STEPHEN COLBERT VIDEO
http://www.republicanoffenders.com/
On April 29, 2006, Stephen Colbert, during the White House Correspondents dinner, stepped up and did what no other man in the media ever dared to do... . You see, Colbert agrees with President Bush. Colbert isn’t one to give into facts or statistics. Books are all facts, no heart. Colbert thinks with his gut. Just like the President. And it’s a well known fact that “truth has a liberal bias.”
It’s almost excruciating to watch. If you haven’t already, you can watch the entire thing on Google video. George W. Bush, who has been extremely careful through his presidency to avoid any direct contact with detractors or protestors of any kind, was forced to sit for 24 minutes and listen, with a strained fake smile, as Colbert’s rapier like wit cut at Bush again, and again, and again. During the more savage moments, the audience would groan in sympathy as the President was located a seat away from the Colbert.
The delay schadenfreude didn’t arrive until a year later when the President’s handler, fearful of another ‘incident,’ booked aging comedian Rich Little to host the event.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Podcasting: Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods
Related - Streaming Audio: "Here And Now: Grant Woods, Journalist Round-Up" (Bio sketch with interview about illegal immigration and Woods' support for John McCain.)
" ... the Web site is currently sponsored by Budweiser -- Cindy McCain, of course, being the owner of the area's biggest Bud distributorship. ... "
Former AZ Attorney General Grant Woods: Howard Stern for the Age of the Podcast?
By Sarah Fenske in News
kjzz.org/news
Add former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods to the list of old-school guys giving new media a try.
We hear through the grapevine that Woods is launching a new Web site, www.grantwoods.com. It's apparently still in the preview stage -- the home page currently includes a note warning about its unfinished quality and asking readers to let him know what they like and don't like, "so that we can continue to make GrantWoods.com part of your daily routine."
But from what we can see so far, it looks like Woods is setting himself up to be the King of all Media for the 602 area code. The site includes a weekly podcast of the Grant Woods Show, blog posts from the former state attorney general and his compadres, and even some video. J.D. Hayworth, eat your heart out!
Woods, of course, is famously well-connected. Not only was he elected attorney general back in the 90s, but he's since represented all sorts of interesting people in his private practice, from Sonia Falcone, socialite and wife of an alleged international arms dealer, to (for a time) disgraced then-Congressman Rick Renzi.
So we're not the least bit surprised that Woods' Podcast show boasts guests ranging from Charles Barkley to John McCain. Nor were we surprised to see that the Web site is currently sponsored by Budweiser -- Cindy McCain, of course, being the owner of the area's biggest Bud distributorship.
Now, we're pretty sure Woods intentionally failed to send a link to the preview site to us journalists on purpose. And we also suspect it's a little early to be sending readers of this blog over to check the thing out. But what the hell ... we're living in a New Media world these days, and we're pretty sure this thing is about to go viral. (Whatever that means.)
So check it out now. The Web site is still a little rough around the edges, but someday when grantwoods.com is the Drudge Report of Phoenix, you can say you knew it when...
Meantime, we've got a call out to Woods, and we'll let you know more when we do.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2009/01/grant_woods_howard_stern_for_t.php
" ... the Web site is currently sponsored by Budweiser -- Cindy McCain, of course, being the owner of the area's biggest Bud distributorship. ... "
Former AZ Attorney General Grant Woods: Howard Stern for the Age of the Podcast?
By Sarah Fenske in News
kjzz.org/news
Add former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods to the list of old-school guys giving new media a try.We hear through the grapevine that Woods is launching a new Web site, www.grantwoods.com. It's apparently still in the preview stage -- the home page currently includes a note warning about its unfinished quality and asking readers to let him know what they like and don't like, "so that we can continue to make GrantWoods.com part of your daily routine."
But from what we can see so far, it looks like Woods is setting himself up to be the King of all Media for the 602 area code. The site includes a weekly podcast of the Grant Woods Show, blog posts from the former state attorney general and his compadres, and even some video. J.D. Hayworth, eat your heart out!
Woods, of course, is famously well-connected. Not only was he elected attorney general back in the 90s, but he's since represented all sorts of interesting people in his private practice, from Sonia Falcone, socialite and wife of an alleged international arms dealer, to (for a time) disgraced then-Congressman Rick Renzi.
So we're not the least bit surprised that Woods' Podcast show boasts guests ranging from Charles Barkley to John McCain. Nor were we surprised to see that the Web site is currently sponsored by Budweiser -- Cindy McCain, of course, being the owner of the area's biggest Bud distributorship.
Now, we're pretty sure Woods intentionally failed to send a link to the preview site to us journalists on purpose. And we also suspect it's a little early to be sending readers of this blog over to check the thing out. But what the hell ... we're living in a New Media world these days, and we're pretty sure this thing is about to go viral. (Whatever that means.)
So check it out now. The Web site is still a little rough around the edges, but someday when grantwoods.com is the Drudge Report of Phoenix, you can say you knew it when...
Meantime, we've got a call out to Woods, and we'll let you know more when we do.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2009/01/grant_woods_howard_stern_for_t.php
Book Review - Liberation: Europe 1945, By William I Hitchcock
LiberationReview by Daniel Swift
www.ft.com
January 12 2009
Liberation: Europe 1945
By William I Hitchcock
Faber £25, 446 pages
FT Bookshop price: £20
Liberation is the great story of war. In the past 50 years those that invaded Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam each time claimed to be freeing subjected peoples; even in the Iliad, the Greek soldiers were on the beaches of Troy to liberate the kidnapped Helen. However, this ideal of liberation is most purely true of the conventional telling of the invasion of occupied Europe by Allied troops in 1944. Novels, memoirs and Hollywood movies all narrate the liberation of Europe as a grand military epic of freedom.
“We have fixed our gaze upon battles and armies, and taken refuge in a well-worn and predictable narration of the war that stresses the ennobling quality of the fight for freedom” writes historian William I Hitchcock in his new book Liberation. Instead of focusing on the liberators, unusually he chooses instead to look at the liberated, particularly the civilians of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and the millions of Jews in concentration camps. With this shift in focus, a different story comes to light. “However much we wish to assign it a benevolent nature, liberation came to Europe in a storm of destruction and death,” he writes.
The book has four parts. It opens with what Hitchcock calls the “catastrophe” on Omaha beach on D-Day, June 6 1944. The US First Army ran into secure German batteries, their amphibious tanks sank, there were mines on the beaches, and the troops were trapped. “By late July, the Allies fielded 1.4m soldiers in Normandy yet were still stuck in positions they had planned to occupy just five days after D-Day,” notes Hitchcock.
The keynote of this first section, as in all revisionist histories, is the slowness of progress and its great cost. Twenty thousand French people were killed in Normandy during its liberation and the towns of Caen, Saint-Lô and others were bombed to rubble. “The theft and looting of Norman households and farmsteads by liberating soldiers began on June 6 and never stopped during the entire summer,” Hitchcock says. He recounts the shootings of PoWs, the rape of civilians, and the spread of disease as Allied soldiers made their way through Belgium that winter.
The second section moves on to the arrival of the Russians in Germany: 25m Soviet citizens died in the war and when Russian armies entered Germany, they did so with an astonishing orgy of rape and pillage. Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met in Tehran in November 1943. Their policy in the last year of the war, suggests Hitchcock, was to “reduce Germany to a lifeless wreck”.
There are many shocking anecdotes here. Hitchcock reports that by August 1945, “IG Farben, which had manufactured the Zyklon B pellets used to exterminate millions of Jews, was now helping the occupation by making DDT to keep lice-borne typhus at bay.” This is a terrible compromise, as was the British and American policy to keep Jews in concentration camps for months after liberation. The British in particular were reluctant to permit Jewish survivors to relocate to Palestine, fearing this would upset the balance of power around the Mediterranean and Middle East.
Yet Hitchcock, in the third section, details the achievements of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which shipped food and medical supplies into 12 countries across Europe in 1945. Hitchcock looks at the agency’s work in Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia and concludes: “Millions of people benefited from UNRRA’s work.”
Above all, Liberation is a story of chaos. “Eleven million people inside Germany were set free by the collapse of the Third Reich,” he says, and inevitably there were grave failures in the Allied occupation of Europe. But Hitchcock may give too much attention to these failures – his fourth section, on the treatment of the Jews in Europe, reads as morally skewed. Close to a million Jews were killed at Auschwitz alone, yet Hitchcock dwells on the limitations of the relief of the camps. “Liberators rarely perceived the camp survivors as human beings,” he says, and gives examples of crude, unsympathetic language used there by reporters and soldiers. “No serious preparation for the care and treatment of Jews had been arranged,” he writes, and calls it “shocking” that “the Jews who emerged from Hitler’s camps in the spring of 1945 were not free on the morrow of their liberation”.
If there is a single moral absolute of the history of the 20th century, it is this: the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps was right. Perhaps it was inefficiently handled; perhaps it was slow. But it is hard to read the records of this time and not see the world, for an instant, in black and white. This is, however, a small stumble in an otherwise powerful and important new work of history. Liberation is a thorough, passionate corrective to any simple telling of the terrible last year of this war.
Daniel Swift is assistant professor of English literature at Skidmore College, New York State
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/00872618-dddc-11dd-87dc-000077b07658.html
Coleman Lawyer was at Center of 2004 Swift Boat Vets Scandal
Muriel Kane
rawstory.com
February 1, 2009
Norm Coleman's efforts to force a reconsideration of the recount that showed him losing his Minnesota Senate seat to Democratic challenger Al Franken are being led by attorney Ben Ginsberg, who has a long history of involvement in questionable Republican campaign activities.
Not only was Ginsberg one of the senior lawyers in the Bush v. Gore recount case in 2000, but in 2004 he was at the center of a Republican scandal when he was found to be advising both the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign.
When the Swift Boat Veterans first began running commercials which falsely suggested that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had lied about his Vietnam War record, the Bush campaign was quick to deny having any connection with the group.
However, it soon turned out that Ginsberg, who was the chief outside counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign, was also giving legal advice to the Swift Boat Veterans on complying with campaign finance rules. Ginsberg resigned from the campaign in August 2004 following these revelations.
At the same time, Ginsberg was also serving as counsel for Progress for America, another massively-funded 527 organization with many similarities to the Swift Boat Veterans. During the last three weeks before the November 2004 election, Progress for America was the largest-spending outside group, buying $16.8 million of television and radio time, while the Swift Boat Vets were second with $6.3 million. These two groups were also linked in other ways besides their reliance on Ginsberg's advice, such as their use of the same advertising firm, Mentzer Media Services.
Ginsberg's ties to Progress for America appear to have been particularly close. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, "During the fall of 2003, reported Peter Stone of the National Journal, Ginsberg talked 'across the country to prominent fundraisers,'asking them to serve on PFA's advisory board and to rope in large soft-money contributions."
The largest of PFA's funders was Dawn Arnell, of the subprime mortgage giant Ameriquest, who donated $5 million. According to the Wall Street Journal:
"During the housing boom, the subprime industry succeeded at more than just writing mortgages. It also shot down efforts by some states to curtail risky lending to borrowers with spotty credit. Ameriquest Mortgage Co., until recently one of the nation's largest subprime lenders, was at the center of those battles. Working with a husband-and-wife team of Washington lobbyists, it handed out more than $20 million in political donations and played a big role in persuading legislators in New Jersey and Georgia to relax tough new laws. Those victories, in turn, helped blunt efforts by other states to crack down on reckless lending, critics of the industry contend."
Ginsberg's ties to Progress for America may also indicate how he came to serve as Coleman's lawyer. PFA was founded in 2001 by Tony Feather, a long-time associate of Karl Rove and partner in the DCI Group and its sister firm, Feather-Larson-Synhorst (now known as FLS Direct.) Feather stepped aside from running PFA when he began working for the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign but handed its operation over to DCI employee Chris LaCivita, who also served as an adviser to the Swift Boat Veterans on media strategy.
Coleman himself is also intimately connected with FLS-Connect. As of last September, he had paid the firm almost $645,000 in consulting fees for the 2008 election and over $1.5 million since 2001.
Not only that, but according to a complaint filed last fall with the FEC by the DFL Party (the local name for the Democrats), "The owner of FLS-Connect, longtime Coleman confidant and powerful Republican operative Jeff Larson, is the treasurer of Coleman’s political-action committee."
That complaint alleged "illegal in-kind corporate contributions" to Coleman by two groups which had run issues ads attacking Franken for his support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Those groups were also FLS clients.
It was further reported that "Coleman rents living space in the English-basement apartment of a million-dollar townhouse that Jeff Larson owns in Washington, D.C., for which Coleman pays far under market value. In addition, Coleman shares the apartment with offices of FLS-Connect."
Just recently, the DFL Party filed a fresh complaint with the FEC concerning the recount, suggesting that it is being illegally funded by the Republican National Lawyers Association:
"The complaint, filed today with the FEC, alleges that: the RNLA is funding Coleman's recount committee with illegal contributions in excess of legal limits; the RNLA is funding Coleman's recount committee with illegal contributions from corporations; the RNLA has failed to register with the FEC, as its contributions to Coleman's recount require it to; and Coleman has failed to report any contributions from the RNLA."
Perhaps Ginsberg's network of "prominent fundraisers" -- or at least those who haven't been caught in the subprime mortgage meltdown -- should be scrutinized for any interest they may have in the Minnesota recount.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Coleman_lawyer_at_center_of_Swift_0201.html
rawstory.com
February 1, 2009
Norm Coleman's efforts to force a reconsideration of the recount that showed him losing his Minnesota Senate seat to Democratic challenger Al Franken are being led by attorney Ben Ginsberg, who has a long history of involvement in questionable Republican campaign activities.
Not only was Ginsberg one of the senior lawyers in the Bush v. Gore recount case in 2000, but in 2004 he was at the center of a Republican scandal when he was found to be advising both the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign.
When the Swift Boat Veterans first began running commercials which falsely suggested that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry had lied about his Vietnam War record, the Bush campaign was quick to deny having any connection with the group.
However, it soon turned out that Ginsberg, who was the chief outside counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign, was also giving legal advice to the Swift Boat Veterans on complying with campaign finance rules. Ginsberg resigned from the campaign in August 2004 following these revelations.
At the same time, Ginsberg was also serving as counsel for Progress for America, another massively-funded 527 organization with many similarities to the Swift Boat Veterans. During the last three weeks before the November 2004 election, Progress for America was the largest-spending outside group, buying $16.8 million of television and radio time, while the Swift Boat Vets were second with $6.3 million. These two groups were also linked in other ways besides their reliance on Ginsberg's advice, such as their use of the same advertising firm, Mentzer Media Services.
Ginsberg's ties to Progress for America appear to have been particularly close. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, "During the fall of 2003, reported Peter Stone of the National Journal, Ginsberg talked 'across the country to prominent fundraisers,'asking them to serve on PFA's advisory board and to rope in large soft-money contributions."
The largest of PFA's funders was Dawn Arnell, of the subprime mortgage giant Ameriquest, who donated $5 million. According to the Wall Street Journal:
"During the housing boom, the subprime industry succeeded at more than just writing mortgages. It also shot down efforts by some states to curtail risky lending to borrowers with spotty credit. Ameriquest Mortgage Co., until recently one of the nation's largest subprime lenders, was at the center of those battles. Working with a husband-and-wife team of Washington lobbyists, it handed out more than $20 million in political donations and played a big role in persuading legislators in New Jersey and Georgia to relax tough new laws. Those victories, in turn, helped blunt efforts by other states to crack down on reckless lending, critics of the industry contend."
Ginsberg's ties to Progress for America may also indicate how he came to serve as Coleman's lawyer. PFA was founded in 2001 by Tony Feather, a long-time associate of Karl Rove and partner in the DCI Group and its sister firm, Feather-Larson-Synhorst (now known as FLS Direct.) Feather stepped aside from running PFA when he began working for the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign but handed its operation over to DCI employee Chris LaCivita, who also served as an adviser to the Swift Boat Veterans on media strategy.
Coleman himself is also intimately connected with FLS-Connect. As of last September, he had paid the firm almost $645,000 in consulting fees for the 2008 election and over $1.5 million since 2001.
Not only that, but according to a complaint filed last fall with the FEC by the DFL Party (the local name for the Democrats), "The owner of FLS-Connect, longtime Coleman confidant and powerful Republican operative Jeff Larson, is the treasurer of Coleman’s political-action committee."
That complaint alleged "illegal in-kind corporate contributions" to Coleman by two groups which had run issues ads attacking Franken for his support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Those groups were also FLS clients.
It was further reported that "Coleman rents living space in the English-basement apartment of a million-dollar townhouse that Jeff Larson owns in Washington, D.C., for which Coleman pays far under market value. In addition, Coleman shares the apartment with offices of FLS-Connect."
Just recently, the DFL Party filed a fresh complaint with the FEC concerning the recount, suggesting that it is being illegally funded by the Republican National Lawyers Association:
"The complaint, filed today with the FEC, alleges that: the RNLA is funding Coleman's recount committee with illegal contributions in excess of legal limits; the RNLA is funding Coleman's recount committee with illegal contributions from corporations; the RNLA has failed to register with the FEC, as its contributions to Coleman's recount require it to; and Coleman has failed to report any contributions from the RNLA."
Perhaps Ginsberg's network of "prominent fundraisers" -- or at least those who haven't been caught in the subprime mortgage meltdown -- should be scrutinized for any interest they may have in the Minnesota recount.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Coleman_lawyer_at_center_of_Swift_0201.html
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Ghosts in the Wind ("Suicide" Case File # 23) - Raymond Lemme's Amazing Vote-Rigging Software Prototype!
www.bradblog.com
Raymond Lemme Crime Scene Photos Said Not to Exist are Published on Net! - Photos, Evidence and FDOT Involvement with Valdosta, GA Police Raise New Questions in Mysterious Death!
The case of the mysterious suicide of Raymond Lemme of the Florida Inspector General's office was reopened by Valdosta, Georgia police last December shortly after we broke the story of computer programmer Clint Curtis' sworn affidavit charging that he had built a "vote-rigging software prototype" at the request of Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)!
Furthermore, graphic and disturbing photos from the crime scene --- said in the original police report to have not existed due to a failure in the camera's "flash memory cards" --- have recently been published on the web!
Those crime scene photos, which clearly do exist, can be viewed via this link.
WARNING: THE PAGE LINKED ABOVE INCLUDES GRAPHIC MATERIAL!
A spokesman from the Valdosta Police Department has confirmed the legitimacy of the photos but has so far failed to explain several inconsistencies that the photos and materials from the supplementary detective reports reveal when compared to the original police report.
Supplementary evidence from the reports would seem to indicate that Lemme was not even in Valdosta, Georgia at the time that the motel receipts show that he had checked-in to the room where he was eventually found dead.
Furthermore, involvement from the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) may have lead to the quick re-closing of the case shortly after it was recently re-opened!
Lemme was the first official from the FL Inspector General's office to investigate the charges originally made by Curtis' 2001 whistleblower complaint at the FDOT, where he had gone to work after leaving Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) in the wake several disturbing meetings at the software firm with Feeney and YEI's CEO, Mrs. Li-Woan Yang.
In Curtis' 2001 complaint to the IG's office, filed along with another FDOT whistleblower, he charged that an illegal Chinese alien was working at and committing espionage out of YEI and that YEI was illegally over-billing FDOT in a multi-million dollar contract. That contract, Curtis charges, was received with assistance from Feeney, who was, at the time of Curtis' original complaint, the Florida Speaker of the House as well as legal counsel and a registered lobbyist for YEI. Feeney had previously been Jeb Bush's running-mate in his original failed bid for Florida governor in 1994. Feeney now sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee representing Florida's 24th Congressional district.
The Chinese spy reported by Curtis was eventually indicted and pled guilty to espionage charges (see this previous BRAD BLOG report for more details). For their part, YEI was recently found --- in the IG's final report begun by Lemme in 2001 and finally released in February 2005 --- to have billed FDOT for more than $300,000 in "questionable charges" (see this recent BRAD BLOG report for more info on that).
THE 'BIG' CASE...
In his 2004 affidavit, Curtis describes a mid-June 2003 meeting with Lemme in which he claims that Lemme told him he "had tracked the corruption 'all the way to the top' and that the story would break in the next few weeks and I would be satisfied with the results."
On July 1, 2003 --- just two weeks later --- Raymond Camillo Lemme was found dead in a bathtub, with his arm slashed twice with a razor blade near the left elbow in Room #132 of the Knights Inn motel in Valdosta, Georgia; a border-town some 80 miles from Tallahassee, Florida where Lemme lived and worked.
A handwritten note, unsigned, was found by police on the desk in the room in a black leather day planner. Here is a photocopy of that note...
At the time of this incident, Lemme's only child was engaged to be married just three months later in September. Curtis has told us that Lemme frequently talked about his daughter with him. "He would always discuss his daughter and had talked about her upcoming wedding," he told us. Yet Lemme's only daughter --- his only child --- is not mentioned by name in the unsigned note. A family member of Lemme's has told us that the family generally feels that the handwriting on the note seemed to belong to Lemme.
A statement from Lemme's wife, Mary Ann, in the report from the Leon County, FL Sheriff's Office (where Lemme was first reported as missing) would seem to concur with Curtis' description of what he had been told by Lemme when they met in mid-June. His wife is described in the report by Officer Jim Tyson as having told the police that her husband "has been under a lot of stress at work due to a 'big' case he is working."
When we first asked Curtis what Lemme might have been doing in Valdosta in the first place, Curtis explained to the The BRAD BLOG in one of our initial interviews that "There are no autopsy laws in Georgia. Had he committed suicide in Florida, there would have been a mandatory autopsy."
THE APPEARANCE OF THE PHOTOS...
The police report from Valdosta Det. Shannon Floyd states, "a defect in the camera flash memory cards resulted in no usable photographs. Photographs will not be submitted with this report."
However, several weeks ago, Insider-Magazine published over a dozen photographs --- previously reported to have not existed! --- from the crime scene, including detailed shots of Lemme in the bathtub where he is said to have killed himself.
We will discuss shortly some unexplained inconsistencies in the photos, along with other details from the police report which, so far, neither add-up, nor have been explained by the Valdosta Police Department.
The legitimacy of the photographs was confirmed by a spokesman from the Valdosta police. Capt. Brian K. Childress of Valdosta's Professional Standards Unit told us in our original conversation with him that, "the flash card initially did fail" but that they were able to recover them after they "reopened the case due to interest on the Internet."
"We recovered the photos with some software and were eventually able to get them," he told us, "sometime late last year around December." (Our original story on Curtis was published December 6th last year.)
THE DATES THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE...
Aside from the sudden appearance of the photographs, the most obvious inconsistency in the police report are the two different receipts from Knights Inn.
The first, unsigned, is dated 6/29/03 6:44PM and is described as the check-in receipt, according to the Valdosta police report.
The second, apparently a check-out receipt signed by "Raymond Lemme", is dated 6/30/03 6:54AM.
The problem is, Lemme was not even reported as missing until 6/30/03!
His wife wrote, in a sworn affidavit on 6/30/03, when Lemme was first reported missing:
"I have been unable to reach my husband, Raymond, all day. He left work early this morning, approx 5:15AM, told me he loved me and that he would call me later. He had a meeting @ work today and I had been unable to contact him."
A copy of her full affidavit is available here.
As well, the police report states that Lemme's watch had "stopped at 12:34 on June 30th".
When we asked Childress about the problems with the dates on those receipts, he told us, "Yeah...There was a question about the dates. We were told the management of the hotel made a mistake. Either there was an error in their machines or some other error."
His comment --- made during our first call with him, before he had had the chance to "pull the file" to refresh his memory --- might make sense if the credit card terminal machine at Knights Inn, for some reason, had its date set incorrectly. Yet, when we inquired whether the department had checked with the credit card merchant processor (who would have received transmission of the purchase on their end) to find out what their date/time stamp showed for those transactions, Childress told us he'd have to get back to us on that.
AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE...
Despite inconsistencies in the photos and other evidence that would seem to conflict with information in the police report, Childress informed us that while the case was re-opened last December after our original report, it was closed quickly thereafter.
"We spoke to someone at the Florida Department of Transportation," he explained, "and then closed the case again. It was either late '04 or early '05."
"Someone at the Florida Department of Transportation"?!
Childress promised to get back to us the next day with information on precisely whom they had spoken to at FDOT and, as well, with answers to several other important questions we had about the case, the report, the photographs and the receipts.
Late the next day, after we did not receive the promised callback from Childress, we were able to reach him via his cell phone after paging him. His tone that next day was notably different...
"Look...I spoke with my chief about this. We have looked at everything about this case... Everything...the allegations on the Internet and whether he's committeed suicide. Everything we've looked at indicates it was suicide. And that's all we're going to say about this...the media has blown this out of proportion.
"I'm getting tons and tons of questions about this case. We investigated it like any other case. There's nothing that we found that would indicate [Lemme] was murdered...If you find anything that indicates there's something we missed we'll gladly give it a look.
"I don't want to be short with you, I don't want you to think I'm stonewalling or anything, but quite honestly, I'm tired of answering these questions."
As it turns out, there were many indications that "there's something" they may have missed. So we asked Childress about three specific points on which he again promised to get back to us on Monday with answers to our questions. He also repeated several times that he didn't want us to think he was "stonewalling" us.
THE STONEWALL ...
That second conversation with Capt. Childress took place on Friday, February 11.
Childress did not call us back as promised on the following Monday and repeated calls, messages and pages made by The BRAD BLOG to him in the three ensuing weeks have all gone unreturned.
There are still many unexplained questions that we had hoped Childress and/or Det. Shannon Floyd could clear up for us. Above and beyond some of the matters discussed above, these are the ones we are most interested in for the moment:
Who was spoken to at FDOT, what did the conversation include, and why did that lead to re-closing the recently re-opened case?
The report of Det. Shannon Floyd refers to "flash memory cards" having failed in the camera as the reason that "Photographs will not be submitted with this report," as she wrote. She used the plural "cards". Was there more than one memory card used? And if so, how would one explain several flash memory cards all having the same failure?
We would also love to know how many pictures were taken in total, and how many were actually recovered. Was there more than the 15 which were posted on the Internet by Insider-Magazine?
Det. Floyd reports that she "examined the body for other signs of trauma [aside from the two cuts near Lemme's left elbow] with negative results. She also says there was "no sign of foul play", yet how does one explain the apparent severe bruising as seen on the right side of Lemme's neck in the photographs?
Det. Floyd also states in her report "On the bathrom floor next to the bathtub was a black in color man's dress belt, which was lying on the top of a white in color hotel bath mat. The belt appeared to have been used as a tourniquet; dried blood was visible on the belt but was not visible on the towel". We're no crime scene experts, but the following photograph from the crime scene clearly shows blood on the towel...
Why the discrepancy with Floyd's report?
How do the police explain the fact that both Lemme's wife Mary Ann and Lemme's supervisor in the IG's office, Bob Clift, said that they felt it was "very out of character" for Lemme to simply disappear as he did?
In Clift's handwritten sworn affidavit given to the Leon County, FL sheriff on June 30th, the day Lemme went missing, he wrote "This is very out of character for Ray." (underlined as in the original) A copy of his actual affidavit is available here.
In Mary Ann's affidavit, given on the same day, she writes "This all is very out of character and he has never done this in the past."
In the Leon County Sheriff's report, Officer Jim Tyson says, "Mrs. Lemme did advise that this was out of character for her husband."
THE MISSING DETECTIVE...
We had hoped to speak with Det. Shannon Floyd since she took the crime scene photos and wrote the most detailed report in the case file. She was the one who reported the camera's "flash memory cards" as having failed, said that there were no "signs of trauma", that "Nothing was observed that would indicate foul play" and described there being no visible blood on the white towel next to the tub. She also described the stopped watch and the check-in and check-out receipts, along with their dates, but mentioned nothing about the apparent inconsistency in dates.
In our first conversation with Valdosta's Capt. Childress, he had informed us that Det. Floyd was no longer with the department and was now teaching at a university. He didn't feel it appropriate to let us know where she was teaching, but in our second call, he informed us that, "Det. Floyd does not work for us anymore. She left and is teaching somewhere now. I'm not gonna tell ya where she is. Her husband said she didn't want to talk to the media. I spoke with him last night after we spoke."
THE FAMILY...
We have attempted to speak with members of Lemme's family, including his wife Mary Ann. They preferred to either not speak with us or to do so only on background. The family expressed great sadness about their loss, yet seemed to be of differing opinions on whether there might have been some sort of foul play at work or whether this was just a tragic case of suicide.
They all seem to agree that there had been no previous indications that Lemme might have wanted to kill himself. It was described as a complete shock to all of them.
Things had seemed to be going well for Lemme, who had just returned from an Army Reserve weekend and had recently received an award from the IG's office.
CLOSING THOUGHTS...FOR NOW...
We realize this report raises many unanswered questions. In fact, many more than it answers. Indeed, there are still other concerns from the police report which we have not discussed here yet. For example, a rope found in the trunk of Lemme's car with what was described as a "dark stain that could possible be blood." Det. Floyd claims to have performed a "presumptive test for the presence of blood" and wrote that "the test result was negative."
We have waited quite a while before filing any sort of detailed report on this matter for at least two reasons. One is our interest in being able to investigate it thoroughly before presenting evidence that might be misleading. We have attempted to give the Valdosta Police plenty of time to get back to us, but it has become apparent that --- for whatever reason --- they've determined it's in their best interest not to talk with us. Even if it means they will appear to be stonewalling...as Capt. Childress continually stressed that he wasn't.
The other reason --- at least the reason that we've waited so long before going into detail on this element of the Clint Curtis story --- was because we'd felt that the allegations made by Curtis about Tom Feeney and YEI were explosive enough in and of themselves. A sensational story such as the suicide of the original investigator looking into Curtis' allegations --- just weeks after it is claimed that he "had tracked the corruption 'all the way to the top'" --- could easily allow an all-too-easy way out for those who wish to detract from Curtis' claims. The "crazy conspiracy theory" defense has become, of late, the favored to dismiss credible claims for those who'd rather not deal with uncomfortable facts. Particularly when such claims do not otherwise comfortably fit their own agenda.
There are many "suicide conspiracy theories" out there these days --- too many --- and we had hoped that the extraordinary allegations at the heart of the Curtis case would not be dismissed due to the unexplained mysteries surrounding this particular death.
Indeed, the reporting from the original publishers of the crime scene photographs, Insider-Magazine --- despite the intrepid work by editor John Caylor in unearthing evidence which "didn't exist" --- is the sort which we feel makes it much easier for many to ignore Curtis' claims. We have spoken with Caylor about this point, and he simply feels his way of reporting this sort of story is the best way. We do not agree, although we must respect him for his ability to get hard evidence which nobody else had previously been able to uncover.
It should also be noted as well that we take little comfort in publishing disturbing and graphic photographs of the tragic death --- however it may have happened --- of someone's father, someone's husband, someone's brother... We take no joy in it, and have done so only after much careful consideration.
In the end, the continuing veracity of Curtis' claims, along with the continuing and documented collapse in credibility of both Feeney and YEI in this matter, have continued to give us reason to believe that some very bad people may well have done some very bad things. The reopening of the case in Valdosta, the sudden appearance of the photographs, the quick re-closure of the case after FDOT officials intervened, and the odd behavior of the Valdosta Police have added a newsworthiness to this element of the story, such that we are no longer able to keep from reporting it. As much as we truly might have liked to.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1244
Raymond Lemme Crime Scene Photos Said Not to Exist are Published on Net! - Photos, Evidence and FDOT Involvement with Valdosta, GA Police Raise New Questions in Mysterious Death!
The case of the mysterious suicide of Raymond Lemme of the Florida Inspector General's office was reopened by Valdosta, Georgia police last December shortly after we broke the story of computer programmer Clint Curtis' sworn affidavit charging that he had built a "vote-rigging software prototype" at the request of Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)!
Furthermore, graphic and disturbing photos from the crime scene --- said in the original police report to have not existed due to a failure in the camera's "flash memory cards" --- have recently been published on the web!
Those crime scene photos, which clearly do exist, can be viewed via this link.
WARNING: THE PAGE LINKED ABOVE INCLUDES GRAPHIC MATERIAL!
A spokesman from the Valdosta Police Department has confirmed the legitimacy of the photos but has so far failed to explain several inconsistencies that the photos and materials from the supplementary detective reports reveal when compared to the original police report.
Supplementary evidence from the reports would seem to indicate that Lemme was not even in Valdosta, Georgia at the time that the motel receipts show that he had checked-in to the room where he was eventually found dead.
Furthermore, involvement from the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) may have lead to the quick re-closing of the case shortly after it was recently re-opened!
Lemme was the first official from the FL Inspector General's office to investigate the charges originally made by Curtis' 2001 whistleblower complaint at the FDOT, where he had gone to work after leaving Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) in the wake several disturbing meetings at the software firm with Feeney and YEI's CEO, Mrs. Li-Woan Yang.
In Curtis' 2001 complaint to the IG's office, filed along with another FDOT whistleblower, he charged that an illegal Chinese alien was working at and committing espionage out of YEI and that YEI was illegally over-billing FDOT in a multi-million dollar contract. That contract, Curtis charges, was received with assistance from Feeney, who was, at the time of Curtis' original complaint, the Florida Speaker of the House as well as legal counsel and a registered lobbyist for YEI. Feeney had previously been Jeb Bush's running-mate in his original failed bid for Florida governor in 1994. Feeney now sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee representing Florida's 24th Congressional district.
The Chinese spy reported by Curtis was eventually indicted and pled guilty to espionage charges (see this previous BRAD BLOG report for more details). For their part, YEI was recently found --- in the IG's final report begun by Lemme in 2001 and finally released in February 2005 --- to have billed FDOT for more than $300,000 in "questionable charges" (see this recent BRAD BLOG report for more info on that).
THE 'BIG' CASE...
In his 2004 affidavit, Curtis describes a mid-June 2003 meeting with Lemme in which he claims that Lemme told him he "had tracked the corruption 'all the way to the top' and that the story would break in the next few weeks and I would be satisfied with the results."
On July 1, 2003 --- just two weeks later --- Raymond Camillo Lemme was found dead in a bathtub, with his arm slashed twice with a razor blade near the left elbow in Room #132 of the Knights Inn motel in Valdosta, Georgia; a border-town some 80 miles from Tallahassee, Florida where Lemme lived and worked.
A handwritten note, unsigned, was found by police on the desk in the room in a black leather day planner. Here is a photocopy of that note...
At the time of this incident, Lemme's only child was engaged to be married just three months later in September. Curtis has told us that Lemme frequently talked about his daughter with him. "He would always discuss his daughter and had talked about her upcoming wedding," he told us. Yet Lemme's only daughter --- his only child --- is not mentioned by name in the unsigned note. A family member of Lemme's has told us that the family generally feels that the handwriting on the note seemed to belong to Lemme.
A statement from Lemme's wife, Mary Ann, in the report from the Leon County, FL Sheriff's Office (where Lemme was first reported as missing) would seem to concur with Curtis' description of what he had been told by Lemme when they met in mid-June. His wife is described in the report by Officer Jim Tyson as having told the police that her husband "has been under a lot of stress at work due to a 'big' case he is working."
When we first asked Curtis what Lemme might have been doing in Valdosta in the first place, Curtis explained to the The BRAD BLOG in one of our initial interviews that "There are no autopsy laws in Georgia. Had he committed suicide in Florida, there would have been a mandatory autopsy."
THE APPEARANCE OF THE PHOTOS...
The police report from Valdosta Det. Shannon Floyd states, "a defect in the camera flash memory cards resulted in no usable photographs. Photographs will not be submitted with this report."
However, several weeks ago, Insider-Magazine published over a dozen photographs --- previously reported to have not existed! --- from the crime scene, including detailed shots of Lemme in the bathtub where he is said to have killed himself.
We will discuss shortly some unexplained inconsistencies in the photos, along with other details from the police report which, so far, neither add-up, nor have been explained by the Valdosta Police Department.
The legitimacy of the photographs was confirmed by a spokesman from the Valdosta police. Capt. Brian K. Childress of Valdosta's Professional Standards Unit told us in our original conversation with him that, "the flash card initially did fail" but that they were able to recover them after they "reopened the case due to interest on the Internet."
"We recovered the photos with some software and were eventually able to get them," he told us, "sometime late last year around December." (Our original story on Curtis was published December 6th last year.)
THE DATES THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE...
Aside from the sudden appearance of the photographs, the most obvious inconsistency in the police report are the two different receipts from Knights Inn.
The first, unsigned, is dated 6/29/03 6:44PM and is described as the check-in receipt, according to the Valdosta police report.
The second, apparently a check-out receipt signed by "Raymond Lemme", is dated 6/30/03 6:54AM.
The problem is, Lemme was not even reported as missing until 6/30/03!
His wife wrote, in a sworn affidavit on 6/30/03, when Lemme was first reported missing:
"I have been unable to reach my husband, Raymond, all day. He left work early this morning, approx 5:15AM, told me he loved me and that he would call me later. He had a meeting @ work today and I had been unable to contact him."
A copy of her full affidavit is available here.
As well, the police report states that Lemme's watch had "stopped at 12:34 on June 30th".
When we asked Childress about the problems with the dates on those receipts, he told us, "Yeah...There was a question about the dates. We were told the management of the hotel made a mistake. Either there was an error in their machines or some other error."
His comment --- made during our first call with him, before he had had the chance to "pull the file" to refresh his memory --- might make sense if the credit card terminal machine at Knights Inn, for some reason, had its date set incorrectly. Yet, when we inquired whether the department had checked with the credit card merchant processor (who would have received transmission of the purchase on their end) to find out what their date/time stamp showed for those transactions, Childress told us he'd have to get back to us on that.
AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE...
Despite inconsistencies in the photos and other evidence that would seem to conflict with information in the police report, Childress informed us that while the case was re-opened last December after our original report, it was closed quickly thereafter.
"We spoke to someone at the Florida Department of Transportation," he explained, "and then closed the case again. It was either late '04 or early '05."
"Someone at the Florida Department of Transportation"?!
Childress promised to get back to us the next day with information on precisely whom they had spoken to at FDOT and, as well, with answers to several other important questions we had about the case, the report, the photographs and the receipts.
Late the next day, after we did not receive the promised callback from Childress, we were able to reach him via his cell phone after paging him. His tone that next day was notably different...
"Look...I spoke with my chief about this. We have looked at everything about this case... Everything...the allegations on the Internet and whether he's committeed suicide. Everything we've looked at indicates it was suicide. And that's all we're going to say about this...the media has blown this out of proportion.
"I'm getting tons and tons of questions about this case. We investigated it like any other case. There's nothing that we found that would indicate [Lemme] was murdered...If you find anything that indicates there's something we missed we'll gladly give it a look.
"I don't want to be short with you, I don't want you to think I'm stonewalling or anything, but quite honestly, I'm tired of answering these questions."
As it turns out, there were many indications that "there's something" they may have missed. So we asked Childress about three specific points on which he again promised to get back to us on Monday with answers to our questions. He also repeated several times that he didn't want us to think he was "stonewalling" us.
THE STONEWALL ...
That second conversation with Capt. Childress took place on Friday, February 11.
Childress did not call us back as promised on the following Monday and repeated calls, messages and pages made by The BRAD BLOG to him in the three ensuing weeks have all gone unreturned.
There are still many unexplained questions that we had hoped Childress and/or Det. Shannon Floyd could clear up for us. Above and beyond some of the matters discussed above, these are the ones we are most interested in for the moment:
Who was spoken to at FDOT, what did the conversation include, and why did that lead to re-closing the recently re-opened case?
The report of Det. Shannon Floyd refers to "flash memory cards" having failed in the camera as the reason that "Photographs will not be submitted with this report," as she wrote. She used the plural "cards". Was there more than one memory card used? And if so, how would one explain several flash memory cards all having the same failure?
We would also love to know how many pictures were taken in total, and how many were actually recovered. Was there more than the 15 which were posted on the Internet by Insider-Magazine?
Det. Floyd reports that she "examined the body for other signs of trauma [aside from the two cuts near Lemme's left elbow] with negative results. She also says there was "no sign of foul play", yet how does one explain the apparent severe bruising as seen on the right side of Lemme's neck in the photographs?
Det. Floyd also states in her report "On the bathrom floor next to the bathtub was a black in color man's dress belt, which was lying on the top of a white in color hotel bath mat. The belt appeared to have been used as a tourniquet; dried blood was visible on the belt but was not visible on the towel". We're no crime scene experts, but the following photograph from the crime scene clearly shows blood on the towel...
Why the discrepancy with Floyd's report?
How do the police explain the fact that both Lemme's wife Mary Ann and Lemme's supervisor in the IG's office, Bob Clift, said that they felt it was "very out of character" for Lemme to simply disappear as he did?
In Clift's handwritten sworn affidavit given to the Leon County, FL sheriff on June 30th, the day Lemme went missing, he wrote "This is very out of character for Ray." (underlined as in the original) A copy of his actual affidavit is available here.
In Mary Ann's affidavit, given on the same day, she writes "This all is very out of character and he has never done this in the past."
In the Leon County Sheriff's report, Officer Jim Tyson says, "Mrs. Lemme did advise that this was out of character for her husband."
THE MISSING DETECTIVE...
We had hoped to speak with Det. Shannon Floyd since she took the crime scene photos and wrote the most detailed report in the case file. She was the one who reported the camera's "flash memory cards" as having failed, said that there were no "signs of trauma", that "Nothing was observed that would indicate foul play" and described there being no visible blood on the white towel next to the tub. She also described the stopped watch and the check-in and check-out receipts, along with their dates, but mentioned nothing about the apparent inconsistency in dates.
In our first conversation with Valdosta's Capt. Childress, he had informed us that Det. Floyd was no longer with the department and was now teaching at a university. He didn't feel it appropriate to let us know where she was teaching, but in our second call, he informed us that, "Det. Floyd does not work for us anymore. She left and is teaching somewhere now. I'm not gonna tell ya where she is. Her husband said she didn't want to talk to the media. I spoke with him last night after we spoke."
THE FAMILY...
We have attempted to speak with members of Lemme's family, including his wife Mary Ann. They preferred to either not speak with us or to do so only on background. The family expressed great sadness about their loss, yet seemed to be of differing opinions on whether there might have been some sort of foul play at work or whether this was just a tragic case of suicide.
They all seem to agree that there had been no previous indications that Lemme might have wanted to kill himself. It was described as a complete shock to all of them.
Things had seemed to be going well for Lemme, who had just returned from an Army Reserve weekend and had recently received an award from the IG's office.
CLOSING THOUGHTS...FOR NOW...
We realize this report raises many unanswered questions. In fact, many more than it answers. Indeed, there are still other concerns from the police report which we have not discussed here yet. For example, a rope found in the trunk of Lemme's car with what was described as a "dark stain that could possible be blood." Det. Floyd claims to have performed a "presumptive test for the presence of blood" and wrote that "the test result was negative."
We have waited quite a while before filing any sort of detailed report on this matter for at least two reasons. One is our interest in being able to investigate it thoroughly before presenting evidence that might be misleading. We have attempted to give the Valdosta Police plenty of time to get back to us, but it has become apparent that --- for whatever reason --- they've determined it's in their best interest not to talk with us. Even if it means they will appear to be stonewalling...as Capt. Childress continually stressed that he wasn't.
The other reason --- at least the reason that we've waited so long before going into detail on this element of the Clint Curtis story --- was because we'd felt that the allegations made by Curtis about Tom Feeney and YEI were explosive enough in and of themselves. A sensational story such as the suicide of the original investigator looking into Curtis' allegations --- just weeks after it is claimed that he "had tracked the corruption 'all the way to the top'" --- could easily allow an all-too-easy way out for those who wish to detract from Curtis' claims. The "crazy conspiracy theory" defense has become, of late, the favored to dismiss credible claims for those who'd rather not deal with uncomfortable facts. Particularly when such claims do not otherwise comfortably fit their own agenda.
There are many "suicide conspiracy theories" out there these days --- too many --- and we had hoped that the extraordinary allegations at the heart of the Curtis case would not be dismissed due to the unexplained mysteries surrounding this particular death.
Indeed, the reporting from the original publishers of the crime scene photographs, Insider-Magazine --- despite the intrepid work by editor John Caylor in unearthing evidence which "didn't exist" --- is the sort which we feel makes it much easier for many to ignore Curtis' claims. We have spoken with Caylor about this point, and he simply feels his way of reporting this sort of story is the best way. We do not agree, although we must respect him for his ability to get hard evidence which nobody else had previously been able to uncover.
It should also be noted as well that we take little comfort in publishing disturbing and graphic photographs of the tragic death --- however it may have happened --- of someone's father, someone's husband, someone's brother... We take no joy in it, and have done so only after much careful consideration.
In the end, the continuing veracity of Curtis' claims, along with the continuing and documented collapse in credibility of both Feeney and YEI in this matter, have continued to give us reason to believe that some very bad people may well have done some very bad things. The reopening of the case in Valdosta, the sudden appearance of the photographs, the quick re-closure of the case after FDOT officials intervened, and the odd behavior of the Valdosta Police have added a newsworthiness to this element of the story, such that we are no longer able to keep from reporting it. As much as we truly might have liked to.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1244
The Very First CIA Assassination
THE GEORGE POLK CASECIA Has Lost Records on CBS Reporter Murdered in Greece in 1948, And Destroyed FOIA File on Case
National Security Archive Update, August 10, 2007
For More Information Contact:
William Burr: 202/994-7000
Washington DC, August 10, 2007 – The Central Intelligence Agency has lost documents concerning its investigation of the mysterious 1948 murder of CBS reporter George Polk, and destroyed its file on FOIA requests for Polk documents, according to a letter from Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein. In June 2006, the Archive asked the CIA and the National Archives to investigate the possibility that the CIA had lost or destroyed records on the Polk case.
Polk, a CBS reporter based in Greece at the height of its left-right civil war, was murdered by unknown assailants in 1948. At the request of members of the Polk family, the National Security Archive had asked the CIA to re-review CIA documents on the Polk case that had been released during the 1990s. The CIA found a number of documents for re-review but in December 2005 informed the Archive that nine of the documents, including memoranda to the Agency’s director, had been destroyed. According to CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator Scott Koch’s letter, “The original documents had been destroyed in accordance with approved National Archives and Records Administration records schedules.” It was the CIA’s response that prompted National Security Archive director Thomas S. Blanton to write letters to the Archivist of the United States and the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency asking them to investigate the destruction of documents on the Polk case.
Last week, Dr. Weinstein informed the National Security Archive that the CIA is “unable to locate the original documents or information about their disposition.” As the letter explains, the CIA FOIA case file had been destroyed in accordance with the records schedule; what has gone missing are the original file copies of the Polk-related documents (and whatever collection to which they belonged). That the CIA has determined that the documents cannot be found (and may well have been destroyed) raises troubling questions about CIA’s historical records preservation policies. Why is the CIA losing what should have been permanent records? If the Polk documents were part of a larger system of records that was destroyed, what other historically significant records no longer exist? That the FOIA file which contained copies of the now-missing documents had also been destroyed also raises questions about this standard practice at federal agencies.
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB226/index.htm
•••
BOOK REVIEW
The Polk Conspiracy: Murder and Cover-up in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk
By Jim Miller
It is more than 40 years since CBS radio correspondent George Polk was murdered in Salonika, Greece. But as Kati Marton shows in her compelling new account of the Polk case, the life and death of this young reporter still epitomize the struggle between journalists committed to discovering the truth and governments determined to manipulate it.
Polk died in May 1948, apparently the victim of a civil war between an unusually harsh right-wing oligarchy and battle-hardened left-wing guerillas led by the Greek Communist party. His murder posed a potential diplomatic problem. In its effort to contain communism, the United States under the Truman Doctrine had thrown it support to the Greek rightists. In his coverage Polk had fearlessly documented the brutality and corruption of the Greek elite, despite a stream on anonymous death threats and expressions of unhappiness from American officials. It it had come out that the reporter had been murdered on the orders of the Greek regime, it might well have weakened domestic support for U.S. policy.
Polk's death led to several investigations, one headed by the columnist Walter Lippmann and directed by General William (''Wild Bill'') Donovan, former head of the OSS. The FBI and CIA were drawn in as well. A suspect was finally produced by the Greek police, and a ''confession'' extracted (through the use of torture, it later turned out). In a show trial, this suspect testified (falsely, as Morton confirms) that he had helped local Communist guerillas murder Polk.
Lippmann and Donovan — who were both in position to know better — were pleased with this politically expedient outcome. But doubts about the Polk case lingered. In 1977, Col. James Kellis, a U.S. investigator who had been abruptly removed from the case in 1948 at he behest of diplomats in Athens and Washington, swore in an affidavit that Polk's death had been arranged by ''a handful of right-wing fanatics and their British allies,'' and that American officials had colluded in a cover-up.
This is a conclusion that Marton upholds in her absorbing chronicle. Drawing upon letters, journals, interviews, and previously classified government documents, she also penetrates the Byzantine workings of the ''legal, paralegal, and illegal security services,'' both Greek and American, involved in the case. Her chapters on the mysterious theft of Polk's files after his death give her narrative the pace and texture of an espionage thriller.
The Polk Conspiracy is also surprisingly timely. Once again the United States is embroiled in a foreign conflict; once again the State Department and the military are making an effort, in the name of national security, to control the flow of news. Though George Polk belongs to a more innocent era of American journalism, he remains a model of courage, idealism, and blunt honesty. A-
http://www.williambowles.info/nsa/2007/nsa100807.html
Profiles of America's Beloved TV Celebrities (36) - Heather Locklear
Edited by Alex Constantine
" ... Heather Locklear (born September 25, 1961) ... is considered a Hollywood Republican. ... "
http://conservapedia.com/Heather_Locklear
Heather Locklear - Republican donor
" ... Heather Locklear 'walked drunkenly through a California supermarket' before her arrest for driving under the influence. .... "
The Wit and Wisdom of Heather Locklear
Quotable Quotes:
"Flowers? I'll tell you what I've learned about flowers. They're sticky when they're on your nipple!"
"Bedding is important. So are hair products."
"Women who are in book clubs are really just there for the alcohol."
"If you didn't have parents, who would you blame?"
"I love being in my pajamas."
"The less jewelry, the better the marriage."
"There is no such thing as a closet that's too big, no such thing as too many shoes."
"You can't keep changing men, so you settle for changing your lipstick."
"Apparently, guitars are more valuable than shoes."
"One man is not enough."
"On ABC they don't like you to have nipples. But every time we'd do a Spin City, they'd have to keep it very cold because there's an audience and they have to keep the audience awake."
http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/ESQ0103-JAN_LOCKLEAR
•••
Mouse & Maples
"Locklear was born in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Diane (née Tinsley), a production executive for Disney, and William Robert Locklear, an administrator at UCLA [Bill Locklear has served in a number high-level administrative positions at UCLA (Dean of the School of Engineering, Registrar, Director of the Office of Residential Life, etc.).]. ... She is the youngest of four children and a cousin of Donald Trump's second wife, Marla Maples. She is of Scottish and distant paternal Lumbee ancestry. ... "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Locklear#Early_life
LUMBEE? - LOCKLEAR IS PART AMERICAN INDIAN:
"The 40,000+ members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina reside primarily in Robeson, Hoke, Cumberland and Scotland counties. The Lumbee Tribe is the largest tribe in North Carolina, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River and the ninth largest in the nation. The Lumbee take their name from the Lumbee River which winds its way through Robeson County. Pembroke, North Carolina is the economic, cultural and political center of the tribe. ... "
http://www.lumbeetribe.com/lumbee/index.htm
UCLA Psychology Major
" ... Locklear attended UCLA as a Psychology major and during her first year, met a casting director. He couldn’t help but notice her fresh-faced, all-American look and encouraged her to take a commercial acting class. By the end of that year, she had begun to do guest spots on television and decided to drop out of university to pursue acting fulltime. ... "
http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_story/1648:1977/1/Heather_Locklear.htm
•••
SUICIDE ATTEMPT?
"In March 2008, Locklear was involved in a controversy when a "9-1-1" call was made by a caller claiming to be her doctor who said that she was trying to commit suicide. The authorities arrived at Locklear's home shortly afterwards. Locklear's publicist has since downplayed the incident stating that Locklear had never requested any medical assistance and the Ventura County Sheriff's Department later stated that no further action was taken once they arrived at Locklear's Westlake Village home as she appeared to be fine. They did, however, state that they still believed the call to be genuine. ... "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Locklear#Early_life
Who Placed the 9/11 Call?
" ... As the call wasn’t made from the “Melrose Place” star’s residence, it was firstly thought that the false alarm had been the joke of a prankster. However, it was later revealed afterwards that it was Locklear’s shrink who made the telephone call. Her psychiatrist reportedly spoke to her on the phone and the star sounded distraught. The shrink feared that the suicide could stem from an overdose with anti-depressive drugs she was taking. ... "
http://www.enews20.com/news_Heather_Locklear_Didnt_Try_To_Commit_Suicide_911_False_Alarm_06426.html
•••
Kidz: School Massacres Foreshadowed
Fwd: The Heathers Home Page ... How Very!
Colleen Jones
Sat, 29 May 1999
Years ago I saw this movie Heathers; and you will note in the above subject page, that in th one girls locker was an old 7 year old magazine, November 1979....now, that was the month of Jonestown.....one of the most vicious mind control programs this country ever participated in.
Christian Slater.....in a cafeteria.....takes out a gun......school kids are murdered....and this dear little sweet Wynona Ryder, played the major role, along with Heather Locklear and of course the sicko, Christian Slater.
This movie was the plan soon to be materialized.....it was all there. The movie first, then the deeds.....drugs, guns, and throw in that horrible ignorant level of religion....Littleton is a sick community....these kids were playacting. ...
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg14269.html
•••
Carol Lin, Heather's college Roommate at UCLA, was the Anchor who Broke the News of the 9/11 WTC Assaults
Carol Lin anchor[ed] CNN Newsroom on Saturday and Sunday evenings on CNN. She is based in Atlanta. ... Starting her career at CNN in 1998, Lin anchored CNN Early Edition, CNN Live at Daybreak and the former news-magazine program CNN NewsStand. Before joining CNN, Lin was with ABC News. Lin was one of the few journalists brought to the network by former CNN president Rick Kaplan after he left ABC News. Earlier, Lin was a weekend news anchor for KTTV in Los Angeles.
She covered the shootings at Columbine High School, the rebuilding of Kosovo, CNN's Millennium night coverage from New York City's Times Square (and did a chat with CNN.com users) and the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.
However, Lin will be most remembered as the first anchor to break the news of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. She broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m. ET, 3 minutes after the first plane hit and said:
"Yeah. This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center."
Among other recognition, Lin was the first recipient of the National IMAGE Award by the Organization of Chinese Americans.
Lin earned a bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA. Lin was a dorm mate with actress Heather Locklear at UCLA, mentioned by Locklear while a guest on Larry King Live in 1999.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Carol-Lin
•••
The Day Heather Locklear Stood in For Newt Gingrich
Touch of Glamour for Politicians’ Fund-Raisers
By Mike Downey
latimes.com
October 16, 1998
I have heard of some clever ways to get people to go to a political fund-raiser, but this one takes the cake. Randy Hoffman is a Republican who is running for Congress against incumbent Rep. Brad Sherman, in a district that stretches all the way from Sherman Oaks to Thousand Oaks. ...
With election day a few weeks away, Hoffman is happy to receive the support of any powerful figure who can sway the 24th District’s voters his way.
Therefore, he was naturally quite pleased to have House Speaker Newt Gingrich committed to a fund-raising rally Thursday morning. Let’s face it, Newt is a plum on any Republican’s plate.
At the last minute, however, Hoffman’s people got the word that Gingrich would have to cancel. He was too busy in Washington, running the right side of the country. Well, no Newt is bad news. Hoffman had to hurry. He needed to find somebody fast to fill in for Gingrich–and he did:
Heather Locklear.
Having a political event at which Newt Gingrich is replaced by Heather Locklear is a little like having a Hollywood premiere at which Brad Pitt is replaced by Janet Reno. But that’s what happened. Evidently, the actress from “Melrose Place” is a neighbor of Hoffman’s ...
She and her husband, rock musician Richie Sambora, have reportedly donated $1,000 to Hoffman’s campaign. ...
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/oct/16/news/mn-33145
" ... Heather Locklear (born September 25, 1961) ... is considered a Hollywood Republican. ... "http://conservapedia.com/Heather_Locklear
Heather Locklear - Republican donor
" ... Heather Locklear 'walked drunkenly through a California supermarket' before her arrest for driving under the influence. .... "
The Wit and Wisdom of Heather Locklear
Quotable Quotes:
"Flowers? I'll tell you what I've learned about flowers. They're sticky when they're on your nipple!"
"Bedding is important. So are hair products."
"Women who are in book clubs are really just there for the alcohol."
"If you didn't have parents, who would you blame?"
"I love being in my pajamas."
"The less jewelry, the better the marriage."
"There is no such thing as a closet that's too big, no such thing as too many shoes."
"You can't keep changing men, so you settle for changing your lipstick."
"Apparently, guitars are more valuable than shoes."
"One man is not enough."
"On ABC they don't like you to have nipples. But every time we'd do a Spin City, they'd have to keep it very cold because there's an audience and they have to keep the audience awake."
http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/ESQ0103-JAN_LOCKLEAR
•••
Mouse & Maples
"Locklear was born in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Diane (née Tinsley), a production executive for Disney, and William Robert Locklear, an administrator at UCLA [Bill Locklear has served in a number high-level administrative positions at UCLA (Dean of the School of Engineering, Registrar, Director of the Office of Residential Life, etc.).]. ... She is the youngest of four children and a cousin of Donald Trump's second wife, Marla Maples. She is of Scottish and distant paternal Lumbee ancestry. ... "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Locklear#Early_life
LUMBEE? - LOCKLEAR IS PART AMERICAN INDIAN:
"The 40,000+ members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina reside primarily in Robeson, Hoke, Cumberland and Scotland counties. The Lumbee Tribe is the largest tribe in North Carolina, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River and the ninth largest in the nation. The Lumbee take their name from the Lumbee River which winds its way through Robeson County. Pembroke, North Carolina is the economic, cultural and political center of the tribe. ... "
http://www.lumbeetribe.com/lumbee/index.htm
UCLA Psychology Major" ... Locklear attended UCLA as a Psychology major and during her first year, met a casting director. He couldn’t help but notice her fresh-faced, all-American look and encouraged her to take a commercial acting class. By the end of that year, she had begun to do guest spots on television and decided to drop out of university to pursue acting fulltime. ... "
http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_story/1648:1977/1/Heather_Locklear.htm
•••
SUICIDE ATTEMPT?
"In March 2008, Locklear was involved in a controversy when a "9-1-1" call was made by a caller claiming to be her doctor who said that she was trying to commit suicide. The authorities arrived at Locklear's home shortly afterwards. Locklear's publicist has since downplayed the incident stating that Locklear had never requested any medical assistance and the Ventura County Sheriff's Department later stated that no further action was taken once they arrived at Locklear's Westlake Village home as she appeared to be fine. They did, however, state that they still believed the call to be genuine. ... "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Locklear#Early_life
Who Placed the 9/11 Call?
" ... As the call wasn’t made from the “Melrose Place” star’s residence, it was firstly thought that the false alarm had been the joke of a prankster. However, it was later revealed afterwards that it was Locklear’s shrink who made the telephone call. Her psychiatrist reportedly spoke to her on the phone and the star sounded distraught. The shrink feared that the suicide could stem from an overdose with anti-depressive drugs she was taking. ... "
http://www.enews20.com/news_Heather_Locklear_Didnt_Try_To_Commit_Suicide_911_False_Alarm_06426.html
•••
Kidz: School Massacres ForeshadowedFwd: The Heathers Home Page ... How Very!
Colleen Jones
Sat, 29 May 1999
Years ago I saw this movie Heathers; and you will note in the above subject page, that in th one girls locker was an old 7 year old magazine, November 1979....now, that was the month of Jonestown.....one of the most vicious mind control programs this country ever participated in.
Christian Slater.....in a cafeteria.....takes out a gun......school kids are murdered....and this dear little sweet Wynona Ryder, played the major role, along with Heather Locklear and of course the sicko, Christian Slater.
This movie was the plan soon to be materialized.....it was all there. The movie first, then the deeds.....drugs, guns, and throw in that horrible ignorant level of religion....Littleton is a sick community....these kids were playacting. ...
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg14269.html
•••
Carol Lin, Heather's college Roommate at UCLA, was the Anchor who Broke the News of the 9/11 WTC Assaults
Carol Lin anchor[ed] CNN Newsroom on Saturday and Sunday evenings on CNN. She is based in Atlanta. ... Starting her career at CNN in 1998, Lin anchored CNN Early Edition, CNN Live at Daybreak and the former news-magazine program CNN NewsStand. Before joining CNN, Lin was with ABC News. Lin was one of the few journalists brought to the network by former CNN president Rick Kaplan after he left ABC News. Earlier, Lin was a weekend news anchor for KTTV in Los Angeles.
She covered the shootings at Columbine High School, the rebuilding of Kosovo, CNN's Millennium night coverage from New York City's Times Square (and did a chat with CNN.com users) and the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.
However, Lin will be most remembered as the first anchor to break the news of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. She broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m. ET, 3 minutes after the first plane hit and said:
"Yeah. This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center."
Among other recognition, Lin was the first recipient of the National IMAGE Award by the Organization of Chinese Americans.
Lin earned a bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA. Lin was a dorm mate with actress Heather Locklear at UCLA, mentioned by Locklear while a guest on Larry King Live in 1999.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Carol-Lin
•••
The Day Heather Locklear Stood in For Newt Gingrich
Touch of Glamour for Politicians’ Fund-Raisers
By Mike Downey
latimes.com
October 16, 1998
I have heard of some clever ways to get people to go to a political fund-raiser, but this one takes the cake. Randy Hoffman is a Republican who is running for Congress against incumbent Rep. Brad Sherman, in a district that stretches all the way from Sherman Oaks to Thousand Oaks. ...
With election day a few weeks away, Hoffman is happy to receive the support of any powerful figure who can sway the 24th District’s voters his way.
Therefore, he was naturally quite pleased to have House Speaker Newt Gingrich committed to a fund-raising rally Thursday morning. Let’s face it, Newt is a plum on any Republican’s plate.
At the last minute, however, Hoffman’s people got the word that Gingrich would have to cancel. He was too busy in Washington, running the right side of the country. Well, no Newt is bad news. Hoffman had to hurry. He needed to find somebody fast to fill in for Gingrich–and he did:
Heather Locklear.
Having a political event at which Newt Gingrich is replaced by Heather Locklear is a little like having a Hollywood premiere at which Brad Pitt is replaced by Janet Reno. But that’s what happened. Evidently, the actress from “Melrose Place” is a neighbor of Hoffman’s ...
She and her husband, rock musician Richie Sambora, have reportedly donated $1,000 to Hoffman’s campaign. ...
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/oct/16/news/mn-33145
CIA's In-Q-Tel, IBM & Non Obvious Relationship Awareness (NORA) Data Mining/DATA DIVER DISSES TERROR-MINING
Foreword - In-Q-Tel Investments are a Map of the Future of Spying: " ... A relatively unknown branch of the CIA is investing millions of taxpayer dollars in technology startups that, together, paint a map for the future of spying. Some of these technologies can pry into the personal lives of Americans not just for the government but for big businesses as well. ... More than 60 percent of In-Q-Tel’s current investments are in companies that specialize in automatically collecting, sifting through and understanding oceans of information, according to an analysis by the Medill School of Journalism. ... "http://newsinitiative.org/story/2006/09/01/the_future_of_spying
Non Obvious Relationship Awareness
by Tim O'Reilly
The most interesting person I met this year at PC Forum was Jeff Jonas, founder of System Research and Development (SRD), the data mining company that made its name in Las Vegas with a technology called NORA (Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness) -- software that would alert casino security, for instance, that the dealer at table 11 once shared a phone number with the guy who is winning big at that same table.As you can imagine, the government came knocking after 9/11. SRD got funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture fund, and was acquired by IBM earlier this year. Jeff is now an IBM distinguished engineer and chief scientist of IBM's Entity Analytics division.
His current focus is "anonymous entity resolution" -- the ability to share sensitive data without actually revealing it. That is, by using one-way hashes, you can look across various databases for a match without actually pooling all the data and making it available to all. As you can imagine, solving this problem is fairly critical to the government if they want "total information awareness" while maintaining citizen privacy and some semblance of civil liberties.
I also find this idea fascinating with regard to social networking. As I've noted in my talks for the past couple of years, social networking as currently practiced by services like Friendster, Orkut, and LinkedIn is really a "hack." (This is a good thing.) Much as screen scraping was a hack that showed the way to web services, current social networking apps point us towards a future in which we've truly reinvented the address book for the age of the internet. Why should we have to ask people if they will be our friends, and refer dates or jobs to us? Our true social networking applications -- our email, our IM, and our phones -- already know who our friends are. Microsoft Research's Wallop project is a step in the right direction -- a tool that lets us visualize and manage our communications web -- but it only extends to first degree connections. What anonymous entity resolution would allow is an application that extends the Wallop idea to a full six degrees by comparing data across address books without actually sharing the addresses themselves unless the owner was willing.
Of course, this could be bad for highly connected people. I already know that Linda Stone is my shortest path to almost anybody, but once all my contacts know that as well, Linda might just have to go hide under a rock.
Still, just as Napster unleashed a music revolution by choosing an unorthodox default (if you download, you make your computer available as a server as well), I believe that "opt out" rather than "opt in" is the trigger that will allow social networking to achieve its full potential as one of the core "Web 2.0" applications.
But back to NORA. A lot of what we do at O'Reilly is driven by pattern recognition, watching emerging trends, and deciding on the right point where adding a strong dose of information to the mix (books, conferences, advocacy) will help some important new idea reach a wider audience and hopefully reach its full potential. Mostly we do this pattern recognition by talking to cool people ("alpha geeks") but we also do some data mining ourselves. But as Jeff points out, most current data mining efforts are rather like a game of Go Fish. (For example, in the intelligence context, "Do you have an Osama? No. Well, then, do you have a Saddam?") Instead, he says, we need "fire and forget" queries, that return whenever they have data. (I also believe strongly in visualization tools like the ones we're building in our own research group, tools that let you see aggregate patterns and trends.)
At any rate, Jeff's definitely one of the movers and shakers of one of the areas that I believe is going to have a huge impact going forward. He's also an O'Reilly kind of guy -- a high school dropout, a self-taught hacker who developed software that a lot of PhDs told him couldn't be done.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2005/04/non-obvious-relationship-aware.html
•••
DATA DIVER DISSES TERROR-MINING
www.defensetech.org
Jeff Jonas is one of the country's leading practitioners of the dark art of data analysis. Casino chiefs and government spooks alike have used his CIA-funded "Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness" software to scour databases for hidden connections.
So you'd think that Jonas would be all into the idea of using these data-mining systems to predict who the next terrorist attacker might be.
Think again. "Though data mining has many valuable uses, it is not well suited to the terrorist discovery problem," he writes in a new study, co-authored with the Cato Institute's Jim Harper. "This use of data mining would waste taxpayer dollars, needlessly infringe on privacy and civil liberties, and misdirect the valuable time and energy of the men and women in the national security community." Are you listening, NSA?
Jonas doesn't have a problem cobbling together information on suspects from various databases. It's using these databases to forecast a terrorist's behavior -- think market research, but for Al-Qaeda -- that Jonas hates. "The possible benefits of predictive data mining for finding planning or preparation for terrorism are minimal. The financial costs, wasted effort, and threats to privacy and civil liberties are potentially vast," he writes.
One of the fundamental underpinnings of predictive data mining in the commercial sector is the use of training patterns. Corporations that study consumer behavior have millions of patterns that they can draw upon to profile their typical or ideal consumer. Even when data mining is used to seek out instances of identity and credit card fraud, this relies on models constructed using many thousands of known examples of fraud per year.
Terrorism has no similar indicia. With a relatively small number of attempts every year and only one or two major terrorist incidents every few years—each one distinct in terms of planning and execution—there are no meaningful patterns that show what behavior indicates planning or preparation for terrorism. Unlike consumers’ shopping habits and financial fraud, terrorism does not occur with enough frequency to enable the creation of valid predictive models. Predictive data mining for the purpose of turning up terrorist planning using all available demographic and transactional data points will produce no better results than the highly sophisticated commercial data mining done today [with results in the low single-digits – ed.]. The one thing predictable about predictive data mining for terrorism is that it would be consistently wrong.
Without patterns to use, one fallback for terrorism data mining is the idea that any anomaly may provide the basis for investigation of terrorism planning. Given a “typical” American pattern of Internet use, phone calling, doctor visits, purchases, travel, reading, and so on, perhaps all outliers merit some level of investigation. This theory is offensive to traditional American freedom, because in the United States everyone can and should be an “outlier” in some sense. More concretely, though, using data mining in this way could be worse than searching at random; terrorists could defeat it by acting as normally as possible.
Treating “anomalous” behavior as suspicious may appear scientific, but, without patterns to look for, the design of a search algorithm based on anomaly is no more likely to turn up terrorists than twisting the end of a kaleidoscope is likely to draw an image of the Mona Lisa.
Civil libertarians and bloggers have talked 'til they're blue in the face about how lame this kind of terror-predicting is. But I don't think I've ever heard a giant of the field, like Jonas, come out against the practice -- at least not on-the-record. Let's hope this is one conversation that the feds are monitoring.
UPDATE 11:49 AM: Shane Harris here. Die-hard proponents of pattern-based 'data mining' to catch terrorists will remain unconvinced by Jonas' and Harper's argument. While it's true that data mining in the commercial sector is based upon "training patterns," backers of systems such as Total Information Awareness will say, yes, and that's why data mining for terrorists has to start with hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of known or potential terrorist patterns to look for. A major part of TIA research was the creation of terrorist attack templates through red teaming exercises, in which experts were paid to come up with devious and clandestine plots that a terrorist might conceivably attempt. Their various machinations would, presumably, leave a set of digital footprints -- airline tickets purchased, money wired, hotels paid for, and so on -- and THAT data would be mined for clues.
What's also interesting about this paper is the combination of the authors. Jim Harper is a well-known and articulate activist, and has long since staked out central territory in the security vs. privacy debate. But Jonas has stayed out of politics. Indeed, those who've met him will know that he sticks out like a sore West coast thumb among Washington gear heads, being unafraid to use the word "dude" in formal conversation and happily acknowledging his ignorance of most Beltway insider baseball. But those who know Jonas and have heard him speak about electronic terrorist hunting know that, like his co-author Harper, he has a strong libertarian streak. Maybe Jonas wouldn't put it quite that way -- dude -- but it's there.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/cat_data_diving.html
Who’s Who in the Obama Cabinet
Part I - Economic and Budget Policy
By Patrick Martin
www.wsws.org
19 January 2009
Timothy Geithner, treasury secretary
A career government official involved in overseeing financial markets, Geithner is one of three protégés of Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs and until January 9 board member and special counsel at Citigroup) who have been named to top economic and budget positions in the Obama administration. He served in the Clinton administration, helping manage the 1995-96 Mexican peso crisis and the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. He then worked for the International Monetary Fund before his appointment by President Bush to his current position as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which conducts the day-to-day operations of the Fed on Wall Street.
Since the Wall Street meltdown began 18 months ago, with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, Geithner has worked closely with the current treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. During that period, all five of the major New York investment banks—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns—have been compelled to convert into commercial banks, merged, been taken over or collapsed.
Once confirmed as treasury secretary, Geithner’s first task will be to distribute the second half of the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street approved last year by the Democratic-controlled Congress. Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke headed the bailout effort that funneled the first $350 billion into the coffers of the major banks, as well as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the insurance company American International Group and US auto companies. Geithner will play the lead role in doling out the remaining $350 billion, which was released to the Treasury last week after the Senate defeated a resolution to block further handouts, and is currently involved in plans to further expand the bank bailout.
Lawrence Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council
Formerly undersecretary and then secretary of the treasury in the Clinton
administration, Summers was considered the key crisis manager during the Mexican and Asian currency collapses in the late 1990s. A magazine cover at the time depicted Summers, his boss Robert Rubin, then treasury secretary, and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan as “the committee to save the world.” In 1999, the Republican-controlled Congress adopted legislation repealing the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking and imposed other restrictions on banking operations. Summers and the Clinton administration backed this deregulation of financial markets, which contributed to the collapse of 2008.
After leaving government with the end of the Clinton administration, Summers became president of Harvard University, but his stormy tenure came to an abrupt end after a series of clashes with the faculty, which included his now-notorious comments about the supposedly innate differences between male and female students in relation to the most abstract scientific fields, particularly mathematics.
Summers served as a top economic adviser to the Obama campaign but was chosen for the lower-profile White House position, which, unlike treasury secretary, does not require Senate confirmation, in part because of the prospect of contentious questioning about his views on gender. If Fed Chairman Bernanke is not reappointed this year—his term expires next January—Summers is a likely candidate to succeed him.
Paul Volcker, chairman of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board
The 82-year-old former investment banker was the key figure in the Reagan-era onslaught against the working class which, combined with the betrayals of the trade union leadership, destroyed the unions as a significant social force in the United States. Volcker was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Board by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and promptly adopted an inflation-fighting strategy based on driving up interest rates to unprecedented levels (above 20 percent at one point), so that corporations could use the resulting mass unemployment to slash wages and benefits and undermine other hard-won workers’ gains.
During most of Volcker’s eight years at the Fed, he worked in tandem with the Reagan administration in its offensive against the labor movement. He hailed Reagan’s mass firing of the striking air traffic controllers and the destruction of their union, PATCO, as a key turning point in bringing inflation under control. At the worst point in the Volcker-induced recession, in 1982-83, the US unemployment rate approached 10 percent, the highest in the post-World War II era.
In his new position as an Obama adviser, Volcker serves as a guarantor to big business and the financial interests that the new administration will proceed ruthlessly against the working class. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial last week, suggested that Volcker be given the authority to set new financial regulations. Other business spokesmen have suggested Volcker or someone like him as the new “car czar,” with authority over the bailout of the US auto industry and the accompanying cuts in auto workers’ jobs, wages and benefits.
Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget
The third Robert Rubin acolyte to take a top financial position with Obama, Orszag moves over from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), where he was appointed by the new Democratic majority, elected in 2006. He is regarded as the foremost Democratic Party expert on cutting spending for entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, and has written extensively on the need for fiscal austerity.
Orszag worked in the Clinton White House, first as an economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, then as a special assistant to the president for economic policy. After leaving the Clinton administration, he served as head of the Hamilton Project, a think tank devoted to controlling government spending set up and financed by Robert Rubin.
In an interview on his role at the CBO, he declared, “I have not viewed CBO’s job as just to passively evaluate what Congress proposes, but rather to be an analytical resource. And part of that is to highlight things that are true and that people may not want to hear, including that we need to address health-care costs.”
Mary Schapiro, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
A former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) first appointed by Ronald Reagan, Schapiro is a classic case of an industry insider taking over a supposedly independent regulatory agency. After six years on the SEC, Schapiro was appointed chairman of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission by President Clinton in 1994, where she was responsible for regulating the US futures markets in agricultural commodities, metals, energy and financial products. She also served on the President's Working Group on Financial Markets with other top federal officials.
For the past 12 years, after leaving government at the end of Clinton’s first term, Schapiro has worked for the securities industry as an advocate of “self-regulation,” first with the National Association of Securities Dealers, the industry trade association, and most recently as head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. She served on the board of directors at Duke Energy and Kraft Foods.
A front-page article in the January 15 Wall Street Journal carried the headline “Obama's Pick to Head SEC Has Record of Being a Regulator With a Light Touch,” and noted that “a close examination of Ms. Schapiro's record as a regulator shows she has infrequently pursued tough action against big Wall Street firms.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/cabi-j19.shtml
•••
Part II - Internal Security
By Tom Eley
20 January 2009
President-elect Obama has assembled a cabinet drawn from the upper echelons of American society and the right wing of the Democratic Party. The right-wing character of the Obama nominees is described by the media under the approving labels of "centrist," "moderate," and—most of all—"pragmatic." This terminology signifies that the incoming Obama team consists entirely of individuals who pass muster with the corporate financial aristocracy.
The New York Times reported Monday that Obama has repeatedly discussed his cabinet selections with his defeated Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, and that McCain has told colleagues "that many of these appointments he would have made himself," according to Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and arch-conservative who has also had input into the formation of the new administration.
McCain, Graham and Co. have a far greater role in the selection of Obama's cabinet than the millions of young people and working people who supported Obama in the belief that he would put an end to the war in Iraq and reverse the right-wing, pro-big business policies of the Bush administration.
Today's series of profiles deals with those cabinet and other high-ranking officials in the incoming administration responsible for the Justice Department, intelligence and Homeland Security—i.e., the domestic repressive functions of the US government.
Eric Holder, attorney general
While Holder is being hailed as the first African-American to hold his position, his selection does not represent a reversal of the anti-democratic policies pursued by the Justice Department under the Bush administration. Holder is a trusted defender of both corporate America in general and the American capitalist state, having served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration (1997-2001) and then as a high-priced lawyer at Covington & Burling, where he represented an assortment of major corporations.
Most notorious was his role defending the food giant Chiquita Brands International, Inc., whose multimillionaire executives were facing potential charges of aiding terrorism because of their financing and arming of right-wing death squads in Colombia. Using his Justice Department connections—and taking advantage of the Bush administration's sympathy for the Colombian fascists—Holder managed to get Chiquita off the hook with a small fine, despite overwhelming evidence that it had hired gunmen to kidnap, torture and murder Colombian workers, peasants and union officials.
With support emerging from prominent Republicans, it is likely Eric Holder will be confirmed as attorney general in the incoming Obama administration. Holder's nomination has withstood somewhat muted criticism from the Republican right. This related to Holder's involvement, as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in the presidential pardon for billionaire fugitive investor Marc Rich, as well as in commutations for 16 Puerto Rican nationalists who had been imprisoned for decades on politically motivated convictions for nonviolent crimes.
Republicans announcing their support for Holder include Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who serves on the Judiciary Committee; Mel Martinez of Florida; Frances Townsend, President George W. Bush's homeland security adviser; William P. Barr, attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; and Larry Thompson, who served as attorney general in the current Bush administration. After Holder expressed agreement with Sen. Lindsey Graham that the nation is at war with terrorists, Graham responded, "I'm almost ready to vote for you right now."
Republicans may fondly remember Holder's critical role in expanding an independent counsel's investigation of Bill Clinton that ultimately led to his impeachment over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Holder advised then-Attorney General Janet Reno to allow for the expansion of the investigation's scope.
Under John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey in the Bush administration, the office of attorney general served as a center of conspiracy against democratic rights, authorizing torture, illegal wiretapping, and firing United States Attorneys who did not completely toe the Bush administration line, among other nefarious activities. Holder will attempt to effect a change of image. In congressional hearings, he said that he considered "waterboarding"—that is, drowning—torture. The Bush administration has defended the procedure as a "harsh interrogation method."
However, in other areas, Holder has made clear that he intends to carry on the policies of the Bush administration. He both supported the initial passage of the Patriot Act in 2001 and played a key role in the talks that led to its reauthorization in 2005—when Obama himself voted for it.
As attorney general, Holder would be obliged to investigate the crimes of the Bush administration. In his nomination hearings, he said he would do no such thing. "The decisions that were made by a prior administration were difficult ones," he said. "It is an easy thing for somebody to look back in hindsight and be critical of the decisions that were made." He indicated that, while he favors closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, this will be a lengthy process in which prisoners' legal status will remain indeterminate.
Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Panetta was a surprise selection to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US spy agency and long a center of counterrevolution, because of his lack of hands-on experience in intelligence work. This was almost a requirement for the job, however, under the current circumstances, since Obama was seeking to rehabilitate the image of an agency that has become identified worldwide with kidnapping, secret imprisonment and torture. Obama initially intended to name a CIA veteran, John Brennan, who was the candidate's top intelligence adviser, but Brennan faced criticism over his role in decisions on interrogation during the Bush administration.
Panetta would play the same political role as George H.W. Bush, another "outsider" but a trusted ruling class figure, brought in to refurbish the agency after the assassination scandals of the early 1970s. He began his political career as a Republican working in the administration of Richard Nixon, but switched to the Democratic Party in 1971, and was elected to the US Congress from California in 1976, serving there for 16 years and specializing in budgetary matters. Clinton chose him as his first director of the United States Office of Management and Budget.
In 1994, Panetta became White House chief of staff, serving in that capacity until 1997, the critical years in which Clinton governed in collaboration with the Republican congressional leadership that took control of Congress in 1994. The single "achievement" of those years was the elimination of the federal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in a bipartisan deal.
More recently, Panetta has shifted his focus to foreign affairs, working as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan establishment group that sought, beginning in 2006, to effect a tactical change in US policies in Iraq.
Also serving on the group were Robert Gates, secretary of defense in both the Bush and Obama administrations, and former secretary of state in the first Bush administration, James Baker.
Admiral Dennis C. Blair, director of National Intelligence
Blair is one of a record four retired military officers chosen for high positions in the Obama administration, and the second Navy man in a row, following retired Vice Admiral Michael McConnell, to hold the position of DNI, created to oversee the entire intelligence establishment in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Blair is a career military man who rose to the rank of commander-in-chief of United States Pacific Command, which is the highest-ranking position for all US forces in the Asia-Pacific region. He also served as director of the joint staff in the Office of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. After retiring from the US Navy in 2002, Blair has been involved in US military and foreign policy circles, holding a chair at the US Army War College and serving on and holding a chair at a geo-strategic think tank, the National Bureau of Asian Research. He also served as president of the important US-government think tank, Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).
Blair could be prosecuted for war crimes in relationship to the 1999 East Timor massacres, which took place during his period as head of the Pacific Command. Apparently, Blair disobeyed orders from the Clinton administration on two occasions. As the massacres against the pro-independence movement in East Timor became an embarrassment for the Clinton administration, which presented its simultaneous imperialist adventure against Yugoslavia as a "humanitarian mission," Clinton called on Blair to meet with General Wiranto, head of the Indonesian military, and order him to end support for the pro-Indonesian militia. Blair instead presented Wiranto with an offer of increased military assistance and invited the Indonesian strongman to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Wiranto took this as an American blessing for an escalation of violence in East Timor.
When State Department officials learned that Blair had not delivered the message to Wiranto, they called on him to do so again. Again he refused. Only several months later, after many more independence supporters had been killed, did Blair act to cut off US military assistance to the Indonesian army.
Blair's career also highlights the incestuous relationship between the military and the defense industry. In 2006, the US Department of Defense inspector general determined Blair had violated IDA's Conflict of Interest regulations by recommending the US government purchase production contracts for F22 Raptors. Blair served as the president of the IDA, which made the recommendation, and on the board of directors for EDO Corporation, which did subcontracting work on the F22. He received only a slap on the wrist, and there is no congressional opposition to his appointment.
Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security
The two-term governor of Arizona, Napolitano has built a reputation for being "pro-business" and a proponent of increased militarization of the US border with Mexico, much of which lies in her state. In state politics, Napolitano supported Arizona's ban on same-sex marriages, opposed restrictions on gun ownership, and supported the death penalty. Her nomination has been warmly received by the Republican Party, with Arizona's two Republican senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain, lobbying on her behalf.
Napolitano has criticized the "Federal government's failure to fulfill its responsibilities in securing our border," and it is her supposed expertise on immigration that was her prime qualification for the Department of Homeland Security. Napolitano made her political name in Arizona through her opposition to immigration, signing into law reactionary legislation that made possible the prosecution of illegal immigrants as felons. She also deployed the Arizona National Guard along the border with Mexico, winning praise from anti-immigration zealots.
In questioning during Congressional hearings related to her nomination, Napolitano spoke in favor of the militarization of the Mexican border, saying that border fences should be used to separate urban areas from Mexico, but that higher technology should be used in the more remote expanses of the border area. She did not oppose the "Real ID program," which would create an internal passport system in the US, saying only that the financial burden it will impose on states needs to be lessened.
Napolitano leaves Arizona just as the state budget has been plunged into crisis by the economic slump, and in particular the housing crisis. The state faces a current deficit of $1.25 billion and a deficit of $2.65 billion for 2010. Napolitano has proposed major cuts to higher education to lessen the deficits. As part of proposed spending cuts of $975 million, $100 million would be cut from the state's university system and $40 million from community colleges. Also, $145 million will be slashed from the state highway fund.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/secu-j20.shtml
By Patrick Martin
www.wsws.org
19 January 2009
Timothy Geithner, treasury secretary
A career government official involved in overseeing financial markets, Geithner is one of three protégés of Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs and until January 9 board member and special counsel at Citigroup) who have been named to top economic and budget positions in the Obama administration. He served in the Clinton administration, helping manage the 1995-96 Mexican peso crisis and the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. He then worked for the International Monetary Fund before his appointment by President Bush to his current position as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which conducts the day-to-day operations of the Fed on Wall Street.
Since the Wall Street meltdown began 18 months ago, with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, Geithner has worked closely with the current treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. During that period, all five of the major New York investment banks—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns—have been compelled to convert into commercial banks, merged, been taken over or collapsed.
Once confirmed as treasury secretary, Geithner’s first task will be to distribute the second half of the $700 billion bailout for Wall Street approved last year by the Democratic-controlled Congress. Geithner, Paulson and Bernanke headed the bailout effort that funneled the first $350 billion into the coffers of the major banks, as well as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the insurance company American International Group and US auto companies. Geithner will play the lead role in doling out the remaining $350 billion, which was released to the Treasury last week after the Senate defeated a resolution to block further handouts, and is currently involved in plans to further expand the bank bailout.
Lawrence Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council
Formerly undersecretary and then secretary of the treasury in the Clinton
administration, Summers was considered the key crisis manager during the Mexican and Asian currency collapses in the late 1990s. A magazine cover at the time depicted Summers, his boss Robert Rubin, then treasury secretary, and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan as “the committee to save the world.” In 1999, the Republican-controlled Congress adopted legislation repealing the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking and imposed other restrictions on banking operations. Summers and the Clinton administration backed this deregulation of financial markets, which contributed to the collapse of 2008.
After leaving government with the end of the Clinton administration, Summers became president of Harvard University, but his stormy tenure came to an abrupt end after a series of clashes with the faculty, which included his now-notorious comments about the supposedly innate differences between male and female students in relation to the most abstract scientific fields, particularly mathematics.
Summers served as a top economic adviser to the Obama campaign but was chosen for the lower-profile White House position, which, unlike treasury secretary, does not require Senate confirmation, in part because of the prospect of contentious questioning about his views on gender. If Fed Chairman Bernanke is not reappointed this year—his term expires next January—Summers is a likely candidate to succeed him.
Paul Volcker, chairman of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board
The 82-year-old former investment banker was the key figure in the Reagan-era onslaught against the working class which, combined with the betrayals of the trade union leadership, destroyed the unions as a significant social force in the United States. Volcker was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve Board by Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and promptly adopted an inflation-fighting strategy based on driving up interest rates to unprecedented levels (above 20 percent at one point), so that corporations could use the resulting mass unemployment to slash wages and benefits and undermine other hard-won workers’ gains.
During most of Volcker’s eight years at the Fed, he worked in tandem with the Reagan administration in its offensive against the labor movement. He hailed Reagan’s mass firing of the striking air traffic controllers and the destruction of their union, PATCO, as a key turning point in bringing inflation under control. At the worst point in the Volcker-induced recession, in 1982-83, the US unemployment rate approached 10 percent, the highest in the post-World War II era.
In his new position as an Obama adviser, Volcker serves as a guarantor to big business and the financial interests that the new administration will proceed ruthlessly against the working class. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial last week, suggested that Volcker be given the authority to set new financial regulations. Other business spokesmen have suggested Volcker or someone like him as the new “car czar,” with authority over the bailout of the US auto industry and the accompanying cuts in auto workers’ jobs, wages and benefits.
Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget
The third Robert Rubin acolyte to take a top financial position with Obama, Orszag moves over from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), where he was appointed by the new Democratic majority, elected in 2006. He is regarded as the foremost Democratic Party expert on cutting spending for entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, and has written extensively on the need for fiscal austerity.
Orszag worked in the Clinton White House, first as an economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, then as a special assistant to the president for economic policy. After leaving the Clinton administration, he served as head of the Hamilton Project, a think tank devoted to controlling government spending set up and financed by Robert Rubin.
In an interview on his role at the CBO, he declared, “I have not viewed CBO’s job as just to passively evaluate what Congress proposes, but rather to be an analytical resource. And part of that is to highlight things that are true and that people may not want to hear, including that we need to address health-care costs.”
Mary Schapiro, chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
A former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) first appointed by Ronald Reagan, Schapiro is a classic case of an industry insider taking over a supposedly independent regulatory agency. After six years on the SEC, Schapiro was appointed chairman of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission by President Clinton in 1994, where she was responsible for regulating the US futures markets in agricultural commodities, metals, energy and financial products. She also served on the President's Working Group on Financial Markets with other top federal officials.
For the past 12 years, after leaving government at the end of Clinton’s first term, Schapiro has worked for the securities industry as an advocate of “self-regulation,” first with the National Association of Securities Dealers, the industry trade association, and most recently as head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. She served on the board of directors at Duke Energy and Kraft Foods.
A front-page article in the January 15 Wall Street Journal carried the headline “Obama's Pick to Head SEC Has Record of Being a Regulator With a Light Touch,” and noted that “a close examination of Ms. Schapiro's record as a regulator shows she has infrequently pursued tough action against big Wall Street firms.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/cabi-j19.shtml
•••
Part II - Internal Security
By Tom Eley
20 January 2009
President-elect Obama has assembled a cabinet drawn from the upper echelons of American society and the right wing of the Democratic Party. The right-wing character of the Obama nominees is described by the media under the approving labels of "centrist," "moderate," and—most of all—"pragmatic." This terminology signifies that the incoming Obama team consists entirely of individuals who pass muster with the corporate financial aristocracy.
The New York Times reported Monday that Obama has repeatedly discussed his cabinet selections with his defeated Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, and that McCain has told colleagues "that many of these appointments he would have made himself," according to Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and arch-conservative who has also had input into the formation of the new administration.
McCain, Graham and Co. have a far greater role in the selection of Obama's cabinet than the millions of young people and working people who supported Obama in the belief that he would put an end to the war in Iraq and reverse the right-wing, pro-big business policies of the Bush administration.
Today's series of profiles deals with those cabinet and other high-ranking officials in the incoming administration responsible for the Justice Department, intelligence and Homeland Security—i.e., the domestic repressive functions of the US government.
Eric Holder, attorney general
While Holder is being hailed as the first African-American to hold his position, his selection does not represent a reversal of the anti-democratic policies pursued by the Justice Department under the Bush administration. Holder is a trusted defender of both corporate America in general and the American capitalist state, having served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration (1997-2001) and then as a high-priced lawyer at Covington & Burling, where he represented an assortment of major corporations.
Most notorious was his role defending the food giant Chiquita Brands International, Inc., whose multimillionaire executives were facing potential charges of aiding terrorism because of their financing and arming of right-wing death squads in Colombia. Using his Justice Department connections—and taking advantage of the Bush administration's sympathy for the Colombian fascists—Holder managed to get Chiquita off the hook with a small fine, despite overwhelming evidence that it had hired gunmen to kidnap, torture and murder Colombian workers, peasants and union officials.
With support emerging from prominent Republicans, it is likely Eric Holder will be confirmed as attorney general in the incoming Obama administration. Holder's nomination has withstood somewhat muted criticism from the Republican right. This related to Holder's involvement, as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in the presidential pardon for billionaire fugitive investor Marc Rich, as well as in commutations for 16 Puerto Rican nationalists who had been imprisoned for decades on politically motivated convictions for nonviolent crimes.
Republicans announcing their support for Holder include Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who serves on the Judiciary Committee; Mel Martinez of Florida; Frances Townsend, President George W. Bush's homeland security adviser; William P. Barr, attorney general under President George H.W. Bush; and Larry Thompson, who served as attorney general in the current Bush administration. After Holder expressed agreement with Sen. Lindsey Graham that the nation is at war with terrorists, Graham responded, "I'm almost ready to vote for you right now."
Republicans may fondly remember Holder's critical role in expanding an independent counsel's investigation of Bill Clinton that ultimately led to his impeachment over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Holder advised then-Attorney General Janet Reno to allow for the expansion of the investigation's scope.
Under John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey in the Bush administration, the office of attorney general served as a center of conspiracy against democratic rights, authorizing torture, illegal wiretapping, and firing United States Attorneys who did not completely toe the Bush administration line, among other nefarious activities. Holder will attempt to effect a change of image. In congressional hearings, he said that he considered "waterboarding"—that is, drowning—torture. The Bush administration has defended the procedure as a "harsh interrogation method."
However, in other areas, Holder has made clear that he intends to carry on the policies of the Bush administration. He both supported the initial passage of the Patriot Act in 2001 and played a key role in the talks that led to its reauthorization in 2005—when Obama himself voted for it.
As attorney general, Holder would be obliged to investigate the crimes of the Bush administration. In his nomination hearings, he said he would do no such thing. "The decisions that were made by a prior administration were difficult ones," he said. "It is an easy thing for somebody to look back in hindsight and be critical of the decisions that were made." He indicated that, while he favors closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, this will be a lengthy process in which prisoners' legal status will remain indeterminate.
Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Panetta was a surprise selection to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US spy agency and long a center of counterrevolution, because of his lack of hands-on experience in intelligence work. This was almost a requirement for the job, however, under the current circumstances, since Obama was seeking to rehabilitate the image of an agency that has become identified worldwide with kidnapping, secret imprisonment and torture. Obama initially intended to name a CIA veteran, John Brennan, who was the candidate's top intelligence adviser, but Brennan faced criticism over his role in decisions on interrogation during the Bush administration.
Panetta would play the same political role as George H.W. Bush, another "outsider" but a trusted ruling class figure, brought in to refurbish the agency after the assassination scandals of the early 1970s. He began his political career as a Republican working in the administration of Richard Nixon, but switched to the Democratic Party in 1971, and was elected to the US Congress from California in 1976, serving there for 16 years and specializing in budgetary matters. Clinton chose him as his first director of the United States Office of Management and Budget.
In 1994, Panetta became White House chief of staff, serving in that capacity until 1997, the critical years in which Clinton governed in collaboration with the Republican congressional leadership that took control of Congress in 1994. The single "achievement" of those years was the elimination of the federal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in a bipartisan deal.
More recently, Panetta has shifted his focus to foreign affairs, working as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan establishment group that sought, beginning in 2006, to effect a tactical change in US policies in Iraq.
Also serving on the group were Robert Gates, secretary of defense in both the Bush and Obama administrations, and former secretary of state in the first Bush administration, James Baker.
Admiral Dennis C. Blair, director of National Intelligence
Blair is one of a record four retired military officers chosen for high positions in the Obama administration, and the second Navy man in a row, following retired Vice Admiral Michael McConnell, to hold the position of DNI, created to oversee the entire intelligence establishment in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Blair is a career military man who rose to the rank of commander-in-chief of United States Pacific Command, which is the highest-ranking position for all US forces in the Asia-Pacific region. He also served as director of the joint staff in the Office of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. After retiring from the US Navy in 2002, Blair has been involved in US military and foreign policy circles, holding a chair at the US Army War College and serving on and holding a chair at a geo-strategic think tank, the National Bureau of Asian Research. He also served as president of the important US-government think tank, Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).
Blair could be prosecuted for war crimes in relationship to the 1999 East Timor massacres, which took place during his period as head of the Pacific Command. Apparently, Blair disobeyed orders from the Clinton administration on two occasions. As the massacres against the pro-independence movement in East Timor became an embarrassment for the Clinton administration, which presented its simultaneous imperialist adventure against Yugoslavia as a "humanitarian mission," Clinton called on Blair to meet with General Wiranto, head of the Indonesian military, and order him to end support for the pro-Indonesian militia. Blair instead presented Wiranto with an offer of increased military assistance and invited the Indonesian strongman to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Wiranto took this as an American blessing for an escalation of violence in East Timor.
When State Department officials learned that Blair had not delivered the message to Wiranto, they called on him to do so again. Again he refused. Only several months later, after many more independence supporters had been killed, did Blair act to cut off US military assistance to the Indonesian army.
Blair's career also highlights the incestuous relationship between the military and the defense industry. In 2006, the US Department of Defense inspector general determined Blair had violated IDA's Conflict of Interest regulations by recommending the US government purchase production contracts for F22 Raptors. Blair served as the president of the IDA, which made the recommendation, and on the board of directors for EDO Corporation, which did subcontracting work on the F22. He received only a slap on the wrist, and there is no congressional opposition to his appointment.
Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security
The two-term governor of Arizona, Napolitano has built a reputation for being "pro-business" and a proponent of increased militarization of the US border with Mexico, much of which lies in her state. In state politics, Napolitano supported Arizona's ban on same-sex marriages, opposed restrictions on gun ownership, and supported the death penalty. Her nomination has been warmly received by the Republican Party, with Arizona's two Republican senators, Jon Kyl and John McCain, lobbying on her behalf.
Napolitano has criticized the "Federal government's failure to fulfill its responsibilities in securing our border," and it is her supposed expertise on immigration that was her prime qualification for the Department of Homeland Security. Napolitano made her political name in Arizona through her opposition to immigration, signing into law reactionary legislation that made possible the prosecution of illegal immigrants as felons. She also deployed the Arizona National Guard along the border with Mexico, winning praise from anti-immigration zealots.
In questioning during Congressional hearings related to her nomination, Napolitano spoke in favor of the militarization of the Mexican border, saying that border fences should be used to separate urban areas from Mexico, but that higher technology should be used in the more remote expanses of the border area. She did not oppose the "Real ID program," which would create an internal passport system in the US, saying only that the financial burden it will impose on states needs to be lessened.
Napolitano leaves Arizona just as the state budget has been plunged into crisis by the economic slump, and in particular the housing crisis. The state faces a current deficit of $1.25 billion and a deficit of $2.65 billion for 2010. Napolitano has proposed major cuts to higher education to lessen the deficits. As part of proposed spending cuts of $975 million, $100 million would be cut from the state's university system and $40 million from community colleges. Also, $145 million will be slashed from the state highway fund.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/secu-j20.shtml
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
