Tim Russert, Dick Cheney, and 9/11
by David Ray Griffin
17/06/08 "ICH" -- -- While we are remembering Tim Russert and his years as moderator of “Meet the Press,” we would do well to recall his interview with Vice President Dick Cheney at Camp David on September 16, 2001, just five days after the 9/11 attacks.1 In fact, Cheney himself, during an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer the morning after Russert died, reminded us of that Camp David interview, saying: “I always, when I think of Tim and think of ‘Meet the Press,’ that's the show that always comes to mind. . . . It was a remarkable moment in American history.”2
Commenting that he himself “remember[ed] that interview vividly,” Lauer asked: “Anything stand out from that interview?” In his reply, Cheney said: “We went back and reminisced to some extent about what had actually happened on the morning of 9/11. So it was---it was a remarkable moment in my career.”3
It was indeed. In reminiscing about his movements that morning, Cheney contradicted what was to become a crucial element of the account that the 9/11 Commission would give of those movements.
In praising Russert’s tenure on “Meet the Press,” Cheney said: “He would ask you tough questions, he would remind you of quotes you made previously in other settings or on earlier shows, so you never got away with anything going up vis-à-vis Tim.”4
Given Cheney’s appraisal of his interview with Russert as a “remarkable moment” in both American history and Cheney’s own career, we should apply Russert’s method to this interview, reminding ourselves of exactly what Cheney said, then comparing it with what was said about Cheney by the 9/11 Commission.
The Camp David Interview
After discussing with Cheney the US response to the 9/11 attacks, Russert turned to September 11 itself, asking Cheney where he was when he learned of the first attack on the World Trade Center. Replying that he was in his White House office, Cheney said that, after seeing the second attack on television, he convened a meeting in his office with Condoleezza Rice and others, then talked by telephone to President Bush (who was in Florida), discussing the public statement the latter might make. (This call would have needed to take place shortly after Bush left the classroom, which was reportedly at about 9:12,5 if it was to help him prepare his address to the nation, which was to be given at 9:30. The New York Times wrote: “[A]t 9:12, [Bush] abruptly retreated [from the classroom], speaking to Mr. Cheney and New York officials.”6) Cheney then said:
“While I was there, over the next several minutes, watching developments on the television and as we started to get organized to figure out what to do, my Secret Service agents came in and, under these circumstances, they just move. They don't say ‘sir’ or ask politely. They came in and said, ‘Sir, we have to leave immediately, and grabbed me and. . .”7
Russert asked: “Literally grabbed you and moved you?” Cheney replied:
“Yeah. And, you know, your feet touch the floor periodically. But they're bigger than I am, and they hoisted me up and moved me very rapidly down the hallway, down some stairs, through some doors and down some more stairs into an underground facility under the White House, and, as a matter of fact, it's a corridor, locked at both ends, and they did that because they had received a report that an airplane was headed for the White House.”
After confirming Russert’s supposition that this was Flight 77, Cheney continued:
“And when it entered the danger zone and looked like it was headed for the White House was when they grabbed me and evacuated me to the basement. . . . [O]nce I got down into the shelter, the first thing I did--there's a secure phone there. First thing I did was pick up the telephone and call the president again, who was still down in Florida, at that point, and strongly urged him to delay his return.”
After discussing that advice in terms of the need to secure “presidential succession,” Cheney continued the narrative about his own movements that day, saying:
“Once I left that immediate shelter, after I talked to the president, urged him to stay away for now, well, I went down into what's called PEOC,8 the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, and there, I had Norm Mineta . . . . I had Condi Rice with me and several of my key staff people. We had access, secured communications with Air Force One, with the Secretary of Defense over in the Pentagon. We had also the secure videoconference that ties together the White House, CIA, State, Justice, Defense.”
After giving still more details, Cheney said: “I was in a position to be able to see all the stuff coming in, receive reports and then make decisions in terms of acting with it.” Cheney made clear, in other words, that he had everyone and everything he needed in the PEOC to take charge.
He then added: “But when I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit.”
Summary of Cheney’s Account to Russert
According to what Vice President Dick Cheney told Tim Russert, only five days after 9/11, the sequence of events went like this:
1. The Secret Service came into Cheney’s office to take him downstairs after they “received a report that an airplane was headed for the White House.” Although the plane “turned away and . . . flew a circle and came back in and then hit the Pentagon,” it was “when it entered the danger zone and looked like it was headed for the White House,” Cheney said, that “they grabbed me and evacuated me to the basement.”
2. The Secret Service agents hustled Cheney down to the underground corridor (which he also called the “immediate shelter,” evidently meaning the part of the bomb shelter that one reaches first).
3. While in this corridor, he used the secure phone to talk to the president again, this time urging him to delay his return to Washington.
4. He went from this corridor to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC (which is also called the “shelter conference room”).
5. After he arrived in the PEOC, he learned that the Pentagon had been hit. Cheney’s statement here---“[W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit”---is ambiguous. Did he mean that he arrived there within a short order? Or that, within a short order after arriving there, he learned that the Pentagon had been hit? The latter seems more likely. The main point, in any case, is clear: Cheney learned about the Pentagon attack---which reportedly occurred at about 9:38---only after arriving in the PEOC.
This is significant because it contradicts what the 9/11 Commission would state three years later.
The 9/11 Commission’s Account
According to The 9/11 Commission Report, the sequence of events was as follows.
1. At 9:33, the Secret Service learned that an unidentified aircraft was coming toward the White House, but “[n]o move was made to evacuate the Vice President at this time,” because the Secret Service learned at 9:34, just before sounding the alarm, “that the aircraft was turning south.”
2. Just before 9:36, the Secret Service, having learned that the plane had started circling back, “ordered the immediate evacuation of the Vice President.”
3. After being hustled downstairs, “The Vice President entered the underground tunnel leading to the shelter at 9:37. Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and television.”
4. While there, “[t]he Vice President [telephoned Florida] and asked to speak to the President, but it took time for the call to be connected.”
5. “He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit, and he saw television coverage of the smoke coming from the building.”
6. Mrs. Cheney, having arrived at the White House at 9:52, “joined her husband in the tunnel.”
7. “[A]t 9:55, the Vice President was still on the phone with the President, advising that three planes were missing and one had hit the Pentagon.” (The Commissioners “believe this is the same call in which the Vice President urged the President not to return to Washington.”)
8. “After the call ended, Mrs. Cheney and the Vice President moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room. . . . [T]he Vice president arrived in the room shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58.”9
As a comparison of these two timelines shows, the 9/11 Commission’s account differs significantly from the account that Cheney gave to Russert.
Contradictions between the Two Accounts
According to Cheney, he arrived in the PEOC, or shelter conference room, before he learned about the attack on the Pentagon. According to the 9/11 Commission, by contrast, he entered the PEOC after he learned about this attack (and, in fact, about 20 minutes after its occurrence at 9:38 AM).
This contrast leads to another: According to Cheney, the telephone call in which he urged the president to stay away from Washington occurred before he learned about the Pentagon strike. According to the Commission’s account, however, this call occurred after he had learned about the strike, so he was able to talk to Bush about it.
The two accounts appear, moreover, to contradict each other with regard to the time at which Cheney was taken downstairs to the underground corridor. According to what Cheney told Russert, this occurred as soon as the Secret Service agents heard that a plane was approaching the White House---they did not wait until the plane came that direction a second time---and this seems to have been shortly after Cheney called the president about the latter’s public statement---a call that, according to the New York Times, occurred at 9:12. If Cheney was taken down about five minutes later, his account would not conflict, at least not strongly, with the testimony of Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, who told the 9/11 Commission during an open hearing in 2003 that Cheney was already there when he got to the PEOC at 9:20.10
If Cheney meant something close to this, his account would, however, strongly contradict The 9/11 Commission Report, according to which he did not even head downstairs until 9:36 and did not enter the corridor until 9:37.
However, even if Cheney did not mean to imply that he had entered the PEOC before 9:20, the natural interpretation of his statement---“when I arrived there [in the PEOC] within a short order, we had word the Pentagon’s been hit”---would seem to be that the Pentagon attack occurred after he had entered the PEOC.
One can point out, to be sure, that Cheney did not actually say this. He said only that he learned about the Pentagon attack after he entered the PEOC. One who wanted to support the 9/11 Commission’s timeline might argue that, although the Pentagon was attacked at 9:38, Cheney did not hear about this attack until 20-some minutes later, after he, as the Commission says, entered the PEOC at 9:58. On that basis, one might argue, Cheney’s account and that of the Commission could be reconciled.
However, besides being extremely implausible (by suggesting that Vice President Cheney, who was formerly the secretary of defense and on 9/11 was the person in charge at the White House, would not have been notified about such an attack for over 20 minutes), this attempted reconciliation would also be ruled out by the Commission’s timeline, which says that Cheney learned about the Pentagon attack while he was still in the corridor, before he entered the PEOC. He told Russert that he learned about it after he entered the PEOC.
It is impossible, therefore, to reconcile the two accounts. If the story that Cheney told Russert at Camp David, just five days after 9/11, was true, then the story told by the 9/11 Commission in July 2004, almost three years later, was false.
The Unique Source for the 9/11 Commission’s Timeline
On what did the 9/11 Commission base its timeline? It claimed that the 9:37 time for Cheney’s entry into the corridor, from which the 9:58 estimate for his entry into the PEOC followed, was based on a timeline in a Secret Service report. By the Commission’s own admission, however, the Secret Service said that “the 9:37 entry time in their timeline was based on alarm data, which is no longer retrievable.”11 The claim that Cheney entered the corridor at 9:37, in other words, is based on no official documentation.
Could the Commission cite journalistic accounts to support its timeline? It appears that there was one journalistic account, and only one, that supported this timeline. This was an MSNBC-Newsweek article by Evan Thomas, which was dated December 31, 2001, at MSNBC and appeared in the January 7, 2002, issue of Newsweek. This article said: “Shortly before 10 a.m., the Cheneys were led into the PEOC conference room. . . . [T]hey looked up at the TV screens. It was 9:58 a.m.”12
In saying this, Thomas disagreed not only with what Norman Mineta would later tell the 9/11 Commission, but also with what Richard Clarke would say in Against All Enemies, which became a best-selling book while the 9/11 Commission was still holding hearings.
According to Clarke, shortly after the meeting that Cheney had with Condoleezza Rice after the second attack on World Trade Center, which occurred at 9:03, the Secret Service wanted Rice as well as Cheney to go down to the PEOC. Rice, however, first went with Clarke to the White House’s Video Teleconferencing Center, where Clarke was to set up a video conference. This conference, Clarke’s statements suggest, began at about 9:10.13 After spending a few minutes there, Rice said, according to Clarke: “You’re going to need some decisions quickly. I’m going to the PEOC to be with the Vice President. Tell us what you need.” Clarke replied: “What I need is an open line to Cheney and you.”14 Some minutes later, evidently at about 9:15, Norman Mineta arrived and Clarke, after receiving him in the Situation Room, “suggested he join the Vice President.”15 Clarke thereby seemed to imply that Cheney was in the PEOC prior to 9:15.
In an ABC News program narrated by Peter Jennings on the first anniversary of 9/11, Condoleezza Rice is portrayed as supporting the early descent time. After describing Cheney’s trip down to the PEOC with the Secret Service agents, ABC’s Charles Gibson said: “Up above, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is trying to find the rest of the President's team,” after which Rice is shown saying: "As I was trying to find all of the principals, the Secret Service came in and said, 'You have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President's already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House.’” Gibson then added: “In the bunker, the Vice President is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.”16 ABC agreed in advance, therefore, with Mineta’s account, according to which Cheney was down there before he arrived.
According to another ABC News program that same week, Cheney’s own White House photographer, David Bohrer, also supported the early descent time. Showing Bohrer describe the moment when the Secret Service agents told Cheney, “Sir, you have to come with us,’” ABC portrayed this event as happening “just after 9 a.m.,” presumably because that is what Bohrer himself had said.17
Mineta’s account was also supported in advance by a Wall Street Journal article, published about a month after 9/11, which told the story of that morning from the perspective of American and United Airlines. Discussing the actions of Donald J. Carty and Jim Goodwin, top executives of AA and UA, respectively, this article said:
“Mr. Carty and Mr. Goodwin . . . were talking on the phone with Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, who was in a government command bunker with Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Carty told Mr. Mineta that American was ordering all 162 of its planes out of the sky; United already had ordered its 122 planes down. About five minutes later, the FAA shut down the skies over the U.S. completely to all but military aircraft. At [9:45 a.m.],18 American lost contact with a third flight, . . . But . . . radio contact was restored in 10 minutes. . . . Soon, reports began pouring in that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon.”19
Mineta had the FAA give two orders that morning. The first one, which was to prevent any more planes from taking off, was at 9:26. The second, which was for all planes to be brought down, occurred at 9:45, after the Pentagon was struck.20 In describing the FAA order that occurred before the attack on the Pentagon, the Journal erroneously called it an order to bring all planes down (confusion between the two orders was quite common).21 It is clear, in any case, that these two airline officials, as paraphrased by the Journal, reported that Cheney was present in the PEOC prior to the attack on the Pentagon.
The 9/11 Commission’s timeline, according to which Cheney arrived much later, was based on a twofold claim: that Cheney did not entering the corridor until 9:37 and that his phone call to the president then took about 20 minutes.
As we saw above, the alleged Secret Service claim that Cheney did not enter the corridor until 9:37 was, by the Commission’s own admission, undocumented. Surely this undocumented claim cannot trump the combined testimony of Norman Mineta, Richard Clarke, David Bohrer (as described by ABC News), American and United Airlines (as described by the Wall Street Journal), and even Dick Cheney himself (as given to Tim Russert five days after 9/11).
However, the claim that Cheney did not enter the corridor until 9:37 was mentioned by one journalistic account: the aforementioned MSNBC-Newsweek article by Evan Thomas. According to Thomas, it was 9:35 when the Secret Service entered Cheney’s office---where the vice president, incidentally, was not in a take-charge mode but was simply “standing by his desk, looking at the TV in the corner.” This article also has the other main elements later articulated in The 9/11 Commission Report: Cheney’s time-consuming phone call to the president (who was “not easy to reach”), Cheney’s being told about the Pentagon attack while he was still in the corridor, Lynne Cheney’s arrival while the vice president was still on the phone, and then the conclusion: “Shortly before 10 a.m., the Cheneys were led into the PEOC conference room. . . . [T]hey looked up at the TV screens. It was 9:58 a.m.”22
If the 9/11 Commission’s timeline was derived from the Thomas article, or else the source(s) for that article, the question becomes: Where did Thomas get the information on which he based his account?
The note provided by the 9/11 Commission for its conclusion that the Cheneys arrived in the PEOC “shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58,” mentions three transcripts, all of which are White House transcripts: “Lynne Cheney interview with Newsweek, Nov. 9, 2001”; “Vice President Cheney interview with Newsweek, Nov. 19, 2001”; and “Rice interview with Evan Thomas, Nov. 1, 2001.” Evidently, therefore, the Evan Thomas MSNBC-Newsweek article of December 31, 2001, was based significantly on interviews with Condoleezza Rice and the Cheneys.
It would appear, accordingly, that the account given by Cheney to Newsweek in November differed significantly from what he had told Russert on “Meet the Press” two months earlier. He told Russert that he learned about the Pentagon attack after he was already in the PEOC, thereby suggesting agreement with all the witnesses who would indicate that he was in the PEOC prior to the attack. But according to the story that he (along with his wife and Rice) apparently told Newsweek, which was later accepted by the 9/11 Commission, Cheney did not enter the PEOC, where he took charge of matters, until about 20 minutes after the attack on the Pentagon had already occurred.
Possible Motives for Changing the Timeline
What possible motives would there have been for Cheney to change the timeline? What possible motives might the 9/11 Commission have had for accepting Evan Thomas’s timeline, even though it was apparently the only journalistic account that depicted Cheney as not entering the PEOC until almost 10:00?
I mentioned above the fact that Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta reported to the 9/11 Commission in 2003 that, when he arrived in the PEOC at about 9:20, Cheney was already there. Mineta then gave the following account of a conversation he witnessed:
“During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, ‘The plane is 50 miles out.’ ‘The plane is 30 miles out.’ And when it got down to ‘the plane is 10 miles out,’ the young man also said to the Vice President, ‘Do the orders still stand?’ And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, ‘Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?’23
When asked by Commissioner Timothy Roemer how long this conversation occurred after his arrival at 9:20, Mineta said, “Probably about five or six minutes.” That, as Roemer pointed out, would have been “about 9:25 or 9:26.”24
During an informal interview in 2007, incidentally, Mineta reaffirmed that Cheney was already there when he arrived in the PEOC, saying “absolutely.” When he was told that the Commission had said that Cheney did not arrive until 9:58, Mineta expressed surprise and said: “Oh no, no, no; I don’t know how that came about.” Although Mineta said he “might have been mistaken on the 9:25,” he said that Cheney was definitely there before the Pentagon was struck, and “so was Mrs. Cheney.”25
Mineta’s 2003 testimony at the 9/11 Commission hearing created two problems for the official story of the day’s events. For one thing, it implied that Cheney---who, as he told Russert, was in contact with Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld---knew that an aircraft was approaching Washington about 12 minutes before the Pentagon was struck. This implication directly contradicted the official claim, according to which Pentagon officials did not know that an aircraft was approaching their building. This claim was essential for explaining why because the Pentagon had not been evacuated, with the result that 125 Pentagon employees were killed. For example, one Pentagon spokesperson, having been asked why this evacuation did not occur, said: “The Pentagon was simply not aware that this aircraft was coming our way.”26
A second problem created by Mineta’s story involved the nature of “the orders.” Although Mineta assumed, he said, that they were orders to have the aircraft shot down, no aircraft approaching Washington was shot down. Mineta’s interpretation also made the young man’s question unintelligible. Given the threefold fact that the airspace over the Pentagon is categorized as “forbidden,” meaning that commercial aircraft are never permitted in it, that two hijacked planes had already crashed into the Twin Towers, and that still other planes had been reported hijacked, the expected orders, if an unidentified plane were approaching that airspace, would have been to shoot it down. Had Cheney given those orders, there would have been no reason for the young man to ask if the orders still stood. His question made sense only if the orders were to do something unexpected---not to shoot it down. The most natural interpretation of Mineta’s story, accordingly, was that he had inadvertently reported that he had heard Cheney confirm stand-down orders.
That Mineta’s testimony was perceived as a dangerous threat to the official account is suggested by several steps taken by the 9/11 Commission. The first step was the one on which we have focused: the claim, based on the White House-supplied Newsweek story, that Cheney did not enter the PEOC---at which time he first went into his take-charge mode (prior to that he was simply talking with the president and watching television)---until 20 minutes after the Pentagon had been struck.
A second step was to make no mention of this portion of Mineta’s testimony in The 9/11 Commission Report.
A third step is suggested by the fact that this portion of Mineta’s testimony is missing from the 9/11 Commission video archive.27
A fourth step was the creation of an alternative version of the story about an incoming aircraft. The 9/11 Commission Report wrote:
“At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft. . . . At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft. . . . The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane. . . . The military aide returned a few minutes later, probably between 10:12 and 10:18, and said the aircraft was 60 miles out. He again asked for authorization to engage. The Vice President again said yes.”28
Although this story has some elements in common with Mineta’s story, it differs in two major respects. It makes clear that Cheney issued a shoot-down, not a stand-down, order. And it came far too late to have had any relevance to the Pentagon attack.
In fact, by coming so late, it also---and this provides a second possible motive for the revised timeline---could have had no relevance to another controversial issue: Whether the US military had shot down United Flight 93 over Pennsylvania (which, according to the 9/11 Commission, crashed at 10:03).
There were reports that this indeed had occurred. For example, Major Daniel Nash, one of the F-15 pilots sent to fly over New York City that morning, reported that when he returned to base, he was told that a military F-16 had shot down an airliner in Pennsylvania.29 This rumor became sufficiently widespread that it came up during General Richard Myers’s confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 13. Chairman Carl Levin, saying that “there have been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down,” added: “Those stories continue to exist.”30 Myers denied that it had occurred, but several other military officers would later state that their fighters were in position to do it.31 Richard Clarke would later state, moreover, that Cheney had given the authorization at approximately 9:50,32 which would have been early enough for the military to have shot it down at 10:03.
According to the Commission, the incoming flight, which elicited Cheney’s shoot-down authorization at some time after 10:10, was indeed United 93. Unbeknownst to Cheney and the military, however, this flight had already crashed at 10:03.33 Insofar as this story was accepted, therefore, the military could not have, under Cheney’s orders, shot down United 93.
Conclusion
As we have seen, it would appear that the 9/11 Commission’s timeline, which rules out the possibility that Cheney could have been responsible for the attack on the Pentagon or the downing of United 93, came from Cheney himself, via the account that he himself---along with Lynne Cheney and Condoleezza Rice---gave to Newsweek.
Arguably the strongest evidence against this timeline is the account that Cheney gave to Tim Russert on the September 16, 2001, edition of “Meet the Press.” The 9/11 Commission’s timeline is, of course, also strongly contradicted by Richard Clarke, Norman Mineta, and others. Ignoring those accounts has, however, proved easy. It will be much more difficult to continue to ignore the given to Russert on “Meet the Press.” Besides the fact that this account was given by Cheney himself, it was also given just five days after 9/11, when the events of that day were still fresh in his mind.
Also, Russert’s interview with Cheney is very well known. Matt Lauer, for example, said: “I remember that interview vividly. . . . I was glued to that.”34 Cheney’s 2008 description of that interview as a “remarkable moment in American history,” moreover, has probably encouraged many people, including many journalists to review it.
In describing Russert’s typical method on “Meet the Press,” Cheney rightly praised him, saying: “He would ask you tough questions, he would remind you of quotes you made previously in other settings or on earlier shows, so you never got away with anything going up vis-à-vis Tim.” But Cheney has thus far gotten away with the contradiction between what he told Russert and what he apparently told Newsweek, which became the position of The 9/11 Commission Report. But perhaps that will not continue to be the case, especially now that Cheney has drawn the world’s attention to his Camp David interview with Tim Russert.
The contradiction between the 9/11 Commission’s report and Cheney’s own words exists only because of the response elicited from him by Tim Russert. What better tribute could journalists around the world pay to Russert’s life and work than to follow up on this contradiction, demanding answers to why it exists?
David Ray Griffin has published 33 books, the most recent of which are Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (2007) and 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (2008). He thanks Tod Fletcher and Elizabeth Woodworth for help with this essay.
1 “The Vice President Appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert,” MSNBC, 16 September 2001 (www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html).
2 “Interview of the Vice President by Matt Lauer of NBC News,” 14 June 2008 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/06/20080614-3.html).
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 William Langley, “Revealed: What Really Went On During Bush’s ‘Missing Hours,’” Telegraph, 16 December 2001 (), says that Bush left at 9:12. However, Bill Sammon suggests that Bush lingered longer (Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism: From Inside the Bush White House [Washington: Regnery, 2002], 89-90).
6 David E. Sanger and Don Van Natta Jr., “After the Attacks: the Events; In Four Days, a National Crisis Changes Bush’s Presidency,” New York Times, 16 September 2001 ().
7 “The Vice President Appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert,” MSNBC, 16 September 2001 ( www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html ).
8 The transcript has “call a PEOC,” but this was surely a mistranscription for “called PEOC.”
9 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Authorized Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004) (http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf), 39-40.
10 9/11 Commission Hearing, 23 May 2003 (). Mineta gave this account under questioning from 9/11 Commission Vice Chair Lee Hamilton and Commissioner Timothy Roemer. Mineta’s interchange with Hamilton can be viewed at http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-3722436852417384871, his interchange with Roemer at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050724164122860.
11 The 9/11 Commission Report, 464 n. 209.
12 Evan Thomas, “The Story of September 11,” MSNBC, 31 December 2001. Although this article can no longer be accessed through the MSNBC URL, it is available as “The Day That Changed America,” Jersey Shore Today (http://jerseyshoretoday.com/archive/day_that_changed_america.htm), which states that it appeared in the January 7 issue of Newsweek.
13 Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 1-4.
14 Ibid., 2-4. Clarke a few pages later reported that he used this line to make requests shortly after 9:30 and was “amazed at the speed of the decisions coming from Cheney” (8).
15 Ibid., 5.
16 “9/11: Interviews by Peter Jennings,” ABC News, 11 September 2002 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html).
17 “Sept. 11’s Moments of Crisis: Part 2: Scramble,” ABC News, 14 September 2002 ().
18 The text has “8:45 a.m. CDT.” I converted this to Eastern Daylight Time to correspond with all the other times mentioned.
19 Scott McCartney and Susan Carey, “American, United Watched and Worked In Horror as Sept. 11 Hijackings Unfolded,” Wall Street Journal, 15 October 2001 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/wallstreetjournal101501.html).
20 Jane Garvey, the head of the FAA, said to the House Subcommittee on Aviation on 21 September 2001: “As soon as Secretary Mineta was aware of the nature and scale of the terrorist attack on New York and Washington . . . the Secretary ordered the air traffic system shut down for all civil operations. . . . . At 9:26 a.m., before either American Airlines Flight 77 or United Airlines Flight 93 had crashed, a national ground stop was issued that prevented any aircraft from taking off. At 9:45 a.m. all airborne aircraft were told to land at the nearest airport” (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/sept_11/garvey_001.htm).
21 See David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), Chap. 4.
22 Thomas, “The Story of September 11.”
23 9/11 Commission Hearing, 23 May 2003.
24 Ibid.
25 “9/11 Seattle Truth Meets Norm Mineta”
(http://www.youtube.com/v/u-5PKQTUz5o).
26 “Air Attack on Pentagon Indicates Weaknesses,” Newsday, 23 September 2001 (http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/newsday092301.html).
27 See Gregor Holland, “The Mineta Testimony: 9/11 Commission Exposed,” 911truthmovement.org, 1 November 2005 (http://www.911truthmovement.org/archives/2005/11/post.php).
28 The 9/11 Commission Report, 41.
29 Kevin Dennehy, “I Thought It Was the Start of World War III,” Cape Cod Times, 21 August 2002
(http://archive.capecodonline.com/special/terror/ithought21.htm).
30 General Myers Confirmation Hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee, 13 September 2001
(http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/mycon.htm).
31 See Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions, Chap. 13, “Could the Military Have Shot Down Flight 93?”
32 See ibid., Chap. 5, “When Did Cheney Issue the Shootdown Authorization?”
33 The 9/11 Commission Report, 41.
34 “Interview of the Vice President by Matt Lauer of NBC News.”
source
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Afghanistan and the Real Terrorists
Terrorising Afghanistan
by Patrick Seale
Last Friday’s massive jail break at Kandahar, which freed 1,200 prisoners including hundreds of Taliban fighters, is only the latest demonstration of the acute difficulties the Western powers are facing in Afghanistan.
Using truck bombs, Taliban guerrillas blow open the gates and mud walls of the Sarpoza Provincial Prison, raced in on motorbikes, killed fifteen of the prison guards, released the prisoners from their cells, and then faded away into the night.
Canadian and Afghan troops arrived on the scene some hours later “to restore order.”
It has long been clear that the 60,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan -- which include 34,000 American and 7,800 British soldiers -- are neither winning the war against the insurgents nor laying the basis for democracy. These are unrealistic objectives, which should, very probably, be abandoned, before more lives are uselessly thrown away.
Afghanistan is a country with strong Islamic traditions and conservative social mores. Every man’s house is his castle. The protection and privacy of women is closely tied to notions of family prestige and male honour. Breaking into people’s houses in search of ‘terrorists’, killing neighbours and relatives by means of air strikes, are hardly the way to win hearts and minds.
Afghans have an ancient and deeply-ingrained hatred of foreign control, as the British discovered to their cost in the 19th century and the Soviets in the twentieth. Theirs is a country of tribes and warlords, of mutually hostile ethnic groups, strong regional diversity, different languages and primitive infrastructure.
Its economy depends very largely on the illegal production of opium and other drugs for the international market -- a brisk and flourishing trade which corrupts every relationship and every institution of the state, not excluding the army and security services.
This is not a country where Western armed intervention can create a viable state, and certainly not the Western model of a state, which most Afghans reject. The task of state-building must surely be left to the Afghans themselves. They alone must decide how and by whom they wish to be governed.
Far from eliminating terrorism, Western policy in Afghanistan -- much like U.S. policies in Iraq and Pakistan -- seems to be creating the very conditions which drive young men into the arms of the insurgency.
Two recent events cast a sharp light on the size of the problem. The first was the Afghan donors’ conference held in Paris on 12 June, at which $20 billion was reluctantly pledged by the 85 delegations present. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon struck a warning note by stressing that the UN -- and its high representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide -- were to play a greater role in coordinating the flow of aid for development and reconstruction. The UN was to be the interface between the Afghan government and the international community.
There is a strong suspicion in the West that aid money in Afghanistan is either lining the pockets of warlords, or used to pay the extravagant fees of Western consultants, or is simply wasted. The clear message of the conference to President Hamid Karzai was that, for international aid to continue, Afghanistan had to put its house in order and make greater efforts to fight corruption.
This, in itself, is an unrealistic expectation since much of Afghanistan is in the hands of warlords and private armies. The writ of Karzai’s government does not run far beyond the capital, Kabul.
The second event which will undoubtedly spawn anti-Western terrorists was the U.S. cross-border airstrike which killed 12 Pakistani soldiers on 10 June. Such strikes arouse fury in Pakistan and undermine U.S.-Pakistani relations.
They will strengthen the conviction of Pakistan’s newly-elected government under Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani -- who took the oath of office on 25 March -- that the way to pacify the tribal agencies on the Pakistani-Afghan border is by negotiations with the local tribes, including the Taliban, rather than by military action.
It is a lesson NATO has yet to learn in Afghanistan. A review of the current bankrupt military policy cannot be long delayed.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
by Patrick Seale
Last Friday’s massive jail break at Kandahar, which freed 1,200 prisoners including hundreds of Taliban fighters, is only the latest demonstration of the acute difficulties the Western powers are facing in Afghanistan.
Using truck bombs, Taliban guerrillas blow open the gates and mud walls of the Sarpoza Provincial Prison, raced in on motorbikes, killed fifteen of the prison guards, released the prisoners from their cells, and then faded away into the night.
Canadian and Afghan troops arrived on the scene some hours later “to restore order.”
It has long been clear that the 60,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan -- which include 34,000 American and 7,800 British soldiers -- are neither winning the war against the insurgents nor laying the basis for democracy. These are unrealistic objectives, which should, very probably, be abandoned, before more lives are uselessly thrown away.
Afghanistan is a country with strong Islamic traditions and conservative social mores. Every man’s house is his castle. The protection and privacy of women is closely tied to notions of family prestige and male honour. Breaking into people’s houses in search of ‘terrorists’, killing neighbours and relatives by means of air strikes, are hardly the way to win hearts and minds.
Afghans have an ancient and deeply-ingrained hatred of foreign control, as the British discovered to their cost in the 19th century and the Soviets in the twentieth. Theirs is a country of tribes and warlords, of mutually hostile ethnic groups, strong regional diversity, different languages and primitive infrastructure.
Its economy depends very largely on the illegal production of opium and other drugs for the international market -- a brisk and flourishing trade which corrupts every relationship and every institution of the state, not excluding the army and security services.
This is not a country where Western armed intervention can create a viable state, and certainly not the Western model of a state, which most Afghans reject. The task of state-building must surely be left to the Afghans themselves. They alone must decide how and by whom they wish to be governed.
Far from eliminating terrorism, Western policy in Afghanistan -- much like U.S. policies in Iraq and Pakistan -- seems to be creating the very conditions which drive young men into the arms of the insurgency.
Two recent events cast a sharp light on the size of the problem. The first was the Afghan donors’ conference held in Paris on 12 June, at which $20 billion was reluctantly pledged by the 85 delegations present. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon struck a warning note by stressing that the UN -- and its high representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide -- were to play a greater role in coordinating the flow of aid for development and reconstruction. The UN was to be the interface between the Afghan government and the international community.
There is a strong suspicion in the West that aid money in Afghanistan is either lining the pockets of warlords, or used to pay the extravagant fees of Western consultants, or is simply wasted. The clear message of the conference to President Hamid Karzai was that, for international aid to continue, Afghanistan had to put its house in order and make greater efforts to fight corruption.
This, in itself, is an unrealistic expectation since much of Afghanistan is in the hands of warlords and private armies. The writ of Karzai’s government does not run far beyond the capital, Kabul.
The second event which will undoubtedly spawn anti-Western terrorists was the U.S. cross-border airstrike which killed 12 Pakistani soldiers on 10 June. Such strikes arouse fury in Pakistan and undermine U.S.-Pakistani relations.
They will strengthen the conviction of Pakistan’s newly-elected government under Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani -- who took the oath of office on 25 March -- that the way to pacify the tribal agencies on the Pakistani-Afghan border is by negotiations with the local tribes, including the Taliban, rather than by military action.
It is a lesson NATO has yet to learn in Afghanistan. A review of the current bankrupt military policy cannot be long delayed.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Blood for Medal: The Rising of Latin America
The Rising of Latin America
The Genesis of 'The War On Democracy'
By John Pilger
In the 1960s, when I first went to Latin America, I travelled up the cone of the continent from Chile across the Altiplano to Peru, mostly in rickety buses and single-carriage trains. It was an experience my memory stored for life, especially the spectacle of the movement of people.
13/06/08 "ICH" -- - -They moved through the dust of a snow-capped wilderness, along roads that were ribbons of red mud, and they lived in shanties that defied gravity. "We are invisible," said one man; another used the term abandonados; an indigenous woman in Bolivia unforgettably described her poverty as a commodity for the rich.
When I later saw Sebastiao Salgado's photographs of Latin America's working people, I recognised the people at the roadside, the gold miners and the coffee workers and the silhouettes framed in crosses in the cemeteries. Perhaps the idea for a cinema film began then, or when I reported Ronald Reagan's murderous assault on Central America; or when I first read the words of Victor Jara's ballads and heard Sam Cooke's anthem A Change Is Gonna Come.
"The War On Democracy" is my first film for cinema. It follows more than 55 documentary films for television, which began with The Quiet Mutiny, set in Vietnam. Most of my films have told stories of people's struggles against rapacious power and of attempts to subvert and control our historical memory. It is this control, this organised forgetting, that has always intrigued me both as a film-maker and a journalist. Described by Harold Pinter as a great silence unbroken by the incessant din of the media age, it assures the powerful in the west that the struggle of whole societies against their crimes is merely "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged... It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened. It didn't matter. It was of no interest".
This was true of Nicaragua in the early 1980s, when a popular revolution began to turn back poverty and bring literacy and hope to a country long dismissed as a banana republic. In the United States, the Sandinista government was successfully portrayed as communist and a threat, and crushed. After all, Richard Nixon had said of all of Latin America: "No one gives a shit about the place." The War On Democracy is meant as an antidote to this.
Modern fictional cinema rarely seems to break political silences. The very fine Motorcycle Diaries was a generation too late. In this country, where Hollywood sets the liberal boundaries, the work of Ken Loach and a few others is an honourable exception. However, the cinema is changing as if by default. The documentary has returned to the big screen and is being embraced by the public, in the US and all over. They were still clapping Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 two months after it opened in this country. Why? The answer is uncomplicated. It was a powerful film that helped people make sense of news that no longer made sense. It did not present the usual phoney "balance" as a pretence for presenting an establishment consensus. It was not riddled with the cliches, platitudes and power assumptions that permeate "current affairs". It was realist cinema, as important as The Grapes of Wrath was in the 1930s, and people devoured it.
The War On Democracy is not the same. It comes out of a British commercial television tradition that is too often passed over: the pioneering of bold factual journalism that treated other societies not as post-imperial curios, as useful or expendable to "us", but extraordinary and important in their own terms. Granada's World in Action, where I began, was a prime example. It would report and film in ways that the BBC would not dare. These days, with misnamed "reality" programmes consuming much of television like a plague of cane toads, cinema has been handed a timely opportunity. Such are the dangers imposed on us all today by a rampant, neo-fascist superpower, and so urgent is our need for uncontaminated information that people are prepared to buy a cinema ticket to get it.
The War On Democracy examines the false democracy that comes with western corporations and financial institutions and a war waged, materially and as propaganda, against popular democracy. It is the story of the people I first saw 40 years ago; but they are no longer invisible; they are a mighty political movement, reclaiming noble concepts distorted by corporatism and they are defending the most basic human rights in a war being waged against all of us.
Cinema and television production are closely related, of course, but the differences, I have learned, are critical. Cinema allows a panorama to unfold, giving a sense of place that only the big screen captures. In The War On Democracy, the camera sweeps across the Andes in Bolivia to the highest and poorest city on earth, El Alto, then follows Juan Delfin, a priest and a taxi driver, into a cemetery where children are buried. That Bolivia has been asset-stripped by multinational companies, aided by a corrupt elite, is an epic story described by this one man and this spectacle. That the people of Bolivia have stood up, expelled the foreign consortium that took their water resources, even the water that fell from the sky, is understood as the camera pans across a giant mural that Juan Delfin painted. This is cinema, a moving mural of ordinary lives and triumphs.
Chris Martin and I (we made the film as a partnership) used two crews and two very different cinematographers, Preston Clothier and Rupert Binsley. They shot in high-definition stock, which then had to be converted to 35mm film - one of cinema's wonderful anachronisms.
The film was backed by the impresario Michael Watt, a supporter of anti-poverty projects all over the world, who had told producer Wayne Young that he wanted to put my TV work in the cinema. Granada provided additional support, and ITV will broadcast the film later in the year. The extra funding also allowed me to persuade the late Sam Cooke's New York agents to license A Change Is Gonna Come, one of the finest, most lyrical pieces of black music ever written and performed. I was in the southern United States when it was released. It was the time of the civil-rights movement, and Cooke's song spoke to and for all people struggling to be free. The same is true of the ballads of the Chilean Victor Jara, whose songs celebrated the popular democracy of Salvador Allende before Pinochet and the CIA extinguished it.
We filmed in the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, where Jara was taken along with thousands of other political prisoners. By all accounts, he was a source of strength for his comrades, singing for them until soldiers beat him to the ground and smashed his hands. He wrote his last song there and it was smuggled out on scraps of paper. These are the words:
What horror the face of fascism
creates
They carry out their plans with
knife-like precision ...
For them, blood equals medals ...
How hard it is to sing
When I must sing of horror ...
In which silence and screams
Are the end of my song.
After two days of torture, they killed him. The War On Democracy is about such courage and a warning to us all that "for them" nothing has changed, that "blood equals medals".
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.
The Genesis of 'The War On Democracy'
By John Pilger
In the 1960s, when I first went to Latin America, I travelled up the cone of the continent from Chile across the Altiplano to Peru, mostly in rickety buses and single-carriage trains. It was an experience my memory stored for life, especially the spectacle of the movement of people.
13/06/08 "ICH" -- - -They moved through the dust of a snow-capped wilderness, along roads that were ribbons of red mud, and they lived in shanties that defied gravity. "We are invisible," said one man; another used the term abandonados; an indigenous woman in Bolivia unforgettably described her poverty as a commodity for the rich.
When I later saw Sebastiao Salgado's photographs of Latin America's working people, I recognised the people at the roadside, the gold miners and the coffee workers and the silhouettes framed in crosses in the cemeteries. Perhaps the idea for a cinema film began then, or when I reported Ronald Reagan's murderous assault on Central America; or when I first read the words of Victor Jara's ballads and heard Sam Cooke's anthem A Change Is Gonna Come.
"The War On Democracy" is my first film for cinema. It follows more than 55 documentary films for television, which began with The Quiet Mutiny, set in Vietnam. Most of my films have told stories of people's struggles against rapacious power and of attempts to subvert and control our historical memory. It is this control, this organised forgetting, that has always intrigued me both as a film-maker and a journalist. Described by Harold Pinter as a great silence unbroken by the incessant din of the media age, it assures the powerful in the west that the struggle of whole societies against their crimes is merely "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged... It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened. It didn't matter. It was of no interest".
This was true of Nicaragua in the early 1980s, when a popular revolution began to turn back poverty and bring literacy and hope to a country long dismissed as a banana republic. In the United States, the Sandinista government was successfully portrayed as communist and a threat, and crushed. After all, Richard Nixon had said of all of Latin America: "No one gives a shit about the place." The War On Democracy is meant as an antidote to this.
Modern fictional cinema rarely seems to break political silences. The very fine Motorcycle Diaries was a generation too late. In this country, where Hollywood sets the liberal boundaries, the work of Ken Loach and a few others is an honourable exception. However, the cinema is changing as if by default. The documentary has returned to the big screen and is being embraced by the public, in the US and all over. They were still clapping Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 two months after it opened in this country. Why? The answer is uncomplicated. It was a powerful film that helped people make sense of news that no longer made sense. It did not present the usual phoney "balance" as a pretence for presenting an establishment consensus. It was not riddled with the cliches, platitudes and power assumptions that permeate "current affairs". It was realist cinema, as important as The Grapes of Wrath was in the 1930s, and people devoured it.
The War On Democracy is not the same. It comes out of a British commercial television tradition that is too often passed over: the pioneering of bold factual journalism that treated other societies not as post-imperial curios, as useful or expendable to "us", but extraordinary and important in their own terms. Granada's World in Action, where I began, was a prime example. It would report and film in ways that the BBC would not dare. These days, with misnamed "reality" programmes consuming much of television like a plague of cane toads, cinema has been handed a timely opportunity. Such are the dangers imposed on us all today by a rampant, neo-fascist superpower, and so urgent is our need for uncontaminated information that people are prepared to buy a cinema ticket to get it.
The War On Democracy examines the false democracy that comes with western corporations and financial institutions and a war waged, materially and as propaganda, against popular democracy. It is the story of the people I first saw 40 years ago; but they are no longer invisible; they are a mighty political movement, reclaiming noble concepts distorted by corporatism and they are defending the most basic human rights in a war being waged against all of us.
Cinema and television production are closely related, of course, but the differences, I have learned, are critical. Cinema allows a panorama to unfold, giving a sense of place that only the big screen captures. In The War On Democracy, the camera sweeps across the Andes in Bolivia to the highest and poorest city on earth, El Alto, then follows Juan Delfin, a priest and a taxi driver, into a cemetery where children are buried. That Bolivia has been asset-stripped by multinational companies, aided by a corrupt elite, is an epic story described by this one man and this spectacle. That the people of Bolivia have stood up, expelled the foreign consortium that took their water resources, even the water that fell from the sky, is understood as the camera pans across a giant mural that Juan Delfin painted. This is cinema, a moving mural of ordinary lives and triumphs.
Chris Martin and I (we made the film as a partnership) used two crews and two very different cinematographers, Preston Clothier and Rupert Binsley. They shot in high-definition stock, which then had to be converted to 35mm film - one of cinema's wonderful anachronisms.
The film was backed by the impresario Michael Watt, a supporter of anti-poverty projects all over the world, who had told producer Wayne Young that he wanted to put my TV work in the cinema. Granada provided additional support, and ITV will broadcast the film later in the year. The extra funding also allowed me to persuade the late Sam Cooke's New York agents to license A Change Is Gonna Come, one of the finest, most lyrical pieces of black music ever written and performed. I was in the southern United States when it was released. It was the time of the civil-rights movement, and Cooke's song spoke to and for all people struggling to be free. The same is true of the ballads of the Chilean Victor Jara, whose songs celebrated the popular democracy of Salvador Allende before Pinochet and the CIA extinguished it.
We filmed in the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, where Jara was taken along with thousands of other political prisoners. By all accounts, he was a source of strength for his comrades, singing for them until soldiers beat him to the ground and smashed his hands. He wrote his last song there and it was smuggled out on scraps of paper. These are the words:
What horror the face of fascism
creates
They carry out their plans with
knife-like precision ...
For them, blood equals medals ...
How hard it is to sing
When I must sing of horror ...
In which silence and screams
Are the end of my song.
After two days of torture, they killed him. The War On Democracy is about such courage and a warning to us all that "for them" nothing has changed, that "blood equals medals".
John Pilger was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, film-maker and playwright. Based in London, he has written from many countries and has twice won British journalism's highest award, that of "Journalist of the Year," for his work in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Supreme Court Rstores Habeas Corpus
Supreme Court restores habeas corpus, strikes down key part of Military Commissions Act
(updated below)
In a major rebuke to the Bush administration's theories of presidential power -- and in an equally stinging rebuke to the bipartisan political class which has supported the Bush detention policies -- the U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 5-4 decision (.pdf), declared Section 7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutional. The Court struck down that section of the MCA because it purported to abolish the writ of habeas corpus -- the means by which a detainee challenges his detention in a court -- despite the fact that the Constitution permits suspension of that writ only "in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion."
As a result, Guantanamo detainees accused of being "enemy combatants" have the right to challenge the validity of their detention in a full-fledged U.S. federal court proceeding. The ruling today is the first time in U.S. history that the Court has ruled that detainees held by the U.S. Government in a place where the U.S. does not exercise formal sovereignty (Cuba technically is sovereign over Guantanamo) are nonetheless entitled to the Constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus whenever they are held in a place where the U.S. exercises effective control.
In upholding the right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees, the Court found that the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" process ("CSRT") offered to Guantanamo detainees -- mandated by the John-McCain-sponsored Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 -- does not constitute a constitutionally adequate substitute for habeas corpus. To the contrary, the Court found that such procedures -- which have long been criticized as sham hearings due to the fact that defendants cannot have a lawyer present, government evidence is presumptively valid, and defendants are prevented from challenging (and sometimes even knowing about) much of the evidence against them -- "fall well short of the procedures and adversarial mechanisms that would eliminate the need for habeas corpus review." Those grave deficiencies in the CSRT process mean that "there is considerable risk of error" in the tribunals' conclusions.
The Court's ruling was grounded in its recognition that the guarantee of habeas corpus was so central to the Founding that it was one of the few individual rights included in the Constitution even before the Bill of Rights was enacted. As the Court put it: "the Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom." The Court noted that freedom from arbitrary or baseless imprisonment was one of the core rights established by the 13th Century Magna Carta, and it is the writ of habeas corpus which is the means for enforcing that right. Once habeas corpus is abolished -- as the Military Commissions Act sought to do -- then we return to the pre-Magna Carta days where the Government is free to imprison people with no recourse.
In its decision, the Court emphasized (and revived) some of the most vital principles of our system of Government which have been trampled upon and degraded over the last seven years (emphasis added):
The Framers' inherent distrust of government power was the driving force behind the constitutional plan that allocated powers among three independent branches. This design serves not only to make Government accountable but also to secure individual liberty. . . .
Where a person is detained by executive order rather than, say, after being tried and convicted in a court, the need for collateral review is most pressing. . . . The habeas court must have sufficient authority to conduct a meaningful review of both the cause of detention and the Executive's power to detain. . . .
Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to separation of powers. . . .
The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system, they are reconciled within the framework of law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, part of that law.
In ruling that the CSRTs woefully fail to provide the constitutionally guaranteed safeguards, the Court quoted Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 84: "The practice of arbitrary imprisonments, in all ages, is the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny." It is that deeply tyrannical practice -- implemented by the Bush administration and authorized by a bipartisan act of Congress -- which the U.S. Supreme Court, today, struck down.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 was -- and remains -- one of the great stains on our national political character. It was passed by a substantial majority in the Senate (65-34) with the support of every single Senate Republican (except Chafee) and 12 Senate Democrats. No filibuster was even attempted. It passed by a similar margin in the House, where 34 Democrats joined 219 Republicans to enact it. One of the most extraordinary quotes of the post-9/11 era came from GOP Sen. Arlen Specter, who said at the time that that the Military Commissions Act -- because it explicitly barred federal courts from hearing habeas corpus petitions brought by Guantanamo detainees -- "sets back basic rights by some 900 years" and was "patently unconstitutional on its face" -- and Specter then proceeded to vote for it.
The greatest victim of the 9/11 attack has been our core, defining constitutional liberties. Of all the powers seized by this administration in the name of keeping us Safe, the power to imprison people indefinitely with no charges and no real process is the most pernicious.
Passage of the Military Commissions Act was spearheaded by John McCain, who was anointed by cowardly Senate Democrats to speak for them and negotiate with the White House. Once McCain blessed the Military Commissions Act, its passage was assured. Barack Obama voted against it, and once its passage appeared certain, Obama offered an amendment to limit it to five years. That amendment failed, rendering the MCA the law of the land without any time limits.
The Supreme Court today did what the Founders envisioned it should do: it protected our basic constitutional guarantees from erosion and assault by a corrupt majority within the political class. In so doing, the Court took a mild though important step in reversing some of the worst and most tyrannical excesses of the last seven years. Patrick Henry warned long ago of the unique dangers of allowing executive imprisonment without meaningful process:
Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings -- give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else! . . . Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.
In his concurring opinion in Brown v. Allen (1953), Justice Jackson wrote:
Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.
Our political and media elite were more than willing -- they were eager -- to relinquish that right to the President in the name of keeping us Safe from Terrorists. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court, in what will be one of the most celebrated landmark rulings of this generation, re-instated that basic right, and in so doing, restored one of the most critical safeguards against the very tyranny this country was founded to prevent.
UPDATE: Three of the five Justices in the majority -- John Paul Stevens (age 88), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 75) and David Souter (age 68) -- are widely expected by court observers to retire or otherwise leave the Court in the first term of the next President. By contrast, the four judges who dissented -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito -- are expected to stay right where they are for many years to come.
John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It's not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the 2008 election.
source
(updated below)
In a major rebuke to the Bush administration's theories of presidential power -- and in an equally stinging rebuke to the bipartisan political class which has supported the Bush detention policies -- the U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 5-4 decision (.pdf), declared Section 7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutional. The Court struck down that section of the MCA because it purported to abolish the writ of habeas corpus -- the means by which a detainee challenges his detention in a court -- despite the fact that the Constitution permits suspension of that writ only "in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion."
As a result, Guantanamo detainees accused of being "enemy combatants" have the right to challenge the validity of their detention in a full-fledged U.S. federal court proceeding. The ruling today is the first time in U.S. history that the Court has ruled that detainees held by the U.S. Government in a place where the U.S. does not exercise formal sovereignty (Cuba technically is sovereign over Guantanamo) are nonetheless entitled to the Constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus whenever they are held in a place where the U.S. exercises effective control.
In upholding the right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees, the Court found that the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" process ("CSRT") offered to Guantanamo detainees -- mandated by the John-McCain-sponsored Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 -- does not constitute a constitutionally adequate substitute for habeas corpus. To the contrary, the Court found that such procedures -- which have long been criticized as sham hearings due to the fact that defendants cannot have a lawyer present, government evidence is presumptively valid, and defendants are prevented from challenging (and sometimes even knowing about) much of the evidence against them -- "fall well short of the procedures and adversarial mechanisms that would eliminate the need for habeas corpus review." Those grave deficiencies in the CSRT process mean that "there is considerable risk of error" in the tribunals' conclusions.
The Court's ruling was grounded in its recognition that the guarantee of habeas corpus was so central to the Founding that it was one of the few individual rights included in the Constitution even before the Bill of Rights was enacted. As the Court put it: "the Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom." The Court noted that freedom from arbitrary or baseless imprisonment was one of the core rights established by the 13th Century Magna Carta, and it is the writ of habeas corpus which is the means for enforcing that right. Once habeas corpus is abolished -- as the Military Commissions Act sought to do -- then we return to the pre-Magna Carta days where the Government is free to imprison people with no recourse.
In its decision, the Court emphasized (and revived) some of the most vital principles of our system of Government which have been trampled upon and degraded over the last seven years (emphasis added):
The Framers' inherent distrust of government power was the driving force behind the constitutional plan that allocated powers among three independent branches. This design serves not only to make Government accountable but also to secure individual liberty. . . .
Where a person is detained by executive order rather than, say, after being tried and convicted in a court, the need for collateral review is most pressing. . . . The habeas court must have sufficient authority to conduct a meaningful review of both the cause of detention and the Executive's power to detain. . . .
Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to separation of powers. . . .
The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system, they are reconciled within the framework of law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, part of that law.
In ruling that the CSRTs woefully fail to provide the constitutionally guaranteed safeguards, the Court quoted Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 84: "The practice of arbitrary imprisonments, in all ages, is the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny." It is that deeply tyrannical practice -- implemented by the Bush administration and authorized by a bipartisan act of Congress -- which the U.S. Supreme Court, today, struck down.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 was -- and remains -- one of the great stains on our national political character. It was passed by a substantial majority in the Senate (65-34) with the support of every single Senate Republican (except Chafee) and 12 Senate Democrats. No filibuster was even attempted. It passed by a similar margin in the House, where 34 Democrats joined 219 Republicans to enact it. One of the most extraordinary quotes of the post-9/11 era came from GOP Sen. Arlen Specter, who said at the time that that the Military Commissions Act -- because it explicitly barred federal courts from hearing habeas corpus petitions brought by Guantanamo detainees -- "sets back basic rights by some 900 years" and was "patently unconstitutional on its face" -- and Specter then proceeded to vote for it.
The greatest victim of the 9/11 attack has been our core, defining constitutional liberties. Of all the powers seized by this administration in the name of keeping us Safe, the power to imprison people indefinitely with no charges and no real process is the most pernicious.
Passage of the Military Commissions Act was spearheaded by John McCain, who was anointed by cowardly Senate Democrats to speak for them and negotiate with the White House. Once McCain blessed the Military Commissions Act, its passage was assured. Barack Obama voted against it, and once its passage appeared certain, Obama offered an amendment to limit it to five years. That amendment failed, rendering the MCA the law of the land without any time limits.
The Supreme Court today did what the Founders envisioned it should do: it protected our basic constitutional guarantees from erosion and assault by a corrupt majority within the political class. In so doing, the Court took a mild though important step in reversing some of the worst and most tyrannical excesses of the last seven years. Patrick Henry warned long ago of the unique dangers of allowing executive imprisonment without meaningful process:
Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings -- give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else! . . . Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.
In his concurring opinion in Brown v. Allen (1953), Justice Jackson wrote:
Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.
Our political and media elite were more than willing -- they were eager -- to relinquish that right to the President in the name of keeping us Safe from Terrorists. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court, in what will be one of the most celebrated landmark rulings of this generation, re-instated that basic right, and in so doing, restored one of the most critical safeguards against the very tyranny this country was founded to prevent.
UPDATE: Three of the five Justices in the majority -- John Paul Stevens (age 88), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 75) and David Souter (age 68) -- are widely expected by court observers to retire or otherwise leave the Court in the first term of the next President. By contrast, the four judges who dissented -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito -- are expected to stay right where they are for many years to come.
John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It's not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the 2008 election.
source
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Mulroney Appointee to Judge Mulroney/Schreiber Affair
PM appoints Manitoba jurist to head Mulroney-Schreiber inquiry
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 5:04 PM ET Comments50Recommend22CBC News
Justice Jeffrey Oliphant sits in a courtroom in Winnipeg on May 7, 2008. (Phil Hossack/Canadian Press)Prime Minister Stephen Harper has appointed Associate Chief Justice Jeffrey Oliphant of Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench to head the inquiry into the business dealings of former prime minister Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber.
"A number of questions remain unanswered and it is in the public interest to investigate further and to find answers," Harper said in a statement released Thursday.
Oliphant's report from the inquiry is to be submitted to the government on or before June 12 of next year, the statement said.
Oliphant was appointed to the bench by prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1985.
The inquiry's mandate will be based on recommendations made by David Johnston, who had been asked to advise the Conservative government on what shape a public inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair should take.
Johnston said the inquiry should be limited and possibly include closed-door hearings.
The announcement comes six months after Harper said he would hold an inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber dealings.
It also comes on the same day the House of Commons ethics committee had wanted Mulroney to return to testify at its hearing. Opposition members of the committee had decided to resume the committee's probe into the affair because they hadn't heard anything about the promised inquiry.
But in a letter to the procedural clerk of the committee, Mulroney's lawyer, Guy Pratte, said the former prime minister "respectfully declines" the invitation to provide more testimony.
Pratte said "no useful purpose would be served by his re-attendance."
Pratte wrote that Mulroney has already provided four hours of testimony to the committee, along with relevant documentation. He also wrote that the committee had not specified what it wants to hear from Mulroney.
"In any event, the upcoming public inquiry should now be allowed to take its course."
No subpoena
The committee chair, Liberal MP Paul Szabo, has said the committee has already decided it won't issue a subpoena to Mulroney compelling him to testify.
Last April, the committee released a report calling for a broad, full-fledged public inquiry into the past business relationship between Mulroney and Schreiber, as German-Canadian businessman.
In previous testimony, Mulroney told the ethics committee that he received money between 1993 and 1994 to lobby internationally on behalf of Schreiber's client, Thyssen, a German armoured-vehicle company.
Mulroney said he was paid $225,000 cash in envelopes at three meetings between the two men, and insisted the arrangement was struck after he left office in June 1993.
While saying that accepting cash payments was one of the biggest mistakes of his life, Mulroney has said he did nothing illegal.
But Schreiber testified that the total was $300,000, and that the arrangement was reached while Mulroney was serving his last days as prime minister in 1993, something that could have put him in violation of federal ethics rules.
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 5:04 PM ET Comments50Recommend22CBC News
Justice Jeffrey Oliphant sits in a courtroom in Winnipeg on May 7, 2008. (Phil Hossack/Canadian Press)Prime Minister Stephen Harper has appointed Associate Chief Justice Jeffrey Oliphant of Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench to head the inquiry into the business dealings of former prime minister Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber.
"A number of questions remain unanswered and it is in the public interest to investigate further and to find answers," Harper said in a statement released Thursday.
Oliphant's report from the inquiry is to be submitted to the government on or before June 12 of next year, the statement said.
Oliphant was appointed to the bench by prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1985.
The inquiry's mandate will be based on recommendations made by David Johnston, who had been asked to advise the Conservative government on what shape a public inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair should take.
Johnston said the inquiry should be limited and possibly include closed-door hearings.
The announcement comes six months after Harper said he would hold an inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber dealings.
It also comes on the same day the House of Commons ethics committee had wanted Mulroney to return to testify at its hearing. Opposition members of the committee had decided to resume the committee's probe into the affair because they hadn't heard anything about the promised inquiry.
But in a letter to the procedural clerk of the committee, Mulroney's lawyer, Guy Pratte, said the former prime minister "respectfully declines" the invitation to provide more testimony.
Pratte said "no useful purpose would be served by his re-attendance."
Pratte wrote that Mulroney has already provided four hours of testimony to the committee, along with relevant documentation. He also wrote that the committee had not specified what it wants to hear from Mulroney.
"In any event, the upcoming public inquiry should now be allowed to take its course."
No subpoena
The committee chair, Liberal MP Paul Szabo, has said the committee has already decided it won't issue a subpoena to Mulroney compelling him to testify.
Last April, the committee released a report calling for a broad, full-fledged public inquiry into the past business relationship between Mulroney and Schreiber, as German-Canadian businessman.
In previous testimony, Mulroney told the ethics committee that he received money between 1993 and 1994 to lobby internationally on behalf of Schreiber's client, Thyssen, a German armoured-vehicle company.
Mulroney said he was paid $225,000 cash in envelopes at three meetings between the two men, and insisted the arrangement was struck after he left office in June 1993.
While saying that accepting cash payments was one of the biggest mistakes of his life, Mulroney has said he did nothing illegal.
But Schreiber testified that the total was $300,000, and that the arrangement was reached while Mulroney was serving his last days as prime minister in 1993, something that could have put him in violation of federal ethics rules.
ARTIST CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE
Department of Justice Fails to Appeal Dismissal Kurtz Speaks about Four-Year Ordeal
Buffalo, NY-- Dr. Steven Kurtz, a Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY at Buffalo and cofounder of the award-winning art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble, has been cleared of all charges of mail and wire fraud. On April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara dismissed the government's entire indictment against Dr. Kurtz as insufficient on its face." This means that even if the actions alleged in the indictment (which the judge must accept as "fact") were true, they would not constitute a crime. The US Department of Justice had thirty days from the date of the ruling to appeal. No action has been taken in this time period, thus stopping any appeal of the dismissal. According to Margaret McFarland, a spokeswoman for US Attorney Terrance P. Flynn, the DoJ will not appeal Arcara's ruling and will not seek any new charges against Kurtz.
For over a decade, cultural institutions worldwide have hosted Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble's educational art projects, which use common science materials to examine issues surrounding the new biotechnologies. In 2004 the Department of Justice alleged that Dr. Kurtz had schemed with colleague Dr. Robert Ferrell of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health to illegally acquire two harmless bacteria cultures for use in one of those projects. The Justice Department further alleged that the transfer of the material from Ferrell to Kurtz broke a material transfer agreement, thus constituting mail fraud.
Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum sentence for these charges was increased from five years to twenty years in prison.
Dr. Kurtz has been fighting the charges ever since. In October 2007, Dr. Ferrell pleaded to a lesser misdemeanor charge after recurring bouts of cancer and three strokes suffered since his indictment prevented him from continuing the struggle.
KURTZ SUMS UP END OF FOUR-YEAR NIGHTMARE
Finally vindicated after four years of struggle, Kurtz, asked for a statement, responded stoically: "I don't have a statement, but I do have questions. As an innocent man, where do I go to get back the four years the Department of Justice stole from me? As a taxpayer, where do I go to get back the millions of dollars the FBI and Justice Department wasted persecuting me? And as a citizen, what must I do to have a Justice Department free of partisan corruption so profound it has turned on those it is sworn to protect?"
Said Kurtz's attorney, Paul Cambria, "I am glad an innocent man has been vindicated. Steve Kurtz stared in the face of the federal government and a twenty-year prison term and never flinched, because he believes in his work and his actions were those of a completely innocent man. Clients like him are a blessing, and although I have had many important victories, this one stands at the top of the list."
As coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, a group organized to support Kurtz from the beginning of the case, Lucia Sommer sees the end of the prosecution as bittersweet, and like Kurtz, is thoughtful about the broader significance of the case: "This ruling is the best possible ending to a horrible ordeal--but we are mindful of numerous cases still pending, and the grave injustices perpetrated by the Bush administration following 9/11. This case was part of a larger picture, in which law enforcement was given expanded powers. In this instance, the Bush administration was unsuccessful in its attempt to erode Americans' constitutional rights."
Referring to the international outcry the case provoked, involving fundraisers and protests held on four continents, Sommer said, "The government has unlimited resources to bring and prosecute these kinds of charges, but the accused often don't have any resources to defend themselves. This victory could never have happened without the activism of thousands of people. Supporters protested, vocally opposed the prosecution, and refused to let it go on in silence. And without their efforts at
fundraising, Kurtz and Ferrell would not have been able to defend themselves from these false accusations."
Sommer added that the next step for the defense will be to get back all of the materials taken by the FBI during its 2004 raid on the Kurtz home, including several completed art projects, as well as Dr. Kurtz's lab equipment, computers, books, manuscripts, notes, research materials, and personal belongings. The four confiscated art projects are the subject of an exhibition entitled SEIZED on view at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY, through July 18:
http://www.hallwalls.org/visual_shows/2008/show_seized.html.
BACKGROUND TO THE CASE
The case originated in May 2004, when Kurtz's wife Hope died of heart failure as the couple was preparing a project about genetically modified agriculture for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Police who responded to Steve Kurtz's 911 call deemed the Kurtzes' art materials suspicious and alerted the FBI. Kurtz explained that the materials (legally and easily obtained basic life science equipment and two harmless bacteria samples) had already been displayed at museums throughout Europe and North America with absolutely no risk to the public. However, the following day, Kurtz was illegally detained for 22 hours on suspicion of bioterrorism, as dozens of agents from the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland
Security, Department of Defense, ATF, and numerous other law enforcement agencies raided his home, seizing his personal and professional belongings.
After a federal grand jury refused to charge Kurtz with bioterrorism, Kurtz and Ferrell were indicted on two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud concerning the acquisition of of harmless bacteria for one of Critical Art Ensemble's educational art projects. (Critical Art Ensemble is the recipient of numerous awards for its projects, including the prestigious 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant, in recognition of twenty years of distinguished work:
http://www.creative-capital.org/index2.html.)
The Department of Justice brought the charges in spite of the fact that the alleged "victims of fraud"--American Type Culture Collection and the University of Pittsburgh--never filed any charges or complained of any wrongdoing, and the fact that in bringing the charges the Department of Justice was acting completely outside its own Prosecution Policy Relating to Mail Fraud and Wire Fraud
(http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/43mcrm.htm).
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 11, 2008
CONTACTS:
Email: media@caedefensefund.org
Dr. Steven J. Kurtz: (716) 812-2968
Lucia Sommer, CAE Defense Fund: (716) 359-3061
Edmund Cardoni, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center: (716) 854-1694
For more information and extensive documentation, including the Judge's
dismissal, please visit: http://caedefensefund.org
Buffalo, NY-- Dr. Steven Kurtz, a Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY at Buffalo and cofounder of the award-winning art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble, has been cleared of all charges of mail and wire fraud. On April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara dismissed the government's entire indictment against Dr. Kurtz as insufficient on its face." This means that even if the actions alleged in the indictment (which the judge must accept as "fact") were true, they would not constitute a crime. The US Department of Justice had thirty days from the date of the ruling to appeal. No action has been taken in this time period, thus stopping any appeal of the dismissal. According to Margaret McFarland, a spokeswoman for US Attorney Terrance P. Flynn, the DoJ will not appeal Arcara's ruling and will not seek any new charges against Kurtz.
For over a decade, cultural institutions worldwide have hosted Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble's educational art projects, which use common science materials to examine issues surrounding the new biotechnologies. In 2004 the Department of Justice alleged that Dr. Kurtz had schemed with colleague Dr. Robert Ferrell of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health to illegally acquire two harmless bacteria cultures for use in one of those projects. The Justice Department further alleged that the transfer of the material from Ferrell to Kurtz broke a material transfer agreement, thus constituting mail fraud.
Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum sentence for these charges was increased from five years to twenty years in prison.
Dr. Kurtz has been fighting the charges ever since. In October 2007, Dr. Ferrell pleaded to a lesser misdemeanor charge after recurring bouts of cancer and three strokes suffered since his indictment prevented him from continuing the struggle.
KURTZ SUMS UP END OF FOUR-YEAR NIGHTMARE
Finally vindicated after four years of struggle, Kurtz, asked for a statement, responded stoically: "I don't have a statement, but I do have questions. As an innocent man, where do I go to get back the four years the Department of Justice stole from me? As a taxpayer, where do I go to get back the millions of dollars the FBI and Justice Department wasted persecuting me? And as a citizen, what must I do to have a Justice Department free of partisan corruption so profound it has turned on those it is sworn to protect?"
Said Kurtz's attorney, Paul Cambria, "I am glad an innocent man has been vindicated. Steve Kurtz stared in the face of the federal government and a twenty-year prison term and never flinched, because he believes in his work and his actions were those of a completely innocent man. Clients like him are a blessing, and although I have had many important victories, this one stands at the top of the list."
As coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, a group organized to support Kurtz from the beginning of the case, Lucia Sommer sees the end of the prosecution as bittersweet, and like Kurtz, is thoughtful about the broader significance of the case: "This ruling is the best possible ending to a horrible ordeal--but we are mindful of numerous cases still pending, and the grave injustices perpetrated by the Bush administration following 9/11. This case was part of a larger picture, in which law enforcement was given expanded powers. In this instance, the Bush administration was unsuccessful in its attempt to erode Americans' constitutional rights."
Referring to the international outcry the case provoked, involving fundraisers and protests held on four continents, Sommer said, "The government has unlimited resources to bring and prosecute these kinds of charges, but the accused often don't have any resources to defend themselves. This victory could never have happened without the activism of thousands of people. Supporters protested, vocally opposed the prosecution, and refused to let it go on in silence. And without their efforts at
fundraising, Kurtz and Ferrell would not have been able to defend themselves from these false accusations."
Sommer added that the next step for the defense will be to get back all of the materials taken by the FBI during its 2004 raid on the Kurtz home, including several completed art projects, as well as Dr. Kurtz's lab equipment, computers, books, manuscripts, notes, research materials, and personal belongings. The four confiscated art projects are the subject of an exhibition entitled SEIZED on view at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY, through July 18:
http://www.hallwalls.org/visual_shows/2008/show_seized.html.
BACKGROUND TO THE CASE
The case originated in May 2004, when Kurtz's wife Hope died of heart failure as the couple was preparing a project about genetically modified agriculture for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Police who responded to Steve Kurtz's 911 call deemed the Kurtzes' art materials suspicious and alerted the FBI. Kurtz explained that the materials (legally and easily obtained basic life science equipment and two harmless bacteria samples) had already been displayed at museums throughout Europe and North America with absolutely no risk to the public. However, the following day, Kurtz was illegally detained for 22 hours on suspicion of bioterrorism, as dozens of agents from the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland
Security, Department of Defense, ATF, and numerous other law enforcement agencies raided his home, seizing his personal and professional belongings.
After a federal grand jury refused to charge Kurtz with bioterrorism, Kurtz and Ferrell were indicted on two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud concerning the acquisition of of harmless bacteria for one of Critical Art Ensemble's educational art projects. (Critical Art Ensemble is the recipient of numerous awards for its projects, including the prestigious 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant, in recognition of twenty years of distinguished work:
http://www.creative-capital.org/index2.html.)
The Department of Justice brought the charges in spite of the fact that the alleged "victims of fraud"--American Type Culture Collection and the University of Pittsburgh--never filed any charges or complained of any wrongdoing, and the fact that in bringing the charges the Department of Justice was acting completely outside its own Prosecution Policy Relating to Mail Fraud and Wire Fraud
(http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/43mcrm.htm).
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 11, 2008
CONTACTS:
Email: media@caedefensefund.org
Dr. Steven J. Kurtz: (716) 812-2968
Lucia Sommer, CAE Defense Fund: (716) 359-3061
Edmund Cardoni, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center: (716) 854-1694
For more information and extensive documentation, including the Judge's
dismissal, please visit: http://caedefensefund.org
Don't Believe the Skype Bush Tells Italy's Youth
Bush Slams Anti-US ‘Propaganda’
by BBC News
US President George W Bush has denounced “misinformation and propaganda” which he says are sullying his country’s image abroad.
On a visit to Italy, he told young entrepreneurs on an exchange programme that going to the US would show them it was compassionate and open.
Mr Bush will later hold talks in Rome with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The two leaders are expected to discuss further sanctions against Iran, and the role of Italian troops in Afghanistan.
Mr Bush will conclude his visit to Italy on Friday by meeting Pope Benedict XVI. In an unusual break with protocol, they will meet not in the Papal Study, but in the Vatican’s gardens.
The Holy See said the Pope wanted to show his gratitude for the hospitality shown to him on his recent visit to the US. Afterwards, Mr Bush will travel to France and the UK.
‘Misinformation and propaganda’
Security for President Bush’s visit has been very tight.
Commercial flights over the city have been diverted, 10,000 policemen have been mobilised, there are frogmen under bridges and snipers on roofs, and mobile phone signals are being disrupted whenever his motorcade moves, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Rome.
As Air Force One touched down, hundreds were gathering in the city centre in protest at the Bush administration and Italy’s involvement in Afghanistan.
Another group of demonstrators chanted “Bush, go home” outside the American Academy in Rome’s Villa Aurelia while the president met young entrepreneurs inside.
Mr Bush urged them to ignore the “misinformation and propaganda” spread about his country and to learn the “first-hand truth about America” by visiting.
“The best diplomacy for America, particularly among young folks, is to welcome you to our country,” he said. “We are compassionate, we’re an open country, we care about people and we’re entrepreneurial.”
Shortly afterwards, Mr Bush was greeted by his Italian counterpart, Georgio Napolitano, at his official residence in the Quirinale Palace.
He will later hold talks with Mr Berlusconi, who was staunch supporter of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 during his previous term in office.
After months of pressure from Washington, Mr Berlusconi’s administration has removed restrictions on Italian troops serving in combat operations in western Afghanistan for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).
In return for this co-operation, Italy wants a bigger say on Iran on the grounds that it has recently become the Iranians’ largest European trading partner.
Mr Bush has said he supports Italy’s bid to join the group of five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, which has been involved in negotiations about Iran’s nuclear programme.
After meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Wednesday, he repeated a warning to Iran that it would face additional sanctions if it continued to defy the international community by refusing to abandon uranium enrichment.
He said diplomatic pressure remained the best path to deal with the issue, but insisted that “all options are on the table”.
source
by BBC News
US President George W Bush has denounced “misinformation and propaganda” which he says are sullying his country’s image abroad.
On a visit to Italy, he told young entrepreneurs on an exchange programme that going to the US would show them it was compassionate and open.
Mr Bush will later hold talks in Rome with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The two leaders are expected to discuss further sanctions against Iran, and the role of Italian troops in Afghanistan.
Mr Bush will conclude his visit to Italy on Friday by meeting Pope Benedict XVI. In an unusual break with protocol, they will meet not in the Papal Study, but in the Vatican’s gardens.
The Holy See said the Pope wanted to show his gratitude for the hospitality shown to him on his recent visit to the US. Afterwards, Mr Bush will travel to France and the UK.
‘Misinformation and propaganda’
Security for President Bush’s visit has been very tight.
Commercial flights over the city have been diverted, 10,000 policemen have been mobilised, there are frogmen under bridges and snipers on roofs, and mobile phone signals are being disrupted whenever his motorcade moves, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Rome.
As Air Force One touched down, hundreds were gathering in the city centre in protest at the Bush administration and Italy’s involvement in Afghanistan.
Another group of demonstrators chanted “Bush, go home” outside the American Academy in Rome’s Villa Aurelia while the president met young entrepreneurs inside.
Mr Bush urged them to ignore the “misinformation and propaganda” spread about his country and to learn the “first-hand truth about America” by visiting.
“The best diplomacy for America, particularly among young folks, is to welcome you to our country,” he said. “We are compassionate, we’re an open country, we care about people and we’re entrepreneurial.”
Shortly afterwards, Mr Bush was greeted by his Italian counterpart, Georgio Napolitano, at his official residence in the Quirinale Palace.
He will later hold talks with Mr Berlusconi, who was staunch supporter of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 during his previous term in office.
After months of pressure from Washington, Mr Berlusconi’s administration has removed restrictions on Italian troops serving in combat operations in western Afghanistan for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).
In return for this co-operation, Italy wants a bigger say on Iran on the grounds that it has recently become the Iranians’ largest European trading partner.
Mr Bush has said he supports Italy’s bid to join the group of five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, which has been involved in negotiations about Iran’s nuclear programme.
After meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Wednesday, he repeated a warning to Iran that it would face additional sanctions if it continued to defy the international community by refusing to abandon uranium enrichment.
He said diplomatic pressure remained the best path to deal with the issue, but insisted that “all options are on the table”.
source
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Motion to Ban (Depleted) Uranium Weapons
CANADA: Statement by Member of Canadian Parliament (New Democratic Party) "to ensure that depleted uranium weapons of mass destruction are banned forever".
PARLIAMENT OF CANADA - HOUSE OF COMMONS
39th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION
EDITED HANSARD • NUMBER 105
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
Wednesday, June 5, 2008
Depleted Uranium
Mr. Alex Atamanenko (British Columbia Southern Interior, NDP): Mr. Speaker, last year the United Nations First Committee passed a resolution urging member states to re-examine the health hazards posed by the use of uranium weapons.
Belgium has banned the use of uranium in all conventional weapon systems. However, at least 18 countries, including the U.S., use depleted uranium in their arsenals. They are considered weapons of mass destruction under international law.
According to a Canada-U.S. agreement, Canadian uranium exports may only be used for peaceful purposes. However, according to Dr. Douglas Rokke, a U.S. Army research scientist, and others, Canada provides raw uranium to the U.S. and other countries for processing. The resulting depleted uranium is then used in weapons.
One only has to watch the documentary film Beyond Treason to see the devastating effects of these weapons in countries such as Iraq.
I call upon our government to undertake every measure possible to ensure that depleted uranium weapons of mass destruction are banned forever.
NOTE:
To express your support, please contact:
MP Alex Atamanenko (NDP)
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Email: Atamanenko.A@parl.gc.ca
Website: http://atamanenko.ndp.ca/
Telephone: (613) 996-8036
Fax: (613) 943-0922
Thank you.
http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/nuclear_free_zone/2008/06/canadian-parlia.html
PARLIAMENT OF CANADA - HOUSE OF COMMONS
39th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION
EDITED HANSARD • NUMBER 105
STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS
Wednesday, June 5, 2008
Depleted Uranium
Mr. Alex Atamanenko (British Columbia Southern Interior, NDP): Mr. Speaker, last year the United Nations First Committee passed a resolution urging member states to re-examine the health hazards posed by the use of uranium weapons.
Belgium has banned the use of uranium in all conventional weapon systems. However, at least 18 countries, including the U.S., use depleted uranium in their arsenals. They are considered weapons of mass destruction under international law.
According to a Canada-U.S. agreement, Canadian uranium exports may only be used for peaceful purposes. However, according to Dr. Douglas Rokke, a U.S. Army research scientist, and others, Canada provides raw uranium to the U.S. and other countries for processing. The resulting depleted uranium is then used in weapons.
One only has to watch the documentary film Beyond Treason to see the devastating effects of these weapons in countries such as Iraq.
I call upon our government to undertake every measure possible to ensure that depleted uranium weapons of mass destruction are banned forever.
NOTE:
To express your support, please contact:
MP Alex Atamanenko (NDP)
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Email: Atamanenko.A@parl.gc.ca
Website: http://atamanenko.ndp.ca/
Telephone: (613) 996-8036
Fax: (613) 943-0922
Thank you.
http://peaceinspace.blogs.com/nuclear_free_zone/2008/06/canadian-parlia.html
Monday, June 09, 2008
Dan Rather’s prepared remarks
The following are Dan Rather’s prepared remarks:
I am grateful to be here and I am, most of all, gratified by the energy I have seen tonight and at this conference. It will take this kind of energy - and more - to sustain what is good in our news media… to improve what is deficient… and to push back against the forces and the trends that imperil journalism and that - by immediate extension - imperil democracy itself.
The Framers of our Constitution enshrined freedom of the press in the very first Amendment, up at the top of the Bill of Rights, not because they were great fans of journalists - like many politicians, then and now, they were not - but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free… it expects what never was and never will be.”
And it is because of this Constitutionally-protected role that I still prefer to use the word “press” over the word “media.” If nothing else, it serves as a subtle reminder that - along with newspapers - radio, television, and, now, the Internet, carry the same Constitutional rights, mandates, and responsibilities that the founders guaranteed for those who plied their trade solely in print.
So when you hear me talk about the press, please know that I am talking about all the ways that news can be transmitted. And when you hear me criticize and critique the press, please know that I do not exempt myself from these criticisms.
In our efforts to take back the American press for the American people, we are blessed this weekend with the gift of good timing. For anyone who may have been inclined to ask if there really is a problem with the news media, or wonder if the task of media reform is, indeed, an urgent one… recent days have brought an inescapable answer, from a most unlikely source.
A source who decided to tell everyone, quote, “what happened.”
I know I can’t be the first person this weekend to reference the recent book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, but, having interviewed him this past week, I think there are some very important points to be made from the things he says in his book, and the questions his statements raise.
I’m sure all of you took special notice of what he had to say about the role of the press corps, in the run-up to the war in Iraq. In the government’s selling of the war, he said they were - or, I should say, we were “complicit enablers” and “overly deferential.”
These are interesting statements, especially considering their source. As one tries to wrap one’s mind around them, the phrase “cognitive dissonance” comes to mind.
The first reaction, a visceral one, is: Whatever his motives for saying these things, he’s right - and we didn’t need Scott McClellan to tell us so.
But the second reaction is: Wait a minute… I do remember at least some reporters, and some news organizations, asking tough questions - asking them of the president, of those in his administration, of White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and - oh yes - of Scott McClellan himself, once he took over for Mr. Fleischer a few months after the invasion.
So how do we reconcile these competing reactions? Well, we need to pull back for what we in television call the wide shot.
If we look at the wide shot, we can see, in one corner of our screen, the White House briefing room filled with the White House press corps… and, filling the rest of the screen, the finite but disproportionately powerful universe that has become known as “mainstream media” - the newspapers and news programs, real and alleged, that employ these White House correspondents - the news organizations that are, in turn, owned by a shockingly few, much larger corporations, for which news is but a miniscule part of their overall business interests.
In the wake of 9/11 and in the run-up to Iraq, these news organizations made a decision - consciously or unconsciously, but unquestionably in a climate of fear - to accept the overall narrative frame given them by the White House, a narrative that went like this: Saddam Hussein, brutal dictator, harbored weapons of mass destruction and, because of his supposed links to al Qaeda, this could not be tolerated in a post-9/11 world.
In the news and on the news, one could, to be sure, find persons and views that did not agree with all or parts of this official narrative. Hans Blix, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector, comes to mind as an example. But the burden of proof, implicitly or explicitly, was put on these dissenting views and persons… the burden of proof was not put on an administration that was demonstrably moving towards a large-scale military action that would represent a break with American precedent and stated policy of how, when, and under what circumstances this nation goes to war.
So with this in mind, we look back to the corner of our screen where the White House Press Corps is asking their questions. I have been a White House correspondent myself, and I have worked with some of the best in the business. You have an incentive, when you are in that briefing room, to ask the good, tough questions: If nothing else, that is how you get in the paper, or on the air. There is more to it than that, and things have changed since I was a White House correspondent - something I want to talk about in a minute. But the correspondents - the really good ones - these correspondents ask their tough questions.
And these questions are met with what is now called, euphemistically and much too kindly, what is now called “message discipline.”
Well, we used to have a better and more accurate term for “message discipline.” We called it “stonewalling.” Now, cut back to your evening news, or your daily newspaper… where that White House Correspondent dutifully repeats the question he asked of the president or his press secretary, and dutifully relates the answer he was given - the same non-answer we’ve already heard dozens of times, which amounts to a pitch for the administration’s point of view, whether or NOT the answer had anything to do with the actual question that was asked.
And then: “Thank you Jack. In other news today… .”
And we’re off on a whole new story.
In our news media, in our press, those who wield power were, in the lead-up to Iraq, given the opportunity to present their views as a coherent whole, to connect the dots, as they saw the dots and the connections… no matter how much these views may have flown in the face of precedent, established practice - or, indeed, the facts (as we are reminded, yet again, by the just-released Senate report on the administration’s use of pre-war intelligence). The powerful are given this opportunity still, in ways big and small, despite what you may hear about the “post-Katrina” press.
But when a tough question is asked and not answered, when reputable people come before the public and say, “wait a minute, something’s not right here,” the press has treated them like voices crying in the wilderness. These views, though they might be given air time, become lone dots - dots that journalists don’t dare connect, even if the connections are obvious, even if people on the Internet and in the independent press are making these very same connections. The mainstream press doesn’t connect these dots because someone might then accuse them of editorializing, or of being the, quote, “liberal media.”
But connecting these dots - making disparate facts make sense - is a big part of the real work of journalism.
So how does this happen? Why does this happen?
Let me say, by way of answering, that quality news of integrity starts with an owner who has guts.
In a news organization with an owner who has guts, there is an incentive to ask the tough questions, and there is an incentive to pull together the facts - to connect the dots - in a way that makes coherent sense to the news audience.
I mentioned a moment ago that things have changed since I was a White House correspondent. Yes, presidential administrations have become more adept at holding “access” over the heads of reporters - ask too tough a question, or too many of them, so the implicit threat goes, and you’re not going to get any more interviews with high-ranking members of the administration, let alone the president. But I was covering Presidents Johnson and Nixon - men not exactly known as pushovers. No, what has changed, even more than the nature of the presidency, is the character of news ownership. I only found out years after the fact, for example, about the pressure that the Nixon White House put on my then-bosses, during Watergate - pressure to cut down my pieces, to call me off the story, and so on… because, back then, my bosses took the heat, so I didn’t have to. They did this so the story could get told, and so the public could be informed.
But it is rare, now, to find a major news organization owned by an individual, someone who can say, in effect, “The buck stops here.” The more likely motto now is: “The news stops… with making bucks.”
America’s biggest, most important news organizations have, over the past 25 years, fallen prey to merger after merger, acquisition after acquisition… to the point where they are, now, tiny parts of immeasurably larger corporate entities - entities whose primary business often has nothing to do with news. Entities that may, at any given time, have literally hundreds of regulatory issues before multiple arms of the government concerning a vast array of business interests.
These are entities that, as publicly-held and traded corporations, have as their overall, reigning mandate: Provide a return on shareholder value. Increase profits. And not over time, not over the long haul, but quarterly.
One might ask just where the news fits into this model. And if you really need an answer, you can turn on your television, where you will see the following:
Political analysis reduced to in-studio shouting matches between partisans armed with little more than the day’s talking points.
Precious time and resources wasted on so-called human-interest stories, celebrity fluff, sensationalist trials, and gossip.
A proliferation of “news you can use” that amounts to thinly-disguised press releases for the latest consumer products.
And, though this doesn’t get said enough, local news, which is where most Americans get their news, that seems not to change no matter what town or what city you’re in… so slavish is its adherence to the “happy talk” formula and the dictum that, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
I could continue for hours, cataloging journalistic sins of which I know you are all too aware. But, as the time grows late, let me say that almost all of these failings come down to this: In the current model of corporate news ownership, the incentive to produce good and valuable news is simply not there.
Good news, quality news of integrity, requires resources and it requires talent. These things are expensive, these things eat away at the bottom line.
Years ago, in the eighties and the nineties, when the implications of these cost-trimming measures were becoming impossible to ignore, and the quality of the news was clearly threatened, I spoke out against this cutting of news operations to the bone and beyond. Even then, though, I couldn’t have imagined that the cost-cutting imperatives would go as far as they have today - deep into the marrow of what was once considered a public trust.
But since the financial resources always seem to be available for entertainment, promotion, and - last but not least - for lobbying… perhaps there is an even more important reason why the incentive to produce quality news is absent, and that is: quality news of integrity, by its very nature, is sure to rock the boat now and then. Good, responsible news worthy of its Constitutional protections will, in that famous phrase, afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted.
And that, when one feels the need to deliver shareholder value above all, means that good news… may not always mean good business - or so goes the fear, a fear that filters down into just about every big newsroom in this country.
Now, I have spent my entire life in for-profit news, and I happen to think that it does not have to be this way. I have worked for news owners who, while they may have regarded their news divisions as an occasional irritant, chose to turn that irritant into a pearl of public trust. But today, sadly, it seems that the conglomerates that have control over some of the biggest pieces of this public trust would just as soon spit that irritant out.
So what does this mean for us tonight, and what is to be done?
It means that we need to be on the alert for where, when, and how our news media bows to undue government influence. And you need to let news organizations know, in no uncertain terms, that you won’t stand for it… that you, as news consumers, are capable of exerting pressure of your own.
It means that we need to continue to let our government know that, when it comes to media consolidation, enough is enough. Too few voices are dominating, homogenizing, and marginalizing the news. We need to demand that the American people get something in exchange for the use of airwaves that belong, after all, to the people.
It means that we need to ensure that the Internet, where free speech reigns and where journalism does not have to pass through a corporate filter… remains free.
We need to say, loud and clear, that we don’t want big corporations enjoying preferred access to - or government acting as the gatekeeper for - this unique platform for independent journalism.
And it means that we need to hold the government to its mandate to protect the freedom of the press, including independent and non-commercial news media.
The stakes could not possibly be higher. Scott McClellan’s book serves as a reminder, and the current election season, not to mention the gathering clouds of conflict with Iran, will both serve as tests of whether lessons have truly been learned from past experience. Ensuring that a free press remains free will require vigilance, and it will require work. Please, take tonight’s energy and inspiration home with you. Take it back to your desks and your workplaces, to your colleagues and your fellow citizens. magnify it, multiply it, and spread it. Make it viral. Make it something that cannot be ignored - not by the powers in Washington, not by the owners and executives of media companies. Write these people. Call them. Send them the message that you know your rights, you know that you are entitled to news media as diverse and varied as the American people… and that you deserve a press that provides the raw material of democracy, the good information that Americans need to be full participants in our government of, by, and for the people.
There is energy here, that can be equal to that task, but this energy must be maintained… if the press - if democracy - is to be preserved.
Thank you very much, and good night.
I am grateful to be here and I am, most of all, gratified by the energy I have seen tonight and at this conference. It will take this kind of energy - and more - to sustain what is good in our news media… to improve what is deficient… and to push back against the forces and the trends that imperil journalism and that - by immediate extension - imperil democracy itself.
The Framers of our Constitution enshrined freedom of the press in the very first Amendment, up at the top of the Bill of Rights, not because they were great fans of journalists - like many politicians, then and now, they were not - but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free… it expects what never was and never will be.”
And it is because of this Constitutionally-protected role that I still prefer to use the word “press” over the word “media.” If nothing else, it serves as a subtle reminder that - along with newspapers - radio, television, and, now, the Internet, carry the same Constitutional rights, mandates, and responsibilities that the founders guaranteed for those who plied their trade solely in print.
So when you hear me talk about the press, please know that I am talking about all the ways that news can be transmitted. And when you hear me criticize and critique the press, please know that I do not exempt myself from these criticisms.
In our efforts to take back the American press for the American people, we are blessed this weekend with the gift of good timing. For anyone who may have been inclined to ask if there really is a problem with the news media, or wonder if the task of media reform is, indeed, an urgent one… recent days have brought an inescapable answer, from a most unlikely source.
A source who decided to tell everyone, quote, “what happened.”
I know I can’t be the first person this weekend to reference the recent book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, but, having interviewed him this past week, I think there are some very important points to be made from the things he says in his book, and the questions his statements raise.
I’m sure all of you took special notice of what he had to say about the role of the press corps, in the run-up to the war in Iraq. In the government’s selling of the war, he said they were - or, I should say, we were “complicit enablers” and “overly deferential.”
These are interesting statements, especially considering their source. As one tries to wrap one’s mind around them, the phrase “cognitive dissonance” comes to mind.
The first reaction, a visceral one, is: Whatever his motives for saying these things, he’s right - and we didn’t need Scott McClellan to tell us so.
But the second reaction is: Wait a minute… I do remember at least some reporters, and some news organizations, asking tough questions - asking them of the president, of those in his administration, of White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and - oh yes - of Scott McClellan himself, once he took over for Mr. Fleischer a few months after the invasion.
So how do we reconcile these competing reactions? Well, we need to pull back for what we in television call the wide shot.
If we look at the wide shot, we can see, in one corner of our screen, the White House briefing room filled with the White House press corps… and, filling the rest of the screen, the finite but disproportionately powerful universe that has become known as “mainstream media” - the newspapers and news programs, real and alleged, that employ these White House correspondents - the news organizations that are, in turn, owned by a shockingly few, much larger corporations, for which news is but a miniscule part of their overall business interests.
In the wake of 9/11 and in the run-up to Iraq, these news organizations made a decision - consciously or unconsciously, but unquestionably in a climate of fear - to accept the overall narrative frame given them by the White House, a narrative that went like this: Saddam Hussein, brutal dictator, harbored weapons of mass destruction and, because of his supposed links to al Qaeda, this could not be tolerated in a post-9/11 world.
In the news and on the news, one could, to be sure, find persons and views that did not agree with all or parts of this official narrative. Hans Blix, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector, comes to mind as an example. But the burden of proof, implicitly or explicitly, was put on these dissenting views and persons… the burden of proof was not put on an administration that was demonstrably moving towards a large-scale military action that would represent a break with American precedent and stated policy of how, when, and under what circumstances this nation goes to war.
So with this in mind, we look back to the corner of our screen where the White House Press Corps is asking their questions. I have been a White House correspondent myself, and I have worked with some of the best in the business. You have an incentive, when you are in that briefing room, to ask the good, tough questions: If nothing else, that is how you get in the paper, or on the air. There is more to it than that, and things have changed since I was a White House correspondent - something I want to talk about in a minute. But the correspondents - the really good ones - these correspondents ask their tough questions.
And these questions are met with what is now called, euphemistically and much too kindly, what is now called “message discipline.”
Well, we used to have a better and more accurate term for “message discipline.” We called it “stonewalling.” Now, cut back to your evening news, or your daily newspaper… where that White House Correspondent dutifully repeats the question he asked of the president or his press secretary, and dutifully relates the answer he was given - the same non-answer we’ve already heard dozens of times, which amounts to a pitch for the administration’s point of view, whether or NOT the answer had anything to do with the actual question that was asked.
And then: “Thank you Jack. In other news today… .”
And we’re off on a whole new story.
In our news media, in our press, those who wield power were, in the lead-up to Iraq, given the opportunity to present their views as a coherent whole, to connect the dots, as they saw the dots and the connections… no matter how much these views may have flown in the face of precedent, established practice - or, indeed, the facts (as we are reminded, yet again, by the just-released Senate report on the administration’s use of pre-war intelligence). The powerful are given this opportunity still, in ways big and small, despite what you may hear about the “post-Katrina” press.
But when a tough question is asked and not answered, when reputable people come before the public and say, “wait a minute, something’s not right here,” the press has treated them like voices crying in the wilderness. These views, though they might be given air time, become lone dots - dots that journalists don’t dare connect, even if the connections are obvious, even if people on the Internet and in the independent press are making these very same connections. The mainstream press doesn’t connect these dots because someone might then accuse them of editorializing, or of being the, quote, “liberal media.”
But connecting these dots - making disparate facts make sense - is a big part of the real work of journalism.
So how does this happen? Why does this happen?
Let me say, by way of answering, that quality news of integrity starts with an owner who has guts.
In a news organization with an owner who has guts, there is an incentive to ask the tough questions, and there is an incentive to pull together the facts - to connect the dots - in a way that makes coherent sense to the news audience.
I mentioned a moment ago that things have changed since I was a White House correspondent. Yes, presidential administrations have become more adept at holding “access” over the heads of reporters - ask too tough a question, or too many of them, so the implicit threat goes, and you’re not going to get any more interviews with high-ranking members of the administration, let alone the president. But I was covering Presidents Johnson and Nixon - men not exactly known as pushovers. No, what has changed, even more than the nature of the presidency, is the character of news ownership. I only found out years after the fact, for example, about the pressure that the Nixon White House put on my then-bosses, during Watergate - pressure to cut down my pieces, to call me off the story, and so on… because, back then, my bosses took the heat, so I didn’t have to. They did this so the story could get told, and so the public could be informed.
But it is rare, now, to find a major news organization owned by an individual, someone who can say, in effect, “The buck stops here.” The more likely motto now is: “The news stops… with making bucks.”
America’s biggest, most important news organizations have, over the past 25 years, fallen prey to merger after merger, acquisition after acquisition… to the point where they are, now, tiny parts of immeasurably larger corporate entities - entities whose primary business often has nothing to do with news. Entities that may, at any given time, have literally hundreds of regulatory issues before multiple arms of the government concerning a vast array of business interests.
These are entities that, as publicly-held and traded corporations, have as their overall, reigning mandate: Provide a return on shareholder value. Increase profits. And not over time, not over the long haul, but quarterly.
One might ask just where the news fits into this model. And if you really need an answer, you can turn on your television, where you will see the following:
Political analysis reduced to in-studio shouting matches between partisans armed with little more than the day’s talking points.
Precious time and resources wasted on so-called human-interest stories, celebrity fluff, sensationalist trials, and gossip.
A proliferation of “news you can use” that amounts to thinly-disguised press releases for the latest consumer products.
And, though this doesn’t get said enough, local news, which is where most Americans get their news, that seems not to change no matter what town or what city you’re in… so slavish is its adherence to the “happy talk” formula and the dictum that, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
I could continue for hours, cataloging journalistic sins of which I know you are all too aware. But, as the time grows late, let me say that almost all of these failings come down to this: In the current model of corporate news ownership, the incentive to produce good and valuable news is simply not there.
Good news, quality news of integrity, requires resources and it requires talent. These things are expensive, these things eat away at the bottom line.
Years ago, in the eighties and the nineties, when the implications of these cost-trimming measures were becoming impossible to ignore, and the quality of the news was clearly threatened, I spoke out against this cutting of news operations to the bone and beyond. Even then, though, I couldn’t have imagined that the cost-cutting imperatives would go as far as they have today - deep into the marrow of what was once considered a public trust.
But since the financial resources always seem to be available for entertainment, promotion, and - last but not least - for lobbying… perhaps there is an even more important reason why the incentive to produce quality news is absent, and that is: quality news of integrity, by its very nature, is sure to rock the boat now and then. Good, responsible news worthy of its Constitutional protections will, in that famous phrase, afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted.
And that, when one feels the need to deliver shareholder value above all, means that good news… may not always mean good business - or so goes the fear, a fear that filters down into just about every big newsroom in this country.
Now, I have spent my entire life in for-profit news, and I happen to think that it does not have to be this way. I have worked for news owners who, while they may have regarded their news divisions as an occasional irritant, chose to turn that irritant into a pearl of public trust. But today, sadly, it seems that the conglomerates that have control over some of the biggest pieces of this public trust would just as soon spit that irritant out.
So what does this mean for us tonight, and what is to be done?
It means that we need to be on the alert for where, when, and how our news media bows to undue government influence. And you need to let news organizations know, in no uncertain terms, that you won’t stand for it… that you, as news consumers, are capable of exerting pressure of your own.
It means that we need to continue to let our government know that, when it comes to media consolidation, enough is enough. Too few voices are dominating, homogenizing, and marginalizing the news. We need to demand that the American people get something in exchange for the use of airwaves that belong, after all, to the people.
It means that we need to ensure that the Internet, where free speech reigns and where journalism does not have to pass through a corporate filter… remains free.
We need to say, loud and clear, that we don’t want big corporations enjoying preferred access to - or government acting as the gatekeeper for - this unique platform for independent journalism.
And it means that we need to hold the government to its mandate to protect the freedom of the press, including independent and non-commercial news media.
The stakes could not possibly be higher. Scott McClellan’s book serves as a reminder, and the current election season, not to mention the gathering clouds of conflict with Iran, will both serve as tests of whether lessons have truly been learned from past experience. Ensuring that a free press remains free will require vigilance, and it will require work. Please, take tonight’s energy and inspiration home with you. Take it back to your desks and your workplaces, to your colleagues and your fellow citizens. magnify it, multiply it, and spread it. Make it viral. Make it something that cannot be ignored - not by the powers in Washington, not by the owners and executives of media companies. Write these people. Call them. Send them the message that you know your rights, you know that you are entitled to news media as diverse and varied as the American people… and that you deserve a press that provides the raw material of democracy, the good information that Americans need to be full participants in our government of, by, and for the people.
There is energy here, that can be equal to that task, but this energy must be maintained… if the press - if democracy - is to be preserved.
Thank you very much, and good night.
Newfoundland; Evicting the Innu
Newfoundland orders Innu families to leave
RHÉAL SÉGUIN
With a report from The Canadian Press
June 6, 2008
QUEBEC -- More than 100 Innu families from Quebec occupying land in Labrador are being evicted by the Newfoundland and Labrador government as part of an escalating confrontation over land rights involving resource development and hydroelectric projects.
A lawyer for the Innu said yesterday the people of the Uashat-Maliotenam reserve in northeastern Quebec will take matters into their own hands if they are forced off the land.
"I've heard people saying that if they tear down our cabins, there won't be a single cabin standing, whether it's Innu or a non-Innu cabin, in Labrador," Armand MacKenzie said.
"We're going to call it 'Labrador Burning.'
"If [Newfoundland Premier] Danny Williams wants to pick a fight with the Quebec Innu, he'll get it. He'll get it and we'll have a social crisis in Labrador."
The government posted the eviction notices late last month, and have given the families 60 days to demolish and remove "cabins located at or near Nairn Bay" in western Labrador.
The Innu face fines of $1,000 and up to three months in jail if they refuse to comply. They've been ordered to restore the site to its original condition or face an additional $25 fine for each day the cabins and other structures remain on Crown land. If they don't remove the structures, the province will do it at the occupants' expense, the eviction notice stated.
Mr. Williams told reporters in St. John's yesterday that the Quebec Innu recently erected the cabins in the region, and government lawyers are questioning whether the action is legal. Mr. Williams said he isn't sure why the cabins were built, but added that they appeared after discussions intensified on the development of the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project. He believes the Innu moved in to assert their land claim over the territory, which would be affected if the hydro project goes ahead.
Mr. MacKenzie pledged to challenge the eviction notice in court. He said that some of the structures were built many years ago on the land, and that the Innu occupied it long before Newfoundland and Labrador was formed.
"This is our homeland. We have sacred sites here. They are recognized by all the residents of Labrador. This is where we hunt. Hold ceremonies and bury our relatives. Even the game wardens and other provincial authorities saw us build structures here 20-25 years ago and recognized that the Innu had the right to do so," Mr. MacKenzie said in a telephone interview yesterday.
The Innu accused the Williams government of harassing their community because a claim to the land was before the Federal Court yesterday in Montreal. More than 20 Innu have filed a claim to establish native ownership over the site.
The Innu argue that their traditional homeland, which also cuts across part of Quebec, belongs to them under aboriginal title, and that resource development, especially hydroelectric projects, cannot proceed without their consent. In 1998, the Innu blocked the announcement of the Lower Churchill project by then-Quebec-premier Lucien Bouchard and his Newfoundland and Labrador counterpart at the time, Brian Tobin.
"No one has the right to evict us," Mr. MacKenzie said yesterday. "It is a total disgrace in the international community for the provincial government to attempt to bully us into giving up our land so that it can construct hydroelectric dams and make money off our resources."
RHÉAL SÉGUIN
With a report from The Canadian Press
June 6, 2008
QUEBEC -- More than 100 Innu families from Quebec occupying land in Labrador are being evicted by the Newfoundland and Labrador government as part of an escalating confrontation over land rights involving resource development and hydroelectric projects.
A lawyer for the Innu said yesterday the people of the Uashat-Maliotenam reserve in northeastern Quebec will take matters into their own hands if they are forced off the land.
"I've heard people saying that if they tear down our cabins, there won't be a single cabin standing, whether it's Innu or a non-Innu cabin, in Labrador," Armand MacKenzie said.
"We're going to call it 'Labrador Burning.'
"If [Newfoundland Premier] Danny Williams wants to pick a fight with the Quebec Innu, he'll get it. He'll get it and we'll have a social crisis in Labrador."
The government posted the eviction notices late last month, and have given the families 60 days to demolish and remove "cabins located at or near Nairn Bay" in western Labrador.
The Innu face fines of $1,000 and up to three months in jail if they refuse to comply. They've been ordered to restore the site to its original condition or face an additional $25 fine for each day the cabins and other structures remain on Crown land. If they don't remove the structures, the province will do it at the occupants' expense, the eviction notice stated.
Mr. Williams told reporters in St. John's yesterday that the Quebec Innu recently erected the cabins in the region, and government lawyers are questioning whether the action is legal. Mr. Williams said he isn't sure why the cabins were built, but added that they appeared after discussions intensified on the development of the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project. He believes the Innu moved in to assert their land claim over the territory, which would be affected if the hydro project goes ahead.
Mr. MacKenzie pledged to challenge the eviction notice in court. He said that some of the structures were built many years ago on the land, and that the Innu occupied it long before Newfoundland and Labrador was formed.
"This is our homeland. We have sacred sites here. They are recognized by all the residents of Labrador. This is where we hunt. Hold ceremonies and bury our relatives. Even the game wardens and other provincial authorities saw us build structures here 20-25 years ago and recognized that the Innu had the right to do so," Mr. MacKenzie said in a telephone interview yesterday.
The Innu accused the Williams government of harassing their community because a claim to the land was before the Federal Court yesterday in Montreal. More than 20 Innu have filed a claim to establish native ownership over the site.
The Innu argue that their traditional homeland, which also cuts across part of Quebec, belongs to them under aboriginal title, and that resource development, especially hydroelectric projects, cannot proceed without their consent. In 1998, the Innu blocked the announcement of the Lower Churchill project by then-Quebec-premier Lucien Bouchard and his Newfoundland and Labrador counterpart at the time, Brian Tobin.
"No one has the right to evict us," Mr. MacKenzie said yesterday. "It is a total disgrace in the international community for the provincial government to attempt to bully us into giving up our land so that it can construct hydroelectric dams and make money off our resources."
Sunday, June 08, 2008
This Week on Gorilla Radio
GR for Monday, June 9th, 2008
by C. L. Cook
Of the world's industrial states, Canada has perhaps the most concentrated media. In this country, the confluence of corporate media purveyors with a singular political vision; a State broadcaster run by careerist weaklings, desperate to preserve their jobs by pleasing the party of the day; and, a supine regulatory system, more interested in making life difficult for college and community radio programmers than in challenging the systemic abuses of the nation's "public" airwaves, conspire to make of Canadian media a final product little better than the base propaganda of the communist regimes of old.
What this means for the denizens of this sad, satellite state that is Canada is a monolithic meme delivery system masquerading as journalism, while media handmaidens to power pretend to operate in the public interest. It's no wonder then Canadians can blithely sit before flickering boxes, sucking beer, as the nation is frog-marched into fascism.
It is a dangerous, and seemingly hopeless situation: Corporate players are not likely to change the way they massage their message, and fearful bureaucrats behind the State media apparatus will not endanger their livelihoods to buck the system to deliver truth to the citizenry.
Luckily, we live in a time of technological wonders whose magic promises to change not only the way we live, but the way we learn about the others effecting our lives.
Geraldine Cahill is Communications and Social Media coordinator for The Real News, a Toronto-based emerging media upstart challenging "old media's" news dissemination monopoly. Geraldine Cahill in the first half.
And; almost seven years past the time the first bunker busters fell upon the heads of hapless Afghani goat herds and their keepers, it's instructive to look back upon the carnage of the interim and what meaning we can take away from this madness.
Hundreds of thousands dead; millions maimed and made homeless; landscapes scarred and corrupted with poisons and unexploded ordnance, just waiting for the curious attentions of children to add again to the misery the chosen course engendered for Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, and the un-people thrown into dark prisons around the world without a glimmer of hope for salvation.
Mike Ferner is an activist with Voices in the Wilderness and Veterans for Peace, broadcaster, and author of the book, 'Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran for Peace Reports.' He's also a dedicated writer, chronicling America's spiral into perpetual war in hundreds of articles published across the internet.
Mike Ferner and keeping tabs on War, Incorporated in the second segment.
And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that's good to do in and around Victoria in the coming week.
UK: Barclays Bank Bows to der Homeland
Barclays bank rejects customers to comply with US terror law
Sean O'Neill, Crime and Security Editor
Barclays is using controversial American anti-terrorism laws to shut down the personal bank accounts of British citizens who are working for Iranian-owned businesses, The Times has learnt.
The bank has unilaterally enforced anti-Iran sanctions drawn up by the Bush Administration under the US Patriot Act against companies that operate completely legally in Britain. Those affected by the account closures are not directors of the companies but ordinary staff members, including clerical officers, computer engineers and bank tellers.
Barclays refuses to discuss the decision or to say how many people have been affected by its action. But The Times has obtained a letter written by Deborah Cooper, a senior Barclays lawyer, which states that the bank must consider “the global regulatory environment” and regards “full compliance with sanctions regimes to be of extreme importance”.
Ms Cooper’s letter was addressed to lawyers representing employees of the Iranian-owned banks Saderat and Melli whose accounts have been closed and funds returned to the account holder.
Related Links
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Barclays encourages philanthropy
Barclays and RBS raided by OFT in loans probe
Both banks are based in the City, fully licensed to operate in Britain and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Neither is subject to the extensive Iranian sanctions regimes that are operated by the Treasury or the European Union.
However, the US Government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has placed both on its list of specially designated nationals (SDNs).
Ms Cooper’s letter said: “Barclays has . . . a policy of not conducting business with people or entities which are publicly designated SDNs and in line with that Barclays is unable to receive payments from or undertake other business which involves Melli or Saderat.”
Barclays began the account closures in February, shortly after reports from industry sources that US Treasury agents had been touring the City of London putting pressure on financial institutions to withdraw from any form of business that might have Iranian links.
One source told The Times that City banks had been warned that they would lose access to the US market if they continued to deal with Iranian businesses. Barclays has extensive business interests in the United States.
The US Government has accused Melli Bank of alleged links to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and described Bank Saderat as a terrorist financier that has channelled money to Hezbollah and other groups. Both banks deny the allegations strongly.
Case study: Cast out in the supermarket
Chris was doing the shopping in Tesco when Barclays rang to tell him that his bank account was being closed. Later that evening his wife was told that her Barclays account, which she had held for 25 years, was also being closed.
Chris, 46, works in IT for Bank Saderat, and his wife is in the accounts department of Melli Bank. Both institutions are Iranian-owned. “They said it was because of sanctions but I knew there were no British sanctions on the banks. I asked them if they were responding to US laws and they said they didn’t have to give me a reason,” he said.
The couple opened new accounts with one of Barclays’ rivals but they had difficulty transferring standing orders, especially Chris’s child-support payments. He said: “I know that UK banks are being pressured by America to stop all dealings with Iran but what impact will it have to shut an English bloke’s account with an English bank? The Iranians won’t give a monkey’s. What upsets me is the lack of respect Barclays have for their customers.”
source
Sean O'Neill, Crime and Security Editor
Barclays is using controversial American anti-terrorism laws to shut down the personal bank accounts of British citizens who are working for Iranian-owned businesses, The Times has learnt.
The bank has unilaterally enforced anti-Iran sanctions drawn up by the Bush Administration under the US Patriot Act against companies that operate completely legally in Britain. Those affected by the account closures are not directors of the companies but ordinary staff members, including clerical officers, computer engineers and bank tellers.
Barclays refuses to discuss the decision or to say how many people have been affected by its action. But The Times has obtained a letter written by Deborah Cooper, a senior Barclays lawyer, which states that the bank must consider “the global regulatory environment” and regards “full compliance with sanctions regimes to be of extreme importance”.
Ms Cooper’s letter was addressed to lawyers representing employees of the Iranian-owned banks Saderat and Melli whose accounts have been closed and funds returned to the account holder.
Related Links
Lloyds TSB expects £180m bill for US breach
Barclays encourages philanthropy
Barclays and RBS raided by OFT in loans probe
Both banks are based in the City, fully licensed to operate in Britain and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Neither is subject to the extensive Iranian sanctions regimes that are operated by the Treasury or the European Union.
However, the US Government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has placed both on its list of specially designated nationals (SDNs).
Ms Cooper’s letter said: “Barclays has . . . a policy of not conducting business with people or entities which are publicly designated SDNs and in line with that Barclays is unable to receive payments from or undertake other business which involves Melli or Saderat.”
Barclays began the account closures in February, shortly after reports from industry sources that US Treasury agents had been touring the City of London putting pressure on financial institutions to withdraw from any form of business that might have Iranian links.
One source told The Times that City banks had been warned that they would lose access to the US market if they continued to deal with Iranian businesses. Barclays has extensive business interests in the United States.
The US Government has accused Melli Bank of alleged links to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and described Bank Saderat as a terrorist financier that has channelled money to Hezbollah and other groups. Both banks deny the allegations strongly.
Case study: Cast out in the supermarket
Chris was doing the shopping in Tesco when Barclays rang to tell him that his bank account was being closed. Later that evening his wife was told that her Barclays account, which she had held for 25 years, was also being closed.
Chris, 46, works in IT for Bank Saderat, and his wife is in the accounts department of Melli Bank. Both institutions are Iranian-owned. “They said it was because of sanctions but I knew there were no British sanctions on the banks. I asked them if they were responding to US laws and they said they didn’t have to give me a reason,” he said.
The couple opened new accounts with one of Barclays’ rivals but they had difficulty transferring standing orders, especially Chris’s child-support payments. He said: “I know that UK banks are being pressured by America to stop all dealings with Iran but what impact will it have to shut an English bloke’s account with an English bank? The Iranians won’t give a monkey’s. What upsets me is the lack of respect Barclays have for their customers.”
source
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