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
March 2004, Week Four
Page Six
- March 29: The latest switch in the US plans for a transitional government call for the dismantling of the US-picked Iraqi Governing Council and replacing it with a hand-picked prime minister, most likely US ally Ahmad Chalabi. Chalabi opposes any UN intervention in Iraq, apparently preferring to be crowned the leader of the Iraqi government by American fiat. Rumor also has it that hard-line neoconservative James Woolsey, former director of the CIA and current senior member of the PNAC, will be named the first US ambassador to Iraq. (TomPaine.com)
- March 29: Two influential senators, Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Max Baucus, accuse the Bush administration of weakening the government's ability to clamp down on terrorism financing and urge Bush to create a central agency to focus on it. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and the panel's senior Democrat, Baucus, say the creation of the Homeland Security department after the 9/11 attacks had left a gap in the ability to fight financial crimes related to terrorism. "This same restructuring has disassembled and scattered the government's apparatus to detect, investigate and prevent financial crimes," they write in a joint letter to Bush. The senators point to a lack of resources, direction and coordination and duplication of effort among the multiple agencies in Treasury, Homeland Security and other departments that now collect intelligence on financial crimes. "While we struggle over how to restructure our agencies, they're squirreling away money to fund their attacks. Shutting down terrorism financing must be an urgent and high priority," Grassley says after the letter was released. The senators recommend fundamental reform in the federal system of combating terrorism financing and ask the administration for input on the creation of a coordinated financial crimes enforcement agency at Treasury. "There must be one hand at the helm empowered to deny terror of its currency," Grassley and Baucus write. Last year, Treasury eliminated the post of undersecretary for enforcement after most of its law enforcement functions, including the Secret Service and the US Customs Service, were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. It also lost its post as head of a National Security Council committee that coordinates federal agencies' efforts to stop terrorism financing. Treasury's new Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence will be headed by an undersecretary and will include two assistant secretaries. "The restructuring seems to be heavy on generals and light on soldiers," the senators say. (Reuters)
- March 29: Steve Coll publishes Ghost Wars, an authoritative account of the origins of al-Qaeda in post-Soviet Afghanistan. His book stitches together the complex roles played by diplomats and spies from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States into one narrative explaining how Afghanistan became such a welcoming haven for al-Qaeda. Coll focuses on how Saudi Arabia and its intelligence operations aided the rise of Osama bin Laden and Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. The New York Times's James Risen writes, "saudi Arabia's alleged involvement in terrorism has been the subject of wild conspiracy theories since Sept. 11; Coll gives us a clear and balanced view of Saudi Arabia's real ties to bin Laden. The links he reveals are serious enough to prompt an important debate about the nature of the Saudi-American partnership in the fight against terrorism. 'Saudi intelligence officials said years later that bin Laden was never a professional Saudi intelligence agent,' he writes, referring to Saudi support for foreign Arab fighters against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Still, 'it seems clear that bin Laden did have a substantial relationship with Saudi intelligence.'" Coll is more critical of the Clinton administration's attempts to combat terrorism, at one point writing, "Clinton's National Security Council aides firmly believed that they were the aggressive ones on the al-Qaeda case, pursuing every possible avenue to get at bin Laden over calcified resistance or incompetence within the CIA and Pentagon bureaucracies. From the other side of the Potomac, Clinton's White House often looked undisciplined, unfocused and uncertain." Coll also corroborates many of Clarke's assertions that counterterrorism policy was largely ignored by the new Bush administration before 9/11. Coll notes, as does Clarke, that the Bush team didn't hold its first cabinet-level meeting on al-Qaeda and Afghanistan until Sept. 4, one week before the twin towers fell. (New York Times)
- March 29: Columnist Sean Gonsalves pulls the following items from Richard Clarke's book that detail further mismanagement and ignoring of the terrorist threat by Republicans as far back as Ronald Reagan:
- "Ronald Reagan, who did not retaliate for the murder of 278 United States Marines in Beirut and who violated his own terrorism policy by trading arms for hostages in what came to be called the Iran-Contra scandal."
- "George H.W. Bush, who did not retaliate for the Libyan murder of 259 passengers on Pan Am 103, who did not have an official counterterrorism policy; and who left Saddam Hussein in place, requiring the United States to leave a large military presence in Saudi Arabia."
- "Bill Clinton, who identified terrorism as the major post-Cold War threat and acted to improve our counterterrorism capabilities; who (little known to the public) quelled anti-American terrorism in Iraq and Iran and defeated an al-Qaeda attempt to dominate Bosnia; but who, weakened by continued political attack, could not get the CIA, the Pentagon, and FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the threat."
- "George W. Bush, who failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al-Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks, and who launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."
- March 29: The US Air Force is accused of complicity in a deal with Boeing for that manufacturer to supply the US military with tanker planes. Instead of following standard bid procedures, the Air Force gave Boeing five months to rewrite the official specifications for 100 aerial refueling tankers so that the company's 767 aircraft would win a $23.5-billion deal, according to e-mail and documents. In the process, Boeing eliminated 19 of the 26 requirements the Air Force originally specified, and the Air Force acquiesced in order to keep the price down. The Air Force then gave Boeing's competitor, Airbus, 12 days to bid on the project and awarded the contract to Boeing even though Airbus met more than 20 of the original 26 specifications and offered a price that was $10 billion less than Boeing's. The Boeing tanker deal has been under investigation since it became public 2 1/2 years ago. The deal has been suspended, pending the outcome. Air Force Undersecretary for Acquisitions Marvin Sambur defends the deal with Boeing: "This was not a competitive bid process," he says. "The Air Force was ordered by Congress to work with Boeing on the new tanker program." Sambur is referring to a line item Republican senator Ted Stevens inserted into the appropriations bill in in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks. It said the Air Force should lease one hundred 767s from Boeing to be used as tankers. The bill passed the Senate over the objections of Republican senator John McCain and others. After it became law, McCain, in a committee hearing where Air Force Secretary James Roche was testifying, criticized Roche for an uncompetitive deal, and Roche agreed to conduct a competitive bidding. The Air Force then requested information from Boeing and Airbus, but by then, Boeing and the Air Force had made arrangements that ensured Boeing would win. Sambur confirms that the first 100 Boeing planes would be able to refuel only one plane at a time and would be able to refuel only Air Force planes, capabilities far below normal Air Force requirements. But Doug Kennett, a Boeing spokesman in Washington, says that the first 100 tankers would be able to refuel Navy, Marine and allied aircraft, one at a time.
- Politics played a heavy role in the Boeing deal. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, whose state is home to Boeing headquarters, and Democratic representative Norman Dicks, who represents the state of Washington, where a key Boeing production plant is located, lobbied the White House on the deal. Boeing and the Air Force also lobbied for the deal, and President Bush designated his chief of staff, Andrew Card, as the point man on the issue. The Office of Management and Budget and other independent agencies criticized the tanker deal as too expensive and unneeded. Card intervened and ordered them to move forward. Senate investigators have examined 8,000 pages of Boeing documents that were so embarrassing that the company fired one of its vice presidents, Darleen Druyun, last year. Druyun had been an Air Force acquisitions officer involved in negotiations on the tanker deal. Boeing also fired its chief financial officer, Mike Sears, who had hired Druyun. Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Phil Condit also left the company in an attempt to help Boeing put the scandal behind it and get the deal back on track. Department of Defense Inspector General Joseph Schmitz is set to release his audit report within the next week. It's the first of several investigations of the Boeing deal, including one by federal prosecutors. A draft of the audit report, leaked earlier this month to Bloomberg News, said the Boeing contract was flawed and may need to be renegotiated because of "unsound acquisition and procurement practices." But Schmitz said he could find "no compelling reason" to kill the deal. His report also questions whether the government should be leasing any of the aircraft, because the cost of leasing a Boeing 767 tanker is greater than the cost of buying one at $138.5 million each. Under the deal as it is now structured, the government would lease 20 of the tankers and buy 80. (Detroit Free Press)
- March 29: A review of the new book The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty by Peter and Rochelle Schweizer sheds some interesting light on the character of George W. Bush and the nature of his relationship to his father, former president George H.W. Bush. The book, which tends to portray the events of both presidencies in a friendly light, quotes a Bush relative as saying that George W. Bush sees the war against terrorism in starkly religious terms, "as a religious war. ...He doesn't have a p.c. view of this war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know." The authors describe what they call George W.'s "addictive personality," which "required him to fix in on something and maintain a hold on it." And they quote a relative who says: "With terrorism, he's like a dog with a bone. He won't give up on it." The authors argue that the post-9/11 demands of office were a perfect match with George W.'s personality: "Because of his addictive personality, it was the sort of presidency that suited him well. Unencumbered by domestic issues, with their detail and ambiguity, he was now free to speak naturally in a way that reflected the way he viewed the world: black and white, good and evil. Life had been for him a struggle to conquer those things that had a bad hold on him; the struggle between good and evil was something that he had experienced in his own life." The authors also reveal that, before the 2000 election, the relationship between George W. and Jeb was strained, with the brothers going months without speaking with each other. During the Florida election standoff, Jeb, as longtime family friend and counselor James Baker put it, "did whatever we needed" without worrying about "his own political future." Like other sources, the book notes that George W. has tried long and hard to distance himself from what he sees as his father's mistakes as president. According to the review, "If his father lacked the 'vision thing,' he would preside over a more ideologically driven administration. If his father was a committed internationalist, he would be willing to go it alone. And if the first gulf war had failed to dislodge Mr. Hussein, then the 2003 Iraq war would finish him off. As Rich Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman sees it, George W. almost consciously tried to be different from his father from Day 1: 'You might say it was almost exaggerated,' the Schweizers quote him saying. 'I don't know why because the father and son were very close. But George W. seemed to want to be defined differently from the beginning.'" (New York Times)
- March 29: On his show, comedian and TV host David Letterman shows a film of a young boy yawning and fidgeting during a speech by George Bush. The next day, CNN runs the Letterman clip just before a commercial. After the commercial, CNN anchor Daryn Kagan informs viewers that the clip was a fake: "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video, which would explain why the people around him weren't really reacting." Later in the day, another anchor will amend that: the boy was at the rally, but not where he was shown in the video. The next night, Letterman will irately defend the film: "That is an out and out 100 percent absolute lie. The kid absolutely was there, and he absolutely was doing everything we pictured via the videotape. So when you cast your vote in November, just remember that the White House was trying to make me look like a dope." CNN later backs down and admits the film was genuine, but tells Letterman that Kagan "misspoke," and never heard from the White House about the film. CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson confirms the "misunderstanding among our staff" surrounding the film. The boy, 13-year old Tyler Crotty, is the son of the Bush campaign's Orange County, Florida chairman Richard Crotty, a Bush "Pioneer" who has raised over $100,000 in campaign funds for Bush. The Crotty family says that the Bush campaign is laughing off the entire incident, but Letterman is not so sure. "This whole thing just smells. Doesn't it smell a little bit?" he asks his audience. "I mean, it just seems all just a little too tidy, just a little too neat. And now, the guy, the kid in Florida -- and his old man -- was really upset in the beginning.... Well, now everybody down there loves it. Everybody couldn't be happier; everybody thought it was hilarious. So you see, it's just a little too tidy. Stuff like this never ends happily, certainly not happily for me. I was waiting for the lawsuit, I was waiting to be arrested, I was waiting to be beaten to a pulp, and now, oh...we couldn't be happier."
- Paul Krugman writes, "...CNN passed along a smear that it attributed to the White House. When the smear backfired, it declared its previous statements inoperative and said the White House wasn't responsible. Sound familiar?" Krugman compares the dispute over the film to a much more serious attempt by the Bush administration to smear Richard Clarke. CNN's Wolf Blitzer used White House sources for the basis of his statement: "What administration officials have been saying since the weekend, basically, that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting there are some weird aspects in his life." Krugman blasted Blitzer for passing along unsubstantiated White House smears; Blitzer responded by saying his statement was supposed to come across as a question, and continued, "I was not referring to anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials as alleged today."
- Krugman writes, "silly me: I 'alleged' that Mr. Blitzer said something because he actually said it, and described 'so-called unnamed' officials as unnamed because he didn't name them. Mr. Blitzer now says he was talking about remarks made on his own program by a National Security Council spokesman, Jim Wilkinson. But Mr. Wilkinson's remarks are hard to construe as raising questions about Mr. Clarke's personal life. Instead, Mr. Wilkinson seems to have questioned Mr. Clarke's sanity, saying: 'He sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden, and bin Laden has a mystical mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of `X-Files' stuff.' Really? On Page 246 of Against All Enemies, Mr. Clarke bemoans the way the invasion of Iraq, in his view, played right into the hands of al-Qaeda: 'Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed.... It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush.' That's not 'X-Files' stuff: it's a literary device, meant to emphasize just how ill conceived our policy is. Mr. Blitzer should be telling Mr. Wilkinson to apologize, not rerunning those comments in his own defense. Look, I understand why major news organizations must act respectfully toward government officials. But officials shouldn't be sure -- as Mr. Wilkinson obviously was -- that they can make wild accusations without any fear that they will be challenged on the spot or held accountable later. And administration officials shouldn't be able to spread stories without making themselves accountable. If an administration official is willing to say something on the record, that's a story, because he pays a price if his claims are false. But if unnamed 'administration officials' spread rumors about administration critics, reporters have an obligation to check the facts before giving those rumors national exposure. And there's no excuse for disseminating unchecked rumors because they come from 'the White House,' then denying the White House connection when the rumors prove false. That's simply giving the administration a license to smear with impunity." (St. Petersburg Times, New York Times/CommonDreams, Washington Post)
- March 30: Continuing investigations fail to unearth any evidence of Iraqi WMDs. The investigations, headed by Charles Duelfer, have continued to find evidence that the Hussein regime was interested in developing such weapons, and Duelfer complains that some Hussein loyalists still refuse to completely cooperate with US authorities. "We do not know whether Saddam was concealing [weapons of mass destruction] or planning to resume production once sanctions were lifted," Duelfer says in written testimony made public after he testifies in secret to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Duelfer's statement is his first since taking over from David Kay, who resigned as chief US weapons inspector in January. Senator Carl Levin, the committee's senior Democrat, challenges Duelfer's remarks as vague and accuses him of releasing selective information and "suspicions" not based on fact. In the closed-door committee session, Levin says, Duelfer and another witness provided classified information that cast doubt on any suspicion that weapons still exist. "I am therefore calling for the CIA to declassify, to the extent possible, the whole report so the public can reach their own conclusions," Levin says. Another Bush administration official argues that the invasion of Iraq was justified even if weapons aren't found. "some have said that not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- to date -- proves that Saddam was not an imminent threat and that therefore, our coalition military action was not justified. These criticisms miss the mark," says Under Secretary of State John Bolton in written testimony to the House Committee on International Relations. "Our concern was not the imminence of Saddam's threat, but the very existence of his regime, given its heinous and undeniable record, capabilities and intentions." (USA Today)
Condoleezza Rice, after weeks of stalling, agrees to testify publicly to the 9/11 commission; Bush and Cheney offer to testify to the 9/11 commission privately, if they can appear together and not testify under oath
- March 30: Condoleezza Rice reverses her position and agrees to testify publicly to the 9/11 commission. Bush and Cheney also agree to testify to the panel, provided they can go together and not under oath. In return for Rice's testimony, the administration elicits an agreement that no other administration official will be asked to testify. The White House and Rice had maintained that requiring a national security adviser to testify under oath would compromise "executive privilege," which allows a president to exchange ideas freely with an adviser without fearing that they would be made public. "A president and his advisers, including his advisers for national security affairs, must be able to communicate freely and privately without being compelled to reveal those communications to the legislative branch," Bush said. "We have observed this principle while also seeking ways for Dr. Rice to testify," he added. Rice had said repeatedly that she wanted to testify, but only in private and not under oath, to rebut claims made before the panel last week by Bush's former counterterrorism director, Richard Clarke. He accused Bush of being obsessed with ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at the expense of fully focusing on the war against terrorism. After citations and photos of previous security directors and other high-level officials testifying in front of independent commissions and congressional hearings were made public, the administration backed off its insistence on keeping Rice out of the hearing room. Another problem was Rice's repeated appearances in the media, which raised questions about her decisions to appear in front of reporters but not in front of the commission.
- "The whole idea of executive privilege is that the president's advisers should be able to give advice in confidence," says Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University in Washington. "That means the advice should be kept confidential. But she's talked to everybody under the sun. What is the difference between appearing before the commission privately, telling them her story, and saying it publicly under oath? She can't have it both ways," Schwartz notes. Previously Rice had offered to testify in private, without being sworn in, but mounting pressure from the public, the media, and outraged Democrats forced her to change her mind. The exact date of her testimony has not yet been set. "We want to hear from Dr. Rice...[about] the kind of threats and dangers that were apparent to her before 9-11," says chairman Thomas Kean. "We want to talk about the day of and the immediate response of the White House. We want to understand what substantive differences there are, perhaps in testimony between Dr. Rice and any other witnesses." The panel and relatives of 9/11 victims say they want Rice to clear up, under threat of perjury, conflicting statements made by herself and Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism chief who served under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. One issue concerns a memo Clarke drafted in late 2000 after the attack on the USS Cole. The memo, which he forwarded to Rice in January 2001, called for urgent action against al-Qaeda, including covert aid to the Northern Alliance that was battling the Taliban in Afghanistan, and for new Predator drone missions. Clarke says Rice put him off, in part because it was a Clinton holdover plan and terrorism wasn't an urgent priority. Rice says the memo was just a "set of ideas" that needed a more comprehensive review. Components of the plan were finally approved by top Bush officials on Sept. 4, 2001, but were not implemented until after the 9/11 attacks. "There are some key questions: Was terrorism an urgent priority? How quickly was the decision made? Was it slow as Mr. Clarke says or accelerated as Dr. Rice says?" says commissioner Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman. "Was their plan handed off from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration, and was the ultimate decision on Sept. 4 significantly different from the Jan. 25 memo from Clarke, and did that justify the bottom-up review?" he adds. Critics say Rice should explain publicly a May 2002 statement she made that no one could have predicted that a hijacked airplane could be used as a missile. Intelligence reports later made public revealed that officials had in fact considered the possibility several times. "I'm glad she modified the statement, because at the very least we should have anticipated the possibility of a domestic hijacking," says commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator.
- Other points commissioners will probably ask Rice to clarify include the possible military options considered by the Bush administration; and the Iraq response, especially in light of Clarke's testimony that the Bush administration used the 9/11 attacks as justification for a pre-planned attack on Iraq. Rice "is a very important witness for the American people to hear because of where she's been sitting and her experience at the senior reaches of government," says Jamie Gorelick, a commissioner who was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. "she says she wants to address discrepancies, and the bottom line is that her testimony will be very important," Gorelick says. (Guardian, MSNBC)
- March 30: Pakistani officials back off claims that they killed or captured a major al-Qaeda fugitive, saying a man they believed had been an intelligence chief for Osama bin Laden's organization was in fact a much less senior local figure. Pakistani Army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan says that intelligence sources indicate that the al-Qaeda intelligence chief, whom he named only as Abdullah, had been killed. Previous reports had touted the death of senior al-Qaeda official Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant and strategist. (AP/Chicago Tribune)
A censored Pentagon report shows that the Bush administration has left the US "woefully unprepared" to deal with a bioterror attack
- March 30: A partially censored study of the US's efforts to prepare the nation against bioterrorism shows the country is "woefully unprepared," and says the Bush administration has done virtually nothing to prepare the nation for such attacks. The Pentagon report, prepared in 2001 after the anthrax attacks which killed several people, is unclassified but has not been released until now, with large sections of the document redacted to prevent the public from reading them. The report identifies weaknesses in "almost every aspect of US biopreparedness and response." Pentagon officials have fought for two years to keep the document from the public. (New York Times/The Nation)
- March 30: Democratic senator Tom Daschle takes the Senate floor to deplore the Bush administration's efforts to smear Richard Clarke. He says in part, "[L]ast week I spoke about the White House's reaction to Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9-11 Commission. I am compelled to rise again today, because the people around the President are systematically abusing the powers and prerogatives of government. ...The retaliation from those around the President has been fierce. Mr. Clarke's personal motives have been questioned and his honesty challenged. He has even been accused, right here on the Senate floor, of perjury. Not one shred of proof was given, but that wasn't the point. The point was to have the perjury accusation on television and in the newspapers. The point was to damage Mr. Clarke in any way possible. This is wrong–and it's not the first time it's happened. When Senator McCain ran for President, the Bush campaign smeared him and his family with vicious, false attacks. When Max Cleland ran for reelection to this Senate, his patriotism was attacked. He was accused of not caring about protecting our nation -- a man who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, accused of being indifferent to America's national security. That was such an ugly lie, it's still hard to fathom almost two years later. There are some things that simply ought not be done – even in politics. Too many people around the President seem not to understand that, and that line has been crossed. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration's misleading claims about Iraq, Niger, and uranium, the people around the President didn't respond with facts. Instead, they publicly disclosed that Ambassador Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. In doing so, they undermined America's national security and put politics first. They also may well have put the lives of Ambassador Wilson's wife, and her sources, in danger. When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that the White House was thinking about an Iraq War in its first weeks in office, his former colleagues in the Bush Administration ridiculed him from morning to night, and even subjected him to a fruitless federal investigation.
- "When Larry Lindsay, one of President Bush's former top economic advisors, and General Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff, spoke honestly about the amount of money and the number of troops the war would demand, they learned the hard way that the White House doesn't tolerate candor. This is not 'politics as usual.' In nearly all of these cases, it's not Democrats who are being attacked. Senator McCain and Secretary O'Neill are prominent Republicans, and Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay, Joe Wilson, and Eric Shinseki all worked for Republican Administrations. The common denominator is that these government officials said things the White House didn't want said. The response from those around the President was retribution and character assassination -- a 21st Century twist to the strategy of 'shooting the messenger.' If it takes intimidation to keep inconvenient facts from the American people, the people around the President don't hesitate. Richard Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare, found that out. He was told he'd be fired if he told the truth about the cost of the Administration's prescription drug plan. This is no way to run a government. The White House and its supporters should not be using the power of government to try to conceal facts from the American people or to reshape history in an effort to portray themselves in the best light. They should not be threatening the reputations and livelihoods of people simply for asking -– or answering -– questions. They should seek to put all information about past decisions on the table for evaluation so that the best possible decisions can be made for the nation's future. In Mr. Clarke's case, clear and troubling double standards are being applied. Last year, when the Administration was being criticized for the President's misleading statement about Niger and uranium, the White House unexpectedly declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate. When the Administration wants to bolster its public case, there is little that appears too sensitive to be declassified. Now, people around the President want to release parts of Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony in 2002.
- "According to news reports, the CIA is already working on declassifying that testimony –- at the Administration's request. And last week several documents were declassified literally overnight, not in an effort to provide information on a pressing policy matter to the American people, but in an apparent effort to discredit a public servant who gave 30 years of service to his American government. I'll support declassifying Mr. Clarke's testimony before the Joint Inquiry, but the Administration shouldn't be selective. Consistent with our need to protect sources and methods, we should declassify his entire testimony. And to make sure that the American people have access to the full record as they consider this question, we should also declassify his January 25 memo to Dr. Rice, the September 4, 2001 National Security Directive dealing with terrorism, Dr. Rice's testimony to the 9-11 Commission, the still-classified 28 pages from the House-Senate inquiry relating to Saudi Arabia, and a list of the dates and topics of all National Security Council meetings before September 4, 2001. I hope this new interest in openness will also include the Vice President's Energy and Terrorism Task Forces. While much, if not all, of what these task forces discussed was unclassified, their proceedings have not been shared with the public.
- "There also seems to be a double standard when it comes to investigations. In recent days leading congressional Republicans are now calling for an investigation into Mr. Clarke. As I mentioned earlier, Secretary O'Neill was also subjected to an investigation. Clarke and O'Neill sought legal and classification review of any information in their books before they were published. Nonetheless, our colleagues tell us these two should be investigated, at the same time there has been no Senate investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a deep cover CIA agent; no thorough investigation into whether leading Administration officials misrepresented the intelligence regarding threats posed by Iraq; no Senate hearings into the threat the chief Medicare Actuary faced for trying to do his job; and no Senate investigation into the reports of continued overcharging by Halliburton for its work in Iraq. There is a clear double standard when it comes to investigating or releasing information, and that's just is not right. The American people deserve more from their leaders.
- "We're seeing it again now in the shifting reasons the White House has given for Dr. Rice's refusal to testify under oath and publicly before the 9-11 Commission. The people around the President first said it would be unprecedented for Dr. Rice to testify. But thanks to the Congressional Research Service, we now know that previous sitting National Security Advisors have testified before Congress. Now the people around the President are saying that Dr. Rice can't testify because it would violate an important constitutional principle: the separation of powers. We will soon face this debate again when it comes time for President Bush and Vice President Cheney to meet with the 9-11 Commission. I believe they should lift the limitations they have placed on their cooperation with the Commission and be willing to appear before the entire Commission for as much time as the Commission deems productive. The all-out assault on Richard Clarke has gone on for more than a week now. Mr. Clarke has been accused of 'profiteering' and possible perjury. It is time for this to stop. The Commission should declassify Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony. All of it. Not just the parts the White House wants. And Dr. Rice should testify before the 9-11 Commission, and she should be under oath and in public. The American people deserve to know the truth -- the full truth -- about what happened in the years and months leading up to September 11. Senator McCain, Senator Cleland, Secretary O'Neill, Ambassador Wilson, General Shinseki, Richard Foster, Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay...when will the character assassination, retribution, and intimidation end? When will we say enough is enough? The September 11 families – and our entire country – deserve better. Our democracy depends on it. And our nation's future security depends on it." (US Senate)
- March 30: In a column blasting the Bush administration's attempts to smear Richard Clarke, economist Paul Krugman names some other instances of administration persecution that have gone all but unreported. He writes, "And there are many other cases of apparent abuse of power by the administration and its Congressional allies. A few examples: according to The Hill, Republican lawmakers threatened to cut off funds for the General Accounting Office unless it dropped its lawsuit against Dick Cheney. The Washington Post says Representative Michael Oxley told lobbyists that 'a Congressional probe might ease if it replaced its Democratic lobbyist with a Republican.' Tom DeLay used the Homeland Security Department to track down Democrats trying to prevent redistricting in Texas." Krugman asks, "Where will it end? In his new book, Worse Than Watergate, John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, 'I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy.' (New York Times/Truthout)
- March 30: John Kerry is basing much of his campaign strategy on attacking the Bush administration's foreign policy as well as offering his own alternatives. Kerry argues that despite Bush's "reassuring words in the days after Sept. 11," he has done little to protect Americans from the threat of terrorism. If he becomes president, Kerry says, he will offer a "stronger, more comprehensive, and more effective strategy for winning the war on terror than the Bush administration has ever envisioned." Kerry contends that his approach would differ in many ways from Bush's. He says he would: build stronger alliances with other countries whose cooperation is vital to fight terrorism; put more emphasis on winning "the hearts and minds" of people drawn to al-Qaeda; take more steps to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction; help overextended military forces abroad and emergency workers at home by temporarily adding 40,000 active-duty troops and providing money to hire more police and firefighters; do more to bolster security at US ports, prepare the public health system for terrorist threats, and enlist ordinary Americans in safety programs; end Bush's "kid-glove" approach to Saudi Arabia and impose tough sanctions on nations that don't crack down on the flow of money to terrorists; and strengthen the US intelligence system and improve communication between federal and local law enforcement. "It's a very broad critique," says Daniel Byman, a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service who worked on the staff of the joint congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. Despite Kerry's long list of criticisms, Byman and other foreign policy experts predict that Americans probably would notice little immediate difference in the US approach to terrorism if he were elected. Initially, they say, Kerry is likely to continue much of what Bush is doing to track down terrorists and stabilize Iraq. Mark Jacobson, a former Defense Department aide who is now a visiting scholar at Ohio State University's Mershon Center for international security studies, says that most of Kerry's advisers on defense issues can be described as "hawkish" in their foreign policy views.
- "The most significant difference between Bush and Kerry, experts agree, is that Kerry would put much more emphasis on building international support for foreign-policy initiatives. "The Bush administration would see allies as nice to have but not essential," says Byman. "I think Kerry would do more to win the cooperation of allies." Another potentially significant difference, some experts say, is that Kerry is likely to take a broader view of counterterrorism. A Kerry administration is more likely, for example, to propose less spending on an anti-missile shield in order to beef up the public health system's ability to withstand terrorist attempts to poison the food system, says Jacobson. Charles Dunbar, a retired diplomat and former president of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs who now teaches at Simmons College in Boston, says he has little doubt that Bush starts out with an edge on national security because he "is perceived as a strong leader who is fighting a serious threat." Nonetheless, Dunbar says, he was amazed during a recent trip to Cleveland when he met with four good friends who are members of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, "all of them rock-ribbed Republicans, all of whom say in varying degrees of anger that they would not conceive of voting for Bush." Their complaint, Dunbar says, is that Bush has created the impression abroad that the United States is a "big bully." Dunbar notes that "One guy said that until this year, voting for him was easy because no matter what he never would have voted for a Democrat. He said now that he would never vote for Bush." (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- March 30: The archbishop of the St. Louis diocese, Raymond Burk, announces in the wake of a visit by John Kerry to an area Baptist church that if Kerry appears at any of the diocese's Catholic churches, he will be denied communion. Kerry is a Catholic. Burk's rationale is that Kerry supports the right of women to have abortions, a position that Burk is against, though 72% of American Catholics also support abortion rights, as do many Catholic Republicans. Right-wing pundit Cal Thomas opines in response to Burk's fatwa, "Kerry has a choice: either 'resign' as a Catholic or withdraw from the presidential race." Thomas is joined in his attack by his colleagues William F. Buckley, Brent Bozell, and Sean Hannity. (World Mag Blog, Al Franken)
- March 30: Columnist Marie Cocco writes that whatever Condoleezza Rice says or doesn't say to the 9/11, her testimony is irrelevant. What is relevant is what George W. Bush said about al-Qaeda during the time between his inauguration and the attacks. She writes, "Here is what those lips said publicly about al-Qaeda between Jan. 1, 2001, just before Bush was sworn in as president, and Sept. 10, 2001: Nothing. There were zero references to al-Qaida during these months. That's according to Federal News Service, which transcribes every presidential utterance -- speeches, news conferences, impromptu musings at photo ops, off-the-cuff remarks made striding toward a helicopter, official comments with foreign dignitaries. ...Of course, the president did mention terrorism, terrorists and counterterrorism 24 times before 9/11. But eight of these comments referred to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Another eight involved a range of terrorist threats, including ethnic terrorism in Macedonia and Basque separatists in Spain. In the remaining eight references to terrorism, the new president offered his idea for how to combat it: the Reagan-era missile-defense system formerly known as Star Wars. On Jan. 8, 2001, after a meeting in Austin, Texas, with congressional defense experts, the president-elect referred to missile defense as necessary to guard against 'the real threats of the 21st century.' In a Feb. 10, 2001, radio address, Bush said, 'we must make sure our country itself is protected from attack from ballistic missiles and high-tech terrorists.' On Feb. 27, in Bush's first address before a joint session of Congress, the new president delivered the clearest exposition of his thoughts on terrorism. 'Our nation also needs a clear strategy to confront the threats of the 21st century, threats that are more widespread and less certain. They range from terrorists who threaten with bombs to tyrants and rogue nations intent upon developing weapons of mass destruction,' Bush said. 'To protect our own people, our allies and friends, we must develop and deploy effective missile defenses.' During the spring and summer, Bush repeatedly pushed the missile-defense system -- still not successfully tested -- as the antidote to terror. He brought it up in conversations with Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar in Madrid; with Russian journalists on the eve of Bush's first meeting with Vladimir Putin and with Putin himself; with NATO leaders in Brussels and at the World Bank in Washington. At the Genoa summit of western leaders in July -- where, we now know, intelligence agencies feared a terrorist might try to slam an aircraft into the meeting -- Bush pressed skeptical allies about going forward with 'Star Wars' to fight terror.
- "Of course, there were other things on the president's mind. Like tax cuts. Bush promoted tax cuts or cutting taxes 81 times. He called for an end to the 'death tax' -- the inheritance tax levied on heirs to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans -- an additional 54 times. The president put in a word for health care 62 times. And there was always Saddam Hussein. Bush's first visit abroad, to Mexico, was dominated by news of renewed US bombing of Iraqi targets. Days later, after his first chat with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David, Bush said they'd talked about keeping Hussein at bay. That was on Feb. 23, 2001. It is possible that Bush was privately obsessed with terrorism and al-Qaeda and chattered about it behind closed doors. It's just not likely. Presidents use public statements for a purpose: to promote their agenda and to prepare the public for what might come. Bush is, by his own account, a plainspoken man. He says what he means and means what he says. He implores us often to take him at his word. And so we should." (Newsday)
Four private US soldiers are murdered, burned to death, and dragged through the streets of Fallujah
- March 31: Four private bodyguards, possibly mercenaries, in the employ of a US contractor are killed while driving through Fallujah; their burned bodies are dragged through the streets and then hung from a bridge, while hundreds of Iraqis celebrate. Chanting "Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans," residents cheer after the grisly assault on two four-wheel-drive civilian vehicles left both SUVs in flames. Residents in Fallujah say insurgents attacked the contractors with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. After the attack, a jubilant crowd of civilians, none of whom appeared to be armed, gather to celebrate, dragging the bodies through the street and hanging two of them from a bridge. Many of those in the crowd are excited young boys who shout slogans in front of television cameras. Pictures show one man beating a charred corpse with a metal pole. Others tie a yellow rope to a body, hook it to a car and drag it down the main street of town. Two blackened and mangled corpses are hung from the green, iron bridge spanning the Euphrates River. "The people of Fallujah hung some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep," resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed says. Some corpses were dismembered, he adds. While the White House blames terrorists and remnants of Saddam Hussein's former regime for the "horrific attacks" on the American contractors, it is plain that the grim celebration was carried out by ordinary citizens. White House press secretary Scott McClellan calls the incident "offensive" and "despicable."
- The four worked for Blackwater Security Consulting, a company based in Moyock, North Carolina. The security firm hires former military members from the United States and other countries to provide security training and guard services. In Iraq, the company was hired by the Pentagon to provide security for convoys that delivered food in the Fallujah area. Many observers compare the scene to the dragging of dead US Rangers through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, an incident written up in the book Black Hawk Down. While most global television and news outlets aired pictures of the four dead, most US media outlets refused to show the pictures, saying they were too graphic. The Associated Press released eight photos of the dead men, warning newspapers of their graphic content. The few US newspapers that did choose to run some of the photos, including the Boston Herald, the New York Sun, the Miami Herald, USA Today, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times, did so in contravention of the US media's overall policy of refusing to show photos from the Iraqi war that might disturb its readers. The Toledo Blade was one newspaper that refused to run the photos: "Why inflame the situation any more than necessary? We'd be doing exactly what the Iraqis want," says managing editor Kurt Franck. No major US television outlets run video of the four murdered men except for some deliberately blurred images aired by CBS. Other television stations around the world were less restrained: Al-Arabiya ran similarly blurred images, while Al-Jazeera ran uncensored footage, as did a Paris TV news station.
- The day before the massacre, Tom Powell, Blackwater's Iraq operations manager, wrote an e-mail to company officials demanding that they stop the "smoke and mirror show" and provide crucial equipment for the private army in the field. "I need Comms [communications equipment]. ...I need ammo. ...I need Glocks and M4s. ...Guys are in the field with borrowed stuff and in harm's way. ...I have requested Hard cars from the beginning and from my understanding an order is still pending. Why I ask," said the e-mail, which is not released until a February 2007 House hearing. In the same hearings, the Army reveals that it had withheld payment from Halliburton subsidiary KBR to pay Blackwater, because the law does not allow the hiring of private guards, leaving that job to US military forces.
- According to Blackwater's general counsel Andrew Howell, the firm believes that since some of Blackwater's vehicles were protected with "steel plates," that was "believed appropriate by everyone involved." In the 2007 hearings, Howell will say, "We have not skimped on equipment." Powell's memo proves that Howell and Blackwater have lied for years about Blackwater's preparation for its mercenaries deployed throughout Iraq. Howell will refuse to go into details, saying that the US military has classified the entire incident. The families of the four Blackwater employees slain in Fallujah will sue the firm, contending that was the only way they could learn the circumstances of the killings. One family member says that the Blackwater employees were denied armored vehicles, heavy weapons and maps for their convoy routes, and that the rear gunners were removed from vehicles to perform other duties. "Blackwater gets paid for the number of warm bodies it can put on the ground in certain locations throughout the world," says Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, the mother of one of the slaim mercenaries. "If some are killed, it replaces them at a moment's notice." During the hearings, Republican Darrell Issa will say that none of the families' testimony, nor the Powell memo, is germane to the hearings, which will scrutinize US companies with Iraq contracts.
- Fallujah is in the heartland of Iraq's bandit country, an area so rough even Hussein never attempted to bring it under control. Now Fallujah is the epicenter of the Sunni-led insurgency. Bush issues the order to bring the area under control. CPA administrator Paul Bremer, who has limited contact with the military, isn't sure what is happening; the chilly relations between the upper-class, arrogant Bremer and General Ricardo Sanchez, the poor kid from a Texas border town made good, have grown ever more distant. (Donald Rumsfeld later denies even knowing that Sanchez, the most junior three-star general in the Army, was given command of all US ground forces in Iraq until the appointment was already made, and calls Sanchez's appointment without his consent "a mistake.") As the US prepares to assault Fallujah, UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warns that the newly emplaced UN mission will pull out if the Sunni city is attacked. Both the UN and the Iraqi Governing Council are against any major strike against Fallujah; losing both the UN and the IGC could mean losing control of the country. Supreme commander John Abizaid seesaws back and forth on the subject, to the point where Robert Blackwill, the NSC's coordinator for strategic planning, privately thinks of Abizaid as almost "schizophrenic." NSC official Frank Miller believes that Abizaid is no longer sounding like a confident commander, to the point where Miller asks Colin Powell to "buck him up."
- In Baghdad, the IGC's leading Sunni, Adnan Pachachi, says that he and his fellow Sunnis are abandoning the IGC. Blackwill finally advises Bush, "We've got to stop." They couldn't allow the IGC to fragment and come apart. Sovereignity was to be transferred to the council in June. The US simply couldn't let the council disintegrate over Fallujah. Bush begins to backtrack on his initial decision to overwhelm Fallujah with US troops; as a half measure, the Marines are instead ordered to lay siege to the city, hopefully trapping the insurgents inside. As the Marines continue the siege, their casualties mount and morale in the units begins to plummet. "We're taking wounded," Miller objects. "We're getting people killed. You cannot maintain the morale of a unit by saying we're going to encircle the city and just get shot at. You can't do it, Bob." The siege eventually ends with little gain; Blackwill continues to believe that if the US had just invaded Fallujah in force, the city could have been pacified and the IGC could have been held together long enough for the transfer of power. Miller believes quite differently.
- The CIA proposes that a renegade Iraqi general, Jassim Mohammed Saleh, be allowed to form what he calls a "Fallujah Brigade" of Iraqis to clean out the city. When Saleh appears on television, wearing a dark green uniform and beret, Rice screeches, "Oh God! He looks like Saddam Hussein! Can't they pick somebody who doesn't look like Saddam?" The so-called "Fallujah Brigade" eventually folds without accomplishing anything; most of its members will eventually join the insurgency. (Washington Post, AP/Fox News, AP/Raleigh News and Observer, Bob Woodward)
- March 31: Ten Islamist fighters are arrested in Canada and Britain after a long police investigation; all are Pakistanis with either Canadian or British citizenship. British police also seize 1100 pounds of fertilizer suitable for making a bomb. British intelligence reports that eight of the men have ties to al-Qaeda members in Pakistan. (Michael Scheuer)
- March 31: During a donors' conference for Afghanistan, held in Berlin, Afghan president Hamid Karzai says that the problem of heroin production in his country is out of control. "The problem is too huge for us to be able to face alone," he tells the gathered representatives as he appeals for more aid. "Drugs in Afghanistan are threatening the very existence of the Afghan state." A UN report adds, "Terrorists take a cut" of the yearly $2.3 billion revenue from opium and heroin production and dealing, and says, "the longer this happens, the greater threat to security within the country." Heroin production, which had fallen to 185 tons under the Taliban and its strict ban on opium, has soared to 3600 tons -- an increase of more than twentyfold. 28 of the country's 32 provinces report that opium is being produced within their borders. The UN report recommends "energetic interdiction measures [be] taken now...or the drug cancer in Afghanistan will keep spreading and metastasize into corruption, violence, and terrorism -- within and beyond the country's borders." At last report, opium production, with all the corollary effects, had nearly doubled since the report's issuance. There is no reason to believe that the US intends to take anything more than symbolic measures to curb the drug trade. One senior NGO official says, "Everybody knows that the US military has the drug lords on the payroll. We've put them back in power. It's gone so terribly wrong." Even Pentagon spokesman Joseph Collins admits, "Counternarcotics in Afghanistan has been a failure." Worse, drug abuse problems have spread throughout the US military forces in Afghanistan. The drug problem among Americans centers not on the troops in the field, but "the logistical guys" -- the truck drivers and the food and maintenance workers stationed at the large airbase in Bagram, near Kabul -- but problems with drug use among Marines are also being reported. A former high-level intelligence official says the Pentagon has "a head-in-the-sand attitude" about drug abuse within the ranks. "There's no desire to expose it and get enforcement involved." Apparently the possibility of negative publicity, and it reflecting back onto the Bush administration, is more than enough reason to let the problem fester unchecked and unreported. (Seymour Hersh)
- March 31: It is clear that the Bush administration's decisions on whether or not to declassify documents are made for little more than political reasons. Before the war, for example, the administration kept classified the intelligence community's significant dissents to the overall assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It later released those dissents, however, after the CIA was criticized for failing to accurately assess Iraq's weapons, a reversal cited by those who argue such decisions are being based on politics, not national security. To make its case for war at the United Nations, the White House also released recent audiotapes of intercepted conversations, usually among its most highly guarded secrets, between Iraqi military officers. Last week the CIA began reviewing for declassification testimony that Richard Clarke gave last year to the congressional panel investigating the 9/11 attacks. The CIA launched the effort at the White House's request, after Republican congressman Porter Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, asked it to do so. Goss said his staff made the request after he "was absolutely sure there was going to be a huge uproar" over Clarke's claims that Bush had ignored terrorism before September 2001. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist also asks for the declassification.
- The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee criticizes Goss for bypassing what she says are normal House procedures in seeking declassification. "This is a stunning violation that can only feed the impression that sensitive materials are being selectively declassified for political reasons, rather than national security or the public interest," she says. "The message this sends is that for partisan political reasons, classified material can be reviewed and selectively released." The House rules permit the chairman to request a declassification review but say he must get the committee's approval for release, which Goss said he intends to do. Harman also requests that the White House, which often reviews CIA declassifications before documents are released, "recuse itself from any declassification decisions and preserve the integrity of this process." Goss, a former CIA officer, says that "the whole classification process is mayhem," and that too much is classified by US agencies. Declassification of material for political reasons "is not unheard of, but it's not routine, and every administration confronts it," says the nation's top classification manager, William Leonard, director of the government's Information Security Oversight Office. "But you don't have to be a whiz to figure out these are unprecedented times we're living in." For information to be classified, the agency that produced it must describe the damage to national security that its release would create, Leonard said. But, he added, policymakers may consider other, subjective issues, such as the public interest served by disclosure.
- "What we're learning is that classification is a political tool," says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. "It can be used to advance or retard a particular agenda." A 25-page version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was released in October 2002. It made clear-cut statements about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities in two pages of "Key Judgments." "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons.... [I]t will probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade," the section said, adding that "most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." When a fuller, eight-page version of the key judgments section was released after the war, it contained lengthy, well-marked dissents by some in the intelligence community. On the question of whether certain aluminum tubes were imported to Iraq for use in nuclear weapons programs, the first document said: "Most intelligence specialists assess this to be their intended use, but some believe that these tubes are probably intended for conventional weapons programs." The second document included a dissent by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence Research (INR), which said it did not believe there was "a compelling case" that Iraq was working to acquire nuclear weapons. And INR and the Department of Energy questioned whether the tubes were well-suited for centrifuges used to enrich uranium. The second declassification, said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a group devoted to declassifying secrets, showed the administration was not "protecting sources and methods. They were creating a document for public consumption that argued for the war." (Washington Post)
Bush administration refuses to add investigators to the IRS for disrupting terrorist finances
- March 31: The Internal Revenue Service's request for additional criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of al-Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations has been rejected by the Bush administration, which balks at the $12 million price tag. The IRS had asked for 80 more criminal investigators beginning in October to join the 160 it has already assigned to penetrate the shadowy networks that terrorist groups use to finance plots like the 9/11 attacks and the recent train bombings in Madrid. But the Bush administration did not include them in the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year. The disclosure, to a House Ways and Means subcommittee, comes near the end of a routine hearing into the IRS budget after most of the audience, including reporters, had left the hearing room. Claire Buchan, the White House deputy spokeswoman, says that a proposed 16% increase in Treasury Department financing to fight both terrorism and financial crimes was enough. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department. (New York Times/NYSSCPA)
- March 31: Richard Clarke asks a political group to stop broadcasting anti-Bush ads featuring his name. MoveOn.org is airing a television ad, created without Clarke's permission, featuring his public testimony before the 9/11 commission. The group says it will continue broadcasting the ad. "I just don't want to be used," Clarke says. "I don't want to be part of what looks like a political TV ad. I'm trying hard to make this not a partisan thing but a discussion of how we stop terrorism from happening in the future, keep this on a policy issue. I don't want this to become any more emotional or personal than it has already." "This is a public statement that Clarke had made," says MoveOn's Eli Pariser. "We think it's important to get what Clarke has to say out there." Clarke has virtually no legal recourse to take against the organization, and in any case has not indicated that he wishes to take the matter to court. The advertisement accuses Bush of "shamelessly" exploiting the September 2001 terrorism attacks against New York and Washington. It includes two audio excerpts from an interview with Clarke that CBS aired on 60 Minutes on March 21, the day before Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, went on sale. In the interview excerpts, Clarke said it was "outrageous" that Bush was promoting his response to the terror attacks because "he ignored terrorism for months when maybe we could have done something to stop 9-11." (AP/The Left Coast)
- March 31: Liberal talk radio network Air America begins broadcasting. Its home station is WLIB-AM in New York City, and the network includes stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Bernadino, Portland, XM Satellite Radio and over the Internet. The network begins with its flagship show, "The O'Franken Factor," hosted by comedian Al Franken, and features guests Bob Kerrey and Michael Moore, and a call-in by former vice president Al Gore. Other shows are hosted by talk show veteran Randi Rhodes, actor/comedian Janeane Garofalo, and rapper Chuck D, among others. Air America starts out with $30 million in investor cash and a $30 million credit line being used to lease AM stations. "I think what you'll see in a short time, is that we will close deals with traditional consumer goods companies," says network executive Mark Walsh. "Liberals buy beer, they drive trucks, they take vacations, they have arthritis. We're also consumers." (Reuters/Get Real List)
- March 31: Slate's Fred Kaplan points out the significance of the failure of CIA director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell to join the bandwagon of criticism from the Bush administration aimed at Richard Clarke. Tenet, one of the most central figures of the Bush administration's war on terror, would the the logical candidate to debunk Clarke's testimony that Clarke's and Tenet's warnings of imminent terrorist attacks were ignored by Bush, yet he has said nothing. Powell, another key administration official who could theoretically knock down Clarke's testimony, not only refuses to attack Clarke, but has gone out of his way to praise Clarke's service. Asked if he had been recruited to join the campaign against Clarke, Powell replies, "I'm not aware of any campaign against Mr. Clarke, and I am not a member." Kaplan writes, "His choice of words here is fascinating. Note: He did not say 'There is no campaign,' but rather 'I'm not aware of any campaign.' As has been widely observed, Powell truly is out of the loop in this administration; it's conceivable he is unaware. He then went on to say, '[A]nd I am not a member' -- suggesting there might be a campaign, but he's not part of it. ...[I]t's a textbook case of the 'non-denial denial.'" Powell also tells interviewer Jim Lehrer that "I met with Mr. Clarke four days after I was named to be the Secretary of State," a fascinating statement in light of Clarke's repeated assertions that he didn't get a chance to brief Bush's Cabinet secretaries on al-Qaeda until the week before 9/11. In this context, Powell is saying that he, alone of the Bush officials, met with Clarke even before the administration got underway. Clarke has characterized Powell as one of his few allies in the White House. (Slate)
- March 31: Columnist John Nichols points out the amazing hypocrisy of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in his attacks on the credibility of Richard Clarke. Frist said of the former counterterrorism chief, "Mr. Clarke makes the outrageous charge that the Bush administration, in its first seven months in office, failed to adequately address the threat posed by Osama bin Laden. I am troubled by these charges. I am equally troubled that someone would sell a book, trading on their former service as a government insider with access to our nation's most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured on September 11, 2001." Putting aside the fact that Frist's attack is specious at best, Frist's own Senate career has accomplished little more than profiteering from the nation's suffering. Frist, whose family owns the nation's largest health-care conglomerate, Columbia/HCA Healthcare, has routinely blocked needed health care reforms, pushed for tort reforms that would protect doctors and hospital administrators from malpractice payouts, and supported privatization of Medicare, all moves that directly profited him and his family. Mother Jones wrote several years ago, "some companies hire lobbyists to work Congress. Some have their executives lobby directly. But Tennessee's Frist family, the founders of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the nation's largest hospital conglomerate, has taken it a step further: They sent an heir to the Senate. And there, with disturbingly little controversy, Republican Sen. Bill Frist has co-sponsored bills that may allow his family's company to profit from the ongoing privatization of Medicare." Frist has done his job well. His family's $800 million ownership in HCA has soared in value since Frist was elected in 2004. His brother, Thomas, has moved up steadily on the Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people in recent years. In 2003, Forbes estimated that Thomas Frist Jr. was worth $1.5 billion, all from health care sources. Frist's demand that certain portions of Clarke's 2002 congressional testimony be declassified, in order to compare Clarke's statements then with his recent testimony, fell flat when Clarke responded, "I would welcome it being declassified. But not just a little line here and there -- let's declassify all six hours of my testimony. ...Let's declassify that memo I sent on January 25. And let's declassify the national security directive that Dr. Rice's committee approved nine months later, on September 4. And let's see if there's any difference between those two, because there isn't. Let's go further. The White House is now selectively finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed are covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press. Let's take all of my e-mails and memos that I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11, and let's declassify all of it." Frist quickly abandoned his demands for selective declassification and took up defending Condoleezza Rice's refusal to testify in public and under oath before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United State. (The Nation)
- March 31: The widow of Daniel Pearl has filed a claim for compensation from the 9/11 victims' fund, even though her claim was initially rejected by the fund administrator. Mariane Pearl has formally appealed her case and hopes Congress will eventually pass a law to aid families of any victim targeted by al-Qaeda. Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau chief, was abducted January 23, 2002, in Karachi, Pakistan, while working on an article about Islamic militants. He was murdered by Islamic terrorists weeks later. Mariane Pearl's attempt to be compensated for her husband's death has rankled some whose loved ones perished in the attacks of 9/11. "[Daniel Pearl] went into dangerous areas, and he had to know it was a risk. My son didn't choose to go over into a terrible nation that has terrorism," says Bill Doyle, whose son, Joseph, worked on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center. Charles Wolf, whose wife was killed in the attacks, said, "One has to understand the reality of why the fund was set up. It was not an act of compassion. It was an act of legal necessity because they curtailed our right to sue the airlines." The attorney representing Pearl, Robert Kelner, said neither he nor his client "have any quarrel" with the decision to reject their claim. What they want, he said, is a bill from Congress "to protect targeted American victims of al-Qaeda." Efforts to compensate the families of such victims -- those killed in the USS Cole bombing in 2000 and the US embassy bombings in Africa in the 1998, for example -- have never made headway in Congress. Kelner, however, said Daniel Pearl's case is the one that most closely mirrors the victims of September 11. "I think that the single closest situation to 9/11 was the Danny Pearl case," Kelner says. "He was an employee of the Wall Street Journal, he was an American, he was going about his ordinary daily business -- as were the people in the World Trade Center -- when solely because he was a symbol of America he was taken, he was captured, he was killed." (CNN)
- Late March: Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commandant of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, is placed in charge of Iraq's prison system by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. Sanchez introduces Miller to the press as the man entrusted with "cleaning up" the prison system and instill compliance with the Geneva Conventions. Sanchez does not tell the press that many of the abuses and tortures taking place in Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons stem from recommendations made by Miller in September 2003, when he recommended that Sanchez "Gitmoize" the prison system to place military intelligence officials in charge of the prisons and make interrogations and intelligence gathering the first priority at these facilities. "We have changed this -- trust us," Miller will say in early May. "There were errors made. We have corrected those. We will make sure that they do not happen again." Before year's end, Miller will be relieved of duty. (Seymour Hersh)
