On the surface, President Bush's visit to South Korea went a long way toward calming tensions between Washington and Seoul over how to handle communist North Korea. Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung stood side by side on the edge of the tense demilitarized zone, the world's last remaining Cold War frontier, to urge Pyongyang to resume a dialogue. "We are prepared to talk with the North about steps that would lead to a better future," Bush said at the border.
Beneath the diplomatic niceties and words of praise, however, is the cold reality of a sharp divergence in the allies' approaches to North Korea. Bush was quick to reassert his skepticism of the Stalinist regime's reforms. Kim, meanwhile, reaffirmed Seoul's commitment to his "sunshine" policy of engaging North Korea, which has been characterized by Seoul's incentives and the lack of punitive steps for failing to deliver on promises.
Saturday, February 23, 2002
HOUSTON -- The bankrupt energy giant, Enron Corp., designed and maintained a fake trading floor at its Houston office.
According to former Enron employees, on the sixth floor of the company's downtown headquarters was a set, designed to trick analysts into believing business was booming.
"It was an elaborate Hollywood production that we went through every year when the analysts were going to be there to be impress them to make our stock go up," former employee Carol Elkin said.
Elkin worked for Enron for five years as an energy analyst. She was once even commended by then-Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling.
Elkin said that the phony trading room was staffed by her and other employees to resemble a real trading operation.
"They would build out the sixth floor of 1000 Smith in what I called a Hollywood set," Elkin said. "They would build out a set with a big, 36-inch flat panel screens and the teleconference conference rooms."
Elkin said that it was all an act, and that no trades were actually made there. The people on the phones were talking to each other.
"They would ask us to go alternately, in like hour shifts down to the sixth floor," Elkin said. "And sit and pretend that we lived and worked there."
SQUATTING in the dark cave with a glass of green tea in hand, Osama bin Laden must have felt awkward. It was late November, the 11th day of Ramadan.
In a cavern high in the mountain complex, bin Laden delivered a diatribe on "holy war" to his elite al-Qa'eda fighters, telling them that unity and belief in Allah would lead to victory over the Americans.
Even as he spoke, he was planning to abandon them. Part of the audience that day were three of his most loyal Yemeni fighters.
Execs who ruin companies need to suffer at least as much as the employees whose hopes and retirement funds they pillaged
If the names of the alleged schemers at Enron and Global Crossing ended in a vowel, the pack of them might be cooling their heels in federal detention centers awaiting trial and trying to make bail so steep even Bill Gates couldn't post it. All the while, a posse of prosecutors would be compiling a list of racketeering charges longer than a line of limos at a Mafia wedding.
Of course, there are two reasons that's not going to happen. The first is that these are preppie MBAs with Porsche bank accounts and hired lawyers whose hourly rate could feed a family of four for a month. The second is that their hides have likely been saved by the high-tech executives of Silicon Valley and their Washington lackeys, er, lobbyists.
If the portfolio-bruising dot-com bust wasn't reason enough to detest all those myopic Internet "visionaries," here's one more. Concerned about lawsuits brought by investors who grew tired of getting burned on high-flying stocks, the high-tech industry got behind passage of a law in 1995 that, among other things, went a long way toward protecting corporate executives from prosecution under the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act (see BW Online, 2/11/02, "Enron Shareholder Suits? Not So Fast").
Big spike in hot-line calls seen at other companies
Washington -- As America watched Enron Corp. officials sweating in the Washington spotlight -- swearing ignorance of misdeeds, pointing fingers at others or simply taking the Fifth -- there was the predictable buzz in the air. But above the clicking of cameras and the low rumble of lawyers conferring with clients, there came another sound.
Was it the echo of whistles being blown elsewhere in the country? Is it wishful thinking on the part of fearful stockholders, or might the spectacle of management-in-the-hot-seat time embolden a new flock of corporate canaries to sing in alarm when they discover their company's cooked books, discriminatory practices or less-than-lawful dumping?
Employees contemplating blowing the whistle may take some courage from Enron Vice President Sherron Watkins, who last summer and fall explained her misgivings, first anonymously and later in person, to Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay. She told him she was "incredibly nervous" that the company might "implode in a wave of accounting scandals."
WASHINGTON -- Alarmed by signs of weapons traffic between Colombian rebels and the Middle East, the Bush administration is weighing a proposal to declare the destruction of leftist guerrillas in the South American country an explicit goal of U.S. policy.
Some senior officials are also pushing for the administration to assert, for the first time, that the Colombian rebels are a specific target of the worldwide U.S. war on terrorism, administration officials said.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States wants to make sure Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s internal rivalries don't rekindle civil war and plunge that country again into killing and chaos.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has long argued against a peacekeeping role for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. In view of the current fluid situation, however, Rumsfeld refused on Thursday to rule out any American role in keeping order in Afghanistan - including the possibility of sending up to 30,000 U.S. soldiers to ``police the whole country.''
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld disputed Wednesday reports that Saudi Arabia wouldn't back the U.S. if the U.S. decided to strike Iraq, but he added any final decisions on what any country would do would be left to its leaders.
Speaking to U.S. troops in Salt Lake City, Rumsfeld was asked about reports from Saudi sources that Saudi Arabia wouldn't support a U.S. military action against Iraq. Rumsfeld said this wasn't the message U.S. officials are receiving from their Saudi counterparts.
Judge John D. Bates, has been assigned to hear the Cheney/GAO case
Bates is a Bush appointee who was confirmed only on December 11th, 2001. He's considered a moderate Republican.
Carter Phillips of Sidley & Austin has, apparently, been retained by the GAO to argue their case.
Late Update: Judge Bates served as Deputy Independent Counsel under Ken Starr from September 1995 until leaving in March 1997.
RESTON, Va. — The American Society of Newspaper Editors has asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to reconsider reported plans by the Defense Department to distribute disinformation to foreign media organizations.
“We believe such a plan, if instituted, would be a serious wrong turn for the United States,” ASNE President Tim J. McGuire said in a letter to Rumsfeld.
U.S. undermining freedom of the press: media watchdog
VIENNA - The International Press Institute (IPI) launched a stinging attack on the United States Thursday, accusing it of undermining press freedom, as it revealed 55 journalists were killed worldwide last year.
"The manner in which the administration of (U.S. President George W.) Bush reacted to the work of the media during the war in Afghanistan, (Bush's) attempt to suppress the freedom of expression of the independent media was the biggest surprise in 2001," the IPI said.
The annual report by the IPI, this year called "The War Against The Media," was a marked departure for the institute, which usually reserves its strongest criticism for Asian, African or South American countries with despotic regimes.
David Dodge, author of the study, accused the Bush administration of having a "desire to control information."
Rocket attacks spread panic in West Bank
ISRAELI helicopter gunships swooped out of a piercing blue sky and began to blast buildings of Yassir Arafat’s Force 17 presidential guard.
Robertson Calls Islam a Religion of Violence, Mayhem
Television evangelist Pat Robertson yesterday described Islam as a violent religion bent on world domination, drawing immediate protests from American Muslims.
Deweaponization drive resisted in Afghanistan
QUETTA, Feb 21: One person was killed and another was injured seriously when fighting erupted between local people and forces of the Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai in Weesh town in Afghanistan, close to Chaman, on Thursday.
An Afghan border official confirmed the fighting and said that people opened fire on official forces that had asked them to hand over their weapons.
"A group of local people refused to hand over their weapons and resisted, which resulted in fighting," Zalmay Khan, a spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Office in Spin Buldak, told this correspondent over telephone.
Elite Colombian troops pour into Farc stronghold
Ten American-supplied Black Hawk helicopters dropped 200 heavily-armed élite Colombian paratroopers into the capital of a former rebel stronghold yesterday as the government poured in ground troops to recapture the zone.
Although one helicopter was reportedly strafed by machine-gun fire, the soldiers met little resistance from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), a day after President Pastrana launched a bombing campaign against the haven ceded to the guerrillas in 1998 as a peace gesture.
The president abruptly abandoned his three-year quest for a ceasefire mid-week after Farc's hijack of a civilian airliner to kidnap a senator on board. Some 13,000 ground troops are set to retake the lawless southern zone, roughly twice the size of Wales, which has been used as a rebel training ground, weapons cache, coca plantation and hostage hideout. One thousand soldiers were deploying east of the main town of San Vicente del Caguan yesterday.
Geneva Conventions are outdated, says US envoy
The Geneva Conventions are outdated and need to be rewritten to deal with the threat of international terrorism, the United States ambassador for war crimes said yesterday.
The forthright views of Pierre-Richard Prosper, who was personally appointed by President Bush, will fuel the controversy over the treatment of Afghan detainees by America. His remarks, in an interview with The Independent, represent the first time a senior figure in the Bush administration has spoken so unambiguously about an overhaul of the conventions. They reflect Washington'sexasperation at criticism by Western allies and international organisations of its treatment ofprisoners at Camp X-Ray on Cuba.
The Geneva Conventions have tempered some of the worst excesses of modern warfare, and attempts to tamper with them are bound to lead to opposition. However, there is a growing feeling in the administration that the present form of the conventions, signed in 1949, does not take into account the new type of conflict in which individuals and organisations, such as al-Qa'ida, rather than states, wage war.
US commandos to take control of Jolo island
MALUSO: The full contingent of 160 US Special Forces troops are to be deployed at the weekend in joint operations against suspected terrorists in the southern Philippines, a Filipino commander said Thursday.
Since Sunday, at least 80 Green Berrets have already joined Filipino forces in jungle camps on the Basilan island stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf Muslim guerrilla group. The remainder are to be flown into Basilan over the next two days, Brigadier Emmanuel Teodosio said.
The Pentagon's 'Ministry of Truth'
WASHINGTON -- Wasn't this "Ministry of Truth" and "War is Peace" stuff was supposed to arrive 20 years ago?
George Orwell predicted a government stamping lies as truth and fighting a war so endless as to assume the monotony of peace. Writing against the early Cold War backdrop, he predicted this grim world to arrive in 1984.
Well, worse late than never. The Orwellian fears of post-World War II are taking form in early 21st-century Washington.
The prophesied "Ministry of Truth" is the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence.
Sharon's buffer zones: dogs, ditches and mines
Buffer zones that Ariel Sharon is planning to create to thwart Palestinian attacks will be guarded by "obstacles" ranging from dogs that can detect explosives, land-mines and electric sensors, to fences and ditches, the Prime Minister's spokesman said yesterday.
The zones, which will vary in width from a few hundred yards to several miles, will be established in "chunks" in parts of the West Bank through which Palestinian suicide bombers pass on their way to attack Israelis, according to the spokesman, Raanan Gissin.
"They have a special mission, which is to prevent infiltration. It has no political connotation. It is only about security," said Mr Gissin, who estimated the cost at "several hundred million dollars".
Mr Sharon announced plans to create the zones during a speech to the nation on Thursday. But he was vague about details, saying only that work on marking them out would begin at once.
This led to suspicions yesterday among diplomats and Middle East analysts that the plan is no different from other measures in the West Bank, and is chiefly an attempt by Mr Sharon to reassure war-rattled Israelis and to shore up his standing in the polls, which has slipped by 16 points since December to 54 per cent.
Lies can come back to hurt you
PARIS The Pentagon has created an Office of Strategic Influence, according to the news from Washington, and is now in the process of discussing just who is to be disinformed, about what. The office was set up during the fighting in Afghanistan as the administration began to be concerned about losing support for its "war on terrorism" in foreign countries, particularly Muslim countries.
The reports say there is some opposition within the Pentagon to plans for using some false and misleading reports where that might help the United States, and the White House has not yet given final approval for that. So it can be assumed that this is another example of a hidden policy debate on how to shape public opinion.
The deliberate leak about the possibility of using misinformation to sway opinion shows that at least some of the people involved are aware of the risks.
In many ways, the battle of words, of attitudes, of sympathies is the major confrontation in this struggle against terrorism. The battle can be decisive at crucial points. So the Pentagon has decided that it should be involved. The question is how, and it is useful to give this some airing before too much damage is done to credibility.
What has war brought us so far?
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER
The last time I checked, the Constitution of the United States authorized only Congress -- not the president -- to declare war on anybody.
In the hyper-inflated atmosphere of unity and patriotism in which the nation finds itself, I suppose this is a minor technicality that it is politically incorrect to mention. So instead let's assess what this war has gotten us.
No one knows whether the war's ostensible, primary objective has been accomplished. Whether Osama bin Laden is dead or alive is anyone's guess; if he is alive, neither we nor our allies know where he is hiding. Bin Laden, in fact, has all but disappeared from public discussion, which has turned to ever-widening aims: toppling the government of Afghanistan, dealing with what President Bush terms an "axis of evil" that embraces at least three other nation-states and, in Secretary of State Colin Powell's declaration, going "after terrorism wherever it threatens free men and women."
Pounding a PBS Poohbah
The latest bugaboo for those on the right is Bill Moyers. Yes, he's liberal. Yes, he worked for LBJ. But there's something about the combination of Moyers's lofty style and his PBS perch that makes some conservatives' skin crawl.
What makes this a spectator sport worth watching is that Moyers is punching back. Hard.
American Arms -- Into Whose Hands?
Since Sept. 11, the US has stepped up military assistance to allies old and new. But might America's own weapons someday be turned against it?
E-mails detail Indiana Guard 'ghosts'
WASHINGTON — Evidence continues to grow that National Guard units across the country are undermanned and have faked their troop level reports to Washington for years in order to protect their flow of federal money and to hide their inability to retain troops.
Last Three Months Warmest on U.S. Record Books-NOAA
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The last three months were the warmest on U.S. record books, and January was the balmiest in the 123 years temperatures for the month have been recorded globally, government scientists said on Thursday.
Green groups cast the report as still more evidence of human-caused global warming. "The results underline the need to start cutting pollution that scientists say is causing global warming," said Jon Coifman, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
FACING SOUTH EXCLUSIVE - Haliburton: To the Victors Go the Markets
The influence of big energy corporations in the Bush Administration is no secret. But the story of Dick Cheney and his former company, Haliburton Co., has received little attention -- and it may be the most important
Thursday, February 21, 2002
A biological weapons control expert yesterday refused to back down from her claim that the FBI has a prime suspect in last autumn's deadly anthrax letters episode, despite strenuous denials by the bureau.
She speculated that FBI agents might still be building their case against the suspect and possible accomplices.
"They're probably collecting evidence, so I can understand they'd want to deny that they have a specific suspect," said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Chemical and Biological Weapons Program.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped nearly a month ago on his way to interview a Muslim fundamentalist leader in Pakistan, is dead.
A senior U.S. administration source said law enforcement officials received a videotape in recent hours that gave them reason to believe the 38-year-old Pearl was dead. The source would not elaborate.
U.S. Copter Crashes in Philippines
WASHINGTON –– A U.S. Army helicopter crashed at sea in the Philippines Thursday with 12 Americans aboard.
A search by another U.S. helicopter and other American military aircraft found no survivors, but the search was continuing, said Navy Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman
CHOWKOR KARIZ, Afghanistan, Feb. 19 -- The Americans came back to this dead village last month, bearing words of contrition and a fragment of rubble from the World Trade Center in New York -- another place, they told survivors, where innocent people died.
Israeli Cabinet Backs Greater Use of Death Squads
Plans by Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to use yet more military force in the occupied Palestinian territories were yesterday approved by his security cabinet as the violence in the Middle East conflict accelerated still further.
Mr Sharon won support for what he called a "new outline on the war on terror", as Israeli armed forces retaliated after the most deadly attack on its soldiers since the intifada began.
As the region grew steadily more nervous about the backwash from the worsening conflict, Mr Sharon – who is under pressure from Israel's hard right to invade the West Bank and Gaza – told his cabinet that he was opposed to dragging Israel into a fully-fledged war.
Italian police say they have arrested four Moroccans who were planning a chemical attack in Rome, targeting buildings which included the United States embassy.
US troops fan out across Philippine rebel stronghold
US Special Forces troops fanned out across a southern Philippine stronghold of Muslim guerillas after an ambush a day earlier which left two Filipino soldiers wounded.
Civil War Preys on Civilians
PURACE, Colombia -- When the rebels left a few hours later, several buildings were in ruins. Two police officers had been killed. And Guauna was dead. Medical workers said a single bullet had passed through his throat, silencing the singer, painter and aspiring lawyer. Whether stray round or deliberate shot, the townspeople got the message: Next time, let the guerrillas win.
Rebels with nothing to do: Saudi Arabian youth begin to act up
RIYADH A rebellion of the bored is being waged on the streets and highways of Saudi Arabia.
UK demands huge shake-up for Europe
Britain will propose revolutionary changes to the European Union today that could lead to the appointment of an influential new leader by prime ministers.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will call for a drastic overhaul of the EU's decision-making bodies that would entrench the powers of governments and downgrade the European Commission's role.
Some EU governments, sidelined in the American-led war on terrorism and increasingly at odds with the foreign policies of President Bush, feel the need for a single voice to speak for Europe. In a keynote speech in The Hague, Mr Straw will argue for important changes to the way decisions are made.
Orthodox Jews Mass Protest Against the State of Israel
NEW YORK-I knew that the United States was in big trouble back in November, when I spent three weeks in Afghanistan. Despite the Niagara-sized deluge of propaganda assuring Americans that thousands of indiscriminately-dropped bombs would keep them safe from terrorism, the bloodbath I witnessed told me otherwise.
And things have gotten worse since.
The Line of Fire: Enron reporters duck as the rich revolt
Let none of the brave reporters here in town following Enron ever think themselves accurs'd or hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks who covers Kandahar.
While those Afghan war scribes are facing trigger-happy nomads in a lawless land, in Houston journalists are ducking from eggs tossed by the city's elite. Literally.
Rivals Battled Enron In Energy Lobbying: Firm Thwarted in Key Business Moves
Just weeks after Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth L. Lay wrote checks for $175,000 to the Republican Party in April 2000, executives and lobbyists from one of his arch rivals hosted a fundraiser in Alabama for Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), then chairman of the Senate Energy Committee
Rampage prompts United to toughen 93 cockpit doors
United Airlines said Tuesday that it is adding reinforcement to the cockpit doors on 93 of its aircraft as a result of a passenger's rampage earlier this month.
Ignorance at Enron: 'I dunno,' says the Fourth Monkey
YOU KNOW those three monkeys -- Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil. The Enron saga has introduced a fourth simian: Understand No Evil. This is one clever little ape.
The Fourth Monkey doesn't cover his ears, eyes or mouth. Rather he just points to his head and rolls his eyes. He's got a great excuse. Even though he hears about prepaid swaps, sees them used as financing tools and talks about them, he doesn't really "get" it how they were used to fool Enron's stockholders.
The Independent Budget: A Budget for Veterans by Veterans; Budget Plan a 'Bitter Pill' for Veterans
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- What is being touted as "an historic increase in spending for veterans health" care is in reality an attempt to sugar coat a bitter pill the Bush administration wants sick and disabled veterans to swallow, major veterans groups warn
Paper Says Faith-Based Housing Program Breaks Rules
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Washington showcase of the Bush administration's faith-based initiative that was supposed to renovate properties worth $14 million has been violating federal rules and failing to deliver on its promise, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Thousands in Seoul Protest Bush's Visit
SEOUL, Feb. 20 -- As President Bush stood today at the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea and decried "despotism" on the northern side , thousands of South Koreans -- some carrying placards depicting Bush with demonic horns and bloody fangs, others chanting "Bush Go Home! Bush Go Home!" -- flooded the parks and boulevards of downtown Seoul.
Former Employee Says Enron Manipulated California Power Market
For more than a year, California Gov. Gray Davis and other state officials have alleged that energy companies, including Enron (ENRNQ), manipulated the price of electricity and natural gas in the state by withholding supplies to create an artificial shortage and gouging utilities by charging prices for power that were 10 times higher compared with previous years.
Bush administration to California: Drop dead!
During the recession of the early 1990s, California Gov. Pete Wilson relentlessly attacked President Clinton's administration for failing to pay its share of the state's costs for services to illegal immigrants. Eventually, he succeeded in getting Congress and the White House to pass SCAAP, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which last year provided California $237 million to help pay for some 25,000 illegal aliens in California's prisons. That's 42 percent of the entire SCAAP program.
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
Since September 11, the media have been lost in the fog of war. Lacking official answers, certain questions hang in the air, fostering conspiracy theories and eluding rational consensus. Weary of the search for objectivity, Press Clips kicks around 10 questions to which journalists either cannot or will not deliver straight answers. As the proverb goes, "Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say."
Bankruptcies rocket 19%, break record
WASHINGTON - A record 1.45 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy protection in 2001, and business filings, including the largest-ever by Enron Corp., jumped 13 percent last year, according to data released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
The number of personal bankruptcies last year breaks the previous high mark of 1.4 million in 1998 and represents a 19 percent jump over the previous year.
NEW YORK, Feb. 19 — Three weeks after the “axis of evil” became Bush administration shorthand for Iran, Iraq and North Korea, American diplomats are defending the statement against charges that the United States is trying to use its anti-terror war to settle scores and provide a political springboard to fund its national missile defense system. The administration stands by its contention that all three of these states possess missiles that are a threat to national security. Yet new intelligence assessments indicate that none has deployed any missile that could hit the United States, and will not have one for a decade or more.
Bush's radical shift in military policy
For a generation, the massive US arsenal has been managed with the purpose of not being used. With the exceptions of the Gulf War and the NATO air war against Serbia, this purpose was achieved. It was rooted in the post-Vietnam assumption that war is a last resort, to be avoided if possible.
Now, a radically different assumption is undergirding American purpose, a repudiation of the experience of the last 55 years. With putative battlefields around the globe, war is all at once being defined as the essence of who we are, and nothing makes this clearer than the new Pentagon budget.
After President Bush signed the 10-year tax cut into law last summer, checks went out to 85 million households--$300 for single taxpayers, $500 for single heads of households and $600 for married couples filing a joint federal tax return.
The problem: People didn't realize that those checks--$300 for singles, $600 for couples filing jointly--were advances based on a tax cut that saw the federal income tax rate on the first $6,000 of income for singles and the first $12,000 for married couples filing jointly trimmed from 15 percent to 10 percent. Rather than make people wait till tax-return time to see the benefits of that cut, the government mailed checks in advance.
''America: hammer & sickle style''
The benign-sounding Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 would enable corporations and their accountants to dodge investor lawsuits. The result could mean all those Houston grandmas who lost their life savings because Enron stock nose-dived from a high of $90.00 to about eighteen cents a share would have no legal recourse. They cannot sue the banks, the accountants, the lawyers, or any of Enron's 4,000 phantom partnerships, either.
Anyone expressing surprise at the supernova-like explosion of Enron and its accounting firm Arthur Andersen must have been roommates in a cave with Osama bin Laden. Eight or nine years ago, Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America laid the very groundwork by which Enron and Arthur Andersen could perpetrate their gigantic fraud on the public.
This kind of fraud we would expect from the Russia that rose out of the ashes of the former Soviet Union. When Communism fell, a primitive get-all-you-can-style capitalism rushed to fill the vacuum. There was no well-ordered, well-planned, and patient transition from one system to another. The businessmen/gangsters who comprised the “New Rich” took advantage of the rough transition and wasted no time using their bureaucratic connections to circumvent the laws they did not like and draft new laws that would enable them to strip away the assets of state-owned enterprises and ship the plunder to banks in Western Europe and North America.
WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- Enron's top executives were more aware of the risks in the one-time energy trader's controversial partnerships than they have previously acknowledged, according to documents released by congressional investigators.
In 1971, The New York Times began publishing a series of articles based on the Pentagon Papers – a top-secret study of the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia that ranged from World War II until May 1968. Included in these papers was proof of U.S. miscalculation and deception of the American people. The government tried to stop the Times from publishing, but, thanks to legal victories, the story came out.
It's easy right now to get into the mentality that America is always right because that's what we want to believe – what we need to believe to justify ourselves to the world. But just because it's easier to think that way doesn't mean we always should.
You have to hand it to George Bush the senior for hustle. Back in 1998, he took at least $80,000 in stock from Global Crossing in return for speaking for the company in Tokyo. The payment was made as the company was about to go public and the stock's value quickly multiplied 175-fold to $14 million. Maybe some congressional committee will turn up how much of that stock the former president sold before the company went belly up a few weeks ago.
A Walk in the Valley of Greed
What would Jesus do? It's a no-brainer; he would leave the Christian Coalition, take a consulting job with Enron and then use his divine power to make George W. Bush president.
U.S. economy lurches toward recovery
Experts fear rebound will be anemic
The recovery could be unusually anemic, many economists fear. Businesses may continue to struggle and unemployment climb for months to come. In fact, even as the economy grows, conditions may not feel much different from an outright slump. The most pessimistic forecasters even speak darkly of a so-called "double dip," a second plunge into negative territory later in the year.
Tracking "Pug" Winokur, wolf in the Enron fold
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Contributing Editor
February 17, 2002—As headlines bellow outrage over Olympic Games figure skating fixes, no mainstream media ink has been devoted to the Enron fix, which is quickly becoming one of the biggest cover-ups in history. This fix began two weeks ago with the quietly accepted testimony of Enron board member Herbert "Pug" Winokur, an appearance that ensured that the charade would leave criminals protected and free, and plundered monies hidden.
In his report, Winokur, the chairman of Enron's finance committee (which is responsible for ensuring the financial soundness of the company) blamed the rest of Enron management, and the auditors at Arthur Andersen, for deceiving him. Members of the various investigating committees quickly accepted this implausible deflection and moved on, eager to avoid crossing the notorious Winokur.
Opponents of Winokur have ample reason to be petrified and silent.
Cutout, Fraudster, Keeper of Secrets
Herbert "Pug" Winokur, a longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a veteran Washington and Wall Street insider, intimately tied to military and intelligence hawks, wealthy elites and the Bush oligarchy. In addition to his key facilitator/enforcer role at Enron, Winokur is the CEO of the private Capricorn Holdings. Capricorn is the lead investor of DynCorp, and Winokur (who was the chairman of DynCorp's board of directors from 1987 to 1997) remains a DynCorp board member and chair of its compensation committee.
The company is a leading private contractor of the American global police state, a beneficiary of the "war on drugs," the "war on terrorism" and corporate globalization itself. Like Enron and other multinational corporations, DynCorp enjoys a special relationship with the US government leadership, doing "unsavory" work in hot spots around the world. The US government has "plausible deniability" when things go wrong (for instance, when people get killed). DynCorp gets big government contracts.
Although DynCorp touts itself as an "Internet technologies corporation," its work is nothing so benign. By contract, DynCorp manages the financial data and other electronic records for more than 30 U.S. government agencies, including the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Justice, the Defense Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Office of National Drug Policy. The company is one of the few with access to PROMIS software, which gives its users access to worldwide banking records.
In addition to its intelligence database, DynCorp is also involved with asset forfeiture for various government agencies, including the Department of Justice.
In short, Winokur, through DynCorp, has the electronic goods on virtually everybody, and the means to shut down any agency, company or individual. Pug, in turn, enjoys J.Edgar Hoover-like powers to intimidate and destroy any political opponent, while looting the system in the process.
And looting is old hat for Pug.
Winokur's Capricorn Holdings was used as an investment vehicle in the National Housing Partnership (NHP), which from 1987 to 1997 was linked to massive HUD housing fraud and money laundering.
Since the late 1990s, Winokur has been on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Endowment Fund. Harvard, the alma mater of George W. Bush, has long been connected to Republicans and the agenda of the Bush family.
Before Enron collapsed, Winokur and Enron bullied Harvard professors into writing studies that promoted the privatization of government agencies and deregulating energy—-agendas that obviously benefit Enron and DynCorp. Based on these Harvard "studies," Enron subsequently won major contracts. (These contracts are still valid today.) Harvard also benefited from the shorting of Enron stock last fall, suggesting that insider trading had occurred. (www.harvardwatch.org.)
In another prime example of modern Enronomics, Winokur is affiliated with National Tank Company, an oil industry supplier. National Tank received $370,294 in sales from Enron in 2000.
Profiting From Death
In addition to its intelligence "database management," DynCorp wages war. It is one of many corporate proprietaries or "cut-outs" that run covert and overt American military operations all over the world. From the support and training of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) terrorists, to firefights alongside right-wing narco traffickers in Latin America, DynCorp has been there.
The outsourcing of US government violence is a time-honored trick. Not covered by the military rules, private mercenaries enjoy the freedom to commit a wide range of US-sanctioned mayhem, alongside the CIA and the Pentagon, while being lavishly funded with US taxpayer money.
DynCorp is the leading corporate mercenary behind the Plan Colombia, or "Andean Initiative." The company has a $600 million contract with the State Department to carry out "defoliation" in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.
In Colombia, DynCorp works closely with the US-backed and US-funded narco-trafficking right-wing Colombian military, paramilitary death squads, and the CIA.
According to its State Department contract, DynCorp "participates in eradication missions, training, and drug interdiction, but also participates in air transport, reconnaissance, search and rescue, airborne medical evacuation, ferrying equipment and personnel from one country to another, as well as aircraft maintenance." DynCorp operates State Department aircraft, including jets, helicopters and crop dusters and provides all the personnel required to conduct warfare in Colombia, including administrative personnel.
DynCorp was connected with the shoot-down of a missionary plane in Peru that killed a woman and her seven-month old child. American spotters who fed Peruvian pilots the targets were DynCorp contractors.
Connecting the Dots
Few people in America understand the history and role of Pug Winokur better than Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing under the first Bush administration and former Republican fundraiser. Fitts butted heads with Winokur and other members of the Bush elite over her attempts to clean up the massive fraud associated with the savings and loan, BCCI, Iran-Contra and HUD pirating.
For her courageous efforts to investigate money laundering, and the link between the drug trade and Wall Street, Fitts has been the target of intimidation, eighteen tax audits, and other forms of harassment since turning on her former Republican allies.
[Note: Fitts' complete dossier on Winokur, his byzantine financial dealings, and his ties to the military and intelligence community, Harvard, the Bush family, and right wing Republicans can be read at www.newsmakingnews.com/catharvardmain.htm. Fitts' ongoing investigations into Enron, Winokur, money laundering and narco-trafficking are featured at her own web site, and at From the Wilderness and DrugWar.com.]
In a recent two-part interview for KPFA's "Flashpoints"
A few highlights:
Arthur Andersen is also DynCorp's auditor.
Winokur's report accused Andersen of incompetence and deception. Yet, DynCorp has not fired Andersen.
Winokur's testimony came weeks after Enron and Arthur Andersen had ample time to shred documents and move massive amounts of monies.
The Department of Justice, through DynCorp and Winokur, has the tools to immediately seize and freeze assets. Ashcroft and the DoJ have made no effort to do so.
Enron and Arthur Andersen remain on government payrolls.
Nearly every member of Congress involved with investigating Enron has received campaign funding from Enron and Arthur Andersen.
Since 1997, various government agencies, including HUD, lost some $149 billion in funds from computer systems run by DynCorp and Lockheed Martin. Fitts suspects that Enron was a laundromat for these funds, which may have ultimately landed in the more than 700 of Enron's offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere. There has been no attempt by the US government to look into these accounts, despite the fact that Cayman Islands officials have invited inquiries.
Political Crime Redux and the Eternal Business of Corruption
The Enron "investigation" by the Department of Justice, the SEC and Congress is an elaborate charade. In Fitts' words, it is "yah yah" that is leaving gaping back door avenues that allow monies to disappear, and perpetrators to slip through the cracks.
Trilateralist, Rockefeller crony, and Council on Foreign Relations heavyweight Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, (and the man best known for declaring that "the living standard of every American must decline") is heading an "internal reform" of Arthur Andersen. Assisting him will be former US Senator John Danforth, the right wing ideologue who muscled Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court.
Given the fact that none of the major Iran-Contra, BCCI, Watergate or S&L masterminds have been appropriately punished, Kenny Boy Lay and the Enron players are surely not preparing for jail time. More likely, they are preparing for comfortable retirements. And in the future, after public attention fades, they will enjoy seats in presidential cabinets, on corporate boards, and on influential policy planning commissions at right wing "think" tanks.
Consider the fact that George W. Bush is the master of the world. His administration consists of the entire Iran-Contra network—Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Colin Powell, Dick Armitage, Asa Hutchinson, and of course, Dick Cheney. Richard Secord is "consulting" in Central Asia. Jeb Bush runs Florida. Narco-trafficker Oliver North is a TV celebrity. General John Singlaub is being paid to make patriotic speeches. Poppy Bush, Frank Carlucci, Jim Baker and the Carlyle Group are raking in millions, and millions more as the American war spreads.
While blustery speeches are made by "angry" members of Congress, the Enron money trail has already grown cold.
People like Herbert "Pug" Winokur will see that it stays that way.
Larry Chin is a freelance journalist and an Online Journal Contributing Editor.
From applying scientific humbuggery to the Kyoto accords to unilateral insolence on the ABM treaty to strong-arm indifference on fiscal policy, Bush II has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt to American citizens and the world alike its penchant for a Mafia mentality, absent any pretensions of honor. The administration is stuck in the century-old Black Hand decadence of the T.R.-Taft-Wilson era, which historian Robert Wiebe characterized as profit- and power-oriented, and specifically in the realm of foreign policy, immature and "intuitive." Today's executive wiseguys flex all the muscle of a political John Gotti, but none of the brain power of a Meyer Lansky. It's top-down arrogance to die for.
The Wrong War
Wahab Akbar is a congenial man in blue jeans and flip-flops who, by all accounts except his own, helped found the Abu Sayyaf "terrorist" group that we're now trying to exterminate. So you might expect to find Mr. Akbar cowering in the jungle. Nope. Instead Mr. Akbar is sipping a cold Coke in the nicest building here on Basilan, the island where Part 2 in America's war on terror is unfolding. He's the governor of Basilan and is helping to preside over the campaign against Abu Sayyaf.
"Confidence in our capital markets cannot be maintained if the public believes everything is a game to enable corporations to rely on lawyers and other professionals, who, in turn, rely on a literal reading of the law or governing principles," said Pitt. "That, in my view, is a major flaw in our system that Enron has exposed."
Lay: Skilling Knew of Enron Partners
In 17 pages of notes released Tuesday, Lay appeared to contradict Skilling's recent testimony at a House hearing. Lay was quoted as saying that Skilling presented board members with the idea for one of the key partnerships. In another instance, Lay said, Skilling would have been responsible for tracking the financial performance of one of the deals.
Washington to Unemployed: Too Bad, Life's Hard
The Senate twice has passed - unanimously - a straightforward, 13-week extension of unemployment benefits. The House Republican leadership persists in hitching the benefit extension to the lame horse of its economic "stimulus" package of tax cuts, mostly for business.
19 Dead, 8 Hurt in Mideast Conflict
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel launched a sea and air attack against Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Gaza office and killed four guards early Wednesday, a day after raids by both sides left 15 dead in one of the bloodiest periods of the Palestinian uprising.
Profits trump patriotism
The trend of American companies avoiding taxes ‘offshore’
Enron paid no taxes in four of the past five years, yet was due to get a $254 million tax rebate from the U.S. government under President Bush's ridiculous economic stimulus package, now fortunately defunct. The company paid $17 million in taxes in 1997, but during the four years it paid nothing, it also got a total of $381 million in tax rebates by using more than 874 offshore accounts.
Since September 11, the media have been lost in the fog of war. Lacking official answers, certain questions hang in the air, fostering conspiracy theories and eluding rational consensus. Weary of the search for objectivity, Press Clips kicks around 10 questions to which journalists either cannot or will not deliver straight answers. As the proverb goes, "Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say.
GEORGE W. BUSH is widely regarded as the avatar of a conservative restoration, but he is the opposite. This presidency marks a radical overthrow of traditional American values and policies. Civil liberties are obviously at issue in the new regime of homeland security, but the most drastic shift involves American attitudes toward war.
Ashcroft Invokes Religion In U.S. War on Terrorism
Contrasting "the way of God and the way of the terrorists," Ashcroft's speech to a group of Christian broadcasters in Nashville included some of the most explicitly religiousremarks from the attorney general since he was confirmed amid controversy over his views more than a year ago.
Pentagon 'ready to lie' to win War on Terror
The proposals appeared to have been leaked by Pentagon officials who fiercely oppose them and hope to ensure widespread outrage at home and abroad and increased scepticism about US statements on the War on Terror, especially in countries where they are expected to have an impact.
Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Pentagon Propaganda Plan Is Undemocratic, Possibly Illegal
February 19, 2002
The New York Times reported today that the Pentagon’s Office of
Strategic
Influence is “developing plans to provide news items, possibly even
false
ones, to foreign media organizations” in an effort “to influence public
sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries.”
The OSI was created shortly after September 11 to publicize the U.S.
government’s perspective in Islamic countries and to generate support
for
the U.S.’s “war on terror.” This latest announcement raises grave
concerns
that far from being an honest effort to explain U.S. policy, the OSI
may
be a profoundly undemocratic program devoted to spreading
disinformation
and misleading the public, both at home and abroad. At the same time,
involving reporters in disinformation campaigns puts the lives of
working
journalists at risk.
Despite the OSI’s multi-million-dollar budget and its mandate to
propagandize throughout the Middle East, Asia and Western Europe, “even
many senior Pentagon officials and Congressional military aides say
they
know almost nothing about its purpose and plans,” according to the
Times.
The Times reported that the OSI’s latest announcement has generated
opposition within the Pentagon among those who fear that it will
undermine
the Defense Department’s credibility.
Tarnished credibility may be the least of the problems created by the
OSI’s new plan to manipulate media-- the plan may compromise the free
flow
of information that democracy relies on. The government is barred by
law
from propagandizing within the U.S., but the OSI’s new plan will likely
lead to disinformation planted in a foreign news report being picked up
by
U.S. news outlets. The war in Afghanistan has shown that the 24-hour
news
cycle, combined with cuts in the foreign news budgets across the U.S.,
make overseas outlets like Al-Jazeera and Reuters key resources for
U.S.
reporters.
Any “accidental” propaganda fallout from the OSI’s efforts is troubling
enough, but given the U.S. government’s track record on domestic
propaganda, U.S. media should be pushing especially hard for more
information about the operation’s other, intentional policies.
According to the New York Times, “one of the military units assigned to
carry out the policies of the Office of Strategic Influence” is the
U.S.
Army’s Psychological Operations Command (PSYOPS). The Times doesn’t
mention, however, that PSYOPS has been accused of operating
domestically
as recently as the Kosovo war.
In February 2000, reports in Dutch and French newspapers revealed that
several officers from the 4th PSYOPS Group had worked in the news
division
at CNN's Atlanta headquarters as part of an “internship” program
starting
in the final days of the Kosovo War. Coverage of this disturbing story
was
scarce (see http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-psyops.html), but after
FAIR
issued an Action Alert on the story, CNN stated that it had already
terminated the program and acknowledged that it was “inappropriate.”
Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not directly
influence news reporting, the question remains of whether CNN may have
allowed the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission
against
the network itself. The idea isn’t far-fetched-- according to
Intelligence
Newsletter (2/17/00), a rear admiral from the Special Operations
Command
told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain
control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an
"informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations
were
taking place. One of CNN’s PSYOPS “interns” worked in the network’s
satellite division. (During the Afghanistan war the Pentagon found a
very
direct way to “gain control”—it simply bought up all commercial
satellite
images of Afghanistan, in order to prevent media from accessing them.)
It’s worth noting that the 4th PSYOPS group is the same group that
staffed
the National Security Council's now notorious Office of Public
Diplomacy
(OPD), which planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan
Administration's Central America policies during the 1980s. Described
by a
senior U.S. official as a "vast psychological warfare operation of the
kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy
territory"
(Miami Herald, 7/19/87), the OPD was shut down after the Iran-Contra
investigations, but not before influencing coverage in major outlets
including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post
(Extra!, 9-10/01).
The OPD may be gone, but the Bush administration’s recent recess
appointment of former OPD head Otto Reich as assistant secretary of
state
for Western Hemisphere affairs is not reassuring. It suggests, at best,
a
troubling indifference to Reich’s role in orchestrating the OPD’s
deception of the American people.
Indeed, as the Federation of American Scientists points out, “the Bush
Administration’s insistent efforts to expand the scope of official
secrecy
have now been widely noted as a defining characteristic of the Bush
presidency” (Secrecy News, 2/18/02). The administration’s refusal to
disclose Enron-related information to the General Accounting Office is
perhaps the most publicized of these efforts; another is Attorney
General
John Ashcroft’s October 12 memo urging federal agencies to resist
Freedom
Of Information Act requests.
In addition, the Pentagon’s restrictive press policies throughout the
war
in Afghanistan have been an ongoing problem. Most recently, Washington
Post reporter Doug Struck claims that U.S. soldiers threatened to shoot
him if he proceeded with an attempt to investigate a site where
civilians
had been killed; Struck has stated that for him, the central question
raised by the incident is whether the Pentagon is trying to “cover up”
its
actions and why it won’t “allow access by reporters to determine what
they're doing here in Afghanistan” (CBS, “The Early Show,” 2/13/02).
Taken together, these incidents and policies should raise alarm bells
for
media throughout the country. Democracy doesn’t work if the public does
not have access to full and accurate information about its government.
"For a quarter century after World War II, Americans grew more prosperous and less unequal. Families in every fifth of the nation's income distribution saw their incomes double. Families in the bottom fifth actually gained income at a faster pace than those at the top. The last quarter-century is a profoundly different story. The top fifth gained while the bottom fifth lost real income. Income inequality reached record levels in the 1990s."
"Divided Decade . . ."
Collins, Hartman and Sklar
United for a Fair Economy, 1999
Over the past year portions of our Constitution (that document that has been held up as a beacon of enlightenment throughout the world) have been shredded wholesale, while John Aschcroft orders concealment of the anatomy of Justice.
The era that's ending saw regulators as nothing but meddlers getting in the way of genius. But capitalism doesn't work without regulation. Powerful people will take advantage of their muscle unless someone -- like it or not, that usually includes the government -- keeps an eye on them.
The War on Waste
More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends. "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
Four Lies About Social Security
Army Secretary's Enron Role Probedbr>
How well White did that job has now become an issue in the aftermath of Enron's collapse, as investigators try to determine whether White's unit, Enron Energy Services (EES), contributed to the massive misstatement of Enron's profits over the past four years.
Banks Seek to Block State Privacy Laws
WASHINGTON (AP) - The banking industry is reaching out to Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and lawmakers in search of federal help to block state consumer privacy laws that bankers argue will hinder their efforts to spot terrorists.
Bring W Down to Earth
George W. Bush, with his $2.13 trillion budget, breezily proposes not only to take military spending back to Cold-War levels in his open-ended war on evil, but he also commits us to permanent tax cuts for his wealthiest benefactors. While he proposes to add $48 billion to the military budget to enable our armed forces to battle terrorists whose most formidable weapon so far has been box cutters, he would spend the Social Security and Medicare surpluses to bankroll nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years that will send 40% of their benefits to the wealthiest 1% of US households. And his budget would leave no room for expansion of domestic spending programs such as health care for the working poor.
Workers Held Hostage
House Republicans blocked vital aid to the nation's most vulnerable workers, and have refused to release it unless they secure passage of a dying stimulus plan. The plan, you won't be surprised to learn, consists almost entirely of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. But now tax-cut advocates have moved from promises to threats. Support tax cuts for the elite, the House leadership says, or we'll cut off your unemployment benefits. So what's next? Support tax cuts or we'll break your legs?
WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said.
'Axis of evil' remark sparks damaging backlash
Three weeks after President Bush opened a war of words against the "axis of evil," the early battles are not going well.
Secrecy leads to inescapable question: What's Bush hiding?
The article Monday on Texas' attempt to make its former governor's records available to the public is most enlightening ("Texas struggle to get Bush papers reflects other records flaps"). The reactionary, Republican administration is setting new highs in being secretive.
Specifically, the space and intelligence communities are interested in finding better ways to get "persistent" coverage and collection over targets and areas, Teets explained.
Attacks take toll on Israeli confidence
AMID seemingly relentless attacks, including a thwarted suicide bombing last night, many Israelis are losing confidence in the country’s ability to defeat the Palestinians.
SOMALIA BRACED FOR WAR
THE Black Hawk wreckage still protrudes from a cactus grove - a legacy of tangled metal to remind those who pass by of how the US was humiliated by a bunch of gangsters.
Reserve generals back unilateral withdrawal
After four months of intense discussion, the Council for Peace and Security, a group of 1,000 top-level reserve generals, colonels, and Shin Bet and Mossad officials, are to mount a public campaign for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza and much of the West Bank.
Germany and France warn Bush on Iraq
THE transatlantic rift deepened yesterday when Germany joined France in opposing military strikes against Iraq as part of a new front in the war on terrorism.
Monday, February 18, 2002
By Stuart Grudgings
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Fresh fighting has erupted in northern Afghanistan between rival ethnic factions in the interim government while tribal forces clashed in the east, aid officials and reports said on Sunday.
The fighting casts fresh doubt on the ability of the new government to hold together its loose coalition of old enemies and ensure security in the war-shattered country.
Iraqis fear it can only get worse U.S. threats come after sanctions ruined
economy
Letters Show Bush and Lay Shared Much
Ties between Jeb Bush and Enron explored further
Nevada Files Suit Over Yucca Mountain
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nevada has filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration to fight a decision to dispose of 70,000 tons of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
By Barry Crimmins
Before the Winter Olympics end perhaps Al Gore will be invited to Salt Lake City and made an honorary member of the Canadian Figure Skating team. If Gore, in a Maple Leaf jacket, were then surprised by a committee's announcement that it had partially reversed the outrageous decision in the 2000 US National Autumn/Winter Games and then the committee named him the 2000 Co-Gold Medalist, that would be the most memorable image to emerge from the Utah Olympics
As things stand, Gore's nemesis has provided the Salt Lake image I'll never be able to forget -- no matter how hard I try.
On Friday February 8, George W. Bush entered the inaugural proceedings at an Olympiad that was built and funded in a manner that could make Arthur Andersen himself pinken with embarrassment. Who better than our twitchy office-taker-in-chief to welcome an assembled mass that would spend the next few weeks averting its gaze from the greed, graft and corruption that helped bring the Downhill Cumorah Pageant to Mormon City, U.S.A.? After locally flavoring the international gathering with some traditional American jingoistic remarks, Dubster made his way to his place among the U.S. delegation.
17 year-old figure skater Sasha Cohen randomly chose the seat reserved for the court-appointed president. As she moved over to make room for the world's most eloquent argument against nepotism, Cohen apologized for being such meager company for a world leader. Bush graciously said that he couldn't think of any better companion for the festivities.
Cohen, who was speaking with her mother via cell phone, excitedly told Mom of her suddenly plum seating assignment. Emboldened by his friendliness, Sasha asked Bush if he'd say hello to her mother, a Ukrainian immigrant. He did. He then assured the flabbergasted mom that her daughter was behaving very well. Whether or not Mrs. Cohen asked Bush to keep his own younger female relations away from Sasha until she had passed any Olympic drug tests was not disclosed.
It was a friendly and warm story. The prez sat down next to a young skater and took time to chitchat with her mother on a cell phone. It would have been nice if we all could have listened. Considering her mother's immigrant status, maybe Kaiser Ashcroft or Fatherland Security Chief Rigid will release tapes of the impromptu moment.
Cohen, already a very recognizable member of the high profile US figure skating squad, immediately graduated to media darling status. The story of her encounter with Dubyahoo burnt up the newswires. Video of the cell phone chat bounced off satellites and into homes all over the world.
The next day a breathless Cohen was taken to do an interview with NBC's Bob Costas. This was when the most indelible moment of the Salt Lake Games occurred. After recounting those parts of the story we had already heard too many times, Cohen added a detail for NBC that had escaped earlier coverage.
She told Costas that she had asked the president if he planned to stay and watch any of the athletic events. Bush said he couldn't because "I have a war to fight."
You're cringing now, aren't you?
It is unclear whether or not he added "Little lady," to his swaggering exit line. Either way, the image of Bush using John Wayne rhetoric on a fawning adolescent paints a creepy picture that will always be synonymous with the Salt Lake Games.
Here was a man running a war effort, justified by the murder of innocents, that had now killed many more unoffending people than were lost on September 11. Throughout the ordeal Bush has played the crisis for political advantage. Hiding behind a logic-proof red, white and blue shield, Bush has pushed to:
… Liberate corporations from reasonable scrutiny (goodbye worker rights and environmental standards)
… Increase repression of dissent
… Called for yet another tax giveaway to the rich while the nation deficit-spends on munitions, corporate welfare and police state fortifications.
His under-credited SeaWorld trainers did a magnificent job preparing Bush2 for the State of the Union Address last month. On that night he declared World War on Iran, Iraq and North Korea. In the speech he called the three nations an "Axis of Evil." With the Taliban banished and Moby bin Laden either dead or receiving dialysis treatments from Lex Luthor in some high tech cavern, W decided it was time to imply that these three wildly disparate nations had joined a ludicrously improbable alliance of evil that required immediate and violent dispersal.
No matter how lifelike his handlers made him seem and regardless of his prefabbed new threats, Bush's true purpose for cacophonous saber rattling was obvious. It was meant to obscure the growing din of the Take the Money Enron scandal, a scam in which Bush's own Axis of Weasels is deeply implicated.
Not since Ronald Reagan have we had a president who is as stupid as he is evil. This explains how Bush devised and delivered his cornball yet toxic farewell to Sasha Cohen. Only a preposterously pompous dope could tell someone, even a fawning 17 year-old, "I have a war to fight" and then strut off. Even worse, this self-deluded nincompoop made the statement knowing that he had a public record of avoiding real combat in Vietnam by hiding in, and at times from, the Texas National Guard back in the Seventies. His daddy squirreled (and that is the proper verb) him away in a Guard unit peppered with the sons of Big Brother.
His father was re-upped as a human shield with the recent concealment of Junior's Texas Gubernatorial papers at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University. The cloaked documents would likely demonstrate that the Bush Axis of Weasels has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron for a very long time. If an upcoming court battle over the papers looks like it could lead to Texas' tight freedom of information laws actually getting enforced, don't be surprised if one of A&M's infamous pep rally bonfires tragically consumes the Bush Library.
The utter shamelessness concentrated in the "I have a war to fight" comment provoked a genuine Vietnam combat vet friend of mine to respond, "That Mickey Mouse sonofabitch is lucky he never made it to Nam because he is exactly the kind of chickenshit OCS grad who real combat vets fragged on his first trip to the latrine. 'I have a war to fight!' What an asshole! Idiots like that get a lot of people killed. Nope, he wouldn't have lasted long and Charlie wouldn't have had a thing to do with it."
Thirty years after ducking a fatal bowel movement in Southeast Asia, George W. Bush has the US military firing live ammunition with deadly results. To the Axis of Weasels collateral damage is just a pleasant byproduct of its ability to create an international distraction with the world's most lethal flare guns. If not for this ever-escalating battle with a murky and exaggerated enemy Bush could well find himself being gaveled out of office just the way he was gaveled in. And then we would be spared stories of how this shifty little guy tries to impress girls by portraying himself as a single-handed, he-man war-fighter.
In each stage-managed appearance Bush sells his war against an axis here and an evildoer there as if his measly political life depends on it -- because it does. Whenever GWB can get a impressionable child to speak of his sordid endeavor as if his truth is marching on, it means more time has been bought to shred and disconnect himself from a scandal that engulfs him right up to his beady little eyeballs.
So even though Bush was probably leaving the Olympics so he could get back to the White House to spend the weekend watching cartoons, he foisted bombast on a child about heading off to war. This is infuriating because had W been anywhere near the violence he so desperately wants to escalate, you know he'd have ordered Air Force One from Utah to Nebraska or Poppy's Library or a National Guard Unit assigned to keep us safe from incursions by the Mexican Air Force. And he would have stayed in seclusion until Andy or Gomer or Cheney told him it was safe to come out again.
George W. Bush has a war to fight. And I have a lunch to lose.
©2002 Barry Crimmins
Not-for-profit distribution of this essay is permitted so long as it is printed exactly as it appears here.
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 17, 2002; Page A14
When U.S. soldiers conducted a raid north of Kandahar, Afghanistan, on Jan. 24, it was initially reported as an American victory.
"U.S. Special Forces got into a fight with the Taliban. . . . Fifteen Afghan fighters were killed and 27 taken into custody," said ABC's Peter Jennings.
"Army Special Forces stormed two Taliban compounds," said NBC's Jim Miklaszewski. Newspapers carried similar stories, adding such caveats as "Defense Department officials said."
Days later, however, a few reporters in Afghanistan began challenging the official accounts, eventually prompting the Pentagon to acknowledge that those captured were not Taliban members after all. On balance, though, some journalists say the news business has been too passive during a war in which the first, often lasting impressions are left by military briefers at the lectern.
"We are the auditors of this operation," said Mark Thompson, Time magazine's defense correspondent. "Sometimes you get the feeling there's a little too much Arthur Andersen going on."
After five months in which the Bush administration drew consistently upbeat coverage for a successful military campaign, the media climate has turned sharply negative. Suddenly, the issues of civilian casualties, military mistakes and the Pentagon's own credibility have been dragged into the national spotlight.
Perhaps there was lingering resentment among journalists over their limited access during the war while Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was hailed on magazine covers like a rock star. Perhaps the tales of innocents slain in remote Afghan villages became too heart-rending to ignore. Perhaps there was a news void as the fighting largely subsided and the Osama bin Laden trail went cold.
Or perhaps it is easier for reporters to raise uncomfortable questions about military blunders now that the Taliban regime has been toppled and the threat to American troops greatly eased.
Whatever the cause, war coverage now resembles a kind of time-lapse photography, with journalists revisiting the scene of past bombing raids for the kind of up-close-and-personal reporting that was all but impossible while the ground war was raging.
On Monday, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and the New York Times reported allegations by some of the 27 Afghans captured in last month's raid that American forces had beaten and kicked them – prompting Rumsfeld to order an investigation. A day earlier, the New York Times ran a lengthy piece on civilian deaths in several raids in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, The Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times examined civilian casualties in a raid in October.
But the Pentagon still controls access in some areas where journalists want to dig for information. One dramatic clash took place last weekend when Washington Post reporter Doug Struck tried to visit the site of the Jan. 24 raid. He was turned away at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers who threatened to shoot him if he went farther.
Struck said from Afghanistan that "the important thing isn't whether Doug Struck was threatened. It shows the extremes the military is going to to keep this war secret, to keep reporters from finding out what's going on."
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke defended the department's dealings with the media. "I think it's a reflection of the often confusing and shifting nature of a very unconventional war," she said. "It's always a balance. We want to put out as much information as we can, and we want that information to be as accurate as it can be. We can't always do that as quickly as some reporters would like."
Since the Persian Gulf War, the military and the media have been arguing over the degree to which journalists can accompany battlefield troops without jeopardizing their safety. These complaints grew louder after the United States began bombing Afghanistan Oct. 7 without activating previously designated pools of reporters. At the same time, Rumsfeld threatened to prosecute anyone caught leaking classified information.
Now that journalists are relatively free to invade Afghanistan on their own, the war's latest phase has produced a spate of murky, conflicting accounts of whether U.S. troops sometimes targeted the wrong people.
CBS correspondent David Martin said Rumsfeld's crackdown has meant that "the real story does not seem to bubble up from below in the reporting chain the way it used to. People who care about their credibility with you no longer trust all the information they're getting. They've become more cautious because they don't want to be made to look the liar when some other report comes up two days later."
Thompson said the military itself frequently has incomplete information about the impact of its bombing. "The Pentagon was pretty much as blind as we were," he said. "As painful as it was to watch, the Pentagon has provided us with their changing assessment as it occurred. Frankly, I don't know how they screwed up so bad."
Not all journalists are critical of defense officials. "I know there are a lot of complaints from reporters that this war has been harder to cover, but personally I don't find it so," NBC's Miklaszewski said. "You get the first blush from military sources, and in many cases a more thorough examination finds it didn't exactly happen that way."
CNN's Bob Franken, who recently visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said officials at the U.S. naval base there considered lifting the ban on filming the transfer of detainees. But, he said, "people on the ground got a tremendous amount of grief from higher-ups for suggesting the idea. I was told there was a concern about what if something goes wrong. Well, in a free society you report the good and the bad."
The day after the Jan. 24 raid, National Public Radio introduced a report from Mike Shuster by noting that "there have been many accusations of errant bombs that killed civilians and civilians who died because they were too near military targets."
"It's been a hard story to get," said Barbara Rehm, NPR's managing editor. "We've tried very hard to chip away at it. The best information for us has been on the scene. I wish we had infinitely more access. It's hard moving around the country."
On Jan. 28, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Knight Ridder and London's Guardian reported claims by Afghan villagers that those killed in the raid four days earlier were, as the Los Angeles paper put it, "pro-government local residents, not hard-line Taliban holdouts as described by the U.S. military."
The Pentagon opened an investigation Jan. 30, even as Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was no evidence that U.S. forces had struck the wrong target. The military later released the 27 captives.
In the incident involving Struck, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said the reporter was turned back "both for his safety and that of the soldiers who were there doing that work."
Although Struck presented his credentials, Quigley said, he was accompanied by armed Afghan guards and "we had no idea who these guys were."
Struck called that explanation "an incredibly specious excuse on the part of the Pentagon." He said his guards, who remained at the bottom of a hill where the soldiers were stationed, "were clearly no threat to the Americans and clearly going nowhere."
Struck said the soldiers' commander, after consulting by radio with his superiors, told him: "If you go further, you would be shot."
Quigley challenged the reporter's version, saying the commander had told Struck: "For your own safety, we cannot let you go forward. You could be shot in a firefight."
Struck said: "That's an amazing lie. Those words were not spoken. With all due respect, Admiral Quigley was not there; I was."
The question of access has come up in other settings. At Camp Rhino, the U.S. Marine base in Afghanistan, military spokesmen repeatedly told reporters last month that they could not see, interview or photograph the detainees because of Geneva Convention rules – even though the administration was then arguing that the detainees were not formally covered by the international agreement.
Clarke, maintaining that the captives always enjoyed Geneva-type protections, said the military has accommodated "scores and scores of reporters" on airplanes, aircraft carriers and even with Special Forces units. "We go to extreme lengths to the extent possible to facilitate media coverage of this war," she said.
Miklaszewski said the media is still getting a good picture of the war: "A complete picture? We'll never get that. There's still information being released about secrets kept during World War II."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
Do Americans really want war or peace?
Feb. 15, 2002 9:01 p.m.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
In his recent State of the Union Address, President Bush boldly proclaimed war without end against the current and potential enemies of the U.S. Thus, what began as a limited action against specific targets - Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and their Taliban supporters - has expanded exponentially. Now that we've started (and presidential approval ratings still hover in the 80s), we ain't gonna rest until we clean out the whole nest of them varmints. And it makes no difference how many billions of dollars we have to spend on new weaponry, how many children are left behind as domestic spending dwindles or how many innocent bystanders are maimed and murdered in the process.
I predict that this war on terrorism will be no more effective in halting terrorism than the war on drugs has been in stopping the flow of illegal drugs into this country. After 30 years and the expenditure of billions of dollars in the effort ($40 billion this year alone by some estimates), drug use in this country is still widespread, and a violent underground economy has been created.
The reason that the drugs continue to find their way across our borders is because a lot of Americans want to smoke, shoot, snort or ingest them. So actions outside our borders - drug interdiction, defoliating fertile farmland, payoffs to puppet regimes, and the like - will do little to handle this issue. Until we are willing to look inside ourselves, inside our culture, and ascertain why so many folks are unwilling or unable to face life without uppers, downers, psychedelics and other mind-altering substances, then address these issues, illegal drugs will continue to be available.
In a similar manner, until we look within, we will not be able to deal effectively with those who harbor ill will against us no matter how many al-Qaida members we kill or capture. As long as we seek to impose our way of life on others, we will meet those who resist us.
As long as we try to be the self-appointed policeman of the world, there will be those who meet us with hostility. As long as we refuse to treat other peoples and cultures with respect, there will be those who are disrespectful of us and what we stand for.
"May God bless" were the words with which President Bush ended his State of the Union Address. What do we really mean when we speak those words, when we ask God to bless America?
Our benevolent Creator certainly blesses the people of this nation, just as he/she blesses every human, every other animal, every living entity, and even the soil that we walk on. Yet I wonder how the Holy One welcomes our prayers for the annihilation of anyone our leaders designate as a terrorist, our entreaties for the downfall of the countries with which we disagree, our pleas for the supremacy of the U.S. throughout the world? I believe that God blesses our nation when we live up to the ideals of our founders - freedom, justice, equality. God blesses America when we want the best for all the people of the world, not just what's best for us.
God blesses America when we live out of the best of who we are, as we did so fully in the days immediately following 9- 11.
We claim that we are a peace-loving nation, that we wage war only to create peace in our time. But as Albert Einstein said, "One cannot simultaneously prepare for war and create peace." If we truly want peace, then we must send it out into the world - in our thoughts, our prayers and our actions, individually and as a nation. If we are willing to do this and do it consistently, then we will be blessed with the elusive gift we say we so desire. Bruce Mulkey's e-mail address is brmulkey@charter.net.
Enron's new $5bn black hole
Investigators extend probe to key firm at heart of energy giant's 3,000 subsidiaries
The Bush files - Observer special
Jamie Doward, deputy business editor
Observer
Sunday January 20, 2002
Investigators probing the accounts of collapsed energy giant Enron are examining what happened to more than $5 billion in loans and investments the company made to subsidiaries kept off its balance sheet. The scale of the black hole opening up looks as if it could dwarf previous estimates.
Investigators are already examining a series of unde clared transactions between the US company and two Cayman Islands firms - LJM1 and LJM2 - set up by the firm's former chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow.
Now it has emerged that by 31 December 2000 Enron had also invested, or loaned, $5.3bn to a number of companies in which it had stakes, according to papers filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. These included two ailing firms that had been harming their par ent's financial performance, water specialist Azurix and the Dabhol Power Company of India. The subsidiaries - part of a network of more than 3,000 firms linked to Enron - were claimed by the company to be 'unconsolidated affiliates', which do not have to be shown on balance sheets.
Fastow's activities have already forced Enron to restate its accounts so that they show a $1.2bn reduction in shareholders' equity. And a special committee Enron established has concluded that further black holes may be found.
Now investigators are believed to be turning their attention to one key 'unconsolidated' subsidiary, WhiteWing Associates, which itself has 75 subsidiaries.
WhiteWing crops up throughout Enron's SEC filings. In 2000 and 1999, respectively, Enron sold '$632 million and $192m of investments and other assets to WhiteWing', the papers say. Enron refuses to discuss WhiteWing, which in turn was involved in several transactions with LJM1 and LJM2.
WhiteWing lists an investment vehicle, Osprey Trust, as a limited partner. The trust is owned by a number of anonymous financial institutions - which suggests the investigators will have to cast their net far wider to understand the true complexities behind Enron's downfall.