21 Administration Officials Involved In Plame Leak
The cast of administration characters with known connections to the outing of an undercover CIA agent:
Karl Rove
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby
Condoleezza Rice
Stephen Hadley
Andrew Card
Alberto Gonzales
Mary Matalin
Ari Fleischer
Susan Ralston
Israel Hernandez John Hannah
Scott McClellan
Dan Bartlett
Claire Buchan
Catherine Martin
Colin Powell
Karen Hughes
Adam Levine
Bob Joseph
Vice President Dick Cheney
President George W. Bush
Karl Rove
Senior Advisor to President Bush (2001-2005); Deputy White House Chief of Staff (2005-Present)
ADMINISTRATION, ROVE ORIGINALLY DENIED ANY INVOLVMENT IN THE LEAK: Asked on 9/29/03 whether he had “any knowledge” of the leak or whether he leaked the name of the CIA agent, Rove answered “no.” That same day, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, after having “spoken to Karl,” asserted that “it is a ridiculous suggestion” to say Rove was involved in the leak. In August 2004, Rove maintained, “I didn’t know her name and didn’t leak her name.” [ABC News, 9/29/03; White House Press Briefing, 9/29/03; RawStory; Newsweek, 7/11/05]
ROVE SPOKE WITH TIME REPORTER MATT COOPER: In a conversation with Time reporter Matt Cooper — a conversation that Rove insisted be kept on “deep background” — Rove instructed Cooper, “Don’t get too far out on Wilson.” Rove then identified Valerie Plame as “Wilson’s wife” who “works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction].” According to Cooper, his conversation with Karl Rove was the first time he had heard anything about Wilson’s wife. Additionally, Rove told Cooper that further information discrediting Wilson and his findings would soon be declassified and ended the phone conversation by saying “I’ve already said too much.” [Time, 7/25/05]
ROVE SPOKE WITH COLUMNIST ROBERT NOVAK: A week prior to publishing his column which outed undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, Robert Novak spoke with Karl Rove. In the 7/8/03 conversation with Rove, Novak brought up Plame’s role at the CIA, and Rove confirmed for the reporter that Plame worked at the CIA: “I heard that too,” said Rove. [NYT, 7/15/05]
TESTIFIED “TWO TO THREE TIMES” BEFORE THE GRAND JURY: In his testimony to the grand jury, Karl Rove reportedly admitted “that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding [Plame] with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists” and “is said to have named at least six other administration officials” who were involved. From Rove’s description of the administration’s efforts, sources characterized the actions as “an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.” [American Prospect, 3/8/04; Newsweek, 7/11/05]
MEMBER OF THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: Rove was a regular participant in the weekly meetings of the Bush Administration’s White House Iraq Group. The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. One clear example of this fact is that “the escalation of nuclear rhetoric” during the pre-war stage, “including the introduction of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ into the debate, coincided with the formation” of WHIG. The group included the other individual who has been confirmed as a leaker, Lewis Libby. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby
Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney (2001-Present)
CHENEY AND LIBBY PRESSURED CIA ON URANIUM: Cheney and Libby visited the CIA headquarters to engage the CIA analysts directly on this issue of uranium acquisition in Africa, “creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration’s policy objectives.” [Washington Post, 6/5/03]
LIBBY, ALONG WITH ROVE AND HADLEY, PREPARED TENET’S RESPONSE TO NIGER CRITICISMS: Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr., were helping to prepare what became the administration’s primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been included in Mr. Bush’s State of the Union address six months earlier. They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president’s political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet. [New York Times, 7/22/05]
LIBBY SPOKE TO JUDITH MILLER: “Two sources say Miller spoke with…Libby, during the key period in July 2003 that is the focus of Fitzgerald’s investigation. The two sources, one who is familiar with Libby’s version of events and the other with Miller’s, said the previously undisclosed conversation occurred a few days before Plame’s name appeared in Robert D. Novak’s syndicated column on July 14, 2003.” … “According to the appellate court’s opinion, Fitzgerald knows the identity of the person with whom Miller spoke and wants to question her about her contact with that ‘specified government official’ on or about July 6, 2003. Miller never wrote a story on the subject.” [Washington Post, 7/15/05 | Washington Post, 2/15/05]
LIBBY SPOKE TO WALTER PINCUS: “Pincus answered questions about Libby as well. Both he and Cooper said they did so with Libby’s approval, and both said that their conversations with Libby did not touch on the identity of Wilson’s wife.” [Washington Post, 9/15/04]
LIBBY SPOKE TO GLEN KESSLER: “Fitzgerald took a tape-recorded deposition that will be played to the grand jury from Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler. Kessler said he agreed to be interviewed, at the urging of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Cheney, about two telephone conversations he had with Libby. Kessler said he told the prosecutors that in conversations last July 12 and July 18, Libby did not mention Plame or Wilson.” [Washington Post, 6/24/04]
LIBBY SPOKE TO MATTHEW COOPER: Libby tells Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper that Dick Cheney had not been responsible for Wilson’s mission. Speaking on the record, Libby denies that Cheney knew about or played any role in the Wilson trip to Niger. Speaking on background, Cooper asks Libby if he had heard anything about Wilson’s wife sending her husband to Niger. Libby replies, “Yeah, I’ve heard that too.” [Time, 7/25/05]
WHITE HOUSE DENIES LIBBY INVOLVEMENT: During press briefing, Scott McClellan says of Libby and others that “they assured me that they were not involved” in “leaking classified information.” [White House, 10/10/03]
CHENEY ASKED ABOUT LIBBY BY PROSECUTORS: “Vice President Dick Cheney was recently interviewed by federal prosecutors who asked whether he knew of anyone at the White House who had improperly disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer.… Mr. Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby…. It was not clear how Mr. Cheney responded to the prosecutors’ questions.” [New York Times, 6/5/04]
LIBBY NOTES FREQUENTLY REFERRED TO BY PROSECUTORS: “One set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and national security adviser. Prosecutors have described the notes as ‘copious.’” [New York Times, 2/10/04]
LIBBY TESTIFIED BEFORE GRAND JURY, MAY HAVE MISLED: Libby told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned Plame’s identity from Tim Russert. Russert said in a statement last year that he told the prosecutor that “he did not know Ms. Plame’s name or that she was a CIA operative” and that he did not provide such information to Libby in July 2003. [Bloomberg, 7/22/05]
MEMBER OF THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: Libby was a regular participant in the weekly meetings of the Bush Administration’s White House Iraq Group. The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. One clear example of this fact is that “the escalation of nuclear rhetoric” during the pre-war stage, “including the introduction of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ into the debate, coincided with the formation” of WHIG. The group included the other individual who has been confirmed as a leaker, Karl Rove. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]
Condoleezza Rice
National Security Advisor (2001-2005); Secretary of State (2005-Present)
RICE WAS ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: Rice was one of several senior administration officials on a July 2003 flight to Africa, during which it was decided that she would appear on the Sunday shows to “protect Cheney by explaining that he had had nothing to do with sending Wilson to Niger, and dismiss the yellowcake issue.” [Newsweek, 7/17/05]
RICE RECEIVES TOP SECRET BRIEFING BOOK ON AFRICA TRIP: “To allow her to prepare on the long flight home to D.C., White House officials assembled a briefing book, which they faxed to the Bush entourage in Africa. The book was primarily prepared by her National Security Council staff. It contained classified information — perhaps including all or part of the memo from State. The entire binder was labeled TOP SECRET.” [Newsweek, 7/17/05]
RICE SAYS SHE LEARNED OF WILSON’S TRIP FROM ABC NEWS APPEARANCE: “…[O]n Ambassador Wilson’s going out to Niger, I learned of that when I was sitting on whatever TV show it was, because that mission was not known to anybody in the White House.” [State Department, 7/11/03]
RICE CLAIMS NO KNOWLEDGE OF LEAKS: “I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this. And it certainly would not be the way the president would expect his White House to operate.” [Fox News, 9/28/03]
RICE WAS MEMBER OF WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: MEMBER OF THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: Rice was a regular participant in the weekly meetings of the Bush Administration’s White House Iraq Group. The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. One clear example of this fact is that “the escalation of nuclear rhetoric” during the pre-war stage, “including the introduction of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ into the debate, coincided with the formation” of WHIG. The group included the two individual who have been confirmed as leakers, Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]
Stephen Hadley
Deputy National Security Advisor (2001-2005); National Security Advisor (2005-Present)
ROVE COMMUNICATED HIS COVERSATION WITH COOPER TO HADLEY: After Karl Rove spoke to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Joseph Wilson (according to Cooper, this was the first time he learned of Plame’s identity), Rove wrote Hadley an email. The July 11, 2003 email said: “Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he’s got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.” [Associated Press, 7/15/05]
HADLEY SEEN AS “EYES AND EARS” FOR CHENEY: In 1989, Hadley served as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy under then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Hadley admitted Cheney was “a factor” in his hiring as deputy national security adviser by President Bush in 2001. The Washington Post reported that some saw Hadley as Cheney’s “eyes and ears” at the NSC. [Washington Post, 7/25/01]
HADLEY WAS WARNED NOT TO CITE URANIUM EVIDENCE: Hadley briefed reporters on July 22, 2003 to explain why the bogus intelligence should have been excluded from Bush’s State of the Union. Hadley noted his receipt of a memorandum from the CIA, dated October 6, 2002, that explained why references to Iraq’s pursuit of uranium was dropped from Bush’s October 7 speech against Iraq. According to Hadley, the memo provided “some additional rationale for the removal of the uranium reference.” The memo described “some weakness in the evidence, the fact that the effort was not particularly significant to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already had a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory…This memorandum was received by the Situation Room here in the White House, and it was sent to both Dr. Rice and myself.” [Hadley/Bartlett Gaggle, 7/22/03]
HADLEY REVIEWED POWELL’S SPEECH TO U.N. WHICH DID NOT CONTAIN URANIUM REFERENCE: Prior to Powell’s speech, Condoleeza Rice’s deputy Stephen Hadley led “the White House effort to sift through the intelligence with the help of the CIA,” and tried “to determine what can be released without damaging the agency’s ability to gather similar information.” The uranium reference mentioned in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union just one week prior was deleted from Powell’s speech to the U.N. because Powell said it did not stand “the test of time.” [Washington Post, 1/30/03]
HADLEY COORDINATED WITH TENET ON TENET’S APOLOGY: The Washington Post reported, “Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to remain in Bush’s speech. As part of this effort, then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not think Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation.” [Washington Post, 7/27/05]
MEMBER OF THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: Hadley was a regular participant in the weekly meetings of the Bush Administration’s White House Iraq Group. The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. One clear example of this fact is that “the escalation of nuclear rhetoric” during the pre-war stage, “including the introduction of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ into the debate, coincided with the formation” of WHIG. The group included the two individual who have been confirmed as leakers, Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]
Andrew Card
White House Chief of Staff (2001-Present)
CARD GIVEN A 12 HOUR HEAD START ON THE INVESTIGATION: On September 29, 2003, the Department of Justice informed then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales that it was launching a criminal investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. Gonzales was instructed to notify the White House staff to preserve all documents related to the case. By his own admission, Gonzales didn’t comply with the request immediately; he went to Chief of Staff Andrew Card and told him that the White House staff would be told to preserve all documents related to the leak the following morning. As a result, Card had a 12-hour window to tip off White House staff about the request — an amount of time that “would give people time to shred documents and do any number of things.” [CBS, 7/24/05; Democracy Now; Fox News, 12/31/03]
CARD WAS ON AIR FORCE ONE: Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was on Air Force One accompanying President Bush on the July 2003 trip to Africa. A “senior State Department official confirmed that, while on the trip, Powell had a department intelligence report on whether Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.” The State Department memo in question — a “key piece of evidence in the CIA leak investigation” — stated that “Wilson’s wife had attended a meeting at the CIA where the decision was made to send Wilson to Niger.” The memorandum “contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked ‘(S)’ for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified…” [Newsweek, 8/9/04; Washington Post, 7/20/05, 7/20/05; Knight Ridder, 3/5/04]
INSTIGATED CONVERSATION BETWEEN TENET, BUSH ABOUT INVESTIGATION: Two days into the Justice Department investigation, Card initiated a conversation between President Bush and then-director of the CIA George Tenet about the leak investigation. Though Tenet was not planning on discussing the issue with the President at the daily intelligence briefing, it was Card who brought up the subject. [New York Times, 10/5/03]
MEMBER OF THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: Andrew Card was the founder and a “regular participant” in the weekly meetings of the Bush Administration’s White House Iraq Group. The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. One clear example of this fact is that “the escalation of nuclear rhetoric” during the pre-war stage, “including the introduction of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ into the debate, coincided with the formation” of WHIG. The group included the two individual who have been confirmed as leakers, Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]
Alberto Gonzales
Chief White House Counsel (2001-2005); Attorney General (2005-Present)
INTERVIEWED BY THE GRAND JURY: Gonzales testified in front of the Grand Jury about the Plame leak on June 18, 2004. [Washington Post, 6/19/04]
THE MISSING 12 HOURS: On 9/29/03, the Department of Justice informed White House counsel Alberto Gonzales that it was launching a criminal investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. Gonzales was instructed to notify the White House staff to preserve all documents related to the case. Gonzales, however, waited 12 hours before informing White House staff about the investigation. Instead, he told only Chief of Staff Andrew Card about the inquiry, in effect giving Card a 12-hour window to tip off White House staff, including Karl Rove, about the request. [Face the Nation, 7/24/05]
LEGAL ADVISER: After the Justice Department launched its investigation into the Plame leak, Gonzales was the chief advisor to White House staffers on complying with the investigation. He also acted as “gatekeeper,” invoking “executive privilege” in order to hold back certain sensitive White House documents from investigators. Gonzales personally spent days screening all requested documents before handing them over to investigators. [CBS, 10/7/03]
Mary Matalin
Senior Advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney (2001-2002)
WORKED CLOSELY VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Mary Matalin was senior advisor in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office at the time of the leak. While in the White House, she worked closely with Scooter Libby — the Vice President’s chief of staff who was one of Matt Cooper’s sources. [Washington Post, 2/3/01]
INTERVIEWED BY THE GRAND JURY: Matalin testified in front of the Grand Jury about the Plame leak on January 21, 2004. [Washington Post, 2/10/04]
MEMBER OF THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: Matlin was a regular participant in the weekly meetings of the Bush Administration’s White House Iraq Group. The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. One clear example of this fact is that “the escalation of nuclear rhetoric” during the pre-war stage, “including the introduction of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ into the debate, coincided with the formation” of WHIG. The group included the two individual who have been confirmed as leakers, Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]
Ari Fleischer
White House Press Secretary (2001-2003)
IN EARLY JULY, FLEISCHER READS MEMO ABOUT PLAME ON AIR FORCE ONE: “On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip.” [Bloomberg, 7/18/05]
FLEISCHER TOLD GRAND JURY HE NEVER SAW THE MEMO: “Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor’s admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.” [New York Times, 7/23/05]
FLEISCHER AMONG FIRST GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS TO CRITICIZE WILSON: Newsday reported, “In the subpoenaed July 12 [2003] transcript of a briefing in Nigeria, then-press secretary Ari Fleischer called Wilson a “lower-level official” and said Wilson had made flawed and incomplete statements.” The transcript of the briefing was pulled from the White House site but has since been restored. [Newsday, 3/6/04; White House, 7/12/03]
FLEISCHER TALKED TO NOVAK THE DAY AFTER HIS COLUMN WAS PUBLISHED: Fleischer’s “telephone log showed a call on the day after Mr. Wilson’s article appeared from Mr. Novak, the columnist who, on July 14, 2003, was the first to report Ms. Wilson’s identity.” [New York Times, 7/23/05]
FLEISCHER INTERVIEWED BY FBI ABOUT LEAK: [Washington Post, 2/10/04]
FLEISCHER A FOCUS OF FITZGERALD INVESTIGATION: “‘Ari’s name keeps popping up,’ said one source familiar with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s probe. Another source close to the probe added there is renewed interest in Fleischer, ‘based on Fitzgerald’s questions.’” [New York Daily News, 7/15/05]
Susan Ralston
Personal assistant to Karl Rove (2001-Present)
RALSTON IS ROVE’S RIGHT-HAND: ABC News reported on August 2, 2005 that Susan Ralston, Karl Rove’s long-time right-hand, testified before the grand jury. The National Journal reported, “If Karl Rove is Bush’s main man, then it’s Ralston who makes this White House go — because she’s indispensable to Rove.” According to Newsweek, Ralston was suggested to Rove by ethically-troubled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, for whom she previously served as a top aide. [ABC The Note, 8/2/05; Newsweek, 4/20/05; National Journal, 6/18/05]
Israel Hernandez
Personal assistant to President Bush (2001-2005)
ROVE AIDE HERNANDEZ TESTIFIED: ABC News reported on August 2, 2005 that Israel Hernandez, a Rove aide in July 2003 during the leak of Valerie Plame, testified before the grand jury. Hernandez was tapped as assistant secretary of commerce. [ABC The Note, 8/2/05; NY Daily News, 6/24/05]
John Hannah
Aide to Vice President Cheney
HANNAH A “MAJOR PLAYER” IN FITZGERALD PROBE: According to the UPI, “The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said. According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby were the two Cheney employees. ‘We believe that Hannah was the major player in this,’ one federal law enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president’s office were not returned. Hannah and Libby did not return calls. [UPI, 2/4/04]
FITZGERALD PRESSURING HANNAH TO NAME SUPERIORS: The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah ‘that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time,’ as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law enforcement official said.’” [UPI, 2/4/04]
Scott McClellan
Deputy White House Press Secretary (2001-2003); White House Press Secretary (2003-Present)
MCCLELLAN WAS NOT ON AFRICA TRIP: “Fleischer and Bartlett were with Bush on a July 7-12 trip to Africa just prior to publication of Novak’s column, and McClellan, then Fleischer’s deputy, was on vacation.” [Associated Press, 2/11/04]
MCCLELLAN SAID THE PRESIDENT “KNOWS” KARL WASN’T INVOLVED: “Q All right. Let me just follow up. You said this morning, ‘The President knows’ that Karl Rove wasn’t involved. How does he know that? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I’ve made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. I saw some comments this morning from the person who made that suggestion, backing away from that. And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it’s public knowledge. I’ve said that it’s not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove…” [White House, 9/29/03]
MCCLELLAN SAID THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE ANYONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE OR VICE PRESIDENT’S OFFICE WAS INVOLVED: “There’s been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement, and that includes the vice president’s office as well.” [White House, 9/29/03]
MCCLELLAN SAID IF ANYONE IN THE ADMINISTRATION WAS INVOLVED THEY’D BE FIRED: “If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.” [White House, 9/29/03]
MCCLELLAN SAID ROVE, LIBBY AND ABRAMS WERE NOT INVOLVED: “Q Scott, earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA? MR. McCLELLAN: Those individuals — I talked — I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that’s where it stands.” [White House, 10/10/03]
MCCLELLAN REFUSES TO COMMENT FURTHER BECAUSE “THE INVESTIGATION IS ONGOING”: Even though he made his previous comments while the investigation was ongoing. [White House, 7/11/05]
Dan Bartlett
White House Communications Director (2001-2005); Councelor to the President (2005-Present)
WAS ON AIR FORCE ONE: Bartlett was one of several senior administration officials on a July 2003 flight to Africa. During the trip, Bartlett gave a background briefing in which he urged reporters to look into the CIA’s sole in sending Joe Wilson to Niger. The briefing has not drawn “substantial interest” the prosecutor’s office recently. One source for a New York Times article on the subject said Prosecutor Fitzgerald knew about the briefing but was not pursuing it. A different source for the same article said the Mr. Bartlett did not see the State Department memo that was otherwise witnessed on the plane. [NYT, 7/27/05]
TESTIFIED BEFORE THE GRAND JURY: According to Anne Kornblut of the New York Times, citing “a person who has been briefed on the case,” Bartlett told investigators that “he did not know who Ms. Wilson was” when her name was leaked. Bartlett’s attorney has refused to discuss the case, citing requests by the special counsel. [[NYT, 7/27/05; Washington Post, 7/21/05]
HAS LONGSTANDING TIES TO KARL ROVE: Rove and Bartlett go way back, and the influence of the former still has a tendency to affect the later. As Newsweek reports: “Technically, Rove was in charge of politics, not ‘communications.’ But, as he saw it, the two were one and the same–and he used his heavyweight status to push the message machine run by his Texas protege and friend, Dan Bartlett.” [Newsweek July 25, 2005.] He has worked closely with both Bush and Rove since 1994, when he worked on Bush’s first successful campaign for governor. Before that, Bartlett was an employee of Karl Rove and associates, a political consulting firm established by Karl Rove after the 1980 primary defeat of George HW Bush against Ronald Reagan. [Link; White House]
CONTRADICTORY EXPLANATIONS OF 16 WORDS: In July of 2003, Bartlett, referring the infamous “16 words” in Bush’s State of the Union address, told reporters that “there was no debate or questions with regard to that line when it was signed off on.” The very same week Condoleeza Rice told reporters that there was “discussion on that specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the CIA thought.” [Washington Post, 7/15/03;=]
MEMBER OF THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: Bartlett was a regular participant in the weekly meetings of the Bush Administration’s White House Iraq Group. The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. One clear example of this fact is that “the escalation of nuclear rhetoric” during the pre-war stage, “including the introduction of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ into the debate, coincided with the formation” of WHIG. The group included the two individual who have been confirmed as leakers, Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]
Claire Buchan
Deputy Press Secretary (2001-2005)
ANNOUNCED THAT PRESIDENT BUSH HAD SPOKEN WITH A LAWYER REGARDING THE LEAK: On Wednesday, June 2, 2004, Buchan announced that Bush had consulted a lawyer, Jim Sharp, about the growing leak controversy. “The president has said that everyone should cooperate in this matter and that would include himself,” said Buchan at the time. [Associated Press, 6/2/04]
TESTIFIED BEFORE THE GRAND JURY: Buchan testified on February 6, 2004—the same day as Adam Levine, a former press office employee, and Scott McClellan. “I was pleased to cooperate,” said Buchan at the time. She has declined to reveal any details of her testimony. [Fox News, 2/11/04]
CLAIMED THAT NO WHITE HOUSE STAFF HAD BEEN ASKED TO SIGN WAIVERS: Despite the fact that the White House is “fully cooperating,” Buchan said that no one had been asked to sign a form waiving the right to privacy. White House officials said that privacy waivers were routinely sought from government employees in the course of investigations to find the sources of sensitive or classified information, even though the procedure was not widely known. [NYT, 1/3/04].
Catherine Martin
Assistant to the Vice President for Public Affairs (2001-2004)
DENIED THAT CHENEY HAD ANY KNOWLEDGE OF WILSON OR HIS REPORT: In response to claims that Joe Wilson had circulated his Niger report prior to the State of the Union Address, Martin denied that Cheney had any knowledge of it. “The vice president doesn’t know Joe Wilson and did not know about his trip until he read about it in the press,” said Martin. [The New Yorker, 10/20/03]
INTERVIEWED BY THE FBI: The FBI interviewed Martin about the leak. It is suspected, though uncertain, that Martin testified before the grand jury. [Newsday, 2/24/04; Washington Post, 11/26/04]
PROSECUTORS EXPRESS INTEREST IN CALLS MADE TO AND BY MARTIN: Prosecutors have reportedly asked about calls made to and from Martin’s cell phone in July of 2003. [NYT, 2/10/03]
CLAIMED IGNORANCE OF WHETHER OR NOT LIBBY HAD TALKED TO NOVAK: According to a Newsweek article, Martin denied knowledge of whether or not Scooter Libby had talked to columnist Bob Novak. “I don’t know the answer,” Martin said when asked about Scooter’s possibly involvement. Her response is considered part of a larger White House tactic to avoid answering such questions. [Newsweek, 10/8/03]
Colin Powell
Secretary of State (2001-2005)
WAS ON AIR FORCE ONE: Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was on Air Force One accompanying President Bush on the July 2003 trip to Africa. A “senior State Department official confirmed that, while on the trip, Powell had a department intelligence report on whether Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.” The State Department memo in question — a “key piece of evidence in the CIA leak investigation” — stated that “Wilson’s wife had attended a meeting at the CIA where the decision was made to send Wilson to Niger.” The memorandum “contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked ‘(S)’ for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified…” There are also indications that Fitzgerald subpoenaed phone records from Air Force One — where the memo was first seen by many administration officials — to “determine whether presidential aides used the aircraft’s phones to leak the name of a CIA employee to reporters.” [Newsweek, 8/9/04; Washington Post, 7/20/05; Knight Ridder, 3/5/04]
TESTIFIED BEFORE THE GRAND JURY: Though not a subject of the inquiry, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the federal grand jury on July 16, 2004. Powell’s appearance was seen “as the latest sign the probe being conducted by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald [was] highly active and broader than [had] been publicly known. Sources close to the case say prosecutors were interested in discussions Powell had while with President George W. Bush on a trip to Africa in July 2003, just before Plame’s identity was leaked to columnist Robert Novak.” Sources saw the decision to question Powell as indicative of “the thoroughness with which Fitzgerald is conducting the probe–and that knowledge about Plame was circulated at the highest levels of the administration.” [Newsweek, 8/9/04]
Karen Hughes
White House Aide (2001-2002); Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy (2005-Present)
INTERVIEWED BY THE FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: In the questionnaire for her confirmation proceedings, Karen Hughes listed that she had been interviewed by the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. [New York Times, 7/22/05]
DECRIED LEAK, DENIED ROVE’S INVOLVMENT: In her book, Ten Minutes From Normal, Hughes discussed the leak, calling it “wrong” and “unfair” to Bush. Hughes earlier said the leak was “disruptive to democracy.” In her book, she said whoever conducted the leak “should come forward and not hide behind journalistic ethics for his or her self-protection.” She added, “The use of unnamed sources has become a convenient way for too many political operatives to hide and avoid accountability for their statements.” Additionally, Hughes commented that she knew Rove wasn’t involved in the leak because “Karl has said he was not involved.” [Ten Minutes From Normal; POE News, 10/2/03]
INVOLVED IN DRAFTING 2003 STATE OF THE UNION WITH FALSE URANIUM CLAIM: In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush declared, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” It has been reported that Karen Hughes was “involved in drafting the speech.” She said her primary goal in the process was to answer: “Why is Saddam Hussein’s continued defiance a threat to our country and to peace in the world?” Intelligence from the CIA and the State Department at that time indicated Iraq was not attempting to acquire uranium from Niger. Furthermore, the inclusion of the false statement led to apologies from Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, Ari Fleischer, and George Tenet. Instead of addressing the allegations at the time they were made, Hughes defended the false intelligence and devised a communications strategy that questioned the motives of those who criticized the president. [President Bush, 1/28/03; The Houston Chronicle, 1/27/03; Baltimore Sun, 7/23/03; Washington Post, 7/20/05; MSNBC, 9/28/03; White House Press Briefing, 7/29/03; CNN, 7/11/03; USA Today, 3/14/02]
PREVIOUS HISTORY OF SMEARING WHITE HOUSE CRITICS: Hughes “was an advocate of the howitzer treatment” of the former Bush counter-terrorism chief and White House critic Richard Clarke. In an attempt to attack and smear the character of Richard Clarke, the White House released numerous pieces of information that were previously classified, including an email from Clarke to Condi Rice shortly after 9-11 and Clarke’s resignation letter. The White House also revealed Clarke to be the source of an anonymous background briefing he had done on behalf of the president. However, the White House refused Clarke’s request to declassify his correspondence with Rice prior to 9-11 about the threats that were being ignored. Hughes admitted on ABC’s 20/20 that she was involved in these efforts against Clarke: “I’m involved in White House discussions about those issues… I think, from personal knowledge, that many of the things he said are not true.” [New York Times, 3/28/04; CNN, 4/9/04; CNN, 3/4/04; ABC’s 20/20, 3/29/04]
MEMBER OF THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP: Hughes was a regular participant in the weekly meetings of the Bush Administration’s White House Iraq Group. The main purpose of the group was the systematic coordination of the “marketing” of going to war with Iraq as well as selling the war here at home. One clear example of this fact is that “the escalation of nuclear rhetoric” during the pre-war stage, “including the introduction of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ into the debate, coincided with the formation” of WHIG. The group included the two individual who have been confirmed as leakers, Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. [Washington Post, 8/10/03]
Adam Levine
Communications Aide (2001-2003)
LEVINE WAS ONE OF FEW PRESS AIDES TO SPEAK TO REPORTERS DURING AFRICA TRIP: “Levine was one of the few press officials at the White House to answer reporters’ calls [during the Africa trip].” [CNN, 2/10/04]
LEVINE AMONG THE FIRST WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS TO TESTIFY BEFORE GRAND JURY: Levine testified on February 6, 2004. “Levine’s testimony was described as ‘brief’ and non-combative, and followed several interviews with FBI agents. … The source said there were many questions about which reporters [Levine] and other senior officials talked to, suggesting investigators are trying to get as much information as possible from press officials, knowing the reporters are unlikely to talk.” [Newsday 2/24/04; CNN, 2/10/04]
LEVINE SAID TO TESTIFY ABOUT ‘WHITE HOUSE PROCEDURES’: “Dan French, former U.S. attorney for New York’s Northern District, and Don Kinsella, the district’s longtime criminal bureau chief, are representing a former White House press aide, Adam Levine… ‘The President of the United States has asked his staff to cooperate, and even though Levine’s no longer on the staff he’s adhering to the President’s request,’ French said. ‘He has been called to testify before the federal grand jury concerning his knowledge of White House procedures, in particular phone calls with reporters. He was called to testify and we represented him in those proceedings.’” [The Times Union (Albany, NY) 2/12/04]
LEVINE LEFT ADMINISTRATION IN DECEMBER ’03, BUT RELATIONSHIP CONTINUED: New York Times: “Levine left the Bush administration in December after working as the principal liaison between the White House and television networks.” Later, the Washington Post describes Levine as “a former White House aide who portrayed Russert in mock sessions with administration officials,” referring to White House prep for President Bush in advance of his Meet the Press appearance in early February ’04. [NYT, 2/10/04; Washington Post, 2/5/04]
Bob Joseph
Director for Nonproliferation at National Security Council (2001-2005); Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs (2005-Present)
JOSEPH SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR INCLUSION OF URANIUM CLAIM IN STATE OF THE UNION: The New York Times reported that senior intelligence officials said that Alan Foley, a C.I.A. expert on weapons of mass destruction, said “he was asked by Bob Joseph, the director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council, whether the president’s address could include a reference to Iraq’s seeking uranium from Niger.” [NYT, 7/18/03]
GUIDED THE W.M.D. ON IRAQ: Bob Joseph, “the senior director dealing with weapons of mass destruction, guided the process of building the case against Iraq” from the White House. Thus, it appears likely he would have seen the State Department memo that contained Plame’s identity. [Newsweek, 9/30/03]
Vice President Dick Cheney
CHENEY INTERVIEWED BY FEDERAL PROSECUTORS: “Vice President Dick Cheney was recently interviewed by federal prosecutors who asked whether he knew of anyone at the White House who had improperly disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer.… Mr. Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby…. In addition, those people said, Mr. Cheney was asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name the officer. It was not clear how Mr. Cheney responded to the prosecutors’ questions. … [Cheney] was not questioned under oath and he has not been asked to appear before the grand jury.” [NYT, 6/5/04]
CHENEY SEEMS TO BE THE COMMON DENOMINATOR: Four members of the Vice President’s staff — “Scooter” Libby, John Hannah, Mary Matalin, and Catherine Martin — have either been implicated in the leak or testified before the grand jury. In addition, Stephen Hadley worked under Cheney at the Defense Department and is considered by some to be his “eyes and ears” on the NSC staff. [Washington Post, 7/25/01]
CHENEY AND LIBBY PRESSURED CIA ON URANIUM: Cheney and Libby visited the CIA headquarters to engage the CIA analysts directly on this issue of uranium acquisition in Africa, “creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration’s policy objectives.” [Washington Post, 6/5/03]
President George W. Bush
WAS BUSH INVOLVED IN THE LEAK? In July 2005, the New York Times raised the possibility that Bush could be involved in the leak. “It is still not clear what the investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. operative’s identity will mean for President Bush. So far the disclosures about the involvement of Karl Rove, among others, have not exacted any substantial political price from the administration. And nobody has suggested that the investigation directly implicates the president. Yet Mr. Bush has yet to address some uncomfortable questions that he may not be able to evade indefinitely…There is the broader issue of whether Mr. Bush was aware of any effort by his aides to use the C.I.A. officer’s identity to undermine the standing of her husband, a former diplomat who had publicly accused the administration of twisting its prewar intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program.” [NYT, 7/24/05]
BUSH QUESTIONED BY FITZGERALD FOR OVER AN HOUR: On June 24, 2004, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and several of his assistants questioned the president for about 70 minutes in the Oval Office. Bush retained a private lawyer, Jim Sharp, for the interview. A prominent First Amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams, said “It’s hard to believe the special prosecutor would be burdening the president with an interview unless they had testimony to the effect that the president had information.” [Washington Post, 2/25/04]
STARR DEPUTY SAID BUSH INTERVIEW SUGGESTED HIGH-LEVEL INVOLVEMENT IN LEAK: The New York Daily News reported, “The Bush interview ‘indicates there’s obviously a belief that the leak was at a high level,’ said Sol Wisenberg, a former [Ken] Starr deputy who questioned Clinton. ‘The President usually doesn’t meet and knock around ideas with midlevel staffers.’” [New York Daily News, 6/25/04]
BUSH WAS ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE WITH THE STATE DEPARTMENT MEMO: A classified State Department report that contained Valerie Plame’s identity was sent to Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration officials who were aboard Air Force One with the president on July 7, 2003. The extent of the circulation of the memo is not known. [Washington Post, 7/21/05]
CLAIMED TO WANT TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THE LEAK: On September 29, 2003, a senior administration official told the Washington Post that Bush said, “I want to get to the bottom of this,” during a daily staff meeting which Karl Rove attended. [Washington Post 9/30/03]
BUSH TOLD TENET HE WOULD COOPERATE WITH THE INVESTIGATION: A conversation between the president and Tenet about the investigation did not consume, according to Andy Card, “any significant amount of time or discussion or angst. It was basically, ‘We’re cooperating, you’re cooperating, I’m glad to see the process is moving forward the way it should.’” [NYT, 10/4/03]
Friday, August 12, 2005
The 1% Split Over Estate Taxes
A Call To Action
washingtonpost.com
The Few at the Top of the Heap Disagree on How to Keep the Most
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 12, 2005; D01
The very rich and the merely rich are fighting over the fate of the estate tax.
So far, the very rich are winning.
Small-business owners -- the merely rich -- want to exempt from taxation inheritances of up to $10 million. The very rich -- people whose estates are worth tens of millions or even billions of dollars -- want instead to reduce the tax rate on assets passed on at death. A $10 million exemption isn't nearly enough for them.
To the pleasure of the very rich, the leading compromise in the Senate would drastically lower the top rate on inherited assets -- to 15 percent from 47 percent. But, to the chagrin of the merely rich, the exemption wouldn't come close to their demands.
Small businesses are irate. "We don't think that a compromise that leaves small business at the starting gate and takes care of the rich guys is a good thing," said Donald A. Danner, executive vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small-business owners. "Our members would be very upset."
Representatives of the very rich are much happier but are also girding for battle. "The other side is painting our people as extraordinarily rich," said John J. Motley III, senior vice president of the Food Marketing Institute, which represents many family-owned supermarket chains. "We plan our lobbying to get more intense."
This elite conflict has serious implications for average citizens as well: a sharp reduction in the estate tax would deprive the federal government of tens of billions of tax dollars each year. "Wealthy people will get tax cuts they don't need at the expense of important public services like food stamps and health care," said Matthew W. Gardner of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal research group.
Only a small number of people would benefit directly from a change. Of the 2.4 million adults who died in 2003, just 28,600 left estates that were liable for any tax, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. In other words, the levy fell on the richest 1.2 percent of Americans with the highest taxable estates.
Still, thanks to lobbying by the heirs of Wal-Mart stores, Mars candies and Campbell soup, the tax is close to becoming extinct. For nearly two decades, clusters of extremely wealthy people have campaigned to get rid of the tax on inheritances. NFIB, a Republican stalwart, joined the effort in the mid-1990s, bringing with it numerous small-business and farm groups.
Pressure from those powerful groups helped persuade President Bush to call for a repeal during his campaign in 2000. But budgetary constraints allowed him only a partial victory the next year. Bush signed into law a bill that eliminated the tax for one year only -- 2010. It will pop back to life in 2011 unless Congress acts to change it.
Hence the debate. The House voted in April to abolish the tax permanently. The Senate is scheduled to take up the matter during the week of Sept. 5.
Senators and lobbyists agree there aren't enough votes for complete repeal because of how much it would cost (about $75 billion a year between 2014 and 2024) and because of procedural obstacles that Democratic opponents are expected to erect. That has spurred negotiations to find a less expensive compromise.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who is leading the talks, has devised a basic outline for the compromise. Its heart is the 15-percent rate, which matches the rate applied to long-term capital gains -- the profits from the sale of property or securities. Kyl believes that a rate that low would prevent the fire sale of assets to pay inheritance.
"At 47 percent, the [estate] tax today is a great inhibitor to growth," Kyl said, "and is also a business-ending event."
But the Arizonan's focus on rates has disappointed small-business advocates who prefer a larger exemption and a smaller rate cut. "Some in the Senate are very anxious to find a compromise," Danner said. "But when you go down that path, you quickly get to rates versus the exemption. We'd like a $10 million exemption."
That size exemption would permit virtually all of NFIB's 600,000 members to escape the tax.
But owners of bigger businesses wouldn't be satisfied with a $10 million exemption. Many supermarket chains, beer wholesalers and auto dealerships are controlled by families and contend that they would still face huge taxes on assets they inherit unless they get extra relief.
"To me, the most important factor is the rate," said Seattle Times Publisher Frank A. Blethen, who is part of a coalition of very rich people who oppose the tax. "I'd like the exemption as high as possible but not if it sacrifices the rate."
Heirs to the $84 billion Wal-Mart fortune, for example, "would save billions of dollars in tax" with repeal or the Kyl compromise, said Michael J. Graetz, co-author of "Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inherited Wealth."
The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official tax scorekeeper, estimates that an estate tax compromise similar to Kyl's that sets the rate at 15 percent and the exemption at $3.5 million -- the same as current law mandates in 2009 -- would cost $53 billion in 2015, or about three-quarters of full repeal.
Clearly, however, the benefits would not be widespread. A new study by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that a $3.5 million exemption in 2000 would have forced a mere 94 family-owned businesses and 65 family farms to pay any estate tax -- which works out to 0.007 percent of adult deaths that year. Only 54 such enterprises would have had to liquidate assets to pay the taxes, the study added.
The estate tax repeal movement began in the late 1980s when Patricia Soldano, an estate planner in Southern California, teamed with Blethen to lobby Congress. Soldano was bankrolled by a handful of families with vast holdings, including the Mars family of McLean, who made millions from candy; Mrs. R.B. Davenport III of the Krystal hamburger fortune; and Dorrance H. "Dodo" Hamilton, a Campbell soup heiress.
Soldano joined the financial clout of her clients with the grass-roots muscle of small-business and farm groups that agreed that the fate of their family-owned enterprises were jeopardized by the tax.
But last year the very rich and the merely rich began to part ways. Persistently high budget deficits made permanent repeal look doubtful. So some of the wealthiest families turned to Aubrey A. Rothrock III, a lobbyist at Patton Boggs LLP, to promote a compromise that would permanently lower the rate and provide much-desired certainty for their estate planning.
Rothrock represented the Mars family, Wal-Mart heirs, the families that own Rich's prepared foods and Wegmans Food Markets, and Soldano's Policy and Taxation Group.
These very rich families had an advantage: access to politicians. Blethen has traveled to Washington frequently for meetings, including a "death tax summit" two months ago with Kyl, White House officials and potential Democratic supporters. Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television and an estate tax opponent, said he made his case to Bush personally on a July 15 flight to North Carolina, where the two appeared together at a public event.
The wealthy also have good relations with Democrats. Wegmans owners have courted Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and both Democratic senators from New Jersey have been visited by owners of Shoprite stores in their state.
Further complicating the search for compromise are the efforts of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting, whose members include estate planners who stand to lose a large piece of their livelihoods if the tax no longer looms at the end of life. The AALU hired two Democratic lobbyists, Jeff and Steve Richetti, who started an anti-repeal group called the Coalition for America's Priorities.
The coalition has run newspaper and television advertisements in the states of senators whose vote on the inheritance tax is up for grabs. One newspaper ad pictures a woman in an elegant gown and reads, "The last thing a rich heiress needs is a one trillion dollar raise in her allowance." The effort also is supported by nonprofit organizations, which fear that an end to the tax will dry up endowments that are often funded by inheritances.
"There's not only a social value that's at stake, there's a self-interest involved," conceded Gary Bass, chair of Americans for a Fair Estate Tax, which is backed by liberal groups and nonprofits.
The dispute could lead to stalemate, a result that some fans of repeal wouldn't mind. "There is absolutely nothing to be gained by settling the issue with compromise this year," said Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "One very viable option is to wait and try to elect more pro-repeal senators next November."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
The Few at the Top of the Heap Disagree on How to Keep the Most
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 12, 2005; D01
The very rich and the merely rich are fighting over the fate of the estate tax.
So far, the very rich are winning.
Small-business owners -- the merely rich -- want to exempt from taxation inheritances of up to $10 million. The very rich -- people whose estates are worth tens of millions or even billions of dollars -- want instead to reduce the tax rate on assets passed on at death. A $10 million exemption isn't nearly enough for them.
To the pleasure of the very rich, the leading compromise in the Senate would drastically lower the top rate on inherited assets -- to 15 percent from 47 percent. But, to the chagrin of the merely rich, the exemption wouldn't come close to their demands.
Small businesses are irate. "We don't think that a compromise that leaves small business at the starting gate and takes care of the rich guys is a good thing," said Donald A. Danner, executive vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small-business owners. "Our members would be very upset."
Representatives of the very rich are much happier but are also girding for battle. "The other side is painting our people as extraordinarily rich," said John J. Motley III, senior vice president of the Food Marketing Institute, which represents many family-owned supermarket chains. "We plan our lobbying to get more intense."
This elite conflict has serious implications for average citizens as well: a sharp reduction in the estate tax would deprive the federal government of tens of billions of tax dollars each year. "Wealthy people will get tax cuts they don't need at the expense of important public services like food stamps and health care," said Matthew W. Gardner of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal research group.
Only a small number of people would benefit directly from a change. Of the 2.4 million adults who died in 2003, just 28,600 left estates that were liable for any tax, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. In other words, the levy fell on the richest 1.2 percent of Americans with the highest taxable estates.
Still, thanks to lobbying by the heirs of Wal-Mart stores, Mars candies and Campbell soup, the tax is close to becoming extinct. For nearly two decades, clusters of extremely wealthy people have campaigned to get rid of the tax on inheritances. NFIB, a Republican stalwart, joined the effort in the mid-1990s, bringing with it numerous small-business and farm groups.
Pressure from those powerful groups helped persuade President Bush to call for a repeal during his campaign in 2000. But budgetary constraints allowed him only a partial victory the next year. Bush signed into law a bill that eliminated the tax for one year only -- 2010. It will pop back to life in 2011 unless Congress acts to change it.
Hence the debate. The House voted in April to abolish the tax permanently. The Senate is scheduled to take up the matter during the week of Sept. 5.
Senators and lobbyists agree there aren't enough votes for complete repeal because of how much it would cost (about $75 billion a year between 2014 and 2024) and because of procedural obstacles that Democratic opponents are expected to erect. That has spurred negotiations to find a less expensive compromise.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who is leading the talks, has devised a basic outline for the compromise. Its heart is the 15-percent rate, which matches the rate applied to long-term capital gains -- the profits from the sale of property or securities. Kyl believes that a rate that low would prevent the fire sale of assets to pay inheritance.
"At 47 percent, the [estate] tax today is a great inhibitor to growth," Kyl said, "and is also a business-ending event."
But the Arizonan's focus on rates has disappointed small-business advocates who prefer a larger exemption and a smaller rate cut. "Some in the Senate are very anxious to find a compromise," Danner said. "But when you go down that path, you quickly get to rates versus the exemption. We'd like a $10 million exemption."
That size exemption would permit virtually all of NFIB's 600,000 members to escape the tax.
But owners of bigger businesses wouldn't be satisfied with a $10 million exemption. Many supermarket chains, beer wholesalers and auto dealerships are controlled by families and contend that they would still face huge taxes on assets they inherit unless they get extra relief.
"To me, the most important factor is the rate," said Seattle Times Publisher Frank A. Blethen, who is part of a coalition of very rich people who oppose the tax. "I'd like the exemption as high as possible but not if it sacrifices the rate."
Heirs to the $84 billion Wal-Mart fortune, for example, "would save billions of dollars in tax" with repeal or the Kyl compromise, said Michael J. Graetz, co-author of "Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inherited Wealth."
The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's official tax scorekeeper, estimates that an estate tax compromise similar to Kyl's that sets the rate at 15 percent and the exemption at $3.5 million -- the same as current law mandates in 2009 -- would cost $53 billion in 2015, or about three-quarters of full repeal.
Clearly, however, the benefits would not be widespread. A new study by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that a $3.5 million exemption in 2000 would have forced a mere 94 family-owned businesses and 65 family farms to pay any estate tax -- which works out to 0.007 percent of adult deaths that year. Only 54 such enterprises would have had to liquidate assets to pay the taxes, the study added.
The estate tax repeal movement began in the late 1980s when Patricia Soldano, an estate planner in Southern California, teamed with Blethen to lobby Congress. Soldano was bankrolled by a handful of families with vast holdings, including the Mars family of McLean, who made millions from candy; Mrs. R.B. Davenport III of the Krystal hamburger fortune; and Dorrance H. "Dodo" Hamilton, a Campbell soup heiress.
Soldano joined the financial clout of her clients with the grass-roots muscle of small-business and farm groups that agreed that the fate of their family-owned enterprises were jeopardized by the tax.
But last year the very rich and the merely rich began to part ways. Persistently high budget deficits made permanent repeal look doubtful. So some of the wealthiest families turned to Aubrey A. Rothrock III, a lobbyist at Patton Boggs LLP, to promote a compromise that would permanently lower the rate and provide much-desired certainty for their estate planning.
Rothrock represented the Mars family, Wal-Mart heirs, the families that own Rich's prepared foods and Wegmans Food Markets, and Soldano's Policy and Taxation Group.
These very rich families had an advantage: access to politicians. Blethen has traveled to Washington frequently for meetings, including a "death tax summit" two months ago with Kyl, White House officials and potential Democratic supporters. Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television and an estate tax opponent, said he made his case to Bush personally on a July 15 flight to North Carolina, where the two appeared together at a public event.
The wealthy also have good relations with Democrats. Wegmans owners have courted Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and both Democratic senators from New Jersey have been visited by owners of Shoprite stores in their state.
Further complicating the search for compromise are the efforts of the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting, whose members include estate planners who stand to lose a large piece of their livelihoods if the tax no longer looms at the end of life. The AALU hired two Democratic lobbyists, Jeff and Steve Richetti, who started an anti-repeal group called the Coalition for America's Priorities.
The coalition has run newspaper and television advertisements in the states of senators whose vote on the inheritance tax is up for grabs. One newspaper ad pictures a woman in an elegant gown and reads, "The last thing a rich heiress needs is a one trillion dollar raise in her allowance." The effort also is supported by nonprofit organizations, which fear that an end to the tax will dry up endowments that are often funded by inheritances.
"There's not only a social value that's at stake, there's a self-interest involved," conceded Gary Bass, chair of Americans for a Fair Estate Tax, which is backed by liberal groups and nonprofits.
The dispute could lead to stalemate, a result that some fans of repeal wouldn't mind. "There is absolutely nothing to be gained by settling the issue with compromise this year," said Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "One very viable option is to wait and try to elect more pro-repeal senators next November."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
American Working Families - Miriam V
AM Feed - August 12, 2005
Hot Topics
List of 3 items
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committee, Americans for
a Republican Majority (ARMPAC) just can't stay out of hot water: Yesterday
an
audit released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) found that the PAC
failed to report more than $300,000 in debt, and could potentially have
spent
$203,000 from its soft money account to pay for political activities. That
last charge is especially serious because it violates campaign finance rules
that separate regulated "hard" money from unregulated "soft" money that can
be donated in much larger chunks. Using unregulated soft money for other
purposes
would give the group a wrongful advantage. DeLay attorney Don McGahn
scoffed, "Everything in this audit is accounting issues." Hey, so was Enron.
[link]
Disgraced super-lobbyist - and Rep. DeLay associate - Jack Abramoff was
formally indicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy yesterday in connection
with
a purchase of several casino boats five years ago. "Gus" Boulis, the Florida
businessman who originally owned the SunCruz casino boats, was killed in a
gang-style assassination. Abramoff and his business partner are accused of
faking a $23 million wire transfer and falsifying personal finance documents
to expedite the deal. Throughout the whole ordeal, Abramoff leaned heavily
on his political connections: He took members of DeLay's staff to the 2001
Super
Bowl in Tampa, and DeLay presented original SunCruz owner Boulis with a flag
that had been flown over the Capitol.
[link]
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced yesterday that the Defense
Department will hold a giant march and country music concert on September 11
to commemorate
the fourth anniversary of the attacks. The march, which will start at the
Pentagon and end at the National Mall, will be titled the "America Supports
You
Freedom Walk" and is intended to remind everyone of "the sacrifices of this
generation and of each previous generation." Of course, the subtext here is
that Rumsfeld is continuing the fine Bush administration tradition of
linking 9/11 to the current war in Iraq by any means necessary. "How about
telling
Mr. Rumsfeld to leave the memories of Sept. 11 victims to the families?"
said Monica Gabrielle, who lost her husband in the 9/11 attacks.
[link]
list end
Morning Snark
List of 1 items
We all know just how much effort the Bush administration puts into its PR
events. So the question is this: Will the Defense Department spend more or
less
time planning the America Supports You Freedom Walk than it did planning for
post-war Iraq?
list end
'Vanity Fair' Rips Media 'Conspiracy' in Covering Up Role in Plame Scandal
'Vanity Fair' Rips Media 'Conspiracy' in Covering Up Role in Plame Scandal
By Greg Mitchell
Published: August 11, 2005 9:00 PM ET
NEW YORKIn an article in the September issue of Vanity Fair (not yet online), Michael Wolff, in probing the Plame/CIA leak scandal, rips those in the news media -- principally Time magazine and The New York Times -- who knew that Karl Rove was one of the leakers but refused to expose what would have been “one of the biggest stories of the Bush years.” Not only that, “they helped cover it up.” You might say, he adds, they “became part of a conspiracy.”
If they had burned this unworthy source and exposed his “crime,” he adds, it would have been “of such consequences that it might, reasonably, have presaged the defeat of the president, might have even -- to be slightly melodramatic -- altered the course of the war in Iraq.” In doing so they showed they owed their greatest allegiance to the source, not their readers.
And their source was no Deep Throat, not someone with dirt on the government -- the source “was the government.”
So in the end, he concludes, “the greatest news organizations in the land had a story about a potential crime that reached as close as you can get to the president himself and they punted, they swallowed it, they self-dealt.” And why did they do it? Well, “a source is a source who, unrevealed, will continue to be a source.”
Even after the news first emerged last month that Rove had leaked to Cooper, the media still waited days to even ask the White House press secretary about it. It was a story, "in full view, the media just ignored."
The title of the Wolff article is "All Roads Lead to Rove."
Wolff mocks Time’s Matt Cooper and Norman Pearlstine and can’t seem to make heads or tails of “genuinely spooky” Robert Novak. He holds off full judgment on the Times’ jailed reporter Judith Miller, while noting the "baloney" she retailed for the White House. But he pointedly notes, concerning Miller, that reporters are born “blabbermouths” and even when they don’t write or print a certain story they are prone to “serve it up to everybody they know.”
He closes with a frontal blast at the media, many members of which will soon be exposed, he predicts, for having “lined up for these lies” spun by the White House.
By Greg Mitchell
Published: August 11, 2005 9:00 PM ET
NEW YORKIn an article in the September issue of Vanity Fair (not yet online), Michael Wolff, in probing the Plame/CIA leak scandal, rips those in the news media -- principally Time magazine and The New York Times -- who knew that Karl Rove was one of the leakers but refused to expose what would have been “one of the biggest stories of the Bush years.” Not only that, “they helped cover it up.” You might say, he adds, they “became part of a conspiracy.”
If they had burned this unworthy source and exposed his “crime,” he adds, it would have been “of such consequences that it might, reasonably, have presaged the defeat of the president, might have even -- to be slightly melodramatic -- altered the course of the war in Iraq.” In doing so they showed they owed their greatest allegiance to the source, not their readers.
And their source was no Deep Throat, not someone with dirt on the government -- the source “was the government.”
So in the end, he concludes, “the greatest news organizations in the land had a story about a potential crime that reached as close as you can get to the president himself and they punted, they swallowed it, they self-dealt.” And why did they do it? Well, “a source is a source who, unrevealed, will continue to be a source.”
Even after the news first emerged last month that Rove had leaked to Cooper, the media still waited days to even ask the White House press secretary about it. It was a story, "in full view, the media just ignored."
The title of the Wolff article is "All Roads Lead to Rove."
Wolff mocks Time’s Matt Cooper and Norman Pearlstine and can’t seem to make heads or tails of “genuinely spooky” Robert Novak. He holds off full judgment on the Times’ jailed reporter Judith Miller, while noting the "baloney" she retailed for the White House. But he pointedly notes, concerning Miller, that reporters are born “blabbermouths” and even when they don’t write or print a certain story they are prone to “serve it up to everybody they know.”
He closes with a frontal blast at the media, many members of which will soon be exposed, he predicts, for having “lined up for these lies” spun by the White House.
Terror's Greatest Recruitment Tool
lookout by Naomi Klein
Terror's Greatest Recruitment Tool
[from the August 29, 2005 issue]
Hussain Osman, one of the men alleged to have participated in London's failed bombings on July 21, recently told Italian investigators that they prepared for the attacks by watching "films on the war in Iraq," La Repubblica reported. "Especially those where women and children were being killed and exterminated by British and American soldiers...of widows, mothers and daughters that cry."
It has become an article of faith that Britain was vulnerable to terror because of its politically correct antiracism. Yet Osman's comments suggest that what propelled at least some of the bombers was rage at what they saw as extreme racism. And what else can we call the belief--so prevalent we barely notice it--that American and European lives are worth more than the lives of Arabs and Muslims, so much more that their deaths in Iraq are not even counted?
It's not the first time that this kind of raw inequality has bred extremism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian writer generally viewed as the intellectual architect of radical political Islam, had his ideological epiphany while studying in the United States. The puritanical scholar was shocked by Colorado's licentious women, it's true, but more significant was Qutb's encounter with what he later described as America's "evil and fanatic racial discrimination." By coincidence, Qutb arrived in the United States in 1948, the year of the creation of the State of Israel. He witnessed an America blind to the thousands of Palestinians being made permanent refugees by the Zionist project. For Qutb, it wasn't politics, it was an assault on his identity: Clearly Americans believed that Arab lives were worth far less than those of European Jews. According to Yvonne Haddad, a professor of history at Georgetown University, this experience "left Qutb with a bitterness he was never able to shake."
When Qutb returned to Egypt he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, leading to his next life-changing event: He was arrested, severely tortured and convicted of antigovernment conspiracy in an absurd show trial. Qutb's political theory was profoundly shaped by torture. Not only did he regard his torturers as sub-human, he stretched that categorization to include the entire state that ordered this brutality, including the practicing Muslims who passively lent their support to Nasser's regime.
Qutb's vast category of subhumans allowed his disciples to justify the killing of "infidels"--now practically everyone--in the name of Islam. A movement for an Islamic state was transformed into a violent ideology that would lay the intellectual groundwork for Al Qaeda. In other words, so-called Islamist terrorism was "home grown" in the West long before the July 7 attacks--from its inception it was the quintessentially modern progeny of Colorado's casual racism and Cairo's concentration camps.
Why is it worth digging up this history now? Because the twin sparks that ignited Qutb's world-changing rage are currently being doused with gasoline: Arabs and Muslims are being debased in torture chambers around the world and their deaths are being discounted in simultaneous colonial wars, at the same time that graphic digital evidence of these losses and humiliations is available to anyone with a computer. And once again, this lethal cocktail of racism and torture is burning through the veins of angry young men. As Qutb's past and Osman's present reveal, it's not our tolerance for multiculturalism that fuels terrorism; it's our tolerance for the barbarism committed in our name.
Into this explosive environment has stepped Tony Blair, determined to sell two of the main causes of terror as its cure. He intends to deport more Muslims to countries where they will likely face torture. And he will keep fighting wars in which soldiers don't know the names of the towns they are leveling. (According to an August 5 Knight Ridder report, a Marine sergeant in Iraq recently pumped up his squad by telling them that "these will be the good old days, when you brought...death and destruction to--what the fuck is this place called?" Someone piped in helpfully, "Haqlaniyah.")
Meanwhile, in Britain, there is no shortage of the "evil and fanatic racial discrimination" that Qutb denounced. "Of course too there have been isolated and unacceptable acts of a racial or religious hatred," Blair said before unveiling his terror-fighting plan. "But they have been isolated." Isolated? The Islamic Human Rights Commission received 320 complaints of racist attacks in the wake of the bombings; the Monitoring Group has received eighty-three emergency calls; Scotland Yard says hate crimes are up 600 percent from this time last year. Not that pre-July 7 was anything to brag about: "One in five of Britain's ethnic minority voters say that they considered leaving Britain because of racial intolerance," according to a Guardian poll in March.
This last statistic shows that the brand of multiculturalism practiced in Britain (and France, Germany, Canada...) has little to do with genuine equality. It is instead a Faustian bargain, struck between vote-seeking politicians and self-appointed community leaders, one that keeps ethnic minorities tucked away in state-funded peripheral ghettos while the centers of public life remain largely unaffected by the seismic shifts in the national ethnic makeup. Nothing exposes the shallowness of this alleged tolerance more than the speed with which Muslim communities are now being told to "get out" (to quote Tory MP Gerald Howarth) in the name of core national values.
The real problem is not too much multiculturalism but too little. If the diversity now ghettoized on the margins of Western societies--geographically and psychologically--were truly allowed to migrate to the centers, it might infuse public life in the West with a powerful new humanism. If we had deeply multi-ethnic societies, rather than shallow multicultural ones, it would be much more difficult for politicians to sign deportation orders sending Algerian asylum-seekers to torture, or to wage wars in which only the invaders' dead are counted. A society that truly lived its values of equality and human rights, at home and abroad, would have another benefit too. It would rob terrorists of what has always been their greatest recruitment tool: our racism.
Terror's Greatest Recruitment Tool
[from the August 29, 2005 issue]
Hussain Osman, one of the men alleged to have participated in London's failed bombings on July 21, recently told Italian investigators that they prepared for the attacks by watching "films on the war in Iraq," La Repubblica reported. "Especially those where women and children were being killed and exterminated by British and American soldiers...of widows, mothers and daughters that cry."
It has become an article of faith that Britain was vulnerable to terror because of its politically correct antiracism. Yet Osman's comments suggest that what propelled at least some of the bombers was rage at what they saw as extreme racism. And what else can we call the belief--so prevalent we barely notice it--that American and European lives are worth more than the lives of Arabs and Muslims, so much more that their deaths in Iraq are not even counted?
It's not the first time that this kind of raw inequality has bred extremism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian writer generally viewed as the intellectual architect of radical political Islam, had his ideological epiphany while studying in the United States. The puritanical scholar was shocked by Colorado's licentious women, it's true, but more significant was Qutb's encounter with what he later described as America's "evil and fanatic racial discrimination." By coincidence, Qutb arrived in the United States in 1948, the year of the creation of the State of Israel. He witnessed an America blind to the thousands of Palestinians being made permanent refugees by the Zionist project. For Qutb, it wasn't politics, it was an assault on his identity: Clearly Americans believed that Arab lives were worth far less than those of European Jews. According to Yvonne Haddad, a professor of history at Georgetown University, this experience "left Qutb with a bitterness he was never able to shake."
When Qutb returned to Egypt he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, leading to his next life-changing event: He was arrested, severely tortured and convicted of antigovernment conspiracy in an absurd show trial. Qutb's political theory was profoundly shaped by torture. Not only did he regard his torturers as sub-human, he stretched that categorization to include the entire state that ordered this brutality, including the practicing Muslims who passively lent their support to Nasser's regime.
Qutb's vast category of subhumans allowed his disciples to justify the killing of "infidels"--now practically everyone--in the name of Islam. A movement for an Islamic state was transformed into a violent ideology that would lay the intellectual groundwork for Al Qaeda. In other words, so-called Islamist terrorism was "home grown" in the West long before the July 7 attacks--from its inception it was the quintessentially modern progeny of Colorado's casual racism and Cairo's concentration camps.
Why is it worth digging up this history now? Because the twin sparks that ignited Qutb's world-changing rage are currently being doused with gasoline: Arabs and Muslims are being debased in torture chambers around the world and their deaths are being discounted in simultaneous colonial wars, at the same time that graphic digital evidence of these losses and humiliations is available to anyone with a computer. And once again, this lethal cocktail of racism and torture is burning through the veins of angry young men. As Qutb's past and Osman's present reveal, it's not our tolerance for multiculturalism that fuels terrorism; it's our tolerance for the barbarism committed in our name.
Into this explosive environment has stepped Tony Blair, determined to sell two of the main causes of terror as its cure. He intends to deport more Muslims to countries where they will likely face torture. And he will keep fighting wars in which soldiers don't know the names of the towns they are leveling. (According to an August 5 Knight Ridder report, a Marine sergeant in Iraq recently pumped up his squad by telling them that "these will be the good old days, when you brought...death and destruction to--what the fuck is this place called?" Someone piped in helpfully, "Haqlaniyah.")
Meanwhile, in Britain, there is no shortage of the "evil and fanatic racial discrimination" that Qutb denounced. "Of course too there have been isolated and unacceptable acts of a racial or religious hatred," Blair said before unveiling his terror-fighting plan. "But they have been isolated." Isolated? The Islamic Human Rights Commission received 320 complaints of racist attacks in the wake of the bombings; the Monitoring Group has received eighty-three emergency calls; Scotland Yard says hate crimes are up 600 percent from this time last year. Not that pre-July 7 was anything to brag about: "One in five of Britain's ethnic minority voters say that they considered leaving Britain because of racial intolerance," according to a Guardian poll in March.
This last statistic shows that the brand of multiculturalism practiced in Britain (and France, Germany, Canada...) has little to do with genuine equality. It is instead a Faustian bargain, struck between vote-seeking politicians and self-appointed community leaders, one that keeps ethnic minorities tucked away in state-funded peripheral ghettos while the centers of public life remain largely unaffected by the seismic shifts in the national ethnic makeup. Nothing exposes the shallowness of this alleged tolerance more than the speed with which Muslim communities are now being told to "get out" (to quote Tory MP Gerald Howarth) in the name of core national values.
The real problem is not too much multiculturalism but too little. If the diversity now ghettoized on the margins of Western societies--geographically and psychologically--were truly allowed to migrate to the centers, it might infuse public life in the West with a powerful new humanism. If we had deeply multi-ethnic societies, rather than shallow multicultural ones, it would be much more difficult for politicians to sign deportation orders sending Algerian asylum-seekers to torture, or to wage wars in which only the invaders' dead are counted. A society that truly lived its values of equality and human rights, at home and abroad, would have another benefit too. It would rob terrorists of what has always been their greatest recruitment tool: our racism.
Mother's Protest at Bush's Doorstep Raises the Stakes
Published on Thursday, August 11, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times
Mother's Protest at Bush's Doorstep Raises the Stakes
By Edwin Chen and Dana Calvo
CRAWFORD, Texas - For more than a year, a modest bungalow known as "Peace House," located a few miles from President Bush's ranch, has served as a headquarters for antiwar activists. It is lonely work, with little more than a skeleton crew on hand much of the time.
But then Cindy Sheehan hit town.
The 48-year-old mother of Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, who was killed in an ambush in Baghdad last year, is consumed by the kind of grief that turns into a furious determination to do something — in her case, to confront the president and force him to explain why her son died.
Now, in the space of just a few days, what started out as a seemingly quixotic personal mission has become something of a phenomenon — with media swarming around Sheehan, leading liberal and antiwar activists parachuting in to try to make her their long-sought voice, and political experts in both parties working to assess what role she may have in galvanizing the public's gathering unhappiness with the increasing American casualties in Iraq.
Antiwar leaders hope that putting the spotlight on Sheehan will motivate Americans who oppose the war, creating a political force strong enough to compel the Bush administration to change course.
MoveOn.org and other liberal groups have rushed to provide support, offering media expertise and attempting to assemble a corps of others who have lost relatives in Iraq or have family members serving there.
Liberal voices have swung into action on the Internet as well. On Wednesday, Democratic media consultant Joe Trippi organized a conference call with Sheehan for bloggers, aiming to garner more publicity. By Wednesday afternoon, "Cindy Sheehan" was the top-ranked search term on Technorati.com, the search engine for blog postings.
The White House, meanwhile, has sought to cope with Sheehan's vigil without abandoning its strategy for dealing with the families of troops who have died. On a number of occasions, Bush has met with bereaved relatives — including some who have challenged him sharply on the war — but he has done so privately, away from news cameras and reporters.
Sheehan, a Vacaville, Calif., resident who opposed the war even before her son's death, was a member of one such group in June 2004. She came away from that meeting dissatisfied and angry.
"We wanted [the president] to look at pictures of Casey, we wanted him to hear stories about Casey, and he wouldn't. He changed the subject every time we tried," Sheehan said. "He wouldn't say Casey's name, called him: 'your loved one.' "
Sheehan, a co-founder of the antiwar group Gold Star Families for Peace, has said she would remain in Crawford until she got to see Bush face to face.
Until a cloudburst forced her to move to Peace House early Wednesday morning, Sheehan had been camping in a tent along a road about two miles from Bush's Prairie Chapel Ranch. On Saturday, the day she arrived in Crawford, two senior White House aides — national security advisor Stephen Hadley and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin — left the ranch to meet with her on a dusty road for 45 minutes.
That, she said, was not satisfactory.
By Wednesday night, Sheehan had given so many interviews that she was sucking on lozenges to soothe an inflamed throat. Her ears were sore from cradling a telephone. Her media advisor, newly arrived from San Francisco, said Sheehan had developed a fever.
None of that stopped her. Whether talking to newspaper reporters, People magazine or radio and television interviewers — some from as far away as Japan — she was relentlessly on message.
"I don't believe his phony excuses for the war," she said of Bush in an interview with a CBS reporter for the network's Northern California affiliates. "I want him to tell me why my son died.
"If he gave the real answer, people in this country would be outraged — if he told people it was to make his buddies rich, that it was about oil."
Sheehan is certainly not the first to denounce the president over the war. From the beginning, activists have been outspoken in criticizing Bush's policy and his stated reasons for sending U.S. troops into Iraq.
For the moment however, the personal nature of Sheehan's protest — with its edge of raw emotion — and the concentration of news media staked out in Crawford, where Bush is spending much of August, have combined to raise her voice above the crowd.
"Anything that focuses media and public attention on Iraq war casualties day after day — particularly [something] that is a good visual for television, like a weeping Gold Star mother — is a really bad thing for President Bush and his administration," said independent political analyst Charlie Cook.
"Americans get a little numb by the numbers of war casualties, but when faces, names and families are added, it has a much greater effect," he said.
"Cindy Sheehan has tapped into a latent but fervent feeling among some in this country who would prefer that we not engage our troops in Iraq," said Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, president of the Polling Company, based in Washington.
"She can tap into what has been an astonishingly silent minority since the end of last year's presidential contest. It will capture attention."
But other analysts predicted that Sheehan would soon fade from the scene.
"The president has an Iraq problem, but I don't think it's much worsened by Mrs. Sheehan," said professor Stephen Hess of George Washington University. "One Gold Star mother is a sympathetic figure, but collectively — as Gold Star Families for Peace — she is a movement and, as such, can be countered by a countermovement.
"I think the president might have defused the situation if he had invited her in instantly," Hess said, predicting that GOP strategists would soon mount a counterattack.
Already, there were signs of just that.
Some have suggested that Sheehan is disloyal to criticize the president in time of war. Even in Vacaville, Sheehan said, some people say she is shaming her son's memory. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin disdainfully called the activists promoting Sheehan "grief pimps."
The antiwar activists who have rushed to Sheehan's side are all too well aware of the danger that her moment in the spotlight could become just another partisan shouting match.
Said Tom Matzzie of MoveOn.org: "Cindy reached out to us. We're e-mailing our members about her story today, running a print ad in Waco [Texas]. Cindy is a morally pure voice on the war, so we're trying to keep the focus on her and not jump in and turn it into a political fight."
Since Sheehan arrived in Crawford, Peace House has been transformed into a beehive.
On the porch, bottles of water — and a huge box of collapsible pink umbrellas — were waiting Wednesday to be ferried out to "Camp Casey," the muddy staging area along Prairie Chapel Road where Sheehan and about 100 of her supporters were gathered.
On a table in the living room were stacks of white T-shirts that read "BUSH … Talk to Cindy! Moms and Vets Will Stop the War!"
In the tiny kitchen, two women busily chopped carrots and celery as they prepared to feed a growing cadre of activists. Other volunteers talked on their cellphones, coordinating with supporters around the country.
There was much speculation about "other moms" and parents of troops serving in the war coming to join Sheehan, although no one seemed to know for certain. "A busload is coming from Seattle," one woman called out.
Stephanie Frizzell, 30, said she drove from Dallas with her son, Julian, 4, "to provide support for Cindy." They met last weekend at a Dallas convention of veterans for peace.
According to Ann Wright, who identified herself as a former U.S. diplomat who resigned to protest the war, Sheehan seemed to make a spontaneous decision to come to Crawford while she was addressing the convention Friday.
Wright said many hands were raised, offering to join her mission.
As Sheehan put it Wednesday: "I just had the right idea in the right place at the right time."
© 2005 Los Angeles Times Company
A Call To Action
A Call To Action
The above link will take you to a web site called Odeo where you can hear audio interviews and other materials.
On this link Forum welcomes author Larry Diamond to discuss his new book “Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.
The above link will take you to a web site called Odeo where you can hear audio interviews and other materials.
On this link Forum welcomes author Larry Diamond to discuss his new book “Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.
In Iraq, No Clear Finish Line
A Call To Action
washingtonpost.com
Timing Is Muddy For U.S. Pullout
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A01
The Bush administration has sent seemingly conflicting signals in recent days over the duration of the U.S. deployment to Iraq, openly discussing contingency plans to withdraw as many as 30,000 of 138,000 troops by spring, then cautioning against expectations of any early pullout. Finally yesterday, President Bush dismissed talk of a drawdown as just "speculation and rumors" and warned against "withdrawing before the mission is complete."
If the public was left confused, it may be no more unsure than the administration itself, as some government officials involved in Iraq policy privately acknowledge.
The shifting scenarios reflect the uncertain nature of the mission and the ambiguity of what would constitute its successful completion. For all the clarity of Bush's vow to stay not one day longer than needed, the muddled reality is that no one can say exactly when that will be.
The events of the past week have brought home once again the difficulties confronting the president as he prosecutes what polls suggest is an increasingly unpopular war. With surging violence claiming more U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq and the angry mother of a dead soldier camping out near his ranch in Texas, Bush plainly cannot count on indefinite public patience.
Administration officials have all but given up any hope of militarily defeating the insurgents with U.S. forces, instead aiming only to train and equip enough Iraqi security forces to take over the fight themselves. At the same time, they believe that the mission depends on building a new political infrastructure, a project facing its most decisive test in the next three days as deeply divided Iraqis struggle to draft a constitution by a Monday deadline.
In the face of all that, Bush is trying to buy time. After meeting with his national security team at his ranch near Crawford, Tex., yesterday, Bush again beseeched the public to stick with his strategy despite continuing mayhem on the ground, exemplified most recently by the deaths of 16 Marines from the same Ohio-based unit in the past two weeks. Overall, nearly 1,850 U.S. troops have died.
"The mission in Iraq is tough because the enemy understands the stakes," Bush said, alongside Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will deliver a serious blow to their hateful ideology. . . . The recent violence in Iraq is a grim reminder of the brutal enemies we face in the war on terror."
Much of the public appears unconvinced. Just 38 percent of Americans in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll last week approved of Bush's handling of the war, the lowest point yet in that survey. More than half of those interviewed in a USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll said they now believe that it was a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq and that the war has made the United States less safe from terrorism; 56 percent supported withdrawing some or all troops now.
That disenchantment is one reason, some officials privately acknowledge, that the military has begun talking about a potential timetable for partial withdrawal -- to provide a sense of progress and reassure Americans that the deployment is not endless.
"They want to start withdrawing because they can feel the heat here in the United States," said Larry Diamond, a onetime U.S. adviser in Iraq who has since written "Squandered Victory," a scathing appraisal of the postwar occupation. "They know the tolerance for American casualties and this ongoing bloodshed is not going to go on forever."
Pentagon plans call for increasing the 17-brigade U.S. troop presence this fall by a brigade or two, or about 10,000 troops, before bringing it down to about 15 brigades next spring and possibly to about 12 brigades by the end of 2006, according to officers familiar with the planning. The near-term increase would cover the constitutional referendum scheduled for Oct. 15 and national elections set for Dec. 15, a period in which U.S. military authorities expect violence to intensify, much as it did during the run-up to January's interim elections.
Top Pentagon officials have made no secret in recent weeks of their eagerness to begin withdrawing some troops to ease the strain of lengthy deployments. At the same time, military commanders have cautioned against expecting that Iraq's new army and police forces will develop quickly enough to operate on their own within another year or two.
"It's a race against time because by the end of this coming summer we can no longer sustain the presence we have now," said retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who visited Iraq most recently in June and briefed Cheney, Rice and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This thing, the wheels are coming off it."
McCaffrey said Bush's strategy of building Iraqi political and security institutions makes sense, and he estimated an 80 percent chance of success. Even so, he said the fading public support represents a genuine hazard for the president: "We want to get out of this. . . . The American people are walking away from this war."
At his meeting with his war cabinet yesterday, Bush reviewed the latest developments but reported no new direction. The administration has set up seven interagency groups focused on its main priorities in Iraq.
These are providing security and training Iraqi forces, building national political institutions, restoring energy and other services, tackling economic problems, establishing rule of law, enlisting international help, and improving strategic communications.
In not-for-attribution comments, some administration officials acknowledge the uphill task. One option that will have to be considered eventually, they say, is amnesty that would forgive even insurgents who have participated in violence. Historically, they note, insurgencies end with some form of amnesty.
But they also see hope in recent developments, mainly the decision by leaders of Iraq's minority Sunnis to participate in the political process instead of continuing to resist the new ruling order. If Iraqis succeed in drafting a constitution by Monday's deadline, the White House hopes it will defuse sectarian grievances that have powered the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
"We're entering a critical phase in the political process in Iraq," Bush counselor Dan Bartlett said. "While there's rightly a lot of focus on the violence and the security, the commanders and Ambassador [Zalmay] Khalilzad are very focused on the political process because the political process will be key to defeating the insurgency."
That remains a daunting prospect given deep-seated differences along ethnic and religious lines, and the administration has signaled that it is willing to take a deal on a constitution without resolving some tough issues involving regional autonomy and resource allocation in hopes of sustaining a sense of momentum.
"The administration understands how delicate this is," said Peter Khalil, who was an adviser to the original U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq. "They're obviously pushing the process forward and want the deadline met. But it's a dangerous game here. You don't want them to delay, but you want the process to work."
Failure to meet the deadline, analysts say, would be a devastating setback to Bush and could accelerate the sense at home that the process is not going well. Alarmed by falling domestic support for the war, Bush aides resolved in June to rally the public by having the president take a more visible role explaining his strategy and predicting victory. Bush flew to Fort Bragg, N.C., to deliver a prime-time address pleading for patience, part of what aides said would be a sustained campaign.
But Bush then largely dropped the subject until yesterday's meeting at the ranch, addressing the war mainly in reaction to the latest grisly events on the ground. In the ensuing vacuum, Rumsfeld and the U.S. effort in Iraq have come under increasing fire even from Bush supporters, such as Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and the American Spectator magazine.
"The Bush administration has lost control of its public affairs management of this issue," said Christopher F. Gelpi, a Duke University scholar whose analyses of wartime public opinion have been studied in the White House. "They were so focused on this through 2004. . . . I don't know why they've slipped."
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
Timing Is Muddy For U.S. Pullout
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A01
The Bush administration has sent seemingly conflicting signals in recent days over the duration of the U.S. deployment to Iraq, openly discussing contingency plans to withdraw as many as 30,000 of 138,000 troops by spring, then cautioning against expectations of any early pullout. Finally yesterday, President Bush dismissed talk of a drawdown as just "speculation and rumors" and warned against "withdrawing before the mission is complete."
If the public was left confused, it may be no more unsure than the administration itself, as some government officials involved in Iraq policy privately acknowledge.
The shifting scenarios reflect the uncertain nature of the mission and the ambiguity of what would constitute its successful completion. For all the clarity of Bush's vow to stay not one day longer than needed, the muddled reality is that no one can say exactly when that will be.
The events of the past week have brought home once again the difficulties confronting the president as he prosecutes what polls suggest is an increasingly unpopular war. With surging violence claiming more U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq and the angry mother of a dead soldier camping out near his ranch in Texas, Bush plainly cannot count on indefinite public patience.
Administration officials have all but given up any hope of militarily defeating the insurgents with U.S. forces, instead aiming only to train and equip enough Iraqi security forces to take over the fight themselves. At the same time, they believe that the mission depends on building a new political infrastructure, a project facing its most decisive test in the next three days as deeply divided Iraqis struggle to draft a constitution by a Monday deadline.
In the face of all that, Bush is trying to buy time. After meeting with his national security team at his ranch near Crawford, Tex., yesterday, Bush again beseeched the public to stick with his strategy despite continuing mayhem on the ground, exemplified most recently by the deaths of 16 Marines from the same Ohio-based unit in the past two weeks. Overall, nearly 1,850 U.S. troops have died.
"The mission in Iraq is tough because the enemy understands the stakes," Bush said, alongside Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will deliver a serious blow to their hateful ideology. . . . The recent violence in Iraq is a grim reminder of the brutal enemies we face in the war on terror."
Much of the public appears unconvinced. Just 38 percent of Americans in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll last week approved of Bush's handling of the war, the lowest point yet in that survey. More than half of those interviewed in a USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll said they now believe that it was a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq and that the war has made the United States less safe from terrorism; 56 percent supported withdrawing some or all troops now.
That disenchantment is one reason, some officials privately acknowledge, that the military has begun talking about a potential timetable for partial withdrawal -- to provide a sense of progress and reassure Americans that the deployment is not endless.
"They want to start withdrawing because they can feel the heat here in the United States," said Larry Diamond, a onetime U.S. adviser in Iraq who has since written "Squandered Victory," a scathing appraisal of the postwar occupation. "They know the tolerance for American casualties and this ongoing bloodshed is not going to go on forever."
Pentagon plans call for increasing the 17-brigade U.S. troop presence this fall by a brigade or two, or about 10,000 troops, before bringing it down to about 15 brigades next spring and possibly to about 12 brigades by the end of 2006, according to officers familiar with the planning. The near-term increase would cover the constitutional referendum scheduled for Oct. 15 and national elections set for Dec. 15, a period in which U.S. military authorities expect violence to intensify, much as it did during the run-up to January's interim elections.
Top Pentagon officials have made no secret in recent weeks of their eagerness to begin withdrawing some troops to ease the strain of lengthy deployments. At the same time, military commanders have cautioned against expecting that Iraq's new army and police forces will develop quickly enough to operate on their own within another year or two.
"It's a race against time because by the end of this coming summer we can no longer sustain the presence we have now," said retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who visited Iraq most recently in June and briefed Cheney, Rice and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This thing, the wheels are coming off it."
McCaffrey said Bush's strategy of building Iraqi political and security institutions makes sense, and he estimated an 80 percent chance of success. Even so, he said the fading public support represents a genuine hazard for the president: "We want to get out of this. . . . The American people are walking away from this war."
At his meeting with his war cabinet yesterday, Bush reviewed the latest developments but reported no new direction. The administration has set up seven interagency groups focused on its main priorities in Iraq.
These are providing security and training Iraqi forces, building national political institutions, restoring energy and other services, tackling economic problems, establishing rule of law, enlisting international help, and improving strategic communications.
In not-for-attribution comments, some administration officials acknowledge the uphill task. One option that will have to be considered eventually, they say, is amnesty that would forgive even insurgents who have participated in violence. Historically, they note, insurgencies end with some form of amnesty.
But they also see hope in recent developments, mainly the decision by leaders of Iraq's minority Sunnis to participate in the political process instead of continuing to resist the new ruling order. If Iraqis succeed in drafting a constitution by Monday's deadline, the White House hopes it will defuse sectarian grievances that have powered the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
"We're entering a critical phase in the political process in Iraq," Bush counselor Dan Bartlett said. "While there's rightly a lot of focus on the violence and the security, the commanders and Ambassador [Zalmay] Khalilzad are very focused on the political process because the political process will be key to defeating the insurgency."
That remains a daunting prospect given deep-seated differences along ethnic and religious lines, and the administration has signaled that it is willing to take a deal on a constitution without resolving some tough issues involving regional autonomy and resource allocation in hopes of sustaining a sense of momentum.
"The administration understands how delicate this is," said Peter Khalil, who was an adviser to the original U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq. "They're obviously pushing the process forward and want the deadline met. But it's a dangerous game here. You don't want them to delay, but you want the process to work."
Failure to meet the deadline, analysts say, would be a devastating setback to Bush and could accelerate the sense at home that the process is not going well. Alarmed by falling domestic support for the war, Bush aides resolved in June to rally the public by having the president take a more visible role explaining his strategy and predicting victory. Bush flew to Fort Bragg, N.C., to deliver a prime-time address pleading for patience, part of what aides said would be a sustained campaign.
But Bush then largely dropped the subject until yesterday's meeting at the ranch, addressing the war mainly in reaction to the latest grisly events on the ground. In the ensuing vacuum, Rumsfeld and the U.S. effort in Iraq have come under increasing fire even from Bush supporters, such as Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and the American Spectator magazine.
"The Bush administration has lost control of its public affairs management of this issue," said Christopher F. Gelpi, a Duke University scholar whose analyses of wartime public opinion have been studied in the White House. "They were so focused on this through 2004. . . . I don't know why they've slipped."
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
City to Release Oral Histories of 9/11 Friday
A Call To Action
The New York Times
August 12, 2005
By JIM DWYER
A rich vein of city records from Sept. 11, including more than 12,000 pages of oral histories rendered in the voices of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, will be made public today.
The histories - a mosaic of vision and memory recalling the human struggle against surging fire, confusion, and horror - were compiled by the New York City Fire Department beginning in October 2001, but to this date, no one from the department has read them all or used them for any official purpose.
The city has announced that it will also release today a written log of calls to the 911 system, many from trapped office workers, as well as tapes of fire dispatchers. Other records, including tapes of 911 operators, are being assembled and are not yet ready for release, city officials said.
The New York Times sought the records under the freedom of information law in February 2002, but the Bloomberg administration refused to make them public and the newspaper sued the city. Earlier this year, the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, ordered the city to release most, but not all, of the records.
Over the last three and half years, The Times has obtained some of these records through unofficial channels, and they can be found on the Web at www.nytimes.com/sept11. These include the dispatch tapes, nearly 100 of the Fire Department oral histories, and a log of calls to Emergency Medical Service dispatchers that were channeled through the 911 system.
A group of families of people who died in the attack intervened in the suit brought by The Times, also urging release of the records. One of those family members, Rosaleen Tallon, noted that Zacarias Moussaoui, an admitted member of Al Qaeda who is accused of plotting with the Sept. 11 hijackers, long ago obtained the same documents in preparation for his criminal trial that were being denied to her and other families by the Bloomberg administration. The city also initially refused access to the records to investigators from both the 9/11 Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but relented when legal action was threatened.
In the Fire Department accounts, the testimony of many fire officers and firefighters was both moving and blunt. When the accounts obtained by The Times were made public, they opened a new dimension to the discussions about fire operations that day and pointedly raised questions about whether some of the department's deaths might have been avoided.
In the histories, the firefighters recalled losing touch with one another that morning and being unable to deliver or hear warnings about the imminent collapse of the towers. They described the physical toll of climbing 20 and 30 flights of stairs, laden with gear and outfits that weighed nearly 100 pounds. They included descriptions of a loss of command of the firefighters going up the stairs, the lack of communication between the police and fire departments, and the small measures by which people survived or died.
The accounts include such serendipities as an aide to a chief, who stood by his side in the lobby of the south tower at the Trade Center site, then left for the adjoining hotel to use a bathroom. Shortly after he left, the south tower collapsed, killing everyone inside.
For all their power, the oral histories are individual narratives, the accounts of men and women who saw the day, at times yards from death. They were originally gathered on the order of Thomas Von Essen, the city fire commissioner on Sept. 11, who said he wanted to preserve those accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory. He was succeeded as commissioner in January 2002 by Nicholas Scoppetta. Some of the oral histories were reviewed, but not all, a spokesman for Mr. Scoppetta said last night. Mr. Scoppetta declined to be interviewed.
Sally Regenhard, the mother of Christian Regenhard, a firefighter killed that day with his engine company, had been one of those who joined the suit for the release of the records, in hope that the oral histories might provide some clue on where her son had been.
"It has been almost four years, and I've been waiting for any information on my son," Mrs. Regenhard said. "He disappeared that day with his entire engine company. No one can tell me what happened to him - not even the smallest detail."
Early in his administration, Mr. Scoppetta refused to release the oral histories because he said he had been advised by federal prosecutors that their publication might impede the prosecution of Mr. Moussaoui. The department also advanced the position in court that the firefighters who had provided the oral histories did so with specific promises of confidentiality.
The department withdrew that claim. Mr. Scoppetta later found little support from federal prosecutors, judges, or defense lawyers for the position that Mr. Moussaoui's right to a fair trial would be hampered by publishing the recollections of firefighters or paramedics.
The city found more success in another line of argument: that release of certain records would violate the privacy of the dead, or cause emotional distress to the living. The Court of Appeals allowed the oral histories to be edited under a limited set of circumstances. It also refused to order the city to release all of the 911 tapes, saying that the callers' voices should not be made public. The other half of the conversations, involving the operators who spoke with the callers, will eventually be made public.
"We're gratified that it's finally being done," said David E. McCraw, a lawyer for The Times. "We believe it should have been done a long time ago. We believe the public is ultimately the beneficiary. We hope the city will move quickly to release the 911 tapes."
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
August 12, 2005
By JIM DWYER
A rich vein of city records from Sept. 11, including more than 12,000 pages of oral histories rendered in the voices of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians, will be made public today.
The histories - a mosaic of vision and memory recalling the human struggle against surging fire, confusion, and horror - were compiled by the New York City Fire Department beginning in October 2001, but to this date, no one from the department has read them all or used them for any official purpose.
The city has announced that it will also release today a written log of calls to the 911 system, many from trapped office workers, as well as tapes of fire dispatchers. Other records, including tapes of 911 operators, are being assembled and are not yet ready for release, city officials said.
The New York Times sought the records under the freedom of information law in February 2002, but the Bloomberg administration refused to make them public and the newspaper sued the city. Earlier this year, the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, ordered the city to release most, but not all, of the records.
Over the last three and half years, The Times has obtained some of these records through unofficial channels, and they can be found on the Web at www.nytimes.com/sept11. These include the dispatch tapes, nearly 100 of the Fire Department oral histories, and a log of calls to Emergency Medical Service dispatchers that were channeled through the 911 system.
A group of families of people who died in the attack intervened in the suit brought by The Times, also urging release of the records. One of those family members, Rosaleen Tallon, noted that Zacarias Moussaoui, an admitted member of Al Qaeda who is accused of plotting with the Sept. 11 hijackers, long ago obtained the same documents in preparation for his criminal trial that were being denied to her and other families by the Bloomberg administration. The city also initially refused access to the records to investigators from both the 9/11 Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but relented when legal action was threatened.
In the Fire Department accounts, the testimony of many fire officers and firefighters was both moving and blunt. When the accounts obtained by The Times were made public, they opened a new dimension to the discussions about fire operations that day and pointedly raised questions about whether some of the department's deaths might have been avoided.
In the histories, the firefighters recalled losing touch with one another that morning and being unable to deliver or hear warnings about the imminent collapse of the towers. They described the physical toll of climbing 20 and 30 flights of stairs, laden with gear and outfits that weighed nearly 100 pounds. They included descriptions of a loss of command of the firefighters going up the stairs, the lack of communication between the police and fire departments, and the small measures by which people survived or died.
The accounts include such serendipities as an aide to a chief, who stood by his side in the lobby of the south tower at the Trade Center site, then left for the adjoining hotel to use a bathroom. Shortly after he left, the south tower collapsed, killing everyone inside.
For all their power, the oral histories are individual narratives, the accounts of men and women who saw the day, at times yards from death. They were originally gathered on the order of Thomas Von Essen, the city fire commissioner on Sept. 11, who said he wanted to preserve those accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory. He was succeeded as commissioner in January 2002 by Nicholas Scoppetta. Some of the oral histories were reviewed, but not all, a spokesman for Mr. Scoppetta said last night. Mr. Scoppetta declined to be interviewed.
Sally Regenhard, the mother of Christian Regenhard, a firefighter killed that day with his engine company, had been one of those who joined the suit for the release of the records, in hope that the oral histories might provide some clue on where her son had been.
"It has been almost four years, and I've been waiting for any information on my son," Mrs. Regenhard said. "He disappeared that day with his entire engine company. No one can tell me what happened to him - not even the smallest detail."
Early in his administration, Mr. Scoppetta refused to release the oral histories because he said he had been advised by federal prosecutors that their publication might impede the prosecution of Mr. Moussaoui. The department also advanced the position in court that the firefighters who had provided the oral histories did so with specific promises of confidentiality.
The department withdrew that claim. Mr. Scoppetta later found little support from federal prosecutors, judges, or defense lawyers for the position that Mr. Moussaoui's right to a fair trial would be hampered by publishing the recollections of firefighters or paramedics.
The city found more success in another line of argument: that release of certain records would violate the privacy of the dead, or cause emotional distress to the living. The Court of Appeals allowed the oral histories to be edited under a limited set of circumstances. It also refused to order the city to release all of the 911 tapes, saying that the callers' voices should not be made public. The other half of the conversations, involving the operators who spoke with the callers, will eventually be made public.
"We're gratified that it's finally being done," said David E. McCraw, a lawyer for The Times. "We believe it should have been done a long time ago. We believe the public is ultimately the beneficiary. We hope the city will move quickly to release the 911 tapes."
* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Advice for weary, wandering Democrats
Advice for weary, wandering Democrats
by Rick Perlstein
July 28th, 2005 12:17 PM
The centrist Democratic Leadership Council meets this week in Columbus, Ohio, with Senator Hillary Clinton the newly named chair of their newly launched yearlong "American Dream Initiative." Her mission: to come up with a new idea agenda for the Democrats. Recently our former national correspondent Rick Perlstein gave a speech to a group of powerful Democrats suggesting an agenda of his own based on his new book The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party. Here, with some identifying details changed, is what he told them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The name of this panel is "Building a New Idea Infrastructure for Progressives."
I was given the privilege of coming before you today, I suppose, because of my expertise on the history of the conservative idea infrastructure.
So it may come as a surprise to you that I've never been impressed by the argument that we need a new idea infrastructure. We've got more ideas than we need.
Sure, the right talks about "ideas" all the time. But they define it exactly opposite from us. For us it is a synonym for clever, complicated new policy options. For them, it's Plato's definition of Ideas: as unchanging essences. The stuff that builds foundations.
As usual, Ronald Reagan boiled it down to essentials. He liked to say—maybe he said it to some of you—"There are no easy answers. But there are simple answers." I'm here to say he's right. "Building a progressive idea structure" ain't the problem. It's recovering the progressive foundation. Do that, and we are unfuckwithable.
It's simple. Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."
Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers.
Here's Bill Kristol, in a famous 1993 memo I'm sure you're all familiar with: "Health care is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative . . . the plan should not be amended; it should be erased. . . . It will revive the reputation of the . . . Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."
I'd say this memo is the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics, if it didn't make me yawn. There's nothing here that's unfamiliar to historians who've read Republican secrets going back 25, 35, even 70 years. You can sum them up in 10 words: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."
They have reason to fear.
There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders. When people stray from the party line, it's not unusual for them to be banned. Free Republic, I'd argue, is far more crucial to the Republican infrastructure than the Heritage Foundation.
Please refer to your handout. The first column records some typical things "Freepers" say. The second records what the same Freeper said after the Senate voted cloture on the president's bankruptcy bill. Column A: "We are going to see a day, in our lifetimes, when schools force children to engage in homosexual acts as 'projects' or 'homework' for sex-ed." Same guy, column B: "The newly amended bankruptcy law is a criminal act perpetrated, bought and paid for by commercial pirates masquerading as legitimate businesses."
I won't belabor the point that I believe that the Democrats pay a huge long-term price for those Democrats who let that bankruptcy bill go through. The Republicans understand us better than we understand ourselves. When we are not credible defenders of the economic interests of ordinary Americans, we amount to little. When we are, we're a nuclear bomb to the heart of their coalition.
The Christian right is a political machine. Very little is asked of its cogs: just that they consult the call board on election day, and vote the way it says. It takes enormous effort to get them to do just that, as any of their leaders will freely tell you. Any of Richard J. Daley's precinct captains would have told you the same thing.
It doesn't take much to demobilize a machine voter: Just instill some doubt that people who claim to be their champions are not really their champions. If the Democrats had been united against the bankruptcy bill, we could even have demobilized some of these Freepers.
That's the way they did it with us. The stuff about the Democrats being "cultural elitists" spread a nagging doubt. People stopped looking to the call board. Even some of the activists.
The time is ripe to do it to them. A Pentecostal friend of mine just returned from a mission to El Salvador with his childhood church from rural Louisiana. He used to regale me with tales of annual July 4 Pentecostal retreats that were like Nuremberg rallies in praise of the Great Leader. That's over now. The straw that broke the camel's back, he tells me, was people not being able to afford to go to the dentist. They also have vanishingly low faith in Bush's foreign policy, and in the Iraq war.
They're getting demobilized.
That's great. But here's the catch. They have to have somewhere to go. That's where the simple stuff comes in.
Let's talk about Social Security.
The most glorious thing about congressional Democrats is that they have drawn the line and said: No further. Don't. Touch. Social. Security. It is a heroic stand. What's more, it's been enormously politically effective.
Now think about this: They are drawing on the capital of an entitlement passed 70 years ago.
They'll be drawing on the capital from Medicare 35 years from now. Congressional Democrats won't let them kill it. Because they understand: These programs make life in America fundamentally better. And because these gooses, Social Security, Medicare, lay golden eggs. They manufacture Democrats.
It is the duty of every generation of Democrats to produce new geese to lay 70 years of golden eggs. It is the only way our party has grown—as Bill Kristol puts it, by reviving the reputation of the Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. They know they're screwed if we're credible in our pledge to deliver new kinds of power to ordinary people in their every day lives.
Democratic congressmen can do that, for example, by making a credible collective pledge that if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live. You really think people wouldn't stop voting Republican then?
It makes a virtuous circle. The most important exit poll finding from last year's election was not about moral values. It was all the people who said they disagreed with Bush on the issues, but they were voting for him anyway because they knew what he stood for.
What I call "superjumbos"—grand policy commitments that span generations—add value by the very credibility of the commitment.
It isn't any accident that not raising taxes is a pledge every Republican makes, on pain of political death. It has not hurt them even though, according to Stanley Greenberg's polls, only 30 percent of Americans call high taxes a very serious problem.
To complete the circle—in the same poll 77 percent called "the state of health care in America" a serious problem.
Remember when Dick Morris used to tell President Clinton that he couldn't afford not to be on the side of any issue supported by 60 percent of Americans? Paul Krugman reported a poll that 72 percent of Americans favor "government-guaranteed health insurance for all."
Guaranteed. Health Insurance. For All. Not, as I found it formulated on the website of even one of the most liberal senators, "access to affordable health insurance."
Simple.
Not easy.
So Democrats, let's get to work.
..
by Rick Perlstein
July 28th, 2005 12:17 PM
The centrist Democratic Leadership Council meets this week in Columbus, Ohio, with Senator Hillary Clinton the newly named chair of their newly launched yearlong "American Dream Initiative." Her mission: to come up with a new idea agenda for the Democrats. Recently our former national correspondent Rick Perlstein gave a speech to a group of powerful Democrats suggesting an agenda of his own based on his new book The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party. Here, with some identifying details changed, is what he told them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The name of this panel is "Building a New Idea Infrastructure for Progressives."
I was given the privilege of coming before you today, I suppose, because of my expertise on the history of the conservative idea infrastructure.
So it may come as a surprise to you that I've never been impressed by the argument that we need a new idea infrastructure. We've got more ideas than we need.
Sure, the right talks about "ideas" all the time. But they define it exactly opposite from us. For us it is a synonym for clever, complicated new policy options. For them, it's Plato's definition of Ideas: as unchanging essences. The stuff that builds foundations.
As usual, Ronald Reagan boiled it down to essentials. He liked to say—maybe he said it to some of you—"There are no easy answers. But there are simple answers." I'm here to say he's right. "Building a progressive idea structure" ain't the problem. It's recovering the progressive foundation. Do that, and we are unfuckwithable.
It's simple. Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream."
Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers.
Here's Bill Kristol, in a famous 1993 memo I'm sure you're all familiar with: "Health care is not, in fact, just another Democratic initiative . . . the plan should not be amended; it should be erased. . . . It will revive the reputation of the . . . Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests."
I'd say this memo is the skeleton key to understanding modern American politics, if it didn't make me yawn. There's nothing here that's unfamiliar to historians who've read Republican secrets going back 25, 35, even 70 years. You can sum them up in 10 words: "If the Democrats succeed in redistributing economic power, we're screwed."
They have reason to fear.
There is a website that thousands of committed Republicans spend hours on, giving and receiving marching orders. When people stray from the party line, it's not unusual for them to be banned. Free Republic, I'd argue, is far more crucial to the Republican infrastructure than the Heritage Foundation.
Please refer to your handout. The first column records some typical things "Freepers" say. The second records what the same Freeper said after the Senate voted cloture on the president's bankruptcy bill. Column A: "We are going to see a day, in our lifetimes, when schools force children to engage in homosexual acts as 'projects' or 'homework' for sex-ed." Same guy, column B: "The newly amended bankruptcy law is a criminal act perpetrated, bought and paid for by commercial pirates masquerading as legitimate businesses."
I won't belabor the point that I believe that the Democrats pay a huge long-term price for those Democrats who let that bankruptcy bill go through. The Republicans understand us better than we understand ourselves. When we are not credible defenders of the economic interests of ordinary Americans, we amount to little. When we are, we're a nuclear bomb to the heart of their coalition.
The Christian right is a political machine. Very little is asked of its cogs: just that they consult the call board on election day, and vote the way it says. It takes enormous effort to get them to do just that, as any of their leaders will freely tell you. Any of Richard J. Daley's precinct captains would have told you the same thing.
It doesn't take much to demobilize a machine voter: Just instill some doubt that people who claim to be their champions are not really their champions. If the Democrats had been united against the bankruptcy bill, we could even have demobilized some of these Freepers.
That's the way they did it with us. The stuff about the Democrats being "cultural elitists" spread a nagging doubt. People stopped looking to the call board. Even some of the activists.
The time is ripe to do it to them. A Pentecostal friend of mine just returned from a mission to El Salvador with his childhood church from rural Louisiana. He used to regale me with tales of annual July 4 Pentecostal retreats that were like Nuremberg rallies in praise of the Great Leader. That's over now. The straw that broke the camel's back, he tells me, was people not being able to afford to go to the dentist. They also have vanishingly low faith in Bush's foreign policy, and in the Iraq war.
They're getting demobilized.
That's great. But here's the catch. They have to have somewhere to go. That's where the simple stuff comes in.
Let's talk about Social Security.
The most glorious thing about congressional Democrats is that they have drawn the line and said: No further. Don't. Touch. Social. Security. It is a heroic stand. What's more, it's been enormously politically effective.
Now think about this: They are drawing on the capital of an entitlement passed 70 years ago.
They'll be drawing on the capital from Medicare 35 years from now. Congressional Democrats won't let them kill it. Because they understand: These programs make life in America fundamentally better. And because these gooses, Social Security, Medicare, lay golden eggs. They manufacture Democrats.
It is the duty of every generation of Democrats to produce new geese to lay 70 years of golden eggs. It is the only way our party has grown—as Bill Kristol puts it, by reviving the reputation of the Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. They know they're screwed if we're credible in our pledge to deliver new kinds of power to ordinary people in their every day lives.
Democratic congressmen can do that, for example, by making a credible collective pledge that if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live. You really think people wouldn't stop voting Republican then?
It makes a virtuous circle. The most important exit poll finding from last year's election was not about moral values. It was all the people who said they disagreed with Bush on the issues, but they were voting for him anyway because they knew what he stood for.
What I call "superjumbos"—grand policy commitments that span generations—add value by the very credibility of the commitment.
It isn't any accident that not raising taxes is a pledge every Republican makes, on pain of political death. It has not hurt them even though, according to Stanley Greenberg's polls, only 30 percent of Americans call high taxes a very serious problem.
To complete the circle—in the same poll 77 percent called "the state of health care in America" a serious problem.
Remember when Dick Morris used to tell President Clinton that he couldn't afford not to be on the side of any issue supported by 60 percent of Americans? Paul Krugman reported a poll that 72 percent of Americans favor "government-guaranteed health insurance for all."
Guaranteed. Health Insurance. For All. Not, as I found it formulated on the website of even one of the most liberal senators, "access to affordable health insurance."
Simple.
Not easy.
So Democrats, let's get to work.
..
Bush and 'intelligent design'
Bush and 'intelligent design'
Last week, in an interview with Texas reporters, Bush answered a question about "intelligent design" by referring obliquely back to his time as governor, saying, "I felt like both sides ought to be taught." Pressed by a reporter whether both evolution and intelligent design should be taught, Bush indicated yes, adding, "So people can understand what the debate is about." And later, The New York Times reported, he said, "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
In Dover, Pennsylvania, next month the issue will come to a head in what some are calling "Scopes 2." It's an ACLU court challenge to a school district's decision to require "intelligent design" 's being taught as an alternative to evolution.
As for evolution, Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, argued in an interview last week, "Evolution is extraordinary in that it's the most robust theory in the history of science. It's 150 years old and it extended into a world on a molecular level. Darwin had never heard of DNA, but it is precisely what the theory of evolution would have predicted."
Denied an understanding of evolution, said Henry, "students end up not being able to understand natural phenomena, and if they aren't able to come to conclusions and theories supported by evidence, they're going to be at a fantastic disadvantage in a world where using science is the major basis of competition."
H.L. Mencken referred to William Jennings Bryan in the 1925 Scopes monkey trial as a sort of "fundamentalist pope," and that is the way any half-alert school principal will now see Bush. When requesting public funds, the principal should include lessons on "intelligent design" in his curriculum or face political repercussions at the Department of Education and other government agencies.
The Scopes trial was a made-up event to promote the town of Dayton, Tennessee. Townsmen persuaded John Scopes, a high school biology teacher who taught evolution, to stand in a case designed to test the state's law banning the teaching of evolution. At the trial famed lawyer Clarence Darrow represented Scopes, while Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and populist, spoke for the state.
As the trial began, the Bible was entered as evidence. Then, in what The New York Times at the time reported as "the most amazing court scene in Anglo Saxon history," Darrow called Bryan, a self-declared student of the Bible, to the stand and proceeded to grill him on the meaning of the scriptures, asking question after question: the size of the fish that swallowed Jonah, the date of the great flood, Joshua making the sun stand still, and the temptation of Adam in the Garden of Eden, among other things. "Do you think the earth was made in six days?" asked Darrow. Which led to this exchange:
Darrow: Have you ever pondered what would have happened to the earth if it had stood still?
Bryan: No.
Q: You have not?
A: No; the God I believe in could have taken care of that, Mr. Darrow.
Q: I see. Have you ever pondered what would naturally happen to the earth if it stood still suddenly?
A: No.
Q: Don't you know it would have been converted into a molten mass of matter?
A: You testify to that when you get on the stand, I will give you a chance.
Q: Don't you believe it?
A: I would want to hear expert testimony on that.
Q: You have never investigated that subject?
A: I don't think I have ever had the question asked.
Q: Or ever thought of it?
A: I have been too busy on thinks that I thought were of more importance than that.
"Darrow has lost this case," wrote Mencken at the end of the trial, which gave Bryan a technical victory that was later thrown out. "It was lost long before he came to Dayton. But it seems to me that he has nevertheless performed a great public service by fighting it to a finish and in a perfectly serious way. Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience. Tennessee, challenging him too timorously and too late, now sees its courts converted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights made a mock of by its sworn officers of the law. There are other States that had better look to their arsenals before the Hun is at their gates."
Last week, in an interview with Texas reporters, Bush answered a question about "intelligent design" by referring obliquely back to his time as governor, saying, "I felt like both sides ought to be taught." Pressed by a reporter whether both evolution and intelligent design should be taught, Bush indicated yes, adding, "So people can understand what the debate is about." And later, The New York Times reported, he said, "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
In Dover, Pennsylvania, next month the issue will come to a head in what some are calling "Scopes 2." It's an ACLU court challenge to a school district's decision to require "intelligent design" 's being taught as an alternative to evolution.
As for evolution, Henry Kelly, president of the Federation of American Scientists, argued in an interview last week, "Evolution is extraordinary in that it's the most robust theory in the history of science. It's 150 years old and it extended into a world on a molecular level. Darwin had never heard of DNA, but it is precisely what the theory of evolution would have predicted."
Denied an understanding of evolution, said Henry, "students end up not being able to understand natural phenomena, and if they aren't able to come to conclusions and theories supported by evidence, they're going to be at a fantastic disadvantage in a world where using science is the major basis of competition."
H.L. Mencken referred to William Jennings Bryan in the 1925 Scopes monkey trial as a sort of "fundamentalist pope," and that is the way any half-alert school principal will now see Bush. When requesting public funds, the principal should include lessons on "intelligent design" in his curriculum or face political repercussions at the Department of Education and other government agencies.
The Scopes trial was a made-up event to promote the town of Dayton, Tennessee. Townsmen persuaded John Scopes, a high school biology teacher who taught evolution, to stand in a case designed to test the state's law banning the teaching of evolution. At the trial famed lawyer Clarence Darrow represented Scopes, while Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and populist, spoke for the state.
As the trial began, the Bible was entered as evidence. Then, in what The New York Times at the time reported as "the most amazing court scene in Anglo Saxon history," Darrow called Bryan, a self-declared student of the Bible, to the stand and proceeded to grill him on the meaning of the scriptures, asking question after question: the size of the fish that swallowed Jonah, the date of the great flood, Joshua making the sun stand still, and the temptation of Adam in the Garden of Eden, among other things. "Do you think the earth was made in six days?" asked Darrow. Which led to this exchange:
Darrow: Have you ever pondered what would have happened to the earth if it had stood still?
Bryan: No.
Q: You have not?
A: No; the God I believe in could have taken care of that, Mr. Darrow.
Q: I see. Have you ever pondered what would naturally happen to the earth if it stood still suddenly?
A: No.
Q: Don't you know it would have been converted into a molten mass of matter?
A: You testify to that when you get on the stand, I will give you a chance.
Q: Don't you believe it?
A: I would want to hear expert testimony on that.
Q: You have never investigated that subject?
A: I don't think I have ever had the question asked.
Q: Or ever thought of it?
A: I have been too busy on thinks that I thought were of more importance than that.
"Darrow has lost this case," wrote Mencken at the end of the trial, which gave Bryan a technical victory that was later thrown out. "It was lost long before he came to Dayton. But it seems to me that he has nevertheless performed a great public service by fighting it to a finish and in a perfectly serious way. Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its details. It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic, rid of sense and devoid of conscience. Tennessee, challenging him too timorously and too late, now sees its courts converted into camp meetings and its Bill of Rights made a mock of by its sworn officers of the law. There are other States that had better look to their arsenals before the Hun is at their gates."
Sorry, Andi
A Call To Action
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
- John Adams
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
- John Adams
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Falwell's 'Vote Christian' Criticized
A Call To Action
Falwell's 'Vote Christian' Criticized Tue Aug 9,10:53 PM ET
A Jewish organization is calling on the Rev. Jerry Falwell to retract a "vote Christian in 2008" statement made months ago in a letter raising money for his ministries.
The criticism of Falwell appeared Monday on the Web site of the Anti-Defamation League, a group organized in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism.
Falwell, founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., and Moral Majority, included with his mass fundraising letter for Falwell Ministries a sticker that reads, "I Vote Christian."
Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's national director, said Falwell's statements are "directly at odds with the American ideal and should be rejected."
"Understanding the danger of combining religion and politics, our founding fathers wisely created a political system based on individual merit and religious inclusiveness," Foxman said.
Falwell told The News & Advance of Lynchburg Tuesday that his statement was misunderstood.
"What I was saying was for conservative Christian voters to vote their values, which are pro-life and pro-family," Falwell said. "I had no intention of being anti-Jewish at all."
Falwell's 'Vote Christian' Criticized Tue Aug 9,10:53 PM ET
A Jewish organization is calling on the Rev. Jerry Falwell to retract a "vote Christian in 2008" statement made months ago in a letter raising money for his ministries.
The criticism of Falwell appeared Monday on the Web site of the Anti-Defamation League, a group organized in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism.
Falwell, founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., and Moral Majority, included with his mass fundraising letter for Falwell Ministries a sticker that reads, "I Vote Christian."
Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's national director, said Falwell's statements are "directly at odds with the American ideal and should be rejected."
"Understanding the danger of combining religion and politics, our founding fathers wisely created a political system based on individual merit and religious inclusiveness," Foxman said.
Falwell told The News & Advance of Lynchburg Tuesday that his statement was misunderstood.
"What I was saying was for conservative Christian voters to vote their values, which are pro-life and pro-family," Falwell said. "I had no intention of being anti-Jewish at all."
Stones Target "Hypocrite" Patriots In New Song
A Call To Action
Print this article Close This Window
Stones target 'hypocrite' patriots in new song
Wed Aug 10, 2005 3:12 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Rolling Stones, not exactly a band at the forefront of rock 'n' roll activism, are taking aim at the American right with a new song on their upcoming album, according to Newsweek magazine.
The track, "Sweet Neo Con," boasts the line, "You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot, well I think you're full of s---," according to the weekly newsmagazine.
"It is direct," singer Mick Jagger was quoted as saying, adding that his collaborator, Keith Richards, was "a bit worried" about a backlash because the guitarist lives in the United States and Jagger does not.
In an interview to be broadcast Wednesday on syndicated TV show Extra, Jagger said the song was not aimed at anyone specifically, such as President Bush.
"It certainly is very critical of certain policies of the administration, but so what! Lots of people are critical," Jagger said, according to an advance transcript.
"Sweet Neo Con" is one of 16 tracks featured on the Stones' new album, "A Bigger Bang," which comes out in the United States on Sept. 6, and a day earlier internationally. It was not featured on a 12-track advance CD circulated to critics. The group's publicist was traveling and not able to confirm the quoted lyrics or provide the complete lyrics.
The band is currently rehearsing in Toronto ahead of a world tour that begins on Aug. 21 in Boston. It will play a club show Wednesday for 1,000 fans at Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre. Tickets were priced at just C$10 ($8.26), a far cry from the tour's $478 top price.
In their 43-year career, the Stones have observed political developments in songs like 1968's "Street Fighting Man," but have generally avoided taking sides. Notable exceptions included the 1983 single "Undercover (of the Night)," about civil rights abuse in Latin America, and 1991's Gulf War-related track "Highwire."
Print this article Close This Window
Stones target 'hypocrite' patriots in new song
Wed Aug 10, 2005 3:12 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Rolling Stones, not exactly a band at the forefront of rock 'n' roll activism, are taking aim at the American right with a new song on their upcoming album, according to Newsweek magazine.
The track, "Sweet Neo Con," boasts the line, "You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot, well I think you're full of s---," according to the weekly newsmagazine.
"It is direct," singer Mick Jagger was quoted as saying, adding that his collaborator, Keith Richards, was "a bit worried" about a backlash because the guitarist lives in the United States and Jagger does not.
In an interview to be broadcast Wednesday on syndicated TV show Extra, Jagger said the song was not aimed at anyone specifically, such as President Bush.
"It certainly is very critical of certain policies of the administration, but so what! Lots of people are critical," Jagger said, according to an advance transcript.
"Sweet Neo Con" is one of 16 tracks featured on the Stones' new album, "A Bigger Bang," which comes out in the United States on Sept. 6, and a day earlier internationally. It was not featured on a 12-track advance CD circulated to critics. The group's publicist was traveling and not able to confirm the quoted lyrics or provide the complete lyrics.
The band is currently rehearsing in Toronto ahead of a world tour that begins on Aug. 21 in Boston. It will play a club show Wednesday for 1,000 fans at Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre. Tickets were priced at just C$10 ($8.26), a far cry from the tour's $478 top price.
In their 43-year career, the Stones have observed political developments in songs like 1968's "Street Fighting Man," but have generally avoided taking sides. Notable exceptions included the 1983 single "Undercover (of the Night)," about civil rights abuse in Latin America, and 1991's Gulf War-related track "Highwire."
Hot Topics
List of 3 items
On Monday House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) opened a privately-run
foster home project for abused and neglected children. Sounds good, right?
But as
we know, in DeLay's world, no deed (good or bad) comes without kickbacks:
The project was built by Perry Homes, which is owned by Bob Perry - the main
financier of the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Perry also donated
some $350,000 to DeLay's various PACs in the 2002 cycle, and kicked in
another
$10,000 for his legal defense fund. The first phase of the project, which
includes eight homes, will cost about $8 million, and the completion of the
second
phase will boost costs to $25 million.
[link]
And speaking of shady deals on DeLay's watch: A state district judge refused
to drop charges against two of DeLay's associates yesterday. John Colyandro,
who worked for Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), is charged with
money laundering and 13 counts of accepting illegal political contributions.
Jim Ellis, a former employee of Americans for a Republican Majority
(ARMPAC), is facing a charge of money laundering. All charges stem from the
2002 elections,
when it appears that nearly $200,000 in corporate donations was funneled to
Texas state legislative candidates, a violation of Texas state law.
[link]
President Bush has been trying to talk the talk about spending restraint
lately, but he certainly hasn't walked the walk: Today Bush plans to sign
the massive
highway bill into law - $286.4 billion price tag and all. The bill, passed
by the Republican-controlled Congress, contains over 6,000 special pet
projects
valued at over $9 billion. The White House had initially threatened to veto
the bill if spending got out of hand, which raises the question: Just what
would that bill look like?
[link]
list end
Morning Snark
List of 2 items
How else will DeLay leave an imprint on his foster home project? Here's
guessing all the TVs will receive only FOX News.
Did Bob Perry receive the DeLay contract after he released a video unfairly
smearing all other building companies in the Houston area? Or were his
$350,000
in political contributions enough to do the job?
Why No Tea and Sympathy?
A Call To Action
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 10, 2005
Why No Tea and Sympathy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
W. can't get no satisfaction on Iraq.
There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a president who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed.
A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here?
Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.
And the Rolling Stones have taken a rare break from sex odes to record an antiwar song called "Sweet Neo Con," chiding Condi Rice and Mr. Bush. "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite," Mick Jagger sings.
The N.F.L. put out a press release on Monday announcing that it's teaming up with the Stones and ABC to promote "Monday Night Football." The flag-waving N.F.L. could still back out if there's pressure, but the mood seems to have shifted since Madonna chickened out of showing an antiwar music video in 2003. The White House used to be able to tamp down criticism by saying it hurt our troops, but more people are asking the White House to explain how it plans to stop our troops from getting hurt.
Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R., says she will camp out in the dusty heat near the ranch until she gets to tell Mr. Bush face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in a Sadr City ambush last year.
The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.
The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.
It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.
It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?
W.'s idea of consolation was to dispatch Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, to talk to Ms. Sheehan, underscoring the inhumane humanitarianism of his foreign policy. Mr. Hadley is just a suit, one of the hard-line Unsweet Neo Cons who helped hype America into this war.
It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.
Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.
Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.
But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 10, 2005
Why No Tea and Sympathy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
W. can't get no satisfaction on Iraq.
There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a president who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed.
A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here?
Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.
And the Rolling Stones have taken a rare break from sex odes to record an antiwar song called "Sweet Neo Con," chiding Condi Rice and Mr. Bush. "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite," Mick Jagger sings.
The N.F.L. put out a press release on Monday announcing that it's teaming up with the Stones and ABC to promote "Monday Night Football." The flag-waving N.F.L. could still back out if there's pressure, but the mood seems to have shifted since Madonna chickened out of showing an antiwar music video in 2003. The White House used to be able to tamp down criticism by saying it hurt our troops, but more people are asking the White House to explain how it plans to stop our troops from getting hurt.
Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R., says she will camp out in the dusty heat near the ranch until she gets to tell Mr. Bush face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in a Sadr City ambush last year.
The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.
The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.
It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.
It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?
W.'s idea of consolation was to dispatch Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, to talk to Ms. Sheehan, underscoring the inhumane humanitarianism of his foreign policy. Mr. Hadley is just a suit, one of the hard-line Unsweet Neo Cons who helped hype America into this war.
It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.
Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.
Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.
But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Rep.: Officials Monitored Hijackers Before 9/11 Attacks
A Call To Action
(Yes, FOX NEWS)
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
WASHINGTON — U.S. law enforcement never received information on Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta (search) and his possible connections to Al Qaeda, even though that information was known more than a year before the attacks that left approximately 3,000 people dead, Rep. Curt Weldon (search) said Tuesday.
Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican and vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said the hijackers were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger," which determined they could be members of an Al Qaeda cell. A military spokesman would not confirm or deny the unit's existence to FOX News.
A Weldon spokesman told FOX News that his boss stands by the claim that military intelligence identified the hijackers who were operating inside the United States.
In September 2000, the unit recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists," Weldon said in an interview with the Associated Press.
However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally.
"In fact, I'll tell you how stupid it was. They put stickies on the faces of Mohamed Atta on the chart that the military intelligence unit had completed and they said you can't talk to Atta because he's here on a green card," Weldon said.
He did not provide details on how the intelligence officials first identified the future hijackers and determined they might be part of a cell.
The congressman, who has occasionally been considered a maverick on Capitol Hill, initially made his allegations in a floor speech in June that attracted little attention. His talk came at the end of a legislative day during a period described under House rules as "special orders" — a time slot for lawmakers to get up and speak on issues of their choosing.
"Two weeks after 9/11, my friends from the Army's information dominance center, in cooperation with special ops, brought me a chart," Weldon said on the House floor. "What's interesting in this chart of Al Qaeda is the name of the leader of the New York cell. And that name is very familiar to the American people. That name is Mohamed Atta."
Weldon continued, saying that he brought the chart to Steve Hadley, who was then the deputy national security adviser. When Hadley said he wanted to show the chart to the president, Weldon asked if the CIA hadn't already done so. Hadley said no.
"So prior to 9/11, this military system that the CIA said we didn't need and couldn't do, actually identified Mohamed Atta and the cell in New York, and with Mohamed Atta they identified two of the other terrorists with him," Weldon said on the House floor. "Not only did our military identify Mr. Atta, our military made a recommendation on September 2000 to bring the FBI in and take out that cell."
Weldon told FOX that the "Able Danger" unit told its bosses that the information should be shared with the FBI.
A spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command said there is no knowledge of Able Danger within Special Operations command headquarters right now.
Weldon said the unit is now defunct.
"It no longer exists," he told FOX. "It was disbanded."
Three other hijackers were also identified as Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. The information was not shared, in part, because those men were all in the United States on valid entry visas, Weldon's spokesman confirmed. Intelligence agencies at that time were uncomfortable singling out individuals who were in this country legally.
The issue resurfaced Monday in a story by the bimonthly Government Security News, which covers national security matters.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Sept. 11 commission (search) looked into the matter during its investigation into government missteps leading to the attacks and chose not to include it in the final report.
Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, confirmed that the panel's investigators had been aware of Able Danger but said they "don't recall any mention of Mohamed Atta, per se, or any mention of a ... cell."
The Sept. 11 commission report, considered the most exhaustive analysis of events leading up to the attacks, never mentions the defense intelligence group. If Weldon's claims are accurate, it means Atta was identified as a threat and it would amount to another missed opportunity.
One law enforcement source, however, told FOX News that he believes a repeat missed opportunity is unlikely because many of the information-sharing problems have been solved.
FOX News' Catherine Herridge, Nick Simeone and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Copyright © 2005 ComStock, Inc.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright 2005 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
(Yes, FOX NEWS)
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
WASHINGTON — U.S. law enforcement never received information on Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta (search) and his possible connections to Al Qaeda, even though that information was known more than a year before the attacks that left approximately 3,000 people dead, Rep. Curt Weldon (search) said Tuesday.
Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican and vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said the hijackers were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger," which determined they could be members of an Al Qaeda cell. A military spokesman would not confirm or deny the unit's existence to FOX News.
A Weldon spokesman told FOX News that his boss stands by the claim that military intelligence identified the hijackers who were operating inside the United States.
In September 2000, the unit recommended that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists," Weldon said in an interview with the Associated Press.
However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation because they said Atta and the others were in the country legally.
"In fact, I'll tell you how stupid it was. They put stickies on the faces of Mohamed Atta on the chart that the military intelligence unit had completed and they said you can't talk to Atta because he's here on a green card," Weldon said.
He did not provide details on how the intelligence officials first identified the future hijackers and determined they might be part of a cell.
The congressman, who has occasionally been considered a maverick on Capitol Hill, initially made his allegations in a floor speech in June that attracted little attention. His talk came at the end of a legislative day during a period described under House rules as "special orders" — a time slot for lawmakers to get up and speak on issues of their choosing.
"Two weeks after 9/11, my friends from the Army's information dominance center, in cooperation with special ops, brought me a chart," Weldon said on the House floor. "What's interesting in this chart of Al Qaeda is the name of the leader of the New York cell. And that name is very familiar to the American people. That name is Mohamed Atta."
Weldon continued, saying that he brought the chart to Steve Hadley, who was then the deputy national security adviser. When Hadley said he wanted to show the chart to the president, Weldon asked if the CIA hadn't already done so. Hadley said no.
"So prior to 9/11, this military system that the CIA said we didn't need and couldn't do, actually identified Mohamed Atta and the cell in New York, and with Mohamed Atta they identified two of the other terrorists with him," Weldon said on the House floor. "Not only did our military identify Mr. Atta, our military made a recommendation on September 2000 to bring the FBI in and take out that cell."
Weldon told FOX that the "Able Danger" unit told its bosses that the information should be shared with the FBI.
A spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command said there is no knowledge of Able Danger within Special Operations command headquarters right now.
Weldon said the unit is now defunct.
"It no longer exists," he told FOX. "It was disbanded."
Three other hijackers were also identified as Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. The information was not shared, in part, because those men were all in the United States on valid entry visas, Weldon's spokesman confirmed. Intelligence agencies at that time were uncomfortable singling out individuals who were in this country legally.
The issue resurfaced Monday in a story by the bimonthly Government Security News, which covers national security matters.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Sept. 11 commission (search) looked into the matter during its investigation into government missteps leading to the attacks and chose not to include it in the final report.
Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, confirmed that the panel's investigators had been aware of Able Danger but said they "don't recall any mention of Mohamed Atta, per se, or any mention of a ... cell."
The Sept. 11 commission report, considered the most exhaustive analysis of events leading up to the attacks, never mentions the defense intelligence group. If Weldon's claims are accurate, it means Atta was identified as a threat and it would amount to another missed opportunity.
One law enforcement source, however, told FOX News that he believes a repeat missed opportunity is unlikely because many of the information-sharing problems have been solved.
FOX News' Catherine Herridge, Nick Simeone and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
SEARCH
Click here for FOX News RSS Feeds
Advertise on FOX News Channel, FOXNews.com and FOX News Radio
Jobs at FOX News Channel.
Internships at FOX News Channel (Accepting Fall Applications Now).
Terms of use. Privacy Statement. For FOXNews.com comments write to
foxnewsonline@foxnews.com; For FOX News Channel comments write to
comments@foxnews.com
© Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005 ComStock, Inc.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright 2005 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
Why Won't Scooter Libby Grant Judith Miller a Personal Waiver?
A Call To Action
Published on Tuesday, August 9, 2005 by the Huffington Post
Why Won't Scooter Libby Grant Judith Miller a Personal Waiver?
by Rep. John Conyers
August is typically a month of no news. Congress goes on its summer recess. The President takes a long vacation. A very long one. For those in the White House press corps who are not so fortunate to be assigned to bake in the Crawford, Texas sun, they too take vacations (though not as long as the President's).
This August is different. If you listen closely enough, you can hear the slow drip of scandal turning into a waterfall of corruption and coverups in the Bush White House. On the internet, new pieces of the puzzle are coming together. My friend and the proprietor of this blog, Arianna Huffington seems to have the best sources inside the New York Times newsroom and has led many of us to begin asking whether Judith Miller's refusal to testify is not what it seems.
Picking up this thread over the weekend is an overlooked investigative piece in the American Prospect Magazine's online edition. In case you missed it, in a piece entitled "The Meeting," investigative reporter Murray Waas uncovers some new information about Treason-gate, Miller's refusal to testify and Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Scooter Libby's possible complicity in a coverup.
The article should be read in its entirety, but here are a few highlights:
-- Libby met with Judith Miller on July 8, 2003 and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame. This meeting, six days before the publication of Robert Novak's infamous column outing Mrs. Joe Wilson (Valerie Plame), is a "central focus" of the Fitzgerald investigation.
-- The kicker: "Sources close to the investigation, and private attorneys representing clients embroiled in the federal probe, said that Libby's failure to produce a personal waiver may have played a significant role in Miller's decision not to testify about her conversations with Libby, including the one on July 8, 2003."
The President has, of course, directed his staff to "fully cooperate" with the probe. Make no mistake about it, if Waas's sources are right, Libby is not cooperating. In fact, while right wing pundits continually claim that the White House has not obstructed the Fitzgerald investigation, these new disclosures indicate that a top White House staffer is essentially directing a reporter to invoke a privilege on his behalf to keep the Special Prosecutor from learning the truth. Remember the hue and cry from conservatives when it was the Clinton Administration invoking privileges on what was not a matter of national security, but a private sexual affair? Where are they now?
The course for Libby is clear. He should obey the President's directive and immediately give Miller his personal waiver to testify about any conversations he may have had with her that are within the purview of the Grand Jury. Today, I and along with my colleagues Louise Slaughter, Maurice Hinchey and Rush Holt, wrote to Libby asking him to do just that. Waas has the letter on his blog.
If he refuses, the President faces a choice. He can show he means what he says and fire an employee who is so obviously obstructing the search for the truth. Or he can continue to tolerate such behavior and thereby make clear what many suspect -- when it comes to getting to the bottom of who did this vile act, he is all talk.
© 2005 Huffington Post
Published on Tuesday, August 9, 2005 by the Huffington Post
Why Won't Scooter Libby Grant Judith Miller a Personal Waiver?
by Rep. John Conyers
August is typically a month of no news. Congress goes on its summer recess. The President takes a long vacation. A very long one. For those in the White House press corps who are not so fortunate to be assigned to bake in the Crawford, Texas sun, they too take vacations (though not as long as the President's).
This August is different. If you listen closely enough, you can hear the slow drip of scandal turning into a waterfall of corruption and coverups in the Bush White House. On the internet, new pieces of the puzzle are coming together. My friend and the proprietor of this blog, Arianna Huffington seems to have the best sources inside the New York Times newsroom and has led many of us to begin asking whether Judith Miller's refusal to testify is not what it seems.
Picking up this thread over the weekend is an overlooked investigative piece in the American Prospect Magazine's online edition. In case you missed it, in a piece entitled "The Meeting," investigative reporter Murray Waas uncovers some new information about Treason-gate, Miller's refusal to testify and Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Scooter Libby's possible complicity in a coverup.
The article should be read in its entirety, but here are a few highlights:
-- Libby met with Judith Miller on July 8, 2003 and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame. This meeting, six days before the publication of Robert Novak's infamous column outing Mrs. Joe Wilson (Valerie Plame), is a "central focus" of the Fitzgerald investigation.
-- The kicker: "Sources close to the investigation, and private attorneys representing clients embroiled in the federal probe, said that Libby's failure to produce a personal waiver may have played a significant role in Miller's decision not to testify about her conversations with Libby, including the one on July 8, 2003."
The President has, of course, directed his staff to "fully cooperate" with the probe. Make no mistake about it, if Waas's sources are right, Libby is not cooperating. In fact, while right wing pundits continually claim that the White House has not obstructed the Fitzgerald investigation, these new disclosures indicate that a top White House staffer is essentially directing a reporter to invoke a privilege on his behalf to keep the Special Prosecutor from learning the truth. Remember the hue and cry from conservatives when it was the Clinton Administration invoking privileges on what was not a matter of national security, but a private sexual affair? Where are they now?
The course for Libby is clear. He should obey the President's directive and immediately give Miller his personal waiver to testify about any conversations he may have had with her that are within the purview of the Grand Jury. Today, I and along with my colleagues Louise Slaughter, Maurice Hinchey and Rush Holt, wrote to Libby asking him to do just that. Waas has the letter on his blog.
If he refuses, the President faces a choice. He can show he means what he says and fire an employee who is so obviously obstructing the search for the truth. Or he can continue to tolerate such behavior and thereby make clear what many suspect -- when it comes to getting to the bottom of who did this vile act, he is all talk.
© 2005 Huffington Post
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