Middle America

Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq, Afghanistan: BBC - Yahoo! News

2005-10-07T05:06:00.000-07:00

Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq, Afghanistan: BBC - Yahoo! News: "Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq, Afghanistan: BBC Thu Oct 6, 6:05 PM ET

LONDON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.

Bush made the claim when he met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and then foreign minister Nabil Shaath in June 2003, the ministers told the documentary series to be broadcast in Britain later this month.

The US leader also told them he had been ordered by God to create a Palestinian state, the ministers said.

Shaath, now the Palestinian information minister, said: " President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God.

'God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan'.'

"And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq...' And I did.

"'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God I'm gonna do it'," said Shaath.

Abbas, who was also at the meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, recalled how the president told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation.

"So I will get you a Palestinian state."

A BBC spokesman said the content of the programme had been put to the White House but it had refused to comment on a private conversation.

The three-part series, "Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs", charts the attempts to bring peace to the Middle East, from former US president Bill Clinton's peace talks in 1999-2000 to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip.

The programme speaks to presidents and prime ministers, their generals and ministers, about what happened behind closed doors as the peace talks failed and the intifada grew.

The series is due to be screened in Britain on October 10, 17 and 24."

OfficialWire: Bush Drinking Again

2005-09-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

Bush Drinking Again

Pressures of Office and falling polls knock President off the wagon
by OfficialWire NewsDesk

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- (OfficialWire) -- 09/23/05 -- According to the National Enquirer George W. Bush is sneaking shots behind his wife's back, while many of his staff know he's drinking again.

Enquirer reporters, Jennifer Luce and Don Gentile, quoting 'family sources' detail 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.

His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."

Bush claims to have given up the drink after his 40th birthday, but according to a Washington source "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."

The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. "And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn't go out of control."

Substance abuse is no stranger to Bush. During the 2000 presidential campaign, there were also persistent questions about past cocaine use. Eventually Bush denied using cocaine after 1992, then quickly extended the cocaine-free period back to 1974, when he was 28.

Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, said: "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."

Salena Zito Takes Cheap Shots at a Good Man - PittsburghLIVE.com

2005-09-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

Where's the za-za-za-ZOOM? - PittsburghLIVE.com: "Where's the za-za-za-ZOOM?

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By Salena Zito
Sunday, September 4, 2005

The power brokers of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party last winter unleashed upon the electorate their version of a demigod.
Seemingly out of nowhere came freshly minted state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr.

Billed as a savior who would peel a U.S. Senate seat from the hands of Rick Santorum, he was thrust into the spotlight as the most likely Democrat resurrecter in the country.

In theory it was a brilliant move. Casey, a Pennsylvania brand name, had just clinched a landslide victory for treasurer. He had the backing of the Beltway leadership, the nod from the MoveOn.org "progressives" and over-the-top enthusiasm from his one-time nemesis, Ed Rendell.

Thus was born the perfect political triangulation.

But we all know there is no such thing as perfect; this is politics, not Walgreens.

Most of Bobby Casey's detractors have pointed to his obvious vulnerability -- he lacks a message. But there is a deeper problem: If he had a message, he'd lack the ability to deliver it.

Casey suffers from a fatal political flaw. He's dull. Al Gore dull. Joe Lieberman dull. And most of us can agree that the only thing that kept John Kerry from putting us all in a coma was anticipating what Teresa would say next.

It's quite different with Casey's opponent, Rick Santorum. Love him or hate him, he's a man who overachieves and gets results. Casey is well-liked by most but commands little respect let alone a political pulse.

Santorum cut his teeth winning tough battles. From his first gutsy run for Congress in 1990 -- taking down Doug Walgren -- to his campaign against Harris Wofford for the Senate, Santorum never has backed away from a challenge or controversy.

Santorum's positions may not always win a popularity poll but they always send a clear and concise message. No one ever has to question where Rick Santorum stands on an issue; he's the first to tell you.

Contrast that with Casey, who ran for state auditor general because, in his own words, his dad did. He was re-elected seamlessly and in 2004 was elected state treasurer. Casey probably could run for any state row office and win it on filing day. These races are more about name ID than anything else.

Conversely, when Casey ran for governor, he flat-lined. He was directionless, issueless and defenseless. He allowed the labor unions to highjack his campaign and message while he sputtered pathetically on communicating a new direction for Pennsylvania. In the end, he had no defense for the mean-spirited personal attack ads that he ran against Rendell.

Democrats gravitated toward Casey for U.S. Senate because they learned they could not just be the party of Michael Moore and Ted Kennedy. Some of those "red voters" used to be true blue. In the Northeast and Midwest they are known as Reagan Democrats. In the South, they are Christians who vote their beliefs.

Casey cannot rescue a Mudville Party by engaging in the same mudslinging that he used against Rendell. The real problem this cycle for Casey and the Democratic Party is that their hero is well-known, liked and presentable, but still has no message. Couple that with a lackluster delivery and an all-star he never will be.

Voters want za-za-za-ZOOM. That is why they gravitate to personalities like Santorum and Rendell.

So forget the polls, analysts and talking heads. Watch the personalities of the candidates and listen to what they say about the issues. That will decide the outcome of next year's race.

For Bob Casey, spring training is about to end; it's time to see if he is ready to bat in the majors. But he'll need some political Viagra to perk up his decidedly za-za-za-less zoom.

Salena Zito, a political consultant who has worked for both Democrats and Republicans, lives in Mt. Lebanon. E-mail her at: salena@mixermail.com."

Former CIA Director Tenet Threatens Disclosures?

2005-09-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

Former CIA Director Tenet Threatens Disclosures?: "With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...

Friday, Sept. 2, 2005 11:00 a.m. EDT
Former CIA Director Tenet Threatens Disclosures?

Former CIA director George Tenet, said to be the target of what the Washington Times called "a scathing report by Inspector General John Helgerson” - may go public with embarrassing disclosures about the Bush administration and its actions leading up to Sept. 11, 2001.

The CIA report, prepared as the result of a 17-month investigation by a team of 11 CIA officials, blames Tenet and several top CIA officials for its failure pre-9/11 to deal with al-Qaida.

But former Reagan White House aide and intelligence expert John B. Roberts II, quoting an anonymous source close to Tenet, wrote in Thursday's Washington Times that the former chief spook has no intention of taking it lying down.

The report, delivered to Congress this week, recommends punitive sanctions against Tenet, former Deputy Director of Operations James L. Pavitt and former counter-terrorist center head J. Cofer Black.

Roberts writes, "George Tenet is not going to let himself become the fall guy for the September 11th intelligence failures, according to a former intelligence officer and a source friendly to Mr. Tenet.”

In retaliation, Roberts says that Tenet may turn the tables and put the blame on President Bush.

Tenet, he claims, has already written a fiery, 20-page, "tightly knitted rebuttal” to the Inspector General's report. But Tenet's response has been marked "classified," in contrast to usual CIA practice. Also unavailable to the public is the report itself.

Roberts says Tenet's decision to strike back could be very bad news for the President.

Wrote Roberts, "Mr. Tenet's decision to defend himself against the charges in the report poses a potential crisis for the White House.

"According to a former clandestine services officer, the former CIA director turned down a publisher's $4.5 million book offer because he didn't want to embarrass the White House by rehashing the failure to prevent September 11 and the flawed intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.”

Quoting a "knowledgeable source,” Roberts wrote that Tenet "had a ‘wink and a nod’ understanding with the White House that he wouldn't be scapegoated for intelligence failings.”

Roberts claims a "deal" was made between Tenet and Bush, one that was sealed with the President’s award of the Presidential Freedom Medal to the former CIA head.

In his rebuttal, Tenet, Roberts warns, "treads perilously close to affirming the account of Richard Clarke, the former NSC terrorism official who claimed the Bush administration's had delayed adopting a strategy against al-Qaida."

Current CIA Director Porter Goss is between a rock and a hard place, according to Roberts, who explains that Goss will be criticized for covering up if he does nothing. But if he follows the IG's recommendation to convene formal hearings as a prelude to sanctions, Tenet himself may go public to defend his reputation by damaging the President and his administration.

Roberts concludes: "The $4.5 million book offer may soon be back on the table, and this time Mr. Tenet might take it.”"

The Iraqi Jewish Archive Harold Rhode's and Judith Miller's Little Charity Project

2005-08-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

The Iraqi Jewish Archive: "The Iraqi Jewish Archive
Preservation Report

October 2, 2003

Background

Rare, historic and modern books, documents and parchment scrolls pertaining to the Iraqi Jewish community were found in the flooded basement of the Iraqi Intelligence (Mukhabahrat) headquarters in Baghdad in early May 2003. Upon removal from the basement, the wet materials (known as the Iraqi Jewish Archive) were packed into sacks and transported to a nearby location where they were partially dried. Dr. Harold Rhode, expert in Middle Eastern and Islamic Affairs, Department of Net Assessment, Office of the Secretary of Defense, provided a general review and initial sorting of the contents during the retrieval process, after which the materials were placed in 27 metal trunks. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) arranged for the materials to be frozen, which served to stabilize the condition and eliminate further mold growth.

At the request of the Coalition Provisional Authority, conservators from the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) traveled to Baghdad June 20-23 to assess the condition of the materials and develop recommendations for their preservation. The following report outlines the preservation action plan and funding requirements for preserving this important collection.

Description of the Iraqi Jewish Archive

The Iraqi Jewish Archive contains 16th-20th century Jewish rare books, correspondence and document files, pamphlets, modern books, audio tape and parchment scrolls. Languages represented in the Archive include Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic and English (a few items).

The following descriptive information, provided by Hebraic and Arabic area study specialists at the Library of Congress, was gleaned from the photographs taken of the frozen materials in the open trunks. Once the materials are dried and have had the mold remediated it will be possible to provide a clearer and more detailed assessment of the contents.

∑ Hebraic materials. The Hebraica includes an eclectic mix of materials, ranging from holiday and daily prayer books, Bibles and commentaries, sections from a damaged Torah scroll, books on Jewish law, as well as children's Hebrew language and Bible primers. The printed books were published in a variety of places, including Baghdad, Warsaw, Livorno, and Venice, and most are from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rare works include:

∑ the 'Ketubim' volume of the monumental Third Rabbinic Bible that was published in Venice by Giovanni di Gara in 1568; and

∑ what appears to be Abraham Brudo's 'Birkat Avraham,' which was published in Venice in 1696.

∑ Arabic materials. The Arabic materials include both hand-written and printed items pertaining to the Jewish community of Iraq, some produced by the Jewish community and others from official governmental sources. In addition, there are items that do not appear to have any connection to the Jewish community at all. The materials include:

∑ a handwritten document, dated September 5, 1966, which appears to be a request for names for a board of directors of the Jewish community;

∑ a school roster Madrasat Furnak (second part unclear) with both male and female names, which dates primarily to August-September 1966-67;

∑ a collection that includes the law of the Jewish community #77 for 1931 and the organization of the Jewish community #36 of 1931, published by the Jewish Charitable Organization in 1932;

∑ an official Iraqi report to the Minister of Interior (and various directorates) reporting on important events, dated 16/2/2000.

Condition of the Collection

In the haste necessary to quickly gather and secure the collection, materials were packed somewhat haphazardly and the booksπ text blocks and groups of documents were not aligned to conform to their original shapes. As a result, many gatherings of loose documents and bound text blocks are distorted, crumpled, and similarly damaged. Many boards are detached from their bindings, and it appears that during the weeks that the records were submerged under water the leather covering many books became detached with the result that bare binderπs board is now exposed. In addition, there are many loose pages and fragments that became disassociated from their original locations. The damage that resulted from handling and packing the wet materials likely can be remedied in most instances, though it will add more time to the project and it will not always be possible to eliminate the evidence of past damage.

After the collection was removed from the water, approximately three weeks elapsed before the collection was frozen, which resulted in varying degrees of mold growth. This may result in some permanent staining, though it does not appear that in most cases the mold was sufficiently advanced that the paper was severely affected or weakened. The books and documents also have numerous rust stains, as a result of contact with the interior of the metal trunk as well as the rusty metal components of the mechanical binders (similar to ring binders) that were used to hold loose documents together.

Overall the collection is in moderate to poor condition. While some pamphlets, books, and document files appear to be intact and complete, many others exist as fragments with loose and/or missing components. There is much physical distortion that can likely be remedied via conservation treatment. Most inks and media appear to be in stable condition -- legible with no evidence of feathering or bleeding -- despite their long period of submersion in water. The exceptions are the inks on the scroll fragments, where there is evidence that ink has bled. The text, however, is still legible.

Preservation Action Plan

The following action plan outlines the steps needed to ensure the collectionπs preservation so it can be made available for future generations. Careful decisions will be required to select treatment options that will minimize costs, yet support the needs for preservation and future use. Further information regarding the preservation steps is provided in Appendix A.

4 Dry the collection to stabilize the condition and halt further damage. (Freeze-drying is complete)

∑ Remediate for mold to allow personnel to be able to handle the materials.

∑ Determine the contents of the collection, and its historical, archival and curatorial importance.

∑ Determine the conservation and reformatting needs of the items within the collection, based on curatorial/archival and preservation assessments.

∑ Conserve individual items deemed to have artifactual importance.

∑ Conserve to the degree necessary to permit handling and/or duplication of items deemed to have research but not artifactual significance

∑ House the collection so it can be stored properly and used in the future.

∑ Microfilm materials as appropriate

∑ Develop an exhibition

Due to the lack of trained personnel and technical resources presently available in Iraq, as well as the costs and time that would be required to establish the necessary infrastructure and staffing for conserving the collection, the collection has been transferred to the United States to undergo the preservation work in an expeditious, technically qualified and cost efficient manner.

Project Goals and Expectations

On an item by item basis it will be necessary to determine how much treatment should be given to each particular item, based on its relative value, importance, future use and availability of funding. In most cases conservation treatment will not eliminate the evidence of the damage that has occurred, including staining, bleeding inks and distortion. In some cases the improvement will be minimal and in other cases the item will be significantly improved. Overall it is expected that the majority of the collection can be treated so the items will be useable, though given the damage that has been sustained and the number of fragments and detached leaves, some items may be incomplete following treatment.

Project Plan

As Custodian for the Iraqi Jewish Archive, the Coalition Provisional Authority is responsible for ensuring the protection and final disposition of the documents pending election of a sovereign Iraqi government and for fund-raising to support the project fully with non-governmental funds.

The US National Archives and Records Administration will provide the leadership in executing the preservation project and in identifying the subject matter experts who can provide the historical and language knowledge required for assessing the contents and curatorial needs of the Archive. NARA is well equipped to provide leadership and technical oversight and guidance to assure preservation of the Iraqi Jewish Archive. Archival and preservation staff can assure that preservation tasks are carried out in conformance with existing international standards. Under the Economy Act, funds that are donated to other agencies can be transferred to NARA to support the necessary preservation work, which can be carried out under NARA direction. NARA is also well positioned to provide the necessary physical security for the collection.

Resource Requirements

Due to the inaccessibility of the records in their frozen state, as yet there is insufficient information to determine the full cost for completing this project. Before a complete preservation assessment and cost analysis can be developed, vacuum freeze drying, inventory, mold remediation, curatorial assessment and conservation condition assessment must be completed. These first steps are expected to cost $450,000-725,000. For the purposes of providing a general understanding of the costs involved in undertaking the full preservation project, a rough budget estimate for the project as a whole was developed: $1,525,000- $3,000,000. It is important to emphasize that there are still numerous elements that will need to be determined and analyzed before finalizing the budget.

In-kind contributions: NARA will cover overhead costs for administrative functions, lab use, storage and utilities as an in-kind contribution to the project. The US Military provided the courier and transport for the collection to come to the United States.

∑ Courier transport to freeze dry facility in the US US Military (In-kind)

∑ Commerical vacuum freeze drying, security,

transport to NARA $100,000 - 100,000

∑ Mold remediation $200,000 - 400,000

∑ Inventory, Curatorial and Conservation Assessment $150,000 - 225,000

Subtotal for First Steps $ 450,000 - $725,000

∑ Conservation Treatment $500,000 - 1,000,000

∑ Rehousing $25,000 - 25,000

∑ Microfilming/Reformatting $300,000 - 700,000

∑ Project Oversight $200,000 - 500,000

∑ Supplies and equipment $ 50,000 - 50,000

∑ Lab facilities, long term storage with security,

utilities at NARA, general oversight NARA (In-kind)

Total Preservation Budget Estimate $1,525,000- $3,000,000

Exhibition To be Determined

Preservation Action Plan Appendix A

4 Freezing for Stabilization (Completed)
Freezing the water and mold-damaged Iraqi Jewish Archive has been accomplished. This important first preservation step has served to stabilize the material and inhibit additional mold growth that will flourish under conditions of high temperature and high relative humidity. If not frozen, wet organic materials--including paper, leather, and parchment--provide a perfect host for mold, and water sensitive or soluble inks will continue to feather and bleed.

4 Drying the Collection (Vacuum freeze drying is completed)
Vacuum freeze-drying is the technique recommended for drying the wet paper material in this collection. This drying method results in the least amount of distortion to records and also minimizes the feathering and bleeding of water soluble inks and other media. Materials must be in a frozen state when entering a vacuum freeze-drying chamber and remain frozen throughout the drying process. The vacuum freeze-drying process causes frozen water to sublimate to a vapor without passing through a potentially reactive liquid stage. The parchment scrolls and fragments that are especially vulnerable to shrinkage if dried incorrectly need to be individually air dried under restraint by trained conservators.

It is important to note that the books and other materials that exhibit physical distortion as a result of being submerged under water and then being packed quickly in trunks will retain their distorted shapes at the conclusion of the drying process. Subsequent conservation treatment will be necessary to return materials to their original shapes and formats, to the degree that this is possible.

∑ Inventory

At the earliest stage possible, an inventory will be undertaken to be able to maintain accountability for the materials during the preservation process and thereafter.

∑ Mold Remediation
Exposure to mold and microorganisms is a documented health hazard that can cause respiratory irritation or more severe reactions, depending on the individual, the type of mold present, and the duration of exposure. After the collection is dried, the mold will be rendered inactive, if maintained in an appropriate temperature and relative humidity environment. However, the mold residue will need to be mechanically removed in order for the collection to receive conservation treatment and ultimately to be studied and handled by researchers and others.

For paper-based and other porous materials, mold remediation is essentially controlled surface cleaning using a vacuum cleaner equipped with a HEPA filter, which minimizes the possibility of mold spores and debris from becoming airborne. To prevent contamination of other collection materials, the work is carried out in a fume hood with trained personnel wearing protective clothing such as gloves, goggles, and respirators. If the mold damage is severe, the mold can greatly weaken and essentially digest the paper; in other cases the mold can cause sheets of paper to block or stick together. In archival contexts, where information is more important than cosmetic improvement, staining from mold is usually not removed or reduced since techniques to minimize stains can also weaken paper.

Mold remediation should be carried out after the Iraqi Jewish Archive is dry, by qualified personnel in a conservation facility outfitted with the appropriate equipment and environmental controls. The work will need to be managed so that original order of the files and any associations that now exist by proximity in a given trunk between fragments, detached leaves, and text blocks are not lost. Maintaining these intellectual links during mold remediation will expedite the conservation treatment phase of the project.

∑ Curatorial and Conservation Assessment
Since conservation treatment is even more time-consuming and expensive than mold remediation, it is normally reserved for materials of known value and research interest. The curatorial/archival assessment of the content and relative values of items in the collection will need to be carried out by subject matter experts with the relevant historical, archival/curatorial and language expertise. Treatment strategies will be developed based on this assessment. For materials that should be microfilmed, it may be possible to minimize the need for extensive conservation treatment and instead focus on stabilizing the materials for filming and assuring that a legible microfilm copy can be achieved. Selected items in the Archive that have high intrinsic or artifactual values that would warrant more complete treatment.

The conservation assessment is a collaboration that merges curatorial perspectives with conservation information on the physical and chemical condition of the collection and available treatment options. This assessment will focus on the content, research importance, scarcity, uniqueness, and value of the collection items. Curatorial review and recommendations will form the basis for developing conservation treatment options.

The National Archives and Records Administration will provide physical security and conservation oversight during the curatorial review.

∑ Conservation Treatment
Conservation treatment will be required to ensure that the Iraqi Jewish Archive is in sufficiently stable condition to permit anticipated handling and use as well as microfilming when that is desired. Specific treatments selected will depend on the format, condition, and value of individual items in the collection and could range from stabilization through full treatment. As appropriate, the following treatment steps will be performed:

ÿ surface cleaning or aqueous bathing (to reduce staining),

ÿ deacidification (to deposit alkaline salts in the paper to extend its usable life), humidification and flattening (to minimize distortions and creases in paper and text blocks),

ÿ mending and filling losses in paper, and

ÿ rebinding and re-casing bound volumes (to replace damaged or detached boards).

Whenever possible, treatment steps will be minimized by using protective housings and enclosures. For example, weak or damaged paper sheets will be placed in stable plastic sleeves to avoid extensive mending, and bound volumes will be placed in protective boxes to avoid the need for rebinding. Of the materials examined, the Torah scroll fragments have the most critical and complex treatment needs and will require separate handling and treatment. Overall, appropriate housing of the collection will be achieved as one of the end products of conservation treatment, which will enhance the ultimate secure and safe storage and handling of the materials.

∑ Microfilming/Reformatting
Microfilming is an important preservation tool that is used to reduce or eliminate handling of fragile original records. It also provides a mechanism for enhancing research access by students and scholars by making copies of the film widely available. To meet long term preservation requirements, collections to be microfilmed must be adequately arranged and described. In addition, international standards must be followed in selecting film stock, processing the film, and in creating preservation master and duplicating copies, which must be stored under specified environmental conditions. Other reformatting methodologies may be utilized as appropriate.

Photographs Appendix B

Removing the Iraqi Jewish Archive materials from the flooded Mukhabahrat basement. May 2003

Photos by Harold Rhode

Books and documents after removal from the Mukhabarat basement. May 2003

A Torah scroll laid out for partial drying.

The sacks were used to transport the materials from the basement.

Photos by Harold Rhode

Frozen books and documents in the Iraqi Jewish Archive

Photos by Doris Hamburg

Assessing the condition of the Iraqi Jewish Archive June 2003

Iraqi Jewish Archive in trunks in the freezer truck

Photos by Doris Hamburg
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This document is published on the website of the
Middle East Librarians Association Committee on Iraqi Libraries
with the kind permission of the authors and
The National Archives & Records Administration.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Middle East Librarians Association Committee on Iraqi Libraries published the following in July 2003:
Pictures of Damaged Libraries in Iraq.
The photographs presented here document damage to libraries in Iraq during and after the war in April 2003. Most of them are provided by Nabil al-Tikriti, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. They were taken during his trip to Baghdad on 25-31 May 2003. They accompany his report: Iraq Manuscript Collections, Archives, & Libraries: Situation Report, dated 8 June 2003. The remaining photographs were taken by McGuire Gibson, Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology, The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. He was a member of the UNESCO team which visited Baghdad in May 2003.

And see also:

Library of Congress Mission To Baghdad. Report on the National Library and the House of Manuscripts, October 27-November 3, 2003"

MSNBC.com - “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game.”

2005-07-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

Secrets and Leaks - - MSNBC.com: "Secrets and Leaks

By (Page 2 of 3)
Newsweek
Updated: 8:56 a.m. ET Oct. 6, 2003
Irked by Wilson’s public charges, administration officials promptly set about undermining Wilson’s credibility. Unnamed administration officials told reporters that Wilson was a Democrat, a Sen. John Kerry contributor and supporter. The administration aides leaked that Wilson’s mission had not been authorized at the top, by CIA Director George Tenet, but rather by some midlevel bureaucrats. Then someone—the mysterious leaker or leakers at the heart of the story—went a step further. According to columnist Robert Novak, “two senior administration officials” told him that the idea of sending Wilson to Africa came from his wife—Valerie Plame, “an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.”

Story continues below ↓
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Novak is the perfect receptacle for such a leak. An old-time Washington insider known for his gruff manner, black suits, conservative leanings and love of Washington intrigue, Novak has been jokingly called “the Prince of Darkness.” At first, Novak told reporters from Newsday, “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me.” But after the story blew up, Novak played down the leak, saying that Plame’s CIA identity was revealed to him “in passing,” and that he thought she was an analyst, not an undercover agent. Before printing her name, he checked with a CIA spokesman, who made only mild objections, according to Novak.

Plame was, in fact, an NOC (“nonofficial cover”)—a deep-cover agent posing as an energy consultant as she traveled abroad. Exposing her was not a trivial matter. It ended Plame’s career as a secret agent, blew the cover of her energy business and put every foreigner she had ever dealt with at risk. Identifying an undercover agent is a federal offense.

At the time, a few reporters and lawmakers raised a fuss. Newsday reporters Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce quoted an indignant Wilson as saying, “It’s a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we’ll take your family and drag them through the mud as well.” Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia called the disclosure of Plame’s identity “vile” and a “highly dishonorable thing to do.” But most news organizations ignored the story, and it seemed to fade away.Leak investigations often lumber slowly along before petering out. Government lawyers have to fill out forms asserting that the information was true and damaging to national security. It was only two weeks ago that the CIA finally got around to formally asking the Justice Department to investigate the leak blowing Plame’s cover.

The facts remain murky but tantalizing to students of the Washington game. Ambassador Wilson, a shaggy-haired, camera-friendly presence, has been meeting the press on a regular basis. Showing a New York Times reporter photographs of his striking blond wife (his third; he is 53, she is 40; they met at a Washington party), he compared her to a real-life Jennifer Garner, the actress who plays an undercover agent in the TV show “Alias.” Wilson has repeatedly suggested that the chief culprit was the White House’s political director, Karl Rove. “It’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs,” Wilson said at a public forum about Iraqi intelligence failures on Aug. 21. “And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.”

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Wilson’s comments clearly implied that he knew that Rove was the leaker, but last week Wilson backtracked, saying only that he knew that Rove had “condoned” the leak. Whoever initially leaked Plame’s name, the White House clearly had a hand in fanning the flames. Wilson told NEWSWEEK that in the days after the Novak story appeared, he got calls from several well-connected Washington reporters. One was NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. She told NEWSWEEK that she said to Wilson: “I heard in the White House that people were touting the Novak column and that that was the real story.” The next day Wilson got a call from Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC show “Hardball.” According to a source close to Wilson, Matthews said, “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game.” (Matthews told NEWSWEEK: “I’m not going to talk about off-the-record conversations.”)"

Bush Expands Intel Chief's Power Over FBI - Yahoo! News

2005-06-30T05:26:00.000-07:00

Bush Expands Intel Chief's Power Over FBI - Yahoo! News: "Bush Expands Intel Chief's Power Over FBI By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 17 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush granted the new national intelligence chief expanded power over the FBI on Wednesday and ordered dozens of other spy agency changes as the White House heeded a presidential commission that condemned the intelligence community for failures in Iraq and elsewhere.

But almost as soon as the details were unveiled, the White House was defending itself against suggestions that the moves were simply adding more bureaucracy without making changes that could have prevented misjudgments like those made on Iraq.

"It's an unfair characterization to say it's simply a restructuring," said Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, who led the 90-day review of the recommendations from the president's commission on weapons of mass destruction. "It's a fundamental strengthening of our intelligence capabilities."

The White House said it endorsed 70 of the 74 recommendations from the commission, which was led by Republican Judge Laurence Silberman and former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb and conducted a yearlong review of the 15 intelligence agencies. Bush formed the commission under pressure after the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq resigned and started a firestorm of controversy over the accuracy of the prewar Iraq intelligence.

In its scathing 600-page report released in March, the commission called the spy community "dead wrong on almost all of its prewar judgments" about Iraq's weapons.

Robb called the White House's broad acceptance of the commission's proposals "truly extraordinary."

Among the most significant changes the White House offered Wednesday, the Justice Department will be directed — with congressional approval — to consolidate its counterterrorism, espionage and intelligence units under one new assistant attorney general for national security.

The White House ordered the creation of a National Security Service inside the FBI. And Bush sought to strengthen the hand of the new national intelligence director over the FBI, giving him expanded budget and management powers over the bureau.

In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union said the FBI's new security service would lead to an "erosion of constitutional protections against law enforcement actions."

But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, "Every law enforcement official within the FBI is going to remain under the supervision of the FBI director and, ultimately, the attorney general."

The White House will also have the national intelligence director, John Negroponte, establish a National Counter-Proliferation Center that will coordinate the U.S. government's collection and analysis of intelligence on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons — a task now performed by many national security agencies.

Negroponte's top deputy, Gen. Michael Hayden, said the center would only have 50 to 100 employees, thereby avoiding some insiders' worries of "brain drain" as new offices tap into existing ones.

A number of Bush administration critics welcomed the reforms. President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, called the changes to Negroponte's authority over the Justice Department and the counterproliferation center "very positive."

"All of this is moving boxes to some degree," said Berger. "I do think that in this case organization is important. ... The real test is how it is implemented."

While the White House portrayed the changes as a near universal endorsement of the commission's recommendations, some suggestions were not completely followed.

For instance, the commission said Negroponte should not be part of the president's morning intelligence briefing. But Hayden said he or Negroponte still attend the secretive daily sessions.

In other moves, the White House also:

_Issued an executive order allowing the freezing of any financial assets in the United States of citizens, companies or organizations involved in the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The order designates eight organizations in Iran, North Korea and Syria.

_Created a new national coordinator for human intelligence, or classic spycraft, who would guide clandestine activities of the entire intelligence community.

_Asked Congress to reform its oversight of the intelligence community, a controversial proposal that could provoke turf wars and other difficulties on Capitol Hill.

Hayden acknowledged that some of the changes, such as those aimed at improving intelligence analysis, will take years to institute. However, he said others, including the human intelligence chief, could be implemented within two months.

House Intelligence Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and the panel's top Democrat, California Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), praised the White House's moves as steps that will help ensure policy-makers get "accurate, timely and actionable intelligence."

Yet, in an interview, Harman said the issues still require "sustained attention" to ensure that Negroponte isn't "forever fending off turf attacks."

The White House said three of the commission's recommendations require further study, including one that would have called for accountability reviews within three intelligence offices under fire for mistakes in the prewar Iraq intelligence. Hayden noted the recommendation focused on organizational accountability and said reviews were under way.

Another recommendation, regarding the management of covert action, was rejected and remains classified.

Following the advice of blue-ribbon panels, numerous changes have been made to the intelligence community since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Many were contained in a sweeping intelligence reform law passed by Congress in December.

"I think we now know what the shape of the animal is going to be," Berger said, "and we have to make sure that the animal is ready to hunt.""

ABC News: Rafsanjani faces run-off vote against hard-liner

2005-06-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

ABC News: Rafsanjani faces run-off vote against hard-liner: "Rafsanjani faces run-off vote against hard-liner
Reuters

Jun 18, 2005 — By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Pragmatic cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani narrowly clinched top spot on Saturday in Iran's nail-biting presidential election, but now faces a run-off against his closest rival, hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The unexpected result left voters with a stark choice between the experienced Rafsanjani, who has pledged better ties with the West, and Tehran mayor Ahmadinejad, who appeals to the pious poor and is wary of re-opening talks with Washington.

Final Interior Ministry figures showed pre-election favorite Rafsanjani won 21.0 percent of the 29.32 million votes cast, a turnout of 63 percent. Ahmadinejad got 19.5 percent.

Ahmadinejad's performance surprised many as opinion polls had placed him well down the list of seven candidates.

But his reputation as a man of the people fiercely loyal to Iran's system of clerical rule appeared to have won him strong support in rural areas and among the urban poor, for whom unemployment and the cost of living are the main concerns.

Whoever wins, unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will keep the last word on state affairs and hard-liners will retain key levers of power such as security and the courts.

Reformists, stunned by the poor showing of their favorite Mostafa Moin, a former education minister who finished fifth with 13.8 percent, debated whether to throw their weight behind Rafsanjani in Friday's second round.

"Rafsanjani won't crack down on the youth as Ahmadinejad may do. There's still a chance," said Maryam, 24, one of about 200 Moin campaign workers gathered at his HQ on Saturday afternoon.

But in an indication that the run-off too may be unpredictable, others said they would not back Rafsanjani, who is bidding to regain the post he held from 1989 to 1997.

"Those who voted for Ahmadinejad are the fruit of Rafsanjani's era of poverty and corruption," said Saeed, 18, who planned to boycott the run-off vote.

"THE PEOPLE'S CANDIDATE"

At a hastily arranged news conference Ahmadinejad criticized opponents for spending large sums on slick television adverts and organising rallies featuring pop music and girls wearing skimpy dress considered immoral by religious conservatives.

"I am the people's candidate because people helped my campaign centers and in my campaign centers we did not spend billions (of Iranian rials)," he said.

Reformist candidates Moin and former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi, who defied expectations by taking an early lead in preliminary vote counts, made vague allegations of electoral fraud.

"Despite the many warnings by the president and the Interior Ministry and also political parties, we see that an organized movement has targeted the health of this election," Moin said in a statement.

"With this action our new-born democracy is in danger," he added, without making specific allegations.

Ayatollah Khamenei congratulated Iranians on the respectable turnout, which he took as a repudiation of U.S. criticisms that the poll was unfair because the unelected Guardian Council had barred many candidates from standing. "With your wise participation in the elections, you have once again announced your strong will to be independent, defend Islamic values and have an Islamic democracy," he said.

Outgoing reformist President Mohammad Khatami described the poll as "totally healthy" and said the result would not derail the changes he initiated because "reforms belong to the people."

The election was the climax to a vibrant campaign that featured Western-style television clips and exuberant street rallies that flouted strict Islamic moral codes.

Even conservative candidates adopted the language of reform and dropped their usual open hostility to the West to appeal to young voters eager for an end to isolation. Half the population is under 25 and anyone over 15 can vote. (Additional reporting by Hossein Jasseb and Amir Paivar)

Copyright 2005 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed."

Bombs scare Iran voters, presidential race hots up

2005-06-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

World News Article | Reuters.co.uk: "Bombs scare Iran voters, presidential race hots up
Mon Jun 13, 2005 9:58 AM BST
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By Alistair Lyon

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranians reacted with anger and fear on Monday to a rare string of bomb attacks that killed nine people and wounded more than 70 ahead of presidential elections.

Officials have blamed Sunday's attacks on exiled opposition groups seeking to deter Iranians from voting.

The death toll from an evening explosion in central Tehran rose to two overnight after one person died of his wounds, said Ali Aghamohammadi, Supreme National Security Council spokesman. He said two people remained on the critical list.

Workmen in the southwestern oil city of Ahvaz were repairing water pipes, power lines and buildings damaged in four blasts outside state offices that killed seven people and wounded 70.

Traffic swirled through the streets as normal, but the attacks clearly rattled many Iranians ahead of Friday's polls.

"I'm not going to vote. I'm afraid of another explosion. I think Friday will be a very dangerous day," said Ahmad Ali Yacoub, a 36-year-old government employee in Ahvaz.

Opinion polls show experienced pragmatist Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani leading in the race to replace outgoing reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who failed to overcome hardline resistance to reform during his eight years in office.

Despite widespread disenchantment among Iran's youthful population of 67 million, interest in the race has picked up with the reinstatement of reformer Mostafa Moin and the conservative vote split betweeen five contenders.

Iranian leaders have been urging a high turnout as a slap to domestic and foreign critics of restrictive electoral laws.

A survey by state broadcaster IRIB published on Monday reported that 73 percent of the electorate definitely planned to vote and another 6 percent would probably do so.

The turnout in last year's parliamentary election was 51 percent and around 67 percent in the 2001 presidential poll.

MAIN RIVALS

"Hardliners were so sure of victory, but it seems to me the main race will be between Rafsanjani and Moin," said Hamid Reza Jalaipour, political science lecturer at Tehran University.

"The reform movement has revived and people who were determined to ignore the elections have now started to think twice about voting, especially after Moin was qualified."

Angry hardliners hostile even to Rafsanjani might resort to violence "like yesterday's explosions", he told Reuters.

Others, however, blamed groups such as the exiled People's Mujahideen Organisation and foreign agents. "They have done this to create fear and uncertainty among people," Ghodratollah Alikhani, member of parliament's national security and foreign policy commission, told student news agency ISNA.

Rafsanjani, president from 1989 to 1997 and seen as the most moderate of the conservative candidates, remains well short of the 50 percent support he needs to avoid a run-off vote.

A poll published on Saturday showed that Moin, one of three reformists in the race, had edged ahead of former police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf to lie in second place.

The bombings in Ahvaz and Tehran jolted a country where such attacks have become a rarity in the past decade.

About 20 foreign journalists seized by Islamic vigilantes at the scene of the bombing in Tehran were released overnight after being held for about four hours, one of them said.

Two other devices exploded in central Tehran on Sunday evening, causing no casualties, and others were made harmless.

"So far we have defused four bombs in different neighbourhoods," Aghamohammadi said, without saying how they had been found. Some arrests had been made and more were expected.

He said security had been tightened on the border with Iraq, the suspected source of infiltrators, and Iranians should not be afraid to go to the polls.

Some in Ahvaz, like Ahmad Razi, 27, seemed receptive to such reassurances. "Those behind those blasts don't want us to vote. I'm scared, but I'll vote," he said.

Ahvaz is the capital of Khuzestan province, where five people died in ethnic unrest in April. Most of Iran's two million ethnic Arabs live in the Gulf province, which also sits on the bulk of the country's oil reserves.

Rahim Fazilatpour, deputy governor of Ahvaz, said three Arab groups had claimed responsibility for the bombings."

Khaleej Times Online - Rafsanjani denounces dirty tricks in Iran election campaign

2005-06-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

Khaleej Times Online: "

Khaleej Times Online >> News >> MIDDLE EAST
Rafsanjani denounces dirty tricks in Iran election campaign
(AFP)

13 June 2005
TEHERAN - Iranian presidential election frontrunner Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Monday denounced the use of dirty tricks against him, saying his opponents appeared to be well-funded but refusing to name names.

“There is a fundamental problem in this campaign,” the powerful cleric said on state television. “Despite the instructions of the supreme leader, a number of immoral acts have been committed.”

Rafsanjani is a pragmatic conservative who has vowed to save Iran from “extremists” if he is elected on Friday in the contest to find a successor to reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

Out of the other seven other candidates in the race, four are from the powerful hardline camp that Rafsanjani is seeking to marginalise.

“Personally I have been the victim of the worse kind of denigration,” Rafsanjani complained. “Millions of slanderous leaflets have been distributed across the country.”

“We know full well who is responsible and where their money comes from,” said the 70-year-old cleric, who already served as Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997.

Rafsanjani has already come under attack over alleged corruption and the moral conduct of his family.

Informal opinion polls carried by Iranian media have put Rafsanjani ahead. Trailing him are the main reformist candidate Mostafa Moin and the hardline former national police chief, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

But the figures suggest that none of the eight candidates will be able to secure the more than 50 percent of the vote needed to win. That means the top two would have to go into a run-off -- unprecedented in the 26-year history of the Islamic republic.

Qalibaf, also a veteran of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, has been running a particularly slick campaign that has raised some questions over financing.

The competition has also been marked by physical attacks against officials from the embattled reformist camp.

Iran was struck by a wave of deadly bombings in the restive southwestern city of Ahvaz and the capital Sunday, with the Islamic regime accusing US-backed “terrorists” of seeking to destabilise the country just days ahead of the election.

At least eight people were killed and 75 wounded by a series of four blasts outside several public buildings in Ahvaz, an ethnic Arab majority city close to the Iraqi border that is capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province.

Later Sunday, another blast hit a busy square in Tehran, killing two people and seriously wounding at least two others, official media said.

Rafsanjani said the bombings show “that the enemies of the revolution are violent and without pity.”

“They want to stop people from voting, but these kind of acts will have the opposite effect,” he said."

The Real Memogate -- In These Times

2005-06-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

The Real Memogate -- In These Times: "The Real Memogate
By Solomon Hughes

At a 2002 G8 summit Bush and Blair demonstrate their “special relationship.”

President Bush gratefully received Tony Blair's support for the invasion of Iraq, but that relationship may now be turning sour. As antiwar feeling runs high in Britain, recently leaked secret official documents show both the U.S. and U.K. governments conspired to cook up a case for a pre-planned Iraq war.

Days before the British general election, the Sunday Times published a "Secret and Strictly Personal--UK Eyes Only" document written in July 2002 by one of Blair's aides revealing U.S. and U.K. war plans.

The memo details a meeting between Blair and his top officials, during which "C reported on his recent talks in Washington." "C" is the code name for the Chief of MI6, Britain's Intelligence service. "C", also known as Sir David Spedding, said, "There was a perceptible shift in attitude among America's political leaders. ... Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam thorough military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts are being fixed around the policy."

The memo sparked front page news in the United Kingdom. The U.S. press was slow to pick up the story, but 88 members of Congress co-signed a letter to Bush written by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) demanding an inquiry into the document's revelations.

At the 2002 meeting, the memo reveals that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said, "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action." However, Straw was also not convinced by the WMD argument, saying, "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." In public, Straw supported the official claim that Iraq's WMDs posed a threat that justified war.

The memo also shows that planning for postwar Iraq was woefully inadequate and the legal case for war was dubious. The British Intelligence chief reported, "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, the British Government's top legal officer warned meeting attendees, "The desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action." Subsequent leaks show Goldsmith turned around and gave a legal thumbs-up for war, but only after a gruelling February 2003 session with then-presidential legal adviser Alberto Gonzales.

This is the latest in a flood of leaks undermining the war's justification, including the 2003 revelations by British weapons inspector David Kelly that the Iraqi mobile bio-war labs highlighted by Colin Powell were really military weather balloon inflators, and by intelligence translator Katherine Gun, who revealed that GCHQ, Britain's surveillance center, was spying on delegations to the U.N. Security Council at the request of the U. S. National Security Agency in an attempt to win U.N. support for invasion.

In September 2004, other secret documents revealing shared war planning were passed to the Telegraph. A March 2002 memo to Blair from his top aide, Sir David Manning, reported that he dined with Condoleezza Rice, and told her that Blair "would not budge in [his] support for regime change" at a time when Blair was about to "visit the ranch" for talks with Bush.

In a March 2002 memo, U.K. ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer recounts to David Manning another dinner date--this time with Paul Wolfowitz. The after-dinner conversation shows that the plan for war was fixed and only the "selling" of the issue remained: "We backed regime change but the plan had to be clever [because] it would be a tough sell for us domestically and probably tougher elsewhere in Europe."

These leaks occured against a background of anti-war demonstrations throughout the United Kingdom, and Iraq and the lies about WMD were a major issue in Britain's recent general election. Labour lost votes as the Liberal Democrats promoted a left-tinged antiwar ticket. Nationally, Labour tried to avoid Iraq, a stance mocked as "don't mention the war." George Galloway, expelled from the Labour Party because of his position on Iraq, was re-elected to Parliament as a representative of the newly formed, antiwar Respect Coalition.

On May 17, Galloway testified before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In response to a question from the chairman, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Galloway said:

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives. ... If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac, who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the antiwar movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today."

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Wrong on Iraq

2005-06-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Real Memogate -- In These Times: "On May 17, Galloway testified before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In response to a question from the chairman, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), Galloway said:

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives. ... If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac, who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the antiwar movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today."

Duncan hires Scott Arceneaux to Run Campaign

2005-04-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

Maryland Politics: La. Strategist to Run Duncan's Campaign: "La. Strategist to Run Duncan's Campaign
La. Strategist to Run Duncan's Campaign: "La. Strategist to Run Duncan's Campaign
'Hard-Charger' Has Record of Success

By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 29, 2005; B05
Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan announced yesterday that he has hired a Louisiana Democratic strategist to manage his campaign for governor next year.

Scott Arceneaux, 34, will move to Maryland in a few weeks to lead Duncan's race against Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley for the Democratic nomination.

"He is a veteran campaign manager, a hard-charger and a great addition to our team," Duncan said in a statement.

In an interview, Arceneaux said Duncan will mount "a very aggressive campaign" to raise Duncan's profile outside of Montgomery County by highlighting his record as county executive. "He's got 10 years of success," Arceneaux said. "It's just a matter of getting his message out.""

AIPAC Sr. Staff Rosen and Weissman are being FIRED FOR CAUSE

2005-04-21T19:33:00.000-07:00

Israeli Spies Rosen and Weissman are being FIRED FOR CAUSE: "Israeli Spies Rosen and Weissman are being FIRED FOR CAUSE
Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman have been the targets an FBI probe as part of what has become known as the AIPAC/Franklin Spy Scandal. Up until now AIPAC has stood behind the pair and proclaimed their innocence as well as that of AIPAC as an organization. Now the BBC has released that Rosen and Weissman are not only leaving AIPAC but are being FIRED FOR CAUSE. In one of the most amazing acts since the Israeli Embassy refused Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard sanctuary AIPAC is as much as admitting that Rosen and Weissman are Israeli Spies. So rather than the one way tickets to Tel Aviv that one would expect AIPAC is turning her back on men who only were doing their jobs. Still in all I have to suggest that whether AIPAC has two spies or twenty it pales in comparison to AEI or the crew Paul Wolfowitz had at DoD.

Haaretz - AIPAC Burning Two to Save Itself - How Deep Does The Spy Scandal Really Run
BBC NEWS | AIPAC 'fires staff' Because of Their Conduct
The Epoch Times | Pro-Israel AIPAC Fires 2 Involved in Spy Probe
Forward Newspaper Online: AIPAC Dumping Suspected Spies Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman"

DailyProgress.com | Zelikow takes state department post

2005-02-26T13:45:00.000-08:00

DailyProgress.com | Zelikow takes state department post: "Zelikow takes state department post

By Kate Andrews / Daily Progress staff writer
February 26, 2005
Philip Zelikow is leaving the University of Virginia to serve as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, government officials announced Friday.

He has left his post as executive director of UVa’s Miller Center of Public Affairs to become counselor of the U.S. Department of State, a full-time job. As counselor, he will serve as a senior adviser on foreign policy issues, including international negotiations.

Zelikow, 50, was executive director of the 9/11 Commission, which examined the lead-up to the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Virginia. Its work concluded in July.

“Philip and I have worked together for years and I value his counsel and expertise,” Rice said in a statement. “I appreciate his willingness to take on this assignment.”

Zelikow and Rice go back a long way, having worked together under the first President Bush. They also co-authored a 1999 book, “Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft.”

“It’s a job that absolutely suits him to a T,” said George H. Gilliam, director of the Miller Center’s forum program. “His job will be to wrap his arms around great big, complex problems.”

The position has a personal side as well, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher noted Friday.

“It’s been somebody the secretary could turn to, rely on for projects, advice, thinking, coordination - a lot of different things,” he said. “It’s a very personal position, sort of, for the secretary.”

The last time the post was filled was in 2001, when Wendy Sherman served under Secretary Madeleine Albright.

Zelikow declined an interview request Friday, but Gilliam said the job offer took him by surprise.

He was “fully committed” to staying at UVa, Gilliam said, but added, “He’s a patriot, and it’s very hard to say no.”

Zelikow’s six-year tenure at the Miller Center saw a greater focus on presidential politics, including the publication of eight volumes of Oval Office recordings from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

“He had a very clear vision of the Miller Center’s mission,” Gilliam said. Zelikow’s main objectives were to help scholars and to uncover the decision-making process in the U.S. government’s highest reaches.

The center expects to name an interim director in the next week or so, Gilliam said. The national search for a permanent replacement will take longer - probably six to nine months.

“Philip Zelikow has brought tremendous energy and vision to the Miller Center, and he leaves an indelible imprint,” said Dan Frierson, chairman of the center’s governing council. “While we hate to see him depart, we commend and honor his tremendous commitment to public service.”

Contact Kate Andrews at (434) 978-7261 or kandrews@dailyprogress.com"

Iran News - EU to sell Iran Airbus plane as incentive

2005-02-24T03:26:00.000-08:00

Iran News - EU to sell Iran Airbus plane as incentive: "EU to sell Iran Airbus plane as incentive

Thursday, February 24, 2005 - ©2005 IranMania.com
LONDON, Feb 24 (IranMania) - European Union wants to sell Iran an Airbus plane as an incentive to move forward its nuclear talks, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told a summit with US President George W Bush on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

A participant quoted the German leader as saying the EU needed to offer incentives in non-sensitive goods to make it difficult for Iran to walk out of negotiations for curbing its nuclear program and ending uranium enrichment that could be used to make a bomb.

Schroeder cited as an example selling one Airbus now and raising the prospect of further aircraft deliveries if the talks were concluded successfully, the source said."

Haaretz - Israel News - Want to know what Bush thinks? Read Sharansky

2005-02-23T20:03:00.000-08:00

Haaretz - Israel News - Want to know what Bush thinks? Read Sharansky: "Want to know what Bush thinks? Read Sharansky

By Yoav Stern
BOSTON - Even though he was standing on a high stage, Natan Sharansky was swallowed up in the crowd that pressed around him. Behind him stood federal security agents and burly policemen, in front of him stood young people and adults, Americans and foreigners, who wanted his autograph on his new book. There were also those who had not managed to obtain the book, which sold out quickly at the shops; they made do with an autograph on the flyer that Harvard University had handed out before Sharansky's lecture in the prestigious forum of the Kennedy School of Government. The large space where the lecture was held was absolutely full.

Minister Sharansky's lecture 12 days ago was planned as part of the crowded timetable of a four-day visit to the Untied States, during the course of which Sharansky met with members of Congress in Washington, gave radio and television interviews and met with various forums.

The great interest in the Israeli government minister responsible for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs does not derive from the way in which he is carrying out his duties, or from his heroic past as a freedom fighter in the Soviet Union, but rather from the fact that none other than United States President George W. Bush has enlisted in the publicity campaign for his new book.

The brand new secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, told Sharansky about this in November, when she was still serving in her previous role as national security advisor. She said she wasn't reading the book because it is a best-seller, but rather because the president is reading it, and she had to read every book that her president reads.

Many others in the United States are reacting in the same way. This week the book is at number 18 on The New York Times Bestseller List, after taking the list by storm two weeks ago and appearing in 15th place after President George W. Bush mentioned it in his inaugural address.

It all began in November with the appearance of the book "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror," which Sharansky wrote in English with the help of Ron Dermer, an American-Israeli who lives in Jerusalem, and who has served as political advisor to Sharansky and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On November 11, the day Yasser Arafat died, Sharansky received an urgent summons to the Oval Office at the White House. Rice too took advantage of the opportunity of his visit to Washington to meet with him.

Bush, who defined the book as "part of my presidential DNA" and of "my philosophy," mentioned it not only in his inaugural address on January 20 but also in his State of the Union address several days later. Since then everyone who wants to know what the White House is thinking has been trying to understand Sharansky's philosophy.

The basic principle of the theory is simple. Terror and war stem from the existence of tyrannical regimes that deny their peoples' liberty. In order to maintain their regimes, the tyrannical rulers must direct the anger of the masses to an external enemy - and lead them to war. The toppling of these tyrannical regimes, not by force but rather by means of economic and public pressure, will lead to the expansion of the circle of free democracies - which do not fight one another.

The criterion by which Sharansky assesses whether a given state is free is the "town square" test: If a person can come to the square and preach his opinions without being attacked or arrested, then he is in a free country, which maintains human rights; otherwise, it is a dictatorship. Thus, plain and simple: either "a free society" or a "fear society," with no nuances in between.

Sharansky stresses that he is basing his ideas on his personal experience. In the book, as well as in the lecture at Harvard, he relates with great charm how his awareness of "double-think" developed - a person's ability to regulate outwardly his real thoughts about the regime. This happened to him at the age of five, in 1953, when Stalin died.

The father of young Anatoly, as he was known, explained to him and his siblings that it was "a good day for the Jews," because Stalin had wanted to embark on a new wave of executions. The father added that a miracle had happened, but warned them not to tell anybody. The next day they went to kindergarten and there, like the other children, they wept over the death of the "Sun of the nations." Those who are aware of "double-think" can be found everywhere there is a dictatorship, argues Sharansky; they cannot express their opinions freely because they will be harmed if they do so.

Sharansky directs the thrust of his criticism at the Arab states and the Muslim countries. Their rulers, who are trying to preserve their regimes, are directing the masses' anger, as he sees it, at an external enemy. In most cases in the Arab world, this is Israel.

One of the examples that Sharansky gave at Harvard is Egypt, which, though far from being a democracy, has gained a lot from its peace agreement with Israel. But it lost Israel as an enemy and therefore has become "one of the main producers of anti-Semitic propaganda in the form of television programming and print material," including "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Another example of anti-Semitism is Saudi Arabia, which according to Sharansky is spreading Wahabbism (an extreme Sunni Islamic belief that is at the basis of the Saudi regime) and instability throughout the world in order preserve its own internal stability.

David Gergen, a lecturer in public service at the school of government at Harvard who for 30 years served as an advisor to American presidents, was the moderator of the evening. He believes that its success derived from the personal charm of Sharansky, telling Haaretz that the audience was enchanted by his personal story and by the philosophy he presented.

When asked whether he agrees with the theory itself, Gergen explained that everyone is in favor of democracy, but life is a bit more complex. Examples that support his approach may be found for example in Egypt, where only two months ago a large demonstration against President Hosni Mubarak was held, and in Lebanon, where opposition elements are expressing themselves openly against the continued Syrian presence in the country.

"The question is how to act, on a case by case basis, in countries that are not democratic," Gergen said. "The differences of opinion have more to do with whether or not to use force against them."

Sharansky lightly fended off the questions that were directed to him on the matter of the occupation in the territories. One woman in the audience asked him cynically whether the American administration should cut off its ties with Israel because it is treating the Palestinians tyrannically. Sharansky replied with a smile that the person who is saying that the extent of the concessions to the Palestinians should be proportional to their democratic reform is none other than the president of the United States, George Bush, adding that back in June 2002, he had declared that the administration was not prepared to work with Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat.

"The Palestinian state has to be democratic," Sharansky declared.

It is hard to grasp from Israel the way in which Sharansky is perceived in the United States. In February 1986 he was received in Israel and the world with great affection after he crossed the bridge between East Berlin and West Berlin. In the 1990s he established the Yisrael b'Aliyah party, which has in the meantime been swallowed up in the Likud.

Many people in Israel perhaps see Sharansky as a gray figure with an uncompromising rightist image, but in the United States they don't see it this way.

"Why in fact can't he be the next prime minister, after [Ariel] Sharon?" an American student who attended the lecture asked in total seriousness.

Sharansky himself looks pleased with his new status as an idol of the masses. He enjoys joking with the audience, and speaks proudly about his meetings in Washington.

The book is causing concern in Egypt

The Washington correspondent of the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram, Khaled Daoud, has concluded that Sharansky's book is threatening to the Arab world to the extent that it merits a series of reports in his newspaper, and the third article in the series is slated to be published today. The two that have already been published review the central idea of the book and criticize it.

"The book is very dangerous, especially in light of the fact that Bush praises it," wrote Daoud, adding that the conclusion from reading the book is very frustrating, and that the many lies and deceptions with which Sharansky is inundating Bush are giving rise to a sense of danger.

In response, Sharansky said in a press release: "I'm happy that Egyptian citizens will become familiar with the thesis presented in the book - I am sure that our region is ready for the era of democratization, and that the interest in the book will encourage discussion of the issue."

His aim has been achieved to a large extent, as the reports do indeed present the main idea of the book. What is not in the reports is self-examination - a discussion whether the arguments apply to the Egyptian regime.

Daoud does not miss the opportunity to express criticism of Sharansky at his weakest point. On the one hand, Sharansky divides countries into only two groups - free societies and fear societies - with no nuances in between. On the other hand, Daoud argues that Sharansky gives a discount to Russia, and claims that he is prepared to admit that the attempt to establish a democracy there has not been very successful.

In the end, argues Daoud, "the book is a primitive attempt to justify international involvement led by the United States in the concerns of all the countries of the world."

"Members of Congress ask me how to behave in the manner of President Bush," he said in an anteroom before the lecture. They too, incidentally, ask him to autograph his book for them."

ABC News: Author: Secretly Taped Bush for History, Not Money

2005-02-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

ABC News: Author: Secretly Taped Bush for History, Not Money: "Feb. 21, 2005 — The friend of the Bush family who secretly recorded nine hours of conversations with George W. Bush says he never intended for the tapes to become public but felt he had a duty to accurately represent a man who he believed would one day become president.

Doug Wead, the author of the new book "The Raising of a President," surreptitiously recorded his conversations with Bush beginning in 1998, when Bush was governor of Texas and considering a run for president.

"I didn't do it for money. I could sell the tapes even now for tremendous amounts of money," Wead said in an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America," adding, "I didn't do it to sell books." Wead said his publisher wanted him to release his book during the 2004 presidential campaign so it could benefit from sales to Bush supporters, but he refused. "My publicist told me at the time, 'That cost you a million dollars,'" Wead said.

Wead, a former Assembly of God minister, said he had had second thoughts about secretly taping the future president. "If I had to do it over, I wouldn't do it at all," he said, "but I love history."

The candid conversations suggested Bush's strategies to deal with questions about whether he used drugs, to reconcile his born-again Christian faith with a tolerance toward gays, and other issues.

Wead, who has written extensively about other first families, including the Kennedys and the Roosevelts, believed Bush would become a "pivotal figure in history."

"I had a choice to either write propaganda about the Bushes or write accurately and fairly based on what I knew," said Wead in an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America."

Wead said his publisher insisted on listening to the tapes to confirm anonymous sources cited in the book. The New York Times then got wind of the tapes, and from there, it "all became unraveled," Wead said.

Wead played about a dozen tapes to a reporter from the Times over the past several weeks, and the paper confirmed their authenticity with an audio expert, according to an article in the paper today.

Questions of Possible Drug Use

On the tapes, Bush discussed strategies for stonewalling questions about past marijuana use.

"Do you want your little kid, to say, 'Hey daddy, President Bush tried marijuana; I think I will?'" said Bush on the tapes. "That's the message we've been sending out. I wouldn't answer the marijuana question."

In a taped segment played on "Good Morning America," Bush also addressed how he would deal with questions about cocaine use.

"The cocaine thing, let me tell you my strategy on that," Bush said on the tape. "Rather than saying no … I think it's time for someone to draw the line and look people in the eye and say, you know, 'I'm not going to participate in ugly rumors about me and blame my opponent,' and hold the line. Stand up for a system that will not allow this kind of crap to go on."

When asked if past drug use was a big issue to Bush, Wead said, "He brought the subject up often."

Bush has acknowledged having a problem with alcohol in the past but has not publicly admitted any illegal drug use.

Instead of being a negative for the president, Wead sees Bush's past indiscretions as a positive story of redemption.

"Leo Tolstoy said, 'Everyone wants to change humanity, but no one is willing to change themselves,' " said Wead. "I see George W. Bush as an example of someone who changed themselves."

Tolerance for Gays, Disdain for Rivals

The tapes also show Bush's concern about keeping his evangelical Christian base happy while appearing tolerant to gays.

In one conversation, Wead said on the tape: "He's saying you promised you would not appoint any gays to office."

Bush replied: "No, what I said was I wouldn't fire gays. … I'm not going to discriminate against people."

A more bawdy side of Bush also is apparent on the tapes, as he mocked then-Vice President Al Gore for admitting to marijuana use, predicted that Sen. John McCain's, R-Ariz., appeal would "wear thin," and called his father's vice-president "ugly."

"Dan Quayle, gosh, he's ugly. He's gone ugly on me, man," Bush said on the tapes.

Terse Response

The White House response to the six-year-old tapes has been terse.

"These were casual conversations with someone [the president] considered a friend," said a White House spokesman.

Wead said he's keeping some of the material private, because it's too personal and could land him in legal trouble. He also said he made all of the recordings in states where it is legal to do so.

Though Wead said he has spoken to the White House since the release of the tapes, he has stayed mum on the president's response.

"He's a leader, and he prefers to lead," said Wead of his old friend, adding, "I write history."
"

Yahoo! News - President Bush Plotted to Hide History of Years of Drug Abuse

2005-02-21T07:49:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! News - Secret Tapes Show Bush's Concern Over Past: "Secret Tapes Show Bush's Concern Over Past

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) was concerned "his mistakes as a youth" would disqualify him from running for the nation's highest office, said an old friend who secretly recorded private conversations in which Bush appears to acknowledge past drug use.

"I don't want any kid doing what I tried to do 30 years ago," Bush said in recordings made when he was governor of Texas and aired Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "And I mean that. It doesn't matter if it's LSD, cocaine, pot, any of those things, because if I answer one, then there will be another one. And I just am not going to answer those questions. And it may cost me the election."

The recordings were made by Doug Wead, a former aide to George W. Bush's father, in the two years before the younger Bush became the Republican nominee for president in 2000.

"I think it bothered him — the fact that when he was younger he was irresponsible," Wead said in an interview on the ABC program. "I think early on he felt disqualified, that he couldn't run for office because of his mistakes as a youth."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Sunday that the president does not dispute the content of the tapes. McClellan would not comment further, other than to say they were "casual conversations that then-Governor Bush was having with someone he thought was a friend."

Wead also played some of his recordings for a New York Times reporter. The newspaper reported Sunday that they show Bush crafting a strategy for navigating the tricky political waters between Christian conservative and secular voters. He repeatedly worried that evangelicals would be angered by a refusal to bash gays and that secular Americans would be turned off by meetings with evangelical leaders, the newspaper reported.

Wead said he didn't intend for the tapes to become public in his lifetime, but he was forced to release them by his publisher. Wead is the author of "The Raising of a President: The Mothers and Fathers of Our Nation's Leaders," which was published by Atria and went on sale last month.

Wead said he made the tapes as a historical record. He denied that he released them to make money or sell books.

"This book could have been released before the election, driven by partisan sales," Wead said. "The publisher wanted it. I wouldn't let it, and my publicist told me at the time, `That cost you a million dollars.'""

Elliott Abrams - From Iran-Contra to Bush's democracy czar. By Michael Crowley

2005-02-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

Elliott Abrams - From Iran-Contra to Bush's democracy czar. By Michael Crowley: "Elliott Abrams
From Iran-Contra to Bush's democracy czar.
By Michael Crowley
Posted Thursday, Feb. 17, 2005, at 10:41 AM PT

Abrams: Bush's Henry Kissinger?

Hours before the president's State of the Union address earlier this month—a perfect moment for burying inconvenient news—the White House announced the ascension of Elliott Abrams to the highest ranks of its foreign-policy team. Abrams has moved from the staff of the National Security Council to the post of deputy national security adviser. It's a significant promotion, one that gives Abrams both an elevated stature and new management powers. Specifically, the White House says Abrams will be in charge of "global democracy strategy," effectively making him Bush's democracy czar. In other words, Abrams is now the brains behind George Bush's grand mission to fix the world. Over the next four years, he may come to represent, more than anyone, the id of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Why would the White House bury Abrams' promotion? Because he still hasn't shed his image as a Reaganite villain. As Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh prepared to bring a multicount felony indictment against him in 1987, Abrams pleaded guilty to misleading Congress, a misdemeanor crime. Many Democrats also revile him as the lead apologist for brutal Central American dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala during the 1980s. He's "the guy who lied and wheedled to aid and protect human rights abusers," The Nation's David Corn wrote upon Abrams' 2001 return to government. Surely the White House grasps the ironies here: A man accused of subverting the Constitution is leading its charge for democratic government; a reputed defender of dictators is working to depose them. In this sense, Abrams embodies Bush's foreign policy as a whole. The goals are noble—but are the methods sound?

Abrams is a neocon with almost cartoonishly pure credentials. He grew up in a liberal Jewish household in New York. While a student at Harvard Law School, he lived in the attic of the sociologist Nathan Glazer, a pioneer of neoconservative social thought. In the 1970s Abrams worked for the two Democrats to whom neocons still pay homage, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late New York senator, and Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the famously hawkish senator from Washington state. He married Rachel Decter, whose mother, Midge, is married to the neocon Yoda-figure Norman Podhoretz. He is also a longtime friend of Natan Sharansky, the Russian dissident turned Israeli parliament member who is a pro-democracy hero to neocons and whose tome on democracy recently graced Bush's bedside table.

Like so many other neocons, Abrams ditched the Democratic party in the late 1970s because of its post-Vietnam foreign-policy timidity. After a meeting with Jimmy Carter, he declared the president "hopeless" about confronting the Soviets. He joined Reagan's State Department and in the name of anti-communism placed himself on the front lines of the administration's Central American proxy wars with the Soviets. Abrams was among the first to agitate for the downfall of Manuel Noriega, and his loathing of Augusto Pinochet led him to feud openly with Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, who urged cooperation with the Chilean strongman. But Abrams undercut his credibility by stubbornly defending the U.S.-backed military regime in El Salvador even after evidence emerged of regime-sponsored massacres. This made him a villain among liberals like New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, who accused him of whitewashing human rights abuses. A famously tough political operator, Abrams gave as good as he got. "I would like to take a machine gun and mow Anthony Lewis down," his wife once told the Washington Post. "I wouldn't waste the bullets," Abrams rejoined. "I would rather have them go to the contras."

That sort of self-certainty helped to enmesh Abrams in the Iran-Contra scandal. Though not a principal architect, he was well aware of Oliver North's secret aid program to the Nicaraguan rebels and played his own memorable role in the skullduggery. In a classic bit of John le Carré intrigue, Abrams traveled to London in 1986 armed with a Swiss bank account number and the code name "Mr. Kenilworth." He met in Hyde Park with an agent of the Sultan of Brunei and solicited a $10 million donation for the contras. When the Iran-Contra investigation revealed his role, Abrams took a beating and then hung on for the duration of Reagan's presidency. He wasn't invited to join the new team when George H. W. Bush took office in 1989, however, though Bush later granted him a Christmas Eve pardon to clear his legal record. Abrams never apologized for his Iran-Contra doings. "I don't have any regrets at all," he proclaimed upon leaving government. Much like the defenders of the Iraq war in the current administration, he felt he had done the right thing in the name of a larger, heroic cause.

Abrams used his time out of government to develop the new specialty that paved his path back: religion and the Middle East. In 1996 he became president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington outfit dedicated to applying faith-based morality to public policy. To boost support for Israel, Abrams urged a new kinship between observant Jews and evangelical Christians. He promoted a strongly pro-Israel stance toward peace negotiations with the Palestinians, criticizing the 1993 Oslo accords as too demanding of Israel.

When Abrams returned to government in 2001 as a National Security Council staffer (a position that did not require a sure-to-be-bloody Senate confirmation), his unflinching belief that only strong American power can catalyze democracy and human rights abroad wasn't a Bush priority. Abrams seemed bound to be a secondary figure. Like his fellow neocons Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, however, his ideas gained sudden new currency after Sept. 11. Unlike Wolfowitz and Perle, however, Abrams hasn't been tarnished by the Iraq war. They made public assurances that proved fanciful; Abrams was a supporter of the war but not a key planner.

He has instead spent the past couple of years as a senior adviser to Bush on the Middle East peace process. In that post he has used his clout to undercut the administration's "road map" to peace because he thought it demanded too much of Israel. Abrams has compared Ariel Sharon to Winston Churchill, an enthusiasm that has translated into a White House policy of few concessions to the Palestinians. His promotion, then, would seem to suggest a more pro-Israel slant. But there is also a school of thought, expressed to me by one administration official, that only someone with Abrams' bona fides can convince American Jews that a U.S.-brokered peace deal is worth supporting. If Bush is to Ramallah as Nixon is to China, then Abrams is the Henry Kissinger.

Meanwhile, Abrams' central task is to implement Bush's call for "the expansion of freedom in all the world." Ill-defined as it may be, the concept presents a quandary for liberals, who may admire Bush's democratic ends but loathe his means, and who may wish for democracy in Iraq but feel the Bush administration has lied in its effort to achieve it. Elliott Abrams' career has been defined by similar contradictions. In that sense, he is a perfect face for George Bush's foreign policy."

31 NGOs in Afghanistan Support Nacotics Trade

2005-02-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

Iran Daily "Anti-Drug War in Afghanistan Questioned

This picture taken 9 April 2004, shows an Afghan poppy farmer using a blade to score the surface of an opium poppy in order to extract raw opium in Laghman, Afghanistan. (AFP File Photo)

KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 2--Afghan authorities and the international community have declared war on drugs in Afghanistan, the world's largest opium producer, but the debate about exactly how to wipe out the problem is just starting, AFP reported.
This week 31 non-governmental organizations wrote to new US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice urging America to reconsider its emphasis on eradicating poppy crops, saying it could destabilize the country.
The open letter shows the widespread concern among aid officials and diplomats, who say eradication is not enough while there is no real policy for giving farmers an alternative livelihood once their crops are destroyed.
They say the West must also tackle the problem at the other end, starting with the addicts who consume Afghan drugs and moving up to the traffickers and even the companies who export chemicals used to make heroin.
"There is no silver bullet," one of the aid officials who signed the letter to Rice told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"Development is going to take many years. So rather than throwing a lot of resources, the US should take a look at the bigger picture."
The letter, released Monday by groups including CARE, the International Crisis Group and Oxfam International said the current anti-drugs policy placed "premature and excessive emphasis" on eradication.
"It has the potential to turn millions of Afghans against a government which is struggling to extend its reach and strengthen its authority," the document added."

Yahoo! News - Report: FBI botched internal spying probe

2005-01-15T12:19:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! News - Report: FBI botched internal spying probe: "Top Stories - Chicago Tribune

Report: FBI botched internal spying probe

Sat Jan 15, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Andrew Zajac Washington Bureau
A former FBI (news - web sites) linguist's allegations of possible espionage involving a colleague are credible but still have not been properly examined nearly three years after they were made, according to a new internal Justice Department (news - web sites) report released Friday.

In his review, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine also concluded that the linguist, Sibel Edmonds, was fired in April 2002 in large part because of her whistle-blowing activity and that the dismissal could have a chilling effect on the willingness of FBI employees to report wrongdoing in the future.

The 37-page assessment documents a superficial inquiry marked by sloppy interviews, shallow research and an unwillingness to look beyond what the department's investigators acknowledged was Edmonds' sometimes difficult personality.

While making no judgment on the merits of her claims of serious security breaches, the report said they "were supported by various pieces of evidence" and that "the FBI did not, and still has not adequately investigated these allegations."

In a statement Friday, the FBI said an investigation into Edmonds' allegations is ongoing. It also cited an e-mail sent last summer to bureau employees from FBI Director Robert Mueller in which he pledged "his commitment to protecting from retaliation all employees, including contractors . . . who raise good faith concerns."

The inspector general's findings are the second black eye for the nation's top law-enforcement agency in two days. On Thursday, the bureau acknowledged that it likely will scrap a highly touted $170 million computer system for tracking cases because of flaws.

Problems exposed

The report also calls further attention to the FBI's already struggling foreign-language translation program.

Last October, Fine issued a review disclosing that the bureau had a backlog of more than 100,000 hours of audio in languages used by suspected terrorists and was hard-pressed to find qualified linguists.

The shoddy internal inquiry in Edmonds' case was particularly troubling to Fine because it came barely a year after the February 2001 arrest of Robert Hanssen (news - web sites), the former FBI agent whose selling of secrets to Moscow went undetected for years, despite reports from co-workers of troubling behavior.

"The Hanssen case demonstrates that an individual reporting a security-related concern about another employee may not have the whole story, but may provide sufficient information to focus attention on a person deserving of further scrutiny," the report said in a footnote.

The Edmonds report was originally 100 pages and was completed last July, but classified "Secret."

After Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) pressed for public release of the findings, the FBI negotiated with Fine's office and produced Friday's summary, stripped of classified material. Both senators criticized the bureau for its treatment of Edmonds.

Edmonds was hired in late September 2001 as a contract employee to translate surveillance wiretaps that were in Turkish.

Some allegations valid

According to records from a lawsuit Edmonds filed to get her job back, she suspected that the co-worker, a Turkish linguist in Washington, failed to translate transcripts of recorded conversations involving people she knew, steered co-workers away from certain recordings and leaked wiretap information to acquaintances.

Edmonds also made other accusations that Fine said could not be substantiated. But he said most of the complaints involving the co-worker, who was not named and no longer works for the FBI, warrant scrutiny.

Mark Zaid, the attorney for Edmonds, said the report vindicates her. "Not only does the bureau owe her an apology but compensation for her termination," he said.

Edmonds is appealing a federal judge's dismissal of her lawsuit last summer. The judge accepted the Justice Department's argument that a trial would expose national secrets.

Zaid said Fine's findings will bolster Edmonds' appeal, but she also is suing to get release of the entire document.

The review said that Edmonds "was not an easy employee to manage" and that she had used her home computer to write some of her complaints containing classified information, which the bureau considered a security violation.

But, the report concludes, "we believe that the FBI did not take [her allegations] seriously enough" and they were "the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services.""

Jerusalem Post Puts David Szady in the Cross Hairs

2005-01-15T08:41:00.001-08:00

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "Why has AIPAC been targeted?

Janine Zacharia, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 5, 2004
What prompted the years-long FBI investigation into the activities of AIPAC, which featured this past summer's "setup" of two AIPAC officials now revealed by the Post, and which has reached its height with the issuing of subpoenas last week?

Some speculate that there are those in the intelligence community who have grown irritated and resentful about the level of access AIPAC is afforded at the very highest echelons in Washington.

With the shadow of the Jonathan Pollard affair still looming large in Washington 17 years after the US navy analyst was convicted and imprisoned for life for passing classified information to Israel, there is, too, the possibility that investigators may have been motivated by a suspicion of American Jewish "dual loyalties" – to the US and Israel.

Having realized the magnitude of the damage done by the Pollard episode, Israel publicly declared an end to spying in the US. But American Jews seeking employment in intelligence agencies are still often hamstrung by security checks that prevent them from obtaining employment or rising in the ranks, apparently because of the "dual loyalties" suspicion.

Whatever the motivation for the investigation, few Washington insiders understand why or how AIPAC would be involved in illegal, or espionage-related activities, given the potential repercussions and given the lobby's clout and power in the capital. And many in the Jewish community in particular are doubtful that any accusations of espionage against AIPAC will hold up.

Senior AIPAC officials have regular contact with the most senior administration officials and exchange information regularly on all aspects of Middle East policy.

Howard Kohr, the lobby's executive director, has routine conversations with officials as high up as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Officials at all levels of the organization have regular policy discussions, the kind of discussions that AIPAC officials believe the FBI are trying to portray as espionage.

AIPAC's annual spring policy conference in Washington draws thousands and features speeches by senior administration officials and congressional leaders. Just a few weeks ago, Rice, undeterred by the ongoing investigation, appeared before an AIPAC conference in Florida.

On Friday, Rep. Robert Wexler, a Jewish Democratic congressman from south Florida, sent a second letter to US President George W. Bush expressing "deep concern" about the FBI's ongoing investigation of the lobby group, and urging the president to provide members of Congress with detailed information about the AIPAC probe.

Wexler called on Bush to immediately dismiss David Szady, the senior FBI counterintelligence official who is heading the investigation.

Senior Jewish community officials have accused Szady of targeting Jews in the past by blocking or slowing their security clearances.

As journalist and author Edwin Black reported for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in September, Szady headed a CIA counterespionage group, which tried to force the Jewish former CIA staff attorney Adam Ciralsky out of the agency, by documenting and probing his past contacts with Israel.

The issuing of subpoenas last week to four AIPAC officials to appear before a grand jury later this month could mean that indictments are in the works. If so, the circumstances that triggered the probe will become evident, as will the nature and gravity of any alleged wrongdoing."

Joel Mowbray Joins in Szady Smear

2005-01-14T19:45:00.000-08:00

FrontPage magazine.com :: The Spies Who Aren't by Joel Mowbray: "The Spies Who Aren't
By Joel Mowbray
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 17, 2004

The past couple weeks have seen a swirl of anonymous allegations of supposed spying and espionage, including implications that the Pentagon civilian staff might be teeming with double agents for the Jewish state.

Thing is, almost none of it is true.

Beyond mishandling of classified documents—not an inconsequential offense, to be sure—every other accusation leveled by unnamed State Department and intelligence officials appears part of a carefully calculated campaign to question the loyalty of several Pentagon civilian employees by name, as well as a much larger group by implication.

According to someone with intimate knowledge of the draft presidential directive that low-level Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin allegedly leaked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the document contained no sources and no methods. It had no sensitive material of any kind. It was nothing more than a policy paper—just a few pages that resembled an opinion-editorial—advocating tougher diplomacy, not war, in dealing with Iran.

Why was it marked “secret?” Nearly every document emerging out of that Pentagon office was stamped secret—the lowest grade of secrecy. A memo about an office Christmas party would probably be classified secret too.

If guilty, Franklin should be appropriately punished. But what about others who are inexplicably being lumped into the same smear campaign?

Bandying about words like “espionage” and “spying,” as many news outlets have, serves the goals of the State Department and the CIA, the mortal policy enemies of the hawks at the Pentagon. But unlike previous leak campaigns, State and CIA’s latest effort may have crossed into dangerous territory.

Most politically appointed administration officials on the foreign policy team who support President Bush’s agenda seem to have at least an uneasy feeling that the anonymous smear campaign flirts dangerously close to classic anti-Semitic libels.

Others are of decidedly less mixed opinion. Says one official, “It is not a witch hunt; it is a pogrom.”

Looking at the media coverage, particularly that of the Washington Post, and the reported conduct of the investigation, it is not difficult to understand the officials’ concern.

Though Franklin is Catholic, few articles mention that he is not Jewish, and none from the Post do so. He is far down the food chain, yet almost every story identifies him as an employee of Feith, who is Jewish, even though the undersecretary for policy is some six levels removed and oversees over 1,000 subordinates.

Tarring specific so-called neoconservatives, a September 4 Post story with no other clear purpose identified by name five other Pentagon officials about whom “investigators have asked questions.” All five individuals are Jewish, and according to the piece, “have strong ties to Israel.”

Driving home the smear, the story informs readers that three of them “were co-authors of a 1996 policy paper for then-Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.” The paper in question, however, was neither commissioned nor funded by Netanyahu or the Israeli government. It was unsolicited advice, no different than the papers and op-eds written by thousands of Washington policy wonks attempting to persuade various individuals or entities, including foreign leaders or governments.

The reported track record of the FBI agent in charge of the investigation, FBI assistant director of counterintelligence David Szady, is also troubling. Szady has for years “led investigations into Jewish American CIA employees believed to be spying for Israel that have also failed to persuade the Justice Department even to investigate the cases,” reports Eli Lake of the New York Sun.

That’s not all. Stephen Green, who reportedly was interviewed by the FBI for four hours relating to this case (the FBI refused comment), is a free-lance writer on a two-decade long quest to prove that Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and other Jews are actually embedded Israeli spies. Some twenty years of futility later, Green is suddenly all the rage with leftist blogs and “news” sites, as well as (frighteningly) some mainstream news outlets.

Until his newfound popularity on the left and in the Arab press, Green’s staunchest support had come from Institute of Historical Review (IHR), which is perhaps best known for its denial of the Holocaust. Green’s two books that purport to document Israel’s vast network of Jewish spies working in the U.S. government have received rave reviews from the Holocaust deniers.

And now Green is being utilized by the FBI.

For those curious about the origins of this seemingly sprawling investigation, a quote in the September 4 Post story seems particularly revealing: “The initial interest was: Do you believe certain people would spy for Israel and pass secret information?” which was attributed to “one source interviewed by the FBI about the defense officials.”

In other words, it appears that this investigation started without a scintilla of evidence, and it was sparked solely because of “beliefs.”

Two days earlier, the Post reported that this investigation is “more than two years old.” Yet in those two years, the Post reported on September 4, all investigators have on the five named Jews in the Pentagon are “suspicions,” which the Post also noted may not even be “specific.”

What those five officials have (courtesy of the Post), however, is a taint that will not soon disappear, regardless of their actual innocence.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Mowbray is author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security."

Eli Lake's Smear of David Szady in JewishWorldReview.com

2005-01-14T19:42:00.000-08:00

'Spy'case not what originally claimed: "‘Spy’ case not what originally claimed by GOTCHA! media

By Eli Lake

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | An investigation into a mid-level Pentagon analyst is likely to focus on the misuse of classified materials, senior law enforcement officials told The New York Sun, and not the much more serious charge of espionage on behalf of Israel.

The investigation into Larry Franklin, an Iran analyst who worked in the Pentagon's policy shop, is being led by David Szady, the head of counterintelligence for the FBI. Mr. Szady, who used to lead the CIA's counterintelligence espionage unit, has developed a reputation in the intelligence community for chasing phantoms. For years, Mr. Szady pursued CIA official Brian Kelly who was believed to be a Russian mole, when the whole time the FBI's own Robert Hanssen was Moscow's spy. Mr. Szady has also led investigations into Jewish American CIA employees believed to be spying for Israel that have also failed to persuade the Justice Department even to investigate the cases.

Mr. Franklin, who is not Jewish, has been a longtime analyst of Iran who one colleague described as "mild mannered and patriotic but at times exasperating." An avid practitioner of martial arts, Mr. Franklin was a former employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency where he often clashed with senior agency officials on their estimates of Iranian-directed terrorist activities.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that Mr. Franklin was under investigation for slipping a draft Iran policy paper, known as a National Security Policy Directive, to members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. A former American official familiar with the document said it was classified "secret" and did not contain either intelligence sources or the methods of gathering intelligence.

A senior law enforcement official and administration sources told the Sun that the Franklin investigation stems from a two-year FBI probe into who leaked top secret war plans for Iraq published by the New York Times on July 5, 2002.

This is not a matter of U.S. security being damaged," a senior law enforcement official said. "And the material wasn't of a top secret nature — it was draft policy papers and position papers and stuff like that. The Israelis could have gotten the same stuff from conversations with their counterparts at State or the White House.

At a July 21, 2002, press conference Mr. Rumsfeld said, "It's inexcusable, and they ought to be in jail." In a memo circulated to the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld condemned the improper disclosure of classified information and encouraged staff members to put an end to the practice. "I have spoken publicly and privately, countless times, about the danger of leaking classified information," he wrote. "It is wrong. It is against the law."

More recently at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on August 17, Mr. Rumsfeld speculated, "I wonder if our government can keep a secret."

Senior law enforcement officials and administration sources told the Sun that the official under investigation, Mr. Franklin, would not likely be charged with espionage. The Washington Post and CBS News reports over the weekend mentioned the possibility of espionage charges.

"This is not a matter of U.S. security being damaged," a senior law enforcement official said. "And the material wasn't of a top secret nature — it was draft policy papers and position papers and stuff like that. The Israelis could have gotten the same stuff from conversations with their counterparts at State or the White House.""

Statement on Brian Patrick Regan case by U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty

2005-01-14T19:35:00.000-08:00

: "Statement on case by U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty

Brian Patrick Regan
July 30, 2003

Good Afternoon. I am Paul McNulty, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. With me today are:

David Szady, Assistant Director, Counter-Intelligence Division, FBI
onald Nesbitt, Special Agent in Charge for National Security Division, FBI
Lydia Jechoret, Supervisory Special Agent, FBI
Stephen Carr, Special Agent, FBI
Steve Doyle, US DOJ
Patricia Haynes, Assistant US Attorney, EDVA
Jim Gillis, Assistant US Attorney, EDVA
Colonel Debra Donahoo - Director or Counterintelligence - NRO
Two Conservation Officers from the Virginia Department of Conservation & Recreation:
David Summers and
Dan Quesenberry

We are here today to tell the full story of Brian Patrick Regan's betrayal of his country. We want you to see the magnitude of the damage this man was willing to inflict on his country and fellow citizens.

Regan was sentenced last Spring to spend the rest of his life in prison for attempting to sell national security information to our enemies. At the time, we were only able to describe his traitorous acts in general terms because we were still assessing the damage he would have caused if his betrayal was successful. The whereabouts of all the material he stole and buried away had not been identified.

Today we can now report that more than 20,000 pages of classified documents, CD ROMS and videotapes have been found. These materials were buried in 19 different locations in State Parks in Virginia and Maryland.

Just look at the volume of classified materials gathered here. Some is Top Secret; some is Top Secret Codeword. The documents and information concerned satellites, early warning systems, and weapons of mass destruction, among other classified topics. All of it pertains to the national security of the United States.

Brian Patrick Regan stole this material. He systematically removed thousands of pages of classified documents and other information from the National Reconnaissance Office, where he worked as a signals intelligence officer.

Regan admitted that he took those documents from the NRO with two objectives: To sell them for millions of dollars to Iraq, Libya, China and Iran, and
To blackmail the United States should he get caught.

The classified information that Brian Regan was carrying when he was arrested was only a fraction of what he intended to sell to our adversaries.

Fortunately, because of the extraordinary work of the FBI and the NRO, Regan was prevented from pulling off what may have been one of the largest espionage schemes of all time.

These two parks, the Pocohontas State Park in Virginia and the Patapsco Valley State Park in Maryland are used by thousands of American families every year. They were also used by Regan to hide the secrets he stole. He buried this information in 19 holes - 7 in Maryland and 12 in Virginia.

Regan used a complex coding system to record the locations of the buried packages. To further safeguard these locations, he buried the code containing the locations. We found that container - it was a tooth brush holder and it was buried near the "Fredricksburg" sign by exit 130A of Route 95 South.

Regan also went so far as to attempt to involve his wife in his crime. He asked her to bury a number of items, such as magazines and toys in a variety of places. His plan was to assert his innocense by saying the holes he dug in the parks were just part of a game of treasure hunt he planned to play with his children.

Over the last five months, the FBI and the NRO, along with other members of the intelligence community, have dedicated themselves to recovering these hidden classified documents, and they have done so.

In anticipation of two questions I am sure you will ask:

We are confident that every last page has been recovered.
And, we are also confident that none of the 20,000 pages of classified information, the CD ROMs or the videotapes ever made it to foreign hands.

As Trish Haynes and Jim Gillis so eloquently stated at trial, Brian Patrick Regan took an oath of loyalty to the United States. He was entrusted with many of our nation's most highly classified military secrets. Regan violated that trust. He dishonored his uniform. He was willing to compromise our military secrets, the safety of our armed forces, and the integrity of intelligence systems vital to the security of our country. And when he was caught, he was willing to blackmail the United States into setting him free.

Our successful prosecution of Brian Patrick Regan serves as a warning to anyone willing to try to betray our country - you will fail. The United States can and will protect the information relating to its national security, and the safety of the people of the United States, and you will pay the price for your betrayal.

Again, I want to commend the men and women who worked so hard to recover this material."

The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles Targets Szady with Smear

2005-01-14T19:31:00.000-08:00

The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles: "2004-09-24

Does AIPAC Prober Target Jews?
by Edwin Black, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
David Szady, the senior FBI counterintelligence official currently heading the controversial investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is well-known to senior Jewish communal officials, who assert he has targeted Jews in the past."

Forward Newspaper Publishes SZady Smear that Emanates from AEI

2005-01-14T19:29:00.000-08:00

Forward Newspaper Online: "

Leading neoconservative figure Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute added his own thought. “This is a war of the intelligence community versus the neoconservatives,” Rubin observed. “It involves both the right and the left of the intelligence community. It is a war about policy, the point being, the CIA must not be involved in policy. The CIA’s role is to provide intelligence and let the policymakers decide what to do with it, and it appears they are not sticking to that role — and that is a dangerous situation. This is the politicizing of intelligence. But the CIA, by its establishing principles, is not to be involved in politics.”

Rubin added that the sting effort “against Aipac is the culmination of a 20-year witch hunt from a small corps within the counterintelligence community” that Rubin labeled “conspiracy theorists.” He added, “What is the common denominator between the Ciralsky case and the Aipac case? David Szady.”

Szady, who has been decorated twice by the CIA for distinguished service, answered one critic, writing, “I am not at liberty to comment on pending investigations.” Szady had issued a statement to this reporter earlier that he “has no antisemitic views, has never handled a case or investigation based upon an individual’s ethnicity or religious views, and would never do so.”

One neoconservative at the center of the counterintelligence war said: “This is just the beginning. Nobody knows where this war is going.”"

Jewish News of Greater Phoenix publishes Jewish Telegraphic Agency mear of Szady

2005-01-14T19:19:00.000-08:00

AIPAC prober linked to anti-Semitism: "September 24, 2004/Tishri 9 5765, Vol. 57, No. 4

AIPAC prober linked to anti-Semitism
EDWIN BLACK
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
WASHINGTON - David Szady, the senior FBI counterintelligence official currently heading the controversial investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is well-known to senior Jewish communal officials, who assert he has targeted Jews in the past."

Congressman Robert Wexler Joins the Smear of David Szady

2005-01-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

Congressman Robert Wexler: 19th District of Florida: "Contacts: Dana Kelly
Phone: (202) 225-3001

September 29, 2004
Press Release
Wexler Urges Bush to Investigate AIPAC Probe

FBI Official Leading Case Has Alleged Ties to Anti-Semitism

( Washington, D.C.) – Today Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) sent the following letter to President Bush calling on him to investigate David Szady, a senior FBI counterintelligence official leading the bureau’s investigation of an alleged espionage case involving the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Wexler asks Bush to determine whether or not Mr. Szady has a record of unfairly targeting Jews, and if so, urges the President to remove Mr. Szady from the AIPAC case and dismiss him from his post. Wexler also asks President Bush to re-examine the AIPAC probe and consider whether it may have been instigated by anti-Jewish sentiment within the CIA and the FBI.

Wexler raises the possibility that Szady may have led the charge against AIPAC due to his personal bias against Jews. In 1997, as head of the CIA’s Counter Espionage Group (CEG), Mr. Szady was in charge of a unit investigating CIA attorney Adam Ciralsky’s alleged dual loyalties with Israel based merely on Mr. Ciralsky’s Jewish background. Mr. Ciralsky subsequently sued the CIA and FBI for discrimination, which led to a CIA investigation of Mr. Szady and the CEG in 1998. The Anti-Defamation League was hired to perform “sensitivity training” of CEG employees at that time.

According to reports, Mr. Szady has a history of blocking or delaying security clearances for Jewish employees and singling them out for minor security matters. Despite his disturbing record, in 2001 President Bush appointed Mr. Szady to head the interagency unit known as the National Counterintelligence Policy Board where he served for two years before returning to the FBI in 2002.

Wexler’s letter also questions the Bush Administration’s handling of the AIPAC investigation, including its leaking information to the press, appointing Mr. Szady to lead this investigation and failure to share information with Congress. Wexler sent a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft on September 3 asking that he provide details to Congress about the investigation. Mr. Ashcroft has yet to respond to his request.

(Please find a copy of the letter below)

President George W. Bush

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

September 29, 2004

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing in regard to the FBI’s ongoing investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and allegations that it may have served as a conduit for the transmittal of classified information to Israel. According to recent press reports, this investigation has been headed by the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, David Szady, who has a history of targeting Jewish employees and initiating discriminatory intelligence probes. It is in this vein that I urge you to investigate Mr. Szady’s purported anti-Semitic record at the CIA and FBI and examine whether or not he should be leading this case. If these allegations are found to be true, I urge you to remove Mr. Szady from the AIPAC investigation, dismiss him from his post at the FBI and determine if anti-Semitic sentiment and unwarranted skepticism of Jews may have been the impetus for the AIPAC probe.

Given the fact that no information has surfaced to substantiate the highly incriminating accusations against AIPAC, I am perplexed by the manner in which you and your Administration have handled this case. As such, I urge you to take immediate action to ameliorate the unconscionable circumstances surrounding the investigation of AIPAC including – but not limited to – ending egregious press leaks from the Administration and providing Congress with further information about this case.

In a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft on September 3 rd, I requested that he provide Congress with details of the AIPAC investigation and expressed my deep misgivings about leaks stemming from the Department of Justice (DOJ) at a time when suspects have not been officially named by the FBI and charges have yet to be filed. I also question the very premise of this investigation, considering no evidence has surfaced suggesting that AIPAC staff committed espionage, violated the law or even crossed the line requiring registration as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice. If crimes have been committed, then those responsible must be held accountable. If no illegalities have occurred, however, I strongly urge you to do everything in your power to exonerate AIPAC and its staff from this public castigation.

Mr. President, it appears as though your Administration has responded to this investigation with both negligence and deception. Having known about this case for over two years, one would think that you would have either temporarily severed ties with AIPAC’s leadership, or put an end to what appears to be a baseless witch-hunt against them. Instead, you have allowed dubious press reports to circulate which have been damaging to the American Jewish community and U.S.-Israel relations. One of the most disconcerting effects of these reports – which have been rampant in the European and Arab press – are that they have effectively provided fodder to anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists throughout the world who believe that U.S. policy in the Middle East is driven by the American Jewish community and Israel.

While an increase in anti-Semitism may be the result of this investigation, it appears it may also have been the driving force. In the weeks since this story became public, there has been growing suspicion that the impetus for this case may have been anti-Semitic sentiment in the FBI and suspicions that American Jews hold so-called “dual loyalties” to Israel. This theory has been exacerbated by reports that the investigation is led by David Szady, an FBI agent known for targeting Jews in the intelligence field. Given his history, one cannot help but question the propriety of appointing Mr. Szady to lead this case, especially considering the highly-sensitive nature of the AIPAC probe.

As you may be aware, in 1997 Mr. Szady directed an overtly anti-Jewish investigation of a former CIA legal staffer, Adam Ciralsky, in his capacity as head of the Counter Espionage Group (CEG) in the CIA. At the onset of this investigation, the CIA created a “Jewish Resume” for Mr. Ciralsky questioning his teenage trips to Israel, association with the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, education in Judaic studies at George Washington University and other innocuous aspects of his life as a Jew. During this probe, CIA officials also questioned whether his nephew – who was a mere five months old at the time – worked for the Israeli government and were determined to fire Mr. Ciralsky for suspicions of inappropriate ties to Israel. This case received much publicity when Mr. Ciralsky subsequently filed a lawsuit against the CIA and FBI for religious discrimination, and the CIA hired the Anti-Defamation League to conduct "sensitivity training" within the ranks of Szady's CEG.

In 1999, former CIA Director George Tenet stated that “insensitive, unprofessional and highly inappropriate language” was used by the CEG in the Ciralsky investigation. Unfortunately, this was not the only time that Mr. Szady has been accused of anti-Jewish bias in the workplace. According to reports, Jewish community leaders have complained that Szady has unfairly focused on Jewish employees, rejecting or slowing their security clearances and singling them out for minor security matters. As such, Mr. Szady and the CEG were the focus of an external and internal CIA investigation to determine if anti-Semitism played a role in the Ciralsky case. Despite his disturbing record, in 2001 you appointed Mr. Szady to head the interagency unit known as the National Counterintelligence Policy Board where he served for two years before returning to the FBI in 2002.

Mr. President, in light of these serious allegations, I respectfully request that you determine whether or not Mr. Szady has a record of unfairly targeting Jews. If so, I urge you to remove him from this case and dismiss Mr. Szady from the ranks of the American intelligence community. I also strongly urge you to re-examine the AIPAC probe and consider the possibility that it may have been instigated by similar circumstances that led to the Ciralsky case. It is critical that your Administration implement and enforce a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination of any kind in the CIA, FBI and other federal agencies.

In my experience with AIPAC, I have found it to be one of the most principled and effective organizations in Washington which has always conducted its business with professionalism, integrity and a deep commitment to American interests in the Middle East. Given AIPAC’s esteemed record and reputation, it is difficult to envision a case of espionage stemming from the highest ranks of this organization. It is in this regard that I strongly urge you to further investigate this matter and determine the basis and circumstances surrounding this highly questionable case.

I thank you in advance for your time and consideration, and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Robert Wexler"

jonathanpollard.org Joins in Smear of David Szady

2005-01-14T19:15:00.000-08:00

Growing Suspicion AIPAC Probe Driven By Improper Agenda: "Growing Suspicion AIPAC Probe Driven By Improper Agenda
Senior FBI counter-intelligence official involved in case linked to
lawsuit against the FBI and CIA based on anti-Semitism and prejudice.
Maariv International - September 28, 2004

The FBI counter-intelligence probe against AIPAC, in which Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin allegedly passed on sensitive documents to AIPAC officials may be taking a new turn.

So far it has been characterized by a plethora of leaked hype, and a paucity of any evidence of wrongdoing. To date no arrests have been made, and the current status of the probe is unclear.

However new evidence has emerged that cast a new light on the entire affair, supporting those who from the outset voiced grave doubts about the veracity of the entire affair, claiming it was driven by an agenda.

The evidence revolves around the role of David Szady. He formerly held a senior position at the CIA's Counterintelligence Center, and currently holds a senior position in the FBI's Counterintelligence unit, which initiated the probe.

A Washington source intimately familiar with the US intelligence community has confirmed to Maariv that David Szady personally initiated and oversaw the AIPAC probe.

Szady has been linked to a lawsuit filed by former CIA employee Adam Ciralsky. In the suit, currently being heard by the US District court in the District of Columbia, he claims to be the victim of anti-Jewish discrimination, which ended with his unlawful dismissal from the agency. David Szady is not among the list of defendants, which includes former CIA director George Tenet, and FBI director Louis Freeh, and several other senior Agency and bureau officials, including one "John Doe" Chief Counterintelligence Center CIA.

According to the suit, filed by Attorneys David H. Shapiro, Edward Tolchin and Janine Brookner, he was the victim of "outrageous, constitutionally repugnant, and ultra vires counterintelligence ("CI") and security investigations and disciplinary processes conducted against the plaintiff Adam J. Ciralsky by officials of the Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA" or the "Agency") and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI" or the "Bureau")".

"Mr. Ciralsky was unjustly singled out for investigation and subsequently interrogated, harassed, subjected to surveillance and terminated from employment with the CIA solely because he is a Jew and he practices the Jewish religion. Moreover, this ultra vires and constitutionally repugnant conduct was knowingly undertaken by defendants in conformance with a custom, policy and practice of both the CIA and FBI".

"Here, Mr. Ciralsky seeks damages to compensate for him for his injuries, and injunctive relief to prevent further harm to himself and other Jewish-Americans who work or seek to work in the federal government in so-called intelligence agencies. Indeed, damages and injunctive and other equitable relief are being sought pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act".

Mr Szady had previously been named by senior officials of major Jewish organizations as being one of the driving forces behind the counter-intelligence probe that resulted in the firing of Mr. Ciralsky.

Former CIA Director George Tenet has admitted, in a letter he wrote to the ADL, that the CIA counter-intelligence unit headed by Szady operated in an "insensitive, unprofessional and inappropriate manner" regarding the Adam Ciralsky case.

Subsequently Szady transferred to the FBI, where he currently holds a senior position in the Bureau's CI (Counter-Intelligence) department, which is responsible for the probe involving AIPAC, and is believed to be behind the damaging leaks.

Jewish leaders say this is not the first time David Szady has hit their radar screens. "This guy is bad news", said one of them, on condition of anonymity. "He has a record of targeting and harassing Jewish employees. This includes using inappropriate and unprofessional language that could be construed as bigoted, casting doubts and aspersions on their loyalty to the US, and laying whatever bureaucratic mines he could in their paths".

The FBI has denied any allegations of anti-Semitism on the part of Szady. "David Szady holds no anti-Semitic views, and has never handled a case based on any individual's ethnicity", said a FBI spokesperson questioned previously on this affair.

Other Jewish officials and officers of Jewish organizations are willing to bear this out. "I do not believe he is anti-Semitic", said one senior Jewish official. "I have spoken to Jews who know him personally, and have been to his house, and they have assured me he is not anti-Semitic. They have said however that he may be somewhat overzealous, especially in the hunt for Agent X, who some FBI officials still believe worked with convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, despite the fact that no evidence supporting allegations of his existence has ever come to light over the past 18 years since Pollard was apprehended".

A senior official of a major Jewish organization has said that although there is no conclusive evidence that points to Mr. Szady being a bigot and anti-Semite, the Ciralsky case "showed that there existed, within the CIA at the time, an atmosphere tolerant of insensitive and inappropriate attitudes and demeanor, including in the unit headed by Mr Szady".

He also said that it is important to remain vigilant, since "no institution is ever totally immune to the bacilli of anti-Semitism". "Significant progress has been made. If one looks at the State Department, traditionally considered a bastion of genteel and not always so genteel anti-Semitism, and reflects on the number of Jews who have held senior positions in that body over the past two decades, it is clear that things have significantly changed for the better".

Following the exposure of the Ciralsky case the ADL was approached by former CIA director George Tenet to conduct "sensitivity training", which goes on to this day. FBI director Louis Freeh has adopted a similar program, also run by the ADL.

David Shapiro, Adam Ciralsky's attorney said that his client's current employment conditions "prohibit him from making any further comment on the case, over and above the brief filed with court, which is a matter of public record"."

Federal Bureau of Investigation - FBI Executives - David W. Szady

2005-01-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

Federal Bureau of Investigation - FBI Executives: "David W. Szady - Assistant Director, Counterintelligence Division

Mr. Szady currently serves as the Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, appointed to that position March 2002 and reappointed following his mandatory retirement on November 4, 2003. Mr. Szady's former position was as the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX), a position created by a Presidential Decision Directive in December 2000.

Mr. Szady has over 30 years of service in the FBI, with 25 years experience in espionage and foreign counterintelligence investigations. He entered on duty with the FBI in September 1972 and was assigned to the FBI's Mobile, Alabama, Field Division where he worked general criminal investigative matters. From 1975 until 1980 he served in the FBI's Washington Field Office and worked in the FBI's Foreign Counterintelligence (FCI) program and established himself as an FCI Soviet expert. In 1980, Mr. Szady was assigned as a supervisor in the FBI Headquarters Intelligence Division during which time he was commended for his supervision and personal attention to the John Walker espionage investigation. In 1985, he was assigned to the FBI's San Francisco Division where he served in a supervisory capacity for both criminal investigative and FCI matters. He was recognized for his grasp of counterintelligence issues associated with the hostile intelligence threat in Silicon Valley.

In 1995, Mr. Szady was appointed to the position of Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the San Francisco Division with responsibility for San Francisco's FCI and Terrorism Programs. In 1997 he was appointed to the position of Chief of the CIA's Counter-intelligence Center's Counterespionage Group (CEG), a position mandated by Presidential Decision Directive to be held by a senior executive of the FBI. For his service in this capacity, Mr. Szady was awarded the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) Donovan Award and the CIA's Agency Seal Medallion. In May 1999, Mr. Szady was appointed Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Portland Division where he was responsible for all FBI operations in Oregon.
Mr. Szady was born and raised in Massachusetts. He received a B.A. degree in biology from St. Michaels College in Vermont in 1966, a M.Ed degree in administration from Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts in 1969, and an M.S.T. degree in chemistry from the University of New Hampshire in 1972."

Internet HaganahSmears David Szady

2005-01-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

Internet Haganah::Haganah b' Internet: "David Szady, the senior FBI counterintelligence official currently heading the controversial investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is well-known to senior Jewish communal officials, who assert he has targeted Jews in the past.

Now, an investigation reveals that Szady was involved in a well-publicized case involving a Jewish former CIA staff attorney who sued the FBI, the CIA and its top officials for religious discrimination.

Although not named in the suit, Szady headed the elite department that former CIA Director George Tenet admitted in 1999 was involved with "insensitive, unprofessional and highly inappropriate" language regarding the case of the attorney, Adam Ciralsky.

The AIPAC investigation, which CBS broke last month on the eve of the Republican convention, is believed to focus on a Pentagon official suspected of passing a classified draft policy statement on Iran to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, which allegedly then passed it on to Israel.

AIPAC denies any wrongdoing and has called the alleged charges "baseless." But the case cast a spotlight on the venerable lobbying organization and has sent shock waves through the Jewish community.

Jewish communal officials and members of Congress have protested the investigation and the media frenzy around it, calling for an investigation into who leaked the investigation and for what purpose.

Many questions remain unresolved, including who initiated the investigation, believed to have begun two years ago, and why.

Szady, who was appointed by President Bush in 2001 to head a little-known intelligence interagency unit known as the National Counter Intelligence Policy Board, returned to the FBI about two years ago, becoming assistant director for counterintelligence.

Jewish communal officials familiar with Szady assert he has targeted Jews, blocked or slowed their clearances and squeezed minor security violators.

"He's bad, very bad," declared one senior Jewish organizational executive, who like all those familiar with Szady declined to speak for the record.

According to exclusively obtained documents, Szady was directly involved in the Ciralsky case. He is identified in the documents as the chief of the CIA's Counterespionage Group, known as CEG, which was later accused of targeting Ciralsky for being Jewish and a supporter of Israel.

Szady would not respond directly to a request for an interview, but FBI spokeswoman Cassandra Chandler said, "David Szady has informed me that he has no anti-Semitic views, has never handled a case or investigation based upon an individual's ethnicity or religious views, and would never do so."
Of the AIPAC investigation in particular, Chandler said: "Investigations are predicated upon information of possible illegal or intelligence activity. The suggestion that the FBI or any FBI official has influenced this investigation based on moral, ethnic or religious bias is simply unfounded, untrue, and contrary to the very values the FBI holds highest."

Ciralsky's problems began as soon as he joined the CIA's legal staff as a junior member in early December 1996. Within days, CIA security personnel began creating a special file on Ciralsky and his Jewish background, according to the documents.

One Dec. 19, 1996, internal CIA memo on Ciralsky indicated that a CIA supervisor "would like to keep current on developments for damage control purposes."

By Jan. 15, 1997, the agency had created a four-page annotated "Jewish resume" of Ciralsky, which was classified "secret." The resume listed Ciralsky's teenage trips to Israel in 1987 with the Milwaukee federation and for Passover in 1988, his camp counselor stint at the Milwaukee JCC's day camp, and his minor in Judaic studies at George Washington University. His major in international affairs was not mentioned.

Shortly thereafter, CIA security personnel were asking whether Ciralsky's nephew might be working with the Israeli government, according to documents; the nephew was only about five months old at the time.

By May 1997, Szady, a 32-year veteran of the FBI, had joined the CIA as chief of the Counterespionage Group, within the CIA's Counterintelligence Center. A presidential directive mandates that an independent FBI official serve as chief of the CIA's Counterespionage Group.

Although Szady was not in his post when Ciralsky was hired, shortly after Szady assumed his new position, the counterespionage group appeared determined to terminate Ciralsky.

On June 12, 1997, a memo entitled, "Spot Report-Next Steps in the Adam Ciralsky Case" was circulated by Szady's department, outlining what would be done to force Ciralsky from the agency.

The report and the routing slips were tagged with classifications such as "sensitive," "restricted handling" and "eyes only, no registries" thus ensuring that the documents would not end up in any formal and traceable file.

Although Szady's name is blocked out, his bureaucratic initials, C/CEG/CIC, on two routing pages plus the hand-written acknowledgment next to his initials, show he received the "Spot Report" the day it was written, according to sources with personal knowledge of the case.

By September 1997, unable to find any incriminating information on Ciralsky, Szady's CEG assigned teams of investigators to ramp up the pressure with multiple interrogations, according to documents.

One CEG investigator's memo on Sept. 12, 1997, suggests questions for interrogators to ask Ciralsky, such as, "What is your family's relation with Israeli President Ezer Wizman (sic)?"

This question was based on the fact that Ciralsky is a distant relative of Ezer Weizman, who was Israel's president at the time.

The Sept. 12, 1997 memo added, "Maybe his family has donated money to Israeli government causes."

The memo also quotes one of Szady's investigators, saying "From my experience with rich Jewish friends from college, I would fully expect Adam's wealthy daddy to support Israeli political/social causes in some form… [such as] Israeli Bonds purchased through the United Jewish Appeal."

A week later, Sept. 19, 1997, before a security polygraph had even been administered, Szady's CEG circulated a secret memo, saying that former CIA director "Tenet says this guy is outta here because of lack of candor… Once that's over, it looks like we'll be waving goodbye to our friend."

Szady was third on the distribution list to receive that Sept. 19 memo, according to the routing slip and sources.

A handwritten note on the routing slips comments, "Great job — we should have Ciralsky's report in the security file… This will definitely…result in termination by cancellation of contract! Thx."

Ciralsky complained to the CIA's inspector general, the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, to senior administration officials and to Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

After the outlines of the Ciralsky story broke in 1998, the CIA launched an internal and external review of Szady's department, the CEG, to determine whether it had engaged in anti-Semitism.

As a result of that review, Tenet conceded in a letter to Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's national director, that "some of the language used by some of the investigators in this case was insensitive, unprofessional and highly inappropriate."

After the review, the CIA hired the ADL to conduct "sensitivity training" within the ranks of Szady's CEG.

Foxman said, "The sensitivity training in the CIA was not directed at one individual. It was directed at a situation. There was a concern in the agency at that time, that the world was changing and the agency itself needed its staff to be sensitive to diversity."

After he left the CIA in 1998, when his contract was not renewed, Ciralsky filed a lawsuit against the CIA, the FBI and others, alleging that he was "unjustly singled out for investigation and subsequently interrogated, harassed, surveilled and terminated from employment with the CIA solely because he is a Jew and he practices the Jewish religion," according to the complaint.

Ciralsky's case was not isolated within the intelligence community, according to senior officials at Jewish organizations who declined to speak for the record. One Jewish official stated that he knew of as many as 10 other CIA employees who had been harassed or pressured because of their Jewish background, but they were afraid to come forward.

Postings on the CIA's internal Jewish-only bulletin board — the agency allows various ethnic groups within its ranks to share company tidbits — reflect that numerous employees feel anti-Semitism is rampant. One such posting in 2000, obtained from sources, asks, "Does anyone know how one would go about informing the D/CI [director of central intelligence] "directly that some incidents of anti-Semitism…are tolerated?"

Despite Szady's direct involvement in the Ciralsky case, Szady was decorated twice by the CIA for distinguished service, once with its Seal Medallion and once with the Donovan Award.

One Jewish communal official said of Szady, "He has never stopped looking for Mr. X," the elusive individual some FBI officials hypothesized worked with Jonathan Pollard, who was sentenced in 1987 for spying for Israel.

At least one senior Jewish official cautioned against concluding too much. "Szady might just be over-zealous. I know Jews who have been to his house and they assure they saw no evidence of prejudice."

On Szady's link to the Ciralsky case, American Jewish Congress chairman Jack Rosen said, "The FBI, in recent years, has been criticized for many things, and if the story is true, I would urge that an outside and independent individual or group come in to investigate."

Ciralsky, now a TV network newsman, declined to comment on his case. His lawsuit has been caught up in pre-trial legal limbo, hampered by a series of preliminary motions, according to attorneys familiar with the case.

(Award-winning investigative author and reporter Edwin Black has covered allegations of Israeli spying in the United States since the Pollard case. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "Banking on Baghdad" (Wiley), being released October 12, which chronicles 7,000 years of Iraqi history.)

"

Statement of Mr. David Szady on Changes the FBI is Making to the Counterintelligence Program

2005-01-14T19:07:00.000-08:00

Statement of Mr. David Szady on Changes the FBI is Making to the Counterintelligence Program: "Statement for the Record of
David Szady
Assistant Director, Counterintelligence Division
Federal Bureau of Investigation

on
Changes the FBI is Making
to the Counterintelligence Program

Before the
United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
Washington, D.C.

Mr. Chairman, Senator Hatch, and other members of the Committee, I would like to express my appreciation to you for inviting me to share my thoughts and provide you with an update on the changes we are making to the Counterintelligence program at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). I am pleased to be appearing jointly today with Kenneth Senser, Assistant Director of the FBI's recently established Security Division. By necessity the cooperation between our two Divisions is complementary and seamless. Our Director is committed to protecting the full range of U.S. national security interests and has made counterintelligence, along with counterterrorism and prevention, his highest priorities.

Because the world has changed so dramatically, the FBI is making significant changes to its Counterintelligence program. Our end goal is more effective and efficient detection, prevention, and disruption of hostile foreign intelligence activity directed against the United States and its interests. The FBI appreciates your support as we continue to implement these changes across our organization. First, I would like to provide a very brief assessment of the characteristics of the foreign intelligence threats of the 21st Century, for they provide a basis for understanding our new national, centrally managed counterintelligence strategy.

The Threat Environment

The United States today faces an intelligence threat that is far more complex than it has ever been historically. The threat is increasingly asymmetrical insofar as it seeks to exploit the areas where there is a perception of weakness within the U.S. national security approach and organizations. Traditional notions of counterintelligence that focus on hostile foreign intelligence services targeting classified national defense information simply do not reflect the realities of today's complex international structure. Foreign targeting of the elements of national power, including our vibrant national economic and commercial interests, continues to evolve. While traditional adversaries were limited to centrally controlled national intelligence services, today's adversaries include not only these traditional services but also non-traditional and non-state actors who operate from decentralized organizations. Moreover, the techniques and methodologies used to target classified, sensitive, and commercially valuable proprietary information march forward with the advance of technology.

This new environment and the uncertain future that accompanies it present the FBI with new challenges. The FBI's role as the leader of the nation's counterintelligence efforts requires that we understand all dimensions of the intelligence threats facing the nation and match them with new and innovative investigative and operational strategies. The FBI must continually assess and measure its performance against ever-evolving threats found in these new and different environments. The constant parade of new technologies, the vulnerabilities created by them, the extraordinary value of commercial information and the globalization of everything are but a few examples. The FBI must focus its resources on those actors that constitute the most significant intelligence threats facing the nation, wherever that might come from and in all of these new arenas.

The FBI Response

In response to the increasingly complex intelligence threat environment, the FBI is taking measures that re-orient its counterintelligence strategy, prioritize intelligence threats, and make the requisite organizational and managerial changes to ensure U.S. national security interests are protected. The following initiatives are underway:

Nationally-Directed Strategy

We recognize that in order to mitigate the intelligence threats our country is now facing, we must continually redesign our Counterintelligence program. Historically, when the threat lines were more clearly drawn, counterintelligence at the FBI was largely decentralized, with field divisions setting local priorities and assigning resources accordingly. To effectively recognize and counter the extremely diverse intelligence threats now evolving, a new more centralized and nationally directed, focused, and prioritized program is more effective. By centralizing our program we will ensure the ability of the FBI to be more proactive and predictive in protecting the critical national assets of our country. Centralization cements accountability regarding counterintelligence program direction, control and leadership. Moreover, a centralized counterintelligence program facilitates the FBI's cooperative and collaborative interaction with other members of the United States Intelligence Community. The counterintelligence environment must be transparent.

Our National Strategy will be totally integrated with the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX), or CI-21, to ensure that our efforts are focused on policy driven priorities and that we are positioned to protect identified critical national assets. Our efforts will also be seamless with the CIA to ensure that our counterintelligence efforts extend worldwide.

As part of this nationally directed strategy, I have undertaken a comprehensive strategic planning effort that is providing the FBI with the framework in which to prioritize and address intelligence threats. This framework is based on community-wide analysis and direction and recognizes that there can never be unlimited resources so we must be focused on the greatest threats. This will better position the FBI for the future by changing our performance expectations, management practices and processes and workforce. The central elements of this initiative are:

Development of clear strategic objectives and operational priorities in support of those objectives. As the Assistant Director of Counterintelligence for the FBI, I have responsibility for meeting these objectives and will be held accountable for their successful implementation. Some characteristics of this effort include the establishment of:
A highly trained and specialized Counterintelligence workforce with a management team that reinforces counterintelligence as a specialized priority career within the FBI.
A much stronger operational component within the Counterintelligence Division to include a stronger program management role and specific accountability at Headquarters.
An ongoing system of accountability that clearly defines responsibilities for all elements of counterintelligence both at Headquarters and in the field; and
An enhanced communication strategy that is more effectively communicating counterintelligence policy, plans, priorities, and management concerns throughout the counterintelligence program.
Greatly enhanced analytical support that relies more extensively on highly specialized disciplines and that is interwoven into the intelligence community as a whole.
Organizational Changes

Accepting responsibility to prevent and disrupt foreign intelligence threats and espionage from threatening U.S. national security requires the Counterintelligence Division to adopt a more proactive posture, the kind envisioned by CI-21. In order to fully evolve to this posture, the FBI is developing operational strategies that strategically align our resources in a manner consistent with community-wide national priorities. A fully proactive posture also requires candor in acknowledging our limitations and constraints, and courage in committing ourselves to confront and overcome them. One organizational change I have made consistent with this goal is the establishment of a Counterespionage Section within the Counterintelligence Division from existing base resources. This new section is responsible for managing all of our major espionage investigations. The section also evaluates and prioritizes all existing espionage cases to ensure effective allocation of financial and human resources and expertise to these top priority cases. I want to ensure that these cases are being handled and managed by the most highly skilled and trained FBI personnel.

Resources

In order to meet the challenges ahead of us, I am ensuring that the most important resources the Counterintelligence Division has, its human resources, have the appropriate tools available to effectively implement our mission. While the FBI has historically provided counterintelligence training to new special agents and support personnel and provided specialized courses as advances training, a systematic approach to a comprehensive counterintelligence training regimen applicable throughout an Agent's career has not been in place. The FBI is currently studying its counterintelligence training program. Agents and analysts assigned to work counterintelligence should have a systematic and integrated training program that allows them to continually refine their operational, investigative and analytical skills as their careers advance and a program to ensure that FBI counterintelligence personnel have the same knowledge and understandings as those elsewhere in the community.

Analysis is another area of my focus. Counterintelligence analysis is central to our program, as it not only provides tactical support to ongoing investigations and operations, but is also integral to providing strategic analysis in assessing the foreign intelligence threat we face. With the dissolution of the Investigative Service Division (ISD), many of the counterintelligence analysts have returned to the Counterintelligence Division. It is my job, working with our training Academy and our new college of analytical studies, to have in place a world class analytical function that operates seamlessly within the larger community effort. I think today's challenges require much greater reliance on, and bring in much greater numbers of, outside subject matter experts to bolster our efforts and understanding.

Information management and intelligence sharing are also two areas that we are improving in concert with the directives established by Director Mueller regarding these subjects. The technology being put in place at the FBI will vastly increase our capability to maximize the value of what we know and, even more basic, to know what we know. These new technologies will be the thread that ties the sum of the community body of knowledge together.

Summary

Counterintelligence and counterterrorism are the FBI's leading priorities. If we are to successfully mitigate the asymmetrical intelligence threats facing us today and in the future, a new approach, new ways of thinking and better technology are required. We are in the process of redesigning the counterintelligence program at the FBI. It will be much more centralized to ensure the program is nationally directed, prioritized, and that appropriate management and accountability measures are in place. The Counterintelligence Division will continue to work closely with the Security Division to ensure that our activities are complementary and that the FBI is able to comprehensively address any internal threats. Through our ongoing comprehensive strategic planning process, we are ensuring that our counterintelligence priorities, performance expectations and management practices are designed in a manner that is responsive to ensuring our national objectives are achieved. We are working to not only ensure that counterintelligence personnel have the best possible tools to conduct their work, but also to enhance the training and experience amongst counterintelligence personnel and to bolster counterintelligence as a specialized and vital career within the FBI."

Jewish Review smears David Szady

2005-01-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

DAVID SZADY IN PORTLAN D: "Top agent in AIPAC probe sent to Portland after tainted 1999 inquiry of Jewish lawyer

BY PAUL HAIST
Jewish Review
The senior FBI official who is at the center of a current federal investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee became the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Portland Division immediately after a group he headed in 1999 was named in a public admission of government wrongdoing in the investigation of a Jew.

According to the FBI’s Web site, David Szady was posted as agent in charge of the FBI in Portland in May of 1999, one month after then CIA Director George Tenet admitted that a group headed by Szady had engaged in “inappropriate” conduct in its investigation of a Jewish attorney employed by the CIA.

A spokeswoman at the Portland FBI office said Szady served in Portland until May of 2001.

Today, Szady heads the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division and is the leading government figure in the U.S. government’s current probe of and alleged sting operation against AIPAC.

Investigative reporter Edwin Black, writing for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, began a Sept. 20, 2004, story about Szady by asserting that Szady “is well-known to senior Jewish communal officials, who assert he has targeted Jews in the past.”

Black also reported, “Now, an investigation reveals that Szady was involved in a well-publicized case involving a Jewish former CIA staff attorney who sued the FBI, the CIA and its top officials for religious discrimination.

“Although not named in the suit, Szady headed the elite department that former CIA Director George Tenet admitted in 1999 was involved with ‘insensitive, unprofessional and highly inappropriate’” language regarding the case of the attorney, Adam Ciralsky.

It was April 13, 1999, that Tenet made that admission in a published letter to Anti-Defamation League Director Abraham H. Foxman. That admission came the month before Szady was sent to Portland.

Black’s report also noted: “According to exclusively obtained documents, Szady was directly involved in the Ciralsky case. He is identified in the documents as the chief of the CIA’s Counterespionage Group, known as CEG, which was later accused of targeting Ciralsky for being Jewish and a supporter of Israel.”

In the same story, Black quoted an FBI spokesperson on the issue of Szady’s interest in Jews: “David Szady has informed me that he has no anti-Semitic views, has never handled a case or investigation based upon an individual’s ethnicity or religious views, and would never do so.”

In more recent reporting of the AIPAC probe, Black has not commented further on allegations or suspicions of the possible targeting of Jews based on their ethnicity or religion."

Undersecretary of State John Bolton is leaving State

2005-01-08T07:17:00.000-08:00

Undersecretary of State John Bolton is leaving State "Reuters Jan 6, 2005

Hard-line State Dept. Official To Quit - Sources
Reuters Jan 6, 2005 — By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a leading hard-liner on nuclear nonproliferation who has raised hackles among America's allies as well as its adversaries, is expected to quit the Bush administration, sources said on Thursday.

His departure may signal a shift in U.S. diplomacy to a less confrontational approach as President Bush begins a second term in which he has pledged to reach out to allies estranged by the Iraq War and other policies.

Bolton, an outspoken and controversial policymaker, often provoked strong negative reactions from European allies and was identified more with the sticks than the carrots of U.S. diplomacy when dealing with countries like North Korea and Iran."

Follow the pipeline: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

2004-12-28T06:06:00.000-08:00

Follow the pipeline: South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "Follow the pipeline

By Jim Mullins
Posted December 28 2004
The recent presidential campaign revolved around many issues, but the elephant in the room -- the prospect of wars without end to maintain U.S. control of the world's oil supply -- was ignored.

Shell oil physicist M. King Hubbert predicted in 1954 that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970s. Dismissed as a crackpot theory, his prediction was right on the mark. Despite exhaustive prospecting with new and advanced technology, U.S. production began its inexorable decline from 11.6 million barrels per day then to 9 mbd now, with consumption increasing to 20 mbd.

Oil production has peaked subsequently in other major producing countries: Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Indonesia, as well as the North Sea region.

Soon after, in 1973 and again in 1979, the U.S. suffered oil shortages, mile-long gas lines, lack of heating oil and the realization that oil was finite and not to be wasted. President Carter called for raising mileage standards on motor vehicles and more efficient use of energy in all its forms. He declared the Persian Gulf a U.S. national security priority, for the largest known untapped oil reserves were there.

Americans have enjoyed a constant suppy of oil at unrealistically low prices since then -- but at a hidden military expense: U.S. forces guard oil installations and pipelines in Colombia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The U.S. Navy patrols the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, South China Sea and other supply routes. U.S. bases line the shores of the Arabian peninsula, supporting undemocratic and repressive regimes favorable to U.S. interests.

A constant increase in demand of 2 percent a year requires a 6 percent to 7 percent increase in new discovery to offset the increase plus the decline in the major producing regions. The latest discoveries have been in the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. The Cold War's end brought a potential gas and oil bonanza in landlocked countries around the Caspian Sea. The U.S. moved in quickly to acquire bases in the area and negotiate leases and contracts.

The problem was transportation to the most profitable markets in India and China, whose markets are driving the worldwide upsurge in oil and gas consumption. The first choice was through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea.

It is interesting that Afghanistan was never put on the State Department terrorist list, although it was headquarters for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida.

U.S. negotiations with the Taliban took place during both the Bush and Clinton years. Afghanistan's elected president, Hamid Karzai, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Kalilzad, an Afghan-American, in the 1990s were Houston employees of Unocal, the contractor, and engaged in the unsuccessful talks.

In the Bush administration, a Taliban representative who brought a present of a fine carpet to a Washington negotiating session in July 2001 was reportedly threatened with "accept our carpet of gold or you will receive a carpet of bombs."

A neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century, had published a report in 2000 about the necessity to secure Caspian and Iraqi oil and cited "a new Pearl Harbor" that could ignite the fuse for military action. U.S. plans to depose the Taliban in Afghanistan were in place in conjunction with the Afghan Northern Alliance when 9-11 obliged.

In a few short months -- before Afghanistan was secure and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida had been eliminated -- the Bush administration activated its plan for an invasion of Iraq, using deception to build public consensus. Its first priorities revealed its true motives -- takeover of oil export facilities, destruction of ministries except for oil and the hiring of mercenaries to guard pipelines.

It's now apparent that the Bush administration's Afghan invasion had two purposes, one laudable and unfinished -- the destruction of al-Qaida -- and the other for the site of a Central Asian pipeline. And also obvious, the "war on terror" invasion of Iraq was based on fabrication rather than the reality of consolidating U.S. control of Middle Eastern oil.

Fossil fuels are on the way to rapid depletion. Immediate conservation with available technology and development of alternative renewable energy in the immediate future -- not endless war for oil -- should be American policy.

Jim Mullins is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and a resident of Delray Beach."

The Daily Star - Opinion Articles - Is America planning new imperial adventures?

2004-12-17T14:19:00.000-08:00

The Daily Star - Opinion Articles - Is America planning new imperial adventures?: "Is America planning new imperial adventures?

By Patrick Seale
Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, December 18, 2004
President George W. Bush's foreign policy in his second term is an enigma. It will no doubt remain so until the struggle inside the administration between neoconservatives and traditional conservatives is resolved, one way or the other, over the coming months.

Both sides are marshalling their forces and their arguments - in the press, in think tanks, in Washington drawing-rooms and in debates inside the great agencies of government.

In the State Department, the National Security Council and the CIA, key posts are being fought over. How they are filled will provide clues to the future direction of American policy, in particular regarding the most hotly-contested region of all - the Middle East.

Bush's closest foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is the incoming Secretary of State, but no one knows what line she will take on the major Middle East issues, or whether indeed she has any views of her own. Rumour in Washington has it that she may appoint Eliott Abrams to head the Near East bureau of the State Department. He worked under her at the National Security Council as director of Middle East affairs and is well known as a passionate supporter of Israel and a virulent opponent of Palestinian aspirations. Were he to join her at state, hopes for a more balanced U.S. policy would almost certainly be dashed.

One might have thought that the neoconservative Likudniks, who dragged the United States into a disastrous war in Iraq, might now lie low in the hope of escaping blame for the mess. On the contrary, they are pursuing what the French call a fuite en avant - brazenly pushing their hard-line agenda in the evident belief that attack is the best means of defence. They are demanding that the "crusade" against "Islamofascism" - their newly-coined term for America's Islamic opponents - must continue. To falter, they say, is to risk defeat.

Colin Powell, the outgoing Secretary of State, was the most prominent traditional conservative in Bush's first administration. His departure is the neocons' biggest victory so far. Last weekend, at a forum in Morocco on the "Greater Middle East," Powell delivered his swan song. Everyone was agreed, he said, that change in the Arab world had to come from inside . To defeat the terrorists, the West had to attack the causes of despair and frustration which the extremists exploited for their own ends.

Such language runs counter to the whole neocon philosophy, which can be summed up in the phrase, "democracy by conquest." Change, neoconservatives argue, must be imposed on the Arabs from outside, if necessary by force. Military pre-emption must remain an option. Arab and Muslim frustration over the Arab-Israeli conflict can be safely ignored. Anti-Americanism is pure "hot air" which will dissipate once America's enemies are crushed.

Douglas Feith and William Kristol are two leading neocons who, in their different ways, exemplify the thinking of the whole group. Feith is Under Secretary for Policy at the Defence Department, number three in the Pentagon hierarchy, just below his friend Paul Wolfowitz. He is widely credited with having fabricated and manipulated the intelligence which led America into war. Yet, astonishingly, he remains in office and seems likely to keep his job in Bush's second term.

In an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post on December 12, Feith, described as "a staunch friend of Israel," suggested that military action against Iran's nuclear sites could not be ruled out, if Iran did not follow Libya in abandoning its nuclear program. "I don't think that anybody should be ruling in or ruling out anything," he said.

He predicted that democratic reform in the Arab world - including in such U.S. allies as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan - would be the linchpin of Bush's foreign policy in the next four years.

Not being in government, William Kristol can afford to be blunter still. He is the "Osama Bin Laden" of the American press, forever calling for an American jihad against the Arab world and Iran. He does not believe in dialogue, diplomacy or half-measures: his technique is blatant incitement to violence.

As editor of The Weekly Standard, the strident organ of the neocons, he campaigned relentlessly for Saddam Hussein's overthrow. He is now urging the U.S. to attack other countries in the region, and Syria in particular.

In an article due to be published on December 20, but already available on the Internet, Kristol thunders: "Syria is a hostile regime. We have tried sweet talk and tough talk. Talk has failed. We now need to take action to punish and deter Assad's regime."

To justify such radical action he accuses Syria of "permitting and encouraging activities that are killing not just our Iraqi friends but also, and quite directly, American troops."

What does Kristol recommend? "We could bomb Syrian military facilities; we could go across the border in force to stop infiltration; we could occupy the town of Abu Kamal in eastern Syria, which seems to be the planning and organising center for Syrian activities in Iraq; we could covertly help or overtly support the Syrian opposition."

He concludes his article on a robust note: "It's time to get serious about dealing with Syria as part of winning in Iraq, and in the broader Middle East." Such hectoring by neocons - who use the royal "we" and claim to speak for the American people - is typical of the irresponsible discourse heard in several of Washington's right-wing think tanks.

Clearly, this is no way to promote U.S.-Arab understanding, but that is not the neocons' intention. On the contrary, their aim is to burn bridges with the Arabs in the belief that this will serve Israel's interests and consolidate its position as Americaõs closest ally.

President George W. Bush has been under considerable pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but also from other European leaders and moderate Arabs, to pay serious attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict in his second term. In Washington this week, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier repeated the message that, if trans-Atlantic differences were to be healed and terrorism defeated, the Arab-Israeli problem had to be addressed. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan conveyed the same message to Bush a week or two earlier.

But has Bush listened? Has he heard? He has spoken of his wish to see the emergence of a democratic Palestinian state in the coming years, but he has resisted calls for an international conference or for the appointment of a special envoy armed with firm presidential backing, who might succeed in pushing the peace process forward.

There is no sign yet that Bush intends to turn his words into deeds or put any sort of pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The fact that he has kept prominent pro-Israeli neocons in key positions in his administration suggests that he has no real appetite to wrestle with one of the most intractable conflicts of our time.

Above all, he may not be convinced that there is an organic connection - any phenomenon of cause and effect - between U.S. policies in the Middle East and the hostility America is facing from a worldwide Islamic insurgency. The neocon line is that there is no such connection.

Toward Iran, the U.S. appears to be totally intransigent. It has just blocked for the 20th time, Iran's bid for observer status in the World Trade Organization and remains profoundly sceptical of European diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for a package of commercial, technological and political benefits.

In Iraq, the killing continues and seems likely to continue after the January 30 elections. No one can predict what the post-election scene will look like, except that the Shiites are likely to dominate the future Iraqi government for the first time in centuries. The U.S. has given no hint that it intends to withdraw its troops in the near future or forego its ambition for a permanent military presence in that unfortunate country.

Patrick Seale, a Paris-based political analyst and commentator, wrote this article for

The Daily Star"

AlterNet: Mole Hunt

2004-12-15T18:27:00.000-08:00

AlterNet: Mole Hunt: "Mole Hunt

By Jason Vest and Laura Rozen, The American Prospect. Posted September 7, 2004.

In May, Stephen Green was hard at work campaigning for a seat in Vermont's House of Representatives when he got a phone call. The last person the 64-year-old former United Nations official, then preoccupied with health-care policy issues, expected to hear from was an FBI agent, who asked if he could come to Washington to chat with him about the history of Israeli espionage efforts against the United States.

As the author of two books on U.S.-Israeli relations, Green knew something about the subject. Still, the phone call seemed to come out of the blue. Green quickly discovered, however, that the FBI had a keen interest in the subject. Federal agents were involved in an investigation into an alleged Israeli "mole" in the office of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.

Early reports suggested that the FBI had wiretap evidence that a veteran Iran analyst working in Feith's office at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Larry Franklin, may have passed a classified draft of a National Security Presidential Directive on Iran to an official working for the pro-Israel lobbying organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Members of the organization, in turn, were said to have passed the document on to Israel. (AIPAC officials strongly deny the accusations.)

But as Green spoke with investigators, he realized the agents were investigating far more than Franklin.

"Larry Franklin's name never came up, but several others did," he said.

Green, as the FBI agents knew, had a special expertise in the field of Israeli espionage in the United States. In the 1980s, he had taken time off from his job at the UN to look into the U.S.–Israeli "special relationship." He spent years combing through public records, filing and litigating Freedom of Information Act requests, and tracking down current and retired government officials. He eventually wrote two books, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With Israel and Living By The Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East. The Times of London and Foreign Affairs commended his work, describing it as "praised by those who believe the United States has damaged its own security, and Israel's too, by uncritical and often secret support of Israel's actions, no matter how extreme." Yet, as Foreign Affairs reported, Green's work also caused "sputter[ing] with indignation" among "those who believe… that American and Israeli interests are identical."

Green returned to the UN in 1990 and followed the subject from there. Earlier this year, he published a piece in the newsletter CounterPunch, recapping previously reported – though long-forgotten – government investigations of prominent neoconservatives for their suspected espionage or improper information-sharing with Israel. And that's where the FBI comes in.

According to the FBI agents who contacted Green, as he recounts, the article had come to their attention when one of Green’s sources – a retired national security official they were interviewing – shared it with them.

And so on June 22, Green found himself sitting across an oval-shaped conference table from two FBI agents at an undisclosed northern Virginia venue. The meeting lasted nearly four hours.

"They were extraordinarily well-informed; it was apparent they've been at this for awhile," Green says. "I asked them if there was a current reason for them asking questions about things that go back over 30 years, and they sort of looked at each other and said, 'Yes, it's a present issue,' but wouldn't say specifically what. Though they did ask very specific questions about one individual in particular."

Green said the agents asked about several current or former Pentagon officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, and Stephen Bryen.

"The tenor of their questions was such that it defined where these people were in terms of the nature of their focus," Green says. "They also asked about a couple other Office of Special Plans people, including Harold Rhode. Ironically, about the only name that didn't come up was Larry Franklin."

Regardless of the status of the investigation, something seemed a bit fishy. After all, Israel – one of the United States’ closest allies, with deep support in the Bush Administration and especially at the Defense Department – hardly needs a Pentagon-embedded spy to get access to interagency debates about U.S. policy to Iran, as observers have pointed out. And compared with the information on arms shipments that former US Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard passed on to Israel in the 1980s, a draft of a document about U.S. policy toward Iran would hardly seem like the crown jewels.

Yet, as Newsweek has reported, Franklin had come to the FBI’s attention a year and a half ago, when he walked in on a lunch with an Israeli diplomat and an AIPAC lobbyist, both of whom were under FBI surveillance for a year. In addition, Newsweek reported that when news of the investigation surfaced, Franklin had already been cooperating with the FBI for several weeks and had reportedly led FBI agents to those who may have received information from him.

The previous FBI investigation came into focus only on September 1, when The Washington Post reported that for two years, the FBI has conducted a counterintelligence investigation into whether AIPAC has forwarded “highly classified materials from the National Security Agency . . . to Israel.” The Post piece describes Franklin’s alleged role as merely “coincidental” to the larger FBI probe of alleged intelligence-passing through AIPAC to Israel.

Both AIPAC and Tel Aviv vehemently deny any wrongdoing. And indeed, the Israeli diplomat who acknowledges meeting with Franklin and AIPAC – Naor Gilon, the Israeli embassy’s No. 3 official and a specialist on Iran’s nuclear program – returned to Washington on August 29 from a summer vacation in Israel. He admits that he met with Franklin, but insists he’s done nothing wrong.

A source familiar with the investigation told The American Prospect that when news of the investigation broke, the Justice Department had been preparing a request to the State Department to have an Israeli diplomat – by implication Gilon – declared persona non grata for allegedly having received classified U.S. intelligence from AIPAC sources.

Furthermore, a Sept. 1 report by NBC speculated that the reason the Israelis may have broken their declared post-Pollard policy of not spying on the United States is because of Israel’s preeminent concern about Iran’s nuclear program, and its view that the United States may not be prepared to act assertively enough to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Post piece seems to imply that Franklin is more of an anti-Tehran zealot than anything else and wasn’t engaging in espionage per se. But as the Post article and the June meeting between Green and the FBI seem to indicate, the FBI is looking into the possibility there's been communication between Israeli elements and U.S. officials, including several who work for Feith and have access to sensitive intelligence on Iran and its nuclear program.

Jason Vest is senior correspondent at The American Prospect. Laura Rozen reports on national security issues from Washington, D.C. and for her weblog, War and Piece.

Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org."

Rumsfeld can't wriggle off the hook | ajc.com

2004-12-09T13:38:00.000-08:00

Rumsfeld can't wriggle off the hook | ajc.com: "Rumsfeld can't wriggle off the hook

Published on: 12/09/04
After the Atlanta Falcons were humiliated 27-0 last week by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Falcons coach Jim Mora reacted like a true leader: He took the blame himself so that none would fall on his players, attributing the loss to his own inexperience in preparing teams for Sunday in the NFL.

"What the heck," he told a news conference. "I'm a rookie head coach, man."

Mora also declined an invitation to identify specific players who contributed to the embarrassing defeat.

"Let's just say that we don't air our dirty laundry in public," he said. "It does happen [privately], but it doesn't happen for everyone to see because it doesn't need to."

The contrast between that stand-up leadership style and that of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could not be more stark.

It has become crystal clear to all but the willfully blind that the failure to commit enough troops to the occupation of Iraq contributed significantly to the rising chaos in that country. However things turn out, history will record that decision as a fundamental mistake that endangered the success of the mission and led to increased casualties.

But in recent interviews, Rumsfeld has tried to wash his hands of any responsibility for that mistake.

"The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that's really out of my control," Rumsfeld said recently. "I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person, and I guess that's fine. But the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that General [Tommy] Franks and General [John] Abizaid wanted, the number of troops we have had every day since has been the number of troops that the field commander thought appropriate."

In other words, Rumsfeld's defense is that he was just following orders . . . from his subordinates.

That's reprehensible, for a couple of reasons. First, a good leader does not dump public blame on those who have no opportunity or, in the case of uniformed officers, even the right to defend themselves. That's particularly true when the people involved are soldiers in the field watching their own subordinates fight and die.

But the worst thing about Rumsfeld's denial of responsibility is that it is a blatant lie. He was without doubt the driving force behind the decision to keep the invading and occupying forces as lean as possible, and any effort to dump that responsibility on others amounts to cowardice on his part.

According to the former head of U.S. Central Command, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the Pentagon plan for invading and occupying Iraq when Rumsfeld took office had just been updated in 2000 and called for a force of roughly 400,000 troops. It was Rumsfeld, enamored with the possibility of using technology to do more with less, who ordered that plan redrawn time and again to dramatically reduce the number of troops involved.

A month before the invasion, when Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki was asked by Congress how many troops it would take to occupy Iraq, he told the truth: hundreds of thousands of troops. Almost immediately, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz memorably proclaimed that estimate "wildly off the mark," with Rumsfeld concurring it was "far off the mark." The two made it clear that Shinseki had disgraced himself, a point driven home when Army Secretary Thomas White was forced from office after coming to Shinseki's defense.

By those actions, Rumsfeld made it as clear as possible to officers down the line that he did not want to hear a word about needing more troops and that to argue otherwise would affect careers. In fact, in the months before the invasion and in the immediate afterglow of its success, Rumsfeld basked in his role as architect of the remarkably small force that took Iraq, dismissing concern about the resulting chaos as "henny-penny the sky is falling . . . just unbelievable."

Rumsfeld and his colleagues should have been fired long ago for incompetence and bad judgment. He should be fired now for poor leadership. The fact that he has been asked to stay on bodes poorly for the second Bush administration — and for the country."

STLtoday - Bush has tough political choice after bill stalls in Congress

2004-11-27T15:00:00.000-08:00

STLtoday - News - NewsWatch: "Bush has tough political choice after bill stalls in Congress
By Philip Dine
Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau
11/27/2004

WASHINGTON - The battle over intelligence reform is one President George W. Bush neither sought nor rushed to join. But now that he has become enmeshed in it, the fight threatens to overshadow the president's own priorities for a second term.

With last week's failure of the Senate-House conference committee to reach agreement on an intelligence bill, Bush faces a delicate choice between two potentially risky actions:

He can continue to call for change in the nation's intelligence apparatus but wait for those changes until the new Congress convenes in January. This is the easier course politically, but it means the president's ambitious agenda might be delayed while the battle over intelligence reform continues to loom - and possibly that no intelligence reform will occur at all.

He can aggressively take on the handful of House Republicans blocking a deal, in hope of achieving a quick solution when the current Congress meets briefly starting Dec. 6. That would clear the slate for other legislation he wants taken up, such as changes in Social Security. But it also could antagonize powerful congressional chairmen whose support he'll need later. And, because success on intelligence is far from guaranteed, he could end up squandering his new political capital in a losing cause.

"If it doesn't get done now, you've got to start over in January, and he has a huge agenda of his own that he wants to get enacted," said Stephen Hess, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution who started as an aide to President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.

"And he knows from the history of the presidency that in a two-term presidency, the sand starts to run out of the hourglass, and that fifth year is very important," Hess said. "He's got a lot of his own programs on which he wants to build his legacy, and he needs to get off to a very fast start in January. To that extent, he's better off getting this done now, if he can."

But pushing the measure through now might require Bush to do something for which he's shown little propensity - wage an all-out lobbying effort aimed at members of his own party.

Bush's dilemma reflects how the effort to reorganize the nation's intelligence agencies is turning into an epic struggle on several levels.

There is, first, the issue of national security - how best to reorganize the intelligence community to protect Americans in an age of deadly terrorism.

Then there are the turf battles being fought among executive branch departments and within Congress by the various oversight committees, for control of personnel and purse strings.

Finally, political conflicts are arising on a number of fronts - within the House, between the Senate and House and, most recently, between Bush and key House members.

The push to improve U.S. intelligence gathering began with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and picked up steam with the 9/11 Commission's report calling for a national director of intelligence and a national counterterrorism center to improve data analysis and sharing among the 15 spy agencies. The fiasco over Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction added urgency.

As a result, Congress moved with unusual speed. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill based on the 9/11 Commission proposals, but House Republicans resisted some key recommendations. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, opposes reducing Pentagon control over tactical intelligence, and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants tough immigration measures.

Though the president says he generally favored the Senate version, the House GOP chairmen refuse to yield and the measure has stalled.

Yet the need for change is as strong as ever, says Wendy Sherman, former State Department counselor and now a principal at the Albright Group, a global consulting firm headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

"Reforming the intelligence apparatus of the United States of America is absolutely critical. We can see that playing out over the serious situation in Iran, where the U.S. government says there are indications from intelligence of a covert nuclear program, and no one's sure whether they can believe us or not," Sherman said.

"The credibility of the United States is at stake, and intelligence reform ought to be at the top of the agenda."

Intraparty squabbles
Last week, Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated his opposition to an intelligence czar who would control tactical intelligence now under Pentagon control. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced to deny reports that he has quietly lobbied against changes urged by the president.

This is an unusual situation for an administration that prizes loyalty.

"It's a really interesting set of issues," said Norm Ornstein, veteran political analyst with the American Enterprise Institute. "Part of it is a bill in which the president really didn't have much interest for a long time, never particularly wanted it. But he ended up getting invested in it at the end - partly out of a political calculus that it was going to pass and he wanted to be on board to declare victory.

"Then he became embroiled in a controversy he never expected or wanted," Ornstein said.

Bush has become increasingly earnest about getting a bill passed, Hess said, but doing so may require "making sure as much as possible that no one loses." That would mean allowing Sensenbrenner to emerge with some kind of victory, perhaps a promise that his immigration restrictions will be taken up soon on their own, and assurances to Hunter that any changes won't interfere with tactical intelligence to the war fighters, Hess said.

But Daniel Benjamin, a former National Security Council official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, questions how much pressure Bush will exert behind the scenes.

"It's a legitimate question whether the White House really wants this," Benjamin said. "That question has been begged by the fact that this president, who has all this political capital, who just won an election, just got stiffed by his own party on the Hill."

While dealing with the measure after the election allows for more sober reflection, it also removes much of the political impetus, Benjamin contends.

But that's a good tradeoff, counters Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign policy and defense at the American Enterprise Institute and a former top staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"The bottom line is this affords the Congress the chance to take a deep breath," Pletka said. "A lot of the deliberations about this bill took place in the campaign environment and were about point-scoring, not about achieving a better intelligence apparatus."

Starting over
Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Mo., of the Senate Intelligence Committee, prefers starting afresh on intelligence reform with a new Congress. Bond contends that Hunter and Sensenbrenner have raised good questions.

All 535 members of Congress, and particularly the intelligence panels, should be involved in resolving the issues, not just the two dozen members of the Senate-House conference panel now engaged, Bond said. He noted that the Senate Intelligence Committee has been reconfigured.

"This is a good time to step back and do it right," Bond said, adding that he's expressed that view to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

But a Senate Intelligence Committee colleague, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., says a "breakdown in leadership in the White House and the House Republican caucus" has ruined the best chance of improving the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

Durbin says a combination of powerful GOP committee chairmen and Pentagon officials - including Meyers and Rumsfeld - has stymied the will of the White House and even of the House GOP leadership.

"They put the president in an impossible situation," Durbin said. "He either has to defy Republican leaders in Congress, like Sensenbrenner and Hunter, or he runs the risk of no intelligence reform.

"The stars were lined up for this in a way they may never be again," Durbin said, citing the tragedy of 9/11, the push by victims' families for reform, the commission's report and the rapid response by Congress. "I don't know if the stars will ever line up again, and that's why this may be a missed opportunity."

Reporter Philip Dine of the Post-Dispatch's Washington bureau covers national security, defense and labor.

Reporter Philip Dine
E-mail: pdine@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 202-298-6880"

CNN.com - Hollywood activists stage anti-Bush bash - Dec. 3, 2003 Malcolm and Ickes

2004-11-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

CNN.com - Hollywood activists stage anti-Bush bash - Dec. 3, 2003: "Hollywood activists stage anti-Bush bash
Wednesday, December 3, 2003 Posted: 1:53 AM EST (0653 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Dedicated to defeating President Bush in 2004, two newly formed political action committees made up of actors and Hollywood activists huddled Tuesday night in Beverly Hills to outline their goals and to dispute conservative media characterizations of their motives.

America Coming together (ACT) and The Media Fund are "determined to bring people back into the political process" and, according to ACT President Ellen Malcolm, address the "extremism of the Republican policies ... and the impact of those policies on voters and their families."

Working with Malcolm in ACT are former AFL-CIO political director Steve Rosenthal, Service Employees Union President Andy Stern and the Sierra Club's executive director, Carl Pope.

Malcolm is also the president of EMILY's List, a lobbying group for pro-choice Democratic women.

The Media Fund is headed by Harold Ickes, a key White House political strategist for Bill Clinton who helped his wife, Hillary, get elected to the Senate.

At a Tuesday night news conference at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Malcolm said the work of the two groups will cost about $190 million, noting $40 million has been raised so far.

Some 300 invitations were sent out for the event, which thanks to some unexpected publicity, grew beyond expectations, organizers said. According to Malcolm, the event had to be moved to a larger room at the hotel, and several people wanting to attend had to be turned away.

On several occasions during a 20-minute news conference, group leaders said characterizations in the media that their groups are "Bush Haters" have been irresponsible.

Malcolm said one such report appeared on the Drudge Report Web site -- a conservative media portal. She called the report an example of the kind of misleading information that has been published about their group and was a "misrepresentation" of the facts.

Laurie David -- wife of "Seinfeld" creator Larry David and co-chair of the event -- thanked Matt Drudge for his report, saying it helped turn "a small gathering of political activists into a very large gathering of political activists."

Joining David as co-hosts at the event that was called a "Mandatory Meeting to Change the Leadership in America" were such backstage money-and-influence forces as Marge Tabenkin, political adviser to singer Barbra Streisand; Ari Emanuel, brother of Rep. Rahm Emanuel; screenwriter Naomi Foner; movie producer Robert Greenwald; and actress Michelle Lee."

DesMoinesRegister.com | News: JoDee Winterhoff - 2 unions' endorsements add to Dean's momentum

2004-11-20T08:54:00.000-08:00

DesMoinesRegister.com | News: "2 unions' endorsements add to Dean's momentum
By THOMAS BEAUMONT
Register Staff Writer
11/12/2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is expected today to solidify his front-runner status for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination while again displaying his agility in exploiting the 21st-century political landscape.

The two largest labor unions in the country - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union - are set to pledge their support to Dean over Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri. Union support is considered crucial to Gephardt, who has long-standing ties to organized labor and has aggressively courted the key Democratic constituency.

By picking up the endorsements today, Dean shows the ability to attract support from among the few growing sectors of the labor movement: government, health care and education workers.

"That's very, very big," said political columnist Charlie Cook, who publishes the Washington, D.C.-based Cook Political Report. "Dean is appealing to the one sector that's growing and has determined that's where the future is. He's demonstrated a knack for that."

The endorsements follow Dean's adroit use of the Internet, which propelled him to the lead among his rivals in fund raising and sets him apart in terms of appealing to new or growing segments of the Democratic electorate.

The announcement today also comes as Dean has been subjected to two months of withering attacks from his rivals and on the heels of his decision Saturday to outspend his opponents for the nomination. Combined with his record-breaking fund raising, Cook and others say, the endorsements position Dean as the Democrat to beat.

Officials with AFSCME, the largest union in Iowa, and the service workers union, a growing and politically influential group, declined to comment on the endorsements, although they and Dean's campaign staff planned a joint announcement in Washington, D.C.

The two unions have a combined national membership of 3 million. AFSCME, the nation's largest public employees union, has roughly 1.4 million members nationwide and 30,000 in Iowa. SEIU, which represents health-care and education workers, is the nation's largest union with 1.6 million members, with roughly 4,000 in Iowa.

The announcement is seen as a boost to Dean's campaign for the leadoff Iowa caucuses, where he and Gephardt are battling for the lead and where unions' ability to help organize and deliver supporters on caucus night, Jan. 19, is a significant asset.

"The challenge will be to get the organizers out in these counties to organize their members and get them to turn out on caucus night," said JoDee Winterhoff, a longtime Iowa Democratic organizer with close ties to organized labor. "It's a leg up for Dean, but it's not a gigantic advantage."

The endorsements would be among three international unions to back Dean, including the painters' union, compared with 20 unions that have thrown their support to Gephardt. But the decisions of AFSCME and SEIU could go a long way toward blocking Gephardt from receiving the coveted endorsement of the nation's largest labor umbrella organization, the 13 million-member AFL-CIO.

Gephardt campaign manager Steve Murphy played down the significance of Dean's achievement, saying Gephardt's labor backing, which includes political heavyweights such as the Teamsters and Machinists, is larger and broader.

"We never thought we would get the support of either AFSCME or SEIU. But Dick Gephardt has a wide range of labor unions, representing the industrial sector, representing building trades, representing transportation," Murphy said Tuesday. "I'll stack our union support up against Howard Dean's any day and we'll win with it."

Gephardt, who opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, has blamed the trade pact for sending manufacturing jobs overseas. Dean, who supported NAFTA as a governor, faces little hostility for the position from service sector employees who have less to fear than the manufacturing sector.

SEIU's most recent national accomplishment was to organize professionals and staff at University Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. Combined with AFSCME's size and statewide presence, it could be of help to Dean in his campaign for the caucuses, said Winterhoff, a former chief of staff to Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin who ran the Iowa Democratic Party's coordinated campaign in 1996.

After months as a small-state governor best-known for his opposition to the war in Iraq, Dean burst into the top tier of the 2004 Democratic presidential field in July when he topped his rivals in second-quarter fund raising. He set the quarterly fund-raising record for a Democrat in the third quarter, raising almost $15 million, due largely to a flood of contributions over the Internet.

Since then his rivals, mainly Gephardt and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, have spent weeks attacking Dean's 11 years as governor.

Dean announced Saturday he would opt to finance his campaign solely with private contributions, betting he could raise more than the roughly $19 million he would receive if he chose to abide by spending caps.

The endorsements come at a critical time when the sense of electability is beginning to coalesce around Dean, said campaign manager Joe Trippi.

"It's a sign of how we're beginning to answer in a credible way: Who can beat George Bush?" Trippi said. "What you're seeing is AFSCME and SEIU looking at the whole group of candidates and coming to the conclusion it's not just whether the candidate is good for working families, but also whether they can win."

National political columnist Stu Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, agrees the endorsements show Dean has convinced a large, educated sector of the Democratic base that he is more than a single-issue candidate.

"I think the endorsements are a significant and important credential for Dean," he said. "It adds a sense of - inevitability may be a bit too strong - but a sense of Dean's momentum."

Reporter Thomas Beaumont can be reached at (515) 284-2532 or

tbeaumont@dmreg.com

Howard Dean, campaigning in eastern Iowa on Tuesday, blamed President Bush for allowing contracts in postwar Iraq to be granted to corporations with ties to his Republican backers, including energy company Halliburton and construction giant Bechtel.

"Again, every penny that is misspent is keeping our troops in Iraq longer. It is a disservice to them and the American taxpayer," Dean said in a speech in Iowa City at the University of Iowa. "This entire process is endemic not only with Iraq but every policy of this administration."

Howard Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri appeal to different sectors of organized labor in their quests for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. Here's a quick look at some areas of their labor and trade positions:

Gephardt voted against the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 while Dean supported the trade pact as a governor. Dean said it was good for Vermont, but has said since that he would not sign a trade agreement that did not have higher labor and environmental standards. Both support reopening the agreement to change its labor and environmental standards.

Both candidates oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which would expand NAFTA to include countries in Central and South America. Both candidates support raising the minimum wage. Gephardt has proposed an international minimum wage."

Shariatmadari: Allocating subsidies will end up fixed prices

2004-11-20T08:52:00.000-08:00

IranMania News: " "Allocating subsidies will end up fixed prices"

Saturday, November 20, 2004 - ©2004 IranMania.com
LONDON, Nov 20 (IranMania) - Iranian Commerce Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari said that the government is likely to decide against increasing prices of certain consumer goods next year provided that the parliament fully approves the 10 bln rials the government needs for allocating subsidies.

The official told Fars news agency that if the parliament makes the funds available and gives the government a free hand to set prices of essential goods, the Khatami administration will try not to increase prices of goods above the inflation level.

"One of the most important goods that the people get government subsidies for is wheat and flour whose prices will increase slightly," he said.

The Minister added that any increase in prices of essential consumer goods would have a huge psychological impact on prices of other commodities, aggravating the inflation rate.

"As we approach the yearend (March 2005), the budget deficit worsens," he said, stressing that the heads of the three branches of the government have come to the conclusion that the key to this problems lies with the parliament.

Shariatmadari said tapping the Foreign Exchange Reserve Fund, a cut in budget for implementing developmental projects, revenues from official hard currency sales and money earned from economizing on the national budget could be used to supply funds needed for allocating subsidies."

Hillary Inc.HILLPAC.com - Hillary Inc.

2004-11-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

HILLPAC.com - Hillary Inc.: "Hillary Inc.

By Eliza Newlin Carne, National Journal

Hillary Rodham Clinton insists that she's not running for president. But at an early-October Washington luncheon for Democratic women, it was easy to see why people refuse to believe her. The moment Clinton slipped through a side door into the Mayflower Hotel ballroom where she was scheduled to speak, several hundred women dropped their forks and leaped to their feet, whooping and applauding in a standing ovation.

After graciously thanking the event's many organizers, Clinton quickly launched into a full-throated assault on President Bush and congressional Republicans. "We're not just fighting to get back on the right track that we were [on] when the Clinton administration ended its stewardship of this country," she roared, her words all but drowned out by applause. "We are literally fighting to save the advances of the 20th century."

Clinton has been giving a lot of fiery speeches like the one she delivered that day to the packed Mayflower audience, which had gathered to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Democratic National Committee's Women's Leadership Forum. Whether stumping for her Democratic colleagues, collecting checks for her party, raising money for her Senate campaign, or rallying liberal activists, Clinton routinely draws standing-room-only crowds. She also tends to walk away with a thick wad of campaign contributions.

Having kept a relatively low profile during her first two years in the Senate, Clinton has swept back onto the national stage in recent months. The success of her multimillion-dollar leadership political action committee, HILLPAC; her elevation to a Senate leadership post; her outspoken attacks on the Bush administration; and especially the publication of her best-selling book, Living History, have dramatically ramped up her visibility and fundraising prowess.

Of course, Clinton's growing celebrity has fueled lots of breathless speculation about her presidential aspirations. Many political types remain convinced that she will run in 2004, despite her repeated assertions to the contrary. Clinton may or may not be gearing up to follow in her husband's footsteps to the White House. But one thing isBut one thing is clea clear: She has already replaced Bill Clinton as her party's most sought-after fundraiser.

"She's more of a star than the other 99 of us combined," Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., declared in an interview. Dayton is one of the dozens of Senate, House, state, and local Democrats who have benefited from Sen. Clinton's largesse. And the Democratic Party desperately needs powerhouse fundraisers like Clinton these days. Democrats backed the 2002 campaign finance law, but its restrictions have left them badly strapped for cash.

The new law banned the soft money, or unregulated contributions, from labor unions and corporations that for years had filled the bulk of Democratic Party coffers. Now, both parties may raise only hard money, or regulated contributions, which can't exceed $2,000 per election from an individual donor. Collecting such low-dollar donations has long been a GOP forte, and Democrats are getting trounced. At last count, Republican Party committees had raised more than twice what the Democratic committees had raised in this election cycle.

Clinton, for one, has responded with an elaborate network of campaign accounts to collect hard money. She aggressively uses direct-mail solicitations and the Internet to round up small checks. Her political money organization boasts a multiperson staff with offices in Washington and New York City.

She also hosts up to five private fundraisers per month at the Clinton family's posh mansions in Chappaqua, N.Y., and off Embassy Row in northwest Washington. Like Bush, she is building a team of fundraising loyalists -- she calls them "Hill Raisers" -- to recruit donors and bundle checks for her. And she has turned Living History, which earned her an $8 million advance, into a productive political fundraising tool.

Although most Democrats applaud Clinton's emergence as a party rainmaker, some acknowledge that she is venturing into risky territory. Clinton remains a highly polarizing figure, inspiring angry conservatives to write almost as many checks for Republicans as she rounds up for Democrats. While plenty of Democrats are begging her to come raise money in their states, some would rather she stayed away.

The ethical problems that earned the Clintons such notoriety at the White House may come to dog Hillary Clinton's massive fundraising operation, particularly as it attracts more scrutiny. As a candidate in 2000 and as a senator, Clinton has moved vast sums of money around in a complicated array of interlocking and sometimes controversial campaign accounts -- leadership PACs, nonfederal accounts, joint committees with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The new campaign finance law has already banned some of these activities; others remain controversial and may soon face restrictions from the Federal Election Commission.

Still, Clinton's colleagues are watching -- and emulating -- her grassroots fundraising techniques. The 2002 campaign finance law has unquestionably drained the major party committees of both cash and influence. The new power centers are now outside interest groups and individual officeholders, such as Clinton, who can motivate low-dollar donors by virtue of their ideological appeal or their celebrity. With its vast staff, budget, and campaign coffers, Clinton's political organization has begun to assume a quasi-party status.

"I think we'll see her playing a particularly prominent role in this coming election year," said Tony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. "Now that you have parties that can no longer raise soft money, there's going to be a lot more pressure on candidates to raise money on their own."

And if Clinton ever does run for president, she'll have a full-blown fundraising infrastructure at the ready. She'll also be able to call in all the chits on the $1.5 million in direct contributions that she has made to state, local, and national candidates as well as to party committees since her election to the Senate.

"She's doing well by doing good," said Ellen Malcolm, head of the Democratic women's PAC, EMILY's List, and president of a new liberal mega-PAC known as America Coming Together. "She's being very helpful to other Democratic candidates and organizations in their fundraising, and at the same time, building her own connections with donors across the country."

Queen Of The Hill
Building personal connections is an art that Clinton perfected during her years as first lady, when she and her husband developed a nationwide fundraising team that revolved around Hollywood celebrities, business executives, and prominent female activists. Many have gone on to become devoted fundraisers for Hillary Clinton, including New Yorkers John Catsimatidis, CEO of the Red Apple Group, and Alan Patricof, a venture capitalist who was finance chairman of her 2000 Senate race.

Another longtime Clinton loyalist is Susie Tompkins Buell, a California philanthropist and major Democratic donor who co-founded and co-owned the Esprit clothing chain. In September, Buell flew to New York for a kickoff dinner at the Clintons' Chappaqua estate to officially launch the fundraising drive for the senator's 2006 re-election campaign. Buell is also a founding member of Clinton's leadership PAC, HILLPAC.

"There's a very strong personal dimension there," Ann Lewis, the national chairwoman of the DNC Women's Vote Center, said of Clinton's fundraising style.

When she ran for the Senate in 2000, Clinton took full advantage of her White House contacts and also cashed in on New York's status as a leading power center for Democratic donors. She drew the bulk of her contributions from lawyers and law firms, the securities and investment sector, and the entertainment industry. But Clinton also struck out into uncharted territory, drawing large crowds to fundraising events in such cities as Cincinnati, Omaha, and Tulsa, a tactic that Democrats had until then largely overlooked.

"She changed the way we think about what we can do, and made the party look at medium-sized cities and small cities," said DSCC Executive Director Andrew Grossman. She "made people say, 'Look, there's money in these cities that we can raise, and we should do it.' "

For her 2000 campaign, Clinton ultimately raised more than $30 million, an amount she put up against the $40 million that her Republican opponent, then-Rep. Rick Lazio, had amassed, in part by appealing to anti-Hillary conservatives around the country. She also showed some of the same creative, aggressive fundraising instincts that made Lincoln Bedroom overnighters and Asian donors' contributions the subject of investigations during her White House years.

Clinton augmented her Senate campaign account by setting up a controversial joint fundraising committee with the DSCC. Dubbed "New York Senate 2000," that committee netted some $10.5 million in 2000, the bulk of it in unregulated, unlimited corporate and labor contributions. It was hardly the only joint committee of its type in the 2000 election, but it was one of the most lucrative. At the time, campaign finance watchdogs denounced such joint committees for letting federal candidates raise soft money for their campaigns, something that was illegal both before and after the 2002 campaign finance law took effect.

After the election, in which she beat Lazio 55 percent to 43 percent, Clinton started out cautiously in the Senate, deferring to more-senior members and concentrating on securing federal funds for New York. Yet she lost no time in setting up her leadership PAC, HILLPAC, which quickly became one of the top three such organizations in the Senate. Leadership PACs allow members of Congress to raise money for noncampaign purposes, such as making contributions to colleagues. They're controversial because they allow members to collect contributions far larger than those permitted for lawmakers' campaigns, and are often used to fund travel and self-promotion.

Since its inception in 2001, HILLPAC has raised $4 million and doled out more than $1 million to candidates and party committees. In 2002, HILLPAC was outdone only by the leadership PACs run by Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in the amount of money contributed to candidates.

Clinton also launched a new vehicle to raise soft money, setting up a nonfederal (state) arm of HILLPAC dubbed "HILLPAC-N.Y." Registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt 527 political committee, HILLPAC-N.Y. raised $356,000 in 2002, much of it in $5,000 and $10,000 contributions from labor unions and corporate executives. HILLPAC-N.Y. doled out $85,000 to state and local candidates in New York, and $240,000 to Democratic Party committees all over the country.

When the new campaign finance law took effect in November 2002, banning federal officeholders from collecting soft money, HILLPAC-N.Y. drained its accounts. But unlike most lawmakers who had operated nonfederal PACs, Clinton has yet to officially close down HILLPAC-N.Y. She appears to be hedging her bets, possibly in the event that the Supreme Court upholds a constitutional challenge to the new law. "HILLPAC still wants to contribute nonfederal money to some of the New York races," said one Democrat familiar with Clinton's fundraising activities.

Clinton and her staff are not eager to discuss her fundraising activities. She declined to be interviewed for this story, and her staff answered questions grudgingly, repeatedly referring this reporter to public campaign finance records.

Book Party
The new campaign finance law hasn't stopped Clinton from exploring new and different ways to raise campaign cash. If anything, she appears to have found an even better vehicle for raising money: Her best-selling book, Living History.

The autobiographical memoir, in which Clinton for the first time describes the emotional tumult that she felt during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, has sold some 1.4 million copies in the United States since its publication in June. It is entering its 17th week on the New York Times best-seller list, and has also emerged as a best-seller internationally.

The publication of Living History marked a turning point for Clinton as a senator, because it ended her early attempts to stay out of the limelight. The book has brought a tsunami of publicity and media attention. Clinton, who has personally signed thousands of copies, has used her book tour to reintroduce herself to Americans on her own terms. She has also begun a major media offensive, appearing on such shows as CBS's Early Show, CNN's Inside Politics, and NBC's Today to deliver blunt criticisms of the Bush administration's national security and economic policies.

The book has not only fattened Clinton's personal bank account by some $8 million, with royalties still to come, it has also proved a surprisingly effective political fundraising tool. While touring the country in recent months to promote the book, on publisher Simon & Schuster's tab, Clinton has headlined events that netted more than $1 million for her Senate colleagues and for the DSCC.

At a breakfast in Seattle in August for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., at which Murray gave out her annual "Golden Tennis Shoe" awards for community service, Clinton drew an extraordinary 1,600 people. "They had to open up an overflow room to accommodate everybody," said Murray spokesman Todd Webster. "It was just a really energetic and excited crowd." The event raised $200,000 on Murray's behalf. The previous year, Murray's Golden Tennis Shoe event, which featured not Clinton but then-Sen. Jean Carnahan, D-Mo., drew 650 people and raised only $112,000.

Clinton's success at such events reflects both her personal magnetism and her appeal to the Democratic base, which responds to her unabashedly liberal, anti-Bush attacks and to her passionate defense of education, the environment, social welfare programs, and abortion rights. "It is a values-based fundraising," noted Lewis of the DNC. "People do not go into [contributing to Hillary Clinton] because they are wishy-washy about the Clintons."

It's the same kind of ideology-driven approach that has helped former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean so dramatically out-raise his fellow Democratic presidential contenders. "One of the things that has driven the Dean Internet fundraising, and Dean's small-dollar fundraising, has been the strength of his message and his forceful presentation of it," said Anita B. Dunn, a partner with the Democratic political consulting firm of Squier Knapp Dunn. "And in the post-McCain-Feingold era, raising small dollars, in particular, will be much more a function of perceived message than of perceived influence."

Like Dean, Clinton has set out to turn the Internet into a core fundraising tool. Both HILLPAC and her Senate re-election campaign account, which she has dubbed "Friends of Hillary," have their own Web sites (www.hillpac.com and www.friendsofhillary.com), with multiple gimmicks to attract donors.

The Friends of Hillary site offers a catalog of rewards for donors, who are invited to become "Hill's Angels." Donate $25, and you'll get a "Hill's Angels membership card" and a "commemorative" Living History bookmark. Up the ante to $75, and you'll get all that, plus a Living History coffee mug. For $500, you'll get the full "Living History Gift Package," complete with mug, pen, bookmark, and "a personally inscribed copy" of the memoir.

For "Hill Raisers," those who commit to rounding up checks for Clinton, the rewards are more personal. This month, those who managed to raise $1,000 were invited to participate in a live online chat with Clinton. The Friends of Hillary Web site also touts its "Young Voters for Hillary Rodham Clinton" program, which has the hip-sounding name, "YvHRC." The program rewards donors at various levels with everything from membership pins to conference calls with the senator.

Clinton "is picking up on a lesson we've learned at EMILY's List, which is that you can create a tremendous amount of financial power by combining many small contributions," Malcolm observed. Clinton's Web presence reflects an attempt "to build a personal connection in a mass-market, technological world," Malcolm added.

Clinton's Web activities also enable her to collect valuable names and addresses for direct-mail appeals. Clinton has been in the vanguard of the Democrats' new love of direct mail. In the first six months of this year, HILLPAC collected $717,745, a good percentage of which -- $168,435 -- went for direct-mail activities with the fundraising consulting firm of O'Brien McConnell & Pearson.

Clinton routinely signs direct-mail appeals for the DSCC, and she has even made candidate recruitment calls for the committee. "She's opening people's eyes" to new fundraising approaches, said the DSCC's Grossman.

Not all of the attention swirling around Clinton is positive, of course. She arguably has replaced Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., as the conservatives' favorite liberal to bash. The National Republican Senatorial Committee features a "Stop Hillary Now" logo on its Web site, complete with online contribution options and links to negative news reports about her.

Some Senate Democrats, most notably in the South, fear that Clinton could prove a lightning rod, attracting attacks from their opponents. "There are two sides of that coin when she goes in to help a candidate," noted NRSC spokesman Dan Allen. Polls show Clinton teetering between public approval and disapproval. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in June found that 43 percent of Americans held a favorable opinion of her, with 43 percent unfavorable.

Clinton's media and fundraising blitz also has its dangers. While New Yorkers have a well-known taste for larger-than-life politicians, some may tire of all the presidential talk. A September Marist poll found that close to 70 percent of New Yorkers said that Clinton should not seek the White House in 2004, a 15-point jump from an April poll that had asked the same question.

Plenty of Hillary-haters are poised to pounce on the least sign of ethical transgression on her part. Although Living History has proved relatively noncontroversial, a few high-profile book deals have gotten lawmakers in hot water. In the mid-1990s, when then-House Speaker New Gingrich, R-Ga., accepted a $4.5 million book offer from publisher Rupert Murdoch -- far less than Clinton's Simon & Schuster take -- the resulting firestorm forced Gingrich to decline the advance. In the 1980s, a book controversy helped bring down House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas.

Already, Clinton's fundraising has been the target of some half-dozen complaints to the FEC, though none has prompted the agency to act. The highest-profile of these involves claims by Hollywood executive Peter F. Paul that for Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign, he spent $1.9 million on a fundraiser that she failed to report.

"Our view is that we reported what he told us," said Sen. Clinton's campaign treasurer, Harold Ickes, who is a former Clinton White House adviser. "If he's now changing his position, we have to know what it is. But the FEC has not pursued it so far."

Leadership PACs such as HILLPAC, moreover, have become increasingly controversial, particularly in light of the 2002 campaign finance law. Although they are still commonly known as "leadership" PACs, close to 200 House members and senators now operate them. In July, the FEC voted to place new limits on leadership PACs connected to presidential candidates. Responding to complaints that presidential leadership PACs enabled candidates to skirt spending limits, the FEC commissioners ruled that funds such PACs spent to provide polling and staff, for instance, for someone who eventually became a presidential candidate should count as an "in-kind" donation to that person's campaign.

Those rules won't apply to Clinton, of course, unless she declares herself a presidential candidate. But the FEC is also considering restricting or even banning all congressional leadership PACs, which allow lawmakers such as Clinton to hit up donors for amounts that far exceed the $2,000-per-election limit for individuals.

Will She Or Won't She?
Clinton, in the meantime, is merrily setting up new accounts. She established a new joint fundraising committee this year with the DSCC, becoming the only senator not up for re-election in 2004 to operate such an account. Dubbed the "Clinton-DSCC Victory Fund," the committee has pulled in only $58,000 thus far, but it is poised to raise much more. The new campaign finance law allows the joint committee to raise as much as $29,000 from any single donor, with $4,000 going to Clinton's campaign committee and the rest going to the DSCC.

Clinton's fundraising operation has a powerhouse staff headed by her trusted longtime aide, Patti Solis Doyle, who was her scheduler in the White House and a key adviser in her 2000 campaign. Solis Doyle oversees both HILLPAC and Friends of Hillary, and acts as a commander-in-chief of sorts for the senator's many fundraising activities. HILLPAC itself has four staff members operating out of a town house in southeast Washington, and three more posted in a Manhattan office.

To conservatives, Clinton's money machine furnishes clear evidence that she has set her sights on a White House bid in 2004. In his book Hillary's Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton's Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House, right-leaning Web journalist Carl Limbacher details a long list of reasons why Clinton's denials of presidential aspirations are not to be believed. Even mainstream journalists such as William Safire of The New York Times have suggested that former Gen. Wesley Clark, the newest entrant into the Democratic presidential race, is nothing but a stalking horse for Clinton.

Many Clinton allies, inspired in part by wishful thinking, also believe that she will run. "Draft Hillary" committees unconnected to her campaign have cropped up, and fans have routinely shown up at her book tour appearances to promote her as a presidential candidate. One fan even set up an unauthorized presidential committee for her at the FEC.

For her part, Clinton is adamant that she has no plans to run in 2004, although she has made no such promise for 2008. Clinton recently removed from her Web site some gushing e-mails from admirers urging her to run, after the messages attracted media attention. Whether playfully or purposefully, however, the Clintons have kept the buzz going. At last month's Chappaqua dinner to launch her 2006 campaign, Sen. Clinton reportedly remarked that she'd like all the guests present to stay on board "for my next campaign, whatever that might be."

Democrats close to Clinton do not expect her to suddenly enter the race. "I take her at her word. I don't think she's going to get in, [in] 2004," Malcolm said. But, she added, "I certainly think she will be on everybody's radar screen to run for president in the future."

Whatever transpires in the 2004 election, the continual speculation about Clinton's presidential plans only enhances her appeal to donors and activists. "Whether she's going to run or not, the people around her have done a very good job of capturing that attention, so that she's always in the game," said one Democratic operative. "I think the presidential speculation is a very useful tool for her on a national level."

Even if she is not a candidate, Clinton is positioned to play an influential strategic role in 2004, in both the presidential and the congressional contests. The Clintons have stated publicly that they are not officially endorsing Clark. But Clark reportedly has said that both Clintons encouraged him to run.

Hillary Clinton, moreover, has close ties to a long list of former Clinton administration officials who are raising millions of dollars for new liberal organizations. These groups have set out to take over some of the research and get-out-the-vote functions that the Democratic Party may not have enough money to do effectively under the new campaign finance law. These include ex-Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta, who is launching a think tank called the American Majority Institute, and Ickes, who is raising money for Malcolm's new America Coming Together PAC as well as for a Democratic media fund.

"She's not just raising money," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, a PAC for centrist Democrats, speaking of Clinton. "Her allies are constructing and leading the infrastructure that will be the next Democratic Party."

Clinton's Senate colleagues have also begun to rely more heavily on her political insights and connections. In January, she was tapped to head the Senate Democratic Steering and Coordination Committee, an unusually senior post for a junior senator. The committee's role is to reach out to local, state, and national Democratic-leaning groups. Clinton has hosted a series of meetings with groups representing Native Americans, Hispanics, women, the Jewish community, environmentalists, and labor leaders -- meetings that have been well attended by both senators and activists.

"She's done a superb job of reaching out to constituency groups nationwide," said Dayton. "An invitation from Hillary Clinton is one that gets a very, very positive response."

Dayton has seen for himself how the former first lady's national and international stature leaves so many average Democrats starry-eyed. He has taken hundreds of Minnesotans through security in the Capitol building and up to the Senate visitors' gallery. "Ninety-eight percent of the time, the person they most want to see, and the only person they want to see on the floor, is Senator Clinton," Dayton recounted. "She really has a national prominence beyond anyone else in the Senate today."

Little wonder that Clinton can't seem to shake the rumors that she's running for president. She may never make it back to the White House. But at a time when Democratic candidates need campaign checks more desperately than ever, her ability to raise money has thrust her to the top of her party's hierarchy nonetheless."

South Dakota Politics: Andy Grossman leaves DSCC post as executive director

2004-11-20T07:55:00.000-08:00

South Dakota Politics: January 19, 2004 - January 25, 2004: "Daschle leadership in jeopardy?
Roll Call contributing writer Stuart Rothenberg has a report today on the first ramification of Thune's run against Daschle, headlined "After 'Shotgun Marriage' Will New Blood Help Turn DSCC around?" Excerpt:

The announcement early last week that Andy Grossman would leave his post as executive director and be replaced by David Rudd, a former top aide to outgoing Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), wasn’t big news in Omaha or Orlando. But it raised more than a few eyebrows on Capitol Hill....

After the 2002 elections, Daschle picked Corzine as chairman and Grossman as executive director for the 2003-2004 cycle. Corzine didn’t have input in the choice of Grossman and didn’t have a close relationship with him....

Democrats familiar with the goings on at the DSCC present a picture of a dysfunctional family. Corzine and Grossman didn’t have a good working relationship, even though the executive director tried to get the Senator to work with him. While Daschle and a number of his top aides apparently tried to address the friction between the two men, they failed to improve things....

But things changed recently when former Republican Rep. John Thune entered the Senate race against Daschle on Jan. 5. Daschle found himself in his toughest political fight since he was first elected to the Senate in 1986, guaranteeing that the DSCC’s top fundraiser and Grossman’s strongest advocate would increasingly be spending more time in South Dakota and less on committee work.

The timing of Grossman’s announcement, coming only days after Thune’s entry into the South Dakota race, is hard to ignore.

Interestingly, another of Daschle's staffers, Jay Carson, left the leadership office to work in the Dean campaign, which seems to have imploded after coming in third in Iowa. It seems that Daschle, like Al Gore, is becoming the kiss of death for Democratic campaigns."

Ground War - Steve Rosenthal Wages a $100 Million Battle to Line Up Democratic Votes (washingtonpost.com)

2004-11-20T07:42:00.000-08:00

Ground War (washingtonpost.com): "Ground War
Steve Rosenthal Wages a $100 Million Battle to Line Up Democratic Votes
By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 6, 2004; Page C01

PHILADELPHIA
There is President Bush and John Kerry and the merry band of bragsters, pollsters, pontificators, image-shapers flashing around on the higher reaches of cable TV. These are the brand names and faces of American politics.

Then there is Steve Rosenthal, a middle-aged Jewish guy with a big belly who looks like he'd be happy to live in Takoma Park, which he does, and coach his kid's baseball team, which he does. In this presidential election, he may be the most important person you've never heard of.

Rosenthal has $100 million at his disposal, no boss and only one job: to find, track and deliver Democrats to the polls come November. "Hopefully, a byproduct of this is that George Bush will end up back in Crawford and," he adds sardonically, "spend the next several years trying to figure out if he really did make mistakes."

Usually, get-out-the-vote operations start after Labor Day. Money gets spread. Precinct captains get their big day to swagger around. Not this time. The difference is that Rosenthal, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, is already prowling around out there. He is setting up an elaborate war plan that has more than a thousand paid foot soldiers marching up to doors in 17 battleground states. They come armed with Palm handhelds loaded with voter registration data and streaming video about education and jobs.

As head of America Coming Together, one of the best-funded political interest groups created after campaign finance reform, Rosenthal -- like the Republican National Committee -- has been at this for months. Like all ruthless fighters, he is not always nice.

"He is as mean and tough and vicious as they come," says Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, "and that makes him more attractive. He's the last great hope of the Democratic Party."

On this hot day in Philadelphia, Rosenthal is being nice.

"What you are all doing is incredible," he tells about 45 members of the Palm brigade, canvassers searching rough neighborhoods for the real people to match the voter data they carry. He lavishes them with a few more phrases of praise -- he has learned to do this sort of thing -- then moves on to what he really relishes.

"I am going to give you two numbers: 172. And the other is 537. Anybody know what either of them are?" Rosenthal asks.

"Electoral votes?" somebody calls out.

"No," he says. "Not a bad guess."

Somebody else confuses 537 with 527, the section of the tax code that gives the political advocacy groups their label.

He waits. No one has any more guesses."

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"There are 172 days left between now and Election Day," Rosenthal says on this day in May, "and 537 is the number of votes that they claim that George Bush won by in Florida."

"Boooooooo!" chorus the canvassers.

"What I do when I am thinking about an election is, I break it down," says Rosenthal, "person by person, name by name, every single voter that we talk to, and who they talk to, to connect them to what we need to do in this state." Pennsylvanians will cast between 4.8 million and 5 million votes, Rosenthal predicts, and "we have to get 2 1/2 million of them."

In the Trenches

In the billion-dollar business of modern politics, the highly paid consultancy chatters about the metric, the margin of error, the media buy, the group psychology dynamic, the focus group. The consultancy runs the air war, planning surgical ad strikes from a distance.

Rosenthal works down on the ground. In his big corner office two blocks from the White House, he is restless behind his desk. "He doesn't like to just stay in D.C. and go to all the same restaurants where you can have all the same conversations," says JoDee Winterhoff, a former top aide to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and now political director for America Coming Together. From now until Election Day, Rosenthal will spend two or three days each week in states where the electoral votes are seen as up for grabs.

One of these visits takes him to black North Philadelphia with the canvassers, mostly middle-age African American and West Indian women. He knocks on doors, peers through torn curtains, steps gingerly past a rusting bike with missing wheels. He is looking for what works and what doesn't, constantly assessing and measuring. As Tom Lindenfeld, a veteran grass-roots strategist working with him, puts it, "You don't get what you expect. You get what you inspect."

It is hot, dirty and desperate on these blocks, but they are Democratic blocks. Philadelphia voted 80 percent for Al Gore in 2000. By Election Day 2003, Democratic registration in the city had surged by an additional 86,000, primarily from pilot efforts designed and funded under Rosenthal's auspices, and carried out by field workers close to Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.). Now former Fattah aide Greg Naylor is state director for America Coming Together. Naylor's longtime colleague Donald Redmond is heading up the group's operation in Missouri. Since canvassing began again this spring, registration has grown more than 100,000 since 2000.

This feat is even more staggering when viewed from the pavement. Rosenthal is teaming up with Maria Watson, a nursing home employee in New York and one of 30 members of the Service International Employees Union who have moved to Philadelphia for six months, leaving their lives, and in Watson's case, her 4-year-old grandson, behind. The two peer at Watson's Palm, which displays a block list drawn from voter registration and property records. They knock on the first door. "Beautiful," Rosenthal mutters. "Nobody lives here," in contradiction to the data. The second house is abandoned. At the third door, a child nearby calls out, "Nobody live there."

"Thank you, baby," Watson calls back. Her grandson smiles out from a big button she wears on her shirt. "You must miss him," says Rosenthal. "I'm doing this for him," she says firmly. They walk past the Perfect Love Ministries storefront church and Jessie's Nice & Polite Lounge and tackle another block of houses with sagging porches, shabby roofs and DirecTV satellite dishes.

"What are your major concerns?" Watson asks a woman coming home from work. Her Palm prompts her with a list, so that America Coming Together can stay in touch on those particular issues and use them to motivate the voter to go to the polls on Election Day.

"Crime? Drugs? Education? Jobs?"

"Yes, yes, yes and yes!" says the woman.

Up another walkway go Rosenthal and Watson, stepping over the trash. "Hey, I'm a candidate," calls a guy with bloodshot eyes. "I'm running for president." At another house, a man in an NRA cap answers their knock. "Are you registered?" says Rosenthal. "Yes," says the man. As a seasoned organizer, Rosenthal knows that "yes" can be a way of saying "leave me alone." So he holds the man's gaze, until the man reaches into his wallet and pulls out his registration card.

On another block, they linger for a moment in front of a house with flower boxes and cleanly swept Astroturf covering the steps. "See this?" Rosenthal instructs, jerking a thumb at this example of homeowner pride. "These are your people you use to maintain contact on your block."

"

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Across the street, a woman in tight stretch pants and a halter top puts down her grocery bags and makes a call from a pay phone. The conversation does not go well. Cursing loudly, she takes the receiver and starts hammering it, hard, over and over, against the phone.

The canvass team stops to watch. "Another dissatisfied constituent," says Lindenfeld. "Who's gonna go sign her up?" Everybody laughs, including Rosenthal, who then adds, firmly, "We don't leave anybody behind."

At age 51, with 30 years in organizing, and as a former deputy political director for the Democratic National Committee, Rosenthal is always teaching the basics. Put your foot between the jamb and the screen door before it gets slammed shut. Rattle the fence before opening the gate. Why? To make sure there's no nasty dog. "I got that advice from the letter carriers' union, long ago," he says.

"He's a great listener, and he steals things with no conscience," says his longtime friend Andy Stern, president of SEIU, which has donated money and bodies to the program. "He'll hone in on some . . . phone bank person discussing how many seconds you can talk on the phone before the person gets bored. And Steve will sit there fascinated and ask what would happen if you had to do it in four seconds." Rosenthal keeps index cards in his shirt pocket -- he rarely wears a suit -- and he jots on them throughout the day. "Then he organizes them at night," says Stern. "He's like a sponge."

But: "He's not very patient with people who think they know everything and want to tell him what to do. It is not his best skill to tolerate people who may not be very accomplished."

A Divided Partnership

Because of Rosenthal's success mobilizing union voters while at the AFL-CIO, labor leaders agreed to fund a new initiative, Partnership for America's Families, that he would direct, using $20 million to mobilize voters. But last summer, within a few months of its formation, the new effort was dissolving in a spasm of acrimony between two powerful union bosses, Stern and Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The partnership's entire board abruptly resigned. McEntee charged that Rosenthal "failed to win the support of key labor unions and leaders and other constituency organizations."

Then a prominent black union leader attacked Rosenthal, saying his leadership amounted to "paternalism."

"We have told Mr. Rosenthal and his organization where he could go and what he could do," AFSCME Treasurer Bill Lucy said in a press release. The issue "is about who will decide how the black community will be involved in its own politics." Oscar Sanchez, then head of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, chimed in that Rosenthal, as the AFL-CIO political director, "was not sympathetic to the causes of the minority community."

"This is one of the criticisms that will haunt him for life," says Brazile, who is black. She jumped to Rosenthal's defense, taking him to meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Rosenthal is no racist, she says.

"He was trying to transition from 'old school' to 'new school,' " she says, "and he bumped heads" by making clear to some of the Democrats' traditional constituency groups that their time-honored methods were not getting enough voters to the booths.

"Don't expect to demand a seat at the table," she adds. "You have to earn it with Steve."

"People perceived that his demands were inappropriate," says Gina Glantz, who ran Bill Bradley's presidential campaign and has known Rosenthal since working with him on the Walter Mondale campaign. She rejects that argument. "If [he thinks] you're not getting the job done, it doesn't make any difference what color you are or what color your organization is. He is going to measure your performance."

Asked about this episode, Rosenthal says, "It's history. It was an ugly period. I have spent my adult life working to win power for the powerless, and I let my record speak for myself."

"He can be prickly," says Don Kaniewski, political director of the Laborers' International Union. "He can be disagreeable. I have not always felt that he was the most open and forthcoming person on everything I wanted to know about. That didn't prevent me from respecting the work he was doing. And by every measure he has been successful. And that is how he would like to be judged: Did I win, not who did I piss off?" "

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Lessons From a Master

The youngest of three children, Rosenthal grew up in a Levitt house in Hicksville, a white working-class suburb of Long Island. His father was a shoe salesman who started a union for shoe store workers, and Rosenthal's first real job, at 16, was selling shoes in a union shop. He sold a lot of shoes. "I learned from a master," he says of his late father. "He was really, really good at selling. He would have been very, very good at this stuff" his son does now.

Political organizing and fundraising is much the same. You scrutinize your customers' needs and make your pitch. Part of his job as head of America Coming Together is fundraising, and after a recent meeting with potential donors in New Mexico, Rosenthal reached for a retail metaphor, telling his staff, "We didn't sell any vacuums today. We made a couple of visits, we have a couple on layaway."

There wasn't much talk around the Rosenthal dinner table about politics and current affairs, although there was that time someone tossed a brick through the front window to warn his father away from organizing the union. His father was "probably a registered Republican" in GOP-owned and -operated Nassau County, and one summer, because his dad was friendly with the committeeman, Rosenthal got a job working at the local park, "the first and last thing the Republican Party ever did for me."

The passion came from his mother, he thinks, and the Judaic tradition of tikkun olam, which means "repair the world." She was religious, strictly kosher and insisted her children go to synagogue weekly.

"I shouldn't tell you this," Rosenthal says, "but I barely made it out of high school." He just wasn't interested. After a stint at community college, he transferred to the State University of New York at New Paltz, a liberal hotbed then and now. There, he majored in political science and urban studies, grew energized against the Vietnam War and hunger and volunteered for George McGovern.

After working on some local campaigns and Ted Kennedy's presidential race in 1980, he was hired to help run a campaign by the Communication Workers of America to represent New Jersey's state employees.

Rosenthal moved to Trenton, and met and married a fellow CWA organizer, "a Teamster's daughter," Eileen Kirlin.

"Working in New Jersey for the union, that was the be-all and end-all. That was the Lord's work," he says. "We had become a very big union in a small state, and this was what it was all about: organizing workers, building political power for working people."

The couple moved to Washington in 1986, when Kirlin was hired to head organizing for CWA. She is now director of SEIU's public employee sector. They have two children, Ana, 19, adopted from Brazil, and Sam, 15, adopted from Paraguay.

In 1991, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown borrowed Rosenthal for Bill Clinton's presidential bid. He went to work as an associate deputy secretary at the Labor Department after the election.

In late 1995, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney hired Rosenthal to energize the federation's flagging political operation, and over the next six years he turned out increasing numbers of union voters, even as organized labor's political clout waned and its workforce fell. After the 2002 midterm elections, with Republicans solidifying their grip on Congress and statehouses, Rosenthal left the AFL. Federal election law was going to change, shutting down the "soft money," or unlimited contributions, that donors could make to the parties. Labor traditionally had given huge sums of this soft money to the Democrats to fund turnout efforts. That money would have to go somewhere else, and Rosenthal was keen to apply the get-out-the-vote programs he had built beyond union households.

That was the idea behind the Partnership for America's Families. After the flap, Rosenthal teamed up with Democratic fundraiser Ellen Malcolm, who had started Emily's List to fund pro-choice female candidates, and Harold Ickes, a senior aide during the Clinton presidency who masterminded Hillary Rodham Clinton's run for the Senate, and the trio formed America Coming Together.

George Soros, the Hungarian who came to America with nothing and built a fortune estimated at $7 billion, had decided that defeating President Bush had become "the central focus of my life." Perhaps the best way to assure this, he decided after meeting Malcolm and Rosenthal, with the trio and seeing Rosenthal's PowerPoint presentation, was to pledge $10 million to their effort. Soros has persuaded other rich progressives to do the same. The group now has pledges and receipts totaling about $75 million toward a goal of $100 million that it is confident it will reach well before Election Day. There have been howls of protest from campaign finance watchdogs, editorial pages and the Republican National Committee that groups like this subvert the intent of the McCain-Feingold Act to reduce the influence of large donors.

Rosenthal loves to argue this point."

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"How? Look, there are two kinds of donors -- access donors and ideological donors. Our donors are ideological. We can't give them anything. We have no tickets to the inauguration, no Lincoln Bedroom, no photos with the president," he says, shrugging. "All we can give them is the change they want, and that's all they want."

The Berlin Wall of the law forbids America Coming Together and the other 527s from coordinating with the Democratic National Committee or the Kerry campaign. Publicly, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe has grown used to saying, "It's illegal for me to discuss them." Privately, a senior DNC aide admits it can be quite awkward: Longtime comrades-in-arms, some who worked 16-hour days together through the primaries, now can't even speak to each other.

For Rosenthal, funny, acerbic, brusque, battered from his tussles over the years, this is exquisitely liberating.

Riding in the group's van in Philadelphia, he looks out the window and grins. "In a way, we don't have to take all their [expletive] anymore," he says. "Not the candidate, not the wife, not the manager. This is not so bad."

Foot Soldiers' Pitch

"Tell me the weirdest thing that has happened to you," he commands, back in the group's Philadelphia headquarters, an expectant grin on his face. The uniforms are too hot, the canvassers say. The ex-criminals they approach don't know if they have voting rights. The young hoods won't listen. And the Palms -- the expensive, sophisticated, darling Tungsten 2 Palms! -- are freezing up, jumping around, annoying the canvass teams.

"Those batteries don't last as well as we do," says one of the canvassers. Rosenthal frowns. "This is not good news," he says.

Still, the foot soldiers are cheerful, eager to share their persuasion techniques with the general: Groceries can be carried while working on a prospect. Children can be hoisted onto a hip while Mama fills out her form.

"We were at the mall," begins Watson, in her rolling West Indian accent. " 'Are you registered to vote?' I asked a woman. 'Why should I register to vote?' she says. I say, 'Is this economy okay with you?' She says, 'I think I should register to vote.' " Watson finishes this tale with a flourish, and the room claps and laughs.

Another canvasser from New York talks vaguely about not feeling welcomed by the local workers, then thanks Rosenthal several times for coming to the office to listen to her concerns.

"Are you leading up to some group hug or something?" he says. "Because that is where I draw the line.""

BIPAC: Electing Business to Congress

2004-11-20T07:11:00.000-08:00

BIPAC: Electing Business to Congress: "On July 16th, BIPAC supporters had the opportunity to hear from the four campaign committees on their predictions for this fall. Not surprisingly, both sides foretold of great success and, oftentimes, with each side expecting to win the same race!

Micaela Isler, PAC Director of Household International and Chairman of BIPAC’s PAC Council, moderated the panel comprised of Chris LaCivita (Political Director, National Republican Senatorial Committee), Andrew Grossman (Political Director, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), Michael Matthews (Political Director, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and Steve Schmidt (Communications Director, National Republican Congressional Committee).

With 14 Democrat and 20 Republican-held seats up for grabs in the Senate, it is understandable why the NRSC and DSCC are not willing to concede victory to the other side in any of the races this cycle.

You Like Potayto and I Like Potahto

Andy Grossman with the DSCC said that he did not expect a big change in the make-up of the Senate (perhaps a 2 – 3 seat pick-up by the Democrats) and certainly anticipates that the Democrats will maintain the majority.

Chris LaCivita with the NRSC offered his differing view and highlighted the Minnesota, South Dakota and Missouri races as their top three challenger races. Both sides acknowledged that the South Dakota Senate race will be a real nail biter up until the end, with less than 10,000 votes making the difference as to whether Sen. Tim Johnson (D) will be returning to Washington.

Both differed on the outlook for the Texas Senate race, with LaCivita suggesting that any money spent in Texas by the DSCC is money wasted. Grossman indicated that recent polls have shown Kirk tied with Cornyn and that significant dollars would be invested by the DSCC in the Texas Senate race.

The NRSC indicated that they feel confident about the Arkansas and New Hampshire Senate races, while acknowledging they are competitive. The DSCC highlighted the Colorado and Oregon races as places where the Republican candidates may be "out of step" with voters in their state, and projected that the Oregon Senate election will be the sleeper race for Democrats this cycle.

The Senate races in Maine, Oklahoma and Kentucky were mentioned as long shots for Democrats, but not without potential for pick-ups and some possible movement.

You Say Tomayto, I Say Tomahto!

On the House side, Democrats need to pick up six seats in order to regain the majority, and with 47 seats without incumbents running, it is certainly mathematically possible. However, the NRCC was optimistic on its projections for this Fall to retain the majority.

The NRCC is predicting that Republicans will fare well in each of the four member vs. member match-ups that occurred due to redistricting. The seats that were cited as most vulnerable were: Rep. Connie Morella (R-MD 8), the MD 2 open seat, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV 2) and Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT 2). The NRCC dismissed any talk of Rep. Henry Bonilla’s (R TX 23) risk, citing polls that show him 30 points ahead.

The DCCC highlighted Georgia and Iowa as their two greatest states with opportunities, achieved through redistricting.

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off?

With all of the differing views as to what will actually take place, it may lead one to suggest that we "call the whole thing off"…but with so much at stake, we know that the business community must continue to fight for its place at the table and not cede control of the debate to the not-so-pro-business side.

Telling the Business Story

During lunch, Alex Castellanos with National Media and Evan Tracey of Campaign Media Analysis Group briefed attendees on what to expect from interest groups this cycle. Castellanos noted that pro-business groups tend to play a fourth quarter game whereas the not-so-pro-business groups become energized much earlier, and thus are prepared to mobilize easily in the last 72 hours of the campaign. Castellanos re-emphasized the BIPAC point that American business has a very good story to tell, but business is the only one who can tell that story.

What Really Matters to Business

BIPAC’s Bernadette Budde wrapped up the day by highlighting the 12 races (9 House and 3 Senate) that exemplify how business should be evaluating races. The races she selected were based upon the issue coalitions that would result from the election or defeat of a candidate, as well as what it would mean for the composition of committees in the 108th Congress.

The Mid-Course Connection conference was hosted by BIPAC’s PAC Council. The PAC Council seeks to develop a strong and vibrant PAC community and increase the political effectiveness of the American business community in electing pro-business candidates to Congress. The PAC Council does this by hosting monthly workshops, conducting one-on-one PAC check-ups and issuing PAC primers about subjects important to the PAC community.

If you would like more information about the PAC Council, please contact Lacye Tennille or Heather Alfano at (202) 833-1880."

Talon News -- Harris Forgoes 2004 Senate Run; Not Ruling Out Race in 2006 - Andy Grossman

2004-11-20T07:05:00.000-08:00

Talon News -- Harris Forgoes 2004 Senate Run; Not Ruling Out Race in 2006: "Harris Forgoes 2004 Senate Run; Not Ruling Out Race in 2006
By Jimmy Moore
Talon News
January 19, 2004

SARASOTA, FL (Talon News) -- After months of behind-the-scenes political posturing and speculation, Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) announced on Friday that she will not run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by retiring Democrat Sen. Bob Graham.

But Harris tricked the crowd of supporters and media that gathered for her statement at the local Boys & Girls Club by revealing that she would be running for the Senate.

"[A]fter careful deliberation, I am here to announce my candidacy for the United States Senate," Harris stated.

After a brisk round of applause from the audience, Harris admitted, "But just not this year."

Harris said she looks forward to running for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives this year and helping Republicans make gains in Congress.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert reacted positively to Harris' decision not to run by describing her as "an effective leader who always puts people before politics."

He continued, "I am glad that she plans on continuing her service in the House."

Harris became a household name during the 2000 presidential election in Florida when she certified the election in favor of George W. Bush while serving as Secretary of State during the infamous election recount. Her popularity with conservatives from that unprecedented event paved the way for her to win a seat in the U.S. Congress in 2002.

Some Republicans believed Harris' presence in the Florida U.S. Senate race would have incited a backlash from Democrat voters who would have reminded them of the 2000 presidential election. They even said that her candidacy would have jeopardized President George W. Bush chances of winning reelection.

In fact, Andy Grossman, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was so concerned about Harris running for the U.S. Senate that he had already begun using her as a political pawn designed to rally Democrat supporters to work in this year's elections.

"Please send Katherine Harris a message that we don't want her in the Senate, and won't let her steal any future elections," he wrote in a recent e-mail to supporters.

Grossman called Harris "an election-stealing, right-wing apologist for the radical Republican agenda."

Nevertheless, before her announcement that she would not be running, Harris was leading two recent polls conducted by The Miami Herald and the St. Petersburg Times, despite not being an official candidate in the race.

With Harris out of the race, it has become a tightly contested race between the remaining declared Republican candidates.

The Republicans running for the U.S. Senate include outgoing state House Speaker Johnnie B. Byrd, Jr., former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum, state Sen. Daniel Webster, state Rep. Mark Adam Foley, Judicial Watch leader Larry Klayman, former Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH), and former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez.

Although she has ruled out a run in 2004, Harris has left the door open for a possible run for the U.S. Senate in 2006 against incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson.

"My decision may surprise those who looked forward to the horse race and the headlines," Harris responded when asked if she would be running in 2006. "Rest assured, all in good time."

As a highly successful GOP fundraiser since the 2000 election, Harris built a $3 million war chest for her 2002 campaign for Congress. As of September, she had raised another $350,000 for her next political race.

The Republican primary for the U.S. Senate race in Florida will be held on August 31.

Copyright © 2004 Talon News -- All rights reserved."

The World Today - Foreign policy a challenge for Bush in his second term

2004-11-06T15:39:00.000-08:00

The World Today - Foreign policy a challenge for Bush in his second term: "Foreign policy a challenge for Bush in his second term PRINT FRIENDLY EMAIL STORY
The World Today - Thursday, 4 November , 2004 12:18:00
Reporter: Eleanor Hall
ELEANOR HALL: The most urgent and potentially dangerous challenges for the next Bush administration are likely to be in the areas of foreign policy.

So will a second Bush administration adopt a more moderate approach to foreign policy, as some analysts have been suggesting, or will President Bush' decisive victory embolden the neo-conservatives?

One foreign policy analyst well placed to answer this is Dr Lawrence Korb.

A former Assistant Secretary of Defence in the Reagan administration, Dr Korb is now Senior Fellow at the Centre for American Progress and a former Deputy President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dr Korb spoke to me a short time ago from his home in Virginia.

LAWRENCE KORB: I think that the neo-conservatives will be emboldened by the victory, since so much of the campaign was fought on foreign policy grounds. That's not why the President won, but basically this war dominated, virtually, the last month of the campaign.

ELEANOR HALL: Now we heard House majority leader, Tom Delay, say today that this victory means it's time not just to fight the war on terror, but to win it outright. What do you think he means by that?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think what he basically means is that we should continue the policy of regime change for those groups that support terrorists, and we ought to follow up more on the President's admonition, you know, either you're with us or against us, and if you don't support us in this war, then we will go on without you, and we'll go after those people who we think are supporting the terrorists.

ELEANOR HALL: Now, presumably the choice of personnel in the next administration is going to be critical in the future of foreign policy. Do you believe that Donald Rumsfeld will stay, and who do you think might replace the dove in the first administration, Colin Powell?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, Secretary Rumsfeld wants to stay, because he wants to finish the transformation of the military to take our military out of the, as he puts it, out of the industrial age more into the information age, and he was not able to get much of that done in the first Bush administration because of the war, the attacks of September 11th.

I think if you take a look at the Secretary of State, this is going to be a key indicator – if the President should reach across the aisle and get somebody like a Senator Biden, for example, a leading Democrat, then I think you would see an indication of getting the parties to work together.

On the other hand, I think if he goes with one of his own people, like somebody like Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, or Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defence, then I think it's an indication he plans to continue the same type of policy he's had in the first administration.

ELEANOR HALL: Now, you're a former Assistant Defence Secretary yourself. If you were advising the President right now, what would you be telling him are the most important foreign policy measures he should take immediately?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think what he has to do is get help from the rest of the world to deal with the situation of Iraq. Our situation is… our military is overstretched very badly, and we're vulnerable in places like Korea, for example, or if something should happen in the Taiwan straits.

I think the next thing that he needs to do is work together, primarily with the Europeans, on Iran. Iran is a very dangerous situation, and also work with our allies – with China, Russia, Japan and South Korea – to deal with the situation in North Korea.

ELEANOR HALL: How likely do you think it is that he will be able to reach out to European allies, for example, in a second administration?

LAWRENCE KORB: I think it'll be very difficult. One thing he could do is move on areas that are important to Europe that are not directly connected with the war on terror –the International Criminal Court, for example, the Kyoto Protocol – those are issues that are very important to the Europeans.

And if he would sit down with them and try and work out some of the objections that the United States has to those arrangements, I think that would go a long way to creating an environment which he could then cooperate in situations like Iraq and Iran.

ELEANOR HALL: And how confident are you that the US will head in the right direction, as you see it, in terms of national security and foreign policy over the next four years?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, unfortunately, I don't think it'll be able to continue on this idea, sort of, unilateral if they can, multilateral only if they must, rather than sort of the opposite way in which the Republican Party from Eisenhower to his father, which was 'always multilateral if we can, unilateral only if we must' approach.

ELEANOR HALL: Do you think there's likely to be division inside the Republican Party then?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think divisions will occur if the situation in Iraq is not brought under control, because while the American people did vote for the President, they did it in spite of his Iraq policy, not because of it.

And if that situation continues to drag on with casualties – we're now getting close to 1,200 casualties – and every day there's some horrible thing going on in Iraq, and if there doesn't seem to be any end to it, I think you're going to see opposition from his own party from people like Senator Lugar and Senator Hagel.

ELEANOR HALL: And how high do you think the stakes are in the next four years, particularly in terms of foreign policy?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think they're very, very high, because if we don't get the situation with al-Qaeda under control, there's liable to be more attacks, not only on the United States, but on its interests and its friends around the world.

And we now know that because of the way in which we handled Afghanistan and also going into Iraq without a clear reason, we have basically increased al-Qaeda – it's metastasised – it's now in some 60 countries, and you have many people in the Arab world that see our invasion of Iraq as an indication that Osama bin Laden may have been correct about what he says about the United States.

ELEANOR HALL: You're a former member of a Republican administration, but you essentially seem to be saying that the first Bush term did not get it right on critical things like the war on terror.

Would you have preferred a Kerry win?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think I would have preferred a different approach in foreign policy, and it looked like Kerry… Kerry actually had the same foreign policy as Bush's father did, and this was my Republican party, as I mentioned, from Eisenhower through his father, this is the way that he was approaching it.

I mean, the Democratic Party has become the, if you will, the party of international realism, whereas the Bush administration has a very, very idealistic radical approach to the world.

ELEANOR HALL: What hope do you have that that ideological approach might change? Where could the change come from?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I think the one hope for changes would be that President Bush begins to worry about his place in history, and then becomes concerned about the legacy he will leave, and he would not want to leave office with the United States' prestige around the world at an all time low.

ELEANOR HALL: And how confident do you think that we may see that change, at least in the second half of this next administration?

LAWRENCE KORB: Well, I'm not terribly confident, based upon everything that I see in terms of even the President's speech today, that he will do that.

And of course Vice President… you still have the same Vice President Cheney, who's very influential and is really sort of the architect of the approach that the President has taken to the world.

ELEANOR HALL: Former Assistant Secretary of Defence in the Reagan administration, Dr Korb, who's now Senior Fellow at the Centre for American Progress, speaking to me from Virginia."

Bush’s make-believe world

2004-10-31T08:43:00.000-08:00

Bush’s make-believe world

Bush’s make-believe world

N J NANPORIA

What is the single, most self-defining characteristic which President Bush has acquired on the eve of the November election? It is surely that of a man with whom there can be no genuine communication. He has positioned himself in incommunicado, cocooned in an isolation in which he alone is a companion to his own thoughts, and armoured with an impenetrability which even his closest associated cannot overcome. His State department, his intelligence people, his experts, his allies, the Pentagon, the world media, and on-the-ground realities in Afghanistan have confirmed that the Taliban is not only not dead but is very much alive and active.

Yet, hugging the comforting thought to himself but letting it slip out as a self-evident truth he claims that “as a result of the American military the Taliban is no longer in existence”. What is actuality for the entire world is for him a nullity, and by declaring it as such he has invalidated it as far as he is concerned. The Taliban example is a prototype of many others relating to nearly every important issue concerning Iraq, Afghanistan and the war against terrorism.

A leader’s loony potential

A clue to an explanation lies in his remark “Mistakes? Not me. You can’t lead the world if you say your country made a mistake”. Never admit to anything, least of all to error or failure. Never apologise and never allow unacceptable facts to violate a very private vision of the world.

This is not a denial that mistakes have been made. It is simply that they should not be acknowledged; and this has been elevated to the status of a key quality of world leadership. In any run-of-the-mill citizen such a character flaw would invite regret and commiseration. In a leader of the world’s sole superpower it can only set the alarm bells ringing. No surprise then that in the critical comments that have surfaced in America, leave aside anywhere else, the word “lunacy” has begun to figure with increasing frequency.

The ultimate contrarian

In the face of contrary evidence, contrary opinion and contrary reality the position Bush has taken is not easy to maintain. So he has fallen back on the technique of the flat and uncompromising statement, with all the Presidential authority he can give it. Next he has invoked the help of macho rhetoric, a mix of bravado and phoniness that would be embarrassing in anyone else. And finally he has been pushed to claiming that the goals he has set for himself are those which God has coincidentally instructed him to try and achieve. It is impossible to believe that the coterie that surrounds him hasn’t had uneasy reservations about a leader progressively exposed as a dangerous maverick, seemingly incapable of at least an intelligent advocacy of a neoconservative ideology.

Powell has been unable to conceal his equivocations. Condoleeza Rice has betrayed, off and on, symptoms of an enforced loyalty. Even the Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, despite his own contribution to the mess, has disclosed belatedly and no doubt expediently that “he was never convinced by the evidence that Saddam Hussein had deep ties with al Qaeda”. Confirmed ideologues like Wolfowitz and Karl Rove, being what they are, tied to their beliefs and, as their bizarre leader would say, are committed to “stay the course.” Vice-President Cheney hasn’t even the dignity of any commitment other than to himself, and in evasions of the points made against him he has equalled his leader in guile and disinformation.

Given all this, when compelled to abandon his cocoon and engage in debate, Bush could only grimace, frown and scowl. The language of refutation, the mobilisation of detail and rational discourse, and the making of a case on the basis of what is happening out there were beyond him. Flustered by the gathering pressure on him he has admitted to a “miscalculation”.

Asked whether he could win the war on terror, his impromptu answer was “I don’t think we can win it”. Asked whether he would accept responsibility for Iraq as Kennedy did for the Bay of Pigs disaster, he said, “I’m taking the rap of course.” He could not deny that there was any “rap” to take. We have here, then, the picture of a man, confused, bewildered, incoherent, on his own volition isolated and out of touch, inspired only by his God-given messages. If this is farcical it is also a global tragedy.

Vietnam holds the answer

For anyone who has watched TV, particularly the debate with Kerry, read the papers with a modicum of intelligence, listened to the views of those qualified to know, and analysed things at a very elemental level the truth can hardly be avoided. It is there staring in one’s face. The gap between Kerry and Bush is stark. The voters, it has been said, are impatient with and cannot understand “nuances”. But there is no nuance here. What Bush is is plain for all to see.

Yet — and here is another aspect of the tragedy — the polls tell us that there is a fifty-fifty division of support for both the Presidential candidates. Arguably and theoretically the best educated and best informed electorate in the world is unable or unwilling to renounce a President so blatantly unworthy of the American people. What does this say about the ridiculous platitude that the voters know best? Miraculously November 2 might prove otherwise but doubts persist as also the conspiracy of silence on the one question that now matters. This is how the Americans can get out of Iraq for which America is desperately groping for an answer. One day, with or without Kerry, they will realise that the only way to get out is to get out as was done in Vietnam.

Naipaul’s area of ignorance

Of his own choice V S Naipaul has had more than normal exposure to the Indian atmosphere in which it is not enough to make a point. It has to be underlined and underlined again to excess before it registers however dimly.

This, perhaps, explains Naipaul’s comment that Saudi Arabia and Iran which “foment religious war must be destroyed”. Destroyed? Eliminated? Wiped out?

That is really going over the top whereas a novelist is expected to say what he means precisely neither more nor less.

Certainly there is a case to be made out against the countries he names. But despite the neoconservatives in — you know where — it isn’t quite yet the accepted thing to demand the wiping out of two ongoing independent nations, however much one might disapprove of them.

Perhaps it isn’t too off-mark to say that novelists in general are not quite convincing in the role of political commentators and analysts.

True, John Le Carre has said the right things on American unilateralism and Gunter Grass on America cannot be faulted.

Yet their comments do no more than reinforce conventional liberal opinion.
That is a useful contribution but, as in Naipaul’s case, it can be overdone.

The arithmetic of incivility

One of the casualties of 9/11 and of Bush on the rampage is the shared sense of civility that kept the wheels moving in the political and diplomatic world.
For the US President anyone who doesn’t fall in line is by definition a thug. An unrepentant Saddam Hussein called Kuwaiti citizens “dogs”.

Someone in the Canadian Parliament declared “damn Americans. I hate those bastards”.

Many hard and colourful things have been said about Blair and Bush to the point where civility in public affairs is an unexpected thing.
The art of being rude in language which in itself is not offensive has declined sharply.

Here in India incivility has the dull colour of routine, lacking inventive skill. When Yashwant Sinha called the Prime Minister a “puppet” the attempted incivility deservedly fall flat.

Amen for a prognosis

The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs. It is a war we cannot win: Scott Ritter. Amen.

MSNBC - Amb. Wendy Sherman on Yasir Arafat

2004-10-28T19:29:00.001-07:00

MSNBC - Malign Neglect: "Malign Neglect
Both Bush and Kerry blame Arafat for the mess in the Mideast. If the Palestinian leader is suddenly out of the picture, both candidates will have to come up with real policies—not just transparent appeals to Jewish voters. WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 1:26 p.m. ET Oct. 28, 2004Oct. 28 - If “the old man” dies, and it’s looking like he might, both George W. Bush and John Kerry have some explaining to do. Like, what’s their policy toward Israel and the Palestinians? Do they really even have one?

To date, 75-year-old Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat—known to friends as Abu Ammar (“the old man”), known to enemies as a liar, murderer and thief—has provided both our president and his challenger with a convenient cop-out. If they mentioned the peace process at all, it was to bash Arafat. “You know,” said Bush in the second TV debate, “I've made some decisions on Israel. That's unpopular. I wouldn't deal with Arafat because I felt like he had let the former president down, and I don't think he's the kind of person that can lead toward a Palestinian state.”

Otherwise, what’s passed for policy toward Israel in stump speeches by the candidates and their boosters has been nothing but a transparent appeal to Jewish voters. The candidates assume that Jews want to be told that the United States will do anything and everything to protect and support Israel, no matter who leads it or how. Rarely in the history of international relations have the politicians of one country expressed such unconditional love for another. Former president Bill Clinton, campaigning for Kerry in Florida, went so far as to say the Democratic candidate is a “loyal friend of Israel.” Loyal?

President Bush and his minions like to suggest that the Iraq war was launched, not least, for Israel’s benefit. “I personally think one of the reasons we don't have as many suicide attacks today in Israel as we had in the past is because Saddam is no longer in business,” says Vice President Dick Cheney. “A free Iraq will secure Israel,” says the president.

This line of argument is not only less than true, it’s more than dangerous. If suicide attacks are down, it’s not because Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is no longer around to offer a $25,000 recompense to bombers’ families, whose homes are usually bulldozed by the Israelis. It’s because the infamous wall built by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on mostly confiscated Palestinian lands has proved an effective short-term barrier against most terrorist attacks. The theoretical strategic threat Saddam would have presented if he ever got back on his feet was a legitimate concern, but not a likely one. As we all know now, and some of us knew then, before the invasion ever began, he was thoroughly contained, disarmed and defanged. According to the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, "Iraq has now become a convenient arena for Jihad, which has helped Al Qaeda to recover from the setback it suffered as a result of the war in Afghanistan. With the growing phenomenon of suicide bombing, the U.S. presence in Iraq now demands more and more assets that might have been otherwise deployed against various dimensions of the global terrorist threat." So none of us is safer.

By suggesting, as the Bush campaign often does, that the Iraq war is good for the Jews, it gratuitously implicates Israelis and the U.S. voters it wants in an unpopular war costing hundreds of billions of dollars as well as rivers of American and Iraqi blood. Stranger still, some Bush campaign advisers think American Jews should be grateful. One recently confided to the Israeli daily Haaretz that to date he’s been “disappointed” when he looks at the polls. Ronald Reagan got almost 40 per cent of the Jewish vote. Bush is not expected to get more than 30 (although that’s up 10 points on the 2000 result).

It seems a long time ago now, but there were some people in the Bush administration who actually argued before the insurgency began that the road to peace in the Middle East—which is the only way to bring real, long-lasting security to Israelis and Palestinians—led not through Jerusalem or Ramallah, but through Baghdad.

This was always an implausible academic conceit. Now it seems delusional. But it was given credibility by the seeming absence of other alternatives. And for that, the blame always went to Arafat. His maddening, mercurial rule had exhausted every option, it was said. And anyone looking for fresh options would soon be exhausted, too. As Kerry foreign-policy adviser Wendy Sherman recently told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “the burden of the current mess in the Middle East, the collapse of the last serious peacemaking effort under President Clinton, the wave of terror that has followed, and the failure to end terrorist violence today rest primarily with the Palestinian leadership and Yasir Arafat, in particular.”

What happens if suddenly he’s out of the picture? Where does the peace process stand today? The usual, candid answer off the record from U.S. officials directly concerned is “what peace process?” But that’s too simple. Both Bush and Kerry advocate the creation of a Palestinian state that would be viable and “contiguous”—that is, something more than a collection of little Bantustans like the pseudo-sovereign states set up by the old apartheid regime in South Africa.

Yet Sharon’s current plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, which both candidates also support, is very much the beginning of a Bantustan design. There’s no direct consultation or coordination with Arafat or his security forces. The Palestinians will get what the Sharon government is willing to give them, no more, no less—and, in the end, not much.

The proposal to take 8,000 settlers and the troops who protect them out of the midst of 1.3 million Palestinians does little more than lay the groundwork for an enormous prison. Israel will control the fences, and little children—who are the majority of Gaza’s population—will be left to grow up with no sense of freedom or a future. Any withdrawal from the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, is nothing more than a token gesture. This is not a blueprint for peace, really, or even a roadmap pointing the way there. It is simply and explicitly a way to divest Israel of Arabs in the demographic struggle to preserve Israel’s Jewish majority inside its current borders and, eventually, the West Bank.

Put to a vote in the Knesset this week, Sharon’s plan won an overwhelming majority. But for the radical settlers who believe God gave them every inch of Gaza and the West Bank, it’s still too much. Which is why Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, at a ceremony marking the ninth anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s murder, warned that more assassinations could be in the works. Haaretz quoted Mofaz saying, “We do not know if there is another loaded revolver waiting to strike Israeli democracy again.

It’s an ugly picture. And I’m among those who believe only the United States has the power to begin to change it at this late date. The Bush administration has simply dropped the ball. Searching for a fantasy solution in Baghdad, it turned its back on the realities in Jerusalem.

“Some might say that the parties need to grow up and that some benign neglect is in order,” says Kerry adviser Sherman. “They would have you believe that American engagement is a euphemism for pressuring Israel. But as events on the ground demonstrate, there is no such thing as benign neglect. And, indeed, the lack of involvement is what imperils Israel, not American engagement—as the current state of affairs with respect to Gaza disengagement demonstrates.”

If “the old man” goes, then it truly is time for the United States to fight again, with all its diplomatic and economic power, for a just and lasting peace that ends the key conflict in the Middle East. In fact, it’s long past time.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc."

MSNBC - Amb. Wendy Sherman on Yasir Arafat

2004-10-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - U.S. Envoy Smoothes Way for Karzai Win in Afghan Poll

2004-10-12T11:03:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - U.S. Envoy Smoothes Way for Karzai Win in Afghan Poll: "U.S. Envoy Smoothes Way for Karzai Win in Afghan Poll

By Simon Cameron-Moore
KABUL (Reuters) - The flashing smile, the patrician wave of the hand for the cameras as he stepped into his bullet-proof car belonged to a man who had just won Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s presidential election.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, nicknamed "the Viceroy" and familiarly known as Zal, had just helped to smoothe the path to almost certain victory for Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai after meeting his chief rival.

The historic election on Saturday was nearly derailed when Karzai's 15 opponents threatened to boycott over suspicion of irregularities, but soon most of his main challengers had fallen into line and promised to respect the result -- thanks to a little word in their ear from the U.S. envoy.

"They came to him asking for advice on ways to save face," said one Western official, describing the urgent consultations Khalilzad held with Yunus Qanuni, the main candidate from the ethnic Tajik minority. That was on Monday evening.

Qanuni later withdrew his boycott, citing national interests.

A day earlier, a visit from Khalilzad was followed by a decision by another key opponent -- Mohammad Mohaqiq from the Shi'ite Muslim Hazara minority -- to take back his threat to refuse to recognize the election.

On Tuesday, presidential contender General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek commander from the north, was to meet the Afghan-born Khalilzad who is the face of President Bush (news - web sites) in Kabul.

Most expect Karzai to win Saturday's historic vote, although three weeks of counting only begin on Wednesday.

It's no secret that Washington wants to see Karzai endorsed as president.

Khalilzad was under pressure to move quickly because Bush, on his own campaign trail, was hailing last weekend's election as his foreign policy triumph and could not risk allegations of fraud jeopardizing the success story.

Khalilzad, who has a doctorate from the University of Chicago and is a former professor at Columbia and long-time Republican, was appointed special envoy to Afghanistan after U.S. forces toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.

Many Afghans say Khalilzad has been engaged in political horse-trading on Karzai's behalf, possibly carrying offers of ministerial posts or provincial governorships.

"He's put pressure on them and they won't change their position free of charge," said one candidate, who believed the deals could backfire on Karzai.

OLD FRIENDS
Khalilzad and Karzai go back a long time -- they studied together at the American University of Beirut in the 1970s.

It was Khalilzad, as a foreign policy adviser to the National Security Council, who lobbied Washington to pick Karzai as head of a transitional government after the Taliban were overthrown. Khalilzad says he has always been ready to act as a go-between, carrying messages between rival Afghan politicians, but denies direct interference in Afghanistan's domestic affairs.

Afghans fear U.S. impatience for a Karzai win may have resulted in a series of expedient deals and that could result in warlords and drug runners retaining a say in government.

Qanuni, Dostum and Mohaqiq are commanders of ethnic militias that fought the Soviet occupation and the hardline Taliban. Those same factions now fear they are being squeezed out of Afghanistan's political future as U.S. policy seeks to dissociate itself from warlords.

"It is important that the United States is not seen as pushing for deals that would be perceived by Afghans as maintaining the status quo, but rather for producing positive political change," said Andrew Wilder, director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit.

"The legitimacy of the election result rests on who will be in the next cabinet," he said. "Afghans desperately want political change and whoever is elected should bring in new faces, more professional people into government."

Dumping leaders who rely on ethnic loyalties and armed militias is difficult, given the composition of the nation and a far from complete disarmament process. Moreover, the vote will demonstrate they represent constituencies too large to ignore.

Khalilzad studiously avoided endorsing Karzai's candidacy in the run-up to the election.

But few Afghans doubt a Karzai win is what Bush wants to hold up as a triumph of democracy before the Nov. 2 U.S. election.

"Everybody knows who is calling the shots," said Hamidullah Tarzi, a former finance minister from one of the country's best-known political families."

Yahoo! News - Bremer: U.S. Paid Price for Lack of Troops

2004-10-05T08:05:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - Bremer: U.S. Paid Price for Lack of Troops: "

Bremer: U.S. Paid Price for Lack of Troops

Tue Oct 5, 7:43 AM ET U.S. National - AP

WASHINGTON - The United States did not have enough troops in Iraq (news - web sites) after ousting Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and "paid a big price" for it, says the former head of the U.S. occupation there.

L. Paul Bremer said Monday that he arrived in Iraq on May 6, 2003 to find "horrid" looting and a very unstable situation.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," Bremer said during an address to an insurance group in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

The group released a summary of his remarks in Washington.

"We never had enough troops on the ground," Bremer said, while insisting that he was "more convinced than ever that regime change was the right thing to do."

Despite the daily reports of violence, "I am optimistic about the future in Iraq," he added.

In a statement Monday night to The Washington Post, Bremer said fully supported the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq.

"I believe that we currently have sufficient troop levels in Iraq," he said in the e-mailed statement, according to Tuesday's edition of the Post. He said references to troops levels related to the situation when he first arrived in Baghdad "when I believed we needed either more coalition troops or Iraqi security forces to address the looting."

Bremer addressed the Insurance Leadership Forum, at The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. Portions of the speech were made available Monday night through a press release from the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers.

Bremer returned to the United States after Iraqi leaders retook political control in June.

His comments are similar in tone to criticism in March 2003 from then-Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki that the United States needed several hundred thousand troops to keep the peace in postwar Iraq. Shinseki's comments were rebuked by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon (news - web sites) superiors.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) has fired similar criticism at the White House on the campaign trail.

Since no U.N. weapons inspection team had been allowed in the country for almost four years, there was a "real possibility" that Saddam would provide weapons of mass destruction to new terrorist groups, Bremer told the insurance group.

He also disputed criticism that the Bush administration had no plans for postwar Iraq.

"There was planning, but planning for a situation that didn't arise," he said, including a large-scale humanitarian or refugee crisis. "Could it have been done better? Frankly, I didn't spend a lot of time looking back.""

Security Clearance Scandal Engulfs Bush Administration

2004-10-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

Security Clearance Scandal Engulfs Bush Administration: "Security Clearance Scandal Engulfs Bush Administration

Despite Clear and compelling evidence the system allows questionable people to hold security clearances. While it has been lax for years under President Bush all caution was thrown to the wind. Espionage for a 'friendly' power would not disqualify a person from access to our nation's secrets."

Khilafah.com - Iraqi Judge Drops Case Against Chalabi

2004-10-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

Khilafah.com - Iraqi Judge Drops Case Against Chalabi: "Iraqi Judge Drops Case Against Chalabi

uploaded 29 Sep 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 27 — A senior Iraqi judge said today that he had closed a case brought against Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile once backed by the Pentagon, who had been suspected of involvement in a counterfeiting operation.

The judge, Zuhair al-Maliky, said in a telephone interview that he took the action about a week-and-a-half ago because he had decided "the evidence was not enough to bring the case to trial." If more evidence emerges, he said, the case will be reopened.

The decision also followed conversations between Mr. Chalabi's lawyers and representatives of the Central Bank of Iraq, Judge Maliky said.

The move appears to signify a minor victory by Mr. Chalabi over the interim government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a longtime rival of Mr. Chalabi's. The government said in August that it was charging Mr. Chalabi with counterfeiting Iraqi currency. That came at a time when Mr. Chalabi was on vacation at a summer home in Iran, and it appeared to many that the levying of the charge was a move by Mr. Allawi to dissuade Mr. Chalabi from re-entering the country.

But Mr. Chalabi did return to Iraq and proceeded to lambaste the government, holding meetings with reporters in which he proclaimed his innocence and vowed to return to political life."

Khilafah.com - The Philosophy of Deception

2004-10-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

Khilafah.com - The Philosophy of Deception: "The Philosophy of Deception

uploaded 22 May 2003

Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception

What would you do if you wanted to topple Saddam Hussein, but your intelligence agencies couldn't find the evidence to justify a war?

A follower of Leo Strauss may just hire the "right" kind of men to get the job done – people with the intellect, acuity, and, if necessary, the political commitment, polemical skills, and, above all, the imagination to find the evidence that career intelligence officers could not detect.

The "right" man for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, suggests Seymour Hersh in his recent New Yorker article entitled 'Selective Intelligence,' was Abram Shulsky, director of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – an agency created specifically to find the evidence of WMDs and/or links with Al Qaeda, piece it together, and clinch the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Like Wolfowitz, Shulsky is a student of an obscure German Jewish political philosopher named Leo Strauss who arrived in the United States in 1938. Strauss taught at several major universities, including Wolfowitz and Shulsky's alma mater, the University of Chicago, before his death in 1973.

Strauss is a popular figure among the neoconservatives. Adherents of his ideas include prominent figures both within and outside the administration. They include 'Weekly Standard' editor William Kristol; his father and indeed the godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol; the new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, a number of senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (home to former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Lynne Cheney), and Gary Schmitt, the director of the influential Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is chaired by Kristol the Younger.

Strauss' philosophy is hardly incidental to the strategy and mindset adopted by these men – as is obvious in Shulsky's 1999 essay titled "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)" (in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality). As Hersh notes in his article, Shulsky and his co-author Schmitt "criticize America's intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment." They argued that Strauss's idea of hidden meaning, "alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."

Rule One: Deception

It's hardly surprising then why Strauss is so popular in an administration obsessed with secrecy, especially when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Not only did Strauss have few qualms about using deception in politics, he saw it as a necessity. While professing deep respect for American democracy, Strauss believed that societies should be hierarchical – divided between an elite who should lead, and the masses who should follow. But unlike fellow elitists like Plato, he was less concerned with the moral character of these leaders. According to Shadia Drury, who teaches politics at the University of Calgary, Strauss believed that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right – the right of the superior to rule over the inferior."

This dichotomy requires "perpetual deception" between the rulers and the ruled, according to Drury. Robert Locke, another Strauss analyst says,"The people are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy, according to Drury, author of 'Leo Strauss and the American Right' (St. Martin's 1999).

Second Principle: Power of Religion

According to Drury, Strauss had a "huge contempt" for secular democracy. Nazism, he believed, was a nihilistic reaction to the irreligious and liberal nature of the Weimar Republic. Among other neoconservatives, Irving Kristol has long argued for a much greater role for religion in the public sphere, even suggesting that the Founding Fathers of the American Republic made a major mistake by insisting on the separation of church and state. And why? Because Strauss viewed religion as absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control.

At the same time, he stressed that religion was for the masses alone; the rulers need not be bound by it. Indeed, it would be absurd if they were, since the truths proclaimed by religion were "a pious fraud." As Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine points out, "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers."

"Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing,'' Drury says, because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats. Bailey argues that it is this firm belief in the political utility of religion as an "opiate of the masses" that helps explain why secular Jews like Kristol in 'Commentary' magazine and other neoconservative journals have allied themselves with the Christian Right and even taken on Darwin's theory of evolution.

Third Principle: Aggressive Nationalism

Like Thomas Hobbes, Strauss believed that the inherently aggressive nature of human beings could only be restrained by a powerful nationalistic state. "Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," he once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and they can only be united against other people."

Not surprisingly, Strauss' attitude toward foreign policy was distinctly Machiavellian. "Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat," Drury wrote in her book. "Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured (emphases added)."

"Perpetual war, not perpetual peace, is what Straussians believe in," says Drury. The idea easily translates into, in her words, an "aggressive, belligerent foreign policy," of the kind that has been advocated by neocon groups like PNAC and AEI scholars – not to mention Wolfowitz and other administration hawks who have called for a world order dominated by U.S. military power. Strauss' neoconservative students see foreign policy as a means to fulfill a "national destiny" – as Irving Kristol defined it already in 1983 – that goes far beyond the narrow confines of a " myopic national security."

As to what a Straussian world order might look like, the analogy was best captured by the philosopher himself in one of his – and student Allen Bloom's – many allusions to Gulliver's Travels. In Drury's words, "When Lilliput was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect."

The image encapsulates the neoconservative vision of the United States' relationship with the rest of the world – as well as the relationship between their relationship as a ruling elite with the masses. "They really have no use for liberalism and democracy, but they're conquering the world in the name of liberalism and democracy," Drury says. "

Clare Wolfowitz

2004-10-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

Notable - Outlook Online - Notable: "Melissa Thomas, Clare Wolfowitz, Xavier Forneris, Peter Gajewski, William Strang and Clifford F. Zinnes
The Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS) has added several new people to its staff.

Melissa Thomas has joined IRIS as a member of the Democracy, Governance and Regulation Team. A political economist and lawyer, she specializes in corruption, governance, legal/judicial reform and Rule of Law issues. Her dissertation, “Building the Rule of Law: Government Design for Legal Implementation,” explored determinants of legal implementation in the Republic of Mali. She has consulted for the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Government of Madagascar. Thomas has analyzed the political economy of corruption in Uganda and Mali, conducted a study of user perceptions of justice in Madagascar, and represented the World Bank in its dialogue with the governments of Chad and Cameroon on governance reform strategies in the context of the HIPC Initiative for debt relief.

Clare Wolfowitz helps manage the Indonesia projects for the Democracy, Governance and Regulation Team. Before coming to IRIS, she taught courses at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the Johns Hopkins School of Continuing Education and Georgetown University School of Languages and Linguistics. She is currently writing another book on Indonesian culture and preparing a chapter for a book on the languages of Suriname. Wolfowitz participates in many civic activities during her free time, including serving as vice president of the Board of Trustees of Deep Springs College, as founder and coordinator of the Sarah Thompson Memorial Scholarships at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, as a member of the Human Relations Committee at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School, as vice president of the Board of Directors of the IN Series of Performing Arts and as a founder of the Indonesian Foundation for Cranio-Facial Surgery."

Reuters.com: Isaeli Government wants War but the People DoNot!

2004-10-01T04:37:00.000-07:00

International News Article | Reuters.com: "Most Israelis Oppose Strike on Iran for Now -Poll
Fri Oct 1, 2004 03:14 AM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Most Israelis want to await the outcome of international pressure on Iran over its nuclear program rather than consider a pre-emptive military strike on their arch-foe's reactors, a poll published on Friday said.
Israeli officials say Iran could produce atomic weapons by 2007, fueling speculation the Jewish state may strike first, as it did in 1981 against Iraq by bombing its Osiraq reactor.

Iran says its nuclear program is being pursued solely to meet civilian energy needs.

A poll in Israel's Maariv newspaper found only 38 percent of Israelis think the country should now consider a military option, while 54 percent favor letting diplomatic scrutiny and threats of sanctions on Iran run their course. The remaining eight percent of 530 Israelis surveyed were either undecided or did not give an opinion. The poll's margin of error was 4.5 percent.

Tehran, which rejects Israel's right to exist, last month defied calls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to suspend uranium enrichment -- a process that can be used to make atomic bombs.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz signaled this week that Israel was not ruling out a military option although it supported U.S.-led efforts to step up inspections on Iran's nuclear facilities and threaten it with United Nations sanctions.

"The important thing is to stop the current (Iranian) regime reaching a nuclear option," Mofaz told Yedioth Ahronoth daily. "All options for preventing this will be considered."

Tehran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, widely assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power, for any strike on its soil.

Defense experts believe Iran could step up support for Lebanese and Palestinian militants fighting the Jewish state or use other proxy forces to attack U.S. interests in the Gulf."

Rezai seeks fame amid a sea of unproven allegations and daydream

2004-09-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

Rezai seeks fame amid a sea of unproven allegations and daydream: "Rezai seeks fame amid a sea of unproven allegations and daydream

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: iran-news@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Rezai seeks fame amid a sea of unproven allegations and daydream
From: Payman Arabshahi
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 16:38:51 -0700 (PDT)
Content-length: 13568
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CAIRO, July 15 (AFP) - A top Iranian official's son living in
the United States told an Arabic-language weekly that a pro-Iranian
militant group carried out the 1996 attack in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia,
which killed 19 US airmen.
Ahmad Rezai, son of a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary
Guards, said in an interview to appear Friday in the Arab weekly
Al-Watan Al-Arabi that "members of the Hezbollah-Gulf based in Iran
planned and carried out the attack with indirect support from the
Iranian government," according to an advance copy of the interview
obtained here by AFP Wednesday.
"I think that the Islamic Republic is not directly implicated in
the attack but indirectly by aiding, for example, the purchase and
supply of weapons," he told the paper, which is edited in Paris and
published in Cairo.
Gulf news media have previously reported the existence of a
Hezbollah-Gulf organization and accused it of plotting unrest in
Bahrain and other Arab Gulf monarchies.
According to Rezai, Iran's "spiritual guide Ali Khamenei and
former Iranian president (Akbar) Hashemi Rafsanjani are directly
involved in giving support to extremist organizations in the Arab
Gulf countries and elsewhere in the world, even though current
President Mohammad Khatami does not support extremist elements."
Rezai, 21, has been living for the last three months in Los
Angeles, according to Al-Watan Al-Arabi, where he is under police
protection.
Ahmad Rezai is the son of Mohsen Rezai, the secretary of Iran's
national expediency council.
He earlier criticized the Tehran regime in a Voice of America
interview from the United States, prompting Iranian authorites to
claim he is physically and mentally affected by a serious road
accident in Iran 17 months ago.
The June 25, 1996 attack in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran
used a truck loaded with explosives to destroy a US military
compound, killing 19 airmen and injuring more than 500 other
people.
The Pentagon expressed frustration last month that no one has
been brought to justice for the truck bombing two years ago.
The New York Times reported that the US government's
investigation has collapsed over disagreements with the Saudis.
But a Saudi official in Riyadh said last month that the Saudi
investigation had determined that the bombing was carried out by
Saudis with the assistance of some other parties."

Maximum Danger Of War With Iran Nearing

2004-08-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

Maximum Danger Of War With Iran Nearing: "Behind The Israeli Mole Affair -
The Point Of Maximum Danger
Of War With Iran Approaching
By Webster Griffin Tarpley
8-29-4

WASHINGTON, DC -- News of the investigation of Larry Franklin, a middle-level functionary working for the Wolfowitz-Feith-Luti-Shulsky clique in the Pentagon, indicates that we are now approaching a critical choice-point on the road to war with Iran, and towards a synthetic terrorism attack inside the US which would be used as an additional pretext to start such a war.

The probe of an Israeli mole in the Pentagon was made public by CBS news last Friday evening. The Saturday edition of the Washington Post named Larry Franklin as being identified by sources as the person under investigation. In Sunday,s Washington Post, it was confirmed that Lawrence A. Franklin was the person at the center of investigation.

As seen in the excerpt below, this same Larry Franklin was named in my June 6 news release, "Rogue Bush Backers Prepare Super 9-11 False Flag Terror Attacks. Franklin was indicated as one of the vulnerable links in the neocon network which finds itself in a hysterical flight forward to try to salvage the debacle of their Iraq war by expanding that war to neighboring countries, notably Iran. The threat of a new round of "own goal synthetic terrorism, quite possibly in the ABC dimension, was linked to the preparation of that wider war. The logic at work was that of an "October surprise, this time on the scale adequate to shock the post 9-11 world.

The best working hypothesis to understand the new mole investigation is that neocon networks in the Pentagon may be very close to embroiling the United States in a war with Iran. This would likely come as an Israeli or US pre-emptive bombing attack on Iran,s nuclear facilities, possibly combined with a terrorist attack inside the US using weapons of mass destruction, which the corporate controlled media would immediately blame on Iran.

Whatever forces are behind the naming of Franklin, it must be assumed that their main aim is to break up neocon preparations for a surprise attack on Iran, which the neocons have been boasting about in the media with special emphasis for some weeks. Backing the Franklin probe may well be military factions who have no desire to be fed into the Iranian meatgrinder, and who not fancy neocon fascist dictatorship. The immediate goal would be to knock Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Rice, Abrams and their cheering section in the media and think-tanks onto the defensive. While the exposure of Franklin is a positive step, it is far from decisive, and the neocons are still in a position to unleash the dogs of war over the next days and weeks.

We are therefore now most probably on the brink of war with Iran, and at the same time entering a period of steadily increasing danger of synthetic terrorism designed to steal or cancel the November elections, and thus freeze the current neocon clique in power for the foreseeable future. The calculation of the rogue network operating behind the scenes is evidently that terrorism taking place a few days before the elections will stampede the electorate to support Bush, while terrorism well in advance of the elections will give the public time to recover enough to advance recriminations and demands for accountability on the part of the administration. We are now entering the time frame when the terrorist controllers can expect the maximum impact of their handiwork, either in stampeding the electorate, or in calling off the elections completely.

OCTOBER SURPRISE IN SEPTEMBER?

On August 19, Martin Sieff of UPI warned: "Forget an October Surprise, a much worse one could come in September: Full-scale war between the United States and Iran may be far closer than the American public might imagine.

Sieff quoted remarks made by Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani on August 18 which bluntly warned that if Iranian military commanders believed the United States were serious about attacking Iran to destroy its nuclear power facility at Bushehr, or to topple its Islamic theocratic form of government, the Iranian military would not sit back passively and wait for the U.S. armed forces to strike the first blow, as President Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq did in March 2003. They would strike first.

"We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us," Shamkhani told al-Jazeera. "Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly," he added. With this, the Iran-Iraq border became a new line of hair-trigger confrontation in the restless war agitation of the neocons.

One day earlier, neocon Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton told an audience at the Hudson Institute in Washington that it was imperative that the Iranian nuclear program be brought before the U.N. Security Council. "To fail to do so would risk sending a signal to would-be proliferators that there are no serious consequences for pursuing secret nuclear weapons programs," said Bolton. "We cannot let Iran, a leading sponsor of international terrorism, acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Europe, most of central Asia and the Middle East, or beyond," Bolton added. "Without serious, concerted, immediate intervention by the international community, Iran will be well on the road to doing so." Similar threatening noises have come from Condoleezza Rice at the Bush National Security Council.

Iranian public opinion had been shocked by a raving, psychotic column by Charles Krauthammer in the July 23 Washington Post: Krauthammer wrote: "The long awaited revolution (in Iran) is not happening. Which [makes] the question of pre-emptive attack all the more urgent. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of 'the Great Satan' will have both nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or pre-emptive attack." Iranian observers compared this to the US propaganda campaign which had preceded the attack on Iraq.

US FORCES IN IRAK AS HOSTAGES TO IRAN

Competent US military commanders dread the prospect of war with Iran. Iran is four times the area of Iraq, and has three times the population. Its infrastructure was not destroyed during the Kuwait war in the way that Iraq,s was, and Iran has not been subjected to 13 years of crippling UN sanctions on everything, including food and medicine. The Iranian military forces are intact. In case of war, Iran could be expected to use all means ranging from ballistic missile attacks on US and Israeli bases to asymmetrical warfare. The situation of the US forces already in Iraq could quickly become extraordinarily critical. Shamkhani alluded to this prospect when he said that "The U.S. military presence will not become an element of strength at our expense. The opposite is true because their forces would turn into a hostage."

For purposes of analogy, the Iraq war so far could be compared to the first months of the Korean War, from June to November 1950. By provoking Iran to go beyond logistical support for guerrillas and the sending of volunteers, and come into the war with both feet, the neocons would be inviting a repeat of the Chinese intervention and the disastrous US retreat south from the Yalu to south of Seoul, which still stands as the longest retreat in US military history. Just as Chinese entry into the Korean conflict in late November 1950 created a wholly new and wider war, Iranian entry into the US-Iraq war would have similarly incalculable consequences. The choices might quickly narrow to the large-scale use of nuclear weapons or defeat for the current US hollow army of just 10 divisions.

ANOTHER STEP TOWARDS WORLD WAR III

In the case of Iran, the use of nuclear weapons by the US would have a dangerous complication: Iran is an important neighbor and trading partner of the Russian Federation, which is helping with Iran,s nuclear power reactor program. The threatened US/Israeli raid on Iran might kill Russian citizens as well. Such a US attack on Iran might prod the Russian government into drawing its own line in the sand, rather than sitting idle as the tide of US aggression swept closer and closer to Russia,s borders, as one country after another in central Asia was occupied. In other words, a US attack on Iran bids fair to be the opening of World War III, making explicit was already implicit in the invasion of Iraq. The Iran war project of the neocons is the very midsummer of madness, and it must be stopped.

War with Iran means a military draft, just for starters. If Iran can close the Straits of Hormuz, it might mean rationing of food and fuel. Bloated speculative financial structures could hardly survive.

The Israeli mole investigation seeks to explore the intersection of the Valerie Plame affair, the Chalabi affair, the Niger yellowcake forged documents scandal, and some key policy documents passed to the Israelis. According to a CIA veteran interviewed by CNN, the probe reaches into the National Security Council as well as the Pentagon. On June 6, I had identified Larry Franklin in these terms:

At the root of the Valerie Plame affair is the role of her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in refuting the baseless claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. This story was buttresses by documents which turned out to be forged. A prime suspect in this regard is Ledeen, and the accusation is made more plausible because the faked documents first surfaced in Rome, where Ledeen possesses extensive contacts. A federal grand jury is probing this matter. Ledeen, like so many Bush officials, is an alumnus of the 1980s George H. W. Bush-Poindexter-Abrams-Oliver North Iran-contra gun-running and drug-running scandal, and appears to have mobilized these networks as part of the post 9-11 assault on Iraq. In December 2001, Ledeen moved to revive the Iran connection, setting up a meeting between two Pentagon civilian neo-cons and Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer whom the CIA called a criminal and liar. Three days of meetings in Rome involved Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin, Ghorbanifar, and two unnamed officials of the Iranian regime. After the conquest of Iraq, Rhode was sent to Baghdad as the contact point between the Office of Special Plans and Chalabi. Ghorbanifar, in a Dec. 22, 2003 interview with Newsweek's Mark Hosenball, reported that he maintained contact with Rhode and Franklin "five or six times a week through June 2003, when he had a second meeting with Rhode in Paris. This back channel to the Iranians is now also under intense scrutiny.

In the June 6 release, I also showed that, for Bush, the notion of a confrontation with Iran was closely linked to the hypothesis of a new wave of synthetic terrorism. I pointed in this context to a key speech in which Bush had escalated his threat of both:

A dramatic turning point on the way to the current emergency came on April 21, when Bush delivered two speeches which represented a palpable escalation of the tone of his usual demagogy of terrorism and fear. In the afternoon, he assured the Newspaper Association of America, composed of newspaper editors, that Iran "will be dealt with if they pursue a nuclear development program. Bush went on to characterize the United States as "a battlefield in the war on terror. He was at pains to build up the stature of Al-Qaeda, whose members he emphatically characterized as "smarttoughand sophisticated. Because the terrorists are so formidable, Bush said the United States "is a hard country to defend. Our intelligence is good. It,s just never perfect, is the problem. We are disrupting some cells here in America. We,re chasing people down. But it is we,ve got a big country. Later, Bush spoke to the same themes at a closed-door gathering at the White House: "...On Tuesday evening, Bush told Republican congressional leaders during a meeting at the White House that it was all but certain that terrorists would attempt a major attack on the United States before the election, according to a congressional aide. The leaders were struck by Bush's definitiveness and gravity, the aide said... (Washington Post, April 22, 2004)

The general thesis of the June 6 release was this:

Washington DC, June 6 Intelligence patterns monitored here now point conclusively to the grave threat of an imminent new round of ABC (atomic-bacteriological-chemical) terror attacks in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and possibly other nations. These attacks could include nuclear detonations, radiological dirty bombs, poison gas and other chemical weapons, or biological agents, to be unleashed in such urban settings as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Vancouver BC, or London. The goal of these operations would be to produce a worldwide shock several orders of magnitude greater than the original 9-11, with a view to stopping the collapse of the Bush administration, the Wall Street-centered financial structures, and the US-UK strategic position generally. The attacks would be attributed by US/UK intelligence to controlled patsy terrorist groups who would be linked by the media to countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, thus setting these states up for attack. The organizers of the attacks would in reality be substantially the same secret command cell in the United States which set up the 9-11 events and its associated networks, which has been able to continue in operation because of the abject failure of all 9-11 investigations to date to identify it. These forces are now in a desperate flight forward to escape from their current increasingly grim position. Their goal is now to establish a neocon fascist dictatorship in the United States, complete with martial law, special tribunals, press and media censorship, and the full pervasive apparatus of the modern police state.

As of the end of August, 2004, this threat is now more urgent than ever.

These issues will be discussed in my upcoming book, 9/11 Synthetic Terrorism: The Myth of the Twenty-First Century, to be published by Progressive Press. For information, please contact info@progressivepress.com.

To read the full text of the June 6 release, "Rogue Bush Backers Prepare Super 9-11 False Flag Terror Attacks,aaa' please go to:

http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules
/news/article.php?storyid=355"

ZAMAN DAILY NEWSPAPER (2004083111893)

2004-08-31T17:21:00.000-07:00

ZAMAN DAILY NEWSPAPER (2004083111893): "FBI Questions Wolfowitz about Mole Scandal

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) talked to US Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz about claims that a Pentagon official leaked sensitive information to the Israeli government.
Larry Franklin, who is a Middle East expert working for Pentagon, is accused of transferring information about US-Iran relations to an Israeli lobby group in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The FBI still must decide whether or not to accuse Franklin of espionage, and it must also determine if AIPAC actually delivered the said information to the Israeli government. "

Jerusalem Post | Steve Rosen, AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues caught up in Spy Probe

2004-08-31T17:19:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "FBI seizes computer from AIPAC offices
By JANINE ZACHARIA

FBI agents on Friday copied the computer hard drive of a senior staffer at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who has been questioned in relation to the case of a Pentagon official suspected of turning over a classified document either directly to Israel, or via the pro-Israel lobby group.

Sources in Washington said the hard drive was that of Steve Rosen, AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues.

It was not clear if FBI agents also seized other materials from Rosen's office. AIPAC says it is cooperating fully with the FBI's investigation.

Government lawyers, according to Tuesday's New York Times, are preparing to make the first arrests in the case by issuing a criminal complaint against one or more figures who are said to be involved. The case is being handled by federal prosecutors in Virginia.

But experts suggested that the rush to file a complaint could be a sign that the charge will be less severe than that of espionage, as was originally reported.

"The fact that they're going to file a complaint instead of an indictment is an indication of the weakness of their case," said one criminal defense expert. A criminal complaint would allow the government to proceed with arrests more quickly.

AIPAC and Israel have denied any wrongdoing in a case that has become increasingly muddled since CBS News reported on Friday that the FBI was about to arrest an Israeli mole in the Pentagon.

Investigators suspect that a mid-level Pentagon staffer, Larry Franklin, provided either AIPAC or Israel with a secret draft of an internal planning document on US policy toward Iran.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith have been briefed on the case, as have officials at the White House, State Department, and congressional leaders.

Congressional leaders continued on Tuesday to rally around AIPAC, whose image, many in the pro-Israel community fear, has been tarnished by accusations of wrongdoing.

"AIPAC has worked hard to build its credibility with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle," House Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri said. "While the House will want to look carefully at any allegations that might endanger our national security, it will begin that look with a record of great confidence in our relationship with AIPAC and our strongest ally and the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel."

The House Democratic Whip, Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) also expressed confidence in AIPAC. "I have worked with AIPAC for many years. They are a very successful, strong, and committed organization and do a tremendous job advocating for the important US-Israel relationship."

Despite those voices of confidence, some in Washington said they expected that US officials would be reluctant to meet with AIPAC staffers, at least in the immediate short-term, now that there is a suspicion that AIPAC is being monitored by the FBI.

"The biggest implication, is that mid-level officials will not be meeting with AIPAC. They don't want to be seen with them," said one Washington lobbyist."

Naor Gilon fled to Israel to prepare defense

2004-08-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

Haaretz - Israel News: "Naor Gilon fled to Israel to prepare defense

By Amir Oren
Four people, all of them formerly of the political affairs department at the Israeli embassy in Washington during the past decade and currently in the top echelons of the Foreign Ministry, sat in Jerusalem on Sunday combing through the Foreign Ministry's computers and paging through its documents in search of evidence that might inculpate Israel. They are Jeremy Issacharoff, the head of the ministry's strategic division; Ron Prosor, currently the acting deputy director general and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's chief political adviser; Naor Gilon, who happened to be in Israel on personal business and discovered that he is being spoken of as the interlocutor of Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and Steve Rosen of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); and Prosor's associate in Shalom's bureau, Yaki Dayan.

This was one of those searches "with a fine-tooth comb," as one of the four put it, in which you hope you won't find anything, and the hope was realized until finally it was decided that there was no danger in Gilon's return to Washington, although in any case he enjoys diplomatic immunity.

The story of the investigation of Franklin was broken in an exclusive report by CBS-TV, a real scoop, and there was implied praise in it for the head of the FBI's counter-intelligence unit, Dave Szady. Exactly one year earlier Szady had appeared on another CBS broadcast to defend the failures of his colleagues in a previous investigation of leaks - or rather, floods - of security secrets. Now a way was found to make both sides happy - the ambitious investigator and the voracious media.

Generation follows generation and in a regular cycle, ever since 1970, the American media - mostly CBS or The Washington Post - have been publishing exclusive reports: A suspicion is being investigated that a knowledgeable Jewish/non-Jewish supporter of Israel in the administration/in Congress has handed security information to Israeli representatives. This has been the case for 34 years, from Richard Perle through Stephen Bryen to Paul Wolfowitz to Douglas Feith - all of them young and still before their rise to relative greatness in the Pentagon.

Once every five or six years a similar scoop appears, through the efforts of elements hostile to Israel, to nail a group whose patron, the late Democratic senator Henry Jackson of Washington, bore the nickname "Scoop" ever since he delivered newspapers as a boy. Without Scoop Jackson, it is impossible to understand American politics of the past decades, the swings of the administration's policy toward Israel and the background of an important level in the senior bureaucracy that is now staggering under the derisive nickname of "neo-conservative." ("Neo-schmeo," grumbled one of them recently, "I'm simply conservative.")

Jackson, with Perle heading his team of aides, symbolized the Democratic Party's reservations about moving leftward in its foreign and defense policy. Jackson's stream based itself on the memory of presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the center of the arena, and opposed the strong pull toward the left by 1968 presidential candidate senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota and 1972 candidate senator George McGovern of South Dakota.

The split became evident before the 1972 presidential elections when the Democrat Jackson - who refused to serve as Republican president Richard Nixon's secretary of defense - ran for his party's candidacy, lost and signaled that he would prefer Nixon to McGovern. The Israeli ambassador in Washington, Yitzhak Rabin - who was himself a kind of Israeli version of Jackson from Achdut Ha'avoda, the more hawkish precursor of today's Labor Party - followed in his footsteps with an aspiration (at least verbal) toward social justice at home and an active defense policy abroad.

Led by Jackson, one of the leading proponents of the supply of sophisticated weapons to Israel and aid to Soviet Jewry, for the first time a school of thought developed in America that identified a connection between assertive defense against the Soviets and the strengthening of Israel. Heading the intellectual wing of this school were Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. Perle and his friends were prominent at the head of the political wing.

The final disappointment with their mother party during the days of Jimmy Carter's presidency and his seeming flabbiness vis-a-vis the Soviets and the Iranians pushed the Jackson Democrats across the line to join the Republicans, much like Moshe Dayan's surprise desertion to prime minister Menachem Begin's government in 1977 and like Shimon Peres' precedent-setting willingness to serve under prime minister Yitzhak Shamir in 1986.

The Jacksonites set up the Committee on the Present Danger to warn against the Soviets' victory in the Cold War and coined the slogan "Peace through strength." Their support helped Ronald Reagan defeat Carter, and they were rewarded with positions in his administration, especially in the Defense Department. To rebuff charges of excessive closeness to Israel, the policy undersecretariat at the Pentagon was divided in two, each headed by a Richard - Perle and Armitage.

During the presidencies of George Bush senior and Bill Clinton, the Perle-Wolfowitz group was sidelined. It returned to center stage in the current administration, though on its right wing, from which it has influenced not only encouraging the attack on Saddam Hussein but also scaling back the tendencies of the State Department under Colin Powell to formulate the road map as desired by the Europeans and the Palestinians. The group is too close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - that is, not far enough to the right - for the tastes of those Israelis and American Jews who are still with Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish settlers in the territories. There, in the no-man's-land between the extremes, the latest scoop in the series has caught them.
"

FBI trailed Israeli diplomat as link to Pentagon leak

2004-08-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

FBI trailed Israeli diplomat as link to Pentagon leak : "FBI trailed Israeli diplomat as link to Pentagon leak
It is being reported Monday morning that the FBI has been following Naor Gilon, the diplomatic adviser in the Israeli Embassy in Washington, in connection with its investigation into an alleged leak of classified material to the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC.

Newsweek reports that the FBI monitored a lunch meeting in 2003 between Gilon and an AIPAC lobbyist, which was joined by Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, who is suspected of leaking information to Israel via AIPAC.

The report claims that FBI agents saw Franklin attempt to transfer a classified U.S. policy document on Iran. Newsweek says Franklin, who is not Jewish, did reserve duty at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.

Both Israel and AIPAC flatly denied reports that any Pentagon official passed them classified information. A leading Israeli expert on U.S.-Israel relations, Professor Gerald Steinberg, director of the conflict management program at Bar-Ilan University, says the affair seems to have been deliberately exaggerated."

Oregon Live: 03-16-01 Oregon FBI agent gets job as nation's top spy fighter

2004-08-29T04:57:00.000-07:00

Oregon Live: 03-16-01 Oregon FBI agent gets job as nation's top spy fighter: "David W. Szady is the lead on the Larry Franklin Israeli Spy - Mole Case. JBOC

Oregon FBI agent gets job as nation's top spy fighter
Counterintelligence expert David W. Szady takes a new post protecting national secrets from domestic and foreign intrusion

By Mark Larabee of The Oregonian staff
FBI chief Louis J. Freeh on Thursday named David W. Szady, Oregon's top FBI agent and a counterintelligence expert, to the newly created post of coordinating the government's spy-fighting efforts.

As the nation's first governmentwide counterintelligence executive, Szady will be charged with identifying the nation's crown-jewel secrets and developing ways to protect them.

"The key thing about the job is to identify the key assets of the country," said Szady, a 28-year FBI veteran. "What do we need to protect that could cause the most damage to the U.S. if it's stolen and used against us?"

Dubbed "CI-21," which stands for counterintelligence in the 21st century, Szady will lead a staff of government spy catchers whose aim will be to thwart expanding threats from foreign spies, terrorists and computer hackers. He will answer to a board of directors headed by Freeh, and deputy directors of the CIA and Justice and Defense departments.

The group is not charged with protecting just traditional Cold War-like secrets, such as missile guidance systems and weapons technology. It's also looking to cloak private-sector secrets, such as developments in computer chips and software, banking technology and the Internet.

"We have to protect against intrusion into the nation's computer systems," Szady said. "Developing an outreach program to the private sector, like Oregon's Silicon Forest, is a key aspect of CI-21."

The announcement comes a month after the FBI charged one of its own agents, Robert Philip Hanssen, with spying for Moscow for 15 years. Hanssen is alleged to have furnished Russian agents with scores of highly classified national security and counterintelligence information in exchange for more than $600,000.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which reviewed Szady's appointment, said the threat to U.S. security interests is real.

"This is about as important as it gets," Wyden said. "There's been a major breech. The information that got out is not trifling stuff. It's going to take somebody of Dave Szady's character to turn this around."

President Clinton created the new post in January, partly in response to allegations that Taiwan-born nuclear scientist, Wen Ho Lee, was a spy. Federal agents began investigating Lee in 1996 on suspicion that he provided China with design plans for Trident missile warheads. He pleaded guilty in September to one count of mishandling classified information.

Szady said the Lee case is a perfect example of the type of problem CI-21 is designed to avoid. The case resurrected old questions about the nation's somewhat fractured anti-spying efforts. After years of bureaucratic resistance, Szady hopes his work will broaden the efforts of the nation's national security agencies to work together.

"People who are friends could still be our friends, but they're trying to steal our secrets," Szady said. "There are key things within our nuclear program that different countries are looking for."

Szady, 57, who joined the FBI in September 1972 as a field agent in Mobile, Ala., is considered a counterintelligence expert.

From 1975 to 1985, he rose to supervisor of the FBI's headquarters intelligence division, where he oversaw the investigation of convicted U.S. Navy spy John Walker Jr. Before his arrest in May 1985, Walker lead a spy ring that sold secrets to the Soviet Union, including a manual on Navy contingency plans in the event of war in the Middle East.

From 1985 to 1995, Szady ran the FBI's major foreign counterintelligence program in San Francisco, then spent two years there as the assistant special agent in charge, running counterintelligence operations in Silicon Valley.

Beginning in March 1997, Szady was the FBI's chief of counterintelligence and counterespionage, which included being the FBI liaison to the CIA. In May 1999 he was assigned to run the FBI's Portland field office, supervising 92 agents.

Szady said it's painful for him and his family to leave Oregon. He said he's proud that he elevated the FBI's drug, organized crime and white-collar crime investigative teams, expanded the agency's presence in Eastern Oregon and developed crucial working relations with local police.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can reach Mark Larabee at 503-294-7664 or by e-mail at marklarabee@news.oregonian.com."

Interview with FBI Assistant Director Dave Szady

2004-08-29T04:51:00.000-07:00

Federal Bureau of Investigation - Press Room - Headline Archives: "

Dave Szady is the lead on the Larry Franklin Israeli Mole - Spy investigaion. JBOC

FOCUS ON COUNTERINTELLIGENCE
Part 1 of an Interview with FBI Assistant Director Dave Szady

07/20/04

Let's start with the basics. What's counterintelligence?

It's much broader than just espionage--the traditional spy game. It also includes the protection of our critical national assets. And by that, I don't mean the bridges, the railroad stations, the nuclear plants. I mean things like our country's advanced technologies, its weapons systems, its military capacities--classified information and systems that are strategically important to our nation's well-being. Counterintelligence, or CI, also involves protecting trade secrets and guarding against operations or disinformation campaigns that would disadvantage the U.S.

What's the FBI's role in counterintelligence?

We're the lead agency for exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities on U.S. soil. We run our own investigations and coordinate investigations of other agencies. Simply put, we're on point to protect the U.S. from intelligence threats within our country. We've also got the lead on cases overseas involving potential espionage.

Why is counterintelligence the FBI's #2 priority?

Because the threat is incredibly serious. It strikes at the heart of our national security--our political, military, and economic strengths; our position in the world; our future as a country. That's why only terrorism, with its threat of direct attacks and bombings and mass casualties, ranks above it.

How has the threat changed since the end of the Cold War?

In the Cold War, the threat was what we call "symmetric." It was predictable, clear, and geographically limited to the Soviet Union and the bloc countries. Today, the threat is "asymmetric." It's coming at us from a lot of different directions. It's no longer just our traditional adversaries who want to steal our secrets, but sometimes even our allies. And how they go about it has changed. Embassies and consulates are still used as a basis of operations for intelligence services. But now foreign governments are also using students, visiting delegations, scientists, and false front companies to get at our secrets. And the threat is just as severe in places like Alabama, Kentucky, Maine, and Iowa as it is in New York or Washington, because the classified projects, the universities, and the corporations being targeted exist throughout the U.S.

Why is economic espionage now such a serious threat?

Economic espionage attempts to disadvantage the U.S. unfairly without legitimate competition. For example, the U.S. spends billions on research and development, and someone comes in and steals that research and tries to sell it, in some cases back to our own country. Billions of dollars can be lost, and anytime you impact our country's economic viability in such a significant way you impact its national security. There's also a lot of dual use technology or export-controlled technology that can be used for weapons of mass destruction or military systems. So it's vital that the FBI prevent countries from stealing our trade secrets, our proprietary information, and our embargoed technology because it undermines both our economic and national security."

Blow the agent's cover, reap the (political) reward

2004-08-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

Mathaba.Net News: "Blow the agent's cover, reap the (political) reward
Posted: 08/11
From: Informed Comment

by Juan Cole

We know that the Pakistani government has complained that the Bush administration blew the cover of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. Not only are the Pakistanis annoyed by the blown cover, they are also furious about the cavalier way the FBI used a fiction about a plot against the life of Pakistan's ambassador in the US to entrap two merchants into what they thought was a money-making scheme that involved providing weapons to terrorists.

Responding to volley of questions about the issue at the weekly press briefing, the Foreign Office Spokesman Masood Khan said, “ At one level this is a bizarre story; at another quite dangerous.”

The standard line about the Pakistanis in Washington is that the Pakistani government is riddled with sympathizers of the Taliban and maybe al-Qaeda and is unreliable. But from Islamabad's point of view, during the past two weeks the Bush administration has behaved like wild men, spreading around the idea of killing the Pakistani ambassador and blowing the cover of a major intelligence asset inside al-Qaeda.

Charlie Savage and Brian Bender of the Boston Globe provide more details about the unfolding story of the Bush administration outing of the double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. Khan had been an al-Qaeda communications operative until arrested July 13 and turned by Pakistani military intelligence. His name appears to have been revealed by a Bush administration official to the New York Times on Sunday, August 1 in connection with the raising of the terror alert levels in Washington and New York by Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge.

The authors point out that in her interview with Wolf Blitzer on the past Sunday, National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice denied that the Bush administration had publicly identified Khan. So Wolf Blitzer said, "He was disclosed in Washington on background." Then Condi replied, "On background. And the problem is that when you're trying to strike a balance between giving enough information to the public so they know that you're dealing with a specific, credible, different kind of threat than you've dealt with in the past, you're always weighing that against operational considerations. We've tried to strike a balance."

The authors note:
'Later in the show, Blitzer said this exchange meant Rice had confirmed that the administration released Khan's name to a reporter on background -- an interpretation repeated in later news accounts. But Sean McCormack, a National Security Council spokesman, said yesterday that Rice did not say the leak came from American officials. "She was in the middle of making a point and he interrupted her, and she reflexively repeated 'on background,' but she was not confirming it and went on to complete her thought," McCormack said.'

Savage and Bender say that "Senior intelligence officials gave a background briefing to reporters Aug. 1 after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced an orange alert for sites in New York, Washington, and Newark. Khan's name does not appear in the transcript."

That is worth repeating. "Khan's name does not appear in the transcript."
I had been assuming that the name was given out at the Sunday briefing. But maybe not. Though, if the name was given on background, would they have recorded it in the transcript?

Savage and Bender say that the Boston Globe's intelligence contact in the government had declined to name Khan on Sunday Aug. 1, saying only that the information came from a suspect recently arrested in Pakistan. This official confirmed after the name came out that he had been talking about Khan.

There does not seem any doubt that the Bush administration has provided enormous numbers of details about al-Qaeda operations to the public since August 1, and that many intelligence professionals and officials in Pakistan, the United Kingdom and even the US are extremely dismayed at this way of proceeding.

' . . . several senior intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed dismay at the level of information that has been revealed to the media -- particularly the role that Khan's arrest has played. "Most of the people I talk to are most shocked by some of the recent details being revealed about Al Qaeda," said one senior CIA analyst who works on terrorism issues. '

I am not sure that the transcript resolves the issue of whether the name of Khan was revealed after the Ridge press conference. It is, however, possible that after the press conference and the background briefing, the reporters began working their Bush administration contacts. The one to whom the Boston Globe spoke was circumspect. The one to whom the New York Times spoke was less so.

Given the evidence from Pakistani complaints (and strong but implicit such evidence via British government complaints), there is not any doubt that the Bush administration blew Khan's cover and also spread a lot of operational details all over the press that the Pakistanis, the British and even the CIA would have liked to keep secret.

Remaining questions:

Why did Wolf Blitzer think that Khan's name had been provided "on background"?

Why did Condi Rice agree with him? Either she knew this was true and agreed, or was ignorant and just parroted back to him his statement. If the latter, which her office asserts, is actually true, then she should be fired immediately. You can't have public officials who a) don't know key information and b) purvey misinformation "reflexively" to millions of viewers about important issues.

Was the name given on background but not included in the transcript of the Aug. 1 briefing?

Or did Jehl get the information from a Bush Administration source by telephone later, on background (note: not "deep background," which whould have cautioned him against using it)?

What was the motive in releasing all this information RIGHT AFTER the Democratic Party Convention? Was the revelation of Khan's name DELIBERATE or a piece of stupidity?

Jim Lobe has a good summary of the state of play in the scandal of the Bush administration outing of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. Two important points.

1) Lobe implicitly takes on the argument of the rightwing bloggers that the press is to blame for printing Khan's name. He says,
" Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, confirmed Sunday briefing officials had given Khan's name to the Times but insisted he was identified "on background," an assertion that caused consternation among experienced journalists here, who know that everything said by officials "on background" can be quoted so long as the name of the briefing officials is not disclosed."

Again, there is no way to shift the blame here from Tom Ridge or one of his aides, who told the press the information came from Khan. You don't tell a big group of journalists something you don't want to see in the newspapers the next day.

Lobe also writes:
' Similarly, the administration announced the arrest in Pakistan of a senior al-Qaeda operative, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, wanted for organizing the 1998 suicide bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, on the third day of the Democratic convention, and three weeks after the The New Republic weekly quoted Pakistani intelligence officials as saying the White House had asked them to announce the arrest or killing of any "high-value [al-Qaeda] target" any time between July 26 and 28, the first three days of the Democratic Convention. At the time, former CIA officer Robert Baer said the announcement made "no sense." "To keep these guys off-balance, a lot of this stuff should be kept in secret. You get no benefit from announcing an arrest like this." '

Meanwhile, kudos to New York Senator Charles Schumer, who has bravely taken up this issue and is pressing the White House to explain why it leaked Khan's name to the press.

The most concerning information so far gleaned from Khan's files is not the operations planned years ago but the evidence that a new, young generation is replenishing al-Qaeda's ranks.

Juan Cole is a professor of History at University of Michigan, and runs his on blog on the war in Iraq. This is an excerpt from it, Aug. 9 and 10."

Bush Chooses Rep. Goss to Head CIA

2004-08-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News - Bush Chooses Rep. Goss to Head CIA: "Bush Chooses Rep. Goss to Head CIA

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) has chosen Rep. Porter Goss, chairman of the House intelligence committee and a one-time Army intelligence operative, to be the new director of the CIA (news - web sites), it was learned Tuesday.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush planned to announce the selection of the 65-year-old Goss later Tuesday during a White House appearance.

Goss, a Republican from Florida, had been mentioned prominently in speculation about a successor to departed CIA Director George Tenet, who left amid a torrent of criticism of the agency's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Bush's decision also comes in the wake of the president's embrace of a key recommendation of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks: creation of a new intelligence czar to oversee the activities of the CIA and more than a dozen other intelligence agencies.

Speaking last week of the pleas for change by the 9/11 commission, Goss had said "we cannot afford to make changes blindly or in an unnecessary haste. We can ill-afford to rush to judgment any more than we can tolerate needless delay."

Goss was among the leading candidates mentioned when Tenet announced his resignation in late spring. But there had been more recent speculation that his prospects had dimmed, due at least in part to the unavoidable controversies that follow a leading player in Congress.

Tenet's last day was July 11, and the much-criticized agency since then has been under the leadership of acting Director John McLaughlin.

The administration was believed to have debated internally whether to choose a permanent successor to Tenet before the fall elections, thus putting itself in the position of having to defend its choice in confirmation hearings held in a politically charged atmosphere.

Pending Senate confirmation, Goss is poised to take over the agency at a pivotal moment.

Leaders of various intelligence agencies worry about a series of high-profile events this summer that could become attractive terrorist targets. It is widely believed that al-Qaida and its allies might try to strike the United States in a way that replicates the political and economic impact of March's train bombings in Madrid, Spain.

The Connecticut-born Goss graduated from Yale in 1960 and launched a clandestine career, working for Army intelligence for two years and eventually the CIA's most well-known division, the Directorate of Operations.

When he got into politics, Goss had to get special permission to reveal that he was associated with "the agency" for roughly a decade, reportedly in Europe and Latin America. Goss still doesn't discuss classified details of his work, although he has said he was deployed in Miami during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

"I had some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits," Goss told The Washington Post in 2002.

In the early 1970s, an almost deadly staph infection forced him to retire to Sanibel, Fla., where retired CIA officers who had made the coastal community their home had convinced him to come for recovery. Each day, he tried to walk to the ocean as part of his rehabilitation.

Gradually, he stepped into local politics and ran for the House in 1988.

Goss has served in Congress for 16 years, including eight years as House Intelligence chairman. He planned on making his 2000 election bid his last, but decided to stay on after the Sept. 11 attacks — with encouragement from Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites). The opportunity was sweetened when Republicans waived a rule limiting his chairmanship to six years.

Along with fellow Floridian, Democratic Sen. Bob Graham (news, bio, voting record), then the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Goss led an joint congressional inquiry into the attacks, which identified numerous miscalculations that prevented authorities from derailing the attacks.

With his well-placed experience, Washington insiders have speculated for some time that he could take over as director of central intelligence, overseeing the CIA and 14 other agencies that make up the intelligence community. Only one CIA director was also a member of Congress: former President George H.W. Bush.

The 2005 intelligence authorization bill, which passed the House in late June, contained an entire section dedicated to criticizing the CIA's clandestine service, where Goss once worked.

Tenet at the time called some of the judgments "absurd" and "ill-informed."

If Goss's goal was to assert his independence from the CIA, "he may have overachieved. Just about everyone at CIA read the language in the report," said one current intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity."