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The screwing of Cynthia McKinney
By Greg Palast
June 18— Have you heard about Cynthia McKinney, former US Congresswoman?
According to those quoted on National Public Radio (NPR), McKinney’s
“a loose cannon” (media expert) who “the people of Atlanta
are embarrassed and disgusted” (politician) by, and she is also “loony”
and “dangerous” (senator from her own party).
Yow! And why is McKinney dangerous/loony/disgusting? According to NPR,
“McKinney implied that the [Bush] Administration knew in advance
about Sept. 11 and deliberately held back the information.”
The New York Times’ Lynette Clemetson revealed her comments went
even further over the edge: “Ms. McKinney suggest[ed] that President
Bush might have known about the Sept. 11 attacks but did nothing so his
supporters could make money in a war.”
That’s loony, all right. As an editor of the highly respected Atlanta
Journal Constitution told NPR, McKinney’s “practically accused
the President of murder!”
Problem is, McKinney never said it.
That’s right. The “quote” from McKinney is a complete fabrication.
A whopper, a fabulous fib, a fake, a flim-flam. Just freakin’ made
up.
Hi, Lynette. My name is Greg Palast, and I wanted to follow up on a story
of yours. It says, let’s see, after the opening — it’s
about Cynthia McKinney — it’s dated Washington byline Aug. 21.
“McKinney’s [opponent] capitalized on the furor caused by Miss
McKinney’s suggestion this year that President Bush might have known
about the Sept. 11 attacks but did nothing so his supporters could make
money in a war.” Now, I have been trying my darndest to find this
phrase . . . I can’t. . .
Lynette Clemetson, New York Times: Did you search the Atlanta Journal
Constitution?
Yes, but I haven’t been able to find that statement.
I’ve heard that statement — it was all over the place.
I know it was all over the place, except no one can find it and that’s
why I’m concerned. Now did you see the statement in the Atlanta Journal
Constitution?
Yeah....
[Note: No such direct quote from McKinney can be found in the Atlanta
Journal Constitution.]
And did you confirm this with McKinney?
Well, I worked with her office. The statement is from the floor of the
House [of Representatives].... Right?
So did you check the statement from the Floor of the House?
I mean I wouldn’t have done the story. . . . Have you looked at House
transcripts?
Yes. Did you check that?
Of course.
You did check it?
[Note: No such McKinney statement can be found in the transcripts or other
records of the House of Representatives.]
I think you have to go back to the House transcripts.... I mean it was
all over the place at the time.
Yes, this is one fact the Times reporter didn’t fake: The McKinney
“quote” was, indeed, all over the place: in the Washington Post,
National Public Radio, and needless to say, all the other metropolitan
dailies — everywhere but in Congresswoman McKinney’s mouth.
Nor was it in the Congressional Record, nor in any recorded talk, nor
on her Website, nor in any of her radio talks. Here’s the Congresswoman’s
statement from the record:
“George Bush had no prior knowledge of the plan to attack the World
Trade Center on
Sept. 11.”
Oh.
And I should say former Congresswoman McKinney.
She was beaten in the August 2002 Democratic primary. More precisely,
she was beaten to death, politically, by the fabricated quote.
Months before the 2000 presidential elections, the offices of Florida
Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the
removal of 90,000 citizens from the voter rolls because they were convicted
felons . . . and felons can’t vote in Florida. There was one problem:
97 percent of those on the list were, in fact, innocent.
They weren’t felons, but they were guilty . . . of not being white.
Over half the list contained names of non-whites. I’m not guessing:
I have the list from out of the computers of Katherine Harris’ office
— and the “scrubbed” voter’s race is listed with each
name.
And that’s how our President was elected: by illegally removing tens
of thousands of legal African American voters before the race.
But you knew that . . . at least you did if you read the British papers
— I reported this discovery for the Guardian of London. And I reported
again on the nightly news. You saw that . . . if you live in Europe or
Canada or South America.
In the USA, the story ran on page zero. Well, let me correct that a bit.
The Washington Post did run the story on the fake felon list that selected
our President — even with a comment under my byline. I wrote the
story within weeks of the election, while Al Gore was still in the race.
The Post courageously ran it . . . seven months after the election.
The New York Times ran it . . . well, never, even after Katherine Harris
confessed the scam to a Florida court after she and the state were successfully
sued by the NAACP.
So, I can’t say the New York Times always makes up the news. Sometimes
the news just doesn’t make it.
At BBC Television, we had Florida’s computer files and documents,
marked “confidential” – stone-cold evidence showing how
the vote fix was deliberately crafted by Republican officials. Not a single
major US paper asked for the documents – not from the state of Florida
nor from the BBC. Only one US Congressperson asked for the evidence and
made it public: Cynthia McKinney of Atlanta.
That was her mistake.
The company that came up with the faux felon list that determined the
presidency: a Republican-tied database company named “ChoicePoint,”
one of the richest, most powerful companies in Atlanta.
Before I started with the BBC in London, I took a one-day television training
course with the Washington correspondent for Fox News.
We filmed Al Gore. Specifically, we filmed the eleven seconds of Gore’s
impromptu remarks . . . which we’d been given two hours earlier by
his advance ladies. They wore blue suits.
The man for the Associated Press wrote a lead paragraph of Gore’s
impromptu remarks one hour before Al walked in and said them. The network
reporter copied down the AP lead line. I copied down the AP lead line.
After we got Al Gore’s eleven seconds and footage of someone in the
crowd saying, “Wow, Al Gore really talked different from the way
Al Gore usually talks,” we set up in front of the hotel where Al
Gore talked. The important network reporter looked sternly into the camera
and spoke in a very important voice. I squinted into the camera and spoke
in a very important voice.
I can’t remember what I said.
He can’t remember what he said.
No one can remember what we said.
No one should.
Did I mention to you that (ex-)Congresswoman McKinney is black? And not
just any kind of black. She’s the uppity kind of black. What I mean
by uppity is this:
After George Bush Senior left the White House, he became an advisor and
lobbyist for a Canadian gold-mining company, Barrick Gold. Hey, a guy’s
got to work. But there were a couple of questions about Barrick, to say
the least. For example, was Barrick’s Congo gold mine funding both
sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict? Only one Congressperson
demanded hearings on the matter.
You’ve guessed: Cynthia McKinney.
That was covered in the . . . well, it wasn’t covered at all in the
US press.
McKinney contacted me at the BBC. She asked if I’d heard of Barrick.
Indeed, I had. Top human rights investigators had evidence that a mine
that Barrick bought in 1999 had, in clearing their Tanzanian properties
three years earlier, bulldozed mine shafts . . . burying about 50 miners
alive.
I certainly knew Barrick: They’d sued the Guardian for daring to
run a story I’d written about the allegations of the killings. Barrick
never sued an American paper for daring to run the story, because no American
paper dared.
The primary source for my story, an internationally famous lawyer named
Tundu Lissu, was charged by the Tanzanian police with sedition, and arrested,
for calling for an investigation. McKinney has been trying to save his
life with an international campaign aimed at Barrick.
That was another of her mistakes.
The New York Times wrote about McKinney that Atlanta’s “prominent
Black leaders – including Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP
and former Mayor Maynard Jackson – who had supported Ms. McKinney
in the past – distanced themselves from her this time.”
Really? Atlanta has four internationally recognized black leaders. Martin
Luther King III did not abandon McKinney. I checked with him. Nor did
Julian Bond (the Times ran a rare retraction on their website at Bond’s
request). But that left Atlanta’s two other notables: Vernon Jordan
and Andrew Young. Here, the Times had it right; no question that these
two black faces of the Atlanta Establishment let McKinney twist slowly
in the wind – because, the Times implied, of her alleged looniness.
But maybe there was another reason Young and Jordan let McKinney swing.
Remember Barrick? George Bush’s former gold-mining company, the target
of McKinney’s investigations? Did I mention to you that Andy Young
and Vernon Jordan are both on Barrick’s payroll? Well, I just did.
Did the Times mention it? I guess that wasn’t fit to print.
I suppose it’s my fault, McKinney’s electronic lynching. Unlike
other politicians, McKinney, who’s earning her doctorate at Princeton’s
Fletcher School of Diplomacy, enjoys doing her own research, not relying
on staff memos. She’s long been a reader of my reports from Britain,
including transcripts of BBC Television investigations. On Nov. 6, 2001,
BBC Newsnight ran this report with a follow-up story in the Guardian the
next day:
Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2001
Probes Before September 11
Officials Told to ‘Back Off’ on Saudis Before September 11
FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented
for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members
of the bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11. US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale
failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Center. But some
are complaining that their hands were tied.
FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the Guardian
show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden’s
relatives in Washington and a Muslim organization, with which they were
linked.
And so on. There was not one word in there that Bush knew about the September
11 attacks in advance. It was about a horrific intelligence failure. This
was the result, FBI and CIA/DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) insiders
told us at BBC, of a block placed on investigations of Saudi Arabian financing
of terror. We even showed on-screen a copy of a top-secret document passed
to us by disgruntled FBI agents, directing that the agency would not investigate
a “suspected terrorist organization” headed in the US by a member
of the bin Laden family. The FBI knew about these guys before September
11 (with their office down the street from the hijackers’ address).
The CIA also knew about a meeting in Paris, prior to Sept. 11, involving
a Saudi prince, arms dealers, and al-Qaida. Although the information was
in hand, the investigation was stymied by Bush’s intelligence chiefs.
This is what McKinney wanted investigated.
Why were the Saudis, the bin Ladens (except Osama), and this organization
(the World Assembly of Muslim Youth) off the investigation list prior
to Sept. 11, despite evidence that they were reasonable targets for inquiry?
The BBC thought it worth asking; the Guardian thought it worth asking
– and so did Congresswoman McKinney. Why no pre-Sept. 11 investigations
of these characters?
And what was the reason for the block? According to the experts we broadcast
on British television, it was the Bush Administration’s fanatic desire
to protect their relations with Saudi Arabia – a deadly policy prejudice
which, according to the respected Center for Public Integrity of Washington,
DC, seems influenced by the Bush family ties, and Republican donors’
ties, to Saudi royalty. McKinney, a member of the House Foreign Relations
Committee, thought the BBC/Guardian/Observer investigation worth a follow-up
Congressional review.
According to NPR, her “loony” statement was made on the radio
news show Counterspin. (Not incidentally, Counterspin is produced by an
NPR competitor, the nonprofit Pacifica Radio Network.) I have the transcript;
it’s on the web. Her charge that Bush knew about the Sept. 11 attacks
in advance and deliberately covered it up can’t be found.
What can be read is her call for a follow-up on the revelations from the
BBC and USA Today on the information about a growing terror threat ignored
by Bush . . . and whether the policy response – war, war, war –
was protecting America or simply enriching Bush’s big arms industry
donors and business partners. Fair questions. But asking them is dangerous
. . . to one’s political career.
The BBC report which got McKinney in hot water mentioned the Bush Administration’s
reluctance to investigate associates of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth
(WAMY), which the FBI secret document termed “a suspected terrorist
organization.” They may be. They may not be. McKinney’s question
was only: Why no investigation?
Just after McKinney’s defeat, the courier of Osama bin Laden’s
latest alleged taped threat against the United States was busted in Africa:
He was on the staff of WAMY. Shortly thereafter, Prince Abdullah, the
Saudi dictator, invited WAMY leaders to his palace and told them, “There
is no extremism in the defending of the faith.”
So if you listen to US radio and read US papers, you are told this: Abdullah’s
protector and godfather, George W. Bush, is sane and patriotic, and McKinney,
who wants to investigate these guys, is a loony and a traitor. Got it?
Ted Koppel’s Nightline did a kind of follow-up to the BBC elections
story. Our BBC team discovered that of the 180,000 votes never counted
in the Florida 2000 presidential race, a sickeningly disproportionate
number came from black counties. In Gadsden County, where more than half
the population is black, one in eight ballots was marked “spoiled”
and, thus, never counted.
Koppel’s team got on the case, flying down to Florida to find out
why thousands of black votes were never counted. They talked to experts,
they talked to important white people, and Koppel reported this: Many
blacks are new to voting and, with limited education, have a difficult
time with marking the sophisticated ballots. In other words, ABC concluded,
African Americans are too fucking dumb to figure out how to vote.
Hey, if true, then you have to report it. But it wasn’t. It was a
fib, a tall tale, made-for-TV mendacity, polite liberal electronic cross-burning
intellectual eugenics.
Here’s the real scoop: All races of voters make errors on paper ballots.
But in white counties like Leon (Tallahassee), if you make a stray mark
or other error, the vote machine rejects your ballot, and you get another
ballot to vote again. But in black counties like Gadsden, you make a mistake
and the machine quietly accepts and voids your ballot.
In other words, it wasn’t that African Americans are too dumb to
vote but that European American reporters are too dumb to ask, too lazy
to bother, too gutless to tell officialdom to stop lying into the cameras.
Back in the edit room with Mr. Washington Network TV Reporter, we were
ready to bake the cake, the Gore story. We had all the ingredients.
“Take out your watch,” said the Fox man.
“You get 90 seconds,” he said. “That’s what you get.
You got an intro, 40 seconds of narration, two sound bites, and end with
a stand-up to camera.”
I repeated, “Forty seconds narrate, two sound bites, stand-up.”
He said, “Two sound bites and a stand-up. Every story. Every time.”
He said, “What do you think?”
I said, “I think I’m leaving the country.”
Source: The Guardian
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American military bans BBC crew from Guantanamo
Bay for talking to inmates
By Vikram Dodd
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, June 21— The US military clashed with British
journalists yesterday at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay after inmates shouted
to a BBC Panorama team who had been invited to tour the maximum security
camp. As the journalists walked through camp four, detainees shouted that
they wanted to tell their story and the US soldiers immediately halted
the tour, ordering everyone out.
About 680 people, including around nine Britons, are being held in Guantanamo
Bay naval base in US-occupied Cuba, as part of the Bush administration’s
war against terror.
An audio recording made by the Panorama team was seized by US forces and
the BBC reporter Vivienne White was banished to a section of the bay away
from Camp Delta.
The journalists, including one from the Guardian, saw the inmates wearing
white clothes and eating at an outside table as temperatures reached 100°F.
From behind a fence one man in his late 20s, with a Pakistani accent,
shouted out: “Are you journalists? Can we talk to you?” White
responded: “We’re from BBC television, we are from BBC TV.”
Then immediately US officials tried to order the reporters out. The detainee
said: “We’ve been waiting to see you.” A melee broke out
as the reporters stood by only three meters away. One US officer said:
“Either you keep moving or the tour ends.” One detainee said:
“We’ve been here a long time ... we will talk to you later.”
US officials next confined journalists to a bus, before allowing those
reporters not with the BBC to continue the tour. A US official told the
Guardian that the BBC Panorama team had been told they would have to hand
over their audio recordings if they wished to do any more filming at the
camp. The source said sections containing the detainees’ voices had
been erased before the tapes were handed back and filming, outside and
away from Camp Delta, was allowed to continue. A Camp Delta spokesman,
Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, said the BBC team had ignored an instruction
to move, and had broken the ground rules they had promised to obey.
Col. Johnson said “the big deal” was that the ground rules were
there for a reason and “part of that reason is we try hard not to
exploit the situation of the detainees, and that way no contact is allowed
in the camp.” He said the Panorama team had shouted to the detainees
first. The US military maintains the detainees cannot speak to the press
because of the Geneva convention, but that claim is disputed by the International
Committee of the Red Cross.
Source: The Guardian
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