The booking agent for Dr. Khidhir Hamza, the dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist who said this week that Iraq could have a nuclear bomb within months, is the same person who has been so successful in helping "experts" from a network of right-wing think tanks dominate the debate on Middle Eastern issues.
One of those think tanks has just set up a Web site to monitor the attitudes of American professors and universities toward Islamic fundamentalism and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
CNN refused to broadcast nationally an advertising campaign emphasizing that Israel is a democracy and has a lot in common with the U.S.
March/April 1993 (cjr.org)
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy reportedly vowed to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces. In the end, he settled for firing CIA chief Allen Dulles and his top deputies and the closure of the research part of the CIA's mind-control programs.
LONDON, Sept 23 2002 (Reuters) - An earthquake rocked many parts of Britain early on Monday, knocking out electricity and phone lines in some areas, but there were no reports of serious damage.
"It measured 4.8 on the Richter scale and the epicentre was around Dudley in the West Midlands (central England)," David Galloway of the British Geological Survey told Reuters.
"It was relatively strong and we would expect this to happen only every 10 or 12 years," he said.
Structural damage to buildings was unlikely. "Plaster cracking, that kind of thing, but no major damage," he said.
Buildings are only at risk when earthquakes reach a magnitude of 5 to 5.5 on the Richter scale, the government's Environment Agency website said.
Tremors were felt by people as far afield as Wales in the west and London in the southeast shortly before one a.m. on Monday (midnight GMT on Sunday).
"We have had hundreds of calls from people saying their houses were shaken and that buildings were wobbling," a spokesman for West Midlands police said.
"Some electricity and phone lines went down," he said.
In London some residents called out the fire brigade.
"We have attended a few buildings, four or five in London after people in them phoned saying they were worried," a spokesman for the London fire service said.
"Car alarms have also been set off, but there has been no serious damage," he said.
Britain is not troubled by major earthquakes but it does experience a moderate rate of seismicity, according to the government's Environment Agency website.
It said around 200-300 low to medium earthquakes were detected each each year, although only 30 or so are strong enough for people to feel.
Britain's strongest earthquake, in 1931, measured 6.1 on the Richter scale but damage was greatly reduced because the epicentre was in the North Sea. It was felt all over Britain, northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and parts of Norway and Germany.
On 2 September VSI raised the Alert Level at Tangkubanparahu from 1 to 2 (on a scale of 1-4). The number of daily earthquakes had been increasing for 2 weeks and the temperatures of Domas and Ratu craters were 2-4°C higher than normal. There were no surface changes at the volcano, but several animals from the forest near Ratu crater were found dead in the crater.
Background. Tangkubanparahu is a broad shield-like stratovolcano overlooking Indonesia's former capital city of Bandung that was constructed within the 6 x 8 km Pleistocene Sunda caldera. The volcano's low profile is the subject of legends referring to the mountain of the "upturned boat." The rim of Sunda caldera forms a prominent ridge on the western side; elsewhere the caldera rim is largely buried by deposits of Tangkubanparahu volcano. The dominantly small phreatic historical eruptions recorded since the 19th century have originated from several nested craters within an elliptical 1 x 1.5 km summit depression. Tangkubanparahu last erupted in September 1983, when ash rose up to 150 m above the rim of Kawah Ratu.
EARTHQUAKES:
2002/09/20 15:43:36 1.58S 134.28E 10.0 6.4 A IRIAN JAYA REGION, INDONESIA
2002/09/20 13:33:42 1.56S 133.94E 10.0 6.0 A IRIAN JAYA REGION, INDONESIA
26 September, 2002
(BBCNEWS)
An image of Venus captured by the Galileo spacecraft
Scientists in the United States say clouds high in the atmosphere of the planet Venus contain chemicals that may suggest the presence of life.
Venus: The facts
Second planet from the Sun
Similar in size and mass to Earth
Thick, poisonous atmosphere of carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid
Greenhouse effect keeps the surface hot enough for molten metal to flow
Space probes have never found any sign of life on Venus, which has an extremely hot surface and an atmosphere that contains a mixture of poisonous chemicals.
But Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Louis Irwin, from the University of Texas, say the Venusian atmosphere is "relatively hospitable" and may be home to large numbers of bacteria.
"From an astrobiology point of view, Venus is not hopeless," the scientists claim after finishing their research, published in the New Scientist magazine.
However, most astronomers remain sceptical and general consensus is that life on the Earth's closest neighbour would be impossible.
Oddities
Using data from the Russian Venera space missions and also the US Pioneer Venus and Magellan probes, the researchers have been studying the high concentration of water droplets in the Venusian clouds.
Nasa's Magellan mission ended in 1994
They noticed oddities in its chemical composition that they say could be explained by the presence of microbes.
The scientists found hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide - two gases which react with each other, and are not seen in the same place unless something is producing them.
They also say that - despite solar radiation and lightning - the atmosphere contains hardly any carbon monoxide, suggesting that something is removing the gas.
Bacterial life
The researchers told the New Scientist that "bugs living in the Venusian clouds could be combining sulphur dioxide with carbon monoxide and possibly hydrogen sulphide or carbonyl sulphide in a metabolism similar to that of some early Earth bugs".
Past missions to Venus
Nasa's mission Magellan orbited the planet for 4 years before plunging into its atmosphere in 1994
Nasa's Mariners 2, 5 and 10 also visited Venus
Soviet missions have landed several spacecraft on Venus
Chemical analyses of rocks indicate a composition similar to that of volcanic rocks found on Earth
They also believe the temperatures of Venus was once much cooler and there could have been oceans on the planet.
"Life could have started there and retreated to stable niches once the runaway greenhouse effect began," Mr Schulze-Makuch says.
But most scientists are sceptical.
They say that tiny droplets of water are not enough to support life.
The other thing is that the general circulation of the atmosphere - the way the winds blow on average - is very rapid and we have no physical understanding of what the mechanisms are that are causing it.
This is alarming for the Earth's nearest neighbour and the most Earth-like planet.
What could we learn about climate change on Earth?
One of the things we are trying to do on the Earth these days is predict to what extent the Earth is going to move towards being more Venus-like.
I think that there's wide agreement that that's happening. If we're going to be able to understand what's happening here and predict how it's going to go in the future, a valuable place to start would be to look at a similar planet that's undergone that transition already and to understand what happened and how the greenhouse effect actually operates under these similar but different conditions on our neighbouring planet.
LONDON, Sept 19 (Reuters) - British police and security agents have arrested six men on suspicion of funding terrorism after dawn raids on several houses across London, a police spokesman said on Thursday.
Police sources told Reuters the arrests related to alleged fundraising for Islamic militant groups and international terrorism but were not directly related to last year's September 11 attacks on the United States.
A Scotland Yard spokesman would not comment on the nature of the alleged offences but said the men, aged in their 20s and 30s, had been held for questioning since the arrests on Wednesday under the Terrorism Act 2000.
"Searches are being carried out at the addresses and at two storage units in London," he said.
The arrests were the result of a joint operation between the police Anti-Terrorist Branch and MI5, Britain's domestic security agency, and did not involve the FBI, he said.
Five other men were arrested alongside the six in connection with alleged criminal and immigration offences. Four of those men remain in custody while the fifth was released on police bail.
LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Scientists looking for a way to provide cheap electricity for people in some of the poorest parts of the world have found a way of running a light bulb off a wood-burning stove.
Working with Rida Nuwayhid at the American University in Beirut, Mike Rowe and Gao Min at Cardiff University in Wales have developed a thermocouple device that converts some of the otherwise wasted heat from the stove into a weak electric current.
The 100 watts produced by the heat-resistant thermocouple is adequate to run a light bulb or a small television -- a major bonus in remote rural areas of the world where electricity is scarce or non-existent.
"We are actively collaborating on the rural development of this technology," Rowe told New Scientist magazine.
20th September 2002
orange-today.co.uk
Stray dogs are being used as mobile billboards by rival shops in a Russian city.
Shopworkers grab the dogs in the city of Penza after luring them with cutlets or sausages.
They then spray-paint their shop logo on the animal, reports the Molodoy Leninets newspaper.
Logos include not only the name of the shop but also the goods they stock, including Sony and Camel.
The newspaper says workers of rival stores often catch each other's dogs and repaint them in their own colours.
Local vets say they can't save animals from being painted as it is not illegal. They say it's a question of ethics rather than animal welfare.
LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Puffins have returned to a Scottish island to breed after the rats that preyed on them for more than a century were finally ousted.
Scientists at Glasgow University said on Wednesday an 11-year project to eradicate rats on Ailsa Craig had succeeded in encouraging the birds back after an absence of 50 years. "We are very pleased to see puffins breeding there again," the university's Professor Pat Monaghan told Reuters. "It's a very difficult thing to do to get rid of rats."
The tiny volcanic island eight miles off the coast of Ayrshire, southwest Scotland, was home to tens of thousands of puffins before brown rats invaded in the late 19th century and found the birds' burrow nests easy targets.
The university said huge flocks of puffins flying over Ailsa Craig in the 1870s used to cause "a bewildering darkness."
The first rat was seen on the island in 1889 at around the time the first lighthouse was built there.
It is thought to have escaped from a ship bringing coal or possibly from shipwrecks on the rocks before the lighthouse was built, the university said.
The huge project to get rid of them involved tons of rat poison airlifted to the island by navy helicopter.
No rats have been seen on the island since 1992.
Saturday, September 21, 2002
SINGAPORE (CNN) -- Singapore has become the first port in Asia to sign an agreement to screen U.S. bound containers for dangerous cargo.
The move is designed to help ferret out possible attempts by terrorists to smuggle in illegal materials, the U.S. Customs Service announced.
Singapore signed the Container Security Initiative on Friday, Customs Service Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said.
"I congratulate the government of Singapore for becoming the first Asian port to join [the initiative]," Bonner said in a written statement.
"Today's signing marks an important first for the global supply chain of trade, from Asia to the United States. Now our implementation work begins. Together, we can ensure that trade is facilitated while our mutual security in enhanced."
Launched in January, the program is intended to enhance the security of global maritime shipping.
Each year, 200 million cargo containers move among the world's seaports; nearly half of the value of all U.S. imports arrives via sea cargo containers.
The Container Security Initiative places U.S. Customs inspectors at international seaports to screen U.S.-bound cargo containers for instruments of terror before they are shipped.
Customs is initially focusing its inspectors on the 20 large ports responsible for two-thirds of the 5.7 million containers that enter the United States each year.
Singapore's port ranks second to Hong Kong in the number of cargo containers handled. Last year, 330,000 sea cargo containers entered America from its port.
This year, U.S. Customs reached similar accords with Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany. All will exchange Customs inspectors at certain seaports to screen containers bound for each nation.
Singapore was the first mega-port to agree to join the initiative.
The U.S. Customs Service is in discussions with several other nations, including countries in Europe and Asia, about forming partnerships under the program.
"He will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters. There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute."
August 30, 2002
CNN
The plan is breathtaking -- to create one Islamic state from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore to parts of the Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar.
Intelligence officials say Osama bin Laden has turned terrorism into a franchise, focusing on Muslim separatist groups in Southeast Asia and offering them support if they merge their goals with his anti-American agenda.
According to Tony Tan, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister, bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network has long sought to extend its war against the West to the potentially fertile recruiting grounds of Southeast Asia.
"Al Qaeda has been able to coopt all these regional elements and give them focus and organization to strike against America and American interests throughout the world," said Tan.
It started in the early 1990s. Bin Laden's first messenger was his brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who spread the dictum, or dream, of the singular Islamic state of Southeast Asia.
Khalifa funded Islamic charities in the Philippines and created ties with the largest and most organized separatist group in the region -- the MILF, or Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Intelligence officials say Khalifa worked with a terrorist cell busted in the Philippines in 1995.
Three members of that cell are serving life sentences in U.S. prisons: Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; Wali Khan Amin Shah, who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the third, Abdul Hakim Murad, the pilot who told authorities he was recruited for a suicide mission to crash commercial planes into buildings like the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
Prophetic documentation
A Philippine intelligence document dated January 20, 1995 outlined their plans with chilling foresight.
"He will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters. There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute," the document states.
Intelligence officials in the Philippines say they believe that 1995 plan was the blueprint for September 11 -- the finer details worked out by two cell members who had escaped arrest.
The main financier of the operation is alleged to have been Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, and now purported to be al Qaeda's main operative in Southeast Asia.
The other man is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle, who helped in the first failed bombing attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993. Seven people were killed in the unsuccessful attempt to topple the towers.
But the attackers remained undeterred. By 2001, Mohammed had risen up al Qaeda's ranks to become a trusted bin Laden lieutenant.
U.S. officials say Mohammed was a key planner behind September 11.
"It's the same network, but it was expanded. It was modernized. It became sophisticated, and it attracted a lot of membership," said Philippine counter-terrorist expert Col. Rodolfo Mendoza.
Indonesians at helm
Today, al Qaeda's network in Southeast Asia is led by two Indonesian clerics.
One is Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, dubbed the Asian Osama bin Laden. He provides vision and sets policies.
Wanted by Singapore and Malaysia, the 63-year-old Ba'asyir operates freely in Indonesia, where he openly campaigns for an Islamic superstate.
Working with him is Hambali, financier from the 1995 plot now turned CEO and operations chief. Intelligence officials say the 36-year-old Afghan war veteran is responsible for the growth of sleeper cells across the region.
Andrea Domingo, Philippine Comissioner of Immigration, said the key to al Qaeda success in the region rested in generating loyalty among local recruits.
"They learned that when they organize in the region, it is a lot better and more effective to use locals to do their job. But they have to be trained, and they have to be indoctrinated enough so that they themselves believe in the cause just like the originals did," said Domingo.
Through the mid to late 1990s, the MILF camp in the southern Philippines would begin training al Qaeda operators and Islamic militants from the region.
Asian targets
Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the man dubbed the Asian Osama Bin Laden
Confidential intelligence reports obtained by CNN show that in 2000, 15 members of armed Muslim groups in the region met at least three times in Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, to plot terrorist attacks- - funded and inspired by al Qaeda.
The meetings were led by Ba'asyir and Hambali.
Among those who attended: the MILF from the Philippines, the Free Aceh movement from Indonesia, KMM from Malaysia, Laskar Jundullah from Indonesia, Jemaah Islamiya from Singapore and other groups from Thailand and Myanmar.
Their plots ranged from bombing the Philippine Ambassador's house in Jakarta to assassinating Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri to bombing U.S. and Israeli interests in Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Wong Kan Seng, Singapore's Home Affairs Minister, said the groups maintained a level of autonomy that allowed them to adhere to both al Qaeda and local separatist agendas.
"Al Qaeda has been able to transmit the kind of sense of jihad to the local groups while enabling these groups to keep to their own agenda in causing problems in their own countries," said Wong.
One of the men who attended the Philippines meetings was Indonesian Agus Dwikarna - arrested in the Philippines in March and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for possession of explosives.
Dwikarna says he was set up.
"I did nothing wrong. Those things in my bag don't belong to me," alleged terrorist Dwikarna said through an interpreter.
Ambon 'replacing Afghanistan'
Dwikarna's connections with al Qaeda in Europe went to the highest levels, officials say
Intelligence officials say Dwikarna commands Laskar Jundullah, an extremist group based in Poso, Indonesia with six batallions -- or a total of 2,000 men.
Intelligence documents obtained by CNN say Dwikarna set up an al Qaeda training camp that fuelled Muslim-Christian violence in Poso and nearby Ambon in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia.
Nearly 10,000 people have died there since 1999 in sectarian violence.
After September 11, officials in the region say Ambon became the new Afghanistan for many Muslim fighters.
"They were initially inspired by the war in Afghanistan. Now without Afghanistan, they use Ambon in the Malukus as the new battleground," said Singapore's senior minister Lee Kuan Yew.
A senior Indonesian intelligence official said Dwikarna worked with an Indonesian living in Spain, Parlindungan Siregar.
Spanish authorities say Parlindungan arranged for several hundred al Qaeda operatives from Europe to travel to Indonesia for training.
Parlindungan is wanted for questioning by Spanish police. They say he was the right-hand man of Imad Eddin Barakat Yarbas, the leader of an al Qaeda cell in Spain connected to the September 11 hijackers.
High level connections
But Dwikarna's connections with al Qaeda in Europe are said to have gone to the highest levels.
Intelligence officials say in June 2000, Dwikarna acted as a guide for al Qaeda leaders who visited Indonesia, namely Osama Bin Laden's second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef, al Qaeda's former military chief.
This Philippine intelligence document obtained by CNN justifies the visit thus: "This visit was part of a wider strategy of shifting the base of Osama Bin Laden's terrorist operations from the Subcontinent to South East Asia."
Intelligence sources in the Philippines say the phone number of another al Qaeda official was found in Dwikarna's cellphone.
This number belonged to a Kuwaiti man named Omar al-Faruq.
U.S. sources confirm he was arrested by Indonesian authorities on June 5 and is now in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The Southeast Asian links continue.
USS Cole bombing
U.S. officials say the planning for the bombing of the USS Cole (in October 2000 that killed 17 U.S. sailors) and September 11 took place in this condominium complex on the outskirts of Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur.
In January of 2000, about a dozen of Osama bin Laden's trusted followers met here.
The host was Hambali.
Among those who attended: Tawfiq bin Attash, a key suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole 9 months later; Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi, who nearly two years later crashed a plane into the Pentagon, and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Osama Bin Laden's lieutenant, a key planner, U.S. officials say, of September 11.
Eight months after that al Qaeda meeting, another guest would stay here -- Zacarias Moussaoui, now on trial in the United States for September 11 related charges.
What seems clear is that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network has tapped and fuelled Muslim discontent in Southeast Asia to build a potent, homegrown terrorist network over the last decade.
Officials here say they believe the network here is replicated in other parts of the world, places like the Middle East, Kashmir and Chechnya where armed Muslim fighters have been coopted into a global terrorist network to substitute for the loss of Afghanistan.
September 19, 2002
JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) -- Imagine a huge gas tanker hijacked in the busy Malacca Strait and turned into a floating bomb aimed at wealthy Singapore or major ports in Indonesia or Malaysia.
The blast would cause massive damage and yet the chances of such an attack could be limited if there was closer cooperation between the three Southeast Asian nations, regional ministers gathered in the Indonesian capital Jakarta said on Thursday.
Experts have warned the Malacca Strait, one of the world's busiest sea lanes, could make an ideal target for militants to hijack tankers filled with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of gas or oil.
"The issue of fighting piracy in the Malacca Strait has to take on a new importance given the much greater threat it could now pose. We need a closer security cooperation with Malaysia and Singapore," Indonesian Communications Minister Agum Gumelar told Reuters at the sidelines of the TransASEAN 2002 conference.
Ideal target
Gas carriers make ideal targets due to the highly flammable nature of their cargo, experts say. A hijacked tanker could be rammed into offshore oil terminals causing huge damage.
Southeast Asia is particularly at risk from sea-borne militant attacks given the narrowness of its waterways, while the long-running scourge of piracy in the Malacca Strait illustrates just how easy it is to hijack a vessel, experts warn.
"But such efforts (to secure the strait) are very costly...so the three countries will try to get international support...on how to share the cost," Singapore Transport Minister Yeo Cheow Tong told Reuters.
He said the island country has stepped up security at maritime installations and waters surrounding offshore oil and chemical terminals following threats on its Changi airport earlier this year.
Malaysian Minister of Transport Ling Liong Sik said it was increasingly important for Southeast Asian countries to cooperate in ensuring the security of their cargoes in the free trade era.
"Container tracking and safe delivery of our cargo is very important especially to the United States," Ling said.
Terrorists more organized than pirates
Terrorists are likely to be much more organized and better armed than pirates and, even more alarmingly, could already be present on the ship as bona fide crew, he said.
Apart from the obvious devastation such an attack would cause, the economic impact could be enormous, blocking a sea lane that carries 25 percent of the world's crude oil trade, or 10.3 million barrels a day, Ling said.
Others said if militants can train to be aircraft pilots they can learn to control a large ship as well.
"And one of the problems...despite huge advances in tracking and communications equipment, owners and operators often do not know where their ships really are and therefore take considerable time to realize that they are missing," said Barens Saragih, the head of the Indonesian National Shipowners Association.
Fri Sep 20, 2002
DETROIT (Reuters) - Holy mackerel!
A shark held with no male counterpart at Detroit's Belle Isle Aquarium for the past six years has produced three babies in what zoo officials are calling "virgin births."
The first two offspring hatched in July and the third was born earlier this week, Doug Sweet, curator of fishes at the aquarium, said in an interview on Friday.
The female trio and their two-feet-long mother, a white spotted bamboo shark common to waters in the South Pacific, are all doing well and a fourth offspring is expected in another couple of weeks, Sweet told Reuters.
"With fish, amphibians and reptiles it does happen sometimes, it is kind of rare but it can happen," Sweet said of the unusual hatchings.
He said they were thought to be the result of a process called parthenogenesis, which is the ability of unfertilized eggs to develop into embryos without sperm.
"The other option here is that perhaps there's a chance that the female might be a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite. That is, she might have testicular tissue inside her as well as ovarian tissue, and it's possible she could be fertilizing her own eggs. Either way you look at it it's pretty weird," Sweet said. He said the only other adult bamboo shark in the 680-gallon tank where the mother is held is also a female.
"There's no male around and there hasn't been any male around for as long as we've had the sharks, and we've had them for over six years," Sweet said. Though the births in Detroit were thought to be extremely rare, Sweet said a bonnet head shark, also held without any male companion, reproduced in late 2001 at a zoo in Omaha, Nebraska.
Unlike the biblical account of Jesus' birth and the Virgin Mary, "in nature, during parthenogenesis, it typically is always a female that is produced," Sweet said.
Fri Sep 20, 2002
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Entertainment and politics are about to collide as never before via a sure-to-be provocative new reality series from FX.
The News Corp.-owned cable channel has pacted with documentary veteran R.J. Cutler ("The War Room"), director Jay Roach ("Austin Powers") and producer Tom Lassally ("Totally Hidden Video") to mount an ambitious two-year endeavor that will culminate in the American public choosing a "people's candidate" to run for president of the United States in 2004.
"It's like a cross between 'The War Room' and 'American Idol,"' Cutler told Daily Variety. "We will be making available to every American who is qualified, by virtue of the Constitution, the opportunity to run for president."
Just as "American Idol" went searching for undiscovered musical talent, Cutler said "American Candidate" will be on the hunt for untapped political and leadership skill.
"We're trying to see if there's a young Abe Lincoln out there, somebody whose vision could turn on the public in an exciting way," he said.
The series will be seeking "the Jesse Venturas of the world, finding messages people want to hear," added Kevin Reilly, FX's president of entertainment. "Hopefully, we'll find some very qualified civil servant who lacks a power base and maybe also a plumber from Detroit who (tells) it like it is."
To land a slot on the show, applicants will have to fill out questionnaires, provide videotapes in which they explain why they would make a great president and put together a group of 50 supporters from their community who will serve as sponsors.
The process likely will get under way in January 2003, with the first of a minimum 13 episodes likely to air starting in January 2004.
A panel of yet-to-be-determined experts will assess the applicant pool and choose about 100 candidates for the start of the series. During subsequent episodes, candidates will square off in numerous competitions, from debates to deciding whether to use opposition research to slam other contestants.
The number of semifinalists will be whittled down each week, based on a point system that will factor in competition results, live audience response and telephone/Internet voting. Each episode will originate from all-American locales such as Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty.
The final episode will be an "American Candidate" convention, held on the National Mall in Washington around July 4, 2004 -- about the same time the Republicans and Democrats will be prepping their conventions. In a live episode, viewers will then determine the winning candidate from among three finalists.
The winner will then decide whether to launch an official campaign. If he or she decides to make a run, a series of "War Room"-like specials will be produced following the candidate through Election Day.
The candidate will have to meet the standards for election set forth in the U.S. Constitution, which means each will have to be a natural-born American citizen who's at least 35 years old as of Jan. 20, 2005 and has lived in the States for the last seven years.
Cutler said the series will test the openness of U.S. democracy.
"We're (taught) that every young boy or girl can grow up to be president, but we all know that's not really true," he said, noting that the two major party candidates in the 2000 election came from political dynasties. "This show is going to ask whether or not anyone really can become president."
Cutler, Lassally and Roach previously developed a similar concept at HBO called "Candidate 2012," which did not go forward. That project was conceived much differently, as a straight documentary about one young political wannabe on a quest for the presidency in 2012.
FX's Reilly said his network and Cutler already were at work developing a documentary franchise when the idea of "American Candidate" came up.
"The intention is not to do a political gong show," he said. "We think we can get the audience to connect to politics, issues and the democratic process in a way they haven't been. It's a lofty goal, and we hope we can do it."
While "American Candidate" will be a reality show at heart, Cutler and FX hope the show ends up something more than just another big nonfiction hit.
"We expect it to be entertaining and engaging and provocative in the way that all good television is," Cutler said. "But it's also a show about something."
Beltway skeptics will no doubt scoff at the idea that a complete nobody could end up a serious candidate for president. Cutler, however, believes those pundits would be underestimating the power of television.
After all, Kelly Clarkson was a complete unknown until "American Idol" turned her into a household name. And Ventura became governor of Minnesota on the strength of his TV and wrestling fame.
"The winner of 'American Candidate' will be a TV star with (high name recognition)," Cutler said. "Like America itself, this project is a great experiment. We'll see how America responds."
Sun Sep 22, 2002
LONDON (Reuters) - A former lover of Britain's Princess Diana said in an interview published Sunday he was not the father of her youngest son Prince Harry.
James Hewitt, a former cavalry office in the British army, said he wanted to dispel rumors that he, and not Prince Charles, was the father of third-in-line to the British throne Prince Harry.
"I have been aware for a while that the issue of Harry's paternity has been a major talking point. There really is no possibility whatsoever that I am Harry's father," he told the Sunday Mirror newspaper.
"I can understand the interest, but Harry was already walking by the time my relationship with Diana began."
Buckingham Palace said it had no comment on Hewitt's remarks.
Hewitt, 44, said he first met Diana in 1986, two years after Harry was born. The couple had a five year affair until news of their relationship broke while Hewitt was serving as a tank commander with British forces in the 1991 Gulf War ( news - web sites).
He was later branded a "love rat" and cad by Britain's tabloids after he revealed details about their affair to journalist Anna Pasternak for her book "Princess in Love."
The Sunday Mirror said rumors about Harry's paternity had arisen after pictures taken of the prince to commemorate his 18th birthday showed similarities with images of Hewitt.
"Admittedly the red hair is similar to mine and people say we look alike," Hewitt said. "Looking at the pictures I would say he is a much more handsome chap than I ever was."
Diana was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997.
September 20, 2002
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. (AP) - A tiger attacked a kindergartner at a school assembly Friday, sending the 6-year-old boy to a hospital.
The tiger was being led out of an auditorium at Baymonte Christian School by its trainer when it suddenly lurched over a row of seats and grabbed the boy by the head in its jaws, Scotts Valley Police Capt. Harry Bidleman said.
Principal Steve Patterson was sitting one row behind the boy and wrestled him away from the declawed animal, said school spokesman Jenny Paul.
The boy was airlifted to Stanford Medical Center, where spokesman Robert Dicks said he was being evaluated Friday afternoon. Scotts Valley is about 60 miles south of San Francisco and about 30 miles south of Stanford.
Paul said the tiger was brought to the school as a reward for children who had sold 10 or more magazine subscriptions. About 150 students, from kindergarten through eighth grade, attended the assembly, Paul said.
The 1-year-old tiger is owned by Zoo To You, a company that brings animals to schools, she said.
"He was here last year when he was a little cub. It was his second visit here," Paul said.
NewsMax.com
9-21-2
Professors "who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement, and ignorance" and "actively dissociate themselves from the United States" are in the cross-hairs of a Web site that monitors their rantings and ravings and publishes them on the Internet.
According to Scott Smallwood of the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Middle East Forum has created a new Web site that lists faculty members it is monitoring and allows students to report on their professors who display an anti-Israel bias and denigrate the U.S.
The Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, has announced the new site, called Campus Watch http://www.campus-watch.org, where organizers say they plan to monitor and gather information "on professors who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement, and ignorance." The site targets professors who "actively dissociate themselves from the United States."
Among the eight academics already cited for mention by Campus Watch is Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Near East languages and civilization at the University of Chicago, for dedicating his study of the Palestine Liberation Organization to "those who gave their lives during the summer of 1982 ... in defense of the cause of Palestine and the independence of Lebanon."
Another academic among the eight listed, M. Shakid Alam, was cited by the Boston Herald for shocking Northeastern University with a defense of a suicide bomber
The dossiers of the eight professors include short biographies and reprints of a variety of materials - articles about the professors, as well as letters to editors and essays written by the professors themselves.
In response to Campus Watch, Khalidi said the effort "could have a chilling effect if people allow themselves to be intimidated." Campus Watch, he added is part of a "well-financed campaign of black propaganda."
Another of the listed professors, Hamid Dabashi, chairman of the department of Middle East and Asian languages and cultures at Columbia University, said the project seeks to create fear that students will be spying on professors. That won't affect him, he said, but it could be a "horrible development" for junior faculty members. "In the tenure culture, it could be damaging to the healthy relationship that has to govern the classroom," he said.
Others, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, suggest that the project is "basically a hate Web site" and that posting "dossiers" on faculty members amounts to a blacklist. And some professors who are listed on the site are denouncing it as hateful and inappropriate.
Address at morning prayers
Memorial Church
Cambridge, Massachusetts
September 17, 2002
I speak with you today not as President of the University but as a concerned member of our community about something that I never thought I would become seriously worried about -- the issue of anti-Semitism.
I am Jewish, identified but hardly devout. In my lifetime, anti-Semitism has been remote from my experience. My family all left Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. The Holocaust is for me a matter of history, not personal memory. To be sure, there were country clubs where I grew up that had few if any Jewish members, but not ones that included people I knew. My experience in college and graduate school, as a faculty member, as a government official -- all involved little notice of my religion.
Indeed, I was struck during my years in the Clinton administration that the existence of an economic leadership team with people like Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Charlene Barshefsky and many others that was very heavily Jewish passed without comment or notice -- it was something that would have been inconceivable a generation or two ago, as indeed it would have been inconceivable a generation or two ago that Harvard could have a Jewish President.
Without thinking about it much, I attributed all of this to progress -- to an ascendancy of enlightenment and tolerance. A view that prejudice is increasingly put aside. A view that while the politics of the Middle East was enormously complex, and contentious, the question of the right of a Jewish state to exist had been settled in the affirmative by the world community.
But today, I am less complacent. Less complacent and comfortable because there is disturbing evidence of an upturn in anti-Semitism globally, and also because of some developments closer to home.
Consider some of the global events of the last year:
There have been synagogue burnings, physical assaults on Jews, or the painting of swastikas on Jewish memorials in every country in Europe. Observers in many countries have pointed to the worst outbreak of attacks against the Jews since the Second World War.
Candidates who denied the significance of the Holocaust reached the runoff stage of elections for the nation’s highest office in France and Denmark. State-sponsored television stations in many nations of the world spew anti-Zionist propaganda.
The United Nations-sponsored World Conference on Racism -- while failing to mention human rights abuses in China, Rwanda, or anyplace in the Arab world -- spoke of Israel’s policies prior to recent struggles under the Barak government as constituting ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The NGO declaration at the same conference was even more virulent.
I could go on. But I want to bring this closer to home. Of course academic communities should be and always will be places that allow any viewpoint to be expressed. And certainly there is much to be debated about the Middle East and much in Israel’s foreign and defense policy that can be and should be vigorously challenged.
But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.
For example:
Hundreds of European academics have called for an end to support for Israeli researchers, though not for an end to support for researchers from any other nation.
Israeli scholars this past spring were forced off the board of an international literature journal.
At the same rallies where protesters, many of them university students, condemn the IMF and global capitalism and raise questions about globalization, it is becoming increasingly common to also lash out at Israel. Indeed, at the anti-IMF rallies last spring, chants were heard equating Hitler and Sharon.
Events to raise funds for organizations of questionable political provenance that in some cases were later found to support terrorism have been held by student organizations on this and other campuses with at least modest success and very little criticism.
And some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country have called for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the University has categorically rejected this suggestion.
We should always respect the academic freedom of everyone to take any position. We should also recall that academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism. The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong alternatives vigorously advocated.
I have always throughout my life been put off by those who heard the sound of breaking glass, in every insult or slight, and conjured up images of Hitler’s Kristallnacht at any disagreement with Israel. Such views have always seemed to me alarmist if not slightly hysterical. But I have to say that while they still seem to me unwarranted, they seem rather less alarmist in the world of today than they did a year ago.
I would like nothing more than to be wrong. It is my greatest hope and prayer that the idea of a rise of anti-Semitism proves to be a self-denying prophecy -- a prediction that carries the seeds of its own falsification. But this depends on all of us.
The booking agent for Dr. Khidhir Hamza, the dissident Iraqi nuclear scientist who said this week that Iraq could have a nuclear bomb within months, is the same person who has been so successful in helping "experts" from a network of right-wing think tanks dominate the debate on Middle Eastern issues.
One of those think tanks has just set up a Web site to monitor the attitudes of American professors and universities toward Islamic fundamentalism and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
(globeandmail.com)
September 21, 2002
TORONTO -- One elderly woman is terrified of showers. Then there are those who hide crusts of bread in their rooms, even though that's against the rules.
"You know what? Let them hoard," said Cindy Gabriel, a health-care aide at one of the country's most unusual old-aged homes.
"If that is their way of dealing with it, let them."
"It" is the Holocaust. More than 300,000 Canadians have Alzheimer's disease or other age-related dementia. At Baycrest's Apotex Centre, Jewish Home for the Aged in Toronto, 50 per cent of patients with dementia are Holocaust survivors for whom the loss of short-term memory condemns them, once again, to the death camps.
"For those that don't have a present any more, their past is their present," said Dr. Michael Gordon, a gerontologist and Baycrest vice-president for medical services. "In the past 10 years, we are more and more involved with patients for whom the Holocaust has resurged in their consciousness. The most dramatic are those who managed to compartmentalize their experience. As they develop Alzheimer's or dementia, the Holocaust absolutely dominates their lives."
So the dental clinic has no gas. No one lines up for flu shots. At night, the staff avoids using flashlights. And one administrator with a brisk, efficient walk and a penchant for block-heeled shoes stopped wearing them after one patient mistook her for a Nazi.
Baycrest has showers, but the staff is sensitive. "Some are very frightened of a shower. Then you say, 'Can we go and have a bodn?' " said Ms. Gabriel, using the Yiddish word for bath.
The Chinese cherish their elderly. They also value education. But neither Mon Sheong or Yee Hong, Toronto's two old-age homes for Chinese, has a research centre. Ditto Villa Colombo, for Italian-Canadians, and Suomi Koti Home, for Finnish-Canadians. Baycrest is the country's only geriatric facility with a teaching hospital and on-site research centre.
"Baycrest is unique in focusing on aging," said Dr. Paula Rochon, a Baycrest scientist who specializes in the impact of textbook doses of medicine on the elderly.
Is it coincidence that research and Jewish old-age homes exist side by side? Some say not, citing centuries of discrimination.
Dr. David Streiner, director of Baycrest's Kunin-Lunenfeld Applied Research Unit, pointed to the Diaspora. "It's the one transportable thing when you're kicked out of a country: brains."
At Baycrest, 140 people work in two research units: Dr. Streiner's, which specializes in applied research, and the Rotman Research Institute, which engages in pure research. Dr. Donald Stuss, the Rotman's founding director and a former neuroscientist at the University of Ottawa, is studying memory, emotion and cognitive impact, research that could benefit anyone with a traumatic past. As victims of rape, incest or violence develop age-related dementia, they, too, will be trapped in unspeakable memories.
"We're often perceived as the Jewish old-age home on Bathurst," said Mark Gryfe, president of the Baycrest foundation.
"But what's important is sharing what we know about Alzheimer's and dementia and aging with the world. The work we're doing is universal."
As a country of immigrants, Canada needs such research. Many newcomers have survived political oppression, extreme poverty, war and ethnic cleansing. Many could end up reverting to their mother tongues and reliving their traumas.
"It's not just an issue for Jewish Holocaust survivors," said Dr. Gordon, the gerontologist, whose first wife's family died in Germany and whose second wife's family are survivors. "Our experience can be used for others who have comparable genocidal experiences, people who have watched their brothers murdered or their sisters raped."
Researchers estimate that 40 per cent of people will develop some form of dementia by age 80. As the population ages, the numbers of Canadians with serious brain-related disorders will triple over the next 30 years. Even baby boomers with happy-go-lucky childhoods will need help.
Whenever Chaya Vilenski would spy a half-eaten bun on the sidewalk in Toronto, she always picked it up. Food, or the lack of it, indelibly marked her life.
After the Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941, her one-year-old daughter, Miriam, starved to death in the Kaunas ghetto. Her husband died there, too. But Mrs. Vilenski was too healthy, so the Nazis forced her into slave labour.
"She was chosen to stay alive because she was healthy. She said they were always looking at her legs. They looked healthy," said Batia Schaffer, 52, the daughter she had after the war, after she married the widower of a cousin who was also killed in the war.
Where once Mrs. Vilenski dug runways at the Kaunas airport, now her legs are weak. A few months ago, she fell and broke her hip. On this day, she is sitting in a wheelchair at Baycrest, elegantly dressed in a blue straw hat and white sweater. Her nails are manicured. She's wearing pink lipstick.
At 88, she suffers from dementia. After all the losses she has suffered, the burning question for her is one of life and death. And so she asks, over and over again, if her brothers and sisters and cousins are alive.
With one exception, every member of her family perished in the Holocaust, not just her husband and their daughter, but her parents, all her cousins and four of her five siblings. One brother was sent to Auschwitz, but managed to escape. He died in California a few years ago. Like him, Mrs. Vilenski was sent to a Polish concentration camp from 1943 to 1945. She nearly died of starvation.
She speaks Russian, Lithuanian, Yiddish and Hebrew, but not English. Through Ms. Schaffer, a retired chemist, who translated, Mrs. Vilenski was asked what the death camp was like for her. She stared at the pastel carpet, and then described the food. "They gave us soup from grass."
Her second husband died of leukemia when Ms. Schaffer, her only living child, was a toddler. After Lithuania became a Soviet republic, Mrs. Vilenski worked in a cigarette factory. Ms. Schaffer said her mother was once caught exchanging stolen cigarettes for food. "I was very scared because they could send you to Siberia."
Mrs. Vilenski stopped stealing for a month. "And then she started again, because we couldn't survive," Ms. Schaffer said. "Food was very important in my mother's life. My mom was always shovelling food into me."
After waiting years for an exit visa, mother and daughter emigrated to Israel. In the late 1970s, they came to Canada. Even after Ms. Schaffer married and had a daughter of her own, they always lived together until Mrs. Vilenski moved into Baycrest a year ago.
At lunch time, Ms. Schaffer wheeled her mother into a dining room bright with natural light. The daughter hovered, but her mother didn't appear to need help. Although Ms. Schaffer said Mrs. Vilenski's appetite was a bit off after she broke her hip, she ate steadily, wordlessly. First she polished off a green salad, then a bowl of potato soup, then a plate of gefilte fish. She left nothing on her plate. Dessert was a dish of peaches, washed down with a container of apple juice and a cup of hot tea.
"You can ask her what she ate five minutes ago, and she can't remember," Ms. Schaffer said. "But she likes to eat."
During the Second World War, Hitler killed off the very young and very old, saving the fittest, such as Mrs. Vilenski, for slave labour. Now, 60 years after the first Jews were shipped to concentration camps, the survivors are in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Baycrest has 13 centenarians, all female.
These Holocaust survivors, who lost immediate and extended families, never lived with aging parents themselves. Their adult children, who grew up without grandparents, are also experiencing aging for the first time. Like Batia Schaffer, these children are often especially devoted and protective. "But their kids can't protect them from old age," said Paula David, the Holocaust Research Project co-ordinator.
The children do their best. They can't prevent their parents hearing the sirens on Bathurst Street, but when someone noticed barbed wire around a nearby construction site, he asked the company to take it down, and it did.
In the death camps, inmates were called by number. One survivor reported sleeping on a wooden shelf with 14 others. "If one rolled over, they all had to roll over," Ms. David said. So the old-age home avoids looking institutional. Its dining rooms are intimate. Nursing stations look like condo kitchens, with coffee makers and well-stocked refrigerators. Every resident has a private room, with en suite sink and toilet.
Outside each resident's door is a display case for photos, chatchkas, even golf trophies. In Mrs. Vilenski's is her only photo -- a torn one -- of herself and her second husband. The displays remind everyone that these people once had independent lives. They also help the residents find their way back to the right room.
With 1,110 beds, Baycrest is one of the largest facilities in the world. In addition to the 472-bed old-age home designated for Jews, there is a rehabilitation hospital, palliative-care unit, adult daycare and assisted-living apartments open to all ethnic and religious groups. Baycrest also has the largest kosher kitchen in Canada, a barbershop, a hair salon, a library, a museum of Jewish heritage and four on-site synagogues, including one without built-in pews because almost everyone comes in a wheelchair.
Donated art, $7-million worth, is used as markers to help residents (and visitors) get around. There are Stieglitz photographs, Frank Stella paintings and Chinese scrolls. Original Warhol silk-screens from his 1980 series, The Ten Portraits of Jews in the 20th Century, occupy a corner near a public washroom. Baycrest owns six of them: Martin Buber, Sigmund Freud, George Gershwin, Gertrude Stein and Franz Kafka.
"It's an art gallery with a couple of patients thrown in to make it look legit," Dr. Streiner joked. The old-age home has a seven-storey atrium of Jerusalem limestone, planted with olive trees. Two squawking parrots named Rhett and Scarlett exclaim, "Oy vey!" in a giant aviary. Merchants in the main hallway sell clothing, shoes and used books to patients in wheelchairs. A huge saltwater aquarium faces the elevators, which have exposed cables so residents can observe them swinging up and down.
"It's all about life, to see living things all the time, to see the hustle and bustle," said Fran Sonshine, the foundation chairwoman, whose parents and in-laws were Holocaust survivors.
In Jewish culture, the drinking toast is L'chaim, which means "To life." So when patients deteriorate, there is zero debate on physician-assisted suicide. "It will never arise here," Dr. Streiner said. "Orthodox Judaism believes life is a gift from God. Suicide has connotations, like, we've lost another Jew in the world prematurely. There's the feeling, they tried to wipe us out."
Patients here are sometimes reluctant to report pain. "In the war, the first people to be murdered were the sick and vulnerable," Ms. David said. "In the camps, if you got sick, you died."
So staff is alert for unreported symptoms. And they are careful when taking medical histories. For someone who has lost everyone, routine questions can trigger sadness, such as: "Does breast cancer run in your family?"
On a floor of patients with dementia, Joseph Jurman, a retired accountant, sits quietly with his wife. Diana Jurman, 82, has Alzheimer's disease. Mr. Jurman, 88, visits her every morning. They met in Palestine, where her family had fled from Russia. "She was a wonderful girl. She gave me a home. We were very dedicated to each other."
Mrs. Jurman, who is slumped in a wheelchair, is impeccably dressed. Mr. Jurman always chooses her clothes, on this occasion a flowered green dress with a matching gauze jacket.
On many days, Mrs. Jurman is restless and gets lost. But if she is locked in her past, no one knows. Two years ago, she lost the ability to speak. "Now I can only read her eyes," he said.
Like Mrs. Vilenski, whose infant daughter starved to death, many here cannot adjust to abundance. One patient refused to take Ensure, the canned liquid supplement, until a rabbi fetched several cases from the kitchen to show her there was plenty.
"Hoarding is a real issue," Dr. Gordon said. "They will always take what's left over and put in the drawer. The cockroaches love it, it smells, but confrontation doesn't get you anywhere. You just say: Check Mrs. Greenberg's bedside table for bagels."
Still, Baycrest's staff has learned not to make assumptions. While some patients fear showers, others object to baths. For them, baths evoke Nazi hypothermia experiments of plunging prisoners into freezing water. Or they may bring back memories of being dipped into basins of disinfectant at the death camps.
Ms. David has prepared a staff manual with a brief history of the Holocaust and vocabulary lists in phonetic Hungarian, Russian and Yiddish. Baycrest offers free Yiddish lessons to staff whose ethnic backgrounds reflect Toronto's multicultural mix.
"We have staff from all over the world, some escaping their own oppression," she said. "A lot of immigrants can give extremely compassionate care. It's immigrant to immigrant."
Sep 23, 2002
JERUSALEM (AP) - Thousands of sympathetic Christians from around the world brought a feeling of an old-time revival to the Holy Land, starting a pilgrimage to show uncompromising support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.
The pro-Zionist Christians, in Israel on an annual event for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, showered support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as he addressed them Sunday.
Some in the crowd of more than 2,000 people in a Jerusalem auditorium urged a line even tougher than Sharon's hawkish views, calling on Israel not to compromise with the Palestinians at all.
Amid huge swells of applause, the Israeli leader entered a like a prizefighter, under a spotlight. The crowd chanted "We love Israel" and waved hundreds of national flags from places like Brazil, the Philippines and the United States as he took the stage.
Sharon said the last two years of violence have been difficult for Israel, and he has been plagued by worries — but said the Christians' solidarity has helped. "When I entered, when I saw you and I saw your friendship, I lost all my worries.
"Walking here, I heard many times, and many people said, 'We love you, we love Israel'," he said. "May I tell you? We love you. We love all of you."
The International Christian Embassy, a Christian Zionist group based in Jerusalem, has organized an annual gathering of pilgrims since 1980 — and all of Israel's prime ministers have attended since then.
During the week, the group will hold religious seminars, tours and a march in Jerusalem.
Their Zionism is based on the belief that Scripture has foretold the Jews returning from the Diaspora to Israel — and Christians have been given a role in helping the process along. The organization has helped pay for 50 flights of Russian Jews hoping to settle in Israel, for example.
Some believe that biblical prophecy also says Jews, after their return, will one day accept Jesus as the Messiah.
"God will bless them with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit — and they will recognize that Jesus is the one who is their Messiah," said Paul O'Higgins, a pilgrim from southern Florida who has attended the event for 20 years. "It won't be converting to Christianity — they will be entering into the fulfillment of their own destiny."
As for politics, the pro-Israel tone was clear.
"Mr. Prime Minister, they have come here tonight to express their solidarity with you and with your nation, and also to express their outrage at the terror to which this nation has been subjected to in the last two years," Malcolm Hedding, the group's executive director, told Sharon and the crowd.
The Christian group take Israel's side against the Palestinians, who want a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a capital in Jerusalem.
Israeli-Palestinian fighting erupted two years ago as peace talks broke down. Since the fighting erupted, 618 people have been killed on the Israeli side, many in terror attacks, while 1,876 have been killed on the Palestinian side.
In a crowd-pleaser, Sharon said that Israel would remain "united and undivided," with Jerusalem as its capital. Many of the faithful shouted "Yes" and "Amen" in response.
Earlier, in what resembled a Las Vegas-style show, dancers dressed in robes flitted across a stage under colored lights as dry ice wafted down from the ceiling. Others paraded out with giant palm leaves, symbolizing the holiday, and banners with "praise," "strength" and "wisdom" written on them.
Some came dressed in local costumes, while many wore T-shirts with pictures of their national flags next to Israel's Star of David flag. There were no kind words for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat , held responsible by Israel for the violence, though Palestinians blame Israel's continued presence in the West Bank and Gaza.
"Yasser Arafat is a terrorist, a well-known terrorist," said Dejan Azdajic, 24, a Croat who now lives in Florida. "He is substantially the cause of the problems today. He should be taken out of power."
(NYT)
9/22/02
LAST fall, Kamel Daoudi, an Algerian-born computer specialist who lived most of his life in France, was arrested in Leicester, England, on suspicion that he was part of a plot by Al Qaeda to blow up the American Embassy in Paris. He is also suspected of directing communications between a cell in France and Al Qaeda. Deported to France and charged with "associating with criminals connected with a terrorist plot" and carrying false identity papers, he was sent to a prison south of Paris, where he is awaiting trial.
From his cell, Mr. Daoudi, 28, elegantly handwrote three essays in French about his middle-class childhood, his turn to Islam and his political radicalization, which he sent recently to the French television network France 2. The result is an unusually personal — if one-sided — glimpse into the mindset of a young, educated Arab who calls himself a terrorist, even as he denies involvement in any terrorist plot. Excerpts follow:
Allah the Great says in the Koran that neither Jews nor Christians will ever be satisfied with you until you follow their religion. But Allah's way is the true way. . . . This is without a doubt the verse of the Koran that sums up . . . the 28 years of my life.
My name is Kamel Daoudi. My first name means perfection in Arabic. My last name means coming from the tribe of the sons of David. I was born in Algeria on the third of August 1974. . . . My father was working in France to meet the needs of his large family. . . . I only saw my father in the summer when he managed to save enough to pay for a ticket to take the boat or plane so that he could come and see my mother, his mother and me and leave us a bit of money. . . .
My childhood, in spite of my poor mother's poverty, was a happy one. I was spoiled by my maternal uncles and aunts who used to take me with them to the colorful sunny bazaars in the little town and bought me sweets and tried to make up for my father's absence. . . . In the summer of 1979, when I was about to turn 5, my father came to get us — my mother, my brother, who is two years younger than I, and myself — to take us to France. . . . I was condemned to be my father's foot soldier while he was working. I was alternately an interpreter, guide and accountant for my poor mother, who had a great deal of trouble getting used to this new barbarian language. . . . Very early on I had adult responsibilities, which literally ate into my childhood, which I wanted to live in the same way as other children.
Mr. Daoudi describes how his father, a hospital worker, pushed him to excel in school and beat him with a wooden paddle when he failed to do so. During this period, his family was able to move from a working-class section of Paris to a middle-class neighborhood on the Left Bank.
There I started to discover the heart of Paris and real Parisians. My time was spent between school and play in the Jardin des Plantes. In school I was a brilliant student and I was often the only Arab in the class. People were jealous of me because of my good grades but they made fun of me for the way I acted and for my excessive modesty in the eyes of the French children. They made jokes about my first name. . . .
In junior high school I wanted to be Indiana Jones. I decided to learn as many languages as possible — English, then Spanish. I took courses in Arabic. . . . Then I went to senior high where I continued with Latin and also learned ancient Greek. At the end of 11th grade I gave up my adolescent dream to become an anthropologist or paleontologist. I knew that my country of origin had a greater need for engineers or doctors than Indiana Joneses. So I decided to make another dream come true. I wanted to be a pilot on a fighter plane. But I knew that my [poor] eyesight would never allow this. . . . So I decided to become an aeronautical engineer.
In 1992, while Mr. Daoudi says he was studying science and engineering at the University of Paris, the Algerian government canceled elections that the main Islamist party was poised to win. That set off a violent struggle between the government security forces and armed Islamic groups:
Just as I came close to achieving my dream I started to worry about religious and political questions. The context of the time was the war in Algeria, where they were about to set up a regime based on Islamic law.
The West hated us because we were Arabs and Muslims. France did everything possible to ensure than Algeria would not be an Islamic state. It backed an illegitimate and profoundly one-sided regime by sending weapons, helicopters and even the Foreign Legion (not many people know about that). The massacres committed by the Algerian army were the last straw for me. I could no longer study serenely. . . .
All of the pressure that had been put on me during my school years so that I would succeed at any price suddenly transformed itself into energy to challenge radically my environment and my father. . . . From that moment on I didn't want anything to do with the West.
Mr. Daoudi says he was further radicalized when his family was evicted from their apartment and had to move to a poor suburb of Paris:
That's where I became aware of the abominable social treatment given to all of those potential "myselves" who had been conditioned to become subcitizens just good for paying pensions for the real French when the French age pyramid starts getting thin at the base. . . .
There were only two choices left for me, either to sink into a deep depression, and I did for more than six months at the end my second year at university, or to react by taking part in the universal struggle against this overwhelming unjust cynicism.
So I reviewed everything that I had learned and put all of my knowledge into a new perspective. I then understood that the only person worth devoting my life to was Allah. . . . Everything suddenly became clear to me and I understood why Abraham went into exile, why Moses rebelled against the Pharoah, why Jesus was spat upon and why Muhammad said, "I came with the sword on judgment day." My battle was and will be to eradicate all powers that are opposed to the law of Allah, the most high, whatever the price may be, because only our creator has the power to make laws and any system based on the laws of men is artifice and lies.
This glorious battle will not stop until the law of Allah has been re-established and applied by a just and honest caliph.
Empowered by his new perspective, Mr. Daoudi began to re-educate himself:
I had to succeed by acquiring enough political tools so that I could know my enemy well and fight back. I discovered the great contemporary writers of political Islam. . . . I read them in French or in English because my Arabic wasn't good enough. I knew that a victory of Islam over the West was possible.
I decided to go to Algiers in the middle of the war, with the curfew and the shooting that was taking place. For four months I saw the situation with my own eyes and I experienced the roadblocks . . . and the intervention of the Algerian military security forces. Had it not been for my belief that armed groups had already been infiltrated by the Algerian security services, I would probably joined up with the partisans who wanted to introduce Islamic law in Algeria.
France was a major protagonist in this conflict. . . . I could not accept the fact that the former colonial power was continuing to control my country's destiny when so many women, children and men had been tortured, massacred, raped and assassinated. . . .
The Algerian war, the Bosnian war, the gulf war, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon — all of these events strengthen my conviction that the Judeo-Christian community influenced by atheism has a visceral hatred of the community of Muhammad. . . . For all these reasons and because of all these events which have left indelible wounds, I went over to the forces of the "dark side." . . .
I got married, thinking that marriage would regenerate me and make me more stable. But this was a mistake that made me want to escape the Machiavellian social trap that was closing in on me. My ex-wife, who I had met through an American chat room, . . . didn't live up to my dreams. In spite of her many qualities, she did not have . . . a taste for strong sensation and adventure. Seeing that my idea of life was not the same as hers I decided to leave her, leaving her everything I could.
Mr. Daoudi concludes his story by proudly accepting the label of terrorist:
My ideological commitment is total and the reward of glory for this relentless battle is to be called a terrorist. I accept the name of terrorist if it is used to mean that I terrorize a one-sided system of iniquitous power and a perversity that comes in many forms.
I have never terrorized innocent individuals and I will never do so. But I will fight any form of injustice and those who support it. My fight will only end in my death or in my madness.
NYT
9/22/02
INDHOVEN, The Netherlands, Sept. 18 — A member of the Hamburg cell that planned the Sept. 11 terror attacks who is now awaiting trial in Germany visited this southern Dutch town a number of times before the attacks, according to the German and Dutch authorities.
The Dutch secret service also confirmed today that the German authorities were investigating the trail of money that flowed through here from Saudi Arabia to finance possible terrorism operations. A spokesman in the German federal prosecutor's office would not comment, and it is not clear if a link has been established between the Hamburg cell member, Mounir el-Motassadeq, and the Saudi money.
But the inquiry underscores concern that charities based in Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers originated, have provided financing for terrorists.
According to Vincent van Steen, a spokesman for the Dutch secret service, Mr. Motassadeq, who is being tried for mass murder related to Sept. 11, visited Eindhoven in 1999 for a religious gathering, possibly with others from the Hamburg cell.
Germany's top prosecutor, Kay Nehm, has said Mr. Motassadeq — a Moroccan who is accused of providing logistical support for Mohamed Atta, believed to be the hijacking ringleader, and others in the Hamburg cell — embraced fundamentalism after visits to the Netherlands.
Newspaper reports have also indicated that another of the Sept. 11 pilots, Marwan el-Shehhi, took a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Miami on May 2, 2001, after spending two weeks in the Netherlands.
According to the Eindhovens Dagblad, a local newspaper, which cited an unidentified intelligence source working with American investigators, Mr. Motassadeq received cash from an Eindhoven mosque that had been diverted from funds provided by "Saudi financiers."
Mr. Motassadeq reportedly withdrew the money himself from a bank account that had been set up to finance a new mosque in town. He then returned to Hamburg with the money, which he used to help pay for flying lessons for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, the newspaper said.
Mr. van Steen said the secret service had no evidence confirming the report.
The secret service has been conducting a more general investigation into Saudi charities since the late 1990's. According to Mr. van Steen, it has been investigating whether charities have helped recruit warriors for terror missions. "It may be possible for radicals to infiltrate these organizations and use the channels in ways we do not want," he said.
The Dutch authorities say recent arrests in Eindhoven and other cities resulted from investigations of recruitment activities, forgery and financing for terrorist operations.
Eindhoven residents first learned of a link between Al Qaeda and their city, known as a high-tech center, when a man was arrested here in December and extradited to Belgium on charges that he provided a forged passport to one of the assassins of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. The suicide bombing that killed Mr. Massoud last year was reportedly a Qaeda operation.
In January, two Dutch citizens of Moroccan origin died in Kashmir in what the Indian authorities have called a suicide operation. According to the secret service, the men were "recruited for jihad" in Eindhoven.
Muhammad Cheppih, a spokesman for the families of the two men, Ahmed el-Bakiouli, 20, and Khalid el-Hassnoui, 21, denied the Indian and Dutch accounts, but said he did not know why the men had traveled to Kashmir. Mr. Cheppih is the director of the Dutch branch of the Muslim World League, a major Saudi charity that supports Islamic causes around the world.
Mr. Bakiouli's father was once a board member of a charitable organization based in Eindhoven, Al Waqf al Islami Foundation, which according to the Dutch authorities is financed by private Saudi interests.
Since the two men were killed in Kashmir, there have twice been arrests in Eindhoven of people linked to Al Qaeda. In April, the police arrested four suspected members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, an Algerian organization said to have ties to Al Qaeda. Earlier this month, the police arrested seven men in Rotterdam, Den Helder and Eindhoven on the basis of information gathered by the secret service. The men were said to have provided financial and logistical support for Al Qaeda and helped recruit young men as militants.
That German rather than Dutch agencies are leading an investigation in Eindhoven may suggest that investigators have identified a tie to German cells. So far the authorities have not made public any evidence that money from Saudi charities based in Eindhoven was misused.
In an interview, Mr. Cheppih of the Muslim World League said recent news reports had unfairly tarnished legitimate charity work by Islamic organizations in the Netherlands. "Since Sept. 11, people are suspicious of all Saudi money," he said.
9-20-2
Someone stole vials of bacteria from an MSU lab, and authorities don't know what they plan to do with it. The bacteria was being processed into a vaccine to fight Pneumonia in pigs when it was stolen late last week. Someone broke into a secure lab, took several vials of the bacteria, a note pad and a computer disk. And nobody seems to know why.
The bacteria was stolen from the Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building on campus sometime between last Thursday evening and Friday morning. The stolen material is called APP, it usually causes respiratory infection in young pigs. The bacteria could be deadly to swine, but veterinarian's say, not to humans.
Lonnie King, DVM, Dean, College of Veterinary Medicine: "You can't be hurt by direct contact with the bacteria, or by eating meat from an infected animal."
MSU officials have already contacted local swine producers and state and federal authorities.
First posted 9-18-02 http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=940240
And this from FreeRepublic.com -
Bacteriological Disease Alert (Swine)
Dr. John Schiltz [email protected]> State Veterinarian - Iowa 9-20-2
I have been informed that the infectious agent Actinobacillus (Hemophilus) pleuropneumoniae (APP) may have been acquired by unauthorized individuals from a laboratory in the United States. This particular strain causes encephalitis and rapid mortality in pigs. The bacteria is not known to cause a threat to human health.
Producers and veterinarians should pay specific attention to swine populations and be alert to any unusual symptoms in pigs such as encephalitis, acute pneumonia, and sudden death. Any APP diagnosis that causes unusual clinical conditions, encephalitis, and sudden death must be reported to the State Veterinarian.
The endemic strain of APP causes outbreaks of respiratory disease in grower and finishing pigs. Clinical signs of the endemic strain of APP are dyspnea, fever, reduced appetite, and rapidly occurring death, with an elevated mortality rate. Cough and, in some cases, frothy and blood-stained nasal discharge can also be seen.
APP can be treated with injectable antibiotics. Vaccines are also available for specific serotypes for use as tools in prevention.
Most cases of infection occur by nose-to-nose contact after the introduction of infected carrier pigs. APP can be found in the tonsil, necrotic tissue, and nasal cavity of recovered carriers or sub-clinical cases. Some reports concerning indirect transmission via contaminated clothing and airborne transmission do exist, but the major mode of transmission of APP infection is by the introduction of a carrier pig.
2002/09/16
Miningweb
NEW YORK -- Earlier this month it came to my attention that hallmarked Sterling silver jewellery (925 fineness) being hawked at major US retail outlets and even prominent jewellers is probably little better than stainless steel.
Newsletter publisher Bob Chapman ran a simple magnetic test on Sterling products in Texas earlier this month and reported that nearly everything clung to his magnet for dear life. Sterling silver doesn't do that. He reported the fraud to the managements of the stores who promised to take action, but were still selling counterfeit stuff days later. Evidently the stores think this is not a problem or their communication is really that bad. They're going to get an expensive surprise.
To my wife's misguided delight, I suggested we browse the wares at the local jewellery stores in one of those cheerless, windowless shrines to consumerism (Quaker Bridge Mall, Princeton). Suffice it to say she was less than impressed at my interest in silver and less so that it was for its magnetic rather than aesthetic qualities. In short, most of the stuff was magnetic.
Nearly every outlet was running a 50% off special on the Sterling products (the correct price?). Lord & Taylor had a sizeable pyramid of boxed goodies priced at around $50 (before the discount) and all from "Italy". The second item – a bracelet – we picked up snapped onto the magnet. A quick test on nearby items indicated that well over half of them were debased.
JC Penny staff was gob smacked at the demonstration and it is worth saying that they were the only sales crew who actually cared to do something. We tested a variety of chains, rings, charms and earrings and almost all of them were magnetic, stamped as products of Italy or Thailand. A range of higher quality, but not much more expensive products all passed the informal test (a chemical test is required to be absolutely sure because the crooks will plate nickel and brass as well).
A $130 chain proved particularly interesting – only certain links were magnetic. This suggests that "good" runs are being mingled with tainted ones; probably deliberately. In every single instance at every outlet, clasps proved not to be Sterling silver, which is an absolute no-no because one never mixes metals or fineness on jewellery. Also, every single thin chain tested was highly magnetic, as were cheap rings with settings.
We left JC Penny having bought a $20 ring marked down to $10.60 and which is very fond of magnets. It is on its way to Los Angeles for an assay test, hopefully it won't rust before it gets there.
A kiosk run by an Indian immigrant had a good selection of silver that he was very proud of. There was no snapping effect with his chains, but when they were held up a majority swayed lovingly toward the magnet. He was not amused.
Macy's was an experience. The sales lady was disbelieving, but having seen one chain snap on and another not, she knew the explanation immediately – the anti tarnish coating. So we tried strictly uncoated trinkets and it was as bad. She still knew the answer – Columbian and Peruvian silver is 925, Mexican 900 and Italy's is, well, trash. Needless to say she was neither Mexican nor Italian, but almost certainly a patriotic Columbian. Therefore, the bad stuff was just bad silver…
Fortunately for Macy's, it had the least proportion of tainted material although some items were so bad they could be attracted through a thick Perspex display case. Again, some links were magnetic and others not, or one earring of a pair glued itself to the magnet while the other did not.
Kay's Jewellers was not especially helpful and refused to let me handle a batch of chains without head office authorization. The store manager did the test himself and the clasp clamped on immediately and there was some "sway". He said there had been a problem some years back with gold caratage (be sure, this is not just a silver problem) and believed it could not recur, although he agreed that the clasp should be Sterling silver, especially since it was stamped as such. He believed the anti-tarnish coating, "apparently rhodium", would cause magnetism.
Sears was appalling. A rack of cheapies levitated toward the magnet and when this was revealed to the sales lady, her response was "So?" She was so unperturbed that she thought it best if I called the supervisor the next day – no offer of a store manager or a hint of concern.
At least JC Penny brought along plenty of people to look things over and promised concrete action. The store previously dealt directly with suppliers, but the function has been centralised in recent months. Indeed, there was not a single outlet that knew who its suppliers were – everything is lost in a head office miasma. From what I have pieced together informally, it seems there are not much more than a dozen national wholesalers to the big chains. Those middlemen also buy from a relatively small pool of manufacturers that will, in due course, be identified.
The problem is massive and widespread, also affecting Wal-Mart which is one of the largest jewellery retailers by any measure, and the implications are sure to be devastating. Luxury chain Tiffany has so far come up clean.
Given the evidence pouring in from around the country, this impacts tens of millions of ounces of silver. Duped customers are going to want their money back or the real thing. The stores, fearing litigation, will swiftly turn on their suppliers, who will turn on the manufacturers to get back the money or 925 silver. Either way, it looks very positive for silver producers and anyone else long silver because this is not a problem to be solved quietly. However, the danger is that a large chunk of people will be put off buying jewellery altogether since there is no way to be sure you're getting what is promised.
Miningweb will be following up with the buying units of the various stores throughout this week.
19-09-2002
(Albawaba.com)
Saddam Hussein is planning to escape Iraq in the event of a United States attack on Baghdad, the French paper Liberation reported.
According to the report, the Iraqi President has sent his son, Uday, along with other representatives, to check out various options for receiving asylum in foreign countries.
The report said that Uday had visited the Russian capital of Moscow, while Saddam’s cousin visited Algeria.
According to the newspaper, Saddam has millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account - - an amount which will enable him to live his life in dignity in a foreign country.
Commentators of the French daily estimated, in light of this report, that Saddam’s decision to agree to the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq was meant for the sole purpose of “buying time”, needed for preparing his escape route.
March/April 1993
(cjr.org)
IRAQGATE
The Big One That (Almost) Got Away
Who Chased it -- and Who Didn't
by Russ W. Baker
Baker, a member of the adjunct faculty at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, is a free-lance writer who regularly contributes to The Village Voice. Research assistance was provided by Julie Asher in Washington and Daniel Eisenberg in New York.
ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop. "It is becoming increasingly clear," said a grave Ted Koppel, "that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy."
Is this accurate? Just about every reporter following the story thinks so. Most say that the so-called Iraqgate scandal is far more significant then either Watergate or Iran-contra, both in its scope and its consequences. And all believe that, with investigations continuing, it is bound to get bigger.
Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage? Certainly, if you watched Nightline or read the London Financial Times or the Los Angeles Times, you saw this monster grow. But if you studied the news columns of The Washington Post or, especially, The New York Times, you practically missed the whole thing. Those two papers were very slow to come to the story and, when they finally did get to it, their pieces all too frequently were boring, complicated,and short of the analysis readers required to fathom just what was going on. More to the point, they often ignored revelations by competitors.
The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam's arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear to be getting any better telling them. In the interest of learning from our mistakes, this reporter examined several hundred articles and television transcripts on Iraqgate and spoke to dozens of reporters, experts, and generally well-informed news consumers.
Before evaluating the coverage, let's summarize the Iraqgate story itself:
ARMING SADDAM
The United States and its European allies have laws and policies designed to prevent arms and military technology from getting into the hands of developing countries, especially where there is a likelihood of their reckless deployment. If these controls were aimed at anyone, certainly they were aimed at the highly repressive, swaggering Iraqi regime, with its history of threatening both its neighbors and its citizens.
Still, when Saddam went to war against Iran, becoming the world's chief practitioner of chemical warfare, U.S. realpolitikers dubbed him the lesser of two evils, and the one less likely to disrupt the oil flow. The essence of Iraqgate is that secret efforts to support him became the order of the day, both during his long war with Iran and afterward.
Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned by now that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying partially on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $ 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $ 2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
All of this was not yet clear in August 1989, when FBI agents raided U.S. branches of BNL, hitting the jackpot in Atlanta. The branch manager in that city, Christopher Drogoul, was charged with making unauthorized, clandestine, and illegal loans to Iraq -- some of which, according to the indictment, were used to purchase arms and weapons technology. Yet three months after the raid, White House officials went right on backing Saddam, approving $ 1 billion more in U.S. government loan guarantees for farm exports to Iraq, even though it was becoming clear that the country was beating plowshares into swords.
At the time, inquiring minds wondered whether Drogoul could possibly have acted alone in such a mammoth operation, as the U.S. government alleged. Was there a formal, secret plan to arm Iraq? And did the U.S. government engage in a massive coverup when evidence of such a plan began to emerge?
In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case. And that the lead investigator lacked the basic financial know-how to handle such an investigation, and made an extraordinarily feeble effort to get to the bottom of things. More damningly, we know know that mid-level staffers at the commerce department altered Iraqi export licenses to obscure the exported materials' military function -- before sending the documents on to Congress, which was investigating the affair.
Eventually, it would turn out that elements of the U.S. government almost certainly knew that Drogoul was funneling U.S.-backed loans -- intended for the purchase of agricultural products, machinery, trucks, and other U.S. goods -- into dual-use technology and outright military technology. And that the British government was fully aware of the operations of Matrix Churchill, a British firm with an Ohio branch, which was not only at the center of the Iraqi procurement network but was also funded by BNL Atlanta. (Precision equipment supplied by Matrix Churchill was reportedly a target this January when the Western allies renewed their attack on Iraq).
It would later be alleged by bank executives that the Italian government, long a close U.S. ally as well as BNL's ultimate owner, had knowledge of BNL's loan diversions. It looked to some like an international coalition. As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, "Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
Safire had been on the case since 1989, turning out slashing op-ed pieces. But readers of the Times's news pages must have wondered where Safire's body-blows were coming from, since the news columns contained almost nothing about Iraqgate for the longest time.
THE COVERAGE
Not everyone was slow to spot trouble. The coverage might be said to have begun in 1987, when Alan Friedman, a correspondent in Italy for the London Financial Times who was writing a book -- Agnelli: Fiat, and the Network of Italian Power -- learned of a European-based arms-procurement network that had gathered equipment for Iraq. In the book, published in 1988, he explored a five-year-old joint Argentine-Egyptian-Iraqi effort to build a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, code-named CONDOR 2. Friedman's claims that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapon were shrugged off by colleagues in the press.
In August 1989, while working in Milan, Friedman noticed a four-line press release from Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. "Irregularities," it seemed, had been uncovered at BNL's Atlanta branch. (Later, Friedman would learn that this was the bank's way of acknowledging something troubling that had just transpired, unnoticed by the press: the FBI raids on BNL's U.S. branches.) Shortly thereafter, a London tipster told Friedman to look at a seemingly unrelated story -- the possible role of a British company, Matrix Churchill, in secretly arming Iraq. When Friedman phoned a source in Rome and mentioned both firms, he was told to get on a plane and come down for a little chat. It lasted all night.
Beginning in September 1989, a Financial Times team, reporting from Milan, Baghdad, and London, laid out the first charges that BNL, relying heavily on U.S. government-guaranteed loans, was funding Iraqi chemical and nuclear weapons work. Led by Friedman, who relocated to New York City in early 1990, the reporters went on to produce about 300 articles over three years, painting a compelling portrait of a massive -- and seemingly coordinated -- international effort to aid Iraq. For the next two and a half years, the Financial Times provided the only continuous newspaper reportage on the subject.
The London paper tied CONDOR 2 to BNL Atlanta -- which had just been publicly identified as the source of $ 3 billion in unauthorized loans to Iraq. And in one 1989 article it warned that the BNL story was more than just another dull tale of banking malfeasance: "The CONDOR story raises questions about the effectiveness of the commitment of Western governments to preventing military technology transfer." It pointed out that, while U.S. intelligence had long bragged about aggressively monitoring the transfer of military technology, Washington had fallen down on the job. The paper noted that if government sleuths had been serious about stopping the arms flow, they could have followed either the money trail or the technology trail. "In each case, they appear to have slipped up," it concluded.
The Financial Times extensively quoted top former officials at the International Monetary Fund, the Pentagon, and elsewhere, who expressed alarm over Export-Import Bank loan guarantees to Iraq. Some asserted that Washington had, as one of them put it, "allowed and abetted the development and stockpiling of a major chemical warfare capability" in Iraq. Among the companies shipping militarily useful technology under the eye of the government, according to the Financial Times, were Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, and Matrix Churchill, through its Ohio branch.
The most striking thing about the paper's revelations is that they were published before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Douglas Frantz of the Los Angeles Times, who deserves a lot of credit for his own reporting on Iraqgate, nevertheless says the Financial Times was without question the early leader on the story. "Events subsequent have shown inmost cases they were on the money," he says.
By early 1990 the Financial Times was no longer alone. Representative Henry Gonzalez, chairman of the House Banking Committee (who also had noticed the four-line BNL press release back in 1989), began a long, lonely crusade to expose the affair. Soon he would be entering related documents into the Congressional Record in late-night speeches before an empty chamber. Attorney General Thornburgh even wrote to him, demanding that he stop looking into BNL in the interests of "national security." He didn't. Meanwhile, many reporters, accepting the administration's line that it was shocked -- shocked! -- to discover the BNL subterfuge, treated Gonzalez as a crank.
On August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the debate began in the U.S. over an appropriate response. But only a handful of reporters bothered to ask where he had acquired the military muscle for the invasion. One who did, Thomas L. Flannery of the Intelligencer Journal, a 45,000-circulation paper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, warned in November: "If U.S. and Iraqi troops engage in combat in the Persian Gulf, weapons technology developed in Lancaster and indirectly sold to Iraq will probably be used against U.S. forces. . . . And aiding in this . . . technology transfer was the Iraqi-owned, British-based precision tooling firm Matrix Churchill, whose U.S. operations in Ohio were recently linked to a sophisticated Iraqi weapons procurement network." Flannery, who wrote in impressive string of stories identifying Pennsylvania companies that supplied Iraq, had been hired by the Financial Times as an occasional stringer the year before.
Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990, issue. Under the headline GULFGATE: HOW THE U.S. SECRETLY ARMED IRAQ, Waas pulled together a massive amount of information, ranging from senior White House officials' accounts that George Bush was a behind-the-scenes advocate of a pro-Iraq tilt, to an accounting of U.S. trade with Iraq that had a potential military application. "That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq," Waas wrote, "is the most serious consequence of a U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public."
The gulf war began shortly after, on January 16, 1991, and the media went wild. But when it ended six weeks later, most Americans knew little more about the war's root causes then they did before.
There would, however, be more to the story. Within hours after hostilities ceased on February 27 -- and nine-teen months after the FBI had raided BNL -- the government indicted Drogoul, painting him as a lone-wolf financier of the Iraqi war machine. He was charged with defrauding his Rome employers of billions of dollars.
Nightline, which had been looking at Iraqgate for some time, hooked up with the Financial Times in an unusual and productive arrangement. On May 2, 1991, the team reported the secret minutes of the President's National Advisory Council, at which, despite earlier reports of abuses, an undersecretary of state declared that terminating Iraqi loans would be "contrary to the president's intentions."
Nightline/Financial Times also cited intelligence reports that Iraq was using U.S. government farm credits to procure military technology. On July 3, 1991, the Financial Times reported that a Florida company run by an Iraqi national had produced cyanide -- some of which went to Iraq for use in chemical weapons -- and had shipped it via a CIA contractor.
In another unusual and productive partnership, Douglas Frantz of the Los Angeles Times teamed up with The Village Voice's Murray Waas. The Times published the first of their three-part series on February 23, 1992. "Classified documents obtained by the Times show . . . a long-secret pattern of personal efforts by Bush -- both as President and as Vice-President -- to support and placate the Iraqi dictator," the paper reported. It cited a top-secret National Security decision directive signed by President Bush in 1989, ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the way for $ 1 billion in new aid. Although the directive had been briefly described in other publications, the Times put it in context. Assistance from Washington was critical for Iraq, Frantz and Waas pointed out, since international bankers had cut off virtually all loans to Baghdad because Iraq was falling behind on repayments -- precisely because it was busily pouring millions into arms purchases.
And it emphasized the striking fact -- buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece -- that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loan guarantees to Iraq.
"Nobody responded to that [February 1992] series," says Frantz. "That week, Gonzalez went onto the house floor to deliver another speech, and nobody followed that either." The Los Angeles Times went on to publish 100 articles exploring the history of U.S.-Iraq relations before and after the war. The reportage was, admirably, light on anonymous sources and heavy on information from internal documents, shared with the paper by government employees troubled by what they had seen.
Still, the top national papers ignored most of the Financial Times/Nightline and Los Angeles Times revelations. In fact, when in March an obscure Italian newspaper reported Drogoul's claim that both the Italian and U.S. governments had known and approved of his lending operation, only the Financial Times picked up the story.
Things began to heat up last June when, in an abrupt turnabout, the feds suddenly agreed to drop 287 of 347 charges against Drogoul in return for a guilty plea and pledge of cooperation. Drogoul, who had asked for an opportunity to explain his actions fully, suddenly decided to go mute. A troubled Judge Marvin Shoob, presiding over Drogoul's case, wrote to the head of the House Judiciary Committee: "[Drogoul] decided not to provide a statement until sentencing, after debriefing over a two-month period by the government."
By July, five other congressional committees had joined Gonzalez's banking panel in launching probes into various aspects of the Iraqgate affair, and Democrats were demanding that an independent prosecutor be named to investigate it.
Since Drogoul had made a deal, the fall sentencing hearings were expected to be brief. But they turned into a major show when, in October, Drogoul's lawyer suddenly began introducing new evidence that the head office of the Italian-government-owned bank had known all along what Drogoul was up to. He also produced testimony suggesting that figures with ties to U.S. intelligence may have been involved. The prosecution quickly asked to withdraw its plea bargain, and agreed to a trial (which had the net effect of postponing public airing of the affair until after the November election).
Earlier, The Village Voice's Robert Hennelly had assembeled a massive timeline documenting a pro-Saddam U.S. tilt dating back a full decade. He concluded: "At worst, that support was a frightening exercise in capitalistic opportunism (we made money both supporting and attacking Hussein). . . ."
THE PACK JOINS IN
Drogoul's plea bargain and sentencing hearing provided a perfect new peg, and everyone finally jumped in. With the Financial Times far in the lead and the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal -- got into Iraqgate late, leaving beat reporters struggling to untangle the story's many complex international strands.
The Journal set the pace. Chiefly through reporter John Fialka, the paper made up for its late awakening by demystifying technicalities through striking headlines and crystal-clear prose. Despite a small general news hole, the Journal constantly found space for explanatory Iraqgate pieces.
The Post's early coverage had a protective tone. In July, reporter John Goshko wrote about Bush administration actions that "unwittingly bolstered" Iraq's military. And he asserted: "The record suggests that Bush . . . Baker and other senior foreign policy advisers were not paying much attention to Iraq. . . ."
The Post's R. Jeffrey Smith, whose Iraqgate coverage included the Drogoul hearing, produced several exclusives from Washington sources. Yet the paper did not significantly advance the story. "It was a story with high political content, and a paucity of hard evidence to back up charges of conspiracy," Smith says. "Some papers allowed themselves to be manipulated, acting almost as agents of the Democratic opposition. Some people made this a crusade."
The New York Times, meanwhile, shifted into high gear -- and promptly crashed into a pile of charges and countercharges. To cover BNL and the Drogoul sentencing, the Times brought in Elaine Sciolino, the national security correspondent, who had returned to daily reporting after writing a book about Iraq. She had other credentials that might have been helpful: she had served as Newsweek's Rome bureau chief before coming to the Times, and had covered intelligence matters for years.
She came in cold, and her sudden coverage was almost without context, since, aside from columnist William Safire, the newspaper had failed to follow up on the massive amount of evidence already gathered by others in the greater Iraqgate story. When much of the Financial Times's early scoop material resurfaced during the trial, the Times reported some of it -- without noting who had originally unearthed it. Safire, on the other hand, cited the Financial Times often in his early crusade to rise above his paper's seeming indifference to the larger scandal. During Drogoul's hearings, the Times brought in Martin Tolchin, an old Washington hand. He had covered the Neil Bush S&L affair, and seemed adept at telling this story clearly, but he made only a cameo appearance.
THE FOOL ON THE HILL
The Times largely ignored Representative Gonzalez, meanwhile, as he made his allegations and entered supporting documents into the Congressional Record. Sciolino got around to a close look at the man making the charges on July 3. Her piece, headed ECCENTRIC STILL BUT OBSCURE NO MORE, cast Gonzalez as something of a buffoon, and included charges that his disclosure of sensitive information was a threat to national security -- without explaining why it would be. The piece could almost be read as a justification for the Times's failure to follow Gonzalez's earlier charges.
The Journal, which regularly reported Gonzalez's steady flow of documents and pronouncements, was far more charitable in Fialka's July 31 profile of the congressman. Headed LONER GONZALEZ TOILS TO EXPOSE WHITE HOUSE ROLE IN AIDING IRAQ IN YEARS LEADING UP TO GULF WAR, it presented a tough, uncorruptible maverick.
WHAT THEY MISSED
Many incendiary allegations reported by the Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and The Atlanta Constitution (covering the Drogoul hearing in its home town) were simply ignored by The New York Times, and sometimes by The Washington Post, as well. A few of many examples, all from 1992:
Intelligence Connections?
On October 3, the Journal reported Drogoul's assertion that the director general of Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military Production had told him "We are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S. government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraq government." Three weeks later, the Journal reported that Gonzalez "produced a phone-book-sized packet of documents" showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms. The documents mentioned one, RD&D International of Vienna, Virginia -- which designed parts for Iraq's howitzers and was financed through BNL -- that was run by a man with reputed connections to U.S. intelligence. The Times and the Post missed the first story and failed to follow up on the second.
Quayle involvement?
On three separate occasions it was reported (first by Representative Gonzalez, then by The Atlanta Constitution, and finally by the Journal) that BNL bankers claimed that companies seeking Iraqi business had come to the Atlanta branch at the urging of Vice-President Dan Quayle. One such corporation was owned by a man with close personal and business ties to the Quayle family; he built a brass refinery that recycled spent Iraqi artillery shells. Neither the Times nor the Post reported this.
Scuds and Superguns?
September 16: the Journal, in a piece headed IRAQ FUNDED SCUDS WITH MONEY GAINED FRAUDULENTLY IN U.S., INVESTIGATOR SAYS, recounted prosecution testimony that Drogoul had toured an Iraqi military facility, was shown a drawing of a missile, and was told that it had been financed through BNL Atlanta. The Atlanta Constitution reported this, as did the Los Angeles Times, whose lead stated: "Loans from an Italian bank branch here paid for improving Iraqi Scud missiles like the one that killed 28 Americans in the Persian Gulf War, a top federal investigator testified Tuesday." The Times and Post didn't report the story.
How high does it go?
September 23: The Constitution reported that Judge Shoob, complaining in open court about the prosecution's failure to call BNL officials to testify, actually sought to call his own witness. The Journal quoted Shoob: "I've read all the secret documents, and I can't believe [Drogoul] was the sole actor or principal actor in the enterprise." The Times and Post were AWOL on this story.
A question of bribery?
Even when the Times raised startling facts, it often failed to follow up on itself. On October 17 the newspaper noted that the CIA had "uncovered a document suggesting the possible payoff of government officials in the United States and Italy in the elaborate bank-fraud case." Readers of the Times never learned more about this development.
DON'T FOLLOW ME, I'M LOST
In other cases, the Big Two -- but particularly The New York Times -- simply muddled matters.
In October, it was revealed that the CIA had withheld from Congress -- and possibly from prosecutors -- crucial documents showing what the government knew about BNL. The Justice department blamed the CIA the CIA blamed the Justice department; and Senator David Boren, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, got angry at everyone.
Sciolino did her most energetic work covering this turf battle, often using unnamed sources, which made it difficult to discern whose agenda was being advanced. And although the Times finally started producing exclusives in its coverage of this matter, its daily revelations over the finger-pointing were hard to follow and did little to foster understanding of the bigger story. (In the end, evidence suggested that the CIA had withheld the documents at the request of Justice. If so, in retrospect, the story was the collusion, not the feud.)
Readers' comprehension suffered when this complex story was reported as a he said-she said exercise. Here's Sciolino on October 11, writing about the intergovernmental feud: "The unusual finger-pointing over the case came after reports that CIA officials had disclosed to Congress on Thursday that, at the urging of the Justice Department, they had deliberately withheld information about the bank fraud from federal prosecutors in Atlanta. . . . CIA and Justice Department officials denied those reports today. . . . But their denials came amid a new disclosure by lawmakers that the Justice Department also had withheld information that the CIA wanted to make public. . . . The CIA, the Justice Department, and the Bush Administration have all denied wrongdoing in the case. . . . In a sharply worded statement today, the CIA denied that its officials had told the Senate Committee that it had deliberately withheld information from Federal prosecutors in Atlanta at the urging of the Justice Department."
Wording like this, one television producer who has followed Iraqgate observed, "makes The New York Times responsible for gross public apathy."
Dean Baquet, who had earned a reputation as a formidable investigative reporter during his years with the Chicago Tribune, worked to advance the story on several occasions, especially covering Matrix Churchill developments in a separate trial in London. But he was only sporadically assigned to the story.
On October 18, Sciolino and Baquet wrote an overview piece, a belated effort to advance the story, although they appeared hesitant to state what, for others, had been all but proven long ago. Notice the qualifiers: "Some Congressional Democrats say the recent revelations are only a tiny part of a two-pronged Government-wide cover-up; to protect and conceal its dealings with Mr. Hussein, and to accommodate the Italian government. Even more ominously, these critics, without any real proof, have begun to suggest that the administration knew about the loans all along."
Six congressional committees was hardly "some" Democrats; the revelations were hardly "recent"; the evidence of administration knowledge was, by now, fairly overwhelming. As even the national-security minded columnist Jim Hoagland, writing a week earlier in The Washington Post, put it, "That Bush is tolerating a coverup on Iraq conducted by others on his behalf can no longer be seriously doubted. That Bush has lied about his knowledge of shipments of U.S. arms to Iraq can no longer be seriously disputed."
On November 2, Representative Gonzalez announced that the Agriculture department, which had approved BNL loans, had learned back in 1990 for the CIA that BNL Rome was involved in the alleged Atlanta fraud. This revelation not only challenged the government's assertion that Drogoul had acted alone, but also implied that a coverup was under way.
Gonzalez's disclosure represented another news peg. The Journal covered the disclosure in a piece headed FARM AGENCY KNEW SCOPE OF BNL FRAUD. Working from the same material that same day, the Times, in a story headed 1990 LETTER ADDS NEW QUESTIONS ON CIA ROLE IN IRAQ BANK CASE, chose to emphasize the CIA-Justice turf battle, obscuring the main point: that the Agriculture department was in the BNL loop. (And while the Journal cited Gonzalez in the second paragraph, the Times waited until they very last sentence to credit the congressman.)
Times deputy national editor Philip Taubman, who was deputy bureau chief in Washington until late last year and supervised much of the reporting on Iraqgate (except when it was assigned to the paper's business or foreign desk), sees the Times's heavy coverage of the CIA-Justice fight as a plus. "I don't think it's inside baseball when two major branches of government are involved in a donnybrook, both accusing each other of malfeasance," he says.
Many reporters from other newspapers criticize the Time's coverage of Iraqgate, and much of its coverage in general, for a bias toward authority, an unwillingness to challenge power. Taubman, however, sees his newspaper as properly cautious. "I think it's off base to suggest that our coverage was somehow deficient because we attempted to lay out what charges were confirmed and which might still fall short of being confirmed," he says. "We try in all our stories to make clear what we don't know, as well as what we know. And in a complicated story of this type I think it's good journalism to clue the reader in where inflammatory accusations are not yet, and may never be, confirmable or provable."
Sciolino, who recently moved on to become the paper's chief diplomatic correspondent, admits that coming in late to such a complicated story was tough. "I couldn't summarize the story in one sentence," she says. "That's what made it so difficult to explain -- to an editor, to people at a cocktail party. It's even more complicated than Iran-contra."
In retrospect, she says, "I think our paper could have done a better job, especially in the beginning. One spinoff could be to look at the whole arms procurement network around the world, how independent arms dealers, banks, and governments who own weapons-production facilities promote arms proliferation." Yet, Sciolino adds, arms proliferation "is not a sexy story."
She praises the Los Angeles Times for putting two people on the story, and for treating it as an investigation rather than as a beat story. She says her paper was hobbled because the story affected several sections of the paper -- foreign, national, and business -- and was parceled out to them. So no one editor was in charge of coordinating coverage.
LESSONS
With Dragoul's new trial set for October, there is still time for news organizations to wise up. Some things everyone agrees on: besides exploring the proliferation of weapons into unstable or dangerous hands, a serious Iraqgate investigation would look at the power of America's largest corporations to sway foreign policy in ways that help them make sales. The Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, and others did explore this, but there was little follow-up. One exception was the Journal, which led an October 12 piece this way: "In the unfolding drama of how the U.S. financed and supplied Saddam Hussein's Iraq, there's more than a walk-on part for corporate America." The Journal's John Fialka cited a list of major U.S. corporations that "saw Iraq as a gusher of business -- so long as credits were wrung out of government agencies such as the Agriculture department, Commodity Credit Corp., and the Export-Import Bank."
Serious coverage would also examine geopolitical arrangements between countries like the U.S. and Italy, the place of banks in global scandals, and the role of American and foreign intelligence agencies in secretly carrying out policies that the American people have not endorsed. And to do this it would also seem necessary to report this story with some distance from partisan sources, whether Robert Gates or Henry Gonzalez, and not just count on leaks alone.
As it was, for a long time reporters couldn't even count on partisan political warfare to generate scoops. In Congress, both parties had repeatedly backed legislation authorizing farm credits to Iraq -- despite warnings from Kurdish representatives that the funds would end up being used against them, in the form of poison gas. With no one to hand the story to the media on a platter, unraveling it required following hunches, and spending time and money -- serious investigative reporting that roams far afield from the constraints of the conventional beat.
For ABC, which broke plenty of stories in concert with London's Financial Times, only to watch them sink, covering Iraqgate has been a sobering experience. "It's been very frustrating for us," says Gordon Platt, a Nightline producer. "We'd put it on the air, but there would be no follow-up by the other press. We'd expect the Times or Post would pick up on it. But until this last summer, they didn't."
As for why much of the press fears this kind of story, perhaps Ted Koppel put it best. "There's a good reason why we in the media are so partial to a nice, torrid sex scandal," he said as he opened yet another Nightline Iraqgate report last July. "It is, among other things, so easy to explain and so easy to understand. Nothing at all, in other words, like allegations of a government coverup, which tend to be not at all easy to explain, and even more difficult to understand."
The Sunday Herald - UK
9-15-2
A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.
The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'
The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.
This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.
The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.
The PNAC report also:
l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';
l describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';
l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;
l says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';
l spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';
l calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;
l hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';
l and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.
'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'
http://www.sundayherald.com/27735
In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue
U.S. Drillers Eye Huge Petroleum Pool
(WASHPOST)
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 15, 2002
A U.S.-led ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries, and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and leaders of the Iraqi opposition.
Although senior Bush administration officials say they have not begun to focus on the issues involving oil and Iraq, American and foreign oil companies have already begun maneuvering for a stake in the country's huge proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of crude oil, the largest in the world outside Saudi Arabia.
The importance of Iraq's oil has made it potentially one of the administration's biggest bargaining chips in negotiations to win backing from the U.N. Security Council and Western allies for President Bush's call for tough international action against Hussein. All five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- have international oil companies with major stakes in a change of leadership in Baghdad.
"It's pretty straightforward," said former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who has been one of the leading advocates of forcing Hussein from power. "France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them."
But he added: "If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them."
Indeed, the mere prospect of a new Iraqi government has fanned concerns by non-American oil companies that they will be excluded by the United States, which almost certainly would be the dominant foreign power in Iraq in the aftermath of Hussein's fall. Representatives of many foreign oil concerns have been meeting with leaders of the Iraqi opposition to make their case for a future stake and to sound them out about their intentions.
Since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, companies from more than a dozen nations, including France, Russia, China, India, Italy, Vietnam and Algeria, have either reached or sought to reach agreements in principle to develop Iraqi oil fields, refurbish existing facilities or explore undeveloped tracts. Most of the deals are on hold until the lifting of U.N. sanctions.
But Iraqi opposition officials made clear in interviews last week that they will not be bound by any of the deals.
"We will review all these agreements, definitely," said Faisal Qaragholi, a petroleum engineer who directs the London office of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella organization of opposition groups that is backed by the United States. "Our oil policies should be decided by a government in Iraq elected by the people."
Ahmed Chalabi, the INC leader, went even further, saying he favored the creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraq's oil fields, which have deteriorated under more than a decade of sanctions. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," Chalabi said.
The INC, however, said it has not taken a formal position on the structure of Iraq's oil industry in event of a change of leadership.
While the Bush administration's campaign against Hussein is presenting vast possibilities for multinational oil giants, it poses major risks and uncertainties for the global oil market, according to industry analysts.
Access to Iraqi oil and profits will depend on the nature and intentions of a new government. Whether Iraq remains a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, for example, or seeks an independent role, free of the OPEC cartel's quotas, will have an impact on oil prices and the flow of investments to competitors such as Russia, Venezuela and Angola.
While Russian oil companies such as Lukoil have a major financial interest in developing Iraqi fields, the low prices that could result from a flood of Iraqi oil into world markets could set back Russian government efforts to attract foreign investment in its untapped domestic fields. That is because low world oil prices could make costly ventures to unlock Siberia's oil treasures far less appealing.
Bush and Vice President Cheney have worked in the oil business and have long-standing ties to the industry. But despite the buzz about the future of Iraqi oil among oil companies, the administration, preoccupied with military planning and making the case about Hussein's potential threat, has yet to take up the issue in a substantive way, according to U.S. officials.
The Future of Iraq Group, a task force set up at the State Department, does not have oil on its list of issues, a department spokesman said last week. An official with the National Security Council declined to say whether oil had been discussed during consultations on Iraq that Bush has had over the past several weeks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Western leaders.
On Friday, a State Department delegation concluded a three-day visit to Moscow in connection with Iraq. In early October, U.S. and Russian officials are to hold an energy summit in Houston, at which more than 100 Russian and American energy companies are expected.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said Bush is keenly aware of Russia's economic interests in Iraq, stemming from a $7 billion to $8 billion debt that Iraq ran up with Moscow before the Gulf War. Weldon, who has cultivated close ties to Putin and Russian parliamentarians, said he believed the Russian leader will support U.S. action in Iraq if he can get private assurances from Bush that Russia "will be made whole" financially.
Officials of the Iraqi National Congress said last week that the INC's Washington director, Entifadh K. Qanbar, met with Russian Embassy officials here last month and urged Moscow to begin a dialogue with opponents of Hussein's government.
But even with such groundwork, the chances of a tidy transition in the oil sector appear highly problematic. Rival ethnic groups in Iraq's north are already squabbling over the the giant Kirkuk oil field, which Arabs, Kurds and minority Turkmen tribesmen are eyeing in the event of Hussein's fall.
Although the volumes have dwindled in recent months, the United States was importing nearly 1 million barrels of Iraqi oil a day at the start of the year. Even so, American oil companies have been banished from direct involvement in Iraq since the late 1980s, when relations soured between Washington and Baghdad.
Hussein in the 1990s turned to non-American companies to repair fields damaged in the Gulf War and Iraq's earlier war against Iran, and to tap undeveloped reserves, but U.S. government studies say the results have been disappointing.
While Russia's Lukoil negotiated a $4 billion deal in 1997 to develop the 15-billion-barrel West Qurna field in southern Iraq, Lukoil had not commenced work because of U.N. sanctions. Iraq has threatened to void the agreement unless work began immediately.
Last October, the Russian oil services company Slavneft reportedly signed a $52 million service contract to drill at the Tuba field, also in southern Iraq. A proposed $40 billion Iraqi-Russian economic agreement also reportedly includes opportunities for Russian companies to explore for oil in Iraq's western desert.
The French company Total Fina Elf has negotiated for rights to develop the huge Majnoon field, near the Iranian border, which may contain up to 30 billion barrels of oil. But in July 2001, Iraq announced it would no longer give French firms priority in the award of such contracts because of its decision to abide by the sanctions.
Officials of several major firms said they were taking care to avoiding playing any role in the debate in Washington over how to proceed on Iraq. "There's no real upside for American oil companies to take a very aggressive stance at this stage. There'll be plenty of time in the future," said James Lucier, an oil analyst with Prudential Securities.
But with the end of sanctions that likely would come with Hussein's ouster, companies such as ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco would almost assuredly play a role, industry officials said. "There's not an oil company out there that wouldn't be interested in Iraq," one analyst said.
Anomalia.Ru
(Pravda)
9-14-2
Ukrainian workers found strange graves at a construction in one of the towns in the south of Ukraine. The graves were found at a depth of two or two and a half meters.
At first, they thought that it was an ancient Scythian graveyard. Then, someone saw a medallion of a German soldier in one of the coffins. The finding was a grave of German soldiers. However, when archeologists arrived to the site, they were shocked with what they saw. Some of the human skeletons in the grave had their spines sawn lengthwise. Some of them did not have heads, while others had skull trepanation. Other skeletons had little holes drilled in their cannon-bones. After that, there were tens of other graves found. They were all covered with lime and calcium chloride. Some of the human remains preserved the vestiges of chemical impact. Someone was trying to find a ìthird eyeî in the heads of several officers: their skulls were opened in several places.
Experts determined that the found graves were the vestiges of Ahnenerbeís activities. This was the most secret organization of the Third Reich. The people of the true Aryan race were its victims. Ahnenerbeís doctors believed that medical tests and experiments were supposed to eventually result in a new breed of a human being.
Scythian fields are not the only place where Nazi mystics performed their horrid tests. They were travelling all over the world. Ahnenerbe means ìAncestorsí Inheritance;î the organization appeared in 1933. After the establishment of Hitlerís regime in Germany, Ahnenerbe was entrusted with searching for anything dealing with spirit, traditions, and peculiar features of the Indo-German Nordic race. In 1937, the Ahnenerbe was incorporated into the SS. The study of the ancient German history was conducted with only one goal: to prove the superiority of the Aryan race within the scope of the Nazi race doctrine.
First-class scientists took part in the research. They performed expeditions to Tibet, the Middle East, and Ukraine. When WWII started, research of ancient German culture was reduced. New projects were totally devoted to anthropological research, including infamous research in Dachau and Auschwitz.
Ahnenerbe was founded by philosopher Friedrich Gilscher and Doctor German Hirt. It is interesting that professor Gilscher never became a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. He was in friendly relations with Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. In the beginning of 1940s, Hirt was appointed to the position of chairman of the Anatomic Institute in Strasbourg. The institute was working on the scientific substantiation of the race theory. In the summer of 1944, Hirt was ordered to destroy his laboratories. He did not manage to do that, so the allied troops found numerous beheaded corpses. Hirt disappeared afterwards. People say that he was seen in Chile and in Paraguay.
Karl Maria Willigut was the most conspicuous person in the organization. He was known as an outstanding specialist in the field of black magic. He was called Himmlerís Rasputin due to his immense influence on Nazi high-ranking officials. His last name is translated as the ìgod of will.î According to mystical terminology, this is a synonym to a ìfallen angel.î Karl Willigut died in 1946; he was never called into criminal account for his activities.
It is also worth mentioning that Ahnenerbe maintained contacts with Tibet. When Soviet troops entered Berlin in 1945, they were very surprised to find thousands of Tibetan corpses in SS uniforms.
Ahnenerbeís members were all tall, muscular, blond men, like in all other Nazi services. They were supposed to be married in their twenties. Marriages could only be racially pure. Ahnenerbe was preoccupied with the same issues as the Soviet Institute of Human Brain. They tried to invent a psychotropic weapon there in order to obtain control over the human mind. Experiments and tests were performed on people. Ahnenerbe also dealt with the study of occultism, vivisection on people, espionage, invention of the arms of retaliation, and so on and so forth. By the end of the war, the Germans had nine scientific enterprises that were testing projects of ìflying disks.î Some scientists say that Ahnenerbe had a large base in Antarctica. There are rumors that this base still exists. According to other rumors, there is an underground city called New Berlin there with a two-million-strong population. The people of the underground city allegedly deal with genetic engineering and space exploration. Indirect proof of such a city is the fact that UFOs can often be seen around the South Pole. In 1976, the Japanese saw 19 round objects at once. They all came down on Antarctica from space and vanished from radar screens. Furthermore, scientists found several ownerless satellites in orbit around Earth.
Crystal skulls were one of the most mysterious findings of the 20th century. The skulls were found in Central America during an expedition of the well-known English archaeologist Albert Mitchell. The skulls were delivered to a Brazilian museum. Ahnenerbe agents were detained after an attempt to rob the museum in 1943. They said during interrogations that they had been sent to South America with a special task: to obtain crystal skulls. The Nazis were hoping that Aryan ancestorsí knowledge would allow them to create a superman and place other people under their command. Some experts say that those crystal skulls were made in Atlantis. If this was really so, then it is clear why the SS was so interested in them. When the war was over, the majority of Ahnenerbe members disappeared without leaving a trace.
By Matt Bivens Moscow Times
9-19-2
In his famous "axis of evil" speech, President George W. Bush said "North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction while starving its citizens."
Fair enough.
So why is the United States hand-delivering to Great Leader Kim Jong Il a pair of nuclear power reactors capable of producing enough weapons-grade plutonium each year to make dozens of nuclear bombs?
In the early 1990s, North Korea was running domestically built reactors that were churning out bomb-grade plutonium. It was the heart of a covert weapons program that has, according to U.S. intelligence, already yielded "one or two" nuclear bombs.
The Clinton administration convinced Pyongyang to shut down those reactors and to allow in UN weapons inspectors. In return, North Korea was to get two U.S.-designed light-water reactors, or LWRs, and free heating oil each year until they were built. The Bush team has not blocked the policy, and last month concrete was poured for the reactor foundations.
If North Korea needs energy to replace its homemade reactors, why not build them coal- or gas-fired plants? These are far cheaper to build and run than nuclear plants. And as an added bonus, coal plants can't moonlight as factories for weapons of mass destruction.
Apparently the State Department has convinced itself light-water reactors can't be used to make bombs. But they can -- something the State Department does recognize when discussing Russia's plans to build the same reactors in Iran.
"LWRs could be used to produce dozens of bombs' worth of weapons-grade plutonium in both North Korea and Iran," write Henry Sokolski, who runs a nuclear nonproliferation center (
Even the State Department's uneasily evasive language gives up the game: the LWRs in North Korea (apparently unlike Russia's in Iran) are "proliferation-resistant." As opposed, one assumes, to "proliferation-proof."
The old Korean-designed reactors had to be refueled frequently, and it was easy for Pyongyang to quietly pull out the bombs-grade gunk inside. Light-water reactors, by contrast, have to be shut down for an extended period to extract such material. This is what qualifies them as "proliferation-resistant" -- because it's hard to do this secretly.
Sokolski and Gilinsky, writing in The Washington Post, cited a study by the Lawrence Livermore weapons laboratory, which says upon the first scheduled refueling -- about 15 months after the reactors go into operation -- an LWR will contain about 300 kilograms of near-weapons grade material. Assume North Korea diverts that material to bomb-making, and it could have "a couple of dozen bombs in a couple of months."
Yet the program's backers argue, straight-faced, that because North Korea knows it will eventually be caught, it will be afraid to do this. Never mind that North Korea, like Iraq, is still keeping out UN weapons inspectors. And never mind that since Sept. 11 last year, Washington has denied Americans much the same knowledge of reactor safety and operations it now intends to share with a regime listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.
The whole arrangement is so ludicrous that it's surprising more of America's enterprising politicians aren't piling on to complain about it. We are using the holiest of holies -- the American taxpayer's dollar -- to build a nuclear program for a reclusive North Korean dictator. Duh!
September 18, 2002 Back The Halifax Herald Limited
Bystanders look over the remains of an unidentified sea creature that washed ashore Monday at Parkers Cove, Annapolis County.
Associated Press
September 21, 2002
WASHINGTON -- The first northern right whale calf to be seen in the eastern North Pacific Ocean in perhaps a century was reported by the National Marine Fisheries Service on Friday.
Marine mammal specialists at the service called the sighting a cause for celebration.
"The North Pacific right whale population is in danger of extinction. A mother and calf embody hope for the whales," said Jim Balsiger, regional administrator for the fisheries service in Alaska.
The northern right whale is the most endangered whale in the world, the agency said.
There is no reliable population estimate for that whale in the eastern North Pacific and scientists have seen only a dozen or so in the area in recent years.
The calf was spotted on Aug. 24 by fisheries researchers who were studying whales in the southeastern Bering Sea.
"The weather was heavily overcast when we first made the sighting," said scientist Lisa Ballance, who led the research cruise. "We immediately launched a small boat with three scientists aboard to get a closer look, and to take photographs and biopsy samples."
After studying for about an hour, they concluded it was a female and her calf. The calf was smaller than the other whale and it swam in alongside the flank of the larger whale in a drafting position typical of whale calves. The larger animal seemed intent on keeping itself between the small boat and the calf, Ballance said.
Photos do not show much, since the sighting was at night, but study of a skin sample from the larger whale confirmed it was female.
Since 1997 scientists have identified six individual eastern North Pacific right whales, all male.
In July 1996, another NOAA research expedition came across right whales in the same area, possibly including a calf, but the photo evidence was not clear enough to confirm the calf sighting.
Between 1900 and 1994 there were only 29 reliable sightings of right whales in the eastern North Pacific. Since then scientific expeditions have found a few whales -- between about four and 13 individuals -- in the eastern North Pacific each year.
Right whales were hunted extensively in the early 1900s because they were easy to catch, and floated after they were killed. Right whale flesh is very rich in oil. They've been listed as endangered since 1973.
(Washington Post)
September 23, 2002
Federal health officials will issue detailed guidelines today for vaccinating the entire U.S. population against smallpox within five days of an outbreak of the dreaded disease.
Intended as a blueprint for state and local health officials nationwide, the unprecedented move reveals a growing belief within the Bush administration that even one case of smallpox anywhere in the Western Hemisphere would signify a terrorist assault and should therefore trigger a far more massive response than officials had previously suggested, said two experts involved in the planning.
The manual being sent to health commissioners in the 50 states and the District of Columbia offers advice on how to operate mass vaccination clinics -- from logistical issues such as parking to the medical challenge of treating severe side effects. It offers suggestions on utilizing the National Guard, recruiting translators, building intricate data systems and contending with extreme weather conditions.
For now, the Bush administration does not anticipate inoculating the nation's 288 million residents -- partly because the threat of an attack is unknown and partly because the vaccine can cause severe, sometimes fatal, side effects. The vaccination plan would be activated only if an outbreak of the deadly disease occurred, an event administration officials characterize as unlikely but not impossible.
"This is a very detailed, thoughtful recipe for response" to a bioterror incident, said Michael Osterholm, a public health expert at the University of Minnesota who is advising the federal government. Using the template, states and cities should be able to devise plans "for vaccinating the largest amount of people in the shortest time possible," he said.
Smallpox has not been seen in the United States for decades, and the disease was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. Still, it is perhaps the most feared biological weapon because it is contagious, often incurable and can kill at least one-third of its victims. Since routine vaccination was halted in this country in 1971, there is little immunity left in the population and little expertise in dealing with the disease or vaccine.
Only the United States and Russia are known to possess stocks of the virus, but security experts fear a hostile nation such as Iraq may have acquired a cache of the virus. Vice President Cheney has contended the risk of attack may necessitate inoculating every American as a protective measure.
"One of the real concerns about Saddam Hussein, as well, is his biological weapons capability," he said recently on NBC's "Meet the Press." "The fact that he may, at some point, try to use smallpox, anthrax, plague, some other kind of biological agent against other nations, possibly including even the United States."
Ten months ago, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson signed a $428 million contract to buy a dose of vaccine for every American. Production is under way, and the United States already has stockpiled nearly 100 million doses.
Federal experts since have been working furiously on two tracks: a vaccination program for the emergency medical workers most likely to see an initial case of smallpox, and a mass vaccination plan if an attack occurs, said Julie L. Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We have to be able to do both," she said in a recent interview.
Pre-vaccination, as it is known in public health, would be targeted to medical personnel, who could respond to an attack knowing they are protected. Plans are underway to begin vaccinating tens of thousands of "first responders," perhaps by the end of this year.
There have been no plans to make the vaccine available to the public in the absence of any cases. But officials have been debating what would be the best response to an outbreak. Last winter, the CDC released a blueprint for containing a smallpox outbreak based on the "ring vaccination" strategy used during the campaign to eradicate the disease. Ring vaccination involves starting with the people closest to an exposure and working out in concentric circles.
There is growing recognition, however, that although that approach worked well for a naturally occurring outbreak during a time when air travel was rare, it would be no match for a terrorist with the ability to release the virus in several locations simultaneously, said Jerome M. Hauer, acting assistant secretary for HHS's Public Health Emergency Preparedness.
"You begin with ring vaccination, but in a big outbreak obviously mass vaccination would be part of the plan," he said. Federal officials are requiring states to develop plans for vaccination within five days, he said, because it is widely believed that even if a person has been exposed to the virus, a vaccine given in that time frame will provide immunity.
Administration officials refused to release the manual until state health commissioners receive it. But in interviews with The Washington Post, several described the scenario for responding to a smallpox attack.
At the first hint of a smallpox case, the CDC in Atlanta would begin dispatching emergency teams to the area to confirm the outbreak and begin vaccination.
Yet the suspicion that terrorists would strike more than one location "would require us to be in many, many places simultaneously," one federal planner said. "That would completely deplete our assets."
Instead of sending its staff to every corner of the country, the CDC plans to ship the vaccine and let states handle inoculation, Osterholm said. The National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, he said, "can be at any hamlet in this country in 12 hours." Officials have not said how much it would cost or how it would be paid for.
HHS has received assurance that even if air traffic were halted, as it was immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, planes transporting vaccine would have clearance. Vaccine would be delivered in waves much the way a grocery store receives its weekly shipment of milk in batches.
The manual, which is almost 100 pages, was developed in consultation with local health officers, medical societies, the military and businesses such as UPS and Federal Express that have logistical expertise, said an adviser to Thompson. Much of its contents were based on previous large-scale vaccination programs, such as the 1995 meningitis outbreak in Mankato, Minn., in which 26,000 people were inoculated in four days.
Each state must determine where vaccination clinics would be located, who would staff them, how to counsel people on the potential risks of vaccination and most importantly, how to move hundreds of thousands of people through the process calmly and quickly. Some communities might select large shopping malls or sports arenas because of parking availability; metropolitan centers might rely on buses and subways to bring people to clinics.
Every state will need provisions for everything from inclement weather to the person who faints at the sight of a needle, Osterholm said. "Are you going to have a line stretching 21/2 blocks in the snow or blistering heat?" he said, describing one challenge.
The guidelines urge states to address the need for bathrooms, transportation, a media strategy and a medical questionnaire, as well as how to separate and treat any potential smallpox cases. They also include sample consent forms if states must administer an unlicensed vaccine. Two administration sources said they hope the vaccine soon will be re-licensed.
Although bioterrorism is a new challenge, large vaccination campaigns are not, Osterholm said. "The public health system delivers vaccine to our nation's children every day, overcoming language, transportation and financial hurdles," he noted.
Aside from an assumption that some health care workers will be vaccinated before an attack, the document does not resolve enormous questions surrounding that issue.
Last month, Thompson sent recommendations to the White House on how many people should be inoculated in advance. Although a CDC advisory panel has recommended vaccinating about 20,000 medical personnel, several administration sources said President Bush is weighing a proposal on the order of 500,000 people.
"Until a decision is made on pre-vaccination," Hauer said, "our efforts continue to focus on bioterrorism detection and response."
9/23/02
Newsday
The city is prepared to rapidly deploy vaccines in the case of a smallpox or bio-terror attack, a city health official said yesterday.
Sandra Mullin, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said the city has a "point of distribution" plan that would distribute vaccines and increase laboratory capacities, hospital care facilities and ambulance availability in the event of an attack.
"Those are all being and have been deliberated upon," she said of the distribution points. "We have very strong syndromic surveillance systems that look at ambulance runs and emergency visits to analyze patterns on a 24/7 basis to determine any suggestion of unusual illnesses, bio-terrorism or natural outbreaks."
Mullin would not discuss details of the distribution points.
Her comments came after the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report yesterday saying they have enough smallpox vaccine to cover everyone in the United States.
The country has 155 million doses of smallpox vaccine on hand and should have 280 million doses by the end of the year, the CDC said.
"Like other cities, we would depend on the CDC for smallpox vaccine supplies," Mullin said. "They're not on hand, but there is a plan to distribute them quickly around the country."
September 26, 2002
WASHINGTON (AP) - When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, the government had a TOW antitank missile stowed in a locker several floors above the daycare center.
The missile, about 3 feet long, actually had an inert warhead and only a small amount of rocket fuel, and the government says it did not contribute to the massive explosion that day. Instead, it tumbled into the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah building.
But its discovery prompted an evacuation that slowed rescue efforts April 19, 1995, in part because the missile had been marked as live ordinance to make it look believable to the targets of a planned law enforcement sting, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
``Tow Missile recovered from A.P. Murrah Building,'' states an Oklahoma County sheriff's department evidence form showing the missile was removed from the rubble by the department's bomb squad and examined by military ordinance experts.
Oklahoma City emergency personnel records show the rescue site evacuation lasted 44 minutes.
``People were scrambling in every direction,'' recalled Sgt. William Grimsley of the Oklahoma County sheriff's department bomb squad, who helped remove the missile during the evacuation. ``From the crate, we knew it was some kind of a missile. We were told to get it out of there and get it out of there as fast as we could.''
The missile was the subject of a lengthy FBI investigation and also was examined by a local grand jury in Oklahoma, according to documents and interviews, but its existence has remained mostly a secret to the public - except for a handful of conspiracy theorists and government critics.
``There was a gag order at the time, we just didn't talk about it at all. It was an ongoing investigation,'' Grimsley explained.
McVeigh was convicted and later executed for the truck bomb blast that killed 168 people, including 19 children - most of them in a day-care center on the second floor.
Though a sidelight in the Oklahoma City drama, the missile's unexpected appearance in the rubble of a federal building frequented by civilians - including children - raises broader safety issues, experts say.
``We have no idea of what the potential dangers are in federal buildings because there is no methodology'' for the General Services Administration, the government's landlord, to independently review what is stored in every building, said John Culbertson, a former congressional aide to expelled Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio.
Culbertson investigated the Oklahoma City building and other federal building safety issues and testified before a House subcommittee.
The GSA says its security procedures have changed greatly since 1995. The changes ``include extensive exchange of information with local, state and federal law-enforcement organizations, designing federal buildings to incorporate security measures and using magnetometers, X-ray machines and other innovations, some not visible to the public,'' GSA spokeswoman Viki Reath said.
Just last summer, GSA implemented a new regulation requiring federal agencies to seek its authorization before bringing ``hazardous explosive or combustible materials'' into federal buildings.
Still, the TOW missile is among a growing number of recent examples of weaponry, ordinance and other potentially dangerous materials that have been involved in incidents in government buildings.
In December, an FBI agent suffered severe burns on his hands, arm and abdomen when a stun grenade accidentally exploded in a federal building in Buffalo, N.Y. Witnesses said the explosion shook the building and caused smoky haze to drift through the complex.
And shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, authorities divulged that a government office building that collapsed in a fiery heap near the World Trade Center had stored thousand of gallons of diesel fuel in tanks just above the ground floor. Investigators have examined whether the fuel could have contributed to the fire and collapse, and some insurance companies have sued the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for storing the fuel there.
The federal building in Baltimore was evacuated in 1997 when pepper gas was discharged, overcoming several workers.
Some potential perils have been known by the government for more than a decade.
In 1987, a fire inside an FBI crime laboratory in Washington set off ordinance stored casually in a cabinet. ``The detonation of ordinance stored in the lower area of the cabinet occurred late in the fire as the heat level approached the floor,'' an FBI investigative report said.
That report states that among the items to detonate were two rocket-propelled grenades and 30 Soviet-made detonating fuses.
Federal law enforcement officials say their agencies frequently must store weapons - everything from handguns and ammunition to semiautomatic rifles and flash grenades - inside buildings frequented by civilians, but that those who handle them are carefully trained and abide by existing laws.
The Customs Service acknowledged it possessed the TOW missile in the Murrah building. When its discovery in the rubble sparked alarm, a Customs agent attempted to assure rescuers the missile was unarmed and pleaded unsuccessfully not to delay the rescue efforts.
``The Customs agent offered to personally remove the inert TOW missile from the building,'' the service said in a statement to AP. ``Rescue officials did not take up the agent's offer.''
Customs said the missile was marked live because it ``must appear to be live in order to gain the confidence of suspected arms traffickers during undercover investigations.'' But the agency added it believes its storage in a ``reinforced strong room'' was legal.
``Customs' actions in possessing and storing this system were completely within the law,'' the agency said. It would not discuss the details of the planned sting.
The FBI eventually took custody of the missile and traced the weapon's history from its creation and initial firing at an Alabama Army depot to its reconfiguration with a dummy warhead.
One military expert told the FBI that even an inert missile could pose dangers. ``He stated that inert TOW missiles are still operational. ... These missiles are still fireable as they contain an engine which is propelled by rocket fuel,'' an FBI report said.
Associated Press
Fleischer Says Steps Have Been In Works For Months
September 25, 2002
(AP)
WASHINGTON -- Staff and reporters who work at the White House are being given protective hoods for use in case of smoke, fire or chemical attack.
They're also being given instruction on how to respond to any terrorist strike.
Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said the steps are not a response to any new threat -- and have been in the works for months. Similar precautions already have been taken on Capitol Hill.
Fleischer says the moves are part of the continuing effort to upgrade readiness in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
On the day of the attacks, the White House was evacuated as officials feared the executive mansion might be the target of United Flight 93, which eventually crashed in Pennsylvania.
September 25, 2002
(AP)
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military is exploring ways to use drugs such as Valium to calm people without killing them during riots or other crowd control situations where lethal weapons are inappropriate.
Some critics say the effort violates international treaties and federal laws against chemical weapons, an allegation the military denies.
"It's a rotten idea to drug rioters," said Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a chemical and biological weapons watchdog group that is the program's chief critic. "Beyond being a horrible idea, it's illegal."
The Pentagon has long tried to develop nonlethal weapons that would incapacitate or repel people with little risk of killing them. The effort intensified in the 1990s after hostile mobs confronted U.S. troops during peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in places like Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti.
Officials in the military's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate began discussing whether it would be possible to develop drugs for use as "calmatives," or chemical peacemakers. Those discussions continued at a seminar with British military officials in 2000, according to a joint report on the meeting.
"During war game scenarios, numerous participants expressed the desire to have a NLW (non-lethal weapon) that could quickly incapacitate individuals with little or no aftereffects," the report said.
Researchers at a Pentagon-funded institute at Pennsylvania State University prepared a 50-page report that year saying that developing calmative weapons "is achievable and desirable" and suggesting drugs like Valium for further research.
One hurdle for using such drugs for riot control, the researchers wrote, is finding a way to deliver the substances to large groups, such as in a spray or mist. Another problem would be figuring out how to prevent other injuries, such as by people falling down if they are knocked unconscious, the researchers wrote.
That's as far as the military went, spokesmen for Pennsylvania State and the military said. University spokeswoman Vicki Fong said the researchers initiated the study themselves, not under a request from the military.
"We decided to step back and make sure the use of calmatives would not violate the Chemical Weapons Convention," said Marine Capt. Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. "There are still questions, and until those are worked out, we're not going to put any funding into it."
Hammond said the research itself may have violated the anti-chemical weapons treaty and any use of calmatives would be illegal.
"If the U.S. is going to denounce countries around the world for violating chemical and biological arms control treaties, it better make sure its own house is in order first," said Hammond, whose group obtained the Pennsylvania State study and hundreds of pages of other nonlethal weapons documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
The chemical weapons treaty allows military and police forces to use riot control agents, such as tear gas and pepper spray, that produce temporary irritation. The treaty bans use of chemicals that incapacitate people, however.
The report of the U.S.-British meeting said the American participants agreed that research into calmatives "must be conducted in a manner consistent with our obligations under international law, including the law of war."
by Allen M. Hornblum, 320 pp with black-and-white illustrations, $16, New York, NY, Routledge, 1998.
Reviewed by
Michael E. Bigby, MD
Allen Hornblum's Acres of Skin is a distressing exposé of human experimentation on prisoners that emphasizes the role of dermatologists in such experiments. A printing of the Nuremberg Code, an introduction explaining the author's reasons for writing the book, and a short note on the sources used for it preface the body of the book. The author arrived at Holmesburg prison in 1971 to teach adult literacy and was appalled by the sight of prisoners wearing patches for patch testing. Over the years he investigated human experimentation on prisoners and wrote the book to expose unethical experimentation on prisoners and the silence of the medical community in condemning it. The book is based on interviews of prisoners, staff, and researchers; newspaper and magazine articles; government documents; and published medical journals.
Hornblum divides the book into 4 sections: (1) the subjects, physicians, and experiments involved in human experimentation at Holmesburg prison in Pennsylvania; (2) a historical review of American penal experimentation; (3) a description of "cruel and unusual" experiments; and (4) the end of experimentation at Holmesburg prison. The first section emphasizes the role of the University of Pennsylvania dermatologist who directed the Holmesburg prison and other human subject research programs. He was invited to the prison in the 1950s to investigate and control an outbreak of tinea pedis in the prison. On seeing the prison environment he is quoted as saying, "All I saw before me was acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time."
Over the next decade he developed a lucrative and productive system of paying prisoners to undergo testing of chemicals and medications from cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies, and from the US Army. Many of the experiments, which were unethical by today's standards, led to papers published in the Archives of Dermatology, JAMA, and the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. Among them were studies of the pathogenesis of tinea capitis in retarded children, and tinea pedis, candidiasis, warts, and impetigo in prisoners (these experiments involved inoculating human subjects with pathogens). The author emphasizes that the research was conducted poorly because of incomplete data collection, premature termination of experiments, prisoner noncompliance, and the entrepreneurial nature of much of the research. These deficiencies culminated in temporary sanctions imposed by the Food and Drug Administration that banned the investigator from performing tests in the prison.
The second section of the book is a historical review of penal experimentation in the United States. The author describes "cruel and unusual experiments" in the third section of the book. These experiments include Department of Defense–sponsored testing of hallucinogens and chemical weapons on prisoners and Army volunteers, skin-hardening experiments, the use of radioisotopes, cutaneous exposure to dioxins, and radiation treatment for tinea capitis. The final section details how and why experimentation on prisoners was abolished in the 1970s. The author emphasizes that the use of topical tretinoin for wrinkles was "born" at Holmesburg prison in this section.
The author emphasizes several themes throughout the book. First, the experiments performed in the prison violated the Nuremberg Code for many reasons, including the investigators lacked informed consent from the subjects, the experiments did not involve problems of sufficient importance, and these experiments exposed subjects to unnecessary risks. Second, Hornblum stresses that the experiments conducted on prisoners were similar in kind (although not in scope) to experiments performed by physicians in Nazi concentration camps. He quotes as evidence that Nazi doctors used knowledge of experiments on prisoners in the United States in their defense of their own experimentation. Third, the fact that most experiments were conducted on African American prisoners was racist, similar to the Tuskegee syphilis study, which contributed to the lack of protest against the practices.
Acres of Skin is a disturbing book to read which nonetheless should be widely read. It describes an era of human experimental research that should not be repeated. The role of dermatologists and the seeming indifference of the academic and medical communities is disturbing. The book has faults. It often reads like a personal vendetta or a sensational Hard Copy style TV report. There is often seemingly intentional blurring of who did what, when, to whom, and with what intentions. Some of the experiments described as horrendous, such as patch tests and skin biopsies, won't seem so to dermatologists. These reservations notwithstanding, the book serves as an important signpost for scientists, health care workers, researchers, and anyone interested in human rights.
September 25, 2002
(AP)
PHILADELPHIA -- Prisoners who were deliberately exposed to diseases and given mind-altering drugs during jailhouse medical experiments from the 1950s through the 1970s cannot sue the city and the university that conducted the tests, a federal appeals court ruled.
A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a lower court's ruling that the 298 former inmates waited too long to bring their lawsuit.
In most circumstances, state law requires that the type of lawsuit filed by the prisoners be brought within two to four years. The experiments stopped in 1974.
"The experimentation programs were widely publicized from the mid-1970s until the early 1980s and a number of inmates filed suits in the years following the publicity," the court said. "It is simply not reasonable to believe that plaintiffs were not aware of the facts underlying this litigation many, many years before bringing suit."
The prisoners -- all of whom finished serving their jail time long ago -- sued in 2000 after Temple University instructor and prison activist Allen Hornblum wrote about the testing in his 1998 book "Acres of Skin."
For decades, the University of Pennsylvania and dermatologists led by Dr. Albert Kligman, who is credited with developing the acne and anti-wrinkle treatment Retin A, performed experiments on inmates at Holmesburg Prison, a city jail that closed in 1995.
Many of the tests were harmless, but at city hearings conducted earlier this year, one former prisoner said his hands and feet swelled grotesquely. Others said they lost feeling in limbs or had bad reactions to psychotropic drugs.
The lawsuit said the inmates had not been informed of the risks or properly asked for their consent.
"Some of the people were tested with LSD. Some were tested with dioxin. They didn't know what they were getting into," said Thomas Nocella, the prisoners' attorney.
He said the group has not decided whether to appeal. After Hornblum's book was published, Penn offered to examine any former inmates who thought they were harmed by the school's studies.
"That offer still stands," Penn spokeswoman Rebecca Harmon said Wednesday.
"Thirty or 40 years ago, it was common practice. But we've all grown up since then," she said. "It's understood globally that prisoners are not appropriate subjects for testing."
At least six other lawsuits filed by prisoners against the school were settled out of court.
John Marks, New York: Times Books, 1979
Chapter 8
Brainwashing
(conspiracyarchive.com)
In September 1950, the Miami News published an article by Edward Hunter titled “‘Brain-Washing’ Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party.” It was the first printed use in any language of the term “brainwashing,” which quickly became a stock phrase in Cold War headlines. Hunter, a CIA propaganda operator who worked under cover as a journalist, turned out a steady stream of books and articles on the subject. He made up his coined word from the Chinese hsi-nao—“to cleanse the mind”—which had no political meaning in Chinese.
American public opinion reacted strongly to Hunter’s ideas, no doubt because of the hostility that prevailed toward communist foes, whose ways were perceived as mysterious and alien. Most Americans knew something about the famous trial of the Hungarian Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, at which the Cardinal appeared zombie-like, as though drugged or hypnotized. Other defendants at Soviet “show trials” had displayed similar symptoms as they recited unbelievable confessions in dull, cliché-ridden monotones. Americans were familiar with the idea that the communists had ways to control hapless people, and Hunter’s new word helped pull together the unsettling evidence into one sharp fear. The brainwashing controversy intensified during the heavy 1952 fighting in Korea, when the Chinese government launched a propaganda offensive that featured recorded statements by captured U.S. pilots, who “confessed” to a variety of war crimes including the use of germ warfare.
The official American position on prisoner confessions was that they were false and forced. As expressed in an Air Force Headquarters document, “Confessions can be of truthful details. . . . For purposes of this section, ‘confessions’ are considered as being the forced admission to a lie.” But if the military had understandable reasons to gloss over the truth or falsity of the confessions, this still did not address the fact that confessions had been made at all. Nor did it lay to rest the fears of those like Edward Hunter who saw the confessions as proof that the communists now had techniques “to put a man’s mind into a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe what did not happen actually had happened, until he ultimately becomes a robot for the Communist manipulator.”
By the end of the Korean War, 70 percent of the 7,190 U.S. prisoners held in China had either made confessions or signed petitions calling for an end to the American war effort in Asia. Fifteen percent collaborated fully with the Chinese, and only 5 percent steadfastly resisted. The American performance contrasted poorly with that of the British, Australian, Turkish, and other United Nations prisoners—among whom collaboration was rare, even though studies showed they were treated about as badly as the Americans. Worse, an alarming number of the prisoners stuck by their confessions after returning to the United States. They did not, as expected, recant as soon as they stepped on U.S. soil. Puzzled and dismayed by this wholesale collapse of morale among the POWs, American opinion leaders settled in on Edward Hunter’s explanation: The Chinese had somehow brainwashed our boys.
But how? At the height of the brainwashing furor, conservative spokesmen often seized upon the very mystery of it all to give a religious cast to the political debate. All communists have been, by definition, brainwashed through satanic forces, they argued—thereby making the enemy seem like robots completely devoid of ordinary human feelings and motivation. Liberals favored a more scientific view of the problem. Given the incontrovertible evidence that the Russians and the Chinese could, in a very short time and often under difficult circumstances, alter the basic belief and behavior patterns of both domestic and foreign captives, liberals argued that there must be a technique involved that would yield its secrets under objective investigation.
CIA Director Allen Dulles favored the scientific approach, although he naturally encouraged his propaganda experts to exploit the more emotional interpretations of brainwashing. Dulles and the heads of the other American security agencies became almost frantic in their efforts to find out more about the Soviet and Chinese successes in mind control. Under pressure for answers, Dulles turned to Dr. Harold Wolff, a world-famous neurologist with whom he had developed an intensely personal relationship. Wolff was then treating Dulles’ own son for brain damage suffered from a Korean War head wound. Together they shared the trauma of the younger Dulles’ fits and mental lapses. Wolff, a skinny little doctor with an overpowering personality, became fast friends with the tall, patrician CIA Director. Dulles may have seen brainwashing as an induced form of brain damage or mental illness. In any case, in late 1953, he asked Wolff to conduct an official study of communist brainwashing techniques for the CIA. Wolff, who had become fascinated by the Director’s tales of the clandestine world, eagerly accepted.
Harold Wolff was known primarily as an expert on migraine headaches and pain, but he had served on enough military and intelligence advisory panels that he knew how to pick up Dulles’ mandate and expand on it. He formed a working partnership with Lawrence Hinkle, his colleague at Cornell University Medical College in New York City. Hinkle handled the administrative part of the study and shared in the substance. Before going ahead, the two doctors made sure they had the approval of Cornell’s president, Deane W. Malott and other high university officials who checked with their contacts in Washington to make sure the project did indeed have the great importance that Allen Dulles stated. Hinkle recalls a key White House aide urging Cornell to cooperate. The university administration agreed, and soon Wolff and Hinkle were poring over the Agency’s classified files on brainwashing. CIA officials also helped arrange interviews with former communist interrogators and prisoners alike. “It was done with great secrecy,” recalls Hinkle. “We went through a great deal of hoop-de-do and signed secrecy agreements, which everyone took very seriously.”
The team of Wolff and Hinkle became the chief brainwashing studiers for the U.S. government, although the Air Force and Army ran parallel programs.[23] Their secret report to Allen Dulles, later published in a declassified version, was considered the definitive U.S. Government work on the subject. In fact, if allowances are made for the Cold War rhetoric of the fifties, the Wolff-Hinkle report still remains one of the better accounts of the massive political re-education programs in China and the Soviet Union. It stated flatly that neither the Soviets nor the Chinese had any magical weapons—no drugs, exotic mental ray-guns, or other fanciful machines. Instead, the report pictured communist interrogation methods resting on skillful, if brutal, application of police methods. Its portrait of the Soviet system anticipates, in dry and scholarly form, the work of novelist Alexander Solzhenitzyn in The Gulag Archipelago. Hinkle and Wolff showed that the Soviet technique rested on the cumulative weight of intense psychological pressure and human weakness, and this thesis alone earned the two Cornell doctors the enmity of the more right-wing CIA officials such as Edward Hunter. Several of his former acquaintances remember that Hunter was fond of saying that the Soviets brainwashed people the way Pavlov had conditioned dogs.
In spite of some dissenters like Hunter, the Wolff-Hinkle model became, with later refinements, the best available description of extreme forms of political indoctrination. According to the general consensus, the Soviets started a new prisoner off by putting him in solitary confinement. A rotating corps of guards watched him constantly, humiliating and demeaning him at every opportunity and making it clear he was totally cut off from all outside support. The guards ordered him to stand for long periods, let him sit, told him exactly the position he could take to lie down, and woke him if he moved in the slightest while sleeping. They banned all outside stimuli—books, conversation, or news of the world.
After four to six weeks of this mind-deadening routine, the prisoner usually found the stress unbearable and broke down. “He weeps, he mutters, and prays aloud in his cell,” wrote Hinkle and Wolff. When the prisoner reached this stage, the interrogation began. Night after night, the guards brought him into a special room to face the interrogator. Far from confronting his captive with specific misdeeds, the interrogator told him that he knew his own crimes—all too well. In the most harrowing Kafkaesque way, the prisoner tried to prove his innocence to he knew not what. Together the interrogator and prisoner reviewed the prisoner’s life in detail. The interrogator seized on any inconsistency—no matter how minute—as further evidence of guilt, and he laughed at the prisoner’s efforts to justify himself. But at least the prisoner was getting a response of some sort. The long weeks of isolation and uncertainty had made him grateful for human contact even grateful that his case was moving toward resolution. True, it moved only as fast as he was willing to incriminate himself, but . . . Gradually, he came to see that he and his interrogator were working toward the same goal of wrapping up his case. In tandem, they ransacked his soul. The interrogator would periodically let up the pressure. He offered a cigarette, had a friendly chat, explained he had a job to do—making it all the more disappointing the next time he had to tell the prisoner that his confession was unsatisfactory.
As the charges against him began to take shape, the prisoner realized that he could end his ordeal only with a full confession. Otherwise the grueling sessions would go on forever. “The regimen of pressure has created an overall discomfort which is well nigh intolerable,” wrote Hinkle and Wolff. “The prisoner invariably feels that ‘something must be done to end this.’ He must find a way out.” A former KGB officer, one of many former interrogators and prisoners interviewed for the CIA study, said that more than 99 percent of all prisoners signed a confession at this stage.
In the Soviet system under Stalin, these confessions were the final step of the interrogation process, and the prisoners usually were shot or sent to a labor camp after sentencing. Today, Russian leaders seem much less insistent on exacting confessions before jailing their foes, but they still use the penal (and mental health) system to remove from the population classes of people hostile to their rule.
The Chinese took on the more ambitious task of re-educating their prisoners. For them, confession was only the beginning. Next, the Chinese authorities moved the prisoner into a group cell where his indoctrination began. From morning to night, he and his fellow prisoners studied Marx and Mao, listened to lectures, and engaged in self-criticism. Since the progress of each member depended on that of his cellmates, the group pounced on the slightest misconduct as an indication of backsliding. Prisoners demonstrated the zeal of their commitment by ferociously attacking deviations. Constant intimacy with people who reviled him pushed the resistant prisoner to the limits of his emotional endurance. Hinkle and Wolff found that “The prisoner must conform to the demands of the group sooner or later.” As the prisoner developed genuine changes of attitude, pressure on him relaxed. His cellmates rewarded him with increasing acceptance and esteem. Their acceptance, in turn, reinforced his commitment to the Party, for he learned that only this commitment allowed him to live successfully in the cell. In many cases, this process produced an exultant sense of mission in the prisoner—a feeling of having finally straightened out his life and come to the truth. To be sure, this experience, which was not so different from religious conversion, did not occur in all cases or always last after the prisoner returned to a social group that did not reinforce it.
From the first preliminary studies of Wolff and Hinkle, the U.S. intelligence community moved toward the conclusion that neither the Chinese nor the Russians made appreciable use of drugs or hypnosis, and they certainly did not possess the brainwashing equivalent of the atomic bomb (as many feared). Most of their techniques were rooted in age-old methods, and CIA brainwashing researchers like psychologist John Gittinger found themselves poring over ancient documents on the Spanish Inquisition. Furthermore, the communists used no psychiatrists or other behavioral scientists to devise their interrogation system. The differences between the Soviet and Chinese systems seemed to grow out of their respective national cultures. The Soviet brainwashing system resembled a heavy-handed cop whose job was to isolate, break, and then subdue all the troublemakers in the neighborhood. The Chinese system was more like thousands of skilled acupuncturists, working on each other and relying on group pressure, ideology, and repetition. To understand further the Soviet or Chinese control systems, one had to plunge into the subtle mysteries of national and individual character.
While CIA researchers looked into those questions, the main thrust of the Agency’s brainwashing studies veered off in a different direction. The logic behind the switch was familiar in the intelligence business. Just because the Soviets and the Chinese had not invented a brainwashing machine, officials reasoned, there was no reason to assume that the task was impossible. If such a machine were even remotely feasible, one had to assume the communists might discover it. And in that case, national security required that the United States invent the machine first. Therefore, the CIA built up its own elaborate brainwashing program, which, like the Soviet and Chinese versions, took its own special twist from our national character. It was a tiny replica of the Manhattan Project, grounded in the conviction that the keys to brainwashing lay in technology. Agency officials hoped to use old-fashioned American know-how to produce shortcuts and scientific breakthroughs. Instead of turning to tough cops, whose methods repelled American sensibilities, or the gurus of mass motivation, whose ideology Americans lacked, the Agency’s brainwashing experts gravitated to people more in the mold of the brilliant—and sometimes mad—scientist, obsessed by the wonders of the brain.
In 1953 CIA Director Allen Dulles made a rare public statement on communist brainwashing: “We in the West are somewhat handicapped in getting all the details,” Dulles declared. “There are few survivors, and we have no human guinea pigs to try these extraordinary techniques.” Even as Dulles spoke, however, CIA officials acting under his orders had begun to find the scientists and the guinea pigs. Some of their experiments would wander so far across the ethical borders of experimental psychiatry (which are hazy in their own right) that Agency officials thought it prudent to have much of the work done outside the United States.
Call her Lauren G. For 19 years, her mind has been blank about her experience. She remembers her husband’s driving her up to the old gray stone mansion that housed the hospital, Allan Memorial Institute, and putting her in the care of its director, Dr. D. Ewen Cameron. The next thing she recalls happened three weeks later:
They gave me a dressing gown. It was way too big, and I was tripping all over it. I was mad. I asked why did I have to go round in this sloppy thing. I could hardly move because I was pretty weak. I remember trying to walk along the hall, and the walls were all slanted. It was then that I said, “Holy Smokes, what a ghastly thing.” I remember running out the door and going up the mountain in my long dressing gown.
The mountain, named Mont Royal, loomed high above Montreal. She stumbled and staggered as she tried to climb higher and higher. Hospital staff members had no trouble catching her and dragging her back to the Institute. In short order, they shot her full of sedatives, attached electrodes to her temples, and gave her a dose of electroshock. Soon she slept like a baby.
Gradually, over the next few weeks, Lauren G. began to function like a normal person again. She took basket-weaving therapy and played bridge with her fellow patients. The hospital released her, and she returned to her husband in another Canadian city.
Before her mental collapse in 1959, Lauren G. seemed to have everything going for her. A refined, glamorous horsewoman of 30, whom people often said looked like Elizabeth Taylor, she had auditioned for the lead in National Velvet at 13 and married the rich boy next door at 20. But she had never loved her husband and had let her domineering mother push her into his arms. He drank heavily. “I was really unhappy,” she recalls. “I had a horrible marriage, and finally I had a nervous breakdown. It was a combination of my trying to lose weight, sleep loss, and my nerves.”
The family doctor recommended that her husband send her to Dr. Cameron, which seemed like a logical thing to do, considering his wide fame as a psychiatrist. He had headed Allan Memorial since 1943, when the Rockefeller Foundation had donated funds to set up a psychiatric facility at McGill University. With continuing help from the Rockefellers, McGill had built a hospital known far beyond Canada’s borders as innovative and exciting. Cameron was elected president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1953, and he became the first president of the World Psychiatric Association. His friends joked that they had run out of honors to give him.
Cameron’s passion lay in the more “objective” forms of therapy, with which he could more easily and swiftly bring about improvements in patients than with the notoriously slow Freudian methods. An impatient man, he dreamed of finding a cure for schizophrenia. No one could tell him he was not on the right track. Cameron’s supporter at the Rockefeller Foundation, Robert Morrison, recorded in his private papers that he found the psychiatrist tense and ill-at-ease, and Morrison ventured that this may account for “his lack of interest and effectiveness in psychotherapy and failure to establish warm personal relations with faculty members, both of which were mentioned repeatedly when I visited Montreal.” Another Rockefeller observer noted that Cameron “appears to suffer from deep insecurity and has a need for power which he nourishes by maintaining an extraordinary aloofness from his associates.”
When Lauren G.’s husband delivered her to Cameron, the psychiatrist told him she would receive some electroshock, a standard treatment at the time. Besides that, states her husband, “Cameron was not very communicative, but I didn’t think she was getting anything out of the ordinary.” The husband had no way of knowing that Cameron would use an unproved experimental technique on his wife—much less that the psychiatrist intended to “depattern” her. Nor did he realize that the CIA was supporting this work with about $19,000 a year in secret funds.
Cameron defined “depatterning” as breaking up existing patterns of behavior, both the normal and the schizophrenic, by means of particularly intensive electroshocks, usually combined with prolonged, drug-induced sleep. Here was a psychiatrist willing—indeed, eager—to wipe the human mind totally clean. Back in 1951, ARTICHOKE’s Morse Allen had likened the process to “creation of a vegetable.” Cameron justified this tabula rasa approach because he had a theory of “differential amnesia,” for which he provided no statistical evidence when he published it. He postulated that after he produced “complete amnesia” in a subject, the person would eventually recover memory of his normal but not his schizophrenic behavior. Thus, Cameron claimed he could generate “differential amnesia.” Creating such a state in which a man who knew too much could be made to forget had long been a prime objective of the ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA programs.
Needless to say, Lauren G. does not recall a thing today about those weeks when Cameron depatterned her. Afterward, unlike over half of the psychiatrist’s depatterning patients, Lauren G. gradually recovered full recall of her life before the treatment, but then, she remembered her mental problems, too.[25] Her husband says she came out of the hospital much improved. She declares the treatment had no effect one way or another on her mental condition, which she believes resulted directly from her miserable marriage. She stopped seeing Cameron after about a month of outpatient electroshock treatments, which she despised. Her relationship with her husband further deteriorated, and two years later she walked out on him. “I just got up on my own hind legs,” she states. “I said the hell with it. I’m going to do what I want and take charge of my own life. I left and started over.” Now divorced and remarried, she feels she has been happy ever since.
Cameron’s depatterning, of which Lauren G. had a comparatively mild version, normally started with 15 to 30 days of “sleep therapy.” As the name implies, the patient slept almost the whole day and night. According to a doctor at the hospital who used to administer what he calls the “sleep cocktail,” a staff member woke up the patient three times a day for medication that consisted of a combination of 100 mg. Thorazine, 100 mg. Nembutal, 100 mg. Seconal, 150 mg. Veronal, and 10 mg. Phenergan. Another staff doctor would also awaken the patient two or sometimes three times daily for electroshock treatments.[26] This doctor and his assistant wheeled a portable machine into the “sleep room” and gave the subject a local anesthetic and muscle relaxant, so as not to cause damage with the convulsions that were to come. After attaching electrodes soaked in saline solution, the attendant held the patient down and the doctor turned on the current. In standard, professional electroshock, doctors gave the subject a single dose of 110 volts, lasting a fraction of a second, once a day or every other day. By contrast, Cameron used a form 20 to 40 times more intense, two or three times daily, with the power turned up to 150 volts. Named the “Page-Russell” method after its British originators, this technique featured an initial one-second shock, which caused a major convulsion, and then five to nine additional shocks in the middle of the primary and follow-on convulsions. Even Drs. Page and Russell limited their treatment to once a day, and they always stopped as soon as their patient showed “pronounced confusion” and became “faulty in habits.” Cameron, however, welcomed this kind of impairment as a sign the treatment was taking effect and plowed ahead through his routine.
The frequent screams of patients that echoed through the hospital did not deter Cameron or most of his associates in their attempts to “depattern” their subjects completely. Other hospital patients report being petrified by the “sleep rooms,” where the treatment took place, and they would usually creep down the opposite side of the hall.
Cameron described this combined sleep-electroshock treatment as lasting between 15 to 30 days, with some subjects staying in up to 65 days (in which case, he reported, he awakened them for three days in the middle). Sometimes, as in the case of Lauren G., patients would try to escape when the sedatives wore thin, and the staff would have to chase after them. “It was a tremendous nursing job just to keep these people going during the treatment,” recalls a doctor intimately familiar with Cameron’s operation. This doctor paints a picture of dazed patients, incapable of taking care of themselves, often groping their way around the hospital and urinating on the floor.
Cameron wrote that his typical depatterning patient—usually a woman—moved through three distinct stages. In the first, the subject lost much of her memory. Yet she still knew where she was, why she was there, and who the people were who treated her. In the second phase, she lost her “space-time image,” but still wanted to remember. In fact, not being able to answer questions like, “Where am I?” and “How did I get here?” caused her considerable anxiety. In the third stage, all that anxiety disappeared. Cameron described the state as “an extremely interesting constriction of the range of recollections which one ordinarily brings in to modify and enrich one’s statements. Hence, what the patient talks about are only his sensations of the moment, and he talks about them almost exclusively in highly concrete terms. His remarks are entirely uninfluenced by previous recollections—nor are they governed in any way by his forward anticipations. He lives in the immediate present. All schizophrenic symptoms have disappeared. There is complete amnesia for all events in his life.”
Lauren G. and 52 other subjects at Allan Memorial received this level of depatterning in 1958 and 1959. Cameron had already developed the technique when the CIA funding started. The Agency sent the psychiatrist research money to take the treatment beyond this point. Agency officials wanted to know if, once Cameron had produced the blank mind, he could then program in new patterns of behavior, as he claimed he could. As early as 1953—the year he headed the American Psychiatric Association—Cameron conceived a technique he called “psychic driving,” by which he would bombard the subject with repeated verbal messages. From tape recordings based on interviews with the patient, he selected emotionally loaded “cue statements”—first negative ones to get rid of unwanted behavior and then positive to condition in desired personality traits. On the negative side, for example, the patient would hear this message as she lay in a stupor:
Madeleine, you let your mother and father treat you as a child all through your single life. You let your mother check you up sexually after every date you had with a boy. You hadn’t enough determination to tell her to stop it. You never stood up for yourself against your mother or father but would run away from trouble. . . . They used to call you “crying Madeleine.” Now that you have two children, you don’t seem to be able to manage them and keep a good relationship with your husband. You are drifting apart. You don’t go out together. You have not been able to keep him interested sexually.
Leonard Rubenstein, Cameron’s principal assistant, whose entire salary was paid from CIA-front funds, put the message on a continuous tape loop and played it for 16 hours every day for several weeks. An electronics technician, with no medical or psychological background, Rubenstein, an electrical whiz, designed a giant tape recorder that could play 8 loops for 8 patients at the same time. Cameron had the speakers installed literally under the pillows in the “sleep rooms.” “We made sure they heard it,” says a doctor who worked with Cameron. With some patients, Cameron intensified the negative effect by running wires to their legs and shocking them at the end of the message.
When Cameron thought the negative “psychic driving” had gone far enough, he switched the patient over to 2 to 5 weeks of positive tapes:
You mean to get well. To do this you must let your feelings come out. It is all right to express your anger. . . . You want to stop your mother bossing you around. Begin to assert yourself first in little things and soon you will be able to meet her on an equal basis. You will then be free to be a wife and mother just like other women.
Cameron wrote that psychic driving provided a way to make “direct, controlled changes in personality,” without having to resolve the subject’s conflicts or make her relive past experiences. As far as is known, no present-day psychologist or psychiatrist accepts this view. Dr. Donald Hebb, who headed McGill’s psychology department at the time Cameron was in charge of psychiatry, minces no words when asked specifically about psychic driving: “That was an awful set of ideas Cameron was working with. It called for no intellectual respect. If you actually look at what he was doing and what he wrote, it would make you laugh. If I had a graduate student who talked like that, I’d throw him out.” Warming to his subject, Hebb continues: “Look, Cameron was no good as a researcher. . . . He was eminent because of politics.” Nobody said such things at the time, however. Cameron was a very powerful man.
The Scottish-born psychiatrist, who never lost the burr in his voice, kept searching for ways to perfect depatterning and psychic driving. He held out to the CIA front—the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology—that he could find more rapid and less damaging ways to break down behavior. He sent the Society a proposal that combined his two techniques with sensory deprivation and strong drugs. His smorgasbord approach brought together virtually all possible techniques of mind control, which he tested individually and together. When his Agency grant came through in 1957, Cameron began work on sensory deprivation.
For several years, Agency officials had been interested in the interrogation possibilities of this technique that Hebb himself had pioneered at McGill with Canadian defense and Rockefeller money. It consisted of putting a subject in a sealed environment—a small room or even a large box—and depriving him of all sensory input: eyes covered with goggles, ears either covered with muffs or exposed to a constant, monotonous sound, padding to prevent touching, no smells—with this empty regime interrupted only by meal and bathroom breaks. In 1955 Morse Allen of ARTICHOKE made contact at the National Institutes of Health with Dr. Maitland Baldwin who had done a rather gruesome experiment in which an Army volunteer had stayed in the “box” for 40 hours until he kicked his way out after, in Baldwin’s words, “an hour of crying loudly and sobbing in a most heartrending fashion.” The experiment convinced Baldwin that the isolation technique could break any man, no matter how intelligent or strong-willed. Hebb, who unlike Baldwin released his subjects when they wanted, had never left anyone in “the box” for more than six days. Baldwin told Morse Allen that beyond that sensory deprivation would almost certainly cause irreparable damage. Nevertheless, Baldwin agreed that if the Agency could provide the cover and the subjects, he would do, according to Allen’s report, “terminal type” experiments. After numerous meetings inside the CIA on how and where to fund Baldwin, an Agency medical officer finally shot down the project as being “immoral and inhuman,” suggesting that those pushing the experiments might want to “volunteer their heads for use in Dr. Baldwin’s ‘noble’ project.”
With Cameron, Agency officials not only had a doctor willing to perform terminal experiments in sensory deprivation, but one with his own source of subjects. As part of his CIA-funded research, he had a “box” built in the converted stables behind the hospital that housed Leonard Rubenstein and his behavioral laboratory. Undaunted by the limits set in Hebb’s work, Cameron left one woman in for 35 days, although he had so scrambled her mind with his other techniques that one cannot say, as Baldwin predicted to the Agency, if the prolonged deprivation did specific damage. This subject’s name was Mary C., and, try as he might, Cameron could not get through to her. As the aloof psychiatrist wrote in his notes: “Although the patient was prepared by both prolonged sensory isolation (35 days) and by repeated depatterning, and although she received 101 days of positive driving, no favorable results were obtained.”[27] Before prescribing this treatment, Cameron had diagnosed the 52-year-old Mary C.: “Conversion reaction in a woman of the involutional age with mental anxiety; hypochondriatic.” In other words, Mary C. was going through menopause.
In his proposal to the CIA front, Cameron also said he would test curare, the South American arrow poison which, when liberally applied, kills by paralyzing internal body functions. In nonlethal doses, curare causes a limited paralysis which blocks but does not stop these functions. According to his papers, some of which wound up in the archives of the American Psychiatric Association, Cameron injected subjects with curare in conjunction with sensory deprivation, presumably to immobilize them further.
Cameron also tested LSD in combination with psychic driving and other techniques. In late 1956 and early 1957, one of his subjects was Val Orlikow, whose husband David has become a member of the Canadian parliament. Suffering from what she calls a “character neurosis that started with postpartum depression,” she entered Allan Memorial as one of Cameron’s personal patients. He soon put her under his version of LSD therapy. One to four times a week, he or another doctor would come into her room and give her a shot of LSD, mixed with either a stimulant or a depressant and then leave her alone with a tape recorder that played excerpts from her last session with him. As far as is known, no other LSD researcher ever subjected his patients to unsupervised trips—certainly not over the course of two months when her hospital records show she was given LSD 14 times. “It was terrifying,” Mrs. Orlikow recalls. “You’re afraid you’ve gone off somewhere and can’t come back.” She was supposed to write down on a pad whatever came into her head while listening to the tapes, but often she became so frightened that she could not write at all. “You become very small,” she says, as her voice quickens and starts to reflect some of her horror. “You’re going to fall off the step, and God, you’re going down into hell because it’s so far, and you are so little. Like Alice, where is the pill that makes you big, and you’re a squirrel, and you can’t get out of the cage, and somebody’s going to kill you.” Then, suddenly, Mrs. Orlikow pulls out of it and lucidly states, “Some very weird things happened.”
Mrs. Orlikow hated the LSD treatment. Several times she told Cameron she would take no more, and the psychiatrist would put his arm around her and ask, “Lassie,” which he called all his women patients, “don’t you want to get well, so you can go home and see your husband?” She remembers feeling guilty about not following the doctor’s orders, and the thought of disappointing Cameron, whom she idolized, crushed her. Finally, after Cameron talked her out of quitting the treatment several times, she had to end it. She left the hospital but stayed under his private care. In 1963 he put her back in the hospital for more intensive psychic driving. “I thought he was God,” she states. “I don’t know how I could have been so stupid. . . . A lot of us were naive. We thought psychiatrists had the answers. Here was the greatest in the world, with all these titles.”
In defense of Cameron, a former associate says the man truly cared about the welfare of his patients. He wanted to make them well. As his former staff psychologist wrote:
He abhorred the waste of human potential, seen most dramatically in the young people whose minds were distorted by what was then considered to be schizophrenia. He felt equally strongly about the loss of wisdom in the aged through memory malfunction. For him, the end justified the means, and when one is dealing with the waste of human potential, it is easy to adopt this stance.
Cameron retired abruptly in 1964, for unexplained reasons. His successor, Dr. Robert Cleghorn, made a virtually unprecedented move in the academic world of mutual back-scratching and praise. He commissioned a psychiatrist and a psychologist, unconnected to Cameron, to study his electroshock work. They found that 60 percent of Cameron’s depatterned patients complained they still had amnesia for the period 6 months to 10 years before the therapy.[28] They could find no clinical proof that showed the treatment to be any more or less effective than other approaches. They concluded that “the incidence of physical complications and the anxiety generated in the patient because of real or imagined memory difficulty argue against” future use of the technique.
The study-team members couched their report in densely academic jargon, but one of them speaks more clearly now. He talks bitterly of one of Cameron’s former patients who needs to keep a list of her simplest household chores to remember how to do them. Then he repeats several times how powerful a man Cameron was, how he was “the godfather of Canadian psychiatry.” He continues, “I probably shouldn’t talk about this, but Cameron—for him to do what he did—he was a very schizophrenic guy, who totally detached himself from the human implications of his work . . . God, we talk about concentration camps. I don’t want to make this comparison, but God, you talk about ‘we didn’t know it was happening,’ and it was—right in our back yard.”
Cameron died in 1967, at age 66, while climbing a mountain. The American Journal of Psychiatry published a long and glowing obituary with a full-page picture of his not-unpleasant face.
D. Ewen Cameron did not need the CIA to corrupt him. He clearly had his mind set on doing unorthodox research long before the Agency front started to fund him. With his own hospital and source of subjects, he could have found elsewhere encouragement and money to replace the CIA’s contribution which never exceeded $20,000 a year. However, Agency officials knew exactly what they were paying for. They traveled periodically to Montreal to observe his work, and his proposal was chillingly explicit. In Cameron, they had a doctor, conveniently outside the United States, willing to do terminal experiments in electroshock, sensory deprivation, drug testing, and all of the above combined. By literally wiping the minds of his subjects clean by depatterning and then trying to program in new behavior, Cameron carried the process known as “brainwashing” to its logical extreme.
It cannot be said how many—if any—other Agency brainwashing projects reached the extremes of Cameron’s work. Details are scarce, since many of the principal witnesses have died, will not talk about what went on, or lie about it. In what ways the CIA applied work like Cameron’s is not known. What is known, however, is that the intelligence community, including the CIA, changed the face of the scientific community during the 1950s and early 1960s by its interest in such experiments. Nearly every scientist on the frontiers of brain research found men from the secret agencies looking over his shoulders, impinging on the research. The experience of Dr. John Lilly illustrates how this intrusion came about.
In 1953 Lilly worked at the National Institutes of Health, outside Washington, doing experimental studies in an effort to “map” the body functions controlled from various locations in the brain. He devised a method of pounding up to 600 tiny sections of hypodermic tubing into the skulls of monkeys, through which he could insert electrodes “into the brain to any desired distance and at any desired location from the cortex down to the bottom of the skull,” he later wrote. Using electric stimulation, Lilly discovered precise centers of the monkeys’ brains that caused pain, fear, anxiety, and anger. He also discovered precise, separate parts of the brain that controlled erection, ejaculation, and orgasm in male monkeys. Lilly found that a monkey, given access to a switch operating a correctly planted electrode, would reward himself with nearly continuous orgasms—at least once every 3 minutes—for up to 16 hours a day.
As Lilly refined his brain “maps,” officials of the CIA and other agencies descended upon him with a request for a briefing. Having a phobia against secrecy, Lilly agreed to the briefing only under the condition that it and his work remain unclassified, completely open to outsiders. The intelligence officials submitted to the conditions most reluctantly, since they knew that Lilly’s openness would not only ruin the spy value of anything they learned but could also reveal the identities and the interests of the intelligence officials to enemy agents. They considered Lilly annoying, uncooperative—possibly even suspicious.
Soon Lilly began to have trouble going to meetings and conferences with his colleagues. As part of the cooperation with the intelligence agencies, most of them had agreed to have their projects officially classified as SECRET, which meant that access to the information required a security clearance.[29] Lilly’s security clearance was withdrawn for review, then tangled up and misplaced—all of which he took as pressure to cooperate with the CIA. Lilly, whose imagination needed no stimulation to conjure up pictures of CIA agents on deadly missions with remote-controlled electrodes strategically implanted in their brains, decided to withdraw from that field of research. He says he had decided that the physical intrusion of the electrodes did too much brain damage for him to tolerate.
In 1954 Lilly began trying to isolate the operations of the brain, free of outside stimulation, through sensory deprivation. He worked in an office next to Dr. Maitland Baldwin, who the following year agreed to perform terminal sensory deprivation experiments for ARTICHOKE’s Morse Allen but who never told Lilly he was working in the field. While Baldwin experimented with his sensory-deprivation “box,” Lilly invented a special “tank.” Subjects floated in a tank of body-temperature water wearing a face mask that provided air but cut off sight and sound. Inevitably, intelligence officials swooped down on Lilly again, interested in the use of his tank as an interrogation tool. Could involuntary subjects be placed in the tank and broken down to the point where their belief systems or personalities could be altered?
It was central to Lilly’s ethic that he himself be the first subject of any experiment, and, in the case of the consciousness-exploring tank work, he and one colleague were the only ones. Lilly realized that the intelligence agencies were not interested in sensory deprivation because of its positive benefits, and he finally concluded that it was impossible for him to work at the National Institutes of Health without compromising his principles. He quit in 1958.
Contrary to most people’s intuitive expectations, Lilly found sensory deprivation to be a profoundly integrating experience for himself personally. He considered himself to be a scientist who subjectively explored the far wanderings of the brain. In a series of private experiments, he pushed himself into the complete unknown by injecting pure Sandoz LSD into his thigh before climbing into the sensory-deprivation tank.[30] When the counterculture sprang up, Lilly became something of a cult figure, with his unique approach to scientific inquiry—though he was considered more of an outcast by many in the professional research community.
For most of the outside world, Lilly became famous with the release of the popular film, The Day of the Dolphin, which the filmmakers acknowledged was based on Lilly’s work with dolphins after he left NIH. Actor George C. Scott portrayed a scientist, who, like Lilly, loved dolphins, did pioneering experiments on their intelligence, and tried to find ways to communicate with them. In the movie, Scott became dismayed when the government pounced on his breakthrough in talking to dolphins and turned it immediately to the service of war. In real life, Lilly was similarly dismayed when Navy and CIA scientists trained dolphins for special warfare in the waters off Vietnam.
A few scientists like Lilly made up their minds not to cross certain ethical lines in their experimental work, while others were prepared to go further even than their sponsors from ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA. Within the Agency itself, there was only one final question: Will a technique work? CIA officials zealously tracked every lead, sparing no expense to check each angle many times over.
By the time the MKULTRA program ended in 1963, Agency researchers had found no foolproof way to brainwash another person.[32] “All experiments beyond a certain point always failed,” says the MKULTRA veteran, “because the subject jerked himself back for some reason or the subject got amnesiac or catatonic.” Agency officials found through work like Cameron’s that they could create “vegetables,” but such people served no operational use. People could be tortured into saying anything, but no science could guarantee that they would tell the truth.
The impotency of brainwashing techniques left the Agency in a difficult spot when Yuri Nosenko defected to the United States in February 1964. A ranking official of the Soviet KGB, Nosenko brought with him stunning information. He said the Russians had bugged the American embassy in Moscow, which turned out to be true. He named some Russian agents in the West. And he said that he had personally inspected the KGB file of Lee Harvey Oswald, who only a few months earlier had been murdered before he could be brought to trial for the assassination of President Kennedy. Nosenko said he learned that the KGB had had no interest in Oswald.
Was Nosenko telling the truth, or was he a KGB “plant” sent to throw the United States off track about Oswald? Was his information about penetration correct, or was Nosenko himself the penetration? Was he acting in good faith? Were the men within the CIA who believed he was acting in good faith themselves acting in good faith? These and a thousand other questions made up the classical trick deck for spies—each card having “true” on one side and “false” on the other.
Top CIA officials felt a desperate need to resolve the issue of Nosenko’s legitimacy. With numerous Agency counterintelligence operations hanging in the balance, Richard Helms, first as Deputy Director and then as Director, allowed CIA operators to work Nosenko over with the interrogation method in which Helms apparently had the most faith. It turned out to be not any truth serum or electroshock depatterning program or anything else from the Agency’s brainwashing search. Helms had Nosenko put through the tried-and-true Soviet method: isolate the prisoner, deaden his senses, break him. For more than three years—1,277 days, to be exact—Agency officers kept Nosenko in solitary confinement. As if they were using the Hinkle-Wolff study as their instruction manual and the Cardinal Mindszenty case as their success story, the CIA men had guards watch over Nosenko day and night, giving him not a moment of privacy. A light bulb burned continuously in his cell. He was allowed nothing to read—not even the labels on toothpaste boxes. When he tried to distract himself by making a chess set from pieces of lint in his cell, the guards discovered his game and swept the area clean. Nosenko had no window, and he was eventually put in a specially built 12’ X 12’ steel bank vault.
Nosenko broke down. He hallucinated. He talked his head off to his interrogators, who questioned him for 292 days, often while they had him strapped into a lie detector. If he told the truth, they did not believe him. While the Soviets and Chinese had shown that they could make a man admit anything, the CIA interrogators apparently lacked a clear idea of exactly what they wanted Nosenko to confess. When it was all over and Richard Helms ordered Nosenko freed after three and a half years of illegal detention, some key Agency officers still believed he was a KGB plant. Others thought he was on the level. Thus the big questions remained unresolved, and to this day, CIA men—past and present—are bitterly split over who Nosenko really is.
With the Nosenko case, the CIA’s brainwashing programs had come full circle. Spurred by the widespread alarm over communist tactics, Agency officials had investigated the field, started their own projects, and looked to the latest technology to make improvements. After 10 years of research, with some rather gruesome results, CIA officials had come up with no techniques on which they felt they could rely. Thus, when the operational crunch came, they fell back on the basic brutality of the Soviet system.
Saturday July 13, 2002
The Guardian
The Manchurian Candidate's plot is an exploitation of terrors floating in the air in 1959: the terror of McCarthyism, which meant any US citizen could at any time be called a Communist and then blacklisted, deprived of her job, cast out of his community; the terror of Communist brain-washing, good American boys in Korea tortured with beatings, castor oil and drugs until they denounced their own country and praised their own enemies.
The Soviets and the Chinese Communists have made an amnesiac assassin out of US soldier Raymond Shaw. Their comrade in the US is Shaw's mother, whose husband is Senator John Iselin, a stand-in for Senator Joe McCarthy. Posing as rabid anti-Communists, Senator and Mrs Iselin are Communist agents. Ultimately, Senator Iselin will win the vice-presidential nomination of his party; his stepson Raymond Shaw is to assassinate the presidential nominee in mid-speech, then Senator Iselin will take his place with a great patriotic address. And then Senator Iselin, or rather his Communist masters, or rather Eleanor Iselin, will be swept into power.
The plot is an excuse, an excuse for the pleasure of its violence. That is: you're going to see everything you ever believed suspended in the air then dashed to the ground. That's a thrill. You're going to believe the notion that a single person could, by means of a single bullet, change history, transform it utterly. Nonsense - even if it happened, in the years after The Manchurian Candidate was made, again and again. Historians tell us it didn't happen; that solitary individuals, even solitary individuals acting out great, historic conspiracies, don't make history. History is made by invisible hands.
When you look now at this 1962 black-and-white movie made up of bits and pieces of Hitchcock and Orson Welles, of Psycho and Citizen Kane most obviously (perhaps less obviously, but more completely, taking Invasion of the Body Snatchers out of science fiction and returning it to history), what's overwhelming is a sense of what the movie does that movies can no longer do. The momentum of the film is so strong, you may not catch this dislocation until the second time you see it, the third, the 10th - but that sense, that itch, may keep calling you back.
I remember first seeing it alone, when it came out in 1962, at the Varsity Theatre in Palo Alto, California, a Moorish wonderland of a movie house. The first thing I did when it was over was call my best friend and tell him he had to see it, too. We went the next night; as we left, I asked what he thought. "Greatest movie I ever saw," he said flatly, as if he didn't want to talk about it - and he didn't.
He said what he said stunned, with bitterness, as if he shouldn't have had to see this thing, as if what it told him was both true and false in a manner he would never be able to untangle, as if it was both incomprehensible and all too clear, as if the whole experience had been, somehow, a gift, the gift of art, and also unfair - and that was how I felt, too.
We saw, as anyone can see today, too many rules broken. It's one thing to have Raymond Shaw, the nasty, boring prig, made into an assassin; the zombie state he's put into when he has to kill is not really so far from his everyday life. When his controllers make him kill his boss, the manner in which Shaw performs the act is not all that different from the way he speaks or gestures to anyone else he might encounter. But it's something else to see him enter the house of Senator Iselin's sworn enemy, Senator Thomas Jordan, who is, for one day, Raymond's father-in-law. On orders from his mother, Raymond shoots the senator through the heart, as he stands by his refrigerator, welcoming his new son-in-law.
When the film played in the Castro Theatre in San Francisco in 2001, some in the audience were laughing as milk spurted from the carton and the senator fell to the floor. The action is too direct, unhesitating, too unadorned to be anything but a hole in the story it is advancing. But then Raymond, being careful not to step in the milk on the floor, approaches the body and puts the necessary, professional second shot into the dead man's brain. As he does so, his wife, the senator's daughter, comes running down the stairs in her nightgown, into the frame - and then Raymond, who has been programmed not only to kill his target but to kill any witnesses - turns and shoots his wife through the forehead. And at this point the audience in the Castro sucked in its breath in a single, audible gasp. You could feel the air go right out of the room.
"We don't take our stories straight any more," wrote Pauline Kael in 1967, in her famous New Yorker review of Bonnie and Clyde, written to save the film from a flood of condemnation by liberal critics appalled by its violence and amorality. "This isn't necessarily bad," she went on. "Bonnie and Clyde is the first film demonstration that the put-on can be used for the purposes of art. The Manchurian Candidate almost succeeded in that, but what was implicitly wild and far-out in the material was nevertheless presented on screen as a straight thriller. Bonnie and Clyde keeps the audience in a kind of eager, nervous imbalance - holds our attention by throwing our disbelief back in our faces. To be put on is to be put on the spot, put on the stage, made the stooge in a comedy act. People in the audience at Bonnie and Clyde are laughing, demonstrating that they're not stooges - that they appreciate the joke - when they catch the first bullet right in the face." But it is precisely the straightness of the presentation that allows Raymond Shaw's bullet to hit the audience in the face, and with more force than any shot fired in Bonnie and Clyde.
And Raymond Shaw's shot through his wife's forehead is not even the worst. At the end of the movie, as Raymond perches high in Madison Square Garden -positioned to assassinate the presidential nominee but instead shoots his stepfather Senator lselin - there is an instant cut to Raymond's mother, seated next to the senator, as she realises what's coming. A second bullet goes through her forehead, and her hands jerk to her head - just as everyone who has seen the film since November 22 1963 has to remember, President Kennedy's hands would go to his neck.
The Manchurian Candidate was taken out of circulation not long after it was released. Not that quickly, not right after the assassination of President Kennedy; while director John Frankenheimer refused to allow a second theatrical run, the film played on television. Then it went missing. Certainly, among those who remembered it, as year after year people continued to tell others about it, about how they had to see it, only to discover that they couldn't, there was a feeling that the film might be part of the inexplicable cycle of assassinations that followed it - a feeling that went far beyond anything in, say, Richard Condon's Manchurian Candidate in Dallas, published in the December 28 1963 edition of the Nation: "I was reading about how Senator Thurston Morton of Kentucky absolved the American people from any guilt in the assassination of the President when a reporter from a South African press association telephoned from London to ask if I felt responsible for the President's killing, inasmuch as I had written a novel, The Manchurian Candidate, on which had been based a film that had just been 'frozen' in the United States because it was felt that the assassin might have seen it and been influenced by it.
"I told the reporter that, with all Americans, I had contributed to form the attitudes of the assassin; and that the assassin, and Americans like him, had contributed to the attitudes which had caused me to write the novel." Rather it was a feeling that the film was part of the supposedly scattered but obviously whole, complete, singular event that the cycle of assassinations comprised: its transformation of what in the United States had been taken as open, public life into private crime or hidden conspiracy. And there must have been a feeling, as the film itself stayed hidden, that the country's real history, history as it is lived out every day, its fundamental premises of work and leisure, love and death, might be a kind of awful secret that no one would ever understand.
It was at a party at John Frankenheimer's house in Malibu, California - just before the California primary - that the novelist Romain Gary approached Robert Kennedy and said: "You know, don't you, that somebody is going to kill you?" Frankenheimer had spent 102 days on the campaign with Kennedy, filming speeches and appearances and making advertisements; on the day of the California primary Kennedy decided he wanted to watch the returns at Frankenheimer's house in Malibu. The campaign staff insisted Kennedy be at the Ambassador Hotel for a network interview. Frankenheimer drove him. "He went in and did the telecast," recalled Frankenheimer in 1995, speaking to Charles Champlin, but Kennedy nevertheless insisted on returning to Frankenheimer's house as soon as he was able to make his victory speech. Eugene McCarthy was refusing to concede; finally he did. "Bobby said, 'I want you standing next to me on the podium,'" Frankenheimer said. "I said, 'Bobby, I don't think it looks good for you to have a Hollywood director standing next to you. It's not the image.' He said, 'You're right.' And the man who stood next to him was shot, too. That would have been me.
"Bobby said, 'When I say, "Let's win it in Chicago", go and get the car. I'll come right out.' I was standing there in an archway, feeling like someone in The Manchurian Candidate," Frankenheimer said; in the scene in his own movie set in the briefing room used by the secretary of defence, he found the action taking place both in the flesh and on TV screens. "I can see Bobby's face on a big television monitor in the ballroom and I can see his back for real. As I stood there a figure went by me and it was as if there was electricity coming out of his body. I've never felt anything like it before or since. Of course it was Sirhan Sirhan."
Frankenheimer waited; then came the last act. "When Bobby said, 'Let's win it in Chicago', I left and got the Rolls and brought it to the entrance. The next thing I knew there were policemen banging on the car and saying, 'Move it!' I said, 'This is Senator Kennedy's car.' They shouted, 'Move it', then a black woman ran out of the hotel shouting, 'Kennedy's been shot!' The cops started hitting the car with their batons. It had to be repainted later. I drove off and turned on the radio and got a CBS flash which said, 'Senator Robert Kennedy, his brother-in-law Stephen Smith and movie director John Frankenheimer have been shot.'"
(by John Marks)
(druglibrary.org)
Sid Gottlieb was one of many CIA officials who tried to find a way to assassinate Fidel Castro. Castro survived, of course, and his victory over the Agency in April 1961 at the Bay of Pigs put the Agency in the headlines for the first time, in a very unfavorable light. Among the fiasco's many consequences was Gottlieb's loss of the research part of the CIA's behavior-control programs. Still, he and the others kept trying to kill Castro.
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy reportedly vowed to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces. In the end, he settled for firing Allen Dulles and his top deputies. To head the Agency, which lost none of its power, Kennedy brought in John McCone, a defense contractor and former head of the Atomic Energy Commission. With no operational background, McCone had a different notion than Dulles of how to manage the CIA, particularly in the scientific area. "McCone never felt akin to the covert way of doing things," recalls Ray Cline, whom the new Director made his Deputy for Intelligence. McCone apparently believed that science should be in the hands of the scientists, not the clandestine operators, and he brought in a fellow Californian, an aerospace "whiz kid" named Albert "Bud" Wheelon to head a new Agency Directorate for Science and Technology.
Before then, the Technical Services Staff (TSS), although located in the Clandestine Services, had been the Agency's largest scientific component. McCone decided to strip TSS of its main research functions—including the behavioral one—and let it concentrate solely on providing operational support. In 1962 he approved a reorganization of TSS that brought in Seymour Russell, a tough covert operator, as the new chief. "The idea was to get a close interface with operations," recalls an ex-CIA man. Experienced TSS technicians remained as deputies to the incoming field men, and the highest deputyship in all TSS went to Sid Gottlieb, who became number-two man under Russell. For Gottlieb, this was another significant promotion helped along by his old friend Richard Helms, whom McCone had elevated to be head of the Clandestine Services.
In his new job, Gottlieb kept control of MKULTRA. Yet, in order to comply with McCone's command on research programs, Gottlieb had to preside over the partial dismantling of his own program. The loss was not as difficult as it might have been, because, after 10 years of exploring the frontiers of the mind, Gottlieb had a clear idea of what worked and what did not in the behavioral field. Those areas that still were in the research stage tended to be extremely esoteric and technical, and Gottlieb must have known that if the Science Directorate scored any breakthroughs, he would be brought back into the picture immediately to apply the advances to covert operations.
"Sid was not the kind of bureaucrat who wanted to hold on to everything at all costs," recalls an admiring colleague. Gottlieb carefully pruned the MKULTRA lists, turning over to the Science Directorate the exotic subjects that showed no short-term operational promise and keeping for himself those psychological, chemical, and biological programs that had already passed the research stage. As previously stated, he moved John Gittinger and the personality-assessment staff out of the Human Ecology Society and kept them under TSS control in their own proprietary company.
While Gottlieb was effecting these changes, his programs were coming under attack from another quarter. In 1963 the CIA Inspector General did the study that led to the suspension of unwitting drug testing in the San Francisco and New York safehouses. This was a blow to Gottlieb, who clearly intended to hold on to this kind of research. At the same time, the Inspector General also recommended that Agency officials draft a new charter for the whole MKULTRA program, which still was exempt from most internal CIA controls. He found that many of the MKULTRA subprojects were of "insufficient sensitivity" to justify bypassing the Agency's normal procedures for approving and storing records of highly classified programs. Richard Helms, still the protector of unfettered behavioral research, responded by agreeing that there should be a new charter—on the condition that it be almost the same as the old one. "The basic reasons for requesting waiver of standardized administrative controls over these sensitive activities are as valid today as they were in April, 1953," Helms wrote. Helms agreed to such changes as having the CIA Director briefed on the programs twice a year, but he kept the approval process within his control and made sure that all the files would be retained inside TSS. And as government officials so often do when they do not wish to alter anything of substance, he proposed a new name for the activity. In June 1964 MKULTRA became MKSEARCH. [1]
Gottlieb acknowledged that security did not require transferring all the surviving MKULTRA subprojects over to MKSEARCH. He moved 18 subprojects back into regular Agency funding channels, including ones dealing with the sneezing powders, stink bombs, and other "harassment substances." TSS officials had encouraged the development of these as a way to make a target physically uncomfortable and hence to cause short-range changes in his behavior.
Other MKULTRA subprojects dealt with ways to maximize stress on whole societies. Just as Gittinger's Personality Assessment System provided a psychological road map for exploiting an individual's weaknesses, CIA "destabilization" plans provided guidelines for destroying the internal integrity of target countries like Castro's Cuba or Allende's Chile. Control— whether of individuals or nations—has been the Agency's main business, and TSS officials supplied tools for the "macro" as well as the "micro" attacks.
For example, under MKULTRA Subproject #143, the Agency gave Dr. Edward Bennett of the University of Houston about $20,000 a year to develop bacteria to sabotage petroleum products. Bennett found a substance that, when added to oil, fouled or destroyed any engine into which it was poured. CIA operators used exactly this kind of product in 1967 when they sent a sabotage team made up of Cuban exiles into France to pollute a shipment of lubricants bound for Cuba. The idea was that the tainted oil would "grind out motors and cause breakdowns," says an Agency man directly involved. This operation, which succeeded, was part of a worldwide CIA effort that lasted through the 1960s into the 1970s to destroy the Cuban economy. [2] Agency officials reasoned, at least in the first years, that it would be easier to overthrow Castro if Cubans could be made unhappy with their standard of living. "We wanted to keep bread out of the stores so people were hungry," says the CIA man who was assigned to anti-Castro operations. "We wanted to keep rationing in effect and keep leather out, so people got only one pair of shoes every 18 months."
Leaving this broader sort of program out of the new structure, Gottlieb regrouped the most sensitive behavioral activities under the MKSEARCH umbrella. He chose to continue seven projects, and the ones he picked give a good indication of those parts of MKULTRA that Gottlieb considered important enough to save. These included none of the sociological studies, nor the search for a truth drug. Gottlieb put the emphasis on chemical and biological substances—not because he thought these could be used to turn men into robots, but because he valued them for their predictable ability to disorient, discredit, injure, or kill people. He kept active two private labs to produce such substances, funded consultants who had secure ways to test them and ready access to subjects, and maintained a funding conduit to pass money on to these other contractors. Here are the seven surviving MKSEARCH subprojects:
First on the TSS list was the safehouse program for drug testing run by George White and others in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Even in 1964, Gottlieb and Helms had not given up hope that unwitting experiments could be resumed, and the Agency paid out $30,000 that year to keep the safehouses open. In the meantime, something was going on at the "pad"—or at least George White kept on sending the CIA vouchers for unorthodox expenses—$1,100 worth in February 1965 alone under the old euphemism for prostitutes, "undercover agents for operations." What White was doing with or to these agents cannot be said, but he kept the San Francisco operation active right up until the time it finally closed in June. Gottlieb did not give up on the New York safehouse until the following year.[3]
MKSEARCH Subproject #2 involved continuing a $150,000a-year contract with a Baltimore biological laboratory This lab, run by at least one former CIA germ expert, gave TSS "a quick-delivery capability to meet anticipated future operational needs," according to an Agency document. Among other things, it provided a private place for "large-scale production of microorganisms." The Agency was paying the Army Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick about $100,000 a year for the same services. With its more complete facilities, Fort Detrick could be used to create and package more esoteric bacteria, but Gottlieb seems to have kept the Baltimore facility going in order to have a way of producing biological weapons without the Army's germ warriors knowing about it. This secrecy-within-secrecy was not unusual when TSS men were dealing with subjects as sensitive as infecting targets with diseases. Except on the most general level, no written records were kept on the subject. Whenever an operational unit in the Agency asked TSS about obtaining a biological weapon, Gottlieb or his aides automatically turned down the request unless the head of the Clandestine Services had given his prior approval. Gottlieb handled these operational needs personally, and during the early 1960s (when CIA assassination attempts probably were at their peak) even Gottlieb's boss, the TSS chief, was not told what was happening.
With his biological arsenal assured, Gottlieb also secured his chemical flank in MKSEARCH. Another subproject continued a relationship set up in 1959 with a prominent industrialist who headed a complex of companies, including one that custom-manufactured rare chemicals for pharmaceutical producers. This man, whom on several occasions CIA officials gave $100 bills to pay for his products, was able to perform specific lab jobs for the Agency without consulting with his board of directors. In 1960 he supplied the Agency with 3 kilos (6.6 pounds) of a deadly carbamate—the same poison OSS's Stanley Lovell tried to use against Hitler. [4] This company president also was useful to the Agency because he was a ready source of information on what was going on in the chemical world. The chemical services he offered, coupled with his biological counterpart, gave the CIA the means to wage "instant" chemical and biological attacks—a capability that was frequently used, judging by the large numbers of receipts and invoices that the CIA released under the Freedom of Information Act.
With new chemicals and drugs constantly coming to their attention through their continuing relations with the major pharmaceutical companies, TSS officials needed places to test them, particularly after the safehouses closed. Dr. James Hamilton, the San Francisco psychiatrist who worked with George White in the original OSS marijuana days, provided a way. He became MKSEARCH Subproject #3.
Hamilton had joined MKULTRA in its earliest days and had been used as a West Coast supervisor for Gottlieb and company. Hamilton was one of the renaissance men of the program, working on everything from psychochemicals to kinky sex to carbon-dioxide inhalation. By the early 1960s, he had arranged to get access to prisoners at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville. [5] Hamilton worked through a nonprofit research institute connected to the Facility to carry out, as a document puts it, "clinical testing of behavioral control materials" on inmates. Hamilton's job was to provide "answers to specific questions and solutions to specific problems of direct interest to the Agency." In a six-month span in 1967 and 1968, the psychiatrist spent over $10,000 in CIA funds simply to pay volunteers— which at normal rates meant he experimented on between 400 to 1,000 inmates in that time period alone.
Another MKSEARCH subproject provided $20,000 to $25,000 a year to Dr. Carl Pfeiffer. Pfeiflfer's Agency connection went back to 1951, when he headed the Pharmacology Department at the University of Illinois Medical School. He then moved to Emory University and tested LSD and other drugs on inmates of the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta. From there, he moved to New Jersey, where he continued drug experiments on the prisoners at the Bordentown reformatory. An internationally known pharmacologist, Pfeiffer provided the MKSEARCH program with data on the preparation, use, and effect of drugs. He was readily available if Gottlieb or a colleague wanted a study made of the properties of a particular substance, and like most of TSS's contractors, he also was an intelligence source. Pfeiffer was useful in this last capacity during the latter part of the 1960s because he sat on the Food and Drug Administration committee that allocated LSD for scientific research in the United States. By this time, LSD was so widely available on the black market that the Federal Government had replaced the CIA's informal controls of the 1950s with laws and procedures forbidding all but the most strictly regulated research. With Pfeiffer on the governing committee, the CIA could keep up its traditional role of monitoring above-ground LSD experimentation around the United States.
To cover some of the more exotic behavioral fields, another MKSEARCH program continued TSS's relationship with Dr. Maitland Baldwin, the brain surgeon at the National Institutes of Health who had been so willing in 1955 to perform "terminal experiments" in sensory deprivation for Morse Allen and the ARTICHOKE program. After Allen was pushed aside by the men from MKULTRA, the new TSS team hired Baldwin as a consultant According to one of them, he was full of bright ideas on how to control behavior, but they were wary of him because he was such an "eager beaver" with an obvious streak of "craziness." Under TSS auspices, Baldwin performed lobotomies on apes and then put these simian subjects into sensory deprivation—presumably in the same "box" he had built himself at NIH and then had to repair after a desperate soldier kicked his way out. There is no information available on whether Baldwin extended this work to humans, although he did discuss with an outside consultant how lobotomized patients reacted to prolonged isolation. Like Hamilton, Baldwin was a jack-of-all trades who in one experiment beamed radio frequency energy directly at the brain of a chimpanzee and in another cut off one monkey's head and tried to transplant it to the decapitated body of another monkey. Baldwin used $250 in Agency money to buy his own electroshock machine, and he did some kind of unspecified work at a TSS safehouse that caused the CIA to shell out $1450 to renovate and repair the place.
The last MKSEARCH subproject covered the work of Dr. Charles Geschickter, who served TSS both as researcher and funding conduit. CIA documents show that Geschickter tested powerful drugs on mental defectives and terminal cancer patients, apparently at the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington. In all, the Agency put $655,000 into Geschickter's research on knockout drugs, stress-producing chemicals, and mind-altering substances. Nevertheless, the doctor's principal service to TSS officials seems to have been putting his family foundation at the disposal of the CIA—both to channel funds and to serve as a source of cover to Agency operators. About $2.1 million flowed through this tightly controlled foundation to other researchers.[6] Under MKSEARCH, Geschickter continued to provide TSS with a means to assess drugs rapidly, and he branched out into trying to knock out monkeys with radar waves to the head (a technique which worked but risked frying vital parts of the brain). The Geschickter Fund for Medical Research remained available as a conduit until 1967. [7]
As part of the effort to keep finding new substances to test within MKSEARCH, Agency officials continued their search for magic mushrooms, leaves, roots, and barks. In 1966, with considerable CIA backing, J. C. King, the former head of the Agency's Western Hemisphere Division who was eased out after the Bay of Pigs, formed an ostensibly private firm called Amazon Natural Drug Company. King, who loved to float down jungle rivers on the deck of his houseboat with a glass of scotch in hand, searched the backwaters of South America for plants of interest to the Agency and/or medical science. To do the work, he hired Amazon men and women, plus at least two CIA paramilitary operators who worked out of Amazon offices in Iquitos, Peru. They shipped back to the United States finds that included Chondodendron toxicoferum, a paralytic agent which is "absolutely lethal in high doses," according to Dr. Timothy Plowman, a Harvard botanist who like most of the staff was unwitting of the CIA involvement. Another plant that was collected and grown by Amazon employees was the hallucinogen known as yage, which author William Burroughs has described as "the final fix."
MKSEARCH went on through the 1960s and into the early 1970s, but with a steadily decreasing budget. In 1964 it cost the Agency about $250,000. In 1972 it was down to four subprojects and $110,000. Gottlieb was a very busy man by then, having taken over all TSS in 1967 when his patron, Richard Helms finally made it to the top of the Agency. In June 1972 Gottlieb decided to end MKSEARCH, thus bringing down the curtain on the quest he himself had started two decades before. He wrote this epitaph for the program:
As a final commentary, I would like to point out that, by means of Project MKSEARCH, the Clandestine Service has been able to maintain contact with the leading edge of developments in the field of biological and chemical control of human behavior. It has become increasingly obvious over the last several years that this general area had less and less relevance to current clandestine operations. The reasons for this are many and complex, but two of them are perhaps worth mentioning briefly. On the scientific side, it has become very clear that these materials and techniques are too unpredictable in their effect on individual human beings, under specific circumstances, to be operationally useful. Our operations officers, particularly the emerging group of new senior operations officers, have shown a discerning and perhaps commendable distaste for utilizing these materials and techniques. They seem to realize that, in addition to moral and ethical considerations, the extreme sensitivity and security constraints of such operations effectively rule them out.
About the time Gottlieb wrote these words, the Watergate break-in occurred, setting in train forces that would alter his life and that of Richard Helms. A few months later, Richard Nixon was reselected. Soon after the election, Nixon, for reasons that have never been explained, decided to purge Helms. Before leaving to become Ambassador to Iran, Helms presided over a wholesale destruction of documents and tapes—presumably to minimize information that might later be used against him. Sid Gottlieb decided to follow Helms into retirement, and the two men mutually agreed to get rid of all the documentary traces of MKULTRA. They had never kept files on the safehouse testing or similarly sensitive operations in the first place, but they were determined to erase the existing records of their search to control human behavior. Gottlieb later told a Senate committee that he wanted to get rid of the material because of a "burgeoning paper problem" within the Agency, because the files were of "no constructive use" and might be "misunderstood," and because he wanted to protect the reputations of the researchers with whom he had collaborated on the assurance of secrecy. Gottlieb got in touch with the men who had physical custody of the records, the Agency's archivists, who proceeded to destroy what he and Helms thought were the only traces of the program. They made a mistake, however—or the archivists did. Seven boxes of substantive records and reports were incinerated, but seven more containing invoices and financial records survived—apparently due to misfiling.
Nixon named James Schlesinger to be the new head of the Agency, a post in which he stayed only a few months before the increasingly beleaguered President moved him over to be Secretary of Defense at the height of Watergate. During his short stop at CIA, Schlesinger sent an order to all Agency employees asking them to let his office know about any instances where Agency officials might have carried out any improper or illegal actions. Somebody mentioned Frank Olson's suicide, and it was duly included in the many hundreds of pages of misdeeds reported which became known within the CIA as the "family jewels."
Schlesinger, an outsider to the career CIA operators, had opened a Pandora's box that the professionals never managed to shut again. Samples of the "family jewels" were slipped out to New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh, who created a national furor in December 1974 when he wrote about the CIA's illegal spying on domestic dissidents during the Johnson and Nixon years. President Gerald Ford appointed a commission headed by Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller to investigate the past CIA abuses—and to limit the damage. Included in the final Rockefeller report was a section on how an unnamed Department of the Army employee had jumped out of a New York hotel window after Agency men had slipped him LSD. That revelation made headlines around the country. The press seized upon the sensational details and virtually ignored two even more revealing sentences buried in the Rockefeller text: "The drug program was part of a much larger CIA program to study possible means for controlling human behavior. Other studies explored the effects of radiation, electric-shock, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and harassment substances."
At this point, I entered the story. I was intrigued by those two sentences, and I filed a Freedom of Information request with the CIA to obtain all the documents the Agency had furnished the Rockefeller Commission on behavior control. Although the law requires a government agency to respond within 10 days, it took the Agency more than a year to send me the first 50 documents on the subject, which turned out to be heavily censored.
In the meantime, the committee headed by Senator Frank Church was looking into the CIA, and it called in Sid Gottlieb, who was then spending his retirement working as a volunteer in a hospital in India. Gottlieb secretly testified about CIA assassination programs. (In describing his role in its final report, the Church Committee used a false name, "Victor Scheider.") Asked about the behavioral-control programs, Gottlieb apparently could not—or would not—remember most of the details. The committee had almost no documents to work with, since the main records had been destroyed in 1973 and the financial files had not yet been found.
The issue lay dormant until 1977, when, about June 1, CIA officials notified my lawyers that they had found the 7 boxes of MKULTRA financial records and that they would send me the releasable portions over the following months. As I waited, CIA Director Stansfield Turner notified President Carter and then the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that an Agency official had located the 7 boxes. Admiral Turner publicly described MKULTRA as only a program of drug experimentation and not one aimed at behavior control. On July 20 I held a press conference at which I criticized Admiral Turner for his several distortions in describing the MKULTRA program. To prove my various points, I released to the reporters a score of the CIA documents that had already come to me and that gave the flavor of the behavioral efforts. Perhaps it was a slow news day, or perhaps people simply were interested in government attempts to tamper with the mind. In any event, the documents set off a media bandwagon that had the story reported on all three network television news shows and practically everywhere else.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Senator Edward Kennedy's Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research soon announced they would hold public hearings on the subject. Both panels had looked into the secret research in 1975 but had been hampered by the lack of documents and forthcoming witnesses. At first the two committees agreed to work together, and they held one joint hearing. Then, Senator Barry Goldwater brought behind-the-scenes pressure to get the Intelligence panel, of which he was vice-chairman, to drop out of the proceedings. He claimed, among other things, that the committee was just rehashing old programs and that the time had come to stop dumping on the CIA. Senator Kennedy plowed ahead anyway. He was limited, however, by the small size of the staff he assigned to the investigation, and his people were literally buried in paper by CIA officials, who released 8,000 pages of documents in the weeks before the hearings. As the hearings started, the staff still not had read everything—let alone put it all in context.
As Kennedy's staff prepared for the public sessions, the former men from MKULTRA also got ready. According to one of them, they agreed among themselves to "keep the inquiry within bounds that would satisfy the committee." Specifically, he says that meant volunteering no more information than the Kennedy panel already had. Charles Siragusa, the narcotics agent who ran the New York safehouse, reports he got a telephone call during this period from Ray Treichler, the Stanford Ph.D. who specialized in chemical warfare for the MKULTRA program. "He wanted me to deny knowing about the safehouse," says Siragusa. "He didn't want me to admit that he was the guy.... I said there was no way I could do that." Whether any other ex-TSS men also suborned perjury cannot be said, but several of them appear to have committed perjury at the hearings. [8] As previously noted, Robert Lashbrook denied firsthand knowledge of the safehouse operation when, in fact, he had supervised one of the "pads" and been present, according to George White's diary, at the time of an "LSD surprise" experiment. Dr. Charles Geschickter testified he had not tested stress-producing drugs on human subjects while both his own 1960 proposal to the Agency and the CIA's documents indicate the opposite.
Despite the presence of a key aide who constantly cued him during the hearings, Senator Kennedy was not prepared to deal with these and other inconsistencies. He took no action to follow up obviously perjured testimony, and he seemed content to win headlines with reports of "The Gang That Couldn't Spray Straight." Although that particular testimony had been set up in advance by a Kennedy staffer, the Senator still managed to act surprised when ex-MKULTRA official David Rhodes told of the ill-fated LSD experiment at the Marin County safehouse.
The Kennedy hearings added little to the general state of knowledge on the CIA's behavior-control programs. CIA officials, both past and present, took the position that basically nothing of substance was learned during the 25-odd years of research, the bulk of which had ended in 1963, and they were not challenged. That proposition is, on its face, ridiculous, but neither Senator Kennedy nor any other investigator has yet put any real pressure on the Agency to reveal the content of the research—what was actually learned—as opposed to the experimental means of carrying it out. In this book, I have tried to get at some of the substantive questions, but I have had access to neither the scientific records, which Gottlieb and Helms destroyed, nor the principal people involved. Gottlieb, for instance, who moved from India to Santa Cruz, California and then to parts unknown, turned down repeated requests to be interviewed. "I am interested in very different matters than the subject of your book these days," he wrote, "and do not have either the time or the inclination to reprocess matters that happened a long time ago."
Faced with these obstacles, I have tried to weave together a representative sample of what went on, but having dealt with a group of people who regularly incorporated lying into their daily work, I cannot be sure. I cannot be positive that they never found a technique to control people, despite my definite bias in favor of the idea that the human spirit defeated the manipulators. Only a congressional committee could compel truthful testimony from people who have so far refused to be forthcoming, and even Congress' record has not been good so far. A determined investigative committee at least could make sure that the people being probed do not determine the "bounds" of the inquiry.
A new investigation would probably not be worth the effort just to take another stab at MKULTRA and ARTICHOKE. Despite my belief that there are some skeletons hidden—literally —the public probably now knows the basic parameters of these programs. Thefact is, however, that CIA officials actively experimented with behavior-control methods for another decade after Sid Gottlieb and company lost the research action. The Directorate of Science and Technology—specifically its Office of Research and Development (ORDfdid not remain idle after Director McCone transferred the behavioral research function in 1962.
In ORD, Dr. Stephen Aldrich, a graduate of Amherst and Northwestern Medical School, took over the role that Morse Allen and then Sid Gottlieb had played before him. Aldrich had been the medical director of the Office of Scientific Intelligence back in the days when that office was jockeying with Morse Allen for control of ARTICHOKE, so he was no stranger to the programs. Under his leadership, ORD officials kept probing for ways to control human behavior, and they were doing so with space-age technology that made the days of MKULTRA look like the horse-and-buggy era. If man could get to the moon by the end of the 1960s, certainly the well-financed scientists of ORD could make a good shot at conquering inner space.
They brought their technology to bear on subjects like the electric stimulation of the brain. John Lilly had done extensive work in this field a decade earlier, before concluding that to maintain his integrity he must find another field. CIA men had no such qualms, however. They actively experimented with placing electrodes in the brain of animals and—probably— men. Then they used electric and radio signals to move their subjects around. The field went far beyond giving monkeys orgasms, as Lilly had done. In the CIA itself, Sid Gottlieb and the MKULTRA crew had made some preliminary studies of it. They started in 1960 by having a contractor search all the available literature, and then they had mapped out the parts of animals' brains that produced reactions when stimulated. By April 1961 the head of TSS was able to report "we now have a 'production capability' " in brain stimulation and "we are close to having debugged a prototype system whereby dogs can be guided along specific courses." Six months later, a CIA document noted, "The feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated.... Special investigations and evaluations will be conducted toward the application of selected elements of these techniques to man." Another six months later, TSS officials had found a use for electric stimulation: this time putting electrodes in the brains of cold-blooded animals—presumably reptiles. While much of the experimentation with dogs and cats was to find a way of wiring the animal and then directing it by remote control into, say, the office of the Soviet ambassador, this cold-blooded project was designed instead for the delivery of chemical and biological agents or for "executive action-type operations," according to a document. "Executive action" was the CIA's euphemism for assassination.
With the brain electrode technology at this level, Steve Aldrich and ORD took over the research function from TSS. What the ORD men found cannot be said, but the open literature would indicate that the field progressed considerably during the 1960s. Can the human brain be wired and controlled by a big enough computer? Aldrich certainly tried to find out.
Creating amnesia remained a "big goal" for the ORD researcher, states an ex-CIA man. Advances in brain surgery, such as the development of three-dimensional, "stereotaxic" techniques, made psychosurgery a much simpler matter and created the possibility that a precisely placed electrode probe could be used to cut the link between past memory and present recall. As for subjects to be used in behavioral experiments of this sort, the ex-CIA man states that ORD had access to prisoners in at least one American penal institution. A former Army doctor stationed at the Edgewood chemical laboratory states that the lab worked with CIA men todevelop a drug that could be used to help program in new memories into the mind of an amnesic subject. How far did the Agency take this research? I don't know.
The men from ORD tried to create their own latter-day version of the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. Located outside Boston, it was called the Scientific Engineering Institute, and Agency officials had set it up originally in 1956 as a proprietary company to do research on radar and other technical matters that had nothing to do with human behavior. Its president, who says he was a "figurehead," was Dr. Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid. In the early 1960s, ORD officials decided to bring it into the behavioral field and built a new wing to the Institute's modernistic building for the "life sciences." They hired a group of behavioral and medical scientists who were allowed to carry on their own independent research as long as it met Institute standards. These scientists were available to consult with frequent visitors from Washington, and they were encouraged to take long lunches in the Institute's dining room where they mixed with the physical scientists and brainstormed about virtually everything. One veteran recalls a colleague joking, "If you could find the natural radio frequency of a person's sphincter, you could make him run out of the room real fast." Turning serious, the veteran states the technique was "plausible," and he notes that many of the crazy ideas bandied about at lunch developed into concrete projects.
Some of these projects may have been worked on at the Institute's own several hundred-acre farm located in the Massachusetts countryside. But of the several dozen people contacted in an effort to find out what the Institute did, the most anyone would say about experiments at the farm was that one involved stimulating the pleasure centers of crows' brains in order to control their behavior. Presumably, ORD men did other things at their isolated rural lab.
Just as the MKULTRA program had been years ahead of the scientific community, ORD activities were similarly advanced. "We looked at the manipulation of genes," states one of the researchers. "We were interested in gene splintering. The rest of the world didn't ask until 1976 the type of questions we were facing in 1965.... Everybody was afraid of building the supersoldier who would take orders without questioning, like the kamikaze pilot. Creating a subservient society was not out of sight." Another Institute man describes the work of a colleague who bombarded bacteria with ultraviolet radiation in order to create deviant strains. ORD also sponsored work in parapsychology. Along with the military services, Agency officials wanted to know whether psychics could read minds or control them from afar (telepathy), if they could gain information about distant places or people (clairvoyance or remote viewing), if they could predict the future (precognition), or influence the movement of physical objects or even the human mind (photokinesis). The last could have incredibly destructive applications, if it worked. For instance, switches setting off nuclear bombs would have to be moved only a few inches to launch a holocaust. Or, enemy psychics, with minds honed to laser-beam sharpness, could launch attacks to burn out the brains of American nuclear scientists. Any or all of these techniques have numerous applications to the spy trade.
While ORD officials apparently left much of the drug work to Gottlieb, they could not keep their hands totally out of this field. In 1968 they set up a joint program, called Project OFTEN, with the Army Chemical Corps at Edgewood, Maryland to study the effects of various drugs on animals and humans. The Army helped the Agency put together a computerized data base for drug testing and supplied military volunteers for some of the experiments. In one case, with a particularly effective incapacitiating agent, the Army arranged for inmate volunteers at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia. Project OFTEN had both offensive and defensive sides, according to an ORD man who described it in a memorandum. He cited as an example of what he and his coworkers hoped to find "a compound that could simulate a heart attack or a stroke in the targeted individual." In January 1973, just as Richard Helms was leaving the Agency and James Schlesinger was coming in, Project OFTEN was abruptly canceled.
What—if any—success the ORD men had in creating heart attacks or in any of their other behavioral experiments simply cannot be said. Like Sid Gottlieb, Steve Aldrich is not saying, and his colleagues seem even more closemouthed than Gottlieb's. In December 1977, having gotten wind of the ORD programs, I filed a Freedom of Information request for access to ORD files "on behavioral research, including but not limited to any research or operational activities related to bio-electrics, electric or radio stimulation of the brain, electronic destruction of memory, stereotaxic surgery, psychosurgery, hypnotism, parapsychology, radiation, microwaves, and ultrasonics." I also asked for documentation on behavioral testing in U.S. penal institutions, and I later added a request for all available files on amnesia. The Agency wrote back six months later that ORD had "identified 130 boxes (approximately 130 cubic feet) of material that are reasonably expected to contain behavioral research documents."
Considering that Admiral Turner and other CIA officials had tried to leave the impression with Congress and the public that behavioral research had almost all ended in 1963 with the phaseout of MKULTRA, this was an amazing admission. The sheer volume of material was staggering. This book is based on the 7 boxes of heavily censored MKULTRA financial records plus another 3 or so of ARTICHOKE documents, supplemented by interviews. It has taken me over a year, with significant research help, to digest this much smaller bulk. Clearly, greater resources than an individual writer can bring to bear will be needed to get to the bottom of the ORD programs.
A free society's best defense against unethical behavior modification is public disclosure and awareness. The more people understand consciousness-altering technology, the more likely they are to recognize its application, and the less likely it will be used. When behavioral research is carried out in secret, it can be turned against the government's enemies, both foreign and domestic. No matter how pure or defense-oriented the motives of the researchers, once the technology exists, the decision to use it is out of their hands. Who can doubt that if the Nixon administration or J. Edgar Hoover had had some foolproof way to control people, they would not have used the technique against their political foes, just as the CIA for years tried to use similar tactics overseas?
As with the Agency's secrets, it is now too late to put behavioral technology back in the box. Researchers are bound to keep making advances. The technology has already spread to our schools, prisons, and mental hospitals, not to mention the advertising community, and it has also been picked up by police forces around the world. Placing hoods over the heads of political prisoners—a modified form of sensory deprivation—has become a standard tactic around the world, from Northern Ireland to Chile. The Soviet Union has consistently used psychiatric treatment as an instrument of repression. Such methods violate basic human rights just as much as physical abuse, even if they leave no marks on the body.
Totalitarian regimes will probably continue, as they have in the past, to search secretly for ways to manipulate the mind, no matter what the United States does. The prospect of being able to control people seems too enticing for most tyrants to give up. Yet, we as a country can defend ourselves without sending our own scientists—mad or otherwise—into a hidden war that violates our basic ethical and constitutional principles. After all, we created the Nuremberg Code to show there were limits on scientific research and its application. Admittedly, American intelligence officials have violated our own standard, but the U.S. Government has now officially declared violations will no longer be permitted. The time has come for the United States to lead by example in voluntarily renouncing secret government behavioral research. Other countries might even follow suit, particularly if we were to propose an international agreement which provides them with a framework to do so.
Tampering with the mind is much too dangerous to be left to the spies. Nor should it be the exclusive province of the behavioral scientists, who have given us cause for suspicion. Take this statement by their most famous member, B. F. Skinner: "My image in some places is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively." Such notions are much more acceptable in prestigious circles than people tend to think: D. Ewen Cameron read papers about "depatterning" with electroshock before meetings of his fellow psychiatrists, and they elected him their president. Human behavior is so important that it must concern us all. The more vigilant we and our representatives are, the less chance we will be unwitting victims.
Footnotes
1. At 1977 Senate hearings, CIA Director Stansfield Turner summed up some of MKULTRA's accomplishments over its 11-year existence: The program contracted out work to 80 institutions, which included 44 colleges or universities, 15 research facilities or private companies, 12 hospitals or clinics, and 3 penal institutions. I estimate that MKULTRA cost the taxpayers somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million. (back)
2. This economic sabotage program started in 1961, and the chain of command "ran up to the President," according to Kennedy adviser Richard Goodwin. On the CIA side, Agency Director John McCone "was very strong on it," says his former deputy Ray Cline. Cline notes that McCone had the standing orders to all CIA stations abroad rewritten to include "a sentence or two" authorizing a continuing program to disrupt the Cuban economy. Cuba's trade thus became a standing target for Agency operators, and with the authority on the books, CIA officials apparently never went back to the White House for renewed approval after Kennedy died, in Cline's opinion. Three former Assistant Secretaries of State in the Johnson and Nixon administrations say the sabotage, which included everything from driving down the price of Cuban sugar to tampering with cane-cutting equipment, was not brought to their attention. Former CIA Director William Colby states that the Agency finally stopped the economic sabotage program in the early 1970s. Cuban government officials counter that CIA agents were still working to create epidemics among Cuban cattle in 1973 and that as of spring 1978, Agency men were committing acts of sabotage against cargo destined for Cuba. (back)
3. In 1967 a Senate committee chaired by Senator Edward Long was inquiring into wiretapping by government agencies, including the Narcotics Bureau. The Commissioner of Narcotics, then Harry Giordano told a senior TSS man— almost certainly Gottlieb—that if CIA officials were "concerned" about its dealings with the Bureau involving the safehouses coming out during the hearings, the most "helpful thing" they could do would be to "turn the Long committee off." How the CIA men reacted to this not very subtle blackmail attempt is unclear from the documents, but what does come out is that the TSS man and another top-level CIA officer misled and lied to the top echelon of the Treasury Department (the Narcotics Bureau's parent organization) about the safehouses and how they were used. (back)
4. James Moore of the University of Delaware, who also produced carbamates when he was not seeking the magic mushroom, served at times as an intermediary between the industrialist and the CIA. (back)
5. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, it seemed that every radical on the West Coast was saying that the CIA was up to strange things in behavior modification at Vacaville. Like many of yesterday's conspiracy theories, this one turned out to be true. (back)
6. Geschickter was an extremely important TSS asset with connections in high places. In 1955 he convinced Agency officials to contribute $375,000 in secret funds toward the construction of a new research building at Georgetown University Hospital. (Since this money seemed to be coming from private sources, unwitting Federal bureaucrats doubled it under the matching grant program for hospital construction.) The Agency men had a clear understanding with Geschickter that in return for their contribution, he would make sure they received use of one-sixth of the beds and total space in the facility for their own "hospital safehouse." They then would have a ready source of "human patients and volunteers for experimental use," according to a CIA document, and the research program in the building would provide cover for up to three TSS staff members. Allen Dulles personally approved the contribution and then, to make sure, he took it to President Eisenhower's special committee to review covert operations. The committee also gave its assent, with the understanding that Geschickter could provide "a reasonable expectation" that the Agency would indeed have use of the space he promised. He obviously did, because the CIA money was forthcoming. (This, incidentally, was the only time in a whole quarter-century of Agency behavior-control activities when the documents show that CIA officials went to the White House for approval of anything. The Church committee found no evidence that either the executive branch or Congress was informed of the programs.) (back)
7. In 1967, after Ramparts magazine exposed secret CIA funding of the National Student Association and numerous nonprofit organizations, President Johnson forbade CIA support of foundations or educational institutions. Inside the Agency there was no notion that this order meant ending relationships, such as the one with Geschickter. In his case, the agile CIA men simply transferred the funding from the foundation to a private company, of which his son was the secretary-treasurer. (back)
8. Lying to Congress followed the pattern of lying to the press that some MKULTRA veterans adopted after the first revelations came out. For example, former Human Ecology Society director James Monroe told The New York Times on August 2, 1977 that "only about 25 to 30 percent" of the Society's budget came from the CIA—a statement he knew to be false since the actual figure was well over 90 percent. His untruth allowed some other grantees to claim that their particular project was funded out of the non-Agency part of the Society. (back)
September 25, 2002
(AP)
HEMINGFORD, Neb. -- Two workers were killed and at least one other was injured Tuesday as they made repairs to a 2,000-foot tall television tower in western Nebraska.
Only about 50 feet of the Station KDUH tower remained standing.
Officials said two workers had been repairing the roof of a small transmission building at the base of the tower. Three other people were working to strengthen the tower prior to installation of new transmitting equipment.
The structure was more than 500 feet taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago and 700 feet taller than the Empire State Building in New York City.
Alliance Volunteer Fire Department spokesman Gary Bauer said the cause of the collapse is unknown. Sheriff's officials said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been called in to investigate.
The collapse, which happened around noon, crushed several nearby vehicles.
Local volunteer firefighters also battled a one-acre grass fire ignited by sparks from the tower.
by Sarah Goodyear
(villagevoice)
September 25, 2002
I recognized him by the back of his head as soon as I walked into the candlelit bar: Ameen, the Egyptian car-service driver. The cocksure young man who had argued politics with me from Brooklyn to Manhattan, gesturing with one hand and steering with the other. Who had told me back in July 2001 that something terrible was going to happen in New York, and that Osama bin Laden would be responsible. The guy I had handed over to the FBI. Whose life had been disrupted. Whose phone had been tapped. Whose family had been questioned. Because of me.
On the phone, setting up a time to meet, Ameen* had used flattery. "You live in Brooklyn?" he asked "Why don't I know you? Are you sure I haven't told you you are beautiful? I bother everybody in the neighborhood." It felt like the most awkward possible blind date. You're flirting with me even though you know I turned you in to the feds as a potential terrorist?
He didn't look around when I walked in the door, so I had one more moment to observe him unobserved: tight black curls, crisp button-down shirt. In front of him, a bottle of Corona with a slice of lime. Pack of Marlboro Lights at the ready. Talking, talking, talking, to whoever was next to him.
I approached the bar and said his name. He swiveled quickly to meet my gaze, smiled instantly and easily, and put out his hand. I was close enough to smell his cologne. "Sarah?" he said in his lightly accented voice, his dark brown eyes sparkling. "So glad to meet you."
My brief career as an FBI informant began on September 13, 2001. It's the kind of experience that Attorney General John Ashcroft would like to encourage. There are all sorts of hot lines you can call if you want to be one, too. The federal TIPS line is geared toward people who might spot suspicious activities while they're on the job, like cable employees and postal workers. New York State just set up its own TIPS line after the recent bust of six young Middle Eastern men from Lackawanna, New York; authorities say civilian informants helped in that case. The government wants you to think that an ordinary citizen like you can help save the United States from the forces of terrorism. That's what I wanted to think, too.
Still, making that call violated every principle of New York neighborliness I knew. This is a city built on the solidarity of individuality, in which people's privacy, their right to go about their business—even, sometimes, illegal business—is a civic birthright. But when we were attacked on September 11, the rules changed. We became a small town, in more ways than one. Now, as in a small town, certain people among us are cause for suspicion and must be watched carefully.
But back on July 16, 2001, we were still playing by the old rules. That was the day Ameen showed up in a livery cab sent to take me to a morning appointment in Manhattan. He started talking as soon as I got in the backseat, bragging about a movie star and a director he had driven around town the previous weekend.
We were nearly halfway over the Brooklyn Bridge when he changed the subject.
As we crossed the river, on a bright sunny day very much like the day that awaited us two months in the future, he said, "You know, I am leaving the country and going home to Egypt sometime in late August or September. I have gotten e-mails from people I know saying that Osama bin Laden has planned big terrorist attacks for New York and Washington for that time. It will not be safe here then."
In my memory—I trust my memory here—we were swinging onto the FDR Drive, the shimmering twin towers already behind us and out of sight, when I responded. Something noncommittal and earnestly liberal about how I didn't worry about terrorism, how I believed in the goodness of the Muslim people of the world. Then things started getting ugly. I told him I had a job in the media. He started complaining about Jewish control of the American press. I told him I thought his opinions were based on ignorance.
By the time we reached my destination on the Upper East Side, a chill had settled over the car. I tipped him generously—as if this were proof of my high-mindedness—but as I got out, I realized I was pissed off. I had been so reasonable. Why had he persisted with that anti-Semitic nonsense?
Angry as I was, I did not think to fear this smiling, charming man. I did not think to call the FBI and report his warning. I'm no stool pigeon. After all, 50 years earlier, my innocent grandfather, an Italian opera singer named Ezio Pinza, had been thrown in an internment camp by Hoover's G-men—detained for several months as an enemy alien in wartime, without ever seeing the charges against him. I was not going to be a party to government surveillance of this obviously harmless driver. That wouldn't be my style.
In the hours after the towers fell, as the debris rained on my Brooklyn neighborhood and the plume of smoke turned day into hideous twilight, I thought again and again of the glib and handsome driver. For a couple of angst-ridden hours, I even wondered if I could have prevented the horror somehow, if only I had been willing to play the role of informant. If only I had taken him seriously.
And then another part of our conversation came swimming up out of my memory. We had talked about my fear of flying. He was dismissive of my apprehension. He had been, he told me proudly, an air-traffic controller back in Egypt, and was going to air-traffic control school out near LaGuardia so he could do the same work here. He trusted the system because he knew it from the inside.
Suddenly, getting through to the FBI seemed like the most important thing I could do.
I was frightened—of reprisal from him and his friends? Of the knock of a federal agent on my own door? I decided to make the call from a pay phone. I got the number from a scroll that crawled by on the television while Ashcroft was speaking woodenly about the duty of American citizens. I scribbled it on a tiny piece of paper, shoved it in my pocket and went looking for a pay phone. An American citizen on her way to do her duty.
This was late in the day on September 11. I hurried from booth to booth in downtown Brooklyn, a safe distance from my neighborhood, I reckoned, and dialed the number until I had it by heart, each time to be greeted by a series of high-pitched tones, a squawk of static, and a woman's voice telling me all circuits were busy. At one booth, I tried for several minutes, looking absentmindedly at a sign that said, "GIVE BLOOD! PEOPLE ARE DYING!"
The next day, I gave up the hope of anonymity and started trying from home. I still couldn't get through. All over the country, I figured, people were dialing that number. People who knew something.
By Thursday, my little piece of information had swollen in my chest. I felt like I might be an unfound piece of some heroic puzzle.
Finally, I walked up to a cop on Court Street and told him my story. He told me to go to the precinct house, that there might be an agent there who could take my statement.
I practically ran through the streets as dusk fell, the smoke to the west billowing in the glare of the rescue workers' lights. Throat stinging, I made my way past the barricades that surrounded the station, hoarsely explaining myself to cop after cop to get to the next layer, until I found myself inside. They showed me to a telephone in a room where two clerical workers were sitting eating Caribbean takeout food. The smell of jerk sauce filled the cramped room. On the other end of the phone was a federal agent.
As I recited my story yet again, I looked around the shabby office. The two women were chewing placidly. I couldn't tell if they were listening. I hunched over the phone as if I were the one with something to hide. When I hung up I realized the agent had never asked me my name.
I walked out into the empty hallway with the adrenaline ebbing from me. I had done it. And I would never know, I figured, what it was worth.
Informant. It's a slightly dirty word. A word that calls up Orwellian excesses, prison blocks, the Berlin Wall. A word for Stalinists and McCarthyites. It's not something you pull out proudly in cocktail conversation. Oh, so you're an informant? How interesting.
Now we're being explicitly encouraged to look at the guy across the hall, at the newsstand, in the airport waiting room, with suspicion. That's what the TIPS program is all about.
The day I reached out to touch the FBI, I couldn't have known just how efficiently and completely the Bush administration would be working to get rid of the legal process as I had known it my entire life. But in the weeks and months that followed, I got the picture pretty quickly. Hundreds of people of Middle Eastern descent were being arrested and held incommunicado, indefinitely, in prisons around the country—for immigration violations or as "material witnesses" in the war on terrorism.
Every time I saw the headlines about those people, I thought of how my grandfather had been interned in a cell on Ellis Island. Every time I saw pictures of the detainees' family members protesting the confinements, I wondered about the driver, the happy-go-lucky driver.
I had to remind myself why I had called in the first place. I had to remind myself that he had known what should have been unknowable.
Ameen's eyes slipped away from mine when I asked him about it more than a year later. He picked up the pack of cigarettes in front of him on the bar, flipping it nervously. "Nooo . . . I didn't tell you that," he said.
"But you did," I said, leaning in toward him, immediately feeling I had something to prove. "I remember very clearly." And I described it for him. Crossing the bridge. Seeing the towers. Bin Laden's name. The e-mails from home.
"Oh, you're right," Ameen said suddenly, laughing and looking at me again. "But many people knew this."
Many people knew this. True enough. We've been hearing for months that both the FBI and the CIA knew about it, essentially stood by and watched it happen. And yet he was the one who had told me. And on September 11, he was at home in Egypt, thousands of miles from the falling towers.
I had found this out—I had found Ameen himself—from a radio show that aired December 3. He had been interviewed by a WNYC reporter about his experience with the FBI. I recognized him immediately, not just from the identifying details, but also from the lighthearted swagger of his voice.
I was both relieved and distressed when I heard the report. Ameen and his wife spoke of repeated visits from federal agents, of how they were evicted from their apartment, of the uncertainty and sense of injustice they had felt. He had not, however, been arrested. He was not one of the nameless people sitting in a New Jersey prison. Apparently the feds had cleared him.
But the radio report said nothing about Ameen's foreknowledge of the attacks.
Months after the interview aired, I got up the nerve to call the reporter who did the story and ask her to put me in touch with Ameen. Within a week, I had his cell phone number. It took me a while to dial it. I don't know what I expected, but I figured it wouldn't be pleasant. Instead, Ameen joked that I could take him out to a nice dinner because I had turned him in. Within days, we were sitting elbow to elbow in a Brooklyn bar.
Ameen told me the FBI had contacted him first when he was still in Egypt, a few days after September 11. He said they told him they wanted to question him and he told them it would be no problem. Agents met him at JFK when he returned to the United States and subjected him to a lengthy interrogation; he was angered by their suspicions, but claimed he never worried that he would be held for something he hadn't done. He was a legal immigrant with a green card. He trusted the United States system to protect him. He seemed to have much more faith in that system than I did.
He also was adamant that the information he had shared with me on that July morning was simply common knowledge in the Arab world—and no one in the U.S. government has disproved that. He said he hadn't left the country in September to protect himself, but to visit his mother, who was gravely ill. "I believe in fate," he said. "If it is your time to die, there is nothing you can do about it anyway."
I told him that I didn't believe in fate. That I believed knowledge could save you sometimes. "What else do you know?" I asked him, only half-joking. "Are there going to be more attacks?"
"Who knows?" he replied. "If they say there is going to be an attack here, it will probably be abroad, and if they say it is going to be abroad, it will be here." One thing was certain, he said: United States foreign policy was creating legions of new followers for Al Qaeda.
As for the FBI agents themselves, he told me they had tried to recruit him as an informant. "But I would never work with such stupid people," he said.
I asked him to tell me about himself. He said he grew up in a village near Cairo. He also told me that his uncle had been a mover and shaker in Cairo and had brought him there as a youngster to further his education. He talked about serving in the Egyptian army. He showed me a scar from a bullet wound and said he had gotten it while helping to chase down the terrorists who shot up a bus full of German tourists in 1997. He told me that his marriage had ended, but that he wanted to stay on in the United States. He told me that he had stopped driving for the car service and was working as a "consultant" now. That his goal was to buy a house here.
I realized that there was no way I could be sure whether what he said to me was true.
Ameen was distracted for much of our conversation. A young woman he knew had come into the bar. She was tall and blonde and she gave him a long, close hug when they greeted each other. She ordered a glass of wine and sat a couple of seats away from us, chatting with a friend. I felt his impatience with our conversation; his body yearned toward her.
Before I left, I asked him one last thing. "Are you mad at me for calling the FBI?"
"Mad? No, not at all," he said, looking at me sideways, a half-smile on his face. "Why should I be mad? I'm clean. If I wasn't clean, then I would be mad."
I left him sitting with the blonde. I took one last look at the back of his head as he leaned over and began kissing her. It seemed he was just a guy after all, a 29-year-old guy trying to make it in New York. A guy who knew something, but not too much. Because his papers were in order, he was sitting in that bar with that girl instead of staring at a wall in an anonymous jail cell. My call hadn't saved the world, but it hadn't condemned an innocent man, either. He was clean enough. I was clean, too. Or at least as clean as I could be.
Since I tracked down Ameen for this story, I see him on the street all the time. He's just doing the usual—hanging out with the guys in front of the deli, talking on his cell. We say hello, and it's perfectly friendly, although there's an undeniable tension there as well. I guess you could say we're keeping an eye on each other.
(israelinsider.com)
September 22, 2002
CNN refused to broadcast nationally an advertising campaign emphasizing that Israel is a democracy and has a lot in common with the U.S.
Amid allegations of biased coverage, CNN highlights Israeli victims of terror
CNN founder accuses Israel of terror
Two American Jewish organizations - the American Jewish Committee and ISRAEL21c - have launched a national television advertising campaign designed to increase America's appreciation for Israel's democratic society and the individual freedoms of all its citizens. CNN refused to broadcast the advertisements nationally.
The two organizations launched the advertising campaign in Washington, DC on September 12th to coincide with the beginning of the Jewish New Year. The campaign's two 30-second spots utilize vivid pictures and words to convey the vitality of Israeli society, where, like in the United States, every citizen - Arab, Christian, or Jew - enjoys the right to vote; every individual - Muslim, Christian or Jew - enjoys freedom of religion, and every person - male or female - enjoys emancipation and equal access to education, employment and health care. View the ads in Windows Media player using a 56K connection or a 100K connection.
"The ads emphasize that Israel is a democracy, very much like the United States," said Ken Bandler, a spokesman for the American Jewish Committee.
"We want Americans to know just how much Israel and the United States have in common," said Zvi Alon, founder and chairman of ISRAEL21c, a Cupertino, California-based non-profit organization founded in 2001 which seeks to focus public and media attention on the Israel that exists "beyond the conflict." (The ISRAEL21c website is produced by the same company that produces Israel Insider.)
Alon noted that "in Israel, democracy means every citizen of Israel, both Arab and Jew, enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities as Americans have in the United States. We want every American to know that in Israel's democracy, Arabs and women vote, in fact 17 women and 10 Arabs have seats in the Israeli parliament."
CNN refuses to air ads nationally
The advertisements began airing on Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC and CNN cable operators in New York and California's Silicon Valley, but CNN rejected a request to air the ads on a nationwide basis.
Larry Weinberg, executive vice president of ISRAEL21c, said he had sought to buy time directly from CNN to ensure that it would air on every CNN station, but that the request was refused.
Despite appeals to Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Atlanta-based network, CNN said it would not run the ads. CNN issued a statement saying the network "is not airing advocacy advertising regarding international issues from regions in conflict."
CNN spokesman, Matthew Furman, said that the network had decided earlier not to accept ads on behalf of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and several other Arab countries. ''We don't think it's appropriate to take advocacy ads from regions in conflict. We treated both sides the same way,'' he said.
The organizations behind the ads disputed the characterization of their spots as advocating any issue. "Calling our announcements issue advocacy is wrong, and it's a bad business decision," said Weinberg. "Our ad says nothing about conflict. It's pure and simple education, telling people that Israel is a democracy. It's CNN that is being political. Are they the media or are they politics?"
Unlike the ad campaign backed by the Saudi government, Weinberg said, his non-profit organization and the AJC are American and the funding of its ad came from American citizens.
Despite CNN's decision, the organizations are able to place the ads to run on CNN channels via local cable operators, which have discretion in which ads they can run in several time slots each hour.
Mr. Weinberg noted that the CNN refusal to air the ads on its network has generated far greater publicity to the ads. And he said that CNN Headline News had even run a report about the ads as a news story.
The American Jewish Committee ad, which begins with the statement "Israel is America's real ally in the Middle East," is airing on Time Warner in Manhattan and Cablevision in Westchester, as well as in the Washington area.
"We plan to roll it out nationally over the next several weeks and assess its effectiveness," Bandler said.
First Jewish American organization television campaign
The television advertisements marks the first time that a major Jewish American organization has launched such a campaign to improve Israel's image. The new media approach is based on research by Jennifer Laszlo-Mizrachi, a Democratic political consultant, who worked alongside Democratic consultant Stanley Greenberg and Republican strategist Frank Luntz.
"It is astonishing, but even well informed American opinion leaders are badly informed about Israel," Laszlo-Mizrachi said, quoted in the Jerusalem Report. "They don't know what Israel has done for peace and they don't know that Israel has a voting Arab population that is represented in the Knesset. They buy the newspaper, but they don't read it."
While the Palestinians drill in the repeated message of 'occupation, occupation,' Israel's message had to be consistent and repeated: 'democracy and peace,' Laszlo-Mizrachi said.
(Boston Globe)
9-25-2
Mosquito-borne West Nile virus is causing a medical condition rarely seen by US physicians since the 1950s: polio.
In case reports released yesterday, stunned neurologists in Mississippi and Georgia describe the conditions of four patients suffering from the hobbled limbs, impaired breathing, and fevers that are the hallmark of polio, a disease essentially eradicated in the United States.
Just like the polio patients of the first half of the 20th century, the West Nile victims seen this summer by the Southern doctors are also enduring prolonged muscle weakness and respiratory ailments that will require months of treatment and probably will disable some of the patients permanently.
''I teach this as a historical thing to the residents,'' said Dr. Jonathan D. Glass, director of the neuromuscular program at Emory University in Atlanta and one of the physicians who treated the polio patients. ''We simply don't see it today. That's why I didn't believe it at first.''
The strain of polio that was so widely feared in the 20th century, and now prevented by vaccines, is caused by a different virus than West Nile. In fact, West Nile comes from a different family than viruses known to cause the disease. However, the devastating effects are the same.
In polio, the virus attacks the gray matter of the patients' spinal cord, which contains the neurons responsible for carrying information to the muscles. As the attack frays the neuron fibers, muscles turn limp, often producing uneven results - a leg gone weak on the right side, an arm on the left. It also results in bladder and bowel dysfunction, along with respiratory complications that can leave patients tethered to breathing machines.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the West Nile virus has killed 94 people nationwide this year, including two in Massachusetts, and sickened 1,963, by far the largest outbreak since it was first reported in the United States three years ago. Although other viral illnesses kill vastly more people - the flu is blamed for 20,000 deaths annually - public-health authorities are concerned about West Nile because it has spread from coast to coast so quickly and produced unexpected symptoms, with polio being the most recent example.
''We obviously have to learn a lot more about this virus,'' said Dr. Alfred DeMaria, director of communicable disease control for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. ''This is another aspect that's worrisome about West Nile.''
The New England Journal of Medicine released the articles on the polio link nearly a month before their scheduled publication, an unusual step reserved for reports of urgent medical importance. The doctors who wrote the articles said yesterday they believe it is vital that their findings circulate among physicians because some of the patients they treated had been misdiagnosed and prescribed treatments that could have been life-threatening.
And they suspect - strongly - that other cases of West Nile-induced polio have gone untreated and unreported. After discovering polio in their own West Nile patients, the physicians in Mississippi and Georgia decided to review previous outbreaks. In examining autopsy results from New York City in 1999, the first time West Nile was identified in the nation, the doctors uncovered symptoms that struck them as remarkably similar to the cases they had seen this summer.
Dr. A. Arturo Leis, a neurologist at Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson, Miss., saw such a patient in late July or early August. He recalled walking into an exam room and witnessing a 56-year-old man who had been referred to him because of muscle weakness. In reviewing the patient's medical chart, Leis discovered that the man had been diagnosed weeks earlier with early signs of a stroke and prescribed blood-thinning medication. The same man also was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the nervous system.
Only after running blood tests, observing symptoms similar to polio, and performing a battery of electrically activated tests that record activity in nerves and in spinal cord cells, did the Mississippi physicians reach their diagnosis: polio, caused by West Nile virus.
Previously, severe cases of West Nile had been characterized by meningitis and encephalitis, the brain swelling that is regarded as the most serious consequence of the virus. But the muscle weakness and other problems associated with polio were not evident.
''I thought, `This is extremely unusual - this can't be,''' Leis said. ''How can a virus, in this case West Nile, change its clinical properties to such a marked degree? It had typically not presented this way.''
The medications the man had received initially, Leis said, could have killed him. The stroke drug could have caused a hemorrhage, and the medicine initially given to treat his misdiagnosed case of Guillain-Barre had the potential to result in a stroke. That's why the Mississippi and Georgia researchers became so determined to share their findings on the link between polio and West Nile.
Leis has now seen four cases of West Nile-related polio, one additional since he wrote his journal article. In Atlanta, Glass received a call from a suburban physician one Saturday night in July. That doctor was confounded by the symptoms of a patient he was seeing. She had muscle weakness, along with fever and meningitis. The kind of muscle fatigue she was experiencing was consistent with Guillain-Barre, but that disease does not typically produce fever and meningitis.
''The guy called me and said, `Help. I don't know what I'm looking at,''' Glass said. ''And I said, `I don't know what you're looking at either.'''
The 50-year-old woman, who lives in Louisiana, which was hard hit by West Nile and was in Georgia visiting grandchildren, was transferred to the university hospital in Atlanta. There, a neurology resident, Dr. William Hewitt, examined her and confirmed the presence of an unusual constellation of symptoms.
Glass spent the night poring over old medical textbooks and epidemiology reports on the New York cases. All evidence began pointing toward polio.
The woman treated by Glass is expected to survive but remains in a rehabilitation hospital. The four patients in Mississippi also will live, their doctor said, although three will probably have permanent disabilities.
(The Tampa Tribune)
First published 10-5-01
9-18-2
Note - There are numerous reports of how relatives of Saudi elite and the bin
Laden family were hastily flown out of the US right after the 911 attacks. This
appears to be a piece of that puzzle...
TAMPA - The twin-engine Lear jet streaked into the afternoon sky, leaving Tampa behind but revealing a glimpse of international intrigue in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on America.
The federal government says the flight never took place.
But the two armed bodyguards hired to chaperon their clients out of the state recall the 100-minute trip September 13 quite vividly.
In the end, the son of a Saudi Arabian prince who is the nation's defense minister and the son of a Saudi army commander made it to Kentucky for a waiting 747 and a trip to their homeland.
The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Local and federal authorities will say little about the flight.
"It's not in our logs ... it didn't occur,'' said Chris White, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration's regional office in Atlanta.
For private investigators Dan Grossi and Manuel Perez, the bodyguards on the Lear, it was a trip they can't forget.
A Special Situation
Grossi said Tampa police intelligence detectives called him about 11 a.m. Sept. 13, needing help with a special situation: They had been watching three young Saudi men - at least one a student at the University of Tampa - at their south Tampa apartment, and the trio was scared and wanted to go home.
Jim Harf, director of UT's international programs, confirmed one of them is the son of Prince Sultan, the defense minister.
University spokesman Grant Donaldson refused to provide details. Perez said he understood the men arrived in Tampa three weeks earlier to receive tutoring in English.
The Tampa detectives guarding the men were ordered to stay in Tampa by Police Chief Bennie Holder, so Grossi was offered the job of escorting the trio to Lexington, Ky., where the prince's relatives were buying race horses.
Lexington police Lt. Mark Barnard confirmed a Saudi relative had asked for help in getting protection for the men in Tampa. Two off-duty detectives were assigned. Tampa police records list Sultan bin Fahad as the one requesting the security detail.
But Tampa's official assistance ended at Raytheon's airport terminal.
"There was a perceived threat, and the family of the person wanted him home right away,'' said Tampa police Sgt. John Solomon. "The job lasted about five hours. It was handled very quickly.'' `
Out Of A Tom Clancy Movie'
Meanwhile, Grossi had put Perez on alert and went home to wait. Both men provide security for the National Football League at Raymond James Stadium. Grossi, who retired from the Tampa Police Department in August, has worked in internal affairs and homicide. Perez, who has his own investigative company in St. Petersburg, worked for the FBI for more than 29 years and has experience in counterterrorism and as a bomb technician.
At 2:30 p.m., Grossi got the call from the police department.
"They said it was happening,'' Grossi said. "This was out of a Tom Clancy movie.'' Grossi said he was told the clearance came from the White House after the prince's family pulled a favor from former President Bush. Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister, was part of the coalition that fought the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
To the United States, Saudi Arabia is a key component in the emerging coalition of nations in the war on terrorism.
The White House referred questions on the trip to the State Department, which denied involvement, and the National Security Council, which did not return messages.
At Raytheon airport, Grossi met with the Tampa detectives who had brought the young men. The Lear's pilot, who had flown in from Fort Lauderdale, introduced himself.
By 4:30 p.m., the twin-engine, eight-passenger jet lifted off.
"They [the trio] looked like typical college students with knapsacks,'' Perez said. "I didn't realize the prince's son was onboard until we landed.'' Grossi and Perez recalled the strange feeling of flying in the near-empty sky, knowing of the ban on private flights.
"My first reaction to the pilot was, `We're not going to get shot down are we?' '' Perez said.
Grossi said he spoke only briefly to the prince's son.
"He wanted to leave,'' Grossi said. But he also said he would like to return, Grossi said.
In less than two hours, the Lear landed at the Blue Grass airport, where the passengers were met by Saudi security officials, Grossi said. He and Perez saw several private 747s parked on the tarmac with foreign flags on the tails and Arabic lettering on the sides.
Within the hour, the Lear took off again for Tampa with Grossi and Perez. Neither would say how much they were paid.
But the Lear was not headed back to Fort Lauderdale, Grossi said the pilot told him. It was bound for New Orleans to pick up someone who needed a ride to New York.
Grossi said he doesn't recall the name of the aircraft company providing the jet.
"Who knows who they really were,'' Grossi said. ``It was certainly somebody important to obtain clearance to fly.''
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