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
2001
July 2001
- July: Bush replaces the usual American delegates to the annual meeting of the UN's World Health Organization with a coterie of hardline religious fanatics.
Religious conservatives
Instead of sending delegates from the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association, he sends a group that includes Jeanne Head, a professional anti-abortion activist with the National Right to Life Coalition, Janice Crouse of the right-wing Concerned Women for America (a foundation created by Beverly LaHaye, wife of fundamentalist evangelist Tim LaHaye), and John Klink, a former chief negotiator for the Vatican. None of Bush's delegation are experts in any aspect of public health. Molly Ivins observes that for the Bush administration to send such an "eccentric delegation" is indicative of the "contempt" he holds for the organization. (Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose) - July: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz announces that the Pentagon intends to turn a "testbed" in Fort Greely, Alaska into a "very rudimentary" national defense missile system as early as 2004.
US military
This will mark the first real deployment of the highly expensive and problem-riddled "Star Wars" system. The Pentagon's former director of operational testing and evaluation, Philip Coyle, tells Congress during the same month that it will likely be closer to 2011 before any such missile system is ready for any sort of deployment. Wolfowitz's announcement appears to contradict statements made by Bush that he does not intend to field any missile defense system that isn't ready and workable. In December, Bush withdraws the US from the ABM missile treaty with Russia and other countries; in mid-2002 he announces that missile defense platforms will be deployed in Alaska and California by October 2004. At that time, the system has still failed every single real-world test put to it, and necessary components were not yet developed. David Corn asks, "Is it a lie to say you will definitely deliver what might never exist?" As of this writing (May 2005), the system has yet to pass a single test, but the 2004 military budget earmarks $9 billion for the program, with more to come. (David Corn) - July: The Bush administration unilaterally withdraws from an eight-year effort to create an international Chemical and Biological Weapons Convention
Bush's foreign policies
because the new inspection-verification provisions, initially advocated by the US to combat germ warfare weapons, might risk exposing some American corporations' industrial secrets. London's Independent acidly observes, "For six years everybody talks of the importance of verification. And then, America discovers that its facilities, too, would have to be verified. The brazen nerve! America might be treated as though it were just another country!" (Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - July: The Bush administration opposes a UN-backed nonbinding small arms treaty that would track international arms sales and prohibit foreign arms sales to nongovernmental groups (such as al-Qaeda or Peru's Shining Path, for example).
Bush's foreign policies
John Bolton, the vituperative neocon who is the US delegate to the UN conference, cites the Second Amendment as the reason why the US cannot back the treaty; the real reason is that US arms manufacturers oppose the treaty. The US is the world's largest exporter of weapons, accounting for over $1.3 billion of the $4 billion in arms sold around the globe. The US is joined by Russia and China, and some of these countries' best arms customers, in opposing the treaty. (Mark Crispin Miller) - July: In a major flip-flop from his advocacy of cuts in government spending,
Bush's economic policies
Bush signs a $180 billion farm subsidy bill, the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002. The rationale for the bill can be found in the administration's relentless attempts to shift goverment spending from traditionally Democratic-voting areas to more Republican-voting areas. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - July: As part of the GOP's attempt to bring more women into the fold
GOP campaign strategies
(Bush lost women's votes by double digits to Gore in 2000), the Republican National Committee and the Bush administration mount a heavily funded, highly visible PR campaign called "Winning Women." Top White House officials like Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, and Christie Todd Whitman are brought to the media for profiles. The effort is led by the RNC's new co-chair, Ann Wagner, who is invariably described as a "38-year old suburban mom," the demographic targeted by the PR campaign. - The New York Times article on Rice focuses on her looks, her hemline, her place of birth, and her eating habits: "she eats either a bagel or cereal every day for breakfast," the article reveals. "she is always impeccably dressed, usually in a classic suit with a modest hemline, comfortable pumps, and conservative jewelry." The article barely touches on Rice's ten-year tenure as a member of the board of directors at Chevron, mentioning offhand that Rice "has an oil supertanker named after her, a result of being on the Chevron Corporation Board." Rice's cousin Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney in Los Angeles, says the coverage is simply sexist: "You don't hear the press asking where Dick Cheney likes to shop." The Times retells the carefully crafted story of Rice's "poor" childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, painting her as the daughter of a family active in the civil rights movement. The story, appealing as it is, is long on emotional content and short on fact. Rice was born to a middle-class family in Birmingham, Alabama in 1954, a city called the worst in America for civil rights by Martin Luther King and the stomping grounds of racist sheriff "Bull" Connor." Rice proudly recalls that her father was "the first Republican I knew," and maintains, only half-truthfully, that her father registered as a Republican because the Jim Crow Democrats of Birmingham would not sign up blacks on the voting rolls. (The truth is that neither party welcomed blacks on their rolls, but the local Republicans would sign up blacks in secret, and only if the black signees pledged to vote Republican.)
- Rice's story emphasizes her family's insistence that their children improve themselves by merely "ignoring" racism and focusing instead on keeping their grades up and getting into college; it does not include, for example, the fact that her family was in the upper echelons of black society both because of their relative wealth and the fact that they were quite light-skinned due to a number of white ancestors in their family tree. Laura Flanders writes, "The up-from-oppression narratives of powerful people of color pack a particular punch: they can cast liberal complainers as bigots. Those who bemoan the discrimination against groups -- so goes the argument -- underestimate the power of one." The story "hit[s] the rhetorical jackpot" for the Republicans, writes Flanders -- Rice's story illustrates an entire class of blacks who supposedly did not need civil rights legislation or affirmative action laws to achieve success in America. A GOP strategist says that her story contains the elements needed to challenge the view that black Americans are the "natural constituents" of the Democratic Party. Rice says that Bush "would have loved [her] Granddaddy Rice," but Flanders reminds us that while Rice's grandfather was forced to sell his church for the opportunity to get an education, Bush's grandfather was running a Wall Street Bank; his uncle Prescott Bush opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964; George W. Bush himself grew up in the de facto segregated town of Midland, Texas, where his family's black maid was prohibited from wearing anything but work clothes downtown.
- Rice herself benefited from a raft of anti-discriminatory laws that helped her get into the colleges she seems to believe she was "foreordained" to attend simply because of her family heritage. In 1969, her father, John Wesley Rice, then the assistant dean of the University of Denver, said, "The great American Dream has become the great American lie" for racial minorities. Rice's father was able to become a dean in part because of affirmative action laws passed in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and because the University of Denver was clamoring for black administrators and faculty. Rice worked hard to integrate the almost all-white university during his tenure there, and was a prominent civil rights activist who raised money for Martin Luther King's organization. Condoleezza Rice describes herself as a former Democrat who voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 but lost her faith in the Democrats after witnessing Carter's "feeble" response to the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan. (Laura Flanders)
- July: Bush names Michael Astrue, a pharmaceutical industry lawyer, to head the Food and Drug Administration.
Partisan Bush appointees
Democratic senator Edward Kennedy blocks Astrue's appointment because of Astrue's close ties to the industry that the FDA is supposed to regulate. "It would be unprecedented for the commissioner to be appointed from an industry regulated by the FDA," writes Kennedy and six fellow Democrats. However, such an appointment is not unprecedented, nor even uncommon, for the Bush adminstration. Astrue's name is eventually withdrawn. (Eric Alterman and Mark Green) - July: John O'Neill, former FBI deputy director,
Islamist terrorism
says in an interview, "All of the answers, all of the clues allowing us to dismantle Osama Bin Laden's organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia. ...The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it." (Buzzflash) - July: Britain's Ministry of Defense takes DERA (Defence Evaluation and Research Agency) partially private, splitting it into two organizations, DSTL and QinetiQ. DSTL remains part of the MOD and continues to handle the most sensitive areas of research, but QinetiQ, a private company, handles its own areas of defense research and intelligence processing. On December 5, 2002, the Carlyle Group became QinetiQ's "strategic partner." In June 2003, one observer will note, "so Tony Blair essentially condoned the privatization of a large section of the British defense intelligence apparatus to the Carlyle Group. It would be comparable for us [the US] to subcontract that to a foreign company." (QinetiQ)
- July: According to a South Carolina National Guard member,
Iraq war and occupation
"My unit reported for drill in July 2001 and we were suddenly and unexpectedly informed that all activities planned for the next two months would be suspended in order to prepare for a mobilization exercise to be held on Sept. 14, 2001. We worked diligently for two weekends and even came in on an unscheduled day in August to prepare for the exercise. By the end of August all we needed was a phone call, which we were to expect, and we could hop into a fully prepared convoy with our bags and equipment packed." This gives the lie to Bush's insistence that no planning was underway for an invasion of Iraq. (CommonDreams) - Early July: The National Academy of Sciences releases a long-awaited report that proves global warming is a reality,
Global warming and the environment
and that is caused largely by emissions from "human activities" such as auto and industrial pollutants. The Bush administration, who had requested the report, misrepresented the findings as "inconclusive" about the reasons for global warming. An initiative later begun by the administration that promised to "reduce America's greenhouse-gas emissions relative to the size of our economy" was a complete ruse; at the time, the US economy was growing, so according to the proposed standard, the amount of emissions could rise as well, as long as they didn't rise more than the economy was growing. Most industrialized nations, who were signees of the Kyoto environmental accords, advocate lowering emissions to below 1990 levels. The Bush administration asks for nothing more than slower emissions based on 2000 levels. (The Nation)
"Who cares what you think?" -- George W. Bush to a citizen who tells him he's doing a poor job, July 4, 2001
- July 4-14:
Islamist terrorism
Osama bin Laden stays for 10 days in a Paris hospital for treatment of a kidney condition. (From the Wilderness)
Tenet, Black meet to give Rice urgent warning of imminent al-Qaeda attack; Rice ignores warnings
- July 10: CIA director George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief,
9/11 attacks
Cofer Black, meet with national security advisor Condoleezza Rice to warn her of what they believe is an imminent attack by al-Qaeda on US soil. The case for the warning is compiled from a mass of fragments and items that, put together, make a compelling argument for immediate preparations. Rice refuses to heed the warnings. This meeting is not made public knowledge until late September 2006, when Bob Woodward writes of it in his book State of Denial. Rice and the White House initially deny that the meeting ever took place, but after documentation proves the meeting actually happened, they begin spinning the meeting to mislead the public into believing it was far less serious than it actually was -- a spin that is hard to credit, considering Tenet is Woodward's prime source for the information. - Tenet feels that the situation is as grim, and as imminent, as the situation in the days before the December 1999 "Millennium Plot," and feels that similar action needs to be taken immediately. He has seen transcripts of 34 separate intercepted phone calls from NSA monitors that talk about "zero hour" and the pronouncement, "Something spectacular is coming." As he did in 1999, Tenet has already ordered the CIA to share its al-Qaeda intelligence with the intelligence bureaus in other friendly countries, and asked that station chiefs urge the arrests of known terrorist cells in their countries. Tenet has told counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one." However, Tenet is having difficulty gaining any traction on any immediate action plan against al-Qaeda, in part because Donald Rumsfeld is questioning every NSA intercept and other intelligence. Rumsfeld believes the US is being duped, perhaps as part of a plan to test US reactions and defenses. Even a top secret intelligence briefing from June 30 entitled "Bin Laden Threats are Real" fails to impress Rumsfeld. Tenet decides to perform an end run around Rumsfeld and contact Rice with a request for an immediate audience.
- Tenet calls Rice from his car phone and says he needs to see her immediately. Tenet has been after Rice for months to set a clear counterterrorism policy, writes Woodward, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Woodward writes, "Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an 'out of cycle' session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention. Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence he'd seen. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming. He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action." But Tenet was having a hard time getting anyone to listen in the highest echelons of power in Washington. As noted above, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld openly doubts that the NSA intercepts and other intelligence were anything more than misdirection and deception. And Rice just isn't listening, period.
- Both Tenet and the NSA felt the intelligence they were gathering was valid; as noted above, on June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real." Tenet hoped that he could shake Rice into paying some attention. He and Black would make two main points. One, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, perhaps on American soil. Black would emphasize that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Two, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden. But Rice doesn't listen to their presentation with anything but polite, distant interest. Both Tenet and Black feel that they receive, in their words, "the brush-off." A plan for dealing with al-Qaeda covertly was in the pipeline, but wouldn't be ready for a while. As with the Clinton administration, a debate was raging over the use of the Predator drone that could be used to kill bin Laden or other top al-Qaeda officials; the CIA and Pentagon were fighting over who would pay for it and who would have authority to fire. And Rice is far more interested in selling the ballistic defense missile system to Congress and the American populace. Woodward writes, "She [is] in a different place."
- Tenet leaves the meeting frustrated; Black terms the decision to just stick with the ongoing planning is a sustained policy failure. Rice and the entire Bush administration are stuck in denial. "Adults should not have a system like this," Black says later. Black feels that if Rice had given him $500 million in covert action funds then and there, along with presidential authorization to assassinate bin Laden, he "would have been able to make great strides if not do away with him," Woodward writes. "...Just give [Black] the money and the authority and he might be able to bring bin Laden's head back in a box."
- The meeting goes unreported and unacknowledged in the various reports of investigations into the 9/11 attacks, particularly in the 9/11 commission investigation, but it stands out in the minds of Tenet and Black as the starkest warning they had given the White House on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. (Commission executive director Phillip Zelikow, a close friend and colleague of Rice, observes during the commission hearings that in his opinion, the administration did indeed move fairly quickly to thwart bin Laden, even though an action plan was not approved before the attacks. Rice had prepared a National Security Presidential Directive to move against bin Laden ready to present to Bush on September 10. It was NSPD-9, meaning eight other foreign policy matters had been formally debated, agreed on, and signed by Bush as administration policy before the plan to go after bin Laden.) Though the investigators have access to all the paperwork on the meeting, Black feels there are things the commissioners wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about. Tenet looks back on the meeting with Rice as a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the attacks. Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, Tenet feels, but she just didn't get it in time. He feels that he had done his job and had been very direct about the threat, but that Rice had not moved quickly. He feels she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA. As Black later says, "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head." (Washington Post, Bob Woodward)
- July 15: Members of the G8,
Islamist terrorism
meeting in Genoa, Italy, discuss the Taliban, pipelines, and the handing over of Osama bin Laden. According to Pakistani representative Ambassador Naiz Naik, the U.S. delegation, led by former Clinton Ambassador to Pakistan Tom Simmons, warns of a "military option" if the Taliban did not change position. (From the Wilderness) - July 16: In his defense of Bush's deficit spending, budget director Mitch Daniels says,
Bush's economic policies
"The [Clinton] surplus has declined from being gigantic to merely immense." A month later, Bush will tell Americans that a return to deficit spending is "incredibly positive news" because it will restrain government spending. Within his first two years, Bush will squander every dime of the $5.6 trillion surplus he inherited, and Bush will submit budgets calling for the largest deficits in American history. Bush will lay the blame on a variety of targets, including Bill Clinton, al-Qaeda, the March 2001 economic recession, and in one memorable statement tells us "it's nobody's fault." He even blames the Iraqi war for the deficit, though deficit spending started a year before Iraq was invaded. (Washington Post/Paul Waldman) - July 19: Lori Klausutis, an aide to GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, dies in his office in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
Republican corruption
She is found at 8:10 the next morning by Juanita and Andreas Bergmann, who claim they had an appointment that morning with Scarborough to facilitate Bergmann's application for a green card. Scarborough, however, is ostensibly still in Washington, DC, and flies in to Pensacola, less than forty miles from the office, later that day. Police immediately characterize Klausutis's death as an accident, and not a result of foul play, even before the coroner's report or the autopsy; medical examiner Michael Berkland concurs even before doing an autopsy or receiving a toxological report. Berkland and the local police refuse to search for evidence of foul play, such as skin cells, hairs, fibers, and so forth. The police and medical examiner's office will later refuse to release the autopsy report in violation of Florida's public records law, until August 6, after threats of lawsuits are made. Klausutis, who worked for Scarborough since 1999 and is married to a scientist who does classified design work for the Air Force, is apparently alone in the office when she dies. - The medical examiner, Berkland, later announces that she died from a previously undiagnosed heart condition that caused her to lose consciousness, strike her head on a desk, and die of a blood clot. Berkland says that Klausutis suffered a severe head trauma, though his initial report says that no such injury was noted; Berkland admits to lying about the wound when he first spoke to the press, and says that he did so to restrain what he calls "undue speculation" about her death. Berkland characterizes the wound -- a 7 1/2 inch long fracture stretching from the right temple across the top of the head, a contusion in the occipital region at the base of the skull, a subdural hematoma on the left side opposite the fracture, and eggshell fractures under the brain above the eye socket -- as a "scratch and bruise." He also says that blood pooled in the area around the fracture, contributing to her death; the autopsy shows that said blood pooled on the other side of her head, away from the fracture. It is later revealed that Berkland, a strong supporter and donor to the Scarborough campaign, had lost his license to practice medicine in Missouri in 1998 for falsifying autopsies, which forced judicial review of nine criminal convictions that were partly based on his testimony. (Berkland was retained as medical examiner because of intervention by his immediate supervisor, Gary Cumberland, another heavy Scarborough donor. Berkland apparently applied to practice in Florida without informing the state that he had been thrown out of his job in Missouri.)
- The facts of Klausutis's death are in dispute; not only are there conflicting reports about her head wound, but outside medical experts question the diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmia, and cast serious doubt on Berkland's conclusion that the head wound, with a resulting "contracoup" bruising on the other side of her brain, could not have been caused by a blow to the head. Even the scene of her death is in dispute; one statement has the door to the office locked and the lights on; another has the office locked and the lights off; a third has the office unlocked and the lights on. Berkland's diagnosis is also questionable due to the fact that his medical report contains no description of the death scene, no diagram of the location of the body, or its posture or appearance as he first observed it on the morning of July 20th. In fact, many elements of Berkland's diagnosis, particularly those he cites as evidence that the head wound was the result of a fall and not of a blow to the head, are in direct contravention to accepted practice.
- Scarborough flies into Pensacola, less than 40 miles away from the Fort Walton Beach office, the day that Klausutis's body was found, to spend the weekend with his two sons. ABC-TV affiliate WEAR-TV posts on its Web site within three hours of the body's discovery that "scarborough's office says Klausutis had a history of health problems," Scarborough himself calls to inform the news department that Klausutis had a complicated medical history, specifically surrounding "stroke and epilepsy." About a week later, press secretary Miguel Serrano will ask WEAR-TV to drop the "complicated health history" story, saying Scarborough had spoken in error. Lois Hoyt, Klausutis's supervisor, will then claim that it was a "lie" that Scarborough had passed on details of Lori's health. WCTX-AM is also told by Scarborough's staff members that "Klausutis was suffering with ill health for some time." Those who knew Klausutis dispute that she had any health problems. "she was a runner," says a former neighbor. "Every morning, I would see her run while I walked. We'd wave to each other as we passed." The director of the local Young Republicans chapter says he believes that Klausutis was in good health and "if she wasn't working or in school, she always seemed to be out running. ...I assumed she was in good health, and if she had any kind of debilitating injuries or illnesses, she didn't share them with us." Her family also releases a statement disputing the alleged health problems.
- In May 2001, Scarborough announced that he is resigning as Congressman, a post he had won less than seven months before, to spend more time with his family (he had filed for divorce in 1999, and retains joint custody of his two sons; Scarborough has long been dogged with rumors of marital infidelity, including the impregnation of one of his aides). He had tried unsuccessfully to get the Bush administration to name him to a post that would allow him to work out of his home, and was discussing the idea of hosting a radio or television talk show (in June 2003, Scarborough will later join MSNBC as a political pundit and host of his own show). Scarborough began working as a lawyer in September 2001. Interestingly, Klausutis's hometown paper's obituary completely fails to mention that she worked for Scarborough. Her husband's personal Web site has disappeared. The Emerald Coast Young Republicans have removed all mention of Klausutis, a past president, from their literature and Web site. The Pensacola News Journal has removed her name from their Web site's search mechanism. Her college, the University of West Florida, has removed her picture from their archives. (Northwest Florida Daily News, Northwest Florida Daily News, Truthout, Truthout, Truthout, Destin Log)
Illegal activities in Florida by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris proven
- July 19: Governor Jeb Bush,
Election fraud
who pledged to keep out of the Florida presidential election, has been found to have been far more involved than he previously admitted. Bush pledged to stay out of the campaign because his brother, George W. Bush, was the GOP candidate. However, at least 95 phone calls were placed from his private office to campaign headquarters. The governor refuses to disclose the nature of those phone calls. Further investigation shows that he visited the Bush/GOP headquarters in Tallahassee at least once, that he participated in at least one Bush campaign strategy conference call, and that six of the 95 calls were made on the day that a violent, well-coordinated mob of GOP protesters stopped the Miami-Dade recount. (Alligator, Floridagate) - July 19: Proof surfaces that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris allowed members of the Republican Party to use her office to coordinate strategy following the hotly contested 2000 election;
Election fraud
she also erased numerous documents relating to the recount from her computer. Evidence continues to mount that Harris committed election fraud in her actions as Secretary of State. Examination of computers in Harris's office shows that she and her co-workers placed documents and files on those computers directly linked to the efforts to elect George W. Bush as President. Harris served as the co-chairman of the Florida Bush presidential campaign; as Secretary of State, she is pledged to ensure a fair and impartial election. To avoid conflicts, Harris pledged to erect a "firewall" between her work as chairman of the Bush campaign and her work as Secretary of State. The unearthing of these files proves that Harris did not maintain the integrity of the so-called "firewall," but let the two positions overlap. - Later investigation shows that Harris allowed Republican operatives Andrew Goodman and J.M. Stipanovich to use her state computers and offices during the recount; Communications Director Donald Tighe admitted writing partisan speeches during the campaign. A November 11, 2000 document on the computer shows that Harris and the Bush campaign were digging into the campaign finances of Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente, one of the jurists reviewing election cases. A list of contributors to Harris' 1998 Democratic opponent, Karen Gievers, was also found. Another document was titled "George W. Bush Talking Points." It was dated March 14, 2000, and endorsed Bush's nomination for president, saying he had "proven in Texas that he can manage like an executive, govern across party lines and lead with inclusiveness."
- Another document, written for Harris, urged Republicans to support Bush and "send the loudest possible message that we are ready to lead!" The speech was written following the New Hampshire primary, which Bush lost to Senator John McCain. "I am a bit biased. I co-chair the campaign effort of George W. Bush.... I hope it will be 'W,'" the document read. Harris was supposed to deliver the speech in Orlando. Harris's spokespersons claim the speech was not written by Harris and that she never delivered the speech. Harris herself claims Stipanovich and Goodman were "volunteers," but Goodman billed Harris $12,000 for his work, and Harris initially approved the bill. Harris has caused serious controversy with her computers; she, or her staff, erased a number of files from the computers after questions arose about whether Harris's efforts to elect Bush compromised her impartiality and caused the election to be tainted. (The computers used by Stipanovich and Goodman were completely reformatted and had their operating systems reinstalled.) A data retrieval firm was able to retrieve some of the deleted documents. Kerry Stillman, an official with the state Commission on Ethics, says that using state equipment and time for political activity falls under the state law governing misuse of public position.
- Harris rebuts the possibility by denying that any records were destroyed, and that "no partisan political activity transpired in my office during the recount period." Harris released the computer files after reports that a draft memo to Harris from her staff after the election said overseas ballots had to be postmarked or signed and dated by Election Day. Harris later corrected herself to say that said ballots should be "executed," but not necessarily postmarked, by Election Day. Reports have shown that Republican operatives waged a county-by-county campaign to get election boards in GOP-heavy counties to accept late absentee ballots while arguing that Democratic counties should disregard such ballots. The effort led to vast disparities in what ballot mistakes were tolerated. Florida officials counted hundreds of disputed overseas ballots, which were crucial to Bush's 537-vote victory in Florida over Al Gore. Democrats have claimed that Harris used her position to boost Bush's chances of winning the state. "It think it was pretty obvious from day one of the election that George Bush's campaign was calling the shots here in Florida," says Florida House Democratic Leader Lois Frankel. "I think that if we continue to stand silent...we are doing nothing more than condoning the behavior." Harris later divulges that she had been in communication with the Bush campaign before the election, hoping to land an ambassadorship if Bush were to win the White House. (CBS News, Alligator, Floridagate)
Clandestine meetings between US officials and Taliban continue
- July 21: Three American officials, Tom Simons (former US Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia) meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in a Berlin hotel.
Bush's foreign policies
It is the third of a series of back-channel conferences called "brainstorming on Afghanistan." Taliban representatives sat in on previous meetings, but boycotted this one due to worsening tensions. However, the Pakistani ISI relays information from the meeting to the Taliban. At the meeting, former US State Department official Lee Coldren passes on a message from Bush officials. He later says, "I think there was some discussion of the fact that the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action." Accounts vary, but former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik later says he is told by senior American officials at the meeting that military action to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan is planned to "take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest." The goal is to kill or capture both bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, topple the Taliban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place. Uzbekistan and Russia would also participate. Naik also says "it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban." One specific threat made at this meeting is that the Taliban can choose between "carpets of bombs" -- an invasion -- or "carpets of gold" -- the pipeline. Naik says Tom Simons made the "carpets" statement; Simons claims: "It's possible that a mischievous American participant, after several drinks, may have thought it smart to evoke gold carpets and carpet bombs. Even Americans can't resist the temptation to be mischievous." Naik and the American participants deny that the pipeline was an issue at the meeting. (Albion Monitor/AlterNet, From the Wilderness) - July 21: National Security Director Condoleeza Rice confirms that Iraq has no ability to strike either his neighbors or the United States.
Iraq war and occupation
She tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "We are able to keep arms from him [Saddam]. His military forces have not been rebuilt." Shortly afterwards, Rice, along with the rest of the Bush administration, will abruptly change their stories with no new evidence of Iraqi weapons programs. (CNN/Buzzflash) - July 24: US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca pressures the Indian government to settle the Dabhol power plant dispute in Enron's favor,
Bush's energy policies
and implies that US foreign investment in India will rise once India cooperates with Enron. "By any reasonable standard," she says, "the level of foreign investment here remains much lower than it could or should be.... From an American perspective, as I'm sure you've all heard before, many of India's problems in this regard can be summed up in one five-letter word: Enron." (David Corn) - July 26: CBS News reveals that Attorney General John Ashcroft has stopped flying on commercial planes,
9/11 attacks
due to a threat assessment, but neither the FBI nor the Justice Department identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it. "Ashcroft demonstrated an amazing lack of curiosity when asked if he knew anything about the threat. 'Frankly, I don't,' he told reporters." It is later reported that he stopped flying in July based on threat assessments made on May 8 and June 19. In May 2002 it is claimed the threat assessment had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, but Ashcroft walked out of his office rather than answer questions about it. (From the Wilderness) - July 29: National security advisor Condoleezza Rice
Iraq war and occupation
tells CNN interviewer Wolf Blitzer, "In terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." (CNN/Al Franken) - July 30: Bush tells an audience,
Bush administration's contempt for democracy
"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it. Just so long as I'm the dictator." (Business Week/Buzzflash) - July 31: The FAA issues another warning to US airlines,
9/11 attacks
citing no specific targets but saying "Terror groups are known to be planning and training for hijackings, and we ask you therefore to use caution." These alerts had expired by 9/11. Note that pilots and flight attendants later claim they were never told about warnings such as these. The airlines also disagree about the content of pre-9/11 warnings generally. For instance, American Airlines states these warnings were "extremely general in nature and did not identify a specific threat or recommend any specific security enhancements." The text of these warnings remain classified. (CCR) - Late July: Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil learns that bin Laden is planning a "huge attack" on targets inside America.
9/11 attacks
The attack is imminent, and will kill thousands. He learns this from Tahir Yildash, leader of the rebel Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which is allied with al-Qaeda at the time. Muttawakil sends an emissary to pass this information on to the US consul general. A US intelligence official also attends the meeting. The message is not taken very seriously; one source blames this on "warning fatigue" from too many warnings. Also, supposedly the emissary was from the Foreign Ministry, but didn't say the message came from Muttawakil himself. The emissary then takes the message to the Kabul offices of UNSMA, the political wing of the UN. They also fail to take the warning seriously. (CCR) - Late July: Argentina's Jewish community receives warnings of a major terrorist attack against either the United States,
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Argentina or France from "a foreign intelligence source." The warning is then relayed to the Argentine security authorities. It is agreed to keep the warning secret in order to avoid panic while reinforcing security at Jewish sites in the country. Says a Jewish leader, "It was a concrete warning that an attack of major proportion would take place, and it came from a reliable intelligence source. And I understand the Americans were told about it." Argentina has a large Jewish community that has been bombed in the past, and has been an area of al-Qaeda activity. (CCR)
Late Summer
- Late Summer: Jordanian intelligence (GID) makes a communications intercept deemed so important that King Abdullah's men relay it to Washington, probably through the CIA station in Amman.
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To make doubly sure the message gets through it is passed through an Arab intermediary to a German intelligence agent. The message states that a major attack, code named "The Big Wedding," is planned inside the US and that aircraft will be used. "When it became clear that the information was embarrassing to Bush Administration officials and congressmen who at first denied that there had been any such warnings before September 11, senior Jordanian officials backed away from their earlier confirmations." Christian Science Monitor calls the story "confidently authenticated" even though Jordan has backed away from it. (CCR) - Late Summer:
War in Afghanistan
A US contingency plan is drawn up to attack Afghanistan from the north." (CCR)
