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THE REAL DONALD RUMSFELD DOUG IRELAND, DIRELAND - No man bears greater responsibility for the tragedy of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq than Donald Rumsfeld, yet, though his face and voice are, unfortunately, all too familiar even to the most casual news consumer, most of us have only a rather sanitized conception of who Rumsfeld is, the crucial role he has played at key moments of American history for the last three decades, and what drives him. Roger Morris has now filled the voids in our understanding of Rumsfeld with a brilliant, lengthy essay that lifts the carpet to reveal Rumsfeld's rise and role, and how he led us into an iniquitous war. Roger is one of our finest chroniclers of contemporary history, aRoger_morris masterful dissector of American politics, and a skilled portraitist of the dark side of American power. As a young man with a Ph.D from Harvard, he was a Foreign Service officer and a member of the Senior Staff of the National Security Council under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Roger Morris resigned from the NSC in protest against the secret invasion of Cambodia in 1970 -- an experience which radicalized him. Since then, he has turned out a series of important, probing books that have contributed mightily to our understanding of our times. . . Morris's brilliant Rumsfeld dissection -- with the telling title "The Undertaker's Tally" -- is being published by Tom Dispatch in two parts, the first of which has just appeared. . . http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2007/02/rumsfeld_the_de.html  RUMSFELD TOOK PART IN INTERROGATION OF PRISONER WHO WAS TORTURED SALON - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in the late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." He also communicated weekly with the man in charge of the interrogation, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the controversial commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center. During the same period, detainee Mohammed al-Kahtani suffered from what Army investigators have called "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were following the interrogation plan Rumsfeld had approved. Kahtani was forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform "dog tricks" on a leash. He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days. . . In a sworn statement to the inspector general, investigator Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt Schmidt . . . said he concluded that Rumsfeld did not specifically prescribe the more "creative" interrogation methods used on Kahtani. But he added that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the abusive conduct to take place. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/04/14/rummy/
RUMSFELD SUED IN GERMANY FOR
ALLEGED WAR CRIMES DEUTSCHE WELLE - Alleging responsibility for war crimes and torture at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, a human rights group has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US officials. he New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association said they and five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US soldiers were seeking a probe by German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers. They said they had chosen Germany because of its Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in 2002, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity. It also makes military or civilian commanders who fail to prevent their subordinates from committing such acts liable. . . The complaint names Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski and other military officers who served in Iraq. . . "Regardless of the law of
the place of commission, the German criminal law is also applicable
to … acts committed outside of Germany," the law reads.
While the law could be interpreted as an obligation to act in
cases of crimes against international law, a clause leaves it
up to prosecutors to decide whether alleged crimes should be
brought before a German court. Prosecution can be dropped in
cases where neither the victim nor the perpetrator of a crime
are German citizens. If the accused is not in Germany nor can
be expected to come to Germany, prosecution can also be dropped.
Germany's Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries justified these limitations
by saying that Germany should not act as a "global policeman"
by prosecuting all crimes against international law regardless
of where they have been committed. RUMSFELD'S PERSONAL SPY RING ERIC BOEHLERT, SALON - During last fall's feverish ramp up to war with Iraq, the Pentagon created an unusual in-house shop to monitor Saddam Hussein's links with terrorists and his allegedly sprawling arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. With direct access to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office and the White House, the influential group helped lay out, both to administration officials and to the press, an array of chilling, almost too-good-to-be-true examples of why Saddam posed an immediate threat to America. Six months later, with controversy mounting over the administration's handling of war intelligence, the small, secretive cell inside the Pentagon is drawing closer scrutiny and may soon be the subject of a congressional inquiry to determine whether it manipulated and politicized key intelligence and botched planning for post-war Iraq. "The concern is they were in the cherry-picking business," says U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee. "Cherry-picking half-truths and rumors and only highlighting pieces of information that bolstered the administration's case for war." The Pentagon's innocuously named Office of Special Plans served as a unique, hand-picked group of hawkish defense officials who worked outside regular intelligence channels. According to the Department of Defense, the group was first created in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to supplement the war on terrorism; it was designed to sift through all the intelligence on terrorist activity, and to focus particularly on various al-Qaida links. By last fall it was focusing almost exclusively on Iraq, and often leaking doomsday findings about Saddam's regime. Those controversial conclusions are now fueling the suspicion the obscure agency, propelled by ideology, manipulated key findings in order to fit the White House's desire to wage war with Iraq. RUMSFELD'S NORTH KOREAN CONNECTIONS CONT'D RICHARD BEHAR, FORTUNE - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it's surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program. What's even more surprising about Rumsfeld's silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The company is Zurich-based engineering giant ABB, which signed the contract in early 2000, well before Rumsfeld gave up his board seat and joined the Bush administration. Rumsfeld, the only American director on the ABB board from 1990 to early 2001, has never acknowledged that he knew the company was competing for the nuclear contract. Nor could Fortune find any public reference to what he thought about the project. In response to questions about his role in the reactor deal, the Defense Secretary's spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told Newsweek in February that "there was no vote on this" and that her boss "does not recall it being brought before the board at any time." Rumsfeld declined requests by Fortune to elaborate on his role. But ABB spokesman Bjoern Edlund has told Fortune that "board members were informed about this project." And other ABB officials say there is no way such a large and high-stakes project, involving complex questions of liability, would not have come to the attention of the board. "A written summary would probably have gone to the board before the deal was signed," says Robert Newman, a former president of ABB's U.S. nuclear division who spearheaded the project. "I'm sure they were aware." Fortune contacted 15 ABB board members who served at the time the company was bidding for the Pyongyang contract, and all but one declined to comment. That director, who asked not to be identified, says he's convinced that ABB's chairman at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reactor project in the mid-1990s. "This was a major thing for ABB," the former director says, "and extensive political lobbying was done." The director recalls being told that Rumsfeld was asked "to lobby in Washington" on ABB's behalf in the mid-1990s because a rival American company had complained about a foreign-owned firm getting the work. Although he couldn't provide details, Goran Lundberg, who ran ABB's power-generation business until 1995, says he's "pretty sure that at some point Don was involved," since it was not unusual to seek help from board members "when we needed contacts with the U.S. government." Other former top executives don't recall Rumsfeld's involvement. BEHIND THE BUSHES: LEDEEN SETTING IRAN POLICY JIM LOBE, ASIA TIMES - When The Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove, President George W Bush's closest advisor, regularly consults for advice outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs analyst. "The two met after Bush's election," the Post reported cheerfully, quoting Ledeen about Rove's request that "any time you have a good idea, tell me." ". . . "When I saw that, I couldn't believe it," said one retired senior diplomat. "But then again, with this administration, it seemed frighteningly plausible." Michael A Ledeen, resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works closely with the better-known former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, has been a fixture of Washington's neo-conservative community for more than 20 years. But he is now out front, in a public campaign for the United States to confront Iran, warning that Tehran will cause Washington problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan and that "the mullahs are determined to obliterate Israel. . . Along with Morris Amitay, a former top lobbyist for the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Ledeen has already co-founded a new group, called the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, which is pressing Congress to approve a pending bill that would, among other things, provide some US$50 million in aid to both exile groups and opposition forces in Iran. To Ledeen, whose own contacts with the mullahs in the Iran-Contra affair 15 years ago remain the source of some mystery, Iran is "the mother of modern terrorism." . . . Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections - including alleged ties to the P-2 Masonic Lodge that rocked Italy in the early 1980s - have long been a source of speculation and intrigue, but he returned to Washington in 1981 as "anti-terrorism" advisor to the new secretary of state, Al Haig. . . Throughout his career, Ledeen has insisted that war and violence are integral parts of human nature and derided the notion that peace can be negotiated between two nations. He was a fierce opponent of the Oslo peace process. For Ledeen, Iraq was only the beginning of the broader struggle against the "terror masters". "As soon as we land in Iraq, we're going to face the whole terrorist network," he told an interviewer in March. "Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia are the big four, and then there's Libya." "You can't solve all problems I grant that," he told the BBC. "I mean, I wrote a book about Machiavelli, and I know the struggle against evil is going to go forever." HOLLINGER INVESTMENTS LINKED TO PERLE AND KISSINGER ROBERT FRANK and ELENA CHERNEY, WALL STREET JOURNAL - Hollinger International Inc. invested in a venture-capital fund and a conservative magazine linked to outside directors Richard N. Perle and Henry A. Kissinger, raising new questions about the board's independence in the wake of a widening financial scandal. According to company filings and people familiar with the situation, Hollinger invested $2.5 million in a venture-capital firm that was co-managed by Mr. Perle and listed Mr. Kissinger as a board member. Hollinger, a Chicago-based media company that owns the U.K.'s Telegraph Group, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post, also invested $14 million in a British technology company that includes Mr. Perle and his business partner as shareholders. In addition, Hollinger gave $200,000 a year to the National Interest, a conservative publication that includes Mr. Perle, Mr. Kissinger and Hollinger's former chief executive, Conrad Black, as advisers. There isn't any indication that any of the directors, including Messrs. Perle and Kissinger, did anything illegal. And neither Mr. Perle nor Mr. Kissinger served on Hollinger's audit or compensation committees. But the payments highlight the subtle financial relationships between companies and otherwise independent directors. And the payments take on a starker light in the wake of investor accusations that the board stood by while Hollinger made large payments to Lord Black, who resigned as CEO last month, despite the company's flagging share price. DAVID S. HILZENRATH WASHINGTON POST - Pentagon adviser Richard N. Perle coauthored an opinion piece this summer praising a Pentagon plan to lease tanker aircraft -- which had the potential to steer billions of dollars to Boeing Co. -- 16 months after Boeing committed to invest $20 million with a venture capital firm where Perle was a principal. . . Perle's business interests and his position in the defense policy world have repeatedly placed him at the center of controversy this year. Perle, an outspoken advocate of the war in Iraq, was a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration and has been a corporate consultant. . . Boeing yesterday said the company briefed Perle on the tanker issue on July 14. Boeing said it "had no hand in writing the document nor did we assist in placing it." PERLE, KISSINGER SERVE ON HOLLINGER BOARD FINANCIAL TIMES - The spectacular crisis at what remains of Lord Black's media empire could lead to an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. . . Critics claim Lord Black filled the Hollinger board with friends such as Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, and Richard Perle, the US defense adviser with close links to the Bush administration. Tweedy Browne, a minority investor whose allegations prompted the internal investigation, on Monday called Hollinger's board "a disgrace" after it emerged that Lord Black would remain non-executive chairman and had until June to repay the group $7 million in undisclosed fees. "How much money has to leave the company before somebody calls the cops?" said Laura Jereski, a Tweedy analyst. STEPHANIE KIRCHGAESSNER, FINANCIAL TIMES - Hollinger International is examining investments that were made by Richard Perle, a director on the publisher's board and prominent defense advisor, on behalf of the company. . . That probe, which is being lead by former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Richard Breeden, is wide-ranging and involves close scrutiny of so-called "related-party transactions," or deals in which members of Hollinger's board or executives personally benefited from deals the publisher agreed with other companies. One transaction that caught the attention of some Hollinger investors was a $2.5 million investment earlier this year in Trireme Partners, a venture-capital company in which Mr. Perle, an independent director, is a managing partner. Mr. Perle has also played a prominent role in the late 1990's and early 2000 in directing investments in other companies through Hollinger Digital, Hollinger's investment arm. Under review is a $14 million investment the company made under Mr. Perle's direction through Hillman Capital, a venture-capital group controlled by Gerald Hillman - who has since become a partner at Trireme and is a member of the U.S. Defense Policy Board, as was Mr. Perle. . . Mr. Perle has been criticized in the past over perceived conflicts of interest in his business dealings. Mr. Perle resigned as chairman of the Defense Policy Board earlier this year after he was criticized for having a $750,000 contract with Global Crossing, the bankrupt telecoms group. Global Crossing was at the time seeking to overcome Defense Department objections on its sale to Hutchison Whampoa, a Chinese-controlled company. Paul Healy, head of investor relations at Hollinger, refused to comment. Mr. Perle and Mr. Hillman were unavailable for comment. FORTUNE - Black set his sights on America. He chased after the New York Daily News but lost it to Montreal-born real estate developer Mort Zuckerman. Hollinger did win control of the Chicago Sun-Times for $180 million in 1994. That year Hollinger went public in the U.S. Black recruited dignitaries he'd gotten to know at the Bilderberg meeting, like Kissinger and Perle, to join the board. PERLE STILL WANTS WAR WITH NORTH KOREA NEWSMAX - Bush Pentagon adviser Richard Perle says that unless China and other countries help the U.S. embargo North Korea, military force remains the only other option available. FORGET BIN LADEN AND WHITEY BULGER; WHERE'S RICHARD PERLE? WILLIAM HUGHS, PALESTINE CHRONICLE - Perhaps we should take a break on looking for Saddam Hussein, Usama bin Laden, William "Slots" Bennett, or, even James J. "Whitey" Bulger. For me, the key question today is: Where is Richard Perle? Before the launching of Iraq War No. 2, in March 20, 2003, Perle, America's Iago, regularly appeared on TV and cable TV programs, on radio, and in the print media, too. He repeated, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, why it was so absolutely critical for the U.S. to immediately invade Iraq. America was "at risk," he said, with that ubiquitous smirk on his mug. There wasn't a moment to lose. "Saddam has WMD," he told us, and he also "hates America" and poses a dire "threat to our security?" The shifty Perle, the Mother of all Neocons, also predicted, like former Defense Department official, Ken Adelman, that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be a "cakewalk!" It will be "easy," he boasted. We would also be "exporting democracy" to the Iraqi people, who will "welcome us" with open arms "as liberators," he claimed over and over again in similar words. Cakewalk! Easy! Exporting Democracy! Liberators! Sure! Now, Perle is among the missing! The man with the sinister-looking scowl hasn't showed up on the Talking Head circuits since about the time the U.S. occupation of Iraq began going sour. Could he be hiding out in his beloved Israel, in a safe house provided by Benjamin Netanyahu, a/k/a "Bend-the-Truth Yahoo"? Or, are the War Hawks, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), telling him to keep a low profile by working temporarily as an extra on a Hollywood movie? Who knows? PERLE ADVISING HOW TO MAKE MONEY OFF WAR KEN SILVERSTEIN AND CHUCK NEUBAUER, LA TIMES - Last February, the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisors to the Pentagon, received a classified presentation from the super-secret Defense Intelligence Agency on the crises in North Korea and Iraq. Three weeks later, the then-chairman of the board, Richard N. Perle, offered a briefing of his own at an investment seminar on ways to profit from possible conflicts with both countries. Perle and his fellow advisors also heard a classified address about high-tech military communications systems at the same closed-door session in February. He runs a venture capital firm that has been exploring investments in that very area. The disclosures in recently released board agendas and investment documents are the latest illustrations of how Perle's private consulting and investment interests overlap with his role on the board, which advises the secretary of Defense. Perle resigned as board chairman on March 27 after published reports that he had been employed as a consultant by bankrupt telecommunications firm Global Crossing Ltd., which was trying to get Pentagon clearance to be sold to Asian investors. The reports also had him soliciting investment money from a Saudi who was seeking to influence U.S. policy on Iraq. PERLE INVOLVED IN CLINTON SCANDAL PERLE IN ANOTHER CONFLICT OF INTEREST WHAT HAPPENED TO GERONIMO'S SKULL? PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, September 23, 2000 - One expects, from a family of politicians, a certain amount of skullduggery. But that is a term of art. It should not involve the actual digging of skulls. So begins one of the odder political stories of recent years. It involves allegations that George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, late of the United States Senate by way of Connecticut, had joined a midnight foray 82 years ago into an Oklahoma graveyard whence he emerged with the mortal skull of Geronimo, the Apache warlord who spent his final years as a tourist attraction and, it would seem, part of his afterlife as a souvenir. The story unfolded when Apache tribesmen from Arizona debated whether to have Geronimo exhumed and brought back to his native soil. They received, unsolicited, a letter advising them that Geronimo's head had taken up residence in New Haven, Conn., home to Yale University and its secret Skull and Bones Society. "He sent a photo," said Raleigh Thompson, a tribal council member. It showed a skull, remnants of a bridle and a photo of Geronimo . . . His group later obtained what purported to be an internal history of Skull and Bones that included this account: In 1918, Prescott Bush and two companions crept into the cemetery near Fort Sill and pried open the grave of Geronimo. The head was taken out, spiffed up and forwarded to New Haven, where it was given pride of place for goofy rituals that have been attended by generations of Bushes and a veritable army of powerful types . . . Thompson, two other council members and tribal attorney Joe Sparks traveled to New York three times to meet with Skull and Bones officers, their lawyer and Jonathan Bush, brother to the then-vice president. "They said 'We have a skull that we call Geronimo,'" Thompson said. Then they offered up a skull. Thompson and Sparks said it didn't look like the photo. "They said it was the remains of a young Indian child, as if that made things better," Sparks said. Sparks said he confronted them with a Skull and Bones history, dated 1933, that purported to tell of the grave raid. "They said we were in a lot of trouble for having it," Sparks said. He suggested they might be in a bit of trouble for having a head not currently attached to a neck.
NATIONAL ENQUIRER THINKS BUSH IS DRINKING AGAIN JENNIFER LUCE AND DON GENTILE, NATIONAL
ENQUIRER - Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life,
President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer
can reveal. . . Family sources have told how the 59-year-old
president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze
at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of
the hurricane disaster. "When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!" "Laura gave him an ultimatum before, 'It's Jim Beam or me.' She doesn't want to replay that nightmare - especially now when it's such tough going for her husband.". . . A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him - but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months. . . Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, told The National Enquirer: "I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any program, like the President, have a hard time when stress gets to be great. "I think it's a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It's very frightening." http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/63426 AMERICA: GEORGE BUSH'S BATTERED WIFE [This hit home as it has long seemed to us that GWB was not only a dry drunk but abusive in his behavior - from blowing up frogs when he was a teenager to blowing up countries as an adult. Further, the unusual scarcity of his daughters from his life suggests that they may not have had a happy childhood with this man] Dear America As a friend of the family I can't sit back and watch you do this to yourself without saying something. Consider this a long distance intervention. Your man is no good. He treats you like crap, lies to you, abuses you, bullies you, exploits you, takes your money. As a friend I want to tell you that you deserve better. You deserve a person that treats you with respect, cares about your welfare, and your children's welfare, but that's not George and it never will be. Do you tell yourself that he'll stop, or that it won't get worse? He won't ever stop, every insult, injury and death he has caused are a line that once crossed will never be uncrossed. Forget the dream. You will never have the American dream with George. You have to forget about what might have been, what George might have been, and realize that at the end of the day you are what you do, and look at George's track record. Notice how he's alienated all your friends? Who can blame them, they can't understand why you stay with him when he treats you like shit and embarrasses you in front of everybody. The more his public behavior overshadows yours, The more doubt creeps over them, they wonder if they knew you as well as they thought they did. You seem to have changed - if you condone his behaviour - and your silence can create the impression that you do. . . Do you even recognise yourself anymore America? He is a drunken, coke-addled loser and he always will be, you should kick him out of your house today before he can destroy any more members of your family, your history, your culture, before he decimates your bank account so irretrievably that China and Saudi Arabia repossess all your stuff. . . It all comes down to you, America. I know noone likes other people passing comment on their relationships but this is an extreme situation. You are in very real danger, he is hurting you everyday and he is hurting us, your friends as well. But only you can make it stop. We are all rooting for you, although we don't get to talk to you very often anymore, because he cuts us off from you. We are on your side, we will all be over the moon the day you finally kick him out. You know he really should be thrown in jail for the things he has done to you. Him and all of his gangster friends. Please, please, do it America, you know I am right. If not for yourself then do it for your brothers and sisters and children. Do it before he kills any more of your family or anyone else's. We are all really worried for your welfare. Your friend, Gail http://12thharmonic.com/wordpress/index.php/2005/09/07/americas-battered-wife-syndrome/
BUSH'S THINKING REFLECTS MANY ASPECTS OF THE DRY-DRUNK KATHERINE VAN WORMER, IRISH TIMES - Brain studies reinforce what recovering alcoholics and their counselors have been saying for years; long-term alcohol and other drug use changes the chemistry of the brain These anomalies in brain patterns are associated with a rigidity in thinking. . . "Dry drunk" is a slang term used by members and supporters of Alcoholics Anonymous and substance abuse counselors to describe the recovering alcoholic who is no longer drinking, one who is dry, but whose thinking is clouded. Such an individual is said to be dry but not truly sober; such an individual tends to go to extremes. It was when I started noticing the extreme language that colored Mr Bush's speeches that I began t o wonder. First there were the terms - "crusade" and "infinite justice" that were later withdrawn. Next came "evildoers", "axis of evil", and "regime change", terms that have almost become cliches. Something about the polarized thinking and the obsessive repetition reminded me of many of the recovering alcoholics/addicts I had treated. Over the months, hundreds of people, many of them in recovery from alcoholism, have written "ah-ha" letters and provided additional insights to the hypothesis: "I spotted it right away - he's a dry-drunk," or "He needs to work on his issues." Consider the most commonly delineated traits of irrational thinking known as "the dry-drunk syndrome" and how closely they match the personality characteristics of George W. Bush. Exaggerated self-importance and grandiose behavior. . . All or nothing thinking. . . Obsessiveness. . . The man who knows George W. best, the person most familiar with his rashness of thought, recently sent him a message. In a speech at Tufts University, George Bush Snr emphasized the need for the US to maintain close ties with Europe and the UN. "You've got to reach out to the other person," he advised. If only George W. would. Katherine van Wormer Ph.D. is professor of social work at the University of Northern Iowa. She is co-author of Addiction Treatment: A Strength's Perspective WHERE IT ALL STARTED `WE WERE TERRIBLE TO ANIMALS,'
recalled [Bush pal Terry] Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind
the Bush borne turned into a small lake after a good rain, and
thousands of frogs would come out. `Everybody would get BB guns
and shoot them,' Throckmorton said. `Or we'd put firecrackers
in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.'- Nicholas D. Kristof,
Midland Life, TX BUSH HAS RECORD [From detonating frogs with firecrackers as a kid to torturing Afghan prisoners, George Bush has shown an interest in sadistic violence. Now David Martin sends along this from a few years back. RICHARD GOODING, STAR WEEKLY, July 27, 1999 - Presidential candidate George W. Bush once led a Yale fraternity that barbarically branded its new members on their backsides with a red-hot metal rod as part of a sadistic hazing practice. "I got branded and I didn't like it one bit," Professor Bradford Lee of the elite Naval War College in Newport, R.I.-an ex-football player and onetime member of Bush's Delta Epsilon Kappa fraternity-told STAR in an exclusive interview. "It did burn," he says, recalling the terrifying experience. "I think I still have the mark on me." A Star investigation has revealed that he was president of Delta Epsilon Kappa when the hazing scandal broke in the campus newspaper in the late '60s-leading to the fraternity being fined and the branding practice halted. Amazingly, Bush, now the governor of Texas, defended the illegal torture of the young fraternity pledges at the time as a harmless prank-insisting that it was comparable to "only a cigarette burn" which left "no scarring mark physically or mentally." But others said the branding resulted in a second-degree burn that left a half-inch scab in the shape of the Greek letter Delta. Lee-who still bears the mark 32 years later-is not sure who actually wielded the brand because the pledges were not allowed to look at their tormentors. "But I do know that George Bush was very active in all the fraternity activities then." Lee, who was a guard on the Yale football team, recalled that the branding came after "a long initiation that went on into the early morning hours." He says the idea was to wear you out so much that you allowed your bare flesh to be singed. "I was already tired from football practice earlier that day. I was so groggy I wasn't exactly sensitive to what they were up to. I wasn't very happy about it." . . . Bill Katz, now a community college teacher in northern New Jersey, told Star that the branding was done with "a wire coat hanger twisted into a triangle and heated up" in the fireplace. "They touched you just above the buttocks, in the small of the back," he says. . . . And Boston lawyer Franklin Levy said that to increase the fear of the moment, the older fraternity men first brandished an actual glowing hot branding iron-to make them think that was what awaited them. "When they burned me," Levy remembers, "I jumped a mile." Before the brandings, pledges had to endure hours of being kicked and a vicious round of tannings with wooden paddles-another practice that Yale has ruled taboo. "On that night," according to an account in the Yale Daily News in 1967, 'each pledge was forced to sit with his head between his legs, motionless, for two to five hours. "If he coughed, raised his hand or talked, he was kicked by an older brother." After all the beatings, recalled one fraternity member, the branding was almost a relief. In the wake of the Yale Daily News' expose of the fraternity's hazing, Bush, whose father was also a DKE at Yale, admitted the branding to the New York Times in November 1967. But Bush - whose college nickname was "Lip" for his Texas wisecracks - also ripped into Yale for being too "Haughty" to "allow this type of pledging to go on." ALAN BISBORT, AMERICAN POLITICS JOURNAL - Alcoholics Anonymous has a name for someone who is a drunk in every way except for the actual imbibing of spirits. They call that person a "dry drunk." This is not a judgmental term, nor should this be a judgmental topic in America, where there are, by even the most conservative estimates, 10 million adult alcoholics, and very few families that have not been touched, in one way or another, by this national scourge. This same scourge has, by his own admission, also touched the life of our Commander in Chief. . . Bush's past battles with the bottle are worth pondering at a time like this, one of the most dangerous in the nation's history. When a recovering alcoholic begins to engage in what AA calls "stinking thinking," he or she begins to exhibit the old attitudes and pathologies of their drinking years. These include an increase in anxiety, mild tremors, mild depression, disturbed sleep patterns, inability to think clearly, craving for junk food, irritability, sudden bursts of anger and unpredictable mood swings. According to AA literature, "Boredom and listlessness may alternate with intense feelings of resentment against family and friends, and explosive outbursts of violence." Bush said he was a "heavy drinker." But let's not be coy here. Anyone who has ever imbibed heavily over a long period of time knows that "heavy drinker" is the rich man's (or the politician's) code for alcoholic. How did he, at age 58, get so fumble-tongued, incapable of stringing more than two coherent sentences together, snippily irritable with anyone who dares disagree with him or even ask a question, poutily turning his back on the democratically elected president of one of our most important allies because of something one of his underlings said about him, listlessly in need of constant vacations and rest, dangerously obsessed with only one thing, to the exclusion of all other things (including an economy that is slowly sucking the life from the nation as well as the retirement savings of anyone reading these words)? Furthermore, why is Bush so eager to engage in violence and so incapable of explaining why? KATHERINE VAN WORMER, COUNTERPUNCH - What is the dry drunk syndrome? "Dry drunk" traits consist of: Exaggerated
self-importance and pomposity Clearly, George W. Bush has all these traits except exaggerated self importance. He may be pompous, especially with regard to international dealings, but his actual importance hardly can be exaggerated. His power, in fact, is such that if he collapses into paranoia, a large part of the world will collapse with him. Unfortunately, there are some indications of paranoia in statements such as the following: "We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends." The trait of projection is evidenced here as well, projection of the fact that we are ready to attack onto another nation which may not be so inclined. CAROL WOLMAN, MD, COUNTERPUNCH - Many people, inside and especially outside this country, believe that the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal path. As a board-certified psychiatrist, I feel it's my duty to share my understanding of his psychopathology. He's a complicated man, under tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the world at large. So the following is offered with humility and questioning, in the form of a differential diagnosis. From the Freudian point of view: Dubya may be acting out a classical Oedipal drama--overcome Daddy to get Mommy. By deposing Saddam, when his father did not, he may want to prove himself more worthy of his mother's love. His rationale that he is avenging the assassination attempt on George, Sr., may be a reaction formation - his way of hiding the true motive from himself. . . From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fourth Edition, Antisocial Personality Disorder--301.7 There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others since age 15 years as indicated by at least three of the following: 1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; 2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; 5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others; 7) lack of remorse by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated or stolen from others. . . Another possibility: Narcissistic personality disorder 301.81 1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance- exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements; 2) in preoccupied with fantasies of unliimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love; 3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people. . . JAMES RIDGEWAY, VILLAGE VOICE: To be an American ambassador to a foreign country, you usually have to be some rich person who contributed millions of dollars to the new president's campaign coffers. So there was nothing surprising when President Bush nominated Orange County, California, apartment landlord George Argyros as ambassador to Spain. After all, by his own account, Argyros collected $50 million for the Bush war chest. He oughta get something . . . What Dubya didn't say is that Argyros is under investigation by the California attorney general for the swindling of thousands of poor, middle-class, and immigrant tenants. According to an investigation by Anthony Pignataro of OC Weekly, a Voice sister paper, the nominee has for years systematically ripped off thousands of tenants by overcharging and shortchanging them. Argyros's lawyers and associates have strenuously denied committing any crimes. FOR THE FIRST TIME in American history, a high government official pardoned for criminal activity by one president has been appointed to a high government position by another. President Bush has named Elliot Abrams to a senior position at the White House National Security Council. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice announced that Abrams had been appointed to the position of senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations, a position that does not require Senate confirmation. Abrams was up to his eyeballs in the unconstitutional operation and international war crime known as Iran-Contra. And he was in it alongside such odious colleagues as Oliver North and William Walker. Abrahms was pardoned by George Bush Sr along with the likes of Caspar Weinberger and Robert McFarlane. Part of Abrams' job was to spin the Iran-Contra and spin he did. In 1987, US Rep. Jack Brooks told Abrams that he took "more pride in not knowing anything than anybody I ever saw." Replied Abrams, "I never said I had no idea about most of the things you said I said I had no idea about." Abrams was also involved in keeping Americans from understanding what was realy going on with the Central American death squads, including 70,000 killed in El Salvador, 100,000 in Guatemala. The appointment of the seedy Abrams is bad enough, but that Bush figured he could get away with it is a dismal sign of the state of honor in Washington. BRASS CHECK: On January 15, 1999, in the Kosovo village of Racak, Yugoslav and Serbian police forces were accused of carrying out a horrible massacre of civilians. William Walker, a U.S. diplomat in charge of the international monitoring force in Kosovo, went to the site with Western reporters and proclaimed that 45 people had been "killed in the massacre." Pictures of 40 bodies laid out in a village Mosque were put on the front page of all the major Western newspapers. Walker called it a "crime against humanity" by the Yugoslav government led by Slobodon Milosevic . . . William Walker was presented as the consummate neutral peace keeper. Why question his word? In fact, no major U.S. media outlet did question his account. William Walker, however, is not a neutral peace keeper . . . As a special assistant to Lt. Col. Oliver North and Assistant Secretary of State Eliot Abrams, Walker was a key operator in Reagan's White House operation to overthrow the Nicaraguan government in the 1980s. According to charges filed in U.S. district court by independent council Lawrence Walsh, Walker was responsible for setting up a phony humanitarian operation at an airbase in Ilopango, El Salvador. That "humanitarian" air base was used to run guns, ammunitions, and supplies to the fascist Contra mercenaries attacking the Nicaraguan Revolution. Walker was also the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador from 1988 to 1992 when military death squads murdered thousands of progressive workers, peasants, and young people. PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, MARCH 1995: When members of the elite faltered -- a Kissinger, Helms, McNamara, Abrams and so forth -- their peers moved quickly to protect, rehabilitate and restore them to the pantheon of the wise. Given that more than ten percent of the Council on Foreign Relations -- a sort of Elks Club for the tenured elite -- is composed of journalists, it is not surprising to find the latter often serving as EMTs, reviving some beloved source suffering a momentary attack of imperfection. This service was not, of course, provided to all. For example, surgeons general from the lesser ethnic groups could not expect rehabilitation, nor could individuals whose misdeeds were personal rather than merely an abrogation of the Constitution. All this was carried out with a numbing smugness. Like the Cromwell described in A Man for All Seasons, the prototypical member of the old elite possesses "a self conceit that can cradle gross crimes in the name of effective action." THOMAS A SCULLY, Bush's health care administrator wants to shove more Medicare patients into HMOs. Says Rep. Pete Stark: "In health care, as in energy policy, the philosophy of this administration seems to be that if you are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, you get assistance." Scully is a former lobbyist for corporate hospitals. MARY MCGRORY: [Elliott] Abrams was the pit bull for the [Reagan] administration's "better dead than red" policy on Central America. Despite his record, George W. Bush is giving him another chance. He has named him senior director of the National Security Council's office for democracy, human rights and international operations. The appointment signifies a step beyond Bush's in-your-face selections for Latin America. This one is in your eye, a signal to the right wing that there is nothing he will not do for it. Choosing Abrams makes laughable Bush's promise of increased civility and bipartisanship. Ditto his claims of being "a uniter, not a divider." Members of Congress remember Abrams's snarling appearances at committee hearings, defending death squads and dictators, denying massacres, lying about illegal U.S. activities in support of the Nicaraguan contras. Abrams sneered at his critics for their blindness and naiveté, or called them "vipers." His contempt for Congress was formalized in charges of withholding information from Congress brought by Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. Abrams evaded questions about a secret mission to extract $10 million in contra funds from the sultan of Brunei, and also about the contra supply plane that was shot down. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts, and was pardoned by the First George Bush at Christmas 1992. Congress will get no chance to register an opinion on his qualifications . . . The Abrams appointment follows two other provocative picks from one of the uglier chapters in American foreign policy. Otto Reich, a darling of the Cuban American Foundation and another Iran-contra figure, ran the Office of Public Diplomacy, a shady operation invented to subvert the Boland Amendment, banning aid to the contras . . . A third nomination that brings back the Iran-contra scandal is that of John Negroponte as ambassador to the United Nations. He is a different type, having served with distinction in many posts. The blot on his career was his service as ambassador in Honduras at the height of the contra activity, which, of course, was supervised by Oliver North at the White House. He was accused of concealing information about the guerrilla activities.MORE DAVID CORN, NATION: Bush the Second has tapped a number of Reagan/Bush alums who were involved in Iran/contra business for plum jobs: Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Otto Reich and John Negroponte. But Abrams's appointment--should it come to pass--would mark the most generous of rehabilitations. Not only did Abrams plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress about the Reagan Administration's contra program, he was also one of the fiercest ideological pugilists of the 1980s, a bad-boy diplomat wildly out of sync with Bush's gonna-change-the-tone rhetoric. Abrams, a Democrat turned Republican who married into the cranky Podhoretz neocon clan, billed himself as a "gladiator" for the Reagan Doctrine in Central America . . . After a contra resupply plane was shot down in 1986, Abrams, one of the coordinators of Reagan's pro-contra policy (along with the NSC's Oliver North and the CIA's Alan Fiers), appeared several times before Congressional committees and withheld information on the Administration's connection to the secret and private contra-support network. He also hid from Congress the fact that he had flown to London (using the name "Mr. Kenilworth") to solicit a $10 million contribution for the contras from the Sultan of Brunei. At a subsequent closed-door hearing, Democratic Senator Thomas Eagleton blasted Abrams for having misled legislators, noting that Abrams's misrepresentations could lead to "slammer time." Abrams disagreed, saying, "You've heard my testimony." Eagleton cut in: "I've heard it, and I want to puke." On another occasion, Republican Senator Dave Durenberger complained, "I wouldn't trust Elliott any further than I could throw Ollie North." Even after Abrams copped a plea with Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, he refused to concede that he'd done anything untoward. Abrams's Foggy Bottom services were not retained by the First Bush, but he did include Abrams in his lame-duck pardons of several Iran/contra wrongdoers. MORE DAN EGGEN, WASHINGTON POST: The Bible study begins each day at 8 a.m. sharp, with Attorney General John D. Ashcroft presiding. A group of employees gathers at the Main Justice building in Washington, either in his personal office or a conference room, to study Scripture and join Ashcroft in prayer . . . Within the massive Justice Department, with about 135,000 employees worldwide, some who do not share Ashcroft's Pentecostal Christian beliefs are discomfited by the daily prayer sessions -- particularly because they are conducted by the nation's chief law enforcement officer, entrusted with enforcing a Constitution that calls for the separation of church and state. " BRIAN BLOOMQUIST, NY POST - The Justice Department recently bought drapes to hide two mostly nude statues seen in the background during press conferences - but Attorney General John Ashcroft is denying he ordered the cover-up. "It's not something he thought about one way or the other. He's got better things to do," said Ashcroft's spokeswoman, Barbara Comstock. Comstock, who insisted Ashcroft is not offended by the statues, said the $8,000 draperies make for better TV pictures. FUN FACTS ABOUT JOHN ASHCROFT [Found in an article by Judy Bachrach in the current issue of Vanity Fair] Speaking at a Justice Department prayer meeting: "The law is not about forgiveness. It is oftentimes about vengeance, oftentimes about revenge." News that the ambassador to the Netherlands had calico cats upset Ashcroft's advance team, who knew their boss considered the animals 'instruments of the Devil/' Introducing his wife to women lawyers at Justice during Women's History Month, Ashcroft, according to one attendee, he describes her as 'the woman who taught him how to put dishes away. . . He said you should rotate your china, put your new plates on the bottom of the stack, so you don't wear them out." Ashcroft likes to have reading matter reduced, in the words of one former staffer, to a "paragraph of background and a paragraph of talking points." Receiving a 12-page report, Ashcroft said, "Do I get extra credit for reading all this?" Ashcroft used black prisoners at servants at the Missouri governor's mansion. During one dinner there, Ashcroft said, 'Women in the workforce have become so prevalent that a man's role has been reduced to a sperm donor.' From 1963 to 1969 he received seven military deferments. In 1998 the John Birch Society ranked him second in legislative scorecard. Governor Ashcroft told his lieutenant governor, Harriet Woods, "You have to promise you won't serve as governor in my absence." In return he might give her something more substantial to do in her job. She explained that such a deal would violate the law. "He blinked. On the other hand, he wasn't telling me or anybody when he left the state." Interviewing a candidate for head of Missouri's social services, Governor Ashcroft asked, "Mr. Offer, let me start by asking you if have the same sexual preference as most men?" He has supported ten additional amendments to the Constitution including one to make it easier to amend. He received the most negative votes ever cast by the Senate in opposition to his nomination as attorney general. In his memoirs, Ashcroft regularly compares himself to Christ, describing his campaign victories as 'resurrections' and his defeats as 'crucifixions..' DOUG THOMPSON, AMERICAN NEWSREEL - These days, it seems John Ashcroft is avoiding everyone: terrorists, members of Congress who have the gall to demand an explanation for his ignorance of the Constitution and even reporters from print publications. When Ashcroft went on the road to promote his rights-trampling USA Patriot Act, Secret Service agents were ordered to bar print Republicans from press briefings. "He is not talking to print," a perky female Secret Service Agent said as she barred a Philadelphia City Paper reporter. "Only talking to television." "I think it sucks, but if he wants to talk to TV, there's not much we can do," says Nick Fox, a New York Times national editor. "The president does that; I can't recall the AG doing it." But Jim Naughton, President of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, is less willing to accept Ashcroft's evasion of print media."I'm not sure Poynter has (or should have) a policy on attorneys general acting more like generals than attorneys," he says. "But I can't imagine anyone here thinking an employee of the public's should be barring any journalist from a press conference. If it had been an interview conducted by one of the networks you might legitimately have been excluded. But if it's a press conference that would seem to be open to the press. Duh." DAN EGGEN, WASHINGTON POST: The Bible study begins each day at 8 a.m. sharp, with Attorney General John D. Ashcroft presiding. A group of employees gathers at the Main Justice building in Washington, either in his personal office or a conference room, to study Scripture and join Ashcroft in prayer . . . Within the massive Justice Department, with about 135,000 employees worldwide, some who do not share Ashcroft's Pentecostal Christian beliefs are discomfited by the daily prayer sessions -- particularly because they are conducted by the nation's chief law enforcement officer, entrusted with enforcing a Constitution that calls for the separation of church and state. "The purpose of the Department of Justice is to do the business of the government, not to establish a religion," said a Justice attorney, who like other critics was unwilling to be identified by name. "It strikes me and a lot of others as offensive, disrespectful and unconstitutional. . . . It at least blurs the line, and it probably crosses it." "It's alienating," another lawyer said. "He's using public spaces to have a personally meaningful event to which I would not be welcome, nor would I feel welcome." . . The federal government's "Guidelines on Religious Exercise and Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace," issued in 1997 after bipartisan negotiations, say supervisors and department heads must be especially careful with religious activities or statements . . . Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office, said Ashcroft is at least violating the spirit of the federal rules on workplace prayer. "Ashcroft has a right to pray in office, but he does not have a right to implicitly or explicitly force others into praying with him," she said. "Ashcroft's the chief defender of the nation's civil liberties. He can't pretend to be just another citizen leading prayers." BEVERLEY LUMPKIN, ABC NEWS - The attorney general was fed up with having his picture taken during events in the Great Hall in front of semi-nude statues. He had ordered massive draperies to conceal the offending figures. But initially not only could the story not be confirmed - it was strongly denied. The Justice Department building was constructed during the 1930s as a WPA project, completed in 1934. The artwork and fittings were strongly influenced by the Art Deco movement. Much of the ornamentation in the building is made of aluminum, apparently a big Art Deco feature. The Great Hall is basically what it sounds like - a large, even grand, two-story room used for department events and ceremonies. The formal entrance up a winding stairway is adorned with murals depicting great figures in the history of law, including Moses, Hammurabi, and John Marshall. At the opposite end of the hall, on either side of the stage, are two enormous and stylized but largely naked aluminum statues. On the left, the female figure represents the Spirit of Justice; the male on the right is the Majesty of Justice. The male is clad in only a cloth draped over his essential parts; the female wears a sort of toga-style garment, but one breast is entirely exposed. She's been fondly referred to for years by at least some as "Minnie Lou." And she's the one the photographers seek out. The most famous pictures of all were shot when former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese proudly released the final report of his commission on pornography. . . last November [Ashcroft] and Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson staged a major event in the Great Hall, to announce their plans for restructuring the Justice Department to address the new challenge of fighting terrorism. Many papers the next day used a photo of the attorney general with - you guessed it - Minnie Lou and that breast right over his shoulder. According to my original tipster, that was the final straw for Ashcroft, and he ordered that the statues henceforth be draped. . . Well, I guess this is a lot of background to get to the point: the draperies have in fact been ordered. Minnie Lou and her mate now can only be imagined. The draperies installed last week at a cost of just over $8,000. And it turns out that they were indeed ordered by someone in the attorney general's office, who delivered the request to the Justice Management Division and asserted it was the attorney general's desire. I'm told she was the only person in the attorney general's office who knew about it. She's his advance person, and she said it was done for "aesthetic purposes" - she just thought it would look better when staging events in the Great Hall. MORE BRIAN BLOOMQUIST, NY POST - The Justice Department recently bought drapes to hide two mostly nude statues seen in the background during press conferences - but Attorney General John Ashcroft is denying he ordered the cover-up. "It's not something he thought about one way or the other. He's got better things to do," said Ashcroft's spokeswoman, Barbara Comstock. Comstock, who insisted Ashcroft is not offended by the statues, said the $8,000 draperies make for better TV pictures. MISSOURI COPS SAID ASHCROFT AGREED TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY" ON FORFEITURE LAW By Daniel Forbes Two Missouri police officials quoted then governor John Ashcroft as having told them he'd "`look the other way'" should they ignore an upcoming Missouri State Supreme Court ruling that might direct asset forfeiture monies to be distributed to local school boards in accordance with the state constitution. The statements were made independently and at different times by both a sheriff in uniform and a police chief at a meeting at the office of then US Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Jean Paul Bradshaw, a decade ago, according to Don Burger, then an official with the US Department of Justice. Representing Justice, Burger attended in his role as a community affairs specialist seeking to steer to Missouri schools and treatment programs some of the drug-bust money being illegally kept by police. John Ashcroft drapes himself in the mantle of "integrity." He used the word in reference to himself several times during his introduction by President-elect Bush as the Attorney General nominee. The repeated characterization fuels the oft-proclaimed notion that Sen. Ashcroft is a man of such moral rectitude that the nation can count on him to fully enforce all laws - no matter his personal views. During the first day of his Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Ashcroft declared, raising his right hand for emphasis, that, "When I swear to uphold the law, I will keep my oath, so help me God." Yet, during Sen. Ashcroft's tenure as governor of Missouri, he blithely told two senior law enforcement officials he would ignore a serious matter of law, according to Burger. Says Burger, recalling the meeting at Bradshaw's office in Kansas City, MO a decade ago, the two law enforcement officials said Gov. Ashcroft had told them he would "`look the other way'" should the police proceed to ignore a ruling about to emerge from the Missouri Supreme Court. The ruling, ultimately issued in November 1990, mid-way through Sen. Ashcroft's second term as governor, concerned a case brought by a local school board that argued that Missouri law enforcement must follow the state constitution and turn proceeds from asset forfeiture cases over to education rather than keep the money for themselves. Millions of dollars were at stake, money Missouri law enforcement agencies had used for years to buy everything from computers to radio systems to cars and guns. Now, with a ruling expected shortly, the cops were nervous that their well might run dry. But, according to Burger's recollection of statements by the two top cops, who spoke independently at different times during the meeting, police - especially the highway patrol that reports to the governor's office - need not fear interference from the same cabinet nominee who now pledges to rigorously and impartially enforce the nation's laws. Hosted by US Attorney Bradshaw, the meeting was attended by members of what was known informally as the Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee, says Burger. Among the items on the agenda was a discussion of the "problem of state law," he says - that is, the provision in Article IX, Section 7 of Missouri's constitution that requires "the clear proceeds of all penalties, forfeitures and fines collected hereafter for any breach of the penal laws of the state … shall be distributed annually to the schools of the several counties according to law." Referring to the sheriff and the police chief, Burger told the Review, "Both men stated at different times during the meeting that - based on their conversations with Governor Ashcroft - the governor said he would 'look the other way' specifically regarding the [Missouri] Supreme Court's ruling and asset seizures going to education. That was the terminology used by both persons." Burger adds that he remembers both individuals using the specific "look the other way" terminology because, "It struck me as an unusual reference regarding the applicability of funds to be set aside for education." In fact, says Burger, the remarks were salient enough, that he later jotted down the Ashcroft quote in the margins of a Dept. of Justice report he was reading. The governor's statement, in Burger's opinion, indicated that Missouri law enforcement agencies would continue, despite any state supreme court ruling, to "use asset forfeiture to divert money to sheriff and police department projects." Bradshaw, now in private practice in Kansas City, recalls no such statements by any police officials at any meeting he attended. Mindy Tucker, a spokesperson for the Bush/Cheney transition team said that ignoring a court ruling "is not a position ever held by Gov. Ashcroft." She based her statement, she said, on conversations with "people familiar with his positions on this." But, consider the disclosure last May by Karen Dillon, who's written an award-winning two-year series in the Kansas City Star on asset forfeiture issues: "In 1990, just a few days after the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that state forfeitures had to go to education in most cases, the US attorney for the Western District of Missouri wrote a letter to state and local law enforcement agencies. 'I know that all of you in law enforcement are in desperate need for additional financial resources,' wrote Jean Paul Bradshaw. He explained that police could bring seizures to a federal agency even if the agency had no involvement in the case. 'As most of you know, the money we share through our forfeiture program goes [directly] to the state or local law enforecment agency,' he wrote." The fruits of Ashcroft's alleged winking and Bradshaw's exhortation were harvested richly. There have been subsequent attempts in 1992, 1993, and last year in the Missouri legislature to strengthen the law that forfeitedassets be conveyed to education. Another attempt will be made in the upcoming session. A report by the staff of the US Senate Judiciary Committee; a 1998 federal district court case and Dillon's massive and continuing series in the Kansas City Star also suggest an end-run around the state constitutional requirements. City Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem of Kansas City, Alvin Brooks, is a former police detective and a charter board member of the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. He was also one of President Bush's "Thousand Points of Light," and, according to his bio, was recognized by William Bennett as "a front-line soldier in our war against drugs." Back in 1990 he was running the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime in Kansas City, which fought crime and drug abuse. During that time Brooks says he had many conversations with Don Burger, representing the Dept of Justice, about the mechanics of asset forfeiture and how to steer some of those funds to local drug treatment programs. He said his discussions with Burger focused on "how could we get law enforcement to bring some money back to the neighborhoods where the forfeitures were taking place." He adds, "Don did research on this and said here's what community groups should do to try to get some of this money." Told of Burger's allegations, Kevin Zeese, executive director of the Common Sense for Drug Policy Legislative Group opposing the Ashcroft nomination, says "Ashcroft told people to go ahead, to federalize it, I'll look the other way. That's an affirmative action, but one he tried to keep his fingerprints off." Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington Bureau, says that senators he has spoken to, including Russ Feingold (D-WI), report that Sen. Ashcroft has told his former Senate colleagues that he'll vigorously enforce the law without exception. But Shelton maintains that, "If indeed these allegations are true, it raises major, fundamental concerns about Mr. Ashcroft's ethical ability to serve as attorney general. It begs the question of how he will enforce laws that he doesn't agree with." The concept by which state and local law enforcement agencies still circumvent the Missouri Constitution is known as "adoptive forfeiture." Basically, the cops call in federal agents, typically DEA agents, and have them "adopt" the case. Stopping a car on Interstate 70, for instance, and finding drugs and a quantity of cash, the Missouri Highway Patrol declares that it has detained the assets (often including the car itself), but has not "seized" them. It leaves that to the DEA. Then, according to federal guidelines, the feds keep 20% of the proceeds and, in effect, launder the remainder back to the local authorities; often, several jurisdictions will slice up the pie. Everyone but school kids is happy. Quoting the Kansas City Star, the Senate Judiciary Committee report quotes one officer as saying, "We don't deal in state forfeitures at all, because law enforcement doesn't derive any revenues from that." Evidence that the tactic continues is found in a concurring opinion issued by a federal judge in the Eight Circuit in 1998, who found that the Missouri Highway Patrol and the DEA "successfully conspired to violate the Missouri Constitution." James D. Worthington, a partner in the Lexington, MO, law firm of Aull, Sherman, Worthington, Giorza and Hamilton, represented the local school board in the 1990 case. He says the case was prompted by press reports of three separate forfeitures of approximately $1 million each in a particular county, and the school board in Odessa reasoned that surely they should have received some funds. After the court ruling, says Worthington, police agencies indicated they would comply. "But then they proceeded with a sleight of hand, a bait and switch, a calling the feds down to have the feds 'seize' the money. It's been nothing but organized blackmail, graft and corruption." Don Burger joined Justice in 1968, recruited by Ramsey Clark to spend a career working primarily to foster improved relations among the many different shades of Americans. He served the final years of a twenty-two year career based in Kansas City. Retired from federal service, he's now a consultant on civil rights issues. Atkins Warren is now regional director of the Dept. of Justice for the states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, and he worked with Burger for many years in Washington. "He was a very good employee," said Warren. "He did a lot to resolve community conflict." Warren termed Burger "credible," then added, "He was excellent." US Rep. Jim Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, got to know Burger through their work with the National Association of Human Rights Workers; Rep. Clyburn is a past president and Burger served a term as national secretary. (Burger was also president of his government employees union local.) Rep. Clyburn, who opposes the Ashcroft nomination, says, "Burger was always a straight shooter with me. I never had any dealings with him that make me question whether he was a straight shooter or not." Leonard Zeskind, formerly research director for the anti-Klan, Atlanta-based Center for Democratic Renewal, worked with Burger combating hate crimes and white supremacy organizations such as the Covenant Sword and Arm of the Lord in rural Missouri. Currently writing a book for Farrar, Strauss, Giroux on white nationalist groups and a former McArthur Foundation "genius" award winner, Zeskind declares Burger, "a reasonable guy, a nice, smart guy." In fact, Burger is such a straight arrow, he actually referred a potential favorable witness on Sen. Ashcroft's behalf to Missouri Senator Kit Bond. With accusations of racism hounding Sen. Ashcroft, Burger says he referred an African-American woman to Sen. Bond who was anxious to speak favorably of her experience at Evangel University in Springfield, MO, the college run by Ashcroft's father. Marlene Henderson confirms that last Friday, Burger called both Sen. Bond's Missouri and Washington offices on her behalf. Burger says he's fairly agnostic on Ashcroft's nomination, but that he's spent a career trying to develop funding for drug treatment, among other things, and wants to call attention to where seized assets are still being directed. New York freelancer
Daniel
Forbes
testified before both the US. Senate and the House of Representatives
regarding his series in Salon on sub rosa White House payments
to television networks and magazines rewarding anti-drug content.
A subsequent Salon article detailed the media campaign's origins
as an attempt to influence voters on state medical marijuana
initiatives. ANN MCFEATTERS, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE - And now, for something completely different, to borrow a phrase from Monty Python. The three earnest young men burdened with plastic bags came to the office bearing food. Pretzels with seeds. A snack bar. An energy bar. Tortilla chips. Never mind the caloric sin. We're talking serious evil here. Or so the government says. Unless you are an avid reader of the Federal Register and perused the tiny print of almost undecipherable bureaucratese on pages 51,539 through 51,544, you might have missed it - but the government has returned to normal. The Drug Enforcement Administration, under the direction of Asa Hutchinson, the former GOP congressman from Arkansas, has announced rules to ban certain brands of a wide variety of foods - "beer, cheese, coffee, corn chips, energy drink, flour, ice cream, snack bars, salad oil, soda and veggie burgers" - if they contain trace amounts of THC. THC, as those who came to the age of majority in the 1960s know well, is tetrahydrocannabinols. As DEA succinctly explains: "That's the hallucinogenic substance in marijuana that causes the psychoactive effect or high." The THC found in certain brands of the above-mentioned food comes from hempseeds and hempseed oil, popular with some so-called "natural food" manufacturers because they are high in protein and serve as a fatty acid supplement - "good fats" that doctors like. But DEA says such foods are now controlled substances illegal for everyone. Makers of foods with hempseeds or oil, with $5 million in annual sales, argue that the amount of THC is so infinitesimal that inhumanly high consumption of them would be required to get high. They liken it to getting a buzz from eating the opiate-containing poppy seeds on bagels or the alcohol in orange juice. But the Controlled Substances Act says that any consumption of THC is forbidden. And any food that contains it is no longer to be sold, distributed or eaten. Says the DEA: "If you wish to err on the side of caution, you may freely dispose of the product. As stated in the rules that DEA published on Oct. 9, 2001, anyone who has purchased a food or beverage product that contains THC has 120 days (until Feb. 6, 2002) to dispose of the product without penalty under federal law." . . . The DEA, in its wisdom, notes that bird seed with cannabis seeds, clothing such as hats, shirt and shoes, cosmetics, lotion, paper, rope, twine and, yes, shampoo and soap, which also can contain hemp, are not illegal. "Based on the information currently available, DEA believes that [such products] do not cause THC to enter the human body and are therefore legal." . . . MORE MARA LEVERITT, ARKANSAS TIMES: Some strange things happened in [Asa] Hutchinson's district while he was federal prosecutor that he doesn't mention in his speeches. Specifically, a man identified by federal agents as "a documented, major narcotics trafficker" was using facilities at an airport in Hutchinson's district for "storage, maintenance, and modification" of his drug-running aircraft, throughout most of Hutchinson's tenure. The man was Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal. For the last four years of his life - and throughout Hutchinson's term as U.S. attorney - his base of operations was Mena, Arkansas. In 1982, the year that Hutchinson took office as U.S. attorney and Seal moved to Mena, federal officials were already aware that he controlled "an international smuggling organization" that was "extremely well organized and extensive." Agents for the DEA, FBI, U.S. Customs, and IRS were watching him. They brought Hutchinson evidence that Seal was "involved in narcotics trafficking and the laundering of funds derived from such trafficking." . . . My interest in the relationship between Seal and Hutchinson was piqued as I became aware of how heavily drug prosecutions fell on street- and mid-level dealers, while smugglers like Seal, who imported drugs by the ton, rarely ended up in prison. So when rumors surfaced about Seal and his organization, and how they had managed for years to avoid prison, even though the extent of their activities was well known to drug authorities, I wanted to know more. But getting the story has not been easy. In the early 1990s, I asked Hutchinson about Barry Seal and his associates at Mena. Hutchinson provided no information, and politely dismissed the complaints that had arisen by then about his failure to prosecute Seal. He said he had already resigned as U.S. attorney by the time the matter arose . . . I believe that if this country is going to fight a long and costly war, the war's leaders have an obligation to report faithfully on its battles. The incidents that surrounded Seal constituted a major battle. But the faithful report has been missing. For more than 15 years, U.S. government officials, including Hutchinson, who were close to the events have maintained a stony silence . . LOTS MORE ACCORDING TO POLICE SOURCES in Arkansas, Bush's reported nominee to head the DEA, Asa Hutchinson, knew about the extensive drug importation at Mena during the 1980s but looked the other way. Hutchinson was replaced by Mike Fitzhugh who was reluctant to let investigators Russell Welch of the state police and William Duncan of the IRS present evidence of money-laundry to a grand jury. According to a memo obtained later by Arkansas Times report Mara Leveritt, an FBI agent in Hot Springs notifies the agent in charge of the Little Rock office that Fitzhugh would be "withholding presentation" about the investigation at Mena from the grand jury. The memo is dated days before notorious durg trafficker Barry Seal's murder, and a month before he was to come to Arkansas to appear before that same grand jury. The agent in Hot Springs further reports that Fitzhugh "advised that he will not utilize Seal as a government prosecution witness in view of his lack of credibility in other mitigating circumstances." Wrote Leverrit, "For almost three years, a federal grand jury in the Western District of Arkansas considered questions about drug-running, money-laundering, and illegal airplane modification - all of which investigators believed were being conducted at the Mena airport. But Fitzhugh reportedly focused only on the drug-running allegations, the aspect of the case the jurors felt would be the most difficult one to prove about anyone except Seal, and he, by then, was dead. According to statements from one of the jurors, Fitzhugh refused to consider the money laundering or conspiracy charges, for both of which the jurors believed evidence was substantial. 'We asked him about it,' the juror said, "and it was like just blown off. We were never given a straight answer.' Fitzhugh has denied having stymied the grand jury, but he has never explained why, in the three years it met, Welch and Duncan, the central investigators in the case, were never called to testify." IN 1995, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR magazine published an article by L.D. Brown, a former member of Clinton's Arkansas State Police security detail, in which he described participating in two secret flights from Mena in 1984, during which M-16 rifles were traded to Nicaraguan Contra rebels in exchange for cocaine. Brown also claims that Clinton knew of the activity. Writes Mara Leveritt in the Arkansas Times: "That announcement spurred Fort Smith lawyer Asa Hutchinson, chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, to request yet another congressional inquiry into long-standing allegations of money-laundering at Mena. Hutchinson was the the U.S. attorney for the western district of Arkansas when investigators first presented evidence supporting those allegations. In an argument disputed by police investigators, Hutchinson claims he left office before the evidence was well established. Since he harbors political ambitions, he has an interest in clearing his name." FROM A CONGRESSIONAL DEPOSITION from IRS investigator William Duncan: Q. Would you
describe the nature of your instructions and the manner in which
you carried out those instructions as they relate to activities
surrounding the Mena Airport matter? * * * * * Q. What did you
do with the evidence of money laundering that you gathered from
your investigation? ARI EXPLAINS IT ALL ||| RUSSELL MOKHIBER - Ari, you said the other day that the United States is "set in stone against military coups of any kind." And yet, there is a long history of the United States organizing coups against democratically elected leaders, including, Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile and Lumumba in the Congo. So, when you said we are "set in stone against military coups of any kind," were you announcing a new policy? ARI FLEISCHER: Russell, I think the examples you use are interesting. I think when you talked about Iran, you just went back to 1954. President Bush came into office here in 2001. And one of the great prides and success stories of American politics has been that in the last 20 years, there has been a wonderful sea change in Central and South America, brought in large part, as a result of Otto Reich and Elliot Abrams and others -- Ronald Reagan, George Bush -- who worked very hard to bring democracy to the region. And as a result, there is a difference in the military in those regions. ||| TOM TURNIPSEED, COUNTER PUNCH - Reich is a right-wing Cuban-American obsessed with overthrowing Fidel Castro's regime and is also a big political supporter of President Bush's brother and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who needs strong support from Cubans in Florida in his re-election bid this year. Reich, along with fellow Reagan administration cohorts, Elliott Abrams and John Negroponte, were discredited for their covert activities and false assertions when the United States intervened in Central America in the 1980's and '90s, but have been re-instated in prominent positions in the second Bush administration. They abhor Latin-American governments that are elected by the poor and working class people, like the Chavez government in Venezuela and the deposed Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra scandal, but has been remarkably rehabilitated and recycled back into the second Bush administration as head of the "Office of Democracy and Human Rights." Negroponte was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations last September in spite of being implicated as a friend of Honduran death squad leaders who committed atrocities against the people of Honduras while he was the U.S. Ambassador there. The most recent resurrection of this trio of right-wing renegades is the appointment of Otto Reich as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs . . . On September 30, 1987 a Republican appointed comptroller general of the U.S. found that Reich had done things as director of the OPD that were "prohibited, covert propaganda activities, "beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities...." WASHINGTON POST: Sheriff [Ari] Fleischer was on duty Thursday and upset with Houston Chronicle reporter Bennett Roth. Bush that morning urged parents to talk more to their kids about the dangers of drugs. Roth, at Fleischer's daily briefing, asked: "Ari, the president talked about parental involvement today. How much has he talked to his own daughters about both drugs and drinking? And given the fact that his own daughter was cited for underage drinking, isn't that a sign that there's only so much effect that a parent can have on their children's behavior?" Fleischer responded brusquely: "No, I think, frankly, there are some issues where I think it's very important for you all in the press corps to recognize that he is the president of the United States; he's also a father. And the press corps has been very respectful in the past of treating family matters with privacy, and I'm certain that you're going to do so again. I hope so." Fleischer later called Roth to chastise him, telling him his question had been "noted in the building." <> Noriega JOEL SKOUSEN'S WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF: [Robert Mueller] was responsible for the prosecution of Gen. Manuel Noriega of Panama, who was the CIA's main money launderer for CIA operations in Panama. Even Congress knew of Noriega's CIA connections. Senator Kerry said that Noriega "had been on the payroll and an employee of the CIA for many, many, many years" Noriega was taken down by the CIA and prosecuted because he was found to be taking a much larger cut out of CIA drug profits than was agreed upon. During the trial, the presiding judge ruled that Noriega could not enter into evidence any documents proving his relationship to the CIA over the years. Mueller helped cover up this major issue by silencing Noriega . . . Mueller presided over the prosecution of John Gotti, the alleged Mafia head of the Gambino family group. CIA agent Richard Beneke, in response to a question of whether or not the Gotti family had ties to the CIA, testified, "Yes. As far back as 1968 and early 1969, we had begun to launder money from organized crime families in New York. At that time, Mr. Gotti was an up and coming member of one of the families. We used to wash their money out overseas and put it in Switzerland in nice, safe places for them."We do not know why the government turned on Gotti as a partner in crime. Perhaps he was also found guilty of skimming too much off the top. <> The BNL investigation [Mueller was a top Justice Department official as the BNL fiasco unfolded. The full story of this seedy period has yet to emerge] GULF WEB: The focus of [Rep. Henry] Gonzalez's investigation was a massive $5.5 billion bank fraud that the Justice Department pinned on Christopher Drogoul, the lowly Atlanta branch manager of Italy's state-owned Banca Nazionale del Lavom. Benefiting from U.S. government export credit guarantees, the Atlantic bank lent the money to companies all over world that were supplying Saddam Hussein with weapons manufacturing gear and other goods. In his defense, Drogoul - backed by Gonzalez - claimed he was merely the instrument of a secret U.S. policy to aid Saddam Hussein. Rejecting that notion, the Justice Department indicted Drogoul on 347 counts of fraud and related charges in 1991. As the presidential campaign heated up, Gonzalez bombarded the White House, the State Department, and the intelligence agencies with subpoenas, obtaining reams of sensitive diplomatic cables and internal memos documenting the U.S. "tilt" toward Iraq. It was these documents (as well as Brent Scowcroft's secret trip to China only weeks after the Tianananmen massacre in June 1988) that prompted Bill Clinton to charge, during the final days of the campaign, that President Bush had been "coddling dictators." Nearly four years and several grand juries later, however, the Clinton administration has swept its "Iraqgate" investigation under the rug. The Final Report, issued by attorney general Janet Reno on January 17, 1995, and written by Reno deputy John Hogan, amounts to little more than a whitewash of the entire affair. In every case it examined, the report concluded there had been no violation of law. And in a classified addendum, subsequently rendered public, the intelligence community and the executive branch were exonerated of having "illegally armed Iraq," despite extensive evidence of intelligence community involvement unearthed by the Gonzalez investigation and the U.S. Customs Service. SAM SMITH, SHADOWS OF HOPE, 1994: [Clinton] appears willing to ignore the great residue of Reagan-Bush offenses, especially those growing out of the war on drugs and attempts to gag and intimidate government and defense workers. And he seems similarly disinterested in unclosed cases of political racketeering such as those involving BCCI and BNL. Said one activist lawyer who has met with Attorney General Reno: "She's closing her ears to all of that." Reno, who was clearly more interested in protecting law enforcement agencies than in finding the truth about the Waco massacre, also early bought the Bush administration line in the BNL bank case. She agreed to a plea bargain by Christopher P. Drogoul, the former Atlanta manager of the Italian bank who had claimed that US intelligence officials were aware of loans made to Iraq. Reno declared that she did not think the case had been mishandled by the Bush administration, despite a federal judge's charge that Drogoul and his Atlanta bank colleagues were "pawns and bit players" in a secret deal to provide arms for Iraq and that the Clinton administration's exoneration of its predecessors was only possible "in never-never land." INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL LEADERSHIP, TUFTS: Despite Iraq's bad credit rating, the US administration allowed Iraq to take out loans under the Food Aid program. Christopher Drogoul, head of the BNL branch in Atlanta, borrowed billions of dollars from other banks, which was then lent to Iraq at a slightly higher interest rate. It was this money, many allege, that enabled Iraq to build its ballistic missile and nuclear weapon programs. The U.S. government reportedly agreed to act as a guarantor on these loans. PETER MANTIUS, ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, SEP 13,1992: The U.S. Justice Department for 18 months withheld the names of companies that financed exports to Iraq through an Atlanta branch bank, in order to protect the companies from being unfairly linked to Iraqi weapons programs. But one company, Matrix Churchill Ltd., used the money to ship Iraq machinery to manufacture fuses for cluster bombs, "smart" rockets and mortars, newly released documents, blueprints and interviews with congressional investigators show. A second company, called XYZ Options Inc., used $14 million from the Atlanta bank to build a machining plant at Iraq's Al-Atheer nuclear weapons complex. U.N. arms inspectors were so convinced of its military purpose that they destroyed it after the Persian Gulf War, according to Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D-Texas). A third company, Servaas Inc., used $40 million arranged through the Atlanta bank to build a plant to recycle tons of spent brass artillery shells fired by Iraqi gunners. A fourth, Associated Instruments Distributors Inc. of Norcross, used its $12.1 million to ship machine tools to the Huteen munitions complex outside Baghdad. Rep. Charlie Rose (D-N.C.) said the documents detailing Matrix Churchill's exports of arms manufacturing equipment are the clearest evidence to date linking the Atlanta branch of Italy's Banca Nazionale del Lavoro with Iraq's arms buildup before its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. When the Atlanta branch office was raided by the FBI in August 1989, investigators uncovered $5 billion in unreported loans to Iraq and touched off an international scandal . . . From the time it indicted Drogoul on the day after the Persian Gulf War ended until this month, the Justice Department sheltered exporters who received BNL-Atlanta financing from the stigma of being associated with arms deals with Iraq. Justice Department officials in Washington would not discuss their handling of the companies, referring all questions about the case Friday to the Atlanta U.S. attorney's office. The Atlanta U.S. attorney's office did not respond to requests for comment. CHRISTOPHER DROGOUL STATEMENT TO HOUSE BANKING COMMITTEE: My efforts at cooperation with the US Attorney's office were frustrated by their continued unwillingness to allow me to tell them the truth. They would pose a question, and when I began to tell them an answer which was inconsistent with their theory of the case, they would either say we're not interested, or you're lying. My then attorney kept pulling me out of the room and warning me to just say what they want to hear, so you can get them to write a letter seeking a downward departure in my sentence. I finally accepted this premise and limited my responses to say yes, you're right. REP HENRY GONZALEZ, HOUSE FLOOR: In order to learn more about Mr. Kissinger's role at BNL, [House Banking Committee] investigators contacted an attorney representing BNL in the United States and asked him to contact BNL in Rome. The BNL employee in Rome told BNL's attorney the following: Mr. Kissinger has been a member of the BNL International Advisory Board since 1985. Mr. Kissinger is paid $10,000 for appearing at an Advisory Board meeting and he is paid extra for speaking at BNL functions. It is important to bring these facts out because BNL is owned by the Italian government . . . Mr. Kissinger supposedly did not resign his BNL post until over 18 months after the BNL scandal became public in August 1989. Another interesting point to note is the timing of Mr. Kissinger's supposed resignation from BNL on February 22, 1991. That date is just days before the Justice Department announced a 347 count indictment against the former employees of BNL after an exhaustive 18-month investigation. This is quite a coincidence. BNL was actually a client of Kissinger Associates at the same time BNL's former employees in Atlanta were providing Iraq with billions in unreported loans. ROBERT MUELLER, Bush's apparent choice for head of the FBI, was involved in the shutting down of the BCCI investigation in this country. The failure to investigate the world's greatest financial scandal properly was probably the biggest dive ever taken by U.S. prosecutors and other law enforcement officials. WASHINGTON POST, MARCH 19,2001: The U.S. Sentencing Commission is fashioning a significant increase in penalties for people who import or sell "ecstasy," a move that would elevate the party pill used by hundreds of thousands of adolescents into the upper echelons of illegal drugs. Responding to a command from Congress, the commission is considering proposals that would make trafficking in ecstasy a more serious offense than dealing powder cocaine. Medical researchers opposed the step yesterday, testifying that ecstasy -- its purest form is known as MDMA -- is not as dangerous as cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine. "MDMA is less likely to cause violence than alcohol, less addictive than cocaine or tobacco and less deadly than heroin," said New York University psychiatrist Julie Holland, who works in Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric emergency room. "I see alcoholics and crack addicts every time I go to work. I do not see people whose lives have been ruined by MDMA." . . . Ecstasy is "quickly becoming one of the most abused drugs in the United States," Robert S. Mueller, acting deputy attorney general, testified yesterday. "The damage this drug can produce is significant and long-term," said Mueller, once the District's chief homicide prosecutor. "We have an opportunity to stop this growing problem before it becomes an epidemic, and the proposal put forth by the commission would very much help." ||||||| All that many reporters need to know about a law enforcement appointee is that he is an ex-marine (the journalistic equivalent of discovering that a mass murderer is a 'loner.') The word immediately goes into the headline, and the hack's work is done, witness the Washington Post: "Ex-Marine Is Praised as Tough, Skilled." Unfortunately, in the case of Bush's nominee to head the FBI, this is not quite enough. The appointment raises long dormant questions about the biggest financial scandal in world history and the biggest botched crime inquiry in American history - for Robert Mueller was at the center with those who were meant to be investigating and prosecuting the crimes of BCCI in the United States. While many of the scandal's international aspects were pursued, the American participants got off largely scot-free. Clark Clifford and Robert Altman were indicted on charges of engaging in fraud and accepting $40 million in bribes. They spent a lot in lawyer's fees but in the end charges were dropped against Clifford because of his age and health and Altman was acquitted. As far as Mueller & Company were concerned there were no other significant targets; apparently BCCI just growed. A journalist who followed the story closely was asked how many Washington |
THE BUSH INDEX