43, 41 and 42 Hit It Off
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - Former President George Bush calls them "the odd
couple," and this weekend one of the most unlikely teams in modern American
politics
is on a four-day humanitarian air odyssey to the Asian nations hit hard by
the tsunami last year.
On Thursday night in Houston, Mr. Bush boarded an official blue-and-white
Boeing 757 jet with "United States of America" on its side in Houston and
flew
to Los Angeles to pick up former President Bill Clinton.
By 10 o'clock, the two were headed toward Phuket, Thailand, to make their
first appearance to help raise money for tsunami victims on Saturday
afternoon
local time.
From there, the former presidents were scheduled to visit Banda Aceh,
Indonesia, on Sunday and Sri Lanka and the Maldives on Monday.
Neither of their wives, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton nor Barbara Bush,
were on the trip.
"It's just the two guys," Jean Becker, Mr. Bush's chief of staff, said.
Ms. Becker said before leaving on Thursday that she did not know where Mr.
Bush or Mr. Clinton would sit on the plane, or whether they would have
separate
compartments, but that both would be up front.
"I know there are couches and beds, and they'll figure out the sleeping
arrangements when they get on the plane," she said.
The trip is the most dramatic example in recent months of what staff members
for both men describe as a growing friendship that seems to have erased the
bitterness of the 1992 election, when Mr. Clinton ousted Mr. Bush from the
White House.
When Mr. Clinton was in the hospital for quadruple bypass heart surgery last
September, aides say, the 41st president was almost instantly on the
telephone.
"President Bush immediately picked up the phone and said, 'Bill, what the
hell happened to you?' " Ms. Becker recounted.
When Mr. Bush went to the dedication of Mr. Clinton's presidential library
in Little Rock, Ark., with the current president and former President Jimmy
Carter
in November, the 41st and 42nd presidents talked at times with such
familiarity that former staff members were taken aback.
"President Clinton was walking with all the presidents, and former President
Bush says, 'Bill, what are you doing with this property back here?' " said
Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat was a top aide to Mr.
Clinton. "It only sticks with me because it seemed so 'friendlike.' "
More recently, Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton, whom President Bush appointed last
month as his representatives in raising money for tsunami relief, were seen
joking with each other as they sat side by side at the Super Bowl, where
they had been invited by the National Football League.
Former staff members said the friendship could offer political advantages
for the Bush and Clinton families, softening the edges of a political
rivalry,
as Mr. Bush's son begins his second term and as Mrs. Clinton considers a run
for president in 2008.
Former staff members also said the friendship seemed genuine and was
ultimately not that surprising given that there are only five men alive who
know what
it is like to go through the crucible of the American presidency. At the end
of the day, the staff members said, partisan differences were overcome by
the power of that shared experience.
"It has its own little Outward Bound quality to it," Mr. Emanuel said.
The new warmth arises as President Bush and Mr. Clinton, who had little love
for each other in the past, have grown closer.
"Frankly, President Bush likes Clinton a lot," Roland Betts, a close friend
of the president, said. "He says he thinks he's a terrific person. He's not
judging his administration. He just likes being around him."
Mr. Betts, who made those remarks in an interview in December, added in a
brief interview this week that in his view the current president and Mr.
Clinton
were charismatic people and that they "saw a little bit of themselves in
each other, and they liked it."
Staff members for the three men say they first noticed the thaw last
Memorial Day, when the 41st, 42nd and 43rd presidents, on stage after the
dedication
of the National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, shared
private laughs. At one point, George H. W. Bush gave Mr. Clinton a playful
but
vigorous shove as a reaction to something Mr. Clinton had said. Aides could
not recall this past week what it was, but one person did say the current
president
joked at the time that Mr. Clinton's biography, "My Life," was so long that
he would have to read one half and his father the other.
The warming trend continued a few weeks later, when the president unveiled
Mr. Clinton's official portrait at the White House with such gracious words
that
aides said Mr. Clinton was stunned. Mr. Bush praised Mr. Clinton as a man
"with far-ranging knowledge of public policy, a great compassion for people
in
need and the forward-looking spirit the Americans like in a president."
Mr. Clinton reddened and his eye teared as he acknowledged: "I had mixed
feelings coming here today, and they were only confirmed by all those kind
and
generous things you've said. Made me feel like I was a pickle stepping into
history."
By the time of Mr. Clinton's library dedication, he and the Bushes were
falling over one another with accolades. But the 41st president spoke about
the
man who bested him in 1992 in personal and revealing terms.
"It always has to be said that Bill Clinton was one of the most gifted
American political figures in modern times," Former President Bush said.
"Trust me.
I learned this the hard way."
Mr. Bush added that "seeing him out on the campaign trail, it was plain to
see how he fed off the energy and the hopes and the aspirations of the
American
people."
"Simply put," Mr. Bush said, "he was a natural and he made it look easy.
And, oh, how I hated him for that!"
Since being named tsunami relief envoys, they have appeared in public
service advertisements and other appearances.
"In January," Ms. Becker said, "when we needed to get the two in the same
city, it was: 'I'll come to your city.' 'No, I'll come to your city.' "
When they are together, she added, they joke about the 41st president's
skydiving and which one is in the best health.
"President Bush likes to say, 'I'm 80, for God's sake,' " Ms. Becker said.
"And President Clinton says, 'Well, you're the one jumping out of
airplanes.'
"
Posted by Miriam V. Feb. 19
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Poorest Face Most Risk on Social Security
A Call To Action
washingtonpost.com
Bush Plan's Success May Hinge on Perceived Safety
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 19, 2005; Page A01
No group of Americans would be affected more by President Bush's Social Security plan than those earning the least. Just ask 46-year-old Brent Allen.
Allen, who recently lost his job at a Massachusetts paper mill, faces a retirement financed exclusively by the money he has been paying into the Social Security system for the better part of 30 years. Like nearly half the U.S. population, he has no pension or savings to speak of. And his brief flirtations with the stock market have largely flopped.
So Allen, who lives on less than $15,000 a year in disability payments from Social Security and income from his live-in girlfriend, is distrustful of Bush's plan to allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal investment accounts.
"I have had stocks, and have had them for six years, and I have lost money continually," Allen said this week. "What's going to happen to people when they retire when the market is down? There is no guarantee [Bush] can make. There is a guarantee now," under the current system.
More than 60 million Americans 25 to 64 years old reported incomes of less than $25,000 in 2002, the latest year for which government figures are available. Like Allen, most of these workers have small or no pensions, scant savings, and serious concerns about their retirement years, according to government statistics and polling results.
Bush sees personal accounts as the gateway to their financial security -- giving them a chance to join tens of millions of Americans with significant investments in stocks and bonds for their retirement. But unless he can convince Democrats and skeptical Republicans that the personal accounts would be a wise and relatively safe investment option for low-income workers, his proposal is likely to fail, many lawmakers agree.
Bush is lobbying Congress to allow Americans younger than 55 to eventually put 4 percent of their income subject to Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, in exchange for a reduction in guaranteed benefits, if they choose. Those who opt to divert a part of their payroll tax would invest the money in a small menu of stock and bond funds that they could not touch until they retire. Unlike in the current retirement system, they could pass on the money accumulated in the personal account to family or friends when they die.
The president says Americans would end up with a stronger Social Security system and bigger nest eggs under his proposal, although the White House has yet to release full details of the plan.
"We can build a better system for low-income workers based on the power of investment and the magic of compound interest," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.
Critics, including most Democrats, say individual investment accounts are too risky, they would impose restrictions on the way lower-income retirees could spend the proceeds from their accounts, and they would require unwise and costly reductions in the guaranteed benefits offered by the current system.
Because Social Security is often the biggest or the only source of retirement money for the poorest Americans, low-income workers would be hit particularly hard if the markets plunged and they were left with smaller benefits than they would have received under the current system.
Under the Bush plan, low-income workers would be required to purchase an annuity, which pays a fixed stream of money until the person dies, or set up an alternative way that keeps them above the poverty level until death using their personal account funds. The administration said such mandates are needed to keep seniors from falling into poverty by emptying out their accounts upon retirement.
Fay Lomax Cook, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, called the accounts "much too risky."
"The whole purpose of Social Security has always been to ensure basic income to those no longer able to work. That basic income can no longer be guaranteed" under the Bush plan, she said.
Responding to suggestions from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and a small group of Senate Democrats, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said in an interview that he will lead an effort to pressure Bush to provide more generous benefits to the working poor to win passage of the president's top domestic priority. "I am trying for a plan that will meet with legitimate concerns. People worry [the accounts] will put low-income workers at risk because they cannot afford to lose money," he said.
Graham said he will soon propose a federal guarantee that those who earn less than $30,000 will do better under a partially privatized Social Security system. He would do this by cutting scheduled benefits only for those making more than $30,000 a year, offering a $500 government contribution to the individual accounts of the low-income workers and providing additional protections against precipitous market drops. "I am trying to get a bipartisan beachhead and have the administration react to it," Graham said. Bush is open to the ideas, Duffy said.
David C. John of the Heritage Foundation, which supports the Bush plan, said the president will eventually have to embrace significant protections and incentives for low-income workers, perhaps allowing them to put a much higher percentage of their income in personal accounts than everyone else, to win support of Democrats.
Social Security provides more than half of retirement benefits to nearly two-thirds of the nation's elderly, according to the latest Social Security Administration data. It is the only source of income for 20 percent of retirees. For those struggling to get by, Social Security is often their only safeguard.
As a result, many experts think the debate over the Bush Social Security plan will come down to one question: Is it a good deal for the neediest people? The system was created 70 years ago during the Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide a safety net for those who could no longer work. Critics contend that Bush cannot create individual accounts without cutting the benefits promised under today's program.
Bush argues that personal accounts are the only way to guarantee all workers -- but especially those with low incomes -- generous Social Security benefits in the future. The reason, he says, is there is no way the government can fulfill its current promises without raising taxes or borrowing trillions of dollars because, starting in 2018, Americans will be taking more money out of the system in the form of benefits than they are contributing through payroll taxes. Bush envisions the personal accounts generating enough profit from investments in stocks and bonds to offset future reductions in guaranteed benefits.
In guidelines he presented to lawmakers, Bush proposed structuring the program to allow the working poor to benefit the most in the early years of the system. Starting in 2009, only those making $25,000 or less could contribute the full 4 percent of their income subject to the Social Security tax. Annual contribution limits will be set at $1,000 and rise $100 each year thereafter. It will take richer Americans as long as 32 years before they can contribute the full 4 percent of their salary, said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
To limit risk, the White House supports only a small menu of relatively conservative investment options. "The narrow menu would certainly help," said Lomax Cook, a critic of the plan. "But what if some stocks and bonds don't do well? The federal government cannot guarantee performance of stocks." The senior White House official said history shows stocks and bonds are wise long-term investments. Moreover, he said, "no one is exposed to risk that does not want any risk" because the program is voluntary.
Bush has not ruled out additional protections, including a minimum guaranteed benefit regardless of how a person's investments perform.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
Bush Plan's Success May Hinge on Perceived Safety
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 19, 2005; Page A01
No group of Americans would be affected more by President Bush's Social Security plan than those earning the least. Just ask 46-year-old Brent Allen.
Allen, who recently lost his job at a Massachusetts paper mill, faces a retirement financed exclusively by the money he has been paying into the Social Security system for the better part of 30 years. Like nearly half the U.S. population, he has no pension or savings to speak of. And his brief flirtations with the stock market have largely flopped.
So Allen, who lives on less than $15,000 a year in disability payments from Social Security and income from his live-in girlfriend, is distrustful of Bush's plan to allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal investment accounts.
"I have had stocks, and have had them for six years, and I have lost money continually," Allen said this week. "What's going to happen to people when they retire when the market is down? There is no guarantee [Bush] can make. There is a guarantee now," under the current system.
More than 60 million Americans 25 to 64 years old reported incomes of less than $25,000 in 2002, the latest year for which government figures are available. Like Allen, most of these workers have small or no pensions, scant savings, and serious concerns about their retirement years, according to government statistics and polling results.
Bush sees personal accounts as the gateway to their financial security -- giving them a chance to join tens of millions of Americans with significant investments in stocks and bonds for their retirement. But unless he can convince Democrats and skeptical Republicans that the personal accounts would be a wise and relatively safe investment option for low-income workers, his proposal is likely to fail, many lawmakers agree.
Bush is lobbying Congress to allow Americans younger than 55 to eventually put 4 percent of their income subject to Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, in exchange for a reduction in guaranteed benefits, if they choose. Those who opt to divert a part of their payroll tax would invest the money in a small menu of stock and bond funds that they could not touch until they retire. Unlike in the current retirement system, they could pass on the money accumulated in the personal account to family or friends when they die.
The president says Americans would end up with a stronger Social Security system and bigger nest eggs under his proposal, although the White House has yet to release full details of the plan.
"We can build a better system for low-income workers based on the power of investment and the magic of compound interest," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.
Critics, including most Democrats, say individual investment accounts are too risky, they would impose restrictions on the way lower-income retirees could spend the proceeds from their accounts, and they would require unwise and costly reductions in the guaranteed benefits offered by the current system.
Because Social Security is often the biggest or the only source of retirement money for the poorest Americans, low-income workers would be hit particularly hard if the markets plunged and they were left with smaller benefits than they would have received under the current system.
Under the Bush plan, low-income workers would be required to purchase an annuity, which pays a fixed stream of money until the person dies, or set up an alternative way that keeps them above the poverty level until death using their personal account funds. The administration said such mandates are needed to keep seniors from falling into poverty by emptying out their accounts upon retirement.
Fay Lomax Cook, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, called the accounts "much too risky."
"The whole purpose of Social Security has always been to ensure basic income to those no longer able to work. That basic income can no longer be guaranteed" under the Bush plan, she said.
Responding to suggestions from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and a small group of Senate Democrats, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said in an interview that he will lead an effort to pressure Bush to provide more generous benefits to the working poor to win passage of the president's top domestic priority. "I am trying for a plan that will meet with legitimate concerns. People worry [the accounts] will put low-income workers at risk because they cannot afford to lose money," he said.
Graham said he will soon propose a federal guarantee that those who earn less than $30,000 will do better under a partially privatized Social Security system. He would do this by cutting scheduled benefits only for those making more than $30,000 a year, offering a $500 government contribution to the individual accounts of the low-income workers and providing additional protections against precipitous market drops. "I am trying to get a bipartisan beachhead and have the administration react to it," Graham said. Bush is open to the ideas, Duffy said.
David C. John of the Heritage Foundation, which supports the Bush plan, said the president will eventually have to embrace significant protections and incentives for low-income workers, perhaps allowing them to put a much higher percentage of their income in personal accounts than everyone else, to win support of Democrats.
Social Security provides more than half of retirement benefits to nearly two-thirds of the nation's elderly, according to the latest Social Security Administration data. It is the only source of income for 20 percent of retirees. For those struggling to get by, Social Security is often their only safeguard.
As a result, many experts think the debate over the Bush Social Security plan will come down to one question: Is it a good deal for the neediest people? The system was created 70 years ago during the Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide a safety net for those who could no longer work. Critics contend that Bush cannot create individual accounts without cutting the benefits promised under today's program.
Bush argues that personal accounts are the only way to guarantee all workers -- but especially those with low incomes -- generous Social Security benefits in the future. The reason, he says, is there is no way the government can fulfill its current promises without raising taxes or borrowing trillions of dollars because, starting in 2018, Americans will be taking more money out of the system in the form of benefits than they are contributing through payroll taxes. Bush envisions the personal accounts generating enough profit from investments in stocks and bonds to offset future reductions in guaranteed benefits.
In guidelines he presented to lawmakers, Bush proposed structuring the program to allow the working poor to benefit the most in the early years of the system. Starting in 2009, only those making $25,000 or less could contribute the full 4 percent of their income subject to the Social Security tax. Annual contribution limits will be set at $1,000 and rise $100 each year thereafter. It will take richer Americans as long as 32 years before they can contribute the full 4 percent of their salary, said a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
To limit risk, the White House supports only a small menu of relatively conservative investment options. "The narrow menu would certainly help," said Lomax Cook, a critic of the plan. "But what if some stocks and bonds don't do well? The federal government cannot guarantee performance of stocks." The senior White House official said history shows stocks and bonds are wise long-term investments. Moreover, he said, "no one is exposed to risk that does not want any risk" because the program is voluntary.
Bush has not ruled out additional protections, including a minimum guaranteed benefit regardless of how a person's investments perform.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Show Me the Money
A Call To Action
AlterNet
By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet
Posted on February 19, 2005, Printed on February 19, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21302/
President Bush is waving the carrot of private Social Security accounts in front of millions of Americans who, perhaps too young to remember what happened to stocks five years ago, still think they are going to get rich quick in the stock market.
If you could just take some of that money that Social Security drains out of your paycheck every week, he says, and put it in a private account where you could invest in stocks, how much better off you would be when you retire!
Or would you? This is a case where it really helps to read the fine print. Although President Bush hasn't announced a comprehensive plan, he did have a "senior White House official" spill some details of the plan just before his State of the Union address.
One of the details: the money that will go into the private account isn't really yours. At the end of your working career you will have to pay it all back to the government. Plus interest: at the rate of U.S. Treasury notes.
The difference between what you made in your private account and what you have to pay back, with interest, is your "profit" – or loss. But that's not the end of the story. There are administrative costs that will reduce your accumulation by another 5 percent (according to the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security). Or possibly a lot more: in a typical private 401 (k) account it's about 3 times that much.
You're still not home free. The President's plan will require you to convert some or all of your accumulated sum to a lifetime annual payment. But the cost of this conversion is not cheap: in the private sector it is 10-20 percent of accumulated savings; if the government does it maybe it can be kept to 5 percent.
Now let's do the numbers: say you are a 27-year-old worker with average wages when the plan takes effect for you in 2011. Assume that you put the maximum allotted amount into the private account. Let's also assume that the administrative costs, and the cost of converting the lump sum to an annual payment are the cheapest imaginable.
When you retire after 40 years, your combined benefit from the private account and the traditional Social Security system will be $1371 per month. This compares to $2127 that the current Social Security program, if left alone, has promised to pay.
Supporters of privatization would reply that the system can't pay all promised benefits. If absolutely nothing is done to increase Social Security's revenue – a very remote possibility – then benefits will be cut by about 24 percent in 2053. But even then, the monthly benefit in the above example would be $1,625 – still 19 percent better than in the privatization scheme.
Interestingly, when the government takes back the money that it loaned you, it doesn't come out of the private account that it went into. Rather, it is deducted from the benefit that you receive from the traditional Social Security program. This will create the illusion that most of your benefits come from the private account – rather than from the traditional system. This indicates that the people who designed this privatization scheme want to undermine support for the traditional Social Security system – so as to get rid of Social Security as we know it altogether.
In the mean time, privatization won't make many dreams come true. The next time you hear someone telling you what a great deal it is, just tell them: show me the money.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21302/
AlterNet
By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet
Posted on February 19, 2005, Printed on February 19, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21302/
President Bush is waving the carrot of private Social Security accounts in front of millions of Americans who, perhaps too young to remember what happened to stocks five years ago, still think they are going to get rich quick in the stock market.
If you could just take some of that money that Social Security drains out of your paycheck every week, he says, and put it in a private account where you could invest in stocks, how much better off you would be when you retire!
Or would you? This is a case where it really helps to read the fine print. Although President Bush hasn't announced a comprehensive plan, he did have a "senior White House official" spill some details of the plan just before his State of the Union address.
One of the details: the money that will go into the private account isn't really yours. At the end of your working career you will have to pay it all back to the government. Plus interest: at the rate of U.S. Treasury notes.
The difference between what you made in your private account and what you have to pay back, with interest, is your "profit" – or loss. But that's not the end of the story. There are administrative costs that will reduce your accumulation by another 5 percent (according to the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security). Or possibly a lot more: in a typical private 401 (k) account it's about 3 times that much.
You're still not home free. The President's plan will require you to convert some or all of your accumulated sum to a lifetime annual payment. But the cost of this conversion is not cheap: in the private sector it is 10-20 percent of accumulated savings; if the government does it maybe it can be kept to 5 percent.
Now let's do the numbers: say you are a 27-year-old worker with average wages when the plan takes effect for you in 2011. Assume that you put the maximum allotted amount into the private account. Let's also assume that the administrative costs, and the cost of converting the lump sum to an annual payment are the cheapest imaginable.
When you retire after 40 years, your combined benefit from the private account and the traditional Social Security system will be $1371 per month. This compares to $2127 that the current Social Security program, if left alone, has promised to pay.
Supporters of privatization would reply that the system can't pay all promised benefits. If absolutely nothing is done to increase Social Security's revenue – a very remote possibility – then benefits will be cut by about 24 percent in 2053. But even then, the monthly benefit in the above example would be $1,625 – still 19 percent better than in the privatization scheme.
Interestingly, when the government takes back the money that it loaned you, it doesn't come out of the private account that it went into. Rather, it is deducted from the benefit that you receive from the traditional Social Security program. This will create the illusion that most of your benefits come from the private account – rather than from the traditional system. This indicates that the people who designed this privatization scheme want to undermine support for the traditional Social Security system – so as to get rid of Social Security as we know it altogether.
In the mean time, privatization won't make many dreams come true. The next time you hear someone telling you what a great deal it is, just tell them: show me the money.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21302/
Intelligence Nominee Comes Under Renewed Scrutiny on Human Rights
A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 19, 2005
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - Human rights advocates repeated longstanding criticisms on Friday of John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as director of national intelligence. They said accusations that he covered up abuses as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980's had a new importance after recent cases of American abuse of detainees.
In Honduras, Mr. Negroponte "looked the other way" when evidence of rights violations came to light, said Reed Brody, counsel to Human Rights Watch.
"Unfortunately," Mr. Brody said, "today the United States is involved in serious human rights crimes committed in the process of collecting intelligence. Is he just going to look the other way again?"
Sandra Coliver, executive director of the Center for Justice and Accountability, a human rights law center in San Francisco that has aided Honduran torture victims, said the nomination would hurt the United States' image in Central America.
"In Central America," Ms. Coliver said, "Negroponte is indelibly remembered for his role in increasing the amount of U.S. aid to the Honduran military at the very time that the military's role in supporting brutal death squads was becoming abundantly clear. What kind of a message will this appointment send to the people of Central America? That the U.S. is willing to overlook massive human rights atrocities in the name of collecting intelligence in pursuit of U.S. national interests."
Mr. Negroponte, 65, now ambassador to Iraq, is a career diplomat who has worked all over the world in his 40-year career. He has faced repeated scrutiny for his work as envoy to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, when Honduran military units, some trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, carried out kidnappings, torture and killings.
As the first director of national intelligence, Mr. Negroponte would oversee the C.I.A. and the other 14 agencies that are part of the nation's estimated $40 billion spying enterprise. The post is the centerpiece of intelligence reorganization undertaken chiefly because of the failure to warn of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The C.I.A. and military are also under intense scrutiny because of evidence that detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have been tortured in questioning and in a few cases have died in custody. Questions have also been raised about whether the intelligence agency has handed over prisoners to third countries, where they might be tortured.
At confirmation hearings for previous posts, Mr. Negroponte has adamantly denied that he tolerated or covered up any abuses.
He said at a hearing in 2001 that his top priority as envoy to Honduras was "encouraging Honduras's return to civilian democratic rule, including protection of human rights."
Efforts to contact Mr. Negroponte through the State Department were not successful.
He has won easy confirmations in the past, and the Honduras record is not likely to be a major obstacle to his confirmation in the new position.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was not particularly troubled by Mr. Negroponte's record there.
"People grow and change over 20 years," Mr. Rockefeller said, adding that the panel would conduct a "thorough" review of the nominee.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who pursued the Honduran questions in 2001, when Mr. Negroponte was confirmed as delegate to the United Nations, issued a statement on Thursday praising him and not mentioning Honduras.
Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee, described Mr. Negroponte in a telephone interview as "a person who has a great deal of credibility." Jack R. Binns, who preceded Mr. Negroponte as ambassador to Honduras, said he opposed the confirmation because he believed that Mr. Negroponte had misled Congress in past testimony and because he might slant intelligence to suit administration policies.
"Based on his performance in Honduras, there's that possibility," said Mr. Binns, who was ambassador from 1980 to 1991 and is now retired and living in Arizona.
Oscar Reyes, whom the Honduran military seized in 1982 and tortured along with his wife, Gloria, said he was dismayed to learn of Mr. Negroponte's nomination.
"He'll say, 'I didn't know,' " said Mr. Reyes, 69, who now publishes a Spanish-language newspaper in Washington. "But the U.S. embassy knew everything that was going on."
Douglas Jehl contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
February 19, 2005
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - Human rights advocates repeated longstanding criticisms on Friday of John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as director of national intelligence. They said accusations that he covered up abuses as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980's had a new importance after recent cases of American abuse of detainees.
In Honduras, Mr. Negroponte "looked the other way" when evidence of rights violations came to light, said Reed Brody, counsel to Human Rights Watch.
"Unfortunately," Mr. Brody said, "today the United States is involved in serious human rights crimes committed in the process of collecting intelligence. Is he just going to look the other way again?"
Sandra Coliver, executive director of the Center for Justice and Accountability, a human rights law center in San Francisco that has aided Honduran torture victims, said the nomination would hurt the United States' image in Central America.
"In Central America," Ms. Coliver said, "Negroponte is indelibly remembered for his role in increasing the amount of U.S. aid to the Honduran military at the very time that the military's role in supporting brutal death squads was becoming abundantly clear. What kind of a message will this appointment send to the people of Central America? That the U.S. is willing to overlook massive human rights atrocities in the name of collecting intelligence in pursuit of U.S. national interests."
Mr. Negroponte, 65, now ambassador to Iraq, is a career diplomat who has worked all over the world in his 40-year career. He has faced repeated scrutiny for his work as envoy to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, when Honduran military units, some trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, carried out kidnappings, torture and killings.
As the first director of national intelligence, Mr. Negroponte would oversee the C.I.A. and the other 14 agencies that are part of the nation's estimated $40 billion spying enterprise. The post is the centerpiece of intelligence reorganization undertaken chiefly because of the failure to warn of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The C.I.A. and military are also under intense scrutiny because of evidence that detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have been tortured in questioning and in a few cases have died in custody. Questions have also been raised about whether the intelligence agency has handed over prisoners to third countries, where they might be tortured.
At confirmation hearings for previous posts, Mr. Negroponte has adamantly denied that he tolerated or covered up any abuses.
He said at a hearing in 2001 that his top priority as envoy to Honduras was "encouraging Honduras's return to civilian democratic rule, including protection of human rights."
Efforts to contact Mr. Negroponte through the State Department were not successful.
He has won easy confirmations in the past, and the Honduras record is not likely to be a major obstacle to his confirmation in the new position.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was not particularly troubled by Mr. Negroponte's record there.
"People grow and change over 20 years," Mr. Rockefeller said, adding that the panel would conduct a "thorough" review of the nominee.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who pursued the Honduran questions in 2001, when Mr. Negroponte was confirmed as delegate to the United Nations, issued a statement on Thursday praising him and not mentioning Honduras.
Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee, described Mr. Negroponte in a telephone interview as "a person who has a great deal of credibility." Jack R. Binns, who preceded Mr. Negroponte as ambassador to Honduras, said he opposed the confirmation because he believed that Mr. Negroponte had misled Congress in past testimony and because he might slant intelligence to suit administration policies.
"Based on his performance in Honduras, there's that possibility," said Mr. Binns, who was ambassador from 1980 to 1991 and is now retired and living in Arizona.
Oscar Reyes, whom the Honduran military seized in 1982 and tortured along with his wife, Gloria, said he was dismayed to learn of Mr. Negroponte's nomination.
"He'll say, 'I didn't know,' " said Mr. Reyes, 69, who now publishes a Spanish-language newspaper in Washington. "But the U.S. embassy knew everything that was going on."
Douglas Jehl contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Opponents of 'Clear Skies' Bill Examined
A Call To Action
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-clear19feb19,0,5649063.story?coll=la-home-headlines
THE NATION
The GOP sponsor of legislation championed by Bush asks two groups to turn over financial records. One official calls it intimidation.
By Alan C. Miller and Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writers
February 19, 2005
WASHINGTON — The chairman of a Senate committee that oversees environmental issues has directed two national organizations that oppose President Bush's major clean-air initiative to turn over their financial and tax records to the Senate.
Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, asked for the documents 10 days after a representative of the two groups criticized Bush's "Clear Skies" proposal before a Senate subcommittee. Inhofe is the leading sponsor of the administration bill, which is deadlocked in his panel.
The executive director of the two organizations, which represent state and local air pollution control agencies and officials, charged that the request was an attempt to intimidate critics of the measure.
Democratic senators on Inhofe's committee also were dismayed by his action, but declined to say so publicly because they were in the midst of sensitive negotiations with the chairman on the legislation, staffers said.
The committee's majority staff director, Andrew Wheeler, said the request for the groups' documents did not stem from their criticism of the legislation. He said the panel wanted to determine whether the groups represented only regulators' views or whether they also were subsidized by outside interests, including environmentalists or foundations.
The funding, Wheeler said, "goes to who they're speaking for."
William Becker, the executive director of both groups — the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators, which represents 48 state air pollution control agencies, and the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials, which represents more than 165 local agencies — said they received no money from environmental activists or other private interests.
The administration has proposed the "Clear Skies" initiative as part of its effort to overhaul the way the Clean Air Act forces power plants to cut emissions.
The measure would set new emission standards for three major pollutants and introduce a market-based approach favored by industry. Proponents say it would reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury emissions by 70%. Opponents say reductions could be achieved faster through tighter restrictions or other approaches, including existing Clean Air Act regulations.
Inhofe delayed a vote on the bill this week after he determined that he did not have the numbers to send it to the full Senate. The panel's 18 members are split, largely along party lines.
On Jan. 26, John Paul, an environmental regulator from Ohio, testified on behalf of both pollution control organizations. He told the Senate subcommittee that "Clear Skies" "fails on every one of our associations' core principals," was "far too lenient" on polluters and would undermine "states' abilities to protect air quality."
After the testimony, several senators sent a letter to Paul with follow-up questions; Inhofe included a request for financial statements, membership lists and tax returns for the last six years for both groups. Paul is the vice president and incoming president of the local air pollution group. Inhofe's request was first disclosed by Cox News Service on Friday.
The Senate committee asked for the information because it had long-standing concerns about the decision-making process of the state air pollution group, and was pursuing those questions as part of its oversight responsibility, Wheeler said.
"It has nothing to do with 'Clear Skies,' " he said. "If we wanted to intimidate them, we would have done it before they testified, not after."
Wheeler said there also were concerns about whether the state group purported to speak for all its members when some disagreed with its positions.
The two groups represent the views of the state and local regulators before the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress. They also do training, surveys and publish newsletters.
"We have a limited constituency — the 50 states and local agencies," Becker said. "These are the only ones for whom we can work."
Becker said Inhofe's request appeared to be "some sort of retaliation against some very legitimate criticism of [Bush's] 'Clear Skies' proposal."
Although the membership often is not unanimous on the state group's positions, Becker said, "We go to great pains to try to reach an overwhelming majority, not just a simple majority, and we succeed."
Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said: "There is not even any subtlety about this. This is a blatant attempt at intimidation and bullying so that experts will be afraid to speak out about a bill that rolls back air pollution protections for all Americans."
A Republican who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, Paul gained prominence in March 2004 when he told the Los Angeles Times that an EPA advisory committee he co-chaired had been abruptly shelved after it requested comparative data on the administration's proposal to control mercury emissions from power plants. The EPA never produced the information.
He said he was "deeply disappointed" by Inhofe's request.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-clear19feb19,0,5649063.story?coll=la-home-headlines
THE NATION
The GOP sponsor of legislation championed by Bush asks two groups to turn over financial records. One official calls it intimidation.
By Alan C. Miller and Tom Hamburger
Times Staff Writers
February 19, 2005
WASHINGTON — The chairman of a Senate committee that oversees environmental issues has directed two national organizations that oppose President Bush's major clean-air initiative to turn over their financial and tax records to the Senate.
Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, asked for the documents 10 days after a representative of the two groups criticized Bush's "Clear Skies" proposal before a Senate subcommittee. Inhofe is the leading sponsor of the administration bill, which is deadlocked in his panel.
The executive director of the two organizations, which represent state and local air pollution control agencies and officials, charged that the request was an attempt to intimidate critics of the measure.
Democratic senators on Inhofe's committee also were dismayed by his action, but declined to say so publicly because they were in the midst of sensitive negotiations with the chairman on the legislation, staffers said.
The committee's majority staff director, Andrew Wheeler, said the request for the groups' documents did not stem from their criticism of the legislation. He said the panel wanted to determine whether the groups represented only regulators' views or whether they also were subsidized by outside interests, including environmentalists or foundations.
The funding, Wheeler said, "goes to who they're speaking for."
William Becker, the executive director of both groups — the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators, which represents 48 state air pollution control agencies, and the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officials, which represents more than 165 local agencies — said they received no money from environmental activists or other private interests.
The administration has proposed the "Clear Skies" initiative as part of its effort to overhaul the way the Clean Air Act forces power plants to cut emissions.
The measure would set new emission standards for three major pollutants and introduce a market-based approach favored by industry. Proponents say it would reduce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury emissions by 70%. Opponents say reductions could be achieved faster through tighter restrictions or other approaches, including existing Clean Air Act regulations.
Inhofe delayed a vote on the bill this week after he determined that he did not have the numbers to send it to the full Senate. The panel's 18 members are split, largely along party lines.
On Jan. 26, John Paul, an environmental regulator from Ohio, testified on behalf of both pollution control organizations. He told the Senate subcommittee that "Clear Skies" "fails on every one of our associations' core principals," was "far too lenient" on polluters and would undermine "states' abilities to protect air quality."
After the testimony, several senators sent a letter to Paul with follow-up questions; Inhofe included a request for financial statements, membership lists and tax returns for the last six years for both groups. Paul is the vice president and incoming president of the local air pollution group. Inhofe's request was first disclosed by Cox News Service on Friday.
The Senate committee asked for the information because it had long-standing concerns about the decision-making process of the state air pollution group, and was pursuing those questions as part of its oversight responsibility, Wheeler said.
"It has nothing to do with 'Clear Skies,' " he said. "If we wanted to intimidate them, we would have done it before they testified, not after."
Wheeler said there also were concerns about whether the state group purported to speak for all its members when some disagreed with its positions.
The two groups represent the views of the state and local regulators before the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress. They also do training, surveys and publish newsletters.
"We have a limited constituency — the 50 states and local agencies," Becker said. "These are the only ones for whom we can work."
Becker said Inhofe's request appeared to be "some sort of retaliation against some very legitimate criticism of [Bush's] 'Clear Skies' proposal."
Although the membership often is not unanimous on the state group's positions, Becker said, "We go to great pains to try to reach an overwhelming majority, not just a simple majority, and we succeed."
Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said: "There is not even any subtlety about this. This is a blatant attempt at intimidation and bullying so that experts will be afraid to speak out about a bill that rolls back air pollution protections for all Americans."
A Republican who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, Paul gained prominence in March 2004 when he told the Los Angeles Times that an EPA advisory committee he co-chaired had been abruptly shelved after it requested comparative data on the administration's proposal to control mercury emissions from power plants. The EPA never produced the information.
He said he was "deeply disappointed" by Inhofe's request.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Friday, February 18, 2005
Our Friends, The Torturers
February 18, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Our Friends, the Torturers
By
BOB HERBERT
The United States has long purported to be outraged over Syria's bad
behavior, the latest flash point being the possible Syrian involvement in
the assassination
of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
From the U.S. perspective, Syria is led by a gangster regime that has, among
other things, sponsored terrorism, aided the insurgency in Iraq and engaged
in torture. So here's the question. If Syria is such a bad actor - and it
is - why would the Bush administration seize a Canadian citizen at Kennedy
Airport
in New York, put him on an executive jet, fly him in shackles to the Middle
East and then hand him over to the Syrians, who promptly tortured him?
The administration is trying to have it both ways in its so-called war on
terror. It claims to be fighting for freedom, democracy and the rule of law,
and
it condemns barbaric behavior whenever it is committed by someone else. At
the same time, it is engaged in its own barbaric behavior, while going out
of
its way to keep that behavior concealed from the American public and the
world at large.
The man grabbed at Kennedy Airport and thrown by American officials into a
Syrian nightmare was Maher Arar, a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated
to Canada as a teenager. No one, not even the Syrians who tortured him, have
been able to present any evidence linking him to terrorism.
He was taken into custody on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2002, and was not
released until Oct. 5, 2003. He was never charged, and when he wasn't being
brutalized,
he spent much of his time in an unlit, rat-infested cell that reminded him
of a grave.
Government officials know that this kind of activity is not just wrong but
reprehensible, which is why they won't admit publicly to the policy that
permits
them to kidnap individuals like Mr. Arar and send them off to regimes known
to engage in torture. The policy is known as extraordinary rendition, which
is an extreme variation of a little-known but longstanding legal principle
called rendition. Rendition most commonly refers to the extrajudicial
transfer
of individuals from a foreign country to the United States for the purpose
of answering criminal charges.
Think, for example, of a drug kingpin who is abducted in Colombia and
brought to the U.S. to stand trial for trafficking. The defendant is said to
have
been "rendered" to justice in the U.S.
The courts here have tended to overlook the circumstances surrounding the
seizure of such suspects. But upon arrival in the U.S., the normal rules of
due
process in criminal proceedings kick in, and the suspect is entitled to a
fair trial.
In extraordinary rendition there are no rules. The person seized, presumably
a terror suspect, is thrust into a highly secret zone of utter lawlessness,
with no rights whatever. The entire point of this atrocious exercise is to
transfer the suspect to a regime skilled in the art of torture. It's as if a
cop picked up a suspect on the street and handed him over to the Mafia to
extract a confession. One's guilt or innocence is not relevant. No legal
defense
is permitted. If a mistake is made, too bad.
U.S. officials knew what they were doing when they gave the signal to ship
Mr. Arar to Syria. As far back as 1996, the State Department had this to say
in a report about human rights in Syria:
"Former prisoners and detainees have reported that torture methods include
electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; the forced insertion of objects
into
the rectum; beatings, sometimes while the victim is suspended from the
ceiling; hyperextension of the spine; and the use of a chair that bends
backwards
to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the spine."
According to the State Department, torture was most likely to occur at one
of the many detention centers run by the Syrian security forces,
"particularly
while the authorities are trying to extract a confession or information
about an alleged crime or alleged accomplices."
Extraordinary rendition is antithetical to everything Americans are supposed
to believe in. It violates American law. It violates international law. And
it is a profound violation of our own most fundamental moral imperative -
that there are limits to the way we treat other human beings, even in a time
of war and great fear.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
Posted by Miriam V. Feb. 18
Copyright 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Our Friends, the Torturers
By
BOB HERBERT
The United States has long purported to be outraged over Syria's bad
behavior, the latest flash point being the possible Syrian involvement in
the assassination
of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.
From the U.S. perspective, Syria is led by a gangster regime that has, among
other things, sponsored terrorism, aided the insurgency in Iraq and engaged
in torture. So here's the question. If Syria is such a bad actor - and it
is - why would the Bush administration seize a Canadian citizen at Kennedy
Airport
in New York, put him on an executive jet, fly him in shackles to the Middle
East and then hand him over to the Syrians, who promptly tortured him?
The administration is trying to have it both ways in its so-called war on
terror. It claims to be fighting for freedom, democracy and the rule of law,
and
it condemns barbaric behavior whenever it is committed by someone else. At
the same time, it is engaged in its own barbaric behavior, while going out
of
its way to keep that behavior concealed from the American public and the
world at large.
The man grabbed at Kennedy Airport and thrown by American officials into a
Syrian nightmare was Maher Arar, a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated
to Canada as a teenager. No one, not even the Syrians who tortured him, have
been able to present any evidence linking him to terrorism.
He was taken into custody on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2002, and was not
released until Oct. 5, 2003. He was never charged, and when he wasn't being
brutalized,
he spent much of his time in an unlit, rat-infested cell that reminded him
of a grave.
Government officials know that this kind of activity is not just wrong but
reprehensible, which is why they won't admit publicly to the policy that
permits
them to kidnap individuals like Mr. Arar and send them off to regimes known
to engage in torture. The policy is known as extraordinary rendition, which
is an extreme variation of a little-known but longstanding legal principle
called rendition. Rendition most commonly refers to the extrajudicial
transfer
of individuals from a foreign country to the United States for the purpose
of answering criminal charges.
Think, for example, of a drug kingpin who is abducted in Colombia and
brought to the U.S. to stand trial for trafficking. The defendant is said to
have
been "rendered" to justice in the U.S.
The courts here have tended to overlook the circumstances surrounding the
seizure of such suspects. But upon arrival in the U.S., the normal rules of
due
process in criminal proceedings kick in, and the suspect is entitled to a
fair trial.
In extraordinary rendition there are no rules. The person seized, presumably
a terror suspect, is thrust into a highly secret zone of utter lawlessness,
with no rights whatever. The entire point of this atrocious exercise is to
transfer the suspect to a regime skilled in the art of torture. It's as if a
cop picked up a suspect on the street and handed him over to the Mafia to
extract a confession. One's guilt or innocence is not relevant. No legal
defense
is permitted. If a mistake is made, too bad.
U.S. officials knew what they were doing when they gave the signal to ship
Mr. Arar to Syria. As far back as 1996, the State Department had this to say
in a report about human rights in Syria:
"Former prisoners and detainees have reported that torture methods include
electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; the forced insertion of objects
into
the rectum; beatings, sometimes while the victim is suspended from the
ceiling; hyperextension of the spine; and the use of a chair that bends
backwards
to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the spine."
According to the State Department, torture was most likely to occur at one
of the many detention centers run by the Syrian security forces,
"particularly
while the authorities are trying to extract a confession or information
about an alleged crime or alleged accomplices."
Extraordinary rendition is antithetical to everything Americans are supposed
to believe in. It violates American law. It violates international law. And
it is a profound violation of our own most fundamental moral imperative -
that there are limits to the way we treat other human beings, even in a time
of war and great fear.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
Posted by Miriam V. Feb. 18
Copyright 2005
Three-Card Maestro
A Call To Action
The New York Times
February 18, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Alan Greenspan just did it again.
Four years ago, the Fed chairman lent crucial political support to the Bush tax cuts. He didn't specifically endorse the administration's plan, and if you read his testimony carefully, it contained caveats and cautions. But that didn't matter; the headlines trumpeted Mr. Greenspan's support, and legislation whose prospects had previously seemed dubious sailed through Congress.
On Wednesday Mr. Greenspan endorsed Social Security privatization. But there's a difference between 2001 and 2005. In 2001, Mr. Greenspan offered a convoluted, implausible justification for supporting everything the Bush administration wanted. This time, he offered no justification at all.
In 2001, some readers may recall, Mr. Greenspan argued that we needed to cut taxes to prevent the federal government from running excessively large surpluses. Even at the time it seemed obvious from his tortured logic that he was looking for some excuse, any excuse, to help out a Republican administration. His lack of sincerity was confirmed when projected surpluses turned into large deficits, and he nonetheless supported even more tax cuts.
This week, Mr. Greenspan offered no excuse for supporting privatization. In fact, he agreed with two of the main critiques of the administration's plan: that it would do nothing to improve the Social Security system's finances, and that it would lead to a dangerous increase in debt. Yet he still came out in favor of the idea.
Let me make a detour here. The way privatizers link the long-run financing of Social Security with the case for private accounts parallels the three-card-monte technique the Bush administration used to link terrorism to the Iraq war. Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.
Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.
And so it was with Mr. Greenspan. He painted a dark (and seriously exaggerated) picture of the demographic problem, and said that what we need is a "fully funded" system. He then conceded that Bush-style privatization would do nothing to improve the system's funding.
But privatization "as a general model," he said, "has in it the seeds of developing full funding by its very nature." Nice metaphor, but what does it mean? Clearly, he was trying to create the impression of links where none exist.
Mr. Greenspan went on to concede that the opponents of privatization are right to worry about the huge borrowing that Bush-style privatization would entail.
Privatizers claim that financial markets won't be disturbed by all that borrowing because the Bush plan prescribes offsetting cuts in guaranteed benefits for the workers who open private accounts. Mr. Greenspan, who does know a thing or two about markets, put his finger on the reason why those prospective future benefit cuts wouldn't offset current borrowing in the eyes of investors: "Well, the problem is that you cannot commit future Congresses to stay with that."
Yet the chairman managed to avoid admitting the obvious - that borrowing on the scale the Bush plan requires would substantially increase the risk of a financial crisis. And the headlines didn't emphasize his concession that crucial critiques of the Bush plan are right. As he surely intended, the headlines emphasized his support for privatization.
One last point: a disturbing thing about Wednesday's hearing was the deference with which Democratic senators treated Mr. Greenspan. They acted as if he were still playing his proper role, acting as a nonpartisan source of economic advice. After the hearing, rather than challenging Mr. Greenspan's testimony, they tried to spin it in their favor.
But Mr. Greenspan is no longer entitled to such deference. By repeatedly shilling for whatever the Bush administration wants, he has betrayed the trust placed in Fed chairmen, and deserves to be treated as just another partisan hack.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
February 18, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Alan Greenspan just did it again.
Four years ago, the Fed chairman lent crucial political support to the Bush tax cuts. He didn't specifically endorse the administration's plan, and if you read his testimony carefully, it contained caveats and cautions. But that didn't matter; the headlines trumpeted Mr. Greenspan's support, and legislation whose prospects had previously seemed dubious sailed through Congress.
On Wednesday Mr. Greenspan endorsed Social Security privatization. But there's a difference between 2001 and 2005. In 2001, Mr. Greenspan offered a convoluted, implausible justification for supporting everything the Bush administration wanted. This time, he offered no justification at all.
In 2001, some readers may recall, Mr. Greenspan argued that we needed to cut taxes to prevent the federal government from running excessively large surpluses. Even at the time it seemed obvious from his tortured logic that he was looking for some excuse, any excuse, to help out a Republican administration. His lack of sincerity was confirmed when projected surpluses turned into large deficits, and he nonetheless supported even more tax cuts.
This week, Mr. Greenspan offered no excuse for supporting privatization. In fact, he agreed with two of the main critiques of the administration's plan: that it would do nothing to improve the Social Security system's finances, and that it would lead to a dangerous increase in debt. Yet he still came out in favor of the idea.
Let me make a detour here. The way privatizers link the long-run financing of Social Security with the case for private accounts parallels the three-card-monte technique the Bush administration used to link terrorism to the Iraq war. Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.
Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.
And so it was with Mr. Greenspan. He painted a dark (and seriously exaggerated) picture of the demographic problem, and said that what we need is a "fully funded" system. He then conceded that Bush-style privatization would do nothing to improve the system's funding.
But privatization "as a general model," he said, "has in it the seeds of developing full funding by its very nature." Nice metaphor, but what does it mean? Clearly, he was trying to create the impression of links where none exist.
Mr. Greenspan went on to concede that the opponents of privatization are right to worry about the huge borrowing that Bush-style privatization would entail.
Privatizers claim that financial markets won't be disturbed by all that borrowing because the Bush plan prescribes offsetting cuts in guaranteed benefits for the workers who open private accounts. Mr. Greenspan, who does know a thing or two about markets, put his finger on the reason why those prospective future benefit cuts wouldn't offset current borrowing in the eyes of investors: "Well, the problem is that you cannot commit future Congresses to stay with that."
Yet the chairman managed to avoid admitting the obvious - that borrowing on the scale the Bush plan requires would substantially increase the risk of a financial crisis. And the headlines didn't emphasize his concession that crucial critiques of the Bush plan are right. As he surely intended, the headlines emphasized his support for privatization.
One last point: a disturbing thing about Wednesday's hearing was the deference with which Democratic senators treated Mr. Greenspan. They acted as if he were still playing his proper role, acting as a nonpartisan source of economic advice. After the hearing, rather than challenging Mr. Greenspan's testimony, they tried to spin it in their favor.
But Mr. Greenspan is no longer entitled to such deference. By repeatedly shilling for whatever the Bush administration wants, he has betrayed the trust placed in Fed chairmen, and deserves to be treated as just another partisan hack.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Critics attack new spy tsar for blind eye
A Call To Action
By Douglas Jehl and Elisabeth Bumiller in Washington
February 19, 2005
The US President, George Bush, has named John Negroponte as the first director of national intelligence, to take charge of US intelligence agencies as they try to recover from missteps on Iraq and the September 11 terrorist attacks.
After a long search Mr Bush turned to Mr Negroponte, a career diplomat who has been ambassador to the United Nations and Iraq, and whose decades of diplomatic experience mean he is familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of US intelligence agencies.
The Senate confirmed him for the earlier jobs in 2001 and last year by large margins, despite questions about his performance in the early 1980s as ambassador to Honduras. Critics said he had turned a blind eye to human rights abuses.
Mr Bush chose Lieutenant-General Michael Hayden of the Air Force as Mr Negroponte's top deputy. He is a career military intelligence officer who as director of the National Security Agency has spent the past five years as overseer of the country's electronic eavesdropping operations.
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Mr Bush said the posts would help ensure US intelligence agencies operated as "a single unified enterprise", the goal embraced by Congress and the White House after missteps on Iraq and terrorism suggested systemic intelligence flaws.
At 65, Negroponte, who worked in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, has spent 41 of the past 45 years in government service, serving in senior posts at both the State Department, as ambassador to the United Nations, Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras, and at the White House, where he was deputy national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan.
"I trust his judgement and I look forward to working with him," Mr Bush said, adding that Mr Negroponte's service as ambassador to Iraq since last June had provided him with "an incalculable advantage for an intelligence chief: an unvarnished and up-close look at a deadly enemy".
Mr Bush said Mr Negroponte would be his principal intelligence adviser, with daily access as principal briefer at morning meetings in the Oval Office.
If the Senate confirms Mr Negroponte he will oversee the country's 15 intelligence agencies and exercise broad control over an intelligence budget estimated to be $US40 billion ($50 billion) a year.
Critics said Mr Negroponte had a record of political loyalty overwhelming accurate reporting. His promotion would further politicise intelligence, they said. Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official, pointed to his Honduras ambassadorship.
"I think of the Negroponte of the 1980s covering up humans rights abuses, and then I think of the role of intelligence in telling truth to power, and it doesn't fit," Mr Goodman said.
In Baghdad, Mr Negroponte is also reported to have disagreed with CIA reports on the strength of the insurgency, and sent more optimistic views back to Washington.
"Negroponte is tough enough," Mr Goodman said. "The question is, is he independent enough?"
The New York Times, Reuters,The Guardian
By Douglas Jehl and Elisabeth Bumiller in Washington
February 19, 2005
The US President, George Bush, has named John Negroponte as the first director of national intelligence, to take charge of US intelligence agencies as they try to recover from missteps on Iraq and the September 11 terrorist attacks.
After a long search Mr Bush turned to Mr Negroponte, a career diplomat who has been ambassador to the United Nations and Iraq, and whose decades of diplomatic experience mean he is familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of US intelligence agencies.
The Senate confirmed him for the earlier jobs in 2001 and last year by large margins, despite questions about his performance in the early 1980s as ambassador to Honduras. Critics said he had turned a blind eye to human rights abuses.
Mr Bush chose Lieutenant-General Michael Hayden of the Air Force as Mr Negroponte's top deputy. He is a career military intelligence officer who as director of the National Security Agency has spent the past five years as overseer of the country's electronic eavesdropping operations.
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Mr Bush said the posts would help ensure US intelligence agencies operated as "a single unified enterprise", the goal embraced by Congress and the White House after missteps on Iraq and terrorism suggested systemic intelligence flaws.
At 65, Negroponte, who worked in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, has spent 41 of the past 45 years in government service, serving in senior posts at both the State Department, as ambassador to the United Nations, Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras, and at the White House, where he was deputy national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan.
"I trust his judgement and I look forward to working with him," Mr Bush said, adding that Mr Negroponte's service as ambassador to Iraq since last June had provided him with "an incalculable advantage for an intelligence chief: an unvarnished and up-close look at a deadly enemy".
Mr Bush said Mr Negroponte would be his principal intelligence adviser, with daily access as principal briefer at morning meetings in the Oval Office.
If the Senate confirms Mr Negroponte he will oversee the country's 15 intelligence agencies and exercise broad control over an intelligence budget estimated to be $US40 billion ($50 billion) a year.
Critics said Mr Negroponte had a record of political loyalty overwhelming accurate reporting. His promotion would further politicise intelligence, they said. Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official, pointed to his Honduras ambassadorship.
"I think of the Negroponte of the 1980s covering up humans rights abuses, and then I think of the role of intelligence in telling truth to power, and it doesn't fit," Mr Goodman said.
In Baghdad, Mr Negroponte is also reported to have disagreed with CIA reports on the strength of the insurgency, and sent more optimistic views back to Washington.
"Negroponte is tough enough," Mr Goodman said. "The question is, is he independent enough?"
The New York Times, Reuters,The Guardian
Thursday, February 17, 2005
untitled
Conservatives and Rivals Press a Struggling PBS
By JOHN TIERNEY and JACQUES STEINBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - It was no accident that PBS found itself turning to
Elmo, the popular "Sesame Street" character, to lobby on Capitol Hill this
week.
There were not many options.
Public television is suffering from an identity crisis, executives inside
the Public Broadcasting Service and outsiders say, and it goes far deeper
than
the announcement by Pat Mitchell that she would step down next year as the
beleaguered network's president.
Some public television executives said that running PBS was a thankless job,
and that managing a far-flung network composed of independent fiefs around
the country was a particularly daunting assignment. They also said they were
facing larger issues that would challenge any executive, like increased
competition
from the cable industry.
Corporate underwriters have been less willing to finance PBS programs, which
has left the network increasingly dependent on Washington, where Republicans
criticize its programming as elitist and liberal.
The network has also struggled to develop popular new shows.
"The biggest problem we've got is the structure we've got," Alberto
Ibarguen, the chairman of PBS and the publisher of The Miami Herald, said in
an interview
yesterday. "It assumes a lot of government funding, continuing heavy levels
of corporate image advertising and no competition. But in the world we're in
- the world of increased cable competition, less and less government funding
and cutbacks in corporate image advertising - it's a significant problem if
that's your business model."
Mr. Ibarguen added: "The risk is the tighter your budgets get, the less you
can afford to fail. If you can't afford to fail, you can't afford to take
risks."
Among the challenges that Ms. Mitchell has confronted is a trend, lasting
nearly a decade, in which corporations have scaled back on the so-called
"image
advertising" through which they had once financed programs like "Masterpiece
Theater." According to PBS's financial statements, revenues drawn from
program
underwriting - which are paid directly to producers, but catalogued by PBS -
reached a five-year peak of $221.9 million in 2001, dropped to $179.4
million
in 2003, and rebounded slightly to $184.3 million last year.
PBS hopes to relieve some of the pressure by creating a huge endowment from
the proceeds of reselling the spectrum used by its stations when they trade
their current broadcast positions for new high-definition stations later in
the decade. But that will take persuading the same Congressional and
administration
officials who have objected to its programming.
Conservatives have complained about Bill Moyers's news program (he has since
retired from it) and about a recent children's program featuring a rabbit
named
Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.
After Education Secretary Margaret Spellings threatened to retract financing
for that program - a controversy that some called Bustergate - Ms. Mitchell
decided not to distribute it.
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Mitchell, 62, said she had felt no
pressure, either from inside her board or outside of PBS, to step aside.
She also said she had not been personally pressured to change programming by
Republicans at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides
federal
money to the system. But she said her programmers had worked with their
counterparts at the corporation, which is led by White House appointees, in
developing
several new shows, including a talk show for the conservative commentator
Tucker Carlson.
"They certainly want to make sure we are providing a balanced schedule," she
said. "We believe we are. We check that with the people we report to - our
member stations and the American public."
One high-level executive at PBS headquarters in Washington, who declined to
be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation for PBS, said new
managers at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had been concerned about
a perceived liberal bias at PBS as well as difficulties in fund-raising.
"The thing to remember with public broadcasting is that everything is
steered by the money," the executive said. "What used to be a unique thing
is now
in this competitive environment and has to do whatever it can to survive,
which means bending in a way it used to never bend."
Now that 85 percent of Americans subscribe to cable or satellite television,
PBS's children shows, historical dramas and wildlife documentaries face
competitors
like the History Channel, Discovery, A & E, the National Geographic Channel,
BBC America, Nickelodeon, and The Learning Channel. PBS has responded by
forging
new alliances, like a recent agreement to show HBO films.
Ms. Mitchell, who was interviewed between lobbying meetings, said she would
devote the rest of her tenure to raising money. Officials at PBS and its
affiliated
stations are beginning to lobby for a share of the windfall the federal
government may get later this decade when public television stations and
other
over-the-air broadcasters stop using the airwaves to transmit analog
signals, relying instead on digital signals over cable and satellite
systems.
Once the broadcasters' part of the spectrum is open, the federal government
stands to collect tens of billions of dollars by reselling it to other users
like wireless broadband companies. Lobbyists for public television stations
are supporting legislation that would put some of the money in a trust fund
for public television.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat sponsoring the
legislation along with Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, has
called for
the trust fund to be administered by an independent agency following the
sort of procedures used by the National Science Foundation and the National
Institutes
of Health.
Some critics, like Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, a conservative
watchdog group, are reluctant to give PBS any independent endowment.
"They want to create an empire that does not have to answer to the Congress
or the people," Mr. Graham said. "Conservatives do not want to give more tax
dollars to television stations that attack their ideas."
But there are some sympathetic conservatives, at least among the advisers on
the Digital Future Initiative committee created by Ms. Mitchell, which met
Wednesday in Washington to contemplate how PBS could put a trust fund to
use. Norman Orenstein, a committee member who also sits on the PBS board,
said
Republicans on the committee believed that a trust fund could pay for
socially useful programming.
"We're focusing on education and children and making the case that public
broadcasting can do valuable things in a digital age that no one else can or
will
do," said Mr. Orenstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a
conservative research group.
But he did not expect the money to come easily.
"You couldn't have a tougher budget environment," Mr. Orenstein said, "and
you're going to have vicious scrambling over discretionary domestic
spending."
Referring to the recent programming incident, he said, "The timing couldn't
have been worse on the Buster thing. This is not a time you want to be in
the
cross hairs."
PBS is also being criticized by others, like Jeffrey Chester, the executive
director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a longtime advocate of more
money for public television.
"I'm concerned that PBS is so desperate for funding and support from the
Republican-dominated Congress that they're willing to sell their legacy,"
Mr. Chester
said. "They could forgo their historic mandate to do cutting-edge
programming and replace it with Bush-administration-friendly educational
content."
John Tierney reported from Washington for this article, and Jacques
Steinberg from New York.
Posted by Miriam V. Feb. 17
By JOHN TIERNEY and JACQUES STEINBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - It was no accident that PBS found itself turning to
Elmo, the popular "Sesame Street" character, to lobby on Capitol Hill this
week.
There were not many options.
Public television is suffering from an identity crisis, executives inside
the Public Broadcasting Service and outsiders say, and it goes far deeper
than
the announcement by Pat Mitchell that she would step down next year as the
beleaguered network's president.
Some public television executives said that running PBS was a thankless job,
and that managing a far-flung network composed of independent fiefs around
the country was a particularly daunting assignment. They also said they were
facing larger issues that would challenge any executive, like increased
competition
from the cable industry.
Corporate underwriters have been less willing to finance PBS programs, which
has left the network increasingly dependent on Washington, where Republicans
criticize its programming as elitist and liberal.
The network has also struggled to develop popular new shows.
"The biggest problem we've got is the structure we've got," Alberto
Ibarguen, the chairman of PBS and the publisher of The Miami Herald, said in
an interview
yesterday. "It assumes a lot of government funding, continuing heavy levels
of corporate image advertising and no competition. But in the world we're in
- the world of increased cable competition, less and less government funding
and cutbacks in corporate image advertising - it's a significant problem if
that's your business model."
Mr. Ibarguen added: "The risk is the tighter your budgets get, the less you
can afford to fail. If you can't afford to fail, you can't afford to take
risks."
Among the challenges that Ms. Mitchell has confronted is a trend, lasting
nearly a decade, in which corporations have scaled back on the so-called
"image
advertising" through which they had once financed programs like "Masterpiece
Theater." According to PBS's financial statements, revenues drawn from
program
underwriting - which are paid directly to producers, but catalogued by PBS -
reached a five-year peak of $221.9 million in 2001, dropped to $179.4
million
in 2003, and rebounded slightly to $184.3 million last year.
PBS hopes to relieve some of the pressure by creating a huge endowment from
the proceeds of reselling the spectrum used by its stations when they trade
their current broadcast positions for new high-definition stations later in
the decade. But that will take persuading the same Congressional and
administration
officials who have objected to its programming.
Conservatives have complained about Bill Moyers's news program (he has since
retired from it) and about a recent children's program featuring a rabbit
named
Buster who visited a pair of lesbian parents.
After Education Secretary Margaret Spellings threatened to retract financing
for that program - a controversy that some called Bustergate - Ms. Mitchell
decided not to distribute it.
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Mitchell, 62, said she had felt no
pressure, either from inside her board or outside of PBS, to step aside.
She also said she had not been personally pressured to change programming by
Republicans at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides
federal
money to the system. But she said her programmers had worked with their
counterparts at the corporation, which is led by White House appointees, in
developing
several new shows, including a talk show for the conservative commentator
Tucker Carlson.
"They certainly want to make sure we are providing a balanced schedule," she
said. "We believe we are. We check that with the people we report to - our
member stations and the American public."
One high-level executive at PBS headquarters in Washington, who declined to
be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation for PBS, said new
managers at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting had been concerned about
a perceived liberal bias at PBS as well as difficulties in fund-raising.
"The thing to remember with public broadcasting is that everything is
steered by the money," the executive said. "What used to be a unique thing
is now
in this competitive environment and has to do whatever it can to survive,
which means bending in a way it used to never bend."
Now that 85 percent of Americans subscribe to cable or satellite television,
PBS's children shows, historical dramas and wildlife documentaries face
competitors
like the History Channel, Discovery, A & E, the National Geographic Channel,
BBC America, Nickelodeon, and The Learning Channel. PBS has responded by
forging
new alliances, like a recent agreement to show HBO films.
Ms. Mitchell, who was interviewed between lobbying meetings, said she would
devote the rest of her tenure to raising money. Officials at PBS and its
affiliated
stations are beginning to lobby for a share of the windfall the federal
government may get later this decade when public television stations and
other
over-the-air broadcasters stop using the airwaves to transmit analog
signals, relying instead on digital signals over cable and satellite
systems.
Once the broadcasters' part of the spectrum is open, the federal government
stands to collect tens of billions of dollars by reselling it to other users
like wireless broadband companies. Lobbyists for public television stations
are supporting legislation that would put some of the money in a trust fund
for public television.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat sponsoring the
legislation along with Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, has
called for
the trust fund to be administered by an independent agency following the
sort of procedures used by the National Science Foundation and the National
Institutes
of Health.
Some critics, like Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, a conservative
watchdog group, are reluctant to give PBS any independent endowment.
"They want to create an empire that does not have to answer to the Congress
or the people," Mr. Graham said. "Conservatives do not want to give more tax
dollars to television stations that attack their ideas."
But there are some sympathetic conservatives, at least among the advisers on
the Digital Future Initiative committee created by Ms. Mitchell, which met
Wednesday in Washington to contemplate how PBS could put a trust fund to
use. Norman Orenstein, a committee member who also sits on the PBS board,
said
Republicans on the committee believed that a trust fund could pay for
socially useful programming.
"We're focusing on education and children and making the case that public
broadcasting can do valuable things in a digital age that no one else can or
will
do," said Mr. Orenstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a
conservative research group.
But he did not expect the money to come easily.
"You couldn't have a tougher budget environment," Mr. Orenstein said, "and
you're going to have vicious scrambling over discretionary domestic
spending."
Referring to the recent programming incident, he said, "The timing couldn't
have been worse on the Buster thing. This is not a time you want to be in
the
cross hairs."
PBS is also being criticized by others, like Jeffrey Chester, the executive
director of the Center for Digital Democracy and a longtime advocate of more
money for public television.
"I'm concerned that PBS is so desperate for funding and support from the
Republican-dominated Congress that they're willing to sell their legacy,"
Mr. Chester
said. "They could forgo their historic mandate to do cutting-edge
programming and replace it with Bush-administration-friendly educational
content."
John Tierney reported from Washington for this article, and Jacques
Steinberg from New York.
Posted by Miriam V. Feb. 17
untitled
Bush's Barberini Faun
By
MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
I am very impressed with James Guckert, a k a Jeff Gannon.
How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both
a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com,
Workingboys.net,
Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to
question the president of the United States?
Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get
to be face2face with the commander in chief?
It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility
again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy. How
does
it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?
"Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years
as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a
wealthy
Texas Republican. Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for
softball questions.
Howard Kurtz reported in The Washington Post yesterday that although Mr.
Guckert had denied launching the provocative Web sites - one described him
as "
'military, muscular, masculine and discrete' (sic)" - a Web designer in
California said "that he had designed a gay escort site for Gannon and had
posted
naked pictures of Gannon at the client's request."
And The Wilmington News-Journal in Delaware reported that Mr. Guckert was
delinquent in $20,700 in personal income tax from 1991 to 1994.
I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press
pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a
tax
evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini
Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by
mining
homophobia and preaching family values?
At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even
though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one
called
me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd
renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last
several months.
In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service
background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West
Wing
every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising
for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said
James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to
his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.
Mr. McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher magazine, oddly
noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to
actors."
I know the F.B.I. computers don't work, but this is ridiculous. After
getting gobsmacked by the louche sagas of Mr. Guckert and Bernard Kerik, the
White
House vetters should consider adding someone with some blogging experience.
Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a
military-stud Web site is a recommendation?
Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White House,
even on gay issues, was endearing. One of his stories mocked John Kerry's
"pro-homosexual
platform" with the headline "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."
With the Bushies, if you're their friend, anything goes. If you're their
critic, nothing goes. They're waging a jihad against journalists - buying
them
off so they'll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail
for doing their jobs and replacing them with ringers.
At last month's press conference, Jeff Gannon asked Mr. Bush how he could
work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." But
Bush
officials have divorced themselves from reality.
They flipped TV's in the West Wing and Air Force One to Fox News. They paid
conservative columnists handsomely to promote administration programs.
Federal
agencies distributed packaged "news" video releases with faux anchors so
local news outlets would run them. As CNN reported, the Pentagon produces
Web
sites with "news" articles intended to influence opinion abroad and at home,
but you have to look hard for the disclaimer: "Sponsored by the U.S.
Department
of Defense." The agencies spent a whopping $88 million spinning reality in
2004, splurging on P.R. contracts.
Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy. It's worse than
hating the press. It's an attempt to reinvent it.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
Posted vy Miriam V. Feb. 17
By
MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
I am very impressed with James Guckert, a k a Jeff Gannon.
How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both
a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com,
Workingboys.net,
Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to
question the president of the United States?
Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get
to be face2face with the commander in chief?
It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility
again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy. How
does
it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?
"Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years
as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a
wealthy
Texas Republican. Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for
softball questions.
Howard Kurtz reported in The Washington Post yesterday that although Mr.
Guckert had denied launching the provocative Web sites - one described him
as "
'military, muscular, masculine and discrete' (sic)" - a Web designer in
California said "that he had designed a gay escort site for Gannon and had
posted
naked pictures of Gannon at the client's request."
And The Wilmington News-Journal in Delaware reported that Mr. Guckert was
delinquent in $20,700 in personal income tax from 1991 to 1994.
I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press
pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a
tax
evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini
Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by
mining
homophobia and preaching family values?
At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even
though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one
called
me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd
renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last
several months.
In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service
background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West
Wing
every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising
for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said
James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to
his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.
Mr. McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher magazine, oddly
noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to
actors."
I know the F.B.I. computers don't work, but this is ridiculous. After
getting gobsmacked by the louche sagas of Mr. Guckert and Bernard Kerik, the
White
House vetters should consider adding someone with some blogging experience.
Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a
military-stud Web site is a recommendation?
Or maybe Gannon/Guckert's willingness to shill free for the White House,
even on gay issues, was endearing. One of his stories mocked John Kerry's
"pro-homosexual
platform" with the headline "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."
With the Bushies, if you're their friend, anything goes. If you're their
critic, nothing goes. They're waging a jihad against journalists - buying
them
off so they'll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail
for doing their jobs and replacing them with ringers.
At last month's press conference, Jeff Gannon asked Mr. Bush how he could
work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." But
Bush
officials have divorced themselves from reality.
They flipped TV's in the West Wing and Air Force One to Fox News. They paid
conservative columnists handsomely to promote administration programs.
Federal
agencies distributed packaged "news" video releases with faux anchors so
local news outlets would run them. As CNN reported, the Pentagon produces
Web
sites with "news" articles intended to influence opinion abroad and at home,
but you have to look hard for the disclaimer: "Sponsored by the U.S.
Department
of Defense." The agencies spent a whopping $88 million spinning reality in
2004, splurging on P.R. contracts.
Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy. It's worse than
hating the press. It's an attempt to reinvent it.
E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com
Posted vy Miriam V. Feb. 17
Fw: 100,000 Strong
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hillary Clinton"
To:
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 11:11 AM
Subject: 100,000 Strong
FriendsofHillary.com - Hill News
Dear Friends,
What better way to advance our Count Every Vote reform initiative than
to show the power of democracy in action!
Last week I asked you to become a citizen co-sponsor of this vitally
important reform legislation that Senator Barbara Boxer and I have made a
top priority for 2005.
100,000 of you answered our call to action -- and the number is
growing every day.
http://www.friendsofhillary.com/CountEveryVote
Today, we take the next step. This afternoon, I will step onto the
Senate floor and formally introduce the Count Every Vote Act.
Providing paper receipts for electronic voting machines, creating
uniform standards for provisional ballots, and guaranteeing adequate
equipment to prevent long waiting lines are common-sense reforms. They will
help strengthen our democracy and they are supported by the vast majority of
Americans.
But here's the reality. Many of the Republican leaders who make
speeches about democracy abroad will resist this attempt to strengthen it
here at home. They don't want to face the issue of electoral reform, and
they don't want to vote on it - so they are going to try to ignore it.
That's why I am committed to building grassroots momentum -- to insist
on action for the Count Every Vote Act of 2005. We are going to show that
the American people are determined to have fair, free and credible
elections - our democracy demands no less!
100,000 citizen co-sponsors is a great start. But, it is only a start.
Will you continue to help me build support? Will you forward this
email to your friends, and ask them to join us? The more citizen co-sponsors
we have, the louder, and stronger, our voice will be!
Thank you,
Hillary Clinton
Contribute to Friends of Hillary today!
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Wednesday, February 16, 2005
untitled
C.I.A. Is Seen as Seeking New Role on Detainees
By DOUGLAS JEHLThis article was reported by Douglas Jehl, David Johnston and Neil A. Lewis
and written by Mr. Jehl.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 - The Central Intelligence Agency is seeking to scale
back its role as interrogator and custodian of terrorist leaders who are
being
held without charges in secret sites around the world, current and former
intelligence officials said.
The internal discussions, they said, reflect the agency's growing discomfort
with what is increasingly seen as an untenable position. The C.I.A.'s
current
leadership is concerned, the officials said, that the legal authority for
interrogations and detentions is eroding, and that there is no clear plan
for
how the agency can extricate itself from what could be a lengthy task of
holding and caring for a small population of aging terrorists whose
intelligence
value is steadily evaporating and who are unlikely ever to be released or
brought to trial.
The C.I.A. assumed the mission of detaining the leaders in the months after
the Sept. 11 attacks. But the officials said the effort required to
indefinitely
maintain what amounts to a secret prison system overseas is increasingly
regarded within the agency as conflicting with its core mission of
collecting
and analyzing intelligence.
As it rethinks its role, the C.I.A. is facing renewed scrutiny in Congress
and in the courts over practices like detentions without trial, harsh
interrogations
and the handing over of captives to third countries where they might be
abused.
The C.I.A. never expected to play a long-term role in the detention and
interrogation of terror suspects, the officials said. At the same time, they
added,
the Bush administration's repudiation of an August 2002 legal opinion
regarding the use of torture, sought by the C.I.A. to protect its employees
from
liability, is seen within the agency as undercutting its authority to use
coercive methods in interrogations.
C.I.A. lawyers, who have said nothing in public about the decision in June
2004 to invalidate the opinion, were furious about the decision, former
Justice
Department officials said. From the start, senior C.I.A. officials had
agreed to play a part in detention and interrogation as part of an immediate
sense
after the Sept. 11 attacks that all agencies must adopt a new approach to
counterterrorism. But current and former intelligence officials say there
was
concern that the C.I.A. might be left to bear sole responsibility and the
brunt of criticism for the use of harsh techniques.
That concern was recently heightened when high-level administration
officials seemed in public testimony to sidestep responsibility for shaping
interrogation
policies. The officials included Alberto R. Gonzales, the attorney general,
and Michael Chertoff, the new homeland security secretary. Both suggested in
their confirmation hearings that others might have played a greater role in
deciding how interrogations would be conducted.
Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence chief, is scheduled to make his first
public appearance in that role on Wednesday, in testimony before the Senate
Intelligence
Committee. Congressional officials have said that the panel would conduct a
review this year of the C.I.A.'s role in the detention and interrogation of
the terrorist leaders, but the facts surrounding their detention remain
among the government's most closely guarded secrets, and it is not clear
whether
senators will question Mr. Goss about the issue in a public forum.
The estimated three dozen people being held by the C.I.A. include Abu
Zubaydah, the personnel coordinator for Al Qaeda, and Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, the
chief operational planner of the Sept. 11 plot. Under Bush administration
directives, they are being detained indefinitely as unlawful combatants,
without
trial, and without access to lawyers or human rights groups.
Among the options being discussed within the government is the possibility
of enlisting another agency, most likely the Federal Bureau of
Investigation,
to assume a role in their interrogation. Bureau officials said they knew of
no such discussions and would oppose any move to involve the F.B.I.
Other possibilities include more active efforts to hand over some of the
detainees to third countries. Neither the C.I.A. nor the F.B.I. would
comment for
this article, and the current and former intelligence officials who agreed
to discuss the issue would speak only on condition of anonymity. None would
say where the detainees were being held, or describe the interrogation
methods used on them.
But all of the officials described deep frustration within the C.I.A. about
its role as custodian of the detainees. While some of those in American
detention,
particularly Mr. Zubaydah, are said to have provided useful intelligence
during their first months in captivity, no more than a handful of those
still
in C.I.A. custody are seen as possessing much intelligence value.
"No one has a plan for what to do with these guys," a former senior
intelligence official said, "and the C.I.A. has been left holding the bag."
Any change would be a significant one for the C.I.A. The agency's
authorization to use coercive interrogation methods has been spelled out in
a series of
documents, most still highly classified, the former officials said,
including a narrow definition of torture in a Justice Department legal
opinion issued
in August 2002.
But some former intelligence officials said the C.I.A.'s latitude in
conducting interrogations had been reduced significantly and might have been
scaled
back by the agency itself in response to the White House's repudiation last
summer of the 2002 opinion and its decision in December to issue an opinion
that broadened the definition of torture, putting a wider range of
interrogation methods off limits.
Abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have focused Congressional and
public scrutiny on the possibility that the agency engaged in excessive
force in
interrogations.
It has long been known that F.B.I. agents and behavioral science experts
took part in interrogations of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. F.B.I.
agents
have also taken part in interviews of high-level detainees in Iraq and spent
months questioning Saddam Hussein at an undisclosed site near Baghdad.
But until now, the F.B.I. has been unwilling to assign agents to routinely
interview high-value detainees in C.I.A. custody. After the Sept. 11
attacks,
senior F.B.I. officials urged the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III,
to keep agents out of those high-level interviews out of concern that it
would
damage the bureau's reputation and compromise agents as potential witnesses
in future criminal cases if it became known that they had engaged in
interviews
in which highly coercive techniques were used.
Since then, Mr. Mueller has assigned agents to work with the military and
the C.I.A. in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, current and former
associates
said.
At Guantánamo, where hundreds of captives from the war in Afghanistan are
held by the military, the F.B.I. has complained about excessive force being
used
against some detainees. Those complaints have been disclosed in recent weeks
in internal bureau documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union,
which obtained them in a Freedom of Information Act request.
The C.I.A.'s agreement to hold and question high-level Qaeda figures rather
than turn them over to other governments or agencies, was a departure from
the
agency's past practices. But legal opinions and other documents disclosed
recently show that the agency struggled to protect its employees by
repeatedly
asking the Justice Department how far they could go without violating the
federal law prohibiting the use of extreme force on anyone under custody.
Justice Department lawyers addressed the issue in the August 2002 legal
memorandum, which defined torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain
accompanying
serious physical injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function
or even death."
A companion memorandum, which remains classified, outlined specific methods
that the agency could use.
Copyright 2005
Posted by Miriam V. Feb. 16
Fw: Hello there
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Dean, Democracy for America"
To: "Miriam"
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 5:04 PM
Subject: Hello there
Dear Miriam,
You may have heard that my brother Howard was elected Chairman of the
Democratic Party last week. Just before he took on his new role he
asked me to join you as the new chair of Democracy for America.
I'm not a politician. Even though my brother was a governor I wasn't
politically active beyond Howard's campaigns until the 2000 elections.
I was one of millions of people drawn in by the debate about the credibility
of our political process and how to make it work for the people again.
That's what motivates me today.
What you have done so far is remarkable. In less than a year you have
built a vibrant, winning organization that supports the fiscally
responsible, socially progressive values that are the mainstream in
America today. But we can do even more.
This year you and I will work together to endorse good candidates all
over the country and provide them the training, financial resources,
technology know-how and volunteers they need to win.
You and I will build organizations of like-minded people working for
change in your neighborhood and every other neighborhood in America.
Most of all, you and I will help ordinary people impact our political
process.
Soon you'll be hearing from Tom Hughes, our new executive director,
about some exciting things happening. We are already at work helping
candidates and organizations prepare for 2005 elections -- including a
referendum on campaign finance reform in Ohio and the nearly 500 races
for mayor taking place in cities across America this year.
And we will be getting into the fight to stop George Bush from
dismantling Social Security.
I also want to hear from you. This is your organization, not mine. And
the best ideas always come from the grassroots up rather than the top
down. You can contact me anytime:
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/telljim
DFA has only just begun, and I can't wait to get to work with you.
Thanks,
Jim
James Dean, Chair
Democracy for America
P.S. Howard posted a message for you on Blog for America just before
he was elected on Saturday. You can read it here:
http://www.blogforamerica.com/archives/005975.html
---
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/contribute
This email was sent to miriam@panix.com
You may unsubscribe this address by clicking here:
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/unsubscribe
/-------------------------------------------------------------------|Paid for by Democracy for America, www.democracyforamerica.com, |
|and not authorized by any candidate. Contributions to Democracy |
|for America are not deductible for federal income tax purposes. |
\-------------------------------------------------------------------/
Iraq Conflict Feeds International Terror Threat -CIA
A Call To Action
Wed Feb 16, 2005 06:03 PM ET
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Islamic militants waging a deadly insurgency against U.S.-led forces in Iraq pose an emerging international terrorism threat, CIA Director Porter Goss said on Wednesday.
In his first public appearance as U.S. spymaster, Goss described Iraqi insurgents, including al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as part of a Sunni militant movement inspired by Osama bin Laden and intent on attacking Americans.
"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries," he said.
President Bush, who portrays U.S.-led actions in Iraq as the leading edge of democratic reform in the Middle East, cited Iraqi backing for international terrorism as a reason for the 2003 invasion.
But a top level U.S. inquiry found last year that there had in fact been no collaboration between al Qaeda and Iraq under President Saddam Hussein.
Bush critics say the invasion was a distraction from the global war against terrorism declared after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by al Qaeda on the United States and has stirred up a violent response in Iraq that inflamed further terrorism.
"These sentences indicate Goss is very much listening to what his analysts are saying, and not necessarily to what the White House wants to hear," said Kenneth Katzman, terrorism analyst for the Congressional Research Service.
"Zarqawi has sought to bring about the final victory of Islam over the West, and he hopes to establish a safe haven in Iraq from which his group could operate against 'infidel' Western nations and 'apostate' Muslim governments," Goss said.
Presenting the CIA's annual "threat assessment," Goss also said insurgents achieved some of their goals in the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections by keeping Sunni Arab voter turnout low.
HUGE SPYING LAPSES
A long-time intelligence officer and former chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, Goss took over the CIA last year with a mandate to reform the premier U.S. spy agency after huge lapses in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion.
His predecessor, George Tenet, resigned amid widespread criticism over flawed intelligence about the threat from Iraq that critics say was exaggerated to meet a political agenda.
Goss told the lawmakers that U.S. authorities and their allies had dealt "serious blows" to the al Qaeda network.
"Despite these successes, however, the terrorist threat to the U.S. in the homeland and abroad endures," he said in an assessment that differed little from last year's report.
Goss was one of several top officials to appear before the Senate committee, which is scrutinizing U.S. intelligence on Iran, North Korea and other hot spots in hopes of avoiding mistakes committed before the war on Iraq.
FBI Director Robert Mueller testified al Qaeda remained intent on attacking the United States, likely by using low-tech methods of the kind employed in 2001 when terrorists killed about 3,000 people after hijacking airliners with box-cutters.
Goss said al Qaeda or another group would likely try to eclipse the Sept. 11 attacks by using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons that authorities say could be stolen or purchased from nations such as North Korea.
Officials also warned that North Korea, which declared last week that it had nuclear arms, could soon be ready to test a new long-range nuclear-capable missile which could hit targets across North America.
Private analysts doubt North Korea could pose a direct threat to the U.S. mainland any time soon.
All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
© Reuters 2005
Wed Feb 16, 2005 06:03 PM ET
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Islamic militants waging a deadly insurgency against U.S.-led forces in Iraq pose an emerging international terrorism threat, CIA Director Porter Goss said on Wednesday.
In his first public appearance as U.S. spymaster, Goss described Iraqi insurgents, including al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as part of a Sunni militant movement inspired by Osama bin Laden and intent on attacking Americans.
"The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
"Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries," he said.
President Bush, who portrays U.S.-led actions in Iraq as the leading edge of democratic reform in the Middle East, cited Iraqi backing for international terrorism as a reason for the 2003 invasion.
But a top level U.S. inquiry found last year that there had in fact been no collaboration between al Qaeda and Iraq under President Saddam Hussein.
Bush critics say the invasion was a distraction from the global war against terrorism declared after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by al Qaeda on the United States and has stirred up a violent response in Iraq that inflamed further terrorism.
"These sentences indicate Goss is very much listening to what his analysts are saying, and not necessarily to what the White House wants to hear," said Kenneth Katzman, terrorism analyst for the Congressional Research Service.
"Zarqawi has sought to bring about the final victory of Islam over the West, and he hopes to establish a safe haven in Iraq from which his group could operate against 'infidel' Western nations and 'apostate' Muslim governments," Goss said.
Presenting the CIA's annual "threat assessment," Goss also said insurgents achieved some of their goals in the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections by keeping Sunni Arab voter turnout low.
HUGE SPYING LAPSES
A long-time intelligence officer and former chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, Goss took over the CIA last year with a mandate to reform the premier U.S. spy agency after huge lapses in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion.
His predecessor, George Tenet, resigned amid widespread criticism over flawed intelligence about the threat from Iraq that critics say was exaggerated to meet a political agenda.
Goss told the lawmakers that U.S. authorities and their allies had dealt "serious blows" to the al Qaeda network.
"Despite these successes, however, the terrorist threat to the U.S. in the homeland and abroad endures," he said in an assessment that differed little from last year's report.
Goss was one of several top officials to appear before the Senate committee, which is scrutinizing U.S. intelligence on Iran, North Korea and other hot spots in hopes of avoiding mistakes committed before the war on Iraq.
FBI Director Robert Mueller testified al Qaeda remained intent on attacking the United States, likely by using low-tech methods of the kind employed in 2001 when terrorists killed about 3,000 people after hijacking airliners with box-cutters.
Goss said al Qaeda or another group would likely try to eclipse the Sept. 11 attacks by using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons that authorities say could be stolen or purchased from nations such as North Korea.
Officials also warned that North Korea, which declared last week that it had nuclear arms, could soon be ready to test a new long-range nuclear-capable missile which could hit targets across North America.
Private analysts doubt North Korea could pose a direct threat to the U.S. mainland any time soon.
All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
© Reuters 2005
What We Don't Know About 9/11 Hurts Us
A Call To Action
lRobert Scheer
February 15, 2005
Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?
The answer is unknowable and, at this date, moot. Yet it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent. Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided.
For the last three years, administration apologists have tried to make the FAA the scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks. But it is the president who ultimately is responsible for national security, not a defanged agency that is beholden to the industry it allegedly monitors.
The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations.
The warnings provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks. Rice had dismissed those warnings as "historical," but according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA — and available to Rice — before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Given this shocking record of indifference on the part of the administration, it is politically understandable that it tried to prevent the formation of the 9/11 commission in the first place, and then for five months prevented the declassification of key sections of the final report. Commission members, including its Republican chairman, Thomas Kean, stated in the past that there was no national security concern that justified keeping those sections of the report from the public.
And let's be clear: The failure to fully disclose what is known about the 9/11 tragedy is not some minor bureaucratic transgression. Not since the Soviets first detonated an atomic bomb more than half a century ago has a single event so affected decision-making in this country, yet the main questions as to how and why it happened remain mostly unanswered.
Even worse, what we do know calls into question our government's explanation that a diabolical international terrorist conspiracy exploited our liberal, naive society. What has emerged, instead, is a portrait of an often bumbling terrorist gang allowed to wreak havoc because the top tiers of the administration were so indifferent to the alarms, which former CIA Director George Tenet described so graphically: "The system was blinking red."
Had the business-friendly administration put safety first and ordered a full complement of air marshals into the air, over the obscene objections of airlines loath to give up paid seats, nearly 3,000 people might not have died that day. And had the president of the United States taken some time from his epic ranch vacation that August to order a nationwide airport alert, two bloody wars abroad, as well as an all-out assault on civil liberties in this country, probably would not have happened.
Instead, an administration that resisted spending the tens of millions required to fortify airline security before 9/11 is nearing the $300-billion mark on Afghanistan and Iraq. And declassified documents have unmistakably said the latter had nothing to do with 9/11. Meanwhile, those countries that at least indirectly did, most notably "allies" Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have been let off the hook.
Indeed, the 9/11 commission was not allowed to get near that story: It is an unnoticed but startling truth that the basic narrative on the tragedy derives from the interrogations of key detainees whom the 9/11 commissioners were not allowed to interview. Nor were they permitted to even take testimony from the U.S. intelligence personnel who interrogated those prisoners.
When the truth and governmental transparency are arbitrarily trumped by the invocation of national security, the public is simply incapable of making informed decisions on the most crucial decisions we face — starting with whom we elect as our commander in chief.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
TMS Reprints
Article licensing and reprint options
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
lRobert Scheer
February 15, 2005
Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?
The answer is unknowable and, at this date, moot. Yet it was appalling to learn last week that the White House suppressed until after the election a damning report that exposes the administration as woefully incompetent if not criminally negligent. Belatedly declassified excerpts from still-secret sections of the 9/11 commission report, which focus on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to heed multiple warnings that Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to hijack planes as suicide weapons, make clear that this tragedy could have been avoided.
For the last three years, administration apologists have tried to make the FAA the scapegoat for the 9/11 attacks. But it is the president who ultimately is responsible for national security, not a defanged agency that is beholden to the industry it allegedly monitors.
The terrible fact is that the administration took none of the steps that would have put the protection of human life ahead of a diverse set of economic and political interests, which included not offending our friends the Saudis and not hurting the share prices of airline corporations.
The warnings provided by intelligence agencies to the FAA were far clearer and more specific than suggested by Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 commission when she reluctantly conceded the existence of a presidential briefing that warned of impending Al Qaeda attacks. Rice had dismissed those warnings as "historical," but according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA — and available to Rice — before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
Given this shocking record of indifference on the part of the administration, it is politically understandable that it tried to prevent the formation of the 9/11 commission in the first place, and then for five months prevented the declassification of key sections of the final report. Commission members, including its Republican chairman, Thomas Kean, stated in the past that there was no national security concern that justified keeping those sections of the report from the public.
And let's be clear: The failure to fully disclose what is known about the 9/11 tragedy is not some minor bureaucratic transgression. Not since the Soviets first detonated an atomic bomb more than half a century ago has a single event so affected decision-making in this country, yet the main questions as to how and why it happened remain mostly unanswered.
Even worse, what we do know calls into question our government's explanation that a diabolical international terrorist conspiracy exploited our liberal, naive society. What has emerged, instead, is a portrait of an often bumbling terrorist gang allowed to wreak havoc because the top tiers of the administration were so indifferent to the alarms, which former CIA Director George Tenet described so graphically: "The system was blinking red."
Had the business-friendly administration put safety first and ordered a full complement of air marshals into the air, over the obscene objections of airlines loath to give up paid seats, nearly 3,000 people might not have died that day. And had the president of the United States taken some time from his epic ranch vacation that August to order a nationwide airport alert, two bloody wars abroad, as well as an all-out assault on civil liberties in this country, probably would not have happened.
Instead, an administration that resisted spending the tens of millions required to fortify airline security before 9/11 is nearing the $300-billion mark on Afghanistan and Iraq. And declassified documents have unmistakably said the latter had nothing to do with 9/11. Meanwhile, those countries that at least indirectly did, most notably "allies" Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have been let off the hook.
Indeed, the 9/11 commission was not allowed to get near that story: It is an unnoticed but startling truth that the basic narrative on the tragedy derives from the interrogations of key detainees whom the 9/11 commissioners were not allowed to interview. Nor were they permitted to even take testimony from the U.S. intelligence personnel who interrogated those prisoners.
When the truth and governmental transparency are arbitrarily trumped by the invocation of national security, the public is simply incapable of making informed decisions on the most crucial decisions we face — starting with whom we elect as our commander in chief.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
TMS Reprints
Article licensing and reprint options
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Fw: Kyoto begins; auto makers resist.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joan Blades, MoveOn.org"
To: "Miriam Vieni"
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 3:16 PM
Subject: Kyoto begins; auto makers resist.
Dear MoveOn member,
Today, February 16, the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect worldwide, without
the support of the U.S. Through the Kyoto treaty, 141 nations are getting
serious about averting a climate crisis from global warming. Last year, you
signed our Climate Crisis petition, which has been part of the mounting
public pressure on leaders in the U.S. to join this crucial work. Thank you.
There is something more you can do this week. California recently passed
ground breaking legislation requiring new cars to reduce greenhouse gasses
in their emissions by 30% starting in 2009. Sadly manufacturers are fighting
these new standards tooth and nail. Rather than lead the world to new
technologies, they're taking California to court to roll back the new
standards.
Can you help?
Can you send a letter to auto manufacturers asking them to accept the
California emission standards and to build cars that will help America lead
in using new technologies and avert a global climate crisis? Together, we
can embarrass auto companies into being good global citizens. Personal notes
by paper mail are very effective, if you can take the time. We've attached
addresses below. Or if you are pressed for time, our friends at NRDC are
delivering messages from online activists. Just go to:
http://www.nrdcaction.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=52452&ms=mo0205
Many states are considering adopting California's legislation and are
concerned about this court battle. In honor of the Kyoto Protocol, the
members of a broad coalition of organizations are putting pressure on auto
manufacturers to innovate rather than litigate. This coalition includes
Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense, Greenhouse Network, League of
Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, NRDC, RiverKeeper, Sierra
Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S. PIRG and WaterKeeper.
Today marks a major milestone. With Kyoto, the world is moving forward to
address global warming. While the Bush administration blocks national
legislation, we should pressure industry to take the lead, before it's too
late.
Thanks for everything you do,
--Joan Blades
MoveOn.org
February 16th, 2005
___________
ADDRESSES
Key auto industry executives
G. Richard Wagoner, Jr.
President and CEO
General Motors Corporation
300 Renaissance Center
Detroit, MI 48265-3000
Hideaki Otaka
President and CEO
Toyota Motor North America, Inc.
9 W. 57th Street, Suite 4900
New York, NY 10019
Juergen E. Schrempp
Chairman
DaimlerChrysler Corp.
1000 Chrysler Drive
Auburn Hills, MI 48326
Koichi Kondo
President and CEO
American Honda Motor Co., Inc.
1919 Torrance Blvd.
Torrance, CA 90501
William Clay Ford, Jr.
Chairman and CEO
Ford Motor Co.
The American Road
Dearborn, MI 48121
BACKGROUNDER
Bait and Switch: Big Auto Fights
California's Landmark Global Warming Law
Carmakers work the courts instead of putting
clean technology to work.
The car companies are trying to have it both ways: They tease us with
promises of cleaner cars -- "zero emissions," "energy for the future" --
then sue to prevent states from setting standards to cut global warming
pollution.
California made history in late 2004 when it adopted the world's first
standards requiring automakers to cut global warming pollution from new cars
and trucks. The law, which at least eight other states may adopt, requires
automakers to reduce the heat-trapping exhaust from new vehicles by about 30
percent.
Automobiles are the second largest source of global warming pollution in the
United States. Scientists say global warming promises increasingly severe
heat waves and droughts, more property damage from floods and wildfire, and
more asthma-causing air days.
But instead of turning to their engineers to design cars that would protect
public health and the environment, automakers summoned their lawyers for
excuses. They argue the law demands too much, that it's too difficult to cut
the heat-trapping pollution their vehicles produce.
Carmakers have a long history of fighting against simple, cost-effective
solutions -- everything from catalytic converters to air bags and even
seatbelts -- and always with the same complaint -- that it's just too hard.
But their claims ring hollow. The new requirements were crafted around
technologies that are already in use, like better engine electronics,
improved transmissions and energy-saving tires, which combine to slash
heat-trapping emissions from cars and trucks.
We know the auto industry can build cleaner cars. The solutions are there,
and American consumers are ready to put them on the road. A healthy,
competitive auto industry relies on ingenuity, not lawsuits. Big Auto needs
to lose its can't-do attitude and start being a leader again.
SAMPLE LETTER
(But your own words are always best.)
Dear Chief Executive Officer,
I am very disappointed to hear about your company's lawsuit to stop progress
on an issue of critical importance to our health, our economy and our
environment -- the urgent need to cut global warming pollution.
Global warming is happening. We're already seeing the polar ice caps melting
and changes in habitat with deadly consequences for many animal and plant
species. If that's not enough, global warming will worsen smog, triggering
more asthma attacks and hospitalizations.
Cars and trucks make up the second largest source of global warming
pollution, sending heat-trapping emissions into the air for decades to come.
For more than 40 years, California has led the nation and the world in
creating sound, sensible air pollution standards -- leadership that has long
been acknowledged in federal clean air laws. That's why more than 80 percent
of Californians backed the world's first law designed to reduce automotive
global warming emissions when it passed three years ago. The new performance
standards are supposed to phase in starting in 2009, giving you ample time
to deploy new technology. But instead of stepping up to meet the challenge,
your company and others have gone to court to try to block the law.
You have the know-how and technology to fix the global warming problem.
Smart engineering such as cylinder deactivation and continuously variable
transmissions are available today to build cleaner cars and trucks that get
us where we're going with less pollution.
As a consumer, I urge you to call off your lawyers and use your resources to
innovate, not litigate. Withdraw your company from the litigation blocking
California's pioneering safeguard.
QUICK FACTS AND TALKING POINTS
- Eighty-one percent of California voters -- including 77 percent of SUV
owners -- support the state's new global warming emissions standards.
- New emissions standards will save California drivers nearly $921 million
annually by 2012.
- States including Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode
Island, Vermont, Maine and Washington, are considering adopting California's
standards.
- America's cars and trucks pump 1.4 billion tons of heat-trapping CO2 into
the atmosphere every year.
- Technology such as cylinder deactivation, continuously variable
transmissions and energy saving tires can be deployed today to meet new
standard which are set to phase in gradually beginning in 2009
________________
Subscription Management:
This is a message from MoveOn.org. To remove yourself (Miriam Vieni) from
this list, please visit our subscription management page at:
http://moveon.org/s?i=5096-3285954-hvpxgxyD3HczEcm10IKBLg
untitled
The New York Times > Washington > For Democrats, Rethinking Abortion Runs
Risks
The New York Times
February 16, 2005
For Democrats, Rethinking Abortion Runs Risks
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 - In their search for middle ground on the subject of
abortion, Democrats are encountering a mixture of resistance and retreat
from
abortion rights advocates in their own party.
Since its defeats in the November elections, nothing has put the fractured
soul of the Democratic Party on display more vividly than abortion. Party
leaders,
including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and the new chairman,
Howard Dean, have repeatedly signaled an effort to recalibrate the party's
thinking
about new restrictions on abortion.
Adding to that, Congressional Democrats named a professed opponent of
abortion rights, Harry Reid of Nevada, as the leader in the Senate. Some
Democrats
supported another abortion opponent, Timothy J. Roemer, for the party's
chairmanship.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has actively recruited at least
two abortion opponents to run for the Senate in 2006. And perhaps most
symbolically,
the party is seeking to enlist Robert P. Casey Jr., Pennsylvania's
treasurer, to challenge Senator Rick Santorum, a stalwart foe of abortion
rights.
Mr. Casey is the son of former Gov. Bob Casey, a hero to abortion opponents
inside and outside the Democratic Party. After trying unsuccessfully to have
the party's 1992 platform state that Democrats did not support "abortion on
demand," Governor Casey denounced the party for refusing to let him speak at
its convention in New York on behalf of other Democrats who shared his
views.
In contrast, the younger Mr. Casey said that Senator Charles E. Schumer of
New York, chairman of the party's senatorial campaign committee, had
encouraged
him to run as an opponent of abortion rights.
"He was very welcoming and very candid about the party's need to speak for a
broad section of Americans," Mr. Casey said in an interview.
But Mr. Schumer's overture has roiled party loyalists who remain unyielding
in their support for abortion rights, exposing a deepening rift in the
party.
Abortion rights groups that are major financial donors to Democratic
campaigns say they may fight Mr. Casey in a primary with a candidate who
shares their
beliefs.
Karen White, political director of Emily's List, a group that raises money
for female candidates who support abortion rights, said the group was "very
excited"
about possibly backing an abortion rights supporter, Barbara Hafer, a former
Pennsylvania treasurer.
Emily's List and other groups have also sounded alarms about the direction
the party leadership is taking over all. During the search for a national
Democratic
chairman, Ms. White posted a rallying cry on the group's Web site: "We
fought like mad to beat back the Republicans. Little did we know that we
would have
just as much to fear from some within the Democratic Party who seem to be
using choice as a scapegoat for our top-of-the-ticket losses."
Emily's List is circulating a study it commissioned by the pollster Mark
Mellman stating that abortion "was not a factor in voters' decision-making"
in
the November elections.
Ann Stone, president of Republicans for Choice, an abortion rights group,
said her organization's members had not been re-examining their positions,
as
their Democratic counterparts have. Ms. Stone added a cautionary note that
cut across each party's support base.
"The Democrats have to be very careful about this because they could end up
undercutting themselves with the donor base," Ms. Stone said. "The
pro-choice
donors in both parties tend to be the more wealthy."
Mr. Schumer, for his part, said abortion rights groups should worry about
Republicans, not Democrats, if they want to preserve Roe v. Wade, the 1973
Supreme
Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. "What we
find is that even the most pro-choice Republican senators just vote down the
line
for judges that are chomping at the bit to overturn Roe," he said.
Another large abortion rights group, Naral Pro-Choice, is reversing course,
saying it will drop its opposition to the proposed Unborn Child Pain
Awareness
Act, a bill that would require doctors to offer anesthetic for the fetuses
of women seeking abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice, said the organization was
saving its ammunition to fight judicial nominees who might overturn Roe v.
Wade.
"We are standing strong in the next Supreme Court battle," Ms. Keenan said.
There are "bigger issues to fight," she added, "to draw attention to the
broader issue of reproductive health." For example, in this week's edition
of the
conservative Weekly Standard, Naral placed an advertisement asking abortion
rights groups to "please, help us prevent abortions" by increasing access to
birth control.
But Carol Tobias, political director for the National Right to Life
Foundation, dismissed the invitation as an effort "to get the pro-life
movement into
a debate over birth control," on which her organization takes no position.
Ms. Tobias called the Democrats' talk "pulling the wool over the eyes of
voters."
Still, Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, a champion of abortion
opponents and the sponsor of the fetal-pain bill, said he was watching the
Democrats'
steps with great interest. "Just the language that allows for the Democrats
to open up and even encourage people to run for office as a pro-life
candidate
is an enormously positive development for me," Mr. Brownback said, adding
that Naral's decision not to oppose his fetal-pain bill made him much more
optimistic
about its passage.
But abortion rights advocates warn of a bigger revolt within the party if
its members start compromising on new abortion restrictions like parental
notification
laws or the fetal-pain bill. Karen Pearl, interim president of Planned
Parenthood, said some of her allies were saying that "to the degree that the
Democrats
move away from choice, that could be the real birth of a third-party
movement."
But Ms. Pearl added, "When the day is done, I don't believe they will
backslide," in part because of the importance of abortion rights advocates
to the
party's base of activists and contributors.
In a New York Times poll last month, 36 percent of respondents said
abortions should be generally available, 35 percent said the procedure
should be available
but under stricter limits, and 26 percent said abortions should not be
permitted.
The financial balance sheet is much more one-sided. Single-issue abortion
rights groups gave over $1.4 million in the 2004 elections to candidates for
national
office, more than twice as much as the total from groups opposed to abortion
rights, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In addition,
Emily's
List raised $34 million for female candidates who support abortion rights,
according to the center. By comparison, the National Right to Life
Committee,
the largest donor opposed to abortion rights, raised about $1.7 million.
Senator Reid said that he welcomed the new "emphasis on recognizing the
diversity of the party." He added, "We have had a lot of pro-life Democrats,
but
the pro-choice folk haven't reached out to them and haven't protected them."
He acknowledged some complaints from abortion rights groups about the
party's shifting rhetoric. "They have to keep their folks geared up, just
like people
who work for more highways," Mr. Reid said. "That is what they do, just like
the pro-life groups."
Copyright 2005
Possted by Miriam V. 2/16
Risks
The New York Times
February 16, 2005
For Democrats, Rethinking Abortion Runs Risks
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 - In their search for middle ground on the subject of
abortion, Democrats are encountering a mixture of resistance and retreat
from
abortion rights advocates in their own party.
Since its defeats in the November elections, nothing has put the fractured
soul of the Democratic Party on display more vividly than abortion. Party
leaders,
including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and the new chairman,
Howard Dean, have repeatedly signaled an effort to recalibrate the party's
thinking
about new restrictions on abortion.
Adding to that, Congressional Democrats named a professed opponent of
abortion rights, Harry Reid of Nevada, as the leader in the Senate. Some
Democrats
supported another abortion opponent, Timothy J. Roemer, for the party's
chairmanship.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has actively recruited at least
two abortion opponents to run for the Senate in 2006. And perhaps most
symbolically,
the party is seeking to enlist Robert P. Casey Jr., Pennsylvania's
treasurer, to challenge Senator Rick Santorum, a stalwart foe of abortion
rights.
Mr. Casey is the son of former Gov. Bob Casey, a hero to abortion opponents
inside and outside the Democratic Party. After trying unsuccessfully to have
the party's 1992 platform state that Democrats did not support "abortion on
demand," Governor Casey denounced the party for refusing to let him speak at
its convention in New York on behalf of other Democrats who shared his
views.
In contrast, the younger Mr. Casey said that Senator Charles E. Schumer of
New York, chairman of the party's senatorial campaign committee, had
encouraged
him to run as an opponent of abortion rights.
"He was very welcoming and very candid about the party's need to speak for a
broad section of Americans," Mr. Casey said in an interview.
But Mr. Schumer's overture has roiled party loyalists who remain unyielding
in their support for abortion rights, exposing a deepening rift in the
party.
Abortion rights groups that are major financial donors to Democratic
campaigns say they may fight Mr. Casey in a primary with a candidate who
shares their
beliefs.
Karen White, political director of Emily's List, a group that raises money
for female candidates who support abortion rights, said the group was "very
excited"
about possibly backing an abortion rights supporter, Barbara Hafer, a former
Pennsylvania treasurer.
Emily's List and other groups have also sounded alarms about the direction
the party leadership is taking over all. During the search for a national
Democratic
chairman, Ms. White posted a rallying cry on the group's Web site: "We
fought like mad to beat back the Republicans. Little did we know that we
would have
just as much to fear from some within the Democratic Party who seem to be
using choice as a scapegoat for our top-of-the-ticket losses."
Emily's List is circulating a study it commissioned by the pollster Mark
Mellman stating that abortion "was not a factor in voters' decision-making"
in
the November elections.
Ann Stone, president of Republicans for Choice, an abortion rights group,
said her organization's members had not been re-examining their positions,
as
their Democratic counterparts have. Ms. Stone added a cautionary note that
cut across each party's support base.
"The Democrats have to be very careful about this because they could end up
undercutting themselves with the donor base," Ms. Stone said. "The
pro-choice
donors in both parties tend to be the more wealthy."
Mr. Schumer, for his part, said abortion rights groups should worry about
Republicans, not Democrats, if they want to preserve Roe v. Wade, the 1973
Supreme
Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. "What we
find is that even the most pro-choice Republican senators just vote down the
line
for judges that are chomping at the bit to overturn Roe," he said.
Another large abortion rights group, Naral Pro-Choice, is reversing course,
saying it will drop its opposition to the proposed Unborn Child Pain
Awareness
Act, a bill that would require doctors to offer anesthetic for the fetuses
of women seeking abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice, said the organization was
saving its ammunition to fight judicial nominees who might overturn Roe v.
Wade.
"We are standing strong in the next Supreme Court battle," Ms. Keenan said.
There are "bigger issues to fight," she added, "to draw attention to the
broader issue of reproductive health." For example, in this week's edition
of the
conservative Weekly Standard, Naral placed an advertisement asking abortion
rights groups to "please, help us prevent abortions" by increasing access to
birth control.
But Carol Tobias, political director for the National Right to Life
Foundation, dismissed the invitation as an effort "to get the pro-life
movement into
a debate over birth control," on which her organization takes no position.
Ms. Tobias called the Democrats' talk "pulling the wool over the eyes of
voters."
Still, Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, a champion of abortion
opponents and the sponsor of the fetal-pain bill, said he was watching the
Democrats'
steps with great interest. "Just the language that allows for the Democrats
to open up and even encourage people to run for office as a pro-life
candidate
is an enormously positive development for me," Mr. Brownback said, adding
that Naral's decision not to oppose his fetal-pain bill made him much more
optimistic
about its passage.
But abortion rights advocates warn of a bigger revolt within the party if
its members start compromising on new abortion restrictions like parental
notification
laws or the fetal-pain bill. Karen Pearl, interim president of Planned
Parenthood, said some of her allies were saying that "to the degree that the
Democrats
move away from choice, that could be the real birth of a third-party
movement."
But Ms. Pearl added, "When the day is done, I don't believe they will
backslide," in part because of the importance of abortion rights advocates
to the
party's base of activists and contributors.
In a New York Times poll last month, 36 percent of respondents said
abortions should be generally available, 35 percent said the procedure
should be available
but under stricter limits, and 26 percent said abortions should not be
permitted.
The financial balance sheet is much more one-sided. Single-issue abortion
rights groups gave over $1.4 million in the 2004 elections to candidates for
national
office, more than twice as much as the total from groups opposed to abortion
rights, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In addition,
Emily's
List raised $34 million for female candidates who support abortion rights,
according to the center. By comparison, the National Right to Life
Committee,
the largest donor opposed to abortion rights, raised about $1.7 million.
Senator Reid said that he welcomed the new "emphasis on recognizing the
diversity of the party." He added, "We have had a lot of pro-life Democrats,
but
the pro-choice folk haven't reached out to them and haven't protected them."
He acknowledged some complaints from abortion rights groups about the
party's shifting rhetoric. "They have to keep their folks geared up, just
like people
who work for more highways," Mr. Reid said. "That is what they do, just like
the pro-life groups."
Copyright 2005
Possted by Miriam V. 2/16
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