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!! History Commons Alert, Exciting News
For the first time in 30 years, an Iranian diplomat meets for informal discussions with officials from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Senior NATO negotiator Martin Erdmann will later confirm that he has met with Iran's ambassador to the European Union, Ali-Asghar Khaji. "This is another good step in engaging Iran in the international community," Erdmann will say. NATO will confirm the discussion, and will say the main focus of the talks is the situation in Afghanistan. Iran will confirm its planned participation in US-backed talks on Afghanistan to take place at The Hague. NATO spokesman James Appathurai will say of Iran's participation in those talks, "The fact that Iran has decided to go is good news and constitutes a new step." The US State Department will welcome Iran's contacts with NATO. The Iranian contact follows a recent message sent by President Obama to the government and people of Iran (see March 19, 2009). [BBC, 3/27/2009]
Entity Tags: US Department of State, Ali-Asghar Khaji, James Appathurai, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Martin Erdmann
Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran
Martha MacCallum. [Source: The Activity Pit]Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, host of Fox's "straight news" show The Live Desk, airs clips of Vice President Joseph Biden taken during a September 2008 campaign event to falsely imply that Biden is contradicting the Obama administration's current stance on the economy. MacCallum tells viewers that "after weeks of economic doom and gloom, the Obama administration is now singing a slightly different tune. Take a look at what was said in recent interviews this weekend." Fox then airs a clip of Biden telling an audience, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." The clip is not from an interview held over the weekend, but from a campaign event held seven months before. MacCallum does not inform her viewers of the timing of the clip, nor does she note that Biden was criticizing Republican presidential candidate John McCain's economic views, which he characterized as unrealistically rosy. Instead, she goes on to claim that the administration has fundamentally, and dishonestly, shifted its views on the economy from a positive campaign outlook to a more "doom and gloom" viewpoint. In the September 2008 campaign rally, Biden told a Michigan audience: "I believe that's why John McCain could say with a straight face, as recently as this morning—and this is a quote, 'The fundamentals of the economy are strong.' That's what John says. He says that 'we've made great progress economically' in the Bush years.… I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn't run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain." Alongside the Biden clip, Fox also airs footage of Austan Goolsbee, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. On March 15, Goolsbee told a Fox News Sunday audience that "the core strength of the economy is middle-class workers." Fox airs that clip immediately after the Biden clip. What it does not air is Goolsbee's statement just after the broadcast statement, in which he said, "Over the last eight years, before this president came into office, we saw an unbelievable squeeze on the middle class like nothing we have seen in decades." MacCallum uses the clips to accuse the Obama administration of "singing… a bit of a different tune" now than during the campaign. [Media Matters, 3/16/2009] The next day, MacCallum apologizes for asserting the seven-month-old clip was recent. She tells viewers that Fox News "inadvertently used a piece of video of Vice President Biden saying that, quote, the fundamentals of the economy are strong. This video was from the campaign trail, when the vice president was a candidate, and was actually quoting Senator John McCain. When we get something wrong, we admit it. We did so yesterday, and for that, we apologize" (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 3/17/2009]
Entity Tags: Austan Goolsbee, Fox News, John McCain, Martha MacCallum, Council of Economic Advisers, Obama administration, Joseph Biden
Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda
Journalist and author Mark Danner, who has just published a lengthy examination of torture under Bush administration policies (see March 15, 2009), says as long as the press continues to dodge the use of the word "torture," the country will continue to have trouble coming to grips with the issues surrounding the policies. Danner, appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, says the press continues to engage in a "semantic debate" over whether the US committed torture under the Bush administration. "One can continue to talk about torture is in the eye of the beholder, etc., etc., but frankly, nobody of any legal reputation believes that," says Danner. Danner adds he is "frustrated by the practices of the press" that are "interfering with a clear debate." Danner says: "I think the definitional question is extremely important, and… I think it's extremely important to get by it already. We're debilitated in that by some degree by the practices of the American press, frankly, which is that as long as the president or people in power continue to cling to a definition that they assert is the truth—as President Bush did when it came to torture, he said repeatedly the United States does not torture—the press feels obliged to report that and consider the matter as a question of debate." [Think Progress, 3/17/2009]
Entity Tags: Mark Danner, Bush administration (43)
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives
Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, joined by National Review deputy managing editor Kevin Williamson, asserts that Obama administration members are working behind the scenes to move towards what they call a "one-world government." Williamson tells Beck and their viewers that Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, belongs to a group that is "arguing for… the same stuff that the left is always arguing for, which is transferring wealth and power out of citizens' hands and into the government's hands." Williamson continues: "You know, the left always needs an emergency because they can't get this stuff done through normal democratic means. So, in the '30s, it was the Depression, and then it was World War II. Then it was the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. And then after the Soviet Union fell apart, it became the environmental movement." Beck responds: "Right. Let me—I'm going to have them take you someplace that I like to call 'one-world government.'" Beck later says that Browner "was involved in a socialist organization" that "wants one-world government." Williamson agrees: "Yeah, they're big on what they call, you know, global architecture, transnational architecture, which is just another way of saying sort of UN-style bureaucracies that would be international in nature and would de-emphasize American power and global leadership." [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Beck and Williamson are echoing claims made in the '90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a "new world order" (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans' guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010).
Entity Tags: Obama administration, Carol Browner, Glenn Beck, Fox News, Kevin Williamson
Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff and now chairs the New America Foundation/US-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative, writes an op-ed titled "Some Truths about Guantanamo Bay" for the Washington Note. Wilkerson explains why he believes so many people were captured and so many of those were tortured, for so little gain, and in the process covers several other issues regarding the Bush administration. Handling of Terror Suspects - Wilkerson writes that the entire process of capturing, detaining, and processing suspected Islamist militants was marked by incompetence and a casual, improvisational approach. Most of the "suspects" captured during the first weeks and months of the Afghanistan invasion (see October 7, 2001) were merely picked up in sweeps, or bought from corrupt regional warlords, and transported wholesale to a variety of US bases and military camps, and then sent to Guantanamo, mostly in response to then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's exhortation to "just get the b_stards to the interrogators." Wilkerson blames the civilian leadership, for failing to provide the necessary information and guidance to make sensible, informed decisions about who should and should not have been considered either terror suspects or potential sources of information. When detainees were found not to have had any ties to Islamist radical groups, nor had any real intelligence value, they were kept at Guantanamo instead of being released. Wilkerson writes that "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough.… They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released." He writes that State Department attempts to rectify the situation "from almost day one" experienced almost no success. Data Mining Called for Large Numbers of Detainees - Wilkerson notes what he calls "ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people," a data mining concept called in the White House "the mosaic philosophy." He explains: "Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals—in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified. Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot." Unfortunately for this data mining effort, the gathering, cataloging, and maintenance of such information was carried out with what he calls "sheer incompetence," rendering the information structure virtually useless either for intelligence or in prosecuting terror suspects. No Information of Value Gained from Guantanamo Detainees - And, Wilkerson adds, he is not aware of any information gathered from Guantanamo detainees that made any real contribution to the US's efforts to combat terrorism: "This is perhaps the most astounding truth of all, carefully masked by men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney in their loud rhetoric—continuing even now in the case of Cheney—about future attacks thwarted, resurgent terrorists, the indisputable need for torture and harsh interrogation, and for secret prisons and places such as Gitmo." Hindrance to Prosecution - This incompetence in gathering and storing information had a powerful impact on the ability of the US to prosecute the two dozen or so detainees who actually might be what Wilkerson calls "hardcore terrorists." For these and the other detainees, he writes, "there was virtually no chain of custody, no disciplined handling of evidence, and no attention to the details that almost any court system would demand" (see January 20, 2009). Shutting Down Guantanamo - Wilkerson writes that the Guantanamo detention facility could be shut down much sooner than President Obama's promised year (see January 22, 2009), and notes he believes a plan for shutting down the facility must have existed "[a]s early as 2004 and certainly in 2005." War on Terror Almost Entirely Political - Wilkerson charges that the Bush administration's driving rationale behind the "never-ending war on terror" was political: "For political purposes, they knew it certainly had no end within their allotted four to eight years," he writes in an op-ed about the US's detention policies. "Moreover, its not having an end, properly exploited, would help ensure their eight rather than four years in office." Cheney's Criticisms of Obama 'Twisted ... Fear-Mongering' - Wilkerson excoriates former Vice President Dick Cheney for his recent statements regarding President Obama and the "war on terror" (see February 4, 2009). Instead of helping the US in its fight against al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism, Wilkerson writes, Cheney is making that fight all the more difficult (see February 5, 2009). "Al-Qaeda has been hurt, badly, largely by our military actions in Afghanistan and our careful and devastating moves to stymie its financial support networks. But al-Qaeda will be back. Iraq, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, heavily-biased US support for Israel, and a host of other strategic errors have insured al-Qaeda's resilience, staying power, and motivation. How we deal with the future attacks of this organization and its cohorts could well seal our fate, for good or bad. Osama bin Laden and his brain trust, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are counting on us to produce the bad. With people such as Cheney assisting them, they are far more likely to succeed." [Washington Note, 3/17/2009]
Entity Tags: Colin Powell, Barack Obama, Bush administration (43), Richard ("Dick") Cheney, US Department of Defense, Lawrence Wilkerson, Obama administration, US Department of State
The Obama administration's choice to head the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen, is endorsed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. All the committee Democrats vote to endorse her, and all but one Republican committee member vote against her; Arlen Specter (R-PA) abstains. After the endorsement, Senate Republicans use a variety of parliamentary procedures to delay or block her appointment. Legal expert and columnist Scott Horton writes, "The real reason for their vehement opposition is that Johnsen is committed to overturning the Bush administration's policies on torture and warrantless surveillance that would clip the wings of the imperial presidency." Johnsen formerly worked for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), earning her the enmity of social conservatives who have made her the target of a massive opposition campaign. Anti-abortion groups call her a "radical, pro-abortion activist." However, Horton notes, observations from Republican officials and opinion leaders show that the GOP's real concern is not over Johnsen's support for abortion, but for her apparent intent to roll back Bush-era policies on torture and warrantless surveillance. Even worse, Horton writes, is her intention to reveal secret information from the Bush years about those subjects. But it is politically difficult to attack Johnsen on these issues, Republicans say, so instead she is being targeted for her views on abortion. President Obama's choice of Johnsen's two deputies—Harvard law professor David Barron and Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman (see January 20, 2009)—are, like Johnsen, experienced in both academia and politics, and have been vehement critics of the OLC during the Bush years. [Daily Beast, 3/26/2009]
Entity Tags: Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ), Arlen Specter, David Barron, Dawn Johnsen, Scott Horton, Senate Judiciary Committee, US Department of Justice, Obama administration, Martin ("Marty") Lederman
Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties
Condoleezza Rice on the Charlie Rose show. [Source: PBS]Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells PBS's Charlie Rose that "no one" in the White House ever asserted that Saddam Hussein had any connections to 9/11. Rose says, "But you didn't believe [the Hussein regime] had anything to do with 9/11." Rice replies: "No. No one was arguing that Saddam Hussein somehow had something to do with 9/11.… I was certainly not. The president was certainly not.… That's right. We were not arguing that." Rice refuses to answer Rose's question asking if former Vice President Dick Cheney ever tried to make the connection. In reality, former President Bush and his top officials, including Cheney and Rice, worked diligently to reinforce a connection between Iraq and 9/11 in the public mind before the March 2003 invasion (see (Between 10:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001, Shortly After September 11, 2001, Shortly After September 11, 2001, After September 11, 2001, Mid-September, 2001, September 17, 2001, September 19, 2001, September 20, 2001, September 28, 2001, November 6-8, 2001, December 9, 2001, 2002-March 2003, March 19, 2002, June 21, 2002, July 25, 2002, August 2002, August 20, 2002, September 12, 2002, September 16, 2002, September 21, 2002, September 25, 2002, September 26, 2002, September 27, 2002, September 28, 2002, October 7, 2002, October 7, 2002, October 15, 2002, December 2, 2002, December 12, 2002, January 26, 2003, January 28, 2003, Early February 2003, February 5, 2003, (2:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.) February 5, 2003, February 5, 2003, February 6, 2003, February 11 or 12, 2003, and February 17, 2003). [Think Progress, 3/19/2009]
Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Bush administration (43), Charlie Rose, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano hosts radio host Alex Jones on the online program Freedom Watch. Jones says that he has long pointed out "how hundreds of mainstream news articles a week are saying there is a new world order, a global government. It will be run by the very banks that are collapsing society by design, and we will pay carbon taxes to them.… [T]he good news is, I've never seen an awakening this big. And I'm seeing, you know, people like Glenn Beck talk about the new world order on Fox. I'm seeing you talk about it for years before him. We're seeing [CNN host] Lou Dobbs talk about it. We're seeing, you know, mainline talk show hosts—[radio host Rush] Limbaugh is even talking about global government now. [Radio host] Michael Savage is talking about how he thinks, you know, Obama may stage crises to bring in martial law." [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Jones is echoing claims made in the '90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a "new world order" (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans' guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010), and that are echoed by Fox News pundits such as Glenn Beck (see March 17, 2009), Bill O'Reilly (see April 1-2, 2009), and others (see April 6, 2009).
Entity Tags: Andrew Napolitano, Alex Jones, Barack Obama, Fox News
The Justice Department informs CIA Director Leon Panetta that, after due deliberation, it will recommend to the White House that it release four Bush-era "torture memos" almost uncensored (see April 16, 2009), in compliance with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Panetta, who is about to leave for an overseas trip, tells Attorney General Eric Holder and White House officials that the administration needs to consider the possibility that the memos' release might expose CIA officers to lawsuits on allegations of torture and abuse. He also demands more censorship of the memos. The Justice Department informs other senior CIA officials, and as a courtesy, former agency directors Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet, and John Deutch. Senior CIA officials object, arguing that the memos' release could damage the agency's ability to interrogate prisoners in the future and would further besmirch CIA officers who had acted on the Bush administration's legal guidance. They also warn that the release might harm foreign intelligence services' trust in the CIA's ability to protect national security secrets. The four former directors also raise objections, arguing that the release might compromise ongoing intelligence operations. The torture authorized by the Bush White House had been approved under Tenet's directorship. On March 19, the Justice Department requests a two-week delay in releasing the memos; department officials tell the court handling the lawsuit that the administration is considering releasing the memos without waiting for a court verdict. Two weeks later, Justice Department officials tell the court that the memos would come out on or before April 16. President Obama becomes more and more involved in the matter, leading a National Security Council (NSC) session on the issue and holding high-level sessions with Holder and other Cabinet members. Obama also discusses the issue with lower-level officials, and with an unidentified NSC official from the Bush administration. Obama's biggest worry is the possibility of endangering ongoing intelligence operations. The Justice Department argues that the ACLU lawsuit would in the end force the administration to release the documents anyway. Obama eventually agrees, and the White House decides it will be better to release the memos voluntarily and avoid the perception of only releasing them after being forced to do so by a court ruling. Obama also decides that very few redactions should be made in the documents. The only redactions in the memos are the names of US employees, foreign services, and items related to techniques still in use. To mollify CIA personnel concerns, Obama will send a personal letter to CIA employees reassuring them that he supports them, understands the clandestine nature of their operations, and has no intention of prosecuting CIA employees who followed the legal guidelines set forth in the memos. [Associated Press, 4/17/2009]
Entity Tags: John Deutch, Barack Obama, American Civil Liberties Union, Bush administration (43), George J. Tenet, Leon Panetta, US Department of Justice, Eric Holder, Michael Hayden, Porter J. Goss
Israeli President Shimon Peres issues a special message to the Iranian people, in time to commemorate the Iranian holiday of Nowruz. Peres sends his message just minutes after US President Obama sent his own video message to Iran (see March 19, 2009). Unlike Obama, Peres refuses to address the Iranian government, but issues his message directly to the Iranian people, and adopts a far less conciliatory tone than the American leader. He tells the Iranians: "Unfortunately, the relations between our two countries have hit a low point, stemming from ideas that compel your leaders to act in every possible way against the state of Israel and its people. But I am convinced that the day is not far off when our two nations will restore good neighborly relations and cooperation in thriving in every way." Peres continues: "Things in Iran are tough. There is great unemployment, corruption, a lot of drugs, and a general discontent? You can't feed your children enriched uranium, they need a real breakfast. It cannot be that the money is invested in enriched uranium and the children are told to remain a little hungry, a little ignorant. [I suggest] you don't listen to [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, it is impossible to preserve a whole nation on incitement and hatred, the people will become tired of it.… I see the suffering of the children and ask myself, why? [Iran] is such a rich country with such a rich culture, why do they allow a handful of religious fanatics take the worst possible path, both in the eyes of God and in the eyes of man?" Peres then encourages the Iranian people to overthrow their own government: "It is impossible to preserve a whole nation on incitement and hatred. I think that the Iranian people will topple these leaders, these leaders who don't serve the people—in the end the people will realize that." Some of Peres's message is recorded in Farsi, and the message is broadcast on Israel's Radio Farsi, which has a large audience in the Middle East. [Washington Post, 3/20/2009; Ha'aretz, 3/21/2009] The neoconservatives of the Weekly Standard applaud Peres's speech, writing, "Now that's how a president should be speaking to the prisoners of the Mullahcracy." [Weekly Standard, 3/20/2009]
Entity Tags: Weekly Standard, Shimon Peres, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President Obama disagrees with recent statements from former Vice President Dick Cheney that his administration's policies are endangering America (see February 4, 2009 and March 15, 2009). "I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney—not surprisingly," Obama tells CBS reporter Steve Kroft. "I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history. [CNN, 3/22/2009; CBS News, 3/22/2009] The facts don't bear him out." Cheney "is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable," Obama says, and notes that Cheney's politics reflect a mindset that "has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world." [Raw Story, 3/22/2009; CBS News, 3/22/2009] In response to Cheney's advocacy of extreme interrogation methods—torture—of suspected terrorists, Obama asks: "How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment." [Politico, 3/21/2009; CBS News, 3/22/2009] "The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that, somehow, the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists," Obama continues. "This is the legacy that's been left behind and, you know, I'm surprised that the vice president is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable. Let's assume that we didn't change these practices. How long are we going to go? Are we going to just keep on going until, you know, the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that's really going to make us safer? I don't know a lot of thoughtful thinkers, liberal or conservative, who think that was the right approach." [Raw Story, 3/22/2009; CBS News, 3/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Obama administration, Bush administration (43)
Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, 2010 Elections
Conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly writes an op-ed that claims, apparently sarcastically, that former Vice President Cheney would have had reporters assassinated if he really controlled a military assassination squad. Responding to the allegations by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that Cheney controlled an "executive assassination wing" (see March 10, 2009), O'Reilly writes: "The other day, left-wing muckraker Seymour Hersh went on MSNBC and said he had information, provided by the usual anonymous sources, that Dick Cheney was running an assassination squad out of the White House. I have but one simple observation: If Cheney really had such a crew, Hersh would have been dead a long time ago, and so would most everybody at MSNBC." [Boston Herald, 3/22/2009; Think Progress, 3/22/2009]
Entity Tags: MSNBC, Bill O'Reilly, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Seymour Hersh
The New York Times, in an unsigned editorial, warns of the possible ramifications of an upcoming Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The case was argued on March 15, eight days before the Web publication date of the editorial (see March 15, 2009) and nine days before the editorial is published in print; it is unclear in retrospect why the editorial is written as if the arguments have not yet taken place, or whether the dates of the published version are accurate. The Times sums up the case—a conservative nonprofit organization, Citizens United (CU), planned to air a 90-minute film that was highly critical of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in the days before 2008 presidential primary elections, in violation of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, or "McCain-Feingold"—see March 27, 2002) that bans "electioneering communications" within 30 days of a primary election. CU was aware of the law, and filed a suit claiming that the law unconstitutionally violated its First Amendment rights. "The Supreme Court should affirm that ruling," the Times states. The CU briefs "mak[e] a wide array of claims," the "most dangerous" of which is a request to overturn the 1990 Austin Court decision (see March 27, 1990) that banned corporations from using monies from their general treasuries. The Times states: "If Citizens United prevails, it would create an enormous loophole in the law and allow corporate money to flood into partisan politics in ways it has not in many decades. It also would seriously erode the disclosure rules for campaign contributions." [New York Times, 3/23/2009]
Entity Tags: Citizens United, Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, US Supreme Court, Hillary Clinton, New York Times
Bill Hemmer. [Source: New York Daily News]Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, host of Fox News's flagship news program America's Newsroom, hosts several segments touting the April 15 "tea party" protests (see April 8, 2009 and April 15, 2009). Hemmer notes protests in Florida and Ohio that occurred in recent days, and directs viewers to the Web site for America's Newsroom for more information. He says: "Protesters, well, they waved flags and signs and with slogans like 'Repeal the Pork' and 'Our Bacon is Cooked.' I say, our bacon is cooked. They're popping up literally all across the country now.… If you go to our Web site, you will find a growing list of these events, hundreds of photos, and a new tea party anthem that you will hear from the man who wrote it and recorded it next hour. And there's a list of the nationwide Tax Day tea party events coming up on the 15th of April, which will be a huge deal for those organizations. So check it out online right now" (see October 13, 2009). The song is by Lloyd Marcus of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who has been on what he tells Hemmer was "a 40-city 'Stop Obama' tour." Marcus's song is extremely critical of President Obama's policies and supportive of the "tea parties." The lyrics are posted on FoxNews.com. [Media Matters, 4/8/2009]
Entity Tags: Fox News, National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, Lloyd Marcus, Bill Hemmer
Logo for the Foreign Policy Initiative. [Source: Foreign Policy Initiative]Neoconservatives form a new think tank to rehabilitate their image and regain some of the influence they had under the Bush administration, according to news reports. The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is headed by Weekly Standard publisher William Kristol, foreign policy consultant Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan Senor. Its first activity will be to sponsor a March 31 conference (see March 31, 2009) pushing for a US "surge" in Afghanistan similar to the one Kagan helped plan for Iraq (see January 2007). Successor to PNAC - Many see the FPI as the logical successor to Kristol and Kagan's previous neoconservative organization, the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC—see January 26, 1998). PNAC's membership roll included many prominent Bush administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and the Defense Department's top two officials, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Employees - Information about FPI's creation is initially sketchy, with the organization deliberately avoiding media attention. Two of its three listed staff members, Jamie Fly and Christian Whiton, are former Bush administration officials, while the third, Rachel Hoff, last worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee. Mission Statement; Conflict with China, Russia - FPI's mission statement says that the "United States remains the world's indispensable nation," and warns that "strategic overreach is not the problem and retrenchment is not the solution" to Washington's current financial and strategic woes. It calls for "continued engagement—diplomatic, economic, and military—in the world and rejection of policies that would lead us down the path to isolationism." The statement lists a number of threats to US security, including "rogue states," "failed states," "autocracies," and "terrorism," but focuses primarily on the "challenges" posed by "rising and resurgent powers," of which only China and Russia are named. Kagan has argued that the 21st century will be dominated by an apocalyptic struggle between the forces of democracy, led by the US, and the forces of autocracy, led by China and Russia. He has called for the establishment of a League of Democracies to oppose China and Russia; the FPI statement stresses the need for "robust support for America's democratic allies." Apparently, confrontation with China and Russia will be the centerpiece of FPI's foreign policy stance, a similar position to that taken by the Bush administration before the 9/11 attacks. Reactions to New Think Tank - Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation says: "This reminds me of the Project for the New American Century. Like PNAC, it will become a watering hole for those who want to see an ever-larger US military machine and who divide the world between those who side with right and might and those who are evil or who would appease evil." Reporters Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe write, "[T]he formation of FPI may be a sign that its founders hope once again to incubate a more aggressive foreign policy during their exile from the White House, in preparation for the next time they return to political power." [Inter Press Service, 3/25/2009]
Entity Tags: Jim Lobe, Dan Senor, Christian Whiton, Daniel Luban, Jamie Fly, Rachel Hoff, Steve Clemons, Foreign Policy Initiative, Project for the New American Century, William Kristol, Robert Kagan
Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) releases a report that says the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 (see February 27, 2009) will be a "massive and expensive effort" that is likely to increase, rather than lower, Iraq-related spending for several years. The GAO report finds, "Although reducing troops would appear to lower costs," withdrawals from previous conflicts have shown that costs often rise in the short term. The price of equipment repairs and replacements, along with closing or turning over 283 US military installations in Iraq, "will likely be significant," the report finds. Even smaller bases will take up to two months to close, and the largest facilities, such as Balad Air Base, with 24,000 soldiers and support personnel, may take up to 18 months to shut down. The report also notes uncertainties surrounding civilian security, issues surrounding the US Embassy in Baghdad, and the Iraqi government's ability to sustain basic services and infrastructure. Currently, the US Army plans on withdrawing eight of the 14 brigades deployed in Iraq by August 2010. All US forces are to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. [Washington Post, 3/25/2009]
Entity Tags: Government Accountability Office, US Department of the Army
Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation
At least 19 Congressional Republicans, including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), say that the Obama administration's "cap-and-trade" proposal would cost American families $3,128 apiece in extra taxes. Misrepresenting an MIT Study - Boehner, McConnell, and their fellow Republicans base their claim on a 2007 MIT study. However, one of the study's researchers, John Reilly, says that the Republicans are misreading it. According to Reilly, any tax burden on American families would not be felt until 2015, and the cost would be closer to $31 per person and $79 per year. The controversial claim originates in a Web posting by the House Republican Conference on March 24, which says: "The administration raises revenue for nationalized health care through a series of new taxes, including a light switch tax that would cost every American household $3,128 a year. What effect will this have on Americans struggling to pay their mortgages?" The St. Petersburg Times explains that the GOP's "light switch tax" is a reference to President Obama's proposal to tax power companies for carbon dioxide emissions, and allow companies to trade emissions credits among themselves. The program is called cap-and-trade. Republicans say the power companies would pass the tax on to electricity consumers, thus creating what they call a "light switch tax"—a term the Times calls misleading in and of itself. According to the MIT study, such a program would raise around $366 billion per year; Republicans divide that figure by the 117 million households in the US and get $3,128 in additional costs. Reilly says the Republicans are "just wrong. It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin." Corrected by Study's Author - And, Reilly says, he told House Republicans so when they contacted him on March 20. "I had explained why the estimate they had was probably incorrect and what they should do to correct it, but I think this wrong number was already floating around by that time." Republicans also claim that the Obama administration intends to use cap-and-trade money to pay for what they call "nationalized health care," a claim refuted by details of the program released by Obama officials. (House Republicans later amend this claim to say that the program will pay for "increased spending.") The Times notes that Boehner rebuffs a second attempt by Reilly to correct the claim that the program will cost American households over $3,000 per year. Further Falsehoods - Instead, nine other Republicans and the neoconservative Weekly Standard begin echoing the claim, with the Standard claiming that their figures show an annual cost of over $3,900 and accusing Reilly of "low-balling the cost of cap-and-trade by using some fuzzy logic." Reilly says the Standard "just completely twisted the whole thing.… It's false." Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) takes the claim even further, saying that the huge annual tax would be levied on "every living American." Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) restates the cost to $4,500 per family, and fellow House colleague Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) raises the rate to $4,560. Fox News correspondent Jim Angle reports Gregg's claim without refutation or examination; on a later Fox broadcast, Gregg says, "every time you turn on your light switch, you're going to be paying a tax." Denouncing the Lies - Reilly has written to Boehner and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to denounce the GOP's distortion of the MIT study. Democratic Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) accuses the Republicans of "using an intentional misrepresentation of the study," and says: "One of the things I find most distressing is their repeated falsehood about somehow a $3,000 increase in taxes on the American people based on a research done by MIT. They talked about it four times again last night!… The fact is that in the budget we have an opportunity for people who want to be legislators not communicators to help us allocate how those benefits will be utilized." [St. Petersburg Times, 3/30/2009; Think Progress, 4/1/2009; Think Progress, 4/2/2009]
Entity Tags: Judd Gregg, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Obama administration, John Reilly, Jim Angle, Cynthia Lummis, Earl Blumenauer, House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, House Republican Conference, John Boehner
Timeline Tags: Global Warming, Global Economic Crises
Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, with former UN Ambassador John R. Bolton as his guest, says that the Obama administration is pushing for a "global currency." The assertion is part of Beck's larger claim that Obama wants to steer the US towards some sort of "one-world government." Beck says: "Ambassador, everybody is calling for global currency. I think part of this is a game, but I think, also, part of it is a—I mean, now the UN is saying, you know what? We should have a global currency. It's also a movement to tie the entire globe together into one big government. Am I wrong or right?" Beck adds later in the interview: "You're known as a fighter. I mean, you are a guy in there, man, you were just taking the fight right to them. So, what does the average person do? I mean, the average person, they hear, you know, I might be losing my sovereignty.… What—who do—who's on our side?" Bolton responds: "Well, you know, I think it's important we understand what we mean by sovereignty. To Europeans and many left-wing intellectuals in this country, it's just kind of an abstract concept that doesn't mean much. But I think to most Americans, sovereignty means our control over our own government. It's about self-government." Beck later says: "Ambassador, when you say world government, it does sound nuts. And because everybody knows, nobody is for world government," and Bolton responds: "That's why they don't call it world government anymore. And they'll try and find these other phrases. But you have to look underneath of it. And it's on a range of issues, not just the money supply, but gun control, the death penalty, abortion, all—global warming—all of which are issues we can and should debate in our—in our constitutional democratic framework. We don't need to decide them internationally. But that's what the agenda is of many people very close to the Obama administration." [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Beck and Bolton are echoing claims made in the '90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a "new world order" (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans' guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010), and that are echoed by Fox News pundits such as Glenn Beck (see March 17, 2009), Bill O'Reilly (see April 1-2, 2009), and others (see April 6, 2009).
Entity Tags: Obama administration, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Fox News, John R. Bolton
Fox News contributor Charles Payne, appearing on Fox's morning show Fox & Friends, tells viewers that under the Obama administration the US is moving towards a "one-world" government. Payne is echoing claims made in the '90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a "new world order" (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans' guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010), and that will be echoed by Fox News pundits such as Bill O'Reilly (see April 1-2, 2009) and others (see April 6, 2009). Payne says: "Listen, one day I think that we are heading toward a one-world sort of government. I think Obama probably likes that," and says moments later, "We're taking itty-bitty steps towards that." [Media Matters, 3/24/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Payne is following recent, similar claims by Fox News guest Alex Jones (see March 18, 2009) and Fox host Glenn Beck and his guests (see March 17, 2009 and March 24, 2009).
Entity Tags: Fox News, Obama administration, Charles Payne
During a House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing, Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) argues against a so-called "cap-and-trade" system to limit carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. Shimkus argues that the world's ecology depends on carbon dioxide to survive: "It's plant food.… So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere?… So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying." The National Wildlife Fund responds to Shimkus's statement by noting that the world's plant life has sufferred tremendous damage from the inordinate amount of carbon dioxide and other gases resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Liberal analyst Matthew Yglesias writes: "The point about our CO2 emissions is that the rate at which fossil fuel use puts new carbon into the atmosphere greatly exceeds the rate at which plants remove it. The aim is not to eliminate the CO2 from the atmosphere but to stabilize the amount of CO2, which means curtailing emissions to a level much closer to the rate at which plants consume it." [Think Progress, 3/27/2009]
Entity Tags: House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, National Wildlife Fund, Matthew Yglesias, John Shimkus
Timeline Tags: Global Warming
Eric Cantor (R-VA), the House Minority Whip, while appearing on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," agrees with a caller that the Obama administration is moving the US towards one-party fascist rule. The caller says: "But what really is scaring the rest of us, the other half of us, is the fascism. I mean the true fascism that is happening in this country today.… The belligerent takeover of a one-party system." Without repeating the terminology, Cantor agrees: "Now as far as a one-party government in here, I think what the public is doing, they're finally waking up and everybody is realizing that checks and balances are a part of the system and divided government is something that is beneficial to a balanced debate, and something that can produce a better outcome. Which is exactly why Republicans in the House have said, 'Look, we want to work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We want to try to bring this president back into the mainstream.'" [Think Progress, 3/25/2009]
Entity Tags: Obama administration, Eric Cantor
Fox News host Sean Hannity and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) join to accuse President Obama of attempting to impose a "dictatorship" in America. Discussing the Obama administration's plans to implement new financial regulations and oversight, Hannity begins by accusing Obama of "mov[ing] America down the road to socialism." He asks Gingrich to "explain" to the audience "how dangerous this power grab is." Gingrich responds: "We are seeing the biggest power grab by politicians in American history. The idea that they would propose that the treasury could intervene and take over non-bank, non-financial system assets gives them the potential to basically create the equivalent of a dictatorship.… Look, it absolutely moves it towards a political dictatorship." [Think Progress, 3/26/2009]
Entity Tags: Sean Hannity, Barack Obama, Obama administration, Newt Gingrich
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) produces a Republican alternative to the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion budget proposal. Calling President Obama's budget "completely irresponsible," Boehner holds up a booklet on the floor of the House and says: "Two nights ago the president said, 'We haven't seen a budget yet out of Republicans.' Well, it's just not true because—Here it is, Mr. President." Boehner calls the booklet a "blueprint for where we're going." However, the booklet contains almost no details and no actual numbers; the Associated Press calls it "a glossy pamphlet short on detail." Boehner's House colleague Paul Ryan (R-WI) says more details will be revealed next week. "We're going to show a leaner budget, a budget with lower taxes, lower spending, and lower borrowing," Ryan says. "Our plan curbs spending, creates jobs, and cuts taxes, while reducing the deficit," says Boehner. When asked about specifics, including where the cuts would come from, Boehner tells a reporter, "We'll wait and see next week." [CNN, 3/26/2009; Associated Press, 3/27/2009] Cutting Deficits, Lowering Taxes for Wealthy Americans and Working Class - The proposal does not specify how it would reduce the federal deficit. It does advocate heavy cuts in domestic spending and lowering tax rates: the Republicans propose reducing the 35 percent, 33 percent, and 28 percent tax brackets to 25 percent, which would result in significant tax cuts for wealthier Americans. The proposal would also reduce the tax rate for those making below $100,000 to 10 percent. Liberal analyst Matthew Yglesias notes, "It's strange that the Republicans railing about long-term deficits seem to love long-term deficits when the point of the deficits is to further enrich the rich." [Think Progress, 3/26/2009] No Actual Numbers - Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) says "[i]t's not likely" that the GOP budget will be adopted. However, Pence says he believes "that a minority in Congress plus the American people equals the majority." Pence adds, "We intend to take our case for fiscal discipline, growth, and tax relief to the American people from sea to shining sea and if the American people will rise up, anything is possible on Capitol Hill." White House press secretary Robert Gibbs laughs at the Republicans' budget proposal, noting that the blueprint contains more pictures of windmills than charts. "It's interesting to have a budget that doesn't contain any numbers," he says. "I think the 'party of no' has become the 'party of no new ideas.'… The administration is glad that the Republicans heard the president's call to submit an alternative," he says. "We just hope that next time it will contain actual numbers so somebody can evaluate what it means." Obama's proposal is likely to be modified by more conservative Democrats in the upcoming days. Senate Republicans later say that they do not intend to submit a specific alternate proposal to Obama's budget, a decision that the Associated Press notes "spares them the need to make politically difficult choices." [CNN, 3/26/2009; Associated Press, 3/27/2009] Asked about the proposal's effect on the federal deficit by MSNBC correspondent Norah O'Donnell, Pence is unable to answer the question. O'Donnell asks: "So you don't have the numbers now? About what your plan would be in terms of how it would cut the deficit or add to the deficit? You don't have any numbers on that?" Pence attempts to duck the question: "Well, it's really a broad—when the White House a few minutes ago was attacking the numbers in this bill, the tax cut numbers. There's plenty of numbers in the Republican recovery plan. And we just really believe the president's plan to raise taxes by nearly 2 trillion dollars on almost every American… deserves a debate on Capitol Hill." O'Donnell responds, "[H]ow is your plan credible?" Pence replies: "Well, I thought through this morning, we didn't have a plan, so it may be progress our plan is being attacked.… This is the broad outline." [Think Progress, 3/26/2009] 'Marketing Document' - Five days later, Ryan will admit that the "budget proposal" being offered by Boehner is nothing more than a "marketing document" (see April 1, 2009).
Entity Tags: Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Matthew Yglesias, Norah O'Donnell, John Boehner, Obama administration, Robert Gibbs
Timeline Tags: Global Economic Crises
Dr. George Tiller, one of three doctors in the US that perform late-term abortions, is acquitted of misdemeanor charges that he violated laws governing such abortions. Within minutes of the acquittal, the Kansas Board of Healing Arts announces that it is investigating allegations against Tiller almost identical to the charges rejected by the jury. Prosecutors alleged that in 2003, Tiller had gotten second opinions on late-term abortions, not from an independent doctor as required by law, but from a doctor that was an employee of his. The jury takes an hour to reject the 19 charges. "You would hope it would be over," says Tiller's attorney Dan Monnat, "but there is a group of people who want to suppress the constitutional rights of women." Tiller has maintained that the charges are politically motivated. He has long been a target of violent anti-abortion protests; his clinic was bombed in 1985 and targeted by the 1991 "Summer of Mercy" protests featuring violent demonstrations, and in 1993 he was shot by an anti-abortion activist (see August 19, 1993). [Associated Press, 3/27/2009] Tiller will be murdered by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder several weeks later (see May 31, 2009).
Entity Tags: George Tiller, Kansas Board of Healing Arts, Scott Roeder, Dan Monnat
Timeline Tags: US Health Care
Fox News host Glenn Beck, on his daily radio show, hosts US Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to discuss her proposed constitutional amendment "to prohibit the president from entering into a treaty or other international agreement that would provide for the United States to adopt as legal tender in the United States a currency issued by an entity other than the United States." Beck says to Bachmann: "I don't want to believe that there are people in our country that would trash our dollar like this. And what's going to happen is if you start to talk about a global currency, which I'm telling you, there's no way out of what we're doing now besides devaluing the dollar to pay off our debt and then have a new currency. There's just no other way.… [W]hat happens is when you stand up, and when you say those things, then you're deemed a kook. Then you're deemed a militia member." Bachmann says later in the interview: "The president is committing us so much now, and Congress is committing us to so much spending, that the only way out will be for him to continue to print money and have wild inflation. And once that collapses, then it's a global currency. Well, then we are no more as a nation. We cease at that point." Beck responds: "I believe it. But convincing everybody else may be a different story." [Glenn Beck, 3/29/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009]
Entity Tags: Fox News, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck
Baltasar Garzon. [Source: Presidency of Argentina]A Spanish court begins preliminary work towards opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former top Bush administration officials may be guilty of war crimes related to torture of prisoners at Guantanamo. Spanish law allows the investigation and prosecution of people beyond its borders in the case of torture or war crimes. Investigative judge Baltasar Garzon, who ordered the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and has overseen the prosecution of numerous terrorists and human rights violators, wants to prosecute former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, former Defense Department officials William Haynes and Douglas Feith, and David Addington, the former chief of staff to then-Vice President Cheney. Many legal experts say that even if Garzon's case results in warrants being issued, it is highly doubtful that the warrants would ever be served as long as the six potential defendants remain in the US. Spain has jurisdiction in the case because five Spanish citizens or residents have claimed to have been tortured at Guantanamo; the five faced charges in Spain, but were released after the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that evidence obtained through torture was inadmissible. Garzon's complaint rests on alleged violations of the Geneva Conventions and the 1984 Convention Against Torture (see October 21, 1994). The complaint was prepared by Spanish lawyers with the assistance of experts in Europe and America, and filed by the Association for the Dignity of Prisoners, a Spanish human rights group. Lawyer Gonzalo Boye, who filed the complaint, says that Gonzales, Yoo, and the others have what he calls well-documented roles in approving illegal torture techniques, redefining torture, and ignoring the constraints set by the Convention Against Torture. "When you bring a case like this you can't stop to make political judgments as to how it might affect bilateral relations between countries," Boye says. "It's too important for that." Boye adds: "This is a case from lawyers against lawyers. Our profession does not allow us to misuse our legal knowledge to create a pseudo-legal frame to justify, stimulate, and cover up torture." The US is expected to ignore any extradition requests occuring from the case. [New York Times, 3/28/2009; Associated Press, 3/28/2009]
Entity Tags: William J. Haynes, Jay S. Bybee, David S. Addington, John C. Yoo, Geneva Conventions, Convention Against Torture, Gonzalo Boye, Association for the Dignity of Prisoners, Alberto R. Gonzales, Baltasar Garzon, Bush administration (43)
Glenn Beck. [Source: New York Times]The New York Times profiles Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, describing him as a "rising star" and "one of the most powerful media voices for the nation's conservative anger." Beck's show typically draws about 2.3 million viewers, putting him third among all cable news hosts behind fellow Fox conservatives Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. Beck describes himself as identifying with Howard Beale, the mad "television prophet" of the 1976 film Network, and particularly Beale's most famous line, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore." [New York Times, 3/29/2009] (Media pundit Eric Boehlert calls Beck's attempt to associate himself with Beale "nonsense," and observes: "Beale's unvarnished on-air rants… targeted conformity, corporate conglomerates, and the propaganda power of television.… Beale's attacks were not political or partisan. Beck, by contrast, unleashes his anger against, and whips up dark scenarios about, the new president of the United States. Big difference.") [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] Apocalyptic Rhetoric - Though he insists he believes every word he says on his TV show as well as on his daily radio broadcast, Beck also calls himself a "rodeo clown" and an "entertainer" who reminds his listeners, "If you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot." (Beck is a former morning show disc jockey who regularly performs stand-up comedy in shows around the country.) The Times writes that Beck "is capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans." He regularly preaches against liberal politicians, hosts segments entitled "Constitution Under Attack" and "Economic Apocalypse," and sometimes bursts into tears. [New York Times, 3/29/2009] Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters will note in a later article that Beck regularly terms President Obama a Marxist, a socialist, and/or a fascist. [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] In a recent week-long segment titled "War Games," Beck advocated for armed citizen militias to overthrow the government (see February 20, 2009), though he later denied such advocacy. America is "on the road to socialism," he tells his viewers, and claims, "God and religion are under attack in the US." He recently accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of setting up "concentration camps" for citizen dissenters, presumably conservatives. He has accused the Obama administration of trying to "indoctrinate… your child into community service through the federal government" [Media Matters, 3/27/2009] , says America is about to go through "depression and revolution" [Media Matters, 2/13/2009] , and, three days after the Times article is published, compares the administration's actions to those in "the early days of Adolf Hitler." [Media Matters, 4/1/2009] He will accuse the government of being what he calls "a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state." [Media Matters, 3/31/2009] Voice of the 'Disenfranchised' - Phil Griffin, the president of Fox News cable rival MSNBC, says of Beck: "That's good dramatic television. That's who Glenn Beck is." Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says: "There are absolutely historical precedents for what is happening with Beck. There was a lot of radio evangelism during the Depression. People were frustrated and frightened. There are a lot of scary parallels now." Conservative writer David Frum calls Beck's success "a product of the collapse of conservatism as an organized political force, and the rise of conservatism as an alienated cultural sensibility." Beck's shows are "for people who feel they belong to an embattled minority that is disenfranchised and cut off," Frum adds. Fox News senior vice president Joel Cheatwood says Beck's audience is "somewhat disenfranchised," and adds, "[I]t's a huge audience." Author and media professor Jeffrey Jones says that Beck engages in "inciting rhetoric. People hear their values are under attack and they get worried. It becomes an opportunity for them to stand up and do something." Beck denies inciting attacks on the government or any other citizens, saying that those "who are spreading the garbage that I'm stirring up a revolution haven't watched the show." Fellow talk show host Bill Maher recently accused Beck of producing "the same kind of talking" that led Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building in 1995 (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995); Beck responded by saying in part: "Let me be clear. If someone tries to harm another person in the name of the Constitution or the 'truth' behind 9/11 or anything else, they are just as dangerous and crazy as those we don't seem to recognize anymore, who kill in the name of Allah." [New York Times, 3/29/2009] (The Times does not publish Beck's next line: "There are enemies both foreign and domestic in America tonight. Call it fearmongering or call it the truth.") [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] He describes himself as having to "be… the guy I don't want to be—the guy saying things that are sometimes pretty scary, but nobody else is willing to say them." Currently Beck is the voice of the "We Surround Them" movement (see March 3, 2009) and is part of the "Tea Party" or "teabaggers" civil protest project (see April 8, 2009). [New York Times, 3/29/2009]
Entity Tags: Glenn Beck, David Frum, Eric Boehlert, Tom Rosenstiel, Bill Maher, New York Times, Jeffrey Jones, Phil Griffin, Fox News, Media Matters, Joel Cheatwood
US CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus disagrees with assertions by former Vice President Cheney that President Obama is endangering the country (see February 4, 2009 and March 15, 2009). Petraeus, whom Cheney has called "extremely capable," says when asked about Cheney's comments: "Well, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I think in fact that there is a good debate going on about the importance of values in all that we do. I think that if one violates the values that we hold so dear, that we jeopardize.… We think for the military, in particular that camp, that's a line [torture] that can't be crossed. It is hugely significant to us to live the values that we hold so dear and that we have fought so hard to protect over the years." [Think Progress, 3/29/2009]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, David Petraeus
Timeline Tags: US International Relations
The CIA's torture of a supposed high-ranking al-Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaida, produced no information that helped foil any terrorist attacks or plots, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Zubaida was subjected to intensive waterboarding and other tortures (see April - June 2002), and provided information about a fantastic array of al-Qaeda plots that sent CIA agents all over the globe chasing down his leads. But none of his information panned out, according to the former officials. Almost everything Zubaida said under torture was false, and most of the reliable information gleaned from him—chiefly the names of al-Qaeda members and associates—was obtained before the CIA began torturing him. Moreover, the US's characterization of Zubaida as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations" and a "trusted associate" of Osama bin Laden turned out to be false as well. Several sources have challenged the government's characterization of Zubaida as a "high-level al-Qaeda operative" before now (see Shortly After March 28, 2002 and April 9, 2002 and After). 'Fixer' for Islamists before 9/11 - Zubaida, a native Palestinian, never even joined al-Qaeda until after 9/11, according to information obtained from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement, and military sources. Instead, he was a "fixer" for a number of radical Islamists, who regarded the US as an enemy primarily because of its support for Israel. Many describe Zubaida as a "travel agent" for al-Qaeda and other radical Islamists. He joined al-Qaeda because of the US's preparations to invade Afghanistan. US officials are contemplating what, if any, charges they can use to bring him into court. Zubaida has alleged links with Ahmed Ressam, the so-called "Millennium Bomber" (see December 14, 1999), and allegedly took part in plans to retaliate against US forces after the overthrow of the Taliban in late 2001 (see December 17, 2001). But some US officials worry that bringing him into a courtroom would reveal the extent of his torture and abuse at the hands of the CIA, and that any evidence they might have against him is compromised because it was obtained in part through torture. Those officials want to send him to Jordan, where he faces allegations of conspiracy in terrorist attacks in that country. Defending Zubaida's Information - Some in the US government still believe that Zubaida provided useful information. "It's simply wrong to suggest that Abu Zubaida wasn't intimately involved with al-Qaeda," says a US counterterrorism official. "He was one of the terrorist organization's key facilitators, offered new insights into how the organization operated, provided critical information on senior al-Qaeda figures… and identified hundreds of al-Qaeda members. How anyone can minimize that information—some of the best we had at the time on al-Qaeda—is beyond me.… Based on what he shared during his interrogations, he was certainly aware of many of al-Qaeda's activities and operatives." But the characterization of Zubaida as a well-connected errand runner was confirmed by Noor al-Deen, a Syrian teenager captured along with Zubaida at a Pakistani safe house (see March 28, 2002). Al-Deen readily answered questions, both in Pakistan and in a detention facility in Morocco. He described Zubaida as a well-known functionary with little knowledge of al-Qaeda operations. (Al-Deen was later transferred to Syria; his current whereabouts and status are unknown to the public.) A former Justice Department official closely involved in the early investigation of Zubaida says: "He was the above-ground support" for al-Qaeda and other radicals. "He was the guy keeping the safe house, and that's not someone who gets to know the details of the plans. To make him the mastermind of anything is ridiculous." A former intelligence officer says the US spent an inestimable amount of time and money chasing Zubaida's "leads" to no effect: "We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms." Connected to KSM - Zubaida knew radical Islamist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed for years. Mohammed, often dubbed "KSM" by US officials, approached Zubaida in the 1990s about finding financial backers for a plan he had concocted to fly a small plane into the World Trade Center. Zubaida declined involvement but recommended he talk to bin Laden. Zubaida quickly told FBI interrogators of Mohammed and other al-Qaeda figures such as alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla (see May 8, 2002). He also revealed the plans of the low-level al-Qaeda operatives he fled Afghanistan with. Some wanted to strike US forces in Afghanistan with bombs, while others harbored ideas of further strikes on American soil. But he knew few details, and had no knowledge of plans by senior al-Qaeda operatives. At this point, the CIA took over the interrogations, and the torture began (see Mid-April-May 2002). As a result of the torture, Zubaida began alternating between obstinate silence and providing torrents of falsified and fanciful "intelligence"; when FBI "clean teams" attempted to re-interview some detainees who had been tortured in order to obtain evidence uncontaminated by abusive treatment, Zubaida refused to cooperate. Joseph Margulies, one of Zubaida's attorneys, says: "The government doesn't retreat from who KSM is, and neither does KSM. With Zubaida, it's different. The government seems finally to understand he is not at all the person they thought he was. But he was tortured. And that's just a profoundly embarrassing position for the government to be in." Margulies and other lawyers want the US to send Zubaida to another country besides Jordan—Saudi Arabia, perhaps, where Zubaida has family. Military prosecutors have already deleted Zubaida's name from the charge sheets of detainees who will soon stand trial, including several who were captured with Zubaida and are charged with crimes in which Zubaida's involvement has been alleged. Pressure from the White House - The pressure from the White House to get actionable information from Zubaida was intense (see Late March 2002), according to sources. One official recalls the pressure as "tremendous." He says the push to force information from Zubaida mounted from one daily briefing to the next. "They couldn't stand the idea that there wasn't anything new. They'd say, 'You aren't working hard enough.' There was both a disbelief in what he was saying and also a desire for retribution—a feeling that 'He's going to talk, and if he doesn't talk, we'll do whatever.'" [Washington Post, 3/29/2009]
Entity Tags: Jose Padilla, Al-Qaeda, Ahmed Ressam, Abu Zubaida, Bush administration (43), Federal Bureau of Investigation, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, US Department of Justice, Joseph Margulies, Central Intelligence Agency, Noor al-Deen
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer interviews investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who recently alleged that an "executive assassination wing" operated out of the White House (see March 10, 2009). Blitzer notes that the entity Hersh cited, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), denies Hersh's claim, and says, in Blitzer's words, "their forces operate under established rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict." The JSOC "has no command and control authorities over the US military," the JSOC has told Blitzer. Additionally, former Bush national security expert Frances Townsend has denied Hersh's claim. Not New Reporting - Hersh tells Blitzer that though he has not written specifically about the "assassination wing," he and others have written about the actions of the JSOC well before now. "[I]t's a separately independent unit that does not report to Congress, at least in the years I know about.… It has been given executive authority by the president in as many as 12 countries to go in and kill we're talking about high value targets. That's absolutely correct." He says that such actions are not only illegal, but have no basis in intelligence. "The idea that you're telling a group of American combat soldiers," he says, "[t]he idea that we have a unit set up who goes after high-value targets who up to a certain point I know for sure until very recently were clearing lists. That doesn't mean Cheney has an assassination unit that he says I want to go get somebody. That's how it sort of played out in the press. The idea that we have a unit that goes around and without reporting to Congress, Congress knows very little about this group, can't get clearings, can't get hearings, can't get even a classified hearings on it. Congresspeople have told me this. Those are out and has authority for the president to go into a country without telling the CIA station chief or the ambassador and whack somebody and I'm sorry, Wolf, I have a lot of problems with that." Poor Choice of Phrase - Hersh says he regrets using the phrase "executive assassination wing," because it is a "loaded phrase." Word choice aside, Hersh says: "It comes down to the same thing, that you can—you've delegated authority to troops in the field to hit people on the basis of whatever intelligence they think is good and I can tell you it's always not good and sometimes things get very bloody.… The bottom line is, it's—if it were the way your little presentation set up, that everything was checked and cleared, in fact, it was an awful lot of delegation to this group, which does not brief the Congress. And this does raise profound questions of constitutional authority. It's the same questions that have come up repeatedly in the Bush administration. That is a unitarian president, the notion that a president can do things without telling Congress and unilaterally. This is an extension of that issue." Implied Confirmation from Former Cheney Adviser - John Hannah, the former national security adviser to Vice President Cheney, says Hersh's allegations are "not true," but in his next statement, he seems to confirm Hersh's allegations to an extent. Blitzer says: "Explain exactly what's going on in terms of a list. Is there a list of terrorists, suspected terrorists, out there who can be assassinated?" Hannah replies: "There is—there's clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted process—interagency process, as I think was explained in your piece, that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States, or is suspected of planning operations of war against the United States, who authority is given, to our troops in the field in certain war theaters to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true.… Osama bin Laden and his number two are right at the top of the list. [The number of individuals to be assassinated] is a small group and the point is that it is very, very heavily vetted throughout the interagency process." Hannah says that he has trouble believing that Congress was not aware of actions, presumably including possible assassinations, carried out by the JSOC: "I don't know exactly what the consultations are with the Congress, but it's hard for me to believe that those committee chairman and the leadership on the Hill involved in intelligence and armed services, if they want to know about these operations, cannot get that information through the Defense Department." Asked if such assassinations are legal and Constitutional, Hannah says: "There is no question. And in a theater of war, when we are at war, and there's no doubt, we are still at war against al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and on that Pakistani border, that our troops have the authority to go out after and capture and kill the enemy, including the leadership of the enemy." [CNN, 3/30/2009; MinnPost (.com), 3/31/2009]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Frances Townsend, Seymour Hersh, US Department of Defense, Wolf Blitzer, Bush administration (43), Al-Qaeda, Joint Special Operations Command, John Hannah
Former Project for the New American Century (PNAC) member Michael Goldfarb, a former spokesman for the presidential campaign of John McCain (R-AZ) and an editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, touts the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a new neoconservative think tank (see Before March 25, 2009), as the new PNAC. On Twitter, Goldfarb writes, "PNAC=Mission Accomplished; New mission begins tomorrow morning with the launch of FPI." [Think Progress, 3/31/2009]
Entity Tags: Foreign Policy Initiative, Project for the New American Century, Michael Goldfarb
Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo (R-Metarie) introduces legislation in the Louisiana State House of Representatives that would require all new applicants for state welfare to submit to drug testing. Those who fail would be denied benefits until they completed a required counseling program. Currently, Louisiana screens applicants through interviews and questionnaires. Those suspected of being drug users are tested, and they can still get Temporary Assistance for Needy Families as long as they comply with the state-paid treatment program. They are denied benefits only if they refuse the counseling-treatment program or when they fail to meet its requirements. LaBruzzo triggered a storm of criticism last year when he suggested paying welfare recipients to be sterilized (see September 23, 2008); the ensuing controversy cost him the vice chairmanship of the House Health and Welfare Committee. That idea was quickly shelved, and LaBruzzo now calls it "one of several ideas" from a "brainstorming session" on how to reduce public assistance rolls. "I never intended to draft legislation," he says. LaBruzzo has said that Louisiana is losing tax revenues because people receiving government aid reproduce at a faster rate than wealthier, better-educated people who pay more in taxes. He calls his idea of drug-testing all welfare applicants a "sensible way" to trim the number of households on assistance, and says it will "prove that welfare recipients in Louisiana are not criminals," by giving taxpayers assurance that anyone on assistance is drug free. His idea would mandate the Department of Social Services (DSS) to outsource the testing program to a private firm. LaBruzzo also says that anyone convicted of a drug felony should have to wait 10 years before receiving public assistance. Currently, the law mandates a one-year waiting period. In 2008, about 14,000 families received a total of $17 million in assistance. The monthly benefit to a qualifying parent with two children is about $250. LaBruzzo incorrectly says Louisiana already spends $40 million on testing and treatment programs, but DSS spokesperson Trey Williams says the actual figure is a tenth of LaBruzzo's claim—$4.1 million. LaBruzzo also claims that Louisiana is suffering from a "growing problem of welfare," though the number of recipients has been much lower since 1996, when President Clinton signed a federal law that limited recipients to a cumulative five years of benefits. [New Orleans Times-Picayune, 3/30/2009]
Entity Tags: Trey Williams, John LaBruzzo, Louisiana State House of Representatives, Louisiana Department of Social Services
The New York Post publishes an article headlined "Scary! Obama nominee wants one world order." The article, by Post reporter Meghan Clyne, attacks President Obama's nomination of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Clyne says Koh is a "fan of 'transnational legal process,' arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish." She says that according to Koh's views, judges should put aside the Constitution in favor of "legal 'norms'" from other nations' laws. "Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts," she writes. "The United States constitutes an 'axis of disobedience' along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq." The newly launched Fox Nation, the blog for Fox News, links to the article, which disappears from the Post's Web archive shortly thereafter. [Fox Nation, 3/31/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009] An extraordinarily racist conservative blog, Chimpout, hosts a forum discussion of the article under the heading "Osambo picks another douche bag for his cabinet." The forum's thread is part of a larger discussion section entitled "N_gger College" and a subsection entitled "F_cked Up Facts about First Monkey," an apparent reference to Obama. Commenters immediately begin launching "birther"-styled accusations of Obama being an illegal president because of his "Kenyan birth" (see October 8, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, and August 4, 2009), and say Obama should be relegated to "picking cotton." [Chimpout, 3/31/2009] Days later, Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, conservative editor Cliff Kincaid, and former Republican Senator Rick Santorum will join in attacking Koh (see April 1, 2009, April 6, 2009, and April 9, 2009).
Entity Tags: Glenn Beck, Chimpout (.com), Barack Obama, Fox Nation, US Department of State, Obama administration, Harold Koh, Rick Santorum, New York Post, Meghan Clyne, Cliff Kincaid
Dick Morris discussing the economy on Fox News. [Source: Fox News]Conservative political pundit Dick Morris tells a Fox News audience that the recent G20 economic summit advocated a "global approach" to the current economic crisis, and discussed putting both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Reserve under the control of the International Monetary Fund—a position not advocated or discussed by anyone in the Obama administration. He worries that there will soon be what he calls "a supernational authority run by bureaucrats, not by elected officials, that will be telling the elected governments, including the United States, what its [economic] regulations should be." President Obama is far more amenable to the idea of allowing a multinational authority to control the US economy, Morris insists, and adds that Obama intends to preside over what he calls "a global redistribution of income, downward," using environmental policy as "an excuse." "We're about to meet Barack Obama the internationalist," Morris continues, "not fighting for American interests, but looking for global coordination." He concludes, "Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the UN's going to take over'—well, they're beginning to have a case." [Media Matters, 3/31/2009]
Entity Tags: Fox News, Dick Morris
Timeline Tags: Global Economic Crises, Domestic Propaganda
A new neoconservative think tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI—see Before March 25, 2009) holds a conference entitled "Afghanistan: Planning for Success." The focus will be, according to the organization's website, a push to escalate US military efforts in that nation. The featured speaker is Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the 2008 presidential candidate and a close friend of two of FPI's founders, William Kristol and Robert Kagan. In February, McCain gave a speech at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) arguing for a new military "surge" in Afghanistan. Other speakers include AEI fellow Frederick Kagan, counterinsurgency expert Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, and Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), a foreign policy hawk. [Inter Press Service, 3/25/2009; Foreign Policy Initiative, 3/31/2009] Matt Duss of the Center for American Progress wryly observes: "[G]iven the heavy representation of Iraq war advocates [in the conference], I think a far better title would be 'Afghanistan: Dealing With The Huge Problems Created By Many Of The People On This Very Stage.' The broad consensus among national security analysts and aid officials is that the diversion of troops and resources toward Iraq beginning in 2002 was one of the main reasons the Taliban and al-Qaeda were able to to re-establish themselves in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas, facilitating the collapse of the country back into insurgent warfare. Having failed to complete the mission in Afghanistan, Bush and the Iraq hawks handed the Obama administration a war that promises to be as difficult and costly as Iraq has been—if not more. It's deeply absurd that some of the people most responsible for the crisis in Afghanistan would now presume to tell us how to deal with it." [Think Progress, 3/26/2009]
Entity Tags: John Nagl, Frederick Kagan, Foreign Policy Initiative, Jane Harman, John McCain, Robert Kagan, Matt Duss, William Kristol
UN Human Rights Council logo. [Source: China Human Rights Net]The Obama administration announces that the US will seek a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. The Bush administration had chosen not to participate in the council, saying that it would not countenance the influence of nations who repress their populations. "Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy," says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "With others, we will engage in the work of improving the UN human rights system.… We believe every nation must live by and help shape global rules that ensure people enjoy the right to live freely and participate fully in their societies." Elections for three seats on the 47-member council will take place in May. The other countries on the ballot are Belgium and Norway. New Zealand agreed to withdraw from the ballot in favor of the US candidacy; New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, explained, "Frankly, by any objective measure, membership of the council by the US is more likely to create positive changes more quickly than we could have hoped to achieve them." A human rights advocate tells the Washington Post: "This is a welcome step that gives the United States and other defenders of human rights a fighting chance to make the institution more effective. I think everybody is just desperate to have the United States and Barack Obama run for the human rights council, and countries are willing to bend over backward to make that happen." Human rights activists have pressured the US to join the council since its inception in March 2006. The council took the place of the UN's Human Rights Commission, which lost credibility when it allowed nations such as Sudan and Zimbabwe to join and thus thwart criticism of their treatment of their citizens. Bush officials had refused to join the new body, saying that they did not believe the new organization represented any improvement over its predecessor. Then-US ambassador to the UN John Bolton explained that the US would have more "leverage in terms of the performance of the new council" by not participating in it and thus signaling a rejection of "business as usual." Bolton says of the Obama administration's decision: "This is like getting on board the Titanic after it's hit the iceberg. This is the theology of engagement at work. There is no concrete American interest served by this, and it legitimizes something that doesn't deserve legitimacy." Obama officials concede that the council has failed to do its job adequately, and focused too much on abuse allegations by Israel to the exclusion of allegations against nations such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka. US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice says: "Those who suffer from abuse and oppression around the world, as well as those who dedicate their lives to advancing human rights, need the council to be balanced and credible." The US intends to join the council "because we believe that working from within, we can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights." [Washington Post, 3/31/2009]
Entity Tags: United Nations Human Rights Council, Barack Obama, Bush administration (43), Hillary Clinton, Obama administration, Murray McCully, John R. Bolton, United Nations Human Rights Commission
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh discusses his recent allegation that what he calls an "executive assassination wing" was run from the office of former Vice President Dick Cheney (see March 10, 2009). Interviewer Amy Goodman opens her segment with Hersh by playing what was apparently an implicit confirmation, to an extent, of Hersh's claims from a former Cheney aide (see March 30, 2009). Hersh notes that the comments from the former aide, John Hannah, verify that "yes, we go after people suspected—that was the word he used—of crimes against America. And I have to tell you that there's an executive order, signed by Jerry Ford, President Ford, in the '70s, forbidding such action. It's not only contrary—it's illegal, it's immoral, it's counterproductive." Of the allegations that the "assassination wing" is operated through the military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Hersh says: "[T]he problem with having military go kill people when they're not directly in combat, these are asking American troops to go out and find people and… they go into countries without telling any of the authorities, the American ambassador, the CIA chief, certainly nobody in the government that we're going into, and it's far more than just in combat areas. There's more—at least a dozen countries and perhaps more. [President Bush] has authorized these kinds of actions in the Middle East and also in Latin America, I will tell you, Central America, some countries. They've been—our boys have been told they can go and take the kind of executive action they need, and that's simply—there's no legal basis for it.… [T]he idea that the American president would think he has the constitutional power or the legal right to tell soldiers not engaged in immediate combat to go out and find people based on lists and execute them is just amazing to me.… And not only that, Amy, the thing about George Bush is, everything's sort of done in plain sight. In his State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003)… about a month and a half before we went into Iraq, Bush was describing the progress in the war, and he said—I'm paraphrasing, but this is pretty close—he said that we've captured more than 3,000 members of al-Qaeda and suspected members, people suspected of operations against us. And then he added with that little smile he has, 'And let me tell you, some of those people will not be able to ever operate again. I can assure you that. They will not be in a position.' He's clearly talking about killing people, and to applause. So, there we are. I don't back off what I said. I wish I hadn't said it ad hoc… sometimes when you speak off the top, you're not as precise." JSOC, Hersh explains, is a group of Navy Seals, Delta Force soldiers, and other "commandos" (a word the soldiers don't prefer, but, Hersh says, most journalists use), which has been "transmogrified, if you will, into this unit that goes after high-value targets." Hersh explains the involvement of Cheney's office: "And where Cheney comes in and the idea of an assassination ring—I actually said 'wing,' but of an assassination wing—that reports to Cheney was simply that they clear lists through the vice president's office. He's not sitting around picking targets. They clear the lists. And he's certainly deeply involved, less and less as time went on, of course, but in the beginning very closely involved." Goodman concludes by asking, "One question: Is the assassination wing continuing under President Obama?" Hersh replies: "How do I know? I hope not." [Democracy Now!, 3/31/2009]
Entity Tags: Seymour Hersh
US presidential envoy Richard Holbrooke meets briefly and informally with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Mehdi Akhondzadeh. Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special representatative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Akhondzadeh are participants in a major international conference at The Hague convened to discuss the problem of Afghanistan. The two talk briefly during a lunch break. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will say of the meeting: "It was cordial, unplanned, and they agreed to stay in touch. I myself did not have any direct contact with the Iranian delegation." Clinton says the US has asked the Iranian delegation to intercede in the cases of two American citizens being detained in Iran and a third who is missing. The New York Times calls the two contacts "another step in the Obama administration's policy of engagement… a tentative process, in which the White House makes symbolic gestures, like President Obama's recent video greeting to the Iranian people and government for their New Year (see March 19, 2009), while continuing to formulate its longer-term strategy." Some experts believe that the meeting between Holbrooke and Akhondzadeh is not entirely fortuitous, but is the product of some planning. In the conference, Akhondzadeh says Iran will help reconstruction in Afghanistan as well as take part in efforts to curb the exploding Afghan drug trade. "The fact that they came today, that they intervened today, is a promising sign that there will be future cooperation," Clinton says. "The Iranian representative set forth some very clear ideas that we will all be pursuing together." The US and Iran have mutual interests in curbing Afghanistan's drug trade, Clinton says: "The questions of border security, and in particular the transit of narcotics across the border from Afghanistan to Iran is a worry that the Iranians have, which we share." [New York Times, 3/31/2009]
Entity Tags: Mohammed Mehdi Akhondzadeh, Hillary Clinton, Obama administration, Richard Holbrooke
The CIA fires two contractors, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, from their lucrative consulting contracts. Mitchell and Jessen designed the CIA's torture program (see January 2002 and After, April 16, 2002, Mid-April 2002, and Between Mid-April and Mid-May 2002), and earned $1,000 a day in doing so (see April 30, 2009). The CIA now believes that the two fundamentally misrepresented their knowledge of the safety and efficacy of particular torture techniques, particularly waterboarding. The firings are part of a larger "purge" by CIA Director Leon Panetta of all contractors involved in the Bush-era torture program. Panetta tells CIA employees that all contractors involved in the interrogation program and secret prisons are being "promptly terminated." [ABC News, 6/16/2009]
Entity Tags: Leon Panetta, Bruce Jessen, Bush administration (43), James Elmer Mitchell, Central Intelligence Agency
The virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC—see November 27, 1955 and After) begins actively targeting Jewish synagogues, Jewish community centers, Israeli consulates, and other Jewish organizations and individuals, in what the Anti-Defamation League will consider an orchestrated attempt to express anti-Semitic views. The WBC begins announcing planned protests at dozens of sites, as well as bombarding various Jewish institutions and individuals with anti-Semitic faxes and emails. [Anti-Defamation League, 2012] In an April 23 press release, the WBC declares its opposition to Jews, writing: "JEWS KILLED JESUS! Yes, the Jews killed the Lord Jesus.… Now they're carrying water for the fags; that's what they do best: sin in God's face every day, with unprecedented and disproportionate amounts of sodomy, fornication, adultery, abortion and idolatry! God hates these dark-hearted rebellious disobedient Jews." [Anti-Defamation League, 2012; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2012]
Entity Tags: Westboro Baptist Church
Timeline Tags: US Domestic Terrorism
The image used by San Mateo tea partiers to promote their upcoming anti-tax, pro-Ron Paul event. [Source: Contra Costa Times]Ron Nehring, the chairman of the San Mateo, California, Republican Party asks local tea party organizers not to use what Nehring calls anti-Semitic graphics to advertise their upcoming events. A graphic on a Web site asking for tea party members to attend an anti-tax rally depicts a bucket of money being poured into a funnel with a Star of David on it, which in turn drips blood into a bottle where a person holding a Palestinian flag is seen drowning in blood. The text reads: "Uncle Sam Reminds You: KEEP PAYING TAXES. The ongoing extermination of Palestinian Children Can't be Done Without Your Help." The tea party organization is affiliated with the presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul (R-TX). Nehring writes: "The taxpayer movement is incredibly important for California, and we applaud the success of the tea parties that took place across the state on April 15. Because we remain intensely interested in the growth and success of the mainstream taxpayer movement, we strongly condemn the use of anti-Semitic imagery in the promotion of the recent event in San Mateo County." [Contra Costa Times, 4/20/2009; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010] The organizing group responds by taking its Meetup.com page private, thus denying access to non-members. Group leader Kathy McGrade writes to the Contra Costa Times that the organization has no direct affiliation to Paul, nor does it control the content on its Meetup pages. She accuses Nehring of enlarging the image to "read the fine print, something I had not done," and says, "In retrospect I may have chosen a different graphic had I first scrutinized it more carefully." McGrade then says the image is merely "provocative" and not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, and attacks Nehring for calling the image posters "fringe" members of the tea party movement. Nehring, she writes, has launched "an unjustified smear of Dr. Paul and the people who support him." [Contra Costa Times, 4/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Ron Nehring, Ron Paul, San Mateo, California Republican Party, Kathy McGrade
The right-wing advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), funded largely by Koch Industries (see August 30, 2010), has worked closely with the "tea party" movement since its inception (see February 27, 2009 and April 15, 2009). In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests (see April 8, 2009, April 15, 2009, and April 15, 2009), AFP hosts a Web site offering its visitors "Tea Party Talking Points." The Arizona branch of AFP urges people to send tea bags to President Obama. The Missouri AFP urges its members to sign up for "Taxpayer Tea Party Registration" and provides driving directions to nine protests. After the protests, the North Carolina AFP will launch a "Tea Party Finder" Web site, advertised as "a hub for all the Tea Parties in North Carolina." [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]
Entity Tags: Americans for Prosperity, Koch Industries, Barack Obama
A proposal by two Senators, Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), to cut $250 billion in estate taxes for the children of multi-millionaires, garners what progressive think tank the Center for American Progress calls "a disturbing amount of support." The New York Times writes that for Kyl and Lincoln: "[T]he most pressing [economic] issue is clear: America's wealthiest families need help. Now." The Kyl-Lincoln proposal would raise the estate tax exemption from $7 million to $10 million per couple and lower the top rate from 45 percent to 35 percent. Kyl, Lincoln, and other supporters say the estate tax cuts would protect small farms and businesses. This claim is refuted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which notes that "only 0.2 percent of the additional cost of the proposal, relative to [the Obama proposal for estate taxes], would go toward tax cuts for small businesses and farms." Around $249.5 billion of that money would go to the inheritors of estates worth over $7 million. According to both the Times and the Center for American Progress, less than 0.3 percent of Americans would pay estate taxes under Obama's proposal; only those households worth over $7 million. The Times observes: "In addition to creating the false impression that the estate tax eventually hits everyone—by mislabeling it a 'death tax'—opponents routinely denounce the 45 percent top tax rate as confiscatory. In fact, the rate applies only to the portion of the estate that exceeds the exemption. As a result, even estates worth more than $20 million end up paying only about 20 percent in taxes. Another misleading argument is that the estate tax represents double taxation. In truth, much of the wealth that is taxed at death has never been taxed before. That's because such wealth is often accrued in the form of capital gains on stocks, real estate, and other investments. Capital gains are not taxed until an asset is sold. Obviously, if someone dies owning an asset, he or she never sold it and thus never paid tax on the gain. If those arguments aren't enough to stop the Lincoln-Kyl show, lawmakers should consider this: The estate tax creates a big incentive for high-end philanthropy, because charitable bequests are exempt." [New York Times, 4/1/2009; Think Progress, 4/1/2009]
Entity Tags: New York Times, Blanche Lincoln, Center for American Progress, Obama administration, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Jon Kyl
Republican Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) admits that the "budget proposal" offered the previous week by the GOP in response to President Obama's own budget proposal (see March 26, 2009) was never anything more than a "marketing document." On MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Ryan says, "The thing you saw last week was not the alternative budget, this is our alternative budget." Ryan is referring to a budget the GOP intends to release later today. The "budget" touted on the floor of the House by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) was a "marketing document," Ryan says. "Somewhere along the line there was a misimpression given that that was our budget." In the Wall Street Journal, Ryan says the GOP budget will include the following: A five-year non-defense spending freeze; Cutting the deficit 50 percent more than Obama's proposal by 2019; More oil exploration and fewer regulations on pollution; A revamping of Medicare for those currently below age 55; Making permanent the Bush administration's tax cuts for wealthy Americans, and a simplified tax code that taxpayers could choose to use. Of President Obama's budget, Ryan says, "If this agenda comes to pass, it will mark this period in history as the moment America turned European." [The Hill, 4/1/2009] The Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, says that a spending freeze as advocated by the GOP budget would be calamitous for the American economy. The freeze would negate the entirety of the Obama administration's multi-billion stimulus package, and would rely entirely on economic recovery generated by supply-side tax cuts. MSNBC's Chris Matthews compares the idea to the economic ideas that led to the Great Depression: "[I]t sounds very much like [former President Herbert] Hoover. This is a doctrine which was tried in 1932 and failed. In a period of international deflation, the worst thing you can do is join in the deflation by cutting spending." [Think Progress, 4/1/2009]
Entity Tags: Paul Ryan, Chris Matthews, Center for American Progress, Barack Obama, John Boehner
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman says that Israel's new right-wing government will not be bound by a US-backed understanding to work towards establishing an independent Palestinian nation, the so-called "two-state solution." Lieberman's remarks outrage many Palestinian leaders, and indicate a sharp divide between the Obama administration and the government of newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The conservative Netanyahu has long opposed the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state, though he has recently said he supports an agreement towards limited Palestinian self-rule. Lieberman's speech, described by the Los Angeles Times as "blunt and openly hawkish" and by the New York Times as "blunt and belligerent," warns against giving concessions to the Palestinians, saying they "only bring pressure and more wars." "[T]hose who wish for peace should prepare for war," he adds. "Those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong. It is the other way around; it will lead to more wars." The 2007 agreement, made at Annapolis, Maryland between then-US President George W. Bush, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, committed the parties to further "the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine." Now, Lieberman says: "It has no validity. The Israeli government never ratified Annapolis, nor did parliament." Palestinian spokesman Nabil abu Rudaineh calls Lieberman's position dangerous, and recommends that the Obama administration "take a clear position against this policy before things get worse." Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat says Lieberman has "closed the door on Annapolis and closed the door in the face of the international community." An Obama spokesman says that the US remains committed to a two-state solution. Lieberman's statement is contradicted by a warning from Israeli President Shimon Peres that "the majority of countries in the world" back the Palestinian quest for statehood, hinting that to withdraw support for a two-state solution will result in Israel's isolation. "The outgoing government espoused the vision of two states for two peoples, which was initiated by the American government and accepted by the majority of countries in the world," Peres states. "It is up to your government to decide the shape of the reality to come." Netanyahu has privately told Western officials that he, not Lieberman, will set Israel's foreign policy; Netanyahu gave Lieberman the position because Lieberman's nationalist party, Israel Is Our Home, is a member of Netanyahu's rightist coalition government. But Netanyahu's own foreign policy adviser, Zalman Shoval, says that the prime minister also considers the Annapolis declaration nonbinding. Tony Blair, the former British prime minister now serving as an envoy to the Middle East peace negotiations, says the peace process is in "very great jeopardy." [New York Times, 4/1/2009; Los Angeles Times, 4/2/2009]
Entity Tags: Saeb Erekat, Avigdor Lieberman, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel Is Our Home, Obama administration, Tony Blair, Zalman Shoval, Shimon Peres
Twice in the same broadcast, Fox News airs a segment called "FOXFacts" that echoes almost verbatim claims made in a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan appears for an interview on Fox News's Happening Now, a "straight news" broadcast, hours after his editorial appears in print, and is interviewed by co-host Jon Scott. The seven "FOXFacts," which appear on-screen during the interview, are nearly identical to the claims and even the wording of Ryan's editorial. In February, Scott passed off a Republican press release as independently researched news, even to the point of repeating a typographical error from the press release (see February 10, 2009). Ryan and the accompanying FOXFacts claim that the Republican budget proposal achieves lower deficits than the Obama plan, prioritizes national defense and veterans' health care, rejects Obama's "cap-and-trade scheme," makes permanent the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, lowers capital gains and dividend taxes, repeals estate taxes, and slashes corporate income taxes. An hour later, while interviewing Rob Nabors, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Scott again airs the same "FOXFact" graphics. [Media Matters, 4/1/2009; Media Matters, 4/1/2009; Wall Street Journal, 4/1/2009] Before appearing on Fox, Ryan admits to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough that the Republican "budget plan" is nothing more than a "marketing document" containing few specifics (see April 1, 2009).
Entity Tags: Paul Ryan, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Jon Scott
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, refuses to acknowledge his role in approving the torture of suspected terrorists. In 2008, ABC News named Powell as one of the members of the National Security Council's principals committee who repeatedly authorized a variety of torture techniques to be used on detainees (see April 9, 2008). He also declines to affirm that several techniques, including waterboarding and sleep deprivation, qualify as torture. Powell says the torture of Abu Zubaida (see April - June 2002) and other al-Qaeda suspects "were not play-by-play discussed but there were conversations at a senior level with regard to what could be done with these types of interrogation. I cannot say further because I don't have knowledge of all the meetings that took place or what was discussed at each of those meetings and I think it's going to have to be in the written record of that meeting what will determine whether anything improper took place. But it is always the case that at least in the State Department's standpoint, we should be consistent with the requirements of the Geneva Convention and that's why this was such a controversial, controversial issue that you have to go—in due course I think we all will go to the written record. I'm not sure what memos were signed or not signed. I didn't have access to all of that information." Maddow asks, "If there was a meeting, though, at which senior officials were giving the approval for sleep deprivations, stress positions, waterboarding, were those officials committing crimes when they were getting their authorization?" Powell refuses to answer, saying, "I don't know If any of these items would be considered criminal and I would wait for whatever investigation that the government or the Congress intends to pursue with this." Maddow asks if he regrets his own participation in discussions about interrogations and torture, but Powell cuts her off to state: "There was no meeting on torture. It is constantly said that the meetings—I had an issue with this—we had meetings on what torture to administer. What I recall, the meetings I was in, I was not in all the meetings and I was not an author of many of the memos that have been written and some have come out and some have not come out. The only meetings I recall was where we talked about what is it we can do with respect to trying to get information from individuals who were in our custody. And I will just have to wait until the full written record is available and examined.… I don't know where these things were being approved at a political level." [MSNBC, 4/1/2009; Think Progress, 4/1/2009]
Entity Tags: Rachel Maddow, Colin Powell
Alisyn Camerota. [Source: Fox News]Several media outlets report discredited Republican claims that the Obama administration's "cap-and-trade" global warming initiative would cost American taxpayers over $3,000 per year. Fox News anchors Eric Shawn and Alisyn Camerota (see October 13, 2009), CNN producer Ted Barrett, and the Washington, DC, newspaper Roll Call repeat the claim, which originated in a March 23 House Republican Conference (HRC) "talking points" press release. [GOP (.gov), 3/23/2009; Media Matters, 4/6/2009] The claim points to a 2007 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but one of the study's authors, John Reilly, says the Republicans' interpretation of it is wrong (see March 24 - April 2, 2009). Reilly says the average household cost of $3,128, as calculated by the HRC, is "nearly 10 times the correct estimate" based on his study's cap-and-trade model. The HRC's error is further shown by a March 30 analysis conducted by the St. Petersburg Times. [St. Petersburg Times, 3/30/2009; Media Matters, 4/6/2009] Both Reilly and the Times show that the average annual cost per household will be closer to $340. On Fox News's America's News HQ, Shawn claims "this cap-and-trade, or as the Republicans call it, cap-and-tax—could add $3,000 a year on our electric bills.… [T]hat's about—$290 or so a month. I mean, imagine the American public, everyone watching right now—all of us—getting an extra 300 bucks or so a month tacked on to our utility bills." Camerota tells viewers of Fox News's America's Newsroom that the cap-and-trade proposal "would be $3,100 per US household." Roll Call's Jay Heflin publishes a claim by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) that "the effort equates to a 'light switch tax' of up to $3,128 each year for families" without informing readers of Reilly's and the Times's differing analysis. [Media Matters, 4/6/2009; Roll Call, 4/6/2009] Similarly, on CNN's Political Ticker blog, Barrett repeats a similar claim, writing, "Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell praised the Senate for having 'slammed the door on using the fast-track process to jam through a new national energy tax' that Republicans say will cost families $3,000 a year in higher energy costs." [CNN, 4/1/2009; Media Matters, 4/6/2009]
Entity Tags: Obama administration, Ted Barrett, St. Petersburg Times, John Reilly, House Republican Conference, Jay Heflin, Alisyn Camerota, John Cornyn, CNN, Fox News, Eric Shawn, Roll Call
Fox News host Glenn Beck, speaking on his daily radio show, lambasts President Obama's nomination of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Beck says Koh "believes in internationalism. He believes that we should not have a Constitution, that the Constitution is trumped by international law." Beck later says: "[T]he idea is, have our courts answer to international law. Forget about the Constitution. Forget about your sovereignty." [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Days later, conservative editor Cliff Kincaid and former Republican Senator Rick Santorum will join Beck in attacking Koh (see April 6, 2009 and April 9, 2009).
Entity Tags: Rick Santorum, Cliff Kincaid, Fox News, Harold Koh, US Department of State, Glenn Beck
Former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the Party of European Socialists, writes a Wall Street Journal op-ed that advocates a greater level of communication and cooperation between governments to address the global economic crisis. Rasmussen writes in part: "We must keep up the pressure by demanding a globalization that works for everyone, and forge new alliances and new lines of communication across national boundaries. We must develop new, progressive ways to achieve global justice." He advocates the expansion of European "state health care, social housing, education, unemployment support, and other universal, tax-funded services" to "the developing world, where according to the World Health Organization between 200,000 and 400,000 additional children will die each year due to the global economic downturn." He calls free-market capitalist ideology "simplistic" as "championed by Reagan, Thatcher, and their ideological heirs," and a failure "on a momentous scale." The next night, Fox News talk show host Bill O'Reilly attacks Rasmussen as advocating a Marxist solution, and espousing a "one-world" view. O'Reilly says: "Well, Karl Marx could not have said it better. Global justice requires that a one-world government seize private property and distribute it so that every human being has roughly the same amount of resources. The Denmark guy's vision is nothing new, but it's now being recycled as justice." O'Reilly says that "[s]ome believe Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), and President Obama himself are sympathetic to the one-world, global-justice view," and concludes: "Key question: Where does Barack Obama stand? Are the right-wing pundits correct? Is he down with the global-justice jihad? There's no hard evidence to suggest that he is, but he has not repudiated the false vision either. Until President Obama does, speculation will rage." [Wall Street Journal, 4/2/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009] O'Reilly is following recent, similar claims by Fox News guest Alex Jones (see March 18, 2009), Fox host Glenn Beck and his guests (see March 17, 2009 and March 24, 2009), and Fox News contributor Charles Payne (see March 24, 2009).
Entity Tags: Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, Wall Street Journal
Rick Santelli, the CNBC commentator whose on-air "rant" is credited for sparking the right-wing "tea party" movement (see February 19, 2009 and February 27, 2009), refuses to take part in the upcoming April 15 anti-tax rallies being put on across the country by various "tea party" organizations (see April 15, 2009). CNBC spokesman Brian Steel says Santelli is "not going and not in any way involved" in the protests. Fox News anchors Neil Cavuto and Sean Hannity are joining with protesters in Sacramento and Atlanta, respectively, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich plans to attend a rally in New York. Organizers say over 300 different protests will take place across the nation. Eric Odom, who owns a Chicago-based "tea party" Web site, says, "We have fully confirmed protests in 360 cities" and he is "very confident that all the protests will happen." Odom predicts that the rallies featuring Cavuto and Hannity will bring at least 5,000 to 10,000 participants. He stresses that the protests will be made up of people from "all walks of life," not just conservatives opposed to the Obama administration's policies. Odom does not mention Santelli's non-involvement. [Huffington Post, 4/2/2009]
Entity Tags: Newt Gingrich, Brian Steel, CNBC, Fox News, Eric Odom, Rick Santelli, Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity
Fox News on-screen chyron falsely claiming Obama's 2010 budget is four times larger than biggest Bush budget. [Source: Media Matters]Fox News's flagship morning news broadcast, America's Newsroom, displays an on-screen "chyron" that falsely claims the 2010 budget proposed by President Obama—$3.6 trillion—is four times the largest budget ever submitted by former President Bush. As progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters notes, Bush submitted a $3.1 trillion budget for 2009 and a $2.9 trillion budget for 2008 (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/3/2009]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Media Matters, Barack Obama, Fox News
Conservative pundits on Fox News and other media outlets falsely claim that President Obama ceded the government's authority over its economy to an international consortium during the G-20 summit, which concluded on April 2, 2009 in London. On April 3, pundit Dick Morris appears on Fox News's America's Newsroom to claim that Obama "effectively ceded massive areas of American sovereignty to Europe and to the global economic mavens.… [T]his literally is a massive surrender of sovereignty to an essentially European body." On April 3, US Representative Don Manzullo (R-IL) tells CNN's Kitty Pilgrim that Treasury Secretary Timothy "Geithner's proposing, with the help of the administration, a worldwide international control over all financial interests—in fact, over any corporation, to the extent of even controlling the compensation of the employees. That's not only radical, Kitty, that's frightening." Pilgrim responds, "Yeah, it certainly is." On April 5, Fox News host Monica Crowley, appearing on the syndicated McLaughlin Group, says the G-20 agreement is "the first step to abrogating American sovereignty here, because… it is going to allow European bureaucrats to step in, not just on the hedge fund regulation and the other explicit things that they agreed to, but buried deep down in this communiqué was the ability for European bureaucrats sitting in Brussels to decide what kind of executive compensation American executives should—" Financial Times US managing editor Chrystia Freeland interjects, "No, there was no authority like that there, Monica." Crowley responds, "I read it in the communique this morning." [Media Matters, 4/7/2009] In an April 6 column titled "The Declaration of Independence Has Been Repealed," Morris writes: "On April 2, 2009, the work of July 4, 1776 was nullified at the meeting of the G-20 in London. The joint communique essentially announces a global economic union with uniform regulations and bylaws for all nations, including the United States. Henceforth, our SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], Commodities Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Board, and other regulators will have to march to the beat of drums pounded by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a body of central bankers from each of the G-20 states and the European Union.… Obama, perhaps feeling guilty for the US role in triggering the international [economic] crisis, has, indeed, given away the store. Now we may no longer look to presidential appointees, confirmed by the Senate, to make policy for our economy. These decisions will be made internationally." Noting that the FSB is numerically dominated by European members, Morris writes: "The Europeans have been trying to get their hands on our financial system for decades. It is essential to them that they rein in American free enterprise so that their socialist heaven will not be polluted by vices such as the profit motive. Now, with President Obama's approval, they have done it." [Dick Morris, 4/6/2009] On the evening of April 6, Morris makes the same claims on Fox News's Hannity, telling viewers: "Basically, from an economic standpoint, [Obama's] repealed [the Declaration of Independence]. We no longer have economic sovereignty." [New York Times, 4/3/2009] None of these claims are true, as Freeland tried to assert. The FSB has no cross-border authority and therefore no authority over American economic decisions. On April 3, the New York Times reports, "While the [G-20] leaders agreed to create a new Financial Stability Board to monitor the financial system for signs of risks, they stopped well short of giving regulators cross-border authority, something France has long advocated." [New York Times, 4/3/2009; Media Matters, 4/7/2009]
Entity Tags: Fox News, Chrystia Freeland, Barack Obama, Dick Morris, Financial Stability Board, Timothy Geithner, Don Manzullo, New York Times, Kitty Pilgrim, Monica Crowley
Richard Poplawski. [Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]Pittsburgh resident Richard Poplawski kills three police officers after his mother calls 911 to have him removed from her home. According to a criminal complaint and affidavit, around 7 a.m. Margaret Poplawski and her son begin arguing over a dog urinating in the house; the argument escalates to the point where she calls the police to have him removed. When officers Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo arrive, Mrs. Poplawski asks them inside. Unbeknownst to his mother, Poplawski has donned a bulletproof vest and taken up an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle, a .22 long rifle, and a pistol. From a position behind his mother, he shoots both officers in the head, killing them almost instantly. His mother hears the gunshots and flees to the basement, screaming, "What the hell have you done?" Poplawski shoots Mayhle again to ensure his death, then shoots a third officer, Eric Kelly, when he arrives to provide assistance. Kelly, critically wounded, manages to call for assistance; a fourth officer, Timothy McManaway, is shot in the hand as he arrives on the scene and attempts to help Kelly. Kelly will die at the hospital from multiple wounds to the torso and legs. Four-Hour Siege - Poplawski retreats to his bedroom and, as police assemble outside the home, fires at the officers. Police return fire, and between them, hundreds of shots are exchanged. During the siege, Poplawski calls a friend, Edward Perkovic, and tells him: "Eddie, I'm going to die today. Tell your family and friends I love them. This is probably the end." The standoff between Poplawski and police lasts some four hours before officers finally persuade Poplawski to surrender; they enter the house and lead him out in handcuffs. Poplawski suffers at least one bullet wound during the exchange of gunfire. After the standoff, neighbors describe the scene as a "war zone." Police have been called numerous times to the Poplawski residence to break up fights and disputes between mother and son. Deputy Chief Paul Donaldson will later say of the shootings: "I'd like to understand why. It's senseless." [Associated Press, 4/5/2009; New York Times, 4/5/2009; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/6/2009; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/8/2009] Poplawski is held without bail in the Alleghany County Jail, charged with the murder of three police officers, the shooting of a fourth, and eight counts of assault derived from his shooting at other officers. His grandmother, Catherine Scott, will tell a reporter that she is praying for her grandson, but: "My grandson did a terrible thing. There is no mercy for what he did." [Associated Press, 4/5/2009; New York Times, 4/13/2009] Poplawski will later say he planned on forcing the police to kill him, but decided to surrender so he could write a book from inside prison. He will express no remorse for the men he kills. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/8/2009] White Supremacist, Anti-Semitic, Feared Gun Confiscation - The media will soon learn that Poplawski is a white supremacist who hates Jews and fears his guns will be taken away by the government (see April 4, 2009 and April 4, 2009 and After).
Entity Tags: Eric Kelly, Richard Poplawski, Paul Sciullo, Margaret Poplawski, Catherine Scott, Edward Perkovic, Timothy McManaway, Stephen Mayhle, Paul Donaldson
Cliff Kincaid, the editor of the conservative Accuracy in Media, accuses President Obama of seeking to appoint an advocate of the "new world order" to the State Department. Kincaid is referring to Obama's nomination of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Kincaid says Koh's nomination "is beyond worrisome. This is terrifying that—the thought of this kind of guy with these views becoming the top lawyer at the State Department. But seen in the light of the some of the other appointments Obama has made, it's consistent with his push, which is now out in the open, for the US to become really subsumed into this, quote, 'new world order' that everybody keeps talking about, in which our sovereignty has been sacrificed for the, quote, 'greater good.'" Kincaid is harking back to claims made in the '90s and later by extremist militia groups, which warned that the US government intended to implement a "new world order" (see September 11, 1990) of a one-world government that would result in the confiscation of Americans' guns, and a general replacement of democracy for tyranny (see 1994, January 1994, February 1995, July 4-11, 1997, October 20, 1999, April 14-15, 2009, January 21, 2010, and October 11, 2010). [Media Matters, 4/10/2009] Three days later, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) will say that Obama's nomination of the "internationalist" Koh shows that Obama is "contemptuous of American values" (see April 9, 2009).
Entity Tags: US Department of State, Barack Obama, Harold Koh, Cliff Kincaid, Rick Santorum
Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck attempts to disavow any connection between his rhetoric and accused murderer Richard Poplawski, who killed three police officers in Pittsburgh two days ago (see April 4, 2009). Poplawski said he was influenced by Beck and other conservative talk show hosts who have repeatedly warned that the government intends to forcibly confiscate citizens' guns (see April 4, 2009). Beck tells his listeners, "[T]he press, the blogs, everybody immediately went to, 'This guy's a conservative with guns that says Obama's coming.'" But later in his show, Beck repeats his assertions, telling viewers that President Obama "will slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun. He will make them more expensive; he'll tax them out of existence. He will because he has said he would. He will tax your gun or take your gun away one way or another." [Media Matters, 4/9/2009]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Glenn Beck, Richard Poplawski, Fox News
Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, US Domestic Terrorism
According to an analysis by progressive media watchdog Media Matters, Fox News airs at least 20 segments on the so-called "tea party" protests (see April 6-7, 2009, April 8, 2009, and April 13-15, 2009) scheduled for April 15 (see April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009 and April 15, 2009). The network also airs at least 73 in-show and commercial promotions for its April 15 coverage. Media Matters claims that Fox is "aggressively promot[ing] the events… encouraging viewers to get involved with tea party protests across the country." Fox describes the events as "FNC [Fox News Channel] Tax Day Tea Parties." The network has assigned four of its hosts, including Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, and Neil Cavuto, to broadcast live from various "tea parties" around the nation. The analysis does not include a number of "teasers" that Fox shows air to preview upcoming segments on "tea parties." [Media Matters, 4/15/2009] On April 15, Fox will devote much of its day's coverage to the tea parties. [Media Matters, 9/11/2009]
Entity Tags: Greta Van Susteren, Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Media Matters
'America's Newsroom' advertisement featuring Bill Hemmer. [Source: Zap2It (.com)]Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer, host of Fox News's flagship news program America's Newsroom, interviews several people involved with the April 15 "tea party" protests (see April 8, 2009), including Felicia Cravens, the organizer of an April 15 "tea party" in Houston. During the interview, Fox News displays information about the protest on screen. Though both Hemmer and Craven call the protests "non-partisan," Fox displays protest footage throughout the interview criticizing President Obama. At the end of the segment, Hemmer directs viewers to go to the Web site of his program for more information about the protests. Hemmer also interviews FoxNews.com contributor Andrea Tantaros, who says of the upcoming protests, "People are fighting against Barack Obama's radical shift to turn us into Europe." The program also states that "Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations" and part of a "Growing Revolution" (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/8/2009]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Andrea Tantaros, Felicia Cravens, Bill Hemmer, Fox News
Mike Gallagher. [Source: All Access (.com)]Conservative radio host Mike Gallagher discusses an exchange between the Second Amendment Foundation's Alan Gottlieb and MSNBC anchor David Shuster that occurred the night before, on MSNBC's Hardball. Gallagher lauds Gottlieb's "great job in explaining logically why people are worried about what the Obama administration wants to do with our guns," and airs a clip from the conversation in which Shuster asked Gottlieb, "Do you believe that the Obama administration and the Feds are coming to take away everybody's guns?" Gottlieb replied: "I believe that's what they would like to do. I don't think we're going to let them get away with it." Gallagher later tells his listeners: "[L]isten to the way Gottlieb leaves the liberal columnist stuttering and stammering, explaining very eloquently why so many of us are worried and scurrying to buy guns right now.… [I]f you think the government might take your rights away from you, you want to try and exercise them before that happens. It's a normal reaction." Gallagher suggests "a national movement to register as many people as we can… to become gun owners," and continues: "We're going to set up a Web site, we're going to get listener participation on this, we're going to register and create as many gun owners—new, first-time gun owners as possible. I don't even want to set a number. I'm number one—I'll be the first one." However, Gallagher criticizes media reports that state Pittsburgh cop-killer Richard Poplawski killed three police officers for fear that government or law enforcement officials would take away his guns (see April 4, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/7/2009; Media Matters, 4/9/2009]
Entity Tags: Second Amendment Foundation, Alan Gottlieb, David Shuster, Mike Gallagher, Richard Poplawski, Obama administration
Betty Brown. [Source: Houston Chronicle]Texas State Representative Betty Brown (R-Terrell) says during House testimony on voter identification legislation that since Asian-Americans often have names that are difficult for other Americans to pronounce, they should just change their names to something "easier for Americans to deal with." The Texas House Elections Committee hears testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans, who says that Americans of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent often have problems with voting and with other forms of identification because they have both a legal transliterated name and then a common English name used on their driver's license and school registrations. Brown suggests that Asian-Americans find a way to make their names more accessible, asking, "Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese—I understand it's a rather difficult language—do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?" Later in the session, she tells Ko, "Can't you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that's easier for Americans to deal with?" Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie says Republicans are attempting to suppress votes with a partisan identification bill, and that Brown "is adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments." Brown refuses to apologize for her statements. A spokesman for Brown, Jordan Berry, says that her comments have nothing to do with race, and are merely focused on overcoming problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes. Democrats are the ones guilty of using racial rhetoric, says Berry, not Brown: "They want this to just be about race." [Houston Chronicle, 4/9/2009]
Entity Tags: Ramey Ko, Betty Brown, Organization of Chinese Americans, Boyd Richie, Jordan Berry, Texas House Elections Committee
Spencer Bachus. [Source: Chicago Tribune]US Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL) tells a group of local leaders in Trussville, Alabama, "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists." Asked to clarify his comment, Bachus tells a reporter that 17 members of the House of Representatives are socialists. [Birmingham News, 4/9/2009; Hill, 4/9/2009] Only Names One of 17 - When pressed, Bachus only names one of his "socialists"—Representative Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has repeatedly recommended that the US adopt a program of "democratic socialism" similar to some practiced in Scandinavian countries. He refuses to name the other 16. Sanders asks rhetorically: "Has Spencer released his list yet? Everybody's waiting with bated breath." He adds, "I think at the very least he has to tell people what his definition of socialism is—and I think, yeah, he should tell us who he was referring to, who's on the list." Possible Reference to Congressional Progressive Caucus - Many Congressional staffers and advisers believe that Bachus is referring to some members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a left-leaning coalition of 77 House members founded by Sanders in the early 1990s. Although the caucus has not espoused socialism in any form, it does advocate reduced military spending, universal health care, and higher taxes on the rich. Right-wing groups have long labeled the caucus's agenda as "fringe-left socialism"; one hard-right pundit, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, has called the caucus "Congress's very own Red Army… marching the nation inevitably toward its self-proclaimed socialist ideal." Differing Definitions - Politico's Glenn Thrush writes that the term "socialism" has different meanings for different people. "To many on the left, it's a relatively benign—if outdated—term, representing an activist, interventionist government that prioritizes economic security over the unfettered freedom of the marketplace. To many on the right, it's practically an epithet—suggesting a return to Soviet-style Communism or a leap toward a hyper-regulated European brand of capitalism that stifles innovation and hikes taxes. It's safe to say that more people in Bachus's suburban Birmingham district—the most GOP-tilting seat in the country, according to the Cook Political Report—view socialism as a bad, bad thing." Mixed Reactions - Doug Thornell, speaking for Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), says of Bachus's accusation: "House Republicans' solution to the current economic crisis is to launch head-scratching, '50s-style accusations against unidentified members of Congress. Next thing you know they'll be going after beatniks and calling for the auto industry to bring back the Edsel.… With all the challenges we face, it's stunning this is what Republicans are talking about. They sound like a broken record of GOP low points from the 2008 campaign." Erin Kanoy of the Heritage Foundation is glad Bachus "called out" his colleagues, saying: "I think that people expressing where they see someone on the political spectrum has tended to be an off-limits thing and very politically incorrect—but sometimes I think you've got to call a spade a spade. If Bachus believes members of Congress are part of this movement, he should be able to say it.… He's really reflecting a much larger frustration with the landslide of legislation that we've had coming at us that seems to be marching towards socialist government." Conservative activist Grover Norquist agrees with Bachus's position, but says he should not have gotten into the subject of lists. "We shouldn't get into a labeling thing with the other side," Norquist says. "We shouldn't call them socialists—we should call them stupid because they are spending all this money we don't have." Sanders notes that conservatives tried to tar Barack Obama with similar accusations: "They said a lot of this stuff about Obama during the [presidential] campaign, calling him a socialist, and trying to instill fear in people" (see August 1, 2008 and After, October 10, 2008, October 27, 2008, and March 5, 2009). Many progressive and liberal bloggers have accused Bachus of launching an attack on Democrats worthy of the McCarthyite "Red scare" of the 1950s. [Washington Post, 4/10/2009; Politico, 4/14/2009] Defending Socialism, Decrying 'Scare Tactics' - In an op-ed for the Huffington Post, Sanders writes: "I doubt that there are any other socialists, let alone 17 more, in all of the Congress. I also respectfully doubt that Spencer Bachus understands much about democratic socialism.… At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy.… [B]randing someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by leading lights of the American right from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh. Some, like Mike Huckabee, intentionally blur the differences between socialism and communism, between democracy and totalitarianism. 'Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff,' Huckabee told last winter's gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference. If we could get beyond such nonsense, I think this country could use a good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long social-democratic tradition like Sweden, Norway, and Finland, where, by and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we do.… [W]e should be prepared to study and learn from the successes of social democratic countries. Name-calling and scare tactics just won't do." [Huffington Post, 4/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Congressional Progressive Caucus, Spencer Bachus, Chris Van Hollen, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Joseph Farah, Doug Thornell, Conservative Political Action Conference, Erin Kanoy, Mike Huckabee, Grover Norquist, Glenn Thrush
Former Republican senator Rick Santorum writes in an op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer that President Obama is "contemptuous of American values." Santorum, now a columnist for the Inquirer, ties his comments to the pending nomination of Harold Koh to become the State Department's lead counsel. Santorum and other far-right conservatives oppose Koh, a former Yale Law School dean, because of his "internationalist" views. Obama's nomination of Koh for the State Department, and Obama's recent supposed "apology for American arrogance" to European audiences, "helped convince me that [Obama] has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions," Santorum writes. Santorum opposes Koh's view that the US must become part of the international legal community, and instead insists that the US hold itself apart from international law, a position Santorum shares with the former Bush administration. "Koh's 'transnationalism' stands in contrast to good, old-fashioned notions of national sovereignty, in which our Constitution is the highest law of the land," Santorum writes. "In the traditional view, controversial matters, whatever they may be, are subject to democratic debate here. They should be resolved by the American people and their representatives, not 'internationalized.' What Holland or Belgium or Kenya or any other nation or coalition of nations thinks has no bearing on our exercise of executive, legislative, or judicial power. Koh disagrees. He would decide such matters based on the views of other countries or transnational organizations—or, rather, those entities' elites." Koh supports the International Criminal Court, which Santorum views as an objectionable intrusion upon American sovereignty. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/9/2009] Santorum is echoing recent arguments by Fox News host Glenn Beck (see April 1, 2009) and Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid (see April 6, 2009).
Entity Tags: Glenn Beck, Harold Koh, Rick Santorum, US Department of State, Cliff Kincaid
Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Domestic Propaganda
The CIA says it intends to close down the network of secret overseas prisons it used to torture suspected terrorists during the Bush administration. CIA Director Leon Panetta says that agency officers who worked in the program "should not be investigated, let alone punished" because the Justice Department under President Bush had declared their actions legal. Justice Department memos (see April 16, 2009) and investigations by the International Committee of the Red Cross (see October 6 - December 14, 2006) have shown that torture was used on several prisoners in these so-called "black sites." Panetta says the secret detention facilities have not been used since 2006, but are still costing taxpayers money to keep open. Terminating security contracts at the sites would save "at least $4 million," he says. The CIA has never revealed the location of the sites, but independent investigations and news reports place at least some of them in Afghanistan, Thailand, Poland, Romania, and Jordan. Agency officials have claimed that fewer than 100 prisoners were ever held in the sites, and around 30 of them were tortured. The last 14 prisoners were transferred to Guantanamo in 2006 (see September 2-3, 2006), but then-President Bush ordered the sites to remain open for future use. Since then, two suspected al-Qaeda operatives are known to have been kept in the sites. Panetta also says that the CIA will no longer use private contractors to conduct interrogations. [New York Times, 4/10/2009]
Entity Tags: Leon Panetta, Central Intelligence Agency
Johnny Lee Clary. [Source: Christian Family Churches of Australia (.com)]The Reverend Johnny Lee Clary, who describes himself as a former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who abandoned his allegiance to white supremacist ideology after converting to Christianity and now preaches against racism and white separatism, answers a number of questions about the Klan and related organizations on his Web site. The John Birch Society - According to Clary, the John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011) "is just a political version of the KKK, without the name of the KKK. They center on the political ideas of the Klan and are not as vocal in public on the ideas of the racial superiority, but they attract the same people and say the same things behind closed doors.… The John Birch Society is the Klan.… They are racist, and full of hate and are officially listed as a hate group with several civil rights organizations throughout the USA." Tom Metzger, the founder and leader of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), is an active leader of a California chapter of the JBS, Clary writes, as are many other members of the Klan and various neo-Nazi and white supremacist militia groups. Clary explains why the Klan is openly racist and the JBS is not, stating: "The John Birch Society's function is to recruit professional people into their ranks of anti-government conspiracy freaks, that would be too afraid to join an organization with the name of the KKK. They suck these people into their ranks and use the donations to further the cause of radical un-American fascist racist KKK activities. This is a ploy for the KKK to get funding to help spread their agenda." In response to an email from a JBS member portraying his organization as "conservative," Clary writes: "Please do not try to represent your organization as 'conservative.' You are not conservative, and are disowned by the Republican Party and are considered a disgrace to true conservatives everywhere. Ronald Reagan, the greatest conservative American ever, would have nothing to do with any of you. Neither will President Bush for that matter." Positive Aspects of the Klan - While Clary repudiates the Klan's racism, he says there are some "good" aspects to the organization: it "stands against abortion, homosexuality, and drug dealers. They are for prayer in the schools and the use of the Bible in the classroom. These are good things that would entice some people into joining the Klan, however, if someone joined because of these reasons they would soon see that the evil the Klan does is so sinister that it far outweighs the good. The Klan is guilty of bombings, murder, and hatred of their fellow man because of the shade of their skin." Why the KKK Hates African-Americans - In response to a letter from an African-American student asking this question, Clary writes: "I believe that one of the reason's the Klan hates African-Americans so much is because they look different [from whites]. By putting others down they make themselves feel superior. One who hates so much really does not like his or her own self. They know deep down inside that they are a loser in society and they are searching for some way to try to achieve some sort of superiority. You have to remember also that the majority of KKK members are what would be classified as 'poor white trash.' Very few Klan members come from upper middle class backgrounds or even middle class for that matter. They come from backgrounds that are poor and down trodden. Instead of doing something to better themselves they build up resentment until it turns into hatred. They blame the Jews, blacks, and others for their own failures in life and they are a product of a learned response. That is, they are taught to hate.… If the blacks were not around for Klansmen to hate, it would be the Jews and if they were not around it would be the Native American Indians and if not them then someone else. When no one else that appears to be different is around then they start hating and bickering with each other. Many of them are crying out for a separate 'Aryan' homeland. They scream for a place where people that believe like they do can all go and live and not have to be around other races. That could be a solution that would benefit everybody. Even if there were no other races around them, their hatred is so deeply imbedded within them that they would start hating each other and finally destroy one another." [Johnny Lee Clary, 2007; Johnny Lee Clary, 4/13/2009]
Entity Tags: White Aryan Resistance, Ronald Reagan, Johnny Lee Clary, Ku Klux Klan, George W. Bush, John Birch Society, Tom Metzger
A three-judge panel rules that Al Franken (D-MN) is the legitimate winner of Minnesota's hotly contested US senate seat (see November 4-5, 2008), ruling against Franken's opponent, former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN—see January 26, 2009). Ironically, when the judges reviewed the ballots under consideration, Franken was awarded almost 100 more votes, setting his margin of victory at 312 votes. Coleman says he will appeal the decision, which will continue to block Franken from taking his seat in the Senate. [Associated Press, 4/14/2009]
Entity Tags: Norm Coleman, Al Franken
Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties, 2008 Elections
Fox News's flagship morning news broadcast, America's Newsroom, repeatedly airs video clips promoting the upcoming "tea party" protests for April 15 (see April 8, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009, and April 15, 2009). Host Bill Hemmer urges viewers to attend protests near them, and alerts them to "virtual tea parties" being hosted on Fox's "non-partisan" Web site Fox Nation. One clip exhorts viewers to "say no to biased media and yes to fair play and free speech," and then prompts them to "express your views, your values" at Fox Nation. Hemmer then tells viewers that commentators Glenn Beck (see April 15, 2009), Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, and Greta Van Susteren are reporting and helping host protests in four separate areas around the nation. "Can't get to a tea party?" Hemmer asks. "Fox Nation hosts a 'virtual tea party.' You can check it out on the site." During Hemmer's pitch, Fox News airs a clip of a protest sign with "NO to socialism!" written across an American flag with a Soviet-style hammer and sickle in place of the 50 stars (see October 13, 2009). [Media Matters, 4/13/2009]
Entity Tags: Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, Bill Hemmer, Fox Nation, Sean Hannity, Fox News, Greta Van Susteren
One of Hayden's Twitter posts. [Source: Twitteradar (.com)]Daniel Knight Hayden, an Oklahoma man who has declared himself affiliated with local tea party organizations and the "Oath Keeper" movement (see March 9, 2009 and March 2010), is arrested by FBI agents after posting a series of messages on Twitter threatening to unleash a violent attack on Oklahoma state government officials on April 15, "Tax Day." On April 13, under the moniker "CitizenQuasar," Hayden began posting a blizzard of "tweets" about his intention to be on the Oklahoma State Capitol steps on the 15th, at first as part of a peaceful tea party event, then escalating into harsher rhetoric, and eventually threats of violence. On April 14, he wrote: "Tea Parties: And Poot Gingrich wants to stand in the limelight. He is a NWO operative," referring to former Republican House Speaker and tea party favorite Newt Gingrich, and accusing him of being an "operative" for the "New World Order" (see September 11, 1990). Towards midnight of April 14, Hayden begins the following series of posts: "Maybe it's time to die. Let's see if I can video record the Highway Patrol at the entrance to the Oklahoma State Capitol." "While trying to inform them of Oath Keepers" (and links to the Oath Keepers blog). "And post it on the internet. Since i live on this sorry f_cking state,that is as good a place as ANY to die and start a WAR. WEshallsee." "I WISH I had someone to watch my back with MY camera." "AND, no matter WHAT happens, to post it on the internet IMMEDIATELY, AND send it to Alex Jones!!!!!!!!!!!!" (referring to radio talk show host Alex Jones). "Damnit!" "Alas… WE SHALL see the TRUTH about this sorry f_cking state!!!!!!!" After a few more posts, Dyer begins posting direct threats of violence (later removed from the Twitter account, but presented in the FBI affidavit). "The WAR wWIL start on the stepes of the Oklahoma State Capitol. I will cast the first stone. In the meantime, I await the police." "START THE KILLING NOW! I am wiling to be the FIRST DEATH! I Await the police. They will kill me in my home." "After I am killed on the Capitol Steps like REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!" "I really don' give a sh_t anymore. Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the on the State Capitol steps." Hayden is taken into custody before he can go to the Capitol building, and arrested for transmitting threats to kill or injure people using interstate communication tools over the Internet. FBI agent Michael Puskas confirms that Dyer posted under the moniker "CitizenQuasar," and says Dyer also has MySpace and Blogger accounts under similar monikers. Wired magazine says it "appears to be [the] first criminal prosecution to stem from posts on the microblogging site," and calls Dyer's MySpace page "a breathtaking gallery of right-wing memes about the 'New World Order,' gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama's covert use of television hypnosis, among many others." Dyer will be arraigned on April 16 and ordered released to a halfway house, a move the Associated Press reports as suggesting "the magistrate judge does not consider him a genuine threat." [Wired News, 4/24/2009; Associated Press, 4/26/2009] Posters on the conservative blog Free Republic, commenting on Hayden's arrest, label him a "leftist" who intended to kill tea party protesters, a contention they say is proven by Hayden's vows to seek revenge for the government's execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). One poster writes: "Hayden appears to be one of those mixtures of far out ideologies. On one hand he seems to support nazism but accused Obama of using mind control." [Free Republic, 4/24/2009]
Entity Tags: Wired News, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Daniel Knight Hayden, Free Republic, Newt Gingrich, Michael Puskas, Oath Keepers
Fox News host Glenn Beck, broadcasting live from a "tea party" protest at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, interviews Joe Horn, who was charged with shooting to death two illegal immigrants whom Horn says he caught burglarizing his neighbor's home. The Alamo is the site of the Republic of Texas's 1836 stand against the Mexican Army, and apparently Beck's interview of Horn is chosen to symbolize American "resistance" to Mexican immigrants. "It's a different world in Texas," Beck says, and Horn replies, backed by cheers from a small audience behind Beck, "Thank God for it." Regarding the shooting, Horn says, "I thought it was the right thing to do, and I did it." As Beck retells the story, Horn saw the two men burglarizing the neighbor's home, called 911, and, before the police could respond, told the 911 operator that he was going to the home to "stop them." Defying the operator's request not to confront the two, Horn took his shotgun to the neighbor's home and shot both intruders, killing them. (His admission of shooting them triggers wild cheering; the Fox News cameras focus on a "Don't Tread on Me" flag waved from the crowd.) Horn claims that the men were approaching him when he opened fire. The crowd cheers at Beck's retelling of another story of a homeowner shooting an alleged burglar, and cheers at every subsequent mention of guns and shootings. "Joe, what kind of world are we living in that people don't understand you have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Beck asks. Horn says he had no intention of "letting those two men kill me," even though police investigations showed that he shot both of them in the back, apparently as they were fleeing, and he told the 911 operator before leaving his home, "I'm going to kill them." Neither one of the alleged burglars was armed. Texas prosecutors failed to indict Horn. [New York Times, 12/13/2007; Media Matters, 4/15/2009]
Entity Tags: Joe Horn, Fox News, Glenn Beck
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who served during President Bush's first term, says had he known that the Bush administration authorized torture while he was in office, the right thing to do would have been to resign. "I hope, had I known about it at the time I was serving, I would've had the courage to resign," he tells an Al Jazeera television interviewer. During the interview, host Avi Lewis asks, "So when you knew that the administration of which you were a part was departing from the Geneva Conventions and sidelining them, why didn't you quit?" Armitage responds: "In hindsight maybe I should've. But in those positions you see how many more battles you have. You maybe fool yourself. You say how much worse would X, Y, or Z be if I weren't here trying to do it? So torture is a matter of principle as far as I'm concerned. I hope, had I known about it at the time I was serving, I would've had the courage to resign." [Huffington Post, 4/15/2009]
Entity Tags: Avi Lewis, Richard Armitage, Geneva Conventions, Bush administration (43)
President Obama presides over a deeply divided group of top advisers as he decides whether or not to release four Bush-era Justice Department memos documenting the Bush administration's torture policies (see April 16, 2009). CIA Director Leon Panetta and his four immediate predecessors have already registered their flat disapproval of the memos' release (see March 18, 2009 and After), as has Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan. On the other side are Attorney General Eric Holder, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and White House counsel Gregory Craig. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has indicated he supports the release because it is inevitable anyway—the memos are the subject of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit—and because Obama is willing to promise that no CIA officers will be prosecuted for abuse. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen sides with Gates. Obama presides over a "mini-debate" in the office of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, where each side designates a spokesperson to present its views. When the debate is concluded, Obama immediately dictates a draft of his announcement of the memos' release. During the discussion, Obama rejects the proposal that the memos' release be delayed in anticipation of a so-called "truth commission" to investigate Bush torture policies, saying that such delay would just create further divisiveness. Craig argues persuasively that the judge overseeing the FOIA lawsuit is unlikely to grant any delays. Obama aides later say the president's decision is in keeping with his frequent campaign promises that he would not only stop the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody, but get to the truth behind the Bush administration's torture policies. [Newsweek, 4/18/2009; Washington Post, 4/24/2009]
Entity Tags: Robert M. Gates, US Department of Justice, Rahm Emanuel, Leon Panetta, Greg Craig, Dennis C. Blair, Barack Obama, John O. Brennan, Eric Holder, Michael Mullen
The Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive think tank and lobbying organization, releases a report that says the "tea party" movement protesting the various policies of the Obama administration (see April 8, 2009) is not, as purported, entirely a grassroots movement of ordinary citizens, but an "astroturf" movement created, organized, and funded by powerful conservative and industry firms and organizations. (CAP notes that the anti-tax "tea parties," with "tea" standing for "Taxed Enough Already," fail to note that President Obama's recent legislation actually has cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans.) Two of the most prominent organizations behind the "tea parties" are FreedomWorks and Americans for Progress (AFP). FreedomWorks (see April 14, 2009) is a corporate lobbying firm run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), and organized the first "tea party," held in Tampa, Florida, on February 27. It then began planning and organizing "tea parties" on a national scale; officials coordinated logistics, called conservative activists, and provided activists with sign ideas and slogans and talking points to use during protests. AFP has coordinated with FreedomWorks. AFP is a corporate lobbying firm run by Tim Phillips, a former lobbying partner of conservative activist Ralph Reed, and funded in part by Koch Industries, the largest private oil corporation in America (see May 29, 2009). Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) is also involved, through his lobbying form American Solutions for Winning the Future, which is supported by oil companies. Support, Promotion from Fox News - On cable news channels, Fox News and Fox Business have run promotions for the "tea parties" in conjunction with enthusiastic reports promoting the affairs (see April 13-15, 2009, April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009, and April 6-13, 2009); in return, the organizers use the Fox broadcasts to promote the events. Fox hosts Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, and Sean Hannity all plan to broadcast live reports from the events. Fox also warns its viewers that the Obama administration may send "spies" to the events. (Fox justifies its depth of coverage by saying that it provided similar coverage for the 1995 Million Man March. However, Fox did not begin broadcasting until 1996—see October 7, 1996.) Republican Support - Congressional Republicans have embraced the "tea parties" as ways to oppose the Obama administration. Many leading Republicans, such as Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Paul Ryan (R-WI), and some 35 others, will speak at AFP-funded "tea parties." Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has moved the RNC to officially support the protests. And Senator David Vitter (R-LA) has introduced legislation formally honoring April 15 as "National Tea Party Day." "It's going to be more directed at Obama," says reporter and commentator Ana Marie Cox. "This is very much, I think, part of the midterm strategy" to win elections in 2010. Fringe Elements - According to CAP, many "fringe" elements of the conservative movement—including "gun rights militias, secessionists, radical anti-immigrant organizations, and neo-Nazi groups"—are involved in the "tea parties." [Think Progress, 4/15/2009; Think Progress, 5/29/2009]
Entity Tags: Ralph Reed, Republican National Committee, Paul Ryan, Tim Phillips, Obama administration, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, Michael Steele, Barack Obama, Neil Cavuto, Center for American Progress, Ana Marie Cox, Americans for Progress, Fox Business Channel, Fox News, Koch Industries, David Vitter, American Solutions for Winning the Future, FreedomWorks, Glenn Beck, Dick Armey
A 'tea party' protester carries a sign during a Chicago rally. [Source: Huffington Post]Fox News devotes much of its day's coverage to the conservative, anti-tax "tea parties" taking place around the nation. The network has promoted the tea parties in the previous weeks (see April 6-13, 2009, April 15, 2009, and April 15, 2009). Fox hosts Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren all provide extensive live coverage from the sites of separate events, which the network promotes as "FNC [Fox News Channel] Tax Day Tea Parties" (see October 13, 2009). Many of the network's shows, such as America's Newsroom, Beck's show, and others provide on-air and online information about the times and locations of events, and broadcast interviews with event organizers. Beck tells his viewers they can "[c]elebrate with Fox News" at any of four "FNC Tax Day Tea Parties." Beck, who is at San Antonio's Alamo for an event (see April 15, 2009) tells his audience: "If you can't make the one in San Antonio, please go to the one with Neil or with Sean in Atlanta, that's supposed to be great, Greta is in Washington, DC. Just get out and let your face be seen." Hannity encourages viewers to send in their "Tax Day Tea Party" videos for on-air broadcast. Cavuto's guest host in the studio, Stuart Varney, says plainly, "It's now my great duty to promote the tea parties." Fox News's Web site, "Fox Nation," actively promotes the events, with links to blogs, maps, videos, and event calendars. The network even hosts its own "virtual tea party" on its Web site. Fox host Gretchen Carlson suggests that viewers hang teabags from their cars' rearview mirrors, "like fuzzy dice." Fox Business anchor Cody Willard tells viewers to "figh[t] the fascism" of the current administration by attending a "tea party." He asks his viewers, "Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?" He adds that in his opinion, conservatives and liberals are "both fascists who are taking my money and building up corporate America with my welfare." And Fox Business anchor David Asman advises his viewers to buy "tea party" merchandise. The push is successful: after the April 15 protests, many mainstream news outlets report that Fox News reports helped drive crowds to protests. CNN and Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz will say, "I don't think I've ever seen a news network throw its weight behind a protest like we are seeing in the past few weeks with Fox and these tea parties." [Media Matters, 9/11/2009]
Entity Tags: Stuart Varney, Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, Gretchen Carlson, Cody Willard, David Asman, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Greta Van Susteren, Howard Kurtz
The various "tea party" organizations around the nation (see After November 7, 2008, February 1, 2009, February 16-17, 2009, February 19, 2009, and February 19, 2009 and After) host rallies and protests throughout the day. The date has been chosen because April 15 is the day American citizens must submit individual income tax returns to the IRS; some tea party members say "tea" stands for "Taxed Enough Already?" The number of rallies is anywhere between 200 and 750, depending on who does the estimating; similarly, national attendance is later estimated at anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000. Some protests, such as the one in Atlanta, Georgia, draw thousands of participants and onlookers, whereas other rallies draw only a few people. A protest outside the White House is broken up by police when a demonstrator tosses a box of tea bags over the fence. This is the first time that a series of protests by tea party groups has been orchestrated on a national level. [Beth Rowen, 2/9/2010] Fox News provides nationwide coverage, both on the national cable news channel and for local affiliates, promotes and markets the rallies, and provides blogs and forums for scheduling, outreach, and coordination (see April 6-13, 2009, April 13-15, 2009, and April 15, 2009). The network promotes the rallies as "FNC [Fox News Channel] Tax Day Tea Parties."
Entity Tags: Fox News
As the Obama administration releases four new and controversial Bush-era torture memos (see April 16, 2009), both the White House and the CIA reassure agency personnel that they will not be prosecuted for carrying out the policies of the Bush administration. The White House statement is carefully worded to give no such reassurances to former Bush administration officials who helped codify and implement such policies. "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," says Attorney General Eric Holder. White House officials say that any CIA agency employee subjected to international tribunals or Congressional inquiries would receive legal representation at no cost to themselves, and the government would indemnify agency workers against any financial judgments. In the weeks before the memos' release, top CIA officials, including CIA Director Leon Panetta, argued that the memos should not be released because the graphic detail in them could lead to a demand for investigations and prosecutions of CIA interrogators and other personnel. Panetta tells CIA employees that since the torture policies were approved at the highest level of the Bush administration, they would not be prosecuted as long as they followed the legal guidelines laid down by the Justice Department. "You need to be fully confident that as you defend the nation, I will defend you," Panetta says. Some civil rights organizations respond with a call for prosecutions. A statement from the Center for Constitutional Rights says, "Whether or not CIA operatives who conducted waterboarding are guaranteed immunity, it is the high level officials who conceived, justified, and ordered the torture program who bear the most responsibility for breaking domestic and international law, and it is they who must be prosecuted." [Washington Post, 4/17/2009] The American Civil Liberties Union is calling for criminal investigations (see April 16, 2009).
Entity Tags: Leon Panetta, Bush administration (43), Center for Constitutional Rights, Eric Holder, Obama administration, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of Justice
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) welcomes the release of Bush-era Justice Department memos that detail the torture methods approved for use under that administration (see April 16, 2009), and calls for the prosecution of government officials responsible for the torture policies. ACLU executive director Anthony Romero says in a statement: "We have to look back before we can move forward as a nation. When crimes have been committed, the American legal system demands accountability. President Obama's assertion that there should not be prosecutions of government officials who may have committed crimes before a thorough investigation has been carried out is simply untenable. Enforcing the nation's laws should not be a political decision. These memos provide yet more incontrovertible evidence that Bush administration officials at the highest level of government authorized and gave legal blessings to acts of torture that violate domestic and international law. There can be no more excuses for putting off criminal investigations of officials who authorized torture, lawyers who justified it, and interrogators who broke the law. No one is above the law, and the law must be equally enforced. Accountability is necessary for any functioning democracy and for restoring America's reputation at home and abroad." ACLU official Jameel Jaffer adds: "Memos written by the Office of Legal Counsel, including the memos released today, provided the foundation for the Bush administration's torture program. Through these memos, Justice Department lawyers authorized interrogators to use the most barbaric interrogation methods, including methods that the US once prosecuted as war crimes. The memos are based on legal reasoning that is spurious on its face, and in the end these aren't legal memos at all—they are simply political documents that were meant to provide window dressing for war crimes. While the memos should never have been written, we welcome their release today. Transparency is a first step towards accountability." And ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh concludes: "The documents released today provide further confirmation that lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel purposefully distorted the law to support the Bush administration's torture program. Now that the memos have been made public, high-ranking officials in the Bush administration must be held accountable for authorizing torture. We are hopeful that by releasing these memos, the Obama administration has turned the page on an era in which the Justice Department became complicit in some of the most egregious crimes." [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/16/2009]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), American Civil Liberties Union, Amrit Singh, Barack Obama, Jameel Jaffer, US Department of Justice, Anthony D. Romero, Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ)
The White House releases four key Justice Department memos documenting the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods—torture—against suspected terrorists. The memos were released as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The documents show that two high-level detainees were subjected to waterboarding at least 266 times between them. Al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida was waterboarded at least 83 times in August 2002, contradicting earlier CIA reports that he "broke" after a single waterboarding session (see December 10, 2007). Confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded at least 183 times in March 2003. The so-called "insect" technique—exposure to insects within an enclosed box—was approved for use on Zubaida, but apparently never used. Numerous prisoners were subjected to "walling" and "sleep deprivation," with at least one detainee subjected to the technique for 180 hours (over seven days). Three of the memos were written by then-Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) chief Steven Bradbury in May 2005 (see May 10, 2005, May 10, 2005, and May 30, 2005), and the fourth by Bradbury's predecessor, Jay Bybee, in August 2002 (see August 1, 2002). [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/16/2009; New York Times, 4/19/2009; BBC, 4/23/2009] Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) says: "These legal memoranda demonstrate in alarming detail exactly what the Bush administration authorized for 'high value detainees' in US custody. The techniques are chilling. This was not an 'abstract legal theory,' as some former Bush administration officials have characterized it. These were specific techniques authorized to be used on real people." [CNN, 4/17/2009] House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) agrees, saying: "This release, as well as the decision to ban the use of such techniques in the future, will strengthen both our national security and our commitment to the rule of law and help restore our country's standing in the international community. The legal analysis and some of the techniques in these memos are truly shocking and mark a disturbing chapter in our nation's history." [Think Progress, 4/16/2009] Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), whose committee is conducting an investigation of abusive interrogation methods used during the Bush administration, says Bush officials "inaccurately interpreted" the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture. "I find it difficult to understand how the opinions found these interrogation techniques to be legal," she says. "For example, waterboarding and slamming detainees head-first into walls, as described in the OLC opinions, clearly fall outside what is legally permissible." [United Press International, 4/16/2009] White House Condemns Methods, Opposes Investigations - Attorney General Eric Holder says of the memos: "The president has halted the use of the interrogation techniques described in these opinions, and this administration has made clear from day one that it will not condone torture. We are disclosing these memos consistent with our commitment to the rule of law." Holder adds that, according to a Justice Department statement, "intelligence community officials who acted reasonably and relied in good faith on authoritative legal advice from the Justice Department that their conduct was lawful, and conformed their conduct to that advice, would not face federal prosecutions for that conduct." Holder states, "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department." [US Department of Justice, 4/16/2009] President Obama condemns what he calls a "dark and painful chapter in our history," and promises that such torture techniques will never be used again. However, he restates his opposition to a lengthy investigation into the program, saying that "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." In contrast, Leahy says that the memos illustrate the need for an independent investigation. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, points out that the memos were written at a time when the CIA was working to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks. "Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing," he says. "But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos." [New York Times, 4/19/2009] The ACLU demands criminal prosecution of Bush officials for their torture policies (see April 16, 2009). [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/16/2009] Techniques Include Waterboarding, Insect Exposure, 'Walling' - The memos show that several techniques were approved for use, including waterboarding, exposure to insects within a "confinement box," being slammed into a wall, sleep deprivation, stress positions, forced nudity, and others. [American Civil Liberties Union, 4/16/2009; New York Times, 4/19/2009; BBC, 4/23/2009] Waterboarded Well beyond Allowed Procedures - Because the information about the waterboarding of Zubaida and Mohammed comes from the classified and heavily redacted CIA's inspector general report, which has not yet been released to the public, the information is at least in part based on the videotapes of Zubaida's interrogation sessions that were later destroyed by CIA officials (see March 6, 2009). The CIA memo explained that detainees could be waterboarded between 12 and 18 times in a single day, but only on five days during a single month—which mathematically only adds up to 90 times in a month, and thus does not explain how Mohammed could have been waterboarded 183 times in a month if these procedures were being followed. The memos also reveal that in practice, the waterboarding went far beyond the methodologies authorized by the Justice Department and used in SERE training (see December 2001 and July 2002). Information Unearthed by Blogger - Initial media reports fail to divulge the extraordinary number of times Zubaida and Mohammed were waterboarded. It falls to a blogger, Marcy Wheeler, to unearth the information from the CIA memo and reveal it to the public (see April 18, 2009). [Marcy Wheeler, 4/18/2009]
Entity Tags: Marcy Wheeler, Central Intelligence Agency, Dennis C. Blair, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Dianne Feinstein, Jay S. Bybee, Geneva Conventions, Eric Holder, Barack Obama, Bush administration (43), John Conyers, Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ), US Department of Justice, American Civil Liberties Union, Steven Bradbury, Patrick J. Leahy, Abu Zubaida, Obama administration
Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) signs into law House Bill 246. It exempts Montana-made guns from federal regulation. The law is the latest in a long list of legislative initiatives designed to strip power from the federal government and give it to the states. "It's a gun bill, but it's another way of demonstrating the sovereignty of the state of Montana," Schweitzer says. The impact is limited to Montana, which currently has only a small number of specialty gun makers who make mostly replica and recreation rifles from US history, and most of their customers are out of state. However, supporters of the new law hope it will trigger a court case testing the legal basis for federal rules governing gun sales. State Representative Joel Boniek (R-MT), who sponsored the bill, said during the House debate, "What we need here is for Montana to be able to handle Montana's business and affairs." Many legislators among the 50 states have introduced legislation designed to push back against what they see as unconstitutional federal intrusion, often in response to the Obama administration's economic stimulus plan. Some legislators consider themselves part of, or sympathetic to, the "tenther" movement, that construes the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution as vastly restrictive of the federal government's powers. Another Montana representative, Michael More (R-MT), recently said of the gun bill and similar legislation, "The whole goal is to awaken the people so that we can return to a properly grounded republic." Legislatures in 15 other states are considering resolutions that attempt to take back power from the federal government. "The balance has swung far to the extreme to the empowerment of the federal government, and to the harm of the individual states," More says. However, critics warn that the "tenther" movement and the move to give power to the states is in line with anti-government militia ideals. "When you really actually get in and look at it there is a lot of what we feel is very dangerous, very anti-government language that reads very similar to posters for the militia movement in the 1990s," says Travis McAdam of the Montana Human Rights Network. Montana Senator Christine Kaufmann (D-MT) says, "I do think that there is a kind of renewed vehemence to this kind of right-wing rhetoric being spewed by conservative talk show hosts to rile the troops and they are using the fact that we have a Democratic, black president as one of their rallying calls." In Montana, the states' rights bills are being sponsored by freshman legislators who were elected as part of an effort to oust more moderate Republicans and replace them with more conservative, "tea party-friendly" representatives. Supporters of House Bill 246 now intend to find someone to challenge a regulation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) that requires federal dealership licensing to build and sell firearms; they will use that pretext to file a lawsuit that they hope will end in the Supreme Court. The Montana Shooting Sports Association, which drafted House Bill 246, has said it will raise the money to pay for any legal costs. [Associated Press, 4/16/2009] Author and columnist David Neiwert later notes, in agreement with Kaufmann, that the Montana gun bill echoes the ideas of "state sovereignty" promoted by radical-right militia groups and "constitutionalists" in the 1990s. The idea behind the bill originated with Charles Duke (R-CO), a far-right Colorado legislator from the 1990s who had close ties to the Rocky Mountain-area militias (see May 15-21, 1996). Duke is considered one of the first "tenther" proponents, and is popular with white supremacists who espouse the "Christian Identity" belief system (see 1960s and After). Neiwert will also note that the gun legislation prompts a series of segments from Fox News host Glenn Beck on the bill and how he hopes it is the first of a larger number of legislative and court initiatives that will ultimately cripple the federal government. [Crooks and Liars, 5/15/2009]
Entity Tags: Montana Shooting Sports Association, David Neiwert, Christine Kaufmann, Charles Duke, Brian Schweitzer, Glenn Beck, Michael More, Obama administration, US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Joel Boniek, US Supreme Court, Travis McAdam
Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, interviewing Brent Bozell of the conservative media watchdog organization Media Research Center, lets slip an admission that her network provided public relations services to the "tea party" protests that took place yesterday (see April 15, 2009, April 15, 2009 and October 13, 2009). Kelly says: "You know, Brent, it's been interesting because Fox News covered these tea parties, and we were one of the only organizations to give it any publicity or PR prior to the fact that it happened, and it was so under-covered by virtually every news organization. Why is that? Why was it so ignored up until the very last day by virtually everyone?" Talking Points Memo reporter Brian Beutler calls Kelly's comment "a media version what some of us like to call a Kinsley gaffe"; such a "gaffe" is defined as an instance where a politician mistakenly tells the truth. [TPMDC, 4/16/2009] Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly notes: "Fox News is ostensibly a news outlet. Obviously, it's not a legitimate journalistic enterprise, and equally obvious was the fact that it was doing 'public relations' work for the conservative rallies. But Megyn Kelly isn't supposed to admit this on the air. As for the substance of her concerns about the legitimate news organizations, Kelly is no doubt convinced that there's a nefarious media bias at play, but it's at least possible major outlets didn't have much pre-event coverage because there wasn't that much, you know, news. Most mainstream outlets didn't feel the need to do 'p.r.' work for enraged partisans in advance of their protests. That's probably a good thing." [Washington Monthly, 4/16/2009]
Entity Tags: Fox News, Brian Beutler, Steve Benen, Brent Bozell, Megyn Kelly
ProPublica reporter Dafna Linzer discovers that one of the CIA torture memos released on this day by the Obama administration (see April 16, 2009) inadvertently identifies one of the so-called CIA "ghost detainees" being held in an agency "black site." The May 30, 2005 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (see May 30, 2005) was redacted before its release, but it identifies one detainee as "Gul." This apparently refers to Hassan Ghul, arrested in northern Iraq in early 2004 (see January 23, 2004). At the time of his capture, President Bush stated: "Just last week we made further progress in making America more secure when a fellow named Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Hassan Ghul reported directly to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. He was captured in Iraq, where he was helping al-Qaeda to put pressure on our troops." US officials, including then-CIA Director George Tenet, described Ghul as an al-Qaeda facilitator who delivered money and messages to top leaders. Those were the last references any US official made to him, except a brief reference in the 9/11 Commission report, which noted that Ghul was in "US custody." The CIA has never acknowledged holding Ghul. In late 2006, human rights groups were surprised when Ghul was not one of a group of 14 "high-value" detainees sent from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo (see September 2-3, 2006). Since then, Ghul has been considered a missing, or "ghost" detainee (see June 7, 2007). The May 30 memo notes that he was one of 28 CIA detainees who were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques." It says that he was subjected to the following interrogation methods: "facial hold," "facial slap," "stress positions," "sleep deprivation," "walling," and the "attention grasp." There is no mention in the unredacted portions of the memo as to when or where Ghul was in CIA custody, or where he is today. [ProPublica, 4/16/2009] Apparently, the CIA transferred Ghul to Pakistani custody in 2006 so he would not have to join other prisoners sent to the Guantantamo prison (see (Mid-2006)), and Pakistan released him in 2007, allowing him to rejoin al-Qaeda (see (Mid-2007)).
Entity Tags: Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ), Hassan Ghul, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Dafna Linzer, Central Intelligence Agency, Al-Qaeda, Obama administration, George J. Tenet, George W. Bush
Marcy Wheeler. [Source: Project Censored]Progressive blogger Marcy Wheeler, who posts under the moniker "emptywheel" at FireDogLake.com, finds that, upon careful perusal of the March 30, 2005 CIA torture memo just released by the Obama administration (see May 30, 2005 and April 16, 2009), two suspected terrorists, Abu Zubaida and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were waterboarded 266 times. Initial, more cursory news reports on the memo did not reveal this fact. The next day, the New York Times will cite Wheeler in its report on the discovery. [Marcy Wheeler, 4/18/2009; New York Times, 4/19/2009] Wheeler writes: "The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM. That doesn't sound very effective to me." [Marcy Wheeler, 4/18/2009] Days later, an unidentified "US official with knowledge of the interrogation program" will tell a Fox News reporter that the claim of 183 waterboardings for Mohammed is inaccurate and misleading. Mohammed was only waterboarded five times, the official will claim. The figure of 183 is the number of "pours" Mohammed was subjected to. "The water was poured 183 times—there were 183 pours," the official says, adding, "[E]ach pour was a matter of seconds." The report of five waterboardings for Mohammed comes from a 2007 Red Cross report, the official will say. [Fox News, 4/28/2009]
Entity Tags: Marcy Wheeler, Obama administration, FireDogLake (.com), Central Intelligence Agency, Abu Zubaida, New York Times, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Complete 911 Timeline
Congressional Quarterly reporter Jeff Stein publishes an article alleging that House Democrat Jane Harman (D-CA) was captured on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage charges against two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC—see October 2005). The offer was allegedly made in return for AIPAC's help in Harman's attempt to gain the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee (see Summer 2005). Stein's sources say the wiretap was approved by a federal court as part of an FBI investigation into illegal Israeli covert actions in Washington. Stein also reports on accusations that the FBI investigation into Harman's activities was halted by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in return for Harman's support for the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program (see Late 2005). In a statement, Harman says the allegations are false. "These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact," she says through a spokesman. "I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves." [Congressional Quarterly, 4/19/2009] Harman's chief of staff, John Hess, later tells reporters that Stein's story "recycles three-year-old discredited reporting of largely unsourced material to manufacture a 'scoop' out of widely known and unremarkable facts—that Congresswoman Jane Harman is and has long been a supporter of AIPAC, and that some members of AIPAC regarded her as well qualified to chair the House Intelligence Committee following the 2006 elections." Hess adds, "If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the Congressional intelligence committees." [Roll Call, 4/21/2009] Explanation of Harman's Failure to Ascend - According to Stein, "[s]uch accounts go a long way toward explaining not only why Harman was denied the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee (see December 2, 2006), but failed to land a top job at the CIA or Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration." [Congressional Quarterly, 4/19/2009] Bipartisan Corruption - Both Congressional Democrats and their Republican colleagues are remarkably silent on the charges, which, if true, would taint both a high-ranking Congressional Democrat and a former Republican attorney general. "The whole thing smells, and nobody's hands are clean," says an aide to a senior Democratic lawmaker. Conservative scholar Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute says, "I don't think anybody wants to touch it." Ornstein, who says he knows Harman "very well," calls the charges a "big embarrassment," but notes that he would be "very surprised" if the charges proved to be true. The political watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is calling for an investigation. CREW executive director Melanie Sloan says, "If Rep. Harman agreed to try to influence an ongoing criminal investigation in return for help securing a committee chairmanship, her conduct not only violates federal law and House rules, but also her oath to uphold the Constitution." [Roll Call, 4/21/2009]
Entity Tags: John Hess, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Central Intelligence Agency, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Alberto R. Gonzales, House Intelligence Committee, Jeff Stein, US Department of Homeland Security, Jane Harman, Norman Ornstein, National Security Agency, Melanie Sloan, Obama administration
The Obama administration sends mixed signals on whether or not to go forward with investigations and possible prosecutions of Bush administration officials who may have advocated or authorized the illegal torture of detainees in US custody, as detailed in two recent information releases (see April 16, 2009 and April 21, 2009). President Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, says the White House does not favor investigations or prosecutions. But three days later, Obama contradicts Emanuel, saying he favors a Congressional investigation, and if his Attorney General, Eric Holder, believes criminal prosecutions are warranted, he would not block them. "With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions," Obama says, "I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that." [Scotsman, 4/23/2009]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Obama administration
The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), holds a series of hearings about health care reform, on April 21, May 5, and May 12. In all, 41 experts testify, but none of them advocate the so-called "single-payer" form of health care, a system which essentially has the government providing health care insurance instead of private insurers—"Medicare for all Americans," as some characterize it. [Politico, 5/5/2009; Single Payer Action, 5/21/2009] The experts are from organizations like America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the health industry's largest lobbying firm, and health insurers Blue Cross and Aetna. Some of the invited organizations employ former Baucus staff members. [Rolling Stone, 9/3/2009] Baucus says that single-payer is "off the table," and will not be considered. [TPM Cafe, 5/5/2009] Health Industry Heavy Donors to Baucus - The nonpartisan organization Consumer Watchdog has reported that Baucus, one of the Senate's most important architects of Congressional health reform, has accepted more campaign contributions from the health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations than any other current Democratic member of the House or Senate. During the last two election cycles, he received $183,750 from health insurance companies and $229,020 from drug companies. [Single Payer Action, 5/21/2009] Protesters Disrupt Hearings - Protesters disrupt the hearings by standing up and shouting criticisms of the committee over its failure to bring single-payer into the discussion. Eight protesters are led out of the hearing room and later arrested. At one point, Baucus asks for more police officers to enforce security. The protests are organized by Healthcare Now, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Single Payer Action, all of whom support a single-payer, government-run health care system. One protester calls the hearings nothing more than "political theater." For his part, Baucus assures the audience, "I want you to know I care deeply about your views." [Politico, 5/5/2009] The eight protesters spend around seven hours in jail. One, Dr. Margaret Flowers, later recalls: "It's funny, the policemen were all telling us their horror stories about health care. One was telling us about his mother who was 62 and lost her job and was uninsured, waiting to get Medicare when she was 65." The protesters are sentenced to six months' probation. Baucus later admits that not allowing single-payer advocates to participate in the hearings was a mistake; he will eventually agree to meet with a group of those advocates (see June 3, 2009). Single-Payer Never Considered - In September, Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi will note that Baucus, like President Obama and other prominent Democrats, has supported single-payer insurance in theory, but asserts such a proposal would never get through Congress. Journalist Russell Mokhiber, who advocates for single-payer as a member of Single Payer Action, later says that the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats made an agreement with health industry leaders months before considering legislation for health care reform that single-payer would not be part of their proposals. In return, Mokhiber will say, they asked the industry not to oppose their reform efforts, a request that the industry has generally not honored. [Rolling Stone, 9/3/2009]
Entity Tags: Aetna, Healthcare Now, Consumer Watchdog, Barack Obama, America's Health Insurance Plans, Single Payer Action, Blue Cross, Russell Mokhiber, Margaret Flowers, Matt Taibbi, Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Obama administration, Physicians for a National Health Program
Timeline Tags: US Health Care, Domestic Propaganda
The Senate Armed Services Committee releases a report showing that CIA and Pentagon officials explored ways to "break" Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees in early 2002, eight months before the Justice Department issued its "golden shield" memo (see August 1, 2002) approving the use of waterboarding and nine other methods of interrogation that most legal observers believe amount to torture. The report, under Pentagon review since before its release, focuses solely on military interrogations, and not on interrogations carried out by CIA officers and contractors; it rejects claims by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials that Pentagon policies played no role in the torture of prisoners in US custody. Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) says the report shows a direct link between early Bush administration policy decisions and the torture and abuse of detainees. "Senior officials sought out information on, were aware of training in, and authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques," Levin says. "Those senior officials bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses. The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots. This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization" by Rumsfeld "to Guantanamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq." [Senate Armed Services Committee, 11/20/2008 ; New York Times, 4/21/2009; Agence France-Presse, 4/21/2009; Washington Post, 4/22/2009] Torture Policies Driven from Top - One of the report's findings is that top Bush administration officials, and not a "few bad apples" as many of that administration's officials have claimed, are responsible for the use of torture against detainees in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Levin says in a statement that the report proves that such claims "were simply false." He adds that the report is "a condemnation of both the Bush administration's interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse—such as that seen at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan—to low-ranking soldiers." [Senate Armed Services Committee, 11/20/2008 ; Washington Post, 4/22/2009] The report adds details to the material already released that showed Bush officials, particularly those in the Offices of the Vice President and Defense Secretary, pushed for harsher and more brutal interrogation techniques to be used during the run-up to war with Iraq, in hopes that results might prove the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda that administration officials had long touted (see December 11, 2008). Levin says: "I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link [between al-Qaeda and Iraq]. They made out links where they didn't exist." Senior Guantanamo interrogator David Becker confirmed that only "a couple of nebulous links" between al-Qaeda and Iraq were uncovered during interrogations of unidentified detainees. [McClatchy News, 4/21/2009] Ignored Warnings that Torture Techniques Worthless, Illegal - The report, released in classified form in December 2008 (see December 11, 2008), also documents multiple warnings from legal sources and trained interrogation experts that the techniques could backfire, producing false and erroneous intelligence, and might violate US and international law. One Army lieutenant colonel warned in 2002 that coercion "usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain," according to the Senate report. Another official, after being briefed on plans to use "extreme methods" on detainees, asked, "Wouldn't that be illegal?" [Senate Armed Services Committee, 11/20/2008 ; Agence France-Presse, 4/21/2009; Washington Post, 4/22/2009] Torture Methods Became Procedures at Detention Sites - Instead of being abandoned, the methods became the basis for harsh interrogations at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and other US detention facilities around the world, including the CIA's so-called "black sites." [Senate Armed Services Committee, 11/20/2008 ; Washington Post, 4/22/2009] White House Officials Ignorant of SERE Techniques - The report—261 pages long and with almost 1,800 footnotes—documents how techniques from a US military training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) were adapted for use against detainees. SERE trains US soldiers to resist harsh interrogation methods if captured by an enemy that does not observe the Geneva Conventions' ban on torture. The military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JRPA) reverse-engineered SERE methods to use against detainees (see December 2001). Other tactics, such as waterboarding, were culled from methods used by Chinese Communists against US soldiers captured during the Korean War (see July 2002). [Senate Armed Services Committee, 11/20/2008 ; Agence France-Presse, 4/21/2009; Washington Post, 4/22/2009] According to the report, Bush White House officials seemed unaware of the Chinese Communist origins of the SERE tactics, and were apparently unaware that veteran SERE trainers insisted that the methods were useless for getting reliable information from a prisoner. Moreover, the former military psychologist who recommended that the CIA adopt SERE techniques "had never conducted a real interrogation." One CIA official called the process "a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm." Bush administration officials also ignored concerns raised by military legal experts over the efficacy and legality of the techniques (see November 2002). Torture Policies Directly Responsible for Abu Ghraib Scandal - The Armed Service Committee concludes that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were a direct result of the Bush torture policies. It writes: "The abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own.… Rumsfeld's December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials (see December 2, 2002) conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in US custody." [Senate Armed Services Committee, 11/20/2008 ]
Entity Tags: Carl Levin, Central Intelligence Agency, Senate Armed Services Committee, Donald Rumsfeld, US Department of Defense, Geneva Conventions, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, Bush administration (43)
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) begins an investigation of the department's lawyers who signed off on the Bush administration's torture policies, in particular John Yoo (see Late September 2001 and January 9, 2002), Jay Bybee (see August 1, 2002 and August 1, 2002), and Steven Bradbury (see May 10, 2005, June 23, 2005 and July 2007). The OPR investigation will determine whether these lawyers shirked their professional responsibilities in deciding that particular torture techniques were, in fact, legal; if that conclusion is reached, then prosecutors could make the case that the lawyers knowingly broke the law. Today, the press learns that the OPR has obtained archived e-mail messages from the time when the memorandums were being drafted. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has urged President Obama "not to rule out prosecutions of those who implemented the program" until the OPR report, along with a long-awaited report by the Senate Intelligence Committee (see April 21, 2009), become available. Former Bush White House lawyer Bradford Berenson says he has seen a surge in "anxiety and anger" among his former colleagues, and says they should not be investigated. [New York Times, 4/22/2009] The Justice Department will refuse to bring sanctions against Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury (see February 2010).
Entity Tags: Office of Professional Responsibility, Bradford Berenson, Barack Obama, Bush administration (43), John C. Yoo, Russell D. Feingold, Senate Intelligence Committee, US Department of Justice, Steven Bradbury, Jay S. Bybee
Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pens a lengthy op-ed for the Huffington Post to coincide with his committee's release of a report documenting the abuse of prisoners under Bush administration policies (see April 21, 2009). Levin calls the report "a condemnation of both the Bush administration's interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse—such as that seen at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan—to low-ranking soldiers. Claims, such as that made by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, that detainee abuses could be chalked up to the unauthorized acts of a 'few bad apples,' were simply false. The truth is that, early on, it was senior civilian leaders who set the tone." Levin cites numerous statements and actions by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, among others, but the ultimate responsibility for the torture program, he writes, must lie with Bush and Cheney. Levin writes that many high-ranking officials who must be counted as supporters of the administration, such as Iraq commander General David Petraeus, opposed the use of torture and abusive interrogation methods on detainees. Levin concludes: "If we are to retain our status as a leader in the world, we must acknowledge and confront the abuse of detainees in our custody. The committee's report and investigation makes significant progress toward that goal. There is still the question, however, of whether high level officials who approved and authorized those policies should be held accountable." Levin has recommended that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special investigator "to look at the volumes of evidence relating to treatment of detainees, including evidence in the Senate Armed Services Committee's report, and to recommend what steps, if any, should be taken to establish accountability of high-level officials—including lawyers." [Huffington Post, 4/21/2009]
Entity Tags: David Petraeus, Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush administration (43), Carl Levin, George W. Bush, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Senate Armed Services Committee, Eric Holder, Paul Wolfowitz
Progressive reporter and pundit Spencer Ackerman, responding to former State Department official Philip Zelikow's revelation of his opposition to the Bush administration's torture policies (see April 21, 2009), calls Zelikow's Zelikow's article in which he explained why he opposed those policies "a delicate and thoughtful rejection of the Bush administration's architecture of torture." Ackerman then writes: "To ask an impolite question of Zelikow: why didn't he resign? I know, resignations of senior officials are few and far between. But it seems like this is one of those issues—the entrenchment of a widespread system of abusive interrogations that are, you acknowledge, most likely illegal—that merits walking out the door. I'm not trying to play the critic, especially after he's offered such a candid, honest view of his tenure. Nor do I mean to imply that resignation is an easy thing—particularly if you're trying to change the system from within. But it still seems like a question worth asking." [Washington Independent, 4/21/2009]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), Spencer Ackerman, Philip Zelikow
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow interviews former State Department official Philip Zelikow. [Source: Crooks and Liars (.com)]Former State Department adviser Philip Zelikow (see February 28, 2005) reveals that in June 2005, he wrote a secret memo challenging the Bush administration's legal reasoning behind its decision to authorize torture (see June 2005). Zelikow writes that until now he has never publicly discussed the memo, but with the recent release of four Office of Legal Counsel memos (see April 16, 2009), he feels he can now do so without fear of breaking the law. [Foreign Policy, 4/21/2009] The memos were ordered destroyed by someone in the White House. Zelikow later says that while he has no proof, his "supposition at the time" was that the office of Vice President Dick Cheney was behind the suppression. Cheney's office had no authority to request that his memo be suppressed or destroyed, Zelikow will say: "They didn't run the interagency process. Such a request would more likely have come from the White House counsel's office or from NSC [National Security Council] staff." Zelikow will say he never saw any written order pertaining to his memo being suppressed, but he knew of it: "It was conveyed to me, and I ignored it," he will say. Zelikow will call his memo "a more direct assault on [the Bush Justice Department's] own interpretation of American law." [Mother Jones, 5/6/2009] Discussing his memo with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Zelikow recalls that when he first read the memos, he was struck by how "deeply unsound" the legal reasoning in them was. "I wasn't sure that the president and his advisers understood just how potentially questionable and unreasonable many lawyers and judges would find this reasoning.… They [the memos' authors] were using an interpretation of how to comply with that standard that I didn't think any judges or lawyers outside of the administration would find plausible, and I wasn't sure other folks realized just how implausible it was." Maddow asks if Zelikow believes, as she does, that the White House wanted "to erase any evidence of the existence of a dissenting view within the administration because it would undercut the legal authority of the advice in those memos, the advice that those techniques would be legal"; Zelikow responds: "That is what I thought at the time. I had the same reaction you did. But I don't know why they wanted to do it." [MSNBC, 4/21/2009]
Entity Tags: National Security Council, Rachel Maddow, Bush administration (43), Office of the Vice President, Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ), Philip Zelikow
Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer says he has no problem with certain methods of torture documented in recently released Bush administration memos (see April 16, 2009). "I don't know what I think about waterboarding," Fleischer says. "I think waterboarding is pretty close to the line. But I'm not an expert in it, and I think, when it comes to that, you really can't go by what a layman has come to learn by reading newspapers.… [S]leep deprivation, I have no problem with. I think it's all is how it's conducted and to what extent things go (see April 21, 2009). [I]f you read those documents, it was conducted with medical people being present to make certain that it didn't enter the area where you go from a harsh technique—and I think it's appropriate to be harsh with people after September 11 who might be able to prevent the next attack." Even so, Fleischer says he is not a proponent of torture. Asked by interviewer Anderson Cooper, "If it works, do you think, then, it's justified?" Fleischer replies, "No, I don't." [CNN, 4/21/2009]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), Anderson Cooper, Ari Fleischer
Democratic Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and John Conyers (D-MI) say they intend to push for the impeachment of federal judge Jay Bybee in response to the report on torture issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee (see April 21, 2009). As the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under President Bush, Bybee signed off on two memos that justified the use of torture (see August 1, 2002 and August 1, 2002). Nadler says that the purpose of the Bybee memos was never to give an honest legal analysis, but to provide legal cover for patently illegal actions in order to encourage those actions. Nadler says the charge against Bybee would be something approaching "conspiracy to abet torture." Conyers, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says he intends to hold hearings to examine the role that Bybee and other Bush administration lawyers played in crafting Bush administration torture policies. "There are some who tried to do a get-out-of-jail-free card. Obviously, there are some that that's all they were thinking," he says, refusing to name anyone specifically. However, he says, "We're coming after these guys." [Huffington Post, 4/21/2009] Bybee will not be impeached, though he will be found to have exhibited "poor judgment" during his tenure in the Department of Justice (see February 2010).
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, Bush administration (43), Jay S. Bybee, Jerrold Nadler, John Conyers, Office of Legal Counsel (DOJ)
A newly declassified Senate Intelligence Committee chronology discloses that the small group of Bush-era Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing the torture of enemy detainees (see April 16, 2009 and April 9, 2008) did not operate on their own, but were authorized by top White House officials such as then-Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (see April 2002 and After). Other top officials, such as then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, were apparently left out of the decision-making process. Former committee chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV) says the task of declassifying interrogation and detention opinions "is not complete," and urges the prompt declassification of other Bush-era documents that, he says, will show how the Bush administration interpreted the laws governing torture and war crimes. The committee report began in the summer of 2008, at Rockefeller's behest, and was drafted by committee staffers with heavy input from Bush officials. The entire effort was coordinated through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. President Bush's National Security Council refused to declassify the report; President Obama's National Security Adviser, James Jones, signed off on its release and the committee clears it for release today. [Washington Post, 4/22/2009; McClatchy News, 4/22/2009] The Intelligence Committee report dovetails with a report issued by the Senate Armed Forces Committee that showed Defense Department officials debated torture methods months before the Justice Department authorized such methods (see April 21, 2009). The report also shows: The CIA thought al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida was withholding information about an imminent threat as early as April 2002 (see March 28-August 1, 2002), but did not receive authorization to torture him until three months later. Some Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed on the torture of Zubaida and 9/11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in 2002 and 2003. CIA Director George Tenet, in the spring of 2003, asked for a reaffirmation of the legality of torture methods (perhaps this memo—see June 1, 2003). Cheney, Rice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were among the participants at a meeting where it was decided that the torture policies would continue. Rumsfeld and Powell were not present. The CIA briefed Rumsfeld and Powell on interrogation techniques in September 2003. Administration officials had lasting concerns about the legality of waterboarding as they continued to justify its legitimacy. Reactions among other senators is divided, with John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) asking Obama not to prosecute Bush officials who authorized or gave advice concerning torture, and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) reiterating his support for an independent "truth commission" to investigate the interrogations. [McClatchy News, 4/22/2009; Senate Intelligence Committee, 4/22/2009 ] In 2008, Bush admitted approving of his administration's authorization of torture (see April 11, 2008).
Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, US Department of Justice, Colin Powell, Bush administration (43), Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, Abu Zubaida, Alberto R. Gonzales, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Patrick J. Leahy, Lindsey Graham, George W. Bush, James L. Jones, John Ashcroft, John D. Rockefeller, George J. Tenet, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Council, John McCain, Joseph Lieberman
Guantanamo detainee Rafiq al-Hami claims to have been tortured at several CIA-operated "black sites," or secret prisons, months before Justice Department memos (see August 1, 2002 and August 1, 2002) authorized the torture of prisoners in US custody. Al-Hami's lawyers file the lawsuit in a US District Court in Newark, New Jersey. "It's impossible to claim that people who perpetrated torture relied on memos that didn't exist," says al-Hami's lawyer Josh Denbeaux. "Rafiq was tortured before the memos authorizing torture were written." Denbeaux and his father, Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux, are lawyers for the plaintiff. Al-Hami, a Tunisian, says he was arrested in Iran in November 2001 and taken to Afghanistan. From there, he was transported to three CIA "black sites" where "his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers," and his name was not included on any publicly available list of detainees. The suit alleges, "He was told that no one knew where he was; that he would be secretly detained for 20 years, perhaps until his death, and no one would ever know." This would make al-Hami a so-called "ghost detainee." He says he was tortured beginning in December 2001. At various times, he says, he was stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in "stress positions," beaten with rifle butts, kicked, tormented with bright lights and music played at excruciating volumes, and exposed to extremes of temperature. Al-Hami also alleges that interrogators sprayed pepper spray on his hemorrhoids, causing intense pain. Al-Hami says the torture continued after he was transferred to Guantanamo in January 2003. He says he has no ties to any terrorist group, and was arrested by an Iranian seeking a bounty payment. The suit says that after intensive torture sessions, al-Hami "confessed" to training at an al-Qaeda camp for 10 days. Al-Hami's lawsuit seeks $10 million in damages and names as defendants former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Navy Rear Admiral Mark Buzby, the former commander of the detention center at Guantanamo, and approximately 20 others. Josh Denbeaux says the allegations in the lawsuit were pieced together from al-Hami's recollections, declassified documents, and information from human rights organizations. [Associated Press, 4/23/2009; New Jersey Star-Ledger, 4/23/2009] Civil rights activist Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, will write, "It's likely that all of al-Hami's claims are true." Worthington will note that the arrangement between the Iranian and US governments for al-Hami's transfer remains unexplained. In his book, Worthington will spell the name of the detainee as "Alhami," noting that the Defense Department spells the name "al-Hami" in its documents. [Future of Freedom Foundation, 4/27/2009]
Entity Tags: Jamaat-al-Tablighi, Andy Worthington, Al-Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld, Rafiq al-Hami, US Department of Justice, Mark H. Buzby, Josh Denbeaux, Robert M. Gates, Mark Denbeaux
Ali Soufan, an FBI supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005, writes an op-ed for the New York Times about his experiences as a US interrogator. Soufan, who was one of the initial interrogators of suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida (see Late March through Early June, 2002), says he has remained silent for seven years "about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding." Until now, he has spoken only in closed government hearings, "as these matters were classified." But now that the Justice Department has released several memos on interrogation (see April 16, 2009), he can publicly speak out about the memos. "I've kept my mouth shut about all this for seven years," Soufan says. "I was in the middle of this, and it's not true that these techniques were effective. We were able to get the information about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a couple of days. We didn't have to do any of this [torture]. We could have done this the right way." [New York Times, 4/22/2009; Newsweek, 4/25/2009] In early 2002, Soufan trained Guantanamo interrogators in the use of non-coercive interrogation techniques; a colleague recalls the military intelligence officials in the session being resistant to the ideas Soufan proposed (see Early 2002). [Newsweek, 4/25/2009] 'False Premises' Underpinning Use of Torture - Soufan says the memos are based on what he calls "false premises." One is the August 2002 memo granting retroactive authorization to use harsh interrogation methods on Zubaida on the grounds that previous methods had been ineffective (see August 1, 2002). Soufan asserts that his questioning of Zubaida had indeed been productive (contradicting earlier CIA claims—see December 10, 2007), and that he used "traditional interrogation methods" to elicit "important actionable intelligence" from the suspected operative. The harsh methods later used on Zubaida produced nothing that traditional methods could not have produced, Soufan says; moreover, those harsh techniques—torture—often "backfired" on the interrogators. Many of the methods used on detainees such as Zubaida remain classified, Soufan writes: "The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process." False Claims 'Proving' Usefulness of Torture - Some claim that Zubaida gave up information leading to the capture of suspected terrorists Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Jose Padilla. "This is false," Soufan writes. "The information that led to Mr. Shibh's capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don't add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May." Restoring the 'Chinese Wall' - Because of the use of torture by the CIA, the two agencies will once again be separated by what Soufan calls "the so-called Chinese wall between the CIA and FBI, similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks." Since the FBI refused to torture suspects in its custody, "our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An FBI colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him." Targeted Investigations - Soufan writes that any investigations into the use of torture by the CIA should not seek to punish the interrogators who carried out the government's policies. "That would be a mistake," he writes. "Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective, and harmful to our national security." Soufan goes farther, adding, "It's worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not CIA officers, who requested the use of these techniques." The CIA itself must not be targeted for retribution, Soufan writes, as "[t]he agency is essential to our national security." Instead, "[w]e must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated." [New York Times, 4/22/2009; Newsweek, 4/25/2009]
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Jose Padilla, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ali Soufan, Abu Zubaida, Ramzi bin al-Shibh
Rachel Maddow and Ron Suskind during their MSNBC interview. [Source: Huffington Post]MSNBC host Rachel Maddow interviews author Ron Suskind, who has written several books documenting the clandestine activities of the Bush administration. Maddow is most interested in the recent release of the Senate Armed Services Committee report documenting the use of torture against prisoners in US custody (see April 16, 2009 and April 21, 2009). Suskind notes that there were two separate but parallel tracks being followed in the administration, authorizing both the military and the CIA to torture prisoners. He believes the administration's underlying motive was to find, or create through false confessions, a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda that would justify the invasion of Iraq. Suskind tells Maddow: "What's fascinating here is that if you run the timelines side by side, you see for the first time… that the key thing being sent down by the policymakers, by the White House, is 'Find a link between Saddam [Hussein] and al-Qaeda, so that we can essentially link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks and then march into Iraq with the anger of 9/11 behind us.' That was the goal and was being passed down as the directive.… It's often called 'the requirement' inside the CIA, for both agents with their sources and interrogators with their captives: 'Here's what we're interested in, here's what we, the duly elected leaders want to hear about. Tell us what you can find.' What's fascinating, is in the Senate report, is finally, clear confirmation that that specific thing was driving many of the activities, and, mind you, the frustration inside of the White House… as frustration built inside of the White House that there was no link that was established, because the CIA told the White House from the very start that there is no Saddam to al-Qaeda link—'We checked it out, we did it every which way, sorry'—the White House simply wouldn't take no for an answer, and it went with another method: torture was the method. 'Get me a confession, I don't care how you do it.' And that bled all the way through the government, both on the CIA side and the Army side." Suskind notes that the "impetus was not to foil potential al-Qaeda attacks. The impetus here was largely political and diplomatic. The White House had a political/diplomatic problem. It wanted it solved in the run up to the war." [Huffington Post, 4/22/2009; MSNBC, 4/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), Al-Qaeda, Rachel Maddow, Saddam Hussein, Ron Suskind, Senate Armed Services Committee, Central Intelligence Agency
Two days after staunchly defending waterboarding as an interrogation tactic (see April 20, 2009), Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) now claims he has always "strongly opposed" waterboarding. Lieberman, joined by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), writes: "We have… strongly opposed the overly coercive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that these [recently released Justice Department] memos (see April 16, 2009) deemed legal. We do not believe, however, that legal analysis should be criminalized, as proposals to prosecute government lawyers suggest." [US Senate, 4/22/2009] The same day Lieberman defended the use of waterboarding, McCain, who has always opposed torture as an interrogation method, spoke out again against the practice (see April 20, 2009).
Entity Tags: Joseph Lieberman, John McCain, Lindsey Graham
Senator John Ensign (R-NV) calls the recently released Senate Armed Services Committee report on Bush-era torture policies (see April 21, 2009 and April 21, 2009) a "Democrat partisan" report. MSNBC's Chris Matthews asks Ensign if he is shocked that those torture practices were based on techniques used by Chinese Communists to elicit false confessions from American prisoners of war (see 1957). Ensign accuses Matthews of being "inflammatory." Matthews says he is not being inflammatory because he is reading directly from the report. At that point, Ensign says: "Chris, the reason I said it is because you didn't preface that with saying that was a Democrat report. That was a Democrat partisan report. And you have to understand where the people who were doing that report—where their ideology comes from." Matthews retorts: "Well, apparently, Senator John McCain [R-AZ] is part of what you call a 'Democrat report.' It's the full committee report.… [I]t's the Armed Services Committee report. It went through three months of review by the Defense Department, until its final release just yesterday. It seems to me this was vetted, sir. And you say this was some Democrat report." Ensign responds: "The Democrats are in control of all of the committees. This was a Democrat majority report. This was not with the participation of the minority where the minority signed it, 'Yes, we agree with these views.'" Before the interview, another MSNBC correspondent noted that both McCain and another Republican committee member, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), endorsed the report. And reporter Amanda Terkel, of the progressive news Web site Think Progress, reports that she spoke with a committee spokesman who confirmed that the full, unanimous committee released the report. When Matthews informs Ensign that McCain endorsed the report, Ensign says: "Well, I disagree with you. We had a discussion at lunch about this and many members of the [Senate Intelligence Committee and Armed Services Committee] completely disagreed with the report. That's why I said it was a Democrat partisan report." [Think Progress, 4/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Chris Matthews, Amanda Terkel, Senate Armed Services Committee, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, John Ensign
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, reacting to the recent revelations about Bush administration torture policies (see April 16, 2009 and April 21, 2009), writes: "Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link (see April 22, 2009). There's a word for this: it's evil." [New York Times, 4/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Paul Krugman, Bush administration (43)
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says that the Obama administration's decision to release a spate of Justice Department torture memos (see April 16, 2009) was a mistake, but now that these have been released, he says the CIA should release memos which he says prove torture works. "[I]n the aftermath of 9/11 with 3,000 dead Americans, 16 acres of downtown New York devastated, a big hole in the Pentagon," and anthrax attacks shortly thereafter, the US had to obtain "good first-rate intelligence" quickly to "prepare and defend against" future threats, Cheney tells Fox News host Sean Hannity. "That's what we did. And with the intelligence programs, terror surveillance programs, as well as the interrogation program, we set out to collect that type of surveillance." The upshot was, Cheney says, "It worked." Cheney objects to what he characterizes as selective declassification on the part of the Obama White House, saying: "One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos… but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort.… There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now." Cheney does not specify which, if any, unreleased memos might prove his contention that waterboarding and other torture methods produce accurate and reliable information. [BBC, 4/21/2009; Christian Science Monitor, 4/21/2009] Cheney is reiterating a call he made two days ago, again on Hannity's show (see April 20, 2009).
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, Central Intelligence Agency, Obama administration, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Sean Hannity
Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity displays his angry support for torture and waterboarding on his show, in response to the controversy over the recently released Senate report on torture (see April 21, 2009). Hannity says: "Barack Obama is so weakening our defenses in every regard, sucking up to all the world's dictators, that people are gonna die because of what Barack Obama is doing right now. People are going to die." When a guest objects that Americans may die because of the Bush administration's torture policies, and that American torture policies are "spawning terrorists," Hannity accuses her of "blam[ing] America" for terrorism, and begins shouting: "They [terrorists] are not Americans! They are at war with us!" He then raises a football over his head and says, "Imagine this is [9/11 plotter] Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's head." He slams it on the table and shouts: "Dunk it in water so we can save American lives! You bet!" [Media Matters, 4/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Sean Hannity, Barack Obama, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Fox News
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives, Domestic Propaganda
Fox News host Shepard Smith, clearly upset by the recent reports of torture (see April 16, 2009 and April 21, 2009), shouts his opposition to such practices during an interview with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. On the air, Smith declares: "We are America, we don't torture! And the moment that is not the case, I want off the train! This government is of, by, and for the people—that means it's mine. That means—I'm not saying what is torture, and what is not torture, but I'm saying, whatever it is, you don't do it for me! I want off the train when the government starts—I want off, next stop, now!" Smith is as impassioned during the commercial break. "They better not do it," he says. "If we are going to be Ronald Reagan's Shining City on the Hill, we don't get to torture. We don't do it." And on Fox's online broadcast The Strategy Show, Smith allows profanity to emphasize his objection. Slamming his hand on a table, he shouts: "We are America! I don't give a rat's _ss if it helps. We are America! We do not f_cking torture!!" [Huffington Post, 4/22/2009] In recent broadcasts, Fox contributors have either mocked the idea of torture (see April 17, 2009) or supported it outright (see April 20, 2009 and April 22, 2009).
Entity Tags: Shepard Smith, Judith Miller, Fox News
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