|
Co-Chair of Bush panel part of far right
network
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Feb. 6 (IPS) — President George W. Bush’s
choice to co-chair his commission to investigate intelligence failures
prior to the Iraq War is a long-time, right wing political activist
closely tied to the neo-conservative network that led the pro-war propaganda
campaign.
Federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman, who will share the chairmanship
with former Virginia Democratic Senator Charles Robb, also has some
history in covert operations.
In 1980, when he served as part of former Republican president Ronald
Reagan’s senior campaign staff, he played a key role in setting
up secret contacts between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Islamic
government in Tehran, in what became known as the “October Surprise”
controversy.
(Former president George HW Bush, the current president’s father,
was Reagan’s vice-president for two terms, 1981-89).
Rewarded with his appeals court judgeship several years later, Silberman
helped advise right-wing activists during the 1990s on strategies for
pursuing allegations of sexual misconduct by then-Democratic president
Bill Clinton, according to various accounts.
Besides Silberman and Robb, a conservative Democrat who also has strong
ties to neo-conservatives through the Democratic Leadership Council,
Bush chose five other commission members and indicated that two more
have yet to be named.
The five include Arizona Republican Senator John McCain; former White
House counsel for Clinton and former president Jimmy Carter, Lloyd Cutler;
Yale University President Richard Levin; former deputy of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) director; Admiral William Studeman and retired
appeals court judge Pat Wald.
In announcing the panel, Bush rejected appeals by the opposition Democrats
in Congress that they be given a role in deciding its membership in
order to enhance its credibility.
He also appeared to limit the commission’s mandate to study only
the mistakes made by the intelligence community in assessing Iraq’s
alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
Bush said the commission will submits its report by Mar. 31, 2005, well
after the presidential elections in November.
“Last week, our former chief weapons inspector, David Kay ... stated
that some pre-war intelligence assessments by America and other nations
about Iraq’s weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed,”
Bush said. “We are determined to find out why.”
Democrats said the mandate was too limited. “The president is not
allowing [the commission] to look into the growing number of questions
millions of Americans are asking about the administration’s statements
and actions before the Iraq war,” said Democratic Minority Leader
Tom Daschle. “That investigation still needs to be done.”
Democrats have charged that political pressure from leading administration
figures, notably Vice President Dick Cheney, contributed to the intelligence
failures, as did officials’ public exaggerations of the intelligence
community’s assessments, in order to persuade the public to support
the war.
Democrats and other analysts also wanted the commission to take up the
administration’s pre-war charges that former Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein worked closely with the al-Qaida terrorist group.
“The independent commission ... should seize upon its mandate to
investigate ‘related 21st century threats’ and the biggest
failure in the justification for the Iraq war: unproven allegations
of links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein,” said Charles Pena,
a foreign-policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think
tank that has strongly opposed the Iraq war, despite its generally Republican
orientation.
Yet, Bush’s appointments surprised several observers by their ideological
diversity and reputations for independence.
“Overall, this is a much more professional, much more balanced
group than I expected,” said Mel Goodman, a former top Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, who has frequently charged the administration
with distorting and exaggerating the intelligence on Iraq.
“It looks like the pragmatists in the White House must have said,
‘it’s important that we get good names, so we’re not
attacked,’” added Goodman, who teaches at the National War
College. He said much will now depend on who is appointed as the panel’s
staff director.
While a Republican who has often taken neo-conservative positions, McCain,
who opposed Bush in the 2000 Republican primary elections and has frequently
clashed with him on key issues, is considered fiercely independent.
During his tenure at the CIA, Studeman was well respected among analysts.
In contrast to a number of other senior officials, “Studeman was
an honest man,” said Goodman, whose public charges that former
CIA chief Robert Gates had slanted assessments of Soviet power and intentions
in the late 1980s created a sensation in Washington.
Cutler, a top adviser to both Carter and Clinton, has enjoyed a strong
reputation for independence and thoughtfulness over several decades,
while Wald, who was appointed to the bench by Carter, is considered
a strong-willed liberal Democrat, who after retirement served as a judge
on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
The appointment of both Silberman and Wald to the commission is seen
as particularly curious, because they are known not to get along. In
his controversial book, ‘Blinded by the Right,’ former right-wing
journalist David Brock said Silberman gave “false information”
to him about Wald whom, according to Brock, “(Silberman) hated
with a passion.”
Brock depicts Silberman as a major, yet discreet, figure in the right-wing
network that harassed Bill and Hillary Clinton for various alleged scandals
during the 1990s. Brock, who describes Silberman as his “mentor,”
has since admitted that many of his attacks on Democrats were based
on little or no evidence.
“A consummate Washington insider for more than two decades,”
Brock wrote, “Larry would often preface his advice to me with the
wry demurrer that judges shouldn’t get involved in politics —
‘that would be improper’, he’d say — and then go
ahead anyway.”
“He was a behind-the-scenes adviser to the conservative editors
of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and he delighted his conservative
audiences with his acid critiques of the liberal press,” added
Brock.
Silberman has also reportedly been known as aggressive and sometimes
abusive, even in his written opinions. He once accused Clinton of “declaring
war on the United States” by permitting his aides to attack Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr in the Whitewater case, while, during an argument
with another appeals court judge, he is reported to have said, “if
you were 10 years younger, I’d be tempted to punch you in the nose.”
But it is his role in the 1980 election that is perhaps most intriguing
about Silberman’s appointment.
He is alleged to have set up and participated in a mysterious meeting
in Washington on Oct. 2, 1980 — one month before the election —
with Reagan’s top foreign policy adviser, then-Marine Lieutenant
Colonel Robert McFarlane (Reagan’s national security adviser during
the Iran-Contra scandal), and at least one Iranian arms dealer.
It was the culmination of a series of secret meetings — never reported
to the US government — between Reagan campaign officials and Iranians
who purported to represent the government of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The precise purpose of those meetings has never been resolved, but one
school of thought, propounded most effectively in the early 1980s by
Carter’s top National Security Council adviser on Iran, was that
the Republican campaign was trying to ensure that Tehran would not make
a deal with Carter to release US Embassy hostages who were being held
in Iran until after the November elections.
In return, Iran would be covertly supplied with US-made weapons via
Israeli middlemen, according to the theory.
Reagan officials, including Silberman, have vehemently denied this version
of events.
Nonetheless, it appears that Silberman was a key conduit to Iran during
the early 1980s.
According to one source, after he received his judicial appointment,
Silberman passed along his Iranian contacts to Michael Ledeen, a close
associate of Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI),
who played a key role with McFarlane in the transfer of US weapons to
Tehran in the deal that gave rise to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Several years later, Silberman cast the deciding vote on a three-judge
panel in a decision that resulted in dismissing the criminal convictions
of Admiral John Poindexter and Lt Col Oliver North for lying to Congress
in connection with the scandal.
New York latest US city to blast PATRIOT
Act
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Feb. 5 (IPS)— New York City on Wednesday
became the 250th US jurisdiction to condemn parts of the USA PATRIOT
Act, adopted following terrorist attacks on the city’s World Trade
Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, for stripping away too many
of Americans’ cherished legal rights.
In adopting Resolution 60, the New York City Council voted to urge local
agencies not to subject New Yorkers to secret detentions without access
to counsel, and the New York Police Department (NYPD), in particular,
to protect the free-speech rights of individuals and to refrain from
enforcing federal immigration laws or engaging in racial or ethnic profiling.
The measure, which was approved by voice vote, also calls upon the New
York delegation in the federal Congress to “actively work for the
repeal of those sections of the USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA) and related
federal actions that unduly infringe upon fundamental rights and liberties.”
“The city of New York — perhaps more than any city in America
— is keenly aware of why we are engaged in a war on terror,”
said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties
Union, the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
“With its diverse population, it is fitting and proper that the
nation’s largest city has joined millions across the country in
demanding that America can, and must, be both safe and free,” she
added.
The resolution passed two weeks after Los Angeles City Council approved
a similar measure. That Jan. 21 vote was depicted as a direct rebuff
to President George W. Bush, who had called for extending and expanding
the USAPA during his State of the Union Address the night before.
In so doing, Los Angeles, the country’s third largest city, and
now New York have joined a growing list of 250 municipalities, counties,
and states encompassing nearly 50 million people that have approved
measures over the past two years that urge far-reaching reform of the
USAPA to ensure basic rights and due process.
Other jurisdictions to approve such resolutions include Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago, the nation’s
second largest city, as well as small communities from Alaska to North
Carolina and Maine. The state legislatures of Hawaii, Alaska, and Vermont
have also approved similar measures.
The main focus of their objections includes the sweeping powers given
to the Justice Department to round up, detain and summarily deport immigrants
without filing charges or providing them with access to attorneys, or,
in some cases, their family members.
Other USAPA measures include the use of racial and ethnic profiling
by federal agencies in targeting suspects, and the granting of unprecedented
powers to the FBI to secretly obtain information about individuals with
little or no judicial review, ranging from their financial records to
their book-borrowing patterns from local libraries.
Late last year, the Bush administration indicated that it will seek
a further expansion of those powers in a new act, as well as an extension
of the USAPA beyond its December, 2005 expiry date.
At the same time, the administration managed to push through new powers
enabling the FBI to search and seize business records without court
approval from securities dealers, currency exchanges, travel agencies,
post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers, and any other business that, in
the government’s eyes, has a “high degree of usefulness in
criminal, tax, or regulatory matters.”
Under the 2001 USAPA such powers were limited to business records held
by banks, credit unions, and similar financial institutions.
On Thursday, Bush renewed his appeal for USAPA to be extended, in a
speech in South Carolina, reported the Washington Post.
It also quoted Justice Department Spokesman Mark Corallo, who said the
New York resolution, like those of other jurisdictions, was based on
“erroneous” information about the USAPA.
He called the act “one of the most important tools Congress has
given the government to fight terrorism and prevent terrorist acts.”
The ACLU, a leader in national and grassroots efforts to oppose the
USAPA’s more far-reaching provisions and related legislation, has
been joined by a wide coalition of groups from across the political
spectrum.
Indeed, some of the strongest opposition has come from the political
right, including Americans for Tax Reform and the Eagle Forum.
The coalition’s common denominator is the fear that the USAPA has
upset the delicate balance between security and liberty, and now threatens
individuals’ privacy and constitutional freedoms.
More than 90 organizations endorsed the New York resolution, including
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
the New York Public Library Guild, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee. A number of family members of NYPD and NY Fire Department
officers who died on 9/11 supported the resolution.
“The fact that the resolution passed in New York City, site of
the devastating 9/11 attacks, sends a resounding message that New Yorkers
are not willing to trade their freedom for policies that do not make
them any more safe,” said Laura Murphy, head of the ACLU’s
legislative office in DC.
“The City of New York paid a higher cost than most cities, but
New Yorkers are standing up and refusing to sacrifice their fundamental
freedoms.”
The impact of the City Council’s vote on security is likely to
be put to a major test when the Republican National Convention meets
in New York in August. Large-scale protests are expected.
|
