Halliburton Could Get $1.5bn More Iraq Work
Reuters: Halliburton, under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, would receive an extra $1.5 billion as part of the Bush administration's additional war spending proposal for fiscal 2005, a senior US Army budget official said.
Halliburton, once led by Vice-President Dick Cheney, is the largest corporate contractor in Iraq and has drawn fire for its no-bid contracts there, with auditors charging its Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) unit overcharged for some work.
Los Angeles Times: Halliburton Co. received $9.4 million in bonuses for its work in Kuwait and Afghanistan, the Army said Thursday.
None of the bonuses were for work in Iraq, said Sylvia Youngman, an Army contracts specialist. Reviews of those orders will start next week, she said.
Halliburton's KBR unit, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, received its biggest bonuses, $4 million of a potential $5 million, for two projects in Bagram and Kandahar, Afghanistan...
The Army said this month that it wouldn't withhold 15% of future payments to Halliburton for its work in Iraq after a Pentagon inspector general, an Army auditor and the Defense Contract Audit Agency had recommended docking a portion of the company's payments...
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) alleged in August that Halliburton, which was headed for five years by Vice President Dick Cheney, was getting special treatment from the Pentagon.
Pete Yost, Associated Press: Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met privately with Republican pollsters twice in a 10-day span last spring as he embarked on more than a dozen trips to presidential battleground states.
Ridge's get-togethers with Republican strategists Frank Luntz and Bill McInturff during a period the secretary was saying his agency was playing no role in Bush's re-election campaign were revealed in daily appointment calendars obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.
"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Ridge told reporters during the election season.
Bob Fertik, www.democrats.com: George W. Bush, who is allegedly on a "charm offensive" across Europe, dropped the charm and was simply offensive at his NATO press conference when he once again relied on a hidden earpiece to feed him canned soundbite answers to reporters' questions.
As NASA scientist Robert Nelson proved last fall, George W. Bush relied on a wireless earpiece in all three of his debates with John Kerry during the 2004 campaign. While bloggers (including Democrats.com, IsBushWired.com, MysteryBulge, Cryptome, and BushBulge.com) have accumulated overwhelming evidence that Bush was wired, the mainstream media has consistently refused to report on any of this evidence.
Investigative reporter David Lindorff has written extensively on Bush's earpiece in Salon.com, MotherJones.com, and Counterpunch.org. On February 3, Lindorff broke new ground with an expose for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (fair.org) reporting that the NY Times had a solid story ready for publication a week before Election Day - but editors killed the story...
At today's NATO press conference, there was little chance for another "camera malfunction." Bush walked quickly in and out of the press conference, and all three cable networks relied on a single camera that was placed in front of Bush. Bush was also careful to stand square to the podium, never turning his shoulder to provide a revealing side shot.
But Bush's obvious reliance on his earpiece could be easily detected from the manner in which he delivered his answers.
There are several speaking tics that expose Bush when he is using his earpiece. First, he pauses between sentences for an extra beat, which buys him time to hear the answer he is being fed. Second, when a particular answer is different from his own train of thought, his gaze drops down as he concentrates extra hard on the voice within his ear. Third, he sometimes mumbles and speaks gibberish when his brain and tongue get out of synch. Finally his answers ramble on, going from one stray thought to another, as he "filibusters" to consume all available time.
Spiegel Online: During his trip to Germany on Wednesday, the main highlight of George W. Bush's trip was meant to be a "town hall"-style meeting with average Germans. But with the German government unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance, the White House has quietly put the event on ice...
Neither the White House nor the German Foreign Ministry has offered any official explanation, but Foreign Ministry sources say the town hall meeting has been nixed for scheduling reasons -- a typical development for a visit like this with many ideas but very little time. That, at least, is the diplomats' line. Behind the scenes, there appears to be another explanation: the White House got cold feet. Bush's strategists felt an uncontrolled encounter with the German public would be too unpredictable.
To avoid that messy scenario, the White House requested that rules similar to those applied during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit two weeks ago also be used in Mainz. Before meeting with students at Paris's Institute of Political Sciences, which preens the country's elite youth for future roles in government, Rice's staff insisted on screening and approving any questions to be asked by students. One question rejected was that of Benjamin Barnier, the 24-year-old son of France's foreign minister, who wanted to ask: "George Bush is not particularly well perceived in the world, particularly in the Middle East. Can you do something to change that?" Instead, the only question of Barnier's that got approval was the question of whether Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority might create a theocratic government based on the Iranian model?
The Germans, though, insisted that a free forum should be exactly that. Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany's Ambassador to the United States, explained to the New York Times last week: "We told them, don't get upset with us if they ask angry questions."
Ray McGovern, www.tompaine.com: The nomination of John Negroponte to the new post of director of National Intelligence (DNI) caps a remarkable parade of Bush administration senior nominees. Among the most recent:
Alberto Gonzales, confirmed as attorney general: the lawyer who advised the president he could ignore the US War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions on torture and create a “reasonable basis in law...which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”
Michael Chertoff, confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security: the lawyer who looked the other way when 762 innocent immigrants (mostly of Arab and South Asian descent) were swept up in a post-9/11 dragnet and held as “terrorism suspects” for several months. The dictates of PR trumped habeas corpus; the detentions fostered an image of quick progress in the “war on terrorism.”
John Negroponte: the congenial, consummate diplomat now welcomed back into the brotherhood. Presently our ambassador in Baghdad, Negroponte is best known to many of us as the ambassador to Honduras with the uncanny ability to ignore human rights abuses so as not to endanger congressional support for the attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of Nicaragua in the '80s. Negroponte’s job was to hold up the Central American end of the Reagan administration’s support for the Contra counterrevolutionaries, keeping Congress in the dark, as necessary...
The scene visualized by President Bush yesterday for his morning briefing routine, once Negroponte is confirmed, stands my hair on end...
From what President Bush said yesterday, John Negroponte, the man farthest removed from substantive intelligence analysis—not to mention the background and genesis of the briefing items chosen for a particular day—will be the president’s “primary briefer.” I am told that President Bush does not read the President’s Daily Brief, but rather has it read to him.
Who will do the reading? Who will attempt to answer the president’s questions? Will there be a senior analyst there in a supporting role? Will s/he have career protection, should it be necessary to correct Negroponte’s answers? Will Negroponte ask CIA Director Porter Goss to participate as well? Will the briefer feel constrained with very senior officials there? Will s/he be able to speak without fear of favor, drawing, for example, on what the real experts say regarding Iran’s nuclear capability and plans? These are important questions. A lot will depend on the answers.
Halliburton Could Get $1.5bn More Iraq Work
Reuters
Saturday 26 February 2005
Halliburton, under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, would receive an extra $1.5 billion as part of the Bush administration's additional war spending proposal for fiscal 2005, a senior US Army budget official said.
Halliburton, once led by Vice-President Dick Cheney, is the largest corporate contractor in Iraq and has drawn fire for its no-bid contracts there, with auditors charging its Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) unit overcharged for some work.
The Army's portion of a $81.9 billion supplemental spending package earmarked the extra funding for KBR under its LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Programme) contract to provide a wide range of services to US troops in Iraq, the official said. The contract covers food and laundry services, trash collection, mail delivery and other support services.
If approved by Congress, that would bring the total spending under KBR's LOGCAP contract to about $6 billion in fiscal year 2005, about the same amount spent a year earlier, said the offical.
He declined to estimate how much the Army would spend on the LOGCAP contract in fiscal 2006, but said the top US commander in Baghdad was putting a big emphasis on controlling costs by setting clear standards for the services provided.
Gen George Casey told a newspaper earlier this month that KBR had submitted budget estimates that exceeded the Army's proposed spending by $4 billion, adding, "someone has made assumptions that have driven the costs through the roof".
Overall, KBR has earned $7.2 billion under a massive 2001 logistics contract with the US military and could earn more than $10 billion under that deal. It has separate deals with the government for reconstruction work in Iraq.
The senior Army official said the proposed supplemental budget request included about $4 billion in spending to repair or upgrade weapons damaged or worn out by the war in Iraq.
In addition, the budget request included $570 million in funding for replacement of weapons lost in battle, including 13 AH-64 Apache helicopters built by Boeing and five UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters built by the Sikorsky Aircraft unit of United Technologies.
The budget request also included $3.3 billion for new Bradley fighting vehicles made by United Defence Industries, Abrams tanks made by General Dynamics and armored Humvees.
Army Gives Halliburton $9.4 Million in Bonuses
The Los Angeles Times
Friday 25 February 2005
Washington - Halliburton Co. received $9.4 million in bonuses for its work in Kuwait and Afghanistan, the Army said Thursday.
None of the bonuses were for work in Iraq, said Sylvia Youngman, an Army contracts specialist. Reviews of those orders will start next week, she said.
Halliburton's KBR unit, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, received its biggest bonuses, $4 million of a potential $5 million, for two projects in Bagram and Kandahar, Afghanistan.
Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill., said award fee boards rated KBR's performance as "excellent" to "very good" for more than a dozen "task orders" in Kuwait and Afghanistan.
The Army said this month that it wouldn't withhold 15% of future payments to Halliburton for its work in Iraq after a Pentagon inspector general, an Army auditor and the Defense Contract Audit Agency had recommended docking a portion of the company's payments.
Some government departments have launched investigations of Halliburton's work in Iraq, including an inquiry on whether it overcharged to supply fuel to Iraqi civilians. The company has said its prices were fair.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) alleged in August that Halliburton, which was headed for five years by Vice President Dick Cheney, was getting special treatment from the Pentagon.
KBR supplies, among other things, housing and daily meals for the 155,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Kuwait and 18,000 in Afghanistan. Halliburton also is helping to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure.
The awards are the first granted to Halliburton under a contract it won in 2001 to provide emergency combat logistics support worldwide for the Army. It has been paid $7.2 billion of the $10.5 billion obligated.
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022605A.shtml
Published on Thursday, February 17, 2005 by the Associated Press
Ridge, Pollsters Met During Bush Campaign
by Pete Yost
WASHINGTON - Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met privately with Republican pollsters twice in a 10-day span last spring as he embarked on more than a dozen trips to presidential battleground states.
Ridge's get-togethers with Republican strategists Frank Luntz and Bill McInturff during a period the secretary was saying his agency was playing no role in Bush's re-election campaign were revealed in daily appointment calendars obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.
"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Ridge told reporters during the election season.
His aides resisted releasing the calendars for over a year, finally providing them to the AP three days after Ridge left office this month.
Homeland Security officials said the meeting with Luntz at department headquarters was aimed at improving public communication of the department's message, particularly on TV. Ridge declined an interview with the AP about the calendars, referring questions to former aides.
"We did not discuss homeland security in a presidential campaign context," said Susan Neely, a former assistant homeland security secretary who attended the May 17 session with Luntz and Ridge. "We asked him his impression of how well we were explaining whatever the issues were of the day. There was no follow-up meeting."
Neely said the discussion took place after Ridge and Luntz ran into each other and the homeland security secretary expressed an interest in hearing Luntz's assessment.
McInturff, who has done the polling for all of Ridge's campaigns for Congress and Pennsylvania governor, said the two meet every few months to "shoot the breeze."
Homeland security officials said the May 26 conversation between Ridge and McInturff was personal and the secretary did not discuss any homeland security-related issues.
"When you've got Secret Service protection it's a heck of a lot easier for me to meet the secretary of a major agency at the agency than it is for him to come to Old Town and have lunch," McInturff said. Old Town is a neighborhood in Alexandria, Va., home of McInturff's company, Public Opinion Strategies.
"I have zero connection with anyone doing business with homeland security, zero connection with the Bush campaign," McInturff said.
Ridge's meetings with the pollsters occurred just before the first of 16 trips, from late May to late October, to 10 states important to the president's re-election campaign. During the same period, Ridge made 20 appearances in nine uncontested states.
Four days after the meeting with Luntz, Ridge went to Missouri for appearances in Kansas City and St. Louis. In the ensuing five months, he averaged one public appearance a month in his home state of Pennsylvania, traveled three times to Florida and made one trip each to West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona and Washington.
Luntz helped write the 1994 "Contract With America," the issues centerpiece in the GOP's takeover of the House a decade ago. Luntz said he recalls nothing about the 45-minute discussion with Ridge. He said he received no compensation for the meeting.
Under the Hatch Act, which restricts political activity of executive branch employees, costs associated with political activity by Cabinet members may not be paid with federal funds.
Luntz is one of "dozens, hundreds" of people the department talks to about how to better communicate the complicated issues of homeland security, Neely said.
Luntz's comments were "very reinforcing" that the way Ridge and his aides were communicating the department's message "was generally working, and to continue that," said Neely.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said any assertions that politics played a part in homeland security scheduling "are absolutely inaccurate and do not reflect reality."
Ridge also participated in a number of events last year with elected Democratic leaders.
"A vast majority" of the areas Ridge visited during his nearly two-year tenure were in urban centers and border or coastal states that tend to lean Democratic, Roehrkasse said.
When Ridge was running the department, he said the war on terrorism is "about as apolitical or bipartisan as you can get. There's no Republican or Democratic way to do it. We just have to do it right, regardless of our party affiliation."
At the time of Ridge's meetings with the pollsters, President Bush's re-election campaign was reeling from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the news media was speculating that Ridge might replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, or even Vice President Dick Cheney.
Neely said Ridge's future in government did not come up in the meeting with Luntz.
© 2005 The Associated Press
###
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0217-01.htm
Bush Was Wired for NATO Press Conference
by Bob Fertik on 02/22/2005 10:29am. - revised 02/26/2005 5:03am
George W. Bush, who is allegedly on a "charm offensive" across Europe, dropped the charm and was simply offensive at his NATO press conference when he once again relied on a hidden earpiece to feed him canned soundbite answers to reporters' questions.
As NASA scientist Robert Nelson proved last fall, George W. Bush relied on a wireless earpiece in all three of his debates with John Kerry during the 2004 campaign. While bloggers (including Democrats.com, IsBushWired.com, MysteryBulge, Cryptome, and BushBulge.com) have accumulated overwhelming evidence that Bush was wired, the mainstream media has consistently refused to report on any of this evidence.
Investigative reporter David Lindorff has written extensively on Bush's earpiece in Salon.com, MotherJones.com, and Counterpunch.org. On February 3, Lindorff broke new ground with an expose for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (fair.org) reporting that the NY Times had a solid story ready for publication a week before Election Day - but editors killed the story.
Times science writer William Broad, as well as reporters Andrew Revkin and John Schwartz, got to work on the story, according to Nelson, and produced a story that he says they assured him was scheduled to run the week of October 25. "It got pushed back because of the explosives story," he says, first to Wednesday, and then to Thursday, October 28. That would still have been five days ahead of Election Day...
But on October 28, the article was not in the paper. After learning from the reporters working on the story that their article had been killed the night before by senior editors, Nelson eventually sent his photographic evidence of presidential cheating to Salon magazine, which ran the photos as the magazine’s lead item on October 29. That same day, Nelson received the following email from the Times’ Schwartz:
Congratulations on getting the story into Salon. It’s already all over the Web in every blog I’ve seen this morning. I’m sorry to have been a source of disappointment and frustration to you, but I’m very happy to see your story getting out there.
Best wishes,
John
After the Times killed its story, the Washington Post quickly followed suit:
Nelson says that the same day he learned that his story had been killed at the Times, October 28, he received a phone call from Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, famous for his investigative reports on Watergate. "Woodward said he’d heard the Times had killed the story and asked me if I could send the photos to him," says Nelson.
The JPL scientist did so immediately, via email, noting that he had also been in touch with Salon magazine. He says Woodward then sent his photographs over to a photo analyst at the paper to check them for authenticity, which Nelson says was confirmed.
A day later, realizing time was getting short, Nelson called Woodward back. Recalls Nelson: "He told me, 'Look, I’m going to have to go through a lot of hoops to get this story published. You’re already talking to Salon. Why don’t you work with them?'" (Several emails to Woodward asking him about Nelson's account have gone unanswered.)
At that point Nelson, despairing of getting the pictures in a major publication, went with the online magazine Salon. This reporter subsequently asked Nelson to do a similar photo analysis of digital images of Bush’s back taken from the tapes of the second and third presidential debates. The resulting photos, which also clearly show the cueing device and magnetic loop harness under his jacket on both occasions, were posted, together with Nelson’s images from the first debate, on the news website of Mother Jones magazine (10/30/04).
The key evidence presented by Robert Nelson was his enhanced photos of the bulge in Bush's back, which was attached to a wire that ran along Bush's shoulder blade towards his wired ear. The photos which revealed Bush's bulge were partly an accident - Bush's debate lawyers had insisted on a rule preventing candidates from being photographed from behind. But when this rule leaked to the public, the networks decided to defy the rule. In addition, some key photos were taken while Bush lingered to shake hands on stage.
At today's NATO press conference, there was little chance for another "camera malfunction." Bush walked quickly in and out of the press conference, and all three cable networks relied on a single camera that was placed in front of Bush. Bush was also careful to stand square to the podium, never turning his shoulder to provide a revealing side shot.
But Bush's obvious reliance on his earpiece could be easily detected from the manner in which he delivered his answers.
There are several speaking tics that expose Bush when he is using his earpiece. First, he pauses between sentences for an extra beat, which buys him time to hear the answer he is being fed. Second, when a particular answer is different from his own train of thought, his gaze drops down as he concentrates extra hard on the voice within his ear. Third, he sometimes mumbles and speaks gibberish when his brain and tongue get out of synch. Finally his answers ramble on, going from one stray thought to another, as he "filibusters" to consume all available time.
These "delivery" issues have received less attention from bloggers than the photographic evidence. But they deserve far more attention now, because the White House is obviously determined to prevent cameras from revealing any more bulges.
Thanks to TIVO and video blogging, Bush's rare public appearances can now be shared over the Internet and put under close "linguistic" scrutiny. James Poling was shocked when he caught Bush in the act on 12/20/04:
This is very strange. What the hell is wrong with President Bush, and I don't mean in the "oh my God you lied and invaded a country way" I mean in, I think there's really something either mentally or physically wrong with him.
Watch this video! [Link to C-SPAN clip that no longer exists but archived here.] Go to 16:47 in the press conference and keep your eye on Bush. He is in the middle of speaking to the press and he suddenly drops his head and mumbles something and then immediately continues speaking. It is seriously one of the oddest things I've ever seen.
Can anyone tell what he says? What the hell was that?
Does he have tourettes? Is he talking into his tie? Did his shoe fall off? Seriously, I have never seen anything like this.
I challenge the blogosphere to look for similar telltale video moments - as well as knowledgable linguistic experts - to prove that Bush relies on his earpiece for nearly every public event.
http://blog.democrats.com/node/3519/print
Published on Thursday, February 24, 2005 by Spiegel Online
With a Hush and a Whisper, Bush Drops Town Hall Meeting with Germans
During his trip to Germany on Wednesday, the main highlight of George W. Bush's trip was meant to be a "town hall"-style meeting with average Germans. But with the German government unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance, the White House has quietly put the event on ice. Was Bush afraid the event might focus on prickly questions about Iraq and Iran rather than the rosy future he's been touting in Europe this week?
US President George W. Bush arrived in Frankfurt on Wednesday morning. He won't be meeting with the people here, but he will be meeting with a handpicked bunch of Germany's future business and political leaders. The much-touted American-style "town hall" meeting the White House has been planning with "normal Germans" of everyday walks of life will be missing during his visit to the Rhine River hamlet of Mainz this afternoon. A few weeks ago, the Bush administration had declared that the chat -- which could have brought together tradesmen, butchers, bank employees, students and all other types to discuss trans-Atlantic relations -- would be the cornerstone of President George W. Bush's brief trip to Germany.
State Department diplomats said the meeting would help the president get in touch with the people who he most needs to convince of his policies. Bush's invasion of Iraq and his diplomatic handling of the nuclear dispute with Iran has drawn widespread concern and criticism among the German public. And during a press conference two weeks ago, Bush said Washington is still terribly misunderstood in Europe. All the more reason, it would seem, for him to be pleased about talking to people here.
But on Wednesday, that town hall meeting will be nowhere on the agenda -- it's been cancelled. Neither the White House nor the German Foreign Ministry has offered any official explanation, but Foreign Ministry sources say the town hall meeting has been nixed for scheduling reasons -- a typical development for a visit like this with many ideas but very little time. That, at least, is the diplomats' line. Behind the scenes, there appears to be another explanation: the White House got cold feet. Bush's strategists felt an uncontrolled encounter with the German public would be too unpredictable.
To avoid that messy scenario, the White House requested that rules similar to those applied during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit two weeks ago also be used in Mainz. Before meeting with students at Paris's Institute of Political Sciences, which preens the country's elite youth for future roles in government, Rice's staff insisted on screening and approving any questions to be asked by students. One question rejected was that of Benjamin Barnier, the 24-year-old son of France's foreign minister, who wanted to ask: "George Bush is not particularly well perceived in the world, particularly in the Middle East. Can you do something to change that?" Instead, the only question of Barnier's that got approval was the question of whether Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority might create a theocratic government based on the Iranian model?
The Germans, though, insisted that a free forum should be exactly that. Wolfgang Ischinger, Germany's Ambassador to the United States, explained to the New York Times last week: "We told them, don't get upset with us if they ask angry questions."
In the end, the town hall meeting was never officially dropped from the agenda of the trip -- instead it was dealt with in polished diplomatic style -- both sides just stopped talking about it.
As an ersatz for the town hall meeting on Wednesday, Bush will now meet with a well-heeled group of so-called "young leaders." Close to 20 participants will participate in the exclusive round to be held in the opulent Mozart Hall of a former royal palace in Mainz, giving them the opportunity for a close encounter with the president. The chat is being held under the slogan: "A new chapter for trans-Atlantic relations." The aim of the meeting is to give these "young leaders" a totally different impression of George W. Bush. In order to guarantee an open exchange, the round has been closed to journalists -- ensuring that any embarrassments will be confined to a small group.
The guest list for the Wednesday afternoon gathering has been handpicked by several US organizations with offices in Germany. In recent days, the Aspen Institute and the German Marshall Fund have sent lists of possible guests to the German Foreign Ministry. The requirement was that all of the nominees had to be in their twenties or thirties and they must already have been in a leadership position at a young age. In other words: there won't be any butchers or handymen on the elite guest list, but rather young co-workers from blue chip companies like automaker DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Bank or the consultancy McKinsey. The fact that two American organizations are the ones managing the guest list suggests that the chat won't be overly critical of Bush.
One participant in the Bush round is 31-year-old Katrin Heuel of Berlin, an employee of the conservative Aspen Institute. Just a few days ago, she received an invitation from the Protocol Office of the German Foreign Ministry. She's a bit nervous about the encounter -- after all, Bush isn't someone she's likely to encounter in her daily life in Berlin. She says she hasn't heard anything about questions being scrutinized in advance or of any kind of script for the event. "I will ask very open questions about Iran, North Korea and Russia," she said, adding that she's excited to see how the president will react to the young people's questions.
Foreign Ministry sources said Berlin wasn't planning any briefing on the course of the chat prior to the event. And it's unknown whether the American staff will make any suggestions to the young leaders. Then again, the day's issue -- a new chapter for trans-Atlantic relations, seems to ensure that things won't get out of hand -- after all, this event is supposed to focus on the future and not dwell on prickly questions about the past.
With reporting by Matthias Gebauer in Berlin and Georg Mascolo in Washington.
© Spiegel Online 2005
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0224-08.htm
Hail, Hail The Gang's All Here
Ray McGovern
February 18, 2005
The appointment of John Negroponte to be director of National Intelligence is the latest evidence that President Bush is strengthening his cabinet's capacity to mislead Congress and trample civil liberties. Ray McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, examines the meaning of the Negroponte appointment and the dark trend it confirms.
Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He chaired National Intelligence Estimates in addition to preparing the president’s Daily Brief.
The nomination of John Negroponte to the new post of director of National Intelligence (DNI) caps a remarkable parade of Bush administration senior nominees. Among the most recent:
Alberto Gonzales, confirmed as attorney general: the lawyer who advised the president he could ignore the US War Crimes Act and the Geneva Conventions on torture and create a “reasonable basis in law...which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”
Michael Chertoff, confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security: the lawyer who looked the other way when 762 innocent immigrants (mostly of Arab and South Asian descent) were swept up in a post-9/11 dragnet and held as “terrorism suspects” for several months. The dictates of PR trumped habeas corpus; the detentions fostered an image of quick progress in the “war on terrorism.”
John Negroponte: the congenial, consummate diplomat now welcomed back into the brotherhood. Presently our ambassador in Baghdad, Negroponte is best known to many of us as the ambassador to Honduras with the uncanny ability to ignore human rights abuses so as not to endanger congressional support for the attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of Nicaragua in the '80s. Negroponte’s job was to hold up the Central American end of the Reagan administration’s support for the Contra counterrevolutionaries, keeping Congress in the dark, as necessary.
Introducing...Elliot’s Protégé
Stateside, Negroponte’s opposite number was Elliot Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, whose influence has recently grown by leaps and bounds in the George W. Bush administration. Convicted in October 1991 for lying to Congress about illegal support for the Contras, Abrams escaped prison when he was pardoned, along with former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger (also charged with lying to Congress), former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and three CIA operatives. Indeed, their pardons came cum laude , with President George H. W. Bush stressing that “the common denominator of their motivation...was patriotism.” Such “patriotism” has reached a new art form in his son’s administration, as a supine Congress no longer seems to care very much about being misled.
President George W. Bush completed Elliot Abrams’ rehabilitation in December 2002 by bringing him back to be his senior adviser for the Middle East, a position for which the self-described neoconservative would not have to be confirmed by Congress. Immediately, his influence with the president was strongly felt in the shaping and implementation of policy in the Middle East, especially on the Israel-Palestine issue and Iraq. Last month the president promoted him to deputy national security adviser, where he can be counted on to overshadow—and outmaneuver—his boss, the more mild-mannered Stephen Hadley.
It is a safe bet that Abrams had a lot to do with the selection of his close former associate to be director of National Intelligence, and there is little doubt that he passed Negroponte’s name around among neocon colleagues to secure their approval.
As mentioned above, like Abrams, Negroponte has a record of incomplete candor with Congress. Had he been frank about serious government-sponsored savagery in Honduras, the country would have forfeited U.S. aid—thwarting the Reagan administration’s use of Honduras to support the Contras. So Negroponte, too, has evidenced Abrams-style “patriotism.” Those in Congress who still care, beware.
Civil Liberties At Stake
The liberties that Gonzales, Chertoff and Negroponte have taken with human rights are warning signs enough. The increased power that will be Negroponte’s under the recent intelligence reform legislation makes the situation still more worrisome.
How many times have we heard the plaintive plea for better information sharing among the various intelligence agencies? It is important to understand that the culprit there is a failure of leadership, not a structural fault.
I served under nine CIA directors, four of them at close remove. And I watched the system work more often than malfunction. Under their second hat as director of Central Intelligence, those directors already had the necessary statutory authority to coordinate effectively the various intelligence agencies and ensure that they did not hoard information. All that was needed was a strong leader with integrity, courage, with no felt need to be a “team player,” and a president who would back him up when necessary. (Sadly, it has been 24 years since the intelligence community has had a director—and a president—fitting that bill.)
Lost in all the hand-wringing about lack of intelligence sharing is the fact that the CIA and the FBI have been kept separate and distinct entities for very good reason—first and foremost, to protect civil liberties. But now, under the intelligence reform legislation, the DNI will have under his aegis not only the entire CIA—whose operatives are skilled at breaking (foreign) law—but also a major part of the FBI, whose agents are carefully trained not to violate constitutional protections or otherwise go beyond the law. (That is why the FBI agents at Guantanamo judged it necessary to report the abuses they saw.)
This is one area that gives cause for serious concern lest, for example, the law enjoining CIA from any domestic investigative or police power be eroded. Those old enough to remember the Vietnam War and operation COINTELPRO have a real-life reminder of what can happen when lines of jurisdiction are blurred and “super-patriots” are given carte blanche to pursue citizen “dissidents”—particularly in time of war.
Aware of these dangers and eager to prevent the creation of the president’s own Gestapo, both the 9/11 Commission and Congress proposed creation of an oversight board to safeguard civil liberties. Nice idea. But by the time the legislation passed last December, the powers and independence of the “Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board” had been so watered down as to be a laughingstock. For example, the Board’s access to information from government agencies requires the approval of the DNI and the attorney general, who can withhold information from the Board for a variety of reasons—among them the familiar “national security interests.” In addition, the Board lacks subpoena power over third parties. Clearly, if the Board does not have unfettered access to information on sensitive law enforcement or intelligence gathering initiatives, the role of the Board (primarily oversight and guidance) becomes window dressing. In short, the Board has been made lame before it could take its first step.
“What the hell do we care; what the hell do we care” is the familiar second line of “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.” Suffice it to say that, with Chertoff, Abrams and now Negroponte back in town, those concerned to protect civil liberties here at home and to advance them abroad need to care a whole lot.
Corruption, Politicization of Intelligence
Gen. William Odom, one of the most highly respected and senior intelligence professionals, now retired, put a useful perspective on last summer’s politically driven rush into wholesale intelligence reform. In a Washington Post op-ed on Aug. 1, he was typically direct in saying, “No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents.” I believe he would be the first to agree that the adjectives “careerist and sycophantic” should be added to “incompetence,” for incompetence often is simply the handmaiden of those noxious traits. And the failure of the 9/11 Commission and the Congress to insist that real people be held accountable is a major part of the problem.
Intelligence reform in a highly charged political atmosphere gathers a momentum of its own, and the reform bill Congress passed late last year is largely charade. The “reforms” do not get to the heart of the problem. What is lacking is not a streamlined organizational chart, but integrity. Character counts. Those who sit atop the intelligence community need to have the courage to tell it like it is—even if that means telling the president his neocon tailors have sold him the kind of suit that makes him a naked mockery (as with the fashion designed by Ahmed Chalabi).
Is John Negroponte up to that? Standing in the oval office with Gonzales and Chertoff, will Negroponte succumb to being the “team player” he has been...or will he summon the independence to speak to the president without fear or favor—the way we used to at CIA?
It is, of course, too early to tell. Suffice it to say at this point that there is little in his recent government service to suggest he will buck the will of his superiors, even when he knows they are wrong—or even when he is aware that their course skirts the constitutional prerogatives of the duly elected representatives of the American people in Congress. Will he tell the president the truth, even when the truth makes it clear that administration policy is failing—as in Iraq? Reports that, as ambassador in Baghdad, Negroponte tried to block cables from the CIA Chief of Station conveying a less rosy picture of the situation there reinforces the impression that he will choose to blend in with the white-collar, white, White House indigenous.
The supreme irony is that President Bush seems blissfully unaware that the politicization that Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and he have fostered in the intelligence community has lost them an invaluable resource for the orderly making of foreign policy. It pains me to see how many senior careerists at CIA and elsewhere have made a career (literally) of telling the White House what they think it wants to hear.
If that proves just fine with the new DNI and he contents himself with redrawing wire diagrams, the security of our country is in greater danger. If, on the other hand, Negroponte wants to ensure that he and his troops speak truth to power–despite the inevitable pressure to fall in line with existing policy—he has his work cut out for him. At CIA, at least, he will have to cashier many careerists at upper management levels and find folks with integrity and courage to move into senior positions. And he will have to prove to them that he is serious. The institutionalization of politicization over the last two dozen years has so traumatized the troops that the burden of proof will lie with Negroponte.
The President’s Daily Brief
The scene visualized by President Bush yesterday for his morning briefing routine, once Negroponte is confirmed, stands my hair on end. I did such morning briefings for the vice president, the secretaries of State and Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Assistant from 1981 to 1985—each of them one-on-one. Our small team of briefers was comprised of senior analysts who had been around long enough to earn respect and trust. We had the full confidence of the CIA director; when he was in town we would brief him just before lunch, hours after we had made the rounds downtown.
When I learned a few years ago that former director George Tenet was going down to the oval office with the briefer, I asked myself, “What is that all about?” The last thing we wanted or needed was the director breathing down our necks. And didn’t he have other things to do?
We were there to tell it like it is—and, in those days, at least, we had career protection for doing so. And so we did. If, for example, one of those senior officials asked if there was good evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we knew that the serious, honest analysts thought not, we would say “No sir.”
But you ask, “Even if the director has said it was a ‘slam dunk?’” Yes. Even after the director had said it was a slam dunk! But bear in mind that in those days the task was not so heroic. We did not have the director standing behind us to “help.”
From what President Bush said yesterday, John Negroponte, the man farthest removed from substantive intelligence analysis—not to mention the background and genesis of the briefing items chosen for a particular day—will be the president’s “primary briefer.” I am told that President Bush does not read the President’s Daily Brief, but rather has it read to him.
Who will do the reading? Who will attempt to answer the president’s questions? Will there be a senior analyst there in a supporting role? Will s/he have career protection, should it be necessary to correct Negroponte’s answers? Will Negroponte ask CIA Director Porter Goss to participate as well? Will the briefer feel constrained with very senior officials there? Will s/he be able to speak without fear of favor, drawing, for example, on what the real experts say regarding Iran’s nuclear capability and plans? These are important questions. A lot will depend on the answers.
We had a good thing going in the '80s. Ask those we briefed and whose trust we gained. It is hard to see that frittered away. Worst of all, the president appears oblivious to the difference. I wish he would talk to his earthly father. He knows.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/hail_hail_the_gangs_all_here.php