THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
2000:
April
- April: The FBI learns of a plot by bin Laden to hijack a 747. The source is a "walk-in" to the FBI's Newark office, who claims he has attended al-Qaeda training camps and was to be part of the attempt. He also claims to have numerous contacts within the US. He passes a polygraph test, but the FBI is never able to confirm any of his claims.
- April: Qatar gives the US permission to drastically expand their Al Adid military base in that country. Al Adid later becomes one of the major headquarters for the Iraq invasion. (CCR)
- April 15: George W. Bush tells a CNBC interviewer, "Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis." (CNBC/AllHatNoCattle)
- April 19: The Bush campaign announces that Dick Cheney will head a "search" team to select a vice-presidential partner. Unbeknownst to the media or the public, Bush asked Cheney to be his vice president shortly after the South Carolina primary in February, where Bush and campaign manager Karl Rove torpedoed the insurgent candidacy of GOP rival John McCain through some of the dirtiest political machinations in American history (see above item). Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton, is unavailable for comment after the announcement. The entire thing is an artfully manipulated media event, designed to fuel speculation about the vice presidency even though Cheney is already the informal selection. Six days later, Bush says he "couldn't think of a better person" than Cheney to serve as vice president. But, "[f]ortunately there are many good candidates to choose from," Cheney responds in a prepared statement. "We will look at them all. And we will make sure we have the best possible ticket this fall." Three weeks later, Cheney tells his Halliburton executives that he has no intention of joining the Bush ticket, and that he has made a "long-term committment to the company. ...I have no plan, intention, desire under any circumstances to return to government," he says. Of course, he is lying, this time to his own executives.
- Cheney sells half of his Halliburton stock on May 31, garnering about $5.1 million in the sale. In retrospect, it is obvious that Cheney is preparing to bail on his company.
- One of those fooled by the pretend search is Oklahoma governor Frank Keating. Keating is on top of the purported "short list" of vice presidential candidates for Bush: a former FBI agent, Keating served in both the Reagan and Bush administrations, won praise for his response to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and as a devout Catholic, holds a staunchly pro-life viewpoint that appeals to the GOP base. Perhaps best of all, Keating is self-effacing enough not to overshadow Bush on the campaign trail. Keating fills out a background questionnaire for Cheney, as does Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, another vice-presidential consideration. Both are taken aback at the thoroughness of the questionnaire. "I have been governor of Tennessee twice, run for president twice, I've been through a Senate confirmation, and I've never seen anything like it," Alexander later says. Tennessee senator Bill Frist, another on the list, says, "Dick Cheney knows more about me than my mother, father, and wife."
- Keating ends up giving Cheney three huge, indexed binders of information, largely financial, and offers to supplement the binders with boxes of documentation. Keating enjoys the political attention he is garnering, but, like the others, has no idea that the entire process is merely a show for the press. On July 1, Bush again offers Cheney the post, cementing the deal struck months earlier, but they still continue the public pretense of a search. (Cheney's story of the offer, told to CNN's Larry King, is that Bush made him the offer while they stood on Bush's back porch, a nice extension of the usual "log cabin" political story, but far from the truth.)
- As for Cheney, his biggest stumbling block is his health. He has survived three heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, suffers from high cholesterol, gout, and has been treated for skin cancer. But his doctors pronounce him fit and ready to serve.
- On July 15, Bush and Cheney meet with the "iron triangle" of Bush's political advisors: Rove, Karen Hughes, and Joe Allbaugh. Hughes later claims that this is the first time anyone has seriously discussed Cheney as a possible vice president, though that claim is a lie. Allbaugh will vet Cheney's public record and, implausibly, Bush will vet Cheney's financial and personal life. (Hughes even claims at one point that Cheney investigated himself.) Meanwhile, the search charade continues, with the campaign flying in a clueless Senator John Danforth to discuss the job.
- On July 20, the campaign publicly removes "candidates" Connie Mack, the hidebound Florida senator, and Colin Powell from the list; Powell wants to be Secretary of State. Bush refuses to say anything about Cheney. On July 21, Cheney flies to Wyoming to change his voter registration from Dallas to Jackson Hole, where he maintains a vacation home (the Constitution precludes two people from the same state running as president and vice president). The news fuels media speculation that Cheney will indeed be Bush's running mate, and helps beat back a growing draft-McCain movement for the position.
- The campaign history has Bush officially offering Cheney the position on July 24. Cheney, as per the arrangement, accepts, and Bush campaign officials break the news to the other candidates. For himself, Keating is neither particularly surprised nor disappointed. He believes he has a good shot at landing a Cabinet post, perhaps as Attorney General. He publicly praises the ticket and says he will do whatever he can to help the campaign, even if it was just "to serve iced tea at a reception somewhere." But Keating will lose out on the Attorney General spot to former senator John Ashcroft, in part over questions about Keating's acceptance of $250,000 from financier Jack Dreyfus which Keating characterized as nothing more than a gift from an incredibly wealthy friend. The story of the possibly improper gifts is leaked to the press from someone in the Bush campaign itself, as Bush himself admits to Keating. Apparently the devastating leak was in revenge for comments Keating made about Bush when he said every candidate "needs to answer questions about conduct that is arguably criminal." Though Keating was speaking hypothetically, and not referring to anything specific, the Bush team saw the remarks as disloyalty. But others believe that the leak was a preemptive strike to cripple the popular Keating's possible bid to replace Cheney on the ticket in 2004. Oklahoma Democrats excoriate Keating, the governor exhausts his savings repaying Dreyfus, and after serving his term out, leaves public life. But Keating always knew that Dick Cheney was behind the destruction of his political career. (Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)
Elian Gonzalez case infuriates many Americans, galvanizes conservatives
- April 22: In a pre-dawn raid authorized by attorney general Janet Reno, eight INS agents batter down the door of Lazaro Gonzalez in Miami, Florida, and forcibly remove six-year old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez. The raid is shocking in its intensity, with the agents, clad in body armor and wielding automatic weapons, shouting orders and obscenities, smashing their way through personal belongings, and finally kicking in a closet where Elian is being hidden by a family friend. The protesting boy is whisked away in a van driven by another federal agent in a ski mask, while onlookers are kept at bay with pepper spray. An NBC cameraman and sound man are assaulted and threatened with shooting. (Two months later, Elian will return to Cuba with his father.) The entire incident, captured on film and video, is broadcast to a horrified and angry population in the US, Cuba, and around the world. "This nauseating episode...looked more like a kidnapping than an official act of the United States government," writes Cato Institute reporter Deroy Murdock. While the incident justifiably draws criticism and anger down upon the Clinton administration, the story behind the incident is far more complex and has deep ties to the Cuban-American and conservative communities.
- There are problems, missteps, and self-serving behaviors on all sides of the issue. In November 1999, Elian Gonzalez was taken by his mother from Cuba, and with twelve others, fled in a small boat across the Florida Straits. The boat capsized; Elian's mother and most of the others drowned. Only Elian and two others survived to be rescued by a fisherman, who turned them over to the US Coast Guard. INS temporarily turned Elian over to his great-uncle Lazaro in Miami; Lazaro's daughter Marisleysis became something of a maternal figure to Elian. Armando Gutierrez, a local Cuban-American activist with close ties to the region's conservative politicians, became the family's spokesman, helping make Elian a cause celebre among conservatives and Republicans around the nation, who made Elian a symbol for Cuban refugees fleeing to freedom from the hateful Castro regime. Unfortunately, the situation was far more complex. Elian had been kidnapped from his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez-Quintana, by his mother, making the issue one of child custody along with becoming a political football. The debate centered on whether the father had the right, under US law, to speak in Elian's behalf, a right only conferred if the US assumed he was not speaking under duress from the Cuban government.
- For months the media obsessed on the plight of Elian (who quickly acquires celebrity status and name recognition similar to that of other first-name-only celebrities), a media frenzy happily fueled by the conservative Cuban-American community in Florida and their colleagues in the Republican Party. For many of them, the issues of his father's rights and even Elian's own desires are subsumed in the battle to "let Elian stay in America where he can be free." A controversial video is released on April 14 that purports to show Elian telling his father that he wants to stay in the US; the video's credibility is damaged when listeners hear a male voice directing Elian as to what to say. His Miami relatives staged an elaborate campaign to win the sympathy of Americans, a campaign leapt upon by conservatives across the nation. Elian's media-hyped visit to Disney World -- apparently the paradigm of American freedom -- was followed by media-hyped visits by a round of Republican politicians. Protests in favor of keeping Elian in the US raged throughout Florida and the entire country. Still, more than two-thirds of Americans polled consistently registered as believing Elian should go home to be with his father.
- Attorney General Janet Reno decided that she has had enough of the legal, political, and media grandstanding; the law was clear in mandating that Elian's father had the right to take custody of his child. She ruled that Elian must be returned to his father by April 13, but the Miami relatives, openly defying the Justice Department with the encouragement of many conservative politicians, refused. Lazaro's house was surrounded by both protestors and police, as negotiations continue over the course of several days. On April 20, after negotiations broke down in a rain of recriminations and wild accusations, Reno ordered law enforcement officials to take Elian by force. On April 22, the INS agents smash their way into the house and take Elian from the arms of the fisherman while relatives, friends, and protestors howl curses and try to verbally and physically interfere with the proceedings. The INS later reveals that its agents went in with such heavy armor and firepower because it had information that as many as two dozen people had stated that they were "prepared to thwart any government operation," and that many of these people had criminal records and concealed weapons permits.
- Abuse and outrage are heaped upon Reno, the Clinton adminstration and the INS from almost every side. Even Vice President Gore, who backed legislation that would have given Elian and his father citizenship in the US, makes it quietly clear that he thinks the situation was handled badly. The rage from the right is overwhelming. Even Elian's father is not spared, with conservative pundit Ann Coulter saying that Juan Gonzalez is "Cuba's answer to Joey Buttafuoco," a "miscreant," a "sperm-donor," and a "poor man's Hugh Hefner." (All this without ever meeting Gonzalez or knowing anything at all about him.) In Miami, demonstrations, mostly peaceful, take place throughout Little Havana for days. The next day's photograph of a clearly elated Elian with his father is criticized by many on the right as being staged. For two months, Elian and his father are kept out of the media spotlight at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland; a photo-op-ready media caravan headed by the Miami Gonzalezes and Republican senator Bob Smith is turned away from the plantation, giving both the Gonzalezes and Smith a chance to vent more spleen in the media.
- The legal proceedings grind to a halt; an appeals court rules that Elian, as a minor, cannot appeal for asylum himself, and that only his father -- not the Miami relatives -- have standing to do so. The US Supreme Court refuses to hear the case. On June 28, the seven-month legal and media firestorm concludes with Juan Miguel Gonzalez taking his son home.
- In September 2005 Elian, now a young man of 11, will put the entire issue to rest by telling 60 Minutes that he always wanted to return to Cuba to live with his father, that he didn't want to go with his mother to America, that during his stay in the US his family members were "telling me bad things about [my father]", and "were also telling me to tell him that I did not want to go back to Cuba and I always told them I wanted to." To the chagrin of many Americans, Fidel Castro has held numerous photo ops with Elian and his father (a staunch Castro supporter), many of which were obviously staged to thumb his nose at the US. (Cato Institute, Wikipedia, Joe Maguire)
- April 29: GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes sounds off on the Elian Gonzalez incident to a Republican audience in Alabama: "They [the Clinton administration] were, in fact, committing a lawless act in the lawless style of this lawless administration! ...They were, once again, showing their willingness, not just to do the bidding of Bill Clinton's Communist masters, but now to do it in their Communist style! I saw again what I had seen when this administration began. Then it was a lawless abuse of force that pointlessly took even innocent human lives at Waco. Now, it is a pointless abuse of force that ignores the requirements of the human heart in Miami. But, it is the same!" (Mark Crispin Miller)
- Late April - early May: Reports surface of a bizarre meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and US Department of Agriculture official Johnelle Bryant. According to the reports, Atta makes a number of bizarre statements and queries. First he asks for a loan of $650,000 to buy a crop-dusting plane, then he mentions that he wants to put an enormous chemical tank inside the plane, far larger than used by crop dusters. He uses his real name, and ensures she spells it correctly. He says he has come from Afghanistan, and claims to have recently visited Spain and Germany. He asks about security at the World Trade Center and other landmarks. He boasts that bin Laden will someday be known as the world's greatest leader. He asks her, "How would you like it if somebody flew an airplane into your friends' building?" He asks her, "What would prevent [me] from going behind [your] desk and cutting [your] throat and making off with the millions of dollars" in the safe behind her. He asks, "How would America like it if another country destroyed [Washington] and some of the monuments in it like the cities in [my] country had been destroyed?" He gets "very agitated" when he isn't given the money in cash on the spot. Later he tries again to secure the loan, this time disguising himself behind sunglasses. Three of his colleagues also try to get the loan, without success. Even though the visits were highly suspicious, and Atta threatened Bryant's life, she does not report the incidents to anyone until after 9/11. Some experts aren't sure these meetings ever took place. Others believe Atta left such a trail of lurid evidence behind himself as a false trail. (CCR)
Spring 2000
- Spring: George W. Bush names former Wyoming congressman and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, now the CEO of Halliburton, as the head of a search committee to determine the best candidate for Bush's vice-president. The committee names Cheney himself as the best possible candidate. Cheney resigns from Halliburton in June to join the campaign, and supposedly places all of his assets from the company in trust, though he continues to receive severance benefits for years. The question of Cheney's residency briefly clouds his candidacy; both Bush and Cheney are long-time Texas residents, and the 12th Amendment prohibits both a president and vice-president from being from the same state. Cheney, who has lived in Highland Park, Texas, for five years, switches his residency to his vacation home in Teton County, Wyoming in July. A lawsuit challenging Cheney's residency switch is thrown out by the GOP-dominated Texas Supreme Court. Cheney made $36 million a year as Halliburton's CEO, and was awarded a $20 million retirement package upon his departure. Under his tenure, Halliburton did huge amounts of illegal business with three of the seven countries proscribed on the US list of terrorist-sponsoring nations, Iraq, Libya, and Iran. (Nationmaster, Amy and David Goodman)
