washingtonpost.com
Major Republican Donor Indicted in Ohio
By JOHN SEEWER
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 27, 2005; 8:04 PM
TOLEDO, Ohio -- A coin dealer and major GOP donor at the center of a scandal in Ohio state government was charged Thursday with illegally funneling $45,400 in contributions to President Bush's re-election bid.
Tom Noe was accused in a federal indictment of giving money directly or indirectly to 24 friends and associates, who then made the campaign contributions in their own names. In that way, he skirted the $2,000 limit on individual contributions, prosecutors said.
"It's one of the most blatant and excessive finance schemes we have encountered," said Noel Hillman, section chief of the U.S. Department of Justice's public integrity section.
Calls to the White House and Noe's attorneys were not immediately returned. Prosecutors said the Bush campaign has cooperated with their investigation.
Noe also is under investigation over an ill-fated $50 million investment in rare coins he managed for the state workers' compensation fund. Noe has acknowledged that up to $13 million is missing, and Ohio's attorney general has accused him of stealing as much as $6 million. No charges have been filed in that case, though state officials say they plan to do so.
Prosecutors would not reveal the names of the people to whom Noe gave money to contribute or say if any of them would be charged. The indictment said Noe and those who gave his money to Bush had conspired together to violate the contribution limits.
Two people who received just over $20,000 from Noe recruited others who then gave money in their own names, the indictment said.
The coin dealer personally contributed more than $105,000 to Republicans, including Bush and Gov. Bob Taft, during the last campaign.
An investigation into Noe's coin investments led to ethics charges against Taft for failing to report golf outings and other gifts. The governor pleaded no contest in August and was fined $4,000.
U.S. Attorney Gregory White said prosecutors were negotiating Noe's surrender with his lawyer.
Noe's attorney, Bill Wilkinson, said in a statement that Noe's surrender was complicated by the fact that Noe was in South Florida and that many courthouses there were still closed because of Hurricane Wilma.
If convicted, Noe faces up to 15 years in prison and fines up to $950,000.
© 2005 The Associated Press
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Bushies feeling the boss' wrath
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Monday, October 24th, 2005
WASHINGTON - Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say.
With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat death of the 2,000th American G.I.
Last week alone, 23 military personnel were killed in Iraq, and five were wounded yesterday in a relentless series of attacks across the country.
This week could also bring a special prosecutor's decision that could shake the foundations of the Bush government.
The President's top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, are at the center of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of a CIA agent's identity. Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely.
"He's like the lion in winter," observed a political friend of Bush. "He's frustrated. He remains quite confident in the decisions he has made. But this is a guy who wanted to do big things in a second term. Given his nature, there's no way he'd be happy about the way things have gone."
Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss' wrath.
"This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight."
The specter of losing Rove, his only truly irreplaceable assistant, lies at the heart of Bush's distress. But a string of political reversals, including growing opposition to the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and Harriet Miers' bungled Supreme Court nomination, have also exacted a personal toll.
Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
At the same time, these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.
"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."
The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the runup to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics.
Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical."
A second senior Bush loyalist disagreed, saying Bush knows "some of these things are self-inflicted," like the Miers nomination, where Bush jettisoned contrary advice from his advisers and appointed his longtime personal lawyer.
"He must know that the way he did that, relying on his own judgment and instinct, was not good," another key adviser said.
Despite the turmoil, Bush is determined to soldier on, already preparing for two major overseas trips in November and helping shape next year's legislative agenda.
"I've got a job to do," he told reporters last week. "The American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Monday, October 24th, 2005
WASHINGTON - Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say.
With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat death of the 2,000th American G.I.
Last week alone, 23 military personnel were killed in Iraq, and five were wounded yesterday in a relentless series of attacks across the country.
This week could also bring a special prosecutor's decision that could shake the foundations of the Bush government.
The President's top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, are at the center of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of a CIA agent's identity. Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely.
"He's like the lion in winter," observed a political friend of Bush. "He's frustrated. He remains quite confident in the decisions he has made. But this is a guy who wanted to do big things in a second term. Given his nature, there's no way he'd be happy about the way things have gone."
Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss' wrath.
"This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight."
The specter of losing Rove, his only truly irreplaceable assistant, lies at the heart of Bush's distress. But a string of political reversals, including growing opposition to the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and Harriet Miers' bungled Supreme Court nomination, have also exacted a personal toll.
Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
At the same time, these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.
"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."
The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the runup to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics.
Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical."
A second senior Bush loyalist disagreed, saying Bush knows "some of these things are self-inflicted," like the Miers nomination, where Bush jettisoned contrary advice from his advisers and appointed his longtime personal lawyer.
"He must know that the way he did that, relying on his own judgment and instinct, was not good," another key adviser said.
Despite the turmoil, Bush is determined to soldier on, already preparing for two major overseas trips in November and helping shape next year's legislative agenda.
"I've got a job to do," he told reporters last week. "The American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."
The Miers Withdrawal: A Sign of Weakness
The withdrawal of Harriet Miers today sends a signal that President Bush’s agenda and political power are in a state of increasing weakness:
“Despite an outcry among some conservatives over the nomination, Specter said yesterday that he doubted Miers would withdraw from consideration or that Bush would ask her to. ‘It would be seen as a tremendous sign of weakness to have her withdraw,’ Specter said.” [Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/18/05]
“For her part, Totenberg does not believe the chatter that Miers might withdraw, saying that ‘it would make the president look weak,’ she said.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/19/05]
“Either Miers will be confirmed to the Supreme Court with some conservative votes against her and a general feeling of distaste, or conservative opposition will cause Miers to withdraw or be defeated, further weakening the president.” [The Hill, 10/12/05]
“[T]he main argument against a Miers’ withdrawal is that President Bush is probably determined to see it through. It would seem to be out of character for him to surrender to the critics. … It would be out of character for him to withdraw her name, and he probably has calculated that a withdrawal would be widely interpreted as a sign of political weakness, and that by itself would make it more difficult for him to deal with an increasingly skeptical Congress.” [Dick Polman, Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/13/05]
Mort Kondracke: “If [Bush] were to pull her now, this would be an indication that he’s caving into the right-wing groups.” [Fox News, 10/26/05]
UPDATE: Bush, 10/7/05
Q So are you ruling it out, any withdrawal?
PRESIDENT BUSH: No, she is going to be on the bench, she’ll be confirmed — and when she’s on the bench people will see a fantastic woman who is honest, open, humble and capable of being a great Supreme Court Judge.
Shipwrecked
Bush has so thoroughly destroyed the Republican establishment that no one, not even his dad, can rescue him now.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Oct. 27, 2005 | There is no one left to rescue the Republican Party from George W. Bush. He is home alone. The Republican-establishment wise men whose words were once quiet commands are shouting unheeded warnings. The Republican leaders of Congress are distracted and obsessed with their own crises of corruption.
Suspended House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is under indictment for criminal campaign practices while Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider stock trading in his family-owned Hospital Corporation of America. The only revolt brewing in the Senate is on the right against President Bush's nomination of his White House legal counsel, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court; some Republican senators fear her potential for secret liberal heresy despite the president's protestations of her conservative purity.
On Aug. 7, 1974, three Republican leaders of Congress made a fateful journey down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. Sen. Barry Goldwater, tribune of the conservative movement; Sen. Hugh Scott, the stalwart minority leader from Pennsylvania; and Rep. John Rhodes, the minority leader in the House, informed President Richard Nixon that as a result of the Watergate scandals he must resign the presidency in the interest of the country and the Republican Party. Two days later, Nixon quit.
On Nov. 25, 1986, Attorney General Edwin Meese announced at a White House press conference that tens of millions of dollars from illegal sales of weapons to Iran had been siphoned to Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua by a far-flung conspiracy centered in the National Security Council. National Security Advisor John Poindexter immediately resigned and NSC military aide Oliver North was fired. Within the next month, President Reagan's popularity rating had collapsed from 67 to 46 percent; it did not recover until a year and a half later, in May 1988, when he negotiated an arms control treaty with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and traveled to Moscow to declare the Cold War over. After the revelation of the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan purged his administration of right-wingers and neoconservatives in particular. The Republican establishment in all its aspects took control. Former Sen. Howard Baker, who had been the Republican leader at the Watergate hearings, became White House chief of staff; Colin Powell was named national security advisor; neocon protector and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was forced out and replaced by pragmatic bureaucratic player Frank Carlucci; and Secretary of State George Shultz was given charge of foreign policy in order to negotiate terms with Gorbachev.
The storm enveloping President Bush is a consequence of his adoption of the vicious smear tactics of the Nixon political operation, learned there by Karl Rove, who was called as a witness to testify about them before the Watergate inquiry, and of Bush's elevation to power of the neoconservatives removed by Reagan and excluded from office by Bush's father. Bush is haunted by the history he insisted on defying.
The elements of the Republican establishment that Bush brought into his first administration as a sort of symbolic tribute were gone by his second. By their nature, these people are discreet, measured and private. It is not their impulse to voice disagreement in public. Their sweeping and emotional jeremiads against what Bush has wrought are extraordinary not only in their substance but in having been made at all. Those expressing their disquiet about Bush are more than simply losers in bureaucratic struggles for primacy of place. Once representative of the heart and soul of the Grand Old Party, they are historical castaways. They stand for another Republican Party that has been supplanted by Bush's version.
Paul O'Neill, the former CEO of Alcoa, was shocked at the degradation of policymaking he witnessed as Bush's first secretary of the Treasury. He had anticipated that the councils of government under Bush would be no different from those he had experienced as an economic aide under Nixon. Nixon had rigorously insisted on objective analysis, hearing all sides and considering all options. In Cabinet meetings, O'Neill wrote in his memoir, "The Price of Loyalty," Bush was like "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." The White House struck back at O'Neill by falsely charging him with leaking classified materials and subjecting him to an investigation, which had the desired effect of silencing him. In retrospect, the accusation of leaking classified information can only appear ironic.
Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey, was stunned by her denigration and the suppression of science when she was Bush's first director of the Environmental Protection Agency. After her resignation, she compared Bush unfavorably to Reagan, who, she said, "didn't reach out in a way that indicated that there was no room for others." Whitman's book, "It's My Party Too," was a meek plea for attention from the "social fundamentalists" she claimed had seized control of the family firm. She would not name names, as though she might have another go at riding the tiger that had already devoured her.
John Danforth, for 18 years a U.S. senator from Missouri, served briefly before resigning as Bush's ambassador to the United Nations. He did not stipulate the reasons for his departure, but he did publish an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on March 30 of this year decrying how "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians." The GOP, he wrote, has become "a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement." Danforth, an old friend of George H.W. Bush's, lamented the loss of the party's heritage: "Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots." Danforth was replaced at the U.N. not with a believer in old-fashioned bipartisan internationalism but with John Bolton.
Lawrence Wilkerson, the former head of the Marine War College who had served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, revealed the inner struggles of the Bush administration in a speech before the New America Foundation on Oct. 19. A "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" ran U.S. foreign policy for a president "not versed in international relations and not too much interested." Wilkerson defined the Bush doctrine as "cowboyism." Condoleezza Rice as national security advisor was "extremely weak" and more interested in "her intimacy with the president" than in acting as an honest broker. Cleaning up after Bush's tarnishing of America's image in the world was an impossible task. "It's hard to sell shit," said Wilkerson.
Powell, Wilkerson's principal, has remained publicly quiet since his September outburst, in which he said that his speech before the United Nations arguing the case for the existence of WMD and an invasion of Iraq, which subsequently was revealed to be filled with disinformation, was a "blot" on his record and continues to be "painful now." Behind the scenes, however, Powell has been active in countering the Bush torture policy, which he opposed from the beginning. Powell sent personal letters and made telephone calls to Republican senators urging them to support the amendment to the military appropriations bill that would end the torture policy. As a result of Powell's lobbying, 90 senators voted for it. It was a stinging rebuke to Bush, who has threatened to veto the entire military appropriations package if the amendment is attached.
Brent Scowcroft, perhaps more than anyone else, personifies the realist, bipartisan Republican tradition of internationalism. He is also the former national security advisor to the elder Bush and among his closest friends. President Bush dismissed him early this year from the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, having ignored his advice through the first term. Scowcroft's candid views appear in an article in the current issue of the New Yorker, in which he details his rejection by Bush at length. "I don't want to go there," Scowcroft replied when asked about the difference between the father and son. He said dismissively of the Iraq policies of a leading neoconservative, former Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, "He's got a utopia out there." On Cheney, Scowcroft sounded perplexed: "The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney. I consider Cheney a good friend -- I've known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore."
But Scowcroft the foreign policy mandarin may not have been exposed to the partisan Cheney when he served as secretary of defense in the administration of Bush Sr. He may have missed Cheney's tenure as a representative in the House leadership, where he compiled a far-right voting record and, as House minority whip during the 1980s, was the hidden hand behind the rise of Newt Gingrich and his band of radicals. When he was slated to be Bush's running mate, it was widely assumed that Cheney would act as a stabilizing and moderating presence. Only those who understood his congressional career knew of his affinities with the radical right, his vengeful instincts and his mean-spiritedness. His emergence at the center of the "cabal" now under investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should not surprise those who have penetrated his avuncular image to see the hard man beneath. Cheney was not the substitute father figure but the false father.
Bush's highhanded treatment of the few Republican moderates of his first term all but eviscerated what was left of the establishment that once controlled the party. The story of the old party's fall from grace and Bush's part in it is a well-known bildungsroman, a family saga that begins with the father.
The son of Prescott Bush, a patrician moderate Republican senator from Connecticut and a Wall Street investment banker, George H.W. Bush traveled to Texas to make his fortune in the wildcat oil industry. He was hardly a roaring success, but he took up his father's line of work, getting elected to the House from suburban Houston. It was then that he opened the negotiations of his Faustian bargain. His father had been the head of the United Negro College Fund; he and his wife were prominent members of the local chapter of Planned Parenthood. But George Bush Sr., seeking political advantage in Texas, declared his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bush spent the next decade advancing himself as a consummate Republican loyalist in positions ranging from chairman of the Republican National Committee under Nixon to Gerald Ford's CIA director and United Nations ambassador. After losing the Republican presidential nomination to Ronald Reagan in 1980, he swallowed his criticism of Reagan's supply-side nostrums as "voodoo economics" when he became his running mate.
The Faustian negotiations deepened. In 1988, he ran for president as Reagan's anointed successor. Faltering on his own, with unenthusiastic backing from Reagan's evangelical supporters, he ran a series of nativist and racially charged attacks on his Democratic opponent. Bush won that election with the right-wing Republican base voting for him but still doubtful of his authenticity. As president his compromises on taxation and realism in foreign policy led to their open disillusionment.
His son George lost his first campaign for the House from Texas, tainted by association with his father, who was tarnished by the right as a member of the Trilateral Commission international conspiracy. From then on, Bush was never outmaneuvered on his right flank. His political field marshal, Karl Rove, managed the right wing for his benefit. The Faustian bargain of the father became business as usual for the son.
Now the old establishment is faded. Its remnants largely consist of his father's superannuated retinue. Not even the old Texas establishment in the person of James A. Baker III, Bush's father's field marshal and the former secretary of state (among his many official posts), who managed the Florida contest that gave the presidency to the son, is welcome in this White House.
The Republican Party after Bush, minus its traditional establishment, threatens to become the party of its irreducible base, the party of the old Confederacy and the sparsely populated Rocky Mountain states. But this base, however loyal and obsequious to Bush, regardless of any crisis, does not offer statesmen to step in to handle his shaken White House.
A sharp reversal of policy and turnover in personnel are the only actions that may enable Bush to salvage the shipwreck of his presidency, as they did for Reagan. But bringing in the elders, even if they could be summoned, would be psychologically devastating to Bush, a humiliating admission that his long history of recklessness and failure, from the Texas Air National Guard to Harken Energy, with rescue only through the intervention of his father and his father's friends, has reached its culmination.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Oct. 27, 2005 | There is no one left to rescue the Republican Party from George W. Bush. He is home alone. The Republican-establishment wise men whose words were once quiet commands are shouting unheeded warnings. The Republican leaders of Congress are distracted and obsessed with their own crises of corruption.
Suspended House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is under indictment for criminal campaign practices while Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider stock trading in his family-owned Hospital Corporation of America. The only revolt brewing in the Senate is on the right against President Bush's nomination of his White House legal counsel, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court; some Republican senators fear her potential for secret liberal heresy despite the president's protestations of her conservative purity.
On Aug. 7, 1974, three Republican leaders of Congress made a fateful journey down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. Sen. Barry Goldwater, tribune of the conservative movement; Sen. Hugh Scott, the stalwart minority leader from Pennsylvania; and Rep. John Rhodes, the minority leader in the House, informed President Richard Nixon that as a result of the Watergate scandals he must resign the presidency in the interest of the country and the Republican Party. Two days later, Nixon quit.
On Nov. 25, 1986, Attorney General Edwin Meese announced at a White House press conference that tens of millions of dollars from illegal sales of weapons to Iran had been siphoned to Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua by a far-flung conspiracy centered in the National Security Council. National Security Advisor John Poindexter immediately resigned and NSC military aide Oliver North was fired. Within the next month, President Reagan's popularity rating had collapsed from 67 to 46 percent; it did not recover until a year and a half later, in May 1988, when he negotiated an arms control treaty with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and traveled to Moscow to declare the Cold War over. After the revelation of the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan purged his administration of right-wingers and neoconservatives in particular. The Republican establishment in all its aspects took control. Former Sen. Howard Baker, who had been the Republican leader at the Watergate hearings, became White House chief of staff; Colin Powell was named national security advisor; neocon protector and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was forced out and replaced by pragmatic bureaucratic player Frank Carlucci; and Secretary of State George Shultz was given charge of foreign policy in order to negotiate terms with Gorbachev.
The storm enveloping President Bush is a consequence of his adoption of the vicious smear tactics of the Nixon political operation, learned there by Karl Rove, who was called as a witness to testify about them before the Watergate inquiry, and of Bush's elevation to power of the neoconservatives removed by Reagan and excluded from office by Bush's father. Bush is haunted by the history he insisted on defying.
The elements of the Republican establishment that Bush brought into his first administration as a sort of symbolic tribute were gone by his second. By their nature, these people are discreet, measured and private. It is not their impulse to voice disagreement in public. Their sweeping and emotional jeremiads against what Bush has wrought are extraordinary not only in their substance but in having been made at all. Those expressing their disquiet about Bush are more than simply losers in bureaucratic struggles for primacy of place. Once representative of the heart and soul of the Grand Old Party, they are historical castaways. They stand for another Republican Party that has been supplanted by Bush's version.
Paul O'Neill, the former CEO of Alcoa, was shocked at the degradation of policymaking he witnessed as Bush's first secretary of the Treasury. He had anticipated that the councils of government under Bush would be no different from those he had experienced as an economic aide under Nixon. Nixon had rigorously insisted on objective analysis, hearing all sides and considering all options. In Cabinet meetings, O'Neill wrote in his memoir, "The Price of Loyalty," Bush was like "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." The White House struck back at O'Neill by falsely charging him with leaking classified materials and subjecting him to an investigation, which had the desired effect of silencing him. In retrospect, the accusation of leaking classified information can only appear ironic.
Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey, was stunned by her denigration and the suppression of science when she was Bush's first director of the Environmental Protection Agency. After her resignation, she compared Bush unfavorably to Reagan, who, she said, "didn't reach out in a way that indicated that there was no room for others." Whitman's book, "It's My Party Too," was a meek plea for attention from the "social fundamentalists" she claimed had seized control of the family firm. She would not name names, as though she might have another go at riding the tiger that had already devoured her.
John Danforth, for 18 years a U.S. senator from Missouri, served briefly before resigning as Bush's ambassador to the United Nations. He did not stipulate the reasons for his departure, but he did publish an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on March 30 of this year decrying how "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians." The GOP, he wrote, has become "a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement." Danforth, an old friend of George H.W. Bush's, lamented the loss of the party's heritage: "Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots." Danforth was replaced at the U.N. not with a believer in old-fashioned bipartisan internationalism but with John Bolton.
Lawrence Wilkerson, the former head of the Marine War College who had served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, revealed the inner struggles of the Bush administration in a speech before the New America Foundation on Oct. 19. A "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" ran U.S. foreign policy for a president "not versed in international relations and not too much interested." Wilkerson defined the Bush doctrine as "cowboyism." Condoleezza Rice as national security advisor was "extremely weak" and more interested in "her intimacy with the president" than in acting as an honest broker. Cleaning up after Bush's tarnishing of America's image in the world was an impossible task. "It's hard to sell shit," said Wilkerson.
Powell, Wilkerson's principal, has remained publicly quiet since his September outburst, in which he said that his speech before the United Nations arguing the case for the existence of WMD and an invasion of Iraq, which subsequently was revealed to be filled with disinformation, was a "blot" on his record and continues to be "painful now." Behind the scenes, however, Powell has been active in countering the Bush torture policy, which he opposed from the beginning. Powell sent personal letters and made telephone calls to Republican senators urging them to support the amendment to the military appropriations bill that would end the torture policy. As a result of Powell's lobbying, 90 senators voted for it. It was a stinging rebuke to Bush, who has threatened to veto the entire military appropriations package if the amendment is attached.
Brent Scowcroft, perhaps more than anyone else, personifies the realist, bipartisan Republican tradition of internationalism. He is also the former national security advisor to the elder Bush and among his closest friends. President Bush dismissed him early this year from the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, having ignored his advice through the first term. Scowcroft's candid views appear in an article in the current issue of the New Yorker, in which he details his rejection by Bush at length. "I don't want to go there," Scowcroft replied when asked about the difference between the father and son. He said dismissively of the Iraq policies of a leading neoconservative, former Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, "He's got a utopia out there." On Cheney, Scowcroft sounded perplexed: "The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney. I consider Cheney a good friend -- I've known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore."
But Scowcroft the foreign policy mandarin may not have been exposed to the partisan Cheney when he served as secretary of defense in the administration of Bush Sr. He may have missed Cheney's tenure as a representative in the House leadership, where he compiled a far-right voting record and, as House minority whip during the 1980s, was the hidden hand behind the rise of Newt Gingrich and his band of radicals. When he was slated to be Bush's running mate, it was widely assumed that Cheney would act as a stabilizing and moderating presence. Only those who understood his congressional career knew of his affinities with the radical right, his vengeful instincts and his mean-spiritedness. His emergence at the center of the "cabal" now under investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should not surprise those who have penetrated his avuncular image to see the hard man beneath. Cheney was not the substitute father figure but the false father.
Bush's highhanded treatment of the few Republican moderates of his first term all but eviscerated what was left of the establishment that once controlled the party. The story of the old party's fall from grace and Bush's part in it is a well-known bildungsroman, a family saga that begins with the father.
The son of Prescott Bush, a patrician moderate Republican senator from Connecticut and a Wall Street investment banker, George H.W. Bush traveled to Texas to make his fortune in the wildcat oil industry. He was hardly a roaring success, but he took up his father's line of work, getting elected to the House from suburban Houston. It was then that he opened the negotiations of his Faustian bargain. His father had been the head of the United Negro College Fund; he and his wife were prominent members of the local chapter of Planned Parenthood. But George Bush Sr., seeking political advantage in Texas, declared his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bush spent the next decade advancing himself as a consummate Republican loyalist in positions ranging from chairman of the Republican National Committee under Nixon to Gerald Ford's CIA director and United Nations ambassador. After losing the Republican presidential nomination to Ronald Reagan in 1980, he swallowed his criticism of Reagan's supply-side nostrums as "voodoo economics" when he became his running mate.
The Faustian negotiations deepened. In 1988, he ran for president as Reagan's anointed successor. Faltering on his own, with unenthusiastic backing from Reagan's evangelical supporters, he ran a series of nativist and racially charged attacks on his Democratic opponent. Bush won that election with the right-wing Republican base voting for him but still doubtful of his authenticity. As president his compromises on taxation and realism in foreign policy led to their open disillusionment.
His son George lost his first campaign for the House from Texas, tainted by association with his father, who was tarnished by the right as a member of the Trilateral Commission international conspiracy. From then on, Bush was never outmaneuvered on his right flank. His political field marshal, Karl Rove, managed the right wing for his benefit. The Faustian bargain of the father became business as usual for the son.
Now the old establishment is faded. Its remnants largely consist of his father's superannuated retinue. Not even the old Texas establishment in the person of James A. Baker III, Bush's father's field marshal and the former secretary of state (among his many official posts), who managed the Florida contest that gave the presidency to the son, is welcome in this White House.
The Republican Party after Bush, minus its traditional establishment, threatens to become the party of its irreducible base, the party of the old Confederacy and the sparsely populated Rocky Mountain states. But this base, however loyal and obsequious to Bush, regardless of any crisis, does not offer statesmen to step in to handle his shaken White House.
A sharp reversal of policy and turnover in personnel are the only actions that may enable Bush to salvage the shipwreck of his presidency, as they did for Reagan. But bringing in the elders, even if they could be summoned, would be psychologically devastating to Bush, a humiliating admission that his long history of recklessness and failure, from the Texas Air National Guard to Harken Energy, with rescue only through the intervention of his father and his father's friends, has reached its culmination.
Genetic map that could unlock secrets of human life
Genetic map that could unlock secrets of human life
27.10.05 1.00pm
By Steve Connor
The first genetic "map" of human diversity is published today by scientists who describe it as a landmark achievement that will revolutionise medicine.
More than 200 researchers from six countries have spent three years and more than £80m deconstructing the human genome to discover the precise genetic differences between people.
Whereas the human genome - the basic genetic blueprint - showed that everyone shares 99.9 per cent of their genes, it is the 0.1 per cent difference that can hold the clues to illnesses such as asthma, diabetes, dementia, heart disease and cancer.
Scientists have completed the first phase of an ambitious project to tease apart these minute differences to begin to explain why some people develop serious diseases while others with a similar lifestyle remain healthy.
The map of human diversity could also be used to identify patients who respond better to certain drugs as well as explaining the evolutionary origins of humankind by shedding light on the ancient migrations of our ancestors from Africa.
"This represents a milestone for medical research," said David Altshuler of Harvard University, one of the leaders of the team to draw up the genetic map, published in the journal Nature.
Dr Altshuler said that the map provides a powerful new tool for exploring the root causes of the many common diseases that have a genetic as well as lifestyle component.
"Such understanding is required for researchers to develop new and much-needed approaches to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases such as diabetes, bipolar disorder, cancer and many others," he said.
The scientists built up the map of genetic diversity from a detailed analysis of the DNA from 269 volunteers drawn from four different ethnic groups - the Yoruba tribe from Nigeria, residents of Tokyo, the Han Chinese from Beijing and European Americans from Utah.
By painstakingly comparing the smallest possible mutations - called single nucleotide polymorphisms - in each of the volunteer's DNA, the scientists produced the first comprehensive catalogue of human genetic variation.
Panos Deloukas, a senior investigator at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, said that a map of such differences will ultimately prove invaluable in understanding the many life-threatening diseases affecting people today.
"Humans are genetically 99.9 per cent identical.
It is the tiny percentage that is different that holds the key to why some of us are more susceptible to common diseases such as diabetes and hypertension or respond differently to treatment with certain drugs," Dr Deloukas said.
The new genetic map is based on relatively large fragments of DNA - called haplotypes - that contain a unique battery of single mutations which tend to be inherited together as a block.
Scientists have called the study "HapMap" because it is based on these human haplotypes.
More than a million single mutations have so far been mapped to their respective haplotypes.
The researchers estimated that the study will increase by 20-fold the speed at which it is possible to search for the genes responsible for disease.
"This report describes a remarkable step in our journey to understand human biology and disease," said Professor Peter Donnelly of the University of Oxford, another senior member of the research team.
All the information resulting from the study - which was funded jointly by governments and private industry - is available on the internet.
Preliminary data has already been used by researchers to identify the genetic mutations behind age-related macular degeneration, a condition that causes blindness in older people.
"The HapMap is a remarkable resource that will accelerate the search for genes involved in common ailments, such as heart disease and obesity," said Mark Wolport, director of the Wellcome Trust, which helped to fund the project.
- INDEPENDENT
Copyright © 2005, APN Holdings NZ Ltd Privacy Policy | Terms of Use
27.10.05 1.00pm
By Steve Connor
The first genetic "map" of human diversity is published today by scientists who describe it as a landmark achievement that will revolutionise medicine.
More than 200 researchers from six countries have spent three years and more than £80m deconstructing the human genome to discover the precise genetic differences between people.
Whereas the human genome - the basic genetic blueprint - showed that everyone shares 99.9 per cent of their genes, it is the 0.1 per cent difference that can hold the clues to illnesses such as asthma, diabetes, dementia, heart disease and cancer.
Scientists have completed the first phase of an ambitious project to tease apart these minute differences to begin to explain why some people develop serious diseases while others with a similar lifestyle remain healthy.
The map of human diversity could also be used to identify patients who respond better to certain drugs as well as explaining the evolutionary origins of humankind by shedding light on the ancient migrations of our ancestors from Africa.
"This represents a milestone for medical research," said David Altshuler of Harvard University, one of the leaders of the team to draw up the genetic map, published in the journal Nature.
Dr Altshuler said that the map provides a powerful new tool for exploring the root causes of the many common diseases that have a genetic as well as lifestyle component.
"Such understanding is required for researchers to develop new and much-needed approaches to prevent, diagnose and treat diseases such as diabetes, bipolar disorder, cancer and many others," he said.
The scientists built up the map of genetic diversity from a detailed analysis of the DNA from 269 volunteers drawn from four different ethnic groups - the Yoruba tribe from Nigeria, residents of Tokyo, the Han Chinese from Beijing and European Americans from Utah.
By painstakingly comparing the smallest possible mutations - called single nucleotide polymorphisms - in each of the volunteer's DNA, the scientists produced the first comprehensive catalogue of human genetic variation.
Panos Deloukas, a senior investigator at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, said that a map of such differences will ultimately prove invaluable in understanding the many life-threatening diseases affecting people today.
"Humans are genetically 99.9 per cent identical.
It is the tiny percentage that is different that holds the key to why some of us are more susceptible to common diseases such as diabetes and hypertension or respond differently to treatment with certain drugs," Dr Deloukas said.
The new genetic map is based on relatively large fragments of DNA - called haplotypes - that contain a unique battery of single mutations which tend to be inherited together as a block.
Scientists have called the study "HapMap" because it is based on these human haplotypes.
More than a million single mutations have so far been mapped to their respective haplotypes.
The researchers estimated that the study will increase by 20-fold the speed at which it is possible to search for the genes responsible for disease.
"This report describes a remarkable step in our journey to understand human biology and disease," said Professor Peter Donnelly of the University of Oxford, another senior member of the research team.
All the information resulting from the study - which was funded jointly by governments and private industry - is available on the internet.
Preliminary data has already been used by researchers to identify the genetic mutations behind age-related macular degeneration, a condition that causes blindness in older people.
"The HapMap is a remarkable resource that will accelerate the search for genes involved in common ailments, such as heart disease and obesity," said Mark Wolport, director of the Wellcome Trust, which helped to fund the project.
- INDEPENDENT
Copyright © 2005, APN Holdings NZ Ltd Privacy Policy | Terms of Use
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
What's a Modern Girl to Do? - New York Times
The New York Times
October 30, 2005
What's a Modern Girl to Do?
By
MAUREEN DOWD
When I entered college in 1969, women were bursting out of theirs 50's
chrysalis, shedding girdles, padded bras and conventions. The Jazz Age
spirit flared
in the Age of Aquarius. Women were once again imitating men and acting all
independent: smoking, drinking, wanting to earn money and thinking they had
the right to be sexual, this time protected by the pill. I didn't fit in
with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a
fun-loving
(if chaste) type who would decades later come to life in Sarah Jessica
Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. I hated the grubby, unisex jeans and no-makeup
look and
drugs that zoned you out, and I couldn't understand the appeal of dances
that didn't involve touching your partner. In the universe of Eros, I longed
for
style and wit. I loved the Art Deco glamour of 30's movies. I wanted to
dance the Continental like Fred and Ginger in white hotel suites; drink
martinis
like Myrna Loy and William Powell; live the life of a screwball heroine like
Katharine Hepburn, wearing a gold lamé gown cut on the bias, cavorting with
Cary Grant, strolling along Fifth Avenue with my pet leopard.
My mom would just shake her head and tell me that my idea of the 30's was
wildly romanticized. "We were poor," she'd say. "We didn't dance around in
white
hotel suites." I took the idealism and passion of the 60's for granted,
simply assuming we were sailing toward perfect equality with men, a utopian
world
at home and at work. I didn't listen to her when she cautioned me about the
chimera of equality.
On my 31st birthday, she sent me a bankbook with a modest nest egg she had
saved for me. "I always felt that the girls in a family should get a little
more
than the boys even though all are equally loved," she wrote in a letter.
"They need a little cushion to fall back on. Women can stand on the Empire
State
Building and scream to the heavens that they are equal to men and liberated,
but until they have the same anatomy, it's a lie. It's more of a man's world
today than ever. Men can eat their cake in unlimited bakeries."
I thought she was just being Old World, like my favorite jade, Dorothy
Parker, when she wrote:
Block quote start
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
Block quote end
I thought the struggle for egalitarianism was a cinch, so I could leave it
to my earnest sisters in black turtlenecks and Birkenstocks. I figured there
was plenty of time for me to get serious later, that America would always be
full of passionate and full-throated debate about the big stuff - social
issues,
sexual equality, civil rights. Little did I realize that the feminist
revolution would have the unexpected consequence of intensifying the
confusion between
the sexes, leaving women in a tangle of dependence and independence as they
entered the 21st century.
Maybe we should have known that the story of women's progress would be more
of a zigzag than a superhighway, that the triumph of feminism would last a
nanosecond
while the backlash lasted 40 years.
Despite the best efforts of philosophers, politicians, historians,
novelists, screenwriters, linguists, therapists, anthropologists and
facilitators, men
and women are still in a muddle in the boardroom, the bedroom and the
Situation Room.
Courtship
My mom gave me three essential books on the subject of men. The first, when
I was 13, was "On Becoming a Woman." The second, when I was 21, was "365
Ways
to Cook Hamburger." The third, when I was 25, was "How to Catch and Hold a
Man," by Yvonne Antelle. ("Keep thinking of yourself as a soft, mysterious
cat..
. .Men are fascinated by bright, shiny objects, by lots of curls, lots of
hair on the head . . . by bows, ribbons, ruffles and bright colors.. .
.Sarcasm
is dangerous. Avoid it altogether.")
Because I received "How to Catch and Hold a Man" at a time when we were
entering the Age of Equality, I put it aside as an anachronism. After all,
sometime
in the 1960's flirting went out of fashion, as did ironing boards, makeup
and the idea that men needed to be "trapped" or "landed." The way to
approach
men, we reasoned, was forthrightly and without games, artifice or frills.
Unfortunately, history has shown this to be a misguided notion.
I knew it even before the 1995 publication of "The Rules," a dating bible
that encouraged women to return to prefeminist mind games by playing hard to
get.
("Don't stay on the phone for more than 10 minutes.. . .Even if you are the
head of your own company. . .when you're with a man you like, be quiet and
mysterious, act ladylike, cross your legs and smile.. . .Wear black sheer
pantyhose and hike up your skirt to entice the opposite sex!")
I knew this before fashion magazines became crowded with crinolines, bows,
ruffles, leopard-skin scarves, 50's party dresses and other sartorial
equivalents
of flirting and with articles like "The Return of Hard to Get." ("I think it
behooves us to stop offering each other these pearls of feminism, to stop
saying, 'So, why don't you call him?"' a writer lectured in Mademoiselle.
"Some men must have the thrill of the chase.")
I knew things were changing because a succession of my single girlfriends
had called, sounding sheepish, to ask if they could borrow my out-of-print
copy
of "How to Catch and Hold a Man."
Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men, it was
becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to brush up on the
venerable
tricks of the trade: an absurdly charming little laugh, a pert toss of the
head, an air of saucy triumph, dewy eyes and a full knowledge of music,
drawing,
elegant note writing and geography. It would once more be considered
captivating to lie on a chaise longue, pass a lacy handkerchief across the
eyelids
and complain of a case of springtime giddiness.
Today, women have gone back to hunting their quarry - in person and in
cyberspace - with elaborate schemes designed to allow the deluded creatures
to think
they are the hunters. "Men like hunting, and we shouldn't deprive them of
their chance to do their hunting and mating rituals," my 26-year-old friend
Julie
Bosman, a New York Times reporter, says. "As my mom says, Men don't like to
be chased." Or as the Marvelettes sang, "The hunter gets captured by the
game."
These days the key to staying cool in the courtship rituals is B. & I.,
girls say - Busy and Important. "As much as you're waiting for that little
envelope
to appear on your screen," says Carrie Foster, a 29-year-old publicist in
Washington, "you happen to have a lot of stuff to do anyway." If a guy
rejects
you or turns out to be the essence of evil, you can ratchet up from B. & I.
to C.B.B., Can't Be Bothered. In the T.M.I. - Too Much Information - digital
age, there can be infinite technological foreplay.
Helen Fisher, a Rutgers anthropologist, concurs with Julie: "What our
grandmothers told us about playing hard to get is true. The whole point of
the game
is to impress and capture. It's not about honesty. Many men and women, when
they're playing the courtship game, deceive so they can win. Novelty,
excitement
and danger drive up dopamine in the brain. And both sexes brag."
Women might dye their hair, apply makeup and spend hours finding a
hip-slimming dress, she said, while men may drive a nice car or wear a fancy
suit that
makes them seem richer than they are. In this retro world, a woman must play
hard to get but stay soft as a kitten. And avoid sarcasm. Altogether.
Money
In those faraway, long-ago days of feminism, there was talk about equal pay
for equal work. Now there's talk about "girl money."
A friend of mine in her 30's says it is a term she hears bandied about the
New York dating scene. She also notes a shift in the type of gifts given at
wedding
showers around town, a reversion to 50's-style offerings: soup ladles and
those frilly little aprons from Anthropologie and vintage stores are being
unwrapped
along with see-through nighties and push-up bras.
"What I find most disturbing about the 1950's-ification and retrogression of
women's lives is that it has seeped into the corporate and social culture,
where it can do real damage," she complains. "Otherwise intelligent men, who
know women still earn less than men as a rule, say things like: 'I'll get
the check. You only have girl money."'
Throughout the long, dark ages of undisputed patriarchy, women connived to
trade beauty and sex for affluence and status. In the first flush of
feminism,
women offered to pay half the check with "woman money" as a way to show that
these crass calculations - that a woman's worth in society was determined
by her looks, that she was an ornament up for sale to the highest bidder -
no longer applied.
Now dating etiquette has reverted. Young women no longer care about using
the check to assert their equality. They care about using it to assess their
sexuality.
Going Dutch is an archaic feminist relic. Young women talk about it with
disbelief and disdain. "It's a scuzzy 70's thing, like platform shoes on
men,"
one told me.
"Feminists in the 70's went overboard," Anne Schroeder, a 26-year-old
magazine editor in Washington, agrees. "Paying is like opening a car door.
It's nice.
I appreciate it. But he doesn't have to."
Unless he wants another date.
Women in their 20's think old-school feminists looked for equality in all
the wrong places, that instead of fighting battles about whether women
should
pay for dinner or wear padded bras they should have focused only on big
economic issues.
After Googling and Bikramming to get ready for a first dinner date, a modern
girl will end the evening with the Offering, an insincere bid to help pay
the
check. "They make like they are heading into their bag after a meal, but it
is a dodge," Marc Santora, a 30-year-old Metro reporter for The Times, says.
"They know you will stop them before a credit card can be drawn. If you
don't, they hold it against you."
One of my girlfriends, a TV producer in New York, told me much the same
thing: "If you offer, and they accept, then it's over."
Jurassic feminists shudder at the retro implication of a quid profiterole.
But it doesn't matter if the woman is making as much money as the man, or
more,
she expects him to pay, both to prove her desirability and as a way of
signaling romance - something that's more confusing in a dating culture rife
with
casual hookups and group activities. (Once beyond the initial testing phase
and settled in a relationship, of course, she can pony up more.)
"There are plenty of ways for me to find out if he's going to see me as an
equal without disturbing the dating ritual," one young woman says.
"Disturbing
the dating ritual leads to chaos. Everybody knows that."
When I asked a young man at my gym how he and his lawyer girlfriend were
going to divide the costs on a California vacation, he looked askance. "She
never
offers," he replied. "And I like paying for her." It is, as one guy said,
"one of the few remaining ways we can demonstrate our manhood."
Power Dynamics
At a party for the Broadway opening of "Sweet Smell of Success," a top New
York producer gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was
anything
but sweet. He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he
was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist
made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable
and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one
thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be
critical of absolutely everything, even his manhood?
He had hit on a primal fear of single successful women: that the aroma of
male power is an aphrodisiac for women, but the perfume of female power is a
turnoff
for men. It took women a few decades to realize that everything they were
doing to advance themselves in the boardroom could be sabotaging their
chances
in the bedroom, that evolution was lagging behind equality.
A few years ago at a White House correspondents' dinner, I met a very
beautiful and successful actress. Within minutes, she blurted out: "I can't
believe
I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or
P.R. women."
I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took
up with young women whose job it was was to care for them and nurture them
in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight
attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.
John Schwartz of The New York Times made the trend official in 2004 when he
reported: "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and
evolution
may be to blame." A study by psychology researchers at the University of
Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggested that men going for
long-term
relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who
are supervisors. Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to
cheat on them. There it is, right in the DNA: women get penalized by
insecure men for being too independent.
"The hypothesis," Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study,
theorized, "is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps
to minimize
the risk of raising offspring that are not their own." Women, by contrast,
did not show a marked difference between their attraction to men who might
work
above them and their attraction to men who might work below them.
So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less
desirable as they get more successful?
After I first wrote on this subject, a Times reader named Ray Lewis e-mailed
me. While we had assumed that making ourselves more professionally
accomplished
would make us more fascinating, it turned out, as Lewis put it, that smart
women were "draining at times."
Or as Bill Maher more crudely but usefully summed it up to Craig Ferguson on
the "Late Late Show" on CBS: "Women get in relationships because they want
somebody to talk to. Men want women to shut up."
Women moving up still strive to marry up. Men moving up still tend to marry
down. The two sexes' going in opposite directions has led to an epidemic of
professional women missing out on husbands and kids.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the author of "Creating a Life:
Professional Women and the Quest for Children," a book published in 2002,
conducted
a survey and found that 55 percent of 35-year-old career women were
childless. And among corporate executives who earn $100,000 or more, she
said, 49 percent
of the women did not have children, compared with only 19 percent of the
men.
Hewlett quantified, yet again, that men have an unfair advantage.
"Nowadays," she said, "the rule of thumb seems to be that the more
successful the woman,
the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a child. For men, the
reverse is true."
A 2005 report by researchers at four British universities indicated that a
high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to marry, while it is a plus for men. The
prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point
increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point
rise.
On a "60 Minutes" report on the Hewlett book, Lesley Stahl talked to two
young women who went to Harvard Business School. They agreed that while they
were
the perfect age to start families, they didn't find it easy to meet the
right mates.
Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from
high-achieving women. The girls said they hid the fact that they went to
Harvard from guys
they met because it was the kiss of death. "The H-bomb," they dubbed it. "As
soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that's the end of the
conversation,"
Ani Vartanian said. "As soon as the guys say, 'Oh, I go to Harvard Business
School,' all the girls start falling into them."
Hewlett thinks that the 2005 American workplace is more macho than ever.
"It's actually much more difficult now than 10 years ago to have a career
and raise
a family," she told me. "The trend lines continue that highly educated women
in many countries are increasingly dealing with this creeping nonchoice and
end up on this path of delaying finding a mate and delaying childbearing.
Whether you're looking at Italy, Russia or the U.S., all of that is true."
Many
women continue to fear that the more they accomplish, the more they may have
to sacrifice. They worry that men still veer away from "challenging" women
because of a male atavistic desire to be the superior force in a
relationship.
"With men and women, it's always all about control issues, isn't it?" says a
guy I know, talking about his bitter divorce.
Or, as Craig Bierko, a musical comedy star and actor who played one of
Carrie's boyfriends on "Sex and the City," told me, "Deep down, beneath the
bluster
and machismo, men are simply afraid to say that what they're truly looking
for in a woman is an intelligent, confident and dependable partner in life
whom
they can devote themselves to unconditionally until she's 40."
Ms. Versus Mrs.
"Ms." was supposed to neutralize the stature of women, so they weren't
publicly defined by their marital status. When The Times finally agreed to
switch
to Ms. in its news pages in 1986, after much hectoring by feminists, Gloria
Steinem sent flowers to the executive editor, Abe Rosenthal. But nowadays
most
young brides want to take their husbands' names and brag on the moniker
Mrs., a brand that proclaims you belong to him. T-shirts with "MRS."
emblazoned
in sequins or sparkly beads are popular wedding-shower gifts.
A Harvard economics professor, Claudia Goldin, did a study last year that
found that 44 percent of women in the Harvard class of 1980 who married
within
10 years of graduation kept their birth names, while in the class of '90 it
was down to 32 percent. In 1990, 23 percent of college-educated women kept
their own names after marriage, while a decade later the number had fallen
to 17 percent.
Time magazine reported that an informal poll in the spring of 2005 by the
Knot, a wedding Web site, showed similar results: 81 percent of respondents
took
their spouse's last name, an increase from 71 percent in 2000. The number of
women with hyphenated surnames fell from 21 percent to 8 percent.
"It's a return to romance, a desire to make marriage work," Goldin told one
interviewer, adding that young women might feel that by keeping their own
names
they were aligning themselves with tedious old-fashioned feminists, and this
might be a turnoff to them.
The professor, who married in 1979 and kept her name, undertook the study
after her niece, a lawyer, changed hers. "She felt that her generation of
women
didn't have to do the same things mine did, because of what we had already
achieved," Goldin told Time.
Many women now do not think of domestic life as a "comfortable concentration
camp," as Betty Friedan wrote in "The Feminine Mystique," where they are
losing
their identities and turning into "anonymous biological robots in a docile
mass." Now they want to be Mrs. Anonymous Biological Robot in a Docile Mass.
They dream of being rescued - to flirt, to shop, to stay home and be taken
care of. They shop for "Stepford Fashions" - matching shoes and ladylike
bags
and the 50's-style satin, lace and chiffon party dresses featured in InStyle
layouts - and spend their days at the gym trying for Wisteria Lane
waistlines.
The Times recently ran a front-page article about young women attending Ivy
League colleges, women who are being groomed to take their places in the
professional
and political elite, who are planning to reject careers in favor of playing
traditional roles, staying home and raising children.
"My mother always told me you can't be the best career woman and the best
mother at the same time," the brainy, accomplished Cynthia Liu told Louise
Story,
explaining why she hoped to be a stay-at-home mom a few years after she goes
to law school. "You always have to choose one over the other."
Kate White, the editor of Cosmopolitan, told me that she sees a distinct
shift in what her readers want these days. "Women now don't want to be in
the grind,"
she said. "The baby boomers made the grind seem unappealing."
Cynthia Russett, a professor of American history at Yale, told Story that
women today are simply more "realistic," having seen the dashed utopia of
those
who assumed it wouldn't be so hard to combine full-time work and child
rearing.
To the extent that young women are rejecting the old idea of copying men and
reshaping the world around their desires, it's exhilarating progress. But to
the extent that a pampered class of females is walking away from the problem
and just planning to marry rich enough to cosset themselves in a narrow
world
of dependence on men, it's an irritating setback. If the new ethos is "a
woman needs a career like a fish needs a bicycle," it won't be healthy.
Movies
In all those Tracy-Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the
snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. You still
see it onscreen occasionally - the incendiary chemistry of Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie playing married assassins aiming for mutually assured orgasms
and
destruction in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Interestingly, that movie was described
as retro because of its salty battle of wits between two peppery lovers.
Moviemakers
these days are more interested in exploring what Steve Martin, in his novel
"Shopgirl," calls the "calm cushion" of romances between unequals.
In James Brooks's movie "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, playing a sensitive Los
Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid, just as in "Maid in
Manhattan,"
Ralph Fiennes, playing a sensitive New York pol, falls for the hot Latino
maid at his hotel, played by Jennifer Lopez. Sandler's maid, who cleans up
for
him without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman, in
looks and character. His wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly,
yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who
has just lost her job with a commercial design firm and fears she has lost
her
identity.
In 2003, we had "Girl With a Pearl Earring," in which Colin Firth's Vermeer
erotically paints Scarlett Johansson's Dutch maid, and Richard Curtis's
"Love
Actually," about the attraction of unequals. The witty and sophisticated
British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who
wheels
the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial
Emma Thompson, the sister of the prime minister, falls for his sultry
secretary.
A novelist played by Colin Firth falls for his maid, who speaks only
Portuguese.
Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish
narcissists and objects of rejection rather than of affection.
It's funny. I come from a family of Irish domestics - statuesque,
6-foot-tall women who cooked, kept house and acted as nannies for some of
America's first
families. I was always so proud of achieving more - succeeding in a
high-powered career that would have been closed to my great-aunts. How odd,
then, to
find out now that being a maid would have enhanced my chances with men.
An upstairs maid, of course.
Women's Magazines
Cosmo is still the best-selling magazine on college campuses, as it was when
I was in college, and the best-selling monthly magazine on the newsstand.
The
June 2005 issue, with Jessica Simpson on the cover, her cleavage spilling
out of an orange croqueted halter dress, could have been June 1970. The
headlines
are familiar: "How to turn him on in 10 words or less," "Do You Make Men
M-E-L-T? Take our quiz," "Bridal Special," Cosmo's stud search and "Cosmo's
Most
Famous Sex Tips; the Legendary Tricks That Have Brought Countless Guys to
Their Knees." (Sex Trick 4: "Place a glazed doughnut around your man's
member,
then gently nibble the pastry and lick the icing . . . as well as his
manhood." Another favorite Cosmo trick is to yell out during sex which of
your girlfriends
thinks your man is hot.)
At any newsstand, you'll see the original Cosmo girl's man-crazy,
sex-obsessed image endlessly, tiresomely replicated, even for the teen set.
On the cover
of Elle Girl: "267 Ways to Look Hot."
"There has been lots of copying - look at Glamour," Helen Gurley Brown,
Cosmo's founding editor told me and sighed. "I used to have all the sex to
myself."
Before it curdled into a collection of stereotypes, feminism had fleetingly
held out a promise that there would be some precincts of womanly life that
were
not all about men. But it never quite materialized.
It took only a few decades to create a brazen new world where the highest
ideal is to acknowledge your inner slut. I am woman; see me strip. Instead
of
peaceful havens of girl things and boy things, we have a society where women
of all ages are striving to become self-actualized sex kittens. Hollywood
actresses now work out by taking pole-dancing classes.
Female sexuality has been a confusing corkscrew path, not a serene
progressive arc. We had decades of Victorian prudery, when women were not
supposed to
like sex. Then we had the pill and zipless encounters, when women were
supposed to have the same animalistic drive as men. Then it was discovered -
shock,
horror! - that men and women are not alike in their desires. But zipless
morphed into hookups, and the more one-night stands the girls on "Sex and
the
City" had, the grumpier they got.
Oddly enough, Felix Dennis, who created the top-selling Maxim, said he stole
his "us against the world" lad-magazine attitude from women's magazines like
Cosmo. Just as women didn't mind losing Cosmo's prestigious fiction as the
magazine got raunchier, plenty of guys were happy to lose the literary
pretensions
of venerable men's magazines and embrace simple-minded gender stereotypes,
like the Maxim manifesto instructing women, "If we see you in the morning
and
night, why call us at work?"
Jessica Simpson and Eva Longoria move seamlessly from showing their curves
on the covers of Cosmo and Glamour to Maxim, which dubbed Simpson "America's
favorite ball and chain!" In the summer of 2005, both British GQ and FHM
featured Pamela Anderson busting out of their covers. ("I think of my
breasts
as props," she told FHM.)
A lot of women now want to be Maxim babes as much as men want Maxim babes.
So women have moved from fighting objectification to seeking it. "I have
been
surprised," Maxim's editor, Ed Needham, confessed to me, "to find that a lot
of women would want to be somehow validated as a Maxim girl type, that
they'd
like to be thought of as hot and would like their boyfriends to take
pictures of them or make comments about them that mirror the Maxim
representation
of a woman, the Pamela Anderson sort of brand. That, to me, is kind of
extraordinary."
The luscious babes on the cover of Maxim were supposed to be men's fantasy
guilty pleasures, after all, not their real life-affirming girlfriends.
Beauty
While I never related to the unstyled look of the early feminists and I
tangled with boyfriends who did not want me to wear makeup and heels, I
always assumed
that one positive result of the feminist movement would be a more flexible
and capacious notion of female beauty, a release from the tyranny of the
girdled,
primped ideal of the 50's.
I was wrong. Forty years after the dawn of feminism, the ideal of feminine
beauty is more rigid and unnatural than ever.
When Gloria Steinem wrote that "all women are Bunnies," she did not mean it
as a compliment; it was a feminist call to arms. Decades later, it's just an
aesthetic fact, as more and more women embrace Botox and implants and
stretch and protrude to extreme proportions to satisfy male desires. Now
that technology
is biology, all women can look like inflatable dolls. It's clear that
American narcissism has trumped American feminism.
It was naïve and misguided for the early feminists to tendentiously demonize
Barbie and Cosmo girl, to disdain such female proclivities as shopping,
applying
makeup and hunting for sexy shoes and cute boyfriends and to prognosticate a
world where men and women dressed alike and worked alike in navy suits and
were equal in every way.
But it is equally naïve and misguided for young women now to fritter away
all their time shopping for boudoirish clothes and text-messaging about guys
while
they disdainfully ignore gender politics and the seismic shifts on the
Supreme Court that will affect women's rights for a generation.
What I didn't like at the start of the feminist movement was that young
women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. They were
supposed
to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity.
What I don't like now is that the young women rejecting the feminist
movement are dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. The plumage
is more
colorful, the shapes are more curvy, the look is more plastic, the message
is diametrically opposite - before it was don't be a sex object; now it's be
a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling.
And the Future . . .
Having boomeranged once, will women do it again in a couple of decades? If
we flash forward to 2030, will we see all those young women who thought
trying
to Have It All was a pointless slog, now middle-aged and stranded in
suburbia, popping Ativan, struggling with rebellious teenagers, deserted by
husbands
for younger babes, unable to get back into a work force they never tried to
be part of?
It's easy to picture a surreally familiar scene when women realize they
bought into a raw deal and old trap. With no power or money or independence,
they'll
be mere domestic robots, lasering their legs and waxing their floors - or
vice versa - and desperately seeking a new Betty Friedan.
Maureen Dowd is a columnist for The New York Times. This essay is adapted
from "Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide," to be published next month by
G.P.
Putnam's Sons.
List of 11 items
. Copyright 2005
The New York Times Company
Posted by Miriam V.
American Family Voices - Miriam V.
Dear American Family Voices Supporter:
On Friday, American Family Voices joined forces with the Public Campaign
Action Fund and
launched a television ad detailing how newly appointed House Majority Leader
Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) are one in the same. The ad is
supposed
to run on all eight network television stations in
Springfield and Joplin, Missouri. Due to a threatening letter they received
from Blunt's attorney, four stations are now refusing to air our ad.
The ad illustrates how Blunt funneled money he received from former House
Majority Leader Tom DeLay through the Missouri Republican Party to his son
Matt
Blunt's gubernatorial campaign. Entitled "Laundromat," the ad explains how
DeLay, who was recently indicted for money laundering in a scheme where he
funneled
illegal
corporate contributions to help elect Republicans in Texas, donated $150,000
to Rep. Blunt. In return, Blunt funneled DeLay's money to his son's campaign
and a company that hired DeLay's wife.
Obviously, Blunt is feeling the heat and we refuse to let up. Over the next
few weeks American Family Voices will be running three other ads targeting
members
of Congress for their close relationships to DeLay and the oil industry.
Our work is not done and we need your help to continue.
Please contribute to our efforts in anyway you can.
We will continue tracking members embroiled in the House Lobbying Scandal
like DeLay and Blunt, but we can't do it without you. As a committed member
of
the American Family Voices team, we must once again ask for your support.
Sincerely,
Mike Lux, President
Plamegate: Worse than Watergate
by Arianna Huffington
It's getting hard to keep track of all the lies we've been told. Here's a quick cheat sheet:
We now know that Cheney lied to the American people about his involvement in the effort to smear Joe Wilson.
Three months after reportedly receiving a briefing about Wilson's trip to Niger from George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, and then telling Scooter Libby that Plame may have helped arrange her husband's trip, the Vice President went on national TV and told Tim Russert he didn't have a clue about the situation: "I don't know Joe Wilson... I don't know who sent Joe Wilson... I have no idea who hired him and it never came up."
We now know that Karl Rove lied about his involvement, too.
Back in September 2003, when Rove was asked if he had "any knowledge" about the Plame leak, he answered with an unambiguous "No."
Since then, we've learned that Rove was actually up to his Turd Blossom in Plamegate, discussing Plame and her role at the CIA with Matt Cooper and Bob Novak, and taking part in what a source familiar with his four visits to the grand jury characterized as "an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife."
We now know that Scooter Libby also lied about his involvement.
Libby told Pat Fitzgerald that he first learned Plame's identity from Tim Russert. But his own notes show that it was actually his boss, Dick Cheney, who first clued him in about Plame. (Russert, of course, has said he learned of Plame's identity by reading Novak's column, but that's a conundrum for another blog!).
And we now know that Rove and Libby also lied to Scott McClellan, who then -- knowingly or not -- lied to reporters about the two men's involvement.
When pressed today about the fact that in October 2003 he had "categorically" assured reporters that Rove and Libby "were not involved" in the Plame leak, McClellan made it clear that he was just passing on "the assurances that I had received on that." In other words, I only lied to you because they lied to me.
Potential Bonus Presidential Lie: In June 2004, when asked whether he stood by his promise to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's identity, President Bush (taking a cue from Rove) answered with an unambiguous "Yes." But the New York Daily News reports that Bush knew that Rove was involved in the leak two years ago. So why, a year later, was he still acting like he had no idea who'd been involved?
Let's put aside the legal arguments for a moment and just focus on this glut of lying. Clearly, these guys knew that what they were up to should be kept in the shadows. Hence Rove's desire to have his conversation with Cooper be kept on "double super secret background," his self-assessment that he'd "already said too much" to Cooper, and Libby's request that Judy Miller identify him as a "former Hill staffer" instead of the usual "senior administration official."
Cheney, Rove, and Libby obviously felt that their actions had to be covered up.
But what they were covering up was much more than the outing of Valerie Plame. They were covering up the way the White House had used lies and deception to lead us into a war that was reckless and unnecessary -- what Lt. Gen. William Odom, National Security Agency director under Reagan, has called "the greatest strategic disaster in United States history."
The reason why Cheney, Rove, and Libby were so aggressive in attacking anyone who questioned their rationale for war is because, by the summer of 2003, it was becoming embarrassingly clear how wrong they had been about Iraq -- wrong about WMD, wrong about flowers thrown at our feet, wrong about the cost of the war. Had their incompetence not been so grotesquely manifest, there would have been no need for the attack on Wilson -- and the resulting coverup -- that has now landed them all in such legal hot water.
If Rove and Libby are indeed indicted (adding Cheney to our Merry Fitz-mas gift list would just be getting greedy), I believe it will shake up our government in a way we haven't seen since Watergate.
To borrow a phrase from that era, let me make myself perfectly clear: I'm not saying that Plamegate is the same as Watergate. I'm saying it's worse. Much, much worse. No one died as a result of Watergate, but 2,000 American soldiers have now been killed and thousands more wounded to rid the world of an imminent threat that wasn't.
Could there be anything bigger?
After getting a fumbling cipher like George W. Bush elected president, the powers-behind-the-throne must have believed they were untouchable and could get away with anything -- including lying about WMD, outing a CIA agent, and, perhaps, lying to a special prosecutor.
Like Nixon, their mindset was "if you try to get in our way we'll destroy you." (See how quickly those keep-us-safe national security guys were willing to jeopardize an intelligence asset in the name of covering their asses.) And their hubris caused them to over-reach.
Like my old Greek pal Icarus, they flew too close to the sun... and now it looks like they, and their multitude of lies, are about to come crashing down.
It's getting hard to keep track of all the lies we've been told. Here's a quick cheat sheet:
We now know that Cheney lied to the American people about his involvement in the effort to smear Joe Wilson.
Three months after reportedly receiving a briefing about Wilson's trip to Niger from George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, and then telling Scooter Libby that Plame may have helped arrange her husband's trip, the Vice President went on national TV and told Tim Russert he didn't have a clue about the situation: "I don't know Joe Wilson... I don't know who sent Joe Wilson... I have no idea who hired him and it never came up."
We now know that Karl Rove lied about his involvement, too.
Back in September 2003, when Rove was asked if he had "any knowledge" about the Plame leak, he answered with an unambiguous "No."
Since then, we've learned that Rove was actually up to his Turd Blossom in Plamegate, discussing Plame and her role at the CIA with Matt Cooper and Bob Novak, and taking part in what a source familiar with his four visits to the grand jury characterized as "an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife."
We now know that Scooter Libby also lied about his involvement.
Libby told Pat Fitzgerald that he first learned Plame's identity from Tim Russert. But his own notes show that it was actually his boss, Dick Cheney, who first clued him in about Plame. (Russert, of course, has said he learned of Plame's identity by reading Novak's column, but that's a conundrum for another blog!).
And we now know that Rove and Libby also lied to Scott McClellan, who then -- knowingly or not -- lied to reporters about the two men's involvement.
When pressed today about the fact that in October 2003 he had "categorically" assured reporters that Rove and Libby "were not involved" in the Plame leak, McClellan made it clear that he was just passing on "the assurances that I had received on that." In other words, I only lied to you because they lied to me.
Potential Bonus Presidential Lie: In June 2004, when asked whether he stood by his promise to fire anyone found to have leaked Plame's identity, President Bush (taking a cue from Rove) answered with an unambiguous "Yes." But the New York Daily News reports that Bush knew that Rove was involved in the leak two years ago. So why, a year later, was he still acting like he had no idea who'd been involved?
Let's put aside the legal arguments for a moment and just focus on this glut of lying. Clearly, these guys knew that what they were up to should be kept in the shadows. Hence Rove's desire to have his conversation with Cooper be kept on "double super secret background," his self-assessment that he'd "already said too much" to Cooper, and Libby's request that Judy Miller identify him as a "former Hill staffer" instead of the usual "senior administration official."
Cheney, Rove, and Libby obviously felt that their actions had to be covered up.
But what they were covering up was much more than the outing of Valerie Plame. They were covering up the way the White House had used lies and deception to lead us into a war that was reckless and unnecessary -- what Lt. Gen. William Odom, National Security Agency director under Reagan, has called "the greatest strategic disaster in United States history."
The reason why Cheney, Rove, and Libby were so aggressive in attacking anyone who questioned their rationale for war is because, by the summer of 2003, it was becoming embarrassingly clear how wrong they had been about Iraq -- wrong about WMD, wrong about flowers thrown at our feet, wrong about the cost of the war. Had their incompetence not been so grotesquely manifest, there would have been no need for the attack on Wilson -- and the resulting coverup -- that has now landed them all in such legal hot water.
If Rove and Libby are indeed indicted (adding Cheney to our Merry Fitz-mas gift list would just be getting greedy), I believe it will shake up our government in a way we haven't seen since Watergate.
To borrow a phrase from that era, let me make myself perfectly clear: I'm not saying that Plamegate is the same as Watergate. I'm saying it's worse. Much, much worse. No one died as a result of Watergate, but 2,000 American soldiers have now been killed and thousands more wounded to rid the world of an imminent threat that wasn't.
Could there be anything bigger?
After getting a fumbling cipher like George W. Bush elected president, the powers-behind-the-throne must have believed they were untouchable and could get away with anything -- including lying about WMD, outing a CIA agent, and, perhaps, lying to a special prosecutor.
Like Nixon, their mindset was "if you try to get in our way we'll destroy you." (See how quickly those keep-us-safe national security guys were willing to jeopardize an intelligence asset in the name of covering their asses.) And their hubris caused them to over-reach.
Like my old Greek pal Icarus, they flew too close to the sun... and now it looks like they, and their multitude of lies, are about to come crashing down.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Bombshell: Stephen Hadley and the Niger Forgeries
by catnip
Tue Oct 25th, 2005 at 02:14:53 PM EDT
In an explosive article that will further shake the foundations of the White House, Italy’s la Repubblica has released the second installation of their investigative reporting on the Niger document forgeries. The American Prospect gives us a summary in English and confirms that then Deputy National Security Adviser and now current National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley met with the chief of SISMI in 2002 about the documents.
This is very significant because it proves that the WH had its hand on the documents and that the CIA was not the only recipient, as had been previously reported. It also speaks directly to the motive of those in the administration to attack Joe Wilson and his wife.
La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Niccolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.
Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to the Prospect on Tuesday.
Pollari had previously stated that the only US official he had spoken to about the documents was George Tenet. We now know that he was lying.
But La Repubblica also quotes a Bush administration official saying, "I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley."
[…]
Yet if anyone knew who was actually responsible for the White House's trumpeting of the Niger claims, it would seem from the Repubblica report that Hadley did. He also knew that the CIA, which had initially rejected the Italian claims, was not to blame. Hadley's meeting with Pollari, at precisely the time when the Niger forgeries came into the possession of the U.S. government, may explain the seemingly hysterical White House overreaction to Wilson's article almost a year later.
No doubt. If the White House knew that one of its own was involved in perpetuating the case of the false Niger/uranium claims, that would definitely explain why they went after Joe Wilson and his wife. They knew that blaming it all on the CIA could not hold up forever and that Wilson’s revelations were a direct threat to their cabal.
Tue Oct 25th, 2005 at 02:14:53 PM EDT
In an explosive article that will further shake the foundations of the White House, Italy’s la Repubblica has released the second installation of their investigative reporting on the Niger document forgeries. The American Prospect gives us a summary in English and confirms that then Deputy National Security Adviser and now current National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley met with the chief of SISMI in 2002 about the documents.
This is very significant because it proves that the WH had its hand on the documents and that the CIA was not the only recipient, as had been previously reported. It also speaks directly to the motive of those in the administration to attack Joe Wilson and his wife.
La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Niccolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.
Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to the Prospect on Tuesday.
Pollari had previously stated that the only US official he had spoken to about the documents was George Tenet. We now know that he was lying.
But La Repubblica also quotes a Bush administration official saying, "I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley."
[…]
Yet if anyone knew who was actually responsible for the White House's trumpeting of the Niger claims, it would seem from the Repubblica report that Hadley did. He also knew that the CIA, which had initially rejected the Italian claims, was not to blame. Hadley's meeting with Pollari, at precisely the time when the Niger forgeries came into the possession of the U.S. government, may explain the seemingly hysterical White House overreaction to Wilson's article almost a year later.
No doubt. If the White House knew that one of its own was involved in perpetuating the case of the false Niger/uranium claims, that would definitely explain why they went after Joe Wilson and his wife. They knew that blaming it all on the CIA could not hold up forever and that Wilson’s revelations were a direct threat to their cabal.
See Dick Run
washingtonpost.com
The Cheney Factor
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; 1:39 PM
The New York Times this morning reports that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby apparently first learned that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent from none other than his boss -- Vice President Cheney.
This new revelation suggests that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity has reached even closer to the vice president than was previously known.
Fitzgerald is expected to wrap up this week, possibly tomorrow. Libby and Bush senior adviser Karl Rove are widely seen as most likely to be indicted.
Just how the White House first learned of Plame's identity has been one of the elusive mysteries of this case.
Rove is said to have initially told the grand jury he first heard about Plame from some reporter, but he couldn't remember who. Then he said he heard it from Libby.
Libby is said to have initially told the grand jury he first heard about Plame from reporters -- but they denied it. And now, says the Times, Libby's own notes show he heard it from Cheney.
But today's news raises even more questions than it answers, among them:
* Who told Cheney, and under what circumstances?
* Did Cheney acknowledge his own role when he spoke to prosecutors last summer? If not, could he be indicted himself?
* Did Cheney encourage Libby not to disclose their conversation?
* Did President Bush know about Cheney's role?
* Who leaked this latest development -- and what was their motivation?
* Does this mean the White House will stop blaming reporters for everything? (That one was rhetorical: The answer is no.)
The Story
David Johnston, Richard W. Stevenson and Douglas Jehl write in the New York Times: "I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
"Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.
"The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war. . . .
"It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry."
The Times reporters wonder "why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so." Good question.
The conversation between Libby and Cheney apparently took place on the day The Washington Post published a front-page story by Walter Pincus about an unnamed diplomat, later publicly identified as Wilson, and his mission to Niger.
"A key component of President Bush's claim in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program -- its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger -- was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former government official," Pincus wrote.
David Shuster reports for MSNBC this morning: "The story in the New York Times has huge implications, because it places Vice President Cheney for the first time in the heart of this investigation. . . .
"For Scooter Libby, it suggests that his legal exposure may be even greater than expected. . . . This also raises questions about Vice President Cheney. What did the vice president tell investigators? Did the vice president also tell them that he learned about Valerie Plame a month before her identity was revealed by reporters . . . ?
"Why was Scooter Libby trying to protect the vice president in some fashion? Did the vice president know that Scooter Libby was trying to protect him in some fashion? And were there any steps that were taken to further that effort?"
Dana Bash reports on CNN: "This comes at a very, very tense time here at the White House. They're waiting for Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, to come down with perhaps some imminent indictments or at least announcements. They're preparing quietly for that here. It is an understood notion that if anyone is indicted they will resign and we can expect the president of the United States, very soon after that, if that happens, to come out with a public statement."
Under Oath?
As I wrote in last Tuesday's column , in which I speculated about whether a sitting vice president can be legally indicted (answer: yes) I noted that very little was known about Cheney's contact with Fitzgerald last summer.
A contemporaneous New York Times story by David Johnston said Cheney was not under oath during the interview.
But today's Times story says Cheney was indeed under oath.
Johnston, Stevenson and Jehl write that their sources "said they had no indication that Mr. Fitzgerald was considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it."
That could be significant.
Bloggers Falling Out of Their Chairs
Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times that "a senior Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking said that such a meeting between the vice president and his top advisor was not surprising. . . .
" 'Nobody should fall out of their chair if they hear that the vice president discussed classified information trying to determine facts with his national security advisor and chief of staff,' the strategist said."
But that's exactly what bloggers, particularly liberal ones, are doing today.
Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas Zniga writes: "This is not the sort of news that allows us to lower expectations for Fitzmas."
(Many liberal bloggers are referring to the day that Fitzgerald announces indictments as "Fitzmas Day.")
Atrios writes: "The real issue is that Cheney was at the center of this and knew all along what was going on (at least after the fact). Leaking this now is a way of softening the political blow, as even if Cheney's name isn't on the indictments it's going to be in them."
Steven C. Clemons writes: "The entire charade of President Bush stating that he wanted to get to the bottom of who leaked Plame's name -- and who was involved -- is no longer believable at any level. Cheney would not have failed to disclose this to Bush, and Bush played along as if none of his staff were involved. They confessed nothing -- accepted no responsibility -- until forced by Fitzgerald."
Jane Hamsher writes: "Cheney was interviewed by Fitzgerald last year under oath. That would make it perjury to tell a lie. . . .
"What indication do we have that Cheney lied? Well, if Cheney had told the truth when he was interviewed last year, i.e., that he was Scooter Libby's source, Fitzgerald would not have needed to threaten Judy Miller and Matt Cooper with jail in order to counter Scooter Libby's testimony that he first heard about Valerie Plame's identity from journalists."
Spin City
Kenneth R. Bazinet writes in the New York Daily News: "President Bush's damage-control handlers are plotting a sophisticated war room offensive to fight back against possible indictments in the CIA leak probe. . . .
"Team Bush was finalizing its campaign to discredit and undermine special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's conclusions, sources told the Daily News. . . .
"An emerging theme in the Bush war room is arguing that his top political aide, Karl Rove, simply got tripped up on his recollections of whom he talked to and what he told them when questioned about the outing of CIA spy Valerie Plame. He shouldn't be indicted simply because of contradictory grand jury testimony, a source said."
Cheney and the Detainees
R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White write in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody.
"The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by 'an element of the United States government' other than the Defense Department. . . .
"McCain, the principal sponsor of the legislation, rejected the proposed exemption at the meeting with Cheney, according to a government source who spoke without authorization and on the condition of anonymity."
Eric Schmitt notes in the New York Times: "The White House has threatened to veto any bill that includes the McCain provision, contending that it would bind the president's hands in wartime. . . .
"One of the principal amendments that Democrats are expected to offer, sponsored by Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, would create an independent commission to review accusations of prisoner abuse by American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere. The White House has also threatened a presidential veto if any bill comes to Mr. Bush's desk that contains the provision."
Cheney vs. the CIA
Glenn Kessler writes in The Washington Post: "The alleged leaking of a CIA operative's name had its roots in a clash over Iraq policy between White House insiders and their rivals in the permanent bureaucracy of Washington, especially in the State Department and the CIA.
"As the investigation into the leak reaches its expected climax this week with the expiration of the grand jury's term, the internal disputes have been further amplified by a recent string of speeches and interviews criticizing the administration's handling of Iraq, including by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and State Department diplomats, and other officials involved in the early efforts to stabilize Iraq."
Wilkerson vs. Cheney
Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence B. Wilkerson , follows up on his speech last week (see Thursday's column ) with an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today, that hones his major points:
"In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security -- including vital decisions about postwar Iraq -- were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. . . .
"I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less.. . . .
"Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift -- not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy."
He adds: "The administration's performance during its first four years would have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet."
Washington Post reporter Shailagh Murray was Live Online yesterday:
"Boston, Mass.: What do you think of retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson's recent comments about the Bush administration?
"Shailagh Murray: I think it's a good thing his wife isn't a CIA agent, because they'd have to blow her cover, too. Seriously, it was pretty powerful stuff, and way overshadowed by less relevant political speculation stories. . . .
"Boston, Mass.: More on Colonel Wilkerson: How do news stories like this come to get overshadowed by, as you say, a lot less important political news. Is it because papers think that people don't care?
"Shailagh Murray: It's because television reporters prefer windy sea coasts to boring hallways for their live shots, and we stupidly follow their lead too often."
Damage Control
Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei write in The Washington Post: "Facing a convergence of crises threatening his administration, President Bush and his team are devising plans to salvage the remainder of his presidency by applying the lessons of past two-term chief executives and refocusing attention on the president's larger economic and foreign policy goals.
"Rarely has a president confronted as many damaging developments that could all come to a head in this week. A special counsel appears poised to indict one or more administration officials within days. Pressure is building on Bush from within his own party to withdraw the faltering Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. And any day the death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq will pass the symbolically important 2,000 mark.
"To deal with what they consider the darkest days of the Bush presidency, White House advisers have developed a twofold strategy -- confront head-on problems such as the Iraq death toll, while shifting attention to other areas such as conservative economic policies, according to a senior White House official, who spoke about internal deliberations only under the condition of anonymity. Bush advisers are taking clues from the playbooks of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, both of whom weathered second-term scandals.
"The White House strategy will unfold over the next several days, starting with yesterday's announcement of a new Federal Reserve Board chairman and continuing today with a presidential speech on Iraq at Bolling Air Force Base. Anticipating a barrage of criticism when the death toll hits 2,000, Bush will try to put the sacrifice in perspective by portraying the Iraq war as the best way to keep terrorists from striking the United States again, the official said. He will make the same case in another speech Friday in Norfolk."
The Cheney Factor
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; 1:39 PM
The New York Times this morning reports that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby apparently first learned that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent from none other than his boss -- Vice President Cheney.
This new revelation suggests that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity has reached even closer to the vice president than was previously known.
Fitzgerald is expected to wrap up this week, possibly tomorrow. Libby and Bush senior adviser Karl Rove are widely seen as most likely to be indicted.
Just how the White House first learned of Plame's identity has been one of the elusive mysteries of this case.
Rove is said to have initially told the grand jury he first heard about Plame from some reporter, but he couldn't remember who. Then he said he heard it from Libby.
Libby is said to have initially told the grand jury he first heard about Plame from reporters -- but they denied it. And now, says the Times, Libby's own notes show he heard it from Cheney.
But today's news raises even more questions than it answers, among them:
* Who told Cheney, and under what circumstances?
* Did Cheney acknowledge his own role when he spoke to prosecutors last summer? If not, could he be indicted himself?
* Did Cheney encourage Libby not to disclose their conversation?
* Did President Bush know about Cheney's role?
* Who leaked this latest development -- and what was their motivation?
* Does this mean the White House will stop blaming reporters for everything? (That one was rhetorical: The answer is no.)
The Story
David Johnston, Richard W. Stevenson and Douglas Jehl write in the New York Times: "I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
"Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.
"The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war. . . .
"It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry."
The Times reporters wonder "why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so." Good question.
The conversation between Libby and Cheney apparently took place on the day The Washington Post published a front-page story by Walter Pincus about an unnamed diplomat, later publicly identified as Wilson, and his mission to Niger.
"A key component of President Bush's claim in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program -- its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger -- was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former government official," Pincus wrote.
David Shuster reports for MSNBC this morning: "The story in the New York Times has huge implications, because it places Vice President Cheney for the first time in the heart of this investigation. . . .
"For Scooter Libby, it suggests that his legal exposure may be even greater than expected. . . . This also raises questions about Vice President Cheney. What did the vice president tell investigators? Did the vice president also tell them that he learned about Valerie Plame a month before her identity was revealed by reporters . . . ?
"Why was Scooter Libby trying to protect the vice president in some fashion? Did the vice president know that Scooter Libby was trying to protect him in some fashion? And were there any steps that were taken to further that effort?"
Dana Bash reports on CNN: "This comes at a very, very tense time here at the White House. They're waiting for Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, to come down with perhaps some imminent indictments or at least announcements. They're preparing quietly for that here. It is an understood notion that if anyone is indicted they will resign and we can expect the president of the United States, very soon after that, if that happens, to come out with a public statement."
Under Oath?
As I wrote in last Tuesday's column , in which I speculated about whether a sitting vice president can be legally indicted (answer: yes) I noted that very little was known about Cheney's contact with Fitzgerald last summer.
A contemporaneous New York Times story by David Johnston said Cheney was not under oath during the interview.
But today's Times story says Cheney was indeed under oath.
Johnston, Stevenson and Jehl write that their sources "said they had no indication that Mr. Fitzgerald was considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it."
That could be significant.
Bloggers Falling Out of Their Chairs
Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten write in the Los Angeles Times that "a senior Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking said that such a meeting between the vice president and his top advisor was not surprising. . . .
" 'Nobody should fall out of their chair if they hear that the vice president discussed classified information trying to determine facts with his national security advisor and chief of staff,' the strategist said."
But that's exactly what bloggers, particularly liberal ones, are doing today.
Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas Zniga writes: "This is not the sort of news that allows us to lower expectations for Fitzmas."
(Many liberal bloggers are referring to the day that Fitzgerald announces indictments as "Fitzmas Day.")
Atrios writes: "The real issue is that Cheney was at the center of this and knew all along what was going on (at least after the fact). Leaking this now is a way of softening the political blow, as even if Cheney's name isn't on the indictments it's going to be in them."
Steven C. Clemons writes: "The entire charade of President Bush stating that he wanted to get to the bottom of who leaked Plame's name -- and who was involved -- is no longer believable at any level. Cheney would not have failed to disclose this to Bush, and Bush played along as if none of his staff were involved. They confessed nothing -- accepted no responsibility -- until forced by Fitzgerald."
Jane Hamsher writes: "Cheney was interviewed by Fitzgerald last year under oath. That would make it perjury to tell a lie. . . .
"What indication do we have that Cheney lied? Well, if Cheney had told the truth when he was interviewed last year, i.e., that he was Scooter Libby's source, Fitzgerald would not have needed to threaten Judy Miller and Matt Cooper with jail in order to counter Scooter Libby's testimony that he first heard about Valerie Plame's identity from journalists."
Spin City
Kenneth R. Bazinet writes in the New York Daily News: "President Bush's damage-control handlers are plotting a sophisticated war room offensive to fight back against possible indictments in the CIA leak probe. . . .
"Team Bush was finalizing its campaign to discredit and undermine special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's conclusions, sources told the Daily News. . . .
"An emerging theme in the Bush war room is arguing that his top political aide, Karl Rove, simply got tripped up on his recollections of whom he talked to and what he told them when questioned about the outing of CIA spy Valerie Plame. He shouldn't be indicted simply because of contradictory grand jury testimony, a source said."
Cheney and the Detainees
R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White write in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody.
"The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by 'an element of the United States government' other than the Defense Department. . . .
"McCain, the principal sponsor of the legislation, rejected the proposed exemption at the meeting with Cheney, according to a government source who spoke without authorization and on the condition of anonymity."
Eric Schmitt notes in the New York Times: "The White House has threatened to veto any bill that includes the McCain provision, contending that it would bind the president's hands in wartime. . . .
"One of the principal amendments that Democrats are expected to offer, sponsored by Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, would create an independent commission to review accusations of prisoner abuse by American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere. The White House has also threatened a presidential veto if any bill comes to Mr. Bush's desk that contains the provision."
Cheney vs. the CIA
Glenn Kessler writes in The Washington Post: "The alleged leaking of a CIA operative's name had its roots in a clash over Iraq policy between White House insiders and their rivals in the permanent bureaucracy of Washington, especially in the State Department and the CIA.
"As the investigation into the leak reaches its expected climax this week with the expiration of the grand jury's term, the internal disputes have been further amplified by a recent string of speeches and interviews criticizing the administration's handling of Iraq, including by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and State Department diplomats, and other officials involved in the early efforts to stabilize Iraq."
Wilkerson vs. Cheney
Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence B. Wilkerson , follows up on his speech last week (see Thursday's column ) with an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today, that hones his major points:
"In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security -- including vital decisions about postwar Iraq -- were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. . . .
"I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less.. . . .
"Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift -- not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy."
He adds: "The administration's performance during its first four years would have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet."
Washington Post reporter Shailagh Murray was Live Online yesterday:
"Boston, Mass.: What do you think of retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson's recent comments about the Bush administration?
"Shailagh Murray: I think it's a good thing his wife isn't a CIA agent, because they'd have to blow her cover, too. Seriously, it was pretty powerful stuff, and way overshadowed by less relevant political speculation stories. . . .
"Boston, Mass.: More on Colonel Wilkerson: How do news stories like this come to get overshadowed by, as you say, a lot less important political news. Is it because papers think that people don't care?
"Shailagh Murray: It's because television reporters prefer windy sea coasts to boring hallways for their live shots, and we stupidly follow their lead too often."
Damage Control
Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei write in The Washington Post: "Facing a convergence of crises threatening his administration, President Bush and his team are devising plans to salvage the remainder of his presidency by applying the lessons of past two-term chief executives and refocusing attention on the president's larger economic and foreign policy goals.
"Rarely has a president confronted as many damaging developments that could all come to a head in this week. A special counsel appears poised to indict one or more administration officials within days. Pressure is building on Bush from within his own party to withdraw the faltering Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. And any day the death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq will pass the symbolically important 2,000 mark.
"To deal with what they consider the darkest days of the Bush presidency, White House advisers have developed a twofold strategy -- confront head-on problems such as the Iraq death toll, while shifting attention to other areas such as conservative economic policies, according to a senior White House official, who spoke about internal deliberations only under the condition of anonymity. Bush advisers are taking clues from the playbooks of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, both of whom weathered second-term scandals.
"The White House strategy will unfold over the next several days, starting with yesterday's announcement of a new Federal Reserve Board chairman and continuing today with a presidential speech on Iraq at Bolling Air Force Base. Anticipating a barrage of criticism when the death toll hits 2,000, Bush will try to put the sacrifice in perspective by portraying the Iraq war as the best way to keep terrorists from striking the United States again, the official said. He will make the same case in another speech Friday in Norfolk."
Obfuscation and Mis-Direction From the Crook-in-Chief
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Bushies take aim at probe
BY KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
WASHINGTON - President Bush's damage-control handlers are plotting a sophisticated war room offensive to fight back against possible indictments in the CIA leak probe.
Trying to change the subject yesterday, Bush announced a new Federal Reserve chairman and convened his cabinet to signal business as usual at his beleaguered White House.
Behind the scenes, however, Team Bush was finalizing its campaign to discredit and undermine special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's conclusions, sources told the Daily News.
The White House strategy is counting on major help from GOP allies and neocon commentators who turned on Bush for naming Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and are now looking for redemption with a miffed President.
An emerging theme in the Bush war room is arguing that his top political aide, Karl Rove, simply got tripped up on his recollections of whom he talked to and what he told them when questioned about the outing of CIA spy Valerie Plame. He shouldn't be indicted simply because of contradictory grand jury testimony, a source said.
Bush allies have already begun casting perjury and obstruction charges as irrelevant in a probe created to find out who leaked classified information.
The probe may also have big stakes for Vice President Cheney. One of the possible suspects is the veep's top aide Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The New York Times reported today that Libby wrote a note after a conversation with Cheney that indicated the veep informed him of Plame's identity. The conversation occurred several weeks before Plame's name became public and it would contradict Libby's testimony.
Yesterday, with Rove and Libby looking on grim-faced from the back rows of the Cabinet Room, Bush said, "This is a very serious investigation, and I haven't changed my mind about whether or not I'm going to comment on it publicly," Bush said.
Bush critics are also gearing up, pulling together statements from Republicans, including Bush himself, who supported perjury and obstruction allegations against President Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Asked in 1999 about Clinton's impeachment by the House, Bush responded, "I would have voted for it. I thought the man lied."
A senior Senate Democratic aide said, "When it's about perjury and obstruction and it deals with sex, Republicans think it's worthy of impeachment. When it's about perjury and obstruction dealing with national security, they don't take it seriously."
Bushies take aim at probe
BY KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005
WASHINGTON - President Bush's damage-control handlers are plotting a sophisticated war room offensive to fight back against possible indictments in the CIA leak probe.
Trying to change the subject yesterday, Bush announced a new Federal Reserve chairman and convened his cabinet to signal business as usual at his beleaguered White House.
Behind the scenes, however, Team Bush was finalizing its campaign to discredit and undermine special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's conclusions, sources told the Daily News.
The White House strategy is counting on major help from GOP allies and neocon commentators who turned on Bush for naming Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and are now looking for redemption with a miffed President.
An emerging theme in the Bush war room is arguing that his top political aide, Karl Rove, simply got tripped up on his recollections of whom he talked to and what he told them when questioned about the outing of CIA spy Valerie Plame. He shouldn't be indicted simply because of contradictory grand jury testimony, a source said.
Bush allies have already begun casting perjury and obstruction charges as irrelevant in a probe created to find out who leaked classified information.
The probe may also have big stakes for Vice President Cheney. One of the possible suspects is the veep's top aide Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The New York Times reported today that Libby wrote a note after a conversation with Cheney that indicated the veep informed him of Plame's identity. The conversation occurred several weeks before Plame's name became public and it would contradict Libby's testimony.
Yesterday, with Rove and Libby looking on grim-faced from the back rows of the Cabinet Room, Bush said, "This is a very serious investigation, and I haven't changed my mind about whether or not I'm going to comment on it publicly," Bush said.
Bush critics are also gearing up, pulling together statements from Republicans, including Bush himself, who supported perjury and obstruction allegations against President Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Asked in 1999 about Clinton's impeachment by the House, Bush responded, "I would have voted for it. I thought the man lied."
A senior Senate Democratic aide said, "When it's about perjury and obstruction and it deals with sex, Republicans think it's worthy of impeachment. When it's about perjury and obstruction dealing with national security, they don't take it seriously."
Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report
By DAVID JOHNSTON, RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.
The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.
Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.
Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.
It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry.
White House officials did not respond to requests for comment, and Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Mr. Libby's legal status. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, declined to comment on the case.
Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to decide whether to bring charges in the case by Friday, when the term of the grand jury expires. Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment, lawyers involved in the case have said. It is not publicly known whether other officials also face indictment.
The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program.
But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald's possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson - who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame - from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.
It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House's full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought.
The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson's wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip.
Some lawyers in the case have said Mr. Fitzgerald may face obstacles in bringing a false-statement charge against Mr. Libby. They said it could be difficult to prove that he intentionally sought to mislead the grand jury.
Lawyers involved in the case said they had no indication that Mr. Fitzgerald was considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it.
But the evidence of Mr. Cheney's direct involvement in the effort to learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political pressure on the White House in a week of high anxiety among Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow to Mr. Bush's presidency.
Mr. Tenet was not available for comment Monday night. But another former senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had been interviewed by the special prosecutor and his staff in early 2004, and never appeared before the grand jury. Mr. Tenet has not talked since then to the prosecutors, the former official said.
The former official said he strongly doubted that the White House learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Tenet.
On Monday, Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby both attended a cabinet meeting with Mr. Bush as the White House continued trying to portray business as usual. But the assumption among White House officials is that anyone who is indicted will step aside.
On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby, The Washington Post published a front-page article reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there. The article did not name the diplomat, who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.
An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to Africa had appeared in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.
The note written by Mr. Libby will be a crucial piece of evidence in a false-statement case against him if Mr. Fitzgerald decides to pursue it, lawyers in the case said. It also explains why Mr. Fitzgerald waged a long legal battle to obtain the testimony of reporters who were known to have talked to Mr. Libby.
The reporters involved have said that they did not supply Mr. Libby with details about Mr. Wilson and his wife. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, in his account of a deposition on the subject, wrote that he asked Mr. Libby whether he had even heard that Ms. Wilson had a role in sending her husband to Africa. Mr. Cooper said that Mr. Libby did not use Ms. Wilson's name but replied, "Yeah, I've heard that too."
In her testimony to the grand jury, Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, said Mr. Libby sought from the start of her three conversations with him to "insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges."
Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions about Mr. Cheney, Ms. Miller said. "He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interview with me or was aware of them," Ms. Miller said. "The answer was no."
In addition to Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller, Mr. Fitzgerald is known to have interviewed three other journalists who spoke to Mr. Libby during June and July 2003. They were Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC News.
Mr. Pincus and Mr. Kessler have said that Mr. Libby did not discuss Mr. Wilson's wife with them in their conversations during the period. Mr. Russert, in a statement, declined to say exactly what he discussed with Mr. Libby, but said he first learned the identity of Mr. Wilson's wife in the column by Mr. Novak.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.
The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.
Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.
Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.
It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry.
White House officials did not respond to requests for comment, and Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, would not comment on Mr. Libby's legal status. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, declined to comment on the case.
Mr. Fitzgerald is expected to decide whether to bring charges in the case by Friday, when the term of the grand jury expires. Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment, lawyers involved in the case have said. It is not publicly known whether other officials also face indictment.
The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program.
But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald's possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson - who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame - from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.
It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House's full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought.
The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson's wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip.
Some lawyers in the case have said Mr. Fitzgerald may face obstacles in bringing a false-statement charge against Mr. Libby. They said it could be difficult to prove that he intentionally sought to mislead the grand jury.
Lawyers involved in the case said they had no indication that Mr. Fitzgerald was considering charging Mr. Cheney with wrongdoing. Mr. Cheney was interviewed under oath by Mr. Fitzgerald last year. It is not known what the vice president told Mr. Fitzgerald about the conversation with Mr. Libby or when Mr. Fitzgerald first learned of it.
But the evidence of Mr. Cheney's direct involvement in the effort to learn more about Mr. Wilson is sure to intensify the political pressure on the White House in a week of high anxiety among Republicans about the potential for the case to deal a sharp blow to Mr. Bush's presidency.
Mr. Tenet was not available for comment Monday night. But another former senior intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had been interviewed by the special prosecutor and his staff in early 2004, and never appeared before the grand jury. Mr. Tenet has not talked since then to the prosecutors, the former official said.
The former official said he strongly doubted that the White House learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Tenet.
On Monday, Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby both attended a cabinet meeting with Mr. Bush as the White House continued trying to portray business as usual. But the assumption among White House officials is that anyone who is indicted will step aside.
On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby, The Washington Post published a front-page article reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there. The article did not name the diplomat, who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.
An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to Africa had appeared in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.
The note written by Mr. Libby will be a crucial piece of evidence in a false-statement case against him if Mr. Fitzgerald decides to pursue it, lawyers in the case said. It also explains why Mr. Fitzgerald waged a long legal battle to obtain the testimony of reporters who were known to have talked to Mr. Libby.
The reporters involved have said that they did not supply Mr. Libby with details about Mr. Wilson and his wife. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, in his account of a deposition on the subject, wrote that he asked Mr. Libby whether he had even heard that Ms. Wilson had a role in sending her husband to Africa. Mr. Cooper said that Mr. Libby did not use Ms. Wilson's name but replied, "Yeah, I've heard that too."
In her testimony to the grand jury, Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, said Mr. Libby sought from the start of her three conversations with him to "insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges."
Mr. Fitzgerald asked questions about Mr. Cheney, Ms. Miller said. "He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interview with me or was aware of them," Ms. Miller said. "The answer was no."
In addition to Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller, Mr. Fitzgerald is known to have interviewed three other journalists who spoke to Mr. Libby during June and July 2003. They were Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC News.
Mr. Pincus and Mr. Kessler have said that Mr. Libby did not discuss Mr. Wilson's wife with them in their conversations during the period. Mr. Russert, in a statement, declined to say exactly what he discussed with Mr. Libby, but said he first learned the identity of Mr. Wilson's wife in the column by Mr. Novak.
Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92
October 24,2005 | DETROIT -- Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday. She was 92.
Mrs. Parks died at her home of natural causes, said Karen Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."
At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.
The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.
Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
Speaking in 1992, she said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."
The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement.
The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
After taking her public stand for civil rights, Mrs. Parks had trouble finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in Conyers' Detroit office from 1965 until retiring Sept. 30, 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977.
Mrs. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit, where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache likeness of her was featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Mrs. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the struggle for civil rights.
"Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man March in October 1995.
In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Mrs. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999 appearance on CBS' "Touched by an Angel."
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.
"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.
"No," Parks answered.
"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.
"You may do that," Parks responded.
Mrs. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments.
In 1994, Mrs. Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem.
The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The charity's principal activity -- the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement -- routinely cost more money than the institute could raise.
Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In 2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to auction Internet domain name rights to http://www.rosaparks.com .
After losing the OutKast lawsuit, attorney Gregory Reed, who represented Mrs. Parks, said his client "has once again suffered the pains of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was settled out of court.
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP.
Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parks said she worried that black young people took legal equality for granted.
Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent attitude.
"We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today."
At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die -- the dream of freedom and peace."
Mrs. Parks died at her home of natural causes, said Karen Morgan, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.
Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."
At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.
The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.
Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
Speaking in 1992, she said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."
The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement.
The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
After taking her public stand for civil rights, Mrs. Parks had trouble finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in Conyers' Detroit office from 1965 until retiring Sept. 30, 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977.
Mrs. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit, where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache likeness of her was featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Mrs. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the struggle for civil rights.
"Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man March in October 1995.
In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Mrs. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999 appearance on CBS' "Touched by an Angel."
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.
"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.
"No," Parks answered.
"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.
"You may do that," Parks responded.
Mrs. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments.
In 1994, Mrs. Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem.
The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The charity's principal activity -- the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement -- routinely cost more money than the institute could raise.
Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In 2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to auction Internet domain name rights to http://www.rosaparks.com .
After losing the OutKast lawsuit, attorney Gregory Reed, who represented Mrs. Parks, said his client "has once again suffered the pains of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was settled out of court.
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP.
Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parks said she worried that black young people took legal equality for granted.
Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent attitude.
"We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today."
At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die -- the dream of freedom and peace."
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