redundant intelligence network that could be activated in a crisis situation -- for example, if both the primary intelligence network (consisting of diplomats) and the secondary network (NOCs or illegal intelligence officers) were rolled up, leaving the deploying government blind. Sleeper officers would be the safety net to ensure that the sponsoring agency could still gather intelligence about what was happening in the targeted country.
Al Qaeda and Covert Operatives
Given this definition, we are not aware of any jihadist organization -- including al Qaeda -- that has ever created and run a true sleeper operation or cell. Perhaps the most significant reason for this is that an organization with limited resources would find it difficult to afford an operative who sits in place and does nothing. As the 9/11 attacks and other operations have made clear, al Qaeda and other jihadist groups certainly have used clandestine operatives in the past. However, it is important to note that simply because an operative is hidden does not mean he is a sleeper.
Consider the 9/11 operatives as an example. The men were divided into two groups -- the pilots and those who might be termed the "muscle hijackers," who wielded box cutters while the al Qaeda pilots took control in the cockpit. Some in the media have equated the pilots with sleeper operatives because they began to arrive in the United States in early 2000, long before their planned attack, but this would be a misnomer. After arriving, these men quickly engaged in operational activities, such as attending English classes and enrolling in flight schools. The 9/11 pilots clearly were sent to the United States with a mission, which they began pursuing shortly after arriving.
The same holds true for the muscle hijackers, who began arriving in the country by July 2001. Rather than trying to embed themselves in American society, they remained more or less aloof; they kept to themselves, lifted weights and waited for the green light from an operational commander -- in this case, Mohammed Atta -- to execute their mission.
One of the key aspects to consider in any discussion of al Qaeda -- and one that often is overlooked -- is that al Qaeda is a nonstate entity. That means not only that it is a network set up to carry out attacks, but also that it must sustain itself; it has nodes dedicated to fundraising, recruitment, and logistics and training activities. Examples of such nodes can be clearly seen in a historical review of al Qaeda's activities, and at times these can confuse the sleeper cell discourse.
In the mid-1990s, al Qaeda established a node in East Africa -- with headquarters in Nairobi -- that opened a charity called Help Africa People, as well as a gem-trading business, a fishing business and a branch of Osama bin Laden's Taba Investment Company. Alongside these non-terrorist activities, the Nairobi cell was busy with operational planning -- having surveilled the U.S. embassy in Nairobi as early as 1993. The group's planning activities (and its connection to al Qaeda) attracted so much attention that in August 1997, Kenyan and U.S. authorities visited the home of cell leader Wadih El-Hage, seized his computer and other evidence, and strongly suggested that he leave the country.
Thus, even though the East Africa cell was present and active for several years before the 1998 attacks at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, it could not correctly be categorized as a sleeper cell, given its open relationship with al Qaeda and recruiting and fundraising operations.
Grassroots Groups and Sleepers
Since 1979, thousands of Muslim men have fought jihad in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and, most recently, Iraq. These men, along with others who have never been to jihad, have left their home countries or place of residence to attend training camps in places like Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan -- where they also were ideologically indoctrinated. During the jihad in Afghanistan and Bosnia, many of these men were recruited by Muslim "charities" associated with the Maktab al-Khidmat, or MAK -- known in English as the Afghan Services Bureau -- and many even had their travel expenses paid in whole or in part by these charities. These men eventually returned to their home countries but retained their paramilitary skills, their radical mindsets and their relationships with the men with whom they had fought and trained.
Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups have used such networks to their advantage. When Abdel Basit (perhaps more widely known as Ramzi Yousef) arrived in the United States in September 1992, he was able to use contacts at Brooklyn's Alkifah Refugee Center -- which was one of the U.S. branches of the MAK -- to quickly cobble together a team that helped him plan and execute the first World Trade Center bombing. In that case, Basit was not a sleeper because he came to the United States with a mission in mind and quickly got to work on it. Nor would the others arrested in connection with that case fit the definition of sleeper operatives; though they were living in the United States and were, to some degree, embedded in society, they were not deployed for that purpose by al Qaeda but rather came to the country of their own accord.
Mahmoud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh and their colleagues were what might be termed "grassroots" operatives who were organized by an operational commander (Basit), who was dispatched to the United States from "the base" in Afghanistan. The grassroots pattern has been used by al Qaeda far more often than the 9/11 model, in which all the operatives were sent into the United States from overseas. As al Qaeda's evolution from an organization to a movement continues, the odds of another centrally planned, funded and executed attack like 9/11 will grow ever more remote.
Instead, it is the combination of operational planners and grassroots cells that will continue to pose the most significant and most persistent threat. This is the model that was evident in the Madrid and London attacks. Grassroots cells lack the strategic reach and punch demonstrated by the 9/11 cell, but they will continue to pose a tactical threat in their areas of operation for the foreseeable future.
Again, it is critical to distinguish between grassroots militants or supporters of jihadist causes and sleeper operatives. If al Qaeda or any other transnational organization were to demonstrate the strategic reach and capabilities necessary for deploying true sleepers, there would be far-reaching implications for the war against terrorism -- ranging from U.S. counterintelligence policy all the way down to how immigration laws are written and enforced.
The Weight of the Evidence
Now, having said all of those things, it is quite interesting that Osama bin Laden, in the videotape issued in January 2006, implied that al Qaeda operatives are today present within the continental United States, and there have been media reports that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is in U.S. custody, discussed the existence of sleeper cells in the country. At the very least, it is logical to assume that the issue would have been near the top of the list of questions posed by interrogators during his debriefing.
Al Qaeda leaders of such high rank do command a certain amount of credibility, particularly when it comes to threatening and then carrying out specific attacks, and it would be foolish to dismiss their claims out of hand. But it also is important to note that they have strong incentives to spread disinformation, so as to confuse counterterrorism efforts in the United States and elsewhere. Moreover, it is difficult to know how al Qaeda itself defines concepts such as a "sleeper" -- and it is entirely possible that their definition differs from that used by state intelligence organizations.
Thus, while there is strong evidence that al Qaeda has contacts within the United States, the only answer to the question of whether it has sleeper agents in place is that we cannot know for sure. However, we tend to discount the possibility for several reasons.
For one thing, as previously discussed, the deployment of sleeper operatives is a strategic capability that takes a great deal of planning, coordination and training. And since 9/11, al Qaeda's strategic capabilities have been seriously degraded; the U.S.-led counteroffensive has denied the organization places to train, plan and operate, and has inflicted serious damage to its financial and communications networks. As a result, the operational tradecraft of al Qaeda field operatives has degraded to a level below that prior to the 9/11 attacks.
It follows, then, that even if al Qaeda possesses the strategic vision and patience necessary to embed sleeper operatives in the United States, the organization no longer would be capable of training the personnel or coordinating such an operation today. If there is a bona fide threat of al Qaeda sleepers in the United States, it would mean they were present in the country prior to 9/11.
Now, while the leadership of al Qaeda certainly has an attention span and takes a view of history longer than that of many Americans, there is evidence that it also has a relatively short planning cycle. History has shown that key planners and operatives frequently were engaged with more than one operation at a time. In other words, it is not sufficient to use successful al Qaeda attacks to extrapolate a planning cycle; this model does not take into account failed or foiled attempts, such as the shoe bomber plot and other planned spectaculars, that also were being implemented during the same time frame.
When one also factors in the large number of senior al Qaeda planners who have been captured or killed since 9/11, it is clear that the organization is under enormous pressure.The question, then, is this: How much longer could al Qaeda wait before activating any sleeper cells it might have? Logic would argue that any sleeper operatives still out in the cold either must be getting exceedingly nervous at this point or they do not exist. If they do exist, the ability to remain hidden so long after 9/11 implies that they possess a degree of professionalism on par with that of the KGB -- and far exceeding anything exhibited by al Qaeda operatives to date.
Wrap...
Framing the 'Sleeper Cell' Argument
By Fred Burton
Sleeper cell.The very phrase conjures up an image of evil plotters burrowing deep into the fabric of a society, hiding under deep cover until they are called upon to strike at an unsuspecting host. Because it is a "sexy" phrase that arouses deep emotions and commands attention, it is frequently used in the public sphere. In fact, it has so much currency that Showtime even created a dramatic series called "Sleeper Cell" -- and you knew people would watch it on the strength of its name alone.
Psychologically, it is the word "sleeper" that arouses the greatest angst in the post-9/11 context -- the world by now has grown familiar with the concept of "terrorist cell," and that phrase no longer carries the emotional impact that the word "sleeper" does. As a result, the term not only is used frequently, but also often is used incorrectly -- not only by reporters and academics, but even at times by senior officials with agencies like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, in testimony before the U.S. Congress and in other public statements.
The issue is not one of mere semantics; the overuse of the phrase "sleeper cell" tends to blur important distinctions and contribute to general confusion about the nature of the jihadist threat the United States is fighting. Precise language is needed both for clear-eyed analysis and more effective defense and counterterrorism efforts.
Defining a 'Sleeper'
In simple terms, a sleeper is an operative that is infiltrated into the society, or even into the government, of a targeted country -- there to remain dormant ("sleep") until being activated, perhaps by a prearranged signal or a certain chain of events.
The concept of a sleeper operative dates back to the Cold War. In that context, a sleeper would be an officer working with a foreign intelligence service -- which would exercise maximum care in infiltrating him into the target country, to avoid detection by counterintelligence and security forces. The operative could be tasked with carrying out acts of sabotage if war should break out between the country that deployed him and the target country, but barring that, his job was to do nothing but blend into society, until the time came to act.
A sleeper differs from what the Soviets (and now the Russians) would refer to as an "illegal", or what the CIA calls a "NOC" (an officer under "non-official cover"), in that a sleeper is not to take immediate operational activity, but rather must remain dormant until activated.
There are great dangers in submerging a sleeper operative for long periods in a target society, so intelligence agencies are very particular about what kinds of people are selected for such assignments. Such operatives must be mentally prepared for the stress they will endure in infiltrating the country, as well as capable of enduring the monotony of being in place for years without engaging in operational acts and without betraying their true identity or purpose. Only highly disciplined people qualify for such assignments.
Moreover, extensive training in operational tradecraft is needed; any contact between the operative and deploying government is extremely risky for the mission, so a highly sophisticated command-and-control system is needed for communication. This requirement would be multiplied in the case of a sleeper cell, given the need to avoid rousing suspicions or linking members of a cell together.
In short, an operation involving a sleeper must be -- by definition -- a long-term, strategic project that may take years or even decades to reach fruition. Great vision, sophisticated planning and deep reservoirs of patience are required of the government or group that prepares and deploys such agents, which are assets to be held in reserve until a time of great need. In the Cold War context, sleeper operatives were a fallback or redundant intelligence network that could be activated in a crisis situation -- for example, if both the primary intelligence network (consisting of diplomats) and the secondary network (NOCs or illegal intelligence officers) were rolled up, leaving the deploying government blind. Sleeper officers would be the safety net to ensure that the sponsoring agency could still gather intelligence about what was happening in the targeted country.
Al Qaeda and Covert Operatives
Given this definition, we are not aware of any jihadist organization -- including al Qaeda -- that has ever created and run a true sleeper operation or cell. Perhaps the most significant reason for this is that an organization with limited resources would find it difficult to afford an operative who sits in place and does nothing. As the 9/11 attacks and other operations have made clear, al Qaeda and other jihadist groups certainly have used clandestine operatives in the past. However, it is important to note that simply because an operative is hidden does not mean he is a sleeper.
Consider the 9/11 operatives as an example. The men were divided into two groups -- the pilots and those who might be termed the "muscle hijackers," who wielded box cutters while the al Qaeda pilots took control in the cockpit. Some in the media have equated the pilots with sleeper operatives because they began to arrive in the United States in early 2000, long before their planned attack, but this would be a misnomer. After arriving, these men quickly engaged in operational activities, such as attending English classes and enrolling in flight schools. The 9/11 pilots clearly were sent to the United States with a mission, which they began pursuing shortly after arriving.
The same holds true for the muscle hijackers, who began arriving in the country by July 2001. Rather than trying to embed themselves in American society, they remained more or less aloof; they kept to themselves, lifted weights and waited for the green light from an operational commander -- in this case, Mohammed Atta -- to execute their mission.
One of the key aspects to consider in any discussion of al Qaeda -- and one that often is overlooked -- is that al Qaeda is a nonstate entity. That means not only that it is a network set up to carry out attacks, but also that it must sustain itself; it has nodes dedicated to fundraising, recruitment, and logistics and training activities. Examples of such nodes can be clearly seen in a historical review of al Qaeda's activities, and at times these can confuse the sleeper cell discourse.
In the mid-1990s, al Qaeda established a node in East Africa -- with headquarters in Nairobi -- that opened a charity called Help Africa People, as well as a gem-trading business, a fishing business and a branch of Osama bin Laden's Taba Investment Company. Alongside these non-terrorist activities, the Nairobi cell was busy with operational planning -- having surveilled the U.S. embassy in Nairobi as early as 1993. The group's planning activities (and its connection to al Qaeda) attracted so much attention that in August 1997, Kenyan and U.S. authorities visited the home of cell leader Wadih El-Hage, seized his computer and other evidence, and strongly suggested that he leave the country.
Thus, even though the East Africa cell was present and active for several years before the 1998 attacks at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, it could not correctly be categorized as a sleeper cell, given its open relationship with al Qaeda and recruiting and fundraising operations.
Grassroots Groups and Sleepers
Since 1979, thousands of Muslim men have fought jihad in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and, most recently, Iraq. These men, along with others who have never been to jihad, have left their home countries or place of residence to attend training camps in places like Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan -- where they also were ideologically indoctrinated. During the jihad in Afghanistan and Bosnia, many of these men were recruited by Muslim "charities" associated with the Maktab al-Khidmat, or MAK -- known in English as the Afghan Services Bureau -- and many even had their travel expenses paid in whole or in part by these charities. These men eventually returned to their home countries but retained their paramilitary skills, their radical mindsets and their relationships with the men with whom they had fought and trained.
Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups have used such networks to their advantage. When Abdel Basit (perhaps more widely known as Ramzi Yousef) arrived in the United States in September 1992, he was able to use contacts at Brooklyn's Alkifah Refugee Center -- which was one of the U.S. branches of the MAK -- to quickly cobble together a team that helped him plan and execute the first World Trade Center bombing. In that case, Basit was not a sleeper because he came to the United States with a mission in mind and quickly got to work on it. Nor would the others arrested in connection with that case fit the definition of sleeper operatives; though they were living in the United States and were, to some degree, embedded in society, they were not deployed for that purpose by al Qaeda but rather came to the country of their own accord.
Mahmoud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh and their colleagues were what might be termed "grassroots" operatives who were organized by an operational commander (Basit), who was dispatched to the United States from "the base" in Afghanistan. The grassroots pattern has been used by al Qaeda far more often than the 9/11 model, in which all the operatives were sent into the United States from overseas. As al Qaeda's evolution from an organization to a movement continues, the odds of another centrally planned, funded and executed attack like 9/11 will grow ever more remote.
Instead, it is the combination of operational planners and grassroots cells that will continue to pose the most significant and most persistent threat. This is the model that was evident in the Madrid and London attacks. Grassroots cells lack the strategic reach and punch demonstrated by the 9/11 cell, but they will continue to pose a tactical threat in their areas of operation for the foreseeable future.
Again, it is critical to distinguish between grassroots militants or supporters of jihadist causes and sleeper operatives. If al Qaeda or any other transnational organization were to demonstrate the strategic reach and capabilities necessary for deploying true sleepers, there would be far-reaching implications for the war against terrorism -- ranging from U.S. counterintelligence policy all the way down to how immigration laws are written and enforced.
The Weight of the Evidence
Now, having said all of those things, it is quite interesting that Osama bin Laden, in the videotape issued in January 2006, implied that al Qaeda operatives are today present within the continental United States, and there have been media reports that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is in U.S. custody, discussed the existence of sleeper cells in the country. At the very least, it is logical to assume that the issue would have been near the top of the list of questions posed by interrogators during his debriefing.
Al Qaeda leaders of such high rank do command a certain amount of credibility, particularly when it comes to threatening and then carrying out specific attacks, and it would be foolish to dismiss their claims out of hand. But it also is important to note that they have strong incentives to spread disinformation, so as to confuse counterterrorism efforts in the United States and elsewhere. Moreover, it is difficult to know how al Qaeda itself defines concepts such as a "sleeper" -- and it is entirely possible that their definition differs from that used by state intelligence organizations.
Thus, while there is strong evidence that al Qaeda has contacts within the United States, the only answer to the question of whether it has sleeper agents in place is that we cannot know for sure. However, we tend to discount the possibility for several reasons.
For one thing, as previously discussed, the deployment of sleeper operatives is a strategic capability that takes a great deal of planning, coordination and training. And since 9/11, al Qaeda's strategic capabilities have been seriously degraded; the U.S.-led counteroffensive has denied the organization places to train, plan and operate, and has inflicted serious damage to its financial and communications networks. As a result, the operational tradecraft of al Qaeda field operatives has degraded to a level below that prior to the 9/11 attacks.
It follows, then, that even if al Qaeda possesses the strategic vision and patience necessary to embed sleeper operatives in the United States, the organization no longer would be capable of training the personnel or coordinating such an operation today. If there is a bona fide threat of al Qaeda sleepers in the United States, it would mean they were present in the country prior to 9/11.
Now, while the leadership of al Qaeda certainly has an attention span and takes a view of history longer than that of many Americans, there is evidence that it also has a relatively short planning cycle. History has shown that key planners and operatives frequently were engaged with more than one operation at a time. In other words, it is not sufficient to use successful al Qaeda attacks to extrapolate a planning cycle; this model does not take into account failed or foiled attempts, such as the shoe bomber plot and other planned spectaculars, that also were being implemented during the same time frame.
When one also factors in the large number of senior al Qaeda planners who have been captured or killed since 9/11, it is clear that the organization is under enormous pressure.The question, then, is this: How much longer could al Qaeda wait before activating any sleeper cells it might have? Logic would argue that any sleeper operatives still out in the cold either must be getting exceedingly nervous at this point or they do not exist. If they do exist, the ability to remain hidden so long after 9/11 implies that they possess a degree of professionalism on par with that of the KGB -- and far exceeding anything exhibited by al Qaeda operatives to date.
Wrap...
Republican Sen Brownback..a walking, talking, fanatical horror....
From Rolling Stone:
God's Senator
Who would Jesus vote for? Meet Sam Brownback
Nobody in this little church just off Times Square in Manhattan thinks of themselves as political. They're spiritual -- actors and athletes and pretty young things who believe that every word of the Bible is inerrant dictation from God. They look down from the balcony of the Morning Star, swaying and smiling at the screen that tells them how to sing along. Nail-pierced hands, a wounded side. This is love, this is love! But on this evening in January, politics and all its worldly machinations have entered their church.
Sitting in the darkness of the front row is Sam Brownback, the Republican senator from Kansas. And hunched over on the stage in a red leather chair is an old man named Harald Bredesen, who has come to anoint Brownback as the Christian right's next candidate for president.
Over the last six decades, Bredesen has prayed with so many presidents and prime ministers and kings that he can barely remember their names. He's the spiritual father of Pat Robertson, the man behind the preacher's vast media empire. He was one of three pastors who laid hands on Ronald Reagan in 1970 and heard the Pasadena Prophecy: the moment when God told Reagan that he would one day occupy the White House. And he recently dispatched one of his proteges to remind George W. Bush of the divine will -- and evangelical power -- behind his presidency.
Tonight, Bredesen has come to breathe that power into Brownback's presidential campaign. After little more than a decade in Washington, Brownback has managed to position himself at the very center of the Christian conservative uprising that is transforming American politics.
Just six years ago, winning the evangelical vote required only a veneer of bland normalcy, nothing more than George Bush's vague assurance that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. Now, Brownback seeks something far more radical: not faith-based politics but faith in place of politics. In his dream America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years -- schools, Social Security, welfare -- will be privatized or simply done away with. There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all.
Continued at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9178374/gods_senator?rnd=1144873465234&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.872
Wrap...
God's Senator
Who would Jesus vote for? Meet Sam Brownback
Nobody in this little church just off Times Square in Manhattan thinks of themselves as political. They're spiritual -- actors and athletes and pretty young things who believe that every word of the Bible is inerrant dictation from God. They look down from the balcony of the Morning Star, swaying and smiling at the screen that tells them how to sing along. Nail-pierced hands, a wounded side. This is love, this is love! But on this evening in January, politics and all its worldly machinations have entered their church.
Sitting in the darkness of the front row is Sam Brownback, the Republican senator from Kansas. And hunched over on the stage in a red leather chair is an old man named Harald Bredesen, who has come to anoint Brownback as the Christian right's next candidate for president.
Over the last six decades, Bredesen has prayed with so many presidents and prime ministers and kings that he can barely remember their names. He's the spiritual father of Pat Robertson, the man behind the preacher's vast media empire. He was one of three pastors who laid hands on Ronald Reagan in 1970 and heard the Pasadena Prophecy: the moment when God told Reagan that he would one day occupy the White House. And he recently dispatched one of his proteges to remind George W. Bush of the divine will -- and evangelical power -- behind his presidency.
Tonight, Bredesen has come to breathe that power into Brownback's presidential campaign. After little more than a decade in Washington, Brownback has managed to position himself at the very center of the Christian conservative uprising that is transforming American politics.
Just six years ago, winning the evangelical vote required only a veneer of bland normalcy, nothing more than George Bush's vague assurance that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. Now, Brownback seeks something far more radical: not faith-based politics but faith in place of politics. In his dream America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years -- schools, Social Security, welfare -- will be privatized or simply done away with. There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all.
Continued at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9178374/gods_senator?rnd=1144873465234&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.872
Wrap...
Bush...America's serial killer...
From Capitol Hill Blue
The Rant
Lies, damn lies and George W. Bush
By DOUG THOMPSON
Apr 12, 2006, 06:25
No doubt about it. George W. Bush's lying, rotten, putrid, soulless destruction of a once-great nation called America is now open for all to see.
Bush is not just a liar. He's a serial liar who avoids truth at all costs because facts don't' support his perverted, twisted view of the world. Truth exposes his corrupt administration and lays bare his many crimes against the American people and the Constitution of the United States.
Impeachment? Nah. Too good for this lowlife. Arrest the son-of-a-bitch, lead him from the White House in chains, parade him down Pennsylvania Avenue and then lock him in stocks on the Washington Mall so everyone can see what happens when anyone thinks they are above the law of the land.
Today's Washington Post lays out yet another example of how Bush lied to the American people, detailing a deliberate White House pattern of misinformation on the so-called "biological warfare" trailers captured soon after American troops invaded Iraq.
Turns out the trailers had nothing to do with biological warfare. Intelligence officers in the field knew it. They told the White House. Yet Bush ignored the truth and went before the American people to claim otherwise, trumpeting the trailers as "proof" that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"I hate to admit it but it appears clear the President of the United States is a pathological liar," says political scientist George Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon and Reagan administration. "His pattern of deception exceeds anything we saw in the Nixon era."
Members of Congress - Republican and Democrat - admit the same thing, shaking their heads in disbelief while talking privately with supporters and political strategists.
"The biggest threat any Republican running for election or re-election this year faces is not from the Democrats but from the President," says a GOP political consultant who, for obvious reasons, begs for anonymity. "George W. Bush is a major liability to Republicans in the mid-term elections."
When news broke last week that Bush personally authorized a White House campaign of leaks aimed at discrediting Ambassador Joseph Wilson - a campaign that led to the "outing" of Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operative - Republicans scrambled for cover. Sunday talk show producers tried without success to find a Republican willing to go on the air and defend the President.
The only Republican who did appear - maverick Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter - didn't defend Bush's actions but called instead on both the President and the Vice President to come clean about their roles in the CIA leak debacle.
"Bush's actions clearly have left Republicans in uncomfortable, and untenable, positions," Harleigh says. "They don't want to alienate voters by aligning themselves too closely with an increasingly unpopular President but they also have to be careful not to alienate their GOP base."
Polls, however, shows the GOP base dwindling as more and more Republicans realize they've been had by the charlatan-in-chief.
Even die-hard Republicans find it harder and harder to defend their corrupt and morally-bankrupt leader, admitting privately that the Presidency of George W. Bush will go down in history as a monumental failure, surpassing the dark days of Richard M. Nixon.
"The Nixon administration has, for 30 years now, been the baseline to measure failure in the Republican Party," says Harleigh. "No more. George W. Bush has lowered the bar."
© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue
Wrap...
The Rant
Lies, damn lies and George W. Bush
By DOUG THOMPSON
Apr 12, 2006, 06:25
No doubt about it. George W. Bush's lying, rotten, putrid, soulless destruction of a once-great nation called America is now open for all to see.
Bush is not just a liar. He's a serial liar who avoids truth at all costs because facts don't' support his perverted, twisted view of the world. Truth exposes his corrupt administration and lays bare his many crimes against the American people and the Constitution of the United States.
Impeachment? Nah. Too good for this lowlife. Arrest the son-of-a-bitch, lead him from the White House in chains, parade him down Pennsylvania Avenue and then lock him in stocks on the Washington Mall so everyone can see what happens when anyone thinks they are above the law of the land.
Today's Washington Post lays out yet another example of how Bush lied to the American people, detailing a deliberate White House pattern of misinformation on the so-called "biological warfare" trailers captured soon after American troops invaded Iraq.
Turns out the trailers had nothing to do with biological warfare. Intelligence officers in the field knew it. They told the White House. Yet Bush ignored the truth and went before the American people to claim otherwise, trumpeting the trailers as "proof" that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"I hate to admit it but it appears clear the President of the United States is a pathological liar," says political scientist George Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon and Reagan administration. "His pattern of deception exceeds anything we saw in the Nixon era."
Members of Congress - Republican and Democrat - admit the same thing, shaking their heads in disbelief while talking privately with supporters and political strategists.
"The biggest threat any Republican running for election or re-election this year faces is not from the Democrats but from the President," says a GOP political consultant who, for obvious reasons, begs for anonymity. "George W. Bush is a major liability to Republicans in the mid-term elections."
When news broke last week that Bush personally authorized a White House campaign of leaks aimed at discrediting Ambassador Joseph Wilson - a campaign that led to the "outing" of Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operative - Republicans scrambled for cover. Sunday talk show producers tried without success to find a Republican willing to go on the air and defend the President.
The only Republican who did appear - maverick Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter - didn't defend Bush's actions but called instead on both the President and the Vice President to come clean about their roles in the CIA leak debacle.
"Bush's actions clearly have left Republicans in uncomfortable, and untenable, positions," Harleigh says. "They don't want to alienate voters by aligning themselves too closely with an increasingly unpopular President but they also have to be careful not to alienate their GOP base."
Polls, however, shows the GOP base dwindling as more and more Republicans realize they've been had by the charlatan-in-chief.
Even die-hard Republicans find it harder and harder to defend their corrupt and morally-bankrupt leader, admitting privately that the Presidency of George W. Bush will go down in history as a monumental failure, surpassing the dark days of Richard M. Nixon.
"The Nixon administration has, for 30 years now, been the baseline to measure failure in the Republican Party," says Harleigh. "No more. George W. Bush has lowered the bar."
© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue
Wrap...
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Next Up: Books & Films forthcoming...
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
FICTION/DEBUT:
Altaf Tyrewala's NO GOD IN SIGHT, about present-day Bombay told through a series of linked vignettes, to Karan Mahajan at MacAdam/Cage, for publication in fall 2005, in a nice deal, by Penguin India.
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Dick Francis's first novel in six years, UNDER ORDERS, to Ivan Held at Putnam, with Christine Pepe editing, for publication in September 2006, by Sterling Lord of Sterling Lord Literistic (US). UK rights to Tom Weldon at Penguin UK, by Andrew Hewson.
Joseph Wambaugh's HOLLYWOOD STATION, about a police sergeant named the Oracle and his band of cops on the beat, to Judy Clain at Little, Brown and Les Pockell at Warner, at auction, for publication in January 2007, by Nat Sobel at Sobel Weber Associates (NA).
THRILLER:
Stephen J. Cannell's next two books in his series featuring LAPD detective Shane Scully, to Sally Richardson at St. Martin's, by Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group (world).
Steve Martini's next two novels in the series featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani, to David Highfill at William Morrow, by Esther Newberg at ICM (NA). david.highfill@harpercollins.com
2006 Edgar Award nominee OFFICER DOWN author Theresa Schwegel's PERSON OF INTEREST, in which an undercover cop's wife invites disaster when she covers up a mistake made by her rebellious daughter, again to Kelley Ragland at St. Martin's Minotaur, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in fall 2007, by David Hale Smith at DHS Literary (NA).david@dhsliterary.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
Jami Attenberg's THE KEPT MAN, about a woman whose husband -- a painter -- is in a coma, a prominent painter, and her discovery of evidence in his art that suggests their marriage was not what she thought it was, to Megan Lynch at Riverhead, for publication in 2007, by Doug Stewart at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).
Elizabeth Hand's GENERATION LOSS, the story of a photographer from the post-Factory/Andy Warhol days who runs into some very scary business when she attempts to revitalize her career by interviewing another well-known artist, by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant at Small Beer Press, for hardcover publication in spring 2007, and Tina Pohlman at Harvest, for paperback publication in spring 2008, by Martha Millard at Martha Millard Literary Agency.
CHILDREN'S/FANTASY:
French historical thriller writer Guillaume Prevost's first YA books, THE BOOK OF TIME, translated by William Rodarmor, a fantasy adventure trilogy billed as "one part Da Vinci Code, one part Dracula, and one part The Time-Traveler's Wife," about a 14-year-old boy whose quest to find his father takes him through time to ancient Egypt, Viking England, Dracula's castle, and beyond, beginning with THE STONE STATUE, published in France in February, to Arthur Levine at Scholastic and Elaine McQuade at Scholastic UK, in a pre-empt, for publication beginning in fall 2007, by Gallimard Jeunesse.cmeloto@scholastic.com aprice@scholastic.co.uk
UK:
Ivo Stourton's THE NIGHT CLIMBERS, about a group of Cambridge students who commit an art fraud: a cross between "Brideshead Revisited" and "The Secret History," to Jane Lawson at Doubleday UK, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Peter Buckman at The Ampersand Agency (World English).peter@theampersandagency.co.uk
FOREIGN:
German rights to Karyn Bosnak's TWENTY TIMES A LADY, to Droemer, by Regina Wegmann at the Michael Meller Agency, on behalf of RLR Associates.Rights have also been sold to Transworld, Luitingh-Sijthoff in Holland, and Edizione Piemme in Italy.junter@rlrassociates.net
Spanish rights to Wendy French's SMOTHERING, about a girl trying to re-invent herself when her mother unexpectedly lands on her doorstep, mysteriously travelling solo and with enough Weekender Wear to make anyone nervous, to Grupo Anaya, by Alexandre Civico of Agence Litteraire Lora Fountain, on behalf of Sally Harding at The Harding Agency.reception@thehardingagency.com
FILM:
Rights to Dean Koontz's forthcoming THE HUSBAND (from Bantam), about an ordinary working man whose love for his wife is put to a harrowing series of tests over a sixty-hour period, beginning when his peaceful workday is shattered by a phone call from a stranger, to Focus Features and Random House Films for their new filmmaking partnership, for immediate development, by Richard Heller of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.
BIOGRAPHY:
Let Them Call Me Rebel author Sanford D. Horwitt's untitled biography of Senator Russ Feingold, the leading progressive candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, with numerous interviews from a broad range of sources, including Senator Feingold who has imposed no conditions on this independent project, to Alice Mayhew of Simon & Schuster, in a pre-empt, by Mary Evans at Mary Evans (World).Merrylit@aol.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Commander Richard Jadick's A DOCTOR'S WAR, his account of emergency medicine and battlefield triage in the Iraqi war, to Mark Chait at Caliber, by Rafe Sagalyn at The Sagalyn Agency.info@sagalyn.com Film rights: macendejas@lynnpleshetteagency.com
MEMOIR:
Phoebe Damrosch's SERVICE INCLUDED, a "Kitchen Confidential meets Sex And The City" memoir which offers a glimpse into the author's experience as the only female captain while at her first year at the renowned Per Se restaurant, to Carolyn Marino at William Morrow, by Paul Cirone at the Aaron Priest Agency (NA). pcirone@aaronpriest.com
Blogger Melissa Plaut's NEW YORK HACK, about the author's years driving a New York City yellow medallion cab -- a career change she made after having decided at the age of twenty-nine to become "the driver of my own life," to Bruce Tracy at Villard, in a pre-empt, by Erin Hosier at The Gernert Company (world).Film/television rights: Brooke Ehrlich for Rabineau Wachter & Sanford
NARRATIVE:
Magazine reporter and veteran of the "disaster beat" Amanda Ripley's DANGER: Surviving the Unthinkable, looking at epic calamities around the world to show exactly what happens to the human brain in extremis, using interviews with those who "made it out," analysis of after-action reports, and participatory journalism, to explain why some of us seem hard-wired for survival -- and others for failure, while sharing the lessons needed to make the right survival decisions, to Rick Horgan at Crown, in a pre-empt, for publication in 2008, by Esmond Harmsworth of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency (world).Rights: LKaplan@randomhouse.com
AMERICAN NOMAD author Richard Grant's GOD'S MIDDLE FINGER: Adventures in Mexico's Wild West, set in the largely unknown world of the Sierra Madre mountains, a land of anarchy, isolation, and tribal ritual where few outsiders venture and fewer live to tell the tale, to Wylie O'Sullivan at Free Press, for publication in March 2008, by Britt Carlson at Gelfman Schneider (US).
SCIENCE:
UC Berkeley researcher Dacher Keltner's BORN TO BE GOOD: The Biology of Peace and Wellbeing, which shows through studies of facial expression and body language how the "ethical emotions," such as awe and gratitude, tell an untold story of human evolution, how benevolence is our basic nature, to Maria Guarnaschelli at Norton, by Linda Loewenthal at the David Black Literary Agency (World). laeliseo@dblackagency.com
UK:
Marina Nemat's THE MARTYR'S PRISONER, a memoir set against the backdrop of revolutionary Iran, to Eleanor Birne at John Murray, in a pre-empt, by David Grossman, acting on behalf of Beverley Slopen.Eleanor.birne@johnmurrays.co.uk
FOREIGN:
Canadian rights to Reuters environmental reporter Alanna Mitchell's THE DEEPS, examining the deterioration of the oceans by putting together the scattered pieces of a scientific puzzle, to Susan Renouf at McClelland & Stewart, by Sally Harding at The Harding Agency. reception@thehardingagency.com
Canadian rights to Rory Stewart's THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES, chronicling the author's time spent in the remote marsh regions of Southern Iraq where he spent eleven months negotiating hostage releases, holding elections, and splicing together an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war, to Helen Reeves at Penguin Canada, in a nice deal, by Clare Alexander at Gillon Aitken Associates.harmony.ho@ca.penguingroup.com
Wrap...
FICTION/DEBUT:
Altaf Tyrewala's NO GOD IN SIGHT, about present-day Bombay told through a series of linked vignettes, to Karan Mahajan at MacAdam/Cage, for publication in fall 2005, in a nice deal, by Penguin India.
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Dick Francis's first novel in six years, UNDER ORDERS, to Ivan Held at Putnam, with Christine Pepe editing, for publication in September 2006, by Sterling Lord of Sterling Lord Literistic (US). UK rights to Tom Weldon at Penguin UK, by Andrew Hewson.
Joseph Wambaugh's HOLLYWOOD STATION, about a police sergeant named the Oracle and his band of cops on the beat, to Judy Clain at Little, Brown and Les Pockell at Warner, at auction, for publication in January 2007, by Nat Sobel at Sobel Weber Associates (NA).
THRILLER:
Stephen J. Cannell's next two books in his series featuring LAPD detective Shane Scully, to Sally Richardson at St. Martin's, by Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group (world).
Steve Martini's next two novels in the series featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani, to David Highfill at William Morrow, by Esther Newberg at ICM (NA). david.highfill@harpercollins.com
2006 Edgar Award nominee OFFICER DOWN author Theresa Schwegel's PERSON OF INTEREST, in which an undercover cop's wife invites disaster when she covers up a mistake made by her rebellious daughter, again to Kelley Ragland at St. Martin's Minotaur, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, for publication in fall 2007, by David Hale Smith at DHS Literary (NA).david@dhsliterary.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
Jami Attenberg's THE KEPT MAN, about a woman whose husband -- a painter -- is in a coma, a prominent painter, and her discovery of evidence in his art that suggests their marriage was not what she thought it was, to Megan Lynch at Riverhead, for publication in 2007, by Doug Stewart at Sterling Lord Literistic (NA).
Elizabeth Hand's GENERATION LOSS, the story of a photographer from the post-Factory/Andy Warhol days who runs into some very scary business when she attempts to revitalize her career by interviewing another well-known artist, by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant at Small Beer Press, for hardcover publication in spring 2007, and Tina Pohlman at Harvest, for paperback publication in spring 2008, by Martha Millard at Martha Millard Literary Agency.
CHILDREN'S/FANTASY:
French historical thriller writer Guillaume Prevost's first YA books, THE BOOK OF TIME, translated by William Rodarmor, a fantasy adventure trilogy billed as "one part Da Vinci Code, one part Dracula, and one part The Time-Traveler's Wife," about a 14-year-old boy whose quest to find his father takes him through time to ancient Egypt, Viking England, Dracula's castle, and beyond, beginning with THE STONE STATUE, published in France in February, to Arthur Levine at Scholastic and Elaine McQuade at Scholastic UK, in a pre-empt, for publication beginning in fall 2007, by Gallimard Jeunesse.cmeloto@scholastic.com aprice@scholastic.co.uk
UK:
Ivo Stourton's THE NIGHT CLIMBERS, about a group of Cambridge students who commit an art fraud: a cross between "Brideshead Revisited" and "The Secret History," to Jane Lawson at Doubleday UK, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Peter Buckman at The Ampersand Agency (World English).peter@theampersandagency.co.uk
FOREIGN:
German rights to Karyn Bosnak's TWENTY TIMES A LADY, to Droemer, by Regina Wegmann at the Michael Meller Agency, on behalf of RLR Associates.Rights have also been sold to Transworld, Luitingh-Sijthoff in Holland, and Edizione Piemme in Italy.junter@rlrassociates.net
Spanish rights to Wendy French's SMOTHERING, about a girl trying to re-invent herself when her mother unexpectedly lands on her doorstep, mysteriously travelling solo and with enough Weekender Wear to make anyone nervous, to Grupo Anaya, by Alexandre Civico of Agence Litteraire Lora Fountain, on behalf of Sally Harding at The Harding Agency.reception@thehardingagency.com
FILM:
Rights to Dean Koontz's forthcoming THE HUSBAND (from Bantam), about an ordinary working man whose love for his wife is put to a harrowing series of tests over a sixty-hour period, beginning when his peaceful workday is shattered by a phone call from a stranger, to Focus Features and Random House Films for their new filmmaking partnership, for immediate development, by Richard Heller of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.
BIOGRAPHY:
Let Them Call Me Rebel author Sanford D. Horwitt's untitled biography of Senator Russ Feingold, the leading progressive candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, with numerous interviews from a broad range of sources, including Senator Feingold who has imposed no conditions on this independent project, to Alice Mayhew of Simon & Schuster, in a pre-empt, by Mary Evans at Mary Evans (World).Merrylit@aol.com
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Commander Richard Jadick's A DOCTOR'S WAR, his account of emergency medicine and battlefield triage in the Iraqi war, to Mark Chait at Caliber, by Rafe Sagalyn at The Sagalyn Agency.info@sagalyn.com Film rights: macendejas@lynnpleshetteagency.com
MEMOIR:
Phoebe Damrosch's SERVICE INCLUDED, a "Kitchen Confidential meets Sex And The City" memoir which offers a glimpse into the author's experience as the only female captain while at her first year at the renowned Per Se restaurant, to Carolyn Marino at William Morrow, by Paul Cirone at the Aaron Priest Agency (NA). pcirone@aaronpriest.com
Blogger Melissa Plaut's NEW YORK HACK, about the author's years driving a New York City yellow medallion cab -- a career change she made after having decided at the age of twenty-nine to become "the driver of my own life," to Bruce Tracy at Villard, in a pre-empt, by Erin Hosier at The Gernert Company (world).Film/television rights: Brooke Ehrlich for Rabineau Wachter & Sanford
NARRATIVE:
Magazine reporter and veteran of the "disaster beat" Amanda Ripley's DANGER: Surviving the Unthinkable, looking at epic calamities around the world to show exactly what happens to the human brain in extremis, using interviews with those who "made it out," analysis of after-action reports, and participatory journalism, to explain why some of us seem hard-wired for survival -- and others for failure, while sharing the lessons needed to make the right survival decisions, to Rick Horgan at Crown, in a pre-empt, for publication in 2008, by Esmond Harmsworth of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency (world).Rights: LKaplan@randomhouse.com
AMERICAN NOMAD author Richard Grant's GOD'S MIDDLE FINGER: Adventures in Mexico's Wild West, set in the largely unknown world of the Sierra Madre mountains, a land of anarchy, isolation, and tribal ritual where few outsiders venture and fewer live to tell the tale, to Wylie O'Sullivan at Free Press, for publication in March 2008, by Britt Carlson at Gelfman Schneider (US).
SCIENCE:
UC Berkeley researcher Dacher Keltner's BORN TO BE GOOD: The Biology of Peace and Wellbeing, which shows through studies of facial expression and body language how the "ethical emotions," such as awe and gratitude, tell an untold story of human evolution, how benevolence is our basic nature, to Maria Guarnaschelli at Norton, by Linda Loewenthal at the David Black Literary Agency (World). laeliseo@dblackagency.com
UK:
Marina Nemat's THE MARTYR'S PRISONER, a memoir set against the backdrop of revolutionary Iran, to Eleanor Birne at John Murray, in a pre-empt, by David Grossman, acting on behalf of Beverley Slopen.Eleanor.birne@johnmurrays.co.uk
FOREIGN:
Canadian rights to Reuters environmental reporter Alanna Mitchell's THE DEEPS, examining the deterioration of the oceans by putting together the scattered pieces of a scientific puzzle, to Susan Renouf at McClelland & Stewart, by Sally Harding at The Harding Agency. reception@thehardingagency.com
Canadian rights to Rory Stewart's THE PRINCE OF THE MARSHES, chronicling the author's time spent in the remote marsh regions of Southern Iraq where he spent eleven months negotiating hostage releases, holding elections, and splicing together an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war, to Helen Reeves at Penguin Canada, in a nice deal, by Clare Alexander at Gillon Aitken Associates.harmony.ho@ca.penguingroup.com
Wrap...
Dangerous at Los Alamos...
From lanl-the-real-story. blogspot.com :
DX is facing another shutdown. There have been three major incidents in DX Division in the past two weeks. One involved a DX manager.
6 weeks ago there was a stop work issued for another operation involving firearms use at DX.
Since Nanos shut down the lab everyone in DX who knew what they were doing has either retired or quit. They are left with inadequate procedures and a workforce that does not have the experience to fill in the gaps. This has led to a very dangerous work environment at DX.
Incident 1-- A firing point worker operating a mobile crane at DARHT failed to obey the signals of the ground crew and removed a counter weight from the crane without ensuring that the hook was directly over the load. This caused the load to swing into the cab damaging the crane. The independent inspector who came out to look over the crane after the incident said that he had seen this type of accident before but usually the cab is crushed and the operator injured or killed.
Incident 2-- An electrical accident placed a DX worker in the hospital due to a 110v shock.
Incident 3-- A DX Division Manager ran a road block during an explosive operation. He ended up at the firing point where the operation was being conducted.
This incident indicates the lack of knowledge that DX managers have regarding the operations they oversee and authorize. There are virtually no managers left in DX that have experience in explosive operations.
Work Stoppage – A stop work was issued for a test involving a firearm at DX. When the operation was reviewed by the Firearms Safety Committee it was found that DX procedures were woefully inadequate and the firearms were in a state of dangerous disrepair. When asked why this situation existed DX said that the person who used to do this work had retired.
Wrap...
DX is facing another shutdown. There have been three major incidents in DX Division in the past two weeks. One involved a DX manager.
6 weeks ago there was a stop work issued for another operation involving firearms use at DX.
Since Nanos shut down the lab everyone in DX who knew what they were doing has either retired or quit. They are left with inadequate procedures and a workforce that does not have the experience to fill in the gaps. This has led to a very dangerous work environment at DX.
Incident 1-- A firing point worker operating a mobile crane at DARHT failed to obey the signals of the ground crew and removed a counter weight from the crane without ensuring that the hook was directly over the load. This caused the load to swing into the cab damaging the crane. The independent inspector who came out to look over the crane after the incident said that he had seen this type of accident before but usually the cab is crushed and the operator injured or killed.
Incident 2-- An electrical accident placed a DX worker in the hospital due to a 110v shock.
Incident 3-- A DX Division Manager ran a road block during an explosive operation. He ended up at the firing point where the operation was being conducted.
This incident indicates the lack of knowledge that DX managers have regarding the operations they oversee and authorize. There are virtually no managers left in DX that have experience in explosive operations.
Work Stoppage – A stop work was issued for a test involving a firearm at DX. When the operation was reviewed by the Firearms Safety Committee it was found that DX procedures were woefully inadequate and the firearms were in a state of dangerous disrepair. When asked why this situation existed DX said that the person who used to do this work had retired.
Wrap...
Running to replace Randy Cunningham....
So Randy Cunningham's voters in the wealthy, North County, heavily Republican, 50th District voted today. Polls have been closed for an hour and a half now, and so far, Dem Francine Busby has the most votes...but will she get 51%? Be very hard, with 17 candidates running against her.
Just saw the results of Monday's questionnaire 17 of the 18 candidates answered for the paper....the San Diego Union-Tribune. It had 7 questions dealing with Bush's taxes, abortion, gay marriage, gun control, immigration, stem cell research and whether Bush was right to invade Iraq. Not trusting electronic voting machines, I voted for Busby via mail in ballot.
Knowing what I think about each of the seven queries, I checked to see which candidate agreed with me. Was very surprised to find that two agreed with me on five of the seven. One was Busby, the other was a Republican...one Chris Young, a retired bank officer. If it weren't that the Dems really really need a majority in either or both of the House or Senate, I would have been fine if Republican Young should win Cunningham's seat. But that ain't the case. Under the current circumstances, the Repub majority has to go.
So I'll be checking online at www.nbcsandiego.com on and off for the rest of the evening to learn if Busby will win outright or if there will be a run-off and we'll vote again in November.
Wrap...
Just saw the results of Monday's questionnaire 17 of the 18 candidates answered for the paper....the San Diego Union-Tribune. It had 7 questions dealing with Bush's taxes, abortion, gay marriage, gun control, immigration, stem cell research and whether Bush was right to invade Iraq. Not trusting electronic voting machines, I voted for Busby via mail in ballot.
Knowing what I think about each of the seven queries, I checked to see which candidate agreed with me. Was very surprised to find that two agreed with me on five of the seven. One was Busby, the other was a Republican...one Chris Young, a retired bank officer. If it weren't that the Dems really really need a majority in either or both of the House or Senate, I would have been fine if Republican Young should win Cunningham's seat. But that ain't the case. Under the current circumstances, the Repub majority has to go.
So I'll be checking online at www.nbcsandiego.com on and off for the rest of the evening to learn if Busby will win outright or if there will be a run-off and we'll vote again in November.
Wrap...
Wal-Mart...greedy bastards & port security....
Wal-Mart and its Washington, D.C., lobbyist, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), have systematically undermined America’s security by working to defeat or weaken new rules to make America’s seaports and supply chains safe from terrorist attacks.
A new report by the AFL-CIO’s Jason Judd, Unchecked: How Wal-Mart Uses Its Might to Block Port Security, documents the company's efforts since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure that “security requirements should not become a barrier to trade.”
Click here to read the report (PDF).
Unchecked: How Wal-Mart Uses Its Might to Block Port Security shows how Wal-Mart and RILA have lobbied in Congress against increased inspections of containers and other new rules to keep our ports safe.
With $11.2 billion in profits last year, Wal-Mart is the most powerful member of RILA, which has used its influence to thwart important requirements for “smart containers” and electronic seals on cargo coming into the United States.
RILA also has lobbied against independent and regular examinations of supply chain security practices, container-handling fees to finance port security and requirements that would let Customs and Border Protection know what’s being shipped and where it’s coming from.
These are all measures that would help protect us against terrorism, and Wal-Mart and its Washington lobbyists are standing in the way. Read our full report to learn more, and please help us spread the word by passing this email to your friends and family.
Click here to read the report (PDF).
Wrap...
A new report by the AFL-CIO’s Jason Judd, Unchecked: How Wal-Mart Uses Its Might to Block Port Security, documents the company's efforts since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure that “security requirements should not become a barrier to trade.”
Click here to read the report (PDF).
Unchecked: How Wal-Mart Uses Its Might to Block Port Security shows how Wal-Mart and RILA have lobbied in Congress against increased inspections of containers and other new rules to keep our ports safe.
With $11.2 billion in profits last year, Wal-Mart is the most powerful member of RILA, which has used its influence to thwart important requirements for “smart containers” and electronic seals on cargo coming into the United States.
RILA also has lobbied against independent and regular examinations of supply chain security practices, container-handling fees to finance port security and requirements that would let Customs and Border Protection know what’s being shipped and where it’s coming from.
These are all measures that would help protect us against terrorism, and Wal-Mart and its Washington lobbyists are standing in the way. Read our full report to learn more, and please help us spread the word by passing this email to your friends and family.
Click here to read the report (PDF).
Wrap...
Monday, April 10, 2006
Bought & paid for..Propaganda in San Diego Union-Tribune. Can't trust that paper.
From www.voiceofsandiego.org :
Ghostwriting the Airport's Story
By ROB DAVIS
Voice Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006
A lot of work went into Midge Costanza's opinion piece that appeared Dec. 23 in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The staff at GCS Public Relations spent 16-and-a-half hours researching, editing and polishing the article, titled "Who will lead on our airport issue?" Costanza, president of the Midge Costanza Institute, a non-partisan public policy group, met twice with Rick Cook, a partner at GCS. They worked to make Costanza's words more conversational. They discussed a submission strategy. Cook twice spoke with Bernie Jones, the Union-Tribune's opinion page editor, and kept him updated on the article's status.
The bill for GCS's work came to $3,140, according to invoices. The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority paid it.
But anyone reading the article would have had no idea that the authority's public relations team had shaped Costanza's words. She does not work for the authority, and the opinion piece did not divulge the authority's role in drafting it. It appeared to be one person's concerned opinion, not part of an orchestrated campaign by a public organization.
GCS, which signed a lucrative $3.8 million public outreach contract in Nov. 2004, is a vital tool in the airport authority's effort to educate the public about the need for a new airport and the process to find a place to put it. And, along the way, they have enlisted the help of Costanza and other opinion leaders to do it.
Costanza's editorial struck a dire tone, and implored the area's elected officials to lead the quest to find Lindbergh Field's replacement. She recited what has become a familiar battle cry for airport authority officials: Lindbergh Field is 661 acres, one-fourth the size of airports in comparable cities. Its lone runway is just 9,400 feet long. Ten years from now, demand could outstrip capacity.
"Ordinary citizens understand that if we fail to address the airport issue this time," she wrote, "we are playing Russian roulette with our future, as well as our children's and our grandchildren's."
As the authority argues its case for building a new international airport in San Diego, Costanza's op-ed piece is just one example of the behind-the-scenes work that the public body has undertaken to manage public opinion. A review of nearly two years of GCS invoices obtained by voiceofsandiego.org through a California Public Records Act request opens a window into the effort that, according to polls, appears to be working.
Costanza, who didn't return a call for comment, isn't alone in lending her name to the cause. According to GCS invoices, the public relations firm also penned an opinion piece for Marion Blakey, the Federal Aviation Administration's chief.
GCS staffers -- led by partners Rick Cook and Jon Schmid -- have offered to write opinion pieces for others in the community, leaving few stones unturned as the authority's board moves toward a November ballot initiative that could relocate the region's main airport.
The effort is also raising concerns, even from one board member who said she was unaware of the project. Critics question whether the campaign is an appropriate use of federal funds and say the outreach has crossed the line from education to advocacy. The airport authority is forbidden by law from advocating for specific sites.
Told about the extent of ghostwriting, authority board member Mary Teresa Sessom was aghast.
"We shouldn't be doing that," Sessom said. "We should be using that money for education. That's not education. I'm appalled. I'm not surprised, but I'm appalled."
Cook and others who work in public relations say the tactic is common. Opinion leaders want to lend their names and support, they say, but are often too busy to write the pieces themselves.
Public relations professionals say GCS's other tactics are also tools of the trade. GCS ghostwrites opinion pieces and letters to the editor for authority board members. They prepare speaking points when major issues arise. They write speeches and hire pollsters. And they recruit opinion leaders to endorse the authority's strategy.
According to its contract, GCS is also required to maintain "coalition as well as opposition databases." Though his firm named it, Cook said the opposition database is a misnomer and does not track individuals or groups who object to a Lindbergh replacement.
Angela Shafer-Payne, the authority's vice president of strategic planning, said the overall effort, funded by the Federal Aviation Administration, is a necessary tool to keep the public educated about a technical process.
Soliciting Opinions
Steve Erie, a professor of political science at University of California, San Diego, said GCS's Jon Schmid contacted him about three weeks ago, soliciting an opinion piece. Erie, director of the university's Urban Studies and Planning Program, has followed the airport issue and authored several Southern California airport studies.
When Schmid called, UCSD economics professor Richard Carson was in the news, questioning the airport authority's economic analysis. Carson objected to the authority's assertion that the area will lose $94 billion in gross regional product if a new airport isn't built. Erie said Schmid wanted to know if he and another prominent airport forecasting expert would respond to debunk Carson.
"They didn't want to do the research to see whether Carson was right or not," Erie said. "They just wanted us to write the piece. Or if we didn't, they'd write it for us."
Erie turned down the offer, even though he thinks both Carson and the authority have incorrectly analyzed the airport's economic impact.
"It's not my job to write a solicited opinion piece," Erie said. "… I was a little put off. This is not the way the big kids play."
Erie has long been a GCS target, according to invoices. Eight days after Erie penned a Jan. 2005 column in the North County Times calling for a replacement to Lindbergh Field, Schmid and other GCS staffers discussed him as a potential champion for the project. Schmid and Cook each attended a book talk Erie made later that month. Erie remembered Schmid introducing himself, but couldn't recall the conversation. (Schmid and Cook billed the authority approximately $800 for attending the two-hour event.)
Cook characterized the recent contact with Erie as a "very general conversation to determine whether he'd be interested in expressing an opinion."
Not all of GCS's efforts happen behind the scenes. The public relations firm has pitched speaking opportunities to groups ranging from the Black Contractors Association of San Diego to the Borrego Springs Republican Women Federated. Staff members have e-mailed every Rotary Club in San Diego County. They convinced Vista school officials to allow students to earn credit for attending a local town hall meeting.
Airport officials and authority board members typically attend the meetings and hold question-and-answer sessions. The town halls feature a three-minute, 40-second video that explains the need for a new airport.
The video, which cost about $40,000 to produce, is also replayed on televisions throughout the airport -- among the many banners, fliers and signs found in the terminals. In discussing the future, it shows a narrow picture of the present: crowded runways, full waiting areas, bustling ticket check-ins and traffic jams outside the terminals. When it displays projected annual passengers, it uses the highest figure available (33 million) and does not mention the lowest (27 million).
"What's the worst thing that we could do?" the video's voice-over asks. "Ignore the inevitable. A solution must be found now."
With calm music jingling in the background, the voice-over parrots language found in Costanza's December opinion piece -- both in content and sentence structure: "At 661 acres, San Diego's airport is one-quarter the size of those at comparable metro areas."
Costanza wrote: "At 661 acres, San Diego International Airport is one-fourth the size of airports in comparable cities."
As the video concludes, a message pops up: "Make a well-informed decision in November 2006."
Critics say voters won't be able to make an educated decision unless they hear both sides of the debate -- something they say hasn't yet happened.
Lani Lutar, president and CEO of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, a non-partisan fiscal watchdog, said federal tax dollars are being spent on one-sided outreach that doesn't leave room for anything except replacing Lindbergh Field.
"Our concern is that they've now crossed the line into advocacy," Lutar said. "Organizations and individuals with opposing viewpoints should be given an equal opportunity to share their views.
So far we haven't seen that."
Sessom, Lemon Grove's mayor and an authority board member, acknowledged the outreach campaign has done a good job educating the public about the technical aspects of the authority's site selection search.
But she said she worries the outreach campaign has wrongly shaped the public's perception of Lindbergh Field's capacity to handle future demands.
"That concerns me," she said, "because that immediately puts it into the public mindset that there's nothing we can do at Lindbergh -- and I don't think we've fully explored Lindbergh."
She also questions whether a majority of town hall meetings have avoided areas around Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, one site being considered for the new airport's home.
"I'm concerned that there is the appearance that we may have carried it a little too far in terms of advocacy," said Sessom, who has criticized the site-selection process for being too focused on Miramar.
Fellow board member Paul G. Nieto disagrees with his colleague. The promotional materials aren't advocacy, he said, unless they are lobbying for a specific site or a position the airport authority has taken. An attorney vets the authority's outreach.
"I think they've done a good job on focusing on the educational aspects of this," he said. "We just need to be squeaky clean."
Who Are They?
The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority was formed by state legislation in 2003. The law requires the authority, once run by the Unified Port of San Diego, to select a site to replace Lindbergh Field and place it on November's ballot for voters' consideration.
A new airport, which would cost billions of dollars, has been called one of the largest public projects in the region's history.
The authority formally hired GCS in Nov. 2004, restructuring the contract last October. That boosted the maximum payment from $2.25 million to $3.8 million, while prohibiting coordination of efforts with ASAP-21, a local alliance of groups that support a new airport site.
Tom Gable, Rick Cook and Jon Schmid formed GCS in 2001.
Cook, who bills the authority $200 hourly for his work, has worked in public relations for more than 20 years, on projects ranging from the expansion of Louisville, Ky.'s airport to PNC Bank's marketing.
Schmid also bills $200 hourly and is a San Diego native. He was twice nominated for Pulitzer Prizes while a Chicago Sun-Times reporter. While working on this campaign, he won a Bronze Anvil, a Public Relations Society of America prize that recognizes "outstanding public relations tactics," for producing a four-page airport insert that ran in local newspapers.
Others are involved in the process. New West Public Relations of Louisville has been focused on developing the outreach's strategy. Roz Winstead, who runs a San Diego-based public relations firm, focuses on community involvement. GCS has performed the work's majority.
When New West CEO Becky Simpson makes monthly trips to San Diego from Kentucky, the public relations teams often strategize over lunch and dinner, occasionally bringing in other airport political consultants. They've spent at least $4,100 on meals that way since May 2004, according to reimbursement reports.
Since GCS took the reigns of the public outreach program, more people are aware of the site selection process and the November ballot initiative, according to a Sept. 2005 poll.
Those polls also check to see how many voters would support a new site. The Sept. 2005 figures showed 66 percent of voters saying they'd vote for a new airport site, up 13 percent from the outset of the campaign.
In late 2005, Cook valued the media coverage resulting from GCS's work at more than $3 million dollars.
The contract runs through June 2007. Cook said GCS will continue public outreach once the authority board selects a site, educating community members about the board's recommendation -- scheduled for May -- and the reasons behind it.
Please contact Rob Davis directly at rob.davis@voiceofsandiego.orgwith your thoughts, ideas, personal stories or tips.
Wrap...
Ghostwriting the Airport's Story
By ROB DAVIS
Voice Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006
A lot of work went into Midge Costanza's opinion piece that appeared Dec. 23 in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The staff at GCS Public Relations spent 16-and-a-half hours researching, editing and polishing the article, titled "Who will lead on our airport issue?" Costanza, president of the Midge Costanza Institute, a non-partisan public policy group, met twice with Rick Cook, a partner at GCS. They worked to make Costanza's words more conversational. They discussed a submission strategy. Cook twice spoke with Bernie Jones, the Union-Tribune's opinion page editor, and kept him updated on the article's status.
The bill for GCS's work came to $3,140, according to invoices. The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority paid it.
But anyone reading the article would have had no idea that the authority's public relations team had shaped Costanza's words. She does not work for the authority, and the opinion piece did not divulge the authority's role in drafting it. It appeared to be one person's concerned opinion, not part of an orchestrated campaign by a public organization.
GCS, which signed a lucrative $3.8 million public outreach contract in Nov. 2004, is a vital tool in the airport authority's effort to educate the public about the need for a new airport and the process to find a place to put it. And, along the way, they have enlisted the help of Costanza and other opinion leaders to do it.
Costanza's editorial struck a dire tone, and implored the area's elected officials to lead the quest to find Lindbergh Field's replacement. She recited what has become a familiar battle cry for airport authority officials: Lindbergh Field is 661 acres, one-fourth the size of airports in comparable cities. Its lone runway is just 9,400 feet long. Ten years from now, demand could outstrip capacity.
"Ordinary citizens understand that if we fail to address the airport issue this time," she wrote, "we are playing Russian roulette with our future, as well as our children's and our grandchildren's."
As the authority argues its case for building a new international airport in San Diego, Costanza's op-ed piece is just one example of the behind-the-scenes work that the public body has undertaken to manage public opinion. A review of nearly two years of GCS invoices obtained by voiceofsandiego.org through a California Public Records Act request opens a window into the effort that, according to polls, appears to be working.
Costanza, who didn't return a call for comment, isn't alone in lending her name to the cause. According to GCS invoices, the public relations firm also penned an opinion piece for Marion Blakey, the Federal Aviation Administration's chief.
GCS staffers -- led by partners Rick Cook and Jon Schmid -- have offered to write opinion pieces for others in the community, leaving few stones unturned as the authority's board moves toward a November ballot initiative that could relocate the region's main airport.
The effort is also raising concerns, even from one board member who said she was unaware of the project. Critics question whether the campaign is an appropriate use of federal funds and say the outreach has crossed the line from education to advocacy. The airport authority is forbidden by law from advocating for specific sites.
Told about the extent of ghostwriting, authority board member Mary Teresa Sessom was aghast.
"We shouldn't be doing that," Sessom said. "We should be using that money for education. That's not education. I'm appalled. I'm not surprised, but I'm appalled."
Cook and others who work in public relations say the tactic is common. Opinion leaders want to lend their names and support, they say, but are often too busy to write the pieces themselves.
Public relations professionals say GCS's other tactics are also tools of the trade. GCS ghostwrites opinion pieces and letters to the editor for authority board members. They prepare speaking points when major issues arise. They write speeches and hire pollsters. And they recruit opinion leaders to endorse the authority's strategy.
According to its contract, GCS is also required to maintain "coalition as well as opposition databases." Though his firm named it, Cook said the opposition database is a misnomer and does not track individuals or groups who object to a Lindbergh replacement.
Angela Shafer-Payne, the authority's vice president of strategic planning, said the overall effort, funded by the Federal Aviation Administration, is a necessary tool to keep the public educated about a technical process.
Soliciting Opinions
Steve Erie, a professor of political science at University of California, San Diego, said GCS's Jon Schmid contacted him about three weeks ago, soliciting an opinion piece. Erie, director of the university's Urban Studies and Planning Program, has followed the airport issue and authored several Southern California airport studies.
When Schmid called, UCSD economics professor Richard Carson was in the news, questioning the airport authority's economic analysis. Carson objected to the authority's assertion that the area will lose $94 billion in gross regional product if a new airport isn't built. Erie said Schmid wanted to know if he and another prominent airport forecasting expert would respond to debunk Carson.
"They didn't want to do the research to see whether Carson was right or not," Erie said. "They just wanted us to write the piece. Or if we didn't, they'd write it for us."
Erie turned down the offer, even though he thinks both Carson and the authority have incorrectly analyzed the airport's economic impact.
"It's not my job to write a solicited opinion piece," Erie said. "… I was a little put off. This is not the way the big kids play."
Erie has long been a GCS target, according to invoices. Eight days after Erie penned a Jan. 2005 column in the North County Times calling for a replacement to Lindbergh Field, Schmid and other GCS staffers discussed him as a potential champion for the project. Schmid and Cook each attended a book talk Erie made later that month. Erie remembered Schmid introducing himself, but couldn't recall the conversation. (Schmid and Cook billed the authority approximately $800 for attending the two-hour event.)
Cook characterized the recent contact with Erie as a "very general conversation to determine whether he'd be interested in expressing an opinion."
Not all of GCS's efforts happen behind the scenes. The public relations firm has pitched speaking opportunities to groups ranging from the Black Contractors Association of San Diego to the Borrego Springs Republican Women Federated. Staff members have e-mailed every Rotary Club in San Diego County. They convinced Vista school officials to allow students to earn credit for attending a local town hall meeting.
Airport officials and authority board members typically attend the meetings and hold question-and-answer sessions. The town halls feature a three-minute, 40-second video that explains the need for a new airport.
The video, which cost about $40,000 to produce, is also replayed on televisions throughout the airport -- among the many banners, fliers and signs found in the terminals. In discussing the future, it shows a narrow picture of the present: crowded runways, full waiting areas, bustling ticket check-ins and traffic jams outside the terminals. When it displays projected annual passengers, it uses the highest figure available (33 million) and does not mention the lowest (27 million).
"What's the worst thing that we could do?" the video's voice-over asks. "Ignore the inevitable. A solution must be found now."
With calm music jingling in the background, the voice-over parrots language found in Costanza's December opinion piece -- both in content and sentence structure: "At 661 acres, San Diego's airport is one-quarter the size of those at comparable metro areas."
Costanza wrote: "At 661 acres, San Diego International Airport is one-fourth the size of airports in comparable cities."
As the video concludes, a message pops up: "Make a well-informed decision in November 2006."
Critics say voters won't be able to make an educated decision unless they hear both sides of the debate -- something they say hasn't yet happened.
Lani Lutar, president and CEO of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, a non-partisan fiscal watchdog, said federal tax dollars are being spent on one-sided outreach that doesn't leave room for anything except replacing Lindbergh Field.
"Our concern is that they've now crossed the line into advocacy," Lutar said. "Organizations and individuals with opposing viewpoints should be given an equal opportunity to share their views.
So far we haven't seen that."
Sessom, Lemon Grove's mayor and an authority board member, acknowledged the outreach campaign has done a good job educating the public about the technical aspects of the authority's site selection search.
But she said she worries the outreach campaign has wrongly shaped the public's perception of Lindbergh Field's capacity to handle future demands.
"That concerns me," she said, "because that immediately puts it into the public mindset that there's nothing we can do at Lindbergh -- and I don't think we've fully explored Lindbergh."
She also questions whether a majority of town hall meetings have avoided areas around Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, one site being considered for the new airport's home.
"I'm concerned that there is the appearance that we may have carried it a little too far in terms of advocacy," said Sessom, who has criticized the site-selection process for being too focused on Miramar.
Fellow board member Paul G. Nieto disagrees with his colleague. The promotional materials aren't advocacy, he said, unless they are lobbying for a specific site or a position the airport authority has taken. An attorney vets the authority's outreach.
"I think they've done a good job on focusing on the educational aspects of this," he said. "We just need to be squeaky clean."
Who Are They?
The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority was formed by state legislation in 2003. The law requires the authority, once run by the Unified Port of San Diego, to select a site to replace Lindbergh Field and place it on November's ballot for voters' consideration.
A new airport, which would cost billions of dollars, has been called one of the largest public projects in the region's history.
The authority formally hired GCS in Nov. 2004, restructuring the contract last October. That boosted the maximum payment from $2.25 million to $3.8 million, while prohibiting coordination of efforts with ASAP-21, a local alliance of groups that support a new airport site.
Tom Gable, Rick Cook and Jon Schmid formed GCS in 2001.
Cook, who bills the authority $200 hourly for his work, has worked in public relations for more than 20 years, on projects ranging from the expansion of Louisville, Ky.'s airport to PNC Bank's marketing.
Schmid also bills $200 hourly and is a San Diego native. He was twice nominated for Pulitzer Prizes while a Chicago Sun-Times reporter. While working on this campaign, he won a Bronze Anvil, a Public Relations Society of America prize that recognizes "outstanding public relations tactics," for producing a four-page airport insert that ran in local newspapers.
Others are involved in the process. New West Public Relations of Louisville has been focused on developing the outreach's strategy. Roz Winstead, who runs a San Diego-based public relations firm, focuses on community involvement. GCS has performed the work's majority.
When New West CEO Becky Simpson makes monthly trips to San Diego from Kentucky, the public relations teams often strategize over lunch and dinner, occasionally bringing in other airport political consultants. They've spent at least $4,100 on meals that way since May 2004, according to reimbursement reports.
Since GCS took the reigns of the public outreach program, more people are aware of the site selection process and the November ballot initiative, according to a Sept. 2005 poll.
Those polls also check to see how many voters would support a new site. The Sept. 2005 figures showed 66 percent of voters saying they'd vote for a new airport site, up 13 percent from the outset of the campaign.
In late 2005, Cook valued the media coverage resulting from GCS's work at more than $3 million dollars.
The contract runs through June 2007. Cook said GCS will continue public outreach once the authority board selects a site, educating community members about the board's recommendation -- scheduled for May -- and the reasons behind it.
Please contact Rob Davis directly at rob.davis@voiceofsandiego.orgwith your thoughts, ideas, personal stories or tips.
Wrap...
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Oh, this is rich!!! RICO for BushCo....
From Buzzflash :
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT
A LEAKY PRESIDENT RUNS AFOUL OF 'LITTLE RICO'
Buzzflash
by Greg Palast
Sunday, April 9, 2006
It's a crime. No kidding. But the media has it all wrong. As usual.
'Scooter' Libby finally outed 'Mr. Big,' the perpetrator of the heinous disclosure of the name of secret agent Valerie Plame. It was the President of United States himself -- in conspiracy with his Vice-President.
Now the pundits are arguing over whether our war-a-holic President had the legal right to leak this national security information. But, that's a fake debate meant to distract you.
OK, let's accept the White House alibi that releasing Plame's identity was no crime. But if that's true, they've committed a BIGGER crime: Bush and Cheney knowingly withheld vital information from a grand jury investigation, a multimillion dollar inquiry the perps themselves authorized. That's akin to calling in a false fire alarm or calling the cops for a burglary that never happened -- but far, far worse.
Let's not forget that in the hunt for the perpetrator of this non-crime, reporter Judith Miller went to jail. Think about that. While Miller sat in a prison cell, Bush and Cheney were laughing their sick heads off, knowing the grand jury testimony, the special prosecutor's subpoenas and the FBI's terrorizing newsrooms were nothing but fake props in Bush's elaborate charade, Cheney's Big Con.
On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it."
Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this "classified" info -- knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime.
For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice.
If you or I had manipulated the legal system this way, we'd be breaking rocks on a chain gang. We wouldn't even get a trial -- most judges would consider this a "fraud upon the court" and send us to the slammer in minutes using the bench's power to administer instant punishment for contempt of the judicial system.
Why'd they do it? The White House junta did the deed for the most evil of motives: to hoodwink the public during the 2004 election campaign, to pretend that evil anti-Bush elements were undermining the Republic, when it was the Bush element itself at the center of the conspiracy. (Notably, elections trickery also motivated Richard Nixon's "plumbers" to break into the Watergate, then the Democratic Party campaign headquarters.)
Let me draft the indictment for you as I would have were I still a government gumshoe:
"Perpetrator Lewis Libby (alias, 'Scooter') contacted Miller; while John Doe 1 contacted perpetrators' shill at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward, in furtherance of a scheme directed by George Bush (alias 'The POTUS') and Dick Cheney (alias, 'The Veep') to release intelligence information fraudulently proffered as 'classified,' and thereinafter, knowingly withheld material evidence from a grand jury empanelled to investigate said disclosure. Furthermore, perpetrator 'The POTUS' made material statements designed to deceive investigators and knowingly misrepresent his state of knowledge of the facts."
Statements aimed at misleading grand jury investigators are hard-time offenses. It doesn't matter that Bush's too-clever little quip was made to the press and not under oath. I've cited press releases and comments in the New York Times in court as evidence of fraud. By not swearing to his disingenuous statement, Bush gets off the perjury hook, but he committed a crime nonetheless, "deliberate concealment."
Here's how the law works (and hopefully, it will). The Bush gang's use of the telephone in this con game constituted wire fraud. Furthermore, while presidents may leak ("declassify") intelligence information, they may not obstruct justice; that is, send a grand jury on a wild goose chase.
Under the 'RICO' statute (named after the Edward G. Robinson movie mobster, 'Little Rico'), the combination of these crimes makes the Bush executive branch a "racketeering enterprise."
So, book'm, Dan-o. Time to read The POTUS and The Veep their rights. After setting their bail (following the impeachments and removals, of course), a judge will have a more intriguing matter to address. The RICO law requires the Feds to seize all "ill-gotten gains" of a racketeering enterprise, even before trial. Usually we're talking fast cars and diamond bling. But in this case, the conspirators' purloined booty includes a stolen election and a fraudulently obtained authorization for war.
I see no reason why a judge could not impound the 82d Airborne as "fruits of the fraud " -- lock, stock and gun barrels -- and bring the boys home. And if justice is to be done we will will also have to run yellow tape across the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- "CRIME SCENE - DO NOT ENTER" -- and return the White House to its rightful owners, the American people, the victims of this gangster government.
**********
Former racketeering investigator Greg Palast is author of "ARMED MADHOUSE: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," to be released in June. Subscribe to the new podcast of our columns at www.GregPalast.com
Wrap...
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT
A LEAKY PRESIDENT RUNS AFOUL OF 'LITTLE RICO'
Buzzflash
by Greg Palast
Sunday, April 9, 2006
It's a crime. No kidding. But the media has it all wrong. As usual.
'Scooter' Libby finally outed 'Mr. Big,' the perpetrator of the heinous disclosure of the name of secret agent Valerie Plame. It was the President of United States himself -- in conspiracy with his Vice-President.
Now the pundits are arguing over whether our war-a-holic President had the legal right to leak this national security information. But, that's a fake debate meant to distract you.
OK, let's accept the White House alibi that releasing Plame's identity was no crime. But if that's true, they've committed a BIGGER crime: Bush and Cheney knowingly withheld vital information from a grand jury investigation, a multimillion dollar inquiry the perps themselves authorized. That's akin to calling in a false fire alarm or calling the cops for a burglary that never happened -- but far, far worse.
Let's not forget that in the hunt for the perpetrator of this non-crime, reporter Judith Miller went to jail. Think about that. While Miller sat in a prison cell, Bush and Cheney were laughing their sick heads off, knowing the grand jury testimony, the special prosecutor's subpoenas and the FBI's terrorizing newsrooms were nothing but fake props in Bush's elaborate charade, Cheney's Big Con.
On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it."
Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this "classified" info -- knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime.
For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice.
If you or I had manipulated the legal system this way, we'd be breaking rocks on a chain gang. We wouldn't even get a trial -- most judges would consider this a "fraud upon the court" and send us to the slammer in minutes using the bench's power to administer instant punishment for contempt of the judicial system.
Why'd they do it? The White House junta did the deed for the most evil of motives: to hoodwink the public during the 2004 election campaign, to pretend that evil anti-Bush elements were undermining the Republic, when it was the Bush element itself at the center of the conspiracy. (Notably, elections trickery also motivated Richard Nixon's "plumbers" to break into the Watergate, then the Democratic Party campaign headquarters.)
Let me draft the indictment for you as I would have were I still a government gumshoe:
"Perpetrator Lewis Libby (alias, 'Scooter') contacted Miller; while John Doe 1 contacted perpetrators' shill at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward, in furtherance of a scheme directed by George Bush (alias 'The POTUS') and Dick Cheney (alias, 'The Veep') to release intelligence information fraudulently proffered as 'classified,' and thereinafter, knowingly withheld material evidence from a grand jury empanelled to investigate said disclosure. Furthermore, perpetrator 'The POTUS' made material statements designed to deceive investigators and knowingly misrepresent his state of knowledge of the facts."
Statements aimed at misleading grand jury investigators are hard-time offenses. It doesn't matter that Bush's too-clever little quip was made to the press and not under oath. I've cited press releases and comments in the New York Times in court as evidence of fraud. By not swearing to his disingenuous statement, Bush gets off the perjury hook, but he committed a crime nonetheless, "deliberate concealment."
Here's how the law works (and hopefully, it will). The Bush gang's use of the telephone in this con game constituted wire fraud. Furthermore, while presidents may leak ("declassify") intelligence information, they may not obstruct justice; that is, send a grand jury on a wild goose chase.
Under the 'RICO' statute (named after the Edward G. Robinson movie mobster, 'Little Rico'), the combination of these crimes makes the Bush executive branch a "racketeering enterprise."
So, book'm, Dan-o. Time to read The POTUS and The Veep their rights. After setting their bail (following the impeachments and removals, of course), a judge will have a more intriguing matter to address. The RICO law requires the Feds to seize all "ill-gotten gains" of a racketeering enterprise, even before trial. Usually we're talking fast cars and diamond bling. But in this case, the conspirators' purloined booty includes a stolen election and a fraudulently obtained authorization for war.
I see no reason why a judge could not impound the 82d Airborne as "fruits of the fraud " -- lock, stock and gun barrels -- and bring the boys home. And if justice is to be done we will will also have to run yellow tape across the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- "CRIME SCENE - DO NOT ENTER" -- and return the White House to its rightful owners, the American people, the victims of this gangster government.
**********
Former racketeering investigator Greg Palast is author of "ARMED MADHOUSE: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," to be released in June. Subscribe to the new podcast of our columns at www.GregPalast.com
Wrap...
Helen Thomas: McCain is Bush now....
From Seattlepi.nwsource.com :
Sunday, April 9, 2006
Want more Bush? Elect McCain
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- In his bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain is moving to the right.
The Arizona Republican, who failed to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, is the most visible Republican on television, outside the White House, and seems to never pass up an opportunity to appear on Sunday talk shows.
All this appears to be part of his effort to transform his image as a maverick independent so that he can make his pitch to the conservative Republican base that will vote in the party's primaries and caucuses two years hence.
McCain's focus is on Southern states where he will have to show his dedication to the conservatives who dominate the GOP. He was scheduled to be the main speaker at the Lincoln Day dinner in Lakeland, Fla., on Saturday. Later this spring, he will deliver the commencement address at Liberty University at Lynchburg, Va., the school founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell.
Falwell has indicated there are still some bridges to mend with McCain, who had called Falwell "an agent of intolerance" in his first bid for the presidency in 2000.
Although Falwell has not endorsed McCain, he has said that the senator "could be the GOP's best hope" if Sen. Hillary Clinton is nominated to head the Democratic ticket in 2008.
Falwell also says McCain is in the process of "healing the breach with evangelical groups."
Asked to explain his change of attitude toward the evangelist on "Meet the Press" Sunday, McCain said: "I believe that the Christian right has a major role to play in the Republican Party. One reason (that) is so is because they're so active and their followers are. And I believe they have a right to be part of our party."
McCain also has gone out of his way to cozy up to President Bush after their bitter rift in the 2000 presidential campaign. McCain has said he does not look back in anger at old political battles. That's wise -- he's going to need Bush's backing in a presidential bid.
McCain also has taken other stands that should put him in good with Southern conservatives. Hailing from a military family -- his father and grandfather were admirals in the Navy -- he is a strong supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and believes the number of U.S. troops there should be beefed up.
He is against abortion rights and gun-control laws and believes students should be taught the religion-oriented "intelligent design" theory of creation as well as the theory of scientific evolution.
His painful experience as a POW during the Vietnam War led him to buck the White House on the question of using torture to interrogate detainees and prisoners of war. Despite White House opposition, he triumphed with a 90-9 Senate vote on his anti-torture amendment to the defense appropriations bill.
Well, almost.
In signing the bill, the president issued a statement that under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, he did not have to abide by the anti-torture amendment. This is a dubious claim of presidential power that should be challenged.
McCain's political record is not entirely pristine. He was a member of the so-called Keating Five -- five senators linked to Charles Keating in the savings and loan scandals in 1991. But a special investigator found that McCain had not been substantially involved in influence peddling but criticized him and three others for "questionable conduct."
That searing experience may explain why McCain has been an avid advocate of campaign finance reform.
With his "hail fellow well met" persona and tendency to jaw with the media and pundits in the back of the campaign bus, he has created the impression in some quarters that he is a "moderate."
Forget it. His voting record speaks for itself.
McCain is working hard to prove his staunch conservative credentials as he woos the far right in his party.
If he wins the presidency, the country can expect a continuation of Bush's aggressive foreign policy and ultra-right domestic programs.
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Copyright 2006 Hearst Newspapers.
Wrap...
Sunday, April 9, 2006
Want more Bush? Elect McCain
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- In his bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain is moving to the right.
The Arizona Republican, who failed to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, is the most visible Republican on television, outside the White House, and seems to never pass up an opportunity to appear on Sunday talk shows.
All this appears to be part of his effort to transform his image as a maverick independent so that he can make his pitch to the conservative Republican base that will vote in the party's primaries and caucuses two years hence.
McCain's focus is on Southern states where he will have to show his dedication to the conservatives who dominate the GOP. He was scheduled to be the main speaker at the Lincoln Day dinner in Lakeland, Fla., on Saturday. Later this spring, he will deliver the commencement address at Liberty University at Lynchburg, Va., the school founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell.
Falwell has indicated there are still some bridges to mend with McCain, who had called Falwell "an agent of intolerance" in his first bid for the presidency in 2000.
Although Falwell has not endorsed McCain, he has said that the senator "could be the GOP's best hope" if Sen. Hillary Clinton is nominated to head the Democratic ticket in 2008.
Falwell also says McCain is in the process of "healing the breach with evangelical groups."
Asked to explain his change of attitude toward the evangelist on "Meet the Press" Sunday, McCain said: "I believe that the Christian right has a major role to play in the Republican Party. One reason (that) is so is because they're so active and their followers are. And I believe they have a right to be part of our party."
McCain also has gone out of his way to cozy up to President Bush after their bitter rift in the 2000 presidential campaign. McCain has said he does not look back in anger at old political battles. That's wise -- he's going to need Bush's backing in a presidential bid.
McCain also has taken other stands that should put him in good with Southern conservatives. Hailing from a military family -- his father and grandfather were admirals in the Navy -- he is a strong supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and believes the number of U.S. troops there should be beefed up.
He is against abortion rights and gun-control laws and believes students should be taught the religion-oriented "intelligent design" theory of creation as well as the theory of scientific evolution.
His painful experience as a POW during the Vietnam War led him to buck the White House on the question of using torture to interrogate detainees and prisoners of war. Despite White House opposition, he triumphed with a 90-9 Senate vote on his anti-torture amendment to the defense appropriations bill.
Well, almost.
In signing the bill, the president issued a statement that under his constitutional authority as commander in chief, he did not have to abide by the anti-torture amendment. This is a dubious claim of presidential power that should be challenged.
McCain's political record is not entirely pristine. He was a member of the so-called Keating Five -- five senators linked to Charles Keating in the savings and loan scandals in 1991. But a special investigator found that McCain had not been substantially involved in influence peddling but criticized him and three others for "questionable conduct."
That searing experience may explain why McCain has been an avid advocate of campaign finance reform.
With his "hail fellow well met" persona and tendency to jaw with the media and pundits in the back of the campaign bus, he has created the impression in some quarters that he is a "moderate."
Forget it. His voting record speaks for itself.
McCain is working hard to prove his staunch conservative credentials as he woos the far right in his party.
If he wins the presidency, the country can expect a continuation of Bush's aggressive foreign policy and ultra-right domestic programs.
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Copyright 2006 Hearst Newspapers.
Wrap...
Stand-up people in those States...
From truthout.org :
Vermont Democrats Call for Bush Impeachment
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040906B.shtml
Democratic Party leaders in Vermont on Saturday passed a motion asking Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against George Bush.
Note: Democratic state committees in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina have taken similar steps.
Wrap...
Vermont Democrats Call for Bush Impeachment
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040906B.shtml
Democratic Party leaders in Vermont on Saturday passed a motion asking Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against George Bush.
Note: Democratic state committees in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina have taken similar steps.
Wrap...
A willfully ignorant editorial re. Joseph Wilson's "deceptive claims" !!!!
From San Diego Union-Tribune :
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Mess gets worse
Leak order another black eye for Bush
April 8, 2006
The reports Thursday – uncontradicted by the White House – that former White House aide Lewis Libby testified he had divulged details of a secret National Intelligence Estimate to New York Times reporter Judith Miller at the behest of President Bush is inescapably embarrassing for this administration.
Yes, there is a case to be made that this didn't involve illegal leaking, since the president arguably can declassify what he wants.
Yes, the White House had cause to leak – to counter the deceptive claims of former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson that in the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush team lied about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons.
Yes, there is no evidence Bush authorized the outing of Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, which prompted the hiring of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
But none of this can rationalize the hypocrisy evident in the White House's long-standing claim to be appalled by any leaks involving national security, whether they dealt with Plame, Iraq, Iran, Israel, you name it.
The parsing has already begun – some Republicans note the president only decried the leaking of “classified” information. If that's the best they can do, they should give up. Bush was being asked about Plame. If he avoided giving revealing answers by using the smarmy tactics of his predecessor, that is nothing to crow about.
What's baffling is that if the administration had hard proof of Wilson's deceptions – which were later confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee – why didn't it just say so on the record? Using Libby didn't work. Remember, Judith Miller never wrote a story about his disclosures.
The last thing George W. Bush needs is new doubts about his administration's honesty. But now there are new doubts – and he has only himself to blame.
Wrap...
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Mess gets worse
Leak order another black eye for Bush
April 8, 2006
The reports Thursday – uncontradicted by the White House – that former White House aide Lewis Libby testified he had divulged details of a secret National Intelligence Estimate to New York Times reporter Judith Miller at the behest of President Bush is inescapably embarrassing for this administration.
Yes, there is a case to be made that this didn't involve illegal leaking, since the president arguably can declassify what he wants.
Yes, the White House had cause to leak – to counter the deceptive claims of former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson that in the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush team lied about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons.
Yes, there is no evidence Bush authorized the outing of Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, which prompted the hiring of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
But none of this can rationalize the hypocrisy evident in the White House's long-standing claim to be appalled by any leaks involving national security, whether they dealt with Plame, Iraq, Iran, Israel, you name it.
The parsing has already begun – some Republicans note the president only decried the leaking of “classified” information. If that's the best they can do, they should give up. Bush was being asked about Plame. If he avoided giving revealing answers by using the smarmy tactics of his predecessor, that is nothing to crow about.
What's baffling is that if the administration had hard proof of Wilson's deceptions – which were later confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee – why didn't it just say so on the record? Using Libby didn't work. Remember, Judith Miller never wrote a story about his disclosures.
The last thing George W. Bush needs is new doubts about his administration's honesty. But now there are new doubts – and he has only himself to blame.
Wrap...
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Bush is so loved...
From San Francisco Chronicle:
Web site exposes Air Force One defenses
Paul J. Caffera
Saturday, April 8, 2006
Whenever the president travels, security is a prime consideration. Motorcade routes are kept secret, and premature release of information about a presidential trip aboard one of the twin Air Force One planes can result in the Secret Service canceling a visit.
Thus, the Air Force reacted with alarm last week after The Chronicle told the Secret Service that a government document containing specific information about the anti-missile defenses on Air Force One and detailed interior maps of the two planes -- including the location of Secret Service agents within the planes -- was posted on the Web site of an Air Force base.
The document also shows the location where a terrorist armed with a high-caliber sniper rifle could detonate the tanks that supply oxygen to Air Force One's medical facility.
As of Friday, the document was still posted online. The Secret Service refused to comment on the document's release.
"It is not a good thing" for that information to be in the public domain, said Lt. Col Bruce Alexander, director of public affairs for the Air Mobility Command's 89th Airlift Wing, Andrews Air Force Base, which operates the presidential air transport fleet. "We are concerned with how it got there and how we can get it out. This affects operational security."
Information about Air Force One's anti-missile systems is considered particularly sensitive.
"Having information about a target's countermeasures does two things," said Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute. "It gives you an opportunity to choose a different weapon and to choose a different attack style ... perhaps choosing to launch a salvo attack, or choose a missile that uses an active beam."
"It is tough enough for the Secret Service to do its job without this," said Leon Panetta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, who now runs a public policy study center at California State University at Monterey Bay. "If I were still chief of staff, I would order the damned site (to) pull it down."
Page A - 4 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/04/08/MNGESI5U6C1.DTL
Wrap...
Web site exposes Air Force One defenses
Paul J. Caffera
Saturday, April 8, 2006
Whenever the president travels, security is a prime consideration. Motorcade routes are kept secret, and premature release of information about a presidential trip aboard one of the twin Air Force One planes can result in the Secret Service canceling a visit.
Thus, the Air Force reacted with alarm last week after The Chronicle told the Secret Service that a government document containing specific information about the anti-missile defenses on Air Force One and detailed interior maps of the two planes -- including the location of Secret Service agents within the planes -- was posted on the Web site of an Air Force base.
The document also shows the location where a terrorist armed with a high-caliber sniper rifle could detonate the tanks that supply oxygen to Air Force One's medical facility.
As of Friday, the document was still posted online. The Secret Service refused to comment on the document's release.
"It is not a good thing" for that information to be in the public domain, said Lt. Col Bruce Alexander, director of public affairs for the Air Mobility Command's 89th Airlift Wing, Andrews Air Force Base, which operates the presidential air transport fleet. "We are concerned with how it got there and how we can get it out. This affects operational security."
Information about Air Force One's anti-missile systems is considered particularly sensitive.
"Having information about a target's countermeasures does two things," said Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute. "It gives you an opportunity to choose a different weapon and to choose a different attack style ... perhaps choosing to launch a salvo attack, or choose a missile that uses an active beam."
"It is tough enough for the Secret Service to do its job without this," said Leon Panetta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, who now runs a public policy study center at California State University at Monterey Bay. "If I were still chief of staff, I would order the damned site (to) pull it down."
Page A - 4 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/04/08/MNGESI5U6C1.DTL
Wrap...
US universities witch hunt?....
From The Guardian via Information Clearing House...
Silence in class :
University professors denounced for anti-Americanism; schoolteachers suspended for their politics; students encouraged to report on their tutors.
Are US campuses in the grip of a witch-hunt of progressives, or is academic life just too liberal?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1746227,00.html
Wrap...
Silence in class :
University professors denounced for anti-Americanism; schoolteachers suspended for their politics; students encouraged to report on their tutors.
Are US campuses in the grip of a witch-hunt of progressives, or is academic life just too liberal?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1746227,00.html
Wrap...
Goodwin interviews Fisk. Fisk says, "Bullshit".
From: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/07/144219
[An excerpt]
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk is our guest, war correspondent for more than 30 years. Your response, once again, to the issue of the planting of stories?
ROBERT FISK: Well, I'm surprised the military have to plant stories, because I find that an awful lot of my colleagues are quite happy to go along with stories planted or otherwise. You’ve only got to see the number of times on the front page of the New York Times or the L.A. Times or the Washington Post when the phrase “American officials say” appears, particularly the L.A. Times. I can give an example of that, in which a whole story is repeatedly sourced, after 2003, when we know there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, when we know the press was misled totally in the United States and went along with the war party.
Still we see everything being sourced and re-sourced back to American officials, as if the U.S. administration is the center of world truth. I’ll give you an example. I was actually doing the book tour in Los Angeles, picked up my morning L.A. Times. Here’s a story about Zarqawi, who may or may not exist, of course. “U.S. authorities say,” “U.S. officials said,” “Said one Justice Department counterterrorism official,” “U.S. authorities say,” “officials said,” “U.S. officials said.” It turns to page B-10. It gets worse and worse. Look. “Several U.S. officials said,” “those officials said,” “U.S. officials confirmed” -- stop me when you want -- “American officials complained,” “U.S. officials stressed,” “U.S. authorities believe,” “Said one U.S. senior intelligence official,” “U.S. officials said,” “Jordanian officials said” -- Amy, see, there’s a slight difference here -- “Several U.S. officials said,” “U.S. officials said,” “U.S. officials say,” “say U.S. officials,” “U.S. officials said,” “The American officials said,” “One U.S. counterterrorism official said.” Welcome to American journalism today in Iraq. This is what’s wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: How would you write the story?
ROBERT FISK: I wouldn’t write that for start, because I don't believe this particular story, which is claiming that Zarqawi has better intelligence than the United States. He doesn’t. It’s just that the United States military doesn’t know how to use intelligence, because it doesn’t understand what the war is about. But anyway, also I'm not sure that Zarqawi is alive, and this story claims that he is and he’s the mastermind -- he’s supposed to be the al-Qaeda mastermind.
AMY GOODMAN: What indicates to you that he isn’t? The latest story we have, the possibility --
ROBERT FISK: That he’s been killed?
AMY GOODMAN: That he has been forced to step down, so an Iraqi could step forward.
ROBERT FISK: Ah, yes. “According to American officials.” I remember the story came out, yeah. Look, Zarqawi has not been seen by anyone other than “U.S. officials say” ever since the beginning of the war. I think it’s possible, and many Iraqis think this, that he was killed in one of the initial air raids on Iraq in the northeastern area, in the Kurdish area, and that his I.D. has somehow come to be used by some other institution.
He has a wife of whom he was very possessive, who is now so poor. In the town of Zarqa, she has to get out to work. When his mother died more than a year ago, he didn't even send condolences to the family, or so the family have informed me, unlike a man --
AMY GOODMAN: And the family lives --?
ROBERT FISK: In Zarqa, hence his name Zarqawi, of course. In Jordan. But, you know, the problem is that if this man believes he’s a true Muslim, why didn't he send sorrowful greetings to his family on the death of his mother. Very, very weird. And over and over again we hear American military officials say or they think they can identify him in a videotape. This is a guy wearing a hood, right? I don’t know. Maybe he is alive, or maybe he’s a creation, but I’ve never met anyone who’s met him recently in Iraq, which surprises me, because I do meet a lot of people in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, the latest news out of Baghdad, a suicide bomber inside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad and another outside blew themselves up, killing at least 40 people today. The blast also wounded 45 people. The mosque in northern Baghdad belonged to SCIRI, the most powerful party inside Iraq’s ruling Shiite Alliance.
ROBERT FISK: Somebody wants a civil war in Iraq. I don't think the Iraqis do. You know, we have this story again, and it’s a sort of the narrative that’s been laid down, that all the Sunnis are rushing around blowing up Shiite mosques and all the Shiites are burning down Sunni mosques. And that’s not the Sunnis and the Shiites I’ve met in Iraq.
We keep hearing about people being kidnapped by men wearing police uniform or police stations being taken over by men wearing army uniform. Well, do you mean to tell me there’s a warehouse in Fallujah with 8,000 police uniforms made to measure for insurgents? I don’t believe it. I think the policemen are real policemen. I think the men wearing army uniforms are real soldiers. I think that the military on the Iraqi side has been thoroughly infiltrated by the insurgency, and I think there are despots working on behalf of government ministries. We know the Interior Ministry has a death squad, and now some of those corpses that I see in the mortuaries, including women blindfolded, hands tied behind their back, shot in the head, these are not being gunned down by insurgents on the roadways or blown up by bombs; they're victims of death squads.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what is happening in Israel and Palestine, the Hamas elections. Latest news, European Commission has temporarily halted direct aid payments to the Palestinian government.
ROBERT FISK: They voted for the wrong people, Amy. They voted for the wrong people. They misused democracy, you see? This is what happened in Algeria -- isn’t it? -- in 1990. The people were given democracy. They voted for the FIS, so the military canceled the second round of elections. We didn't want democracy to begin with in Iraq. Then, we worried the Iraqi Shiites would join in the insurgency. So we had democracy, and we’ve got an Islamic government in Iraq, as well. Believe me, it is Islamic. It is effectively an Iranian government, because SCIRI and Dawa, the two main linchpins of the government, they grew up, they were the creation of Iran. In Lebanon, we’ve now got, democratically elected, a Hezbollah minister in the Cabinet, whom the Americans can’t talk to, of course, because again they elected the wrong people.
We’ve got this problem in the West Bank. There’s a story here somewhere. You know, the Muslim Brotherhood get 88 seats in the Egyptian Assembly elections. We’ve got Hamas in power. We’ve got an Islamic government still in Iran, of course. And what's going to happen if Syria disappeared or the Syrian government went? You know, at some point, we’re all going to have to face up to the fact that if people do have a genuinely democratic election, we’ve got to talk to the people they elect, not the people they elect if they’re the people we want them to elect. And that’s the big problem for us in the Middle East at the moment.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is going to happen with the Hamas government?
ROBERT FISK: The Hamas government will talk to the Israelis, and they probably already are. I remember when the Hamas officials, who were all in those days “terrorists,” were thrown out of Israel into southern Lebanon, and I was talking to them on this hillside. Most of them or some of them have been blown up since by the Israelis, of course, and I remember I was saying to these guys, you know, “Well, actually, I’m going to be going to Israel tomorrow via Cyprus or via Jordan.” I can’t remember which way I went from Lebanon.
And one of these guys, Hamas people, bounded down the hill and said, “Ah, Mr. Robert, you might like Shimon Peres's home telephone number.” And it was Shimon Peres’s home telephone number, because, of course, these people all talk to each other.
I remember, after the Oslo Agreement, being in Jerusalem and discovering -- and it was on the front page the next day of the Jerusalem Post -- that the Israeli army had actually sat down and been negotiating with Hamas officials after the Oslo Agreement on the White House lawn, the famous shaking of hands between Rabin and Arafat. So, these contacts have continued between Hamas and the Israelis. This business, ‘oh, we don’t talk to terrorists,’ this is for children and journalists.
AMY GOODMAN: Your most recent piece, “Another Brick in the Wall,” you say we’ve been conned again. The Israeli elections, we’re told, mean that the dream of greater Israel has finally been abandoned. West Bank settlements will be closed down, just as the Jewish colonies were uprooted in Gaza last year. The Zionist claim to all of biblical Israel has withered away.
ROBERT FISK: Well, this is my point, that it’s not correct. What’s happened is that the war, which we prefer to call a security barrier or a fence -- see you New York Times -- it has taken away 10% of the 22% of mandate Palestine was left to negotiate over for the Palestinians. The Jordan Valley has gone. The roads that run like concrete ribbons across the territory, which is the so-called viable Palestinian state to come, are not going to be moved.
And the major Jewish settlements or colonies, which is what they would -- colonie in French -- at least they use the right words in the French press -- are going to remain. Ma’aleh Adumim, this vast concrete semi-circle which divides East Jerusalem -- or what was Arab East Jerusalem -- off in the West Bank, that, effectively, along with the wall -- and it is a wall as tall, if not taller than the Berlin Wall or the “Berlin Fence,” as they would have called it if built by the Israelis.
This effectively means there is not going to be a Palestinian state. So the idea that Mr. Olmert is going to suddenly invent new frontiers, and we're all going to accept it, is pie in the sky. I can't see how the U.N. can accept a new frontier. I can’t see how the E.U. can. I can’t see how even our own dear Mr. Blair is going to accept that. I'm sure Mr. Bush will manage a way, though.
Wrap...
[An excerpt]
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk is our guest, war correspondent for more than 30 years. Your response, once again, to the issue of the planting of stories?
ROBERT FISK: Well, I'm surprised the military have to plant stories, because I find that an awful lot of my colleagues are quite happy to go along with stories planted or otherwise. You’ve only got to see the number of times on the front page of the New York Times or the L.A. Times or the Washington Post when the phrase “American officials say” appears, particularly the L.A. Times. I can give an example of that, in which a whole story is repeatedly sourced, after 2003, when we know there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, when we know the press was misled totally in the United States and went along with the war party.
Still we see everything being sourced and re-sourced back to American officials, as if the U.S. administration is the center of world truth. I’ll give you an example. I was actually doing the book tour in Los Angeles, picked up my morning L.A. Times. Here’s a story about Zarqawi, who may or may not exist, of course. “U.S. authorities say,” “U.S. officials said,” “Said one Justice Department counterterrorism official,” “U.S. authorities say,” “officials said,” “U.S. officials said.” It turns to page B-10. It gets worse and worse. Look. “Several U.S. officials said,” “those officials said,” “U.S. officials confirmed” -- stop me when you want -- “American officials complained,” “U.S. officials stressed,” “U.S. authorities believe,” “Said one U.S. senior intelligence official,” “U.S. officials said,” “Jordanian officials said” -- Amy, see, there’s a slight difference here -- “Several U.S. officials said,” “U.S. officials said,” “U.S. officials say,” “say U.S. officials,” “U.S. officials said,” “The American officials said,” “One U.S. counterterrorism official said.” Welcome to American journalism today in Iraq. This is what’s wrong.
AMY GOODMAN: How would you write the story?
ROBERT FISK: I wouldn’t write that for start, because I don't believe this particular story, which is claiming that Zarqawi has better intelligence than the United States. He doesn’t. It’s just that the United States military doesn’t know how to use intelligence, because it doesn’t understand what the war is about. But anyway, also I'm not sure that Zarqawi is alive, and this story claims that he is and he’s the mastermind -- he’s supposed to be the al-Qaeda mastermind.
AMY GOODMAN: What indicates to you that he isn’t? The latest story we have, the possibility --
ROBERT FISK: That he’s been killed?
AMY GOODMAN: That he has been forced to step down, so an Iraqi could step forward.
ROBERT FISK: Ah, yes. “According to American officials.” I remember the story came out, yeah. Look, Zarqawi has not been seen by anyone other than “U.S. officials say” ever since the beginning of the war. I think it’s possible, and many Iraqis think this, that he was killed in one of the initial air raids on Iraq in the northeastern area, in the Kurdish area, and that his I.D. has somehow come to be used by some other institution.
He has a wife of whom he was very possessive, who is now so poor. In the town of Zarqa, she has to get out to work. When his mother died more than a year ago, he didn't even send condolences to the family, or so the family have informed me, unlike a man --
AMY GOODMAN: And the family lives --?
ROBERT FISK: In Zarqa, hence his name Zarqawi, of course. In Jordan. But, you know, the problem is that if this man believes he’s a true Muslim, why didn't he send sorrowful greetings to his family on the death of his mother. Very, very weird. And over and over again we hear American military officials say or they think they can identify him in a videotape. This is a guy wearing a hood, right? I don’t know. Maybe he is alive, or maybe he’s a creation, but I’ve never met anyone who’s met him recently in Iraq, which surprises me, because I do meet a lot of people in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, the latest news out of Baghdad, a suicide bomber inside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad and another outside blew themselves up, killing at least 40 people today. The blast also wounded 45 people. The mosque in northern Baghdad belonged to SCIRI, the most powerful party inside Iraq’s ruling Shiite Alliance.
ROBERT FISK: Somebody wants a civil war in Iraq. I don't think the Iraqis do. You know, we have this story again, and it’s a sort of the narrative that’s been laid down, that all the Sunnis are rushing around blowing up Shiite mosques and all the Shiites are burning down Sunni mosques. And that’s not the Sunnis and the Shiites I’ve met in Iraq.
We keep hearing about people being kidnapped by men wearing police uniform or police stations being taken over by men wearing army uniform. Well, do you mean to tell me there’s a warehouse in Fallujah with 8,000 police uniforms made to measure for insurgents? I don’t believe it. I think the policemen are real policemen. I think the men wearing army uniforms are real soldiers. I think that the military on the Iraqi side has been thoroughly infiltrated by the insurgency, and I think there are despots working on behalf of government ministries. We know the Interior Ministry has a death squad, and now some of those corpses that I see in the mortuaries, including women blindfolded, hands tied behind their back, shot in the head, these are not being gunned down by insurgents on the roadways or blown up by bombs; they're victims of death squads.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what is happening in Israel and Palestine, the Hamas elections. Latest news, European Commission has temporarily halted direct aid payments to the Palestinian government.
ROBERT FISK: They voted for the wrong people, Amy. They voted for the wrong people. They misused democracy, you see? This is what happened in Algeria -- isn’t it? -- in 1990. The people were given democracy. They voted for the FIS, so the military canceled the second round of elections. We didn't want democracy to begin with in Iraq. Then, we worried the Iraqi Shiites would join in the insurgency. So we had democracy, and we’ve got an Islamic government in Iraq, as well. Believe me, it is Islamic. It is effectively an Iranian government, because SCIRI and Dawa, the two main linchpins of the government, they grew up, they were the creation of Iran. In Lebanon, we’ve now got, democratically elected, a Hezbollah minister in the Cabinet, whom the Americans can’t talk to, of course, because again they elected the wrong people.
We’ve got this problem in the West Bank. There’s a story here somewhere. You know, the Muslim Brotherhood get 88 seats in the Egyptian Assembly elections. We’ve got Hamas in power. We’ve got an Islamic government still in Iran, of course. And what's going to happen if Syria disappeared or the Syrian government went? You know, at some point, we’re all going to have to face up to the fact that if people do have a genuinely democratic election, we’ve got to talk to the people they elect, not the people they elect if they’re the people we want them to elect. And that’s the big problem for us in the Middle East at the moment.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is going to happen with the Hamas government?
ROBERT FISK: The Hamas government will talk to the Israelis, and they probably already are. I remember when the Hamas officials, who were all in those days “terrorists,” were thrown out of Israel into southern Lebanon, and I was talking to them on this hillside. Most of them or some of them have been blown up since by the Israelis, of course, and I remember I was saying to these guys, you know, “Well, actually, I’m going to be going to Israel tomorrow via Cyprus or via Jordan.” I can’t remember which way I went from Lebanon.
And one of these guys, Hamas people, bounded down the hill and said, “Ah, Mr. Robert, you might like Shimon Peres's home telephone number.” And it was Shimon Peres’s home telephone number, because, of course, these people all talk to each other.
I remember, after the Oslo Agreement, being in Jerusalem and discovering -- and it was on the front page the next day of the Jerusalem Post -- that the Israeli army had actually sat down and been negotiating with Hamas officials after the Oslo Agreement on the White House lawn, the famous shaking of hands between Rabin and Arafat. So, these contacts have continued between Hamas and the Israelis. This business, ‘oh, we don’t talk to terrorists,’ this is for children and journalists.
AMY GOODMAN: Your most recent piece, “Another Brick in the Wall,” you say we’ve been conned again. The Israeli elections, we’re told, mean that the dream of greater Israel has finally been abandoned. West Bank settlements will be closed down, just as the Jewish colonies were uprooted in Gaza last year. The Zionist claim to all of biblical Israel has withered away.
ROBERT FISK: Well, this is my point, that it’s not correct. What’s happened is that the war, which we prefer to call a security barrier or a fence -- see you New York Times -- it has taken away 10% of the 22% of mandate Palestine was left to negotiate over for the Palestinians. The Jordan Valley has gone. The roads that run like concrete ribbons across the territory, which is the so-called viable Palestinian state to come, are not going to be moved.
And the major Jewish settlements or colonies, which is what they would -- colonie in French -- at least they use the right words in the French press -- are going to remain. Ma’aleh Adumim, this vast concrete semi-circle which divides East Jerusalem -- or what was Arab East Jerusalem -- off in the West Bank, that, effectively, along with the wall -- and it is a wall as tall, if not taller than the Berlin Wall or the “Berlin Fence,” as they would have called it if built by the Israelis.
This effectively means there is not going to be a Palestinian state. So the idea that Mr. Olmert is going to suddenly invent new frontiers, and we're all going to accept it, is pie in the sky. I can't see how the U.N. can accept a new frontier. I can’t see how the E.U. can. I can’t see how even our own dear Mr. Blair is going to accept that. I'm sure Mr. Bush will manage a way, though.
Wrap...
Blowback. Soldier victims in Bosnia & Iraq....
NOTE: Here is an excerpt. Read the entire piece at:
www.indexresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/iraq-victims-of-violence/html
"Whilst I was running three clinics during the Bosnian war, I listened to victims of rape and violence. I listened to grieving family members. I also listened to soldiers. I was given permission to tell their stories.
Soldier A. came to see me. He was in his early twenties - thin, pale, and sweating. His eyes did not look outward towards Tomislav Petrosic, my translator, or myself. They were dark eyes boring inwards. His hands twisted around each other. He found it difficult to speak. Sometimes he stuttered. He was soft-spoken. He did not swear or swagger.
“No, I cannot tell you my story. You are a woman. But I will tell your translator, and he can tell you.”
Soldier A. was with three men. The other soldiers, he said, knifed open a pregnant woman’s belly and ripped the foetus out, almost fully grown. The other soldiers, he said, then stuffed a dead dog inside the woman, who died.
Soldier A. came back into the room. Sometimes he sat, sometimes he paced around the room. He very slowly told me why he had come to see me. He had not been able to sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time for a year. He had nightmares. His eating habits were erratic. He always saw the crime before his eyes, awake or asleep. He thought of suicide, often. He came to see me many times. Sometimes he would talk. Sometimes he sat silently. I learned, with difficulty, to have compassion.
A soldier becomes the victim of his own violence. Blowback.
(read the rest...click link at top)
Wrap...
www.indexresearch.blogspot.com/2006/04/iraq-victims-of-violence/html
"Whilst I was running three clinics during the Bosnian war, I listened to victims of rape and violence. I listened to grieving family members. I also listened to soldiers. I was given permission to tell their stories.
Soldier A. came to see me. He was in his early twenties - thin, pale, and sweating. His eyes did not look outward towards Tomislav Petrosic, my translator, or myself. They were dark eyes boring inwards. His hands twisted around each other. He found it difficult to speak. Sometimes he stuttered. He was soft-spoken. He did not swear or swagger.
“No, I cannot tell you my story. You are a woman. But I will tell your translator, and he can tell you.”
Soldier A. was with three men. The other soldiers, he said, knifed open a pregnant woman’s belly and ripped the foetus out, almost fully grown. The other soldiers, he said, then stuffed a dead dog inside the woman, who died.
Soldier A. came back into the room. Sometimes he sat, sometimes he paced around the room. He very slowly told me why he had come to see me. He had not been able to sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time for a year. He had nightmares. His eating habits were erratic. He always saw the crime before his eyes, awake or asleep. He thought of suicide, often. He came to see me many times. Sometimes he would talk. Sometimes he sat silently. I learned, with difficulty, to have compassion.
A soldier becomes the victim of his own violence. Blowback.
(read the rest...click link at top)
Wrap...
Untold story...when GIs' said NO!!! And now????
[NOTE: (From Preemptive Karma)
Digby asks the question of the century:If the president was willing to authorize leaking of national security information to reporters for political purposes, why should we believe he won't authorize warrantless wiretaps on Americans for political purposes?]
From InMotion Magazine via truthout.org:
How GI Resistance Altered the Course of History
By Paul Rockwell
In Motion Magazine
Monday 03 April 2006
"Sir, No Sir," A timely film, premiers week of 4/3/2006.
"General, your tank is a mighty vehicle.
It shatters the forest and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs drivers.
General, a man is quite expendable.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think."
-- Bertolt Brecht
When award-winning actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland organized an anti-war review, touring US military bases and towns around the world, the GI rebellion against the war in Vietnam was already in full force.
In one theatrical episode, evoking laughter and applause from thousands of soldiers and Marines, Fonda played the part of an aide to President Richard Nixon.
"Richard," she exclaims. "There's a terrible demonstration going on outside."
Nixon replies: "Oh, there's always a demonstration going on outside."
Fonda: "But Richard. This one is completely out of control. They're storming the White House."
"Oh, I think I better call out the 3rd Marines." Nixon exclaims.
"You, can't, Richard," says Fonda.
"Why not?" says Nixon.
She answers: "Because they ARE the 3rd Marines!"
Archival footage of the Fonda tour appears in David Zeiger's exciting new film, "Sir, No Sir," which opens in select theatres throughout the US this month. (See www.sirnosir.com for schedule.)
"Sir, No Sir," the untold story of the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam, is a documentary.
It's not a work of nostalgia. It's an activist film, and it comes at a time when GI resistance to the current war is spreading throughout the United States.
There are more than 100 films - fiction and nonfiction - about the war in Vietnam. Not one deals seriously with the most pivotal events of the time - the anti-war actions of GIs within the military.
The three-decade blackout of GI resistance is not due to any lack of evidence. Information about the resistance has always been available. According to the Pentagon, over 500,000 incidents of desertion took place between 1966 and 1977. Officers were fragged. Entire units refused to enter battle.
Large social movements create their own "committees of correspondence" - communication systems beyond the control of power-holders and police authority. Despite prison sentences, police spies, agent provocateurs, vigilante bombing of their offices, coffeehouses and underground papers sprung up in the dusty, often remote towns that surrounded US military bases throughout the world.
"Just about every base in the world had an underground paper," Director Zeiger tells us in Mother Jones.
When the first coffeehouse opened in Columbia, South Carolina, near Fort Jackson, an average of six hundred GIs visited each week. Moved by the courage and audacity of soldiers for peace, civilians raised funds to help operate the coffeehouses and to provide legal defense.
When local proprietors, like Tyrell Jewelers near Fort Hood, fleeced GIs, GI boycotts were common. At one point, the Department of Defense tripled its purchase of non-union produce in order to break the United Farm Workers boycott. American GIs, many from the fields and barrios of California, immediately joined the Farm Worker pickets. Mocking signs appeared on military bases saying "Officers Buy Lettuce." The GI movement was a profoundly class-conscious movement.
A counter-culture blossomed inside the military. Affinity groups, like "The Buddies" and "The Freaks" were formed. Afros, rock and soul music, bracelets and beads, the use of peace signs and clenched fists - a culture antithetical to the totalitarian culture of military life - proliferated. Prison riots in the stockades, from Fort Dix to the Marine brig in Da Nang, were common by 1970.
In response to a detested recruitment slogan - "Fun, Travel, Adventure" - GIs named one periodical "FTA," which meant "Fuck The Army." When GIs ceased to cooperate with superiors, the military lost control of culture and communication.
Military attacks on GI rights - the right to hold meetings, to read papers, to think for themselves, to resist illegal orders - did not subdue the growing anti-military movement. Repression actually widened the resistance.
Like Pablo Paredes, Kevin Benderman, Kelly Dougherty, Camilo Mejia - to name a few war resisters of our time - the GI resisters of the 60s and 70s showed incredible courage. Pvt. David Samas, one of the Fort Hood Three, who refused to serve in Vietnam, said in one impassioned speech: "We have not been scared. We have not been in the least shaken from our paths. Even if physical violence is used against us, we will fight back ... the GI should be reached somehow. He doesn't want to fight. He has no reason to risk his life. And the peace movement is dedicated to his safety."
In July 1970 forty combat officers sent a letter to the commander-in-chief. If the war continues, they wrote, "young Americans in the military will simply refuse en masse to cooperate." That's exactly what happened. Nothing is so fearful to power-holders as non-cooperation. In 1971, even the Armed Forces Journal published an article by a former Marine Colonel, entitled, "The collapse of the Armed Forces."
A point was reached where the resistance became infectious, almost unstoppable. It spread from barracks to aircraft carriers, from army stockades and navy brigs into the conservative military towns where GIs were stationed. Even elite colleges like West Point were affected by revolt. Thousands of defiant soldiers went to prison. Thousands went into exile in Canada and Sweden.
In the end the GI anti-war movement - enlisted youth, draftees, poor kids from ghettos, farms and barrios - paralyzed the biggest death machine of modern times. In short, people power altered the course of history. (The book "Soldiers In Revolt," by David Cortright, makes an excellent companion to "Sir, No Sir.")
Meeting the War Resisters
"Sir, No Sir" is organized around the testimony of prominent war resisters. Yes, there are a lot of talking heads in "Sir, No Sir." But their revelations, backed with images and footage of rebellion, are unforgettable. We meet Donald Duncan, the decorated member of the Green Berets, who resigned in defiance in 1963 after 15 months of service in Vietnam. His article in Ramparts, "I Quit," generated great excitement in the student movement.
We also meet Howard Levy, the Green Beret medic who refused to use medical practices as a political tactic in war. His court martial caused a huge impact on GI and civilian consciousness. The troops supported him.
"When the court martial began on base," he tells us on film, "it was the most remarkable thing when hundreds and hundreds would hang out of the windows of the barracks and give me the V-sign, or give me the clenched fist. Something had changed here, something very important was happening."
That something was GI revolt.
Thousands of separate, individual acts of moral defiance eventually merged into a collective movement with a specific goal: end the war.
"Sir, No Sir" is not a preachy film. Geiger does not lecture us; he tells a story. Yet we cannot afford to miss the built-in lesson from the eventual triumph of the GI resistance, a lesson that goes against media ideology and conventional wisdom. In the words of George Lakey, "People power is simply more powerful than military power. Nothing is more important for today's activists to know than this: the foundation of political rule is the compliance of the people, not violence. People power is more powerful than violence. The sooner we act on that knowledge, the sooner the US Empire can be brought down."
Of course times have changed. The '60s are over. And while every generation determines its own destiny in its own way, while history itself is but "a light on the stern" - it is still true that "The spirit of the people is greater than man's technology."
"Sir, No Sir" is a work of hope.
Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine.
Wrap....
Digby asks the question of the century:If the president was willing to authorize leaking of national security information to reporters for political purposes, why should we believe he won't authorize warrantless wiretaps on Americans for political purposes?]
From InMotion Magazine via truthout.org:
How GI Resistance Altered the Course of History
By Paul Rockwell
In Motion Magazine
Monday 03 April 2006
"Sir, No Sir," A timely film, premiers week of 4/3/2006.
"General, your tank is a mighty vehicle.
It shatters the forest and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs drivers.
General, a man is quite expendable.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think."
-- Bertolt Brecht
When award-winning actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland organized an anti-war review, touring US military bases and towns around the world, the GI rebellion against the war in Vietnam was already in full force.
In one theatrical episode, evoking laughter and applause from thousands of soldiers and Marines, Fonda played the part of an aide to President Richard Nixon.
"Richard," she exclaims. "There's a terrible demonstration going on outside."
Nixon replies: "Oh, there's always a demonstration going on outside."
Fonda: "But Richard. This one is completely out of control. They're storming the White House."
"Oh, I think I better call out the 3rd Marines." Nixon exclaims.
"You, can't, Richard," says Fonda.
"Why not?" says Nixon.
She answers: "Because they ARE the 3rd Marines!"
Archival footage of the Fonda tour appears in David Zeiger's exciting new film, "Sir, No Sir," which opens in select theatres throughout the US this month. (See www.sirnosir.com for schedule.)
"Sir, No Sir," the untold story of the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam, is a documentary.
It's not a work of nostalgia. It's an activist film, and it comes at a time when GI resistance to the current war is spreading throughout the United States.
There are more than 100 films - fiction and nonfiction - about the war in Vietnam. Not one deals seriously with the most pivotal events of the time - the anti-war actions of GIs within the military.
The three-decade blackout of GI resistance is not due to any lack of evidence. Information about the resistance has always been available. According to the Pentagon, over 500,000 incidents of desertion took place between 1966 and 1977. Officers were fragged. Entire units refused to enter battle.
Large social movements create their own "committees of correspondence" - communication systems beyond the control of power-holders and police authority. Despite prison sentences, police spies, agent provocateurs, vigilante bombing of their offices, coffeehouses and underground papers sprung up in the dusty, often remote towns that surrounded US military bases throughout the world.
"Just about every base in the world had an underground paper," Director Zeiger tells us in Mother Jones.
When the first coffeehouse opened in Columbia, South Carolina, near Fort Jackson, an average of six hundred GIs visited each week. Moved by the courage and audacity of soldiers for peace, civilians raised funds to help operate the coffeehouses and to provide legal defense.
When local proprietors, like Tyrell Jewelers near Fort Hood, fleeced GIs, GI boycotts were common. At one point, the Department of Defense tripled its purchase of non-union produce in order to break the United Farm Workers boycott. American GIs, many from the fields and barrios of California, immediately joined the Farm Worker pickets. Mocking signs appeared on military bases saying "Officers Buy Lettuce." The GI movement was a profoundly class-conscious movement.
A counter-culture blossomed inside the military. Affinity groups, like "The Buddies" and "The Freaks" were formed. Afros, rock and soul music, bracelets and beads, the use of peace signs and clenched fists - a culture antithetical to the totalitarian culture of military life - proliferated. Prison riots in the stockades, from Fort Dix to the Marine brig in Da Nang, were common by 1970.
In response to a detested recruitment slogan - "Fun, Travel, Adventure" - GIs named one periodical "FTA," which meant "Fuck The Army." When GIs ceased to cooperate with superiors, the military lost control of culture and communication.
Military attacks on GI rights - the right to hold meetings, to read papers, to think for themselves, to resist illegal orders - did not subdue the growing anti-military movement. Repression actually widened the resistance.
Like Pablo Paredes, Kevin Benderman, Kelly Dougherty, Camilo Mejia - to name a few war resisters of our time - the GI resisters of the 60s and 70s showed incredible courage. Pvt. David Samas, one of the Fort Hood Three, who refused to serve in Vietnam, said in one impassioned speech: "We have not been scared. We have not been in the least shaken from our paths. Even if physical violence is used against us, we will fight back ... the GI should be reached somehow. He doesn't want to fight. He has no reason to risk his life. And the peace movement is dedicated to his safety."
In July 1970 forty combat officers sent a letter to the commander-in-chief. If the war continues, they wrote, "young Americans in the military will simply refuse en masse to cooperate." That's exactly what happened. Nothing is so fearful to power-holders as non-cooperation. In 1971, even the Armed Forces Journal published an article by a former Marine Colonel, entitled, "The collapse of the Armed Forces."
A point was reached where the resistance became infectious, almost unstoppable. It spread from barracks to aircraft carriers, from army stockades and navy brigs into the conservative military towns where GIs were stationed. Even elite colleges like West Point were affected by revolt. Thousands of defiant soldiers went to prison. Thousands went into exile in Canada and Sweden.
In the end the GI anti-war movement - enlisted youth, draftees, poor kids from ghettos, farms and barrios - paralyzed the biggest death machine of modern times. In short, people power altered the course of history. (The book "Soldiers In Revolt," by David Cortright, makes an excellent companion to "Sir, No Sir.")
Meeting the War Resisters
"Sir, No Sir" is organized around the testimony of prominent war resisters. Yes, there are a lot of talking heads in "Sir, No Sir." But their revelations, backed with images and footage of rebellion, are unforgettable. We meet Donald Duncan, the decorated member of the Green Berets, who resigned in defiance in 1963 after 15 months of service in Vietnam. His article in Ramparts, "I Quit," generated great excitement in the student movement.
We also meet Howard Levy, the Green Beret medic who refused to use medical practices as a political tactic in war. His court martial caused a huge impact on GI and civilian consciousness. The troops supported him.
"When the court martial began on base," he tells us on film, "it was the most remarkable thing when hundreds and hundreds would hang out of the windows of the barracks and give me the V-sign, or give me the clenched fist. Something had changed here, something very important was happening."
That something was GI revolt.
Thousands of separate, individual acts of moral defiance eventually merged into a collective movement with a specific goal: end the war.
"Sir, No Sir" is not a preachy film. Geiger does not lecture us; he tells a story. Yet we cannot afford to miss the built-in lesson from the eventual triumph of the GI resistance, a lesson that goes against media ideology and conventional wisdom. In the words of George Lakey, "People power is simply more powerful than military power. Nothing is more important for today's activists to know than this: the foundation of political rule is the compliance of the people, not violence. People power is more powerful than violence. The sooner we act on that knowledge, the sooner the US Empire can be brought down."
Of course times have changed. The '60s are over. And while every generation determines its own destiny in its own way, while history itself is but "a light on the stern" - it is still true that "The spirit of the people is greater than man's technology."
"Sir, No Sir" is a work of hope.
Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine.
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