No matter how much he stonewalled, Dubby couldn’t save his Wolfy, his old #2 at the Pentagon, his NeoCon soul mate and, recently, would-be Lothario [ugh!]. That’s because it wasn’t a US system he was messing with, it was international — the smoke and mirrors don’t work quite so well when you cross the international borders.
Here are the informative reads — I’ve highlighted a few sentences so you don’t miss them. And don’t miss the couple of great rants in the middle of this short collection — last, Juan Cole gives us an excellent overview of the Wolfman’s career [and weaknesses.]
Oh, by the way — although it’s mentioned in the MSM piece that nobody knows about the financial aspects of Wolfy’s arrangement, it’s been learned that he’ll get a $400,000 “performance bonus” on the first of June … corruptions profitable, ain’t it???
And — though it is a thought that won’t occur to many until much later in this ugly game — putting a man like Paul Wolfowitz in charge of caring for the financial well being of the worlds poor is is not just poor judgment, but a kind of cavalier cruelty that history will name the touchstone of the failed coup attempt of George Walker Bush.
Jude
Wolfowitz Watch
[snipped from] Froomkin
Edward Luce writes in the Financial Times:
“For the past few weeks the Bush administration has been bitterly divided over the best way to respond to growing calls for Paul Wolfowitz’s resignation as World Bank president, according to people who have attended the White House meetings. . . .
“The Bush administration is divided into three camps, which have very rarely seen eye to eye.”
One of them, “led by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Karl Rove, who is George W. Bush’s senior strategist, say[s] the president should remain loyal to Mr Wolfowitz in the teeth of what they see as a European campaign to take revenge for the World Bank president’s pivotal role in pushing for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They have scant interest in the health of ‘multilateral institutions like the World Bank’, said the insider.”
Luce also notes: “The situation has been complicated by the fact that few people within the Bush administration understand what the World Bank does, says another official.”
White House to quickly replace Wolfowitz
JEANNINE AVERSA, AP
5/18/07
WASHINGTON - The White House said Friday it will move quickly to find a successor — preferably an American — for departing World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz as the administration sought to rebuild relationships strained by the controversy.
Wolfowitz a day earlier announced that he would step down at the end of June, his leadership undermined by a furor over compensation he arranged in 2005 for Shaha Riza, a bank employee and girlfriend.
“Traditionally, the American nominee has become the World Bank president. We want to move swiftly in this process,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “We want to make sure that we are selecting the best individual for the job. We want someone who has a real passion for lifting people out of poverty.”
The European Commission called Friday for a quick appointment, saying the poverty fighting institution needs “stable and strong political leadership.”
Wolfowitz’s departure ends a two-year run at the development bank that was marked by controversy from the start, given his previous role as a major architect of the Iraq war when he served as the No. 2 official at the Pentagon.
It also ends a potential political headache for President Bush, who had named Wolfowitz to the post.
The Wolfowitz flap had been seen as a growing liability that threatened to tarnish the poverty-fighting institution’s reputation and hobble its ability to persuade countries around the world to contribute billions of dollars to provide financial assistance to poor nations.
The bank “needs to rebuild it credibility immediately, regain its focus and devote its full attention to its clients,” said the bank’s staff association, which, along with former bank officials, aid groups and some Democratic politicians, had wanted Wolfowitz to resign.
Asked if the president had received any recommendations yet, Fratto responded: “Not that I’m aware of. I see lots of speculation in newspaper articles, and I’m not going to comment on names.”
Fratto also said he wasn’t aware of Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair — who recently met with Bush at the White House — being mentioned as a candidate to head the World Bank in conversations between the two leaders.
Bush’s selection must be approved by the World Bank’s board.
Among those mentioned as a possible replacement for Wolfowitz were former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who was Bush’s former trade chief; Robert Kimmitt, the No. 2 at the Treasury Department; Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson; former Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa; Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.,; Stanley Fischer, who once worked at the International Monetary Fund and is now with the Bank of Israel; and former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.
The 185-nation bank, created in 1945 to rebuild Europe after World War II, provides more than $20 billion a year for projects such as building dams and roads, bolstering education and fighting disease. The bank’s centerpiece program offers interest-free loans to the poorest countries.
By tradition, the bank has been run by an American. The Bush administration keenly wanted to keep that decades-old practice intact as it dealt with the Wolfowitz situation. The United States is the bank’s largest shareholder and its biggest financial contributor.
Paulson, who will work with the president on finding a successor to Wolfowitz, said, “I will consult my colleagues around the world as we search for a leader.” That suggested a more consultive approach to finding a new head of the bank.
Bush’s selection of Wolfowitz in 2005 for the bank post had stunned Europeans and some other countries. Europeans were upset that Bush would tap someone so closely associated with the Iraq war. After the pay controversy erupted a month ago, Europeans led the charge for Wolfowitz to resign.
Ute Koczy, a development policy spokeswoman for Germany’s opposition Greens, argued that it was time to ditch that “wretched tradition” of an American heading the World Bank. But a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed the idea.
“There is absolutely no question for the (German) government over the United States of America continuing to fill the top job at the World Bank,” spokesman Thomas Steg told reporters in Berlin.
Germany “has no doubt” that the U.S. administration will “make a convincing personnel proposal — one that does justice to the demands of the World Bank in this situation,” Steg said.
Japan’s Finance Minister Koji Omi told reporters at a finance meeting of major economic powers in Potsdam, Germany, that it was wise to keep an American as president of the World Bank.
Wolfowitz waged a vigorous battle to save his job and maintained he had acted in good faith. He was all but forced out, however, by the finding of a special bank panel that he violated conflict-of-interest rules in his handling of Riza’s pay package.
After days of negotiations, Wolfowitz got what he wanted — an acknowledgment from the bank’s board that he did not bear sole responsibility for the conflict-of-interest furor surrounding his handling of the pay package.
The bank board said it was clear that a number of people had erred in reviewing Riza’s pay package. The board’s statement made no mention of any financial arrangements related to Wolfowitz’s departure, nor did it speak to Riza’s future.
RIP Wolfie — and European Deniability at the World Bank
Robert Naiman, HuffPo
05.18.2007
I confess. I danced a little jig when the news broke last night that Paul Wolfowitz had been forced out as President of the World Bank. Blessed Art Thou, Lord Our God, King of the Universe, Who Has Given Paul Wolfowitz Your Holy Boot as President of the World Bank.
Not because I believed the myth that the World Bank was a “pro-poor” institution before Paul Wolfowitz came along and spoiled the party.
In this version of Little Red Riding Hood, the new Wolfie replaced the old Wolfie. To believe that Wolfowitz’ presidency threatened the credibility of the World Bank, you have to believe that the World Bank had some credibility that could be threatened.
No, I celebrated for two reasons. Of course, it was never all about the girlfriend’s pay raise. It was also about Iraq - not just Wolfowitz’ role before coming to the bank, but his attempt to use the Bank as a blunt instrument of Bush’s imperial foreign policy, even more so than had previously been the case. And since our prospects of seeing Paul Wolfowitz on trial at the Hague for war crimes in Iraq are remote - not that I’m ruling this out - his ouster provides a measure of what Palestinians, in their advocacy for statehood, call “rough justice” - that is, approximate justice. Not a full accounting, but at least a partial accounting. Our own “de-Baathification program” - the purging of the neo-cons from power in Washington - Libby, Rumsfeld, Bolton, and now Wolfowitz - stumbles fitfully forward.
But I hope the lasting legacy of Wolfowitz’ ouster as World Bank president will include the end of European deniability at the Bank. For far too long European governments have supported policies at the Bank that their domestic constituencies wouldn’t tolerate for one second if a foreign bureaucracy imposed them at home. Would social democrats in Denmark tolerate that the World Bank impose on them “education reforms” like the school fees that have blocked access to primary education in Africa? Would Labor Party activists in Britain tolerate that the World Bank impose on them “health sector reforms” like clinic fees blocking access to prenatal care? Would European social democrats have tolerated that the World Bank impose on them the corrupt privatization of the water utility in Bolivia, the corrupt privatization of public pensions in Chile and Argentina, the destruction of Mozambique’s cashew nut processing industry, the “labor sector reforms” that undermined the right to organize?
If one lobbied the European executive directors at the World Bank, and questioned them on why they supported the World Bank’s policies of reckless and dogmatic fire-sale privatization, the first line of defense was the mindless recitation of economic dogmas and jargon that they didn’t understand. The second line of defense was that the governments in question were hopelessly inefficient and corrupt and therefore privatization was the only hope for providing public services (neglecting the critical question of how hopelessly corrupt and inefficient governments are supposed to regulate privatized services.)
But the last refuge was a shrug of the shoulders: “What can we do? Go talk to U.S. Treasury.”
The ouster of Wolfowitz proves that the Europeans have more power at the World Bank than they have been letting on. The World Bank board “operates by consensus,” we are told, as if it’s a Quaker meeting. In fact the operation is designed to obscure accountability - if no-one has to vote, no-one is on the record for their position, and they can’t be held responsible for it. The Europeans pushed for a “consensus” resolution of the Wolfowitz issue - they forced him to resign, rather than have the board vote on his ouster - but the way they compelled this result was to demonstrate that they had the votes for his ouster, if push came to shove - and to threaten to withhold future contributions from the World Bank.
Of course the general issue is one of priorities. When they go into meetings, the European officials, like the American ones, have two file folders. In one folder, they have all the corporate demands - greater enforcement of patents and copyrights, privatization, greater access for multinationals that fly the flag of the home country when it suits them to do so. This file is stamped: “Priority - don’t leave meeting without resolution.” In the other folder, they have all the civil society demands - human rights, environmental protection, trade union rights, and human needs. This file is stamped: “Also try to mention this so you can claim that you raised the issue.” These officials don’t want to waste leverage on the second file that they could be using on the first file.
I hope that in the future, every time an environmental group, labor union, or human rights organization lobbying European officials about World Bank policies gets the poor-mouth story about the power of US Treasury at the World Bank, the civil society representative calmly replies:
“You took down Wolfie; you can take down this.”
Get involved: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org
Another one down, too many more to go
As corrupt Bush appointees fall, too many more remain
DOUG THOMPSON, Capital Hill Blue
May 18, 2007
Paul Wolfowitz’s overdue and well-deserved demise as President of the World Bank means yet another morally-flawed appointee of President George W. Bush bites the dust.
Another one down. Too many more still to go.
No administration in recent history has produced such an overwhelming number of corrupt, unethical, incompetent and/or downright criminal appointees. Bush’s long, and growing, list of merry men and women who have resigned in disgrace, arrested for criminal conduct or removed from office stands as monumental evidence of a flawed and corrupt Presidential administration.
Wolfowitz, the architect of Bush’s failed Iraq war and the man who helped build a sand castle of lies to sell the war to a blindly obedient Congress and asleep-at-the-wheel media, should have been fired as soon as evidence surfaced that he had used his position to advance the career, and income, of a World Bank employee he was screwing at home.
Bush, as he always does, stood by his corrupt buddy until the pressure overwhelmed him.
The President continues to stand by another fatally-flawed appointee - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - as more and more evidence of incompetence, corruption, criminal activity and baseline stupidity emerge.
That’s the problem with Bush. He’s a flawed, ethically-lapsed man who surrounds himself with corrupt men and women who share his absence of morality and lust for power. It may be someone with absolutely no qualifications for a job (like former and failed FEMA director Michael Brown), a criminal who bilks a store with a phony refund scheme (like former domestic policy advisor Claude Allen) or power-mad despots like Dick Cheney who trample the Constitution into the dirt.
There’s no doubt that Gonzales broke the law by politicizing the Justice Department and illegally firing U.S. Attorneys. There’s no doubt that he repeatedly lied to Congress. Yet Bush, who promised “the most ethical administration in history,” stands by his sleazy prosecutor with Godfather-style protection.
What else should we expect from Bush, who openly lies to the American people, Congress and our allies? The man is, without question, the most corrupt occupant of the White House in decades - a serial liar, lawbreaker and destroyer of the Constitution. If there was any real justice in the world, the man would be taken from the White House in shackles, flown to Gitmo, and given the same “aggressive interrogation” tactics deployed on other Americans imprisoned in that illegal hellhole.
But it won’t happen. Bush sees himself as all-powerful, above the law, and beyond the touch of the Constitution he swore to uphold. Why shouldn’t he? Nobody in Washington will challenge him. Certainly not the lackluster Democratic leadership of Congress or the Supreme Court now overloaded with rabid right-wing appointees from too many years of Republican domination of the White House.
Corrupt leaves like Paul Wolfowitz might fall from the rotting tree of the Bush administration but the roots of corruption fertilized by the abuse of power keep that tree upright.
The Bush White House is the most powerful organized crime family in the world and as long as the Godfather remains in that chair behind the desk in the Oval Office the peace and safety of the United States, and the world, is threatened by his reign of lawlessness and terror.
The Keystone Mafia Hijacked the American Government
A. Alexander, Progressive Daily Beacon
May 17th, 2007
There was a time in America when the federal government, the feds if you will, chased down gangsters and mafia bosses like Al Capone. Under Bush and Republican rule, however, the government has become the equivalent of some strange and overindulged rich boy frat house version of La Cosa Nostra meets the Keystone Cops. Mister Bush and Dick Cheney are interchangeably the modern-day version of the mobster boss and Police Chief Tehiezel - which man plays what role varies depending upon the day, time of day and the racket they happen to be running.
Indeed, if the current federal government — Mister Bush’s version of La Cosa Nostra meets slapstick — was to begin chasing down the gangsters and mafia bosses, it would look like the dog chasing its tail. It really isn’t possible to know anymore, where the mob ends and the American peoples’ government begins.
Perhaps, we’ve stumbled upon a potential Hollywood hit: “The Keystone Mafia” starring George W. Bush (Mob Boss/Police Chief), Dick Cheney (Vice-Mob Boss and Vice-Police Chief), Karl Rove (the so-called brains of the outfit), Alberto Gonzales (the gangs consigliere, of course) and Paul Wolfowitz (the enforcer).
Unfortunately, life truly is stranger than fiction. Here is an overview of only the most recent Bush Gang activity:
The World Bank Chief, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld’s onetime Iraq War neocon assistant intelligence forger, has been caught red-handed trying to give his girlfriend an undeserved pay increase. Rather than expressing any sense of remorse or regret, Wolfowitz, a.k.a. The Enforcer, made the typical mafia-like threat that, “If they [the World Bank board] fu– with me or Shaha [his girlfriend], I have enough on them to fu– them too.”
Al Capone couldn’t have said it better!
Then, of course, for weeks now, the American people have been inundated with the US attorney purge scandal. Karl “The Brain” Rove had dreamed up a scheme whereby any attorney that was unwilling to use his or her office to bring trumped up charges against Democratic candidates in swing-states, had to be fired and replaced by what one Attorney General Gonzales lackey had labeled as being, “loyal Busies”. Basically, it is the Republican Party’s version of playing craps with loaded dice. Rove had planned on ensuring all Democratic candidates rolled electoral snake-eyes, while the Keystone Mafia candidates all rolled seven and eleven.
And then there is the recent testimony of James Comey - the Bush administration’s former Assistant Attorney General to the onetime Attorney General, John Ashcroft. Mister Comey told Congress about the events surrounding Mister Bush and his Keystone Mafia’s original scheme for spying on American citizens. At the time, Ashcroft lay gravely ill in hospital and James Comey had been made acting Attorney General.
Due to concerns over the domestic spy schemes legality, Mister Comey had refused to endorse the administration’s plan. So, in an attempt to bypass Comey the administration dispatched the then White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and former White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, to the hospital bed of a very seriously ill John Ashcroft.
James Comey caught wind of the impending visit and, in an all out effort to beat Gonzales and Card to Ashcroft’s hospital bed, he and his security detail made a crazy “B” movie-like mad-dash through the streets of Washington DC. Comey was able to beat the two men to Ashcroft’s bed and short circuited the White House’s attempt at taking advantage of Ashcroft’s potentially impaired judgment. If the Keystone Mafia was going to employ an illegal domestic spy program, they would have to do it after Alberto “The Consigliere” Gonzales was installed as the Attorney General.
The Bush administration might be the worlds most incompetent and bungling gaggle of gangsters, but there has never been one more dangerous. And that is why it just isn’t possible to laugh at “The Keystone Mafia”. Still, there is something profoundly saddening about the United States federal government having been hijacked by an incompetent version of La Cosa Nostra.
Paul Wolfowitz’s fatal weakness
The cronyism that may cost him his World Bank job is also what caused the Iraq debacle.
Juan Cole, Salon
May. 14, 2007
The executive board of the World Bank mulled a possible vote of no confidence in the leadership of its president, Paul Wolfowitz, this weekend. How did the renowned neoconservative and former deputy secretary of defense, a primary architect of the Iraq war, come to these straits? Is he, as he claims, the victim of a smear campaign by those who dislike his politics? Or do the charges of favoritism and nepotism reflect genuine character flaws?
The small morality play unfolding at the World Bank tells us something significant about how the United States became bogged down in the Iraq quagmire when Wolfowitz was highly influential at the Department of Defense. The simple fact is that Wolfowitz has throughout his entire career demonstrated a penchant for cronyism and for smearing and marginalizing perceived rivals as tactics for getting his way. He has been arrogant and highhanded in dismissing the views of wiser and more informed experts, exhibiting a narcissism that is also apparent in his personal life. Indeed, these tactics are typical of what might be called the “neoconservative style.”
Soon after becoming head of the World Bank, Wolfowitz lapsed into his typical favoritism, even while he was, ironically, decrying the technique as practiced by governments of the global South. Instead of having an open search for some key positions and allowing for promotions from within, Wolfowitz simply installed Republicans from the Bush administration in high positions with enormous salaries. He brought Kevin Kellems from Dick Cheney’s office (where he had been communications director) and gave him a tax-free salary said to have been as high as $250,000 a year. As Wolfowitz’s new senior advisor, Kellems was leap-frogged over hundreds of officials with serious credentials in development work, something about which he knew little. When representing Cheney, Kellems went to great lengths to defend the vice president’s implausible conspiracy theory linking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Another controversial Wolfowitz appointment was Robin Cleveland, whom he made his assistant. She had been an aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell and then associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. She had been implicated in a corruption and nepotism scandal at the Pentagon, but the Department of Defense had determined it did not have jurisdiction to investigate her. In 2003, while at the OMB, she had lobbied then Secretary of the Air Force James Roche to get her brother a job at defense contractor Northrop Grumman, where Roche had been an executive. Though, like Kellems, she lacked experience in international development, she also received a reported quarter of a million dollars a year in compensation at the World Bank. And also like Kellems, she is alleged to have been an abrasive and abusive boss.
Wolfowitz appointee Juan José Daboub quietly began changing World Bank policy on contraception, presumably as a favor to the Bush administration, which depends heavily on the Christian right for support. Daboub, who had been close to the right-wing government of El Salvador, ordered all references to family planning removed from a strategy document for Madagascar. Bank officials were said by the Financial Times to have been afraid that the World Bank’s long-standing focus on contraception in forestalling disease was being changed by Daboub, and that poor women would suffer as a result. When the story surfaced, Wolfowitz told National Public Radio that the bank had made no changes in policy on contraceptives.
Experienced, high-level World Bank officials began resigning in droves as they saw Wolfowitz institute a reign of cronies with little development experience and massive salaries. The management style of the newcomers, cliquish among themselves and harsh toward outsiders, alienated those who remained.
None of these appointments, however unpopular, proved Wolfowitz’s undoing. It was the provisions he made for his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, that finally blew up in his face. She had been working at the bank since the late 1990s, and the two had become involved when she divorced her husband and he became estranged from his wife. Wolfowitz made his relationship with Riza public when it became clear Bush would nominate Wolfowitz to head the bank. Bank ethics rules did not allow him to oversee a lover and set her salary, though he initially insisted that he could recuse himself from such decisions while functioning as her superior. The bank’s ethics officials said no to this proposed arrangement. He then had her transferred to the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau of the State Department to work with Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of the vice president. He arranged such extraordinary salary increases for her that she ended up being better paid than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
This spring, the World Bank Group Association, which represents the institution’s 13,000 employees, sent around a memo pointing out that the pay raises received by Riza were twice what bank rules allowed. Charges of nepotism and corruption flew. Then renewed attention was given to a 2003 incident in which Douglas Feith, at the time Wolfowitz’s deputy, had briefly detailed Riza to a Defense Department contractor as a consultant on Iraq democratization, and arranged for her to receive $17,000 for a month’s worth of work.
A special subcommittee of the executive board of the bank found late last week that Wolfowitz had in fact broken ethics rules. He has been insisting that he will not resign, even though large numbers of his own employees are openly signing petitions against him. The aide he brought in from Cheney’s office, Kellems, did resign. Few think that he is a big enough sacrificial lamb to feed such a large and hungry party. The full executive board will make its decision on Tuesday. Although member states may be reluctant to simply fire Wolfowitz, given President Bush’s backing for him, they might engineer a vote of no confidence as a way of making it difficult for him to stay on.
The management techniques that got Wolfowitz in trouble at the World Bank mirrored those he used at the Pentagon to get up the Iraq war. Without cronyism, tag-teaming, and running circles around opponents of the war such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet, the pro-war cabal could never have persuaded Bush to launch the conflict or persuaded the American public to support it. State Department officials have complained bitterly to me about meetings called by Wolfowitz and others on Iraq in 2002, to which some relevant officials were pointedly not invited, or where the agenda was prearranged and rigidly stage-managed so as to ensure that only neoconservative points of view were heard. Other officials have spoken of being spied on by the neocons at the Department of Defense, to the point where they were reprimanded for cartoons or posters that they had hung on their office doors.
When Donald Rumsfeld appointed Wolfowitz his deputy in January 2001, the latter plumped to have his longtime associate Feith installed as assistant secretary of defense for policy and planning. Feith was an odd choice to be the No. 3 man at the Pentagon, given that he opposed much official U.S. government policy. He was, among other things, a diehard opponent of the Oslo peace accords between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Feith then appointed his former boss, Richard Perle, also close to the Israeli right and a man who had advocated an Iraq war for Israel’s benefit, to head the Defense Policy Board, a civilian oversight body for the Pentagon.
Just as Wolfowitz brought in Daboub at the World Bank to enforce narrow ideological programs such as gutting family planning, so he had earlier politicized intelligence at the Pentagon. Wolfowitz’s tendency toward clientelism made him vulnerable to groupthink based on unexamined premises. In the case of Iraq, the consequences were tragic.
Wolfowitz and his cronies were fixated on overthrowing the government of Iraq. Richard Clarke detailed in his memoirs, “Against All Enemies,” how he had enormous difficulty in calling a meeting of high Bush administration officials to discuss the threat of al-Qaida in spring of 2001. When Clarke finally had the opportunity to make his case to them, Wolfowitz “fidgeted” and “scowled” and attempted to shoot him down. “I just don’t understand,” complained Wolfowitz, “why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden.” Clarke says he explained that he was talking about al-Qaida “because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the U.S.”
Clarke alleges that Wolfowitz responded, “You give bin Laden too much credit,” and insisted that bin Laden’s success with operations such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing would have been impossible without a “state sponsor.” He added, “Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don’t exist.”
The theory that Saddam was actually behind almost all the terrorist attacks on the United States from 1993 forward had been laid out by wild-eyed crank and supposed Middle East expert Laurie Mylroie in her “Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America,” which was published by the American Enterprise Institute (neocon central) in 2000. Peter Bergen has pointed out that the author thanks Wolfowitz and his then wife, Clare Selgin Wolfowitz, saying that Mrs. Wolfowitz had “fundamentally shaped the book,” while Wolfowitz himself “provided crucial support.”
On Jan. 22, 2002, Wolfowitz wrote Feith, “We don’t seem to be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda … We owe SecDef [Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld] some analysis of this subject. Please give me a recommendation on how best to proceed. Appreciate the short turn-around.”
Feith created within the Near East and South Asia bureau at the Department of Defense a body he called the Office of Special Plans that cherry-picked intelligence for any indication, however unfounded, of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. This propaganda effort came in response to Wolfowitz’s special pleading. He did not ask whether such evidence existed. He simply instructed Feith to pull it “together.”
The effort was aided by corrupt financier and Iraqi expatriate politician Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi et al. supplied endless reams of lies to Wolfowitz and others about Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons program and ties to terrorism, which Wolfowitz accepted uncritically. He even believed it when they told him that Iraqi Shiites were secular. For their disinformation, Chalabi and the INC were as well rewarded as other Wolfowitz cronies. The INC received $340,000 a month from the Pentagon even after the overthrow of Saddam.
The tight network of neoconservatives, linked by their background in the 1960s and 1970s as Democratic Party hawks, by their devotion to right-wing Israeli politics, and by their previous alliances and networking during the Reagan administration, proved able to “stove-pipe” analysis and so-called intelligence to the office of Vice President Cheney and thence to George W. Bush. Once the stove-piped intelligence had helped to bring about the desired war with Iraq, any dissenters from that preordained policy had to be punished. Domestic critics were accused of treason; historical allies were marginalized. When he could not strong-arm French President Jacques Chirac into supporting his illegal war on Iraq, Wolfowitz told the U.S. Senate, “I think France is going to pay some consequences, not just with us but with other countries who view it that way.” It was not enough that Chirac lost the battle to stop what he saw as a ruinous Middle East war that would likely blow back on France. Paris had to “pay.”
Wolfowitz’s record of favoritism, ideological blinders, massive blunders and petty vindictiveness has inflicted profound harm on two of the world’s great bureaucracies, the U.S. Department of Defense and now the World Bank. He has left both with thousands of demoralized employees and imposed on both irrational policies that pandered to the far right of the Republican Party. He has, in addition, played a central role in destabilizing the Middle East and in leaving one of its major countries in ruins.
Many of his Himalayan-size errors were enabled by his careful placing of close friends and allies in key and lucrative positions. In the end, his career suffered remarkably little from his substantive policy mistakes. But once he moved beyond the forgiving world of high Republican Party politics, his dependence on cronyism finally caught up with him. That he ran into such trouble at the World Bank for behaving in ways that apparently were business as usual for him at the Department of Defense only underlines how corrupt the Bush administration really is.
Update | 5/19/07
Responding to the commentary, I’ve gone in search of information on Andrew Young’s defense of Paul Wolfowitz. Two articles, below, give you the flavor of this issue. I think the first gives the broader picture — we’re simply tired of same-old, same-old; the second is by Steve Clemons, no member of the Leering Lefty’s himself. It was difficult to find a defense of Wolfowitz on Google — Young was one of a very few. I would add that there is a major and defining difference between forgiveness of Paul’s personal foibles and approving his continuance as an international monetary leader.
JG
Wolfowitz: A View From the Other Side of the Atlantic
Michael Goldfarb, Yahoo
Wed May 16, 2007
London - they still don’t get it.
From this side of the Atlantic it is abundantly clear. Six years into the most disastrous presidency in modern American history, the political class in Washington - first through fourth estates - still don’t get it. They can no longer operate imperiously in a vacuum sealed tight by America’s unrivaled power. Their wish is no longer the world’s command.
The Wolfowitz saga proves as much. Don’t be fooled by the well-orchestrated fight-back that has played out on the opinion pages of the big American newspapers over the last month and this week on the BBC’s airwaves. The “Save Wolfie So He Can Save the World” campaign is organized by an odd combination of the usual right-wing sources and people who should know better. The right-wing sources say the pressure on Wolfowitz is a dastardly plot by those weak-kneed Europeans who have never forgiven Wolfie for his role in planning the
Iraq War. The people who should know better, like former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, pay homage to the caring Wolfowitz they have come to know in the field.
But no matter what the apologists say, the hot-air inflating the scandal and the pressure for Wolfowitz to resign are not about payback for Iraq. It is about something they - the Washington crowd - just don’t get.
You can’t preach anti-corruption and be seen not to practice what you preach. You can’t look at African leaders with wives, children, cousins and their children, and families of key cronies all on the payroll and be making special arrangements for your domestic partner and hiring political hacks whose sole qualification for the work seems to be loyalty to
President Bush. It’s called hypocrisy, and while “hypocrisy” isn’t an indictable crime, it makes reforming an institution like the
World Bank and insisting on better governance to the recipients of its loans virtually impossible.
Anyone outside Washington can see that. It isn’t just the “Europeans” (conservative shorthand for cowardly, ungrateful, former allies) who initially expressed the public disquiet with Wolfowitz. It was an official of America’s staunchest ally, Britain, who made the running.
Tony Blair’s Development Secretary Hilary Benn said more than a month ago that the scandal “had damaged the bank and should never have been allowed to happen.” Several weeks later he told Parliament that the government’s policy was to allow developing countries a greater say in how the Bank’s president was chosen … a marked change from the tradition that the U.S. administration gets to pick the President. Benn, by the way, is widely expected to be Britain’s next Foreign secretary when Gordon Brown replaces Blair as Prime Minister in six weeks.
What is happening over Wolfowitz is more like an intervention by the World Bank’s partners to save a drug addict. The Bush Administration and its enablers in the think-tanks and the press are so far gone in their inability to recognize that American power is wildly diminished that the orderly functioning of the world is now jeopardized. By forcing Wolfowitz’s resignation the partners hope to rescue the Bank’s reputation but also rescue Washington from itself. Not out of a sense of altruism, but because the international order cannot function so long as the most important country on earth is led by people blind to reality in the way drug addicts are blind to reality.
Getting Wolfie out is an act of tough love not directed at the man himself but at the Bush Administration and the rest of the permanent government … sadly,
THEY JUST DON’T GET IT.
What’s up with Andrew Young’s Groveling for Wolfowitz?
Steve Clemons
04.30.2007
Out of the blue in the Washington Post today, former US Ambassador to the UN and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young decries America’s “excessive Puritanism” and makes a plea to give the beleaguered World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz just one more chance.
One can almost imagine Young on the verge of breaking into tears as he grovels for one of the master architects of the Iraq War.
Andrew Young has done many distinguished things in his life, and I don’t want to take anything from him on those fronts. But seriously, Ambassador Young has some chutzpah to counsel the rest of America on what lines should and should not be crossed — and what should be forgiven and not in our public leaders.
One reader remarked to me this morning that “Andrew Young never saw a well-financed cause he did not love.”
Remember Andrew Young’s perceived conflicts of interest with Wal-Mart? and Nike?
Young’s appeal on behalf of Paul Wolfowitz — who not only worked out automatic “outstanding” job evaluations, automatic raises, and a huge pay increase for his girlfriend Shaha Riza but elevated two politicos, Kevin Kellems and Robin Cleveland, to senior positions completely beyond their technical competence — may be more of an appeal for himself.
Young may be scrapping for another chance for himself as well as Wolfowitz. I’ll stay silent on Andrew Young’s ledger of liabilities as opposed to assets — but Wolfowitz’s “next chance” should be outside of the Bank and should be dedicated to making some effort to reverse — in the private sector — the incredible havoc he has brought on the world.
Wolfowitz, accompanied by lawyer Robert Bennett, will appear before the World Bank Board today to respond to extensive allegations of nepotism, inappropriate conduct and lapses in his governance responsibilities. I will have updates later on Huffington Post.
Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. full free gay moviesmovies hustlerindia movies of adultgay cum movies freexxx movie trailers freesapphic pink moviesteacher sex moviesmovies adult dvd Map
May 18th, 2007
We know Rove was undermining the DoJ in order to work the votes … that’s his talent, and his value to those on the inside. Greg Palast has a LOT to say about that, and another hijack, this time of 2008 [even though there isn't a candidate on the Red side that is worth a spit in the wind, with the exception of Ron Paul.]
Two things, as you consider this collection — I’ve posted a link from Wayne Madsen on personal data theft in the last years; DO open this link, you’ll be flabbergasted. Wayne is one of those ‘tinfoil hat’ types, although he being vindicated lately … and probably will be even more as the unravel continues. He was first to point out that Uncle Dick was on the DC Madam’s list … I’ve read that in MSM, now; when you open the link to the thefts, go to his homepage and read the latest.
Secondly, I’ve posted, last, a piece on Homeland Security’s use of all this [mis]information — called, by the GAO, illegal.
Follow the dots.
Jude
Triangulating on the Truth
Dan Froomkin, Washington Post
Thursday, May 17, 2007
[snipped]
In the absence of straight answers from this administration, journalists must resort to triangulation to determine the truth.
Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified in gripping detail Tuesday about the 2004 revolt by top Justice Department officials against President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. In February 2006, however, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified that “there has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed.”
If both officials were testifying honestly — and the Justice Department yesterday stood by Gonzales’s testimony — there’s only one way to reconcile their statements: Prior to Comey’s protest, there was much more to the program than the president has thus far confirmed.
The program as confirmed involves the warrantless surveillance of communications in and out of the United States. Critics make a persuasive argument that it violated federal surveillance laws and the Constitution. In a significant turnaround, the White House in January suddenly announced that the program would start to operate under court jurisdiction.
Comey’s tale of his late-night hospital-room showdown with White House aides … ended with Bush agreeing to make unspecified changes to the program that Comey and his colleagues felt made it legal.
So what was the program like before that — when it was illegal even in the opinion of Bush’s own Justice Department? What was the government doing for two and a half years — starting soon after September 11, 2001, through the spring of 2004?
That is — or at least should be — the question of the day in Washington…
An Army of Rove-Bots
Captain Iglesias, Obstruction of Justice, and the Theft of 2008
Greg Palast, Special to The BRAD BLOG
May 16th, 2007
“The wheels have come off, the engine is on fire and no one is driving,” Captain David Iglesias told me yesterday. I’d asked the Naval Reserve officer, heading off to duty in Norfolk, why he didn’t want his old job back, United States Attorney for New Mexico.
The busted, burning, ghost-mobile he described is the Department of Justice, driven by Alberto Gonzales. Or is Karl Rove at the wheel? Or no one? Whomever, he didn’t want to jump back into Bush’s Justice Jalopy.
Today, Iglesias is in Washington to pull the junker off the road, meeting with the Office of Special Counsel where Obstruction of Justice may be swirling around in the old oil pan laying on the garage floor.
The ex-prosecutor and I, long, long ago, had both worked for the Attorney General of New Mexico, a state where the snakes have less venom than the politicians.
First, there’s Senator Pete Domenici, whose hiss is as smooth as his bite is deadly.
Domenici, softball interviewer Chris Matthews notes, is a nice guy. On TV. However, the Republican Senator’s call to Iglesias at his home, just before the 2006 midterm election, asking the prosecutor about filing charges against Democrats in the week before the vote, was downright rude. When the prosecutor replied in the negative, the Senator hung up.
And apparently, the Senator contacted one Monica Goodling who, scribbled on a notepad: “Iglesias - Domenici says he doesn’t move cases.” Oops. Goodling, a political stooge working for Gonzales, was listing the reasons for firing US attorneys. Now, rudeness was no longer the issue. Firing a prosecutor for failing to “move cases” — handcuff citizens at the request of a Senator — is Obstruction of Justice.
No wonder Monica took The Fifth.
Of course, the Rove dogsbodies at Justice couldn’t tell Congress they fired Iglesias because he wouldn’t jump at the Senator’s rattle. They reached for another complaint on Monica’s list: “absentee landlord.” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Paul McNulty used absenteeism as the official reason for dismissal. McNulty’s resigned.
He should have taken The Fifth….
The problem is that the US Attorney from New Mexico was missing for 40 days because he was on active duty. I guess the White House gang doesn’t go to the movies. Iglesias is a celebrity Navy lawyer, the role model for Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men.
“Our ‘Mission Accomplished’ President attacked you for spending time in the US Naval Reserve?” I asked Iglesias…
“Appalling,” he said. And illegal. Firing a reserve officer for missing work for active duty violates the Uniform Services Employment Rights and Reemployment Act (USERRA).
Pressuring a prosecutor to bust Democrats and punishing a soldier for deploying are the little felonies, the warm-up crimes, in this caper.
The real crime is the one they are about to commit: The Theft of 2008.
Iglesias told me he was continually being pushed to bring “voter fraud” cases beginning in 2004. Unfortunately, Iglesias went along with the game, at least at the opening kick-off, holding a press conference just weeks before the Bush-Kerry race, announcing he was setting up a task force with the FBI to hunt down evil voters.
But there were none. “It was the old throwing pasta at the wall trick. Something’s got to stick. And it didn’t,” he said.
So Iglesias got the axe. “I didn’t help them out on their bogus voter fraud prosecutions.”
Notably, Iglesias has been signaling these cases were phony-baloney for two years. I got that word from his office in 2005 while reporting for BBC Television on what passes for elections in the USA. But the New Mexico and US press continued to hawk the Republican line that masses of illegal voters, especially illegal immigrants, were jamming the polling stations.
One thing the American media still has failed to do is to explain why the GOP wanted to bring these cases. In New Mexico, in Arizona, in Georgia and a dozen other states, Republicans were pushing laws requiring voters to have special ID. In 2004, at least a quarter million citizens lost their vote because they didn’t bring in the right ID. And which quarter million? Overwhelming, it was Black, Brown and “Blue” Americans.
Yet, despite this tidal wave of a quarter million “fraudulent” voters, not one was charged with a crime. Hmmm. Maybe they were innocent. If there’s no crime, there’s no need for a law to stop the crime. But Republicans don’t want to stop voter fraud — they want to stop voters.
Iglesias wouldn’t help them do it. He did the PR stunt — but he wouldn’t handcuff the innocent. Was he fired for that? His termination was ordered by Tim Griffin, Karl Rove’s right-hand hitman. Were Griffin and Rove punishing Iglesias for not bringing the fake cases?
Iglesias said, “If his intent was, look what happened with Iglesias, if that was his intent, he’s in big trouble. That is obstruction of justice, one classic example.”
Figuring out Rove’s intent requires crawling inside his head. That’s scary and difficult — unless you have his office’s “missing” emails. I have 500 of them. How I got them is another story. The key thing, as I was discussing with my fellow alum of the AG’s office, is to explain to a jury the perps’ mindset. And these emails show the mad fixation of Griffin and the Rove crew with eliminating voters of the wrong hue.
Most notable were the “caging” lists naming thousands of voters who lost their vote to GOP challenges, a large proportion of them soldiers sent overseas. Voting rights attorney and law professor Robert F., Kennedy Jr. reviewed the evidence we obtained and concluded, “They ought to be in jail for doing this” — Griffin and his boss Rove both — for violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But who would bust them, Bobby? Alberto Gonzales?
Is Captain Iglesias just another serviceman “caged”?
And where is Griffin today? After Rove had the US Attorney for Arkansas fired, he replaced him with … Griffin. The perpetrator became the prosecutor.
And that’s the real crime: removing those who won’t conspire with the GOP bigs to push the voter ID con — and planting their Griffins, expert in election manipulation — in place for the 2008 race.
This week, I contacted the office of Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy about the Griffin appointment. They seemed oddly indifferent. Leahy’s aide said, “Well, Griffin’s just an interim appointee.”
True, Griffin has promised to leave — right after the 2008 election.
Prosecutor-gate is not about Gonzales’ incompetence. It’s not about appointing “loyal Bushies.” It’s not even about firing A Few Good Men.
It’s about the 2008 election and changing the Department of Justice — the agency charged with protecting voters — into an army of Rove-bots…programmed to attack them.
“Be Careful What You Say”
Greg Palast
May 16th, 2007
It’s a grim day for the Republic when John Ashcroft is the last line of defense of our liberties.
I didn’t know if I should barf or scream or set my hair on fire after watching former Deputy Attorney General James Comey describe how Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his Tonto, Alberto Gonzales, tried to pry the Constitution from Ashcroft’s cold dying hand.
Imagine the scene: Attorney General Ashcroft in intensive care with the two White House enforcers attempting to get him to put his weakening John Hancock on a wiretap program so rancid with illegality even a right-wing pinhead on painkillers could tell it was a bullet hole in the Bill of Rights.
But now let’s get beyond the weird episode of ER-meets-Survivor. With Ashcroft resisting, the President did an end-run around the AG to authorize the whacky wiretap program.
Were they really worried about terrorists, the guys who terrorized Ashcroft?
The truth is, the power they sought was not for hunting al Qaeda; after all, wiretaps on Osama’s pen-pals have never been challenged.
The key here is the contract. The US Constitution prohibits the government spying on us. So they contracted it out. No-bid billions to ChoicePoint Inc. and other “data mining” outfits.
What won’t come out in the hearings is that this was just one tentacle of a program to create an American KGB, a system of mass snooping which, in the end, didn’t catch any bad guys — but will be very useful indeed in creating the purge lists that will ensure the re-election of the regime in 2008.
PERSONAL DATA THEFTS 2005-2007
Wayne Madsen Report
Greg Palast, Author of Armed Madhouse, on How Rove May Have Already Stolen the 2008 Election
BuzzFlash Interview
Thu, 05/17/2007
People ask me: Are they going to steal the 2008 election? No, they’ve already stolen the 2008 election. We still have a chance of swiping it back, but the reason I’ve expanded and put out the new edition of Armed Madhouse is to tell you how they will steal in 2008, and what to do about it. That’s one of the main new things. Plus a special chapter on New Orleans and my bust down there.
~ Greg Palast
You might say, since the 2000 election, BuzzFlash and Greg Palast have shared many a foxhole in the fight for democracy. He’s a workaholic, like we are — and he doesn’t flinch one iota in investigating the powers that be.
One of the things that makes Palast such an incredible asset is that he is in the I.F. Stone tradition of his doing thorough research. As much as he’s built up a Sam Spade sleuthing persona, it is grounded in his ability to shift through large piles of documents and data that most modern reporters would just look at and cry, “No way, I’ve got to meet someone for a daquiri.”
Mainstream jounalism in D.C. is built on the “easy story,” as in the one that is handed to you by the Executive Branch. Actually, Palast doesn’t work in D.C. much at all. He is out traveling around the country — and world — doing actual investigations into what is really going on.
That’s the reason he is the person whom BuzzFlash has interviewed the most times over our seven year history.
Besides, we just love that fedora hat he’s always wearing. Just the right touch.
And Greg always has something controversial and eye-popping to share, whether you agree with him 100% or not.
So enjoy, another BuzzFlash interview with Greg Palast.
BuzzFlash: You’re having incredible success with the new expanded paperback edition of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans — Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Of course, the electronic voting machines and how they function is a very significant issue, but your specialty has really been how the Bush/Rove GOP political machine keeps persons who are likely to vote Democratic or Independent from voting.
Greg Palast: Yes. People ask me: Are they going to steal the 2008 election? No, they’ve already stolen the 2008 election. We still have a chance of swiping it back, but the reason I’ve expanded and put out the new edition of Armed Madhouse is to tell you how they will steal in 2008, and what to do about it. That’s one of the main new things. Plus a special chapter on New Orleans and my bust down there.
Of course, I was very flattered that the first review of the new edition of Armed Madhouse was written by Karl Rove and the Rove-bots — it was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee — I can’t make this up. On February 7th, the Rove team, which had been writing several e-mails screaming about Armed Madhouse and “that British reporter,” Greg Palast, were gloating that no U.S. media had picked up my stories. And they had a .pdf file attached. Of course, the reason my book was subpoenaed is that it has to do with the US prosecutor firings. The prosecutor firings were 100% about influencing elections — not about loyalty to Bush, which is what The New York Times wrote. The administration team couldn’t tolerate appointees who wouldn’t go along with crime. In the book I present the evidence that Karl Rove directed a guy named Tim Griffin to target suppressing the votes of African American students, homeless men, and soldiers. Nice guy. They actually challenged the votes and successfully removed tens of thousands of legal voters from the voter rolls, same as they did in 2000. But instead of calling them felons, they said that they had suspect addresses.
BuzzFlash: In which election cycle?
Greg Palast: 2004. And in 2006 and 2004, they challenged tens of thousands of black soldiers. They stopped their votes from being counted when they were mailed in from Baghdad. Go to Baghdad and lose your vote — mission accomplished.
BuzzFlash: How did they do that?
Greg Palast: By sending letters to the homes of soldiers, marked “do not forward.” When they came back undelivered, they said: Aha! Illegal voter registered from a false address. And when their ballot came in from Fallujah, it was challenged. The soldier didn’t know it. Their vote was lost. Over half a million votes were challenged and lost by the Republicans — absentee ballots. Three million voters who went to the polls found themselves challenged by the Republicans. This was not a small operation. It was a multi-million dollar, wholesale theft operation.
They’re right that I’m a British reporter, because I put this story on British TV, not on American TV, which won’t touch it. [BuzzFlash note: Palast writes for British papers and reports on the BBC, but he is a product of the San Fernando Valley and the University of Chicago, 100% American.] But our election was a complete, total fraud. This is grand theft — no question. It’s not a dirty trick; it’s a felony crime.
I’m working with Bobby Kennedy, who is a voting rights attorney. He said, “This is not just an icky, horrible thing that people do wearing white sheets. This is a felony crime.” [paraphrase] And the guy they put in charge of this criminal ring to knock out voters is a guy named Tim Griffin. Today, Tim Griffin is — badda-bing — U.S. Attorney for Arkansas. When they fired the honest guys, they put in the Rove-bots to fix the 2008 election. That’s what I’m saying — it’s already being stolen, as we speak. Tim Griffin is the perpetrator who’s become the prosecutor, and that’s what’s going down right now.
BuzzFlash: You have been questioned about prosecutor-gate and about the theft of the election of 2008. But these replacement prosecutors are still in place, not to mention the ones who have cooperated with Bush. Gonzales has basically told the House Judiciary Committee, make my day. I’m staying on. It’s over with. You asked me questions. I didn’t give you answers, but you don’t have the courage to impeach me, so I’m staying.
Greg Palast: That’s the game, too. Congress is shooting at the glove puppet. I shoot at the puppeteers. It’s not Gonzales. He’s meaningless. He’s a nothing. He should go because he allowed it to happen, and that’s a crime. When I was a racketeering investigator, we used to call it “willful failure to know.” He can’t just say to his staff, I know what Rove is doing, but don’t tell me about it. He would still be liable for criminal conspiracy of obstruction of justice. That’s why Monica Goodling took the Fifth. Not knowing doesn’t mean you’re not guilty, especially when you went out of your way not to know.
Gonzales should be read his rights and carted away. But it’s the puppeteers behind him — Rove and Harriet Miers — who were deeply involved in the prosecutor hits. No one’s talking about her. This is the woman who went from head of the Texas State Lottery to nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by George Bush, and no one asked how that happened. They said: Harriet who? But they didn’t ask how that happened. They said, oh, she’s loyal to Bush. She’s the one who did the payoffs to cover up the fact that George Senior got George Junior out of the war in Vietnam. Do you think that that was done just by daddy making a call? Money had to be paid — lots and lots of money to keep people quiet — $23 million. That is something I reported on BBC Television and in the Guardian newspaper. We’ve given them plenty of time to challenge that story about the payoffs. We’ve never gotten a peep from these guys. And unlike CBS, the BBC has not withdrawn the story that the fix was put in to get Chicken George out of Vietnam. No one has challenged our story, nor have we withdrawn a comment on our story that the payoffs were made to keep it quiet.
BuzzFlash: Let’s focus for the moment on voter suppression, and we’ll return later to other elements of the voter manipulation story.
Greg Palast: I have it all in Armed Madhouse, including in the three new chapters. First and foremost, is that it’s not one thing. It ain’t just electronic voting, guys. You go, oh, we have paper ballots, we’re saved, we’re saved. Bulls***! Wake up! Hello! Let’s remember that in Florida and Ohio, they didn’t have computer voting. So all the stuff about Diebold — Ohio was not stolen by computers, because they didn’t have computers there. In fact, they were thrilled when people complained about computers because they could keep the junky punch cards in. That doesn’t mean that computers are safe. As I point out in the new chapter, the Republicans held on to Katherine Harris’ seat — and we don’t want to think too carefully about that image — they held onto Katherine Harris’ seat with 300 votes, while 18,000 votes disappeared in the computers. So they do use computers. That was a pure, straight-up, shoplift of the Congressional seat.
BuzzFlash: A House committee just voted not to pursue an investigation of that election, despite the disappearance of 18,000 votes.
Greg Palast: That’s sick — deeply, deviously sick. First of all, in New York and other states, when votes are in question, they simply redo them. People talk about recount — forget it. Redo the vote. When the machines collapse, then there’s no question that there was monkey business.
BuzzFlash: Then why do you think —
Greg Palast: — why don’t Democrats stand up?
BuzzFlash: The U.S. House of Representatives is controlled by Democrats. It’s like saying, well, $320 million is missing from a bank but we’re not going to investigate that.
Greg Palast: You’re forgetting it’s not about the two parties. Vote theft is mainly a racial issue in America, and it’s a class issue. The white caucus is a lot bigger than the black caucus. They don’t call the Congress a millionaire’s club for nothing. There aren’t many guys in there — or women — who are not millionaires. So it’s the millionaires versus us. It’s the white caucus versus the black caucus, which is of great concern. So the vote is along racial class and economic lines, not along party lines. Party lines are pretty much meaningless. There’s pretty much one party — the party of the cash. But I’m not one of these people that says there’s no difference between the Democratic and Republican Party.
The question is: is the difference meaningful? That’s all. When it comes down to voter issues, remember that the Democrats in power there were elected under the racist, broken, classist system. If you fix the voting system, a third of those Democrats could never win a primary. The last thing that they want is poor people to vote.
BuzzFlash: Let’s go back to your tremendous work in the 2000 election.
Greg Palast: In that case, Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush targeted 97,000 registered voters, as it turned out, to remove from the voter rolls on the grounds that they were criminals. They were “guilty of voting black.” By the way, of out of the 97,000 people, do you know how many they charged with actually voting illegally? Of the 97,000 names that they had? Zero. They looked at six cases and brought no charges. There were only six suspected cases, out of 97,000. That’s how sick that was. And the U.S. press — Fox TV — said not one voter was wrongly disenfranchised. In Armed Madhouse, I have the little weasel on Fox who said that, next to the picture of one of the disenfranchised voters, a Gulf War veteran. They love to take out veterans, because who do you think is in the armed forces? A whole lot of war veterans lost their vote because they happened to have — as part of the legacy of slavery — names that are the same as someone who, maybe fifty years before, got convicted of something.
BuzzFlash: We just want to praise you again to the readers. We’ve seen you present a number of times, and several years ago, in Chicago, you did a presentation that shows the list that was used to disenfranchise voters.
Greg Palast: Those are the purge lists. For 2004, we have the caging lists. And in 2008, we’re going to have what’s called the verification list.
BuzzFlash: Meaning the return of the Jim Crow laws, I assume?
Greg Palast: When I say the 2008 race has already been stolen, about a million and a half voter registrations have been turned down. Even though there have been massive voter registration drives among Hispanics and African Americans, as the churches fill up the bucket, there’s a hole in the bucket where the registrations are being dumped.
It used to be that you signed your name — bang, you got through, you’re registered. Not anymore. About 40% of the registrations are being rejected on the grounds that they don’t match citizenship files. Well, you know what? It ain’t the Soviet Union. We don’t have citizenship files in the United States. They don’t exist. They can’t exist under the law, which is the U.S. Constitution.
So how do you verify voters? Well, you don’t. About the only thing that could happen is if you require a passport — and who has passports?
BuzzFlash: This is not conjecture on your part. You’re very methodical.
Greg Palast: We’ve got the documents. We ain’t guessing. When I say they had caging lists targeting innocent black soldiers, I have the lists. I have the soldiers’ names. We spoke to their families. In fact, interestingly, “60 Minutes” came into our office and said, “My God, to prove what these caging lists are, you’re going to have to make hundreds of calls and spend hundreds of hours going through this stuff.” And we said, “Yeah, it’s reporting. Try it. It won’t hurt you.”
BuzzFlash: You go back again to Florida and Choice Point, and you have excellent video documentation of the confrontations with Choice Point.
Greg Palast: Yes.
BuzzFlash: The Secretary of State’s office, meaning Katherine Harris’ office, no doubt at the request of Jeb Bush and the Bush campaign, chose to expand, rather than limit, the list.
Greg Palast: After they were done bleaching the voter rolls of Florida white — yes, they wrote some memos to cover their ass. They knew exactly what was happening. These guys were guilty as sin. They should be in prison. But it’s all right. Their CEO maybe in trouble now. He may still yet be cuffed because of allegations of insider trading. The Choice Point people are back in Armed Madhouse for a very good reason. It’s that after they bleached the voter rolls white for the Bush family, they were paid off by no-bid contracts for the war on terror. They’re the guys who are keeping these KGB lists for the government, because the government is not allowed to keep information files on citizens. It’s against the Constitution.
But somehow Bush has decided that if he contracts it out to his cronies, that there’s kind of a contracting out exception to the Constitution. So he gives it out to Choice Point. Well, do we want this private KGB earning billions? And what else do they do with the information? Well, first of all, they’re in the info biz. They are using it — they sell this stuff. And in fact, they got caught selling at least 145,000 records to identity thieves.
Another problem with using private contractors, of course, is that these private guys don’t have any of the requirements that the government does to be accurate, to produce the information under the Freedom of Information Act. These guys can ream you. And they do. Some people say, well, it’s worth it if they keep us safe. Well, I was charged by the Department of Homeland Security with violating the anti-terror laws — me. Probably I was caught doing investigative reporting in the United States.
BuzzFlash: In New Orleans, right?
Greg Palast: Yes, that was in New Orleans. While I was charged, I was afraid I wouldn’t get home, because I’d be on a watch list. And then, I’d be more afraid when I got home. So, I mean, I’m still wearing my fedora. And these are the guys who are supposed to be saving us from Osama. And as I point out in the book, I have lists of several six-month-old children who are on the terrorism watch list. You can never start too young, I suppose. Maybe they’ll open up a kind of kindergarten at Guantanamo.
BuzzFlash: People have to read Armed Madhouse and your other articles. They need to go to your site, gregpalast.com. Because you are the expert on what is basically a RICO case to undermine the American electoral and voting system in a comprehensive way from several different angles, as masterminded by Karl Rove and other people in the Republican Party. What you have exposed is, in essence —
Greg Palast: A criminal conspiracy, according to Bobby Kennedy. The BBC requires me to work with lawyers so that I don’t just shoot my mouth off on legal stuff. And Bobby Kennedy, Jr., is a law professor and an expert on voting rights law. And his father gave his life for voting rights, too, don’t forget. Bobby Kennedy says that what we have here is a criminal conspiracy to commit felony manipulation of the voter system. It violates endless numbers of laws. These people really need to be not in office, but in prison. He’s not a guy given to much excitement, but when he looked at the evidence in Armed Madhouse, he just flipped. And what’s driving him crazy as well is that Karl Rove is right. The U.S. media is not picking up the investigation.
BuzzFlash: That’s why I want to say that people should read your book and follow your website and your articles.
Greg Palast: They should stay on with BuzzFlash because, yes, a lot of my stuff will eventually get picked up by the U.S. media. They may say “there are accusations within the blogosphere,” because it’s on BuzzFlash. But, of course, this started out with a massive, high-level investigation for the BBC Television network. I’m proud to give it to BuzzFlash because we sure as hell ain’t getting it into the Washington Pravda Post. We aren’t getting into the New York Judith Miller Times. And I’m glad to say that you’re growing and they’re dying, and that’s the way it ought to be.
BuzzFlash: It is such a massive assault on the voting system and felony suppression of rights in many ways, as we’ve pointed out. They’re coming at it from all angles. For instance, in prosecutor-gate, they’re using prosecutors to kind of gin up accusations of voter fraud that don’t exist just to win elections. And then when the elections are over, they get Republicans and state legislatures to cry, oh, that was terrible, even though nothing was ever prosecuted. We need new Jim Crow voter laws to keep people who shouldn’t vote from voting, to prevent fraud that never existed.
Greg Palast: Right now, I’m following up with another story that involves prosecutor-gate. I’m speaking to one of the fired prosecutors’ offices — David Iglesias. Rove had this whole scheme. While he’s stealing votes with both hands — I mean, literally — he is, at the same time, coming up with this scheme to accuse Democrats of registering illegal aliens and encouraging massive voter ID theft. It’s a complete goofy scheme. And what they did is try to involve the U.S. attorneys in bringing prosecution. For example, in New Mexico, they wanted David Iglesias. Rove’s people told me that. Rove’s people claimed that there were 150 cases of voter ID theft in New Mexico. And I said, “Well, then send them to me.” And they said, “Well.”
It’s in the book. And they said, “Well, David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney, will back us up.” So I called his office. And they refused to back it up. They said, “Well, we don’t really have an open investigation on this.”
I said, “In other words, you can’t back up this story.” They said, “Well, I guess you could say that.” I said, “I guess I will.” In other words, they fabricated the evidence and they wanted him to bring a phony prosecution — like a Stalin trial. Pick out a couple Mexicans and say that they were voting illegally, and then we’ll disappear. But you know what? Iglesias wouldn’t do it. He and eight prosecutors drew a line in the sand.
Iglesias, you have to understand, is a right-wing Ashcroft protégé Republican, and he turned away from evidence of the Republicans stealing the election in New Mexico, which they did in 2004. He wouldn’t bust the Rove-arians there. But he wouldn’t go so far as to actually bring false prosecutions. He wouldn’t do it. He has now said the evidence they gave him is bogus. Not that he didn’t try. He had the FBI on these cases. They had the state attorney general on these cases, hoping to give them one prosecution in the entire state. They couldn’t find one. And he said he wasn’t going to just cuff some poor Mexican-American and charge him with voter fraud because Karl Rove ordered him to.
And by the way, Karl Rove flew to New Mexico. The Capo himself flew to New Mexico to give a kiss on each cheek to the doomed prosecutor. And speak to the local guys ordering his execution. Rove went to New Mexico himself to do the hit. It was bring prosecutions against Mexican Americans, or look for a job — and let’s not forget Iglesias’ last name, okay?
BuzzFlash: Now let’s focus on one individual who stands above all the prosecutors in terms of suppressing the right to vote through fraudulent strategies.
Greg Palast: A lot of competition there, but I think we have a winner.
BuzzFlash: You’ve written about “The Talented Mr. Griffin,” Arkansas’ new U.S. attorney, who has a history of suppressing minority voters. So how does Tim Griffin, a Rove protégé, Rove hit man, Rove op and research man, Rove suppression and voter man, end up in one of the disputed districts?
Greg Palast: Because the Democrats have no cojones. I’m going to tell you something very unhappy, okay? Again, it’s the white caucus versus the black caucus. It’s not Democrats versus Republicans. I talked to the black caucus. John Conyers, head of Judiciary on the House side, is very upset that you have a criminal who knocked black soldiers off the voter rolls as the U.S. attorney in Arkansas. The white caucus leader on the Senate side, is Patrick Leahy. His people said, well, Griffin is just there as an interim appointment, so big deal. Well, he’s interim through the 2008 election. In fact, I have another e-mail from inside the Rovian office which said if the Democrats complain, just say that Griffin is interim.
BuzzFlash: The press fell for this, and Democrats fell for this, too. They won’t seek Senate appointment, and everyone went, oh, you see? They’re conceding that they wouldn’t get it. But it didn’t matter because that was the whole scheme. They are in place for 2008. Rove won.
Greg Palast: Oh, it’s okay because he’s only in there for two years. It’s through the election. Like I say, this is not about Democrats versus Republicans. What you just saw was the millionaires white boys’ club — versus the black caucus. And that’s what it’s all about. America has an apartheid electoral system and an apartheid Congress. And it’s about time we call it what it is.
BuzzFlash: How does the amazing Tim Griffin represent what really is the goal? As you just pointed out, it’s very important. The Democrats in Congress seem to have forgotten this in not calling for the impeachment of Gonzales.
Greg Palast: If the prosecutors are wrongfully fired, what you do in any wrongful dismissal is you hire them back. Why don’t we have one Democrat saying put them back? Crazy.
BuzzFlash: Basically if you’re Karl Rove and you’re sitting there, you feel you’ve survived everything. And you say I’ll survive this one. The people I’ve put in place to steal the 2008 election are gonna still be there.
Greg Palast: My boys count the votes.
BuzzFlash: Let’s look at Mr. Griffin, who’s one of those who’s in place and will be there until 2008. They went around the senior Democratic senator from Arkansas, Mark Pryor. There’s all sorts of e-mails indicating how they played Pryor.
Greg Palast: The Republicans proved their point. They can break the law. They can put a criminal in as U.S. prosecutor. They can break every rule of the Senate by going around — remember, it’s not just senatorial privilege, it’s called voter privilege. The people of Arkansas elected Senator Pryor. One of the things that they elected him to do is approve the U.S. attorney for his area. We call that democracy.
BuzzFlash: Why is Griffin particularly emblematic of the reason that most of these eight were being replaced? Either to muddy up Democrats —
Greg Palast: I think that muddying the Democrats is secondary. It’s that he is the guy in charge of the caging list operation. He’s the guy who knocked off tens of thousands — and it may go up to hundreds of thousands — of Democratic voters, mostly minorities. That was his operation. And that is why he is particularly evil, manipulative; and plus, if he can get away with it and then get this appointment without any Democrat raising their voice, then what do you think he’s going to do in office? In other words, if he could get away with what he did, and the Democrats don’t complain, and they basically piss all over the Democrats and Senator Pryor says that’s all right with me, and Patrick Leahy says that’s all right with me, then obviously, what’s he going to do once he’s in office? Take my word for it, he’s going to wipe out the black voters of Arkansas.
And I smell a deal, by the way — and now I’m speculating. Everyone keeps saying he’s been put in Arkansas so he can do investigation of Hillary Clinton. He’s not going to do that. The deal’s been cut. Why do you think that he’s allowed to be there? Because the deal has been cut. We’ll put in Timmy, but he’s not going to touch Hillary. I’ve seen this before. There was a deal cut between the Democrats and Republicans back in the late nineties. The Republican, Newt Gingrich, was going to be in big legal trouble. So was Hillary Clinton. They traded. I smell a trade right here. Why would you allow a complete dirt bag, felon, criminal, racist scum spider in as U.S. prosecutor in Arkansas, in Hillary Clinton’s state, unless the deal was cut that Hillary is off limits to any investigation or grand jury charges?
BuzzFlash: Now we’ve got Griffin, specialist in violating the Voting Rights Act. In Arkansas, we have other people who were appointed who are willing to go on with the scheme to suppress the vote and then have states pass Jim Crow-type laws and Republican legislators. There probably are other prosecutors who weren’t replaced who are willing to go along with this scheme in key states. Otherwise, they would have been replaced. There also have been bogus claims of violation of registration of voters on Native American reservations.
Greg Palast: There is a litany of fake charges. In the new Armed Madhouse, I have Russell Pearce, a Republican legislator from Arizona, who said five million illegal aliens crossed the border to vote for Democrats — five million. I asked this fruitcake to give me five names. I said, “If they voted, that means that you have their names. You have their registrations. So why aren’t you arresting them?” And that’s when I began to smell the Rove plan. He said, “Oh, the U.S. attorneys are going to arrest them.” But there was not one case brought in New Mexico by the honest attorney. Not one case where there’s an honest U.S. attorney. And by the way, they did find about a half dozen illegal aliens who had registered to vote in Arizona. They were registered by the Republican Party.
BuzzFlash: You’ve shown an arc from 2000 up through 2008. Again, we want to emphasize for the umpteenth time in this interview, that despite all this “investigation” of Gonzales, the status quo remains. These U.S. attorneys were replaced, and “interim” attorneys are still functioning on behalf of Gonzales and Rove. Nothing has been done to inhibit or curtail their activity, which can result in the theft of the election in 2008. And what’s more, no one is even speaking about investigating the patterns of behavior in suppressing votes by those who weren’t replaced.
Greg Palast: But there were cases brought against voters in Missouri. One of the new prosecutors, who came in after they fired the honest guy who said that there were no cases here — the Rove-bot came in and actually brought charges in Missouri. Illegal voters, illegal voters, illegal voters — nothing in the papers about the fact that every single case — every single one — was dismissed by judges. The judge says, you’re kidding, right? You know, you’re talking about things like someone being arrested for voting twice as Juan Gonzalez. How many guys named Juan Gonzalez there are in a state? They knew. These were fraudulent cases. And when you bring a fraudulent case, you go to jail. This is what the RICO laws were about, and the Civil Rights Act of ‘64, and the Voting Rights Act of ‘65. It used to be the Democratic officials in the South that teamed up with the Ku Klux Klan to bring false cases. Well, they’re back, but the white sheets have switched parties.
BuzzFlash: You’ve laid it right out on the table in Congress, this abuse of power, the suppression of voting rights. Why then is the mainstream media ignoring what is clearly a multi-year strategy to commit felonies?
Greg Palast: Two reasons. The victims are the poor, and the victims are the defenseless. The victims are black soldiers. There’s a whole section of New Orleans — these are people that are off the radar. Do you think Obama gives a flying toot about someone living in a mobile home for a year and a half in New Orleans? Nah. They’re not voters. They’re not going to let them vote, so he doesn’t care.
And it’s a class issue. It’s a class war issue, and it’s tainted by race, too. Let’s not forget that. When I talk about voter suppression in 2000, it was a race issue. It was a story about black people. If they had removed people from country clubs off the voter rolls — baby, you’d hear it. In fact, let’s remember that the only vote manipulation story that got any play at all in 2000 was in Palm Beach. Because imagine — rich people didn’t have their votes counted correctly. All the reporters are down there, taking pictures of voters in string bikinis. And we’re down the road in Gadsden County, the blackest, poorest county in Florida where the big vote theft was done — not one single camera. Okay, except for Ted Koppel who went down there and said these poor black people — they’re just too stupid to figure out the ballot, you know? And Koppel didn’t even check on the fact that they had busted machines. But it was very easy to say black people are too stupid to figure out how to vote. You have to understand, the racism within U.S. papers is absolutely unbelievable. There is an assumption that black people are stupid, incompetent and lazy.
BuzzFlash: Where do we stand today? Gonzales appeared before Conyers’ committee, I believe, and Conyers was, of course in a huff, as he should be, because he’s a righteous man. He sees the plot.
Greg Palast: Again, he knows what’s happening. I’m in contact with his office. He’s worked on a lot of investigations with me. It’s like the man is the entire conscience of the U.S. Congress.
BuzzFlash: Along with Henry Waxman. Let’s give him at least some credit here.
Greg Palast: Waxman is fantastic. Of course, you can’t separate New Orleans and voting, Iraq and voting, the war on terror and voting — it’s all the same crew playing the same games. And there’s not only votes being lost, but blood being spilled. Of course, the book has a lot of funny stuff in it, because it’s so grim it’s humorous. It’s like a comic horror show. My friend calls it the clown-ocracy, because these are armed and dangerous jesters.
BuzzFlash: So where do we stand? Right now, we have these replacement prosecutors, and the prosecutors who weren’t replaced — some of whom went along with this voter suppression plan and rewriting state laws into Jim Crow laws. We have electronic voting machines. We have a vast scheme here. But the mainstream media is playing the story that Gonzales is going to survive this because they don’t have any more goods on him.
Greg Palast: It’s a Punch and Judy show. It’s all about Gonzales. He’s the glove puppet. How come they aren’t bringing Rove up? And remember that Conyers cannot just call Rove by himself. He needs the power of the other Democrats who have to find their soul and find their balls. They haven’t grown back yet, despite the election of 2006.
BuzzFlash: Is there anyone else on the national scene in the media, in politics, beyond Conyers and Waxman, who understands that the Bush Administration is still trying to extend unitary, executive authority, as it did a couple of weeks ago, trying to extend wireless taps, spying power, and domestic surveillance? They are not doing this with the intention that a Democrat may then end up in the presidency with expanded powers. Their intention is that the Republicans are going to hold on to the White House. To have that expectation, they must have inside knowledge about how they’re going to manipulate the election.
Greg Palast: The new chapter, called “The Theft of 2008,” calculates with, I think, some reasoned accuracy, that four and a half million votes are going to be shoplifted. Get ready for it. That doesn’t mean that they will own the White House. It just means that they start with a big old thumb on the electoral scale.
We should scream bloody murder. But the whining is not a help, you know. It only takes five million more votes. I say work with Jessie Jackson on this. If they’re going to knock out 40% of the registrations, then overwhelm them with more. If they’re going to throw away half the soldiers’ votes, then you better make sure that more of them vote, and that you’re watching it. Yes, try to change the laws. And when you can’t, you better protect yourself. Don’t mail in your ballot. Don’t go posting, fools. You know, everyone’s concerned about the electronic voting. So, do you think that they’re going to go through all this hassle to manipulate the software, but then politely take your vote that you sent through the mail, open it up, and count it correctly? Really? If you believe that, then you deserve not to have your vote counted.
BuzzFlash: One of your contentions, and it’s an important one, concerns the proprietary software issue, and the likelihood that votes have been lost through it. Certainly the Sarasota incident of 18,000 lost votes gives one pause.
Greg Palast: They want you to think that there’s one problem, which is electronic voting and paper ballots. By the way, that’s also racial. You talk to white voter activists, they talk about computers. You talk to black voter activists, and they talk about suppressing the vote. I want to repeat: There were virtually no computer voting machines in Ohio, and that’s where they stole it. There were virtually no computer voting machines in New Mexico. That’s where they stole it. There were virtually no computer voting machines in Florida in 2000. That’s where they stole it.
It’s not the computer voting machines. Yes, they’re evil. They are wrong, they are manipulative, they are hack-prone, and they stole the election through computers in Sarasota and elsewhere in the last election. By the way, Jeb Bush got reelected as governor through manipulation of the new electronic voting machines. So, yes, they are a problem. But if you think that’s it, baby, they’ve got you.
So let me explain. Start thinking like a Hispanic or black voter who’s trying to get to the polls, and they ask you for your ID.
BuzzFlash: I believe in Arizona now it’s a birth certificate.
Greg Palast: You can’t use a driver’s license, because an alien can get a driver’s license. So, you can use a birth certificate — certified original — or a passport. And what people have passports? Now, again, it’s a class issue. After all, Andy Young and Vernon Jordan and Bill Richardson are all for voter ID, okay? Because at their country club, they have plenty of IDs and they can always vote because their chauffeur can vouch for them.
Every time you have a new question or a way to challenge a voter, they will use it. They will abuse it. Three million voters were given provisional ballots. If you’re reading this and you’re white, you don’t know what a provisional ballot is. If you’re reading this and you’re black, you were the ones that got one. It’s that simple. We have one ballot for black folk, one ballot for white folk. And the black ballot is a provisional ballot and it does not get counted. And that’s how it was coming down in the United States of America.
So it’s time that the apartheid within the voter protection movement in America. White voters better start thinking about the need to protect the black vote, because your vote ain’t safe if it gets cancelled out by Karl Rove when they take away a Hispanic voter’s right to vote. You can have a nice, neat paper ballot they will count, but they’re laughing at you because they just purged fifteen Hispanics.
BuzzFlash: In your presentations, you often bring up the figure of millions of votes that are stolen before the election was even open.
Greg Palast: That’s right. Because people are being thrown off the voter rolls. In addition, the one thing that we’re constantly forgetting is that, while there’s this endless discussion of how they can hack the votes that turn you to vote from Democratic to Republican, there’s very, very little evidence of it. It’s there — I don’t doubt it. But we’re not going to find it.
But one thing we know for damn sure is that they have to do something simple. The machines simply don’t work and don’t record the vote. And then there’s no fingerprints. There’s no manipulation. It just didn’t work. We had a million and a half votes in the 2006 election which just disappeared because machines didn’t work. And now you try to prove that it was deliberate.
All you have to do is look at where they didn’t work. In places like New Mexico, 88% in minority areas — 88% in minority areas. You want to know how Diebold might have fixed the election in Cynthia McKinney’s district? Their machines don’t work in humidity. What do you have in July in Atlanta but humidity? In the poor areas. In the rich areas, they’re in air conditioned gymnasiums. That’s the games that they play. And the way that you figure it out is, you stop thinking white, and you start thinking slave.
BuzzFlash: Greg. Thank you so much.
Greg Palast: You guys are the best.
GAO says Homeland Security is breaking privacy laws
Associated Press
May. 16, 2007
WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department is breaking the law by not telling the public exactly how personal information is used to screen international travelers, including Americans, congressional investigators said Wednesday.
One of the screening programs at issue is a computer-based system called the Automated Targeting System that is used by the Customs and Border Protection agency to rate the risk posed by travelers coming to and from the United States.
In its report, the Government Accountability Office said the department is not in full compliance with privacy laws that require agencies to tell the public how the government uses their personal information.
“CBP’s current disclosures do not fully inform the public about all of its systems for prescreening aviation passenger information,” the GAO report said. “Nor do they explain how CBP combines data in the prescreening process, as required by law.”
The GAO, Congress’ auditing agency, also said Customs has not publicly disclosed all the sources of data it reviews on passengers, including information obtained from commercial sources. It did not explain what those commercial sources may be and government officials declined to comment.
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke defended the program.
“The GAO in this case is woefully uninformed and I think that Congress and the public are being poorly served by this report,” Knocke said. This program, he added, “has been the subject of more than 20 speeches or testimonies at hearings.”
Except for two footnotes to documents sent to Congress, however, the administration’s public references primarily described the system as a cargo and passenger screening system without details of its operations. Many officials were only aware of the cargo aspect of the screening system until last fall.
David Sobel, senior counsel at the rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the amount of detailed public information now available to the government presents more of a concern about privacy today than when the Privacy Act was first enacted after the Watergate scandal.
“There is a very good historical reason for the Privacy Act and DHS just seems to have a real blind spot when it comes to compliance,” said Sobel.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., also sounded a note of concern.
“While we support rigorous security screening of airline passengers bound for the United States, Customs and Border Protection must conduct this screening in a manner that protects our citizens’ privacy rights,” Thompson said in a statement.
The other prescreening process about which the GAO expressed disclosure concerns was the Advance Passenger Information System, APIS, which uses information derived from passports or other government-issued documents such as visas.
The Associated Press disclosed late last year that the Automated Targeting System used by Customs had been developing risk assessments of millions of Americans over the last four years without their knowledge. The AP also reported that those assessments were to be kept for 40 years and could be shared with state, local and foreign governments.
The ATS program compares passenger data, such as a passenger’s name, address, credit card information and data from government databases, such as a terrorist screening database, with a set of rules derived from the government’s knowledge of terrorists and criminals.
Government officials have declined to detail those rules, for security reasons. But the comparison results in a risk assessment, which can prevent someone for boarding a plane or require additional screening measures at the airport.
While the GAO found that Customs has disclosed aspects of the program, it said the agency has failed to publish a “system of records notice or a privacy impact assessment that comprehensively describes the entire prescreening process.”
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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May 18th, 2007