April 2004: Week Three: Page Two: This Far and No Further

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April 17: Arab TV station al-Jazeera broadcasts a video of a US soldier being held hostage by Iraqi militants. The soldier identifies himself as Keith Matthew Maupin; he is apparently one of several soldiers captured in a recent attack on a US convoy. (Guardian)

Bob Woodward shows that the Bush administration was planning to invade Iraq as far back as November 2001, saying Cheney in particular was obsessed with Hussein

April 17: A new book by Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, confirms that the Bush administration had a secret plan to invade Iraq from at least November 2001. Woodward, who depends largely on Secretary of State Colin Powell for his information, says that Powell believed Vice President Dick Cheney developed an "unhealthy fixation" on trying to find a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Bush administration denies the book's portrayal of Cheney. Acording to Woodward, Bush told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Nov. 21, 2001, less than two months after US forces attacked Afghanistan, to prepare for possible war with Iraq, and kept some members of his closest circle in the dark. Bush told Woodward he feared that if news had gotten out about the Iraq plan as America was fighting another conflict, that would cause "enormous international angst and domestic speculation." Bush told Woodward, "I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq. It was such a high-stakes moment and...it would look like that I was anxious to go to war. And I'm not anxious to go to war." Bush now says "I can't remember dates that far back" but emphasizes "it was Afghanistan that was on my mind and I didn't really start focusing on Iraq till later on." The White House later confirms the discussion with Rumsfeld but said it did not mean Bush was set on a course of attacking Iraq at that point. Bush and his aides have denied they were preoccupied with Iraq at the cost of paying attention to the al-Qaeda terrorist threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. Woodward's account indicates some members of the administration, particularly Cheney, were focused on Iraq and Saddam Hussein from the outset of Bush's presidency and even after the terrorist attacks made the destruction of al-Qaeda the top priority.
Woodward portrays Cheney and Powell as barely on speaking terms -- the vice president being the chief advocate for a war that the secretary of state was not sure needed to be fought. He recounts the vice president and a defense official making remarks to others about Powell bragging about his popularity, and Powell saying Cheney was preoccupied with an Iraq-al-Qaeda link. "Powell thought Cheney had the fever," Woodward writes. "He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. ...Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation." Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, Lewis "scooter" Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a separate government. The vice president, for his part, believed Powell was mainly concerned with his own popularity and told friends at a dinner he hosted a year ago celebrating the outcome of the war that Powell was a problem and "always had major reservations about what we were trying to do." The book also reveals that Bush delegated Cheney to review intelligence on Iraq in preparation for a possible war even before he officially took office. Before Bush's inauguration, Cheney sent word to departing Defense Secretary William Cohen that he wanted the traditional briefing given an incoming president to be a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." Bush specifically assigned Cheney to focus as vice president on intelligence scenarios, particularly the possibility that terrorists would obtain nuclear or biological weapons.
Early discussions among the administration's national security "principals" -- Cheney, Powell, Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- and their deputies focused on how to weaken Hussein diplomatically. But Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz proposed sending in the military to seize Iraq's southern oil fields and establish the area as a foothold from which opposition groups could overthrow Hussein. Powell dismissed the plan as "lunacy," according to Woodward, and told Bush what he thought. "You don't have to be bullied into this," Powell said. Bush told Woodward he never saw a formal plan for a quick strike. "The idea may have floated around as an interesting nugget to chew on," he said. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, according to Woodward, compared Bush to a circus rider with one foot on a "diplomacy" steed and the other on a "war" steed, both heading toward the same destination: regime change in Iraq. When it was clear that diplomacy would not get him to his goal, Card said, Bush let go of that horse and rode the one called war. But as the planning proceeded, the administration began taking steps that Woodward describes as helping to make war inevitable. On February 16, 2002, Bush signed an intelligence finding that directed the CIA to help the military overthrow Hussein and conduct operations within Iraq. At the time, according to Woodward, the CIA had only four informants in Iraq and told Bush that it would be impossible to overthrow Hussein through a coup. In July, a CIA team entered northern Iraq and began to lay the groundwork for covert action, eventually recruiting an extensive network of 87 Iraqi informants code-named "ROCKSTARS" who gave the US detailed, and often wrong, information on Iraqi forces, including a CD-ROM containing the personnel files of the Iraq Special Security Organization. Woodward writes that the CIA essentially became an advocate for war first by asserting that covert action would be ineffective, and later by saying that its new network of spies would be endangered if the United States did not attack Iraq.
The ROCKSTARS are Iraqi Sufi mystics directed to aid the CIA by their leader, who is paid $1 million a month by the agency. See the Fall 2002 item for more details.
Another factor in the gathering momentum were the forces the military began shifting to Kuwait, the pre-positioning that was a key component of Franks's planning. In the summer of 2002, Bush approved $700 million worth of "preparatory tasks" in the Persian Gulf region such as upgrading airfields, bases, fuel pipelines and munitions storage depots to accommodate a massive US troop deployment. The Bush administration funded the projects from a supplemental appropriations bill for the war in Afghanistan and old appropriations, keeping Congress unaware of the reprogramming of money and the eventual cost. During that summer, Powell and Cheney engaged in some of their sharpest debates. Powell argued that the United States should take its case to the United Nations, which Cheney said was a waste of time. Woodward had described some of that conflict in his previous book, Bush at War. Among Powell's allies was Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush's father, who wrote an op-ed piece against the war for the Wall Street Journal. After it was published in August 2002, Powell thanked Scowcroft for giving him "some running room." But Rice called Scowcroft to tell her former boss that it looked as if he was speaking for Bush's father and that the article was a slap at the incumbent president. Despite Powell's admonitions to the president, Woodward suggests it was Blair who may have played a more critical role in persuading Bush to seek a resolution from the United Nations. At a meeting with the president at Camp David in early September, Blair backed Bush on Iraq but said he needed to show he had tried UN diplomacy. Bush agreed, and later referred to the Camp David session with Blair as "the cojones meeting.,"
After the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the resumption of weapons inspections in Iraq, Bush became increasingly impatient with their effectiveness and the role of chief weapons inspector Hans Blix. Shortly after New Year's 2003, he told Rice at his Texas ranch: "We're not winning. Time is not on our side here. Probably going to have to, we're going to have to go to war." Bush said much the same thing to White House political adviser Karl Rove, who had gone to Crawford to brief him on plans for his reelection campaign. In the next 10 days, Bush also made his decision known to Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar, who helped arrange Saudi cooperation with the US military, feared Saudi interests would be damaged if Bush did not follow through on attacking Hussein, and became another advocate for war. According to Woodward, Bush asked Rice and his longtime communications adviser, Karen Hughes, whether he should attack Iraq, but he did not specifically ask Powell or Rumsfeld. "I could tell what they thought," Bush said. "I didn't need to ask their opinion about Saddam Hussein or how to deal with Saddam Hussein. If you were sitting where I sit, you could be pretty clear." Rumsfeld, whom Woodward interviewed for three hours, is portrayed in the book as a "defense technocrat" intimately involved with details of the war planning but not focused on the need to attack Iraq in the same way that Cheney and some of Rumsfeld's subordinates such as Wolfowitz and Feith were. Bush told Powell of his decision in a brief meeting in the White House. Evidently concerned about Powell's reaction, he said, "Are you with me on this? I think I have to do this. I want you with me." "I'll do the best I can," Powell answered. "Yes, sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President." Bush said he did not remember asking the question of his father, former president George H.W. Bush, who fought Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But, he added that the two had discussed developments in Iraq. "You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to," Bush said. Describing what the 41st president said to him about Iraq, the 43rd president told Woodward: "It was less 'Here's how you have to take care of the guy [Hussein]' and more 'I've been through what you've been through and I know what's happening and therefore I love you' would be a more accurate way to describe it."
On the war's origins, the book describes Bush pulling Rumsfeld into a cubbyhole office adjacent to the Situation Room for that November 2001 meeting and asking him what shape the Iraq war plan was in. When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush ordered a fresh one. The book says Bush told Rumsfeld to keep quiet about their planning and when the defense secretary asked to bring CIA Director George Tenet into it at some point, the president said not to do so yet. Even Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was apparently not fully briefed. Woodward said Bush told her that morning he was having Rumsfeld work on Iraq but did not give details. The book says General Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict. Woodward says the scope and intensity of the war plan grew even as administration officials were saying publicly that they were pursuing a diplomatic solution. The book describes a CIA briefing for Bush, led by deputy director John McLaughlin, on December 21, 2002 presenting evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Bush was not sure the public would find the information compelling, Woodward said, but when he turned to Tenet, the CIA chief assured him: "It's a slam-dunk case." That case fell apart after US forces occupied Iraq and failed to find the stockpiles the administration said had been there; Tenet later told associates he should have said the evidence on weapons was not ironclad, according to Woodward. Even though he had serious reservations about the decision for war, Powell agreed to make the Bush administration's case for war before the UN in his now-infamous February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council, a presentation described by White House communications director Dan Bartlett as "the Powell buy-in." Bush wanted someone with Powell's credibility to present the evidence that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, a case the president had initially found less than convincing when presented to him in the December CIA briefing. Bush told Woodward he was cooperating on his book because he wanted the story of how the United States had gone to war in Iraq to be told. He said it would be a blueprint of historical significance that "will enable other leaders, if they feel like they have to go to war, to spare innocent citizens and their lives. ...But the news of this, in my judgment," Bush added, "the big news out of this isn't how George W. makes decisions. To me the big news is America has changed how you fight and win war, and therefore makes it easier to keep the peace in the long run. And that's the historical significance of this book, as far as I'm concerned." (AP/Lexington Herald-Leader, Washington Post)
April 17: The US Army War College releases a study that blasts the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq invasion and occupation. The study says that the administration tried to win in Iraq "on the cheap" with a flawed strategy that failed to put enough troops on the ground to defeat insurgents and build democracy. The Pentagon's war plan, approved by President Bush, brushed aside the reservations of top generals and "low-balled" the number of US troops "that might have to be put in harm's way to get the job done, and how long they might have to remain deployed," says the study. The "desire to win the war quickly and on the cheap" eventually backfired and the "successful accomplishment of the administration's goal of building a democratic government in Iraq is, thus, still in question," the study says. In the paper titled "The American Way of War," Lieutenant Colonel Antulio Echevarria, director of national security affairs at the War College, writes that senior officers called for a "larger force" in Iraq but Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed their arguments as "old think." The War College, the Army's premier academic institution, issued disclaimers on the report, saying the opinions did not necessarily represent the Army, the Pentagon or the government. But the studies have gained a wide audience among military professionals who have complained of having their suggestions overridden by Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon civilians; it is also significant that the War College chooses to release the report under its own imprimateur. Echevarria charges that the Pentagon war planners focused on destroying the old regime in Iraq while neglecting what form of government would replace it. The planners "placed more emphasis on destroying enemy forces than on securing population centers and critical infrastructure and maintaining order," Echevarria writes. (New York Daily News)
April 17: Continuing his advocacy of an international solution to the Iraq situation, John Kerry calls for a new mission authorized by the United Nations to help rebuild Iraq, with a NATO security force under US command keeping order. Kerry says Bush has failed to lay out a strategy for winning the peace in Iraq and says US troops in Iraq "are paying the price for a flawed policy." "The president may not want to admit mistakes, but his choices in Iraq have so far produced a tragedy of errors," Kerry says. "staying the course does not mean stubbornly holding to the wrong course." Kerry touts a four-step plan for peace in Iraq that includes more US troops combined with a UN mission to help rebuild Iraq and restore a democratic government. He also calls for a NATO security force under an American commander to transform the military force in Iraq. "Removing that 'Made In America' label can send a message to Iraqi military and police that it's time to do their jobs -- not because America is telling them to, but because the world stands ready to help them secure a stable Iraq," Kerry says. The day after Bush's press conference, in which the president refused to admit any mistakes and defended his Iraq policies, Kerry said there was a better way to bring peace to the country by involving the United Nations. "The failure of the administration to internationalize the conflict has lost us time, momentum and credibility -- and made America less safe," he said. "Our stubborn unilateral policy in Iraq has steadily drifted from tragedy to tragedy. Our troops deserve better." Kerry said Bush needed to level with the American people about the prospects for peace in Iraq, but said withdrawal of US troops before the unrest was quieted was not an option. "It would be unthinkable now for us to retreat in disarray and leave behind a society deep in strife and dominated by radicals," said Kerry. "To succeed in Iraq, we must be tough enough to stick to our principles in the face of setbacks. But we must also be smart enough to fight the enemy with all the tools and all the help we can find." (Boston Globe)
April 17: Tony Blair rejected Bush's offer to keep British troops out of Iraq, according to Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack. Woodward says Bush made the offer because he was concerned the backlash against Blair might be so strong that it could lead to his fall from power. Bush delayed the start of the war from January 2003 until March 19 because of Blair's shaky support among the British people and because Blair wanted a second UN resolution, but Blair refused the offer to stay out: "I said I'm with you. I mean it," he told Bush. Woodward's revelation about Blair is expected to increase the already-furious British populace's call for Blair to explain his actions towards Iraq. (Guardian, Washington Post)
April 17: During a visit by Tony Blair to Washington, George W. Bush and Blair agree on a proposal to create a UN-appointed caretaker government that would assume power in Iraq on June 30. However, they disagree on a new Middle East initiative by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that was endorsed Wednesday by Bush. Blair said he welcomed Sharon's move to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, but does not endorse two promises by Bush that have infuriated Arab leaders: that Israel, as part of any peace settlement, will not have to accept the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel and will not have to abandon all settlements in the occupied territories. According to British accounts, Blair had unsuccessfully pleaded with Bush not to embrace the Sharon plan, and Bush's endorsement of it is being portrayed as a major setback for Blair. Bush, in a question-and-answer session with Blair, dismisses a warning from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Bush's action would provoke more violence. "I think this is a fantastic opportunity," Bush says. "The fact that Ariel Sharon said we're going to withdraw from territory is an historic moment." Bush says "we're not going to prejudge the final-status discussions," although Arab leaders said his vow to Sharon that under any peace agreement Israel need not accept refugees or return to its pre-1967 borders does precisely that. Mubarak, who met with Bush at the president's Texas ranch on April 12, says he is "shocked" by Bush's action and says that Bush's move was politically motivated by the presidential election and predicted "much more violence" as a result of it.
Bush and Blair welcomed a UN proposal, announced this week, for a transfer of sovereignty in Iraq to a caretaker government on June 30. Echoing earlier statements by Iraq administrator Paul Bremer and Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush hails the plan without committing to any particulars. "This week we've seen the outlines of a new Iraqi government that will take the keys of sovereignty," Bush says. "We welcome the proposals presented by the UN Special Envoy [Lakhdar] Brahimi. He's identified a way forward to establishing an interim government that is broadly acceptable to the Iraqi people." Brahimi, who recently completed an 11-day visit to Iraq, has recommended forming a caretaker government that would include a prime minister, a cabinet, a president and two vice presidents. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage departed yesterday for Iraq, where he will help to negotiate the transition. The UN plan, done at the Bush administration's urging, calls for dissolving the US-created Iraqi Governing Council and replacing it with a UN-appointed government until elections can be held. Bush said yesterday the composition of the interim government "is going to be decided by Mr. Brahimi." And Blair, who has long pushed Bush to seek more active cooperation with the United Nations than the president has desired, vowed that "the UN will have a central role, as now, in developing the program and machinery for political transition to full Iraqi democracy." At a news briefing after the two leaders spoke, White House press secretary Scott McClellan declines to describe the United Nations' role as "central," saying the UN role is "vital" but "the Iraqi people will have the central role going forward" after June 30.
Though Bush and Blair were in accord on how to proceed with Iraq, there was some disagreement over Bush's embrace of the Sharon plan for the Middle East. According to British press accounts, Blair pleaded with Bush to take a more "evenhanded" approach on the issue but was spurned by Bush. Former British foreign secretary Robin Cook, who resigned to protest the Iraq war, writes that Bush "could not have delivered a worse snub to Tony Blair on the eve of their meeting." Cook charges that Bush had killed the "road map" to Middle East peace that both countries have sponsored. Blair said yesterday that "we welcome the Israeli proposal to disengage from the Gaza and parts of the West Bank." He did not mention Bush's statements about territory and refugees, however. "I see this not in any shape or form as pushing the road map to the side; on the contrary, I see it as a way back into the road map," Blair says. Bush, who has vowed that he still supports the road map, said that despite Sharon's plan, "all final-status issues must still be negotiated between the parties." State Department spokesman Richard Boucher acknowledged yesterday that with Wednesday's declaration the United States has taken positions on some issues "that we had not taken as the US government before, although the ideas had been out there in the previous negotiations." He added: "Obviously, that has an influence on the future of negotiations. But it doesn't determine the outcome. The outcome is determined by the parties."
A senior administration official, briefing reporters after the Bush-Sharon news conference on April 14, asserted that US policy on the settlements has not changed. Bush, he said, simply acknowledged the reality that Israel would not be expected to completely vacate the West Bank, where more than 200,000 settlers have taken up residence since the 1967 war. "There's nothing in this paper, in what the president said or his letter, that changes our policy on settlements," the official said. In announcing his support for the plan, Bush, countering decades of U.S. policy that viewed Israeli settlements as an obstacle to peace, said he opposed giving Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel. (Washington Post/Charleston Post & Courier)
April 17: Portugal is considering withdrawing its National Guard troops from Iraq if the situation worsens. Interior Minister Antonio Figueiredo Lopes says, "If the conflict were to deteriorate and the GNR [national guard] did not have what it required to carry out its mission, the only solution would be to withdraw." Currently 128 Portuguese are in Iraq, operating under British control. A recent poll shows that 71% of the Portuguese people want the guardsmen to come home. (Agence France-Presse/Channel News Asia)
April 17: Without fanfare, US authorities have fired Khidar Hamza from his well-paid job as the senior advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Appointed by the CPA, Hamza, who claims to have headed Saddam Hussein's nuclear program during the 1980s and 90s, had partial control of Iraq's nuclear and military industries. Hamza's testimony before Congress persuaded many lawmakers that Hussein did in fact have an extensive arsenal of WMDs, and that only a military overthrow could make the world safe from Hussein's arsenal. Hamza's testimony has been widely discredited, as has his self-described position under Hussein. In reality, Hamza was a minor figure in Hussein's science ministry, and once he had defected to the US, began inflating his own importance and making up information to tell his American benefactors. His job with the CPA did not go well; he often failed to show up for work, and often obstructed the efforts of others. The US is currently in the process of evicting him from his house within Baghdad's "Green Zone." The Independent writes: "Dr Hamza's own account of his career was that, after being educated in the US, he had been working at Florida State University in 1969 when he was approached by an Iraqi agent. He was told that unless he returned to Iraq his family would be in danger. He came back and was compelled to work for 20 years for Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission on developing an atomic bomb. Deeply opposed to the project, he defected to the US embassy in Hungary in 1994 and swiftly became a persuasive expert witness, testifying as an Iraqi insider on how Saddam was developing a terrifying arsenal. In the lead-up to the war he proclaimed: 'Saddam has a whole range of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical.' It was as if Dr Hamza had studied the agenda of the hawks in the US, who wanted to invade Iraq, and was willing to supply evidence supporting their arguments. Several other Iraqi defectors during the 1990s also produced information which they said proved Saddam was secretly producing WMD, but Dr Hamza was the most convincing because he was able to clothe his evidence in appropriate scientific jargon. He wrote a book, Saddam's Bomb Maker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda. One employer in the US decided that his account of his past simply did not stand up to examination but the US government stuck by him and made him a consultant to the US Department of Energy. Dr Hamza also hinted that Saddam had secret links to al-Qarda and might give them anthrax. Back in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, Dr Hamza's position as a senior advisor was very influential. The US-appointed advisors share control over ministries with Iraqi ministers. The ministry was, among other things, in charge of monitoring and securing the remains of Iraq's nuclear industry." (Independent/CommonDreams)
April 17: John Kerry blasts the Bush administration's handling of the situation in Iraq, saying Bush's failure to "internationalize" the conflict has made America less safe and cost it credibility and momentum. "Our stubborn, unilateral policy in Iraq has steadily drifted -- from tragedy to tragedy," he says in the Democrats' weekly radio address. Kerry calls for a new approach that would put greater reliance on other nations, but concedes "it won't be easy to get our friends and allies to send in new troops." He says that while the United States should not retreat from Iraq in disarray, "staying the course does not mean stubbornly holding to the wrong course. In order to complete our mission, we must review our tactics." Kerry calls for creating an international mission authorized by the United Nations to help set up elections, restore government services and rebuild the economy. "The failure of the administration to internationalize the conflict has lost us time, momentum and credibility -- and made America less safe," Kerry says. Bush has lately been hoping to put a more international face on the U.S.- and British-dominated coalition. On April 16, he welcomed a proposal from UN Iraq envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on transferring sovereignty and called Brahimi's outline "a way forward to establishing an interim government that is broadly acceptable to the Iraqi people." Earlier this week, Bush said he would like to get a new UN resolution "that will help other nations to decide to participate" in Iraq. (AP/WJLA-TV)
April 17: Bush's chief political advisor Karl Rove says he now regrets the use of the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner during the May 1, 2003 photo op for Bush aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. "I wish the banner was not up there," Rove tells an editorial board meeting with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. "I'll acknowledge the fact that it has become one of those convenient symbols." Rove continues to insist that the banner was put up to celebrate the completed mission of the Lincoln and not as an assertion that the war in Iraq was over, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Last October, Bush said the White House had nothing to do with the banner; a spokesman later clarified that the ship's crew asked for the sign and the White House staff had it made by a private vendor. It has never been revealed who paid for the sign. (AP/NewsMax)
April 17: The National Foreign Trade Council, an American business group whose board includes Halliburton and GE, opposes Democratic senator Frank Lautenberg's proposed legislation to expand Congressional anti-terror sanctions to foreign subsidiaries of US companies. Lautenberg wants to change a law that allows US companies such Halliburton, General Electric and Conoco-Phillips to do business through foreign subsidiaries in countries subject to US sanctions such as Iran. "If we are serious about our sanctions laws, then we need to shut down this loophole," Lautenberg says. "When US companies devise schemes to thwart sanctions laws and do business with terrorists, they are funding terrorist activities." Dan O'Flaherty, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, says the amendment would create legal problems similar to those that followed former President Ronald Reagan's June 1982 decision to ban US companies and their European subsidiaries from participating in a Siberian pipeline project. "This is alarming to the business community for a variety of reasons. It will generate lawsuits, WTO (World Trade Organisation) cases, as well as create frictions with our major trading partners at the political level," he says. European countries responded by forbidding European subsidiaries of US companies from following Reagan's orders. "The companies were caught in the middle between a US law that mandated one action and a local law that mandated another," O'Flaherty says. Reagan lifted the restrictions in November 1982 to avoid adverse court rulings and to ease relations with major trading partners. Beginning with sanctions on Libya in 1986, the United States has repeatedly limited investment and trade prohibitions to US-based companies and not their foreign subsidiaries. Most of these subsidiaries are based in European countries, which do not ban trade with Iran and other countries the United States accuses of sponsoring terrorism, trade council officials say. Lautenberg plans to attach his amendment to a Senate bill aimed at resolving an existing trade dispute with the European Union by repealing a set of corporate tax breaks that the WTO says are illegal export subsidies. (South Africa Independent [cached Google copy])
April 17: Of all of his decorations, John Kerry's first Purple Heart has come under the most fire from Republican opponents, probably because it is the only one that cannot be fully documented. Kerry tells the story of how he earned the medal, laying to rest rumors that he earned the medal without really being injured. On December 2, 1968, Kerry was on a special nighttime covert mission, leading a crew on a "Boston Whaler" into a Viet Cong-infested peninsula north of Cam Ranh Bay to disrupt a smuggling operation. At approximately 2 AM, they proceeded up an inlet. Kerry's group surprised a group of Viet Cong smugglers trafficking in contraband. "We opened fire," Kerry recalled in a January 30, 2003, interview. "The light from the flares started to fade, the air was full of explosions. My M-16 jammed, and as I bent down to grab another gun, a stinging piece of heat socked into my arm and just seemed to burn like hell. By this time one of the sailors had started the engine and we ran by the beach strafing it. Then it was quiet." Kerry and crewmates blew up the smugglers' beached sampans and then headed back to Cam Ranh Bay. "I never saw where the piece of shrapnel had come from, and the vision of the men running like gazelles haunted me," Kerry continued. "It seemed stupid. My gunner didn't know where the people were when he first started firing. The M-16 bullets had kicked up the sand way to the right of them as he sprayed the beach, slowly walking the line of fire over to where the men had been leaping for cover. I had been shouting directions and trying to un-jam my gun. The third crewman was locked in a personal struggle with the engine, trying to start it. I just shook my head and said, 'Jesus Christ.' It made me wonder if a year of training was worth anything." Kerry, never trying to inflate the incident, called it a "half-ass action." Nevertheless, the escapade introduced Kerry to the V.C. and earned him his first Purple Heart.
Any US soldier wounded in wartime service is eligible for a Purple Heart, after being approved by their CO for the medal. Giving out Purple Hearts increased in 1968 as the US Navy started sending swift boats up rivers in the Mekong Delta. Sailors were suffering increasing numbers of injuries. Vice Admiral Elmo Zumwalt himself would pin the medal on John Kerry at An Thoi about six weeks after the doctor at the Cam Ranh base took the shrapnel out of the young officer's right arm. "He called me in New York to tell me he had been wounded," recalls Kerry's then girlfriend and later wife, Julia Thorne. "I was worried sick, scared to death that John or one of my brothers was going to die. He reassured me that he was OK." Kerry's CO, Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibbard, has been quoted disparaging Kerry's wound as superficial. Hibbard was not on the Boston Whaler when the firefight erupted. The New York Post quotes Hibbard, a registered Republican, as saying Kerry's injury "didn't look like much of a wound to me."
Reporter Douglas Brinkley writes, "In the wake of the controversial Bush National Guard story, reporters today, anxious to break a headline, are combing through Kerry's Vietnam past. The name of the game is to find a conservative ex-Vietnam hand to say something negative about Kerry. It's an automatic newsmaker, guaranteed to get picked up by Newsmax.com, the Weekly Standard, Rush Limbaugh, the New York Post and other conservative outlets. At issue is an attempt to downgrade Kerry's Vietnam War heroism. The major anti-Kerry Vietnam War Internet complaint, it seems, echoes Hibbard: that his minor wounds weren't big enough to warrant Purple Hearts. Unfortunately neither the Boston Globe nor New York Post takes the time to explain to readers that Purple Hearts are not given out to soldiers/sailors for the size of the wound. Only by the grace of God did the hot shrapnel that pierced Kerry's arm not enter his heart or brain or eye. ... So to set the record straight: Kerry deserved his first Purple Heart -- period. To say otherwise is to distort the reality of the medal. Unfortunately, the Boston Globe and New York Post stories omit fully reporting the bylaws. They present Hibbard at face value, downplaying the fact that he is a Republican criticizing a fellow veteran hoping to cause him public embarrassment. According to the Globe, Hibbard -- in classic blowhard fashion -- said Kerry 'had a little scratch on his forearm, and he was holding a piece of shrapnel.' Adding further verbal insult, Hibbard apparently claimed: 'I've had thorns from a rose that were worse.' The straight-faced Globe reporter, in fact, claims that Hibbard told him that Kerry's wound resembled a 'scrape from a fingernail.' Not included in either newspaper account, however, is Kerry's medical report from the incident. He shared it with me last year when I was writing Tour of Duty. It reads: '3 DEC 1968 U.S. NAVAL SUPPORT FACILITY CAM RANH BAY RVN FPO Shrapnel in left arm above elbow. Shrapnel removed and appl. Bacitracin. Ret. to duty.' Is shrapnel removed from an arm really like a 'scrape from a fingernail?' Or a thorn prick? The answer, of course, as any sensible person can surmise, is no."
The Post alleges that Kerry received the medal because of his supposed ties to the "Kennedy machine" in Massachusetts, and goes on to allege that Kennedy speechwriter Adam Walinsky wrote Kerry's famous 1971 antiwar Washington speech. The allegations are nonsense. Kerry had no connections to Kennedy in 1971, and Walinsky has always denied having anything to do with Kerry's speech. Kerry wrote the speech himself; he has the drafts and rewrites to prove it, and in fact delivered a version of it months beforehand. Brinkley concludes, "Call me naive, or too pro-veteran, but it seems to me we should be thanking every Purple Heart recipient for their duty to country, not demanding of them explanations for why their wounds weren't bigger or fatal. Ridicule Kerry on his liberal Senate record, or so-called aloofism, or even his outspoken Vietnam Veterans Against the War protests, but leave his old battle scars alone." (Salon)
April 17: Florida representative Jennifer Carroll, a Republican, tells a joke at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Miami Beach about Hillary Clinton. Carroll says Clinton was visited by the ghosts of Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. The punchline has Clinton asking each president what she could do to help the country, and Lincoln telling Clinton to go to a theater. Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theater in Washington. Democrats around Florida immediately criticize Carroll for making such an offensive remark, but Carroll refuses to apologize, instead defending the remark. ""You infer what you want to infer, but I never said assassinate, or kill or maim," Carroll later tells the press. Even conservative talk show host Bill O'Reilly criticizes Carroll, though more for not coming onto his show and explaining herself. A spokesman for Carroll says that the joke had no malicious intent. Carroll has refused all other contacts. (Florida Times--Union)

Rice warns of terror attacks before election, but refuses to give details

April 18: Condoleezza Rice is warning of possible terrorist attacks before the November election, though she refuses to divulge any details of any information she or the administration may have. She says the opportunity for terrorists to influence the US election in a similar fashion to what she and other conservatives believe happened in Spain would "be too good to pass up for them." (The inference that Islamic terrorists favor John Kerry is not lost on the listener; Rice, naturally, is speaking on Fox News Sunday.) "I think that we do have to take very seriously the thought that the terrorists might have learned, we hope, the wrong lesson from Spain," Rice says. "I think we also have to take seriously that they might try during the cycle leading up to the election to do something. ...We are actively looking at that possibility, actively trying to see -- to make certain that we are responding appropriately," she continues. Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, who lost the election when he insisted that a terrorist attack in Madrid was performed by Basque separatists and not Islamic extremists, echoes Rice's warnings, saying that he has warned Bush that he believes terrorists will try to affect the US election as they did in Spain. Aznar was one of Bush's few allies in Europe; his successor, Jose Zapatero, is withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq. (AP/Neil Rogers)
April 18: US-trained Iraqi soldiers are angry about being thrown into combat against their countrymen and say they are outgunned by insurgents in the Fallujah area. "Eighty percent of us want to leave and go to Baghdad" because they don't want to fight civilians in Fallujah, says Amar Hussein, a medic in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. The 36th ICDC Battalion was supposed to be the elite of the US-trained Iraqi security forces, with members drawn from the militias run by various members of the Governing Council in order to fight insurgents who have been attacking US forces and their Iraqi allies for months. Now it finds itself involved in the bloody battle of Fallujah, where Marine forces have been fighting insurgents in the city and many civilians have been killed. Mosques have been targeted by both sides, buildings in residential areas destroyed, soccer fields turned into makeshift graveyards. The Fallujah siege has become a rallying point for anti-US sentiment among Iraqis, and their countrymen in the 36th Battalion are feeling conflicted. "I feel there are very few terrorists in Fallujah, but because of the way the Americans are treating the civilians, we are creating more and more terrorists every day," says Shi'ite Firaz Munshed, an ICDC soldier. "If they did this in Sadr City, I would fight the Americans too," he says, referring to the mostly Shi'ite neighborhood of Baghdad where US forces have been trying to put down the militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al Sadr. The unprecedented fighting across Iraq this month has highlighted deep problems in the Iraqi forces that the Americans want eventually to take the front line against insurgents after the handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30. In the south, police and some ICDC are abandoning their stations instead of battling Shi'ite militiamen, some out of fear, some out of mixed loyalties. A battalion of the US-trained Iraqi army recently refused outright to fight in Fallujah. The force came under fire as it left the capital and turned around, saying it did not sign up to fight fellow Iraqis. The ICDC forces stationed in Fallujah before the fighting have abandoned their posts, and US commanders acknowledge that some may be joining the insurgents. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said yesterday that the 36th Battalion, made up of 240 members helping enforce the Marine cordon on the south side of the city, have been "acquitting themselves admirably." But asked about the army unit, he suggested that there could be repercussions for their refusal to fight. "Are we disappointed with performance of some of those units? Yes," he says. "re we going to take action in the future? Yes." (AP/Miami Herald)

Bush campaign collaborating with Saudi Arabia to artificially lower gas prices before election (read down)

April 18: Bob Woodward gives an extensive interview to CBS's 60 Minutes about the stories behind his book, Plan of Attack. Woodward, author of a previous book, Bush at War, an almost-fawning coverage of Bush's response to the 9/11 attacks, is much more objective in his approach to the administration in this book. His book is based on interviews with 75 members of the Bush administration, including most notably Secretary of State Powell and Bush himself. Woodward allowed CBS to listen to tapes he recorded of his most important interviews, to read the transcripts, and to verify that the quotes he uses are based on recollections from participants in the key meetings. Woodward says that many of the quotes came directly from the president: "When I interviewed him for the first time several months ago up in the residence of the White House, he just kind of out of the blue said, 'It's the story of the 21st Century,' his decision to undertake this war and start a preemptive attack on another country." Woodward reports that just five days after Sept. 11, President Bush indicated to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that while he had to do Afghanistan first, he was also determined to do something about Saddam Hussein. "There's some pressure to go after Saddam Hussein. Don Rumsfeld has said, 'This is an opportunity to take out Saddam Hussein, perhaps. We should consider it.' And the president says to Condi Rice meeting head to head, 'We won't do Iraq now.' But it is a question we're gonna have to return to,'" says Woodward. "And there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 21, 2001. This is 72 days after 9/11. This is part of this secret history. President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"
Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told General Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Hussein, and that Rumsfeld gave Franks almost unlimited leeway. "Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible," says Woodward. "Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ...Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this." Woodward says there was a lot happening that only key Bush people knew about. "A year before the war started, three things are going on. Franks is secretly developing this war plan that he's briefing the president in detail on," says Woodward. "Franks simultaneously is publicly denying that he's ever been asked to do any plan." For example, here's Franks' response to a question about invading Iraq, in May 2002, after he's been working on war plans for five months: "That's a great question and one for which I don't have an answer, because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that." But according to Woodward, the general had been perfecting his war plan, and Vice President Dick Cheney knew all about it.
Woodward reports that Cheney was the driving force in the White House to get Saddam Hussein. Cheney had been Secretary of Defense during the first Gulf War, and to him, Hussein was unfinished business and a threat to the United States. Woodward describes Cheney as a "powerful, steamrolling force obsessed with Saddam and taking him out." "Colin Powell, the secretary of state, saw this in Cheney to such an extent, he, Powell, told colleagues that 'Cheney has a fever. It is an absolute fever. It's almost as if nothing else exists,'" says Woodward, who adds that Cheney had plenty of opportunities to convince the president. "He's just down the hall in the West Wing from the president. President says, 'I meet with him all the time.' Cheney's back in the corner or sitting on the couch at nearly all of these meetings." The president had hoped Hussein could be removed in some way short of war. But early in 2002, Woodward reports, the CIA concluded they could not overthrow him. That word came from the CIA's head of Iraq operations, a man known simply as "saul. "saul gets together a briefing and who does he give it to first? Dick Cheney. He said, 'I can count the number of sources, human sources, spies we have in Iraq on one hand,'" says Woodward. "I asked the president, 'What was your reaction that the CIA couldn't overthrow Saddam? And the president said one word. 'Darn.'" Cheney led the way on declaring that Saddam Hussein definitely had weapons of mass destruction. Before that, the president had said only that Saddam "desires them." But ten days later, the vice president said Saddam already had weapons of mass destruction. And 12 days after that, Bush was on board: "A lot of people understand he holds weapons of mass destruction," Bush told the media.
Three months later, on Dec. 21, 2002, Woodward says CIA Director George Tenet brought his deputy, John McLaughlin, to the oval office to show the president and the vice president their best evidence that Iraq really had weapons of mass destruction. "McLaughlin has access to all the satellite photos, and he goes in and he has flip charts in the oval office. The president listens to all of this and McLaughlin's done. And, and the president kind of, as he's inclined to do, says 'Nice try, but that isn't gonna sell Joe Public. That isn't gonna convince Joe Public,'" says Woodward. In his book, Woodward writes: "The presentation was a flop. The photos were not gripping. The intercepts were less than compelling. And then George Bush turns to George Tenet and says, 'This is the best we've got?'" Says Woodward: "George Tenet's sitting on the couch, stands up, and says, 'Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case.' And the president challenges him again and Tenet says, 'The case, it's a slam dunk.' ...I asked the president about this and he said it was very important to have the CIA director -– 'Slam-dunk is as I interpreted is a sure thing, guaranteed. No possibility it won't go through the hoop.' Others present, Cheney, very impressed." Woodward says Tenet's assertion was wrong: "It's a mistake," he says. "Now the significance of that mistake -- that was the key rationale for war." It was just two weeks later when the president decided to go to war. "That decision was first conveyed to Condi Rice in early January 2003 when he said, 'We're gonna have to go. It's war.' He was frustrated with the weapons inspections. He had promised the United Nations and the world and the country that either the UN would disarm Saddam or he, George Bush, would do it and do it alone if necessary," says Woodward. "so he told Condi Rice. He told Rumsfeld. He knew Cheney wanted to do this. And they realized they haven't told Colin Powell, the Secretary of State. So Condi Rice said, 'You better call Colin in and tell him.' So, I think probably one of the most interesting meetings in this whole story. He calls Colin Powell in alone, sitting in those two famous chairs in the Oval Office and the president said, 'Looks like war. I'm gonna have to do this.' And then Powell says to him, somewhat in a chilly way, 'Are you aware of the consequences?' Because he'd been pounding for months on the president, on everyone -- and Powell directly says, 'You know, you're gonna be owning this place.' And the president says, 'I understand that.' The president knows that Powell is the one who doesn't want to go to war. He says, 'Will you be with me?' And Powell, the soldier, 35 years in the army, the president has decided and he says, 'I'll do my best. Yes, Mr. President. I'll be with you.' And then, the president says, 'Time to put your war uniform on.'"
Woodward says he described Powell as semi-despondent "because he knew that this was a war that might have been avoided. That's why he spent so much time at the United Nations." But, it turns out, two days before the president told Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador. "saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, 'Top secret. No foreign.' No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this," says Woodward. "They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, 'So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?' And Cheney -- who has said nothing -- says the following: 'Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.'" After Bandar left, according to Woodward, Cheney said, "I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it." But this wasn't enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. "Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, 'Their message is my message,'" says Woodward. Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election -- to ensure the US economy is strong on election day.
Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: "They're [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly." Woodward's accounts are based on recollections from people who took part in the meetings he describes, including a historic meeting on March 19, when Bush gives the order to go to war. On tht day, Bush was with the National Security Council, in the situation room. Says Woodward: "They have all these TV monitors. Gen. Franks, the commander, is up on one of them. And all nine commanders, and the president asks each one of them, 'Are you ready? Do you have what you need? Are you satisfied?' And they all say, 'Yes, sir.' and 'We're ready.'" Then the president saluted and he rose suddenly from his chair. "People who were there said there were tears in his eyes, not coming down his cheeks but in his eyes," says Woodward. "And just kind of marched out of the room." Having given the order, the president walked alone around the circle behind the White House. Months later, he told Woodward: "As I walked around the circle, I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty. Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I be as good a messenger of his will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for forgiveness." Did Bush ask his father for any advice? "I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, 'Well, no,' and then he got defensive about it," says Woodward. "Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, 'He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.' And then he said, 'There's a higher Father that I appeal to.'" Beyond not asking his father about going to war, Woodward was startled to learn that the president did not ask key cabinet members either. "The president, in making the decision to go to war, did not ask his secretary of defense for an overall recommendation, did not ask his secretary of state, Colin Powell, for his recommendation," says Woodward. "But the president did ask Rice, his national security adviser, and Karen Hughes, his political communications adviser. Woodward says both supported going to war.
And in the run-up to war, Woodward reveals the CIA hired the leaders of a Muslim religious sect at odds with Saddam, but nonetheless with numerous members highly placed in Saddam's security services. The CIA's code name for them: the ROCKSTARS. "Before the war, they recruit 87 of them all throughout the country and they give them satellite phones. And they report in regularly on secret things that are going on," says Woodward. And it turns out, reports from the ROCKSTARS led to the first bombing attack, on March 19, to try to kill Saddam -– at a place called Dora Farm, a farm south of Baghdad that Saddam's wife used. "And Saddam went there at least once a year with his two sons. The security person at Dora Farm was a CIA spy, a ROCKSTAR, and had a telephone, a satellite phone, in which he was reporting what he was seeing." Other ROCKSTARS are apparently there too, so Rumsfeld and Tenet rush to the oval office to tell the president what the spies are seeing. "They've seen the son. There is communications equipment coming in that would show that Saddam is going there. They get overhead satellite photos that show dozens of security vehicles parked under palm trees. And they say, 'Holy Moses, this is for real.' And they start getting better and more detailed reports that they think Saddam is coming. And the question is, do we take them out," says Woodward. "The president asks everyone, and they all recommend doing it. And then he kicks everyone out, except Cheney. And he says, 'Dick, what do you think?' And Cheney says, 'I think we ought to do it, and at minimum, it will rattle Saddam's cage.' ...They start getting intelligence that maybe they hit Saddam." But Woodward says that Tenet was wrong. Again. And to this day, Woodward reports, the CIA still doesn't know if the information from the ROCKSTARS was reliable, or if Saddam was really there that night. "Again, we have the fog of war, the fog of intelligence," says Woodward.
Although Saddam has finally been captured, Woodward says that so far, interrogators are learning very little from him. "What people have told me is that he he's kind of out of it. Unreliable," says Woodward. "That he, at some moments, thinks he's still president. He's not in touch with reality, to the point where they can find what he says is reliable." And in the wake of the war, according to Woodward, there's a deep rift between Powell and Cheney. "The relationship between Cheney and Powell is essentially broken down. They can't talk. They don't communicate," says Woodward. "Powell feels that Cheney drove the decision to go to war in Iraq. And Cheney feels that Powell has not been sufficiently supportive of the president in the war or in the aftermath." Which of the two was more prescient about how Iraq would turn out? "All of Powell's warnings think of the consequences, Pottery Barn rules: If you break it, you own it. And that's exactly what has happened in Iraq. We own it. In a way, they've had victory without success," says Woodward. "Dick Cheney's view is that in a way, it doesn't matter how long the aftermath is.... What matters is the ultimate outcome.... Whether there's stability and democracy." Are there post-war plans? "There were innumerable briefings to the president about currency about oil. And on the real issue of security and possible violence, they did not see it coming," says Woodward. Did the administration really believe that they were going to get flowers and kisses? "some of the exiles told them that," says Woodward. "I think the president was skeptical of that. I think people like Cheney believed it more."
Today, while most doubt that Saddam still possessed any weapons of mass destruction, the president told Woodward he has no doubts at all about going to war. "The president still believes with some conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing, that he has the duty to free people, to liberate people. And this was his moment," says Woodward. But who gave President Bush the duty to free people around the world? "That's a really good question. The Constitution doesn't say that's part of the commander in chief's duties,"says Woodward. "That's his stated purpose. It is far-reaching, and ambitious, and I think will cause many people to tremble." How deep a man is President George W. Bush? "He's not an intellectual. He is not what I guess would be called a deep thinker," says Woodward. "He chastised me at one point because I said people were concerned about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. And he said, 'Well you travel in elite circles.' I think he feels there is an intellectual world and he's indicated he's not a part of it...the fancy pants intellectual world. What he calls the elite." How does the president think history will judge him for going to war in Iraq? "After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, 'Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,'" says Woodward. "And he said, 'History,' and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, 'History, we don't know. We'll all be dead.'" (CBS)
April 18: A security contractor killed in Iraq last week was once one of South Africa's most secret covert agents, his identity guarded so closely that even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not discover the extent of his involvement in apartheid's silent wars. Gray Branfield admitted to being part of a death squad which gunned down Joe Gqabi, the ANC's chief representative and Umkhonto weSizwe, the operational head in Zimbabwe, on July 31, 1981. Gqabi was shot 19 times when three assassins ambushed him as he reversed down the driveway of his Harare home. Author Peter Stiff this week confirms information that Branfield was an operative identified in his books, The Silent War, Warfare By Other Means and Cry Zimbabwe as "Major Brian." He said Branfield, a former detective inspector in the Rhodesian police force specializing in covert operations against guerrilla organisations, came to South Africa after Zanu-PF came to power in 1980. In South Africa he joined the SA Defence Force's secret Project Barnacle, a precursor to the notorious Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) death squad. Given the rank of major, Branfield was put in charge of operations in the urban centres of Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zambia. Says Stiff: "In Rhodesia even his enemies respected him. They called him Mhlatini, 'the one of the bush.' His colleagues nicknamed him 'Hound Dog' because of his innate ability to sniff things out." Stiff says Branfield helped to lay the groundwork in 1982 for Operation Lebanta, an attack on ANC targets in Maseru. In 1985 he was involved in planning the notorious SADF raid on Gaborone in which 14 people, including a five-year-old child, were killed. According to Stiff, Branfield expressed extreme reservations about the targets selected by reconnaissance officers. He later received infor mation that ANC personnel were no longer staying at three of the target houses, and urged commanders to scrap them as targets. He was ignored. "He was not someone to keep his mouth shut," Stiff says. "He eventually left Project Barnacle when he discovered that some of its operators, many of them black, were being killed by their own people. He was appalled by it," he says. (South Africa Sunday Times)
April 18: CPA head Paul Bremer says that Iraqi security forces are not ready to take over the job of protecting Iraqi civilians from insurgent attacks. Neither the police nor the armed forces will be ready by the scheduled transition date of June 30, says Bremer. "Events of the past two weeks show that Iraq still faces security threats and needs outside help to deal with them. Early this month the foes of democracy overran Iraqi police stations and seized public buildings in several parts of the country," he says. "Iraqi forces were unable to stop them." (AP/My Way News)

Spain, Honduras order withdrawal of troops from Iraq

April 18: The Spanish government orders its troops to return from Iraq "as soon as possible." Later in the day, Honduras follows suit. It is one of the first orders issued by newly elected prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who was sworn in less than 24 hours ago. Zapatero has ordered Defense Minister José Bono to "do what is necessary for the Spanish troops stationed in Iraq to return home" in the shortest possible time. Zapatero says he made his decision because it was unlikely that the United Nations would be playing a leading role in Iraq any time soon, which had been his condition for Spain's 1,300 troops to remain. Zapatero has promised to bring Spain's troops back from Iraq since well before he was elected; since his victory on March 14, Spanish officials have held "intense consultations" with heads of state or top officials of 12 nations. Bono made an undisclosed visit to Washington early this month and met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Spain conferred also with Britain, Italy and Poland, which also have troops in Iraq. A Defense Ministry official says that the Spanish withdrawal might take one month. Officials say that the new government made its announcement on its first day to avoid being drawn into a debate and to avoid possible complications in the field. They do not want any future event, such as hostage taking or the death of any soldiers to to be used to misinterpret Spain's motives. The White House reaction was somber: "We knew from the recent Spanish election that it was the new prime minister's intention to withdraw Spanish troops," says Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council. He says the White House expects Spain "to carry out the decision in a coordinated, responsible and orderly manner."
But US officials leave little doubt that the decision is a bitter moment for Bush. They fear it will make it more difficult to continue to internationalize the forces in Iraq as the June 30 date approaches for the transfer of sovereign power to the Iraqi government. Condoleezza Rice says that she is concerned that terrorists could draw "the wrong lesson from Spain," and attempt other attacks aimed at dividing the coalition. Nonetheless, McCormack says, "we are grateful to the other coalition partners for their recent expressions of solidarity." John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president, says, "I regret Prime Minister Zapatero's decision. Rather than losing partners, I believe it's critical that we find new coalition partners to share the burden in Iraq." The new Spanish government has been accused by the outgoing leadership and by American conservatives of capitulating to terrorists in its plan to withdraw the troops. Elections were held three days after terrorist attacks on March 11 left 192 people dead and more than 1,400 wounded. On the eve of the elections, many Spanish voters apparently turned against the conservative government of José María Aznar, who had a narrow lead in the polls, because they felt it was less than truthful about the terrorist attacks, insisting on blaming Basque separatists while evidence was already strongly pointing to Islamist militants. Honduras is also withdrawing its 372 troops: "I have told the coalition countries that the troops are going to return from Iraq," says President Ricardo Maduro. The Dominican Republic has announced that it will not renew its troop commitment when its troops are due to return home. (New York Times, CNN)
April 18: Bush urges Congress to renew the USA Patriot Act, saying it is mandatory for the US to succeed in the war against terror. Key elements of the post-Sept. 11 law are set to expire next year, and "some politicians in Washington act as if the threat to America will also expire on that schedule," Bush says. "To abandon the Patriot Act would deprive law enforcement and intelligence officers of needed tools in the war on terror, and demonstrate willful blindness to a continuing threat." Several conservative Republicans have joined liberal Democrats in saying that portions of the law are too intrusive on Americans' lives. They are threatening to allow the provisions to die at the end of next year. Some want to impose more judicial oversight of how police and prosecutors conduct investigations. "Our government's first duty is to protect the American people" and the Patriot Act "fulfills that duty in a way that is fully consistent with constitutional protections," Bush argues. Bush's remarks strike a theme that he will return to next week, beginning Monday in Pennsylvania, a state that is key to his re-election hopes. "since I signed the Patriot Act into law, federal investigators have disrupted terror cells in at least six American cities," Bush says. He adds that since the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department has charged more than 300 people in terrorism-related investigations, more than half of whom have been convicted or pled guilty. However, a recent study concluded that although the Justice Department has sharply increased prosecution of terrorism-related cases, many fizzled and few produced significant prison time, showing the Patriot Act to be more effective at curtailing citizens' Constitutional rights than actually curbing terrorism. (AP/Winston-Salem Journal)
April 18: While the days of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other methods to keep minorities from exercising their voting rights are over, there are still plenty of obstacles being placed in the way of minority voters. Blacks, Hispanics and Indians are still regularly discouraged from voting, often under the guise of "ballot integrity" programs that are supposed to be aimed at deterring fraud at the polls. In South Dakota, Sioux Indians are being harassed by a number of methods aimed at keeping them from the polls, including a number of false voter fraud charges and harassment from election officials. South Dakota Indians say with the election of Democratic senator Tom Daschle a close call, they expect more problems at the polls. Many Indians feel their situation is similar to other so-called ballot integrity efforts over the last few decades. In the 1986 Louisiana Senate race, for instance, Republicans began a purge of tens of thousands of voters. An internal party document made clear that the goal was to "keep the black vote down." In North Carolina's 1990 Senate race, Jesse Helms supporters mailed 125,000 postcards to predominantly black voting precincts, misleading voters about residency requirements and warning that misstatements to voting officials could mean five years in prison. More recently, Republican poll watchers in the 2002 Arkansas Senate election took photos of blacks as they voted, an intimidation tactic that has been used in other parts of the country. In last fall's Kentucky governor's race, Republicans announced plans to challenge voters in 59 predominantly black precincts. After the NAACP objected, the program was scaled back. And this year, a local Texas prosecutor threatened to arrest students at historically black Prairie View A&M if they tried to vote from their campus addresses, which the law allows them to do. He backed down when he was sued.
Intimidation of Hispanic voters has often focused on immigration matters. In one case that caused an uproar in California in 1988, Republicans hired uniformed security officers to serve as "poll guards" in Latino precincts in Orange County. The New York Times recommends the following steps to ensure that all legitimate voters get their chance to vote. First, the Republican and Democratic party chairmen should publicly commit not to single out minority voters for intimidation, and to get this message out to party workers at every level. Second, the National Association of Secretaries of State, and individual secretaries of state and state election officers, should state publicly that they will be on the lookout for minority vote suppression, and that they will deal with it strictly. Third, the Department of Justice, which has lately seemed more focused on voter fraud than minority voter intimidation, should explain how it intends to discharge its legal duty to protect minorities from discrimination in voting. And lastly, prosecutors should vigorously pursue anyone involved in vote suppression; this is rarely done now. And its victims should bring civil lawsuits, to make those who engage in it pay. The Times writes, "Experts are predicting that this year's election will be among the most hard fought in decades. The people who play a leadership role in it should be making clear, well in advance of Election Day, that minority vote suppression will not be tolerated." (New York Times/Truthout)
April 18: Revelations about Colin Powell's resistance to the Iraq war in Bob Woodward's new book Plan of Attack has added tremendous strain to many administration officials' relationship with Powell. The book has not only aggravated tensions within the senior staff, but has created problems for Powell within the administration. Critics of Powell in the neoconservative wing of the administration say they are startled by what they see as his self-serving decision to help fill out a portrait that enhances his reputation as a farsighted analyst, perhaps at the expense of Bush. Several said the book guaranteed what they expected anyway, that Powell will not stay as secretary if Bush is re-elected. The view expressed by administration loyalists is that Bush comes across as sober-minded and resolute in the book, asking for contingency plans for a war early on but not deciding to wage one until the last minute, saving Powell from any immediate difficulties that might grow from seeming to betray his confidential relationship to a president who prizes loyalty. "Look, a lot of people have been struck by the degree to which Secretary Powell is using this book as an opportunity -- to be fair -- to clarify his position on the issues," says one official. "But what this book does is muddy the water internally, which is very unfortunate and unhelpful."
Another official, who like others declines to be identified because of the political sensitivity of their criticism, accuses Powell of having a habit of distancing himself from policies when they go wrong. "It's such a soap opera with him," this official says. Democrats seized on Powell's portrayal, saying it would give them ammunition to criticize the administration for going to war without broad international backing or adequate planning for an occupation. Throughout the day, John Kerry brings up the Woodward book, mentioning it twice in his interview on Meet the Press on NBC and once at an outdoor rally at the University of Miami. "Here we have a book by a reputable writer," Kerry tells several thousand students at the afternoon campus rally. "We learn that the president even misled members of his own administration." Asked if material in Woodward's book would be grist for his party, Jano Cabrera, the spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, says, "Absolutely. It's one thing for us to assert it. It's another thing for it to be stated as fact by his secretary of state." Steve Murphy, who managed the presidential campaign of Representative Richard Gephardt, says: "The strongest criticism of Bush is that he did not have a plan for the aftermath of the war. And that was exactly what Powell was pointing out to him. He is a credible source. This intensifies the backdrop between Bush and Kerry."
People close to Powell say that they had no doubt he would weather any criticism from within over his apparent cooperation with Woodward. Polls show that he is one of the most popular and best-known figures in government. The people close to him note that most people following the situation closely knew that he had misgivings about the war. "Is the secretary going to be undercut for having been right?" asks an official close to Powell. "I don't think so. Undercut compared to who? Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? These are people who have some real problems right now. They're not reading Bob Woodward's book. They're reading the dispatches from the field." Other officials close to Powell say his strained relations with Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, and Vice President Cheney are common currency among Washington insiders, though they say the suggestion that Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms is highly exaggerated. "I don't think there will be much change in his dealings with Cheney and Rumsfeld," says one person close to Powell. "People already thought it was this bad. It doesn't change things for them to find out that it really was. They know how to deal with each other, and they've been through quite a bit together." "The day-to-day nattering of the Defense Department trying to take over the business of diplomacy at every level, it's just difficult to be on the inside," says an administration official who defends Powell's actions. "Every day is difficult. The byplay at the meetings is difficult." In contrast, national security director Condoleezza Rice describes Powell's and Cheney's relationship as "friendly."
Powell's standing around the world was less easy to measure this weekend. But a European diplomat said he thought the secretary's standing in Europe especially would only be enhanced because he would be seen as sharing the view of many there that the administration had been overly optimistic about subduing dissidents in Iraq. For the people long familiar with Powell's thinking, his misgivings about an American occupation of Iraq, and his insistence on getting full international backing for American actions, goes back many years. So, they note, does his tension with Cheney. For example, Powell's memoir, "My American Journey," published in 1995 after he retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he had opposed a final push to oust Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf war on the ground that an occupation would provoke a counterinsurgency and criticism among Americans. In addition, many accounts of the planning for the first gulf war say that Cheney, then secretary of defense, opposed going to the United Nations or Congress for backing to remove Iraq from Kuwait, fearing that failure would weaken the first President Bush's administration's ability to go to war. In 2002, Cheney was openly disdainful of Powell's insistence on getting approval of the United Nations Security Council before going to war, spreading consternation at the State Department. Powell won that argument, and Bush authorized a bid to get a Security Council resolution supporting war. Powell's memoir also recalls an exchange in the early 1990's, in which Powell accused Cheney -- jokingly, he insisted -- of being surrounded by "right-wing nuts like you." In the last year, the Woodward book says, Powell referred privately to the civilian conservatives in the Pentagon loyal to Cheney as the "Gestapo."
The Woodward book also attributes to Powell the belief that although he had misgivings about going to war, it was his obligation to support the president once Bush decided to do so. Bush told Woodward that he did not ask the secretary's opinion on whether to go to war because he thought he knew what that opinion would be: "no." But a senior aide to Powell asserted this weekend that the secretary was not as opposed to war as some people presume, no matter what the implications in the book. "The portrait of Powell in the Woodward book is pretty consistent with what everybody knows," the official says. "We were with the president if we had to do this. We set up an exit ramp for Saddam, and he didn't take it. Powell in the end was very comfortable knowing that." (New York Times/Middle East Info)
April 18: A series of interviews with Vietnamese citizens shows that the people of Vietnam see strong and disturbing parallels between the Vietnam War and the current battle against insurgents in Iraq. Both were terribly misguided wars, the Vietnamese believe, and the best thing the US can do is figure out a way to get out of Iraq as soon as possible. "It seems like the United States is going to be stuck in Iraq just like they got stuck in Vietnam years ago," says Colonel Tran Nhung, who writes for Quan Doi Nhan Dan, Vietnam's military daily. "No country in the world will accept a foreign invasion -- this is a fundamental truth." Nhung and others say the war was an unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty. "Iraqis need peace and freedom," Nhung says, "but they need to build it themselves." Most Vietnamese were pleased when President Bill Clinton normalized relations between the two former foes in 1995, and relish ever-closer U.S.-Vietnam ties. So they offer their criticism of the Iraq war in a spirit of friendship. Many people interviewed were sympathetic toward the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but they said the war in Iraq was unlikely to deter future acts of terrorism. Their skepticism about the war is fueled in part by the fact that many of the central claims that President Bush used to justify the conflict have so far proved hollow, says college professor Nguyen Quoc Huy. "They have found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction," Huy says. "They have found no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden."
Civilian Nhu Y dismisses Bush's justifications for the invasion as "a total fabrication." "I don't know anyone who supports this war," she continues. "Anyone who does must be on the CIA payroll." A few offer some support of the invasion. Pham Duc Phuong, a businessman in Hanoi, says, "Saddam Hussein was a dictator. He didn't care about the lives of most Iraqis. Because of him, Iraq was cut off from the outside world. He lived in luxurious palaces, but his people lived in poverty." 75-year-old Mai Van Thuan's experience under French colonialism makes him deeply suspicious of foreign intervention of any kind. Sixty years later, he still has vivid memories of his father's French employers slapping him across the face. Thuan worked with his father for a telephone company, installing phone lines. He remembers a daily barrage of insults. "They called me a monkey. They called me a pig." Thuan doesn't believe American promises about building democracy in Iraq or saving the Iraqi people from a brutal tyrant. "The invaders always say nice things when they arrive," says Thuan. "They always have nice, elegant words." The French, he said, maintained that they would share the fruits of the Enlightenment with the Vietnamese, but they really came to exploit them economically. He and other Vietnamese see a parallel in Iraq. The Americans have arrived with flowery language about democracy, Thuan says, but Bush is really on an "imperialist" mission.
"Everyone in the world can see that the United States went to Iraq for oil," says Hoang Van Thinh. "And they had a political motive as well: to expand their influence in the Middle East." When Bush vowed this week that he would send more troops if that's what it takes to prevail in Iraq, his words reminded many here of the steady American troop escalation in Vietnam. If the US presence in Iraq continues to grow, Thinh said, so will opposition to the American intervention, both in Iraq and in America. "surely this war will sow protests and divisions among the American people," said Thinh, recalling the influence of American protests during the Vietnam War. For all the parallels they saw between America's wars in their homeland and in Iraq, Vietnamese said they saw one major difference: Four decades ago the Vietnamese were far more united and prepared to fight than the Iraqi people are today. And they rallied behind Ho Chi Minh, the military leader who represented Vietnam's strong nationalist spirit. By contrast, Iraqi insurgents are leaderless, and the country is riven with hostile religious factions. But the longer the United States occupies the country, says schoolteacher Nguyen Thi Han, the faster Iraqis will put aside their differences. "They need to learn from us," says Han. "Vietnam is a united country, and that strength was there when we defeated the United States. If the Iraqi people stand up and fight, surely they will win." (San Jose Mercury News)
April 18: Democratic senator John Edwards, John Kerry's closest rival in the Democratic presidential campaign, has emerged as a front-runner for Kerry's vice-presidential slot. Edwards is coy about his intentions, but his actions show that not only is he willing to campaign for Kerry against George W. Bush, but he is jockeying for the vice-presidential bid. Edwards lit up a stodgy fundraising meeting recently, charming the audience with his relaxed, folksy presence and precipitating a storm of cheering and applause when he said, referring to Bush's recent press conference, "You know it must be an amazing thing to live a life where, when you're asked multiple times whether you've questioned anything you've done, whether you've made any mistakes...you can't think of a single thing. Well I have a suggestion for the president. If he's struggling with that question, give me a call. I'll give him an answer." Edwards is not running for re-election for his Senate seat; his immediate political future hinges on Kerry's decision for VP. Late last month, Edwards quietly restarted his political action committee, calling it the One America PAC, after his primary campaign theme, and hiring eight staffers to help raise money for his continued travels and for other Democrats. He has complied with requests from Kerry to give interviews on select television shows. But beyond a few superficial conversations, there has been little in the way of formal auditioning for the running-mate slot, say his aides. His primary performance was the audition, they say. Kerry's campaign is refusing to comment on the decision for a running mate, though it is known that Edwards is on the short list of possibilities. Edwards's positives include his popularity among Southern Democrats and his disarming, optimistic presence on the campaign trail. His negatives include his lack of experience in foreign policy, a problem some see in the upcoming debate between Kerry's VP and Vice President Dick Cheney. And despite his Southern pull, Edwards probably would not be able to deliver even his home state of North Carolina for the Democrats -- a point made during the primaries by Kerry -- much less other states in the Republican-dominated region.
Representative Richard Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, probably has more pull in his home state, a crucial battleground, as does another contender from a swing state, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. "Gephardt, I think, could bring them Missouri, a key state. If he could do just that, it would be worth it," says Bay State GOP political consultant Charley Manning. "Edwards doesn't bring very much to the table.... I think next year he'll be making cases before juries." Another school of thought among political specialists views Edwards as the standout in a weak field of alternatives. Many pundits assume the presidential race will be decided in the Rust Belt, in blue collar-heavy battlegrounds like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Missouri, West Virginia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Though the South appears to be beyond Edwards's sphere of influence, the Midwest may not be. Several political specialists say Edwards could help Kerry win over socially conservative, but economically liberal, working-class voters in the Rust Belt. "Because he's from the South and has that drawl, it carries the expectation that he will be more moderate. This helps in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other industrial states," says Theodore Arrington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "And work, as a moral issue, is the theme he does best of all. And that works well in those states, too." Todd Domke, a Massachusetts-based GOP consultant, concurs: "Ironically, Edwards as a Southerner would have more appeal in the Midwest than the other Midwestern politicians."
During the Democratic primary, Edwards pushed the theme of "Two Americas" riven by class and wealth, proclaiming himself the champion of the working class, rarely missing an opportunity to mention his own modest South Carolina mill town roots. Exit polling from several primaries indicated Edwards performed better than Kerry among GOP and independent voters, with a strong showing among those who were influenced by concern about the economy. A Washington voter says, "[Edwards] clearly is interested in, and talks to, the people. John Kerry is a little more patrician, a little more aloof. So they would make a good combination." Focus groups conducted by labor unions last month in St. Louis and Philadelphia found that Kerry "doesn't warm anybody up" and fails to connect to many working-class voters. Meanwhile, the same focus groups viewed Bush as having "good moral values." In Seattle last Thursday, Edwards opened with praise for Kerry, whom he once implied had too privileged an upbringing to represent working-class interests. "I knew John Kerry well before this presidential campaign. I know him much better now. Here is a man who has fought for jobs, health care, clean air, clean water...put his life on the line in Vietnam," said Edwards. "This man needs to be president of the United States." He then launched into his old "Two Americas" stump speech, as if the primaries were only yesterday. Nonetheless, it prompted several standing ovations. But Edwards closed on an unusually personal note: "I've learned two great lessons in my life. One is that there will always be heartache and struggle." Many in the audience knew that Edwards's teenage son, Wade, died in a car accident several years ago, a turning point in the senator's life. The room was silent. "The other is that people of good will can make a difference," said Edwards. "Together, with John Kerry in the White House, we will build one America that works for everybody." "Fantastic," said one audience member. "He brings a lot of excitement and the common touch. He could bring that to the campaign."
A March poll by Case Western Reserve University indicated 20 percent of those interviewed thought Edwards would be the strongest vice-presidential pick, followed by 12 percent for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and 11 percent for Senator John S. McCain, Republican of Arizona. Neither Clinton nor McCain have indicated that they would accept the vice-presidential nomination. Aside from Gephardt and Richardson, other names mentioned include Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Senators Bill Nelson and Bob Graham of Florida, Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa, and former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, a member of the Sept. 11 Commission. "I think that perhaps the most compelling argument for Edwards is that, by process of elimination, he seems the strongest," says GOP consultant Domke. "What is most striking about this field is how weak it is." (Boston Globe)
April 18: A review of a landmark 1953 Supreme Court decision sheds new light on the restrictive secrecy provisions of the USA Patriot Act. On February 26, 2003, the Supreme Court received a petition for a lawsuit concerning the deaths of three Air Force pilots in 1952. Lower courts had awarded the families compensation, but the US government fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, citing secret Air Force documents that it said contained such sensitive government secrets that the Court could not even see them. Accepting the government's assertions, the Court rejected the families' claim, in a case now referred to as US v. Reynolds, one of the landmark decisions affirming the US government's right to secrecy in case of national security. In 2003, the documents in question were finally declassified, and the families were astonished to find that the documents contained nothing whatsoever of any sensitivity warranting the government's claims. In other words, the US government perpetuated a gigantic fraud upon the families, upon the Supreme Court, and upon the country in general to get the decision it desired. The USA Patriot Act depends largely on that ruling for its own, much more sweeping, secrecy provisions. The Los Angeles Times writes, "U.S. vs. Reynolds' ramifications reach beyond civil law: By encouraging judicial deference when the government claims national security secrets, it provides a fundamental basis for much of the Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including the USA Patriot Act and the handling of terrorist suspects. Although some judges and the Supreme Court may be starting to resist, the 'enemy combatants' Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, for many months confined without access to lawyers, have felt the breath of Reynolds. So has the accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui when federal prosecutors defied a court order allowing him access to other accused terrorists. So have hundreds of detainees at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, held for more than two years without charges or judicial review." A Supreme Court clerk returned the 2003 petition, saying that "there are no provisions in the rules of this Court to allow you to file such a document." However, the Court accepted the petition on a second submission.
The original case involved a secret Defense Department project code-named "Banshee," an aerial bomb-guidance device being tested on B-29s. RCA engineer Al Palya, one of the designers of Banshee, died in a mysterious crash of one of the B-29s involved in the testing. Information about the crash, and especially about Banshee, was tightly restricted following the crash. The original lawsuit was based on documentation showing that the engines of B-29s were prone to overheating (the cause of the crash), and that the Air Force had consistently refused to make the engines safer. The case was hampered by the government's refusal to provide the accident report, along with documentation about the B-29's known safety flaws. US District Judge William Kirkpatrick ruled in the families' favor, writing, "The Government does not here contend that this is a case involving the well recognized common law privilege protecting state secrets.... In effect, the Government claims a new kind of privilege. Its position is that the proceedings should be privileged in order to allow...free and unhampered self-criticism within the service.... I can find no recognition in the law of the existence of such a privilege." The government still refused to produce the accident report; the families received a letter from their lawyer, Charles Biddle, which said, "To my mind it is perfect nonsense after all these years when B-29s have had accidents all over the world to say that a report on what caused this accident is a secret which should not be disclosed. Obviously, we are not interested in any secret devices which may have been on board but which had nothing to do with causing the accident. And in any event, the answer...is to let the Court look at the report and if there is anything which should not be made public, the Judge can authorize that it be withheld.... The violent objection to producing [the accident report] on the part of the Air Force naturally makes one suspicious that it may contain some conclusions very unfavorable to the Government's case."
In court, the government invoked the "state secrets" privilege to avoid producing the accident report. Biddle believed that the Department of Justice wasn't merely resisting a lawsuit filed by three widows; it was intentionally trying to set a far-reaching precedent. While a state secrets privilege existed in common law, it had never been formally recognized by the Supreme Court. Biddle felt sure that his opponents meant to make this a test case. With the Cold War intensifying, so too was the government's determination to marshal all possible powers. Judge Kirkpatrick refused to accept the government's arguments, and found in favor of the families. The government appealed, losing in appellate court, and the case eventually wound up as US v. Reynolds in the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Fred Vinson wrote the decision for the 6-3 majority decision: the government had made a valid claim of privilege against revealing military secrets, a privilege "well established in the law of evidence." The decisions of the District Court and the Court of Appeals were therefore reversed. By "well established," the Supreme Court meant that the state secrets privilege was rooted in common law. Now, though, the high court formally recognized it, which made it binding on all courts throughout the nation. The justices also spelled out a procedure for how the privilege should be applied. The privilege must be asserted by the government, they instructed, and it is not to be lightly invoked. There must be a formal claim lodged by the head of a department only after his personal consideration. The court itself must determine "whether the circumstances are appropriate for the claim of privilege," and yet do so "without forcing disclosure of the very thing the privilege is designed to protect."
This last, of course, was the tricky part. To resolve it, Vinson presented a "formula of compromise" that essentially said the government shouldn't have absolute autonomy, but courts shouldn't always insist on seeing the documents. You can't abdicate control over the evidence, Vinson instructed trial judges, but if the government can satisfy you that a reasonable danger to national security exists, you shouldn't insist upon examining the documents, even alone in chambers. In essence, Vinson's decision says that trial judges must take the word of the government that keeping secrets outweighs other legal considerations. Once the Supreme Court had established the precedent the government sought, the government was willing to settle with the families, giving the three families a total of $175,000. Judy Palya Loether lost her father when she was 7 months old. As an adult, she found letters and other documents in her parents' attic that reawakened her interest in her father's death. As she investigated the facts surrounding her father's death and the government case that kept the facts of his death secret, she began learning more and more about the US government's application of the "state secrets privilege" codified by the Supreme Court decision that kept her father's death a mystery.
The Los Angeles Times sums up: "To this day, US vs. Reynolds represents the Supreme Court's only substantive examination of the state secrets privilege. Law professors consider Reynolds the judicial foundation of national security law. On paper, Reynolds offered what many consider to be a reasonable compromise between the public's right to information and the government's need to keep secrets. How that compromise came to be applied is what troubles a number of lawyers and legal experts. Their objections often echo the concerns voiced half a century ago by William Kirkpatrick and Albert Maris, the trial and appellate judges who, in finding for the three widows, declared it 'contrary to sound public policy' to let the government decide what could be kept secret. In the end, critics maintain, Reynolds put judges in the position of ruling blindly, without knowing the contents of requested documents. Amid such uncertainty, government lawyers found it hard to resist invoking state secrets in all sorts of cases. To some opponents, the impulse to protect military secrets began to look like the impulse to cover up mistakes, avoid embarrassment and gain insulation from liability. What was meant as a shield to protect national security, plaintiffs' lawyers started complaining, now was being used as a sword to kill litigation. At the least, one law professor observed, the interests of the administration in power sometimes seemed to get confused with the interests of the nation.
"The use of Reynolds started slowly but grew: The government invoked the state secrets privilege only five times between 1953 and 1970, then 50 times between 1970 and 1994. The current Bush administration has formally invoked it at least three times. The scope of what constitutes a state secret has also expanded, from military technology to all sorts of domestic intelligence operations. Even unclassified information has become subject to national security claims. Government lawyers argue that judges can't see the whole picture, can't tell when separate pieces of seemingly innocuous information might be gathered into a revealing 'mosaic.' Over the years, the types of information protected by the state secrets privilege have included: alleged collusion between defense contractors; alleged malfeasance and incompetence by contractors; alleged civil rights violations by the FBI and CIA; the purchase, insurance and inspection records of a government mail truck involved in an accident; and an FBI file on a sixth-grade boy who received a large amount of mail from foreign countries because he was writing an encyclopedia of the world as a school project. In 1975, a group of Vietnam War protesters claimed the FBI and CIA conducted intelligence operations against them, but they had to drop the lawsuit after a district court upheld the government's state secrets claim. In 1990, families of 37 crew members killed when Iraqi missiles struck the frigate Stark sued contractors responsible for the ship's antimissile system, but the United States again successfully invoked the state secrets privilege. In 2000, a similar claim of privilege stopped a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by a CIA employee. In early 2003, yet another claim killed a suit filed by a senior engineer who'd maintained that a defense contractor had submitted false test results on an antimissile vehicle. Although these types of claims have multiplied, such direct invocations of the state secrets privilege are by no means the broadest legacy of Reynolds. Far more often, Reynolds is simply cited or referred to in courtroom arguments and legal briefs, producing what George Washington University law professor Peter Raven-Hansen calls an 'atmospheric effect.' By waving the Reynolds flag in the background, government lawyers have learned they can often gain a degree of judicial deference, especially since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Such deference allowed them to confine the 'enemy combatants' Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla for months without access to lawyers. It encouraged them to keep accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui from contacting other accused terrorists. And it permitted them to hold hundreds of detainees without charges or judicial review at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A handful of judges have started to question the Bush administration's claim to this type of unilateral power, and the Supreme Court will weigh in soon. Judicial deference, though, is still what lawyers and professors point to as the greatest consequence of Reynolds. Faced with ominous claims about national security, judges today, as in 1953, often find it hard to deny the government. What the Department of Justice sought 50 years ago, it now has firmly in hand. Attorney General John Ashcroft did not reply when Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-North Hollywood) wrote him in late 2002 to express concern about abuse of the state secrets privilege. As it happens, just seven weeks earlier he had invoked it again, in a case involving an FBI whistle-blower who'd alleged defects in the agency's translation program. 'To prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive national security information,' a Department of Justice news release advised, 'Attorney General Ashcroft asserted the state secrets privilege.... The state secrets privilege is well-established in federal law.... This privilege has been applied many times to protect our nation's secrets from disclosure.... It is an absolute privilege that renders information unavailable in litigation.'"
In February 2000, Judy Palya Loether found the accident report from her father's accident on the Internet. It had been quietly declassified by the Air Force. She was horrified, and angered, to read that while there were no "state secrets" of any kind in the report -- the crux of the government's argument in US v. Reynolds -- there were a farrago of documented mistakes and negligence. Loether found the family of William Brauner, who also died in the crash, and learned that the Brauner family had filed three different Freedom of Information requests for information about William's death, and received documents which were so blacked out that they contained little useful information. She also contacted crash survivor Eugene Mechler, who was extremely helpful in assisting Loether in putting together a picture of the crash and the subsequent court battles, before his death in the fall of 2000. After finding the widow of the third victim, Don Reynolds, and learning that she was interested in pursuing the case, Loether was able to retain the services of Biddle's law firm to once again petition the Supreme Court. Partner Wilson Brown spearheaded the legal team. He started by reviewing the Supreme Court documentation on the case. The Times reports, "Right off, Brown felt shocked by the role of the government attorneys back then, particularly the solicitor general. Brown couldn't believe that this man would stand flat-footed before the Supreme Court and say the documents contained national security secrets. The solicitor general had only his integrity. How could he relinquish that? It took Brown the longest time to come up with an answer: The solicitor general didn't know. That had to be it. He hadn't been told. How to cure this fraud? Brown could go to federal district court, but the trial court had nothing to fix; it had ruled in the widows' favor. So had the court of appeals. It was the Supreme Court that had overturned -— only there had the fraud worked. Brown felt he had to get this case back before the high court. He and his colleagues pondered and studied. When Supreme Court jurisdiction is unclear, he'd learned at law school, you should consider the All Writs Act, which gives the court the power to issue all recognized writs necessary to bring about a just remedy."
The team settled on the writ of error coram nobis, an unusual writ which provides a means for a court to correct an error -- an error made in proceedings "before us." The goal wasn't to overturn the legal precedent of US v. Reynolds; they were seeking justice for three families by challenging the facts of the case. They wanted the balance of the original judgment, $55,000, plus compounded interest -- an estimated $1.14 million. When the Court finally accepted the petition, the justices on April 4, 2003 asked Solicitor General Theodore Olson if his office wished to file a response. Olson did. Brown and his clients hoped that Olson might share their sense of dismay at what his office had done 50 years ago. Instead, Olson on May 30 asked the Supreme Court to reject the motion to file. He did so for a variety of reasons, among them that "the law favors finality," but his most startling argument was that no fraud had been committed. The government in 1950, Olson maintained, never stated that "the particular accident reports or witness statements in this case in fact contained military or state secrets." Rather, the Air Force secretary was "legitimately concerned" that classified information might be embedded in the Air Force's internal memos and in a letter Frank Folsom of RCA wrote to General Hoyt Vandenberg weeks after the crash. This Olson argued even though Folsom's letter had made only vague, passing reference to Project Banshee and hadn't been the issue back then. In truth, the Air Force's experiments with remote-controlled aircraft had not even been a secret: A drone plane had been featured in Washington, D.C., newspapers in January 1947, when it flew over the nation's capital carrying members of the news media, who reported that the "purpose of the flight is to demonstrate the effectiveness of remote control of bombers, which will be a major aerial weapon in the future."
Olson, as others before, finally invoked the context of the times to justify his stance: "[I]n this type of proceeding, it is easy for parties to make hindsight judgments.... The proper focus for the courts is to seek to evaluate the claim of privilege from the standpoint of the day and context in which it was asserted. The claim of privilege in this case was made in 1950, at a time in the Nation's history -- during the twilight of World War II and the dawn of the Cold War -- when the country, and especially the military, was uniquely sensitive to need for 'vigorous preparation for national defense.' ...The allegations of fraud made by the petition in this case ... must be viewed in that light." Loether's case had by now drawn some media attention. Parallels with current times couldn't be ignored: the heightened concerns about national security, the Bush administration's desire for expanded powers to fight perceived threats, Ashcroft's refusal to produce documents or witnesses in sensitive cases involving accused terrorists. One news report declared the new Reynolds claim "a case to shake the foundation of national security."
Another thought "it could serve as an important lesson about the potential consequences of expanding the government's homeland security powers." At the Center for National Security Studies, Kate Martin argued against the case being presented: "That facts of the original case are not true is irrelevant to the state secrets privilege. The idea that it undercuts the privilege is ridiculous. Often in cases, after they're decided, the facts are proven to be not true. That's the nature of the legal system. Sometimes people lie. Sometimes there's new information." George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said: "For the Supreme Court to address the fact clearly that it had been lied to would open difficult issues. It would be like Claude Rains saying, 'I'm shocked, I'm shocked.' The court used the facts of Reynolds to say the government could be trusted.... Reynolds was based on trust, on willful blinders. There's much danger in going back now, in recognizing that the government routinely lies. For that reason, they won't reopen this. I think Reynolds is like discovering an unfaithful wife after 50 years of marriage. You're hurt by the betrayal, but you can't turn back half a century. You preserve the marriage for the children's sake." Turley spoke those words in Washington on Friday, June 20. On June 22, the Court refused to hear Loether's case. However, the plaintiffs weren't through. They were lobbying Congress for a remedy, and within weeks would file an action seeking relief in federal district court. However those efforts turned out (a judge in Philadelphia will hear arguments on May 11, 2004), they'd already realized a type of success: Lawyers challenging other state secrets claims had started to study and use their petition. When the government invoked Reynolds, these lawyers could now introduce the story of Reynolds' genesis. Pat Reynolds Herring felt that whatever happened "wouldn't be the same as the Supreme Court admitting fault." Susan Brauner allowed that the court's wordless denial had "stung," had been "a kind of revelation." Judy Palya Loether confessed that she'd expected the Department of Justice to be "appalled" at what transpired 50 years ago. She'd had a fantasy, even, that President Bush would call her to say this was wrong, we'll make it right, we're very sorry. "It didn't happen that way," she said. "Maybe the law isn't about right or wrong. The concept that the government lied to the Supreme Court seemed to me a terrible thing to do. It appears that the justices were not as appalled as I was." (Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times)

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Back to April 2004 | On to April 2004: Week Four

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

April 2004: Week Three

Page Two

Bob Woodward shows that the Bush administration was planning to invade Iraq as far back as November 2001, saying Cheney in particular was obsessed with Hussein

Rice warns of terror attacks before election, but refuses to give details

Bush campaign collaborating with Saudi Arabia to artificially lower gas prices before election (read down)

Spain, Honduras order withdrawal of troops from Iraq

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