The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring A Personal Outside Counsel For The Valerie Plame Investigation

The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring A Personal Outside Counsel For The Valerie Plame Investigation

By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 04, 2004

Recently, the White House acknowledged that President Bush is talking with, and considering hiring, a non-government attorney, James E. Sharp . Sharp is being consulted, and may be retained, regarding the current grand jury investigation of the leak revealing the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert operative.

(Plame is the wife of Bush critic and former ambassador Joe Wilson; I discussed the leak itself in a prior column , and then discussed further developments in the investigation in a follow-up column .)

This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development. The President of the United States is potentially hiring a private criminal defense lawyer . Unsurprisingly, the White House is doing all it can to bury the story, providing precious little detail or context for the President's action.

According to the Los Angeles Times , Bush explained his action by saying, "This is a criminal matter. It's a serious matter," but he gave no further specifics. White House officials, too, would not say exactly what prompted Bush to seek the outside advice, or whether he had been asked to appear before the grand jury.

Nonetheless, Bush's action, in itself, says a great deal. In this column, I will analyze what its implications may be.

The Valerie Plame Grand Jury Investigation

The Plame investigation took a quantum leap in December 2003, when Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself. Ashcroft's deputy appointed a special counsel, who has powers and authority tantamount to those of the attorney general himself. That means, in practice, that Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney from Chicago , does not report to the Justice Department regarding his investigation. (In this sense, Fitzgerald's position is similar to that of an Independent Counsel under the now-defunct independent counsel statute.)

Those familiar with Fitzgerald's inquiry tell me that the investigative team of attorneys is principally from his office in Chicago , and that they do not really know their way around the workings of Washington . This has resulted in an investigation that is being handled Chicago-style - not D.C.-style. That's significant because in Washington , there is more of a courtesy and protocol toward power than exists in the Windy City .

The Fitzgerald investigation has not made friends with the Washington press corps, many of whom are being subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Those journalists with whom I have spoken say they are not willing appeared before any grand jury to reveal their sources. So this issue is headed toward a showdown. And under existing law, a journalist cannot refuse to provide information to a grand jury.

Nor, based on the few existing precedents, can a sitting president refuse to give testimony to a grand jury. And that appears to be the broad, underlying reason Bush is talking with Washington attorney James Sharp.

Reasons the Plame Grand Jury May Want Bush's Testimony

Why might the grand jury wish to hear Bush's testimony? Most of the possible answers are not favorable for Bush.

There is, of course, one totally benign way to view the situation. "It is hard for me to imagine that Pat Fitzgerald is going to be going aggressively after the president," one Washington lawyer told the Los Angeles Times . "My guess is that he feels a need to conduct an interview because he needs to be in a position to say, 'I have done everything that could be done.'" The lawyer added, "If [Fitzgerald] closes the case without an indictment and has not interviewed the president, he is going to be criticized."

But from what I have learned from those who have been quizzed by the Fitzgerald investigators it seems unlikely that they are interviewing the President merely as a matter of completeness, or in order to be able to defend their actions in front of the public. Asking a President to testify - or even be interviewed - remains a serious, sensitive and rare occasion. It is not done lightly. Doing so raises separation of powers concerns that continue to worry many.

Instead, it seems the investigators are seeking to connect up with, and then speak with, persons who have links to and from the leaked information - and those persons, it seems, probably include the President. (I should stress, however, that I do not have access to grand jury testimony, and that grand jury proceedings are secret. But the facts that are properly public do allow some inference and commentary about what likely is occurring in the grand jury.)

Undoubtedly, those from the White House have been asked if they spoke with the president about the leak. It appears that one or more of them may indeed have done so. .

If so - and if the person revealed the leaker's identity to the President, or if the President decided he preferred not to know the leaker's identity. -- then this fact could conflict with Bush's remarkably broad public statements on the issue. He has said that he did not know of "anybody in [his] administration who leaked classified information." He has also said that he wanted "to know the truth" about this leak.

If Bush is called before the grand jury, it is likely because Fitzgerald believes that he knows much more about this leak than he has stated publicly.

Perhaps Bush may have knowledge not only of the leaker, but also of efforts to make this issue go away - if indeed there have been any. It is remarkably easy to obstruct justice, and this matter has been under various phases of an investigation by the Justice Department since it was referred by the CIA last summer.

It seems very possible the leaker - or leakers, for two government sources were initially cited by columnist Robert Novak -- may have panicked, covered up his (or their) illegality, and in doing so, committed further crimes. If so, did the President hear of it? Was he willfully blind? Was he himself the victim of a cover-up by underlings? The grand jury may be interested in any or all of these possibilities.

Bush Needs An Outside Attorney To Maintain Attorney-Client Privilege

Readers may wonder, why is Bush going to an outside counsel, when numerous government attorneys are available to him - for instance, in the White House Counsel's Office ?

The answer is that the President has likely been told it would be risky to talk to his White House lawyers, particularly if he knows more than he claims publicly.

Ironically, it was the fair-haired Republican stalwart Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who decimated the attorney-client privilege for government lawyers and their clients - which, to paraphrase the authority Wigmore, applies when legal advice of any kind is sought by a client from a professional legal adviser, where the advice is sought in confidence.

The reason the privilege was created was to insure open and candid discussion between a lawyer and his or her client. It traditionally applied in both civil and criminal situations for government lawyers, just as it did for non-government lawyers. It applied to written records of communications, such as attorney's notes, as well as to the communications themselves.

But Starr tried to thwart that tradition in two different cases, before two federal appeals courts. There, he contended that there should be no such privilege in criminal cases involving government lawyers.

In the first case, In re Grand Jury Subpoenas Duces Tecum , former First Lady Hillary Clinton had spoken with her private counsel in the presence of White House counsel (who had made notes of the conversation). Starr wanted the notes. Hillary Clinton claimed the privilege.

A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed with Starr. The court held that a grand jury was entitled to the information. It also held that government officials -- even when serving as attorneys -- had a special obligation to provide incriminating information in their possession.

In the second case, In re Lindsey , Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey refused to testify about his knowledge of President Clinton's relationship to Monica Lewinsky, based on attorney-client privilege. Starr sought to compel Lindsey's testimony, and he won again.

This time, Starr persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to follow the Eighth Circuit. The court ruled that exposure of wrongdoing by government lawyers fostered democracy, as "openness in government has always been thought crucial to ensuring that the people remain in control of their government."

Based on these precedents, President Bush has almost certainly been told that the only way he can discuss his potential testimony with a lawyer is by hiring one outside the government.

What Might a Private Attorney Advise Bush to Do?

It is possible that Bush is consulting Sharp only out of an excess of caution - despite the fact that he knows nothing of the leak, or of any possible coverup of the leak. But that's not likely.

On this subject, I spoke with an experienced former federal prosecutor who works in Washington , specializing in white collar criminal defense (but who does not know Sharp). That attorney told me that he is baffled by Bush's move - unless Bush has knowledge of the leak. "It would not seem that the President needs to consult personal counsel, thereby preserving the attorney-client privilege, if he has no knowledge about the leak," he told me.

What advice might Bush get from a private defense counsel? The lawyer I consulted opined that, "If he does have knowledge about the leak and does not plan to disclose it, the only good legaladvice would be to take the Fifth, rather than lie. The political fallout is a separate issue."

I raised the issue of whether the President might be able to invoke executive privilege as to this information. But the attorney I consulted - who is well versed in this area of law -- opined that "Neither 'outing' Plame, nor covering for the perpetrators would seem to fall within the scope of any executive privilege that I am aware of."

That may not stop Bush from trying to invoke executive privilege, however - or at least from talking to his attorney about the option. As I have discussed in one of my prior columns , Vice President Dick Cheney has tried to avoid invoking it in implausible circumstances - in the case that is now before the U.S .Supreme Court. Rather he claims he is beyond the need for the privilege, and simply cannot be sued.

Suffice it to say that whatever the meaning of Bush's decision to talk with private counsel about the Valerie Plame leak, the matter has taken a more ominous turn with Bush's action. It has only become more portentous because now Dick Cheney has also hired a lawyer for himself, suggesting both men may have known more than they let on. Clearly, the investigation is heading toward a culmination of some sort. And it should be interesting.

John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the President.

Weeeeeeeeeee!

DICK CHENEY IS A LYING SACK OF...

HALLIBURTON...

From the excellent CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS:

HALLIBURTON
Play Contractopoly

Last September, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on national television and denied that he had any advance knowledge of or involvement in lucrative government contracts given to his former employer, Halliburton. Cheney said, "I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government." But Cheney wasn't telling the truth. In a letter to the vice president on Sunday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) reveals that the vice president's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby "was briefed in October 2002 about the proposal to issue the November 11 task order [contract] to Halliburton." Earlier this month, Time Magazine unearthed an e-mail which indicates that a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton on March 8, 2003 was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Pentagon officials now acknowledge that Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith discussed the March 2003 Halliburton contract in advance with Cheney's office. But don't let Dick Cheney have all the fun. Check out Contractopoly – the new interactive game from American Progress that lets you win billions in sweetheart deals from the Bush administration as you rebuild Iraq.

HALLIBURTON CONTRACTS AWARDED BY POLITICAL APPOINTEES: Feith, a political appointee, was given ultimate responsibility to award the 2002 "task order" contract. Ordinarily, contracting officers, not political appointees, make those decisions "to avoid any appearance of political influence in the outcome." Steven L. Schooner, a government contracting expert at George Washington University Law School, said, "The suggestion that political appointees would be directing that type of investigation does not seem consistent with maintaining the appearance of propriety."

PENTAGON AUDITORS SAY HALLIBURTON RIPS OFF TAXPAYERS: An audit conducted by the Pentagon found "wide-spread deficiencies in the way Halliburton tracks billions of dollars of government contracts in Iraq and Kuwait, leading to 'significant' overcharges." According to the auditors, Halliburton failed "to follow the company's internal procedures or even to determine whether subcontractors had performed work." Earlier audits revealed Halliburton overcharged $27 million for meals and $61 million for gasoline.

HALLIBURTON EMPLOYEES SAY HALLIBURTON RIPS OFF TAXPAYERS: Several former Halliburton employees "issued signed statements charging that the company routinely wasted money." According to David Wilson and James Warren, both of whom worked for Halliburton, "brand new $85,000 trucks were abandoned or 'torched' if they got a flat tire or experienced minor mechanical problems." Former Halliburton logistics specialist Marie deYoung has documentation proving "Halliburton paid $45 per case of soda and $100 per 15-pound bag of laundry." According to deYoung, "Halliburton did not comply with the Army's request to move Halliburton employees from a five-star hotel in Kuwait, where it costs taxpayers approximately $10,000 per day to house the employees." Michael West, who worked as a foreman for Halliburton, said "he and other employees spent weeks in Iraq with virtually nothing to do, but were instructed to bill 12-hour days for 7 days a week on their timesheets." Want more? Here's a long look at Halliburton and its numerous transgressions.

TELL TOM DAVIS TO STOP COVERING UP THE FACTS: Despite the gravity of the allegations by the Halliburton employees, House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) has refused to allow them to testify under oath during the committee's hearing on government contracting today. Davis claims that "the committee staff needs more time to investigate their allegations." But Waxman notes that, in the past, "promises to investigate in the future have served to deflect criticism of the committee's inaction, but the actual investigations have not been pursued as vigorously as the circumstances warrant." E-mail Tom Davis at tom.davis@mail.house.gov and tell him to let the former Halliburton employees speak.

MEDICARE
Hold On To Your Teeth, Gladys

President Bush traveled to Liberty, MO, on the tax-payer's dime yesterday in an effort to promote the beleaguered prescription drug card program. Attempting to sidestep criticism, he offered up a couple of seniors to tout the program, including Gladys Cole, who said, "I about dropped my false teeth" after learning about the program. Hold on to your teeth, Gladys; the messy drug card program is riddled with confusing details and features which do more to protect corporate interests than the medical needs of seniors. Even President Bush acknowledged the program was troubled; a move surprising in an administration loath to admit mistakes, he admitted there were concerns with his prescription drug program, saying, "we've got some problems."

THE PROBLEMS: In short, these are some of the top problems to which the president may have been referring: a) After signing up for a card, seniors are locked into it, while the drug companies are allowed to change prices as often as once a week; b) instead of acting to keep companies from changing benefits frequently, the White House is crossing its fingers. Leslie Norwalk, who oversees the drug program, said, "I suspect it may [happen] but I hope not often." Many of these companies the administration has decided to trust have been charged at the federal and/or state level with fraud; c) studies show seniors can find cheaper drugs without using the cards; d) the system is confusing, with 73 different cards all covering different medications and constantly changing benefits; e) drug card companies have already begun jacking up prices to offset the discount; and f) the complicated system provides an ideal atmosphere for fraud, as unscrupulous con artists can manipulate the confusion to swindle seniors.

SENIORS AREN'T BUYING IT: Most seniors are reacting to the drug cards with apathy. The White House predicted that 7 million people would sign up for a card by December 2004. The LA Times, however, writes, "Faced with confusing red tape and an array of choices, only about 3.3 million of Medicare's 42 million beneficiaries have enrolled in the program." Of those, "fewer than one-third of them have deliberately signed up; the rest were enrolled automatically by private health plans to which they belong." According to AARP spokesman Steve Hahn, "People are having a tough time…They are a bit confused, and they are getting overwhelmed with information." While about 49,000 people have contacted AARP to request information about [AARP's] card, only 5,900 have actually signed up.

DRUGS OR FOOD?: One egregious aspect of the prescription drug cards was overturned late last week. Under Agriculture Department policy, poor seniors who signed up for the Medicare prescription drug card and the $600 credit could lose their food stamps. A memo last March underscored this, saying food stamp recipients "may not claim a medical deduction for the cost of any prescriptions they receive free through use of the card." The White House revised this policy Friday, saying, "New benefits … cannot take away any existing federal benefits."

REIMPORTATION STEPS: The Medicare bill, under the influence of the powerful prescription drug lobby, blocked Medicare from using bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prices from the pharmaceutical companies. (The huge advantages in savings have been detailed by American Progress.) At the same time, the administration has resisted allowing seniors to import less-expensive medications from Canada. Yesterday, however, a bill to allow prescription drug imports narrowly cleared the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on agriculture. The new proposal "would prevent the FDA from spending funds to bar imports such as those from Canada."

Top Senate Democrat wants probe of Halliburton

The Halliburton fraud and waste was rampant in Iraq. And Cheney, who has had his fingers in EVERYTHING, claims to be "out of the loop" (remember when Bush I claimed that about Iran/Contra?) on dealings for his old company which still pays him MILLIONS OF DOLLARS (how the hell is that possible?!!!!!!).

This kind of corruption can not stand. Support John Kerry for president and wash these criminally immoral creeps into the gutter where they belong this November.


Top Senate Democrat wants probe of Halliburton

Tue Jun 15, 7:00 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The leader of Senate Democrats called Tuesday for a probe of energy behemoth Halliburton, which he accused of "outrageous" billing of the US government for services in Iraq.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said at a press conference that he was "absolutely appalled" at alleged excessive billing and profligate spending by Halliburton.

"In a couple of instances, rather than fix what appears to be relatively minor repairs on 85,000 dollar trucks, they destroyed them and simply went out and bought a new truck," Daschle said.

In another incident, "they had a 10,000 dollar hotel bill in Kuwait when they could have had a room for 600 dollars ... in another hotel," Daschle said.

"These are examples of the outrageous behavior of people who see no need for accountability, and it's why it's so critical for us to insist on adequate oversight, insist that we pressure Halliburton for answers. And so far, we just have not received them."

The energy company, which already is being investigated by the US government for allegedly overcharging the military for fuel delivered to Iraq, recently became the subject of a probe into whether a Halliburton joint venture broke US anti-bribery laws to win construction contracts for a gas plant in Nigeria.

Critics also have called for an investigation into the legality of a multibillion-dollar no-bid oil deal awarded to Halliburton. Time Magazine earlier this month cited an internal Pentagon e-mail indicating that a top defense official was tasked with shepherding the contract, which faced no competing bids. There were questions as to whether Vice President Dick Cheney facilitated the contract.

Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive officer between 1995 and 2000.

Report Singles Out Halliburton in Iraq Mismanagement

The fraud, manipulation and waste combined with the inept planning is beyond contempt. This administration is so corrupt AND with a Vice President that makes profits off the war! Only the John Kerry Broom will do this coming election. Time to sweep these bums out of office and then prosecute them for their criminal acts, negligence and immoral behavior.


Report Singles Out Halliburton in Iraq Mismanagement

Wed Jun 16, 7:55 AM ET

By T. Christian Miller Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon may have wasted billions of dollars in Iraq because of a lack of planning and poor oversight, top congressional and Defense Department investigators said Tuesday.

David M. Walker, head of the General Accounting Office, told a congressional panel that Defense Department planners had failed to determine adequately the needs of U.S. soldiers in Iraq or effectively oversee the billions of dollars' worth of contracts they had issued.

While Pentagon officials defended their efforts by blaming any mistakes on the pressure of the war's early days, the investigators said that they had found ongoing waste in the contracting process a year after the invasion began.

In remarks to reporters, Walker speculated that the total losses due to waste could amount to "billions."

"There are serious problems, they still exist and they are exacerbated in a wartime climate," Walker told members of the House Government Reform Committee, which is charged with preventing waste, fraud and abuse in the government.

Tuesday's testimony by the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, and the Defense Contract Audit Agency, the Pentagon's auditors, was the most complete picture to date of the U.S. military's decision to pay private contractors billions of dollars to help wage the war and rebuild Iraq.

While much of the contracting was done well, the two agencies said, U.S. military contract managers and the companies they oversaw were frequently overwhelmed by the magnitude of the tasks in Iraq.

The two agencies singled out the contract awarded to Halliburton Co. -- the Houston-based oil services giant that supplies food, housing and other logistics services to the military -- as a particularly egregious example of poor oversight by the government and overcharging by the company.

The U.S. military, for instance, did not develop adequate plans to support its troops in Iraq until May 2003, two months after the invasion, when Halliburton was ordered to supply more dining facilities and housing, a GAO report said. Since then, Halliburton's contract to supply the troops in Kuwait and Iraq has been adjusted by the Army more than 176 times, or more than once every two days.

In addition, at one point reservists with no more than two weeks' training were overseeing the Halliburton contract, said Neal Curtin, the GAO director charged with investigating Halliburton and other companies with logistics contracts. Even now, the Pentagon only has twice as many overseers monitoring contracts in Iraq as it did in Bosnia, though it is spending 15 times as much money.

"What you saw was a real thin layer of oversight capability," Curtin said.

Other U.S. government actions also came under fire Tuesday.

The GAO found that most of the biggest contracts awarded without bidding in the early days of the war were justified by their emergency nature. But in some instances, the investigators said, Pentagon officers "overstepped" their authority by issuing billion-dollar jobs under existing contracts, without putting the work out to bid as required by law.

Pentagon procurement officials said significant progress has been made in Iraq, with new bridges, water systems and power stations up and running. But they acknowledged that mistakes were made, especially in the aftermath of the invasion.

"Have we accomplished this tremendous mission without missteps? No, we have not," said Tina Ballard, the Army's head of contracting.

As for Halliburton, which has total contracts in Iraq worth up to $18.2 billion, Pentagon auditors believe that the company has been billing U.S. taxpayers for millions of meals never served to U.S. troops. While Halliburton has objected, the auditors have recommended that the government withhold $186 million in payments until the dispute is settled.

In a related development, the Army recently renegotiated a contract that Halliburton had with a Kuwaiti company to provide meals. By contracting directly with the Kuwaiti company instead of going through Halliburton, the Army knocked 40 percent off the cost of the contract.

"Halliburton is a company whose business base expanded extremely rapidly" after they won contracts for work in Iraq, said Bill Reed, the head of the audit agency. "They were not adequately prepared to keep pace."

The findings by unbiased sources add fuel to Democrats' efforts to draw attention to Halliburton, which was run by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., who as one of Halliburton's fiercest critics has issued more than 35 news releases about the company since last year, demanded that the committee probe more deeply into the links between Halliburton and Cheney.

While the investigators testified that there has been no evidence that Cheney influenced the award of any contracts to his former company, Waxman said more investigation was necessary.

He pointed to recent revelations that a Pentagon political appointee had informed Cheney's chief of staff about a decision that led to a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, winning a $7 billion contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure.

"Halliburton is gouging the taxpayer, and the Bush administration doesn't seem to care," Waxman said.

But Halliburton officials defended their actions in Iraq, saying that they "strongly" disagree with the auditors' contention on overbilling for meals.

"We expected there would be attempts before the end of June to deflect attention from the progress being made in Iraq, but we didn't think so much of it would originate here at home," Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement. "It is one thing to learn through experience, as we have, that war is difficult, but another to find that critics are using the war for purely political purposes."

Halliburton was not the only company singled out. San Diego-based Titan Corp., which employed two people identified in the investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, also came under fire.

Auditors found that Titan was failing to keep track of its workers' hours and recommended withholding up to $4.9 million from the company's $402 million contract to supply translators to coalition forces in Iraq.

Titan also recently refunded the government $178,000 paid for the services of two workers involved in the prison scandal. Titan officials said that although the company has yet to be informed of problems, it made the refund in case the government investigation turns up wrongdoing.

"We don't know what the investigation will entail, so we took the measure to be conservative," said Ralph "Wil" Williams, a Titan spokesman.

9/11 Panel Says Iraq Rebuffed Bin Laden

The 9/11 panel has looked at all the evidence. There were no links between Hussein and Al Qaida. Dick Cheney pressured the CIA to manipulate false evidence of Iraqi ties to Bin Laden to boster their argument to invade Iraq. Someone out of the White House committed treason to expose a CIA agent that pointed out their political lies about this manipulation. Cheney is worse than Bin Laden as he and Halliburton have directly profited from the war. IMHO Dick Cheney IS the Great Satan.



9/11 Panel Says Iraq Rebuffed Bin Laden

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Bluntly contradicting the Bush administration, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported Wednesday there was "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaida target the United States.

In a chilling report that sketched the history of Osama bin Laden's network, the commission said his far-flung training camps were "apparently quite good." Terrorists-to-be were encouraged to "think creatively about ways to commit mass murder," it added.

Bin Laden made overtures to Saddam for assistance, the commission said in the staff report, as he did with leaders in Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan (news - web sites) and elsewhere as he sought to build an Islamic army.

While Saddam dispatched a senior Iraqi intelligence official to Sudan to meet with bin Laden in 1994, the commission said it had not turned up evidence of a "collaborative relationship."

The Bush administration has long claimed links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, and cited them as one reason for last year's invasion of Iraq (news - web sites).

On Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech that the Iraqi dictator "had long established ties with al-Qaida."

The bipartisan commission issued its findings as it embarked on two days of public hearings into the worst terrorist attacks in American history.

The panel intends to issue a final report in July on the hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001 that killed nearly 3,000, destroyed the World Trade Centers in New York and damaged the Pentagon outside Washington. A fourth plane commandeered by terrorists crashed in the countryside in Pennsylvania.

The staff report pieced together information on the development of bin Laden's network, from the far-flung training camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to funding from "well-placed financial facilitators and diversions of funds from Islamic charities."

Reports that bin Laden had a huge personal fortune to finance acts of terror are overstated, the report said.

The description of the training camp operations contained elements of faint, grudging praise.

"A worldwide jihad needed terrorists who could bomb embassies or hijack airliners, but it also needed foot soldiers for the Taliban in its war against the Northern Alliance, and guerrillas who could shoot down Russian helicopters in Chechnya or ambush Indian units in Kashmir," it said.

According to one unnamed senior al-Qaida associate, various ideas were floated by mujahadeen in Afghanistan, the commission said. The options included taking over a launcher and forcing Russian scientists to fire a nuclear missile at the United States, mounting mustard gas or cyanide attacks against Jewish areas in Iraq or releasing poison gas into the air conditioning system of a targeted building.

"Last but not least, hijacking an aircraft and crashing it into an airport or nearby city," it said.

The Iraq connection long suggested by administration officials gained no currency in the report.

"Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded," the report said. "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred" after bin Laden moved his operations to Afghanistan in 1996, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," it said.

"Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al-Qaida and Iraq," the report said.

In a separate report, the commission staff said that senior al-Qaida planner Khalid Shaihk Mohammed initially proposed a Sept. 11 attack involving 10 planes. An expanded target list included the CIA and FBI headquarters, unidentified nuclear plants and tall buildings in California and Washington state.

That ambitious plan was rejected by bin Laden, who ultimately approved a scaled-back mission involving four planes, the report said. Mohammed wanted more hijackers for those planes — 25 or 26, instead of 19.

The commission has identified at least 10 al-Qaida operatives who were to participate but could not take part for reasons including visa problems and suspicion by officials at airports in the United States and overseas.

From a seamless operation, the report portrays a plot riven by internal dissent, including disagreement over whether to target the White House or the Capitol that was apparently never resolved prior to the attacks. Bin Laden also had to overcome opposition to attacking the United States from Mullah Omar, leader of the former Taliban regime, who was under pressure from Pakistan to keep al-Qaida confined.

The United States toppled the regime in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, but Omar has eluded capture, as has al-Qaida.

Halliburton, Once Again

There is nothing lower than Halliburton on the planet.

LA TIMES EDITORIAL

Halliburton, Once Again

June 16, 2004

Vice President Dick Cheney's penchant for secrecy has repeatedly thrust him into an embarrassing spotlight. It began with his clandestine energy task force. Now it involves contracts in Iraq for Halliburton Inc., which Cheney ran from 1995 to 2000.

For months, Cheney has denied knowing about a controversial Pentagon contract awarded to Halliburton in 2002. Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, Cheney stated that he had not been informed about any Halliburton contracts and that political appointees were not involved with them. But Pentagon officials have acknowledged that Cheney's staff was briefed at least twice by political appointees who awarded Halliburton the contract.

The meetings may have been harmless, a simple notification of how the Pentagon intended to handle the restoration of Iraq's oil facilities after the war. And there is no evidence that Cheney used his influence to get Halliburton the contract. But what makes this more than just another Washington blip is the next chapter, the emergence of six whistle-blowers who have told Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, that Halliburton appears to be fleecing the U.S. Treasury on its cost-plus contracts.

The incentive for the company is strong. Cost-plus means Halliburton gets a set percentage above actual costs, so in general the more it spends, the more it makes.

Five of the whistle-blowers worked directly for Halliburton, and one for a major Halliburton subcontractor. The head of the Government Reform Committee, Tom Davis (R-Va.), refused to allow them to testify in a hearing Tuesday about Iraq and contracting.

David Wilson, a convoy commander for Halliburton, and James Warren, a Halliburton truck driver, stated that new $85,000 Halliburton trucks in Kuwait were "torched" if they got a flat tire. According to Wilson, the company "removed all the spare tires in Kuwait," presumably so the entire truck would have to be replaced after a blowout. In addition, they said, they were instructed not to change the oil on trucks. Warren claims that after he expressed his concerns to Randy Harl, the head of a Halliburton subsidiary, he was fired. Marie deYoung, who worked in the subcontracts department of Halliburton, said the company paid for a laundry service that was so inefficient it cost $100 a bag.

Other evidence suggests this is more than sour grapes from former employees. A May 13 Pentagon audit said Halliburton exercised little control over subcontractors and didn't monitor the costs of contracts. The General Accounting Office has also investigated and found numerous problems.

On Tuesday, Reps. Davis and Waxman made some progress by agreeing that Halliburton executives would be asked to testify to their committee and that the two House members would consult with each other on whether any documents should be subpoenaed. There may be nothing to hide in regard to the execution of the Halliburton contract. Holding open hearings is the way to demonstrate that.

New Enron Tapes Are Proof of Manipulation -Lawmaker

George Bush said at the time it was a "market problem", not manipulation. He was supposed to be an "energy expert" and a "businessman" president who understood what was causing the "CA energy crisis" better than any person who had ever been in the White House. Though called upon by every leader in the state from the governor to dog catchers he refused to have FERC investigate the extreme price rises. While grandmothers and children suffered in the withering heat "good Christian" Bush refused to have FERC put price caps in place so a closer examination of the problem could be completed. That sort of negligence is now revealed to be a failure of leadership that borders on criminal while showing a lack of any moral understanding.

We don't have a president in office who works for the people, we have a clueless shill for corporate interests. Only a new broom wrought by John Kerry can sweep this corruption from the White House in November.


New Enron Tapes Are Proof of Manipulation -Lawmaker


Mon Jun 14, 4:14 PM ET

By Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Employees at now-bankrupt Enron Corp. coached rookie traders on ways to overload California's power grid during the state's energy crisis and kept multiple sets of books to cover their tracks, according to evidence released on Monday.

Profanity-laced audio tapes where Enron traders chortle about boosting prices during the 2000-01 western power crisis at the expense of "poor grandmothers" have given Western states new ammunition in their quest for refunds at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Sen. Maria Cantwell, Washington Democrat, on Monday submitted to FERC some 750 pages of financial data and new taped conversations from Enron traders.

The new information gathered in a Justice Department criminal investigation shows that Enron illegally reaped $1.1 billion in profits from questionable trading schemes with nicknames like "Death Star" and "Get Shorty," Cantwell said.

The data is "clear and compelling evidence" that FERC should allow Western utilities to cancel or renegotiate billions of dollars in long-term contracts with Enron, she said.

On one tape, an Enron trader coaches a new employee on ways to overload California's transmission grid, and then collect a fee for relieving the fake congestion.

"If the line's not congested, then I just look to congest it," said a trader identified as "Mallory" on the transcript. "If you can congest it, that's a money-maker no matter what, 'cause you're not losing any money to move it down the line."

An Enron spokeswoman declined to comment on the tapes and said the company continues to "cooperate fully with all investigations."

FERC staff will review the new evidence but will act "based on the facts and the law and not on politics," an agency spokesman said.

The new data -- distilled from internal spreadsheets Enron traders used to track their trades -- offer more details into the transactions. In some instances, Enron employees used five different sets of accounting books to disguise the schemes, Cantwell said.

For example, on May 22, 2000, a day when California's grid operator declared an energy shortage, Enron collected about $223,000 for shipping electricity out of California and back again to avoid federal price caps, the documents show.

So far, FERC has stripped Enron of its power-trading license and an agency judge has recommended that the firm repay $32.5 million in profits from the Western crisis. Washington and California lawmakers say FERC must also allow utilities to cancel or renegotiate long-term contracts signed at the height of the energy crisis.

"FERC has fallen down on the job by conducting an inadequate investigation of Enron's market manipulation," Cantwell said.

FERC has approved about $3.3 billion in refunds for overcharges in short-term Western power markets, but has rejected requests by California and other Pacific Northwest states to cancel long-term contracts.

Justice Dept. Memo Says Torture 'May Be Justified'

According to this Justice Department memo from Alberto R. Gonzales, legal cousel to Bush (and been so since governor of Texas), the White House was not only aware of the issue of torturing Iraqis, it condoned it. That's the kind of moral "Christians" we have in office and why only John Kerry can use a new broom to sweep them out of office and allow our nation to set things right in the world.


washingtonpost.com

Justice Dept. Memo Says Torture 'May Be Justified'

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 13, 2004; 6:30 PM

Today washingtonpost.com is posting a copy of the Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum (PDF) "Re: Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A," from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to President Bush.

The memo was the focus of a recent article in The Washington Post.

The memo was written at the request of the CIA. The CIA wanted authority to conduct more aggressive interrogations than were permitted prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The interrogations were of suspected al Qaeda members whom the CIA had apprehended outside the United States. The CIA asked the White House for legal guidance. The White House asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for its legal opinion on the standards of conduct under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

The Office of Legal Counsel is the federal government's ultimate legal adviser. The most significant and sensitive topics that the federal government considers are often given to the OLC for review. In this case, the memorandum was signed by Jay S. Bybee, the head of the office at the time. Bybee's signature gives the document additional authority, making it akin to a binding legal opinion on government policy on interrogations. Bybee has since become a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Another memorandum , dated March 6, 2003, from a Defense Department working group convened by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to come up with new interrogation guidelines for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, incorporated much, but not all, of the legal thinking from the OLC memo. The Wall Street Journal first published the March memo.

At a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, senators asked Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to release both memos. Ashcroft said he would not discuss the contents of the Justice and Pentagon memos or turn them over to the committees. A transcript of that hearing is also available.

President Bush spoke on the issue of torture Thursday, saying he expected U.S. authorities to abide by the law. He declined to say whether he believes U.S. law prohibits torture. Here is a link to the transcript of the president's press conference, which included questions and answers on torture.

The Post deleted several lines from the memo that are not germane to the legal arguments being made in it and that are the subject of further reporting by The Post.

Waxman Raises New Questions on Cheney

washingtonpost.com

Waxman Raises New Questions on Cheney

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 14, 2004; Page A04

As the government prepared for war in Iraq in the fall of 2002, a senior political appointee in the Defense Department chose oil services giant Halliburton Co. to secretly plan how to repair Iraqi oil fields, and then briefed Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and other White House officials about the sole-source contract before it was granted.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the new details about the $1.8 million contract, disclosed last week in a Pentagon briefing for congressional staff members, raise new questions about whether the vice president or his office played any role in decisions to give what became billions of dollars worth of government business to Halliburton, where Cheney was chief executive from 1995 to 2000.

Cheney has said neither he nor his office influenced decisions to give contracts to Halliburton.

In a letter to Cheney yesterday, Waxman said the circumstances "appear to contradict your assertions that you were not informed about the Halliburton contracts."

"They also seem to contradict the Administration's repeated assertions that political appointees were not involved in the award of contracts to Halliburton," wrote Waxman, senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and one of the sharpest critics of the government's ties to Halliburton.

Kevin Kellems, a spokesman for Cheney, played down the importance of Waxman's letter, suggesting it was politically motivated. "We stand by our previous statements," Kellems said.

The letter describes a briefing at which Michael H. Mobbs, a political appointee who works closely with undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith, acknowledged that he selected Halliburton for Iraq reconstruction work. Mobbs that he believed Halliburton's KBR subsidiary was most qualified, in part because it was familiar with plans under development by U.S. Central Command, the letter said.

Before making a final decision, Mobbs briefed top officials from several executive agencies, in a group known as the Deputies Committee, to ensure they had no objections. Among those at the meeting were Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's top aide, and White House staff members. After that meeting, Waxman's letter says, a White House official told Feith the group did not object.

A career lawyer from the Army Materiel Command, responsible for another contract with Halliburton for meals and laundry services, said that arrangement should not be expanded to include contingency planning for Iraq's oil infrastructure. "These legal reservations were overruled, however," in part because a Defense Department attorney working with Mobbs intervened, according to Waxman's letter.

Kellems said neither Cheney nor Libby had read Waxman's letter.

Waxman also raised questions about a March 5, 2003, e-mail by an Army Corps of Engineers official that suggested a larger no-bid contract to Halliburton subsidiary was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Stephen Browning, a civilian regional director in the Corps, said in an interview last week that he wrote the note after he and retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner met with Feith about plans to declassify the earlier $1.8 million contract with KBR.

According to Browning, Feith said he had already informed Cheney's office. Three days later, KBR got a $7 billion contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure. The war began March 20, 2003. At the briefing last week, Browning repeated his story, Waxman's letter said.

"These disclosures mean that your office was informed about the Halliburton contracts at least twice at key moments," Waxman wrote.

Waxman asked Cheney to "clarify the nature of your involvements" in the contract awards.

Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go

The people who know are calling Bush's foreign policy a failure. John Kerry will bring America back to its place in the world community as a respected leader.


Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go

The 26 ex-diplomats and military leaders say his foreign policy has harmed national security. Several served under Republicans.

By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer

June 13, 2004

WASHINGTON — A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November.

The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.

"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration," said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's father and one of the group's principal organizers.

Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, include 20 former U.S. ambassadors, appointed by presidents of both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia.

Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East under President Bush's father. Hoar is a prominent critic of the war in Iraq.

Some of those signing the document — such as Hoar and former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill A. McPeak — have identified themselves as supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But most have not endorsed any candidate, members of the group said.

It is unusual for so many former high-level military officials and career diplomats to issue such an overtly political message during a presidential campaign.

A senior official at the Bush reelection campaign said he did not wish to comment on the statement until it was released.

But in the past, administration officials have rejected charges that Bush has isolated America in the world, pointing to countries contributing troops to the coalition in Iraq and the unanimous passage last week of the U.N. resolution authorizing the interim Iraqi government.

One senior Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking said he did not think the group was sufficiently well-known to create significant political problems for the president.

The strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said the signatories were making an argument growing increasingly obsolete as Bush leans more on the international community for help in Iraq.

"Their timing is a little off, particularly in the aftermath of the most recent U.N. resolution," the strategist said. "It seems to me this is a collection of resentments that have built up, but it would have been much more powerful months ago than now when even the president's most disinterested critics would say we have taken a much more multilateral approach" in Iraq.

But those signing the document say the recent signs of cooperation do not reverse a basic trend toward increasing isolation for the U.S.

"We just felt things were so serious, that America's leadership role in the world has been attenuated to such a terrible degree by both the style and the substance of the administration's approach," said Harrop, who served as ambassador to four African countries under Carter and Reagan.

"A lot of people felt the work they had done over their lifetime in trying to build a situation in which the United States was respected and could lead the rest of the world was now undermined by this administration — by the arrogance, by the refusal to listen to others, the scorn for multilateral organizations," Harrop said.

Jack F. Matlock Jr., who was appointed by Reagan as ambassador to the Soviet Union and retained in the post by President Bush's father during the final years of the Cold War, expressed similar views.

"Ever since Franklin Roosevelt, the U.S. has built up alliances in order to amplify its own power," he said. "But now we have alienated many of our closest allies, we have alienated their populations. We've all been increasingly appalled at how the relationships that we worked so hard to build up have simply been shattered by the current administration in the method it has gone about things."

The GOP strategist noted that many of those involved in the document claimed their primary expertise in the Middle East and suggested a principal motivation for the statement might be frustration over Bush's effort to fundamentally reorient policy toward the region.

"For 60 years we believed in quote-unquote stability at the price of liberty, and what we got is neither liberty nor stability," the strategist said. "So we are taking a fundamentally different approach toward the Middle East. That is a huge doctrinal shift, and the people who have given their lives, careers to building the previous foreign policy consensus, see this as a direct intellectual assault on what they have devoted their lives to. And it is. We think what a lot of people came up with was a failure — or at least, in the present world in which we live, it is no longer sustainable."

Sponsors of the effort counter that several in the group have been involved in developing policy affecting almost all regions of the globe.

The document will echo a statement released in April by a group of high-level former British diplomats condemning Prime Minister Tony Blair for being too closely aligned to U.S. policy in Iraq and Israel. Those involved with the new group said their effort was already underway when the British statement was released.

The signatories said Kerry's campaign played no role in the formation of their group. Phyllis E. Oakley, the deputy State Department spokesman during Reagan's second term and an assistant secretary of state under Clinton, said she suspected "some of them [in the Kerry campaign] may have been aware of it," but that "the campaign had no role" in organizing the group.

Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director, also said that the Kerry campaign had not been involved in devising the group's statement.

The document does not explicitly endorse Kerry, according to those familiar with it. But some individual signers plan to back the Democrat, and others acknowledge that by calling for Bush's removal, the group effectively is urging Americans to elect Kerry.

"The core of the message is that we are so deeply concerned about the current direction of American foreign policy … that we think it is essential for the future security of the United States that a new foreign policy team come in," said Oakley.

Much of the debate over the document in the days ahead may pivot on the extent to which it is seen as a partisan document.

A Bush administration ally said that the group failed to recognize how the Sept. 11 attacks required significant changes in American foreign policy. "There's no question those who were responsible for policies pre-9/11 are denying what seems as the obvious — that those policies were inadequate," said Cliff May, president of the conservative advocacy group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

"This seems like a statement from 9/10 people [who don't see] the importance of 9/11 and the way that should have changed our thinking."

Along with Hoar and McPeak, others who have signed it are identified with the Democratic Party.

Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., though named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan, supported Clinton in 1992. Crowe has endorsed Kerry. Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner served as Carter's director of central intelligence and has also endorsed Kerry. Matlock said he was a registered Democrat during most of his foreign service career, though he voted for Reagan in 1984 and the elder Bush twice and now is registered as an independent.

Several on the group's list were appointed to their most important posts under Reagan and the elder Bush. These include Matlock and Harrop, as well as Arthur A. Hartman, who served as Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1981 through 1987; H. Allen Holmes, an assistant secretary of state under Reagan; and Charles Freeman, ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the elder Bush.

Many on the list have not been previously identified with any political cause or party. Several "are the kind who have never spoken out before," said James Daniel Phillips, former ambassador to Burundi and the Congo.

Oakley, Harrop and Matlock said the effort began this year. Matlock said it was sparked by conversations among "colleagues who had served in senior positions around the same time, most of them for the Reagan administration and for the first Bush administration."

Oakley said frustration over the Iraq war was "a large part" of the impetus for the statement, but the criticism of President Bush "goes much deeper."

The group's complaint about Bush's approach largely tracks Kerry's contention that the administration has weakened American security by straining traditional alliances and shifting resources from the war against Al Qaeda to the invasion of Iraq.

Oakley said the statement would argue that, "Unfortunately the tough stands [Bush] has taken have made us less secure. He has neglected the war on terrorism for the war in Iraq. And while we agree that we are in unprecedented times and we face challenges we didn't even know about before, these challenges require the cooperation of other countries. We cannot do it by ourselves."

An Economic Legend

June 11, 2004
NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
An Economic Legend
By PAUL KRUGMAN

In the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," a reporter defends prettifying history: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." That principle has informed many of this week's Reagan retrospectives. But let's not be bullied into accepting the right-wing legend about Reaganomics.

Here's a sample version of the legend: according to a recent article in The Washington Times, Ronald Reagan "crushed inflation along with left-wing Keynesian economics and launched the longest economic expansion in U.S. history." Actually, the 1982-90 economic expansion ranks third, after 1991-2001 and 1961-69 — but even that comparison overstates the degree of real economic success.

The secret of the long climb after 1982 was the economic plunge that preceded it. By the end of 1982 the U.S. economy was deeply depressed, with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. So there was plenty of room to grow before the economy returned to anything like full employment.

The depressed economy in 1982 also explains "Morning in America," the economic boom of 1983 and 1984. You see, rapid growth is normal when an economy is bouncing back from a deep slump. (Last year, Argentina's economy grew more than 8 percent.)

And the economic expansion under President Reagan did not validate his economic doctrine. His supply-side advisers didn't promise a one-time growth spurt as the economy emerged from recession; they promised, but failed to deliver, a sustained acceleration in economic growth.

Inflation did come down sharply on Mr. Reagan's watch: it was running at 12 percent when he took office, but was only 4.5 percent when he left. But this victory came at a heavy price. For much of the Reagan era, the economy suffered from very high unemployment. Despite the rapid growth of 1983 and 1984, over the whole of the Reagan administration the unemployment rate averaged a very uncomfortable 7.5 percent.

In other words, it all played out just as "left-wing Keynesian economics" predicted.

In the late 1970's most economists believed that eliminating the high inflation then prevailing in the United States would require inflicting a lot of pain: the economy would have to go through an extended period of high unemployment and depressed output. Once the inflation had been wrung out of the system, the unemployment rate could go back down. And that's exactly what happened. In fact, it's instructive to put a graph showing the actual track of unemployment and inflation during the 1980's next to a figure from a 1978-vintage textbook showing a hypothetical disinflation scenario; the two look almost identical.

Ronald Reagan didn't decide to inflict that pain. The architect of America's great disinflation was Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman. In fact, Mr. Volcker began the process in 1979, when he adopted the tight monetary policy that caused that record unemployment rate. He was also mainly responsible for the recovery that followed: it was his decision to loosen up on the money supply in the summer of 1982 that set the stage for the rebound a few months later.

There was, in short, nothing magical about the Reagan economy. The United States did, eventually, experience an economic miracle — but not until Bill Clinton's second term. Only then did the economy achieve a combination of rapid growth, low unemployment and quiescent inflation that confounded the conventional economic wisdom. (I'm aware, by the way, that this plain statement of fact will generate an avalanche of angry mail. Irrational Clinton hatred remains a powerful force in American life.)

It's a measure of how desperate the faithful are to believe in the Reagan legend that one often reads conservative commentators claiming that the Clinton-era miracle was the result of Mr. Reagan's policies, and indeed vindicated them. Think about it: Mr. Reagan passed his big tax cut right at the beginning of his presidency, and mainly raised taxes thereafter. So we're supposed to believe that a tax cut passed in 1981 was somehow responsible for an economic miracle that didn't materialize until around 1997. Apply the same timing to the good things that happened on Mr. Reagan's watch, and you'll discover that Lyndon Johnson deserves the credit for "Morning in America."

So here's my plea: let's honor Mr. Reagan for his real achievements, not dishonor him — and mislead the nation — with false claims about his economic record.

Planet Reagan

Planet Reagan
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 07 June 2004

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

- e.e. cummings, "Buffalo Bill's Defunct"

Ronald Reagan is dead now, and everyone is being nice to him. In every aspect, this is appropriate. He was a husband and a father, a beloved member of a family, and he will be missed by those he was close to. His death was long, slow and agonizing because of the Alzheimer's Disease which ruined him, one drop of lucidity at a time. My grandmother died ten years ago almost to the day because of this disease, and this disease took ten years to do its dirty, filthy, wretched work on her.

The dignity and candor of Reagan's farewell letter to the American people was as magnificent a departure from public life as any that has been seen in our history, but the ugly truth of his illness was that he lived on, and on, and on. His family and friends watched as he faded from the world of the real, as the simple dignity afforded to all life collapsed like loose sand behind his ever more vacant eyes. Only those who have seen Alzheimer's Disease invade a mind can know the truth of this. It is a cursed way to die.

In this mourning space, however, there must be room made for the truth. Writer Edward Abbey once said, "The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads."

The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye.

How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days?

The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard.

Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see.

Mainstream media journalism today is a shameful joke because of Reagan's deregulation policies. Once upon a time, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that the information we receive - information vital to the ability of the people to govern in the manner intended - came from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. Reagan's policies annihilated the Fairness Doctrine, opening the door for a few mega-corporations to gather journalism unto themselves. Today, Reagan's old bosses at General Electric own three of the most-watched news channels. This company profits from every war we fight, but somehow is trusted to tell the truths of war. Thus, the myths are sold to us.

The deregulation policies of Ronald Reagan did not just deliver journalism to these massive corporations, but handed virtually every facet of our lives into the hands of this privileged few. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are all tainted because Reagan battered down every environmental regulation he came across so corporations could improve their bottom line. Our leaders are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the corporations that were made all-powerful by Reagan's deregulation craze. The Savings and Loan scandal of Reagan's time, which cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars, is but one example of Reagan's decision that the foxes would be fine guards in the henhouse.

Ronald Reagan believed in small government, despite the fact that he grew government massively during his time. Social programs which protected the weakest of our citizens were gutted by Reagan's policies, delivering millions into despair. Reagan was able to do this by caricaturing the "welfare queen," who punched out babies by the barnload, who drove the flashy car bought with your tax dollars, who refused to work because she didn't have to. This was a vicious, racist lie, one result of which was the decimation of a generation by crack cocaine. The urban poor were left to rot because Ronald Reagan believed in 'self-sufficiency.'

Because Ronald Reagan could not be bothered to fund research into 'gay cancer,' the AIDS virus was allowed to carve out a comfortable home in America. The aftershocks from this callous disregard for people whose homosexuality was deemed evil by religious conservatives cannot be overstated. Beyond the graves of those who died from a disease which was allowed to burn unchecked, there are generations of Americans today living with the subconscious idea that sex equals death.

The veneer of honor and respect painted across the legacy of Ronald Reagan is itself a myth of biblical proportions. The coverage proffered today of the Reagan legacy seldom mentions impropriety until the Iran/Contra scandal appears on the administration timeline. This sin of omission is vast. By the end of his term in office, some 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, indicted or investigated for misconduct and/or criminal activities.

Some of the names on this disgraceful roll-call: Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Casper Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Deaver, E. Bob Wallach, James Watt, Alan D. Fiers, Clair George, Duane R. Clarridge, Anne Gorscuh Burford, Rita Lavelle, Richard Allen, Richard Beggs, Guy Flake, Louis Glutfrida, Edwin Gray, Max Hugel, Carlos Campbell, John Fedders, Arthur Hayes, J. Lynn Helms, Marjory Mecklenburg, Robert Nimmo, J. William Petro, Thomas C. Reed, Emanuel Savas, Charles Wick. Many of these names are lost to history, but more than a few of them are still with us today, 'rehabilitated' by the administration of George W. Bush.

Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?

One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.

The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.

Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.

In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.

In the final analysis, however, the legacy of Ronald Reagan - whether he had an active hand in its formulation, or was merely along for the ride - is beyond dispute. His famous question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is easy to answer. We are not better off than we were four years ago, or eight years ago, or twelve, or twenty. We are a badly damaged state, ruled today by a man who subsists off Reagan's most corrosive final gift to us all: It is the image that matters, and be damned to the truth.

Memo Says Bush Not Restricted by Torture Bans

This is not the act of a moral American leader nor a person claiming to be a Christian. Hell, it's not even the act of a normal human being.

Memo Says Bush Not Restricted by Torture Bans

Tue Jun 8, 9:53 PM ET

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush, as commander-in-chief, is not restricted by U.S. and international laws barring torture, Bush administration lawyers stated in a March 2003 memorandum.

The 56-page memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cited the president's "complete authority over the conduct of war," overriding international treaties such as a global treaty banning torture, the Geneva Conventions and a U.S. federal law against torture.

"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority," stated the memo, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.

These assertions, along with others made in a 2002 Justice Department memo, drew condemnation from human rights activists who accused the administration of hunting for legal loopholes for using torture.

"It's like saying the Earth is flat. That's the equivalent of what they're doing with saying that the prohibition of torture doesn't apply to the president," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Media reports of the memos prompted a fierce exchange in a congressional hearing, at which Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to release the documents while Democrats accused the Bush administration of undermining prohibitions on use of torture.

The administration says it observes the Geneva Conventions in Iraq (news - web sites) and other situations where the treaty applies and that it treats terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in a way consistent with the spirit of the accords.

"Our policy is to comply with all our laws and treaty obligations," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

"We have detained some dangerous al Qaeda terrorists. ... While we will seek to gather intelligence from these terrorists to prevent attacks from happening, we will do so consistent with our laws," McClellan added.

INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES

The March 2003 memo was written by a "working group" of civilian and military lawyers named by the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s general counsel.

It came to light as the Pentagon reviewed interrogation techniques used on foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid concerns raised by lawyers within the military and others about interrogation techniques approved by Rumsfeld that deviated from standard practice.

The memo labeled as unconstitutional any laws "that seek to prevent the president from gaining the intelligence he believes necessary to prevent attacks upon the United States."

The memo recommended a presidential directive from Bush allowing for exercise of this power by "subordinates," although it remained unknown whether Bush ever signed such a document.

"It shows us that there were senior people in the Bush administration who were seriously contemplating the use of torture, and trying to figure out whether there were any legal loopholes that might allow them to commit criminal acts," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch.

"They seem to be putting forward a theory that the president in wartime can essentially do what he wants regardless of what the law may say," Malinowski added.

Amnesty International called for a special counsel to investigate "whether administration officials are criminally liable for acts of torture or guilty of war crimes."

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Rumsfeld in April 2003 approved 24 "humane" interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo, four of which required Rumsfeld's personal review before being used. Whitman said 34 techniques were considered by a working group of Defense Department legal and policy experts before Rumsfeld approved the final list.

"None were determined to be tortuous in nature (by the working group). They were all found to be within internationally accepted practice," Whitman said.

Tell Ashcroft To Release The Torture Memo

JUSTICE
Tell Ashcroft to Stop Stonewalling Congress

Testifying yesterday before Congress, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to disclose or discuss an unclassified 2002 Justice Department memorandum to the White House that, according to news reports, describes legal justifications for torture. Ashcroft acknowledged that the memo was not confidential advice to the president and was "widely distributed throughout the executive branch." Ashcroft has decided to thwart the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch because he believes it is "not good policy" to release the memo. Ashcroft had no such compunctions when he declassified a 1995 memo in a cynical attempt to distort the facts and discredit 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick. Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov and tell him to stop stonewalling Congress.


Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov


I sent the following to Ashcroft.

Re: Stonewalling over Torture Memo Release

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft,

You are a servant of the people of the United States and claim to be a Christian. Either would not condone torture and would not hide any memo outlining such barbaric and inhuman treatment for use under an American flag. Besides the moral grounds the American use of torture opens up its use against our own captured soldiers in combat by other countries. This is unthinkable.

Portions of the torture memo have already been circulated in the press.

RELEASE THE ENTIRE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MEMO NOW.

The people of this country demand to know if our leaders are performing irresponsibly in their name. This is still America and a democracy not your and George Bush's dictatorship. As a free citizen of the United States of America I will work to mobilize forces in and outside of the government to have this torture memo released publicly. You have brought nothing but shame and disgrace upon your country for this despicable act and I even question what kind of black soul you harbor in your heart.


Sam F. Park

Tell Ashcroft To Release The Torture Memo

JUSTICE
Tell Ashcroft to Stop Stonewalling Congress

Testifying yesterday before Congress, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to disclose or discuss an unclassified 2002 Justice Department memorandum to the White House that, according to news reports, describes legal justifications for torture. Ashcroft acknowledged that the memo was not confidential advice to the president and was "widely distributed throughout the executive branch." Ashcroft has decided to thwart the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch because he believes it is "not good policy" to release the memo. Ashcroft had no such compunctions when he declassified a 1995 memo in a cynical attempt to distort the facts and discredit 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick. Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov and tell him to stop stonewalling Congress.


Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov


I sent the following to Ashcroft.

Re: Stonewalling over Torture Memo Release

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft,

You are a servant of the people of the United States and claim to be a Christian. Either would not condone torture and would not hide any memo outlining such barbaric and inhuman treatment for use under an American flag. Besides the moral grounds the American use of torture opens up its use against our own captured soldiers in combat by other countries. This is unthinkable.

Portions of the torture memo have already been circulated in the press.

RELEASE THE ENTIRE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MEMO NOW.

The people of this country demand to know if our leaders are performing irresponsibly in their name. This is still America and a democracy not your and George Bush's dictatorship. As a free citizen of the United States of America I will work to mobilize forces in and outside of the government to have this torture memo released publicly. You have brought nothing but shame and disgrace upon your country for this despicable act and I even question what kind of black soul you harbor in your heart.


Sam F. Park

A Nice Guy's Nasty Policies

Reagan was no saint.

A Nice Guy's Nasty Policies
Robert Scheer

June 8, 2004

I liked Ronald Reagan, despite the huge divide between us politically. Reagan was a charming old pro who gave me hours of his time in a series of interviews beginning in 1966 when he was running for governor, simply because he enjoyed the give and take. In fact, I often found myself defending the Gipper whenever I was confronted with an East Coast pundit determined to denigrate anyone, particularly actors, from my adopted state. Yet, looking back at his record, I am appalled that I warmed to the man as much as I did.

The fact is that Reagan abandoned the Roosevelt New Deal — which he admitted had saved his family during the Great Depression — in favor of a belief in the efficacy of massive corporate welfare inculcated in him by his paymasters at Warner Bros., General Electric and the conservative lecture circuit. Though Reagan the man was hardly mean-spirited, Reagan the politician betrayed the social programs and trade unionism he once believed in so fiercely.

Let's start with his leadership of California, where he launched attacks on the state's once- incomparable public universities and devastated its mental health system. Foreshadowing future trumped-up invasions of tiny Grenada and Nicaragua, he sent thousands of National Guardsmen to tear-gas Berkeley.

It also became increasingly clear that although the man wasn't unintelligent, his ability to mingle truth with fantasy was frightening. At different times, Reagan — who infamously said that "facts are stupid things" — falsely claimed to have ended poverty in Los Angeles; implied he was personally involved in the liberation of Europe's concentration camps; argued that trees cause most pollution; said that the Hollywood blacklist, to which he contributed names, never existed; described as "freedom fighters" the Contra thugs and the religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan who would later become Al Qaeda; and claimed that fighting a "limited" nuclear war was not an insane idea.

But to see him as only a bumpkin — as some did — was to very much underestimate him. Like Nixon, the Teflon president was a survivor who'd come up the hard way, and many journalists and politicians who didn't understand that invariably were surprised by his resiliency and savvy. Although he generally was compliant with his handlers, whenever the campaign pros or rigid ideologues got in the way of his or Nancy's instincts, they were summarily discarded.

Even when his ideas were silly, his intentions often seemed good. For example, one of his dumbest and costliest pet projects, the "Star Wars" missile defense program, which he first announced when I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times in 1980, was touted by Reagan as a peace offering to the Soviets.

And his legendary ability to effectively project an upbeat, confident worldview managed to obscure many of the negative consequences of his policies. For example, he made the terrible mistake of willfully ignoring the burgeoning AIDS epidemic at a time when action could have saved millions. Unlike many conservatives, however, he was not driven by homophobia. Instead, Reagan allowed AIDS to spread for the same reason he pointedly savaged programs to help the poor: He was genuinely convinced that government programs exacerbated problems — unless they catered to the needs of the businessmen he had come to revere.

In the White House, he ran up more debt than any earlier president — primarily to serve the requests of what Republican President Eisenhower had, with alarm, termed the "military- industrial complex." (George W. Bush has broken that record.)

Apologists for this waste argue that throwing money at the defense industry broke the back of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. But the Soviet Union was already broken, as Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged quite freely when he came to power in the 1980s. Rather, what Reagan does deserve considerable credit for is ignoring the dire warnings of the hawks and responding enthusiastically to Gorbachev in their historic Reykjavík summit, where the two leaders called for a nuclear-free world.

Let it be remembered, then, that in the closing scene of his presidency Reagan embraced the peacemakers, rejecting the cheerleaders of Armageddon and was then loudly castigated by the very neoconservatives — most vociferously Richard Perle — who have claimed the Reagan mantle for the post-Cold War militarism of the current administration.

*

Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times.

Twisting American Values

Bush's moral failure as a leader on condoning torture goes against everything America stands for. Plus it gives other nations a perverted example to follow in torturing our own soldiers captured in combat. This is nothing less than a huge breakdown across the ranks of the administration.


LA TIMES EDITORIAL
Twisting American Values

June 9, 2004

"Everything changed after 9/11" became, in 2001, the slogan that justified new approaches to national security, including curtailment of civil liberties. Nearly three years later, we learn that even the use of torture was being justified when it came to terror suspects. The Bush administration's Justice Department turned the Constitution on its head by telling the White House in an August 2002 memo — written nearly a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — not only that torture "may be justified" but that laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" in the U.S. war on terror.

Those are the words of out-of-control government servants willing to discard the most fundamental values of this nation. But the declaration became the basis for a secret draft report in March 2003 by Pentagon lawyers to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. That report said the president's "inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign" meant prohibitions on torture did not apply.

It is not known if the language of the draft survived in a final report, and Pentagon officials said the document had no effect on revised interrogation procedures for Guantanamo Bay inmates issued in April 2003. But the memo's willingness to discard international and domestic laws adds strength to questions about the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A 2001 memo from Rumsfeld's office, for instance, said intelligence officers should "take the gloves off" when interrogating the so-called American Talib, John Walker Lindh.

"A few bad apples" was the dismissive phrase used by the White House after photos of brutality by U.S. forces in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison leaked out. The fact that there were numerous soldiers, including alleged Army intelligence officers, in some of the pictures immediately chipped at that claim. New reports of abuse or torture of inmates in Afghanistan rolled in. Last month, the Pentagon said 32 inmates had died in U.S. custody in Iraq and five in Afghanistan; so far, eight of the deaths appear to have been homicides.

Congress must determine how far up the chain of command the abuse stretched and who authorized or tolerated it. The torture memo, all drafts of the report to Rumsfeld and the names of those who received them should be made public. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft refused such a request Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The effort shouldn't stop there.

In 1994, the U.S. ratified the international Convention Against Torture, which states there are "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever" to justify torture. Torture is morally wrong and practically ineffective. This was especially true at Abu Ghraib, where most detainees were not suspected terrorists. Mistreatment of inmates invites retaliation against captured U.S. soldiers, one reason many uniformed Pentagon lawyers opposed the memo's conclusions.

The administration should open its files and explain its interrogation procedures. Anything less reinforces the image of a brutal nation unfettered by the rule of law.

The Roots of Abu Ghraib

George Bush is no Christian but a screwed-up bastard with no regard for American values nor any healthy human understanding.


June 9, 2004 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
The Roots of Abu Ghraib

In response to the outrages at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has repeatedly assured Americans that the president and his top officials did not say or do anything that could possibly be seen as approving the abuse or outright torture of prisoners. But disturbing disclosures keep coming. This week it's a legal argument by government lawyers who said the president was not bound by laws or treaties prohibiting torture.

Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration. It is part of the price the nation must pay for President Bush's decision to take the extraordinary mandate to fight terrorism that he was granted by a grieving nation after 9/11 and apply it without justification to Iraq.

Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke into public view, the administration has contended that a few sadistic guards acted on their own to commit the crimes we've all seen in pictures and videos. At times, the White House has denied that any senior official was aware of the situation, as it did with Red Cross reports documenting a pattern of prisoner abuse in Iraq. In response to a rising pile of documents proving otherwise, the administration has mounted a "Wizard of Oz" defense, urging Americans not to pay attention to inconvenient evidence.

This week, The Wall Street Journal broke the story of a classified legal brief prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in March 2003 after Guantánamo Bay interrogators complained that they were not getting enough information from terror suspects. The brief cynically suggested that because the president is protecting national security, any ban on torture, even an American law, could not be applied to "interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority." Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt reported yesterday in The Times that the document had grown out of a January 2002 Justice Department memo explaining why the Geneva Conventions and American laws against torture did not apply to suspected terrorists.

In the wake of that memo, the White House general counsel advised Mr. Bush that Al Qaeda and the Taliban should be considered outside the Geneva Conventions. But yesterday, Attorney General John Ashcroft assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that Mr. Bush had not ordered torture. These explanations might be more comforting if the administration's definition of what's legal was not so slippery, and if the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House were willing to release documents to back up their explanation. Mr. Rumsfeld is still withholding from the Senate his orders on interrogation techniques, among other things.

The Pentagon has said that Mr. Rumsfeld's famous declaration that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in Afghanistan was not a sanction of illegal interrogations, and that everyone knew different rules applied in Iraq. But Mr. Rumsfeld, his top deputies and the highest-ranking generals could not explain to the Senate what the rules were, or even who was in charge of the prisons in Iraq. We do not know how high up in the chain of command the specific sanction for abusing prisoners was given, and we may never know, because the Army is investigating itself and the Pentagon is stonewalling the Senate Armed Services Committee. It may yet be necessary for Congress to form an investigative panel with subpoena powers to find the answers.

What we have seen, topped by that legalistic treatise on torture, shows clearly that Mr. Bush set the tone for this dreadful situation by pasting a false "war on terrorism" label on the invasion of Iraq.

Storm warnings for Bush in Ohio

Bring it on!

Storm warnings for Bush in Ohio
The John Kerry campaign offices may still be dark in this key battleground state, but an invisible tidal wave is growing here against the President.

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By Tim Russo

June 4, 2004 |

The road-rage Republicans are out early this year in Ohio.

It's only June, but already the John Kerry bumper sticker on my car gets me cut off on I-71 by obese white males in their pickups and Camaros who upon seeing my Kerry sticker, roar past, swerve into my lane, and flip me the bird out their window.

Such folks form the backbone of the George W. Bush "Amway"-model campaign detailed recently in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Prospecting the prefab suburban wilderness for votes, the Bush machine's efforts in Ohio raise the obvious question: What are Democrats doing in response?

A Democrat looking for solace in the obvious places will find little encouragement. Walking into a Democratic Party office anywhere in this key presidential battleground state is like walking into a morgue. The Cleveland party office, the epicenter of the most important region of the state for Democrats, is a deserted storefront that until last week didn't have a single Kerry for President sign. Locked doors greet potential volunteers who peer into the emptiness inside.

Dying of dry rot for more than 10 years, the Ohio Democratic operation's only significant victory since Bill Clinton won Ohio in 1992 was when Bill Clinton won the state again in 1996. That's it. Taking full advantage of this political vacuum, Republicans have established one-party rule at the state level, a legislative cabal so right wing they are known as the "caveman caucus."

Like a desperate and bedraggled street-corner supplicant, the state Democratic Party has been begging talk-show host Jerry Springer for divine deliverance for more than two years. Springer probably can't believe his luck; his sights set on the governor's mansion in 2006, he has stumbled on the biggest bargain fixer-upper political party in the United States Sprinkling his pennies from heaven all over the state gained Springer the "Ohio Democrat of the Year Award" this May, as well as an at-large delegate appointment to the party's presidential convention in Boston, despite having lived out of state for almost 20 years.

Doesn't look good for Kerry in Ohio, does it?

Not so fast.

During primary season, I dragged my apolitical friend Lori from Meetup to Meetup all over Cleveland, the two of us shopping around for a new president on snowy winter nights that would keep normal people huddled indoors. The Meetup groups we encountered were nonpolitical types from various economic, racial, and educational backgrounds whose average was 40-ish. People who looked way outside their comfort zone at a political meeting. People like Lori herself, who was unimpressed with the turnouts, which totaled 20 to 30 people as a rule. "Seems pretty low," she kept saying. "What do you think?"

Having grown up in Ohio politics, working with every presidential election in the state since 1988, and acutely aware of the cobwebs, crickets and tumbleweed of the Ohio Democratic Party, I had a very different perspective.

"Are you kidding me?" I shot back. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

Wesley Clark's Cleveland Meetup the night before Super Tuesday was particularly eye-opening. The organizers were prepared with lists of phone numbers in Oklahoma, which had a primary the next day. Ten attendees used their cellphones to call Oklahoma for an hour.

Do the math. If each of those 10 people talked to 10 others, that's 100 contacts from the downtown Cleveland Meetup. There were 10 Meetups in Cleveland that night, adding up to 1,000 contacts from Cleveland. There are 10 major counties in Ohio. If each had made 1,000 contacts, that's 10,000 cross-state voter contacts made the night before Oklahoma's election -- which Clark won, in his only victory of the primary season, by less than 1,500 votes.

Imagine this grass-roots effort pumped up and targeted at George W. Bush in the fall, and things start to look a little better for Kerry in Ohio.

There's more. All winter, there were fliers at every Meetup that read, "ACT Ohio Hiring; $8 an hour. Make a Difference." America Coming Together (ACT), the George Soros-funded anti-Bush organization, has been paying canvassers (many of them recently laid-off steelworkers) in Ohio to knock on doors, register voters, identify their preference, and get them out to vote in November. This isn't big news; it's happening in swing states all over the country.

The news is that it's been going on in Ohio for more than a year, which itself is staggering. Such get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio have at best been sporadic, unscientific and short-lived in the past. The earliest I've ever observed any such effort to get out Democratic votes in a presidential year in Ohio, with paid staff or unpaid volunteers, was August, two months before the election.

The hundreds of large, mostly urban precincts in Ohio where Democrats get more than 90 percent of the vote, but where the turnout is less than 20 percent, have been a particularly hard nut to crack. Increasing their turnout by mere percentage points would lead to a landslide victory for a Democrat, and it is in those precincts that ACT is most heavily focused.

ACT renders quaint the Bush "Amway" model. Haphazardly targeting garages with golf clubs in them while passing on union halls (note to Karl Rove: Democrats do golf; union members do vote Republican), Bush's minions seek out friends in places like Delaware County, the rarest of Ohio birds -- a county with people actually moving into it from out of state, rather than fleeing it like a burning building.

Ohio's many solidly Republican counties are numerous but low in population. Their Bush votes could be quickly swamped if ACT succeeds in getting out the vote in populous, Democratic-rich counties.

And then there's my mom.

My mother is known among my friends as "the zeitgeist of the American electorate." She's a typical ethnic, blue-collar, middle-class west-side Clevelander. She barely engages in politics, and yet her political behavior is almost exactly predictive. She is the Ohio voter.

Mom voted twice for Ronald Reagan. Dismissed Michael Dukakis in 1988 and voted for George H.W. Bush. In 1992, after flirting with Ross Perot, she voted for Bill Clinton. Clinton again in 1996. In 2000, she went back and forth for months and ended up voting for George W. Bush. She never loses.

This year she took the Democratic primary ballot for the first time in her life and voted for John Edwards.

This thing is over.

Analysts in presidential years tend to look in the obvious places for the ups and downs of the election, at the pathetically empty Democratic Party offices in Cleveland, or the oh-so-cute Bush volunteer pyramid directed by Karl Rove like the Wizard of Oz from behind a curtain.

But out in the real world, something much bigger is happening. Like an invisible earthquake thousands of miles away at the bottom of the sea that produces a tsunami, a growing wave of voter discontent is taking shape in Ohio, as the electorate sours on Bush's handling of the war, the economy and perhaps even the man himself. Recent Ohio polling shows the race has gone from a dead heat to a healthy seven- to nine-point margin for Kerry in the state, reflecting the movement of first-time Meetup attendees and people like my mother into the "Anybody but Bush" crowd.

At the same time, Ohio is experiencing a level of organic political activity in 2004 that I've never seen in my entire career in Ohio politics. It's happening earlier, with more intensity, and it involves more new people than ever. It's both planned and spontaneous. It is everywhere.

And every ounce of its energy is directed against George W. Bush.

A perfect storm is brewing in Ohio. The Bush road-rage bird-flippers know it's coming.

But it's worse than they think.

Mr. Rove, feel free to flip us off as you drive your U-Haul through Ohio on your way back to Texas in November.

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About the writer
Tim Russo is a Cleveland freelance writer who has worked with numerous Democratic campaigns in the state. In 2002 he was a general consultant for Tim Ryan, the youngest Democrat in Congress, who took the place of Jim Traficant.