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:
February
CIA's Operation MERLIN inadvertently provides Iran with critical nuclear weapons technology
- February: The CIA inadvertently provides Iran with key information on developing a nuclear weapon through a reckless, ill-thought out operation designed to give the Iranians misleading information. The CIA has recruited a former Soviet nuclear scientist, a defector and with no experience at espionage, for what it calls "Operation MERLIN," to pass along nuclear weapons blueprints to Iranian nuclear scientists in Vienna. The Soviet scientist, whose identity has not been made public, has the blueprints for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, called a "firing set," used in Russian-made nuclear weapons. The firing set could be used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a core of uranium. It is one of the most closely guarded technological secrets in the world. The Russian scientist is in Vienna to sell the blueprints, or even give them, to Iranian scientists attending an IAEA conference. He is frightened and deeply troubled by the CIA's plan; it seems to him that the CIA is just giving the Iranians crucial technology needed to build a bomb.
- The CIA, of course, has another string to its bow. At first, the CIA officers who explained the mission to him presented it as merely a fact-finding expedition to ascertain just what the Iranians did and didn't know about building a nuke; they already have the TBA 480 technology, the scientist is assured. But the scientist doesn't believe it. He had been a senior engineer at Arzamas-16, the top secret center of the Soviet nuclear weapons center, the equivalent of the Americans' Los Alamos, and had intimate knowledge of the firing set -- more, in fact, than the American experts who had examined the blueprints for themselves. Unbeknowst to the Russian, the Americans have introduced a small but crucial flaw in the blueprints, making it, they hope, a grand misdirection -- the Iranians will spend months, perhaps years, developing the firing set, only to find that it doesn't work, hopefully setting back the program for years. But the operation, a wild "Trojan Horse" idea best left to fiction writers like Robert Ludlum and not for the real world, does not go off as planned.
- After making some initial contacts with Iranian nuclear experts via e-mail and "chance" meetings at conferences, the CIA believes the Russian is ready for his mission, and sends him to Vienna. The scientist couldn't even find the Iranians in Vienna; MERLIN is so secret that even the Vienna CIA station is not involved in its execution. And worse, he has already violated his orders -- he opened the envelope and studied the packet of blueprints and documents for himself. He quickly found the flaw in the blueprints. The discovery terrifies him, and he wonders if he isn't being set up by the CIA, in some kind of covert double game with him as the fall guy. So the Russian scientist writes a carefully worded letter and inserts it into the packet of blueprints and documents. A careful reading of the letter indicates that there is a flaw in the blueprint designs, and as a former Soviet scientist, he can help the Iranians find and correct the flaw. By the time he finds the Iranian embassy, after hours of searching Vienna and battling his own mounting terror, he simply slips the packet through a slot in the door and flees to his hotel. The entire operation is reckless and badly planned. "In effect," writes reporter James Risen, "the CIA asked the Russian to throw the blueprints over the transom, and then the agency just hoped for the best."
- Although no one in the West is certain what happens next, CIA sources believe that the Iranians, with their familiarity with Soviet-era technology, are able to spot the flaws in the blueprints as readily as did the former Soviet scientist. Perhaps using their own former Soviet scientific experts, they are able to correct the flaws. Even if they do not find the flaws, the blueprints give them critical information about nuclear technology, information they could certainly use in the construction of their own bomb. "If a country of seventy million inhabitants [Iran], with quite a good scientific and technical community, got [the blueprints], they might learn something," a nuclear expert with IAEA later warns when informed of the operation. "If [the flaw] is bad enough, they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear." One thing is clear: MERLIN is most likely a disaster for the West, and a windfall of incalculable value for Iran. (James Risen)
- February: European newspapers reveal that officers from the US Army's Fourth Psychological Operations (psyops) Group at Fort Bragg are working in the news division at the Atlanta headquarters of CNN. It comes out that five psyops sergeants have been working at CNN since the final days of the Kosovo conflict in 1999, two in radio, two in television, and one in CNN's satellite department. In April, TV Guide, of all publications, breaks the story that psyops personnel had worked at NPR -- National Public Radio -- in 1998 and 1999, on flagship programs such as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Talk of the Nation. Although NPR claims that the "interns" had been given only menial tasks such as copying and filing, Major Johnathan Withington of the Army's Special Operations Command confirms that the psyops specialists had been involved with, at the very least, research conducted for stories aired by the programs. And investigations and statements by the specialists themselves reveal that they were involved in production of the actual news and opinion segments themselves. (Both CNN and NPR claim that management knew nothing of the psyops operatives' employment, but one CNN employee, Staff Sergeant Jose Velazquez, states that everyone at the CNN Southeast Bureau, including its chief, knew who he was.)
- Dutch reporter Abe de Vries says, "I found it simply astonishing." Media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) notes that it has discovered the US military has long desired to get its psyops operatives in positions of influence within the American media. In March, FAIR will report, "Rear Admiral Thomas Steffens, a psychological warfare expert at the Special Operations Command, recently told a psyops conference that the military needed to find ways to 'gain control' over commercial news satellites to help bring down an 'informational cone of silence' over regions where special operations were taking place." FAIR reports that a strategy paper published by the US Naval War College states that military commanders were seeking ways to "leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate" for the purposes of "communicating the [mission's] objective...playing a major role in the deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection." Not to mention the shaping of American public opinion. (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
- Early February: Anti-abortion leader Gary Bauer drops out of the Republican primaries. Bush was briefly challenged by Bauer, but the Bauer campaign self-destructed when half the staff threatened to quit over an alleged affair Bauer was having with a young female staff member, deputy campaign manager Melissa McClard. Several staffers, including at least one close friend of over 15 years, actually do leave the campaign over the affair, which Bauer declares is "my personal business." He denied the allegations, but called them "devastating" to his candidacy. Bauer's overt indebtedness to the religious empire of Sun Myung Moon was another problem for his candidacy. (Pensito Review, Real Change)
- February 1: After winning the Iowa caucuses, the Bush campaign is stunned by an upset victory by maverick presidential candidate John McCain in the influential New Hampshire primaries. With the South Carolina primary coming up in less than three weeks, Bush campaign manager Karl Rove privately abandons the "no negative campaigning" pledge he has had Bush make (though Bush will continue to insist that his campaign stays to the high road) and begins an orchestrated trashing of McCain, mostly targeted on South Carolina. Two days later, Bush lambasts McCain for "always" opposing legislation for veterans, a ludicrous charge, but one that resonates with the large number of retired military vets who live and vote in South Carolina. (The fact that McCain, a Vietnam veteran who spent five years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, has always been an outspoken advocate of veterans' rights, and co-sponsored a bill to provide benefits to Agent Orange victims, is largely ignored by the media, even after five senators call Bush's allegations "absolutely false;" when challenged by the McCain campaign, Bush spokesman Tucker Eskew retorts that the McCain people "stomped their feet, pointed fingers, and whined.") At one point, Bush appears with Vietnam veteran Thomas Burch, who says McCain "came home [from Vietnam] and forgot us." As for the handshake and no-negative-campaigning pledge Bush made with McCain before the primaries, Bush claims McCain broke the pledge first by airing ads in New Hampshire that correctly pointed out Bush's tax plan would eat away the federal budget surplus. (David Corn, Al Franken)
- February 6: Conservative commentator Ann Coulter tells a Fox News audience, "Clinton is in love with the erect penis." Mark Crispin Miller notes, "However awesome his libido really was, Bill Clinton could not possibly have thought about his crotch one-tenth as much as his detractors did (and do)." (Washington Monthly, Mark Crispin Miller)
- Mid-February: Bush draws heavy criticism for his appearance at South Carolina's Bob Jones University, a radical-right Christian college that bans interracial dating and is a hotbed of anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon sentiment. Bush refuses to apologize, but to deflect criticism, Bush later lies about the content of the speech he makes at the college, falsely claiming that he took the opportunity to "speak out on interracial dating" and "denounc[e] the policy at Bob Jones." The truth, which is not widely reported, is that Bush makes no mention at all of BJU's interracial dating policies while there, instead giving a speech endorsing the ideology and views of the social and religious extremists of the school. Bush says he appeared at BJU to "defend our conservative philosophy." He later claims that he wants to bring his message to anyone regardless of their own beliefs; when asked why, if he could meet with the fundamentalist radicals at BJU, he refused to meet with the openly gay Log Cabin Republicans, he lies again, saying that the LGR had endorsed his primary opponent John McCain, an endorsement the Log Cabin Republicans never made and McCain was quick to correct. (David Corn, Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- February 24: Rolf Ekeus, Swedish ambassador to the UN and the head of the UN's Special Commission to Iraq (UNSCOM) through 1997, tells the editors of Arms Control Today that the UN inspections of Iraq's weapons cache, which ended in 1998, were far more effective than currently characterized by the Bush administration. "UNSCOM was highly successful in identifying and eliminating Iraq's prohibited weapons -- but not to the degree that everything was destroyed. ...In my view, there are no large quantities of weapons. I don't think that Iraq is especially eager in the biological and chemical area to produce such weapons for storage. Iraq views those weapons as tactical assets instead of strategic assets, which would require long-term storage of those elements, which is difficult. Rather, Iraq has been aiming to keep the capability to start up production immediately should it need to." Bush officials routinely twist UNSCOM findings to "prove" that Iraq has massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. (Arms Control Today, David Corn)
Bush slimes McCain to win in South Carolina
- Late February: Republican presidential candidate John McCain, coming off an upset victory against frontrunner George W. Bush in New Hampshire, is trounced in the South Carolina primary after some of the most savagely negative campaigning of the season from the Bush campaign, a campaign called by authors James Moore and Wayne Slater "two weeks of slaughterhouse politics." The attacks, crafted by Bush campaign manager Karl Rove, are largely funded by Texas millionaire and Bush crony Sam Wyly, who, like many other GOP insiders, see McCain as a threat to the status quo. Among the attacks on McCain are mysterious "push" polls made up of telephone calls to South Carolina Republican voters asking how they would feel if they knew McCain had fathered a black child. (The insinuation is double-barreled, implying both infidelity and crossing the racial boundaries; in reality, McCain is the adopted father of an Bangladeshi child. The accusations are followed up with an e-mail from a professor at Bob Jones University saying that McCain's adopted child is actually the illegitimate offspring of McCain's dalliance with a black prostitute. Republican senator Chuck Hagel calls the rumor "the filthiest thing I'd ever seen," spread by "[c]owards. Nameless and faceless.") Another rumor fostered by the Bush campaign alleges that McCain's family has adopted because McCain's wife Cindy has had her uterus destroyed by venereal disease; see below.) McCain's record as a Vietnam POW is also attacked, with Bush operatives insinuating that McCain was driven insane as a result of his imprisonment and even pushing "Manchurian Candidate" rumors that McCain collaborated with his North Vietnamese captors; the Vietnam charges, which of course are false, will be echoed in the Bush campaign's 2004 attacks on Vietnam veteran John Kerry.
- Other campaign tactics include accusations that Cindy McCain, John McCain's wife, was riddled with venereal disease from her husband and was driven to abuse drugs as a result; allegations of illegal abortions within McCain's family; allegations that McCain is gay; false allegations that McCain had been reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee; allegations of mob ties to Cindy McCain; the solicitation of comments on McCain's "weakness" from retired admiral James Stockdale, Ross Perot's 1992 running mate; and a direct-mail campaign falsely claiming that McCain intends to remove the anti-abortion plank from the GOP platform.
- "There is no place for negative smear tactics against any candidates, particularly the type being used against Senator McCain," says fellow Republican candidate Steve Forbes, whose campaign was accused by Rove of fostering some of the smears against McCain. (When asked about the trashy politics being played by his campaign and "independent" supporters, instead of repudiating the rumors and methodologies being employed in his behalf, Bush turns the question around, complaining about attacks on his record by groups like NARAL and the Sierra Club, and attacks the McCain camp for negative campaigning over McCain's accusation that Bush "twists the truth, like Clinton." David Corn observes, "[T]hese outfits were not asserting Bush and his family were psychotic, morally debased, and wracked by sex scandals.")
- "It's gotten to where you have to actually try to destroy -- not just defeat, but destroy -- your opponent," says John Weaver, the political director for McCain and a longtime competitor of Rove's, in November 2003. "And not just destroy him or her politically, but destroy them personally, professionally; drive them not only from the political battlefield but from being able to be gainfully employed, try to get them indicted, attack their family. That's beyond winning and losing. That's about destruction. Some of that is evil, pure evil, and some of it is amoral at the very least."
- Of course, the Bush campaign stauchly denies any involvement in sliming McCain. That insistence is countered by a candid moment on February 12 between Bush and South Carolina state senator Mike Fair, captured by a microphone that the two believed was off. Fair told Bush, "You haven't hit his soft spots yet." Bush: "I know. I'm going to." Fair: "Well, they need to. Somebody does, anyway." Bush: "I agree. I'm not going to do it on TV." (CCR, Esquire, Moore and Slater, Paul Waldman, Al Franken)
- One of Bush's bigger fund-raisers in South Carolina is Richard Hines, termed by historian Sean Wilentz as one of the "most outspoken and influential neo-Confederates in the country." Hines is a former editor of the virulently racist Southern Partisan and a close friend of Karl Rove. Hines boasts that he has an "active voice in the current Bush administration." Hines's support for Bush in South Carolina, which includes a mass mailing extolling Bush's support for the Confederate flag, is characterized by both the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek as crucial to Bush's victory in the state. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
- Late February: The official Bush campaign attacks McCain as a creature of Washington lobbyists, stating the McCain campaign is "crawling with lobbyists," though McCain has long fought for campaign reform and has taken five times less money from lobbyists than Bush; one effective charge states that McCain "solicits money from lobbyists with interests before his committee and pressures agencies on behalf of contributors," a very serious charge of ethical violations for which Bush's campaign has no proof. During a commercial break in a televised debate between Bush and McCain, McCain complains to Bush about the gutter politics conducted by the Bush campaign. Bush professes innocence and reaches over to take McCain's hand. McCain pulls away and snaps, "Don't give me that sh*t. And take your hands off me." McCain is well aware that the Bush campaign, headed by Karl Rove, is behind the attacks on his character and his family, though typically, Rove uses surrogates so he can claim innocence and uninvolvement. Bush beats McCain by 11 points in South Carolina, and continues his ugly campaign tactics to finish McCain off in Michigan and other states, including an effective but false claim that McCain unfairly branded Bush as anti-Catholic (in reality, the McCain campaign made a phone message attacking Bush for his visit to Bob Jones University, and reminded listeners that the school's officials were fond of calling the Pope the Antichrist and calling Catholicism a Satanic cult. To McCain's discredit, his campaign initially denies releasing the message, damaging his credibility.) In New York, Bush airs an ad featuring a breast-cancer survivor claiming that McCain opposed funding for two breast-cancer programs in her state, a charge that was patently a lie. (McCain's own sister is a breast-cancer survivor, a fact not mentioned by Bush. Even right-wing partisan commentator Robert Novak says that Bush's attack "is going too far.") After March 7's Super Tuesday primaries, in which Bush trounces McCain across the board, McCain abandons his campaign and half-heartedly supports Bush during the rest of the presidential season, though it is evident that his support is grudging at best. When asked about his campaign tactics, Bush repeatedly insists, "I never took a negative tone." (Joe Conason, Moore and Slater, David Corn)
- Late February: After his victory over McCain, Bush changes his campaign slogan; now he is a "Reformer with Results." Bush incurs none of the media criticism Gore has received for Gore's supposed attempts to "reinvent himself." Instead, insist the media, Bush is merely retooling his campaign. McCain remarks, "If he's a reformer, I'm an astronaut." (Paul Waldman)
