US uses spy planes to intimidate Iran

smh.com.au
US uses spy planes to intimidate Iran
By Dafna Linzer
February 14, 2005

The Bush Administration has been flying surveillance drones over Iran for nearly a year to seek evidence of nuclear weapons programs and detect weaknesses in air defences.

The small, pilotless aircraft enter Iranian airspace from US bases in Iraq and use radar, video, still photography and air filters designed to pick up traces of nuclear activity to gather information not obtainable by satellites, three US officials with detailed knowledge of the secret effort said.

Aerial espionage is standard in military preparations for an air attack and is also employed as a tool for intimidation.

The Iranian Government has formally protested against the illegal incursions.

The drones set off a national newspaper frenzy in December over whether the country was being visited by UFOs.

The manoeuvres have been conducted as the Bush Administration sharpens its anti-Iran rhetoric and US intelligence agencies search for information to support President George Bush's claim that Tehran is trying to build nuclear weapons.
AdvertisementAdvertisement

Mr Bush's senior advisers, including the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, said last week that a US attack on Iran is not imminent but the option remains available.

The London Sunday Telegraph reported yesterday that Pakistan had admitted for the first time that A.Q. Khan, the rogue nuclear scientist under house arrest in Islamabad, passed secrets and equipment to Iranian officials and is now considered the "brain" behind the program that has put Tehran on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons.

A Pakistani investigation revealed that Khan, a hero in Pakistan as the "Father of the Bomb", and his associates sold nuclear codes, materials, components and plans that left his "signature" at the core of the Iranian nuclear program.

The admission came during private talks in Brussels at the end of last month between European Union officials and senior ministers from Pakistan and India. The EU officials were told that co-operation between Tehran and Khan, 68, and associates from his Khan Research Laboratories began in the mid-1990s and included more than a dozen meetings over several years.

Iran yesterday said it would not give up plans to build a heavy-water reactor which can be used to make nuclear weapons material, in exchange for a light-water research reactor proposed by the Europeans.

"We welcome such proposals but we will not under any circumstances replace our heavy-water research reactor," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

EU negotiators in talks with Iran over its nuclear activities have offered to send a mission to help Tehran obtain a light-water research reactor in what would be the first concrete move towards rewarding Tehran for abandoning uranium enrichment.

Dozens of CIA informants inside Iran were executed or imprisoned in the late 1980s or early '90s after their secret communications with the US spy agency were uncovered, former CIA officials said.

As many as 50 Iranians on the CIA's payroll were "rolled up" in the failed operation, they said.

Read More...

Summary only...

Seven Steps to Raise World Security

english.daralhayat.com
Seven Steps to Raise World Security

Dr. Mohamad El-Baradei Al-Hayat 2005/02/7

Four months from now, in New York, the world will have a rare opportunity to make significant improvements in international security. The question is whether we will be smart enough to use it.

In recent years, three phenomena have radically altered the security landscape. They are the emergence of a nuclear black market, the determined efforts by more countries to acquire technology to produce the fissile material useable in nuclear weapons and the clear desire of terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

We have been trying to solve these new problems with existing tools. But for every step forward, we have exposed vulnerabilities in the system. The system itself - the regime that implements the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT) - needs reinforcement. Some of the necessary remedies can be taken in May, but only if governments are ready to act.

The opportunity in New York will come in the form of a conference. If that sounds like yet more bureaucracy - addressing nightmarish nuclear security scenarios with more meetings - I sympathize. But this is no ordinary conference. Every five years, the NPT Review Conference brings world leaders together to focus on combating the threat of nuclear weapons. All but four countries will participate as treaty members. Given the global nature of the threats, these four - India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea - should also be encouraged to contribute their insights and concerns.

With seven straightforward steps, and without amending the treaty, this conference could reach a milestone in strengthening world security. The first step: put a five-year hold on additional facilities for uranium enrichment and plutonium separation. There is no compelling reason to build more of these facilities; the nuclear industry has more than enough capacity to fuel its power plants and research centers. To make this holding period acceptable for everyone, commit the countries that already have the facilities to guarantee an economic supply of nuclear fuel for bona fide uses. Then use the hiatus to develop better long-term options for managing the technologies (for example, in regional centers under multinational control). To advance these ideas, I have engaged a group of international nuclear experts, and their proposals will be put forward at the conference.

Second, speed up existing efforts, led by the U.S. global threat reduction initiative and others, to modify the research reactors worldwide operating with highly enriched uranium - particularly those with metal fuel that could be readily employed as bomb material. Convert these reactors to use low-enriched uranium, and accelerate research on how to make highly enriched uranium unnecessary for all peaceful nuclear applications.

Third, raise the bar for inspection standards by establishing the "additional protocol" as the norm for verifying compliance with the NPT. Without the expanded authority of this protocol, the International Atomic Energy Agency's rights of inspection are limited. It has proven its value recently in Iran and Libya and should be brought into force for all countries.

Fourth, call on the United Nations Security Council to act swiftly and decisively in the case of any country that withdraws from the NPT, in terms of the threat the withdrawal poses to international peace and security.

Fifth, urge states to act on the Security Council's recent resolution 1540, to pursue and prosecute any illicit trading in nuclear material and technology.

Sixth, call on the five nuclear weapon states party to the NPT to accelerate implementation of their "unequivocal commitment" to nuclear disarmament, building on efforts such as the 2002 Moscow treaty between Russia and the U.S. Negotiating a treaty to ban irreversibly the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons programs would be a welcome start.

Last, acknowledge the volatility of longstanding tensions that give rise to proliferation, in regions such as the Middle East and the Korean peninsula, and take action to resolve existing security problems and, where needed, provide security assurances. In the Middle East, urge all parties to pursue a dialogue on regional security as part of the peace process. One goal of this dialogue would be to make the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free zone.

None of these steps will work in isolation. Each requires a concession from someone. But with leadership from all sides, this package of proposals will create gains for everyone. This opportunity will come again - in 2010. But given current trends, we cannot afford to wait another five years. As a UN panel put it recently: "We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the non-proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation." The stakes are too high to risk inaction.

Read More...

Summary only...

A Case for Truth

washingtonpost.com
A Case for Truth

WHEN MAHER ARAR filed a lawsuit last year over the government's sending him to Syria against his will, the case seemed like an opportunity to clear the air over one of the stranger episodes in the war on terrorism. Mr. Arar is a Syrian-born Canadian who was detained in New York while traveling between Tunisia and Canada in the fall of 2002. Unbeknownst to him, his name had been placed on a terrorist watch list, and when his flight path took him to New York, authorities detained him as a suspected al Qaeda operative. He was held for several days, and then, despite his pleas to be sent to Canada, he was packed off to Syria, where he was held for 10 months and, he alleges, savagely tortured. The government denies any wrongdoing. But unfortunately, the Bush administration is not going to use the lawsuit to make clear what happened. In fact, it has decided not to say anything. In a recent court filing, the government asserted what is called the state secrets privilege to avoid releasing any information about the circumstances of Mr. Arar's detention and removal to Syria. And because it refuses to release any information, the Justice Department argues, Mr. Arar will not be able to prove his case, which should therefore be largely dismissed.

As unfair a Catch-22 as that may sound, the government may actually have a claim here, legally speaking. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey have filed sworn declarations in the case, saying that litigating Mr. Arar's major allegations would require disclosing information that "reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave or serious damage to the national security of the United States and its foreign relations or activities." This may well carry the day in court. Whether or not their assertion is sustained, however, the government owes more than silence, and not just to Mr. Arar.

We had hoped that the litigation would shed light on two key questions: First, whether Mr. Arar, who has become a kind of cause célèbre in Canada, is really an innocent man wrongly accused or (as the government alleges) a dangerous terrorist operative, and second, whether (as he alleges) he was sent to Syria, instead of Canada, precisely so that he could be tortured. The government should not be subcontracting torture, as Mr. Arar alleges it did. If, as the government claims, he was an al Qaeda operative whose return to Canada could not have been accomplished safely, and if he was sent to Syria only after the government received what it has termed "reliable assurances that Mr. Arar would be treated humanely," the picture would look different. Leaving aside whatever rights Mr. Arar might have to litigate his claim, the American public is entitled to some assurance that the government didn't intentionally send a man to be tortured by Syria and isn't now covering that wrongdoing with a smear.

originally published Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page A18

Read More...

Summary only...

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure

Read More...

Summary only...

Not counting . . .

Read More...

Summary only...

Go Dumbo Go

Read More...

Summary only...

The Master of Pre-emption Strikes Again

Read More...

Summary only...

Nukes

Read More...

Summary only...

Mission Accomplished

Read More...

Summary only...

How Dirty Harry Turned Commie

The New York Times
February 13, 2005
FRANK RICH
How Dirty Harry Turned Commie

THE day the left died in Hollywood, surely, was the day that a few too many Queer Eyes had their way with Michael Moore as he set off on his Oscar campaign. The baseball cap and 1970's leisure ensemble gave way to quasi-Libeskind eyeglasses and spiky hair that screamed "I am worthy of a cameo on 'Entourage.' " But not worthy of an Oscar. "Fahrenheit 9/11" got zero nominations, leaving the Best Picture race to five apolitical movies. Since none of those five has yet sold $100 million worth of tickets, let alone the $350-million-plus of a "Lord of the Rings"-level megahit, the only real drama accruing to this year's Oscar telecast was whether its ratings would plunge as low as the Golden Globes.

But two weeks out from the big night, the prospects for a little conflict are looking up. Just when it seemed that Hollywood had turned a post-election page in the culture wars, the commissars of the right cooked up a new, if highly unlikely, grievance against "Holly-weird," as they so wittily call it. This was no easy task. They couldn't credibly complain that "The Passion of the Christ" was snubbed by the movie industry's "elite" (translation: Jews), since it nailed three nominations, including one for makeup (translation: really big noses). That showing bested not only "Fahrenheit 9/11" but "Shrek 2," the year's top moneymaker. Nor could they resume hostilities against their perennial bogeymen Ben Affleck, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand and Whoopi Goldberg. All are nonplayers in this year's awards.

So what do you do? Imagine SpongeBob tendencies in the carefully sanitized J. M. Barrie of "Finding Neverland"? Attack a recently deceased American legend, Ray Charles, for demanding that his mistress get an abortion in "Ray"? No, only a counterintuitive route could work. Hence, the campaign against Clint Eastwood, a former Republican officeholder (Mayor of Carmel, Calif., in the late 1980's), Nixon appointee to the National Council of the Arts and action hero whose breakthrough role in the Vietnam era was as a vigilante cop, Dirty Harry, whom Pauline Kael famously called "fascist." There hasn't been a Hollywood subversive this preposterous since the then 10-year-old Shirley Temple's name surfaced at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing in 1938.

No matter. Rush Limbaugh used his radio megaphone to inveigh against the "liberal propaganda" of "Million Dollar Baby," in which Mr. Eastwood plays a crusty old fight trainer who takes on a fledgling "girl" boxer (Hilary Swank) desperate to be a champ. Mr. Limbaugh charged that the film was a subversively encoded endorsement of euthanasia, and the usual gang of ayotallahs chimed in. Michael Medved, the conservative radio host, has said that "hate is not too strong a word" to characterize his opinion of "Million Dollar Baby." Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a longtime ally of the Christian right, went on MSNBC to accuse Mr. Eastwood of a cultural crime comparable to Bill Clinton having "brought the term 'oral sex' to America's dinner tables."

"What do you have to give these people to make them happy?" Mr. Eastwood asked when I phoned to get his reaction to his new status as a radical leftist. He is baffled that those "who expound from the right on American values" could reject a movie about a heroine who is "willing to pull herself up by the bootstraps, to work hard and persevere no matter what" to realize her dream. "That all sounds like Americana to me, like something out of Wendell Willkie," he says. "And the villains in the movie include people who are participating in welfare fraud."

What galls the film's adversaries - or so they say - is a turn in the plot that they started giving away on the radio and elsewhere in December, long before it started being mentioned in articles like the one you're reading now. They hoped to "spoil" the movie and punish it at the box office, though there's no evidence that they have succeeded. As Mr. Eastwood has pointed out, advance knowledge of the story's ending did nothing to deter the audience for "The Passion of the Christ." My own experience is that knowing the ultimate direction of "Million Dollar Baby" - an organic development that in no way resembles a plot trick like that in "The Sixth Sense" - only deepened my second viewing of it.

Here is what so scandalously intrudes in the final third of Mr. Eastwood's movie: real life. A character we love - and we love all three principals, including the narrator, an old boxing hand played by Morgan Freeman - ends up in the hospital with a spinal-cord injury and wants to die. Whether that wish will be granted, and if so, how, is the question that confronts not just the leading characters but also a young and orthodox Roman Catholic priest (Brian F. O'Byrne). The script, adapted by Paul Haggis from stories by F. X. Toole, has a resolution, as it must. But the movie has a powerful afterlife precisely because it is not an endorsement of any position on assisted suicide - or, for that matter, of any position on the disabled, as some disability-rights advocates have charged in a separate protest. The characters of "Million Dollar Baby" are complex and fictional, not monochromatic position papers outfitted in costumes, and the film no more endorses their fallible behavior and attitudes than "Ray" approves of its similarly sympathetic real-life hero's heroin addiction and compulsive womanizing.

"I never thought about the political side of this when making the film," Mr. Eastwood says. He is both bemused and concerned that a movie with no political agenda should be construed by some as a polemic and arouse such partisan rage. "Maybe I'm getting to the age when I'm starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now," he adds. "You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot - both on the right and the left." His own politics defy neat categorization. He's supported Democrats (including Gray Davis in the pre-Schwarzenegger era) as well as Republicans, professes the libertarian creed of "less government" and "was never a big enthusiast for going to Iraq but never spoke against it once the troops were there." In other words, he's in the same middle as most Americans. "I vote for what I like," he says. "I'm not a loyalist to any party. I'm only a loyalist to the country." That's no longer good enough, apparently, for those who feel an election victory has empowered them to enforce a strict doctrine of political and spiritual correctness.

It's a standard tactic for these holier-than-thou bullies to cite movies they don't like as proof that, in Mr. Medved's formulation, "the entertainment industry" is "not in touch with the general public." The industry's profits prove exactly the reverse, but never mind. Even in this case, were Mr. Eastwood's film actually an endorsement of assisted suicide, the public would still be on his side, not his critics'. The latest Gallup poll on the subject, taken last year, shows that 53 percent of Americans find assisted suicide "morally acceptable" as opposed to the 41 percent who find it "morally wrong." (The figures for Catholics are identical).

But the most unintentionally revealing attacks on "Million Dollar Baby" have less to do with the "right to die" anyway than with the film's advertising campaign. It's "the 'million-dollar' lie," wrote one conservative commentator, Debbie Schlussel, saying that the film's promotion promises " 'Rocky' in a sports bra" while delivering a "left-wing diatribe" indistinguishable from the message sent by the Nazis when they "murdered the handicapped and infirm." Mr. Medved concurs. "They can't sell this thing honestly," he has said, so "it's being marketed as a movie all about the triumph of a plucky female boxer." The only problem with this charge is that it, too, is false. As Mr. Eastwood notes, the film's dark, even grim poster is "somewhat noiresque" and there's "nobody laughing and smiling and being real plucky" in a trailer that shows "triumph and struggles" alike.

What really makes these critics hate "Million Dollar Baby" is not its supposedly radical politics - which are nonexistent - but its lack of sentimentality. It is, indeed, no "Rocky," and in our America that departure from the norm is itself a form of cultural radicalism. Always a sentimental country, we're now living fulltime in the bathosphere. Our 24/7 news culture sees even a human disaster like the tsunami in Asia as a chance for inspirational uplift, for "incredible stories of lives saved in near-miraculous fashion," to quote NBC's Brian Williams. (The nonmiraculous stories are already forgotten, now that the media carnival has moved on.) Our political culture offers such phony tableaus as a bipartisan kiss between the president and Joe Lieberman at the State of the Union, not to mention the promise that a long-term war can be fought without having to endure any shared sacrifice or even too many graphic reminders of its human cost.

Last Sunday's was the first Super Bowl in 19 years that didn't feature the "I'm Going to Disneyland" spot for the victor, but maybe that's because it's superfluous. Whether in reaction to the trauma of 9/11 or for reasons that are as yet unknowable, we seem determined to will ourselves into Fantasyland at all times. This cultural syndrome is perfectly encapsulated by Jacques Steinberg's report in The New York Times last week of a new ABC "reality" program with the working title of "Miracle Workers." In this show, in which DreamWorks is also a participant, a "dream team" of physicians will miraculously run to the rescue of critically ill Americans, the perfect imaginary balm for what ails a country spiraling into a health-care catastrophe.

There's no dream team, either in the boxing arena or in the emergency room, in "Million Dollar Baby." While there is much to admire in the year's other Oscar-nominated movies - the full-bodied writing in "Sideways," the cinematic bravura of "The Aviator," the awesome Jamie Foxx in "Ray" - Mr. Eastwood's film, while also boasting great acting, is the only one that challenges America's current triumphalist daydream. It does so not because it has any politics or takes a stand on assisted suicide but because it has the temerity to suggest that fights can have consequences, that some crises do not have black-and-white solutions and that even the pure of heart are not guaranteed a Hollywood ending. What makes some feel betrayed and angry after seeing "Million Dollar Baby" is exactly what makes many more stop and think: one of Hollywood's most durable cowboys is saying that it's not always morning in America, and that it may take more than faith to get us through the night.

Read More...

Summary only...

Stranger Than Fiction

The New York Times
February 13, 2005

Stranger Than Fiction
By B. R. MYERS

Seoul

TO North Korea, diplomacy is another form of war. Under the leadership of Kim Jong Il, the Foreign Ministry has bullied the United Nations into submission and outwitted the United States into providing food aid - all the while developing a formidable nuclear arsenal.

This is, of course, the hard-line view of North Korea that prevails in some quarters in Washington. Yet it is also the official North Korean view of North Korea.

In the West, attention is almost exclusively focused on the official pronouncements released by Pyongyang's Central News Agency - statements that, for all their strange rhetoric, strive to present North Korea as a misunderstood country eager for more normal relations with Washington. Last week's announcement that North Korea has nuclear weapons, for example, said that while the country had "manufactured nukes for self-defense," it still sought only "peaceful coexistence" with the United States.

But the propaganda dinned every day into the North Korean people is of a different order. School textbooks, wall posters, literary works: all celebrate a cynical "attack diplomacy" that makes a frightened and uncertain world dance to the drum of Kim Jong Il. Again and again, comic effect is derived from stories of stammering American and international officials trying to placate the relentless "warriors" of the Foreign Ministry. Washington's refusal to follow through on veiled threats of military action is mocked as a failure of nerve.

The novel "Barrel of a Gun," for example, released in 2003, is an official "historical" work about how Mr. Kim's iron resolve forced the Clinton administration to its knees in 1998. "Excellency," the American negotiator says at the end of the book, groveling shamelessly before his North Korean counterpart, "you are also a mighty superpower."

"I like the sound of that," the North Korean answers with a chuckle and a sharp look. Then he lays down the law. The Americans want to inspect some caves for evidence of a nuclear program? Perhaps a "visit" can be arranged - if 700,000 tons of food are first delivered in atonement for the "strangulatory" blockade of the country. (If you ever wondered why Pyongyang allows food aid to be distributed with the Stars and Stripes on the bags, there's your answer.)

The North Korean people were probably the least surprised by the Central News Agency's admission last week. For years now domestic propaganda has claimed that the military has weapons capable of destroying any enemy nation in a single day, and there is an entire genre of poster art showing the United States Capitol under a missile attack.

Much of this stands in obvious contradiction to the agency's expression of a desire for "peaceful coexistence." The possibility of agreeing to disagree is all but excluded by an official worldview that allows for only three types of foreigners: hawks, who want to destroy the country through war; doves, who want to destroy it through subtler means; and those who acknowledge the greatness of the Kim regime.

In such a world, it is argued, North Korea may play by its own rules. Particularly troubling is the cheery admission in "Barrel of a Gun" that Pyongyang signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty only for diplomatic purposes, then simply "ignored" it. (North Korea signed the treaty in 1985 and withdrew from it in 2003.)

Granted, it is reassuring that not even the most bellicose North Korean propaganda raises the possibility of an unprovoked attack on anyone. The problem is that virtually all manifestations of American ill will are seen as grave provocations, as was evidenced last week in the histrionic reaction to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's characterization of North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny." In short, the Central News Agency and the poster artists agree that North Korea wants peace - but on its own terms.

Few things are more important to Pyongyang than its propaganda apparatus. Even when the rest of the nation came to a standstill in the mid-1990's, it never missed a beat. And yet Americans tend to dismiss North Korea's official culture as too ludicrous to warrant careful monitoring.

The glorification of "attack diplomacy" must be taken seriously. Either it reflects Kim Jong Il's real attitude, in which case any negotiations - bilateral or otherwise - are unlikely to bear fruit; or it is only part of a larger effort to shore up pride in the regime, in which case it still creates a mood - in the People's Army and the North Korean public at large - that will oppose any meaningful concession to the outside world. Either way, it is time that America started paying as much attention to North Korea's official rhetoric as North Korea does to America's.

B. R. Myers, an associate professor of North Korean studies at Korea University, is the author of "Han Sorya and North Korean Literature."

Read More...

Summary only...

When Elections Go Bad

The New York Times
February 13, 2005

When Elections Go Bad

Steve Troxler is a tobacco farmer from Browns Summit, N.C. Nicholas Spano is a career politician from Yonkers. Aside from being stockily built Republican family men, they do not seem to have much in common, except this: Both are the last candidates standing in close elections that took more than three months to decide because of debilitating, constitutionally dangerous - and utterly fixable - flaws in their states' electoral systems.

In New York, Mr. Spano's re-election as state senator hinged on a handful of paper ballots; no one could agree on whether to count them. His lawyers fought to reject them on technical grounds, fearing he would lose otherwise. As the case ping-ponged through the courts, an array of judges took a whack at interpreting New York election law, with no two rulings alike.

In North Carolina, Mr. Troxler's ascent to agriculture commissioner was stymied at first by thousands of votes that were impossible to count, because they had vanished into the electronic ether. A single electronic voting machine had lost 4,438 votes, more than the margin separating him from his opponent. With no paper trail, there was nothing to do but guess at the outcome.

When the democratic machinery broke down, partisan squabbling and confusion ruled. People in both states offered wacky solutions. Mr. Troxler persuaded 1,300 people to swear in affidavits that they had voted for him, thus proving, he insisted, that his victory was an arithmetic certainty. While this ad hoc approach deserves points for creativity, it shreds the principle of the secret ballot and invites voter coercion.

The Republican mayor of Yonkers, Philip Amicone, called for a new election because, he said, the close vote made the true winner unknowable. His agnostic gloom vanished once most of the contested ballots were counted and Mr. Spano won.

Both crises finally evaporated when Mr. Troxler's and Mr. Spano's opponents bowed to reality and conceded. In both states, voters' confidence seems bruised but not shattered by these torturous elections, because both men are plausible winners - and the losers had the sense to throw in the legal towel.

There are ways to wring some good results from these bad elections. A legislative panel in Raleigh has urged that all voting machines generate paper records. Lawmakers there should quickly approve that proposal, but reject another that would allow contested elections to be decided by the state legislature.

In the Spano race, New York's highest court ruled that provisional ballots cast in the right polling place but wrong election district should count - a victory for voters across the state. It should have gone further, ruling that provisional ballots are valid even if cast in the wrong polling place.

Read More...

Summary only...

CUT SHORT: The Revolution That Wasn't

The New York Times
February 13, 2005
CUT SHORT
The Revolution That Wasn't
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — If the history of the Republican revolution were being written today, a single overarching question would have to be answered: Whatever happened to the promise of smaller government?

That question was asked again last week, when President Bush unveiled a $2.57 trillion budget for 2006, the largest in the nation's history. The cuts he called for, in areas like veterans' medical care, farm subsidies and vocational training, were met in Washington with doubts that they would ever get through the Republican Congress.

"Republicans have lost their way," lamented Newt Gingrich, the government-slashing firebrand of a decade ago.

In 1995, a band of 73 freshman Republicans swept into the House of Representatives, with Mr. Gingrich as their speaker. Flush with ideological zeal and determined to get government off the backs of the people, as Ronald Reagan would say, they pushed through a budget resolution that called for eliminating scores of programs and three federal departments.

Their fervor was so politically potent that in 1996, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, declared, "The era of big government is over."

Yet government has only grown. The Cato Institute, a libertarian research institution, says overall federal spending has increased twice as fast under Mr. Bush as under Mr. Clinton. At the same time, the federal deficit is projected to hit a record high of $427 billion this year.

These trends seem likely to continue. The White House estimated last week that the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries, originally projected at $400 billion from 2004 to 2013, would, in fact, be $724 billion from 2006 to 2015. Republicans called for scaling back the benefit, but on Friday, Mr. Bush said no and vowed to veto any changes to the Medicare bill.

"The era of big government being over is over," declared Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist Democratic research organization. That would certainly seem to be borne out in the record of the Republican revolutionaries, known as the "Class of 1994" for the year they were elected. Of the 30 who are still in the House of Representatives, 28 hsponsored bills in the last Congress that would have increased government spending overall, according to the National Taxpayers Union, an antitax group.

Some of the expansion in government was beyond their control. One big reason for the rise in spending is the growth of mandatory entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Another is the administration's "war on terror"; the government has added an entire new agency, the Department of Homeland Security, since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has spent many billions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Those were legitimate reasons for more expansive spending," said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota. "But we can no longer hide behind that."

Republicans like Mr. Thune say they are pleased that Mr. Bush's budget calls for cutting or eliminating 150 programs, and they applaud his promise to cut the deficit in half within five years. Yet the old Gingrich revolutionaries have lowered their battle cry to a whimper; instead of demanding that federal agencies be put out of business, they are fighting among themselves over small-bore questions of what to cut and what to keep.

"The Gingrich revolution was about system change," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a member of the Class of 1994. "Now we're in the weeds of government, this program and that program, and we've lost the big picture."

To most Americans, the federal budget, more than 2,000 pages of fine print, is hard to grasp; it isn't easy to summon a mental image of $2.57 trillion. One way to look at it is to consider how much the government spends per household. In the 1990's, the figure held steady at about $18,000, according to Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst for the Heritage Foundation. But last year, it exceeded $20,000, adjusted for inflation, the highest amount since World War II. But the government only takes in $17,000 for each household. "So right there," Mr. Reidl said, "we're borrowing $3,000 per household."

Mr. Riedl says the Republicans lost their zeal for spending cuts after 1995, when Congress forced a government shutdown over a budget impasse with President Clinton. The effort came off as mean-spirited and petty, and Republicans took the blame.

For Mr. Gingrich, the architect of the shutdown, the costs were especially high. He left government soon after, a reminder of how much easier it is to be a revolutionary than to govern.

"Ever since the government shutdown was determined to be a political loser for Republicans," Mr. Riedl said, "they have been tentative to take on spending."

By 1998, they didn't have to. That was the year Mr. Clinton and Congress balanced the budget. Without a deficit to rail against, conservatives had little reason to call for spending cuts. And with the budget in surplus, they learned what the Democrats, who had ruled the House for 40 years without interruption, had long known: constituents reward lawmakers who bring federal money home.

"Too many people started to believe that the surest path to re-election is to spend money rather than cut government," says Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican. "The material that comes from the Republican caucus is not to call for the elimination of this program or that, it's to brag that we have increased the budget for education by 144 percent."

That is not surprising, says Mr. Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council. "Yesterday's revolutionaries are today's pragmatic politicians," he said. "It's a classic tale of any revolution. They start out as revolutionaries wanting to storm the Bastille and the end up as 'All the King's Men.' "

There are still revolutionaries out there. Mr. Gingrich, for one, still advocates "very large-scale change."

Mr. Bush's budget, for instance, proposes cuts only in so-called nondefense discretionary spending. A very small slice of the budget pie, roughly one-sixth of the total, is devoted neither to the military nor to the entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Until Congress overhauls these and other entitlements, Mr. Gingrich says, spending will never be brought into line, and many of his former disciples agree.

"We need to be braver when it comes to putting the reforms of entitlements on the table," said Mr. Graham, the South Carolina senator. The Medicare prescription drug bill, Mr. Graham said, "was a reform that included new goodies. We need to put some reforms on the table that require sacrifice. That's the Republican Party I miss."

With President Bush asking Congress to overhaul another entitlement program - Social Security - it may be difficult for lawmakers to find the energy and time to do as Mr. Graham suggests.

Still, Republicans say they sense a new budget-cutting fervor on Capitol Hill. Some conservatives whose arms were twisted by their leaders to vote in favor of the Medicare prescription drug bill are vowing, "Never again."

Last week, Representative Jim Nussle, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, warned that Mr. Bush should be prepared to use his veto power, something he has not done since he became president, to enforce spending limits.

To former Gingrich revolutionaries like Representative Sue Myrick, Republican of South Carolina, that was good news.

"We haven't given up," said Ms. Myrick, who is one of the two representatives from the Class of 1994 who has continued to sponsor bills that would result in lower government spending (the other is Steve Chabot of Ohio). "I'm more encouraged this year than I've been since 1994."

Mr. Flake, the Arizona Congressman, said the future of his party hinges on the revolution's revival. "If voters want bigger government," he warned, "then sooner or later they'll return to the genuine article, and that's the Democrats."

Read More...

Summary only...

Holes in a Web of Budget Deceit

washingtonpost.com
Holes in a Web of Budget Deceit

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, February 11, 2005; Page A25

Let us stand back in awe at the Bush administration's genius. Few administrations in our history have been more successful in setting the terms of the political debate. None has been as skilled at getting its facts accepted as plausible even when they are not. None has looked so principled, even when it said one thing while doing another.

More than any of his predecessors, President Bush understands the conventions of journalism and the traditions of political debate. These require that respectful attention be paid to whatever claims the president makes. Journalists who have the temerity to question whether the claims ring true (or whether the numbers add up) can count on being pummeled as liberal ideologues, even when they are only seeking the facts.

The president's claims are thus duly reported, and most of the challenges come from the political opposition. Then the administration defends itself (as in, "administration officials dismissed the criticism as partisan carping"). Even when the most diligent and numbers-savvy budget reporters try to explain what's going on -- and bless all of them for trying -- the truth is usually lost in the cacophony of claims and counterclaims.

It's not surprising that so many readers skip the budget stories and turn to the sports pages, where the numbers, at least, are reliable.

What's particularly ingenious about the administration's approach is that it throws out so many questionable claims at once that its opponents are left fuming, furious, sputtering -- and easily dismissed as "Bush haters." First the administration understates how much long-term borrowing its Social Security privatization plan will require. Then it claims to have made deep cuts in the deficit when in fact its less-touted tax cut proposals ($1.4 trillion over 10 years) will just ramp the deficit back up again. And you never know on any given day what the new cost estimates of that prescription drug benefit will look like.

Oh, yes, and the administration's "tough" budget doesn't even include the costs of the Social Security plan or the long-term costs of the war in Iraq, let alone the huge costs of permanently fixing the unintended effects of the alternative minimum tax.

As one critic put it, Bush's spending cuts "may grab headlines but will have little impact on the tide of red ink that Bush has ridden since 2001." Bush's budget "will obscure an agenda that is likely to generate ever-larger deficits over the coming decades" and "resembles Swiss cheese -- and the holes may be more interesting than the substance."

Are those the words of a big-spending, Bush-loathing, partisan Democrat? Nope. They come from a budget commentary in the current issue of Business Week, a magazine that can hardly be accused of ultra-leftism. Then there was a description of the Bush budget as "tough talk, but not enough to reassure the world that U.S. public finances are in safe hands." That would be from the Financial Times, another journal free of any taint of Marxism.

Personally, those critiques gave me hope. Perhaps we are finally reaching the point at which hardheaded journalists are realizing the limits of "on the one hand, on the other hand" formulas where Bush's budget facts are concerned. Some facts are true. Some facts, no matter how well spun, aren't facts at all.

And at least some of the president's supporters are perfectly candid about the game that is being played. So I offer three hearty cheers for my conservative friends on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Writing on Tuesday -- beneath a cheeky headline, "Hooray for the Deficit" -- the Journal's opiners argued that "the much-loathed budget 'deficit' is the main, and perhaps the only, reason we may finally get some federal spending restraint."

"The good news," the Journal declared cheerfully, "is that the size of the current deficit is once again focusing political attention back where it belongs, on the rapid rise in federal outlays."

Every commentator and reporter should thank these editorialists and shout, "Free at last!" All the pious claims by less candid conservatives that they and their president truly care about the deficit can now be ignored. The whole point (and, yes, this happened in the 1980s, too) is to create deficits, followed by a "crisis," followed by demands for cuts in domestic programs, especially in those "federal outlays" for low-income people.

The budget coverage may never be as engaging as the sports pages. But it will be much more bracing if everyone feels free to speak the truth: The president wants to cut a lot of things. The deficit just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Read More...

Summary only...

Conservatives Join Forces for Bush Plans

washingtonpost.com
Conservatives Join Forces for Bush Plans
Social Security, Tort Limits Spur Alliance

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page A04

With billions of dollars at stake, a large network of influential conservative groups is mounting a high-priced campaign to help the White House win passage of legislation to partially privatize Social Security and limit class-action lawsuits.

Corporate America, the financial services industry, conservative think tanks, much of the Washington trade association community, the Republican Party and GOP lobbyists and consultants are prepared to spend $200 million or more to influence the outcome of two of the toughest legislative fights in recent memory.

Many of these same interest groups backed Bush administration tax cuts, the 2003 Medicare prescription drug legislation and proposed energy initiatives. As President Bush begins his second term, the alliance has become an institutional fixture, providing both money and manpower to further the Bush agenda and strengthen the Republican Party apparatus.

Dirk Van Dongen, a close administration ally and president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, said the fight over Bush's efforts to restructure Social Security by creating personal investment accounts "will be every bit as big, or bigger" than the battle over the Clinton administration's national health care plan in 1993 and 1994.

Business and trade groups, which have invested well over $200 million during the past decade in efforts to change the rules on lawsuits, see 2005 as their best chance to win major changes. There are three major bills before Congress -- on class action, asbestos and medical malpractice -- and business leaders are increasingly confident.

"I think we can get them all and we should get them all," John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, recently told business journalists. Other proponents of tort changes are less optimistic.

This diverse coalition is bound by economic, ideological and partisan concerns. Many of the groups, for instance, are staunch advocates of free-market policies and reducing dependence on government. Some of the corporate group leaders also believe that the economic health of their industries hinges on the long-term solvency of the Social Security system and on restraining costly litigation.

Some business groups have calculated that if the Bush Social Security plan fails, pressure will grow to raise payroll taxes to pay future costs of the program. Every percentage point increase would cost corporate employers about $50 billion annually.

What's more, Wall Street and the financial sector stand to reap substantial fees from the management of personal Social Security accounts.

In the case of tougher standards for lawsuits, business leaders are seeking to place firm limits on a legal system that in recent years has produced settlements that will cost tobacco companies $246 billion over a decade, and has pushed into bankruptcy more than 70 companies tied to asbestos litigation.

For corporations wary of publicity over their involvement in this and other controversial issues, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform, the Club for Growth and Progress for America pointedly offer donors the promise of anonymity.

But just as Social Security and lawsuit legislation have united right-of-center groups, they have also joined together, in opposition, much of the left: the influential AARP seniors organization; labor unions; the Association of Trial Lawyers of America; consumer, civil rights and environmental groups; and much of the Democratic Party.

The emergence of the center-right phalanx backing the Social Security proposal is a major victory for the Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian group. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cato was almost alone in its willingness to challenge the legitimacy of the existing Social Security system, a politically sacrosanct retirement program.

Recognizing the wariness of other conservatives to tackle Social Security, Cato in 1983 published an article calling for privatization of the system.

The article argued that companies that stand to profit from privatization -- "the banks, insurance companies and other institutions that will gain" -- had to be brought into alliance. Second, the article called for initiation of "guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it."

Just 22 years later, the business alliance is fully on board in the drive to create partially private Social Security accounts.

The campaign is being funded largely with money set aside by major corporations to influence the outcome of the congressional debate. The money will go for lobbying, television advertising, grass-roots campaigning, letter-writing and phone calls in a bid to win majorities in the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

Groups have campaigned for a restructuring of lawsuit rules off and on over the past five years and before now have spent $200 million seeking favorable legislation. Those groups are prepared to spend an additional $50 million or more this year. Last week, they began to see the fruits of their labor when the Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure that would sharply limit the ability of people to file class-action lawsuits against companies.

A group of Fortune 500 companies that are defendants in asbestos cases have formed the Asbestos Study Group, which paid annual lobbying fees of more than $10 million in 2003 and 2004. The American Medical Association -- determined to protect doctors in malpractice cases -- has an annual lobbying budget of more than $17 million. The American Insurance Institute spends about $5 million annually, a significant share of which goes to efforts to restrict lawsuits.

A 2003 study by the consumer group Public Citizen, which opposes most of the Republican-backed lawsuit legislation, found that more than 475 lobbyists had been hired by more than 100 trade associations and corporations representing industries that often are defendants in class-action litigation, including tobacco, drugs, automobiles and large retailers.

In addition, many conservative think tanks have joined Cato in supporting Social Security privatization, recognizing that the proposal offers a rare opportunity to restructure a pillar of liberalism and the social welfare state.

The Heritage Foundation, the National Center for Policy Analysis, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and such advocacy groups as the Club for Growth, Progress for America, FreedomWorks, Americans for Tax Reform and the Free Enterprise Fund are now in the middle of the fight.

"Conservatives intend to fix Social Security, welfare and Medicare -- the very programs that liberals created. And we'll do so no matter how often the left yells, 'Stop!' " Edwin J. Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, vowed recently.

Republican strategists see in both Social Security and lawsuit legislation the possibility of strengthening their center-right coalition. Enactment of the latter could also have the effect of weakening the Democratic Party by reducing the income of pro-Democratic trial lawyers, a major source of campaign contributions.

The Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers have set up two umbrella organizations.

One, the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, will pressure Congress directly, capitalizing on the lobbying staffs and corporate executives of the member companies.

The other, the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security, will conduct a nationwide television and grass-roots pressure campaign costing $15 million to $20 million.

COMPASS has hired OnPoint Advocacy to conduct grass-roots lobbying and Apco Worldwide Inc. for public relations. Tita Freeman, communications director at the Business Roundtable, said COMPASS has a budget of $15 million to $20 million, which may grow as the fight progresses.

Read More...

Summary only...

At DNC Helm, Dean Tasked With Rebuilding

washingtonpost.com
At DNC Helm, Dean Tasked With Rebuilding

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page A01

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean claimed the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee by acclamation yesterday and used his opening speech to attack President Bush and the Republicans for "fiscal recklessness," saying the administration's new budget brings "Enron-style accounting to our nation's capital."

The former presidential candidate, who campaigned in the primaries as someone who would represent "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," struck a more moderate tone on his first day as party chairman. He steered clear of subjects such as the war in Iraq, the issue that first fueled his rise as a presidential candidate, and said his party must find a more effective way to talk about the politically charged issue of abortion and do a more effective job of reaching out to people of all faiths.

Dean assumes the chairmanship of a party still reeling from its losses in 2004, including the defeat of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in a presidential race many in the party believed they would win, as well as shrunken ranks in the House and Senate that have driven home the reality that they are now the minority party in Washington.

Dean's election as the successor to outgoing chairman Terence R. McAuliffe brings a high-profile politician to a post generally filled by a fundraiser or political technician, and his candidacy has generated excitement and concern in the ranks of Democrats here and elsewhere.

Democrats count Dean's proven ability to raise big money through small donations and his commitment to spreading power outside Washington as important assets in his new role. But because of his propensity to spark controversy on policy and political matters and his northeastern roots -- symbolic to some of the party's liberal bent -- many Democrats worry that he could prove to be a detriment to the party, particularly in the southern and western states won by Bush in November.

Dean said yesterday he will spend much of his time in coming months in the red states of the South and West. "I think that's where we need a lot of work," he said. "I think that's where people are most skeptical about the Democratic Party, and I think the way to get people not to be skeptical about you is to show up and talk and say what you believe."

Dean faces a major job of rebuilding the party's infrastructure in the states while preparing for gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey this fall and for the midterm elections in 2006. What role the often outspoken leader will play in steering the party on a new course in message and policy remains a question, with Democratic elected officials cautioning him to defer to them and Dean, for now, agreeing.

Questioned about Iraq, Dean said his views are well known and that he stands by them. But he added, "Most of the policy pronouncements are going to be coming from the leadership of the Congress, not from me."

The election of Dean capped a remarkable political comeback for the former presidential candidate, whose campaign imploded in Iowa just over a year ago. "If you told me one year ago that I'd be standing here today, as your choice for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, I wouldn't have believed you," he told the delegates. "And neither would have a lot of other people."

Before his defeat in the presidential race, however, he showed others in the party the power, energy and fundraising capacity of the party's grass roots. Kerry and the national committee later tapped into that same energy in the general election, and Democratic leaders see it as one of their most significant institutional assets to emerge from an otherwise disappointing election in 2004.

Dean rode that same grass-roots enthusiasm to victory yesterday. He overcame strong initial resistance to his candidacy among Democratic elected officials and others in the party establishment with a focused and methodical campaign that eventually drove all his rivals to the sidelines. That turned yesterday's election into a celebration among the 447 voting members of the national committee and hundreds of other Democrats in attendance.

Dean said in his post-election news conference that he will not be a candidate for president in 2008 and instead will work for the next four years to rebuild state and local parties and put Democrats in a position to compete in all states.

Dean said Democrats should not be afraid to stand up for what they believe, but he cast the party's core beliefs in mainstream language, avoiding some of the bombast of his presidential campaign. Asked whether there was a new, more subdued Howard Dean on view, he said, "I'm not a Zen person. It's hard to answer stylistic questions. I am who I am. . . . It's not intentional."

In his speech, Dean repeatedly stressed fiscal responsibility as a touchstone of Democratic policies. "We Democrats believe in fiscal responsibility, and we're the only ones who have delivered it," he said. He accused Republicans of "borrow and spend" politics, adding that the fiscal record of the administration shows that "Americans cannot trust Republicans with their money."

Dean said Bush's Social Security plan would shred the social safety net while piling more debt on younger Americans. "Social Security is one of the proudest achievements of the Democratic Party, and we don't intend to let it fall victim to a dishonest scheme that only serves to heap greater debt on America's young people," he said.

On national security, an area that proved to be a vulnerability for Kerry against Bush, Dean said Democrats stood for "strong and smart" policies and that there was no reason to be defensive about their positions.

"It was Democrats who pushed to create a Department of Homeland Security," he said. "It was Democrats who pushed to make our airlines safer. It is Democrats who are now working to make sure we close the remaining gaps in our security. It was Democrats who demanded reform of the intelligence community. And it is Democrats who are pushing for a foreign policy that honestly deals with the threats of today, and the threats of tomorrow -- like securing the nuclear materials around the world."

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman called Dean shortly after his election to congratulate him and later issued a statement pledging a vigorous but civil debate. "I congratulate Howard Dean on his election as DNC chairman and look forward to engaging in a constructive dialogue with him about the major issues facing our nation," he said.

Read More...

Summary only...

Continued Distortion of FDR

http://mediamatters.org/

Wall Street Journal's Fund, FOX's Asman echoed Hume's Social Security distortion of FDR

Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and FOX News Live anchor David Asman both echoed FOX News Washington managing editor Brit Hume's distortion of a quote by former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to claim that Roosevelt supported "supplant[ing]" government funding of Social Security with private accounts. In fact, Roosevelt advocated "voluntary contributory annuities" -- which differ significantly from private accounts -- to supplement guaranteed Social Security benefits and never proposed replacing Social Security benefits with private accounts.

In the February 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com "Political Diary" (subscription only, but partially reprinted here), Fund followed Hume's example -- which prompted Air America Radio host Al Franken to call on Hume to resign -- by distorting the same quote from Roosevelt's January 17, 1935, address to Congress. Fund falsely asserted that Roosevelt's "call for the establishment of Social Security directly anticipated today's reform agenda" for private accounts:

They [congressional Republicans] note that in an address to Congress on January 17, 1935, President Roosevelt foresaw the need to move beyond the pay-as-you-go financing of the current Social Security system. "For perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions," the president allowed. But after that, he explained, it would be necessary to move to what he called "voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age." In other words, his call for the establishment of Social Security directly anticipated today's reform agenda: "It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans," FDR explained.

On the February 9 edition of FOX News Live, Asman credited Hume and then repeated his distortion of Roosevelt:

ASMAN: Democrats used a statue of FDR to condemn President Bush's plan to privatize at least part of Social Security. But did the founder of Social Security actually have the same thing in mind? Last week Brit Hume dug up a 1935 FDR speech in which President Roosevelt seemed to suggest he favored private Social Security accounts. But on Friday, former labor secretary Robert Reich disputed that on [FOX News'] The Big Story [with John Gibson].

REICH [video clip from the February 4 editon of The Big Story]: I know what happened, and FDR was talking about not private Social Security accounts, he was talking about separate Social Security accounts -- exactly the system we have today.

ASMAN: That was Robert Reich on The Big Story. Well, here's the exact quote of FDR's from 1935, quote "It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans -- Voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age." Does this sound like the system we have today? Well, you decide.

But neither Asman nor Fund provided "the exact quote of FDR's," as Asman claimed. As Media Matters for America has noted, Roosevelt was not advocating that the present system of guaranteed Social Security benefits "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans." Rather, he was proposing that a system of both mandatory contributions -- today's Social Security -- and voluntary annuities would eventually eliminate the need for a different fund that was established to provide pension benefits to Americans who were already too old in 1935 to contribute payroll taxes to the Social Security system.

Here is the context of Roosevelt's 1935 speech:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities, which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

Further, while Roosevelt envisioned some form of "voluntary contributory annuities" to supplement Social Security, Fund and Asman erroneously equated those annuities with Bush's proposed private investment accounts. The voluntary annuities would differ from private accounts in that their funds would be deposited into and paid out of the Social Security trust fund, and they would provide a government-guaranteed benefit like mandatory contributions, as Edwin Witte, executive director of the Committee on Economic Security (CES), noted during 1935 congressional hearings on Roosevelt's Social Security bill.

Finally, in addition to distorting Roosevelt, Fund quoted an anonymous House Republican who suggested that Bush's proposal for private accounts could meet Roosevelt's "concerns on how to make Social Security solvent" -- even though Roosevelt was not addressing solvency and the White House has conceded that private accounts would not tackle that problem:

"What Roosevelt was talking about is the need to update Social Security sometime around 1965 with what today we would call personal accounts," says one top GOP member of the Ways and Means Committee. "By my reckoning we are only about 40 years late in addressing his concerns on how to make Social Security solvent."

Read More...

Summary only...

Families outraged over FAA 9/11 warnings

Newsday.com
Families outraged over FAA 9/11 warnings

BY CURTIS L. TAYLOR
STAFF WRITER

February 10, 2005, 10:05 PM EST

Expressing outrage Thursday, family members of 9/11 victims called on the federal government to probe why it didn't act on intelligence warning of terrorist hijackings in the months before the World Trade Center was destroyed.

"The fact of the matter is these warnings were out there and nobody did anything about it," said Bill Doyle of Staten Island, who lost his son Joseph Doyle at the trade center. "My biggest concern is how high up did this get into the administration.

"There were people who testified at the 9/11 hearings that there were no warnings, but now we know there were. We need another investigation into the failures of 9/11. Obviously, someone at the FAA should be held accountable." Doyle said he received 253 e-mails yesterday from victim's families expressing anger over the declassified report.

Elaine Moccia, who lost her husband, Frank V. Moccia Sr., said releasing the information reopened old wounds.

"I am mad and upset that they keep bringing it up," Moccia said. "If they knew about it, why couldn't they have prevented it?"

Attorney Sanford Rubenstein, who represents families in a 9/11-related federal lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, said the families were hoping something good could come from the declassified information.

"It is clear that what the victims hope is what comes out of this information will prevent another 9/11," Rubinstein said. City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr.(D-Astoria), said, "It was outrageous that no action was taken by the FAA." "How much more specific than the word hijack before the FAA increases security?" said Vallone.

City Council minority leader Jim Oddo (R-Staten Island) said the early warnings the FAA received show that "we can stop these things."

"It underscores that we have to be vigilant and use all our resources to prevent something like this from happening again. We have to keep our fingers on the pulse."

Read More...

Summary only...

FAA Had 52 Pre - 9 / 11 Warnings

The New York Times
February 11, 2005
Report: FAA Had 52 Pre - 9 / 11 Warnings
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:59 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001, about al-Qaida and its desire to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terror attacks.

The report by the Sept. 11 commission detailed 52 such warnings given to FAA leaders from April to Sept. 10, 2001, about the radical Islamic terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al-Qaida's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. However, none of the warnings pinpointed what would happen on Sept. 11.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown on Thursday said the agency received intelligence from other agencies, which it passed on to airlines and airports.

But, she said, ``We had no specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures.''

Brown also said the FAA was in the process of tightening security at the time of the attacks.

``We were spending $100 million a year to deploy explosive detection equipment at the airports,'' she said. The agency was also close to issuing a regulation that would have set higher standards for screeners and, for the first time, give it direct control over the screening work force.

Al Felzenberg, former spokesman for the 9/11 commission, which went out of business last summer, said the government had not completed a review of the 120-page report for declassification purposes until recently.

Carol Ashley of Rockville Centre, N.Y., whose daughter died in the attacks, said the report should have been released sooner.

``I'm just appalled that this was withheld for five months. That contributes to the idea that the government knew something and didn't act, it contributes to the conspiracy theories out there. We need to rebut those with the actual facts, but we need the facts to do that,'' she said.

California Rep. Henry Waxman, ranking Democrat on the Government Reform Committee, asked for a hearing on whether the Bush administration played politics with the report's release. The letter, also signed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said the committee should probe whether the report was delayed until after the November elections and the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.

The unclassified version, first reported by The New York Times, was made available by the National Archives Thursday.

According to the report:

--Aviation officials were ``lulled into a false sense of security'' and ``intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/ll did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures.''

--Of the FAA's 105 daily intelligence summaries between April 1, 2001 and Sept. 10, 2001, 52 mentioned bin Laden, al-Qaida, or both, ``mostly in regard to overseas threats.''

--It notes that the FAA did not expand the use of in-flight air marshals or tighten airport screening for weapons. It said FAA officials were more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays and easing air carriers' financial problems than thwarting a terrorist attack.

-- A proposed rule to improve passenger screening and other security measures ordered by Congress in 1996 had been held up by the Office of Management and Budget and was still not in effect when the attacks occurred, according to the FAA.

Information in this report was available to members of the 9/11 commission when they issued their public report last summer. That report itself contained criticisms of FAA operations.

^------

Associated Press writer Devlin Barrett contributed to this story.

Read More...

Summary only...

1/25/01 Clarke Memo to Rice on Al-Qaeda Warning Declassified

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm

Bush Administration's First Memo
on al-Qaeda Declassified

January 25, 2001 Richard Clarke Memo:
"We urgently need . . . a Principals level
review on the al Qida network."


Document Central to Clarke-Rice Dispute on Bush Terrorism Policy Pre-9/11

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 147

Edited by Barbara Elias

February 10, 2005

Washington, D.C., February 10, 2005 - The National Security Archive today posted the widely-debated, but previously unavailable, January 25, 2001, memo from counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice - the first terrorism strategy paper of the Bush administration. The document was central to debates in the 9/11 hearings over the Bush administration's policies and actions on terrorism before September 11, 2001. Clarke's memo requests an immediate meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss broad strategies for combating al-Qaeda by giving counterterrorism aid to the Northern Alliance and Uzbekistan, expanding the counterterrorism budget and responding to the U.S.S. Cole attack. Despite Clarke's request, there was no Principals Committee meeting on al-Qaeda until September 4, 2001.

The January 25, 2001, memo, recently released to the National Security Archive by the National Security Council, bears a declassification stamp of April 7, 2004, one day prior to Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission on April 8, 2004. Responding to claims that she ignored the al-Qaeda threat before September 11, Rice stated in a March 22, 2004 Washington Post op-ed, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration."

Two days after Rice's March 22 op-ed, Clarke told the 9/11 Commission, "there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options -- but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were done. They were done after September 11th. They were all done. I didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in February."

Also attached to the original Clarke memo are two Clinton-era documents relating to al-Qaeda. The first, "Tab A December 2000 Paper: Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects," was released to the National Security Archive along with the Clarke memo. "Tab B, September 1998 Paper: Pol-Mil Plan for al-Qida," also known as the Delenda Plan, was attached to the original memo, but was not released to the Archive and remains under request with the National Security Council.

Below are additional references to the January 25, 2001, memo from congressional debates and the 9/11 Commission testimonies of Richard Clarke and Condoleezza Rice.

Excerpts from:
NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES
Eighth Public Hearing
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC
Chaired by: Thomas H. Kean

[See also 9/11 Commission Staff Statement - Intelligence Policy Staff Statement No. 7 by Alexis Albion, Michael Hurley, Dan Marcus, Lloyd Salvetti and Steve Dunne]

Testimony of Dan Marcus - 9/11 Commission staff member, general counsel:

In December 2000, the CIA developed initiatives -- moving off the Cole now -- based on the assumption that policy and money were no longer constraints. The result was the so-called Blue Sky memo, which we discussed earlier today. This was forwarded to the NSC staff.

As the Clinton administration drew to a close, the NSC counterterrorism staff developed another strategy paper; the first such comprehensive effort since the Delenda plan of 1998. The resulting paper, titled "A Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of Al Qaida; Status and Prospects," reviewed the threat, the records to date, incorporated the CIA's new ideas from the Blue Sky memo, and posed several near-term policy choices. The goal was to roll back Al Qaida over a period of three to five years, reducing it eventually to a rump group like others formerly feared but now largely defunct terrorist organizations in the 1980s. Quote, "Continued anti-Al Qaida operations at the current level will prevent some attacks, but will not seriously attrite their ability to plan and conduct attacks," Clarke and his staff wrote.

…

Asked by Hadley to offer major initiatives, on January 25, 2001 Clarke forwarded his December 2000 strategy paper and a copy of his 1998 Delenda plan to the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Clarke laid out a proposed agenda for urgent action by the new Administration: Approval of covert assistance to the Northern Alliance; significantly increase funding; choosing a standard of evidence for attributing responsibility for the Cole and deciding on a response; going forward with new Predator missions in the spring and preparation of an armed version; and more work on terrorist fundraising.

…

Clarke asked on several occasions for early principals meetings on these issues, and was frustrated that no early meeting was scheduled. No principals committee meetings on Al Qaida were held until September 4th, 2001. Rice and Hadley said this was because the deputies committee needed to work through many issues relating to the new policy on Al Qaida. The principals committee did meet frequently before September 11th on other subjects, Rice told us, including Russia, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East peace process. Rice and Hadley told us that, although the Clinton administration had worked very hard on the Al Qaida program, its policies on Al Qaida, quote, "had run out of gas," and they therefore set about developing a new presidential directive and a new, comprehensive policy on terrorism.

Testimony of Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism coordinator:

TIMOTHY ROEMER, Commission Member: OK. With my 15 minutes, let's move into the Bush administration.

On January 25th, we've seen a memo that you've written to Dr. Rice urgently asking for a principals' review of Al Qaida. You include helping the Northern Alliance, covert aid, significant new '02 budget authority to help fight Al Qaida and a response to the USS Cole. You attach to this document both the Delenda Plan of 1998 and a strategy paper from December 2000.

Do you get a response to this urgent request for a principals meeting on these? And how does this affect your time frame for dealing with these important issues?

CLARKE: I did get a response, and the response was that in the Bush administration I should, and my committee, counterterrorism security group, should report to the deputies committee, which is a sub-Cabinet level committee, and not to the principals and that, therefore, it was inappropriate for me to be asking for a principals' meeting. Instead, there would be a deputies meeting.

ROEMER: So does this slow the process down to go to the deputies rather than to the principals or a small group as you had previously done?

CLARKE: It slowed it down enormously, by months. First of all, the deputies committee didn't meet urgently in January or February. Then when the deputies committee did meet, it took the issue of Al Qaida as part of a cluster of policy issues, including nuclear proliferation in South Asia, democratization in Pakistan, how to treat the various problems, including narcotics and other problems in Afghanistan, and launched on a series of deputies meetings extending over several months to address Al Qaida in the context of all of those inter-related issues. That process probably ended, I think in July of 2001. So we were ready for a principals meeting in July. But the principals calendar was full and then they went on vacation, many of them in August, so we couldn't meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September.

…

ROEMER: You then wrote a memo on September 4th to Dr. Rice expressing some of these frustrations several months later, if you say the time frame is May or June when you decided to resign. A memo comes out that we have seen on September the 4th. You are blunt in blasting DOD for not willingly using the force and the power. You blast the CIA for blocking Predator. You urge policy-makers to imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead at home or abroad after a terrorist attack and ask themselves what else they could have done. You write this on September the 4th, seven days before September 11th.

CLARKE: That's right.

ROEMER: What else could have been done, Mr. Clarke?

CLARKE: Well, all of the things that we recommended in the plan or strategy -- there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options -- but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were done. They were done after September 11th. They were all done. I didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in February.

…

SLADE GORTON, Commission member: Now, since my yellow light is on, at this point my final question will be this: Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001, based on Delenda, based on Blue Sky, including aid to the Northern Alliance, which had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?

CLARKE: No.

GORTON: It just would have allowed our response, after 9/11, to be perhaps a little bit faster?

CLARKE: Well, the response would have begun before 9/11.

GORTON: Yes, but there was no recommendation, on your part or anyone else's part, that we declare war and attempt to invade Afghanistan prior to 9/11?

CLARKE: That's right.

…

TIMOTHY J. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having served on the joint inquiry, the only person of this 9/11 panel to have served on the inquiry, I can say in open session to some of Mr. Fielding's inquiries that as the joint inquiry asked for information on the National Security Council and we requested that the National Security Adviser Dr. Rice come before the joint inquiry and answer those questions. She refused. And she didn't come. She didn't come before the 9/11 commission. And when we asked for some questions to be answered, Mr. Hadley answered those questions in a written form. So I think part of the answer might be that we didn't have access to the January 25th memo. We didn't have access to the September 4th memo. We didn't have access to many of the documents and the e-mails. We're not only talking about Mr. Clarke being before the 9/11 commission for more than 15 hours, but I think in talking to the staff, we have hundreds of documents and e-mails that we didn't previously have, which hopefully informs us to ask Mr. Clarke and ask Dr. Rice the tough questions.

Debate over the January 25, 2001 memo in Congress:

Congressional Record: March 25, 2004 (Senate) [Page S3122-S3123]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [DOCID:cr25mr04-92]

Excerpt from the Senate floor on March 26, 2004, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

Also in this August 2002 interview, Clarke noted the Bush administration, in mid-January of 2001--before the 9/11 attack--decided to do two things to respond to the threat of terrorism: "One, to vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all the lethal covert action finds which we have now made public, to some extent; the second thing the administration decided to do was to initiate a process to look at these issues which had been on the table for a couple of years and get them decided.''

In other words, what Clarke was saying in 2002 to members of the press was that the Bush administration's response to the war on terror was much more aggressive than it was under the Clinton years.

Now he is singing an entirely different tune. This is a man who lacks credibility. He may be an intelligent man, he may be a dedicated public servant, but clearly he has a grudge of some sort against the Bush administration. If he was unable to develop a more robust response during the Clinton years, he would only be able to blame himself. He was in charge of counterterrorism during those 8 years. How could the Bush administration be to blame in 8 months for the previous administration's failure over 8 years to truly declare war on al-Qaida?

Congressional Record: March 30, 2004 (Senate) [Page S3315-S3317]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [DOCID:cr30mr04-151]

Excerpt from the Senate floor on March 30, 2004, Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD):

In Mr. Clarke's case, clear and troubling double standards are being applied. Last year, when the administration was being criticized for the President's misleading statement about Niger and uranium, the White House unexpectedly declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate.

When the administration wants to bolster its public case, there is little that appears too sensitive to be declassified.

Now, people around the President want to release parts of Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony in 2002. According to news reports, the CIA is already working on declassifying that testimony--at the administration's request.

And last week several documents were declassified literally overnight, not in an effort to provide information on a pressing policy matter to the American people, but in an apparent effort to discredit a public servant who gave 30 years of service to the American Government.

I'll support declassifying Mr. Clarke's testimony before the Joint Inquiry, but the administration shouldn't be selective. Consistent with our need to protect sources and methods, we should declassify his entire testimony. And to make sure that the American people have access to the full record as they consider this question, we should also declassify his January 25 memo to Dr. Rice, the September 4, 2001 National Security Directive dealing with terrorism, Dr. Rice's testimony to the 9-11 Commission, the still-classified 28 pages from the House-Senate inquiry relating to Saudi Arabia, and a list of the dates and topics of all National Security Council meetings before September 4, 2001.

Congressional Record: March 31, 2004 (House) [Page H1772-H1779]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [DOCID:cr31mr04-105])

Excerpt from the House floor on March 31, 2004, Representative Frank Pallone (D-NJ):

Now, this past Sunday, Clarke said he would support the declassification of his testimony before the joint intelligence panels if the administration also declassifies the National Security Adviser's testimony before the 9/11 Commission and the declassification of the January 25, 2001, memo that Clarke sent to Rice laying out a terrorism strategy, a strategy that was not approved until months later.

Madam Speaker, House Democrats really want a full accounting of the events leading up to the September 11 attacks, including the extent to which a preoccupation with Iraq affected efforts to deal with the threat posed by al Qaeda. It is nice to see the White House has finally stopped stonewalling the commission and now says that it will provide the public testimony the commission is requesting. But Americans need to be able to fully evaluate the decisions of government leaders, especially when it comes to the life and death decisions of war and peace.

Excerpts from:
NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES
Ninth Public Hearing
Thursday, April 8, 2004
Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC
Chaired by: Thomas H. Kean

Testimony of national security advisor Condoleezza Rice:

MR. BOB KERREY, Committee Member: Well, I think it's an unfortunate figure of speech because I think -- especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of August -- October 2000. It would have been a swatting a fly. It would not have been -- we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan. Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 20th of January overt military operations as a -- he turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke. There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration, military plans in the Clinton administration. In fact, just since we're in the mood to declassify stuff, he included in his January 25th memo two appendixes: Appendix A, "Strategy for the Elimination of the Jihadist Threat of al Qaeda;" Appendix B, "Political- Military Plan for al Qaeda."

So I just -- why didn't we respond to the Cole? Why didn't we swat that fly?

MS. RICE: I believe that there is a question of whether or not you respond in a tactical sense or whether you respond in a strategic sense, whether or not you decide that you are going to respond to every attack with minimal use of military force and go after every -- on a kind of tit-for-tat basis. By the way, in that memo, Dick Clarke talks about not doing this tit for tat, doing this on a time of our choosing.

…

Yes, the Cole had happened. We received, I think, on January 25th the same assessment or roughly the same assessment of who was responsible for the Cole that Sandy Berger talked to you about. It was preliminary. It was not clear. But that was not the reason that we felt that we did not want to, quote, "respond to the Cole."

We knew that the options that had been employed by the Clinton administration had been standoff options. The President had -- meaning missile strikes, or perhaps bombers would have been possible, long-range bombers, although getting in place the apparatus to use long-range bombers is even a matter of whether you have basing in the region.

We knew that Osama bin Laden had been, in something that was provided to me, bragging that he was going to withstand any response, and then he was going to emerge and come out stronger. We --
…We simply believed that the best approach was to put in place a plan that was going to eliminate this threat, not respond to it, tit-for-tat.

…

MS. RICE: The fact is that what we were presented on January the 25th was a set of ideas -- and a paper, most of which was about what the Clinton administration had done, and something called the Delenda plan, which had been considered in 1998 and never adopted.

…

We decided to take a different track. We decided to put together a strategic approach to this that would get the regional powers -- the problem wasn't that you didn't have a good counterterrorism person. The problem was you didn't have approach against al Qaeda because you didn't have an approach against Afghanistan, and you didn't have an approach against Afghanistan because you didn't have an approach against Pakistan. And until we could get that right, we didn't have a policy.

…

In the memorandum that Dick Clarke sent me on January 25th, he mentions sleeper cells. There is no mention or recommendation of anything that needs to be done about them. And the FBI was pursuing them. And usually when things come to me it's because I'm supposed to do something about it, and there was no indication that the FBI was not adequately pursuing the sleeper cells.

Read More...

Summary only...