Researchers Tested Drugs on Foster Kids

Yahoo! News
Researchers Tested Drugs on Foster Kids

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found.

The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren't yet available in the marketplace.

The practice ensured that foster children — mostly poor or minority — received care from world-class researchers at government expense, slowing their rate of death and extending their lives. But it also exposed a vulnerable population to the risks of medical research and drugs that were known to have serious side effects in adults and for which the safety for children was unknown.

The research was conducted in at least seven states — Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Colorado and Texas — and involved more than four dozen different studies. The foster children ranged from infants to late teens, according to interviews and government records.

Several studies that enlisted foster children reported patients suffered side effects such as rashes, vomiting and sharp drops in infection-fighting blood cells as they tested antiretroviral drugs to suppress AIDS or other medicines to treat secondary infections.

In one study, researchers reported a "disturbing" higher death rate among children who took higher doses of a drug. That study was unable to determine a safe and effective dosage.



The government provided special protections for child wards in 1983. They required researchers and their oversight boards to appoint independent advocates for any foster child enrolled in a narrow class of studies that involved greater than minimal risk and lacked the promise of direct benefit. Some foster agencies required the protection regardless of risks and benefits.

Advocates must be independent of the foster care and research agencies, have some understanding of medical issues and "act in the best interests of the child" for the entirety of the research, the law states.

However, researchers and foster agencies told AP that foster children in AIDS drug trials often weren't given such advocates even though research institutions many times promised to do so to gain access to the children.

Illinois officials believe none of their nearly 200 foster children in AIDS studies got independent monitors even though researchers signed a document guaranteeing "the appointment of an advocate for each individual ward participating in the respective medical research."

New York City could find records showing 142 — less than a third — of the 465 foster children in AIDS drug trials got such monitors even though city policy required them. The city has asked an outside firm to investigate.

Likewise, research facilities including Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said they concluded they didn't provide advocates for foster kids.

Some states declined to participate in medical experiments. Tennessee said its foster care rules generally prohibit enlisting children in such trials. California requires a judge's order. And Wisconsin "has absolutely never allowed, nor would we even consider, any clinical experiments with the children in our foster care system," spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis said.

Officials estimated that 5 percent to 10 percent of the 13,878 children enrolled in pediatric AIDS studies funded by NIH since the late 1980s were in foster care. More than two dozen Illinois foster children remain in studies today.

Some foster children died during studies, but state or city agencies said they could find no records that any deaths were directly caused by experimental treatments.

Researchers typically secured permission to enroll foster children through city or state agencies. And they frequently exempted themselves from appointing advocates by concluding the research carried minimal risk and the child would directly benefit because the drugs had already been tried in adults.

"Our position is that advocates weren't needed," said Marilyn Castaldi, spokeswoman for Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York.

If they decline to appoint advocates under the federal law, researchers and their oversight boards must conclude that the experimental treatment affords the same or better risk-benefit possibilities than alternate treatments already in the marketplace. They also must abide by any additional protections required by state and local authorities.

Many of the studies that enrolled foster children occurred after 1990 when the government approved using the drug AZT — an effective AIDS treatment — for children.

Arthur Caplan, head of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said advocates should have been appointed for all foster children because researchers felt the pressure of a medical crisis and knew there was great uncertainty as to how children would react to AIDS medications that were often toxic for adults.

"It is exactly that set of circumstances that made it absolutely mandatory to get those kids those advocates," Caplan said. "It is inexcusable that they wouldn't have an advocate for each one of those children.

"When you have the most vulnerable subjects imaginable — kids without parents — you really do have to come in with someone independent, who doesn't have a dog in this fight," he said.

Those who made the decisions say the research gave foster kids access to drugs they otherwise couldn't get. And they say they protected the children's interest by carefully explaining risks and benefits to state guardians, foster parents and the children themselves.

"I understand the ethical dilemma surrounding the introduction of foster children into trials," said Dr. Mark Kline, a pediatric AIDS expert at Baylor College of Medicine. He enrolled some Texas foster kids in his studies, and doesn't recall appointing advocates for them.

"To say as a group that foster children should be excluded from clinical trials would have meant excluding these children from the best available therapies at the time," he said. "From an ethical perspective, I never thought that was a stand I could take."

Illinois officials directly credit the decision to enroll HIV-positive foster kids with bringing about a decline in deaths — from 40 between 1989 and 1995 to only 19 since.

NIH, the government health research agency that funded the studies, did not track researchers to determine if they appointed advocates. Instead, the decision was left to medical review boards made up of volunteers at each study site.

A recent Institute of Medicine study concluded those Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) were often overwhelmed, dominated by scientists and not focused enough on patient protections. An ethicist who served 22 years on such boards said they lack the resources to ensure the safety of foster children.

"Over the last half century, IRBs have basically broken under the strain of some of the structural changes in research," said Gregory E. Pence, a University of Alabama-Birmingham bioethicist.

The U.S. Office for Human Research Protections, created to protect research participants after the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies on black men, is investigating the use of foster children in AIDS research. The office declined to discuss the probe.

NIH said it considers patient safety its top priority and awaits the outcome of the investigation. "If we find that patient protections need further strengthening, we will take action to do so," spokesman John Burklow said.

AP's review found that if children were old enough — usually between 5 and 10 — they also were educated about the risks and asked to consent. Sometimes, foster parents or biological parents were consulted; other times not.

"Our policy was to try and contact the (biological) parents because it was fairly common when we got done the foster kid would go back to the parents," said Dr. Ross McKinney, a pediatrics AIDS expert at Duke University.

Research and foster agencies declined to make foster parents or children in the drug trials available for interviews, or to provide information about individual drug dosages, side effects or deaths, citing medical privacy laws.

Other families who participated in the same drug trials told AP their children mostly benefited but parents needed to carefully monitor potential side effects. Foster children, they said, need the added protection of an independent advocate.

"I don't believe a foster care parent can do it," said Vinnie DiPoalo, a New Jersey woman whose 10-year-old adopted son has participated in three AIDS drug trials. "There are informed consents that have to be signed. There are follow-up blood appointments.

"I think that's the role the advocate should take, because a foster parent may only have this child for three months and then the child moves on and someone needs to be watching all the time," she said.

Many studies that enlisted foster children involved early Phase I and Phase II research — the riskiest — to determine side effects and safe dosages so children could begin taking adult "cocktails," the powerful drug combinations that suppress AIDS but can cause bad reactions like rashes and organ damage.

Some of those drugs were approved ultimately for children, such as stavudine and zidovudine. Other medicines were not.

Illinois officials confirmed two or three foster children were approved to participate in a mid-1990s study of dapsone. Researchers hoped the drug would prevent a pneumonia that afflicts AIDS patients.

Researchers reported some children had to be taken off the drug because of "serious toxicity," others developed rashes, and the rates of death and blood toxicity were significantly higher in children who took the medicine daily, rather than weekly.

At least 10 children died from a variety of causes, including four from blood poisoning, and researchers said they were unable to determine a safe, useful dosage. They said the deaths didn't appear to be "directly attributable" to dapsone but nonetheless were "disturbing."

"An unexpected finding in our study was that overall mortality while receiving the study drug was significantly higher in the daily dapsone group. This finding remains unexplained," the researchers concluded.

Another study involving foster children in the 1990s treated children with different combinations of adult antiretroviral drugs. Among 52 children, there were 26 moderate to severe reactions — nearly all in infants. The side effects included rash, fever and a major drop in infection-fighting white blood cells.

New York City officials defend the decision to enlist foster children en masse, saying there was a crisis in the early 1990s and research provided the best treatment possibilities. Nonetheless, they are changing their policy so they no longer give blanket permission to enroll children in preapproved studies.

"We learned some things from our experience," said Elizabeth Roberts, assistant commissioner for child and family health at the Administration for Children's Services. "It is a more individualized review we will be conducting."

Researchers likewise defend their work, saying they often sat with foster families to explain the risks and benefits, and provided them literature and 24-hour phone numbers.

"We talk about it. Then they come the next time. There is no rush," explained Dr. Ram Yogev, the chief pediatric AIDS researcher in Chicago whose patients include a large number of foster children.

Kline, the Texas researcher, added: "I never wanted a parent or guardian to ever say 'yes' simply because they thought that it was what I wanted them to do. I wanted it to be the right choice for them. I think there is not any single right answer for any family."

___

Researcher Rachel Landau in Washington and reporter Carla K. Johnson in Chicago contributed to this story. On the Net:

Documents associated with this story are available at:

http://wid.ap.org/inv/foster.html

National Institutes of Health: http://www.nih.gov

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U.S. Treasury Says It May Reintroduce 30-Year Bond

The New York Times
May 4, 2005
U.S. Treasury Says It May Reintroduce 30-Year Bond
By JONATHAN FUERBRINGER

In a surprise announcement that roiled the bond market and cost some traders and investors millions of dollars in losses, the Treasury Department announced today that it was considering whether to resume selling the 30-year bond, the one-time benchmark of the world's largest bond market.

The resurrection of the 30-year bond, which the Treasury stopped issuing in October 2001, comes as the Treasury confronts the enormous borrowing needs to cover the federal budget deficit. Treasury officials said today that the bond would help them be more flexible in their borrowing, which would lower costs for taxpayers.

But regular issuance of 30-year bonds also could have enormous implications for Wall Street, pension funds and millions of aging Americans.



For Wall Street, the 30-year bond is a long-term security that is more volatile than shorter-term securities. And Wall Street traders love volatility because it is an opportunity to make money.

For pensions, a new 30-year bond could become a benchmark that could lessen the underfunding of pensions. It also could help provide a vehicle for pension funds to match their costs to the income from a long-term security, making pension management less risky.

As for the aging baby boomers, a 30-year bond would give them a safe, long-term security to put their money in that is better matched to the population's lengthening life expectancy.

"Very long time horizons are implicit in things like pensions," said Neal M. Soss, chief economist at CSFB. "Very long time horizons are implicit in things like I.R.A.'s and 401(k)'s. And very long time horizons are implicit in the longer lives Americans are living."

The Treasury is expected to make its final decision in August. If the Treasury decides to re-issue 30-year bonds, the sales would begin in February 2006, with a second sale later in the year. The total of bonds issued would be $20 billion to $30 billion a year.

The announcement caught the bond market unprepared and the price of the old 30-year bond plunged as much as 2 1/2 points as its yield, which moves in the opposite direction shot as high as 4.67 percent, from around 4.5 percent, in just minutes.

Because a lot of traders have been betting that longer-term interest rates would rise more slowly than short-term term rates, the sudden surge in the 30-year bond's yield meant that there were a lot of losses, traders said.

But despite the cost of the surprise announcement, Wall Street was still generally happy with the Treasury's decision. "It was a surprise, but it was something the market had been calling for, for a long time," said Lundy Wright, who runs the Treasury desk at Nomura Securities International. "So in the long term it was not an unwanted development."

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Judge Declares Mistrial in Abu Ghraib Abuse Case

The New York Times
May 4, 2005
Judge Declares Mistrial in Abu Ghraib Abuse Case
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

FORT HOOD, Tex., May 4 - A United States Army judge declared a mistrial in the court martial of Pfc. Lynndie England today after expressing doubts about whether she had been aware that she was committing a crime when she abused Iraqi prisoners.

The mistrial means that Private England's deal with military prosecutors, under which she agreed to plead guilty, is invalid. Her case goes next to Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, commander of military operations in Iraq, who has a wide range of options, including ordering a non-judicial punishment or directing that the case be reinvestigated. General Metz has jurisdiction in the case because the abuse occurred under his command.

Before declaring a mistrial, the judge, Col. James L. Pohl, had halted the proceedings briefly after a witness, Pvt. Charles Graner Jr., testified that photographs of naked prisoners taken at Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad had a legitimate training use for guards. Private Graner also said he had ordered Private England to hold a leash around the neck of a detainee and said that the leash had become attached to the prisoner's neck by accident.


Private Graner's explanation contradicted Private England's testimony earlier this week, when she told the judge that she knew that the photographs of naked prisoners were intended solely for the amusement of American military guards, including herself, and that she understood her actions were wrong.

Testimony by Private England and other witnesses speaking on her behalf was intended to mitigate her actions and secure a shorter prison term, but Colonel Pohl warned several times that it was verging on a statement of her innocence.

"If you don't want to plead guilty, don't," the judge told her this morning. "Am I missing something here?"

Once court resumed this afternoon, Colonel Pohl said the contradiction between Private England's guilty plea for conspiring to mistreat prisoners and Private Graner's testimony could not be resolved.

"You can't have a one-person conspiracy," Colonel Pohl said.

Private Graner, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib, has been described as Private England's former boyfriend and the father of a child she gave birth to last year.

On Tuesday, Private Graner, 36, passed a statement to reporters as he waited to testify that said, "Knowing what happened in Iraq, it was upsetting to see Lynn plead guilty to her charges." But he added hopes that her plea would result in a lesser sentence, and he said he was sending her "love and support" from people "all over."

Before today's mistrial, Private England, 22, had pleaded guilty to seven counts of abuse, including conspiracy, and faced up to 11 years in prison, though people close to the prosecution said the military jury had been more likely to favor a sentence of 30 months or so. Widely publicized photographs showed Private England smiling and gesturing at naked prisoners and holding a prisoner with a dog leash around his neck. This morning, Private Graner gave his account of the photographs showing Private England with the leashed prisoner.

"I wrapped what I called a tether around his shoulder," Private Graner said. "At one point, it slipped around his neck. I asked her to hold the end."

Private Graner said he then took three photographs.

Today was not the first time that Private England's capacity to discern right from wrong has surfaced in her court-martial.

Earlier this week, a psychologist, Thomas C. Denne, the director of assessment of the Mineral County schools in the poor West Virginia area where Private England grew up, portrayed her as a troubled child, born a "blue baby" deprived of oxygen, and suffering from a malformation of her tongue that required it to be clipped. As a result, he said, she was "electably mute - we knew she could talk, she just didn't."

Private England was so shy in kindergarten, Dr. Denne continued, that she spoke only to a teacher's aide and would not answer his questions. Dr. Denne tested her again in the second, fifth and eighth grades and found her to suffer, he said, from an inability to process information, an ailment affecting fewer than 2 children in 100.

But Dr. Denne said that by high school Private England had learned to manage her disability so that she graduated with a 3.0 average and was accepted by the Army Reserves.

Colonel Pohl interrupted Dr. Denne's testimony to ask, "Are you saying she had trouble telling right from wrong?"

Dr. Denne replied, "I don't know that with great certainty, sir."

Judge Pohl was not satisfied. "The problem here," he told defense lawyers, "is you're creating some inference she had trouble knowing right from wrong."

The judge then instructed the jurors that in her guilty plea Private England "admitted she knew it was wrong and chose to do it."

Ralph Blumenthal reported from Fort Hood, Tex., and Timothy Williams contributed reporting from New York for this article.

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Florida girl's abortion allowed

BBC NEWS
Florida girl's abortion allowed
A pregnant 13-year-old girl in Florida has been allowed to have an abortion after a legal battle over the issue.

The girl, known only as LG, was told last week she could not have an abortion, because she lacked the maturity to make such a decision.

But the same judge reversed the order late on Monday, after LG underwent a psychological evaluation.

"Legally speaking, it's not a difficult decision to make. Morally speaking, it's very difficult," the judge said.

"But I'm not here to make the moral decision. I'm here to make the legal decisions," Judge Ronald Alvarez said, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.


'No good news'

Florida Governor Jeb Bush said the state would not fight the judge's decision, but expressed sadness about the situation.

"It's a tragedy that a 13-year-old child would be in a vulnerable position where she could be made pregnant and it's a tragedy that her baby will be lost.

"There's no good news in this at all," he said on Tuesday.

Florida's Department of Children and Families had sought to block the abortion, because LG is a ward of the state.

She learned last week she was three months pregnant.

It is not clear if she has had the abortion.

Florida state law specifically does not require a minor to seek parental consent before an abortion.

LG's lawyers argued that meant the state - as her legal guardian - could not block it.

Abortion is a deeply divisive issue in the US.

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Senate shifts on filibusters

Analysis: Senate shifts on filibusters

By DAVID ESPO
AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Time was, Republicans buried Bill Clinton's judicial picks by the dozen in the Senate Judiciary Committee and Democrats indignantly demanded a yes-or-no vote for each.

That was then.

This is now, when Democrats block a far smaller number of President Bush's court nominees - and Republicans heatedly insist the Constitution itself requires a vote.

"Give them a vote. A vote up or down," Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said recently, speaking of seven appeals court nominees Democrats have vowed to block. "That's what we've always done for 214 years before this president became president."

Except for more than 60 nominees whose names Clinton sent to the Senate between 1995 and 2000.


Republicans didn't resort to filibusters in many of those cases. They didn't need to.

They controlled the levers of Senate power at the time, and simply refused to schedule action on the nominations they opposed. Hatch, a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, played a pivotal role in the blockade.

Inconsistency is hardly a Republican-only trait.

"According to the U.S. Constitution, the president nominates, and the Senate shall provide advice and consent," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in 1997.

"It is not the role of the Senate to obstruct the process and prevent numbers of highly qualified nominees from even being given the opportunity for a vote on the Senate floor," said Boxer, who supported a move in 1995 to ease the filibuster rule.

Except that she joined other Democrats in successfully filibustering 10 of Bush's first-term appeals court candidates. Bush has renominated seven of the 10, and they are at the core of the current struggle over rules governing judicial confirmation.

According to the U.S. Senate Web site, "filibuster" is from a Dutch word meaning pirate. It is embedded in the rules, available to any minority - senators from one party, for example, or senators from one region - who are trying to thwart the majority.

Filibusters aren't forever, though. Under current rules, a 60-vote majority is enough to end one and assure final action on legislation or a nomination. That means the majority can be forced into concessions as members maneuver for the support needed to prevail.

Conservatives used the filibuster against civil rights legislation a half century ago. Liberals used it during the energy crisis of the 1970s when they sought to prevent passage of natural gas deregulation legislation.

Republicans and Democrats agree its use or threatened use has become more frequent.

Picking their words with excruciating care, many Republicans argue that before Bush came into office, there had never been a filibuster against a judicial nominee with majority support.

Except for Abe Fortas.

He was a Supreme Court justice whom President Lyndon Johnson wanted to make the chief justice in 1968. The nomination drew a filibuster by Republicans and Southern Democrats who opposed Fortas' liberalism and were eager to inflict defeat on a lame duck president.

The roll call on a test vote was 45-43, a majority for Fortas, but short of the total needed to advance to a final vote. The nomination was withdrawn, defeated by a filibuster.

Then there was the case of two Californians Clinton nominated, Richard Paez and Marsha Berzon. Paez's nomination languished for more than four years, Berzon's more than two, before then-Majority Leader Trent Lott agreed to a vote. "I didn't think it was right to filibuster judicial nominees then. And it's not right now," the Mississippi Republican said recently.

Except it took the threat of another filibuster before he agreed to a vote in 2000, officials say. Boxer intervened at the time, promising to block action on a Lott-backed nominee to the Tennessee Valley Authority unless there was final action on Paez and Berzon. Paez was confirmed with 59 votes, Berzon with 64.

A decade ago, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin called the filibuster "a dinosaur, a relic of the ancient past."

Frustrated at the multiple filibusters Republicans had launched in the run-up to the 1994 elections, the Iowa senator proposed a gradually receding filibuster, in which supporters would eventually need a 51-vote majority to prevail.

His attempt died on a test vote of 76-19.

Nine Democrats still in office backed the effort and now support efforts to block Bush's controversial nominees. "Senator Harkin's position has changed since then" on protecting minority rights, said a spokeswoman, Allison Dobson. She said that unlike the current GOP move, Harkin attempted to amend the rules in straightforward fashion rather than through a parliamentary ruling.

Among the 76 opponents of Harkin's rules change were 24 Republicans still in office, many of whom now argue heatedly that judicial filibusters are an abuse of the rules.

Among them is Sen. Bill Frist, newly elected from Tennessee at the time.

Changing positions, he supported a different proposal several years later to change the rules. Now, as majority leader, he is the point man in the GOP effort to ban judicial filibusters and clear the way for confirmation of Bush's nominees.

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More Social Security misinformation in CNN, Fox press conference coverage

mediamatters.org

More Social Security misinformation in CNN, Fox press conference coverage

Beyond distortions and misinformation on President Bush's proposal for Social Security, coverage of Bush's April 28 press conference on CNN and Fox News featured additional Social Security falsehoods. On CNN, host Wolf Blitzer allowed Sens. Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) to falsely claim that Social Security faces an unfunded liability exceeding $10 trillion. Rep. Anne Northup (R-KY) made the same claim without challenge in a post-press conference edition of Hannity & Colmes after co-host Sean Hannity made a baseless assertion of his own -- that privatization in Chile and Galveston, Texas, have been "successful stories." Similarly, former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes claimed on the May 1 edition of CNN's Late Edition that workers who entered into the Galveston system "are getting 50 percent to 200 percent more in benefits than they would have with Social Security."

In fact, the $10 trillion figure has been debunked by the American Academy of Actuaries, and the privatized systems in Chile and Galveston have provided lower retirement benefits for low- and middle-income workers than the guaranteed benefits in the systems that they replaced.


Misleading claims regarding privatization in Chile and Galveston, Texas

Galveston and two other Texas counties opted out of the U.S. Social Security system in 1981, creating a system of private annuities that President Bush has touted in various appearances, most recently in an April 29 "town hall" meeting in Falls Church, Virginia.

But reports by the Government Accounting OfficePDF file (GAO) and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, as well as testimony by Brookings Institution senior fellow Henry Aaron, point out serious shortcomings in the Galveston program. The GAO report determined that only higher-wage earners' benefits and initial disability benefits would increase under the Galveston plan, while all other groups would receive lower benefits than under Social Security.

A recent Democratic congressional analysis, in coordination with the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, also found the Galveston model lacking. As the report, released by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), noted:

Americans at every income level are clearly better off with Social Security's guaranteed, inflation-protected benefit. The only exception is high income earners. And that is true only initially; over the course of retirement, even higher income earners are better off with Social Security.

Even a Galveston newspaper opposed implementing the model nationwide: An April 24 editorial in the Galveston County Daily News stated: "We're open to changes in Social Security but don't think the Galveston Plan is the best model for change."

Further, several Texas news reports have cast doubt on whether the Galveston model is even comparable to Bush's proposal for private accounts. As the Dallas Morning News noted on April 27, the Galveston model differs from Bush's proposal in that it has a "safety net" for workers who become disabled, die, or receive poor returns on their private investment accounts. Similarly, an April 27 Houston Chronicle editorial argued that the two plans are "apples and oranges" with "different aims and results."

As Media Matters for America previously documented when Hannity and New York Times columnist John Tierney touted the Chilean pension system, that country's program of private accounts has been less effective for poor and middle-class workers than the pension program that preceded it.

False claims regarding a $10 trillion unfunded Social Security liability

On CNN's pre-press conference coverage, Blitzer failed to correct Grassley's claim that "we have overpromised, by $10 to $12 trillion, what we can deliver for our children and grandchildren." Earlier that evening, Blitzer failed to correct Coleman as he distorted the numbers to an even greater degree, claiming: "We have a $15 -- $10 to $15 trillion unfunded liability from Social Security." Similarly, following Bush's press conference, Northup asserted on Fox News that "there's a $10 trillion unfunded liability."

The Social Security trustees' determination of a $10.4 trillion unfunded liability over an "infinite horizon" is misleading, according to the American Academy of Actuaries, the country's leading association of insurance and demographics experts:

[T]he new measures of OASDI's [Social Security's] unfunded obligations included in the 2003 report provide little if any useful information about the program's long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise in the demographic, economic and actuarial aspects of the program's finances into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated.

— A.S.

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NY Times glossed over existing conservative presence in public broadcasting

mediamatters.org/

NY Times glossed over existing conservative presence in public broadcasting

In an article documenting efforts by the Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to correct perceived "liberal bias" at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), The New York Times failed to mention the presence of conservative media figures with a record of misinformation on these outlets.

Media Matters for America previously noted that the May 2 Times article on efforts by Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, CPB's Republican chairman, "to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias" at CPB, omits key facts about CPB's two new ombudsmen. But in addition, the Times focused heavily on conservative allegations of "liberal bias" without noting that CPB has itself funded several PBS programs that feature conservative commentators with extensive histories of inaccurate and misleading statements.

Specifically, Media Matters has documented evidence of conservative misinformation by Paul A. Gigot, the Wall Street Journal editorial staff, David Brooks, and Tucker Carlson.



Paul Gigot and The Wall Street Journal

Gigot, who previously wrote for the National Review, is the editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. He is a former political commentator on PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and is the host of the CPB-funded PBS program The Journal Editorial Report. According to CPB, the show incorporates "reports from the field" by members of the Journal's editorial board, as well as "a panel discussion of either the field piece or a recent news story with members of the Journal's editorial board who represent a diverse range of expertise, interests and backgrounds."

Media Matters has documented the Journal editorial page's distortions and misstatements:

* WSJ editorial falsely claimed Abu Ghraib report absolved senior officials
* WSJ editorial page again wrongly attacked DeLay aides' prosecutor Ronnie Earle as a "partisan Democrat"
* WSJ editorial claimed Clinton pioneered Bush rendition policy, revived bogus accusation that Clinton declined Sudan's offer of Bin Laden
* WSJ provided false cover for Rumsfeld, falsely asserted that vehicle armor production is at "full capacity"
* Wall Street Journal falsehood: Bush would've won under every recount scenario

In addition, Media Matters has documented Gigot's own distortions, as well as one by senior editorial page writer Kimberley A. Strassel, who has appeared on The Journal Editorial Report:

* Gigot's wishful thinking: that Clinton thinks "[I]t was right for President Bush to go into Iraq"
* On PBS, WSJ's Strassel exaggerated significance of potential ANWR oil production

David Brooks

Brooks is senior editor at The Weekly Standard and began writing a column for The New York Times in September 2003. He is currently a political commentator on PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Media Matters has documented numerous distortions and misstatements by Brooks:

* Kerry Tora Bora comment ripped out of context (Brooks later apologized for the misrepresentation)
* NYT's David Brooks, in NewsHour panel, falsely claimed Kerry said "Republicans don't value their families"
* NY Times' Brooks cited defender of eugenicists in touting new political constituency
* Brooks, Gaffney cut and run from the truth on Kerry speech

Tucker Carlson

Carlson is the former co-host of CNN's Crossfire and soon-to-be host of a public affairs show on MSNBC. He is also a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard. He is the host of the weekly PBS series Unfiltered. (WETA, the Washington, D.C., PBS affiliate that produced the show, has announced that its yearlong run will end in June.) Media Matters has documented numerous Carlson distortions and misstatements:

* Carlson, Wash. Post misinformation on Social Security's 'solvency' furthered Bush administration's crisis rhetoric
* Conservatives distorted DNC manual to accuse Dems of dirty tricks
* Tucker Carlson lied about Bob Dole's lies; Dole falsely claimed that '96 campaign didn't promote his war record
* Tucker Carlson's amnesia: "Nobody prevented anyone from voting' in Florida"

Media Matters has also documented several inflammatory remarks by Carlson:

* Tucker Carlson: "grouchy feminists with mustaches" control the Democratic Party
* Conservatives equated Mary Cheney's sexual orientation with abortion, adultery, alcoholism, and now obesity
* Carlson to Brazile: Dems "keep track of racial data more assiduously than Himmler ever did"

— J.K.

Posted to the web on Tuesday May 3, 2005 at 2:05 PM EST

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Defense Department Invokes Geneva Conventions to Withhold Torture Photos

Defense Department Invokes Geneva Conventions to Withhold Torture Photos
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org

CIA Improperly Refusing to Confirm or Deny Existence of Documents Reported in the Media, ACLU Says

NEW YORK -- In a federal court brief filed late last night, the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the government's claim that turning over photographic evidence of detainee abuse in Iraq would violate the Geneva Conventions.

"Until now, this administration has shown only contempt for the Geneva Conventions, and it has built its policies dismissing the application of international humanitarian law," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "It's simply astounding that the Defense Department has now invoked the Geneva Conventions to suppress evidence that prisoners have been abused. The government cannot cloak its attempts to protect itself from public embarrassment in a newfound concern for the Geneva Conventions."


Through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union have sought the release of photographs and videotapes, in addition to documents, that would shed light on the systemic abuse of detainees held by the United States overseas. The Defense Department has refused to turn over photographic evidence, stating that to do so would violate the government's obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

In its reply brief, the ACLU argued that the release of photographs would not infringe the personal privacy of the detainees depicted if all identifying details were redacted. The ACLU also submitted declarations from leading international law experts stating that releasing the photographs would be consistent with the Geneva Conventions. One expert noted that photography exposing inhumane conditions at German and Japanese concentration camps played a powerful role in the historical development of the Geneva Conventions themselves.

The ACLU also questioned the sincerity of the government's commitment to the Geneva Conventions, pointing to previous declarations from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the Conventions do not apply to detainees held at Guantánamo Bay or in Afghanistan. Recently, the ACLU obtained a memo signed by Lieutenant General Ricardo A. Sanchez authorizing 29 interrogation techniques for use in Iraq, including several techniques that the group says clearly violate the Geneva Conventions. Among other things, the Sanchez memo allowed interrogators to use military dogs "to exploit Arab fears" and to subject detainees to painful stress positions and extended isolation.

"The Geneva Conventions were intended to protect prisoners, not to provide governments with a basis for withholding evidence that prisoners have been maltreated," said ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer. "It's disgraceful that the Defense Department is attempting to contort the Conventions in this way."

The ACLU also charged in its brief that:

The CIA has improperly refused to confirm or deny the existence of documents that have been reported on by the press. The CIA has invoked a legal argument known as the "Glomar" response to avoid acknowledging even the existence of two Justice Department memos regarding the legality of certain interrogation techniques. It has also invoked Glomar with respect to an order from President Bush authorizing the CIA to set up detention facilities outside the United States.
The Defense Department has improperly withheld documents pertaining to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ACLU is seeking Defense Department documents that were generated in response to concerns raised by the ICRC over the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Although the ICRC reports themselves are confidential, the ACLU has argued that memos produced by the Defense Department in response to the ICRC findings cannot be withheld from the public.
The CIA has failed to justify the withholding of documents on "Ghost Detainees." The ACLU is seeking the release of documents relating to CIA Director George Tenet's request that Secretary Rumsfeld hold an Iraqi prisoner but not list him on the prison rolls, as well as Secretary Rumsfeld's order implementing that request. Neither the Defense Department nor the CIA has provided an adequate response to this request, and the ACLU is asking the court to order the immediate release of these documents.
U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein will address the ACLU's charges and hear oral arguments from attorneys in New York next month.

To date, the Defense Department and other government agencies have released more than 30,000 pages of documents in response to Judge Hellerstein's order directing the government agencies to comply with a year-old FOIA request filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.

Earlier this month, the ACLU and Human Rights First filed a lawsuit charging Secretary Rumsfeld with direct responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody. The action was the first federal court lawsuit to name a top U.S. official in the ongoing torture scandal in Iraq and Afghanistan; many of the charges are based on documents obtained through the FOIA lawsuit. The ACLU has also filed separate lawsuits naming Brig. Gen. Karpinski, Col. Thomas Pappas and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. Details about the lawsuits are online at www.aclu.org/rumsfeld.

The FOIA lawsuit is being handled by Lawrence Lustberg and Megan Lewis of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C. Other attorneys in the case are Jaffer, Amrit Singh, and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur N. Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky and Jeff Fogel of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

For copies of the ACLU's reply brief, as well as government documents submitted in this case, go to www.aclu.org/torturefoia.

originally released April 29, 2005

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Time to Leave the Table

washingtonpost.com

Time to Leave the Table

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, May 3, 2005; A21

There is a name for those who continue to sit at a gambling table even after they learn that the game is fixed. They are called fools.

Now that President Bush has proposed Social Security benefit cuts through "progressive indexing," his critics are said to have an obligation to negotiate in good faith to achieve a solution. There are just two problems with that sentence: The words "good faith" and "solution."

Bush's "plan" is still not a plan, just a few ideas. If the president is serious, let him first persuade members of his own party to agree to a detailed proposal so everyone knows what the trade-offs are. If what he has in mind is a good idea, Republicans will be eager to sign on. And if Bush can't get Republicans to go along, might that say something about the merits of his suggestions?

Opponents of Bush's cut-and-privatize project -- they include not only Democrats but also skeptical Republicans -- do have a responsibility. Their task is to subject half-baked concepts to the criticism they deserve and insist that they be fully baked before serious discussions can begin. Social Security, the most successful government program in our history, should not be overturned lightly.


That the president is fixing the Social Security reform game should be obvious. The most basic corruption of the process is the way the Republican congressional leadership has transformed the bargaining that once took place between the House and the Senate.

In the old days, when each house produced different versions of the same bill, a "conference" committee typically including members of both parties from both houses would thrash out the details and reach a compromise. Now the Republicans will concede whatever is necessary to get a bill out of the Senate, even as the lockstep-Republican House produces a right-wing version of the same proposal. In conferences, Republicans routinely freeze out all but the most pliable Democrats. The supposed "compromise" that emerges is not a compromise at all. Democrats who go along become enablers of a game being played with a stacked deck.

The game is also fixed because the president has narrowed the range of Social Security options to protect his most questionable policy choices.

Some press reports have suggested that Bush's willingness to cut Social Security benefits for the wealthy turned him into some latter-day Karl Marx, or at least Ted Kennedy.

This is nonsense.

Bush has refused to put his own tax cuts on the table as part of a Social Security fix. Repealing Bush's tax cuts for those earning more than $350,000 a year could cover all or most of the 75-year Social Security shortfall. Keeping part of the estate tax in place could cover a quarter to half of the shortfall. Some of the hole could be filled in by a modest surtax on dividends or capital gains.

But Bush is resolute about protecting the interests of the truly rich by making sure that any taxes on wealth are ruled out of the game from the beginning. The Social Security cuts he is proposing for the wealthy are a pittance compared with the benefits they get from his tax cuts. The president is keeping his eye on what really matters to him.

The real costs of progressive indexing as currently conceived would be paid by middle-income earners -- those with incomes in the range of $35,000 to $60,000 a year.

Eventually, such earners would face benefit cuts of 20 to 30 percent from what they are promised under the current program. And it gets worse: Rising Medicare premiums are eating up an increasing share of middle-class Social Security checks. Even without the cuts, Social Security payments will, over time, barely cover an individual's Medicare costs.

Last, there are the trillions of dollars that Bush would have us borrow to cover the transition to the private accounts he wants to set up. It's far from clear that cutting future Social Security benefits for younger members of the middle class and saddling them with mounds of new indebtedness would make either them or the country better off. Anyone who is truly conservative might have a question or two about whether this "solution" is worse than the problem it is purportedly addressing.

Walking away from a rigged game is hard for some people, especially when those running it and the respected opinion-makers who support them insist that this time the game will truly be on the level. But, especially when the danger involves gambling away the future of Social Security, the truly responsible thing is to leave the table.

postchat@aol.com

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"The Bushes Offer a Horse Jerk-off Joke But No Words for the Troops...

thenation.com
The George & Laura Show
David Corn

The entry below is a posting from my personal blog at www.davidcorn.com. It was titled, "The Bushes Offer a Horse Jerk-off Joke But No Words for the Troops...and Other Impolite Observations From the White House Correspondents' Dinner."

No mention of the US troops being killed in Iraq but a horse jerk-off joke--that is one way to sum up the First Couple's appearance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday evening.

This black-tie shindig is an annual ritual. Over two thousand DC media people and government officials mingle with imported Hollywood celebrities--hey there goes Richard Gere!--and the president of the moment shows up and entertains the feeling-good-about-themselves attendees with humorous (often self-deprecating) remarks. Last year, Bush made a crack about my book, The Lies of George W. Bush.

This evening, the Bush White House pulled a switcheroo. Bush started his routine by telling a joke he repeatedly used on the campaign trail. The gag pokes fun at a city slicker lost in a rural area, and what Bush didn't say is that he learned it during his unsuccessful 1978 congressional bid when his opponent told the joke to lampoon a certain Andover, Yale and Harvard grad who was trying to pass himself off as a Texan. As Bush-watchers in the ballroom familiar with this stale chestnut started to groan, Laura Bush stood up, walked to the podium, leaned into the microphone and said, "Not that old joke." She then told her husband to sit down, and she delivered a polished routine that ribbed her old man for being early-to-bed dull. She noted that she had told him, "If you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're going to have to stay up later."

Laura's well-written script included several shots of risque material. After revealing that come nine o'clock at night, "Mr. Excitement is sound asleep, and I'm watching Desperate Housewives," she added, "If those women think they're desperate, they ought to be with George." She then joked that she, Lynne Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice had hit Chippendale's late one night. And moments later--after referring to Barbara Bush as Don Corleone and joking about her husband's aversion to reading--she made fun of her number-one cowboy for knowing little of the ways of ranch life when they bought the spread in Crawford, Texas. Such a greenhorn was George, she explained, "he tried to milk the horse. What's more--it was a male horse."

It was a good performance but weird, for Laura had jabbed at her husband for not reading books, had suggested he was no powerhouse in bed, and had encouraged everyone in the room--and all those children at home glued to C-SPAN--to envision George W. Bush pulling on the penis of a horse. (I wondered how social conservative leader James Dobson, who was scheduled to be at the dinner, reacted.) It was not hard to figure out why the White House decided to have Laura upstage George. Her approval rating is almost twice his, and his number--in the mid-40s--are at a record low. But an HBO routine? Afterward, both Al Franken and Bill Maher were complaining that they could not have gotten away with that horse joke.


Laura's racy act was the talk of the town. But there was something more strange and discomforting about the evening than her channeling of Ellen DeGeneres. Neither she nor her husband once referred to the Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly those who had recently lost their lives implementing Bush's policy and (according to the Bushes) defending the United States from evil. At a high-profile event of this nature, it certainly is customary for a president to joke, but he also often concludes with a serious sentiment. At the radio and television correspondents' dinner several weeks ago, Vice President Dick Cheney, standing in for Bush (who was on his way to the Pope's funeral), took a few stabs at humor then devoted most of his remarks to the deceased Pope. Last year, at one of these galas, Bush joked about his inability to find WMDs in Iraq--yeah, he made fun of the mission for which Americans had lost their lives--but then he saluted troops stationed overseas, noting their sacrifices.

His--and Laura's--non-recognition of the American troops (those dying and those doing the real hard work) was not a one-time phenomenon. Two nights earlier at Bush's first primetime news conference in a year, Bush said nothing about the Americans risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not a word of thanks. Not a word of tribute for those recently killed in action. He did mention troop levels and said, "I believe we're making really good progress in Iraq." But nada regarding the men and women he had dispatched into harm's way. Is this a pattern? Of course, Bush does not have to remind people that Americans are being shot to death and blown up in Iraq and that the violence in Iraq has increased lately. But recent polls disclose that a half of Americans now believe that Bush deliberately misled the public about the (nonexistent) WMDs in Iraq and that a slight majority have concluded that the war was not worth it. With most Americans down on the war as the insurgents mount more deadly attacks and military experts in the United States predict this conflict may last for five to 30 years, is Bush consciously not referring directly to the soldiers and, especially, the fallen Americans? Or has he just forgotten to do so when he has appeared in public?

******

For most of the night, the dinner yielded less disturbing moments. At a pre-dinner reception hosted by Newsweek, I and my colleague Julian Borger of the British Guardian chatted with Dennis Hopper and his wife, Victoria . Months ago, Hopper, a Bush-backer (from Easy Rider to easy street?), had been invited to participate in Bush's inaugural festivities. Then he was dis-invited. Why? The widespread assumption was that the family-values crowd had bitched about Hopper's involvement because they supposedly were not fans of his various on-screen celebrations of perversity. Dennis and Victoria told us they were not able at the time to get an explanation from the inauguration's organizers, but they noted that the head of the Creative Coalition, a group of politically-minded Hollywood stars, was told by Karl Rove that Hopper had been nixed because Victoria is a Democratic Party activist. I wonder if Rove knows that Cheney's daughter is gay?

Borger and I pressed on and nearly found ourselves asphyxiated in a scrum caused by Richard Gere, the celeb who always had the largest crowd about him. We managed to make it to the main ballroom and caught sight of Bill Gertz, a national security correspondent for the Washington Times, chuckling with Donald Rumsfeld. About what? Who knows? Most folks were trying to spot movie stars. I headed straight toward Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. Why, I asked ever-so politely, had his committee not yet completed the so-called Phase II report that is supposed to examine how the Bush White House used--or abused--the intelligence on WMDs. Roberts claimed he wanted to finish the report and get the damn thing off his back. But, he explained, the problem was that he had decided that the committee should look at the prewar statements of a variety of public officials--meaning Democratic members of Congress--and the Democrats now were not so hot to proceed. In other words, Roberts had told the Dems, You want to look at what Bush, Cheney, Rice and the rest said about WMDs before the war? Fine, let's go over 46 statements from prominent Democrats--like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, and so on--who also had said there was a WMD threat from Iraq. Very clever, Mr. Chairman. But none of these folks launched an invasion. And it was not their responsibility to ascertain that the intelligence was sound and that it was being represented accurately to the public. And, Roberts went on, he now is overwhelmed with ensuring there's good intelligence on WMDs in North Korea and Iran and overseeing the ongoing reform of the intelligence community's structure. Do we really want to take time and energy away from these crucial tasks, he asked, to go over what was said three years ago? Still, he said, "I'd like to get this done." And I'd like to see Bush milk a horse.

Elsewhere on the floor of the Washington Hilton's grand ballroom, Democrats were feeling pretty giddy due because Bush's poll numbers are lousy and his recent press conference seemingly caused his failing Social Security crusade even more problems. "I wish the election was tomorrow!" exclaimed Representative Rahm Emmanuel, who runs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Former Democratic Party head Terry McAullife declared, "I almost wish I was still chairman."

I found my table and discovered I was siting about ten feet away from deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, the Iran-contra criminal (pardoned by Bush I) whom George W. Bush had rehabilitated. This past week, I had written for a book proposal a sample chapter in which Abrams plays a special role. (When Abrams worked for the Reagan administration he denied that El Salvador troops trained and equipped by the United States had massacred 800 peasants, mainly women and children. But the massacre had happened. Years later, this fellow who had tried to cover up the existence of one of the most tragic human rights atrocities in the Western Hemisphere in recent decades was given a job on the National Security Council by George W. Bush and placed in charge of coordinating human rights policy.) Borger encouraged me to go talk to Abrams. I really had no questions for him, I said. In retrospect, I realize I should have approached Abrams and said, "How would you feel if your family was slaughtered by soldiers and then two governments denied it ever happened?" But I was perhaps distracted by all the hubbub caused by the latest American Idol celebrity, who was sitting several tables in front of us.

After the dinner, while heading out the hotel, I spotted Paul Wolfowitz. He was walking very quickly and holding a copy of the conservative National Review underneath an arm. The magazine had been opened to a page bearing a story headlined "What Went Right" and written by Rich Lowry, whom I occasionally debate on college campuses. The piece begins, "It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq." Since many military experts note the insurgency could go on for many more years--maybe decades--this may be a slightly premature pronouncement. And ultimately meaningless. A Japanese magazine after Pearl Harbor could have declared, "We are winning." The first quotes Lowry offer are not persuasive. An unnamed "top officer in Iraq" says, "It's not over." (Wow, get this person to the Army War College right away.) And an unnamed administration officials says, "I give us a B minus." I sure hope Wolfowitz is able to get more insightful views than these.

Next stop was the only after-party to speak of: the Bloomberg reception. This is always the hot ticket. The party used to be hosted by Vanity Fair, but the VFers grew tired of the bother. Bloomberg rushed in. The bash was two blocks from the hotel. Still, there was limo gridlock between the two spots. After all, there was a drizzle underway. But the Bloombergers had thought of everything. They had stationed young men with bags of umbrellas along the route to the party. There was no need for anyone to show up moist.

I trodded the wet sidewalks of Washington with Michael Isikoff, Maureen Dowd and Jill Abramson of The New York Times. The line was forever long when we arrived, and there was more security than at Washington National airport. I quickly sussed out that I would not get in because my contact person was not working the door as I had been told she would be. (Don't ask how a proper invitation did not make it to me.) But--in the nick of time--there was Arianna Huffington. She whisked me into her entourage. I was in--and, in a way, her date for the evening. Which was fine by me. As we moved through the overcrowded party (can't they keep out gatecrashers?), she greeted practically everyone by asking, "You will be blogging for me?" Wesley Clark. John Podesta. Isikoff. We chatted with Al Franken and Bill Maher. Franken discussed his preparations to run for the Senate from Minnesota in 2008. We then spied Matt Drudge. The new HuffingtonPost.com group-blog has erroneously been described as competition to Drudge's site, but we all talked amicably. Drudge told me that he had recently linked to my blog, after having heard me bash John Bolton on all-night BBC radio in London. And in a rare moment of quiet conversation, Huffington asked me what I would ask David Geffen and Quincy Jones to blog about. Both have agreed to be part of her mega-blog. I'm not going to reveal my suggestions. I want it to be a surprise. The site launches on May 9.

It was at the Bloomberg party that I had my favorite Hollywood moment. As Huffington and I entered the soiree, Ian McShane, the star of HBO's gritty and explicit Western, Deadwood, was leaving. Huffington knows him, of course. (No Rolodex--or Blackberry--can hold all her connections!) They talked. Then I introduced myself to him and remarked that I was a big fan and that Deadwood is a "great fuckin' show." I then realized he probably had heard this a million times, for one signature element of the show is its abundant flow of curse words, especially "fuckin'" and "cocksucker." Whoops, I said. He quickly ended my embarrassment by warmly noting he was familiar with my writings and was delighted to meet me. What a gent. Later, as I thought about this encounter, I recalled that in a recent episode of Deadwood one grizzled no-good ruffian was caught masturbating himself alongside a horse. I wondered if a future episode might feature someone actually milking a stallion.

*******************

IT REMAINS RELEVANT, ALAS. SO DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! An UPDATED and EXPANDED EDITION is AVAILABLE in PAPERBACK. The Washington Post says, "This is a fierce polemic, but it is based on an immense amount of research.... [I]t does present a serious case for the president's partisans to answer.... Readers can hardly avoid drawing...troubling conclusions from Corn's painstaking indictment." The Los Angeles Times says, "David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the current president. He compares what Bush said with the known facts of a given situation and ends up making a persuasive case." The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations.... Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." And GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS, "I'd like to tell you I've read [ The Lies of George W. Bush], but that'd be a lie."

For more information and a sample, go to www.davidcorn.com. And see his WEBLOG there.

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'Hitler's nurse' breaks silence

BBC NEWS
'Hitler's nurse' breaks silence

A survivor of Adolf Hitler's wartime bunker in Berlin has been tracked down, a German newspaper claims.

The Berliner Zeitung relates 93-year-old Erna Flegel's account of the last days of World War II, under the headline "I was Hitler's nurse".

Mrs Flegel said she stayed in the bunker after Hitler killed himself and was there when Soviet troops arrived.


She said Hitler was so paranoid that he even suspected spies had filled his cyanide capsule with false poison.

From January 1943 until the end of the war, Mrs Flegel's job was to give medical treatment to Hitler and his inner circle, she told the paper.

She was interviewed by US secret service agents in 1945, but otherwise has kept silent about her experiences for the past 60 years, the Berliner Zeitung says.

Now, however, she said she had decided to speak out, telling the paper: "I don't want to take my secret with me to the grave."

'Merciless' mother

Mrs Flegel's story does not challenge what is already known, but does add new details.

She said of Hitler: "By the end, he didn't trust anyone any more - not even the cyanide capsule he swallowed."

She also recalled trying to save the lives of the six children of Josef Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda chief, but said his wife Magda, who poisoned them, was "merciless".

Mrs Flegel said that after Hitler's suicide, Goebbels took over as leader, but no-one paid any attention to him.

"His last subordinates shot themselves in succession," she said. "And those who didn't shoot themselves tried to flee."

She said she remained, however. "I had to look after the wounded."

In the newspaper interview, Mrs Flegel described the atmosphere in the bunker as the noise of approaching Soviet forces grew.

"You could feel that the Third Reich was coming to an end," she said. "The radios stopped working and it was impossible to get information."

Mrs Flegel added that when the Soviet troops arrived, they were well-behaved and advised her to lock her door.

She said she stayed for several days, and was one of the last people to leave the bunker.

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Pentagon Says Iraq Effort Limits Ability to Fight Other Conflicts

The New York Times
May 3, 2005
Pentagon Says Iraq Effort Limits Ability to Fight Other Conflicts
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, May 2 - The concentration of American troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan limits the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts, the military's highest ranking officer reported to Congress on Monday.

The officer, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed Congress in a classified report that major combat operations elsewhere in the world, should they be necessary, would probably be more protracted and produce higher American and foreign civilian casualties because of the commitment of Pentagon resources in Iraq and Afghanistan.


A half dozen Pentagon civilian and military officials were discussing the outlines of the report on Monday as it was being officially delivered to Congress; one government official provided a copy to The New York Times. The officials who discussed the assessment demanded anonymity because it is a classified document.

General Myers cited reduced stockpiles of precision weapons, which were depleted during the invasion of Iraq, and the stress on reserve units, which fulfill the bulk of combat support duties in Iraq, as among the factors that would limit the Pentagon's ability to prevail as quickly as war planners once predicted in other potential conflicts.

The report this year acknowledges that the nation's armed forces are operating under a higher level of risk than cited in the report last year, said Pentagon and military officials who have read both documents.

Despite the limitations, General Myers was unwavering in his assessment that American forces would win any major combat operation. The armed forces, he concluded, are "fully capable" of meeting all Washington's military objectives.

The general's report appears to provide a slightly different assessment than President Bush offered at a news conference last week when he said the number of American troops in Iraq would not limit Washington military options elsewhere.

Mr. Bush said he had asked General Myers, "Do you feel that we've limited our capacity to deal with other problems because of our troop levels in Iraq?"

"And the answer is no, he didn't feel a bit limited," Mr. Bush said. "It feels like we got plenty of capacity."

Late Monday, a Pentagon official dismissed any serious contradiction between the president and the general. "The two comments are consistent in that no one in the military feels at all limited in the ability to respond to any contingency," the official said. "What the risk assessment discusses is the nature of the response."

Another Pentagon official emphasized that the risk assessment should be understood as a rating of the military's ability to successfully perform its mission based on a set of standards set by the Joint Staff, which is different from the broad statement of military capability given by the president at his news conference.

In the report, General Myers wrote, the military faces "moderate" risk in its mission to protect the United States, and he assessed the risk for preventing conflict - including surprise attack - as "moderate, but trending toward significant."

Though the general wrote that the military forces "will succeed in any" major combat operation, he added that "they may be unable to meet expectations for speed or precision as detailed in our current plans."

The annual "Chairman's Risk Assessment," which is required by Congress, warned that additional major combat operations "may result in significantly extended campaign timelines, and achieving campaign objectives may result in higher casualties and collateral damage."

The classified assessment is a formal acknowledgment by General Myers, who serves as the senior military adviser to both President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, of a series of strains: those placed on military personnel by large and lengthy overseas deployments; those placed on weapons and vehicles by wear and tear; and those placed on war planners trying to counter potential adversaries even though forces previously committed to such places as South Korea are now engaged elsewhere.

Even so, the assessment notes steps already under way to mitigate this risk, and concludes that at the broadest global and strategic levels, the risk "is significant, but trending lower."

The half-dozen senior officials who discussed the chairman's assessment seemed motivated at least in part by concerns that its findings might be misinterpreted by adversaries as an admission of vulnerability, and be seen as an invitation to adventurism that could lead to war.

In case of armed conflict, "There is no doubt what the outcome would be," said one senior official. "But it may not be as pretty," said another.

The assessment acknowledges the important role played by the demonstration of American military resolve in deterring adversaries.

"Our ability to manage the perceptions of our adversaries is critical," General Myers wrote. "Our nation's steadfast resolve has been demonstrated by our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and selected operations" in the campaign against terrorism. "This in itself is a strong deterrent and should serve to restrain" the actions of adversaries, he wrote.

General Myers noted that the American military does not face "extreme risk," the highest level, in any of the categories analyzed in the report. Among the steps he listed as being in progress were substantial improvements in coordinating military efforts with civil authorities, who are "playing a critical role in disrupting potential terrorist attacks against the United States," he wrote.

Overseas, terrorist sanctuaries have been reduced and the Navy and Air Force have shown they can quickly deploy weapons and personnel to deter adversaries. One example cited by General Myers was the decision to move heavy bombers from bases in the United States to airfields in the Pacific to deter potential hostile action by North Korea when ground forces in the region - those usually assigned to a contingency on the Korean peninsula - began moving toward Iraq in advance of the war there.

At the same time, the military has learned how to better "maintain and sustain a campaign level of effort" through the mission in Iraq, and the Army in particular is reorganizing its forces to create more units that can be deployed. But even though adjustments to the organization of the active and reserve components, and the Army's overall restructuring, will eventually correct shortfalls in deployable troop strength, "this will take several more years to complete," the assessment states. At present, there are about 138,000 American troops in Iraq, and about 17,000 in Afghanistan.

In an upbeat final paragraph, General Myers told Congress that the armed forces "remain the most professional, best trained, and best equipped military in the world.

"Our ability to project power, anywhere in the world, remains second to none," he added. "The dedication, commitment, and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces ensure success in every challenge."

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U.S. airport screeners lack training and standards, report says

FindLaw.com

U.S. airport screeners lack training and standards, report says

By LESLIE MILLER Associated Press Writer

(AP) - WASHINGTON-A congressional report released Monday criticized the Transportation Security Administration for failing to produce a standard to measure the quality of its airport screeners and for not providing them promised training.

The Government Accountability Office said while it may be impossible for screeners to detect 100 percent of dangerous items that airline passengers try to carry onto planes, the TSA should set a standard for the screeners so it can focus on where to improve, the GAO report said.

TSA screeners' inability to find guns, weapons and other dangerous items since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has been a continuing problem.



"Weaknesses and vulnerabilities continue to exist in passenger and checked baggage screening systems at airports of all sizes, at airports with federal screeners and at airports with private-sector screeners," the report said.

The GAO urged the agency to set standards for how many threat objects screeners intercept when undercover agents try to slip them through airport checkpoints.

"Without performance targets for covert testing, TSA will not have identified a desired level of performance related to screener detection of threat objects," the report said.

The TSA, responding to the GAO, said it has created broad performance indexes for airports, such as the percentage of screeners who pass annual tests and the numbers of passengers they screen. The TSA said it will have set individual performance standards by October.

Screeners are required by law to receive 40 hours of classroom instruction and 60 hours of on-the-job training before they can check passengers or bags on their own. The GAO acknowledged that TSA has been trying to upgrade training and improve screener performance.

A classified version of the report, and a separate report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, went further in their negative assessments of the screeners than those publicly available, according to members of Congress who were briefed.

Rep. John Mica of Florida, chairman of the House Transportation aviation subcommittee, said the GAO report showed private screeners perform better than public screeners. Several senior Democratic congressmen said both performed poorly.

TSA, in a statement, said the reports "observed consistent performance in the two groups."

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Data for 600,000 Time Warner employees MIA

Data for 600,000 Time Warner employees MIA
By Dawn Kawamoto, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: May 2, 2005

Personal information for 600,000 current and former Time Warner employees has been lost, the company announced on Monday, potentially setting the stage for one of the largest cases yet of identity theft.

Time Warner said the mishap occurred on March 22, when data storage company Iron Mountain was transporting its backup tapes to a storage facility away from its offices. The company lost the tapes while in transit, said Kathy McKiernan, a Time Warner spokeswoman.

"The tapes were discovered missing on the same day they were picked up," McKiernan said. "We launched an investigation, and when we could not rule out foul play, we contacted the (U.S.) Secret Service to investigate."

The Time Warner case is just the latest in a string of data theft cases to rock corporate America, from Bank of America to educational institutions such as the University of California at Berkeley.


Time Warner waited for more than a month before notifying current and past employees that their personal information may have been compromised.

"We didn't want to compromise the investigation," McKiernan said. "We determined we could notify people now without it impeding the investigation."

The media giant has set up an 800 number to answer past and current employees' questions and provide free credit monitoring for a year. A few days ago, the company began the process of encrypting its data.

To date, Time Warner says it has not received any notices of compromised personal information from current and former employees.

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A Gut Punch to the Middle

The New York Times
May 2, 2005

A Gut Punch to the Middle
By PAUL KRUGMAN

By now, every journalist should know that you have to carefully check out any scheme coming from the White House. You can't just accept the administration's version of what it's doing. Remember, these are the people who named a big giveaway to logging interests "Healthy Forests."

Sure enough, a close look at President Bush's proposal for "progressive price indexing" of Social Security puts the lie to claims that it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing.

Under current law, low-wage workers receive Social Security benefits equal to 49 percent of their wages before retirement. Under the Bush scheme, that wouldn't change. So benefits for the poor would be maintained, not increased.

The administration and its apologists emphasize the fact that under the Bush plan, workers earning higher wages would face cuts, and they talk as if that makes it a plan that takes from the rich and gives to the poor. But the rich wouldn't feel any pain, because people with high incomes don't depend on Social Security benefits.

Cut an average worker's benefits, and you're imposing real hardship. Cut or even eliminate Dick Cheney's benefits, and only his accountants will notice.


I asked Jason Furman of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to calculate the benefit cuts under the Bush scheme as a percentage of pre-retirement income. That's a way to see who would really bear the burden of the proposed cuts. It turns out that the middle class would face severe cuts, but the wealthy would not.

The average worker - average pay now is $37,000 - retiring in 2075 would face a cut equal to 10 percent of pre-retirement income. Workers earning 60 percent more than average, the equivalent of $58,000 today, would see benefit cuts equal to almost 13 percent of their income before retirement.

But above that level, the cuts would become less and less significant. Workers earning three times the average wage would face cuts equal to only 9 percent of their income before retirement. Someone earning the equivalent of $1 million today would see benefit cuts equal to only 1 percent of pre-retirement income.

In short, this would be a gut punch to the middle class, but a fleabite for the truly wealthy.

Beyond that, it's a good bet that benefits for the poor would eventually be cut, too.

It's an adage that programs for the poor always turn into poor programs. That is, once a program is defined as welfare, it becomes a target for budget cuts.

You can see this happening right now to Medicaid, the nation's most important means-tested program. Last week Congress agreed on a budget that cuts funds for Medicaid (and food stamps), even while extending tax cuts on dividends and capital gains. States are cutting back, denying health insurance to hundreds of thousands of people with low incomes. Missouri is poised to eliminate Medicaid completely by 2008.

If the Bush scheme goes through, the same thing will eventually happen to Social Security. As Mr. Furman points out, the Bush plan wouldn't just cut benefits. Workers would be encouraged to divert a large fraction of their payroll taxes into private accounts - but this would in effect amount to borrowing against their future benefits, which would be reduced accordingly.

As a result, Social Security as we know it would be phased out for the middle class.

"For millions of workers," Mr. Furman writes, "the amount of the monthly Social Security check would be at or near zero."

So only the poor would receive Social Security checks - and regardless of what today's politicians say, future politicians would be tempted to reduce the size of those checks.

The important thing to understand is that the attempt to turn Social Security into nothing but a program for the poor isn't driven by concerns about the future budget burden of benefit payments. After all, if Mr. Bush was worried about the budget, he would be reconsidering his tax cuts.

No, this is about ideology: Mr. Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it. His goal is to turn F.D.R.'s most durable achievement into an unpopular welfare program, so some future president will be able to attack it with tall tales about Social Security queens driving Cadillacs.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

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A White House Adrift

Newsweek
A White House Adrift
Gas prices, Social Security, Tom DeLay. What else can go wrong for Bush?
By Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe

May 9 issue - George Voinovich is not your typical Bush loyalist. A self-styled deficit hawk, the former Cleveland mayor and Ohio governor is so frugal that he once fished a penny out of a urinal in the Statehouse. To the White House, his independent spirit should have come as no surprise: he split with his party over the estate tax in 2000 and he opposed the size of Bush's tax cuts three years later. Yet when it came to the prickly question of John Bolton's nomination as U.N. ambassador, the president's team assumed Voinovich would fall into line.

The warning signs were there if anyone had looked for them. About two weeks before senators were set to vote on Bolton's nomination, Voinovich "grilled" Bolton for an hour in private, according to officials familiar with the session, asking "tough questions" about allegations that Bolton sought to force out an intelligence analyst who disagreed with him. Yet in subsequent days, nobody at the White House asked the senator directly about Bolton. Others got the full-court press: Lincoln Chafee, the wavering Rhode Island Republican, took phone calls from Bush's chief of staff Andy Card and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. But the administration didn't contact Voinovich directly until he announced to the world that he wasn't comfortable voting for Bolton. As the explosive Senate meeting ended, Matthew Kirk, the president's Senate liaison, ran up to Voinovich to tell him, "We'll get you whatever you need."

White House aides insist they were "in constant contact" with Voinovich's office before and after the Bolton grilling, and say that even the senator's staff was surprised that he got cold feet. Whoever is to blame, the president's relationship with his own party has faltered on the high-profile nomination, as well as other priorities like Social Security. Members of Congress have long complained about the Bushies' imperial attitude. Now, some suggest the White House team—headed by a former Dick Cheney aide Candi Wolff—may be too far outside the loop of power. It takes a call from the Committee That Runs the World—Karl Rove and Cheney—to lobby Congress effectively. Last week, both were working the phones on Bolton's behalf.

Whatever happens to Bolton's nomination, his public mauling underscores how the president has struggled in the first 100 days of his second term. On the single issue that seems to trouble voters most—the high price of gasoline—Bush found himself in the uncomfortable position of asking for help, first from Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. On Social Security, Republicans find themselves divided. Then there's the problem of a runaway Congress, diverted by the fate of Tom DeLay, the ethically challenged House Republican leader. Bush tried to regain the initiative with his Thursday-night prime-time news conference. But Republicans hardly cheered at the prospect of selling benefit cuts in Social Security, and Bush himself conceded that he had "no quick fix" for high gas prices. With his approval ratings slipping, Bush looks like he's running low on his precious supply of political capital.


To some in Congress, those problems are a sign that politics are simply getting more costly for the president—a development that some inside his party think is long overdue. One Republican Senate aide said there had been "a lot of frustration for a lot of people" over the postwar management of Iraq, leading to "more assertiveness on Congress's role" on a range of issues. Others say the party has been surprised by Democratic discipline after their defeat in November, denying Bush any time for a victory lap. "The Democrats, in a lot of ways, haven't ended the campaign," says Ed Gillespie, the former Republican Party chairman. "That's new. Nobody anticipated it."

Bush's senior aides and supporters insist they are making good progress—whether on Social Security or more technical legislation like bankruptcy and class-action reform. "We're exactly where we thought we would be," said one senior administration official. "We're three months into the second term, and we've already gotten some major legislation signed and out the door." GOP leaders agree, saying it's way too early to predict how Bush's second-term agenda will fare. "It's like judging who will win the Derby when they are just around the first turn," says the Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell. After all, for a political thoroughbred like George W. Bush, there's always a chance he'll come up on the rails.

With Tamara Lipper

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Bush vs. Bill on N. Korea nukes

New York Daily News
Bush vs. Bill on N. Korea nukes

Monday, May 2nd, 2005

WASHINGTON - After North Korea tested a new missile that plunged into the Sea of Japan yesterday, a top White House official pinned blame for the Communist nation's secret development of nuclear arms on President Bill Clinton.

Asked if North Korea became a nuclear power on President Bush's watch, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card retorted, "Or on President Clinton's watch."

"Some of those weapons may well have been produced as the North Koreans were violating the agreement that they had with President Clinton," Card told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Wendy Sherman, Clinton's special adviser on North Korea, responded, "The worst of this problem has happened on the watch of the Bush administration."

Sherman admitted North Korea "may have built one or two nuclear weapons in the 1990s," but said the pressure Clinton put on dictator Kim Jong Il was reversed under Bush and "six or eight" nukes may be in his stockpile.

"Things have gotten much, much worse," she said.


Card also downplayed the startling warning last week by a top Pentagon intel official, who said the regime could arm missiles with nuclear payloads.

"We don't know that [Kim Jong Il] can, but there is increasing evidence of capability," Card told CNN's "Late Edition."

Card said on CNN and Fox News that North Korea's missile test showed its leaders want to be the "bullies in the world."

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency warned last week that North Korea has the ability to mount a nuclear device on a longer-range missile and the Communist state could hit U.S. territory.

Still, U.S. officials said yesterday that the North Koreans had been having difficulty firing lower-range devices.

Asked what North Korea hoped to gain by testing the missile, Card told Fox, "I think they're looking to kind of be bullies in the world. And they're causing others to stand up and take notice."

He also accused the North Korean leader of flaunting his weapons programs and violating agreements.

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Never Shy, Bolton Brings a Zeal to the Table

The New York Times
Never Shy, Bolton Brings a Zeal to the Table
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, April 30 - In the tumultuous days before John R. Bolton graduated from Yale University in 1970, he and his roommates leaned mattresses against the windows to keep out stray tear gas shells.

The trial of a top Black Panther in New Haven had ignited riots and set off a national uproar. The National Guard patrolled the campus in tanks. A bomb went off at the hockey rink.

At commencement, student speakers compared the United States to pre-Nazi Germany and called for an immediate end to the war in Vietnam.

But one student sounded a contrarian theme.

"The conservative underground is alive and well here," Mr. Bolton told his classmates and their parents, scorning a handful of hecklers. "If we do not make our influence felt, rest assured we will in the real world."

Mr. Bolton's prediction would prove true, and for no one more than for this brainy son of a Baltimore firefighter whose nomination as ambassador to the United Nations is now bitterly contested. Ten years after graduation, he would join the Reagan administration to begin what would become nearly two decades of service in Republican administrations.

Seemingly untroubled by self doubt, Mr. Bolton, whom former Senator Jesse Helms once called "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon," has never shied from a dispute nor hesitated to shatter a consensus. In his office he displays a grenade designating him as "Truest Reaganaut," a telling gift from former colleagues at the United States Agency for International Development.

From his battle, as a Justice Department official, for the doomed Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork to his dramatic declaration to poll workers tabulating presidential ballots in Florida in 2000 - "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team and I'm here to stop the count" - Mr. Bolton has proved himself a fighter, fiercely committed to a bedrock American nationalism.


But now his brash performance as under secretary of state threatens his nomination, as government officials high and low who have clashed with Mr. Bolton strike back. Complaints that he bullied intelligence analysts who rejected his views have particular weight with Congressional critics, who are still fuming that administration claims about Iraq's arsenal and Al Qaeda turned out to be wildly inaccurate.

But as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee extends its consideration of Mr. Bolton's candidacy, President Bush has shown no sign of wavering in his determination to win confirmation for this least diplomatic of diplomats.

"See, the U.N. needs reform," Mr. Bush said at a news conference on Thursday night. "If you're interested in reform in the U.N. like I'm interested in reform in the U.N., it makes sense to put somebody who's skilled and who's not afraid to speak his mind at the United Nations."

Mr. Bolton, 56, has won loyalty from other bosses, too. They include former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, whom he served at the White House and the State Department and who summoned him to Florida for the recount, and Vice President Dick Cheney, who told an American Enterprise Institute audience after the 2000 election that Mr. Bolton deserved "anything he wants" in the new administration.

He wins such plaudits partly because of an extreme work style that sometimes has him firing off e-mail messages to subordinates from home at 4 a.m. before arriving at the office at 6. In his current job, he has required staff members to stand - along with him - at morning meetings, to discourage long-winded discussions.

"When you go in to brief John Bolton, as I found out early, you better be prepared," said Thomas M. Boyd, who was Mr. Bolton's deputy when he was assistant attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department and who remains a friend. "He's kind of like an appellate judge. He will read everything. If you have holes in your argument, he won't work with you."

He has also impressed superiors with his dogged pursuit of goals he believes in. As assistant secretary of state in the administration of the elder George Bush, he took on the task of repealing a United Nations General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism, long resented by Israel and its American supporters.

For several weeks in 1991, Mr. Bolton devoted himself to what he called the "ZR campaign," according to one person who worked on it. Countries were singled out one by one, with Mr. Bolton systematically pursuing their ambassadors and tracking the results on charts until the vote - an unexpectedly lopsided 111 to 25.

"He's tough and he's relentless and he's very logical," said Frank J. Donatelli, a Republican consultant who has worked with Mr. Bolton both in government and party operations. "But I've never observed any kind of abusive behavior."

What really puts off Mr. Bolton's critics, Mr. Donatelli said, are his firm views. "Even in the Reagan administration, John would usually be the most conservative person in the room," he said.

The drive and ideological certainty that admirers believe make Mr. Bolton effective strike his critics as excessive. Avis T. Bohlen, who worked under Mr. Bolton as assistant secretary of state for arms control, said she agreed with several of his initiatives, including scuttling a protocol to the international ban on biological weapons. But she thought the United States should work with European allies to find a better approach to preventing biological weapons. Mr. Bolton did not.

"He was absolutely clear that he didn't want any more arms control agreements," Ms. Bohlen said. "He didn't want any negotiating bodies. He just cut it off. It was one more area where we lost support and respect in the world."

In handling disagreements, too, Ms. Bohlen said, Mr. Bolton sometimes went over the line. "What I find unfortunate is that he had a tendency to go after the little guys," she said. "I think Bolton is a bully."

The same traits, and the same divided views of them, go all the way back to Baltimore's McDonogh School, where Mr. Bolton discovered his intellectual gifts and his fascination with politics.

Raised in a working-class row house neighborhood in southwest Baltimore called Yale Heights - a far cry from the university where he would earn undergraduate and law degrees - Mr. Bolton won a scholarship to McDonogh, then an all-male military school.

That modest background is a key to his personality, some associates say. "He didn't come from money," said Mr. Boyd, his former subordinate. "Sometimes when you push the rock up the hill, you're hungrier. You have more of a drive to succeed."

From seventh grade on, he boarded at McDonogh, returning home on weekends to his father, Jack, who had been wounded in Normandy on D-Day, and his mother, Virginia, a homemaker. They also had a daughter, Joni, who is nine years younger and now works as a nurse near Baltimore.

"He had the same attitudes and beliefs then and now," said Marty McKibbin, 77, who taught at McDonogh for 46 years but still recalls clearly his debates with John Bolton about the Vietnam War in Asian history class and at lunch. "It's kind of surprising that Yale and Yale Law School and Washington, D.C., didn't change him much."

In 1966, Mr. Bolton, who has said he privately called the liberal teacher "Mao McKibbin," wrote an editorial for the school paper titled "No Peace in Vietnam," warning against "spurious" hopes for a settlement. When he stepped down as associate editor after his senior year, an unsigned notice of thanks said: "John Bolton has attacked his duties with the fervor of a political fanatic. His efficient, if sometimes controversial, management of the editorial page deserves more than conservative applause."

Ed Wroe, another McDonogh scholarship student, recalls John Bolton's fervor for the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. "When you hear people describe him as abrasive, you think, 'That sounds like John Bolton,' " said Mr. Wroe, an attorney in Idaho. "He didn't worry about what people thought of him."

But Dr. Bruce K. Krueger, his Yale roommate for five years and now a physiologist at the University of Maryland medical school, recalls Mr. Bolton as a far more pleasant character. "He might say something provocative - everyone else in the room might disagree with it - but he'd have something solid and well-reasoned to back it up."

Dr. Krueger said Mr. Bolton was the only conservative in their six-member suite and one of a shrinking minority of such students on campus. Yet Mr. Bolton seemed to enjoy his status as David versus the campus's liberal Goliath, Dr. Krueger said. "I thought he kind of liked that role - the loner, the sole counterpoint in the room."

Mr. Bolton joined the National Guard, in which he served for six years, before graduation. "I confess that I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asia rice paddy," he wrote in a recollection for his 25-year Yale reunion, in part because he felt that the war in Vietnam was "already lost" because of antiwar sentiment among Americans.

Today, associates describe Mr. Bolton as an avid reader, particularly of history and biography, and a political junkie. They describe him as a very private person who is devoted to his wife, Gretchen, a financial planner, and their daughter, Jennifer, who now attends Yale. When mother and daughter head off on ski trips, he stays behind.

"He can appear to be very stern," said Mr. Boyd, his former Justice Department colleague. "I think that's a product of his reserve. He's got a great sense of humor, a great cackle of a laugh - but he has to trust you."

In the loose shorthand of the news media, Mr. Bolton has sometimes been described as a neoconservative. That's wrong, said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a conservative strategy group.

The neoconservatives believe in spreading democracy; Mr. Bolton, with a less idealistic view of other countries' potential, prefers to focus on threats to the United States, Mr. Schmitt said. "He's a straightforward, traditional, national security conservative," he said.

On the Balkans, for instance, "John's view was that we didn't have a dog in that fight," Mr. Schmitt said. In Iraq, Mr. Bolton favored overthrowing Saddam Hussein. But, Mr. Schmitt said, "I think he would say we should not be in the business of transforming Iraq."

In a recent interview with the McDonogh School magazine headlined "The Patriot," Mr. Bolton, who is not talking to reporters during the confirmation period, defined his job as keeping American interests clearly in sight.

"Frequently you hear diplomacy described as a skill of keeping things calm and stable and so on, and there's an element of that," he said. "But basically, American diplomats should be advocates of the United States. That's the style I pursue."

originally published May 1, 2005

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