THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
2000:
June
- June: A US Justice Department booklet titled "Managing Weapons of Mass Destruction Incidents: An Executive Level Program for Sheriffs" is issued to law enforcement professionals participating in a training program for handling terrorist threats. The picture linked here, showing the North Tower of the World Trade Center in crosshairs, was the cover of the booklet. This is another contradiction of the story promulgated by the Bush administration that no one in the government could have foreseen a terrorist attack on the WTC. (The Memory Hole)
- June: Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris sends a list of over 700,000 Florida voters to county election supervisors that she says are ineligible to vote. The list is promulgated on an obscure 1868 law originally written to keep ex-slaves from voting. Harris claims she is merely enforcing the law that says felons and ex-felons cannot vote. The list, which is dramatically overrepresentative of African-American (and presumably Democratic) voters, contains at least 10,000 African-Americans who are legal voters, but because their names are on the list, will be denied the right to vote in November. Harris also ensures that poorer, primarily minority districts lack the up-to-date voting machines that can alert officials to potential mistakes that invalidate votes. She also oversees an effort in November that has police officers blocking access to primarily minority polling places with roadblocks, or in some cases, her office has these polling places moved just before the elections, in essence "hiding" them from voters. (Laura Flanders)
- June: The Supreme Court rules that a Massachusetts law restricting purchases from companies doing business with Myanmar (Burma) interferes with the federal government's ability to conduct foreign policy. (Massachusetts prohibits its government dealing with countries such as Myanmar, who have horrendous human rights issues.) The case is heavily influenced by a Halliburton-sponsored lobbying group, USA Engage, formed in 1997. Halliburton's CEO, Dick Cheney, and the organization's lobbyists argue that unilateral sanctions such as the Massachusetts law don't work, and only hurt American companies. While human rights activists scored successes in South Africa, USA Engage and other such groups manage to fight off restrictions on dealing with other countries such as Myanmar, Nigeria, Haiti, and Uzbekistan. In one case, Halliburton avoids sanctions for its construction of an environmentally damaging oil pipeline in Myanmar through villages that the Myanmar military had brutally "pacified" to make way for the project.
- Apparently, each member of USA Engage focused on a specific region or country about which to lobby. Cheney's focus was on Iran, where he has a history with industrial commerce. During the Ford administration, he and his mentor, Donald Rumsfeld, had proposed selling Iran technology that would have furthered that nation's nuclear program. Ford reluctantly signed off on the proposal, but it came apart during the Carter administraton after the overthrow of the Shah and the installation of the radical Islamist regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Now Cheney doesn't appreciate the Clinton-era restrictions prohibiting Halliburton and other US firms from doing business with Iran. Iran has 10% of the world's confirmed oil reserves, and the second largest reserve of natural gas. In 1995, Clinton signed an executive order barring businesses from having dealings with Iran; the prohibition was extended, over Cheney's objections, in 1996 with the passage of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA).
- In 1996, Cheney, through his friend, Republican senator Phil Gramm, pushed for a waiver so Halliburton could work in Iran even while the government was investigating Halliburton for illegally doing business with the Iranians. (Halliburton was found in 1997 to have violated the sanctions 15 times; it admitted its guilt, and settled the case for a paltry $15,000 fine.) Cheney's rationale, as delivered during a 1998 speech at the Cato Institute, is basically that since other countries' firms are profiting by doing business with Iran, the sanctions are only hurting American businesses and not having much impact on Iran
- Instead, Halliburton used a loophole in the law to continue doing business with Iran. US companies could use foreign subsidiaries to do business with countries like Iran as long as those subsidiaries were "completely independent" from their parent firms. In early 2000, while Cheney was still CEO, a Halliburton subsidiary registered in the Cayman Islands opened an office in Tehran. In 2001, the Treasury Department will begin investigating over $40 million of Halliburton projects in Iran. The investigation will go nowhere, largely because of administration interference. In 2004, CBS's 60 Minutes will reveal that the Cayman Islands office was (and is) nothing more than a letter drop with no employees whatsoever. The subsidiary's actual offices, in Dubai, share office space and staff with Halliburton. Months before, a federal grand jury subpoenas Halliburton for more information on its dealings with Iran. The investigation has yet to reach a conclusion (as of mid-2006), but considering Cheney's special interest in Iran dating back to his work with Halliburton and with USA Engage, it is highly unlikely he didn't know about Halliburton's work in that terrorist-sponsoring nation.
- Halliburton also had extensive dealings with the regime of Saddam Hussein. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Cheney will staunchly, and falsely, claim that Halliburton refused to do business with Iraq, even if such dealings could have been construed as legal. Cheney lies: under his tenure as Halliburton, the firm signed over $73 million in contracts with Iraq, much of it through the corrupt UN-sponsored Oil for Food program. After Cheney becomes vice president, his office will deny that Cheney the CEO knew anything about the Iraq ventures. (Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)
- June 4: Conservative commentator Ann Coulter insults swing voters in an interview on Fox News: "The swing voters -- I like to refer to them as the idiot voters because they don't have set philosophical principles. You're either a liberal or you're a conservative if you have an IQ above a toaster." (Intervention Magazine)
- June 6: Ann Coulter tells Capital Hill Blue, referring to conservative female political pundits, "Originally, I was the only female with long blonde hair. Now, they all have long blonde hair." (Huffington Post)
- June 7: Ann Coulter tells Geraldo Rivera, in a blunt repudiation of her support for Christian values, "Let's say I go out every night, I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I'm not married." (Washington Monthly)
- June 10: During a birthday party for Barbara Bush, George W. Bush, coming off his victory in the Republican presidential primaries over John McCain, takes Saudi diplomat Prince Bandar, a close Bush family friend, aside and says, "Bandar, I guess you're the best *sshole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing. ...Why should I care about North Korea?" Bandar says he is no expert on that part of the world, but "One reason should make you care about North Korea." Bush replies, "All right, smart aleck. Tell me." Bandar says, "The 38,000 American troops right on the border. If nothing else counts, this counts. One shot across the border and you lose half these people immediately. You lose 15,000 Americans in a chemical or biological or even nuclear attack. The United States of America is at war instantly." "Hmmmm," Bush replies. "I wish those *ssholes would put things just point-blank to me. I get half a book telling me about the history of North Korea." "Now I tell you another answer to that," Bandar continues. "You don't want to care about North Korea anymore?" Bush demurs on that point, and Bandar continues, "But if you don't, you withdraw those troops back. Then it becomes a local conflict. Then you have the whole time to decide, 'Should I get involved? Not involved?' Etc." At that moment, Colin Powell, the former chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the architect of the Gulf War, approaches the two, and Bush quickly redirects the conversation, never telling Powell about his discussion with Bandar. Apparently Bush prefers to take advice on foreign policy from a Saudi Arabian prince with deep connections to Saudi intelligence over that of America's most pre-eminent military leader. Instead, Bush tells Powell that he and Bandar were just "shooting the bull." (Bob Woodward)
- June 21: Dick Cheney, the head of the Bush campaign's search committee for a vice-president, chooses himself as Bush's running mate. Unfortunately, Cheney is a resident of Highland Park, Texas; the 12th Amendment states that both a presidential and vice-presidential candidate shall not be residents of the same state. Though Cheney has been a legal resident of Texas for eight years -- paying state taxes, registering his automobiles, and driving with a Texas driver's license -- Cheney flies to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he maintains a hunting cabin, and registers to vote -- three days later he officially joins the Bush ticket. "It was a transparent attempt to evade the Constitution," observes the University of Texas's David Prindle, a professor of government. Attorney Robert Dennis notes that Cheney obtained almost $350,000 worth of homestead exemptions for his home in Highland Park, and the only way to obtain such exemptions is for that domicile to be your principal place of residence. "If Cheney's candidacy did not violate the Twelfth Amendment," writes Mark Crispin Miller, "then he had certainly ripped off the taxpayers of Texas, and yet he was allowed to run and keep the money...." Judge Sidney Fitzwater of Texas's 12th District, a Reagan appointee, rules that Cheney is, indeed, a legal resident of Wyoming, "mainly on the grounds that Cheney said he did," writes Miller. As is usual with the media, it virtually fails to note the Constitutional end-run performed by Cheney, except to mock it as an attempt by Democrats to tar Cheney. A lawsuit challenging Cheney's residency eventually reaches the Supreme Court, who refuses to hear the case. (Mark Crispin Miller)
- June 30: Dick Cheney's wife Lynne snaps at ABC's Cokie Roberts when Roberts asks her about her openly lesbian daughter, Mary. Mary Cheney has said she came out to her parents while she was in junior high, and that her parents accepted her sexuality unconditionally (even as her father compiled a harshly anti-gay record in the House of Representatives). Mary used her homosexuality as a professional selling point -- in 1999, she told a reporter from the lesbian magazine Girlfriends that she went to work at Coors Brewing Company, owned by the radical rightist Coors family, "because I knew other lesbians who were very happy there." Yet when Roberts asks Lynne Cheney about her daughter, Cheney barks in feigned outrage, "Mary has never declared such a thing" as being gay. "And I'm surprised, Cokie, that you would want to bring that up."
- The effect of Lynne Cheney's outburst is to cow the media into avoiding the topic for the rest of the campaign -- a useful effect, because for the Cheneys to publicly embrace their daughter's homosexuality instead of trying to convert her risks offending the Bush campaign's conservative Christian base who are largely unaware of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation. (Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)
