More on the creeping fascism permeating the rule of the law and the judiciary as it eviscerates the Constitution

A recap of the latest unmitigated legal disgrace

Gitmo 'Justice' for US Citizens?

By Robert Parry



A conservative-dominated U.S. Appeals Court has opened the door for President George W. Bush or a successor to throw American citizens – as well as non-citizens – into a legal black hole by designating them “enemy combatants,” even if they have engaged in no violent act and are living on U.S. soil.

The federal Appeals Court in Richmond, Virginia, ruled 5-4 on July 15 that Bush had the right, while prosecuting the “war on terror,” to hold Qatari citizen (and Peoria, Illinois, resident) Ali al-Marri indefinitely as an “enemy combatant.”

But some of the court’s more liberal judges expressed alarm, saying the legal reasoning that denied al-Marri meaningful due process not only trampled on American legal traditions but could be used to lock up U.S. citizens as well.

“For over two centuries of growth and struggle, peace and war, the Constitution has secured our freedom through the guarantee that, in the United States, no one will be deprived of liberty without due process of law,” wrote Judge Diana Motz, a Bill Clinton appointee, who dissented against the court’s approval of sweeping presidential powers.

Motz noted that al-Marri has been imprisoned for more than five years, “without acknowledgement of the protection afforded by the Constitution, solely because the Executive believes that his indefinite military detention – or even the indefinite military detention of a similarly situated American citizen – is proper.”

Al-Marri’s lawyers plan to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the case underscores one of the biggest issues at stake in the November elections: whether Republican John McCain will get to fulfill his promise to appoint more Supreme Court judges like Samuel Alito and John Roberts, who have embraced Bush’s vision of an all-powerful President.

Currently, the U.S. Supreme Court has a slim 5-4 majority in favor of limiting Bush’s authority to deny basic constitutional rights to people designated “enemy combatants,” but the replacement of one member of the majority with another Alito or Roberts would tip the balance and effectively permit the rewriting of the U.S. Constitution.

Though the July 15 ruling was convoluted and did call for a federal District Court to afford al-Marri some more rights, the Appeals Court decision effectively upheld Bush’s assertion of nearly unlimited power to have people detained as “enemy combatants.”

The ruling suggested that even American citizens – if they are deemed “enemy combatants” – could be subjected to Bush’s military commissions, where truncated legal rights make proving a person’s guilt much easier than in civilian courts.

Stunned Realization

Previously, the New York Times editorial page and some liberal legal experts had criticized Bush’s high-handed approach toward non-citizens, but had assured Americans that the military commissions would not apply to them.

But at Consortiumnews.com, we noted that language buried in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 seemed to cover – indeed even target – U.S. citizens. [See “Who Is ‘Any Person’ in Tribunal Law? or our book, Neck Deep.]

For instance, one section dealing with penalties stated that “any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,” according to the law.

Another clause stated that “any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States ... shall be punished as a military commission … may direct.” [Emphasis added]

Presumably, Osama bin Laden has no “allegiance or duty to the United States.” Such a phrase seems aimed at American citizens.

But it took the Appeals Court ruling – and the blunt language from Judge Motz about denying constitutional rights to U.S. citizens – to catch the New York Times’ attention.

In a July 20 editorial, the Times wrote that the Appeals Court's “decision gives the President sweeping power to deprive anyone – citizens as well as non-citizens – of their freedom. …

“The implications are breathtaking. The designation ‘enemy combatant,’ which should apply only to people captured on a battlefield, can now be applied to people detained inside the United States. Even though Mr. Marri is not an American citizen, the court’s reasoning appears to apply equally to citizens.”

Bush’s victory in the Marri case reflects his continued insistence that for the duration of the “war on terror,” Bush or any successor can exercise “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as the Commander in Chief.

And, since the “war on terror” will go on indefinitely and since the “battlefield” is everywhere, Bush is asserting the President’s right to do whatever he wants to whomever he wants wherever the person might be, virtually forever.

In effect, Bush’s interpretation of his own powers – allowing him to imprison, torture and kill at his discretion – trumps the Founders’ vision that everyone possesses certain “unalienable rights” that a government can’t take away.

Despite some reversals in the U.S. Supreme Court – and the loss of Republican control of Congress in 2006 – Bush still sees himself as a kind of a global monarch who gets to decide which rights and freedoms his subjects anywhere in the world can enjoy and which ones will be denied them.

Al-Marri’s Arrest

Al-Marri entered the United States on a legal student visa, along with his wife and children, only a day before the 9/11 attacks. He was arrested amid the panic and fear that followed the attacks, and was charged criminally in a credit-card scheme.

But the Bush administration then asserted that al-Marri was an al-Qaeda “sleeper cell” agent planning follow-up attacks, declared him an “enemy combatant,” and locked him up at a Navy brig in South Carolina, where he was held incommunicado.

Eventually, al-Marri challenged his indefinite detention through a federal court suit. Bush’s lawyers countered by citing the Military Commissions Act in seeking to deny him access to civilian courts.

In an affidavit submitted to a District Court, a U.S. counter-terrorism official alleged that al-Marri had received al-Qaeda training, was prepared to engage in a suicide attack, and had met personally with Osama bin Laden and other senior terrorist leaders.

However, the original source of that evidence was kept secret, since it presumably was derived from interrogation of al-Qaeda captives, many of whom have been subjected to brutal interrogation methods.

In siding with Bush, conservative Appeals Court judges noted al-Marri had offered only a general denial of the accusations against him and failed to rebut the specific charges. Al-Marri’s lawyers argued that their client should have a right to confront his accusers and not be put in a position of having to prove his innocence.

However, the Appeals Court’s majority accepted the validity of the “sleeper cell” allegations – since al-Marri had not disproved them – and ruled that Bush did have the authority to lock al-Marri up indefinitely as an “enemy combatant.”

“While I would be the first to agree that the criminal justice system retains an important place in our constitutional system when handling the terrorist threat, the notion that it is the only manner of dealing with such threats, or is constitutionally compelled in all cases involving apprehensions on American soil, is simply wrong,” wrote Judge Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee who is often cited as a possible Republican Supreme Court nominee.

Wilkinson said the government had many good reasons not to grant an accused terrorist a public trial.

“While a showcase of American values, an open and public criminal trial may also serve as a platform for suspected terrorists,” Wilkinson wrote. “Terror suspects may use the bully pulpit of a criminal trial in an attempt to recruit others to their cause. Likewise, terror suspects may take advantage of the opportunity to interact with others during trial to pass critical intelligence to their allies.”

However, Motz and other more liberal judges dissented on the grounds that the Constitution spells out basic due-process rights for defendants and that denying those rights to non-citizens like al-Marri means that they would be lost to U.S. citizens as well.

“It is likely that the constitutional rights our court determines exist, or do not exist, for al-Marri will apply equally to our own citizens under like circumstances,” Motz wrote. “This means simply that protections we declare to be unavailable under the Constitution to al-Marri might likewise be unavailable to American citizens, and those rights which protect him will protect us as well.”

Motz’s conclusion also wasn’t simply based on her opinion. It was a little-notice argument that Bush’s lawyers made earlier in the case.

“A citizen, no less than an alien, can be an enemy combatant,” administration lawyer David B. Salmons told the Appeals Court in oral arguments on Feb. 1, 2007, adding that the courts cannot interfere with the President’s wartime judgments on such matters.

Salmons insisted that Bush is not interested in using this power too broadly, but argued that the judgment on whom is deemed an “enemy combatant” must solely be at the discretion of President Bush. [NYT, Feb. 2, 2007]

What may be decided in Election 2008 is whether the U.S. Supreme Court will be stocked with like-minded legal theorists.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

Original article posted here.

More evidence of the brainwashing and manipulation of Americans

Iran-Contra's 'Lost Chapter'

By Robert Parry

As historians ponder George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency, they may wonder how Republicans perfected a propaganda system that could fool tens of millions of Americans, intimidate Democrats, and transform the vaunted Washington press corps from watchdogs to lapdogs.

To understand this extraordinary development, historians might want to look back at the 1980s and examine the Iran-Contra scandal’s “lost chapter,” a narrative describing how Ronald Reagan’s administration brought CIA tactics to bear domestically to reshape the way Americans perceived the world.

That chapter – which we are publishing here for the first time – was “lost” because Republicans on the congressional Iran-Contra investigation waged a rear-guard fight that traded elimination of the chapter’s key findings for the votes of three moderate GOP senators, giving the final report a patina of bipartisanship.

Under that compromise, a few segments of the draft chapter were inserted in the final report’s Executive Summary and in another section on White House private fundraising, but the chapter’s conclusions and its detailed account of how the “perception management” operation worked ended up on the editing room floor.

The American people thus were spared the chapter’s troubling finding: that the Reagan administration had built a domestic covert propaganda apparatus managed by a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist working out of the National Security Council.

“One of the CIA’s most senior covert action operators was sent to the NSC in 1983 by CIA Director [William] Casey where he participated in the creation of an inter-agency public diplomacy mechanism that included the use of seasoned intelligence specialists,” the chapter’s conclusion stated.

“This public/private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt – to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration’s policies.”

However, with the chapter’s key findings deleted, the right-wing domestic propaganda operation not only survived the Iran-Contra fallout but thrived.

So did some of the administration’s collaborators, such as South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon and Australian press mogul Rupert Murdoch, two far-right media barons who poured billions of dollars into pro-Republican news outlets that continue to influence Washington’s political debates to this day.

Before every presidential election, Moon’s Washington Times plants derogatory – and often false – stories about Democratic contenders, discrediting them and damaging their chances of winning the White House.

For instance, in 1988, the Times published a bogus account suggesting that the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment. In 2000, Moon’s newspaper pushed the theme that Al Gore suffered from clinical delusions. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

As for Murdoch, his giant News Corp. expanded into American cable TV with the founding of Fox News in 1996. Since then, the right-wing network has proved highly effective in promoting attack lines against Democrats or anyone else who challenges the Republican power structure.

As President George W. Bush herded the nation toward war with Iraq in 2002-03, Fox News acted like his sheep dogs making sure public opinion didn’t stray too far off. The “Fox effect” was so powerful that it convinced other networks to load up with pro-war military analysts and to silence voices that questioned the invasion. [See Neck Deep.]

Seeds of Propaganda

The seeds of this private/public collaboration can be found in the 84-page draft Iran-Contra chapter, entitled “Launching the Private Network.” [There appear to have been several versions of this “lost chapter.” This one I found in congressional files.]

The chapter traces the origins of the propaganda network to President Reagan’s “National Security Decision Directive 77” in January 1983 as his administration sought to promote its foreign policy, especially its desire to oust Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

In a Jan. 13, 1983, memo, then-National Security Advisor William Clark foresaw the need for non-governmental money to advance this cause. “We will develop a scenario for obtaining private funding,” Clark wrote.

As administration officials began reaching out to wealthy supporters, lines against domestic propaganda soon were crossed as the operation took aim at not only at foreign audiences but at U.S. public opinion, the press and congressional Democrats who opposed funding Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras.

At the time, the contras were earning a gruesome reputation as human rights violators and terrorists. To change this negative perception of the contras, the Reagan administration created a full-blown, clandestine propaganda operation.

“An elaborate system of inter-agency committees was eventually formed and charged with the task of working closely with private groups and individuals involved in fundraising, lobbying campaigns and propagandistic activities aimed at influencing public opinion and governmental action,” the draft chapter said.

Heading this operation was a veteran CIA officer named Walter Raymond Jr., who was recruited by another CIA officer, Donald Gregg, before Gregg shifted from his job as chief of the NSC’s Intelligence Directorate to become national security adviser to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.

[The draft chapter doesn’t use Raymond’s name in its opening pages, apparently because some of the information came from classified depositions. However, Raymond’s name is used later in the chapter and the earlier citations match Raymond’s role.]

According to the draft report, the CIA officer recruited for the NSC job had served as Director of the Covert Action Staff at the CIA from 1978 to 1982 and was a “specialist in propaganda and disinformation.”

“The CIA official [Raymond] discussed the transfer with [CIA Director William] Casey and NSC Advisor William Clark that he be assigned to the NSC as Gregg’s successor [in June 1982] and received approval for his involvement in setting up the public diplomacy program along with his intelligence responsibilities,” the chapter said.

“In the early part of 1983, documents obtained by the Select [Iran-Contra] Committees indicate that the Director of the Intelligence Staff of the NSC [Raymond] successfully recommended the establishment of an inter-governmental network to promote and manage a public diplomacy plan designed to create support for Reagan Administration policies at home and abroad.”

Raymond “helped to set up an elaborate system of inter-agency committees,” the draft chapter said, adding:

“In the Spring of 1983, the network began to turn its attention toward beefing up the Administration’s capacity to promote American support for the Democratic Resistance in Nicaragua [the contras] and the fledgling democracy in El Salvador.

“This effort resulted in the creation of the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Department of State (S/LPD), headed by Otto Reich,” a right-wing Cuban exile from Miami.

Though Secretary of State George Shultz wanted the office under his control, President Reagan insisted that Reich “report directly to the NSC,” where Raymond oversaw the operations as a special assistant to the President and the NSC’s director of international communications, the chapter said.

“At least for several months after he assumed this position, Raymond also worked on intelligence matters at the NSC, including drafting a Presidential Finding for Covert Action in Nicaragua in mid-September” 1983, the chapter said.

In other words, although Raymond was shifted to the NSC staff in part to evade prohibitions on the CIA influencing U.S. public opinion, his intelligence and propaganda duties overlapped for a time as he was retiring from the spy agency.

Key Player

Despite Raymond’s formal separation from the CIA, he acted toward the U.S. public much like a CIA officer would in directing a propaganda operation in a hostile foreign country. He was the go-to guy to keep the operation on track.

“Reich relied heavily on Raymond to secure personnel transfers from other government agencies to beef up the limited resources made available to S/LPD by the Department of State,” the chapter said.

“Personnel made available to the new office included intelligence specialists from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army. On one occasion, five intelligence experts from the Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were assigned to work with Reich’s fast-growing operation. …

“White House documents also indicate that CIA Director Casey had more than a passing interest in the Central American public diplomacy campaign.”

The chapter cited an Aug. 9, 1983, memo written by Raymond describing Casey’s participation in a meeting with public relations specialists to brainstorm how “to sell a ‘new product’ – Central America – by generating interest across-the-spectrum.”

In an Aug. 29, 1983, memo, Raymond recounted a call from Casey pushing his P.R. ideas. Alarmed at a CIA director participating so brazenly in domestic propaganda, Raymond wrote that “I philosophized a bit with Bill Casey (in an effort to get him out of the loop)” but with little success.

The chapter added: “Casey’s involvement in the public diplomacy effort apparently continued throughout the period under investigation by the Committees,” including a 1985 role in pressuring Congress to renew contra aid and a 1986 hand in further shielding S/LPD from the oversight of Secretary Shultz.

A Raymond-authored memo to Casey in August 1986 described the shift of S/LPD – then run by neoconservative theorist Bob Kagan who had replaced Reich – to the control of the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, which was headed by Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, another prominent neoconservative.

Another important figure in the pro-contra propaganda was NSC staffer Oliver North, who spent a great deal of his time on the Nicaraguan public diplomacy operation even though he is better known for arranging secret arms shipments to the contras and to Iran’s radical Islamic government, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal.

The draft chapter cited a March 10, 1985, memo from North describing his assistance to CIA Director Casey in timing disclosures of pro-contra news “aimed at securing Congressional approval for renewed support to the Nicaraguan Resistance Forces.”

North’s Operatives

The Iran-Contra “lost” chapter depicts a sometimes Byzantine network of contract and private operatives who handled details of the domestic propaganda while concealing the hand of the White House and the CIA.

“Richard R. Miller, former head of public affairs at AID, and Francis D. Gomez, former public affairs specialist at the State Department and USIA, were hired by S/LPD through sole-source, no-bid contracts to carry out a variety of activities on behalf of the Reagan administration policies in Central America,” the chapter said.

“Supported by the State Department and White House, Miller and Gomez became the outside managers of [North operative] Spitz Channel’s fundraising and lobbying activities.

“They also served as the managers of Central American political figures, defectors, Nicaraguan opposition leaders and Sandinista atrocity victims who were made available to the press, the Congress and private groups, to tell the story of the Contra cause.”

Miller and Gomez facilitated transfers of money to Swiss and offshore banks at North’s direction, as they “became the key link between the State Department and the Reagan White House with the private groups and individuals engaged in a myriad of endeavors aimed at influencing the Congress, the media and public opinion,” the chapter said.

In its conclusion, the draft chapter read:

“The State Department was used to run a prohibited, domestic, covert propaganda operation. Established despite resistance from the Secretary of State, and reporting directly to the NSC, the [S/LPD] attempted to mask many of its activities from the Congress and the American people.”

However, the American people never got to read a detailed explanation of this finding nor see the evidence. In October 1987, as the congressional Iran-Contra committees wrote their final report, Republicans protested the inclusion of this explosive information.

Though the Democrats held the majority, the GOP had leverage because Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, the House chairman, wanted some bipartisanship in the final report, especially since senior Republicans, including Rep. Dick Cheney, R-Wyoming, were preparing a strongly worded minority report.

Hamilton and the Democrats hoped that three moderate Republicans – William Cohen of Maine, Warren Rudman of New Hampshire and Paul Trible of Virginia – would break ranks and sign the majority report. However, the Republicans objected to the draft chapter about Ronald Reagan’s covert propaganda campaign.

As part of a compromise, some elements of the draft chapter were included in the Executive Summary but without much detail and shorn of the tough conclusions. Nevertheless, Cohen protested even that.

“I question the inordinate attention devoted in the Executive Summary to the Office of Public Diplomacy and its activities in support of the Administration’s polices,” Cohen wrote in his additional views. “The prominence given to it in the Executive Summary is far more generous than just.”

Long-Term Consequences

However, the failure of the Iran-Contra report to fully explain the danger of CIA-style propaganda intruding into the U.S. political process would have profound future consequences. Indeed, the evidence suggests that today’s powerful right-wing media gained momentum as part of the Casey-Raymond operations of the early 1980s.

According to one Raymond-authored memo dated Aug. 9, 1983, then-U.S. Information Agency director Charles Wick “via Murdock [sic] may be able to draw down added funds” to support pro-Reagan initiatives.

Raymond’s reference to Rupert Murdoch possibly drawing down “added funds” suggests that the right-wing media mogul was already part of the covert propaganda operation.

In line with its clandestine nature, Raymond also suggested routing the “funding via Freedom House or some other structure that has credibility in the political center.”

Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, publisher of the Washington Times, also showed up in the Iran-Contra operations, using his newspaper to raise contra funds and assigning his CAUSA political group to organize support for the contras.

In the two decades since the Iran-Contra scandal, both Murdoch and Moon have continued to pour billions of dollars into media outlets that have influenced the course of U.S. history, often through the planting of propaganda and disinformation much like a CIA covert action might do in a hostile foreign country.

Further, to soften up the Washington press corps, Reich’s S/LPD targeted U.S. journalists who reported information that undermined the pro-contra propaganda. Reich sent his teams out to lobby news executives to remove or punish out-of-step reporters – with a disturbing degree of success. [For more, see Parry’s Lost History.]

Some U.S. officials implicated in the Iran-Contra propaganda operations are still around, bringing the lessons of the 1980s into the new century.

For instance, Elliott Abrams. Though convicted of misleading Congress in the Iran-Contra Affair and later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush – Abrams is now deputy adviser to George W. Bush’s NSC, where he directs U.S.-Middle East policy.

Bob Kagan remains another prominent neocon theorist in Washington, writing op-eds for the Washington Post. Oliver North was given a news show on Fox.

Otto Reich now is advising Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Latin American affairs. Lee Hamilton is a senior national security adviser to Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Enduring Skills

Beyond these individuals, the manipulative techniques that were refined in the 1980s – especially the skill of exaggerating foreign threats – have proved durable, bringing large segments of the American population into line behind the Iraq War in 2002-03.

Only now – with more than 4,100 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead – are many of these Americans realizing that were manipulated by clever propaganda, that their perceptions had been managed.

For instance, the New York Times recently pried loose some 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents revealing how the Bush administration had manipulated the public debate on the Iraq War by planting friendly retired military officers on TV news shows.

Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former analyst on Murdoch’s Fox News, said the Pentagon treated the retired military officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’” [NYT, April 20, 2008, or see Consortiumnews.com’s “US News Media’s Latest Disgrace.”]

Bush’s former White House press secretary Scott McClellan described similar use of propaganda tactics to justify the Iraq War in his book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

From his insider vantage point, McClellan cited the White House’s “carefully orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval” – and he called the Washington press corps “complicit enablers.”

None of this would have been so surprising – indeed Americans might have been forewarned and forearmed – if Lee Hamilton and other Democrats on the Iran-Contra committees had held firm and published the scandal’s “lost chapter” two decades ago.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

Original article posted here.

Bob Parry get the point about Obama's significance

Why the War on Obama

By Robert Parry

While some cynics still view Barack Obama’s appeal for “change” as empty rhetoric, it’s starting to dawn on Washington insiders that his ability to raise vast sums of money from nearly one million mostly small donors could shake the grip that special-interest money has long held over the U.S. government.

This spreading realization that Obama’s political movement might represent a more revolutionary change than previously understood is sparking a deepening resistance among defenders of the status quo – and prompting harsher attacks on Obama.

Right now, the front line for the Washington Establishment is Hillary Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, which has been stunned by Obama’s political skills as well as his extraordinary ability to raise money over the Internet. Obama’s grassroots donations have negated Clinton’s prodigious fundraising advantage with big donors.

Powerful lobbies – from AIPAC to representatives of military and other industries – also are recognizing the value of keeping their dominance over campaign cash from getting diluted by Obama’s deep reservoir of small donors. It’s in their direct interest to dent Obama’s momentum and demoralize his rank-and-file supporters as soon as possible.

So, neoconservatives and other ideological movements – heavily dependent on grants from the same special interests – are now joining with the Clinton campaign to tear down Obama by depicting him as unpatriotic, un-vetted, possibly a “closet Muslim.”

On Feb. 25, the New York Times’ new neocon columnist William Kristol attacked Obama’s patriotism by citing the Illinois senator decision to stop wearing an American flag lapel pin because, Obama said, he saw how George W. Bush was exploiting the flag to stampede the nation toward war with Iraq.

“You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin,” Obama said when asked about his lack of a flag pin in October 2007. “As we’re talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”

In a column entitled “It’s All About Him,” Kristol mocked this explanation as an example of both Obama’s dubious claim to patriotism and his pomposity.

“Leaving aside the claim that ‘speaking out on issues’ constitutes true patriotism,” Kristol wrote. “What’s striking is that Obama couldn’t resist a grandiose explanation. … Moral vanity prevailed. He wanted to explain that he was too good – too patriotic! – to wear a flag pin on his chest.”

Kristol then turned on Michelle Obama for her comment about how excited she was by the public outpouring for political change that has surrounded her husband’s campaign: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country,” she said.

Kristol wrote: “Can it really be the case that nothing the U.S. achieved since [the mid-1980s] has made her proud? Apparently.” [NYT, Feb. 25, 2008]

Clinton Money Woes

Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign – having burned through $130 million and needing a $5 million emergency loan from the Clintons’ personal finances – has gone hat in hand to some of the special interests with a strong stake in protecting the Washington status quo.

For instance, campaign finance director Jonathan Mantz met with donors from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a Washington hotel lobby when these pro-Israel AIPAC supporters were in town for other business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 14.

The approach made sense because these pro-Israeli lobbyists remain wary of Obama’s advocacy of high-level talks with Iran, his opposition to the Iraq War, and his skimpier record of supporting Israel when compared with Hillary Clinton or John McCain.

One former Israeli official told me that the Israeli government feels it can work with Obama, Clinton or McCain, but that the Israeli lobby in the United States is adamantly opposed to Obama, preferring Clinton because “they own her.” The ex-official said the lobby has some concern, too, with McCain because of his independent streak.

Like other powerful lobbies, AIPAC is threatened by Obama’s ability to raise large sums of money from everyday Americans, thus reducing the need of Washington politicians to hold out their tin cups to AIPAC’s legendary network of wealthy donors. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “How Far Will the Clintons Go?”]

After having lost 11 consecutive contests, the Clinton campaign is now turning to what its “kitchen sink” strategy of throwing whatever it has at Obama.

Over the past few weeks, Clinton surrogates have been spreading rumors about Obama’s association with people with Arab names and contributions he has received from 1970s-era student radicals (though they’re now gray-haired, middle-class professionals). Some are packaging the attacks under the title, “The Obama Scandals.”

On Feb. 26, Internet gossip Matt Drudge reported that a Clinton staffer e-mailed a photo taken of Obama during a 2006 trip to Kenya when he was dressed in a turban and other traditional garb of a Somali Elder. That reinforced earlier rumors spread about Obama as a secret Muslim, though he has long belonged to a Christian church in Chicago.

Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe denounced the Clinton campaign for circulating the photo with the goal of “shameful offensive fear-mongering.”

The Clinton campaign denied knowledge of how the photo was disseminated, but campaign manager Maggie Williams attacked the Obama campaign for overreacting. “If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed,” she said.

Two Faces of Hillary

Sen. Clinton herself seemed torn between showing voters her softer side and releasing her inner combative persona.

At the end of a Texas debate on Feb. 21, Sen. Clinton extended her hand to Obama and expressed how “honored” she was to be on the same stage with him. But she soon switched tactics and launched harsh attacks on Obama.

On Feb. 23, reacting to flyers that the Obama campaign distributed in Ohio criticizing her positions on the North American Free Trade Agreement and the mandate included in her health insurance plan, Clinton rebuked her rival.

“Shame on you, Barack Obama,” Clinton shouted, before instructing him to “meet me in Ohio, and let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign.”

To some observers, Clinton’s outburst had the look of an angry queen scolding a misbehaving servant boy, or a principal pulling a wayward student by the ear to the school office.

“Enough with the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” she added, suggesting that the flyers contrasting the positions of the two rivals were somehow a novel or diabolical concept.

In reality, the Obama flyers were pretty standard stuff, more from the playbook of Tom Paine than Karl Rove. If Rove’s playbook were in use, the flyers would have claimed to come from a pro-Hillary group while advocating legalization of child pornography.

But the Clinton campaign was only warming up. On Feb. 24, during a stop in Rhode Island, Clinton mocked Obama’s speeches calling for change:

“Now, I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.”

Amid some chuckles from her supporters, Clinton added, “Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and the special interests disappear.”

Though this Clinton line of attack is popular among some of her backers – ridiculing the supposed naivety of Obama’s young supporters – Obama has never suggested that countering the entrenched special interests of Washington would be easy.

Obama’s argument has been that only an energized American public can elect representatives to bring about change and then the people must stay vigilant to make sure there is no backsliding.

While it’s true Obama doesn’t spell out all the difficulties ahead, his argument is at least as realistic as Clinton’s – that Republican obstructionism can be countered with “hard work.” That approach failed miserably when her initial health care plan collapsed in 1994 despite her strenuous efforts on its behalf.

More to the immediate point, however, Obama’s success in getting out from under the special-interest financial dependency may be the most significant political development of this election cycle.

That success also helps explain the emerging war on Obama – and the rising hysteria among Establishment figures about his surging candidacy.

Original article posted here.

Bob Parry identifying the Bush Crime family for what it is

G.W. Bush Is a Criminal, Like His Dad

By Robert Parry

Watching Attorney General Michael Mukasey evade the obvious fact that waterboarding is torture – and the reluctance of Democrats to press him – I was reminded of how the first President Bush got away with an earlier batch of national security crimes.

Indeed, one of the common questions I’ve been asked over the years is – if the evidence really does show that the Reagan-Bush crowd was guilty of illegal dealings with Iran, Iraq and the Nicaraguan contras – why didn’t the Democrats hold those Republicans to account?

For people who have posed that question, I would suggest that they watch the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Jan. 30 hearing with Mukasey. Everybody in the room knew what the unspoken reality was, but nobody dared say it: George W. Bush authorized torture, which is a crime under U.S. and international law.

However, if the Attorney General – the highest-ranking law-enforcement officer in the United States – recognized the obvious, he would have to either commence legal action against President Bush or send a referral to Congress for the initiation of impeachment proceedings.

If such a referral were sent to Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have little choice but to permit the start of impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. A wide range of Bush’s illegal actions would then begin spilling out, provoking a political crisis in the United States.

Not only do Bush’s allies want to avoid that possibility but so do Democratic congressional leaders. They fear an impeachment battle would boomerang, putting them on the spot with both angry Republicans and a hostile Washington news media.

On Dec. 20, 2007, Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now” that impeachment hearings could end up like Watergate in reverse, with today’s careerist press corps treating the notion of accountability for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney like some kind of nutty idea.

“There is a very stark reality that with the corporatization of the media, we could end up with turning people, who should be documented in history as making many profound errors and violating the Constitution, from villains into victims,” the Michigan Democrat said.

So, Democratic senators weren’t all that upset when Mukasey mumbled through a variety of obfuscations.

Orwell Reference

At one point, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, even made a George Orwell reference in noting that Mukasey’s discussion about the criminality of waterboarding had “melted into the abstract.”

Mukasey responded: “We could engage in a discussion. It would not be a concrete and factual discussion because we would be talking about if this, if that, if the other.”

When Whitehouse called Mukasey’s answer “totally not credible” because Bush administration officials already have acknowledged that CIA interrogators did use waterboarding against several terror suspects, Mukasey continued:

“All of that depends on whether certification was given and whether it was permissibly relied on and it should not turn on one person’s current view of what the (anti-torture) statute requires or doesn’t require.”

Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor, rejected that explanation too, noting that “there is no Nuremberg defense built into the criminal statute,” meaning that authorization from President Bush or some other senior official would not make torture legal.

However, Whitehouse, like other Democrats, finished his questioning with praise of Mukasey for taking a variety of steps to shield the Justice Department from the Bush administration’s political pressure.

Still, on the most sensitive issue to Bush – his assertion that he possesses unlimited presidential powers that let him violate criminal laws and ignore constitutional protections – Mukasey was as much in lock step with the administration as his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.

The only significant difference was that the more mature Mukasey, a former federal judge, was less smug in his treatment of the senators than Gonzales had been. For their part, the committee Democrats seemed eager to look to the future.

“So today we continue the restoration of the [Justice] Department,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.

But that “restoration” apparently will not include holding the President and Vice President accountable for authorizing the commission of felonies – in permitting the torture of terror suspects, in ordering warrantless wiretaps of Americans, in exposing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, etc.

Not Good at Confrontation

The Democrats adopted a similar see-no-evil posture from late 1992 through the Clinton years when evidence surfaced about serious crimes committed by Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and some of their subordinates.

Like Marty McFly’s father in “Back to the Future,” the Democrats weren’t very good at “confrontation.”

So, when evidence implicated George H.W. Bush on issues ranging from the Iran-Contra cover-up and secret military support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to Nicaraguan contra drug trafficking and a politically motivated search of Bill Clinton’s passport files, the Democrats averted their eyes and slinked away from a fight.

In December 1992 and January 1993, for instance, evidence poured in to a House task force that was investigating the so-called October Surprise controversy, whether the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign had gone behind President Jimmy Carter’s back and contacted Iranian mullahs while Iran was holding 52 Americans hostage.

Carter’s failure to resolve that hostage crisis doomed his re-election and touched off Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory. Plus, Iran’s release of the hostages as Reagan was taking the oath of office gave Reagan an aura of heroism that has continued to this day.

In a December 2007 campaign ad, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani cited Reagan’s supposed toughness with terrorists as the reason the Iranians suddenly freed the hostages after a 444-day standoff.

“They released the American hostages in one hour, and that should tell us a lot about these Islamic terrorists that we’re facing” today, Giuliani said. “The one hour in which they released them was the one hour in which Ronald Reagan was taking the oath of office as President of the United States.

“The best way you deal with tyrants and terrorists, you stand up to them. You don’t back down.” [NYT, Dec. 6, 2007]

But the House task force was learning a different reality in December 1992, as witnesses came forth and documents surfaced indicating that Reagan campaign operatives, including then vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush, had engaged in their own secret diplomacy in 1980, promising a swap of arms for the hostages.

Among this new evidence:

--Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr sent the task force a detailed letter describing the Iranian infighting that had occurred around this Republican overture and how Iran’s most radical elements favored a deal with the Reagan-Bush team.

--The biographer for French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches recounted how deMarenches had confessed his role in arranging secret meetings in Paris, a statement that was corroborated by several other French intelligence operatives.

--Former CIA officer Charles Cogan described a meeting in early 1981 at which Joseph Reed, an aide to banker David Rockefeller, boasted to then CIA Director William Casey about their success in thwarting President Carter’s hoped-for October Surprise of a pre-election hostage release.

So Startling

The new evidence was so startling that the task force’s chief counsel Lawrence Barcella approached chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, with a request that the investigation be extended a few months so the new information could be evaluated.

Barcella told me during an interview in 2004 that Hamilton rejected the request for an extension.

The task force then finished up work on a report that reached the opposite conclusion from what the new evidence indicated. The task force report claimed there was no credible evidence to support the long-standing allegations that the Reagan-Bush campaign had interfered with the 1980 hostage crisis.

The task force maintained this conclusion by hiding away much of the new evidence. (I discovered some of this evidence in 1994-95 when I gained access to boxes containing the raw files of the task force.)

In January 1993, however, there was one more surprise for the October Surprise task force. After its report was already at the printers, the Russian government responded to an earlier request for information about what its intelligence files showed about secret U.S. contacts with Iran.

On Jan. 11, 1993, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow forwarded to Hamilton a translated version of the Russian report, which stated that Soviet intelligence was aware of secret meetings between Republicans and Iranian officials that had occurred in Madrid and Paris during the 1980 presidential campaign.

Among the Republican operatives menioned by the Russians were George H.W. Bush, William Casey and Robert Gates, who was then a senior CIA official and who is now U.S. Defense Secretary. The Russian report flatly contradicted the findings of the House task force, which were to be released two days later, on Jan. 13, 1993.

Despite this extraordinary example of Russian-U.S. cooperation – and the stunning assertions of Republican guilt – Hamilton’s task force simply stuffed the Russian report into one of the file boxes.

There was no mention of the Russian report or other contradictory evidence when the task force report was issued, or when Hamilton wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled “Case Closed,” which relegated the October Surprise suspicions to the loony bin of conspiracy theories.

In 2004, I asked Barcella about the Russian report and why it hadn’t been released. He explained that it was a classified document and that the task force decided not to undertake the necessary steps to arrange for its declassification.

A more likely explanation was that the Democrats wanted to avoid a nasty fight with Republicans over the Reagan-Bush legacy. In early 1993, the Democrats, especially President Bill Clinton, saw a battle over history as a distraction from his domestic priorities. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Clinton adopted a tolerant attitude, too, toward George H.W. Bush’s unprecedented decision on Christmas Eve 1992 to pardon six Iran-Contra defendants (another scandal which implicated Bush and could be viewed as a sequel to the October Surprise case).

Clinton was equally disinterested when new evidence emerged in 1996 about Bush’s role in the Iraq-gate arming of Saddam Hussein, and in 1998 when the CIA’s inspector general compiled damning evidence on how the Reagan-Bush administration had protected drug traffickers linked to the Nicaraguan contras.

Instead of demanding the truth about these crimes and holding people accountable, the Clinton administration found it easier to sweep these unpleasant matters under the rug. One of Clinton’s rewards was a cozy relationship with the senior George Bush.

Now, the congressional Democrats seem to taking a similarly permissive approach toward the crimes of the junior George Bush.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

Original article posted here.

The wheels of war start the slow grind to a halt

NYT on Iraq: Better Late Than Never?

In an extraordinary full-length editorial, the New York Times has called for an end to the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, a step that some anti-war Americans may praise as a turning-point while others will be left wondering why it took the nation’s leading newspaper more than four years – and scores of thousands of dead – to figure this out.

By Robert Parry

To its credit, the Times does acknowledge that its previous pro-occupation positions – favoring rebuilding what the U.S. invasion had destroyed and worrying about the dire consequences that might result from a U.S. withdrawal – were faulty.

The Times concedes that whatever horrors might follow the end of the U.S. military occupation, they are not likely to be avoided by an indefinite continuation; that it is time to admit that a grotesque mistake in U.S. national security policy was made in 2003 and readjust strategy to make the best of it.

“It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit,” the editorial states.

Many anti-war Americans are sure to welcome the belated support of a newspaper whose own credulous reporting about Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction played a key role in opening the path to war. The editorial also is certain to be denounced by the dwindling members of George W. Bush’s political cult as surrender or treason.

But a deeper question, which the United States eventually must face, is why so many of its leading journalistic institutions performed so badly in the run-up to the Iraq War and what can be done about it.

Why were small, under-funded news outlets, like our own Consortiumnews.com, able to get these big stories mostly right, both before and after the invasion, while the prestige news organizations got the stories almost completely wrong – in both their reporting and opinion columns?

In 2002 and 2003, Consortiumnews.com was even operating on a part-time basis – because we had run out of money in 2000. But simply by filtering out the nonsensical propaganda and doing some old-fashioned reporting, we were able to avoid many of the pitfalls of the Times, the Washington Post and the major networks.

For instance, near the start of the U.S. invasion, I contacted a number of my old military and intelligence sources, who voiced near unanimous concern about the WMD rationale behind the war and the rationality of a U.S.-British-led conquest of an Arab nation.

The only hope for meaningful success, these sources felt, was the unlikely possibility that Iraqis indeed would welcome the Americans as liberators and that WMD stockpiles would be discovered, thus justifying the invasion in the world’s eyes. In the opening days of the invasion, however, it became clear that neither eventuality was likely.

Iraqi Resistance

The unexpectedly strong Iraqi resistance despite the overwhelming firepower of the U.S. invasion force was an early warning sign of what was to come. Also, the absence of any Iraqi counterattack with chemical or biological weapons underscored how hollow the Bush administration’s alarmist rhetoric was.

So, only 10 days into the invasion, I compiled the doubts of my sources, along with the early reality of the invasion, into a Consortiumnews.com article entitled “Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down,” which asserted that the war was already effectively “lost” and that the wisest course would be to start looking for an early exit strategy.

But the Bush administration propagandists and the compliant U.S. news media were not finished misleading the American people.

When the invading forces ousted Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the American press corps continued to collaborate with the Bush administration’s image-manipulators by making a handful of Iraqis helping to pull down Hussein’s statue look like a massive public uprising. The trick was accomplished by showing only close-ups, not a wide-angled look at the small knot of people actually participating.

Then, not wanting to challenge the post-statue-toppling public opinion polls, the U.S. media shifted into full triumphal mode, hailing Bush as some kind of conquering hero and fawning over his P.R. stunt of a tail-hook landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, where he declared victory under a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Amid this premature euphoria, the warning signs of impending disaster were missed. When the evidence kept growing of the emerging calamity, even pre-war skeptics like the New York Times editorial writers offered arguments for why the United States must now succeed in Iraq.

A favorite battle cry during this middle period was “failure is not an option,” although I noted in one article in August 2005 that “no one in Washington has made a convincing case that failure is not at least a strong possibility.”

Though widely ignored by the U.S. news media, the evidence actually pointed to an al-Qaeda desire for the Americans to remain bogged down in Iraq as a way for the terrorist organization to attract new recruits, raise more money and rebuild its organizational infrastructure along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

According to one key intercepted al-Qaeda document, the view of the senior leadership was that “prolonging the war [in Iraq] is in our interest.”

Al-Qaeda’s greatest fear in Iraq was that the United States would withdraw its forces quickly, depriving the terrorist group of its chief recruiting pitch, causing many of its young recruits to go home, and prompting nationalist Iraqis to root out al-Qaeda operatives trying to establish an enclave. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush Is Losing the War on Terror.”]

Contrary to Bush’s claim that al-Qaeda’s plan was to oust U.S. forces from Iraq and then “follow us home,” the terrorist group’s actual strategy appears to be: trap the Americans in Iraq indefinitely, harden a new generation of terrorists, and exploit Muslim anger about the Iraq occupation to justify terrorist strikes against the West.

In its July 8 editorial, the New York Times finally has come to grips with this reality. The tragedy is that the Iraq War already has claimed the lives of more than 3,500 American soldiers and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Before the war is finally brought to an end, the total death toll is likely to put George W. Bush in the Pol Pot category of mass butchers.

But what historical infamy should fall on the heads of the major U.S. news organizations that were the handmaidens to the slaughter? And what can Americans do to ensure that a similar catastrophe never befalls the nation?

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Original article posted here.

A match made in the mind of a Moron

The New Bush-Blair Vanity Play

By Robert Parry

Upon learning that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would become a new envoy intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a former senior Israeli intelligence official confided to an old colleague a two-word comment in English: “It’s nuts.” One can only imagine what the Palestinians said in private.

Rarely in recent history have a man and an assignment matched up as poorly as this one: an officious and deceitful Brit who collaborated on a disastrous scheme to invade an Arab country and who is blamed for the deaths of possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, now intervenes in another Arab land to get the Palestinians to shape up.

At least, the Palestinians and Israelis have been assured, Blair won’t be in charge of negotiating a peace settlement. That daunting assignment will be left to President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, two other widely despised figures in the Middle East.

Blair’s duties will be limited to shoring up Palestinian institutions, funneling international assistance to embattled Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and promoting Palestinian economic development, Bush administration officials have said.

Still, one has to wonder who comes up with these ideas. Is this envoy assignment just the latest Bush-Blair vanity play in the Middle East, treating a strategically vital region as a toy for their egos and a source of patronage plums for their cronies? Or are Bush and Blair really so self-absorbed that they think they’re the right guys for these sensitive jobs?

The notion that the detested Blair can help bail out Abbas is a risky gamble, too. Already, Abbas’s Fatah organization is viewed by many Palestinians as a corrupt tool of the West, an assessment that led to Fatah’s defeat at the polls in 2006 and to its military rout by Hamas in Gaza over the past month.

Now, Blair and Bush are endangering what little political credibility Abbas has left by embracing him and using Western money to bolster him, a strategy that could backfire and drive more Palestinians into the Hamas camp.

Though more extreme politically, Hamas is regarded by many Palestinians both as less corrupt than Fatah and less accommodating to Israel and Western powers. Fairly or not, many Arabs view Israel as a vestige of Western colonial rule and a reminder of the longstanding economic plunder of their lands.

Even before the Iraq War, the British were among the most hated Westerners because of their direct hand in administering Arab lands and manipulating local politics. With his unctuous style, Tony Blair has come to personify much of what infuriates the Arabs about the West.

As the new envoy, Blair is sure to blend his delivery of economic assistance to Fatah with his trademark lectures against Islamic extremism. As much blood as he has on his own hands, he will feel compelled to issue righteous denunciations of terrorism, guaranteeing more fury – and likely more radicalism – among Muslims sickened by Western hypocrisy.

Wedge Politics

The new Bush-Blair strategy on Palestine envisions driving a wedge between the two Palestinian factions. Western aid will pour into the West Bank, where Fatah still rules, while the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and its one million residents will be squeezed into submission through collective punishment.

The goal is to isolate – and possibly destroy – Hamas and force the Palestinian people to line up behind Fatah.

Beyond the human costs, the danger of this Bush-Blair strategy is that it will confirm suspicions that Abbas and other Fatah leaders are bought-and-paid-for traitors to the Palestinian cause. That, in turn, could stoke more Islamic extremism, not tamp it down.

An alternative strategy would have been to promote Palestinian unity, even if that meant tolerating the democratically chosen Hamas leaders, as a prerequisite for improving the desperate lot of the Palestinians and paving the way for compromise on all sides. But that is never the way of Bush or Blair when it comes to dealing with Arabs.

The Blair appointment also has caused division within the so-called Quartet – the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia – the group supposedly spearheading negotiations to resolve the long-festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Russian officials reportedly opposed Blair’s selection and some EU officials felt blindsided by the quick decision, giving Blair a new high-profile portfolio the day after he stepped down as British prime minister.

Blair’s new assignment in the Middle East also comes as he formally converts to Catholicism after three decades of living as a closet Catholic, according to British press reports. Though Blair played down his strong religious feelings while in office, he now is acknowledging his intense Christianity.

Given the painful history between Islam and Catholicism dating back more than 1,000 years to the Crusades, Blair’s religious decision could prove problematic as well. Some international political observers believe that Christian zealotry may help explain the readiness of both Bush and Blair to intervene militarily in Muslim nations despite the heavy loss of civilian lives.

Shortly after al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks, Bush dubbed his planned counter-strikes in the Muslim world a new “crusade,” a characterization that played poorly in the region.

As despair in the Middle East continues to spread, few observers expect that the Bush-Blair team, which has provoked so much animosity over Iraq, will do much to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The smart betting is that they will just make matters worse.

Original article posted here.

Bob Parry says what we all know about the CIA

Next Generation of 'Family Jewels'?

The CIA’s belated release of its infamous “Family Jewels” sheds light on U.S. intelligence abuses during the CIA’s first quarter century, but this openness may actually obscure a darker reality – that the subsequent three-plus decades have witnessed worse national-security crimes committed under the cloak of greater secrecy and deception.

By Robert Parry

Washington’s current conventional wisdom is that the “bad ol’ days” of the 1950s and 1960s couldn’t recur because a formal system of congressional oversight was put in place after press reports first disclosed CIA abuses in the mid-1970s.

Today’s reality, however, is far less reassuring. The start of routine congressional oversight in 1977 only caused intelligence hardliners and their political allies to shift operations off-books while simultaneously building a right-wing media infrastructure to harass journalists, investigators and whistleblowers who still exposed wrongdoing.

The combination of these two factors – the semi-privatizing of covert operations and the emergence of right-wing media defenders – has made it harder, not easier, to uncover and expose intelligence crimes.

Plus, the culture of deception has only deepened in Washington over the past few decades. Looking back on the Family Jewels documents, it’s almost quaint that CIA officers would comply with an order from CIA Director James Schlesinger in 1973 to confess acts that may have violated the CIA’s charter.

Since then, the pattern – reaching from the CIA to the White House – has been to keep on stonewalling and lying, while right-wing media operatives lay down covering fire of angry talking points against any accusers. Many career-minded mainstream journalists then join in “debunking” the potential scandal until it fades away, often amid derision.

In this environment, it would take very tough investigators willing to absorb withering media attacks to pry loose a new generation of Family Jewels. Indeed, it’s next to impossible to envision the current batch of U.S. government officials or this era’s journalists showing the tenacity and courage to do that.

Questions to Ask

However, if CIA Director Michael Hayden wanted to go further than just accepting plaudits for releasing some ancient history, he would demand that CIA personnel answer questions about the following events from the 1970s and 1980s that collectively make the old Family Jewels look like child’s play:

--What is the full story about the CIA’s connection to a right-wing Latin American terror network known as Operation Condor, which carried out a series of international murders including a terrorist attack that killed Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier and American co-worker Ronni Moffitt on the streets of Washington in September 1976?

(The CIA, then run by George H.W. Bush, received warning messages from a U.S. ambassador about a plot by the Chilean government's assassins to use the CIA as a cover for infiltrating into the United States, but Bush has never fully explained why he didn’t do more to prevent the Letelier-Moffitt murders.)

--What did the CIA know about the terrorist bombing of a civilian Cubana Airliner in October 1976 which killed 73 people, including youngsters on the Cuban national fencing team? Why has the U.S. government protected and harbored two of the implicated terrorists, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, to this day?

(Though George H.W. Bush ran for national office four times since the Cubana attack, he has never been pressed to give a thorough answer about his knowledge of the terror wave that occurred under his watch at CIA. Neither has George W. Bush been challenged over his decision to spare Posada from extradition to stand trial.)

--In 1980, what was the role of three CIA officers – Robert Gates, Donald Gregg and George Cave – in backchannel contacts between the Reagan-Bush campaign and Iranian Islamic radicals then holding 52 Americans hostage, a crisis that effectively doomed Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid?

(Gates, Gregg and Cave have denied involvement in the “October Surprise” case, but their alibis have never been carefully vetted. Gregg also failed a lie-detector test when he was asked about his role in this secret 1980 operation during Iran-Contra questioning. Despite extensive evidence that Republicans did contact Iran behind Carter’s back, congressional investigations into the scandal were, at best, half-hearted.)

--What did the CIA do to protect drug traffickers connected to two major paramilitary operations in the 1980s, the contras in Nicaragua and the mujahedeen in Afghanistan?

(Much of the U.S. news media – both right-wing and mainstream – dismissed the contra-cocaine allegations as a “conspiracy theory.” But the inspectors general of the CIA and the Justice Department made broad admissions about the prevalence of drug traffickers inside the contra operation in the 1980s – and the U.S. government’s failure to root them out. Those I.G. reports received little attention – or were simply ignored by major U.S. news outlets – when they were released in 1998.)

Moon’s Operation

--What is the relationship between U.S. intelligence and Sun Myung Moon’s organization? Why has Moon’s operation, with its relationships with crime kingpins in Asia and Latin America, escaped legal scrutiny even after it was exposed during the Korea-gate scandal in the late 1970s as a South Korean intelligence front?

(Though the Korea-gate findings contributed to Moon’s prosecution and conviction on tax charges in 1982, he and his organization have since become untouchables, a pattern of protection that some critics trace to Moon’s investment of billions of mysterious dollars in publishing the pro-Republican Washington Times, in financing a right-wing political infrastructure in the United States, and in putting money into the pockets of U.S. political leaders, including former President George H.W. Bush.)

--What was the CIA’s hand in the so-called “perception management” operations of the 1980s aimed at influencing how the American people perceived foreign-policy events?

(CIA Director William Casey took a direct interest in establishing a “perception management” operation based in the National Security Council under the guidance of long-time CIA officer Walter Raymond Jr. Though Raymond was “externalized” from the CIA by shifting him to the NSC, this sleight of hand violated at least the spirit of the prohibition against the CIA influencing Americans through distribution of propaganda.)

--What did the CIA know about clandestine weapons shipments to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s?

(Former Reagan administration official Howard Teicher has written in a sworn affidavit that then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, CIA Director William Casey and then-deputy CIA director Robert Gates played secret roles in arranging military assistance to Saddam Hussein’s government. But the full story has never been told.)

--Was the CIA aware of the 1985 activities of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and his assistant, Gen. Colin Powell, in arranging illegal shipments of weapons to Iran?

(Ronald Reagan’s National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane has testified that he described the operation to Weinberger and Powell in 1985 before there was a presidential intelligence finding and thus when the shipment of U.S. weapons through Israel was illegal. Weinberger denied knowledge and Powell claimed a faulty memory. Then, President George H.W. Bush blocked the truth when he pardoned Weinberger on Christmas Eve 1992, thus preventing Weinberger’s Iran-Contra trial and sparing Powell some embarrassing questions.)

[For more on the evidence of these intelligence scandals, see Robert Parry’s Lost History and Secrecy & Privilege, available at Amazon.com, or look for our upcoming book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.]

‘War on Terror’

There are many other possible Family Jewels-style questions, including current ones that bear on the “war on terror” – torture, rendition flights, secret prisons, assassinations, etc. – but the CIA would surely throw a cloak of operational secrecy over those activities.

The same should not hold true for questions relating to intelligence crimes of the 1970s and 1980s. The obstacle there is that those abuses remain politically radioactive because they implicate President George W. Bush’s father, current Defense Secretary Robert Gates and several Republican icons, including Colin Powell and Ronald Reagan.

However, if Gen. Hayden were to repeat the practice of CIA Director Schlesinger in calling for confessions about past crimes – and if this generation of CIA officers would obey the order – the legitimacy of the entire Reagan-Bush era could be put into question.

Rather than a glorious period of conservative rule, the Reagan and Bush I administrations would stand exposed as a criminal enterprise, having secured power through illegal subterfuge and conducting foreign policy by violating a host of American laws.

That, in turn, would put the current Bush administration in a very harsh light, as the political spawn of criminal and possibly even treasonous acts.

So the chances of ever reading a second generation of Family Jewels does not seem bright.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.

Original article posted here.

Once again, our own terrorists, our hypocrisy and cover ups.

Bush Sat on Evidence of Cuban Terror

By Robert Parry


Earlier this year, as accused right-wing terrorist Luis Posada Carilles successfully sought to be freed on bond, the Bush administration possessed secret evidence implicating the 79-year-old Cuban exile in terrorist bombings in Havana a decade ago.

The evidence, an FBI document based on interviews with confidential sources in the late 1990s, linked Posada to a wave of hotel bombings in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist. Administration lawyers have now filed the document in court as part of the illegal immigration case against Posada that is scheduled to resume in Texas on May 11.

On April 19, however, Posada was freed on $350,000 bond and allowed to live in his wife’s home in Miami, where many right-wing Cuban exiles regard him as a hero.

The relatively gentle handling of Posada and other right-wing Cubans connected to terrorist acts against the communist government of Fidel Castro is in marked contrast to George W. Bush’s harsh treatment of Islamic militants captured during the “global war on terror.”

While suspected Islamic terrorists are locked away indefinitely at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and can undergo “alternative interrogation techniques,” Posada has been afforded all U.S. legal protections and then some.

Bush has refused to extradite Posada to Venezuela or Cuba, where he is sought on other terrorism charges for masterminding the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cubana Airliner killing all 73 people on board, including the young Cuban national fencing team.

During a court hearing in Texas on Posada, Bush administration lawyers allowed to go unchallenged testimony from a Posada friend that Posada would face torture if he were returned to Venezuela where he held citizenship and once worked as an intelligence officer. The judge, therefore, barred Posada to be deported there.

After that ruling, Venezuela’s Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez accused the Bush administration of applying “a cynical double standard” in the “war on terror.” As for the claim that Venezuela practices torture, Alvarez said, “There isn’t a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela.”

It now appears the Bush administration also was sitting on evidence implicating Posada in more recent acts of terrorism, the 1997 hotel bombings in Havana.

The Associated Press reported that the FBI document, now filed with the court, cited “confidential sources,” including one source saying that two Posada associates at a Guatemalan utility company spoke about plans to assassinate Castro. The source then planted a listening device in an office and picked up conversations about smuggling a “putty-like explosive” into Cuba in the shoes of operatives posing as tourists, the document said.

The source added that another employee of the utility company found 22 plastic tubes in a closet in August 1997 labeled "high-powered explosives, extremely dangerous." The explosives were being mixed into shampoo bottles, the employee said.

According to the AP, the confidential source provided the FBI with a fax about wire transfers from individuals in New Jersey that was signed Solo, one of Posada’s aliases. The FBI concluded that at least $19,000 in wire transfers connected to the hotel bombings were sent from the United States to El Salvador and Guatemala to a "Ramon Medina," the code name used by Posada in the 1980s when he worked on the Iran-Contra operations overseen by White House aide Oliver North. [AP, May 4, 2007]

Admissions/Denials

In 1998, in interviews with a New York Times reporter, Posada admitted a role in the Havana bombings, citing a goal of frightening tourists away from Cuba. But Posada later denied making the admissions. He also has denied masterminding the 1976 airliner bombing in collusion with another notorious Cuban exile, Orlando Bosch, who is living in Miami, too, with the help and protection of the Bush family.

Not only did the Bush administration take a dive during Posada’s deportation hearing by letting the Venezuela torture claim go unchallenged, but also it ignored Bosch’s statement a year ago, when he justified the 1976 mid-air bombing in a TV interview with reporter Manuel Cao on Miami’s Channel 41.

“Did you down that plane in 1976?” Cao asked Bosch.

“If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself,” Bosch answered, “and if I tell you that I did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.”

But when Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the plane crashed off the coast of Barbados, Bosch responded, "In a war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.”

“But don’t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?” Cao asked.

“Who was on board that plane?” Bosch responded. “Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese.” [Officials tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]

Bosch added, “Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our enemies…”

“And the fencers?” Cao asked about Cuba’s amateur fencing team that had just won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in Caracas. “The young people on board?”

Bosch replied, “I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. … She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant.

“We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.” [The comment about Santo Domingo was an apparent reference to a strategy meeting by a right-wing terrorist organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976.]

“If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn’t you think it difficult?” Cao asked.

“No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba,” Bosch answered.

CIA Files

Beyond Bosch’s incriminating statements about the Cubana Airlines bombing, other evidence of his and Posada’s guilt is overwhelming.

Declassified U.S. documents show that soon after the Cubana Airlines plane was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the CIA, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the bombing.

But in fall 1976, Bush’s boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a tight election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford administration wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the newspapers. So Bush and other officials kept the lid on the investigations. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Still, inside the U.S. government, the facts were known. According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in anti-communist Cuban extremists Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP.

The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late September 1976 under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close Washington ally who assigned his intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia “to protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela.”

On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor. “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’” the CIA report said.

“Following the 6 October Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory.”

In South America, police began rounding up suspects. Two Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb. They named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack.

A search of Posada’s apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez.

Lost Interest

After the Reagan-Bush administration took power in Washington in 1981, the momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of anti-communist terrorist plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any concern about right-wing terrorism.

In 1985, Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, reportedly with the help of Cuban exiles. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban activist Jorge Mas Canosa for providing the $25,000 that was used to bribe guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison.

Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who was close to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush. Rodriguez then was handling secret supply shipments to the Nicaraguan contra rebels, a pet project of President Ronald Reagan.

After fleeing Venezuela, Posada joined Rodriguez in Central America and began using the code name “Ramon Medina.” Posada was assigned the job of paymaster for pilots in the White House-run contra-supply operation.

When one of the contra-supply planes was shot down inside Nicaragua in October 1986, Posada was responsible for alerting U.S. officials to the crisis and then shutting down the operation’s safe houses in El Salvador. Even after the exposure of Posada’s role in the contra-supply operation, the U.S. government made no effort to bring the accused terrorist to justice.

By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela’s jails and back in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30 violent attacks, was facing possible deportation by U.S. officials who warned that Washington couldn’t credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a terrorist like Bosch.

But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida politician, led a lobbying drive to prevent the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying paid dividends when Jeb's dad, President George H.W. Bush, blocked proceedings against Bosch, letting the unapologetic terrorist stay in the United States.

In 1992, also during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, the FBI interviewed Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6 ½ hours at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras.

Posada filled in some blanks about the role of Bush’s vice presidential office in the secret contra operation. According toa 31-page summary of the FBI interview, Posada said Bush’s national security adviser, Donald Gregg, was in frequent contact with Felix Rodriguez.

“Posada … recalls that Rodriguez was always calling Gregg,” the FBI summary said. “Posada knows this because he’s the one who paid Rodriguez’ phone bill.” After the interview, the FBI agents let Posada walk out of the embassy to freedom. [For details, see Parry’s Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & Project Truth.]

More Attacks

Posada soon returned to his anti-Castro plotting.

In 1994, Posada set out to kill Castro during a trip to Cartagena, Colombia. Posada and five cohorts reached Cartagena, but the plan flopped when security cordons prevented the would-be assassins from getting a clean shot at Castro, according to a Miami Herald account. [Miami Herald, June 7, 1998]

The Herald also described Posada’s role in a lethal 1997 bombing campaign against popular hotels and restaurants inside Cuba. The story cited documentary evidence that Posada arranged payments to conspirators from accounts in the United States.

“This afternoon you will receive via Western Union four transfers of $800 each … from New Jersey,” said one fax signed by SOLO, a Posada alias.

Posada landed back in jail in 2000 after Cuban intelligence uncovered a plot to assassinate Castro by planting a bomb at a meeting the Cuban leader planned with university students in Panama.

Panamanian authorities arrested Posada and other alleged co-conspirators in November 2000. In April 2004, they were sentenced to eight or nine years in prison for endangering public safety.

Four months after the sentencing, however, lame-duck Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso – who lives in Key Biscayne, Florida, and has close ties to the Cuban-American community and to George W. Bush’s administration – pardoned the convicts.

After the pardons and just two months before Election 2004, three of Posada’s co-conspirators – Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon and Gaspar Jimenez – arrived in Miami to a hero’s welcome, flashing victory signs at their supporters.

While the terrorists celebrated, U.S. authorities watched the men – also implicated in bombings in New York, New Jersey and Florida – alight on U.S. soil. Washington Post writer Marcela Sanchez noted in a September 2004 article about the Panamanian pardons that “there is something terribly wrong when the United States, after Sept. 11 (2001), fails to condemn the pardoning of terrorists and instead allows them to walk free on U.S. streets.” [Washington Post, Sept. 3, 2004]

Posada reportedly sneaked into the United States in early 2005 and his presence was an open secret in Miami for weeks before U.S. authorities did anything. The New York Times summed up Bush’s dilemma if Posada decided to seek U.S. asylum.

“A grant of asylum could invite charges that the Bush administration is compromising its principle that no nation should harbor suspected terrorists,” the Times wrote. “But to turn Mr. Posada away could provoke political wrath in the conservative Cuban-American communities of South Florida, deep sources of support and campaign money for President Bush and his brother, Jeb.” [NYT, May 9, 2005]

Only after Posada called a news conference to announce his presence was the Bush administration shamed into arresting him. But even then, the administration balked at sending Posada back to Venezuela where the government of Hugo Chavez – unlike some of its predecessors – was eager to prosecute.

The Posada-Bosch cases point to one unavoidable and unpleasant conclusion: that the Bush family regards terrorism – defined as killing civilians for a political reason – as justified or at least tolerable in cases when their interests match those of the terrorists.

Original article posted here.