The Bush Administration repeatedly told the nation that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The CIA possessed thirty reports indicating Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Tyler Drumhiller, a ranking CIA official, stated that Dr. Rice and President Bush were told in 2002 that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The source was a former Iraqi foreign minister spying for the CIA. Yet Donald Rumsfeld assured his fellow citizens that the WMDs were “in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
The two Neo Conservative intelligence shops provided President Bush, the Congress, and the public a great number of reasons for attacking Iraq, ranging from Saddam’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction to a fleet of remote controlled drone’s that could reach American cities. George W. Bush told a Cincinnati audience on October 7, 2002 that Iraq might strike the US in league with its terrorist allies. NeoCons in the Bush administration said the problem was that the CIA analysts took too pragmatic a view and were unable to envision the Middle East as it could be. The CIA responded to this pressure by cooking data to help the case that Iraq had WMDs. When the professional intelligence people questioned whether Saddam had WMDs, the administration relied on reports that they did exist offered by “Curveball,” a discredited source provided by the exiled Iraqi National Congress. Iraqi intelligence even offered to permit the CIA to look at any site it named, but the agency showed no interest in taking up the offer. There is evidence that as late as April 2006, President Bush was still convinced that Saddam did have WMDs.
The Bush administration sold the invasion of Iraq to the American people with the claim that Saddam Hussein had close ties to the 9/11 terrorists. For the most part, this was done by mentioning Saddam and the terrorists in the same paragraph rather than by stating outright that Saddam was behind the attack on the US. It was rarely said directly that he had helped Al Qaeda in the attack, but it was argued that he possessed weapons that terrorists could use in future attacks. To leave him in place was to risk another 9-11. Vice President Cheney did directly link Saddam to Al Qaeda long after others moved to mentioning Saddam and Al Qaeda in the same statements without directly linking them. The president was to tell a group of visiting senators, “ F___ Saddam. We’re taking him out. “
The administration talked about “connections” and “lineages” with Al Qaeda. Challenged by a Congressional Committee, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith sent to the hill a list of unconfirmed reports and rumors, some of which proved Iraq and Al Qaeda were not working together. A 2003 poll revealed that 44% of the American people believed that some of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis. Later, in Iraq, there were reports of American troops mistreating people “as payback for 9/11.” In fact, Saddam did not let Al Qaeda roam Iraq at will, but these terrorists were able to do so after the invasion of Iraq. In, mid-September 2003, the president himself admitted that there was no evidence that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 or that Iraq had close ties to Al Qaeda. This admission came at a time when almost 70% of the American public had come to believe that Saddam was tied to 9/11.
The bipartisan 9/11 commission reported that there was no evidence Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks, and Vice President Dick Cheney immediately denounced the press for reporting this finding. Bush claimed the report supported him because he had said there were “ties” between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Some days later Bush again said Saddam “had terrorist ties.” The commission’s main task was examining what happened on 9/11, and it essentially supported the official story. Led by counsel Alberto Gonzales, the White House lawyers stonewalled the commission at every turn, and Bush and Cheney insisted on being questioned together, and not under oath, ostensibly to keep their story straight. The commission was denied access to detainees and even the House of Representatives’ investigative committee refused to share its findings, claiming “congressional privilege.”
Even before the Neo Conservatives assumed positions of power, they were suspicious of the CIA and military intelligence, seeing these people as timid and “Clintonistas.” They were determined to take these people down a notch or two. They made no secret of questioning the knowledge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In October 2001, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz created their own intelligence shop called “the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group.” At first it had only two operatives, but they had the advantage of having the ear of people in high places. They could sort through intelligence gathered by others and “cherry pick” a case for attacking Iraq. This operation was headed by David Wurmser and was called the Policy Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Group, which Lt. Colonel Karen Kwaitkowski said “wasn’t intelligence, it was propaganda.” Much of the information Feith and Wurmser relied upon came from the Iraqi National Congress, under Ahmed Chalabi, an organization dependent upon the Department of Defense for funding. Many of its reports later turned out to be fabricated. The Wurmser operation was folded into the Pentagon’s Office of special Plans, and he became Vice President Cheney’s Middle East advisor. The Defense Intelligence Agency strenuously objected to the work of these amateurs. To no avail, CIA director George Tenet objected to the new intelligence operations.
Experts then thought that among states which might aid terrorists, Iraq was only the 4th or 5th most dangerous. This new office worked closely with the Office of the Vice President, which functioned as a similar intelligence shop. Cheney’s office and the NeoCons in the Pentagon were the core of what Powell aide General Larry Wilkerson called a “cabal” that took control of US foreign policy. Later, as the second Iraq War approached, Feith strongly adhered to the Neo Conservative belief that no planning would be necessary for the aftermath and said there was “no fucking way” Defense would consult with sister agencies about this.
Later, a Republican Congress found no evidence that CIA and NSA analysts were pressured to turn up evidence the Neo Conservatives wanted, despite the numerous visits of Dick Cheney to Langley. However, NSA analyst Kenneth Ford was the key liaison to the NeoCon intelligence shops and earned their enmity. His report did not justify the invasion of Iraq, and he wrote that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. He was hounded for more than two years and convicted on trumped up charges of having secret documents strewn around his kitchen in a case marked by many strange twists, what appeared to be prosecutorial misconduct, and a tainted jury. When the FBI searched his house without warrants for several hours, they detained him, refused him water, or bathroom privileges. It was even demonstrated that the FBI used an informant and a former parolee to bring one document into his house so they could claim a pretext to search for other documents, which were most probably planted. His case should serve as a warning to other honest intelligence analysts.
Two years after the invasion of Iraq, Lt. General William Odum, former head of the NSA, called this “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.” It was brought about and orchestrated by a relatively small cabal of Neo Conservatives and their nationalist allies. Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are traditional nationalists who have signed Neo Conservative documents and have been making common cause with them. Traditional nationalists like Cheney saw an attack on Iraq as desirable because it would reduce energy problems. The extent to which a concern for a rapidly growing dependence on Arab-controlled hydrocarbons influenced Neo Conservative policy is unclear. By the time of the invasion of Iraq, it was clear that Saudi Arabia could no longer be an American base in the Middle East or America’s main source of Middle Eastern oil. The intense secrecy of the George W. Bush administration prevents making solid judgments and there was intense pressure for all involved to conform to the policy line laid down by Cheney and his ideological confreres. Later, a White House aide told a reporter, ,"It's like working in an insane asylum. People walk around like they're in a trance. We're the dance band on the Titanic, playing out our last songs to people who know the ship is sinking and none of us are going to make it."
The war on terror coupled with aggressive unilateralism in foreign affairs was another aspect of the New Right’s cultural wars. It was designed to restore the old doctrine of Manifest Destiny and remove the deep shame that attended the evacuation of Saigon. It was a frontal attack on all those who thought America was in danger of doing sometime wrong. It would vanquish moral relativism and restore moral authority and the imperial presidency. As the congressional elections of 2002 approached, emphasis shifted from combating Al Qaeda to building support for a strike against Iraq, which had been labeled a terrorist nation. In the presidential election of 2000, Bush frequently talked about removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
The manner in which the nation decided to go to war “cast a dark shadow over the health of the U.S. political institutions and the celebrated system of democratic debate and checks and balances.” Congress gave Bush a blank check authorizing him to move at his discretion. Democrats, fearful of being called soft on terrorism, went along enthusiastically. By not questioning Bush’s run-up to war, the press and electronic media in effect set the public agenda, and the opposition politicians lacked the cour4age to question it.. There was little debate over whether the nation should go to war and critics were not given equal time. As historian Arthur Schlesinger noted, “They were reluctant to add to the low esteem in which they are held by questioning a presidential war.” The war even received the eager support of the “Neo Conservative voice of the [Washington] Post’s editorial page.”
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Invasion of Iraq Trumps War on Terror
The struggle against terrorism was substantially weakened because the Bush administration decided to redirect to the Persian Gulf many intelligence units that had been focused on Al Qaeda and other terrorists in Afghanistan. To this day, there is no certain knowledge about why the US decided to invade Iraq.
The the drive for war with Iraq brought to an end day-to-day intelligence cooperation with Syria, which had strong reasons to work with Washington against Al Qaeda. The US demanded Syrian help with the preparations for war and threatened that country after the successful Second Gulf War. Syria possessed vital information about how Saudi Arabia used the Muslim Brotherhood to assist terrorists. European intelligence experts acknowledged that the US was successful in rounding up many Al Qaeda leaders, but they suggested that US policy had increased the number of Al Qaeda recruits: “There are fewer leaders but more followers.” Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorist groups were clearly gaining much more support throughout the Islamic world. In a memo leaked in 2003, even Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the US war on terrorism was producing more terrorists than it was killing or rounding up.
The Bush administration did almost nothing to stop the terrorists from “distorting Islam into a new ideology of hate.” The attack on Muslim Iraq fueled the argument that America was launching a crusade against Islam, making Bush and the US effective recruiters for Al Qaeda. In return for Russian support of the American attack on Afghanistan, George W. Bush supported the Russian efforts in Chechnya, calling the Chechens “the killers who came to America.” This pronouncement strengthened Al Qaeda’s case that the US consistently pursued anti-Islamic policies. The US also endorsed China’s long campaign to reduce in numbers the Islamic Uighur ethnic group in western China. Moreover, the US essentially gave Israel a free hand in dealing with Palestinians, particularly in Jenin, Bethlehem, and Rafah. A 2003 Pew poll showed that Moslem hostility to the US was based on US policies rather than on disapproval of US values. Yet the Administration continually insisted that Islamic opposition was based on hatred for the way we live, which discouraged a mature reconsideration of our foreign policies. Hostility to the US became so great in the Islamic world that President Pervez Musharraf, an American ally, told the UN on September 23, 2004, “Action has to be taken before an iron curtain finally descends between the West and the Islamic world.” A pro-Taliban Pakistani senator explained, “The hatred has increased because of the continued anti-Muslim policies of the US leadership.” He claimed, “The basic reason for this growing gap is US policies. The US wants to grab natural resources of the Muslim world by brute power, and the Muslims have become aware of its design.”
First Steps in Going After Saddam
Early in the morning of September 12, 2001, NSC counter terrorism expert Richard Clarke returned to the White House after showering and changing clothes at home. He was surprised to walk “into a series of discussions about Iraq.” He had expected to hear talk about retaliating against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld saw the attack as an excuse to attack Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld was ready to go against Iraq, saying, “Sweep it all up. Things related, things not.” Wolfowitz did not believe such an act of terror could be without a state sponsor and had previously stated that he adhered to the discredited conspiracy theory that Iraq was behind the first attack on the World Trade Center. Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute, who wrote Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America, propounded it. The author noted that Wolfowitz and his then wife “provided crucial support.” It was claimed that Iraq was behind almost all the attacks on America in the 90s, and held that the crash of flight 800 in 1996 was the work of Iraqi agents. Likewise, the 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa were “the work of Bin Laden and Iraq.” After the attacks on 9/11, which involved skilled Iraqi pilots, the remaining Iraqi plotters left the United States. Richard Perle, an important architect of Neo Conservative foreign policy, said the book was “splendid and wholly convincing.” Acceptance of this book by Neo Conservative advisors might explain why President Bush told assistants after 9/11, “I believe that Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to strike them now.” Dr.Mylroie, a Middle East expert, insisted that the real Ramzi Yousef was not being held by federal authorities but was with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. She charged that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the acknowledged designer of the terrorist attacks, was also a secret Iraqi agent. Yousef was really the mastermind of the Muhabarat, Iraqi intelligence, which was considered as competent as the Keystone Cops. His real name was Abdul Rahman Yasin. James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, was dispatched by Wolfowitz to Great Britain where he was to obtain proof that Mohammed Atta, the lead terrorist on 9/11, was working with Iraqi intelligence and involved in the mailing of anthrax to journalists and politicians. To prove his theory, Wolfowitz tried to get Ramzi Ahmed Yousef declared retroactively an “enemy combatant” as late as February 2003. He wanted the prisoner removed to someplace where he could be persuaded to reveal how Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were linked. In 2004, Mylroie complained that Bush was unable to get any intelligence people to investigate the validity of her claims “because of bureaucratic obstructionism.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was proclaiming that he had “bullet proof” evidence that Al Quada was linked to Iraq in the 9/11 attacks.
Later, on September 12, President Bush instructed Clarke to Ago back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way....” He added AI want to know any shred....” During the campaign of 2000, George W. Bush criticized Clinton’s efforts at “nation building “ and said his foreign policy would show considerable humility. He repeatedly talked about removing Saddam Hussein from power, but his words did not convince many that he would soon want to go to war against However, former Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill, who had also been a member of the National Security Council, noted that from the first days of the Bush administration, it was clear that the president and his inner circle were determined to bring about regime change in Iraq. In January 2001, the Bush administration was discussing the postwar occupation of Iraq and looking over very specific proposals for dividing up Iraq’s fields. The U.S. had become dangerously dependent upon Saudi oil, and it was necessary to find a suitable counterweight. The Saudis faced serious opposition from Shia opposition in their Eastern Province, and it was suspected that many in its their government were not loyal. Another reason was that America’s allies had become disenchanted with sanctions against Iraq. They were less and less effective, and the time was coming when they would collapse altogether. Invasion made unnecessary a losing fight to prop them up.
Days after 9/11, the Defense Policy Board was convened to consider attacking Iraq. Notice of the meeting was not given to the NSC, CIA, or State Department. James Woolsey’s trip to London was undertaken as part of his responsibilities as a member of the DPB, and the other agencies were not informed about the nature of his mission. Even the Defense Intelligence Agency was left out in the cold, perhaps due to its close ties to the CIA. This would be the beginning of a circle of Neo Conservatives and their allies in the Bush government to see that their policies were followed. It is likely that it was this group that was behind efforts to persuade Chinese military brass to engineer a coup against Kim Jong II. John Bolton, a NeoCon in the Pentagon, openly ridiculed the two Koreas peace process even though his department supported it. Michael Ledeen, friend of NSC chair Richard Perle, renewed ties with Manichur Ghorbanifer to drive a wedge between Iran and Syria even though other elements in the US government wanted to encourage those ties in part because both were working together against Al Qaeda. Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy appears to have been behind these moves. Feith and Wolfowitz worked closely with the Vice President’s office, which was filled with Neo Conservatives who shared their views. Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowsky noted that she witnessed several incidents in which officers were told not to work with their counterparts in other departments and agencies. It is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility, that this tight circle of people shaped policy and brought along President Bush through his ties with Dick Cheney. There is no way to know what role Condoleezza Rice had, other than as an apologist for Bush policies. After the second Iraq war was won, soon became obvious that the Shiites would control the South and that it would be necessary for the US to deal with their sponsor Iran. However, that door had been largely closed.
Oil
There is no certain information about why the United States went to war. One important fact is that there was general agreement that Saddam Hussein could not be relied upon to produce predictable flows of oil. The State Department, interested in controlling Iraq’s OPEC seat, proposed to remedy that with its Walnut Creek strategy. It proposed briefly inserting troops and using force to produce a coup and install a different government under a General Nazir Khazraji then living in Denmark. The Neo Conservatives, centered in the Vice President’s office and the Pentagon insisted on occupying Iraq so that they could privatize Iraqi oil and other business interests. They thought privatization would drive down oil prices, and they expected the new owners to pump far more oil. Their working plan was a document entitled, “Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth.” In the end they privatized much of the Iraqi economy, but US petroleum interests insisted that the new Iraqi government nominally control the oil. Their rationale was that this would keep OPEC prices high. It was also their intention to curtail Iraqi production in order to boost oil prices.
A Republican columnist remarked that Bush’s circle is " more inbred, secretive, and vindictive than the Mafia.” The testimony of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke makes it clear the administration was talking about grabbing Iraq’s oil long before 9/11. The so-called Downing Street Memo could also be seen as making this case. It did eventually become clear that either intelligence was misused to sell the war or the intelligence the administration had was just plain wrong. Almost three years after the invasion, a high-ranking CIA official went on the record. Soon after retiring, Paul L. Pilar, formerly national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, said the administration misused the intelligence it had been given. The whole body of intelligence suggested there would be a “messy aftermath” and that going to war was not in the national interest. He dismissed the findings of the Silverman-Robb Commission on whether intelligence had been cooked and the interim report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Those documents only were concerned with whether there had been the crudest attempts at politicization. There were many subtle pressures, and the administration continually framed questions to get answers it wanted to confirm a policy already decided upon.
The CIA was estimating then that by 2015, 75% of Middle Eastern oil would go to Asia, mainly China. However, Donald Rumsfeld later said, that the war had “nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.” Even before the war, the Neo Conservatives had a plan in place to sell off Iraq’s oil fields, but that plan ran into problems, including the fears of American firms that it could damage the OPEC price structure. Vice President Cheney’s office came up with a 323-page plan B on behalf of the big oil interests, which is now being implemented. However, in 2003, the American-dominated oil ministry said that almost none of its previous contracts with foreign firms would be honored. In 2005 and 2006, the Iraqis worked out Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) with American firms. Most oil countries avoid PSAs because they hold down the producer’s share of the profits.
Selling the Second Iraq War
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The the drive for war with Iraq brought to an end day-to-day intelligence cooperation with Syria, which had strong reasons to work with Washington against Al Qaeda. The US demanded Syrian help with the preparations for war and threatened that country after the successful Second Gulf War. Syria possessed vital information about how Saudi Arabia used the Muslim Brotherhood to assist terrorists. European intelligence experts acknowledged that the US was successful in rounding up many Al Qaeda leaders, but they suggested that US policy had increased the number of Al Qaeda recruits: “There are fewer leaders but more followers.” Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorist groups were clearly gaining much more support throughout the Islamic world. In a memo leaked in 2003, even Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the US war on terrorism was producing more terrorists than it was killing or rounding up.
The Bush administration did almost nothing to stop the terrorists from “distorting Islam into a new ideology of hate.” The attack on Muslim Iraq fueled the argument that America was launching a crusade against Islam, making Bush and the US effective recruiters for Al Qaeda. In return for Russian support of the American attack on Afghanistan, George W. Bush supported the Russian efforts in Chechnya, calling the Chechens “the killers who came to America.” This pronouncement strengthened Al Qaeda’s case that the US consistently pursued anti-Islamic policies. The US also endorsed China’s long campaign to reduce in numbers the Islamic Uighur ethnic group in western China. Moreover, the US essentially gave Israel a free hand in dealing with Palestinians, particularly in Jenin, Bethlehem, and Rafah. A 2003 Pew poll showed that Moslem hostility to the US was based on US policies rather than on disapproval of US values. Yet the Administration continually insisted that Islamic opposition was based on hatred for the way we live, which discouraged a mature reconsideration of our foreign policies. Hostility to the US became so great in the Islamic world that President Pervez Musharraf, an American ally, told the UN on September 23, 2004, “Action has to be taken before an iron curtain finally descends between the West and the Islamic world.” A pro-Taliban Pakistani senator explained, “The hatred has increased because of the continued anti-Muslim policies of the US leadership.” He claimed, “The basic reason for this growing gap is US policies. The US wants to grab natural resources of the Muslim world by brute power, and the Muslims have become aware of its design.”
First Steps in Going After Saddam
Early in the morning of September 12, 2001, NSC counter terrorism expert Richard Clarke returned to the White House after showering and changing clothes at home. He was surprised to walk “into a series of discussions about Iraq.” He had expected to hear talk about retaliating against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld saw the attack as an excuse to attack Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld was ready to go against Iraq, saying, “Sweep it all up. Things related, things not.” Wolfowitz did not believe such an act of terror could be without a state sponsor and had previously stated that he adhered to the discredited conspiracy theory that Iraq was behind the first attack on the World Trade Center. Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute, who wrote Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America, propounded it. The author noted that Wolfowitz and his then wife “provided crucial support.” It was claimed that Iraq was behind almost all the attacks on America in the 90s, and held that the crash of flight 800 in 1996 was the work of Iraqi agents. Likewise, the 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa were “the work of Bin Laden and Iraq.” After the attacks on 9/11, which involved skilled Iraqi pilots, the remaining Iraqi plotters left the United States. Richard Perle, an important architect of Neo Conservative foreign policy, said the book was “splendid and wholly convincing.” Acceptance of this book by Neo Conservative advisors might explain why President Bush told assistants after 9/11, “I believe that Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to strike them now.” Dr.Mylroie, a Middle East expert, insisted that the real Ramzi Yousef was not being held by federal authorities but was with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. She charged that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the acknowledged designer of the terrorist attacks, was also a secret Iraqi agent. Yousef was really the mastermind of the Muhabarat, Iraqi intelligence, which was considered as competent as the Keystone Cops. His real name was Abdul Rahman Yasin. James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, was dispatched by Wolfowitz to Great Britain where he was to obtain proof that Mohammed Atta, the lead terrorist on 9/11, was working with Iraqi intelligence and involved in the mailing of anthrax to journalists and politicians. To prove his theory, Wolfowitz tried to get Ramzi Ahmed Yousef declared retroactively an “enemy combatant” as late as February 2003. He wanted the prisoner removed to someplace where he could be persuaded to reveal how Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were linked. In 2004, Mylroie complained that Bush was unable to get any intelligence people to investigate the validity of her claims “because of bureaucratic obstructionism.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was proclaiming that he had “bullet proof” evidence that Al Quada was linked to Iraq in the 9/11 attacks.
Later, on September 12, President Bush instructed Clarke to Ago back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he’s linked in any way....” He added AI want to know any shred....” During the campaign of 2000, George W. Bush criticized Clinton’s efforts at “nation building “ and said his foreign policy would show considerable humility. He repeatedly talked about removing Saddam Hussein from power, but his words did not convince many that he would soon want to go to war against However, former Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill, who had also been a member of the National Security Council, noted that from the first days of the Bush administration, it was clear that the president and his inner circle were determined to bring about regime change in Iraq. In January 2001, the Bush administration was discussing the postwar occupation of Iraq and looking over very specific proposals for dividing up Iraq’s fields. The U.S. had become dangerously dependent upon Saudi oil, and it was necessary to find a suitable counterweight. The Saudis faced serious opposition from Shia opposition in their Eastern Province, and it was suspected that many in its their government were not loyal. Another reason was that America’s allies had become disenchanted with sanctions against Iraq. They were less and less effective, and the time was coming when they would collapse altogether. Invasion made unnecessary a losing fight to prop them up.
Days after 9/11, the Defense Policy Board was convened to consider attacking Iraq. Notice of the meeting was not given to the NSC, CIA, or State Department. James Woolsey’s trip to London was undertaken as part of his responsibilities as a member of the DPB, and the other agencies were not informed about the nature of his mission. Even the Defense Intelligence Agency was left out in the cold, perhaps due to its close ties to the CIA. This would be the beginning of a circle of Neo Conservatives and their allies in the Bush government to see that their policies were followed. It is likely that it was this group that was behind efforts to persuade Chinese military brass to engineer a coup against Kim Jong II. John Bolton, a NeoCon in the Pentagon, openly ridiculed the two Koreas peace process even though his department supported it. Michael Ledeen, friend of NSC chair Richard Perle, renewed ties with Manichur Ghorbanifer to drive a wedge between Iran and Syria even though other elements in the US government wanted to encourage those ties in part because both were working together against Al Qaeda. Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy appears to have been behind these moves. Feith and Wolfowitz worked closely with the Vice President’s office, which was filled with Neo Conservatives who shared their views. Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowsky noted that she witnessed several incidents in which officers were told not to work with their counterparts in other departments and agencies. It is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility, that this tight circle of people shaped policy and brought along President Bush through his ties with Dick Cheney. There is no way to know what role Condoleezza Rice had, other than as an apologist for Bush policies. After the second Iraq war was won, soon became obvious that the Shiites would control the South and that it would be necessary for the US to deal with their sponsor Iran. However, that door had been largely closed.
Oil
There is no certain information about why the United States went to war. One important fact is that there was general agreement that Saddam Hussein could not be relied upon to produce predictable flows of oil. The State Department, interested in controlling Iraq’s OPEC seat, proposed to remedy that with its Walnut Creek strategy. It proposed briefly inserting troops and using force to produce a coup and install a different government under a General Nazir Khazraji then living in Denmark. The Neo Conservatives, centered in the Vice President’s office and the Pentagon insisted on occupying Iraq so that they could privatize Iraqi oil and other business interests. They thought privatization would drive down oil prices, and they expected the new owners to pump far more oil. Their working plan was a document entitled, “Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth.” In the end they privatized much of the Iraqi economy, but US petroleum interests insisted that the new Iraqi government nominally control the oil. Their rationale was that this would keep OPEC prices high. It was also their intention to curtail Iraqi production in order to boost oil prices.
A Republican columnist remarked that Bush’s circle is " more inbred, secretive, and vindictive than the Mafia.” The testimony of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke makes it clear the administration was talking about grabbing Iraq’s oil long before 9/11. The so-called Downing Street Memo could also be seen as making this case. It did eventually become clear that either intelligence was misused to sell the war or the intelligence the administration had was just plain wrong. Almost three years after the invasion, a high-ranking CIA official went on the record. Soon after retiring, Paul L. Pilar, formerly national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, said the administration misused the intelligence it had been given. The whole body of intelligence suggested there would be a “messy aftermath” and that going to war was not in the national interest. He dismissed the findings of the Silverman-Robb Commission on whether intelligence had been cooked and the interim report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Those documents only were concerned with whether there had been the crudest attempts at politicization. There were many subtle pressures, and the administration continually framed questions to get answers it wanted to confirm a policy already decided upon.
The CIA was estimating then that by 2015, 75% of Middle Eastern oil would go to Asia, mainly China. However, Donald Rumsfeld later said, that the war had “nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.” Even before the war, the Neo Conservatives had a plan in place to sell off Iraq’s oil fields, but that plan ran into problems, including the fears of American firms that it could damage the OPEC price structure. Vice President Cheney’s office came up with a 323-page plan B on behalf of the big oil interests, which is now being implemented. However, in 2003, the American-dominated oil ministry said that almost none of its previous contracts with foreign firms would be honored. In 2005 and 2006, the Iraqis worked out Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) with American firms. Most oil countries avoid PSAs because they hold down the producer’s share of the profits.
Selling the Second Iraq War
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The Nasty Side of Public Diplomacy
The Reagan administration also used national security concerns to spend public funds to create American public support for its foreign policy in Central America. The Reagan administration launched a massive campaign to persuade the American public to support the Contra rebels in Nicaragua and other right-wing movements in Central America. About $200,000,000 in public funds were used by the Reagan administration. Money from many private foundations was also employed. A precedent for this was Nixon’s “Operation Mocking Bird,” which placed CIA operatives in major journalistic positions. to assure that the press took a sufficiently anti-Communist line. The Reagan program was different in that it sold a particular approach to dealing with an alleged communist threat. While an administration certainly has the right to influence opinion, it is doubtful there is a right to use public funds for political purposes. This “perception management” campaign was called Project Truth and worked in part through the apparatus of Project Democracy, which was run by Walter Raymond, a 30 year CIA veteran who resigned from the agency to do this work. A parallel operation in the State Department was run by Otto Reich. It was a “public diplomacy” operation in which efforts were made to recruit supporters in universities and the media. Publications were used, speakers deployed, and magazines founded. Polls were taken to find arguments that would sell. It was found that claiming the Sandanistas were anti-Semitic was a strong argument, even though there was no supporting evidence. People were also alerted to the danger of millions of left-leaning people from Central America coming across the US border. It was thought that most of them would flee after leftists took over Central America and Mexico and wrecked those economies.
Psychological warfare operatives from the military and propaganda experts from the CIW were employed to use techniques once reserved for foreign countries and enemy populations to manipulate American opinion and influence Congress. The taught Republican spokesmen to stay on message, to repeat it continually, and that with skillful arguments they could create reality with words. Days after coming to power, Jean Kirkpatrick, Alexander Haig, and Bill Casey demonstrated how effective their information management techniques were in dealing with the four nuns who were raped and murdered by a right-wing death squad in El Salvador in December 1980. Kirkpatrick hinted they deserved their fate because they were leftist political activists, and others hinted they may have been packing weapons and trying to run a roadblock. Soon right wing journalists were shouting at the nun’s families that they were not raped.
The new strategy was remarkable because it was based on flat lies rather than just representing the spinning of half-truths. Eventually, they were able to reverse American opinion on Central American issues and even make massacres and the murder of tens of thousands simply fade away. The public diplomacy operation was located in the State Department and run by Otto Reich, who later became assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere in the George W. Bush administration. The comptroller general had noted that Reich’s public diplomacy activities constituted illegal propaganda. To give the Reagan administration the benefit of the doubt, it should be noted that government has a long history of trying to influence journalists to cover foreign policy in certain ways. Moreover, the Pentagon has also engaged extensively in these activities. The difference under Reagan was scale and creating stories without any factual basis.
Many op-ed pieces were planted, especially in the Wall Street Journal. Long after these operations were over, in 1994 when Oliver North ran unsuccessfully for the Senate, another successful information-planting operation briefly but effectively planted all the blame for not reporting contra drug running on a rogue lieutenant colonel, Oliver North. Of course, he did far more than look the other way. It was a strange comeuppance for a man who was adept at coaching contra drug runners to pose as human rights advocates and speak against their opponents. Oliver North sent an underling to Congress to testify posing as a Roman Catholic priest and claiming the contras were very religions and respectful of human rights. Journalistic “enemies” were targeted and usually demoted or taken off Central America. These people were continually trashed and their journalistic integrity questioned.
An ABC reporter who survived this treatment finally volunteered to cover the Ethiopian civil war rather than remain a target of unrelenting fire. Journalists who wrote positive things about the right-wing movements were rewarded. Soon the State Department established the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America under Otto Reich. He proved to be very energetic and industrious and was particularly successful in forcing NPR and CBS to avoid reporting negative information about the right-wing movements. Reich’s operation included five people borrowed from the military who were experts in psychological warfare.
The FBI cooperated by investigating and harassing people who were critical of the contras and other right-wing operations in Central America. Two Associated Press investigative reporters were branded “Sandanista agents,” and the AP quickly decided to give as little space as possible to stories about contra corruption and drug trading. Newsweek also reluctantly printed such stories, including one about the office of Vice President Bush helping to supply the contras when funds were cut off, but its top officials were continually harassed and intimidated by government officials about this and the reporter who had been pursuing these matters was forced to resign in 1990. Once a respected liberal magazine, The New Republic became an outlet for the Reagan administration’s propaganda. The General Accounting Office eventually ruled that these government activities violated the law that made “covert propaganda” illegal. Congress cut off funding for public diplomacy in 1987, but these abuses of law could not be mentioned in committee reports without running the risk of losing the veneer of bi-partisanship. Republicans would not sign reports that discussed these matters.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Psychological warfare operatives from the military and propaganda experts from the CIW were employed to use techniques once reserved for foreign countries and enemy populations to manipulate American opinion and influence Congress. The taught Republican spokesmen to stay on message, to repeat it continually, and that with skillful arguments they could create reality with words. Days after coming to power, Jean Kirkpatrick, Alexander Haig, and Bill Casey demonstrated how effective their information management techniques were in dealing with the four nuns who were raped and murdered by a right-wing death squad in El Salvador in December 1980. Kirkpatrick hinted they deserved their fate because they were leftist political activists, and others hinted they may have been packing weapons and trying to run a roadblock. Soon right wing journalists were shouting at the nun’s families that they were not raped.
The new strategy was remarkable because it was based on flat lies rather than just representing the spinning of half-truths. Eventually, they were able to reverse American opinion on Central American issues and even make massacres and the murder of tens of thousands simply fade away. The public diplomacy operation was located in the State Department and run by Otto Reich, who later became assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere in the George W. Bush administration. The comptroller general had noted that Reich’s public diplomacy activities constituted illegal propaganda. To give the Reagan administration the benefit of the doubt, it should be noted that government has a long history of trying to influence journalists to cover foreign policy in certain ways. Moreover, the Pentagon has also engaged extensively in these activities. The difference under Reagan was scale and creating stories without any factual basis.
Many op-ed pieces were planted, especially in the Wall Street Journal. Long after these operations were over, in 1994 when Oliver North ran unsuccessfully for the Senate, another successful information-planting operation briefly but effectively planted all the blame for not reporting contra drug running on a rogue lieutenant colonel, Oliver North. Of course, he did far more than look the other way. It was a strange comeuppance for a man who was adept at coaching contra drug runners to pose as human rights advocates and speak against their opponents. Oliver North sent an underling to Congress to testify posing as a Roman Catholic priest and claiming the contras were very religions and respectful of human rights. Journalistic “enemies” were targeted and usually demoted or taken off Central America. These people were continually trashed and their journalistic integrity questioned.
An ABC reporter who survived this treatment finally volunteered to cover the Ethiopian civil war rather than remain a target of unrelenting fire. Journalists who wrote positive things about the right-wing movements were rewarded. Soon the State Department established the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America under Otto Reich. He proved to be very energetic and industrious and was particularly successful in forcing NPR and CBS to avoid reporting negative information about the right-wing movements. Reich’s operation included five people borrowed from the military who were experts in psychological warfare.
The FBI cooperated by investigating and harassing people who were critical of the contras and other right-wing operations in Central America. Two Associated Press investigative reporters were branded “Sandanista agents,” and the AP quickly decided to give as little space as possible to stories about contra corruption and drug trading. Newsweek also reluctantly printed such stories, including one about the office of Vice President Bush helping to supply the contras when funds were cut off, but its top officials were continually harassed and intimidated by government officials about this and the reporter who had been pursuing these matters was forced to resign in 1990. Once a respected liberal magazine, The New Republic became an outlet for the Reagan administration’s propaganda. The General Accounting Office eventually ruled that these government activities violated the law that made “covert propaganda” illegal. Congress cut off funding for public diplomacy in 1987, but these abuses of law could not be mentioned in committee reports without running the risk of losing the veneer of bi-partisanship. Republicans would not sign reports that discussed these matters.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Monday, March 17, 2008
The October 1980 Surprise
National Security was used to cloak other irregularities in the Reagan years. In 1980, former CIA agents, some active agents, at least one member of Jimmy Carter’s NSC staff, and some Republicans led by William Casey held a number of meetings with Iranian representatives and concluded an agreement whereby arms and cash would be given the Iran leaders in return for holding 52 American hostages until after the election. Some conservative career military personnel cooperated by tracing movements of supplies, equipment, and arms through military bases to make sure President Carter had not succeeded in making a deal with the Iranians. The career and retired intelligence personnel were probably motivated by anger over Carter’s purges in the intelligence community. . It is unclear just who was at what meeting and when, but it would take an act of faith to deny that the October Surprise deal took place. The movements of William Casey and some others have been relatively easy to trace, but an absolutely air-tight case that George H.W. Bush attended the most important meeting in Paris cannot be established. . Among other things, Casey promised that Israel would sell some arms to Iran immediately and that they would sell many more after Ronald Reagan became president. The Iranians were also promised the return of $12 billion in blocked funds.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had promised not to sell so much as a shoelace to Iran, cooperated with the Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Carter position. These activities thoroughly undermined the activities of the legitimately elected government of the United States and weakened the U.S. position in bargaining for the return of the hostages. Years later, in an interview on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, former Reagan national security advisor Richard Allen inadvertently confirmed that the Reaganites had made a deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election. He said that Cynthia Dwyer, a journalist, was retained by the Iranians to make sure that the Republicans carried out their end of the deal. No one asked him “what deal” and to this day mainline commentators deny there was a deal.
Carrying on private diplomatic negotiations with a foreign enemy is a violation of the law, as was coordinating arms shipments to Iran, before and after Reagan took power After Carter was out of office, Yasir Arafat told him that the Republicans had asked them to help with the arms deal used to keep the hostages captive until after the election. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was asked if there was an October Surprise and replied, “Of course it was.” He was later pressured to explain away his comment, but it is believable as Menachem Begin detested Carter and would have done anything to hurt the American president. In 1993, Russia gave Congressional investigators files that showed that Casey met with the Iranians in 1980 and that Robert Gates and George H.W. Bush were involved in the deal with Iran.
A much longer account will be posted later.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had promised not to sell so much as a shoelace to Iran, cooperated with the Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Carter position. These activities thoroughly undermined the activities of the legitimately elected government of the United States and weakened the U.S. position in bargaining for the return of the hostages. Years later, in an interview on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, former Reagan national security advisor Richard Allen inadvertently confirmed that the Reaganites had made a deal with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election. He said that Cynthia Dwyer, a journalist, was retained by the Iranians to make sure that the Republicans carried out their end of the deal. No one asked him “what deal” and to this day mainline commentators deny there was a deal.
Carrying on private diplomatic negotiations with a foreign enemy is a violation of the law, as was coordinating arms shipments to Iran, before and after Reagan took power After Carter was out of office, Yasir Arafat told him that the Republicans had asked them to help with the arms deal used to keep the hostages captive until after the election. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was asked if there was an October Surprise and replied, “Of course it was.” He was later pressured to explain away his comment, but it is believable as Menachem Begin detested Carter and would have done anything to hurt the American president. In 1993, Russia gave Congressional investigators files that showed that Casey met with the Iranians in 1980 and that Robert Gates and George H.W. Bush were involved in the deal with Iran.
A much longer account will be posted later.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The Iran/Contra Cover-Up
By mid-November 1986, the Congressional intelligence committees were asking about the sale of weapons to Iran. Oliver North shredded all but one of the documents he thought to be incriminating. However, Justice Department lawyers found a North memorandum that clearly explained how arms were being diverted via Israel to Iran. Ed Meese briefed top White House and cabinet officials on November 24, saying of course Reagan knew nothing of all this. After the meeting, Secretary of Treasury George Schultz told his chief aide, “They may lay all this off on Bud [McFarlane] . . . They rearranging the record.'' The next day-- November 25--Meese admitted to Congressional leaders that arms had been sold to Iran, and the proceeds were used to resupply the Contras. Through the ensuing hearings, North was sure he was untouchable and told Felix Rodriguez, “These people want me, but they cannot touch me, because the old man loves my ass.” In the end he got off with a conviction overturned on a technicality. North had been fined $150,000 and given two years of probation in return for going around urging young people not to use drugs.
Bush aide Boyden Gray decided the diary was largely exculpatory and should not be revealed to the investigators. Bush destroyed the investigation by pardoning Caspar Weinberger, who had been indicted twice, as well as others involved in the matter. Much of the press treated Weinberger as a hero and was critical of Walsh’s tenaciousness. A subsequent investigation found that Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi businessman and major arms dealer, had acted as middleman for North in the deal with the mullahs. He borrowed millions from the now discredited Bank of Credit and Commerce International ( B.C.C.I.) to obtain the embargoed weapons and claims to have lost ten million dollars in the transactions. BCCI collapsed in 1991, after defrauding thousands of depositors. It was to quietly reemerge as Pinnacle Bank Group.
When Bush’s son, George W., became president, he reinterpreted legislation on the release of presidential papers to greatly delay the release of those pertaining to Iran-Contra. The scandal resulted in the jailing of an agent who had been at the center of the sale of 10,000 TOW missiles, William Herrmann. Oliver North thought him unreliable so he ended up in jail where he could be silenced if need be. He was arrested in London, on the job, while moving suitcases of counterfeit US currency. After serving some time in England, he was sent to a prison in Pennsylvania. George H.W. Bush pardoned his Iran/Contra partners at Christmas, 1992: Cap Weinberger, Bud Mc Farlane, Elliot Abrams, Alan Fiers, and Clair George.
The Christic Institute first broke the story of government drug-dealing and the Iran-Contra Scheme. I t was a Jesuit-run ecumenical social justice organization that had exposed Ku Klux Klan murders, handled the Karen Silkwood case, and defended the Native Americans who demonstrated at Wounded Knee. Using the RICO statute of 1970, the institute went to court to expose what was happening. At the center of their case was the attempted bombing assassination of Contra leader Eden Pastora, Commander Zedro, who had fallen out with his colleagues and the CIA. He survived the attempted murder, but three journalists were killed. Two injured journalists were the plaintiffs. They had the testimony of one witness that Hull had said at a meeting “Pastora had to be killed.” There were 29 defendants. The National Council of Churches backed the Institute in this legal action. More than any other person or organization, the Christic Institute broke the Iran-Contra story. Its great mistake was in believing that there was a rogue “secret team” doing the illegal things it discovered. It seemed incomprehensible to these idealists, that what they found--the mere tip of a vast iceberg-- was really the policy of the Reagan administration and by the various arms of the executive branch.
In the end, the Institute lost a $1,600,000 bond and an additional fine put them out of business. Congress, with the help of moderate and conservative Democrats, in 1983 crafted these “rule 11" bonds and fines to cripple private party investigations of government. This case, Avirgan v. Hull was to be the last serious effort to probe government sponsored crime by a public interest group. President Bush’s I RS lifted their tax exemption to make sure they could not recover. The chief judge was clearly hostile to them and came on the case when his predecessor Robert S. Vance died in a bomb explosion. Vance had been connected to the Mississippi Freedom Democrats in 1964. Vance was to be replaced by J.L. Edmundson, a genuine conservative, who was frightened off the case by an attempt on his life. In the end all three judges ruled for the government. The two plaintiffs had been forced to send their children into hiding, and other witnesses had been killed. A third fled to Costa Rica with his family.
When someone later asked a clerk at the eleventh circuit for the papers on the case, she replied, “Oh Lord!...Avirgan v. Hull means duck and run for cover.” Daniel Sheehan, executive director of the Christic Institute, had assumed that he was dealing with a small rogue element within the agency and the government and found his organization destroyed by a far greater force than he had imagined. Eventually, he found that his opponents had almost unlimited funds coming from the Japanese loot that the United States secretly recovered at the end of World War II. In 2001, he unsuccessfully sought to find part of the unrecovered Golden Lily treasure in order to fund progressive causes.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Bush aide Boyden Gray decided the diary was largely exculpatory and should not be revealed to the investigators. Bush destroyed the investigation by pardoning Caspar Weinberger, who had been indicted twice, as well as others involved in the matter. Much of the press treated Weinberger as a hero and was critical of Walsh’s tenaciousness. A subsequent investigation found that Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi businessman and major arms dealer, had acted as middleman for North in the deal with the mullahs. He borrowed millions from the now discredited Bank of Credit and Commerce International ( B.C.C.I.) to obtain the embargoed weapons and claims to have lost ten million dollars in the transactions. BCCI collapsed in 1991, after defrauding thousands of depositors. It was to quietly reemerge as Pinnacle Bank Group.
When Bush’s son, George W., became president, he reinterpreted legislation on the release of presidential papers to greatly delay the release of those pertaining to Iran-Contra. The scandal resulted in the jailing of an agent who had been at the center of the sale of 10,000 TOW missiles, William Herrmann. Oliver North thought him unreliable so he ended up in jail where he could be silenced if need be. He was arrested in London, on the job, while moving suitcases of counterfeit US currency. After serving some time in England, he was sent to a prison in Pennsylvania. George H.W. Bush pardoned his Iran/Contra partners at Christmas, 1992: Cap Weinberger, Bud Mc Farlane, Elliot Abrams, Alan Fiers, and Clair George.
The Christic Institute first broke the story of government drug-dealing and the Iran-Contra Scheme. I t was a Jesuit-run ecumenical social justice organization that had exposed Ku Klux Klan murders, handled the Karen Silkwood case, and defended the Native Americans who demonstrated at Wounded Knee. Using the RICO statute of 1970, the institute went to court to expose what was happening. At the center of their case was the attempted bombing assassination of Contra leader Eden Pastora, Commander Zedro, who had fallen out with his colleagues and the CIA. He survived the attempted murder, but three journalists were killed. Two injured journalists were the plaintiffs. They had the testimony of one witness that Hull had said at a meeting “Pastora had to be killed.” There were 29 defendants. The National Council of Churches backed the Institute in this legal action. More than any other person or organization, the Christic Institute broke the Iran-Contra story. Its great mistake was in believing that there was a rogue “secret team” doing the illegal things it discovered. It seemed incomprehensible to these idealists, that what they found--the mere tip of a vast iceberg-- was really the policy of the Reagan administration and by the various arms of the executive branch.
In the end, the Institute lost a $1,600,000 bond and an additional fine put them out of business. Congress, with the help of moderate and conservative Democrats, in 1983 crafted these “rule 11" bonds and fines to cripple private party investigations of government. This case, Avirgan v. Hull was to be the last serious effort to probe government sponsored crime by a public interest group. President Bush’s I RS lifted their tax exemption to make sure they could not recover. The chief judge was clearly hostile to them and came on the case when his predecessor Robert S. Vance died in a bomb explosion. Vance had been connected to the Mississippi Freedom Democrats in 1964. Vance was to be replaced by J.L. Edmundson, a genuine conservative, who was frightened off the case by an attempt on his life. In the end all three judges ruled for the government. The two plaintiffs had been forced to send their children into hiding, and other witnesses had been killed. A third fled to Costa Rica with his family.
When someone later asked a clerk at the eleventh circuit for the papers on the case, she replied, “Oh Lord!...Avirgan v. Hull means duck and run for cover.” Daniel Sheehan, executive director of the Christic Institute, had assumed that he was dealing with a small rogue element within the agency and the government and found his organization destroyed by a far greater force than he had imagined. Eventually, he found that his opponents had almost unlimited funds coming from the Japanese loot that the United States secretly recovered at the end of World War II. In 2001, he unsuccessfully sought to find part of the unrecovered Golden Lily treasure in order to fund progressive causes.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Covering Up Iran-Contra
By mid-November 1986, the Congressional intelligence committees were asking about the sale of weapons to Iran. Oliver North shredded all but one of the documents he thought to be incriminating. However, Justice Department lawyers found a North memorandum that clearly explained how arms were being diverted via Israel to Iran. Ed Meese briefed top White House and cabinet officials on November 24, saying of course Reagan knew nothing of all this. After the meeting, Secretary of Treasury George Schultz told his chief aide, “They may lay all this off on Bud [McFarlane] . . . They rearranging the record.'' The next day-- November 25--Meese admitted to Congressional leaders that arms had been sold to Iran, and the proceeds were used to resupply the Contras. Through the ensuing hearings, North was sure he was untouchable and told Felix Rodriguez, “These people want me, but they cannot touch me, because the old man loves my ass.” In the end he got off with a conviction overturned on a technicality. North had been fined $150,000 and given two years of probation in return for going around urging young people not to use drugs.
Bush aide Boyden Gray decided the diary was largely exculpatory and should not be revealed to the investigators. Bush destroyed the investigation by pardoning Caspar Weinberger, who had been indicted twice, as well as others involved in the matter. Much of the press treated Weinberger as a hero and was critical of Walsh’s tenaciousness. A subsequent investigation found that Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi businessman and major arms dealer, had acted as middleman for North in the deal with the mullahs. He borrowed millions from the now discredited Bank of Credit and Commerce International ( B.C.C.I.) to obtain the embargoed weapons and claims to have lost ten million dollars in the transactions. BCCI collapsed in 1991, after defrauding thousands of depositors. It was to quietly reemerge as Pinnacle Bank Group.
When Bush’s son, George W., became president, he reinterpreted legislation on the release of presidential papers to greatly delay the release of those pertaining to Iran-Contra. The scandal resulted in the jailing of an agent who had been at the center of the sale of 10,000 TOW missiles, William Herrmann. Oliver North thought him unreliable so he ended up in jail where he could be silenced if need be. He was arrested in London, on the job, while moving suitcases of counterfeit US currency. After serving some time in England, he was sent to a prison in Pennsylvania. George H.W. Bush pardoned his Iran/Contra partners at Christmas, !992: Cap Weinberger, Bud Mc Farlane, Elliot Abrams, Alan Fiers, and Clair George.
The Christic Institute first broke the story of government drug-dealing and the Iran-Contra Scheme. I t was a Jesuit-run ecumenical social justice organization that had exposed Ku Klux Klan murders, handled the Karen Silkwood case, and defended the Native Americans who demonstrated at Wounded Knee. Using the RICO statute of 1970, the institute went to court to expose what was happening. At the center of their case was the attempted bombing assassination of Contra leader Eden Pastora, Commander Zedro, who had fallen out with his colleagues and the CIA. He survived the attempted murder, but three journalists were killed. Two injured journalists were the plaintiffs. They had the testimony of one witness that Hull had said at a meeting “Pastora had to be killed.” There were 29 defendants. The National Council of Churches backed the Institute in this legal action. More than any other person or organization, the Christic Institute broke the Iran-Contra story. Its great mistake was in believing that there was a rogue “secret team” doing the illegal things it discovered. It seemed incomprehensible to these idealists, that what they found--the mere tip of a vast iceberg-- was really the policy of the Reagan administration and by the various arms of the executive branch.
In the end, the Institute lost a $1,600,000 bond and an additional fine put them out of business. Congress, with the help of moderate and conservative Democrats, in 1983 crafted these “rule 11" bonds and fines to cripple private party investigations of government. This case, Avirgan v. Hull was to be the last serious effort to probe government sponsored crime by a public interest group. President Bush’s I RS lifted their tax exemption to make sure they could not recover. The chief judge was clearly hostile to them and came on the case when his predecessor Robert S. Vance died in a bomb explosion. Vance had been connected to the Mississippi Freedom Democrats in 1964. Vance was to be replaced by J.L. Edmundson, a genuine conservative, who was frightened off the case by an attempt on his life. In the end all three judges ruled for the government. The two plaintiffs had been forced to send their children into hiding, and other witnesses had been killed. A third fled to Costa Rica with his family.
When someone later asked a clerk at the eleventh circuit for the papers on the case, she replied, “Oh Lord!...Avirgan v. Hull means duck and run for cover.” Daniel Sheehan, executive director of the Christic Institute, had assumed that he was dealing with a small rogue element within the agency and the government and found his organization destroyed by a far greater force than he had imagined. Eventually, he found that his opponents had almost unlimited funds coming from the Japanese loot that the United States secretly recovered at the end of World War II. In 2001, he unsuccessfully sought to find part of the unrecovered Golden Lily treasure in order to fund progressive causes.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Bush aide Boyden Gray decided the diary was largely exculpatory and should not be revealed to the investigators. Bush destroyed the investigation by pardoning Caspar Weinberger, who had been indicted twice, as well as others involved in the matter. Much of the press treated Weinberger as a hero and was critical of Walsh’s tenaciousness. A subsequent investigation found that Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi businessman and major arms dealer, had acted as middleman for North in the deal with the mullahs. He borrowed millions from the now discredited Bank of Credit and Commerce International ( B.C.C.I.) to obtain the embargoed weapons and claims to have lost ten million dollars in the transactions. BCCI collapsed in 1991, after defrauding thousands of depositors. It was to quietly reemerge as Pinnacle Bank Group.
When Bush’s son, George W., became president, he reinterpreted legislation on the release of presidential papers to greatly delay the release of those pertaining to Iran-Contra. The scandal resulted in the jailing of an agent who had been at the center of the sale of 10,000 TOW missiles, William Herrmann. Oliver North thought him unreliable so he ended up in jail where he could be silenced if need be. He was arrested in London, on the job, while moving suitcases of counterfeit US currency. After serving some time in England, he was sent to a prison in Pennsylvania. George H.W. Bush pardoned his Iran/Contra partners at Christmas, !992: Cap Weinberger, Bud Mc Farlane, Elliot Abrams, Alan Fiers, and Clair George.
The Christic Institute first broke the story of government drug-dealing and the Iran-Contra Scheme. I t was a Jesuit-run ecumenical social justice organization that had exposed Ku Klux Klan murders, handled the Karen Silkwood case, and defended the Native Americans who demonstrated at Wounded Knee. Using the RICO statute of 1970, the institute went to court to expose what was happening. At the center of their case was the attempted bombing assassination of Contra leader Eden Pastora, Commander Zedro, who had fallen out with his colleagues and the CIA. He survived the attempted murder, but three journalists were killed. Two injured journalists were the plaintiffs. They had the testimony of one witness that Hull had said at a meeting “Pastora had to be killed.” There were 29 defendants. The National Council of Churches backed the Institute in this legal action. More than any other person or organization, the Christic Institute broke the Iran-Contra story. Its great mistake was in believing that there was a rogue “secret team” doing the illegal things it discovered. It seemed incomprehensible to these idealists, that what they found--the mere tip of a vast iceberg-- was really the policy of the Reagan administration and by the various arms of the executive branch.
In the end, the Institute lost a $1,600,000 bond and an additional fine put them out of business. Congress, with the help of moderate and conservative Democrats, in 1983 crafted these “rule 11" bonds and fines to cripple private party investigations of government. This case, Avirgan v. Hull was to be the last serious effort to probe government sponsored crime by a public interest group. President Bush’s I RS lifted their tax exemption to make sure they could not recover. The chief judge was clearly hostile to them and came on the case when his predecessor Robert S. Vance died in a bomb explosion. Vance had been connected to the Mississippi Freedom Democrats in 1964. Vance was to be replaced by J.L. Edmundson, a genuine conservative, who was frightened off the case by an attempt on his life. In the end all three judges ruled for the government. The two plaintiffs had been forced to send their children into hiding, and other witnesses had been killed. A third fled to Costa Rica with his family.
When someone later asked a clerk at the eleventh circuit for the papers on the case, she replied, “Oh Lord!...Avirgan v. Hull means duck and run for cover.” Daniel Sheehan, executive director of the Christic Institute, had assumed that he was dealing with a small rogue element within the agency and the government and found his organization destroyed by a far greater force than he had imagined. Eventually, he found that his opponents had almost unlimited funds coming from the Japanese loot that the United States secretly recovered at the end of World War II. In 2001, he unsuccessfully sought to find part of the unrecovered Golden Lily treasure in order to fund progressive causes.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The Underside of the Reagan Revolution
Through most of American history, conservatives have insisted on the strict observance of law and have opposed the expansion of executive power. The Reagan administration’s administration of legislation affecting the civil rights of African Americans sometimes seemed a bit lax, and it approached economic regulations and labor law with a business-friendly perspective. But in its public manifestation, it did not appear bent on expanding executive power or on circumventing statutory law. However, in covert matters, its record was very different. In its dealings in Central America, it constantly circumvented the law and lied to Congress. Its weapons sales in the Middle East also circumvented the law and sometimes violated it outright. In matters involving PROMIS software, which came to be used in law-enforcement, banking and intelligence work, its representatives consistently lied to courts about government use and marketing of this software.
In battling Communists and their leftist allies, the actions of the Reagan administration strongly suggest that it believed there were almost no legal restraints on what it could do. In 1986, the United States government began selling arms to Iran and using the profits to help the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Both actions were illegal. Ronald Reagan denied having authorized this program. This turned out to be the tip of a massive iceberg of illegal activity. The US had been selling arms to Iran and Iraq since the beginning of the Reagan administration.
Of far greater importance was the elaborate executive infrastructure, answerable to Vice President George H.W. Bush, to secretly supply the right-wing Contras. Congress cut legitimate aid to a trickle with the two Boland Amendments, making all other assistance of any sort, including the use of US personnel illegal. Another breach of the law occurred in the Reagan-Bush, Sr., years. The NSC and CIA violated the law by advising and provisioning the Contras in Nicaragua. They used US military personnel in some operations against Nicaragua, a violation of the Neutrality Act, which forbids use of force against nation with whom the US is at peace. Later, the violation of the law was compounded when Congress legislated against supplying the contra rebels in Nicaragua. Almost certainly, Bush was deeply involved in operational problems.
The covert war in Central America in some ways laid the foundations for America’s future imperial adventures in the Middle East. Some intelligence was cooked, and administration actions were covered by the claim that the Communists and their allies were resorting to terrorism. Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams, and Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick gave the public buckets of misinformation about the murders of unarmed men, nuns—more than twenty of whom were thrown out of helicopters-- women, and children. John Negroponte, then ambassador to Honduras, deceived Congress about all this while playing a major role in the Central American black operations. Ambassador Negroponte hid and protected the grisly crimes of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, army chief who had promised to employ the same bloody tactics used by neo-Nazis in Argentina. Indeed, Negroponte played a role in establishing Battalion 3-16, which carried out many barbaric crimes. Negroponte praised
Alvarez for his “dedication to democracy,” and Ronald Reagan gave the general the Legion of Merit medal.
Reagan established the White House Working Group to coordinate efforts to sell his policies in Latin America and work with many other interests including the Heritage Foundation, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and Pat Robertson’s Freedom Council in getting out their message. The seeds of a new American world order were here and made possible by a new alliance of nationalists: Neo Conservatives, the Religious Right, and free marketers. Over time, nationalists like Cheney and Rumsfeld allied so fully with the Neo Conservatives that some thought they had changed. Those involved in orchestrating these operations saw them as ultimately successful, but the Contras never dealt the Sandanistas a military defeat. The reform regime fell due to US economic pressure.
It is also abundantly clear that the NSC and CIA helped and protected the Contras bringing drugs into the United States. This was the principal means of financing their operations. There is considerable evidence that the CIA itself did more than watch and help these operations. The irony is that after moving tons of drugs into the United States to finance the Contras, the problem in Nicaragua was solved by threatening Sandanista leader Daniel Ortega’s family. He was told that his second cousin, a very close friend, would- be killed on a certain day if Ortega did not announce free elections. After his cousin was murdered, he backed down. It is difficult to understand what those involved in these activities thought democracy demanded of them. Perhaps Lt. Colonel Oliver North’s secretary, Fawn Hall, spoke for them when she said they were obeying a “ higher law.” Two decades later, those who took a similar view of the rights of the executive branch of government were talking about inherent powers of the president that exceeded those concretely spelled out in legislation or the constitution.
Much of effort to provide arms for the Contras was coordinated by Lt. Colonel Oliver North, a deputy in the office of the National Security Advisor. A number of former CIA agents played important roles, as did CIA contractors in Central America. At first, it appeared that the CIA was permitting the Contras to bring cocaine into the United States to pay for weapons. The agency and the Justice Department repeatedly shielded US drug dealers who were acting as distributors for the Contras. By late 1985 or 1986, it was clear that the drug trade was being coordinated out of Washington. The operation had become so large that elaborate money laundering schemes in the US had become necessary. Many of those involved in this drug trade were Cuban ex-patriots who were tied to US intelligence work since the Bay of Pigs invasion. There is significant evidence that it also became necessary to share profits with some politicians, mostly Republicans.
Iran/Contra began after a May 16, 1986, National Security Planning Group Meeting where President Reagan suggested that perhaps “Ollie’s people” could help. It soon became clear that this was a reference to using money from the sale of weapons to Iran. Soon, Ted Shackley, technically a private citizen, was in touch with an Iranian general and arms-dealer/fixer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Some witnesses said that Vice President Bush visited Shackley’s Virginia office, but their comments were sometimes subsequently changed. Oliver North worked with the CIA’s Dewey Clarridge to move the weapons, but Clarridge has insisted that for a long time he thought they were dealing with oil-drilling equipment. By August Congress was hearing that the NSC was using private money to help the Contras, and North appeared before the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence on August 6. He told them that he had neither funded the Contras nor given them any military advice. On October 5, 1986, the Sandanistas shot down a CIA plane carrying supplies. Two Americans were killed, and a third, Eugene Hasenfuss, survived. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams coordinated the cover-up, which soon evaporated. After four days of questioning, Hasenfuss told the Nicaraguans he was working for the CIA and identified Colonel Rodriguez as his control agent. The administration denied all involvement and got Congress to appropriate the $100 million to resupply the Contras. Yet, the crash of Hasenfuss C-123 started the half-hearted Iran-Contra investigation.
Congressional committees investigated, but neither the politicians nor the press were very thorough in their probe. A subcommittee under John Kerry went so far as to claim that in at least a few instances the CIA protected the CUIA drug trade, but the committee was continually hamstrung by the Senate establishment, and Kerry was labeled a conspiracy theorist. The offenses involved were so serious that had a less popular president been involved, impeachment would have been seriously discussed. David Kimche, a top Israeli Foreign Ministry official, first brought the possibility of selling weapons to Iran to National Security assistant Robert McFarlane. President Reagan then instructed McFarlane to look into the possibility of doing so, and his aide Michael Ledeen, handled many of the details. Leeden1i would later be one of the key figures behind the Second Iraq War. When most of the pieces of the tentative deal were in place, McFarlane briefed Reagan, chief-of-staff Donald Regan, George Schultz, Caspar Weinberger, Bill Casey, and George Schultz.
One version of how the deal got off the ground gives Ed Meese a key role. At a meeting in thee situation room of the White House, Attorney General Edwin Meese played the leading role. It was agreed that Secretary of State Edwin Meese and National Security assistant Colonel Robert McFarlane engineered the arms sale, but that McFarlane did not tell President Reagan Yet, the Walsh investigation only documents Meese’s extensive involvement beginning in January 1986, months after the process had begun. Meese had been directly involved in the cocaine-for-guns trade in Central America, delaying and calling of investigations of traffickers.
From the president’s diary of August 23, 1985, it can be deduced that he may not have realize he had approved the deal. The first arms shipment was made on August 20. Soon thereafter, McFarlane testified that Reagan approved replenishing the Israeli arsenal for weapons sold to Iran. After 400 TOW missiles had been shipped, only one hostage had been released. There would be more negotiations and more sales to obtain other releases.
The arms were shipped over an eighteen-month period. Three shipments were made in 1985. A problem was that the terrorists would release hostages and then quickly replace them with others. A key player was Manucher Ghobanifar, the Mossad agent and arms dealer. Lt. Colonel North and the Iranian arms dealer marked up the arms 370% before selling them to the government of Iran. At a meeting in thee situation room of the White House, Attorney General Edwin Meese played the leading role. It was agreed that Secretary of State Edwin Meese and National Security assistant Colonel Robert McFarlaine engineered the arms sale, but that McFarlane did not tell President Reagan. In 1992, Howard Teicher, a former NSC staffer, revealed that Vice President Bush was fully briefed on the arms for hostages deal. The 1985 sale was a violation of the Arms Control Act, and Reagan’s involvement would have been an impeachable offense. Chief of Staff Don Regan had been present when the sale was discussed with Reagan. Schultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had objected to the sale but did not object while the cover story was being hatched. Also present were National Security Advisor Ambassador John Poindexter, and CIA Director Casey.
Schultz returned to the State Department and dictated a memo to an aid saying the record had been “rearranged” and that Bud McFarlane was designated to shoulder the blame. A year later, Lt. Colonel Oliver North and Bud McFarlane successfully hid the truth when testifying before Congress and convinced most observers that Iran-Contra had been a rogue operation. President Reagan later appeared before the Tower Commission to discuss the Iran-Contra deal and read to the commissioners his state directions. In 1991-1992, Walsh and his staff found evidence of the cover-up in papers of Caspar Weinberger and his staff. They soon found evidence that Bush aide Donald Gregg had lied about what he knew about how money from the sales was used to resupply the Nicaraguan Contras. A memo showed that Gregg was to discuss “respupplying the contras” with Bush. George Bush claimed he was “out of the loop” on Iran-Contra and refused to give the investigators his papers. During Bush’s presidency, an aid found the portion of his secret diary that discussed Iran. In it, Bush said, “I’m one of the few people that know fully the details.”
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
In battling Communists and their leftist allies, the actions of the Reagan administration strongly suggest that it believed there were almost no legal restraints on what it could do. In 1986, the United States government began selling arms to Iran and using the profits to help the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Both actions were illegal. Ronald Reagan denied having authorized this program. This turned out to be the tip of a massive iceberg of illegal activity. The US had been selling arms to Iran and Iraq since the beginning of the Reagan administration.
Of far greater importance was the elaborate executive infrastructure, answerable to Vice President George H.W. Bush, to secretly supply the right-wing Contras. Congress cut legitimate aid to a trickle with the two Boland Amendments, making all other assistance of any sort, including the use of US personnel illegal. Another breach of the law occurred in the Reagan-Bush, Sr., years. The NSC and CIA violated the law by advising and provisioning the Contras in Nicaragua. They used US military personnel in some operations against Nicaragua, a violation of the Neutrality Act, which forbids use of force against nation with whom the US is at peace. Later, the violation of the law was compounded when Congress legislated against supplying the contra rebels in Nicaragua. Almost certainly, Bush was deeply involved in operational problems.
The covert war in Central America in some ways laid the foundations for America’s future imperial adventures in the Middle East. Some intelligence was cooked, and administration actions were covered by the claim that the Communists and their allies were resorting to terrorism. Otto Reich, Elliot Abrams, and Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick gave the public buckets of misinformation about the murders of unarmed men, nuns—more than twenty of whom were thrown out of helicopters-- women, and children. John Negroponte, then ambassador to Honduras, deceived Congress about all this while playing a major role in the Central American black operations. Ambassador Negroponte hid and protected the grisly crimes of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, army chief who had promised to employ the same bloody tactics used by neo-Nazis in Argentina. Indeed, Negroponte played a role in establishing Battalion 3-16, which carried out many barbaric crimes. Negroponte praised
Alvarez for his “dedication to democracy,” and Ronald Reagan gave the general the Legion of Merit medal.
Reagan established the White House Working Group to coordinate efforts to sell his policies in Latin America and work with many other interests including the Heritage Foundation, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and Pat Robertson’s Freedom Council in getting out their message. The seeds of a new American world order were here and made possible by a new alliance of nationalists: Neo Conservatives, the Religious Right, and free marketers. Over time, nationalists like Cheney and Rumsfeld allied so fully with the Neo Conservatives that some thought they had changed. Those involved in orchestrating these operations saw them as ultimately successful, but the Contras never dealt the Sandanistas a military defeat. The reform regime fell due to US economic pressure.
It is also abundantly clear that the NSC and CIA helped and protected the Contras bringing drugs into the United States. This was the principal means of financing their operations. There is considerable evidence that the CIA itself did more than watch and help these operations. The irony is that after moving tons of drugs into the United States to finance the Contras, the problem in Nicaragua was solved by threatening Sandanista leader Daniel Ortega’s family. He was told that his second cousin, a very close friend, would- be killed on a certain day if Ortega did not announce free elections. After his cousin was murdered, he backed down. It is difficult to understand what those involved in these activities thought democracy demanded of them. Perhaps Lt. Colonel Oliver North’s secretary, Fawn Hall, spoke for them when she said they were obeying a “ higher law.” Two decades later, those who took a similar view of the rights of the executive branch of government were talking about inherent powers of the president that exceeded those concretely spelled out in legislation or the constitution.
Much of effort to provide arms for the Contras was coordinated by Lt. Colonel Oliver North, a deputy in the office of the National Security Advisor. A number of former CIA agents played important roles, as did CIA contractors in Central America. At first, it appeared that the CIA was permitting the Contras to bring cocaine into the United States to pay for weapons. The agency and the Justice Department repeatedly shielded US drug dealers who were acting as distributors for the Contras. By late 1985 or 1986, it was clear that the drug trade was being coordinated out of Washington. The operation had become so large that elaborate money laundering schemes in the US had become necessary. Many of those involved in this drug trade were Cuban ex-patriots who were tied to US intelligence work since the Bay of Pigs invasion. There is significant evidence that it also became necessary to share profits with some politicians, mostly Republicans.
Iran/Contra began after a May 16, 1986, National Security Planning Group Meeting where President Reagan suggested that perhaps “Ollie’s people” could help. It soon became clear that this was a reference to using money from the sale of weapons to Iran. Soon, Ted Shackley, technically a private citizen, was in touch with an Iranian general and arms-dealer/fixer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Some witnesses said that Vice President Bush visited Shackley’s Virginia office, but their comments were sometimes subsequently changed. Oliver North worked with the CIA’s Dewey Clarridge to move the weapons, but Clarridge has insisted that for a long time he thought they were dealing with oil-drilling equipment. By August Congress was hearing that the NSC was using private money to help the Contras, and North appeared before the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence on August 6. He told them that he had neither funded the Contras nor given them any military advice. On October 5, 1986, the Sandanistas shot down a CIA plane carrying supplies. Two Americans were killed, and a third, Eugene Hasenfuss, survived. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams coordinated the cover-up, which soon evaporated. After four days of questioning, Hasenfuss told the Nicaraguans he was working for the CIA and identified Colonel Rodriguez as his control agent. The administration denied all involvement and got Congress to appropriate the $100 million to resupply the Contras. Yet, the crash of Hasenfuss C-123 started the half-hearted Iran-Contra investigation.
Congressional committees investigated, but neither the politicians nor the press were very thorough in their probe. A subcommittee under John Kerry went so far as to claim that in at least a few instances the CIA protected the CUIA drug trade, but the committee was continually hamstrung by the Senate establishment, and Kerry was labeled a conspiracy theorist. The offenses involved were so serious that had a less popular president been involved, impeachment would have been seriously discussed. David Kimche, a top Israeli Foreign Ministry official, first brought the possibility of selling weapons to Iran to National Security assistant Robert McFarlane. President Reagan then instructed McFarlane to look into the possibility of doing so, and his aide Michael Ledeen, handled many of the details. Leeden1i would later be one of the key figures behind the Second Iraq War. When most of the pieces of the tentative deal were in place, McFarlane briefed Reagan, chief-of-staff Donald Regan, George Schultz, Caspar Weinberger, Bill Casey, and George Schultz.
One version of how the deal got off the ground gives Ed Meese a key role. At a meeting in thee situation room of the White House, Attorney General Edwin Meese played the leading role. It was agreed that Secretary of State Edwin Meese and National Security assistant Colonel Robert McFarlane engineered the arms sale, but that McFarlane did not tell President Reagan Yet, the Walsh investigation only documents Meese’s extensive involvement beginning in January 1986, months after the process had begun. Meese had been directly involved in the cocaine-for-guns trade in Central America, delaying and calling of investigations of traffickers.
From the president’s diary of August 23, 1985, it can be deduced that he may not have realize he had approved the deal. The first arms shipment was made on August 20. Soon thereafter, McFarlane testified that Reagan approved replenishing the Israeli arsenal for weapons sold to Iran. After 400 TOW missiles had been shipped, only one hostage had been released. There would be more negotiations and more sales to obtain other releases.
The arms were shipped over an eighteen-month period. Three shipments were made in 1985. A problem was that the terrorists would release hostages and then quickly replace them with others. A key player was Manucher Ghobanifar, the Mossad agent and arms dealer. Lt. Colonel North and the Iranian arms dealer marked up the arms 370% before selling them to the government of Iran. At a meeting in thee situation room of the White House, Attorney General Edwin Meese played the leading role. It was agreed that Secretary of State Edwin Meese and National Security assistant Colonel Robert McFarlaine engineered the arms sale, but that McFarlane did not tell President Reagan. In 1992, Howard Teicher, a former NSC staffer, revealed that Vice President Bush was fully briefed on the arms for hostages deal. The 1985 sale was a violation of the Arms Control Act, and Reagan’s involvement would have been an impeachable offense. Chief of Staff Don Regan had been present when the sale was discussed with Reagan. Schultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had objected to the sale but did not object while the cover story was being hatched. Also present were National Security Advisor Ambassador John Poindexter, and CIA Director Casey.
Schultz returned to the State Department and dictated a memo to an aid saying the record had been “rearranged” and that Bud McFarlane was designated to shoulder the blame. A year later, Lt. Colonel Oliver North and Bud McFarlane successfully hid the truth when testifying before Congress and convinced most observers that Iran-Contra had been a rogue operation. President Reagan later appeared before the Tower Commission to discuss the Iran-Contra deal and read to the commissioners his state directions. In 1991-1992, Walsh and his staff found evidence of the cover-up in papers of Caspar Weinberger and his staff. They soon found evidence that Bush aide Donald Gregg had lied about what he knew about how money from the sales was used to resupply the Nicaraguan Contras. A memo showed that Gregg was to discuss “respupplying the contras” with Bush. George Bush claimed he was “out of the loop” on Iran-Contra and refused to give the investigators his papers. During Bush’s presidency, an aid found the portion of his secret diary that discussed Iran. In it, Bush said, “I’m one of the few people that know fully the details.”
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Monday, March 10, 2008
The Reagan Revolution, Part 5
The Reagan tax cuts mainly benefited the wealthy and were the main instrument in the administration’s very successful effort to rearrange the terms of political debate. Democrats found it impossible to resist the tax cut even though they controlled Congress. The concept had great public support, and few other than core Democrats saw anything wrong with the idea of giving the rich a big tax break. Democrats were intimidated by the widespread acceptance of the GOP market- oriented political philosophy and refrained from defending the Johnson programs the Reaganites denounced and misrepresented. Unwilling or unable to offer effective resistance, many Democrats voted for the Reagan assaults on social programs. A few complained about the widening gap between rich and poor, but most Democrats remained silent on this subject. The Great Communicator’s rhetoric resonated with the many who believed poverty was a character flaw, and he even joked about claims that millions were not getting enough to eat in the United States. He said, “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.” The electorate had made it clear that it was not concerned about a widening gap between rich and poor or that large numbers might be hungry.
Ronald Reagan echoed Barry Goodwater’s demand that size of government be sharply reduced. Goldwater was clearly the founder of modern conservatism, and Reagan clearly wanted to enact his program. Reagan did not enact much of the Goldwater agenda. The failure to do so has been blamed on Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, called “a man of no discernable ideology, who allowed government to begin growing again.” Whatever his intentions were, Reagan did not cut one federal agency, did not reduce the rate of spending, and added $1.4 trillion to the national debt. His aggressive foreign policy, which included a not-so-secret war in Central America, laid the foundations for the imperial foreign policy of George W. Bush. The Republicans who came to power in 1995 did nothing to trip government or arrest spending; rather they soon spawned a multiplicity of pork barrel projects funded through “earmarks” to please the K Street lobbyists who funded and allied with them. Under George W. Bush, new federal agencies were created and the debt soared. There was little sign that the party of Goldwater still feared debt or was serious about reducing the size and influence of government. Under the second Bush, personal liberties were sharply curtailed in the name of national security. Somewhere between Reagan and the second Bush, the Goldwater dream for the Republican Party had vanished. The party still enacted tax cuts for the wealthy and championed business interests, but it had reversed itself on much of Goldwater’s vision.
Ronald Reagan had put in place a political settlement of sorts that seemed to have widespread support. Its basic terms were acceptance of the growing gap between rich and poor, a reversal of the progressive taxation policies of the New Deal, and acceptance of the fact that there was great support among regular voters for cutting social programs. By the mid-eighties, Census Bureau data demonstrated that the gap between the poorest and richest families was wider than it had ever been, and the federal government was pursuing a policy of redistributing wealth in favor of the rich. Nevertheless, the tax cut remained very popular, and many citizens considered criticism of its benefits for the wealthy as class warfare. There is also evidence that framing the difference between parties in terms of the rich and powerful versus other citizens simply does not work. In a follow-up study to the 2000 presidential election, David Brooks compared two counties. In the far less prosperous county, George W. Bush was triumphant. In the more prosperous one , people recognized that there are great differences between rich and poor, but it was hard to find people who thought they were have-nots. Part of the explanation may be that even though some people have enormous wealth there was “little obvious inequality.”
Ronald Reagan echoed Barry Goodwater’s demand that size of government be sharply reduced. Goldwater was clearly the founder of modern conservatism, and Reagan clearly wanted to enact his program. Reagan did not enact much of the Goldwater agenda. The failure to do so has been blamed on Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, called “a man of no discernable ideology, who allowed government to begin growing again.” Whatever his intentions were, Reagan did not cut one federal agency, did not reduce the rate of spending, and added $1.4 trillion to the national debt. His aggressive foreign policy, which included a not-so-secret war in Central America, laid the foundations for the imperial foreign policy of George W. Bush. The Republicans who came to power in 1995 did nothing to trip government or arrest spending; rather they soon spawned a multiplicity of pork barrel projects funded through “earmarks” to please the K Street lobbyists who funded and allied with them. Under George W. Bush, new federal agencies were created and the debt soared. There was little sign that the party of Goldwater still feared debt or was serious about reducing the size and influence of government. Under the second Bush, personal liberties were sharply curtailed in the name of national security. Somewhere between Reagan and the second Bush, the Goldwater dream for the Republican Party had vanished. The party still enacted tax cuts for the wealthy and championed business interests, but it had reversed itself on much of Goldwater’s vision.
Ronald Reagan had put in place a political settlement of sorts that seemed to have widespread support. Its basic terms were acceptance of the growing gap between rich and poor, a reversal of the progressive taxation policies of the New Deal, and acceptance of the fact that there was great support among regular voters for cutting social programs. By the mid-eighties, Census Bureau data demonstrated that the gap between the poorest and richest families was wider than it had ever been, and the federal government was pursuing a policy of redistributing wealth in favor of the rich. Nevertheless, the tax cut remained very popular, and many citizens considered criticism of its benefits for the wealthy as class warfare. There is also evidence that framing the difference between parties in terms of the rich and powerful versus other citizens simply does not work. In a follow-up study to the 2000 presidential election, David Brooks compared two counties. In the far less prosperous county, George W. Bush was triumphant. In the more prosperous one , people recognized that there are great differences between rich and poor, but it was hard to find people who thought they were have-nots. Part of the explanation may be that even though some people have enormous wealth there was “little obvious inequality.”
The Reagan Revolution, Part 4
The election of Ronald Wilson Reagan to the presidency in 1980 and 1984 gave the Republican Party an opportunity to enact its program Republicans referred to it as the Reagan Revolution. However the term should be expanded to encompass the acceleration of a realigning process that would eventually make the GOP the nation’s governing party. The success of Republican cultural arguments was reflected in the movement of the Reagan Democrats into the Republican column. The conversion of the South sped up, and Reagan drew the white Evangelicals and Neo Conservatives into firm allegiance with the Republican Party.
Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, but they had lost thirty-three seats. Republicans took control of the Senate, having picked up twelve seats. It had been twenty-six years since the GOP ran the Senate. In the early Reagan years, the GOP stood foursquare behind their president, showing a degree of unity that was not to reappear until 1995. Democratic Representatives Bob Stump, Eugene Atkinson, Phil Gramm, and Andy Ireland joined the Republican Party. There was talk of a political realignment being underway, and the Democrats were so intimidated by the president’s great popularity that they offered little determined resistance. Speaker Tip O’Neill recognized the magnitude of the party’s losses and feared that it could lose control of the House of Representatives as early as in the 1982 elections. He also realized there was a potential for political realignment, with blue-collar Reagan Democrats staying with the GOP and a sharp acceleration of the movement of Southerners to the GOP standard.
In the House, there were 40 conservative “boll weevil” Democrats led by Charles Stenholm, who had more than enough votes to give Republicans control at any time. O’Neill had little choice but to signal Democrats that was acceptable to support Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts. There were major tax cuts in 1981 and 1986, but Reagan devotees forget that he also raised taxes several times. The top marginal tax rate was slashed from 78% to 35%. This act alone made Reagan a great hero in the eyes of most of America’s most prosperous citizens. The Speaker believed it possible to hold down the size of the 1981 cut, but in the end he was “rolled” by the Reagan administration. The White House was assisted by then-Democrat Phil Gramm, who kept it appraised of Democratic budget strategies.
An accomplishment with far-reaching political consequences was the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 in communications. This doctrine called for balanced political coverage on radio and television outlets. As a “public trust,” a station was required to fairly reflect opposing views. A Federal Communications Commission, dominated by Reagan appointees, abolished it in 1987. Congress attempted to reinstate it, but Reagan vetoed the bill on the grounds that it interfered with the principle of independent journalism. A year before that, Anton Scalia and Robert Bork, sitting on the D.C. federal circuit court, signaled that conservative justices were intent upon gradually nullifying the fairness doctrine. The end of the fairness doctrine, coupled with vast amounts of right wing money, made possible the emergence of an empire of right-wing talk radio programs that were to have a great impact in speeding a rightward political realignment.
Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, but they had lost thirty-three seats. Republicans took control of the Senate, having picked up twelve seats. It had been twenty-six years since the GOP ran the Senate. In the early Reagan years, the GOP stood foursquare behind their president, showing a degree of unity that was not to reappear until 1995. Democratic Representatives Bob Stump, Eugene Atkinson, Phil Gramm, and Andy Ireland joined the Republican Party. There was talk of a political realignment being underway, and the Democrats were so intimidated by the president’s great popularity that they offered little determined resistance. Speaker Tip O’Neill recognized the magnitude of the party’s losses and feared that it could lose control of the House of Representatives as early as in the 1982 elections. He also realized there was a potential for political realignment, with blue-collar Reagan Democrats staying with the GOP and a sharp acceleration of the movement of Southerners to the GOP standard.
In the House, there were 40 conservative “boll weevil” Democrats led by Charles Stenholm, who had more than enough votes to give Republicans control at any time. O’Neill had little choice but to signal Democrats that was acceptable to support Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts. There were major tax cuts in 1981 and 1986, but Reagan devotees forget that he also raised taxes several times. The top marginal tax rate was slashed from 78% to 35%. This act alone made Reagan a great hero in the eyes of most of America’s most prosperous citizens. The Speaker believed it possible to hold down the size of the 1981 cut, but in the end he was “rolled” by the Reagan administration. The White House was assisted by then-Democrat Phil Gramm, who kept it appraised of Democratic budget strategies.
An accomplishment with far-reaching political consequences was the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 in communications. This doctrine called for balanced political coverage on radio and television outlets. As a “public trust,” a station was required to fairly reflect opposing views. A Federal Communications Commission, dominated by Reagan appointees, abolished it in 1987. Congress attempted to reinstate it, but Reagan vetoed the bill on the grounds that it interfered with the principle of independent journalism. A year before that, Anton Scalia and Robert Bork, sitting on the D.C. federal circuit court, signaled that conservative justices were intent upon gradually nullifying the fairness doctrine. The end of the fairness doctrine, coupled with vast amounts of right wing money, made possible the emergence of an empire of right-wing talk radio programs that were to have a great impact in speeding a rightward political realignment.
The Reagan Revolution, Part 3
Ronald Reagan was aptly called “The Great Communicator.” With his affable, easy-going, likeable demeanor, he was the perfect person to sell hope and market economics. He had unparalleled talent as a visionary leader, seizing the public imagination with broad brush pictures of big themes, most rooted in traditional values. Since his days as spokesman for General Electric, he had been doing so. Even before running for governor of California, his handlers had taught him how to get around difficult topics and avoid revealing his lack of understanding about important matters. The public grasped that he was not good with details but sensed his sincerity. He represented the kind of hope people had before the fifties, to which many desperately wanted to return. Reagan promised to balance the budget by 1984, to restore prayer in the schools, end abortions, downsize government, establish free trade, and restore vigor to the Detroit automobile industry. He was unable to deliver on most of these promises, but the voters still considered him a great success. Superb public relations managers improved on Reagan’s natural talents to the point that even his failures came to appear as triumphs. Alexander Haig was to complain that they ran policy, and political operative Lee Atwater said, “I can’t think of a single meeting I was at for more than an hour when someone didn’t say, ‘How will this play in the media?’”
Reagan received very favorable coverage from the press because he was personally likeable and because media executives knew the public would not accept much criticism of this popular president. CBS management ordered its Washington Bureau and Lesley Stahl to tone down coverage of Reagan that could be considered critical because the public would not accept it. Reagan’s favorable press coverage was also due to the reluctance of Democrats to criticize him because he was so popular. The press might have aired Democratic criticisms had there been many.
One of Reagan’s greatest skills was to connect with Americans’ basic optimism. Over time, Americans had moved away from their original belief in original sin and pessimism about the human condition. They wanted to believe that people begin with a clean slate and that America is the place where this happens. The religious awakenings of the Nineteenth Century had moved people toward a much more optimistic mind set. People--at least those who were born again-- he believed to be perfectible and inherently good. William James, America’s most important philosopher, thought our greatest contribution to western thought was the belief that the mind could cure evil and heal the sick soul. He predicted that the belief in mind-cure would “play a part almost as great in the evolution of the popular religion of the future. This mind set prepared the way for the therapeutic culture of the late 20th century. The doctrine of the market required only strong belief, and it would work its magic in the same way that people could rely upon the good hearts and volunteerism of good people to work out social problems. The Democrats had not gotten the faith and were guilty of the great sin of pessimism. Not relying upon the benevolence of the market or redeemed human nature, they looked to government to do what people and natural forces should accomplish.
This sunny optimism and belief in mind-cure laid the foundation for the general acceptance therapeutic culture of the late 20th Century; although, it is doubtful that many psychiatrists would warm to this observation. Similarly, it laid the groundwork for the revival and acceptance of a laissez faire market philosophy that postulated the benevolent workings of natural economic forces. The same optimism and belief in human perfectibility underpinned its companion social philosophy, Social Darwinism. Anyone who put his mind to it can prosper in a society where economic forces are permitted to operate without government interference. Conversely, those unwilling to exert themselves and become productive citizens had no moral claims on society.
Reagan received very favorable coverage from the press because he was personally likeable and because media executives knew the public would not accept much criticism of this popular president. CBS management ordered its Washington Bureau and Lesley Stahl to tone down coverage of Reagan that could be considered critical because the public would not accept it. Reagan’s favorable press coverage was also due to the reluctance of Democrats to criticize him because he was so popular. The press might have aired Democratic criticisms had there been many.
One of Reagan’s greatest skills was to connect with Americans’ basic optimism. Over time, Americans had moved away from their original belief in original sin and pessimism about the human condition. They wanted to believe that people begin with a clean slate and that America is the place where this happens. The religious awakenings of the Nineteenth Century had moved people toward a much more optimistic mind set. People--at least those who were born again-- he believed to be perfectible and inherently good. William James, America’s most important philosopher, thought our greatest contribution to western thought was the belief that the mind could cure evil and heal the sick soul. He predicted that the belief in mind-cure would “play a part almost as great in the evolution of the popular religion of the future. This mind set prepared the way for the therapeutic culture of the late 20th century. The doctrine of the market required only strong belief, and it would work its magic in the same way that people could rely upon the good hearts and volunteerism of good people to work out social problems. The Democrats had not gotten the faith and were guilty of the great sin of pessimism. Not relying upon the benevolence of the market or redeemed human nature, they looked to government to do what people and natural forces should accomplish.
This sunny optimism and belief in mind-cure laid the foundation for the general acceptance therapeutic culture of the late 20th Century; although, it is doubtful that many psychiatrists would warm to this observation. Similarly, it laid the groundwork for the revival and acceptance of a laissez faire market philosophy that postulated the benevolent workings of natural economic forces. The same optimism and belief in human perfectibility underpinned its companion social philosophy, Social Darwinism. Anyone who put his mind to it can prosper in a society where economic forces are permitted to operate without government interference. Conversely, those unwilling to exert themselves and become productive citizens had no moral claims on society.
The Reagan Revolution, Part 2
Reagan repeatedly said that the nation’s difficulties could be blamed on the federal government: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” He praised repeatedly praised the American people, indicating that it was the Democrats, not the voters, who were responsible for government getting out of control. People responded positively to his optimistic gospel and to his contrasting of the absolute goodness of the American people with the pure evil of the Soviet empire. The Republicans had marketed themselves as the party of morality and traditional American principles, and they were fortunate in having a candidate who was thoroughly likeable and easy to portray as a man of character. Peggy Noonan, a Reagan speechwriter, was to spearhead the effort to convince the public that he was uniquely a man of character who exemplified American values. It did not matter that his relationships with his own children were not very good or that some of their close friends did not fit this pattern. He clearly possessed great personal charm, was unfailingly courteous, and he constantly spoke in moralistic terms. Americans learned to ignore any information that did not fit the myth.
A man of principles, he consistently cut taxes; they did not notice tax increases on his watch. As a man of principle, he was not expected to offer careful and detailed explanations for policy. Marshall Mc Luhan, the media philosopher, had warned, “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.” Within the actor-president, persona triumphed over policy. Ronald Reagan was avuncular, charming, and charismatic. It was almost impossible for many to believe that such a man could make serious mistakes. Reagan and his handlers understood that especially in postmodern culture there was no difference between what was true and what was rhetorically seductive.
People in postmodern culture responded positively to what sounded good and were aesthetically pleasing. A charismatic storyteller, Ronald Reagan succeeded in persuading most of the voting public to accept positions they normally opposed, when presented in other terms. Postmodern culture places a high premium on electronic images. People who view someone on the silver screen or on television somehow can accurately discern that person’s character and inner being. If they approve of what they see, they develop an emotional tie with that person. Reagan and his handlers understood this, and it gave them an enormous advantage over his Democratic opponents, who saw him only as a “B” grade movie actor. In 1984, Lesley Stahl provided CBS television with a four-minute pictorial story about how Reagan visited institutions for the handicapped and old age homes, while simultaneously slashing the funding of programs for these people. Knowing that the pictures were worth far more than her commentary, the White House handlers thanked CBS for the favorable publicity.
Reagan began his campaign in Mississippi, defending states rights in language whites understood as being very critical of the civil rights revolution. While Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford courted the black middle class, Reagan went even farther than Nixon in wooing white conservatives and deliberately cut their ties to the African American middle class. As Michael Dawson of Harvard recalled, “Black elites were shocked to find that with Reagan and his advisers, there were no longer ‘good Negroes’ and ‘bad Negroes.’” Reagan’s hostility to the civil rights revolution also played well among white workers in the North. The Democrats had failed to win new voters or retain many old supporters with their ideas, while Reagan offered alternatives that won over some former Democrats.
In 1980, the Democrats lost many seats in the House and saw more than a few liberals support to liberal Republican John Anderson, who ran for the presidency in as an independent. Moderate Republicans who were uncomfortable in a party dominated by conservatives fueled the Anderson candidacy. By then, their numbers in Congress had dwindled to between fifteen and twenty “Gypsy Moths,” who fed off the leaves of the Republican tree but frequently voted with the Democrats. The Republican Senate victory was largely due to the organizational efforts of Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Political Action Committee. It had spent $4.5 million, $1.2 million of which went to purging liberal senators.
A man of principles, he consistently cut taxes; they did not notice tax increases on his watch. As a man of principle, he was not expected to offer careful and detailed explanations for policy. Marshall Mc Luhan, the media philosopher, had warned, “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.” Within the actor-president, persona triumphed over policy. Ronald Reagan was avuncular, charming, and charismatic. It was almost impossible for many to believe that such a man could make serious mistakes. Reagan and his handlers understood that especially in postmodern culture there was no difference between what was true and what was rhetorically seductive.
People in postmodern culture responded positively to what sounded good and were aesthetically pleasing. A charismatic storyteller, Ronald Reagan succeeded in persuading most of the voting public to accept positions they normally opposed, when presented in other terms. Postmodern culture places a high premium on electronic images. People who view someone on the silver screen or on television somehow can accurately discern that person’s character and inner being. If they approve of what they see, they develop an emotional tie with that person. Reagan and his handlers understood this, and it gave them an enormous advantage over his Democratic opponents, who saw him only as a “B” grade movie actor. In 1984, Lesley Stahl provided CBS television with a four-minute pictorial story about how Reagan visited institutions for the handicapped and old age homes, while simultaneously slashing the funding of programs for these people. Knowing that the pictures were worth far more than her commentary, the White House handlers thanked CBS for the favorable publicity.
Reagan began his campaign in Mississippi, defending states rights in language whites understood as being very critical of the civil rights revolution. While Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford courted the black middle class, Reagan went even farther than Nixon in wooing white conservatives and deliberately cut their ties to the African American middle class. As Michael Dawson of Harvard recalled, “Black elites were shocked to find that with Reagan and his advisers, there were no longer ‘good Negroes’ and ‘bad Negroes.’” Reagan’s hostility to the civil rights revolution also played well among white workers in the North. The Democrats had failed to win new voters or retain many old supporters with their ideas, while Reagan offered alternatives that won over some former Democrats.
In 1980, the Democrats lost many seats in the House and saw more than a few liberals support to liberal Republican John Anderson, who ran for the presidency in as an independent. Moderate Republicans who were uncomfortable in a party dominated by conservatives fueled the Anderson candidacy. By then, their numbers in Congress had dwindled to between fifteen and twenty “Gypsy Moths,” who fed off the leaves of the Republican tree but frequently voted with the Democrats. The Republican Senate victory was largely due to the organizational efforts of Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Political Action Committee. It had spent $4.5 million, $1.2 million of which went to purging liberal senators.
The Reagan REvolution, Part I
The election of Ronald Reagan and a Republican Senate in the election of 1980 was the first significant victory in the conservative’s sustained and successful drive to capture long-term control of the United States government. Its impact was so great that it has been called the “Reagan Revolution. “It marked a dramatic shift in policies, as Republicans began to make progress in rolling back the New Deal and successive Democratic domestic programs. Great progress was also made in reorienting tax policy by scaling back progressive taxation and providing generous tax cuts to the rich and corporate interests. In foreign affairs, Reagan’s rhetoric and Star Wars initiative foreshadowed what was to come under Reagan’s self-anointed heir, George W. Bush, a departure from traditional bipartisan foreign policy toward a very assertive, nationalistic, and unilateralist approach to world affairs. It was also a huge personal triumph for a Reagan whose likeable manner and ability instilled trust. His ability to communicate easily won many converts to conservative ideas. Many Americans came to identify modern Republicanism with this cheerful, likeable man whose eight years in the White House presented a generally positive advertisement for the party and conservatism.
It is possible that the Reagan Revolution went farther than the Gipper realized or intended. In retrospect, it is clear that the Republican Party in the Reagan years had accepted supply side economics and that many in its ranks ceased to worry about growing deficits. President Reagan used supply side rhetoric, but his diaries indicate that he disagreed with the most zealous supply-siders, such as Jack Kemp. It was also a period in which the New Right gathered enough influence to take over the party in the 1990s. Reagan employed their rhetoric because it was very effective in attracting support, but he privately worried that these people were extremists and even wrote that Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times is “becoming as R. Wing as the Post is L. Wing.”
Reagan urged Americans to “stand tall” and “dream heroic dreams,” and employed the slogan “Let’s make America great again.” His optimism was appealing and people wanted to believe that it was, as he insisted in 1984, “morning in America.” Reagan’s optimism tapped into a deep strain in the American character. Over time, Americans developed an ethic of cheerfulness, which emphasized individual self-worth and the notion that people are masters of their own destinies. Cheerfulness became a symbol of virtue. It included an aversion to tears, helplessness and grief. It became almost a prerequisite for getting hired and was expected of employees. Eventually advertisers who believed it encouraged spending that commodified it. Sociologist saw it as the handmaiden of Republican complacency. It was an attitude consistent with Republican insistence that little was wrong with America and its capitalistic system. This outlook certainly appealed to people tired of Democratic worrying about social and economic inequalities.
It is possible that the Reagan Revolution went farther than the Gipper realized or intended. In retrospect, it is clear that the Republican Party in the Reagan years had accepted supply side economics and that many in its ranks ceased to worry about growing deficits. President Reagan used supply side rhetoric, but his diaries indicate that he disagreed with the most zealous supply-siders, such as Jack Kemp. It was also a period in which the New Right gathered enough influence to take over the party in the 1990s. Reagan employed their rhetoric because it was very effective in attracting support, but he privately worried that these people were extremists and even wrote that Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times is “becoming as R. Wing as the Post is L. Wing.”
Reagan urged Americans to “stand tall” and “dream heroic dreams,” and employed the slogan “Let’s make America great again.” His optimism was appealing and people wanted to believe that it was, as he insisted in 1984, “morning in America.” Reagan’s optimism tapped into a deep strain in the American character. Over time, Americans developed an ethic of cheerfulness, which emphasized individual self-worth and the notion that people are masters of their own destinies. Cheerfulness became a symbol of virtue. It included an aversion to tears, helplessness and grief. It became almost a prerequisite for getting hired and was expected of employees. Eventually advertisers who believed it encouraged spending that commodified it. Sociologist saw it as the handmaiden of Republican complacency. It was an attitude consistent with Republican insistence that little was wrong with America and its capitalistic system. This outlook certainly appealed to people tired of Democratic worrying about social and economic inequalities.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Rush Limbaugh, Key Figure in Republican Information Machine
Conservative talk radio has had an even greater impact than conservative television. Rush Limbaugh, a benefactor of Scaife’s largess, began his radio broadcast in 1988 on WABC in New York. By 1998 he was reaching 20,000,000 listeners a week on 643 radio stations. Back in the Nixon days, Vice President Spiro Agnew had talked about a biased, liberal, media, but it was Limbaugh who made this an important national issue. He harps on this theme in every broadcast, thus fanning dissatisfaction with the mainstream media and improving the market for his product. With this argument he created a standard around which cultural embattled cultural conservatives could rally. They were encouraged to believe they were a put-upon minority even after they had won the control of the national government and a majority of the states. This approach was most appealing to white males, who became the largest part of conservative talk radio’s audience. They were attracted by the rudeness and crudeness of these commentators. Even Gordon Liddy’s urging followers to kill ATF agents was acceptable; “Head shots, head shots...kill the sons of bitches.”
California’s John Zeigler’s locker room talk seems to satisfy some basic male needs, and his claim that Gray Davis was human waste that needed to flushed resonated with his audience. The right wing hosts are popular because they push people’s buttons and stimulate primal impulses such as fear of the “Other” and play to intense my- country- right- or- wrong nationalism. They encourage an intense comradeship, similar to that found in an army barracks. People who telephone these hosts fall all over themselves about being honored to talk to these shock jocks. Limbaugh’s followers call themselves “ditto heads.” Much grumbling and whining marks the comradeship of the right wing radio broadcast. Appeals are made to fairly primitive mass feelings., and the same simplistic arguments are repeated over and over again. Any idea that could disturb their collective self-satisfaction was belittled.
Limbaugh’s chief mission seemed to be the demonization of Democrats and liberals, and he repeatedly warns listeners that the evil liberals are plotting to destroy American culture and undermine the nation’s strength. He appeared unable to differentiate between liberals and Democrats. Though seldom mentioning God, he embraces the agenda of the Christian Right, and constantly attacks feminists, environmentalists, and homosexuals. His attacks upon Bill Clinton’s personal life were unceasing. Even Clinton’s daughter Chelsea was not spared Limbaugh’s nasty comments, as he called her “the White House dog.” Another major theme was his contempt for the poor and his belief that the nation could not afford the money spent on welfare. His willingness to air unsubstantiated charges and clear falsehoods have spawned a number of web sites devoted to correcting his statements.
He has been praised for playing a central role in giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress in 1995, and Speaker Newt Gingrich said they shared the same goal: to “make Bill Clinton the enemy of normal Americans.” To a significant extent they succeeded. Limbaugh did so by constant discussion of Clinton’s personal life, but the broadcaster had almost nothing to say about revelations about the personal lives of Gingrich, Henry Hyde, and other Clinton tormentors. Limbaugh has a brother who is also in the anti-liberal information industry and who claimed in Prosecution “liberals are waging war against Christianity.”
Even after the Republican victory of 2002, Rush found it necessary to refer to the NAACP as “the enemy” and warn listeners about how successful liberals are at launching personal attacks against Republican leaders. He suggested that though the liberals had sustained a defeat, they might launch a counter-attack as the Nazis did in the Battle of the Bulge. When Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s plane crashed, Grant said he thought Brown might have survived “because at heart I’m a pessimist.” Brown was an African American, a race Bob Grant called “subhumanoids” and “screaming savages.” It was also about race. He once asked his audience of “dittoheads” why composites of criminals often look like Jesse Jackson and was heard to tell a caller, “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” Limbaugh is anti-gay and anti- environmentalist, often using the term “environmental wackos.” Limbaugh also mined the theme that “bleeding-heart” liberal judges were responsible for a perceived increase in crime
Limbaugh began broadcasting nationally in 1988 and had at least 14.5 million listeners per week by December 2002. He captured the hearts and minds of millions with a mix “of mirth with a radio preacher’s urgency and a demagogue’s viciousness.” His great success has inspired many imitators. Together, Rush and Rush wannabes, have had a great impact upon the American political landscape and have done much to make the Republican base larger, angrier, and less inclined to civil dialogue.” Arousing anger was an important function of the right-wing talk shows, but creating a sense of belonging and association with successful, productive people was also important. Limbaugh’s “ditto heads” come to see themselves as part of a noble and enlightened fraternity battling the unspeakable evil of liberalism. Theirs is a noble cause, they believe, because they are fighting to remove government restrictions from capable and productive people like themselves. From Limbaugh, Mike Gallagher, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and others they learn that they are superior in every way to those who expect help from government or are working to expand it and defile traditional values. Rush and the other conservative radio commentators were unable to turn away even briefly from generating anger and paranoia after their election triumph in 2002. They almost immediately took to creating anger against and fear of Nancy Pelosi, the new leader of the diminished Democratic minority in the House of Representative. Even if she led a cohesive party, the fact is that minority leaders have very little clout in today’s House. In a news conference on November 20, 2002, Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle acknowledged that Rush Limbaugh and the many other right-wing talk show hosts give the GOP a great edge in elections, and he attributed the Democratic defeat in 2002 partly to their influence. He noted that their shrill rhetoric generates an extraordinary emotional fervor that energizes many people and gets them to work hard in elections.
The same rhetoric results in making life much more difficult for Democratic politicians because they are often confronted and threatened by people who believe all the charges made on talk shows. Limbaugh’s attacks were supplemented by newspaper advertisements calling Daschle an ally of Saddam Hussein because the senator opposed drilling oil wells in the Anwar reserve. American Renewal, a Christian Right organization, funded the advertisements. Daschle noted that when he was being attacked as an obstructionist he and his family had to face many more unpleasant confrontations and threats than under normal conditions. He twice used the word “pray” in relation to his concern that this kind of rhetoric could eventually do long term damage to American political institutions. Limbaugh responded to this complaint by running a skit that mocked Daschle for complaining that his family was receiving telephoned death threats, claiming Daschle was lying and making the charge for political reasons. Democratic criticism of Limbaugh led the mainstream press to grant him extended interviews on television, thus elevating him to respectable status among political commentators. He was given long and respectful interview on Tim Russert’s CNBC program and on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
Matt Drudge’s web page was also very effective cog in the Republican attack machine, and many GOP publicists like to draw material from it. On August 10, 1997, Drudge found it necessary to retract a story he circulated that White House aid Sid Blumenthal was a wife-beater. The admission did not reduce Drudge’s star/hero status among the New Right one iota. Perhaps they assumed that all Clinton assistants must be deeply depraved people. Not satisfied with the retraction, the Blumenthals went to court for satisfaction. It developed that the story began at a 1994 dinner where a Wall Street Journal publicist bragged that the paper had legal documents proving that Blumenthal regularly beat his wife. Blumenthal denied feeding Drudge the information. Drudge, financed indirectly by Richard Mellon Scaife, refused to name his source. It turned out there were no police reports or documents. The press largely ignored Blumenthal’s litigation. It was covered by the Austin Chronicle and the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. By 2004, the Drudge web site was getting 6.5 million hits a day. Among those consulting this site are radio hosts--not all of them conservative- who are looking for material to discuss on the air.
A New York Times/CBS poll in 1988 demonstrated the success of the Republican information machine. It revealed that 20% of Americans thought Republicans were fair to all classes and 64% believed the GOP was mainly concerned with helping the rich. Despite these beliefs, the GOP had succeeded by then in selling itself as the party of the disaffected. This was done through effective manipulation of cultural issues and directing random anger toward liberals. In that year, George H.W. Bush successfully identified Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis with Willie Horton, a black convicted murder who raped a white woman on a weekend furlough. Bush also denounced the Massachusetts governor as a “card-carrying member” of the American Civil Liberties Union. By 2003, conservatives dominated political discussion and frequently set the tone of political reporting. They accomplished this by aggressively marketing their ideas through a large and well-financed network of foundations. Many of their newspapers and political pundits make no pretense of doing anything more than propagandizing their side of political issues, and in this way they play an important role in setting the agenda for political discussion.
Mainline journalists, who are essentially committed to fairness and evenhandedness, must take into account the spin the conservative journalists place on the news. Likewise, in an effort to avoid charges of media bias, they have given space to unproven and outrageous charges developed by some of the conservative media’s less respectable members. The clearly biased Fox News has captured a large share of the cable news audience and has forced the other cable operations to hire a large stable of one-sided commentators, thus making cable news, particularly in the evenings, a vast echo chamber for right wing views. Finally, a large array of right wing national talk show hosts, together with their innumerable local counterparts, daily fill the airwaves with political propaganda and anger against liberals. Their influence will grow as the market share of the three main networks decreases and as smaller numbers of people read newspapers. Fewer than 20% of young adults read the news. If this tendency continues, what little an ever-growing proportion of American voters know about current events will come from the right-wing information network, which includes a multitude of well-done right-wing blogs.
So long as the shock of rapid social and economic change buffet
s American culture, the conservative information machine is likely to be successful in recruiting and retaining a substantial base for the Republican Party. Despite the many economic insecurities facing voters who were not college educated, 77% of those earning between $30,000 and $40,000 a year think they are doing well and do not seem very worried about their futures. For the future, many seem to “put their trust in the state lottery system.” They have learned that they cannot and should not “look to the federal government or labor unions to throw them a lifeline.” They are more concerned about how the sexual come-ons and violence of contemporary culture threaten their families, and they identify Democrats with the libertine values that menace their families. Even demographic tendencies cooperate with the conservative information machine. In the Europe and the United States, progressive secularists are much likely to have childless or small families than cultural conservatives. The fact that cultural conservatives are considerably more fertile helps “explain the gradual drift of American culture toward religious fundamentalism and social conservatism.” The states carried by George W. Bush in 2004 had 11% higher fertility rates than those carried by Democrat John Kerry. Some fear this will eventually spell the “death of the [influence of the] Enlightenment.” This is probably an exaggerated fear, but it does not bode well for progressives.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
California’s John Zeigler’s locker room talk seems to satisfy some basic male needs, and his claim that Gray Davis was human waste that needed to flushed resonated with his audience. The right wing hosts are popular because they push people’s buttons and stimulate primal impulses such as fear of the “Other” and play to intense my- country- right- or- wrong nationalism. They encourage an intense comradeship, similar to that found in an army barracks. People who telephone these hosts fall all over themselves about being honored to talk to these shock jocks. Limbaugh’s followers call themselves “ditto heads.” Much grumbling and whining marks the comradeship of the right wing radio broadcast. Appeals are made to fairly primitive mass feelings., and the same simplistic arguments are repeated over and over again. Any idea that could disturb their collective self-satisfaction was belittled.
Limbaugh’s chief mission seemed to be the demonization of Democrats and liberals, and he repeatedly warns listeners that the evil liberals are plotting to destroy American culture and undermine the nation’s strength. He appeared unable to differentiate between liberals and Democrats. Though seldom mentioning God, he embraces the agenda of the Christian Right, and constantly attacks feminists, environmentalists, and homosexuals. His attacks upon Bill Clinton’s personal life were unceasing. Even Clinton’s daughter Chelsea was not spared Limbaugh’s nasty comments, as he called her “the White House dog.” Another major theme was his contempt for the poor and his belief that the nation could not afford the money spent on welfare. His willingness to air unsubstantiated charges and clear falsehoods have spawned a number of web sites devoted to correcting his statements.
He has been praised for playing a central role in giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress in 1995, and Speaker Newt Gingrich said they shared the same goal: to “make Bill Clinton the enemy of normal Americans.” To a significant extent they succeeded. Limbaugh did so by constant discussion of Clinton’s personal life, but the broadcaster had almost nothing to say about revelations about the personal lives of Gingrich, Henry Hyde, and other Clinton tormentors. Limbaugh has a brother who is also in the anti-liberal information industry and who claimed in Prosecution “liberals are waging war against Christianity.”
Even after the Republican victory of 2002, Rush found it necessary to refer to the NAACP as “the enemy” and warn listeners about how successful liberals are at launching personal attacks against Republican leaders. He suggested that though the liberals had sustained a defeat, they might launch a counter-attack as the Nazis did in the Battle of the Bulge. When Clinton Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s plane crashed, Grant said he thought Brown might have survived “because at heart I’m a pessimist.” Brown was an African American, a race Bob Grant called “subhumanoids” and “screaming savages.” It was also about race. He once asked his audience of “dittoheads” why composites of criminals often look like Jesse Jackson and was heard to tell a caller, “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” Limbaugh is anti-gay and anti- environmentalist, often using the term “environmental wackos.” Limbaugh also mined the theme that “bleeding-heart” liberal judges were responsible for a perceived increase in crime
Limbaugh began broadcasting nationally in 1988 and had at least 14.5 million listeners per week by December 2002. He captured the hearts and minds of millions with a mix “of mirth with a radio preacher’s urgency and a demagogue’s viciousness.” His great success has inspired many imitators. Together, Rush and Rush wannabes, have had a great impact upon the American political landscape and have done much to make the Republican base larger, angrier, and less inclined to civil dialogue.” Arousing anger was an important function of the right-wing talk shows, but creating a sense of belonging and association with successful, productive people was also important. Limbaugh’s “ditto heads” come to see themselves as part of a noble and enlightened fraternity battling the unspeakable evil of liberalism. Theirs is a noble cause, they believe, because they are fighting to remove government restrictions from capable and productive people like themselves. From Limbaugh, Mike Gallagher, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, and others they learn that they are superior in every way to those who expect help from government or are working to expand it and defile traditional values. Rush and the other conservative radio commentators were unable to turn away even briefly from generating anger and paranoia after their election triumph in 2002. They almost immediately took to creating anger against and fear of Nancy Pelosi, the new leader of the diminished Democratic minority in the House of Representative. Even if she led a cohesive party, the fact is that minority leaders have very little clout in today’s House. In a news conference on November 20, 2002, Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle acknowledged that Rush Limbaugh and the many other right-wing talk show hosts give the GOP a great edge in elections, and he attributed the Democratic defeat in 2002 partly to their influence. He noted that their shrill rhetoric generates an extraordinary emotional fervor that energizes many people and gets them to work hard in elections.
The same rhetoric results in making life much more difficult for Democratic politicians because they are often confronted and threatened by people who believe all the charges made on talk shows. Limbaugh’s attacks were supplemented by newspaper advertisements calling Daschle an ally of Saddam Hussein because the senator opposed drilling oil wells in the Anwar reserve. American Renewal, a Christian Right organization, funded the advertisements. Daschle noted that when he was being attacked as an obstructionist he and his family had to face many more unpleasant confrontations and threats than under normal conditions. He twice used the word “pray” in relation to his concern that this kind of rhetoric could eventually do long term damage to American political institutions. Limbaugh responded to this complaint by running a skit that mocked Daschle for complaining that his family was receiving telephoned death threats, claiming Daschle was lying and making the charge for political reasons. Democratic criticism of Limbaugh led the mainstream press to grant him extended interviews on television, thus elevating him to respectable status among political commentators. He was given long and respectful interview on Tim Russert’s CNBC program and on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”
Matt Drudge’s web page was also very effective cog in the Republican attack machine, and many GOP publicists like to draw material from it. On August 10, 1997, Drudge found it necessary to retract a story he circulated that White House aid Sid Blumenthal was a wife-beater. The admission did not reduce Drudge’s star/hero status among the New Right one iota. Perhaps they assumed that all Clinton assistants must be deeply depraved people. Not satisfied with the retraction, the Blumenthals went to court for satisfaction. It developed that the story began at a 1994 dinner where a Wall Street Journal publicist bragged that the paper had legal documents proving that Blumenthal regularly beat his wife. Blumenthal denied feeding Drudge the information. Drudge, financed indirectly by Richard Mellon Scaife, refused to name his source. It turned out there were no police reports or documents. The press largely ignored Blumenthal’s litigation. It was covered by the Austin Chronicle and the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. By 2004, the Drudge web site was getting 6.5 million hits a day. Among those consulting this site are radio hosts--not all of them conservative- who are looking for material to discuss on the air.
A New York Times/CBS poll in 1988 demonstrated the success of the Republican information machine. It revealed that 20% of Americans thought Republicans were fair to all classes and 64% believed the GOP was mainly concerned with helping the rich. Despite these beliefs, the GOP had succeeded by then in selling itself as the party of the disaffected. This was done through effective manipulation of cultural issues and directing random anger toward liberals. In that year, George H.W. Bush successfully identified Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis with Willie Horton, a black convicted murder who raped a white woman on a weekend furlough. Bush also denounced the Massachusetts governor as a “card-carrying member” of the American Civil Liberties Union. By 2003, conservatives dominated political discussion and frequently set the tone of political reporting. They accomplished this by aggressively marketing their ideas through a large and well-financed network of foundations. Many of their newspapers and political pundits make no pretense of doing anything more than propagandizing their side of political issues, and in this way they play an important role in setting the agenda for political discussion.
Mainline journalists, who are essentially committed to fairness and evenhandedness, must take into account the spin the conservative journalists place on the news. Likewise, in an effort to avoid charges of media bias, they have given space to unproven and outrageous charges developed by some of the conservative media’s less respectable members. The clearly biased Fox News has captured a large share of the cable news audience and has forced the other cable operations to hire a large stable of one-sided commentators, thus making cable news, particularly in the evenings, a vast echo chamber for right wing views. Finally, a large array of right wing national talk show hosts, together with their innumerable local counterparts, daily fill the airwaves with political propaganda and anger against liberals. Their influence will grow as the market share of the three main networks decreases and as smaller numbers of people read newspapers. Fewer than 20% of young adults read the news. If this tendency continues, what little an ever-growing proportion of American voters know about current events will come from the right-wing information network, which includes a multitude of well-done right-wing blogs.
So long as the shock of rapid social and economic change buffet
s American culture, the conservative information machine is likely to be successful in recruiting and retaining a substantial base for the Republican Party. Despite the many economic insecurities facing voters who were not college educated, 77% of those earning between $30,000 and $40,000 a year think they are doing well and do not seem very worried about their futures. For the future, many seem to “put their trust in the state lottery system.” They have learned that they cannot and should not “look to the federal government or labor unions to throw them a lifeline.” They are more concerned about how the sexual come-ons and violence of contemporary culture threaten their families, and they identify Democrats with the libertine values that menace their families. Even demographic tendencies cooperate with the conservative information machine. In the Europe and the United States, progressive secularists are much likely to have childless or small families than cultural conservatives. The fact that cultural conservatives are considerably more fertile helps “explain the gradual drift of American culture toward religious fundamentalism and social conservatism.” The states carried by George W. Bush in 2004 had 11% higher fertility rates than those carried by Democrat John Kerry. Some fear this will eventually spell the “death of the [influence of the] Enlightenment.” This is probably an exaggerated fear, but it does not bode well for progressives.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Republican Victories in Cable TV
Conservative Victories in the Battle for Cable Television
In October 1996 Rupert Murdock, a committed Neo Conservative who owns newspapers around the world, created the FOX News Channel, which set new standards for reporting with a conservative bias Murdock is a committed Neo Conservative who has boasted, “ Our reach is unattached around the world. We are reaching people from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep.” The work of creating the network was left to Roger Ailes, a veteran Republican political operative who had been president of CNBC. The Fox News Network’s strident conservative bias has attracted millions of devoted viewers who can accept no criticism of it. FOX New’s coverage was so slanted that even a few of its own people laughted about it. Scott Norvell, the networks’s London Bureau chief, admitted, “ Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly.” The University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy attitudes found that watching Fox News tended to make people more misinformed. Another study found that in 2004, 13% of Fox panelists had something good to say about John Kerry while 50% strongly backed Bush.
When the producer of the television series “Boston Legal” attempted to criticize Fox News for offering something close to “hate speech,” ABC ordered him to omit all references to Fox and its personnel from the script. Former Fox producer Charles Reina later reported that daily executive memos dictated how stories were to be covered. But he was most disturbed by the laziness of Fox personnel, who had little interest in checking facts or pursuing accuracy. In 2006, the network’s coverage of the Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which was strongly backed by the Bush administration, was so biased that two producers in the Beirut bureau felt it was necessary to protest the propaganda by resigning. In addition to the Fox networks, Murdock owns twenty-six television stations in the United States and has major interests in seven others. Murdock also owns the New York Post, The Chicago Tribune and the Weekly Standard, all influential right-wing publications. He publishes “over-the-top” type conservative commentary through Regan Books/ HarperCollins publications. In August 2007, Murdock added the Wall Street Journal to the list of the hundred newspapers he owns.
The Fox News Network is “an ideological animal” that caters to angry white male viewers and “represents the complete reversal of a conservatism once devoted to tradition, civic ideals, stewardship of natural resources, personal tolerance, and cultural aspiration--the quest for enduring, sustaining roots .” In 2004, Fox gave 48 more minutes ( 20%) coverage to the Republican National Convention than to the Democratic confab. Although it claimed to offer “fair and balanced” news, even conservative writer Andrew Sullivan said, “Fox News is obviously biased toward the right. It’s simply loopy to pretend otherwise.” .
A feature of the network is Brit Hume’s Special Report which is “so claustrophobically right-wing that anyone who appears on the panel contracts a slow-moving case of Stockholm syndrome.” After the Democrats were soundly drubbed in the Congressional elections of 2002, a self-satisfied Brit Hume claimed much of the credit for FOX News. He told Don Imus, “It was because of our coverage that it all happened. We’ve become so influential now that people watch us and take their electoral cues from us. No one should doubt the influence of Fox News in these matters.” When liberals complained about the bias reflected on FOX and the outright false information peddled by right-wing talk radio, the mainline press rushed to the defense of the conservative media and said that the liberals were “whining.” Previously, when conservatives made similar complaints, their conduct was characterized as “courageous.” Publishing clearly biased political stories is also profitable. Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard , commenting on the conservative media, declared that “it pays to be unobjective. ...It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It’s a great little racket. I’m glad we found it.”
FOX News began to attract more viewers than CNN in 2001, and the gap between them reached 60% in 2003. The success of FOX rests upon its strategy of imitating right-wing talk radio. It claims to offer objective news, but its coverage is really confrontational and right-biased talk about news. Its slogan is “fair and balanced,” but its comment is , consistently conservative, and most of its personnel behave as though they are embarked upon a sacred mission to convert American to conservatism. When Paula Zahn signed with CNN several months before her contract expired, Fox fired her, and Fox commentators trashed her.. By 2003, FOX was the most watched cable outlet. Sociologist Tod Gitlin has noted that its “commercial motive dovetails beautifully with a politics of muscularity and resentment.” It features a phony objectivity, while airing Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Both offer even more distortions and simplistic reasoning than Rush Limbaugh. Hannity plays off liberal Alan Colmes, whose mild manner make him raw meat for Hannity to maul and chew up. Mark Levin, another right wing shock jock, specializes in name calling; he called Judy Miller a “rat,” Joseph Wilson and his wife “finks,” and Ted Kennedy, “a lifelong drunk.”
FOX News and the other news outlets owned by Rupert Murdock represent a purely commercial approach to news production. It denies that journalism is a particularly noble craft that has a high responsibility to the American public, in part because it enjoys special privileges under the first amendment. The Murdock ventures are purely commercial, geared to maximize profits and reflect the views of their owner. Murdock operatives still talk about offering balanced news, but it is likely that they will eventually become more forthright about what they are offering. Talk radio has already done this. Murdock is seen as a journalistic trend-setter, and it could well be that the greatest part of the press will eventually follow this lead and that American journalism will eventually mirror what it was in the early 1800s, highly partisan outlets that offered offered partial views of the news. The difference would be that the media is likely to be heavily conservative in orientation.
CNN founder Reese Schonfeld suggested that FNN’s popularity was due to the style of its personalities; “They’re fast, they’re funny, and they’re furious.” On the other hand, it could just be that cable news viewers are mostly conservative and want news that is consistent with their outlook.
The success of FOX’s conservative programming had the effect of moving the other cable news networks, particularly CNN, to the right in order to attract conservative viewers, who may be more inclined to be news junkies than other Americans. CNN became a distinctively conservative voice after it was acquired by AOL-Time -Warner in 2000. Prior to that, CNN focused on little but Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky for 13 months. By 2000, the network of conservative journalists, media outlets, and talk radio had become so successful that their unapologetically slanted information was leaching into the mainstream press. In 2001,CNN head Walter Isaacson tried to recruit Rush Limbaugh as the network’s political commentator, and he went to Capitol Hill to learn from New Right politicians how to attract more conservative viewer. In December he added ultra-conservative warrior Ann Coulter to its staff as a “legal commentator.” A Salon magazine report found that between the inauguration and September 10, 2002, CNN gave unprecedented coverage to the Bush administration, and another study found that the network had covered administration officials live 157 times in a three-month period in 2002, as compared to seven times for elected Democrats. There was anecdotal evidence that MSNBC and FOX coverage were similar. For whatever reason, there seemed to be many more conservative viewers of cable news than liberals. Perhaps this was why Phil Donahue, who briefly had a cable show, was told he could interview conservatives alone but could not have liberals on the air without someone to counterbalance their views.
MSNBC certainly has a better record than FOX but its token “liberal” is Chris Matthews, a registered Democrat who once questioned the patriotism of Michael Dukakis and seems to appeal to angry white men. Matthews was quite conservative when he first appeared on the air and moved close to the center when George W. Bush’s popularity seemed to wane. Initially, he expressed great admiration for Bush because he was clearly a “guy” who could throw a baseball. He also proclaimed that Bush “looks great in a military uniform.” Though he was too cool on Bush, he exhibited a consisten approval of Republicans who were self-styled machomen. He said McCain “deserved the presidency,” then decided that America’s mayor Rudy Guiliani deserved the office. He also noted that Mitt Romney has “a great chin. I’ve noticed.”
Fox-News, by openly appealing to them, became an instant success. And the other cable news channels had little choice but to woo those conservative viewers. Sometimes the effort to woo conservatives was all too obvious as in Kelly Wallace of CNN’s fawning coverage of George W. Bush. By 2001, media scholar Mark Crispin Miller claimed that a communications cartel has emerged that controls the nation’s entertainment and much of its news. Despite the persistent fiction about media bias, Miller claims the cartel has a vested interest in keeping the public half-informed and in not offending generally conservative corporate advertisers. ABC features right-wing John Stossel, whose reports have so twisted data and distorted academic study results that several of his producers have resigned in protest.
When a CNN program added very articulate liberal spokesmen, Republicans tried to bring it into line. In April 2002, CNN attempted to attract more viewers by changing the personnel on its “Crossfire,” its political debate program. Robert Novak and Tucker Carlson were to represent the Right, and James Carville and Paul Begela spoke for the Left. The leftist pair seemed to get the best of most arguments and CNN was flooded with letters and e-mail about their “unfair tactics.” The Republican National Committee and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott’s office attempted to organize a boycott that would prevent prominent Republicans from appearing on the program. The boycott was partially successful for more than a year. After the boycott received some public attention, White Hours spokesmen said that a refusal to debate was not a useful approach because those who refused to debate made Republicans look “like a bunch of wimps.”
Involved in fierce competition among the cable networks to attract conservative viewers, CNN and MSNBC signed on more far-right commentators and were less inclined to offer news that offended conservatives. Even Don Imus, the MSNBC morning host, who is usually considered non-partisan was given to racist invective, calling an African American journalist a “cleaning lady,” a black writer a “quota hire,” and said he hired a producer because he wrote good “nigger jokes.” Founded in 1996, MSNBC struck on a strategy of offering balanced, highly professional newscasts during the day and competing with Fox at night by offering a parade of right-wing commentators. MSNBC even hired Michael Savage, who thought homosexuals were plotting to destroy “the white race” and also engaged in tasteless attacks on blacks. He referred to the “Turd World Nations” and “Million Dyke March” and “ghetto slime,” demanded that “You liberals should drop dead for what you’ve done to my country,” and told a gay who called “You should get AIDS and die, you pig.” The latter comment got him fired. The network also hired former Congressman Joe Scarborough, who defined himself as “a hawk’s hawk” and who shamelessly practiced slanted bookings and one-sided presentations of background information.
A 2003 poll found that only 16% of MSNBC and CNN viewers were conservatives in comparison to 40% who identified themselves as conservatives. Forty-six percent of Fox viewers were conservative, while 44% of Fox were conservatives. Viewers of the three major nightly newscasts were 41% conservative and 17% liberal. The impact of this information on the cable operations was clear. On the other hand, the older news services were clearly aware of viewer preferences and tended to offer some news in as inoffensive way as possible and large doses of “infotainment.”
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
In October 1996 Rupert Murdock, a committed Neo Conservative who owns newspapers around the world, created the FOX News Channel, which set new standards for reporting with a conservative bias Murdock is a committed Neo Conservative who has boasted, “ Our reach is unattached around the world. We are reaching people from the moment they wake up until they fall asleep.” The work of creating the network was left to Roger Ailes, a veteran Republican political operative who had been president of CNBC. The Fox News Network’s strident conservative bias has attracted millions of devoted viewers who can accept no criticism of it. FOX New’s coverage was so slanted that even a few of its own people laughted about it. Scott Norvell, the networks’s London Bureau chief, admitted, “ Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly.” The University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy attitudes found that watching Fox News tended to make people more misinformed. Another study found that in 2004, 13% of Fox panelists had something good to say about John Kerry while 50% strongly backed Bush.
When the producer of the television series “Boston Legal” attempted to criticize Fox News for offering something close to “hate speech,” ABC ordered him to omit all references to Fox and its personnel from the script. Former Fox producer Charles Reina later reported that daily executive memos dictated how stories were to be covered. But he was most disturbed by the laziness of Fox personnel, who had little interest in checking facts or pursuing accuracy. In 2006, the network’s coverage of the Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which was strongly backed by the Bush administration, was so biased that two producers in the Beirut bureau felt it was necessary to protest the propaganda by resigning. In addition to the Fox networks, Murdock owns twenty-six television stations in the United States and has major interests in seven others. Murdock also owns the New York Post, The Chicago Tribune and the Weekly Standard, all influential right-wing publications. He publishes “over-the-top” type conservative commentary through Regan Books/ HarperCollins publications. In August 2007, Murdock added the Wall Street Journal to the list of the hundred newspapers he owns.
The Fox News Network is “an ideological animal” that caters to angry white male viewers and “represents the complete reversal of a conservatism once devoted to tradition, civic ideals, stewardship of natural resources, personal tolerance, and cultural aspiration--the quest for enduring, sustaining roots .” In 2004, Fox gave 48 more minutes ( 20%) coverage to the Republican National Convention than to the Democratic confab. Although it claimed to offer “fair and balanced” news, even conservative writer Andrew Sullivan said, “Fox News is obviously biased toward the right. It’s simply loopy to pretend otherwise.” .
A feature of the network is Brit Hume’s Special Report which is “so claustrophobically right-wing that anyone who appears on the panel contracts a slow-moving case of Stockholm syndrome.” After the Democrats were soundly drubbed in the Congressional elections of 2002, a self-satisfied Brit Hume claimed much of the credit for FOX News. He told Don Imus, “It was because of our coverage that it all happened. We’ve become so influential now that people watch us and take their electoral cues from us. No one should doubt the influence of Fox News in these matters.” When liberals complained about the bias reflected on FOX and the outright false information peddled by right-wing talk radio, the mainline press rushed to the defense of the conservative media and said that the liberals were “whining.” Previously, when conservatives made similar complaints, their conduct was characterized as “courageous.” Publishing clearly biased political stories is also profitable. Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard , commenting on the conservative media, declared that “it pays to be unobjective. ...It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It’s a great little racket. I’m glad we found it.”
FOX News began to attract more viewers than CNN in 2001, and the gap between them reached 60% in 2003. The success of FOX rests upon its strategy of imitating right-wing talk radio. It claims to offer objective news, but its coverage is really confrontational and right-biased talk about news. Its slogan is “fair and balanced,” but its comment is , consistently conservative, and most of its personnel behave as though they are embarked upon a sacred mission to convert American to conservatism. When Paula Zahn signed with CNN several months before her contract expired, Fox fired her, and Fox commentators trashed her.. By 2003, FOX was the most watched cable outlet. Sociologist Tod Gitlin has noted that its “commercial motive dovetails beautifully with a politics of muscularity and resentment.” It features a phony objectivity, while airing Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Both offer even more distortions and simplistic reasoning than Rush Limbaugh. Hannity plays off liberal Alan Colmes, whose mild manner make him raw meat for Hannity to maul and chew up. Mark Levin, another right wing shock jock, specializes in name calling; he called Judy Miller a “rat,” Joseph Wilson and his wife “finks,” and Ted Kennedy, “a lifelong drunk.”
FOX News and the other news outlets owned by Rupert Murdock represent a purely commercial approach to news production. It denies that journalism is a particularly noble craft that has a high responsibility to the American public, in part because it enjoys special privileges under the first amendment. The Murdock ventures are purely commercial, geared to maximize profits and reflect the views of their owner. Murdock operatives still talk about offering balanced news, but it is likely that they will eventually become more forthright about what they are offering. Talk radio has already done this. Murdock is seen as a journalistic trend-setter, and it could well be that the greatest part of the press will eventually follow this lead and that American journalism will eventually mirror what it was in the early 1800s, highly partisan outlets that offered offered partial views of the news. The difference would be that the media is likely to be heavily conservative in orientation.
CNN founder Reese Schonfeld suggested that FNN’s popularity was due to the style of its personalities; “They’re fast, they’re funny, and they’re furious.” On the other hand, it could just be that cable news viewers are mostly conservative and want news that is consistent with their outlook.
The success of FOX’s conservative programming had the effect of moving the other cable news networks, particularly CNN, to the right in order to attract conservative viewers, who may be more inclined to be news junkies than other Americans. CNN became a distinctively conservative voice after it was acquired by AOL-Time -Warner in 2000. Prior to that, CNN focused on little but Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky for 13 months. By 2000, the network of conservative journalists, media outlets, and talk radio had become so successful that their unapologetically slanted information was leaching into the mainstream press. In 2001,CNN head Walter Isaacson tried to recruit Rush Limbaugh as the network’s political commentator, and he went to Capitol Hill to learn from New Right politicians how to attract more conservative viewer. In December he added ultra-conservative warrior Ann Coulter to its staff as a “legal commentator.” A Salon magazine report found that between the inauguration and September 10, 2002, CNN gave unprecedented coverage to the Bush administration, and another study found that the network had covered administration officials live 157 times in a three-month period in 2002, as compared to seven times for elected Democrats. There was anecdotal evidence that MSNBC and FOX coverage were similar. For whatever reason, there seemed to be many more conservative viewers of cable news than liberals. Perhaps this was why Phil Donahue, who briefly had a cable show, was told he could interview conservatives alone but could not have liberals on the air without someone to counterbalance their views.
MSNBC certainly has a better record than FOX but its token “liberal” is Chris Matthews, a registered Democrat who once questioned the patriotism of Michael Dukakis and seems to appeal to angry white men. Matthews was quite conservative when he first appeared on the air and moved close to the center when George W. Bush’s popularity seemed to wane. Initially, he expressed great admiration for Bush because he was clearly a “guy” who could throw a baseball. He also proclaimed that Bush “looks great in a military uniform.” Though he was too cool on Bush, he exhibited a consisten approval of Republicans who were self-styled machomen. He said McCain “deserved the presidency,” then decided that America’s mayor Rudy Guiliani deserved the office. He also noted that Mitt Romney has “a great chin. I’ve noticed.”
Fox-News, by openly appealing to them, became an instant success. And the other cable news channels had little choice but to woo those conservative viewers. Sometimes the effort to woo conservatives was all too obvious as in Kelly Wallace of CNN’s fawning coverage of George W. Bush. By 2001, media scholar Mark Crispin Miller claimed that a communications cartel has emerged that controls the nation’s entertainment and much of its news. Despite the persistent fiction about media bias, Miller claims the cartel has a vested interest in keeping the public half-informed and in not offending generally conservative corporate advertisers. ABC features right-wing John Stossel, whose reports have so twisted data and distorted academic study results that several of his producers have resigned in protest.
When a CNN program added very articulate liberal spokesmen, Republicans tried to bring it into line. In April 2002, CNN attempted to attract more viewers by changing the personnel on its “Crossfire,” its political debate program. Robert Novak and Tucker Carlson were to represent the Right, and James Carville and Paul Begela spoke for the Left. The leftist pair seemed to get the best of most arguments and CNN was flooded with letters and e-mail about their “unfair tactics.” The Republican National Committee and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott’s office attempted to organize a boycott that would prevent prominent Republicans from appearing on the program. The boycott was partially successful for more than a year. After the boycott received some public attention, White Hours spokesmen said that a refusal to debate was not a useful approach because those who refused to debate made Republicans look “like a bunch of wimps.”
Involved in fierce competition among the cable networks to attract conservative viewers, CNN and MSNBC signed on more far-right commentators and were less inclined to offer news that offended conservatives. Even Don Imus, the MSNBC morning host, who is usually considered non-partisan was given to racist invective, calling an African American journalist a “cleaning lady,” a black writer a “quota hire,” and said he hired a producer because he wrote good “nigger jokes.” Founded in 1996, MSNBC struck on a strategy of offering balanced, highly professional newscasts during the day and competing with Fox at night by offering a parade of right-wing commentators. MSNBC even hired Michael Savage, who thought homosexuals were plotting to destroy “the white race” and also engaged in tasteless attacks on blacks. He referred to the “Turd World Nations” and “Million Dyke March” and “ghetto slime,” demanded that “You liberals should drop dead for what you’ve done to my country,” and told a gay who called “You should get AIDS and die, you pig.” The latter comment got him fired. The network also hired former Congressman Joe Scarborough, who defined himself as “a hawk’s hawk” and who shamelessly practiced slanted bookings and one-sided presentations of background information.
A 2003 poll found that only 16% of MSNBC and CNN viewers were conservatives in comparison to 40% who identified themselves as conservatives. Forty-six percent of Fox viewers were conservative, while 44% of Fox were conservatives. Viewers of the three major nightly newscasts were 41% conservative and 17% liberal. The impact of this information on the cable operations was clear. On the other hand, the older news services were clearly aware of viewer preferences and tended to offer some news in as inoffensive way as possible and large doses of “infotainment.”
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
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