The "Good" Governor, His Big Media Company Pals Pay Off Women

Tabloid's Deal With Woman Shielded Schwarzenegger
By Peter Nicholas and Carla Hall
Times Staff Writers

August 12, 2005

SACRAMENTO — Days after Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the race for governor and girded for questions about his past, a tabloid publisher wooing him for a business deal promised to pay a woman $20,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement about an alleged affair with the candidate.

American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, signed a friend of the woman to a similar contract about the alleged relationship for $1,000.

American Media's contract with Gigi Goyette of Malibu is dated Aug. 8, 2003, two days after Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on a late-night talk show. Under the agreement, Goyette must disclose to no one but American Media any information about her "interactions" with Schwarzenegger.

American Media never solicited further information from Goyette or her friend, Judy Mora, also of Malibu, both women said. The Enquirer had published a cover story two years earlier describing an alleged seven-year sexual relationship between Goyette and Schwarzenegger during his marriage to Maria Shriver, California's first lady.

On Aug. 14, 2003, as candidate Schwarzenegger was negotiating a consulting deal with American Media, the company signed its contract with Mora, who said she received $1,000 cash in return. Goyette declined to say whether she received the $20,000 promised in her contract.

Rob Stutzman, the governor's communications director, said he believed Schwarzenegger did not know of American Media's deals with the women. Schwarzenegger is on vacation and not available for comment, Stutzman said.

Stutzman denied any link between AMI's deal with Schwarzenegger and the company's agreements with the two women.

"There is no connection with his business with AMI or AMI's business of purchasing the rights to stories," Stutzman said. "That's what they do. Obviously, part of their business is the tabloid business."

The women might have been in a position to embarrass Schwarzenegger in his bid for the governor's office. When Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy on "The Tonight Show," he speculated that he would face accusations of infidelity.

Host Jay Leno asked if he was prepared for a bruising campaign, and Schwarzenegger replied: "I know that they're going to throw everything at me and they're going, you know, to say that I have no experience and that I'm a womanizer and that I'm a terrible guy, and all these kinds of things are going to come my way."

But American Media was effectively protecting Schwarzenegger's political interests, said a person who worked at the company when the contracts were signed. At the same time, American Media was crafting a deal to make Schwarzenegger executive editor of Flex and Muscle & Fitness magazines, helping to lure readers and advertisers.

If American Media was buying exclusive rights to the women's stories, said the person, who has a confidentiality agreement with the company and spoke on condition of anonymity, "why didn't the stories run? That's the obvious question."

"AMI systematically bought the silence" of the women, said the person. Schwarzenegger "was a de facto employee and he was important to their bottom line."

Schwarzenegger biographer Laurence Leamer wrote in his book, "Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger," that Schwarzenegger understood the tabloids would not skewer him if he was entering a business relationship with the company — although Schwarzenegger told Leamer he did not specifically seek such assurances.

Indeed, during the recall campaign, American Media put out a 120-page magazine celebrating Schwarzenegger as an embodiment of the "American dream."

The Enquirer did run a story repeating allegations in the British media that Schwarzenegger had an extramarital affair. The story was published first on its website before the election, and then in the newspaper three weeks after his election victory. But it was not prominently displayed, running on Page 24.

American Media, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, reached its agreement with Schwarzenegger on Nov. 15, 2003, two days before he was sworn in as governor. The deal was to pay him, by the company's estimates, at least $8 million over five years and no less than $5 million.

Schwarzenegger dropped the contract last month after the arrangement was made public in the Los Angeles Times and the Sacramento Bee. He said he plans to continue writing a monthly column for the two magazines.

American Media's contracts with Goyette and Mora, both titled "Confidentiality Agreement," are two pages long and never expire; they bind the two women "in perpetuity."

Goyette's agreement states that she is not to disclose "conversations with Schwarzenegger, her interactions with Schwarzenegger or anything else relating in any way to any relationship [she] ever had with Schwarzenegger," except to American Media.

Mora's contract bars her from disclosing anything about Goyette's "conversations with Schwarzenegger … interactions with Schwarzenegger or anything else relating in any way to any relationship Gigi Goyette ever had or alleged to have had with Schwarzenegger."

In an interview with The Times last week, with her lawyer present, Goyette said of Schwarzenegger "we're very good friends — and work associates."

Goyette has spent much of her life living in Malibu and grew up, she said, working as an extra on Hollywood film and TV productions. Today she acts occasionally in commercials. She said she last communicated with Schwarzenegger in the spring of 2001, before the National Enquirer published its story.

Goyette did not dispute an account of her relationship in Leamer's biography of Schwarzenegger, published two months ago. Like the National Enquirer, Leamer's book says Goyette and Schwarzenegger had a periodic intimate relationship.

In the book, Leamer says Goyette and Schwarzenegger got together yearly at the Arnold Fitness Weekend in Columbus, Ohio, where she helped with events.

Leamer writes that Goyette described her contact with Schwarzenegger with the term " 'outercourse' because it's like foreplay." The interaction, she told him, was "whatever we wanted it to be."

Goyette's lawyer, Charlotte Hassett, told The Times: "She maintained it was more of a massage situation — however you want to interpret that."

Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, declined to discuss the relationship. "I'm not going to characterize the relationship," Thompson said.

Two years after the Enquirer published its article about the relationship, Goyette told The Times, she heard from the tabloid again. In late July 2003 — as speculation was brewing over whether Schwarzenegger would enter the recall race for governor — Goyette said she got a call from reporter David Wright, who had written the 2001 story.

Goyette said Wright talked casually about the possibility of publishing a book on her life and that a division of American Media might be interested. Goyette was and still is eager to write a book — not a tell-all about Schwarzenegger, she said, but a chronicle of her life in the entertainment industry, from her days as a film and TV extra and a commercial actress to her life now as a 46-year-old single mother and PTA member with a teenage son.

That conversation "was a teaser," said Goyette, who gave Wright a manuscript. Goyette said she heard nothing further until Wright called her on what she believes was Aug. 6 or 7, 2003 — just as Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy — and asked if she could meet with someone from the company right away.

Wright declined The Times' requests for comment, saying, "I can't help you with that."

Goyette said that, unaccompanied by a lawyer or anyone else, she met an American Media representative at a Starbucks near her Malibu home, looked the agreement over hastily and signed it.

She said she did not believe American Media would purchase the rights to her story and then do nothing with it. She thought signing the pledge would be the prelude to a book deal.

"In my mind, it was trying to seal a deal so I wouldn't do the book with anybody else," she told The Times. "That was my feeling in my heart and in my mind."

Hassett added later: "She has reason to believe that she was manipulated by the actions of the people at National Enquirer."

The contract that bears Goyette's signature makes no mention of a book project. Goyette's recollection was that she signed a three-page contract. She said she did not get a copy until several weeks later, via fax, and it was two pages.

The contract was sealed just when interest in her story was peaking. Once Schwarzenegger's campaign was launched, the media quickly dug up the 2001 National Enquirer article. She was besieged by reporters.

They were "in front of my house. In front of my school. In front of the coffee shop," she said. "I didn't answer anyone's questions."

"A lot of people have offered me a lot of money to tell my story," she said. "I always said 'No comment' and turned everybody down."

Before she signed her contract, Goyette gave an interview to the BBC that aired after the contract was sealed. On Sept. 3, 2003 — after signing the contract but before receiving a copy of it, Hassett said — Goyette was quoted in a story by Fox News.

"She conducted herself in a way that a person who thought she had a book deal would act," Hassett said.

Mora, 50, said her first dealings with the National Enquirer took place when the tabloid was preparing the 2001 story on Goyette. The Enquirer, she said in an interview, "only wanted me to establish that she really knew him."

When the Enquirer reporter called, she said, she told him Goyette had pictures of Schwarzenegger around her house and had told her of how she worked with Schwarzenegger at his fitness exhibition.

Mora also said Goyette introduced her to Schwarzenegger once, at a Santa Monica restaurant he used to own.

Mora said she received a call from someone from the National Enquirer soon after Goyette's confidentiality contract was signed. The male caller, whose name she said she could not remember, offered her $1,000 to sign a confidentiality agreement of her own.

"They said, 'Would you be willing to agree to not say anything else?' " Mora recalled. "And I remember at the time saying something like, 'Uh, yeah. I don't know anything else.' They said, 'We paid her an additional $20,000, and if we give you $1,000 will you not say anything?' And I said, 'Sure, I don't know anything.' "

The next day in Los Angeles, Mora said, she met with a woman who gave her an envelope containing $1,000 cash. She said her recollection was imperfect, but she thinks it was then she signed the contract.

The document gives Mora's name as Judy Walker, a name she said she sometimes used. The signature says Judy Mora, as does the name printed by hand below it.

Mora said she does not have a copy of the document.

No Woman's Land

Women's rights are being destroyed while falling back into a thug's world. Thanks to Bush for starting a war for oil to make his military industrial/oil industry pals even richer. Meanwhile his daughters aren't serving in the wars he's creating. When is someone going to ask him point blank why they aren't and why hasn't he encouraged them to join the Army since he's been spouting it as a patriotic duty?

August 13, 2005

Reformer Without Results
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

President Bush has done so much for women. Not at home, of course.

Women in jeans in America may have their rights eroded by an administration where faith trumps science, but women in burkas? The president can't talk enough about how important their rights are.

And in the administration's diplomacy-free foreign policy, five of its top spokesmen on the Muslim world are women: Condi Rice; Laura Bush; Liz Cheney, No. 2 in the Near East bureau of the State Department and head of the Middle East democracy project; Karen Hughes, the new under secretary of state for public diplomacy; and her deputy, Dina Powell.

W. thinks so highly of Ms. Hughes, his longtime Texas political nanny, spinner, speechwriter and ghostwriter, that he put his Lima Green Bean, as he called her when she prodded him about the environment, in charge of the critical effort to salvage America's horrendous image in the Islamic world - even though what she knows about Islam could fit in a lima green bean. Why get any Muslims involved in reaching out to Muslims? That would be so matchy.

The real role for the newly minted ambassador hasn't been defined yet, but so far it looks as if Ms. Hughes's first priority will be to take her spinning skills, honed for W. in 2000 and 2004, to improve his image, and his policies' image, on a global scale.

Just as she retooled Bush as "a reformer with results" and a "compassionate conservative," Ms. Hughes plans to inundate Muslims with the four E's: "engagement, exchanges, education and empowerment."

On Thursday, when Mr. Bush came out of his Crawford ranch with Ms. Rice - it was odd, if refreshing, to see a secretary of state wearing lilac - he once again justified the war in Iraq by talking about the treatment of women.

The way to defeat our enemies' "hateful ideology," he said, is to offer an ideology "that says to young girls, you can succeed in your society, and you should have a chance to do so." He also said, "Hopefully, the drafters of the constitution understand our strong belief that women ought to be treated equally in the Iraqi society."

Hopefully? Is that the best we can do for a country that we broke, own and are sacrificing young men and women every day to keep?

Americans like it when the president talks up women's rights in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he does it often. It helped him sell the invasions of those two countries. But W. should stop listening to "My Sharona" on his iPod and start listening to their Sharia.

The fundamentalist Taliban is recrudescing in Afghanistan, young girls in Iraq are afraid to leave their homes because there are so many kidnappings and rapes, and women's groups in Iraq are terrified that the new constitution will cut women's rights to a Saudiesque level.

Some Shiite politicians are pushing to supplant the civil courts that have long governed marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance with religious courts that are based on Sharia, or Islamic law. The New York Times reported that one of the crucial articles in various drafts of the constitution is: "The followers of any sect or religion have the right to abide by their religion or sect in their personal affairs, and a law should organize this."

That little provision could jeopardize any chance for women's equality. Clerics running religious courts based on the Koran could legitimize polygamy, honor killings, stonings and public beheadings of women charged with adultery, and divorce by "talaq" - where all a husband has to do is declare, "I divorce thee," three times.

Saddam repressed Islamic politics, so under him, Iraq was one of the most secular countries in the Middle East. It has become far more fundamentalist since the U.S. took over.

The back-to-burka trend has been widely reported throughout Shiite-dominated southern Iraq, and young women activists told The Los Angeles Times that their mothers had more freedom in the 60's.

Najla Ubeidi, a lawyer in the Iraqi Women's League, agreed: "During the 1960's, there was a real belief in improving women's conditions. We could wear what we liked, go out when we liked, return home when we liked, and people would judge us by the way we behaved."

If W. liked exercising his mind as much as his body, he could see that his mission to modernize Muslim countries is backfiring on women. The most painless way for Muslim men to prove that they have not abandoned Arab culture and adopted Western ways is to tighten the burka.

To us, the "liberated" but repressive Iraq is a paradox. To the women, it's a prison.

A DIRTY THUG GETS HIS AFTER A CAREER OF CORRUPTING OUR GOVERNMENT "LEADERS"

The GOP is in bed with thousands of lobbyists like Abramoff. In fact they have a program for putting former GOP congressmen and activists IN as lobbyists at every business that has one in Washington. Here's how it works. When a lobbyist retires or leaves a business the GOP meets with and strongly suggests (hell, they DEMAND it) that the business hire their true-blue GOP operative. This is a concentrated effort working under the radar to make sure business plays ball with (funds) the GOP's campaign activities and GOPACS. By assuring that lobbyist money brought into political parties goes to the GOP, they severely cut the campaigning efforts of the Democrats and any other group seeking office. So, read on and look at what kind of morality and ethics the GOP seeks to align itself with in its bid to grab and hold on to power at any cost. Caution. It could make you ill and ready to strangle Tom DeLay.


A High-Powered Lobbyist's Swift Fall From Grace

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A06

What a difference the passage of a few years has made for high-powered Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In the first nine months of 2002, Abramoff collected $12.2 million in fees from Indian tribes and additional sums from the General Council for Islamic Banks and other clients. He spent $232,000 on his personal travel, mostly by chartered jets, and $69,000 for a Passover family vacation.

As a Bush "Pioneer," Abramoff also raised more than $100,000 for the president's reelection in 2004. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was "a very close friend," according to Abramoff's description, as well as a participant in costly trips to Moscow and Scotland arranged and partly subsidized by Abramoff or his clients.

Abramoff played host to other lawmakers and congressional staff members at four luxury sports-stadium skyboxes he leased for $1 million a year, and he provided free fundraisers for lawmakers at Signatures, a Washington restaurant in which he had a financial stake.

Now the restaurant is sold, the clients are gone, the lawmakers are working to distance themselves, and Abramoff's wealth is being diverted to pay his legal tab. His indictment yesterday by a Florida grand jury, which covers only a sliver of the activities targeted in a continuing federal tax and corruption investigation, officially caps his remarkably swift fall from grace but is probably not the end of his travails. He was to spend last night in jail.

The saga of Abramoff's career is the tale of an ideologically committed lawyer whose financial ambitions repeatedly pushed him toward the boundaries of legal and ethical propriety. A short man with a strong chin who wore dark suits and flaunted his religious faith, Abramoff has repeatedly said that what he did was no different from what other lobbyists did for their Washington clients. He said they all got good value for their money, and also that he broke no laws.

He was not bashful about seeking personal enrichment. "Can you smell money?" Abramoff wrote his partner in 2001, referring to a Michigan Indian tribe flush with profits from casino gambling.

Abramoff got his start in politics as an organizer for Ronald Reagan while attending Brandeis University in 1980. Shortly afterward, he made his first connections to others who would command influence in Washington when he became the head of the College Republican National Committee in 1981. One of his predecessors was Karl Rove, and three of his colleagues in the group at the time -- Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed and Amy Ridenour -- would later play helpful roles in Abramoff's Washington work.

He signed on as a lobbyist in Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP, the Washington office of a Seattle-based firm. One of his first tasks was to help textile manufacturers in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands -- a U.S. protectorate -- preserve the islands' exemption from minimum-wage laws.

Abramoff sold the exemption to DeLay and many other lawmakers, whom he took on junkets to the islands, as the key to preserving a model of conservative, regulation-free capitalism. Critics, including international human rights groups and Democrats, said his lobbying helped insulate and preserve the abusive workplace and labor conditions there.

Abramoff later signed on as a lobbyist to Indian tribes, flush with millions of dollars from gambling operations, that wanted to preserve their exemption from taxation. With partner Michael Scanlon, a former press secretary of DeLay, Abramoff collected at least $66 million from six tribes between 2001 and 2003, according to a year-long and continuing investigation by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. He also steered Indian riches into the coffers of numerous politicians, including a few Democrats, as well as influential Republicans.

Abramoff's personal lifestyle matched his lavish fees. A detailed tally by his accountant, released in June by the committee, included expenditures in the first nine months of 1992 of $134,000 for a new BMW, $69,000 for his driver's salary, $103,000 in credit card charges, and $36,000 in fees to accountants and other personal advisers. He also wrote checks to lawmakers' campaigns totaling $28,000 in that period.

But as Abramoff strategized and moved his clients' funds around -- in what his former colleagues and associates have described as a lengthy effort to obscure who was paying for what and where the money wound up -- he also left a trail of thousands of e-mails and other documents recounting the maneuvers in exceptionally brash terms.

Those documents, in the hands of federal and congressional investigators since early last year, are providing the grist for the legal challenges Abramoff and his former associates still face.

Researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

WELCOME TO MY TRAGIC QUAGMIRE - BUSH

The reason the Bush administration "slipped" in their message on Iraq (as mentioned below) is that the citizens of this country are beginning to wake up that the Bush message was never clear in the first place. It's a sad fact that only now a majority of Americans are seeing through the White House Spin and its lies. But it's not going to stop with just the war. We're going to keep slamming Bush and his corrupt administration and congress over their lies and deceit until they are out of office.

In Iraq, No Clear Finish Line
Timing Is Muddy For U.S. Pullout

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A01

The Bush administration has sent seemingly conflicting signals in recent days over the duration of the U.S. deployment to Iraq, openly discussing contingency plans to withdraw as many as 30,000 of 138,000 troops by spring, then cautioning against expectations of any early pullout. Finally yesterday, President Bush dismissed talk of a drawdown as just "speculation and rumors" and warned against "withdrawing before the mission is complete."

If the public was left confused, it may be no more unsure than the administration itself, as some government officials involved in Iraq policy privately acknowledge.

The shifting scenarios reflect the uncertain nature of the mission and the ambiguity of what would constitute its successful completion. For all the clarity of Bush's vow to stay not one day longer than needed, the muddled reality is that no one can say exactly when that will be.

The events of the past week have brought home once again the difficulties confronting the president as he prosecutes what polls suggest is an increasingly unpopular war. With surging violence claiming more U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq and the angry mother of a dead soldier camping out near his ranch in Texas, Bush plainly cannot count on indefinite public patience.

Administration officials have all but given up any hope of militarily defeating the insurgents with U.S. forces, instead aiming only to train and equip enough Iraqi security forces to take over the fight themselves. At the same time, they believe that the mission depends on building a new political infrastructure, a project facing its most decisive test in the next three days as deeply divided Iraqis struggle to draft a constitution by a Monday deadline.

In the face of all that, Bush is trying to buy time. After meeting with his national security team at his ranch near Crawford, Tex., yesterday, Bush again beseeched the public to stick with his strategy despite continuing mayhem on the ground, exemplified most recently by the deaths of 16 Marines from the same Ohio-based unit in the past two weeks. Overall, nearly 1,850 U.S. troops have died.

"The mission in Iraq is tough because the enemy understands the stakes," Bush said, alongside Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will deliver a serious blow to their hateful ideology. . . . The recent violence in Iraq is a grim reminder of the brutal enemies we face in the war on terror."

Much of the public appears unconvinced. Just 38 percent of Americans in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll last week approved of Bush's handling of the war, the lowest point yet in that survey. More than half of those interviewed in a USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll said they now believe that it was a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq and that the war has made the United States less safe from terrorism; 56 percent supported withdrawing some or all troops now.

That disenchantment is one reason, some officials privately acknowledge, that the military has begun talking about a potential timetable for partial withdrawal -- to provide a sense of progress and reassure Americans that the deployment is not endless.

"They want to start withdrawing because they can feel the heat here in the United States," said Larry Diamond, a onetime U.S. adviser in Iraq who has since written "Squandered Victory," a scathing appraisal of the postwar occupation. "They know the tolerance for American casualties and this ongoing bloodshed is not going to go on forever."

Pentagon plans call for increasing the 17-brigade U.S. troop presence this fall by a brigade or two, or about 10,000 troops, before bringing it down to about 15 brigades next spring and possibly to about 12 brigades by the end of 2006, according to officers familiar with the planning. The near-term increase would cover the constitutional referendum scheduled for Oct. 15 and national elections set for Dec. 15, a period in which U.S. military authorities expect violence to intensify, much as it did during the run-up to January's interim elections.

Top Pentagon officials have made no secret in recent weeks of their eagerness to begin withdrawing some troops to ease the strain of lengthy deployments. At the same time, military commanders have cautioned against expecting that Iraq's new army and police forces will develop quickly enough to operate on their own within another year or two.

"It's a race against time because by the end of this coming summer we can no longer sustain the presence we have now," said retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who visited Iraq most recently in June and briefed Cheney, Rice and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This thing, the wheels are coming off it."

McCaffrey said Bush's strategy of building Iraqi political and security institutions makes sense, and he estimated an 80 percent chance of success. Even so, he said the fading public support represents a genuine hazard for the president: "We want to get out of this. . . . The American people are walking away from this war."

At his meeting with his war cabinet yesterday, Bush reviewed the latest developments but reported no new direction. The administration has set up seven interagency groups focused on its main priorities in Iraq.

These are providing security and training Iraqi forces, building national political institutions, restoring energy and other services, tackling economic problems, establishing rule of law, enlisting international help, and improving strategic communications.

In not-for-attribution comments, some administration officials acknowledge the uphill task. One option that will have to be considered eventually, they say, is amnesty that would forgive even insurgents who have participated in violence. Historically, they note, insurgencies end with some form of amnesty.

But they also see hope in recent developments, mainly the decision by leaders of Iraq's minority Sunnis to participate in the political process instead of continuing to resist the new ruling order. If Iraqis succeed in drafting a constitution by Monday's deadline, the White House hopes it will defuse sectarian grievances that have powered the Sunni-dominated insurgency.

"We're entering a critical phase in the political process in Iraq," Bush counselor Dan Bartlett said. "While there's rightly a lot of focus on the violence and the security, the commanders and Ambassador [Zalmay] Khalilzad are very focused on the political process because the political process will be key to defeating the insurgency."

That remains a daunting prospect given deep-seated differences along ethnic and religious lines, and the administration has signaled that it is willing to take a deal on a constitution without resolving some tough issues involving regional autonomy and resource allocation in hopes of sustaining a sense of momentum.

"The administration understands how delicate this is," said Peter Khalil, who was an adviser to the original U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq. "They're obviously pushing the process forward and want the deadline met. But it's a dangerous game here. You don't want them to delay, but you want the process to work."

Failure to meet the deadline, analysts say, would be a devastating setback to Bush and could accelerate the sense at home that the process is not going well. Alarmed by falling domestic support for the war, Bush aides resolved in June to rally the public by having the president take a more visible role explaining his strategy and predicting victory. Bush flew to Fort Bragg, N.C., to deliver a prime-time address pleading for patience, part of what aides said would be a sustained campaign.

But Bush then largely dropped the subject until yesterday's meeting at the ranch, addressing the war mainly in reaction to the latest grisly events on the ground. In the ensuing vacuum, Rumsfeld and the U.S. effort in Iraq have come under increasing fire even from Bush supporters, such as Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and the American Spectator magazine.

"The Bush administration has lost control of its public affairs management of this issue," said Christopher F. Gelpi, a Duke University scholar whose analyses of wartime public opinion have been studied in the White House. "They were so focused on this through 2004. . . . I don't know why they've slipped."

Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.

GOP LOBBYIST INDICTED, PAL & CORRUPTOR TO TOP GOP LEADERS

Delay and the GOP elite traveled the world and lived like kings with this rat! He's only one of thousands now usurping the people's trust in the backroom and halls of YOUR government. You can't trust the Republicans since taking over every branch of the government. It's corrupted them to the point that they have turned their backs on their own ideals and values. It is threatening the foundations of our democracy. Corporations using unethical thugs like Abramoff make the rules while the people suffer under them. You, the person reading this right now, have the most important office in the country. A citizen. Stand up like Cindy Sheehan to the ugly arrogance of power and make your voice heard. It's time during the next election to have a house cleaning in Congress.

Abramoff Indicted in Casino Boat Purchase
Lobbyist, Associate Charged With Fraud

By James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A01

MIAMI, Aug. 11 -- Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a business partner were indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, charged with five counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy in their purchase of a fleet of Florida gambling boats from a businessman who was later killed in a gangland-style hit.

Abramoff, 46, was arrested in Los Angeles in the late afternoon and was expected to be taken before a U.S. magistrate there on Friday. He was indicted along with Adam Kidan, the former owner of the Dial-a-Mattress franchise in Washington. Kidan, 41, of New York City, will surrender to the FBI here by Friday morning, his attorney, Martin I. Jaffe, said in a written statement.

Five years ago, while he was still one of the capital's most prominent Republican lobbyists, Abramoff, with Kidan and former Reagan administration official Ben Waldman of Springfield, Va., took over SunCruz Casinos. The company operated a fleet of gambling boats from as many as 11 ports in Florida. Although the indictment does not detail the effort, Abramoff leveraged his connections with members of Congress to advance the SunCruz deal, according to interviews and thousands of documents, court records and e-mails filed in related bankruptcy cases.

Abramoff's spokesman in New York, Andrew Blum, declined to comment, referring calls to Abramoff's Miami attorney, Neal Sonnett, who did not return calls. Kidan said in a statement that he had cooperated with investigators, adding: "I did nothing wrong and these allegations are totally unfounded."

Each of the six counts in the indictment could bring a punishment of as much as five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Federal authorities are also seeking $60 million from Abramoff and Kidan, the money lost by a lender they had sought out to help finance the casino ships' purchase.

The indictment marks the first formal charges against Abramoff, who has been at the center of a Washington controversy this year involving the large sums of money he collected from Indian casino interests and the influence he exerted on their behalf.

Abramoff and Kidan are accused of faking a wire transfer of $23 million, the equity they had agreed to put into the $147.5 million purchase of SunCruz from Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, the multimillionaire founder of the popular Miami Subs chain of sandwich shops. The wire transfer, said R. Alexander Acosta, the U.S. attorney here, "was counterfeit."

"The defendants never transferred the funds and never made a cash equity contribution toward the purchase of SunCruz," Acosta said.

As part of the fraud, Abramoff and Kidan lied on their personal financial disclosure statements, the indictment alleges. The two also used money borrowed from individuals, which they called "flash funds," to lead "potential lenders to believe [they] had the necessary funding to complete the sale of SunCruz," the indictment alleges. In reality, they did not have those funds, according to the indictment.

"Abramoff and Kidan did not put any of their own money into this deal," said Timothy J. Delaney, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami office.

After the sale, Boulis retained a piece of the business, but relations among the partners quickly soured, according to lawsuits and bankruptcy records. Boulis accused Kidan of maintaining connections to organized crime, and he and Kidan came to blows during a business meeting.

On Feb. 6, 2001, Boulis was killed as he drove home from a business meeting by someone in a Mustang who fired three hollow-point bullets into his chest. No one has been arrested in the slaying.

Today, the SunCruz casino boats are sailing under new ownership after a bankruptcy auction. Foothill Capital sued the partners in the deal over the $60 million in loans, eventually settling with Waldman for $450,000 and with Abramoff for an undisclosed amount. Litigation continues with Kidan.

Federal authorities sidestepped specific mention of Abramoff's high-powered political connections. At an afternoon news conference here, Acosta did not mention Abramoff's use of congressional contacts to seal the SunCruz deal. The closest officials came to doing so was when Delaney said that, "regardless of position, status, wealth or associations, fraudulent activity will not be tolerated."

But Abramoff's dealings with SunCruz were intertwined with his relationships with powerful members of Congress and their staffs. As the negotiations warmed up, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's office -- he was the House minority whip then -- gave Boulis a flag that had flown over the Capitol. And as the SunCruz deal was closing, Abramoff brought his lead financier to a DeLay fundraiser in the lobbyist's box at FedEx Field during a Monday Night Football game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys.

To help land the deal, an Abramoff associate, Michael Scanlon, persuaded Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) to officially criticize Boulis in the Congressional Record; later, Ney praised Kidan in the official publication of Congress.

Abramoff listed Tony Rudy, a top DeLay aide at the time, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) as personal references on his loan papers. And he flew key members of DeLay's staff -- including his current chief of staff -- on a SunCruz jet and took them for a night of gambling on a SunCruz boat at the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa. The Super Bowl trip came just days before Boulis's slaying.

Ney has said he was duped by Abramoff and Scanlon. DeLay's spokesmen have said he does not remember meeting the banker or sending the flag. His spokesman declined to comment. Rudy has declined to comment. Rohrabacher has said he gladly served as a reference for Abramoff.

An FBI official said Thursday that the case is still under investigation, but he indicated that no other arrests are imminent.

In a separate Washington investigation, a task force of the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies is exploring how Abramoff and Scanlon collected $82 million in fees for lobbying and public affairs work from Indian tribes around the country.

The task force is also investigating whether Abramoff and his associates exerted improper influence over members of Congress and federal agencies on behalf of their clients.

Sources familiar with the probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Scanlon and his attorneys have been in discussions with the Justice Department for several months. He and the lawyers have not returned phone calls seeking comment on the investigation.

Scanlon has knowledge of both SunCruz, for whom he did public relations work, and dealings between Abramoff and members of Congress and their staffs. Of particular interest to prosecutors would be Scanlon's knowledge of whether trips, campaign contributions or favors were given in exchange for legislation.

The heart of the alleged fraud was the $23 million wire transfer, faxed by Kidan and Waldman to the partners' key lender -- Foothill Capital, now part of Wells Fargo Bank. It was intended to persuade lenders to provide $60 million in financing to Abramoff's group to be used for the $147.5 million purchase.

The fax from Kidan and Waldman appeared to confirm a transfer of the money from Kidan's account at Chevy Chase Bank to the seller's bank. But Chevy Chase Bank later said that Kidan's account had already been closed at the time of the purported wire transfer. Foothill now contends that the faxed document was a forgery, and that later it was told that Boulis had accepted a $20 million note instead of cash.

Waldman was not indicted on Thursday. Asked whether Waldman was a suspect or a witness, Acosta said: "I'm not going to discuss whether someone may or may not be a witness."

Abramoff said in court papers that he was unaware of the fraud and was shocked to learn of it months after it occurred. But the indictment cites a Sept. 22, 2000, closing document signed by Abramoff. The court file in the SunCruz bankruptcy case includes a similar document with Abramoff's signature certifying that he and Kidan put up the $23 million.

Three months after the sale closed, trouble between Boulis and the other partners began to boil over. Abramoff said in a court filing later that in November 2000 he went to Miami to mediate and was "flabbergasted" that Kidan had never paid Boulis the $23 million for the company.

Yet other records show that Abramoff continued to back Kidan in the growing discord with Boulis.

In December, the rift deteriorated into a fistfight at a business meeting. Boulis attacked and threatened to kill Kidan, according to Kidan, who went to court to get a restraining order against Boulis.

Immediately after the fight, Abramoff agreed with Kidan in e-mails that Boulis should be removed from SunCruz. In an e-mail to a SunCruz attorney, Abramoff said, "It is my belief that Gus [Boulis] and Adam [Kidan] need to resolve the issue of what Gus is owed and Gus needs to move on out of the company."

Boulis was killed two months later. He was a Greek immigrant whose rags-to-riches story became part of South Florida lore. He had launched SunCruz after making a fortune from Miami Subs. Known as a "cruise to nowhere" casino business, SunCruz sailed midsize cruise ships from ports around Florida, taking gamblers into international waters, beyond the reach of state laws.

Based near Fort Lauderdale in Dania Beach, the business was the bane of state officials, who thought Boulis flouted the law. In 1999, federal prosecutors charged Boulis with violating shipping laws by buying his vessels without being a U.S. citizen. Boulis agreed to pay a $1 million fine and sell his cruise line. Abramoff became an interested buyer and teamed with Kidan, a friend from the College Republicans.

In October 2000, a month after Abramoff and Kidan took charge of SunCruz and as relations with Boulis soured, Ney praised Kidan in Congress, saying "he will easily transform SunCruz from a questionable enterprise to an upstanding establishment."

Two months later, Kidan hired Anthony Moscatiello, whom he had described as a business mentor. Authorities have identified Moscatiello as an associate of the Gambino crime family who turned up in wiretaps of mob boss John Gotti in the 1980s.

Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.

A Nation Rocked To Sleep/For Casey

Published on Monday, July 18, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

The Sounds of Hope

by Cindy Sheehan

Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done.
They call him a hero, you should be glad he's one, but,
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
They say he must be brave because his boy died for another mans lies.
The only thing he allows himself are long, deep sighs.
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say he died so the flag will continue to wave,
But I believe he died because they had oil to save.
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

Have you ever heard the sound of a Nation Rocked to Sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep,
But if we the people let them continue, another mother will weep.
Have you ever heard the sound of a Nation Rocked to Sleep?

~ A Nation Rocked To Sleep/For Casey
By Carly Sheehan
Copyrighted 2004

GOP Paying Legal Bills of Rat Suppressing Voters' Rights

GOP Paying Legal Bills of Bush Official

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer Thu Aug 11, 3:08 AM ET

Despite a zero-tolerance policy on tampering with voters, the Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire's newest senator.

At the time, Tobin was the RNC's New England regional director, before moving to President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

A top New Hampshire Party official and a GOP consultant already have pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. Tobin's indictment accuses him of specifically calling the GOP consultant to get a telephone firm to help in the scheme.

"The object of the conspiracy was to deprive inhabitants of New Hampshire and more particularly qualified voters ... of their federally secured right to vote," states the latest indictment issued by a federal grand jury on May 18.

Since charges were first filed in December, the RNC has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent, a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly. The firm's other clients include Bill and Hillary Clinton and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros.

The GOP's filings with the FEC list the payments to Williams & Connolly without specifying they were for Tobin's defense. Political parties have wide latitude on how they spend their money, including on lawyers.

Republican Party officials said they don't ordinarily discuss specifics of their legal work, but confirmed to The Associated Press they had agreed to underwrite Tobin's defense because he was a longtime supporter and that he assured them he had committed no crimes.

"Jim is a longtime friend who has served as both an employee and an independent contractor for the RNC," a spokeswoman for the RNC, Tracey Schmitt, said Wednesday. "This support is based on his assurance and our belief that Jim has not engaged in any wrongdoing."

The Republican Party has repeatedly and pointedly disavowed any tactics aimed at keeping citizens from voting since allegations of voter suppression surfaced during the Florida recount in 2000 that tipped the presidential race to Bush.

Earlier this week, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, the former White House political director, reiterated a "zero-tolerance policy" for any GOP official caught trying to block legitimate votes.

"The position of the Republican National Committee is simple: We will not tolerate fraud; we will not tolerate intimidation; we will not tolerate suppression. No employee, associate or any person representing the Republican Party who engages in these kinds of acts will remain in that position," Mehlman wrote Monday to a group that studied voter suppression tactics.

Dennis Black and Dane Butswinkas, two Williams & Connolly lawyers for Tobin, did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment. Brian Tucker, a New Hampshire lawyer on the team, declined comment.

Tobin's lawyers have attacked the prosecution, suggesting evidence was improperly introduced to the grand jury, that their client originally had been promised he wouldn't be indicted and that he was improperly charged under one of the statutes.

Tobin stepped down from his Bush-Cheney post a couple of weeks before the November 2004 election after Democrats suggested he was involved in the phone bank scheme. He was charged a month after the election.

Paul Twomey, a volunteer lawyer for New Hampshire Democrats who are pursuing a separate lawsuit involving the phone scheme, said he was surprised the RNC was willing to pay Tobin's legal bills and that it suggested more people may be involved.

"It originally appeared to us that there were just certain rogue elements of the Republican Party who were willing to do anything to win control of the U.S. Senate, including depriving Americans of their ability to vote," Twomey said.

"But now that the RNC actually is bankrolling Mr. Tobin's defense, coupled with the fact that it has refused some discovery in the civil case, really raises the questions of who are they protecting, how high does this go and who was in on this," Twomey said.

Federal prosecutors have secured testimony from the two convicted conspirators in the scheme directly implicating Tobin.

Charles McGee, the New Hampshire GOP official who pleaded guilty, told prosecutors he informed Tobin of the plan and asked for Tobin's help in finding a vendor who could make the calls that would flood the phone banks.

Allen Raymond, a former colleague of Tobin who operated a Virginia-based telephone services firm, told prosecutors Tobin called him in October 2002, explained the telephone plan and asked Raymond's company to help McGee implement it.

Raymond's lawyer told the court that Tobin made the request for help in his official capacity as the top RNC official for New England and his client believed the RNC had sanctioned the activity.

What Should the Democrats Do? (8 Letters)

From the NY TIMES letters section. Food for thought.

August 8, 2005

What Should the Democrats Do? (8 Letters)

To the Editor:

Jim Wallis ("The Message Thing," Op-Ed, Aug. 4) articulates a strongly centrist vision of the Democratic Party, in which family values, religious ideals and homeland security define policy at every turn. He somehow believes that this is the way to wrest control from the Republicans, who are, of course, the champions of these same values.

One recalls Ralph Nader's famous characterization of the two parties and their candidates during the 2000 campaign: Tweedledee and Tweedledum. How are we Americans to feel enthusiastic about a Democratic Party that simply presents a moderation of the status quo?

The United States is engaged in an ideological struggle whose outcome will define its future. Republicans are perfectly aware of this, and are fighting (and winning) with exceptional vigor. Democrats can join the battle with equal vigor, offering a real, radical alternative, or they can lay down their arms.

Republican Lite is not going to bring voters to the booths in 2008 any more than it did in 2004 or 2000.

Mark Post
Bundoora, Australia, Aug. 5, 2005
•

To the Editor:

Language is not "clearly important in politics." It is politics. And a message that doesn't get out is no message at all.

For Jim Wallis to suggest that narrative is not as important in swaying voters is more dangerous to the future of the Democratic Party than anything the Republicans can peddle. And peddling is exactly the discipline the Democrats lack.

Put some good, old-fashioned ad man to the task, and Karl Rove would at least have a run for his donors' money.

Howard Reed
Saugerties, N.Y., Aug. 4, 2005
•

To the Editor:

I agree with Jim Wallis that the Democrats "must offer new ideas and a fresh agenda." But Mr. Wallis's agenda, whatever its short-term utility, doesn't fit the bill. It is little more than a series of old left-wing religious ideas with a few accommodations to the right thrown in.

I wish Mr. Wallis had taken this opportunity to support the creation of a progressive infrastructure for genuinely fresh ways of thinking and speaking.

Andrew T. Jacobs
Smallwood, N.Y., Aug. 4, 2005
•

To the Editor:

Jim Wallis is the best person in America to advise Democrats and Republicans on how to talk the talk and walk the walk that genuine spirituality requires.

Democrats should never cede the religious values vote to Republicans.

Democrats are doing the right thing by seeking to improve their campaigning on, and talking about, values issues.

God is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and Republicans certainly do not have a corner on moral and spiritual values. Mr. Wallis is correct in advising Democrats to come up with a values vision that gives the party a compelling message to take to the American people.

Paul L. Whiteley Sr.
Louisville, Ky., Aug. 4, 2005
•

To the Editor:

Jim Wallis says, "The discussion that shapes our political future should be one about moral values." While values definitely count, it takes more to win elections.

Political leadership is the act of saying where our country can get to in the future. For the Republicans, the future is pure win-lose. To the Democrats, the goal is a future where everyone prospers. Unfortunately, they haven't figured out the "values" for getting there.

This clash of worldviews is at the heart of today's struggle. And the Democrats are traumatized by the "take no prisoners" aspect of the Republicans' goal.

Until the Democrats declare the Republican worldview to be obsolete and offer a clear plan for getting to the future they know in their hearts we can get to, the Republicans will beat them in every election to come.

Steven G. Brant
Bryn Mawr, Pa., Aug. 4, 2005
•

To the Editor:

The Democrats' presidential candidate in 2004, John Kerry, adhered to Jim Wallis's policy prescription closely. Senator Kerry opposed tax policies that favor the rich over the poor, championed strong environmental protection and offered more credible international leadership than his opponent. Voters ignored this.

Although writers and political pundits never tire of deriding the Democratic Party for its failure in 2004, it is for some reason verboten to place the blame where it properly belongs: the American people.

Craig Welter
Washington, Aug. 4, 2005
•

To the Editor:

Many of Jim Wallis's ideas make good sense, but I must strenuously object to his comment "Democrats need to think past catchphrases, like 'a woman's right to choose.' "

The decision for any medical procedure is between the patient and his or her doctor. The right to choose what is to be done or not done to one's body is no catchphrase.

Beverly Ball Chassler
New York, Aug. 4, 2005
•

To the Editor:

Jim Wallis called it perfectly. The issues that he pegs as crucial to Americans and to the success of the Democratic Party were not just sampled from a pool of potential controversies du jour but rather will resonate through the future of our politics.

Granted, politicians should choose their words and postures with an eye toward public perception. But as the Democrats' Chicken Little-esque strategy of indiscriminate naysaying gets shriller by the week, we await progressive leaders who will conscientiously identify core objectives and pragmatically set out to achieve what they can.

To Mr. Wallis's sage advice "Find the vision first, and the language will follow," I would only add, "and do it soon."
Bennett Myers
Hinckley, Minn., Aug. 4, 2005

Before the War, CIA Reportedly Trained a Team of Iraqis to Aid U.S...And Totally F#$%ed It Up!

Before the War, CIA Reportedly Trained a Team of Iraqis to Aid U.S.

By Dana Priest and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 3, 2005; A12

Before the war in Iraq began, the CIA recruited and trained an Iraqi paramilitary group, code-named the Scorpions, to foment rebellion, conduct sabotage, and help CIA paramilitaries who entered Baghdad and other cities target buildings and individuals, according to three current and former intelligence officials with knowledge of the unit.

The CIA spent millions of dollars on the Scorpions, whose existence has not been previously disclosed, even giving them former Soviet Hind helicopters. But most of the unit's prewar missions -- spray-painting graffiti on walls; cutting electricity; "sowing confusion," as one said -- were delayed or canceled because of poor training or planning, said officials briefed on the unit. The speed of the invasion negated the need for most of their missions, others said.

After Baghdad fell, the CIA used the Scorpions to try to infiltrate the insurgency, to help out in interrogations, and, from time to time, to do "the dirty work," as one intelligence official put it.

In one case, members of the unit, wearing masks and carrying clubs and pipes, beat up an Iraqi general in the presence of CIA and military personnel, according to investigative documents reviewed by The Washington Post and according to several defense and intelligence officials.

Post inquiries about the case prompted the CIA to brief the House and Senate intelligence committees on the unit, said several members of Congress and two defense officials.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, asked if he was satisfied with the information he received on the unit, said, "Yes -- if it existed." But he added: "We're not spending a lot of time going back and dissecting tactical programs."

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise declined to comment on the unit. Defense Department spokesmen referred comments on the unit to the CIA. All former and current government officials interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the classified nature of the Scorpions.

Authorized by a presidential finding signed by President Bush in February or March 2002, the Scorpions were part of a policy of "regime change" in Iraq. The covert members, many of whom were exiles recruited by the Kurds, were trained in target identification, explosives and small arms at two secret bases in Jordan, according to one U.S. government official.

They were sent surreptitiously into Iraq before the war and were in cities such as Baghdad, Fallujah and Qaim to give the impression that a rebellion was underway and to conduct light sabotage, according to the two defense sources and the three former and current intelligence officials.

"They painted X's [for targeting] on buildings and things like that," said one former intelligence officer.

After the initial combat phase of the war, the CIA used the paramilitary units as translators and to fetch supplies and retrieve informants in an increasingly dangerous Iraq where CIA officers largely stayed within the protected Green Zone, according to the officials.

CIA control over the unit became weaker as chaos grew in Iraq. "Even though they were set up by us, they weren't well supervised," said an intelligence official.

"At some point, and it's not really clear how this happened, they started being used in interrogations . . . because they spoke the local dialect" and were caught roughing up detainees, Curtis E. Ryan, an Army investigator, told a military court in Colorado where four soldiers are charged in connection with the death of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush in 2003.

Many of the paramilitaries did not speak English. When they entered Iraq after the invasion, because they wore civilian clothes and traveled in civilian vehicles, the Scorpion teams were often mistaken for insurgents. On a couple of occasions, U.S. soldiers unknowingly tracked the teams as insurgents and focused on their official safe houses as possible targets until they were discovered to be working with U.S. officials.

Like Nazis...

Under Bush and his underlings' direction our soldiers have been turned into beasts. It's an insult to the tradition of honest and fine American military values to read of something as sickening as this.

Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs

Interrogated General's Sleeping-Bag Death, CIA's Use of Secret Iraqi Squad Are Among Details

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 3, 2005; A01

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

The sleeping bag was the idea of a soldier who remembered how his older brother used to force him into one, and how scared and vulnerable it made him feel. Senior officers in charge of the facility near the Syrian border believed that such "claustrophobic techniques" were approved ways to gain information from detainees, part of what military regulations refer to as a "fear up" tactic, according to military court documents.

The circumstances that led up to Mowhoush's death paint a vivid example of how the pressure to produce intelligence for anti-terrorism efforts and the war in Iraq led U.S. military interrogators to improvise and develop abusive measures, not just at Abu Ghraib but in detention centers elsewhere in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mowhoush's ordeal in Qaim, over 16 days in November 2003, also reflects U.S. government secrecy surrounding some abuse cases and gives a glimpse into a covert CIA unit that was set up to foment rebellion before the war and took part in some interrogations during the insurgency.

The sleeping-bag interrogation and beatings were taking place in Qaim about the same time that soldiers at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, were using dogs to intimidate detainees, putting women's underwear on their heads, forcing them to strip in front of female soldiers and attaching at least one to a leash. It was a time when U.S. interrogators were coming up with their own tactics to get detainees to talk, many of which they considered logical interpretations of broad-brush categories in the Army Field Manual, with labels such as "fear up" or "pride and ego down" or "futility."

Other tactics, such as some of those seen at Abu Ghraib, had been approved for one detainee at Guantanamo Bay and found their way to Iraq. Still others have been linked to official Pentagon guidance on specific techniques, such as the use of dogs.

Two Army soldiers with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Fort Carson, Colo., are charged with killing Mowhoush with the sleeping-bag technique, and his death has been the subject of partially open court proceedings at the base in Colorado Springs. Two other soldiers alleged to have participated face potential nonjudicial punishment. Some details of the incident have been released and were previously reported. But an examination of numerous classified documents gathered during the criminal investigation into Mowhoush's death, and interviews with Defense Department officials and current and former intelligence officials, present a fuller picture of what happened and outline the role played in his interrogation by the CIA, its Iraqi paramilitaries and Special Forces soldiers.

Determining the details of the general's demise has been difficult because the circumstances are listed as "classified" on his official autopsy, court records have been censored to hide the CIA's involvement in his questioning, and reporters have been removed from a Fort Carson courtroom when testimony relating to the CIA has surfaced.

Despite Army investigators' concerns that the CIA and Special Forces soldiers also were involved in serious abuse leading up to Mowhoush's death, the investigators reported they did not have the authority to fully look into their actions. The CIA inspector general's office has launched an investigation of at least one CIA operative who identified himself to soldiers only as "Brian." The CIA declined to comment on the matter, as did an Army spokesman, citing the ongoing criminal cases.

Although Mowhoush's death certificate lists his cause of death as "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression," the Dec. 2, 2003, autopsy, quoted in classified documents and released with redactions, showed that Mowhoush had "contusions and abrasions with pattern impressions" over much of his body, and six fractured ribs. Investigators believed a "long straight-edge instrument" was used on Mowhoush, as well as an "object like the end of an M-16" rifle.

"Although the investigation indicates the death was directly related to the non-standard interrogation methods employed on 26 NOV, the circumstances surrounding the death are further complicated due to Mowhoush being interrogated and reportedly beaten by members of a Special Forces team and other government agency (OGA) employees two days earlier," said a secret Army memo dated May 10, 2004.

The Walk-In

Hours after Mowhoush's death in U.S. custody on Nov. 26, 2003, military officials issued a news release stating that the prisoner had died of natural causes after complaining of feeling sick. Army psychological-operations officers quickly distributed leaflets designed to convince locals that the general had cooperated and outed key insurgents.

The U.S. military initially told reporters that Mowhoush had been captured during a raid. In reality, he had walked into the Forward Operating Base "Tiger" in Qaim on Nov. 10, 2003, hoping to speak with U.S. commanders to secure the release of his sons, who had been arrested in raids 11 days earlier.

Officials were excited about Mowhoush's appearance.

The general, they believed, had been a high-ranking official in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard and a key supporter of the insurgency in northwestern Iraq. Mowhoush was one of a few generals whom Hussein had given "execution authority," U.S. commanders believed, meaning that he could execute someone on sight, and he had been notorious among Shiites in southern Iraq for brutality.

Mowhoush had been visited by Hussein at his home in Sadah in October 2003 "to discuss, among other undisclosed issues, a bounty of US$10,000 to anyone who video-taped themselves attacking coalition forces," according to a Defense Intelligence Agency report.

Military intelligence also believed that Mowhoush was behind several attacks in the Qaim area.

After being taken into custody, Mowhoush was housed in an isolated area of the Qaim base within miles of the Syrian border, according to a situation summary prepared by interrogators.

The heavyset and imposing man was moderately cooperative in his first days of detention. He told interrogators that he was the commander of the al Quds Golden Division, an organization of trusted loyalists fueling the insurgency with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, sniper rifles, machine guns and other small arms.

In the months before Mowhoush's detention, military intelligence officials across Iraq had been discussing interrogation tactics, expressing a desire to ramp things up and expand their allowed techniques to include more severe methods, such as beatings that did not leave permanent damage, and exploiting detainees' fear of dogs and snakes, according to documents released by the Army.

Officials in Baghdad wrote an e-mail to interrogators in the field on Aug. 14, 2003, stating that the "gloves are coming off" and asking them to develop "wish lists" of tactics they would like to use.

An interrogator with the 66th Military Intelligence Company, who was assigned to work on Mowhoush, wrote back with suggestions in August, including the use of "close confinement quarters," sleep deprivation and using the fear of dogs, adding: "I firmly agree that the gloves need to come off."

Another e-mail exchange from interrogators with the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit also suggested "close quarter confinement" in extremely claustrophobic situations, because "discomfort induces compliance and cooperation."

Taking the Gloves Off

A week into Mowhoush's detainment, according to classified investigative documents, interrogators were getting fed up with the prisoner. In a "current situation summary" PowerPoint presentation dated Nov. 18, Army officials wrote about his intransigence, using his first name (spelled "Abid" in Army documents):

"Previous interrogations were non-threatening; Abid was being treated very well. Not anymore," the document reads. "The interrogation session lasted several hours and I took the gloves off because Abid refused to play ball."

But the harsher tactics backfired.

In an interrogation that could be witnessed by the entire detainee population, Mowhoush was put into an undescribed "stress position" that caused the other detainees to stand "with heads bowed and solemn looks on their faces," said the document.

"I asked Abid if he was strong enough a leader to put an end to the attacks that I believed he was behind," the document said, quoting an unidentified interrogator. "He did not deny he was behind the attacks as he had denied previously, he simply said because I had humiliated him, he would not be able to stop the attacks. I take this as an admission of guilt."

Three days later, on Nov. 21, 2003, Mowhoush was moved from the border base at Qaim to a makeshift detention facility about six miles away in the Iraqi desert, a prison fashioned out of an old train depot, according to court testimony and investigative documents. Soldiers with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 101st Airborne Division were running a series of massive raids called Operation Rifles Blitz, and the temporary holding facility, nicknamed Blacksmith Hotel, was designed to hold the quarry.

U.S. troops searched more than 8,000 homes in three cities, netting 350 detainees, according to court testimony. Even though Mowhoush was not arrested during the raids, he was moved to Blacksmith Hotel, where teams of Army Special Forces soldiers and the CIA were conducting interrogations.

At Blacksmith, according to military sources, there was a tiered system of interrogations. Army interrogators were the first level.

When Army efforts produced nothing useful, detainees would be handed over to members of Operational Detachment Alpha 531, soldiers with the 5th Special Forces Group, the CIA or a combination of the three. "The personnel were dressed in civilian clothes and wore balaclavas to hide their identity," according to a Jan. 18, 2004, report for the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

If they did not get what they wanted, the interrogators would deliver the detainees to a small team of the CIA-sponsored Iraqi paramilitary squads, code-named Scorpions, according to a military source familiar with the operation. The Jan. 18 memo indicates that it was "likely that indigenous personnel in the employ of the CIA interrogated MG Mowhoush."

Sometimes, soldiers and intelligence officers used the mere existence of the paramilitary unit as a threat to induce detainees to talk, one Army soldier said in an interview. "Detainees knew that if they went to those people, bad things would happen," the soldier said. "It was used as a motivator to get them to talk. They didn't want to go with the masked men."

The Scorpions went by nicknames such as Alligator and Cobra. They were set up by the CIA before the war to conduct light sabotage. After the fall of Baghdad, they worked with their CIA handlers to infiltrate the insurgency and as interpreters, according to military investigative documents, defense officials, and former and current intelligence officials.

Soon after Mowhoush's detention began, soldiers in charge of him "reached a collective decision that they would try using the [redacted] who would, you know, obviously spoke the local, native Iraqi Arabic as a means of trying to shake Mowhoush up, and that the other thing that they were going to try to do was put a bunch of people in the room, a tactic that Mr. [redacted] called 'fear up,' " Army Special Agent Curtis Ryan, who investigated the case, testified, according to a transcript.

Classified e-mail messages and reports show that "Brian," a Special Forces retiree, worked as a CIA operative with the Scorpions.

On Nov. 24, the CIA and one of its four-man Scorpion units interrogated Mowhoush, according to investigative records.

"OGA Brian and the four indig were interrogating an unknown detainee," according to a classified memo, using the slang "other government agency" for the CIA and "indig" for indigenous Iraqis.

"When he didn't answer or provided an answer that they didn't like, at first [redacted] would slap Mowhoush, and then after a few slaps, it turned into punches," Ryan testified. "And then from punches, it turned into [redacted] using a piece of hose."

"The indig were hitting the detainee with fists, a club and a length of rubber hose," according to classified investigative records.

Soldiers heard Mowhoush "being beaten with a hard object" and heard him "screaming" from down the hall, according to the Jan. 18, 2004, provost marshal's report. The report said four Army guards had to carry Mowhoush back to his cell.

Two days later, at 8 a.m., Nov. 26, Mowhoush -- prisoner No. 76 -- was brought, moaning and breathing hard, to Interrogation Room 6, according to court testimony.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis E. Welshofer Jr. did a first round of interrogations for 30 minutes, taking a 15-minute break and resuming at 8:45. According to court testimony, Welshofer and Spec. Jerry L. Loper, a mechanic assuming the role of guard, put Mowhoush into the sleeping bag and wrapped the bag in electrical wire.

Welshofer allegedly crouched over Mowhoush's chest to talk to him.

Sgt. 1st Class William Sommer, a linguist, stood nearby.

Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Williams, an intelligence analyst, came to observe progress.

Investigative records show that Mowhoush "becomes unresponsive" at 9:06 a.m. Medics tried to resuscitate him for 30 minutes before pronouncing him dead.

In a preliminary court hearing in March for Williams, Loper and Sommer, retired Chief Warrant Officer Richard Manwaring, an interrogator who worked with Welshofer in Iraq, testified that using the sleeping bag and putting detainees in a wall locker and banging on it were "appropriate" techniques that he himself used to frighten detainees and make them tense.

Col. David A. Teeples, who then commanded the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, told the court he believed the "claustrophobic technique" was both approved and effective. It was used before, and for some time after, Mowhoush's death, according to sources familiar with the interrogation operation.

"My thought was that the death of Mowhoush was brought about by [redacted] and then it was unfortunate and accidental, what had happened under an interrogation by our people," Teeples said in court, according to a transcript.

The CIA has tried hard to conceal the existence of the Scorpions. CIA classification officials have monitored pretrial hearings in the case and have urged the court to close much of the hearing on national security grounds. Redacted transcripts were released only after lawyers for the Denver Post challenged the rulings.

Autopsy Shields CIA

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology's standard "Autopsy Examination Report" of Mowhoush's death was manipulated to avoid references to the CIA. In contrast to the other autopsy reports of suspicious detainee deaths released by the Army, Mowhoush's name is redacted and under "Circumstances of Death," the form says: "This Iraqi [redacted] died while in U.S. custody. The details surrounding the circumstances at the time of death are classified."

Williams was arraigned yesterday on a murder charge and is scheduled for court-martial in November, a Fort Carson spokeswoman said. Welshofer's court-martial is set for October. Loper and Sommer have not been referred for trial. Commanders are still considering what, if any, punishment to impose.

Frank Spinner, an attorney for Welshofer, said his client is going to fight the murder charge. Reading from a statement prepared by Welshofer during his Article 32 hearing this spring, Spinner quoted his client as saying that he is proud of the job he did and that his efforts saved U.S. soldiers' lives. "I did not torture anyone," Spinner quoted him as saying.

William Cassara, who represents Williams, cited Mowhoush's brutal encounters in the days before he died as possibly leading to his death. He said Williams, who was not trained in interrogation tactics, had little to do with the case.

"The interrogation techniques were known and were approved of by the upper echelons of command of the 3rd ACR," Cassara said in a news conference. "They believed, and still do, that they were appropriate and proper."

US CAN'T WITHDRAW TROOPS FROM IRAQ IF IRAQ HAS NO TROOPS

August 3, 2005

Worry Grows as Iraq's Defense Ministry Falls Short of Expectations

By DAVID S. CLOUD

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 1 - The reformed Iraqi Ministry of Defense, a crucial element of any American plan to withdraw troops, is riddled with crippling problems that have raised concerns about its ability to keep Iraqi units paid, fed and equipped once it assumes full responsibility for the army, American and Iraqi commanders say.

The shortcomings of the ministry, which was overhauled under the American occupation authorities last year, are a growing concern to the American commanders. Hoping to withdraw large numbers of the 135,000 American combat troops in the next year, these commanders say their plans hinge on a functioning ministry. If American troops leave without one in place, they say, the Iraqi Army could quickly collapse.

"What are lacking are the systems that pay people, that supply people, that recruit people, that replace the wounded and AWOL, and systems that promote people and provide spare parts," said a top American commander in Iraq, who asked not to be identified because his assessment of Iraqi abilities went beyond the military's public descriptions.

"If they don't have that capability, we won't be able to take the training wheels off and let them operate independently," the commander said.

So concerned are military planners that, in the event that American combat troops do indeed leave over the next year, they are preparing to keep large numbers of support troops and supplies in Iraq or in nearby countries, ready to assist Iraqi units fighting insurgents, the American commander said.

Building the new army is a vast undertaking, made all the more difficult by the need to fight a violent insurgency at the same time.

Iraqi soldiers complain that they lack some crucial equipment for fighting the insurgents, especially armored vehicles.

While much of the equipment for the new army is provided by the United States and other foreign governments, the ministry is nominally in charge of distributing it to troops from supply depots being created all around the country. Even routine equipment and supply requests are supposed to be cleared by ministry officials, but there are not enough people to handle the job or procedures in place to ensure that it is done smoothly.

Instead, American trainers embedded with each Iraqi unit often have to step in to ensure that necessary equipment is delivered, several American officers said.

The ministry has responsibility for feeding troops and for operating the growing number of bases where soldiers are stationed around the country, but those jobs are handled largely by Iraqi contractors, many of whom came close to shutting down their operations last month after not being paid for weeks, American officials said.

There are also indications of widespread corruption involving the ministry's purchases of equipment using its own money. Iraqi authorities said last month that they were investigating possible kickbacks in connection with more than $300 million in purchases of defective and outdated helicopters, machine guns and armored personnel carriers by the department's former procurement chief.

The ministry has not yet put in place a system for commanding units in the field, American and Iraqi officials said. Although the army's ground forces headquarters officially opened in May, in July its operations center, which is supposed to keep track of units and transmit orders from the country's civilian authorities and top generals, still was not operational.

A Ministry of Defense spokesman played down the ministry's role in the supply problems. "Coalition forces are responsible and supervising the processes of getting the weapons and supplies for our army," said the spokesman, Saleh Sirhan, adding, "There is no problem in getting paychecks to the soldiers."

American officials say, however, that problems remain and that the ministry will have to make great strides in the next year to stand on its own. The officials add that the Iraqi defense minister, Sadun al-Dulaymi, who was appointed by the new government in May, understands his department's shortcomings and is trying to fix them.

American officials accept some of the responsibility for the ministry's shortcomings, saying they focused initially on building combat units to fight insurgents. Only now, they admit, are they putting comparable effort into developing Iraq's equivalent of the Pentagon.

"There's an enormous amount of effort under way to build the logistical capability" in the military and "supporting ministries and headquarters," said Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who leads the American training effort. He recently announced he was leaving Iraq after completing his one-year tour of duty.

The top-ranked Iraqi military leader, Gen. Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassim, placed blame for many of the army's woes on the decision by the American occupation authorities last year to hire civilians, who lacked extensive military experience.

Equipment purchases and the awarding of contracts have been hampered by cronyism and corruption, he said, and some army commands have been handed out because of family and tribal connections. At one point the buyers at the Defense Ministry chose civilian radios that he said were suitable for taxis, not for the secure communications required for the military.

"The problem is that the Americans made mistakes when they hired the wrong people at the Ministry of Defense," General Jassim said in an interview. "These people are corrupt."

He added, "If we want to build the army, the politicians should not impose these people on our organization."

Among the ministry officials hired by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which administered Iraq until last year, was Ziad Tariq Cattan, an Iraqi who had spent years abroad before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and, in 2004, became the ministry's top weapons buyer. An American military official, who would not speak for attribution because the Iraqi investigation was continuing, said Mr. Cattan was being investigated for possible misuse of Iraqi funds and receiving kickbacks in connection with several major contracts.

Mr. Sirhan, the spokesman for the Defense Ministry, confirmed that Mr. Cattan "was fired from the ministry a month ago by a decision issued from the prime minister council due to the accusations" of procurement fraud.

In an interview with Knight Ridder Newspapers in July, Mr. Cattan denied wrongdoing and said American officials oversaw all contracts at the ministry, which would have made it impossible for him to commit the misdeeds of which he is accused.

With American help, Iraq's new soldiers are slowly overcoming the equipment problems, officials say. In one week in July, for example, Iraqi Army and police units received more than 1,000 new sets of body armor.

This month, more than 500 armored vehicles are to arrive for a force that now largely gets around in pickup trucks. Iraq's first armored brigade is now trained and in the field, and 77 Soviet-designed T-72 tanks donated to Iraq by Hungary are expected in Iraq soon.

The ministry has overcome its lack of internal support troops by employing private Iraqi companies to deliver food and other daily necessities. But that approach has brought its own problems.

In early July, several companies that supply food, sanitation, electricity and other services to Iraqi troops threatened to halt operations because they had not been paid in months. American commanders, worried that thousands of soldiers without food would leave their bases, pressed ministry officials to negotiate stopgap payments, according to American officials.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, warned Iraqi officials last month that if soldiers were not fed, there was a danger of units collapsing as soldiers went AWOL, according to two American officers. "It was resolved, but it was a little bit of a drama," said one of the officers.

The soldiers in the field know firsthand about the ministry's problems.

When Sgt. Ameer Jabar Talb, a stocky 26-year-old, joined the new Iraqi Army, he received a uniform, an AK-47 assault rifle and a poorly made flak vest that wore out within three months.

But his requests for replacement body armor, sent to the Ministry of Defense, went unheeded for months, Sergeant Talb said. Exasperated, he finally spent $100 of his own money on a new flak jacket.

"The Ministry of Defense is useless," he said, pointing to the discarded vest by his barracks desk.

Policy? What Policy? Gutting The Public Is The Policy

August 1, 2005

Triumph of the Machine
By PAUL KRUGMAN

The campaign for Social Security privatization has degenerated into farce. The "global war on terrorism" has been downgraded to the "global struggle against violent extremism" (pronounced gee-save), which is just embarrassing. Baghdad is a nightmare, Basra is a militia-run theocracy, and officials are talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq next year (just in time for the U.S. midterm elections).

On the other hand, the administration is crowing about its success in passing the long-stalled energy bill, the highway bill and Cafta, the free-trade agreement with Central America. So is the Bush agenda stalled, or is it progressing?

The answer is that the administration is getting nowhere on its grand policy agenda. But it never took policy, as opposed to politics, very seriously anyway. The agenda it has always taken with utmost seriousness - consolidating one-party rule, and rewarding its friends - is moving forward quite nicely.

One of President Bush's great political talents is his ability to convince people who do care passionately about policy that he is one of them. Foreign-policy neoconservatives believe he shares their vision of a world transformed by American power. Economic conservatives believe he shares their dedication to dismantling the welfare state.

But a serious effort either to transform the world or to dismantle the welfare state would require sacrifices Mr. Bush hasn't been willing to make.

On the foreign policy front, the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emption and unilateralism sounded very impressive at first. But Mr. Bush's tough-guy attitude wasn't matched by his willingness to commit resources. His administration sought global dominance on the cheap, with an undermanned, underplanned invasion of Iraq that has, indeed, transformed the balance of power in the Middle East - in favor of Iran.

On the domestic policy front, talk of an "ownership society" appealed to conservatives who dreamed of rolling back the New Deal. But Mr. Bush has expanded, not reduced, middle-class entitlements. Only the poor and powerless have faced cuts. (I don't think those middle-class entitlements should be cut. But Mr. Bush claims to be against big government.)

Social Security privatization was to the crusade against the welfare state what the invasion of Iraq was to G-Save: an attempt to achieve radical goals on the cheap. Rather than openly propose reductions in entitlement spending, the administration tried to sell a phaseout of traditional Social Security benefits in return for the magic of investing. But the public didn't buy it.

So what about those legislative successes? Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, called the victories "verification that this is a governing party." But governing means more than handing out goodies.

Let's start with the energy bill. Even the bill's supporters barely pretend that it will do anything to reduce America's dependence on imported oil. It's simply an exercise in corporate welfare, full of subsidies and targeted tax breaks.

Then there's the pork-stuffed highway bill. I guess we'll have to stop making fun of Japanese public works spending: now America, too, is building bridges to islands that have almost no inhabitants, but lie in the districts of influential legislators.

Finally, Cafta contains "free trade" in its title, but that's misleading. The administration rammed the bill through the House by, among other things, promising to limit imports of clothing from China; over all, the effect may well be to reduce, not increase, international trade. But pharmaceutical companies got measures that protect and extend their monopoly rights in Central America.

These bills don't have anything to do with governing, if governing means trying to achieve actual policy goals like energy independence or expanded trade. They're just machine politics at work, favors granted in return for favors received.

In fact, you can argue that the administration does a bad job at governing in part because its highest priority is always to reward its friends. Most notably, the Iraq venture would have had a better chance of succeeding if cronyism and corruption hadn't undermined reconstruction.

Still, Republicans should feel good. Those legislative successes show that the political machine can still deliver the goods, even at a time when a majority of Americans disapprove of Mr. Bush's leadership and believe that his administration deliberately misled us into war.

Bush Only Looks Out For Big Oil's Health

July 30, 2005
NYT Op-Ed

Waiting for Another L. B. J.

By DAVID BLUMENTHAL and JAMES MORONE

IN March 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson eyed one of the toughest unfinished tasks he had inherited from John F. Kennedy: creation of a national health care program for the elderly. With typical ambition and determination, he told his aide on health care, Wilbur Cohen, "We're going to spend the rest of our lives if necessary passing medical care."

Fifteen months later, on July 30, 1965, Johnson traveled to Independence, Mo., and with Harry Truman at his side, signed the legislation that created Medicare, whose 40th anniversary we celebrate today.

If Johnson were alive, he would view Medicare with both pride and anxiety: pride in enormous past accomplishments, anxiety about an uncertain future. He would also probably be scratching his balding head over the way Medicare exemplifies the American health care system's enduring contradictions: its huge costs and persistent gaps in coverage.

Medicare was born in strife. The legislation emerged from a titanic struggle that raged across the American political landscape starting in 1949, when Harry Truman first proposed national health insurance.

Conservatives saw Medicare as a potentially mortal intrusion of government on the American way of life. "We will awake to find that we have socialism," Ronald Reagan warned in 1962. The American Medical Association, one of the most feared lobbies of that time, tenaciously opposed Medicare. For their part, liberals saw Medicare as the first step toward long overdue federal health care coverage for all Americans.

In the end, Medicare's passage required a huge Democratic landslide in 1964, and a president who possessed not only energy and commitment, but also unparalleled legislative skills. Indeed, recently released tape recordings from the Johnson archives show the president functioning at times like a supermajority leader for both houses of Congress during the Medicare deliberations. After the bill passed the House Ways and Means Committee on March 23, 1965, Johnson spoke with Speaker John McCormack, instructing him with Texas earthiness to make haste: "Now don't you let that dead cat hang around." Even so, Medicare initially passed the House by only 45 votes.

Johnson would almost certainly feel today that the results were well worth the effort. Medicare - and its companion program, Medicaid, for the poor - made America a far more decent and healthy place, not only for the elderly but for younger generations who care for them. Before Medicare, only half of America's elderly had any kind of health insurance. But today, this country's 42 million elderly and disabled can visit virtually any doctor or hospital on any given day and receive the best care our health system has to offer. Older Americans now enjoy one of the highest average life expectancies in the world. That achievement is not all due to Medicare but hard to imagine without it.

Nevertheless, Johnson would most likely be concerned about a program that is entering middle age burdened by growing infirmities. Medicare provides insufficient coverage for long term care services that are increasingly vital to older Americans living longer with chronic illness. Drug coverage, only recently created under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, is still incomplete and complex. Because of these continuing gaps, elderly Americans actually pay more for health care as a percent of their income now than they did before Medicare was enacted: 21.7 percent in 2000, versus 19.1 percent in 1965. Paradoxically, the program is also extremely expensive and wasteful. With the addition of the new drug benefit, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, it is expected to cost nearly $773 billion by 2015.

In its perplexing costs and gaps, Medicare mirrors our health care system generally, whose expenses will soon exceed $2 trillion - more than the gross domestic product of Great Britain or France - yet leaves 45 million Americans uninsured. It will be hard to preserve Medicare's benefits without finding solutions to our broader systemic problems, because Medicare relies on that system to serve elderly Americans.

Medicare's history suggests that tough problems in health care can be solved, but only after long struggle, and only with visionary and effective leadership from the highest reaches of our political system. Johnson pulled out all the stops for Medicare. He told Vice President Hubert Humphrey on March 6, 1965: "I'll go a hundred million or a billon on health or education. I don't argue about that any more than I argue about Lady Bird buying flour." He added: "I may cut back some tanks. But not on health."

One measure of Johnson's achievement is surely that Republicans, who have gone from reviling Medicare to enacting its costly new drug benefit, have accepted the program as part of America's social safety net and political firmament. But Medicare's mixed history also suggests that, in health care at least, no solution is ever final. Preserving its benefits, and fixing our failing health care system, will require strong support from the American public and a president as committed and politically agile as Lyndon Baines Johnson. It would be tragic if we had to wait four more decades for this rare combination to emerge.

David Blumenthal is the director of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and aprofessorat Harvard Medical School. James Morone is a professor of political science at Brown University.

July 30, 2005
NYT EDITORIAL

The Roots of Prisoner Abuse

This week, the White House blocked a Senate vote on a measure sponsored by a half-dozen Republicans, including Senator John McCain, that would prohibit cruel, degrading or inhumane treatment of prisoners. Besides being outrageous on its face, that action served as a reminder of how the Bush administration ducks for cover behind the men and women in uniform when challenged on military policy, but ignores their advice when it seems inconvenient.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who has shown real political courage on this issue, recently released documents showing that the military's top lawyers had warned a year before the Abu Ghraib nightmare came to light that detainee policies imposed by the White House and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld violated American and international law and undermined the standards of civilized treatment embedded in the American military tradition.

In February 2003, Maj. Gen. Jack Rives, the deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force, reminded his civilian bosses that American rules on the treatment of prisoners had grown out of Vietnam, where captured Americans, like Mr. McCain, were tortured. "We have taken the legal and moral 'high road' in the conduct of our military operations regardless of how others may operate," he wrote. Abandoning those rules, he said, endangered every American soldier.

General Rives and the other military lawyers argued strongly against declaring that Mr. Bush was above the law when it came to antiterrorism operations. But the president's team ignored them, offering up a pretzel logic that General Rives and the other military experts warned would not fool anyone. Rear Adm. Michael Lohr, the Navy's judge advocate general, said that the situation at the American prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba might be so legalistically unique that the Geneva Conventions and even the Constitution did not necessarily apply. But he asked, "Will the American people find we have missed the forest for the trees by condoning practices that, while technically legal, are inconsistent with our most fundamental values?"

General Rives said that if the White House permitted abusive interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, it would not be able to restrict them to that single prison. He argued that soldiers elsewhere would conclude that their commanders were condoning illegal behavior. And that is precisely what happened at Abu Ghraib after the general who organized the abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo went to Iraq to toughen up the interrogation of prisoners there.

The White House ignored these military lawyers' advice two years ago. Now it is trying to kill the measure that would define the term "illegal combatants," set rules for interrogations and prohibit cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The president considers this an undue restriction of his powers. It's not only due; it's way overdue.