Bush begins Presidential censoring
his first [third] day in office;
and one earlier case

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A Bush Family Book Burning

From Consortiumnews.com

No one should defend sloppy journalism. Nor should a writer lie to an editor about relevant personal details that reasonably might bear on the credibility of an investigative project. The business of informing the public puts a high value on trust, fairness and care with details.

But the media's applause for the decision by St. Martin's Press to recall and burn a critical biography of Texas Gov. George W. Bush is more troubling than any flaws in J.H. Hatfield's Fortunate SonAnd the author's dissembling about his own criminal record.

The chief factual error supposedly was Hatfield's citing three anonymous sources who claim that police arrested Bush on cocaine possession in 1972 and that a friendly judge expunged the record as a favor to Bush's father.

Gov. Bush denied the story as did former President George Bush, who called the book "a fraud and ugly" and made rumblings about a lawsuit.

Hatfield's credibility suffered another blow when the Dallas Morning News reported that a James H. Hatfield -- whose identification seemed to match the author's -- had been convicted of trying to kill two of his bosses at a Dallas real estate firm in 1987.

With that, St. Martin's announced that it was pulling the book and planning to incinerate the 70,000 copies. "They're heat, furnace fodder," declared Sally Richardson, president of St. Martin's trade division. [NYT, Oct. 23, 1999]

The national press corps hailed the decision to recall the book, while still castigating Hatfield and St. Martin's (for publishing the book in the first place). Some conservatives were gleeful, hoping that the controversy would end the pesky questions about Bush's past cocaine abuse.

An editorial in the right-wing Washington Times joked that Hatfield "surely thought he would set the world on fire. He just didn't figure that it was his book that would be the kindling." The newspaper, financed by theocrat Sun Myung Moon, added: "One hopes the finality of the furnace puts an end to the story." [WT, Oct. 28, 1999]

But what was lacking in this intensive press coverage was virtually any concern about the disturbing image of a book being denounced by well-connected politicians -- the father and son Bushes -- and then being burned.

Through more than two centuries of rough-and-tumble American politics, there might be no precedent for this sort of book burning. Yet, the news media focused only on the miscreant, Hatfield, and his careless publishers.

The incineration had the smell of totalitarianism to it, but it was the high-brow sort where one person of privilege calls another person of privilege, "the call that makes things happen."

Bush bullying is not limited to Hatfield's book, either. The $60 million Bush campaign went to extraordinary lengths to shut down critical Web sites that might draw readers with addresses using the Bush name.

The campaign angrily protested "gwbush.com," a site that parodies "georgewbush.com," the official site. In that context, Gov. Bush declared, "there ought to be limits to freedom."

The Bush campaign also bought up Web addresses that might be used by anti-Bush groups: "bushsucks.com," "bushbites.com," "bushblows.com." If you type one in, you go to the official site, "georgewbush.com," where there is a handsome photo of Gov. Bush.

To protest this clumsy attempt at discouraging criticism, one group created a site called, "bushsuckz.com." The site says it is a response to Bush's "political paranoia," but more importantly, a statement about "our hard-won right to free speech."

Like his father, Gov. Bush appears to have a fondness for political and social hierarchy, a proper order to the world where certain people set the rules and other people follow them.

On Nov. 3, in what sounded like a declaration from former President Bush's New World Order, Gov. Bush praised Pakistan's army for ousting the elected president. The coup brought "stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent," Bush said in a TV interview.

When upstarts challenge the "proper order," they can expect to be put down, ruthlessly if necessary. Gov. Bush's father saw nothing wrong with hanging black convict Willie Horton around Michael Dukakis's neck in 1988.

Then, in 1992, President Bush was the driving force behind a "silver bullet" strategy to dig up dirt about Bill Clinton as a young man, according to records from the National Archives. In one document, Bush described himself as "indignant" that his staff had not discovered more. [See iF Magazine, Sept.-Oct. 1999.]

Because of the Bush establishment ties, there's also the question of whether the news media gives the family favored treatment. Despite Gov. Bush's odd denials about cocaine use -- giving various time limits -- news outlets still report that the Bush-cocaine rumors are "unsubstantiated."

Yet, if there were no truth to the rumors -- many coming from Republicans who have known him for years -- Bush obviously would have denied the charges flatly, as he has done with questions about marital infidelity.

When a similar shoe was on Bill Clinton's foot, the press took the opposite stance, refusing to accept evasive answers to personal questions no matter how intimate or trivial.

As for Fortunate Son, author Hatfield may deserve criticism for relying too casually on three unnamed sources and for having a checkered past. But a much greater threat to American democracy comes from this giddy dance around a pile of burning books.

Journalists should show care in their work and do their best to avoid mistakes. But it is far more dangerous to the nation if the news media accepts the solution favored by The Washington Times for stories not to the liking of its powerful allies, what it calls "the finality of the furnace."

Return to chronology 23 Oct 1999

Bush Sends Ominous Message on Reproductive Rights;
Re-Imposes Global Gag Rule on Family Planning Groups Overseas

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, January 22, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Sending what the American Civil Liberties Union called an ominous message on both reproductive rights and freedom of speech, President George W. Bush today reinstated a government policy that denies these basic liberties to family planning organizations operating overseas.

"Where is the compassion in denying American aid to vital public health services overseas?" said Catherine Weiss, Director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. "How is it compassionate to cut U.S. support for desperately needed family planning services, maternal health care and HIV/AIDS prevention? Re-imposition of this gag rule threatens all of these services by denying U.S. dollars to organizations that exercise their right to free speech."

Speaking to reporters yesterday, the Bush Administration also mischaracterized the policy, which is known as the "global gag rule." Although the Administration said it would re-impose the gag rule because it does not support using federal funds for abortions, the gag rule actually denies crucial aid to foreign nongovernmental organizations that use their own money to advocate for or against legal abortion or to perform legal abortions in their own countries.

President Bush's move came on the 28th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed to women for the first time the right to control their reproductive choices. It also came as the U.S. Senate continues to consider President Bush's controversial nomination of anti-choice activist John Ashcroft to be Attorney General.

And this morning, President Bush delivered a statement to anti-Roe protestors in which he said that "unborn children" should be covered by the "promises of our Declaration of Independence."

"Today's statement and decision to re-impose the gag rule undermine the Administration's promises to respect the nation's laws, including those established by Roe v. Wade," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU's Washington National Office. "With one of his first actions as President, George Bush has decided to punish organizations for engaging in legal activities that would be protected by the First Amendment if carried out in the United States."

The ACLU noted that the gag rule would be unconstitutional if it were attempted here. "President Bush should not be allowed to export an undemocratic policy he would be prohibited from imposing within the borders of the United States," Murphy said.

A special ACLU feature on the 28th anniversary of Roe can be found at: http://www.aclu.org/features/f011901a.html

Copyright 2001, American Civil Liberties Union
Reprinted with permission of the American Civil Liberties Union
http://www.aclu.org

Return to chronology 22 Jan 2001

2002, January 14: Report that George Bush Jr. hides gubernatorial documents

In keeping with the Bush family penchant, President Bush Jr. sent the public documents from his time as governor of Texas, 1995 - 2000, to George Bush [Sr.] Presidential Library and Museum, which is housed at Texas A&M University and under the auspices of the National Archives and Records Administration, and therefore not subject to the open-records law of Texas state.

Tom Smith, Texas director of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, is reported to have commented, "These papers belong to the people of the state of Texas, not to George W. Bush. He can't hide them or give them away, and putting them in his daddy's library doesn't change that one bit."

Geedubya's spin doctors, in the person of his attorney, Terri Lacy, insisted that he was "absolutely not" trying to hide the papers. She is quoted as saying, "It is not his goal in any fashion to attempt to do something like that."

[But, see, gubernatorial documents are supposed to have a ten day waiting period between request and release; the archives apparently have a ninety-day turn around because of the workload; there is apparently no deadline for Archives to cough up presidential papers. I don't know what he's trying to hide or cover up this time, but I have no doubts what-so-ever that he is trying to hide something. Censorship is never, ever for the benefit of the censored. It is only ever to the benefit of the state. And this is perfectly in keeping with the Bush family's consistent cover-up of their political and personal activities.

Oh, by the way, this action exploits a law that Governor Geedubya signed into effect in 1997. What does he think he did, I must wonder, that he foresaw the necessity of keeping those records out of the hands of the public as much as possible. --MN]

[Enron! --MN]

Return to chronology 14 Jan 2002

2002, January 30: GAO and White House continue to study confidentiality issues in Enron investigation

General Accounting Office investigators advised the White House that they would sue for the names of Enron officials with whom Bush and Cheney met to formulate the U.S. energy policy. Geedubya insists that confidentiality must be respected to maintain the ability to get unbiased advice. There is talk about his invoking "executive privilege", but so far that is being held in reserve and will likely be invoked only if all else fails.

[Let's see, . . . Vanessa Leggett invoked freedom of press to protect the confidentiality of her sources and spent 168 days in jail. You don't suppose they'll throw Bush in the slammer for doing the same thing, do you?

The issue in this case is that the president and his staff need to be able to guarantee confidentiality so corporate advisers will speak to them openly and candidly. Which is exactly why reporters guarantee confidentiality to whistle-blowers and hoods like Roger Angelton. In cases such as this, however, you can't serve the president with a grand jury warrant; hence: sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander, and rule of law is thereby violated.

Oh, by the way. If you were thinking that I would equate this cover-up with Bush-family censorship, I would; if there were anything to suggest it might be. But there isn't. Yet. --MN]

Return to chronology 30 Jan 2002

2002, February 14: Cheney Energy Task Force documents

By white house officials . . . and which are being kept from public scrutiny by white house officials. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told Geedubya's administration to take the law suit against them by Judicial Watch seriously. Said he to Justice Department lawyer Anne Weismann, "I get the feeling the government's underestimating the seriousness of this case." He also advised her that the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and the eight agencies she named as having information should maintain it. Enron, of course, is now very well known for having destroyed its documents [incriminatng evidence? --MN] in an orgy of paper shredding.

[Still not enough to say whether this is outright censorship, a cover up, or a legitimate concern for the exercise of discretion and authority in the oval office. Needless to say that I'm not betting much on that last one. --MN]
(see 21 Feb 2002; 05 Mar 2002; 05 Sep 2002; 21 Oct 2002; 08 Jul 2003; 30 May 2007)

Return to chronology 14 Feb 2002

2002, February 21: Cheney Energy Task Force documents

By the Bush administration; and withheld from the public by the Bush administration. Again. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the government was basically being obstructionist in failing to release documents pertaining to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. A FOIA request was filed almost a year ago. The Natural Resources Defense Council had asked for the documents 26 April 2001, and filed their law suit in December. This request has nothing to do with the more recent GAO law suit for the Enron documents.

[But it certainly does seem to be part and parcel of Bush censorship. White House lackey, propagandist, spin doctor, misinformationist, and censor Ari Fleischer commented about the ruling, "The administration, as always, will cooperate. ..." As always? If the Bush censorship regime were wont to cooperate with FOIA requests then why in the name of all that is holy did it take a District Court court order to get the administration to cough them up? And where, for that matter, are the Enron documents, Fleischer? Or were you speaking prophetically and meant that the Bush administration would cooperate in the same way it always has? -- which is to say: not at all. --MN]
(see 14 Feb 2002; 05 Mar 2002; 05 Sep 2002; 21 Oct 2002; 08 Jul 2003; 30 May 2007)

Return to chronology 21 Feb 2002

2002, March 05: Cheney Energy Task Force documents

By the Bush administration and suppressed by them. A second federal judge, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, ruled that a half a dozen government agencies have had time to collect some 42,000 pages. The breakdown is as follows: This is the second ruling against the Bush administration in this particular case in two weeks.

[Barbara Comstock, a Justice Department spokeswoman {read: spin doctor}, said of the situation, "The administration has never disputed the necessity of producing information required by law to be made public. The process of sorting through thousands of documents to determine which the law requires federal agencies to disclose, and which Congress has protected from public disclosure, is often laborious and time-consuming." Which makes a handy excuse that falls flat when the courts tell the gubmint to stop dragging their feet and do as they're told by the law of the land. --MN]
(see 14 Feb 2002; 21 Feb 2002; 05 Sep 2002; 21 Oct 2002; 08 Jul 2003; 30 May 2007)

Return to chronology 05 Mar 2002

2002, March 18: Report on Presidential Records Act Amendments

By Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Calif.). This bill was introduced to circumvent Executive Order 13233 by George Bush Jr. Rep. Horn describes his bill as necessary to, "fix a serious, but readily solvable, problem in the implementation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978."

In a letter he sent to all congressmen to seek a co-sponsor, he wrote that the Bush administration had caused excessive delays in the release of presidential documents. Horn allows that his amendment will also permit sitting or former presidents to exert executive privilege, but in a fashion consistent with the Presidential Papers Act. If his law passes, the burden of proof that a document should not be released will be on the president attempting to exert that privilege, rather than on the applicant who wants to see it.

[At the time he introduced this bill, the National Archives had released all but 150 of Ronald Reagan's documents. Thousands of document generated by then Vice President George Bush Senior, however, remained sealed. Gee. What's the connection? --MN]
(see the report at the Freedom Forum web site)

Return to chronology 18 Mar 2002

2002, September 05: Cheney Energy Task Force documents

By the Bush administration and suppressed by them. Despite a court order and warnings by the judge to take this case seriously, Vice President Dick Cheney and the White House refused to release information in two law suits. The Department of Justice filed papers in which it continued to allege that turning over the documents and giving written answers to the plaintiffs would jeopardize the ability of the executive branch's to give confidential advice to the president.

The plaintiffs are Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, who are attempting to learn details of what influence industry had on the national energy plan developed by the Cheney Task Force. The next hearing is scheduled for 13 Sep 2002.
(see 14 Feb 2002; 21 Feb 2002; 05 Mar 2002; 21 Oct 2002; 08 Jul 2003; 30 May 2007)

Return to chronology 18 Sep 2002

2002, October 21: Cheney Energy Task Force documents

The Justice Department filed to delay a court order that would force the release of documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force by Election Day. The court order was issued on 17 Oct and gave the government until 05 Nov. The DOJ alleges that implementing the court order before the appeals court can decide the issues would cause irreversible harm.

[I'm willing to bet that it wouldn't cause as much irreparable harm to presidential due process as much as it would to Cheney's political standing in the community that is going to be voting shortly after those documents are released. --MN]
(see 14 Feb 2002; 21 Feb 2002; 05 Mar 2002; 05 Sep 2002; 08 Jul 2003; 30 May 2007)

Return to chronology 21 Oct 2002

2003, March 25: Public documents

By the U.S. government. And suppressed by George Bush. On 26 Mar The Washington Post reported that the President had issued an order delaying the release of documents that had already been withheld from the public for three years. This same order also granted the government broad powers in reclassifying documents that had been declassfied. The order, rewrites a Clinton directive. It allows the government to delay the release of documents that otherwise would have been out by 17 Apr until the end of 2006. Especially, the order countermands a provision in the Clinton order from 1995 that information should not be classified if a "significant doubt" exists that releasing it would compromise national security. In short: if you're not sure, let it go. With this new order, the U.S. federal government will now be able to classify and thereby withhold information indefinitely. The senior government official who announced the measure to reporters in a conference call said the postponement is needed to complete a review of records or sensitive information. He reportedly stated that documents will be released as they are cleared.

The White House released the order at 6:40 PM, allowing little time for experts in disclosure and government secrets to review it. Steven Aftergood, the Federation of American Scientists' director of the Project on Government Secrecy said the order "will slow the declassification process," and "signals a greater affinity for secrecy."

Thomas Blanton, who is executive director of the private National Security Archive, said the order is, "one more signal from on high to the bureaucracy to slow down, stall, withhold, stonewall.", and of this censorship incident, "This is an administration that was already tending toward greater secrecy before 9/11. Now, we have a war, which is the ultimate leverage." Mr. Blanton, however, apparently does not believe the administration's motive is to cover up. He commented, "This is a matter of theology for them. They really do believe in their hearts that we the people have made the White House too open and too accountable."

[Yeah, and 18:40 is kind of late in the working day to announce something that could have been announced bright and early the next day, isn't it? Draw your own conclusion. --MN]

Return to chronology 25 Mar 2003

2003, July 08: Cheney Energy Task Force documents

By the Bush administration and suppressed by them. On this day, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected the attempt by the Bush administration to stop a lawsuit seeking to investigate ties between the energy industry and Vice President Dick Cheney. The administration is arguing that the lawsuit is an unwarranted intrusion into the internal deliberations of the executive branch of government. Appeals judges David Tatel and Harry Edwards rejected the effort to stop the case and Judge A. Raymond Randolph dissented, declaring that, "for the judiciary to permit this sort of discovery" into the actions of the executive branch "strikes me as a violation of the separation of powers." Judge Tatel wrote in his opinion that Cheney and administration officials "have not satisfied the heavy burden" required for the appeals court to get involved. The opinion also apparently noted that Bush administration officials had not even produced a log of documents they wanted kept confidential. Federal agencies have disclosed 39,000 pages of internal documents but the energy task force itself has turned over no materials.

[The source article for this information was reprinted at TruthOut.com with the accompanying disclaimer:

Editor's Note | For context on this issue, it is important to bear in mind that Dick Cheney met in secret on multiple occasions in early 2001 to plan the nation's energy policy with the very corporations which stood to profit from it. These very same corporations were heavy Bush Campaign/GOP donors and some, including Enron, have been charged with massive fraud. Cheney steadfastly refuses to reveal the details of those meetings. -- ma.
If nothing else, that would certainly have violated open meeting laws. I wonder if the U.S. federal government has such laws. --MN]
(see 14 Feb 2002; 21 Feb 2002; 05 Mar 2002; 05 Sep 2002; 21 Oct 2002; 30 May 2007)

Return to chronology 08 Jul 2003

2003, July 11: Blowing the whistle on King George the Pathetic

By William Rivers Pitt. In a column at Alternet.org, he partially detailed the scope of the Bush administration's mendacity and propaganda. He wrote in part:

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on July 8 stood before the press corps and said the President's statements during the State of the Union address had been "incorrect."

Let us look at the timeline of this and consider the definition of "incorrect":

The Bush administration knew full well that their evidence was worthless, and still stood before the American people and told them it was fact. Bush sent the Director of the CIA to the Senate under orders to use the same worthless evidence to cajole that body into war.

That is not being "incorrect." That is lying. In the context of Bush's position as President, and surrounded by hundreds of dead American soldiers piled alongside thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, that is a crime.

Return to chronology 11 Jul 2003

2003, July 18: Report on obstructionism and double think to lock out We the People

By the U.S. White House. A new e-mail system was emplaced that not only makes it more difficult for private citizens to communicate with the White House, but that also seem to violate a number of constitutional principles. This new system was obstentibly emplaced to facilitate communications. As stated by the White House, the purpose of the new e-mail system, at www.whitehouse.gov/webmail: is an effort to be more responsive to the public and offer the administration "real time" access to citizen comments. To serve this goal, the new system requires:

Tom Matzzie, who is a professional Web site designer and an online organizer with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., commented, "This is the most ridiculous Web form for contacting someone I have ever seen."

[White House spokesman Jimmy Orr reportedly described the system as an "enhancement" intended to improve communications and said the White House, which gets about fifteen thousand e-mails daily, had designed the new system during the last nine months, working with a private firm he wouldn't identify. Smells to me like some of Bush's rich buddies have gotten richer at the expense of the tax payers while Bush has added another layer of the bureaucracy that insulates him from vox populi. I'm sure that if it hadn't been for the chance to throw money to his pals he wouldn't have bothered, since he doesn't listen to what the voters have to say anyway. --MN]

Return to chronology 18 Jul 2003

2003, July 29: Report on censorship of U.S. government 9-11 report

By the United States Congress. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the former vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said that the twenty-eight pages are "classified for the wrong reason," and contends that 95% of it could be safely declassified. President Bush, however, has refused to release the censored material. A number of viewpoints on the issue are:

However, of important note is the following from the article at the First Amendemt Center:

Bush ignored a reporter's question yesterday on Shelby's assessment.

Instead, Bush focused on what he said are the risks of disclosing what is in the report. "It made no sense to declassify during the war on terror because it would help the enemy if they knew our sources and methods," Bush said.

The White House took pains to keep Bush's meeting with the Saudis as low-key as possible. It did not list the session on Bush's schedule for yesterday, acknowledging it only after news reports disclosed it. The White House refused to allow reporters or photographers into the meeting and rejected requests for an official photo shot by Bush's photographers.

[Now it's beginning to look like an overt attempt to cover up. A proper review by an impartial body probably would declassify most of the material. In the Cult of Intelligence case, the court ordered the CIA to reduce the number of deletions by half. The tendency is always to censor (or reveal) more than is necessary to err on the side of caution. But twenty-eight complete pages? Bu-u-u-u-u-u-ullshit! --MN]
(see 09 July 2003)

Return to chronology 29 Jul 2003

2003, August 08: Obscenity prosecution

By the United States federal government. U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan announced on this day that Robert Zicari and Janet Romano, both of the Northridge section of Los Angeles, and their company, Extreme Associates, were indicted for distributing three videos to a "sting" address in Pittsburgh through the mail and for sending six images over the Internet. The grand jury found the material violated the U.S. Supreme Court's test for obscenity. She was joined at the news conference by officials of the U.S. Postal Service, the Justice Department, and Vance Proctor, captain of the Los Angeles Police Department's organized crime and vice division. The news conference was to announce a new movement by the federal government to correct lax law enforcement vis a vis "obscenity". Ms. Buchanan was quoted as having said, "The lack of enforcement of our federal obscenity laws during the mid- to late-1990s has led to a proliferation of obscenity throughout the United States." In a statement, Attorney General Ashcroft commented, "Today's indictment marks an important step in the Department of Justice's strategy for attacking the proliferation of adult obscenity." In light of the indictment, Mr. Zicari and Ms. Romano, were required to surrender their passports and must appear at an arraignment in Pittsburgh on 27 Aug. The pair faces a sentence if convicted, of up to fifty years imprisonment and fines of up to 2.5 million dollars, and the company can be put on probation and fined up to five million dollars.

[Fifty years and two and a half million dollars in fines for selling stuff to consenting adults out of a small and probably home operated business. I wonder what the Enron crooks are facing. It is exactly this sort of stupidity that erodes public confidence in government, but what else can you expect from a pack of rabid ideologues. Adult entertainment industry and First Amendment lawyer Joseph B. Obenberger reportedly said he wasn't surprised by the planned crackdown. He is quoted: "All of this was to make good on promises made (by the Bush administration) to elements of the fanatic moral right." Buchanan was reported to have said that the prosecution isn't about limiting personal sexual conduct but about "banning sexually explicit materials." And what happens, Ms. Tightpants, when using sexually explicit material is part of my personal sexual conduct? Buchanan was also reported to have said that companies such as Extreme Associates must adhere to community standards wherever their products are available. Which is another clear and present case of the Lowest Common Denominator Foundation and makes everything illegal since there is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone somewhere. This case was almost certainly indicted in Pennsylvania because Pennsylvanians are generally more easily shocked and offended than Californians. --MN]
(see 25 Jan 2005; 17 Feb 2005; 05 May 2005)

Return to chronology 08 Aug 2003

2003, August 11: The slippery slope promoted via COPA

By the Bush administration. Government officials filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a law already found unconstitutional on two previous occasions by three-judge panels of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In this appeal, Solicitor General Theodore Olson said that internet filtering alone isn't enough. Children are "unprotected from the harmful effects of the enormous amount of pornography on the World Wide Web." Critics contend COPA violates the rights of adults to see or buy what they want over the internet, while S.G. Olson said the law targets commercial pornographers who use explicit "teasers" to lure customers. COPA has never been enforced because an injunction against it since it was challenged by the ACLU on behalf of artists, bookstores and others who distribute information via the internet.

[Filtering was generally touted by censorship advocates as being necessary to "protect the children", and now they are admitting that filtering alone isn't enough and we need even more censorship. This is why the Taliban finally outlawed applause and paper bags: because all previous measures weren't enough, and now we need more, and more, and more, . . .

Keep in mind that slippery slope arguments are a fallacy in logic. It is a very real force in the physical world, however. --MN]

Return to chronology 11 Aug 2003

2003, August 29: Global Gag Rule on Abortion

By the Reagan Administration. On this day George Bush jr expanded the scope of exported American suppression against factual sexual health information. However, it is not clear from the source article exactly where and how the cuts will be implemented or what impact this decision will have on such programs other than beyond the most general ramifications. Family planning advocates have criticized the action, saying it is a byproduct of the decision this week by the State Department to end funding for an AIDS program for African and Asian refugees, although the President said the order excludes funds disbursed under his $15-billion US, five-year plan to combat HIV-AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. Critics maintain that the policy still means the poor will continue to suffer. Planned Parenthood Action Fund president Gloria Feldt commented, "The world's poorest women and their children again are bearing the brunt of Bush's obsession with appeasing his domestic political base. This is the real face of Bush's compassionate conservatism." The State Department's AIDS program is run by the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium. It offers counselling and supports health-care services in several countries, including Angola, Congo, Rwanda and Eritrea. The State Department gave $1 million for the project's first year and offered more funds for the second year, providing that six other participating groups cut their ties with Marie Stopes International.

[Themirrored at Truthout.com, is so badly presented as to be almost useless. It is straight out of the Vomit School of Journalism. Unfortunately, the "facts" offered in the piece are so disjointed there is little or no focus to the article. This is an especially bad thing in this case because the move seems to stem in part from the apprehension that a group called Marie Stopes International supports involuntary abortions and sterilizations in China, which is in violation of a 1985 American law. However, unidentified U.S. officials reportedly admit that there is no evidence to back up the belief. This thoroughly bad reporting is likely to create in the mind of the rational reader the impression that the Bush administration is implementing these cuts to a number of organizations to punish the one organization, and likely to create the impression in the mind of the censorship advocate that he is taking action against organizations which are violating American Law. The censorship advocates are certain to ignore the part of the report that the administration has no evidence to support the belief, and assume a priori that Marie Stopes and the other unidentified organizations are guilty of the rumored charge.

What this move means to me, assuming the few reported facts are at all accurate, is that the Bush administration is taking punitive action against international organizations based on rumor and innuendo. And that is a very stupid way to administer a government under any circumstances. I also count it as one more indication that the U.S. government is currently based on ideology and fanaticism. --MN]
(See 29 Aug 2003)

Return to chronology 29 Aug 2003

2003, September 24: Report on fallout from faith-based censorship via the Global Gag Rule

By Maggie Fox. She filed a report through Reuters, and which was reprinted at TruthOut.org, about the impact of the so-called compassionate conservatism of the Bush administration. The Global Gag Rule, called the Mexico City rule by those who support it, is being used to suppress comprehensive sexuality education programs and contraception distribution by Non-Governmental Organizations in European and African countries. Ms. Fox reported that a survey by Ethiopia, Kenya, Romania and Zambia, done and published by Population Action International and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, revealed the following results, specifically stating: First implemented in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan at a Mexico City conference, it was lifted by President Clinton, then reinstated by President Bush as one of his first actions in office. The Global Gag Rule was expanded in scope as recently as 29 Aug 2003. Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood commented in a statement, "This is the real face of Bush's compassionate conservatism -- a war on the world's most vulnerable women and children, who bear the brunt of Bush's obsession with appeasing his domestic political base."

Return to chronology 24 Sep 2003

2003, October 22: Report on cover up of war fatalities

By Dana Milbank in an editorial in the New York TimesAnd reprinted at TruthOut.org. The piece details the erosion of free press access to American war dead and the wholescale covering up of what the people have a right to know. Basically, President Bush Jr. simply ordered strict enforcement of a policy suppressing the press coverage of flights into Dover Air Force Base that was established by President Bush Sr. in 1991, and then expanded to cover all bases by President Clinton in 2000. The piece also looks at some of the politics involved in the issue in an objective manner.
(See 1989; 30 Dec 2003)

Return to chronology 22 Oct 2003

2003, October 28: Report on resurgence of McCarthyism

By the National Institutes of Health And Traditional Values Coalition, United States. The ultra-conservative group complained about the scientific research being undertaken by various groups who were funded by NIH, so the institute took to telephoning the 157 researchers to effectively demand that they justify research projects which had already undergone peer review to get the funding in the first place. The research includes studying subjects such as the sexual activity of teenagers, sex and drug use among truckers, and the transmission of STDs among Mexican immigrants. The ultra-conservative group commented about the study into teenage sexuality that it, "Promotes a 'sex positive' attitude among teens; endorses sexual behavior and condom use among teens." Andrea Lafferty, the coalition's executive director, condemned the funding as an abuse of taxpayer's dollars, saying of the HIV/AIDs research, "We know for a fact that millions and millions of dollars have been flushed down the toilet over years on this HIV, AIDS scam and sham. We know what it takes to prevent getting the disease. It takes not engaging in risky sexual behaviors." Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and who had previously criticized the Bush administration for interfering with science, said the phone calls from to the scientists are "sending a dangerous message" that research is being subverted to an ideological agenda. He reportedly called the list a "hit list" and questioned whether federal agencies aided in its compilation.

[Ah, but when you say "risky sexual behaviour" what you really mean is any kind of sexual behaviour whatsoever, don't you? Including sexual emotions. --MN]

Return to chronology 28 Oct 2003

2003, November 09: Whistleblowing on Bush administration cover up

By Dana Milbank, The Washington Post. And reprinted at TruthOut.org. Ms. Milbank reported that the Bush administration had cracked down on questions asked by opposition law makers in an e-mail issued 05 Nov. The decision, desribed as highly unusual, was announced in an e-mail sent to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House had spent to make and install the Mission Accomplished banner for the 01 May presidential speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Timothy A. Campen, The director of the White House Office of Administration, is quoted as having written in an explanation, "Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee." R. Scott Lilly, Democratic staff director for the House committee, commented, "It's saying we're not going to allow the opposition party to ask questions about the way we use tax money. As far as I know, this is without modern precedent." An assessment Norman Ornstein agrees with. A congressional specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, he is quoted, "I have not heard of anything like that happening before. This is obviously an excuse to avoid providing information about some of the things the Democrats are asking for." Unfortunately, the move seems to be only unethical, yet still perfectly legal. Brookings Institution government scholar Thomas Mann said, "This is just one of many instances where Republicans have a legal basis for what they're doing, but it violates long-standing norms."

Return to chronology 09 Nov 2003

2003, November 25: Report on press censorship

By the Bush administration. Mike Littwin of Rocky Mountain News, in an editorial reprinted at Truthout.org, detailed the scope of the rules levied against the press for President Bush's visit to Fort Carson. In summary:
No talking to the troops before the rally.
No talking to the troops during the rally.
No talking to the troops after the rally.
[That editorial is followed by another piece by Agence France-Presse entitled Bush's Iraq Visit a Pre-Election PR Stunt: Analysis. Just so's you know it's there beforehand. It's rather critical of Bush for landing in Baghdad for all of two hours. Personally, I wrote that off as soon as I heard about it as another bullshit PR stunt myself and as something to be expected from a draft-dodging chickenshit who used political favour to stay out of Viet Nam and then deserted from service in the National Guard. Keep in mind, however, that I hold Bush in utter contempt. --MN]

Return to chronology 25 Nov 2003

2003, December 30: Report on antigovernment censorship movement

By Jimmy Breslin. In an article at Newsday, and reprinted at Truthout.org, he writes about an edition of Army Times; a civilian newspaper sold mainly on military bases. He lauds this particular issue by writing, "I usually don't refer to other publications, for I have enough trouble with my own. But this issue of the Army Times is so extraordinary and gives hope that it will provide some leadership in the news industry." What the newspaper did, for its year-end review, was to run eight pages of photographs almost all of the 506 Americans who died in Iraq; as of the time the paper had been put to bed. Seven others were killed between then and this day. The paper was unable to run photographs for thirty five of the dead. Breslin described the feature thusly:
The pictures are small and run in neat columns. The names, ranks and date and place of death are in small type underneath the small pictures. The understatement is devastating.

The paper's senior managing editor, Robert Hodierne, was saying yesterday, "When I looked at the pages, I felt the same as I did when I walked along the Wall."

Moreover, Breslin also wrote of the difficulty the Army Times editors had in getting some of the photographs. Mr. Hodierne was quoted, "We had 75 percent of the photos. We had to make the best effort we could to go after the others. We went to families and homet own papers. The military doesn't give out so many photos of the dead. People here were upset by the gaps in the rows of photos." Mr. Breslin attributed this difficulty as part of the attempt to coverup the deaths of American servicemen by the Bush administration.
(See 1989; 22 Oct 2003)

Return to chronology 30 Dec 2003 2004, January 05: Secret trials

By the Bush administration. In what was described as an extraordinary request, the U.S. government asked the Supreme Court yesterday to let it keep its arguments secret in Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel's challenge of his treatment after the World Trade Center attack. Mr. Bellahouel wants the high court to consider whether the government acted improperly by secretly jailing him after the attacks and keeping his court fight private. The high court is sometimes asked to keep parts of cases private for national security or other reasons, but it's unusual for an entire filing to be kept secret. Mr. Bellahouel is supported by more than 20 journalism organizations and media companies, which coalition asked the Supreme Court to let them join Bellahouel's appeal. In a one-paragraph filing, Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the justices that, "this matter pertains to information that is required to be kept under seal." Executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Lucy A. Dalglish commented, "The idea that there is nothing that could be filed publicly is really ridiculous. It just emphasizes our point that we're living in frightening times. People can be arrested, thrown in jail and have secret court proceedings, and we know absolutely nothing about it."

Return to chronology 05 Jan 2004

2004, February 17: Report on challenge to reproductive freedom

By Matt Howes, National Internet Organizer, ACLU. On this day, Mr. Howe released a ACLU newsletter about an upcoming vote in the U.S. House of Representatives that was described as, "a backdoor attempt by anti-choice proponents to undermine the legal underpinnings of Roe v. Wade." This proposed bill would give a fetus separate rights distinct from the mother, and although its proponents claim the bill is meant to punish violence against women, they rejected approaches that would have punished violence -- including violence that caused the loss of a pregnancy -- without creating new fetal rights. He also wrote:
This unprecedented elevation of the status of a fetus in federal law erodes the very foundation of the right to choose abortion.

It is no accident that anti-choice groups have drafted and circulated similar legislation all across the country. The proponents of this bill have built their careers around banning abortion. This clearly shows that their true intent is to undermine a woman's right to choose.

Return to chronology 17 Jan 2004

2004, February 18: Report on release of George Bush National Guard military records

By David Corn. Mr. Corn had a commentary about the release of the documents reprinted at Truthout.org. In it, he does a rather fine critical review of what the released documents did not contain: That information pertinent to answering the very questions raised by Bush's claims about his service. To whit:
Yet these records contained not a single sheet that that can be used to resolve the controversy. In fact, the file only reinforces the existing questions.

To recap, here are the three key issues.

* In May 1972, Bush moved from Texas to Alabama to work on the Senate campaign of a family friend. He still had two years left on his Guard obligation. He requested permission to continue his Guard training in Alabama. But did he show up?
* Sometime after the November 1972 election, he returned to Houston. But his immediate supervisors at Ellington Air Base in Houston--his home base--noted in a May 2, 1973, a nnual performance review that Bush "has not been observed at this unit" for the past year. After that report, he put in several intensive stints of duty. But had Bush ignored his Guard responsibilities for months once he was back in Houston?
* In September 1972, he was grounded for failing to take a flight physical. Why did he not go through this simple step to preserve his flying status?

The new records provide answers to none of this.

[This editor recommends Mr. Corn's piece quite highly. --MN]

Return to chronology 18 Jan 2004

2004, February 18: Report of criticism of coverups by the Pentagon and Bush administration

By the Project on Defense Alternatives. A Boston Globe article critical of military propagandist non-reporting was reprinted at Truthout.org. The article tells of the conclusions released in a report entitled Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a 'New Warfare'. The report was compiled and released by Project on Defense Alternatives, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. The report concludes that the Pentagon has not fully disclosed accidental deaths and injuries inflicted upon civilian populations by American military forces in recent years and that by refusing to make public its estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon undercut international support for US campaigns in those countries and has increased the difficulty of postwar stabilization of both societies.

The source article also reported:

A Pentagon official, who said he had not yet read the full report, maintained that the Pentagon is unable to tally civilian casualties and has no need to.

"Our efforts focus on defeating enemy forces, so we never target civilians and have no reason to count such unintended deaths," said the official, who asked not to be identified. "It is at best extremely difficult to estimate casualty figures, and we cannot say with any certainty how many civilians have been killed . . .

"Even one innocent death is a sad fact, and something we sincerely regret."

As for Iraq, he added, "The responsibility for every death in Iraq, be it soldier or civilian, Iraqi, American, British, or others, lies with Saddam Hussein, who chose war over complying with UN resolutions."

[Read that report; there's a fair bit about the fallout from the Bush censorship of civilian casualties that I haven't touched upon. What I consider to be especially telling in that article is the above quote by the Pentagon official. --MN]

Return to chronology 18 Jan 2004

2004, March 22:Announcement of March for Women's Lives

By the ACLU et al. On this day, Matt Howes, ACLU National Internet Organizer, released an e-mail alert about a movement to counter Bush adminsistration's erosion of a woman's right to choose. In it he wrote:
The March for Women's Lives will be held in Washington, DC, on April 25th. Join the ACLU and thousands of other organizations and individuals in demanding an end to government attacks on our personal liberties.

In recent years, we have witnessed an unprecedented attack on civil liberties, and reproductive rights are prime targets. The decision of whether or not to have a child is one of the most fundamental and private decisions a person can make. But today our right to make this and other reproductive health care decisions, free from government interference, is being steadily eroded.

Since 1995, states have passed more than 380 measures that block access to abortion, contraceptives, sexuality education, and other essential reproductive health services. And last year, the federal government enacted the first-ever federal ban on abortion.

[Whether you love it or hate it, ultimately it is any individual woman's choice whether to terminate or carry to term, and in a free society no one may say to her "yay" or "nay". If you don't like that, you are perfectly free yourself to move to an Islamist country where women are chattels. --MN]

Return to chronology 22 Mar 2004

2004, April 02: Report on Cheney Energy Task Force case

On 31 Mar, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ordered the government to release more documents related to this White House task force. The order covers material that the Energy Department, Interior Department, and other federal agencies had been ordered to produce two years ago in two similar federal court rulings. This case, Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Energy, was consolidated from those two cases and another, similar one. The order deals with agencies that are subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act, and which agencies must turn over the documents by 01 Jun or explain to the judge why they cannot. The order could also cover some material that is the subject of a separate lawsuit now before the Supreme Court; Cheney v. U.S. District Court. This case was the subject of recent headlines because Vice President Cheney took a hunting trip with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia weeks after the Court had agreed to hear his appeal. Justice Scalia rebuffed a request that he step aside, saying he had no conflict of interest.

[Sure smells like conflict of interest to me. At the very least. At the worst, I would not hesitate to say that the VP's having a cozy relationship with a Supreme Court judge violates the separation of powers between the Executive and Judicial branches. You can read more about this at First Amendment Center. --MN]

Return to chronology 02 Apr 2004

2004, April 04: Whistleblowing on the likelihood of sexual and civil rights abuses by the Bush administration

By Lynn M. Paltrow. Ms Paltrow, who is the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, as of this writing, had a commentary reprinted at Alternet.org. In it, she examines the likely consequences and the likelihood of misapplications of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. She wrote in part:
While South Carolina ranks number one in murders of women by men and last in the number of state dollars spent on drug treatment, the primary targets of the state's fetal protection laws are pregnant women and new mothers who need drug treatment and mental health services. As a result, scores of women in South Carolina who could benefit from treatment have been arrested, some escorted from hospitals in chains and shackles while still pregnant, others still bleeding just following a delivery. According to the Association for Addiction Professionals, women throughout the country "are second-class citizens when it comes to treatment for drug addiction and alcoholism."

In America, we do not punish people for being sick. And courts generally do not permit the arrest of someone merely because they suffer the disease of alcoholism or other drug dependency. Nevertheless, relying on the argument that the fetus is an independent victim, hundreds of women nationwide have been arrested for continuing their pregnancies to term in spite of a drug or alcohol problem that for anyone else would be treated as a health problem. Underlying these arrests is the belief that being addicted to drugs or having another health problem during pregnancy is no different from a man shooting his pregnant girlfriend in the head.

Return to chronology 04 Apr 2004

2004, April 15: Whistleblowing on more Bush censorship

By The Nation. In its 03 May issue, released on this day, in an editorial entitled The Haunted Archives, it critically examined a movement by the Bush administration to control the National Archives. It reported that on 08 Apr the Bush Administration quietly pushed John Carlin, a Clinton appointee and current National Archivist, to step down, with the intent of replacing him with Allen Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein, who is a historian, was criticized on one political point, and on two points of failing to abide by accepted scholarly standards of openness. Concerns about Mr. Weinstein's appointment derive from the projected end of the 9/11 Commission in August, and who is to have control over that body's records which will subsequently go to the National Archives. This movement to replace the archivist violates the spirit of a 1984 law that sought to depoliticize the office. According to that bill, the archivist is not a political appointee who serves at the pleasure of the President and his term is not tied to the term of the President. Although the President can ask for his resignation. A House report in 1984 said Congress "expects" the nomination of a new archivist "will be achieved through consultation with recognized organizations of professional archivists and historians." There has been no such consultation, and the following groups, at least, have protested that lack in a statement issued on 14 Apr: The statement reads in part: "This is the first time since the National Archives and Records Administration was established as an independent agency that the process of nominating an Archivist of the United States has not been open for public discussion and input." Be it noted, however, that Mr. Carlin's appointment was also subjected to opposition, but on the grounds that he was unqualified. The Nation editorial futher notes:
Bush's move is part of a larger pattern of expanded White House secrecy, starting with its fight to conceal the names of members of the Cheney energy task force and continuing with the recent effort to prevent the 9/11 Commission from revealing such documents as the now-famous Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001. It's true that all Presidents want to control access to their papers, but it's the responsibility of the archivist to see that access is "free, open, equal, and nondiscriminatory," as the Statement on Standards of the American Historical Association puts it.

Return to chronology 15 Apr 2004

2004, April 16: A legal test on the limits of political dissent

By U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan. Judge Jordan refused on this day to throw out federal charges against Greenpeace stemming from activists illegally boarding a ship carrying an allegedly illegal shipment of Amazon mahogany into the U.S. Instead he granted a jury trial over prosecution objections, thereby setting up a legal test on the limits of political dissent. The Justice Department filed charges over the boarding of a container ship two years ago under an 1872 sailor-mongering law. Th e catch is that the U.S. federal government has never successfully prosecuted an activist organization on criminal charges over protest methods. Moreover, the law in question has been invoked on no more than two (2) occasions. Judge Jordan wrote about this aspect of the case in his sixteen page decision, "This case is, to put it mildly, unusual." [Although] "lack of use does not prevent the government from going forward against Greenpeace, it does point to how uncommon such a prosecution is." He also noted Greenpeace's claim that the prosecution is "politically motivated" and "maybe unprecedented," and said "the government's real fear" was that the group would try to divert a jury's attention from the law to politics and policy. The trial date is set for 17 May.

The sailor-mongering law was enacted as an anti-pimping law, and it was designed to keep bordello workers from boarding ships while they were still underway heading for port. Judge Jordan did not make a final decision on Greenpeace's claim that the law's wording is too vague, but did comment that it looks like a winner. Aaron Isherwood, Sierra Club staff attorney, commented on the case, "The judge seemed to recognize that this prosecution may signal a major radical change in Department of Justice policy. Under the Bush administration, it appears that they are abandoning their prior position of not going after advocacy groups." The Sierra Club is supporting Greenpeace in this case, which poses a serious threat to Freedom of Expression.
[See the source article for more background. --MN]

Return to chronology 16 Apr 2004

2004, May 12: Whistleblowing on sexual choice infringement

By the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Plan B, also called the "morning after pill", is actually two pills to be taken 12 hours apart that can safely be used to avoid an unwanted pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Barr Pharmaceuticals, has been petitioning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make the pills available over the counter, but on 06 May the FDA turned down the proposal. In doing so, the FDA ruled against its expert advisory panel, which had voted 23 - 4 in Dec 2003 to approve over the counter sales. The FDA said it was because the company had not proved the drug could be safely used by young teenagers without a doctor's support. This official reasoning is contrary to basic logic: Social conservative forces lobbied against the move, however, just as they have opposed access to abortion, condoms, information about contraception for women in general and teenagers in particular. And it appears that the FDA bent to their influence. This would certanly be in keeping with the sexuality-health information based censorship of the Bush administration. This might not be such a case, however, although the source article contains a number of samples of asinine rationales against approving the pill for over the counter sales.

[The source article for this entry is the reprint of Oh, Oh, Oh,..Uh Oh!, by Kari Lydersen, at AlterNet. You should read the whole piece, as it presents a number of interesting points. Of which, one in particular stands out. In her report, Lyderson writes:

But after I talked to several groups of teenage girls at alternative high schools in Chicago, it became apparent that most teens don't know much about the pill or how to use it, and in general they don't think it should be available over the counter. [...] These responses show how extremely important it is to take the opinions and level of knowledge of teenage girls into consideration when making a policy decision like this, something Barr Pharmaceuticals apparently didn't do well enough, since their label comprehension study included only 29 girls under 17 out of 585 total participants. (The FDA may still approve the pill for sale over the counter if Barr Pharmaceuticals undertakes another study that shows teens age 16 and younger can adequately interpret the label on their own.)
This is the only real argument against approving Plan B for general use. The test will be when Barr Pharmaceuticals corrects the labeling for the bottles (a dead cert cinch given the likely profits involved), and the proposal is resubmitted. How the FDA responds to that will put paid to the question of whether or not this is another case of sexuality suppression. --MN]

Return to chronology 12 May 2004

2004, May 26: Whistleblowing on the slippery slope to Bush totalitarianism

By People For the American Way. On this day PFAW issued an Action Alert about President Bush seeking to appoint Defense Department lawyer William Haynes to a Federal Appelate Court bench. PFAW reported that Mr. Haynes's suitability for the position is questionable due to his involvement in the widespread abuse of Iraqis detained by American forces, and a lack of experience in the courtroom.

PFAW wrote: As General Counsel to the Department of Defense, Haynes:

This Action Alert was issued in conjunction with an e-mail campaign to demand the immediate withdrawal of of the nomination on the grounds that Haynes's legacy at the Department of Defense was one of derelict oversight and unjust, inhumane detention policies. PFAW's page on this campaign can be found here.

Return to chronology 26 May 2004

2004, June 01: Erosion of reproductive rights struck down

By the Bush administration. U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional, saying in her opinion, "The act poses an undue burden on a woman's right to choose an abortion." This ruling comes in one of three challenges to legislation signed into effect in Nov 2003, by President Bush. Federal judges in New York and Nebraska also heard challenges to the law but have yet to rule. This ruling applies in New York City. Until Judge Hamilton's decision, enforcement of the ban had been prohibited by a temporary injunction. The law represented the first substantial federal legislation limiting a woman's right to abortion. Justice Department attorneys argued that the procedure is inhumane and never medically necessary, and one government lawyer told the judge that it "blurs the line of abortion and infanticide." In her ruling, Judge Hamilton wrote that it was "grossly misleading and inaccurate" to suggest the banned procedure verges on infanticide.

[See my commentary on this series of issues raised by this case. --MN]

Return to chronology 01 Jun 2004

2004, June 16: Suppression of all human sexuality

By the Bush administration. Censorial new CDC guidelines were published on this day in the Federal Register. Doug Ireland, of the LA Weekly, in an article that was reprinted at Alternet.org, wrote of of the event thusly:
Lethal new regulations from President Bush's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, quietly issued with no fanfare last week, complete the right-wing Republicans' goal of gutting HIV-prevention education in the United States. In place of effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education, little will soon remain except failed programs that denounce condom use, while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS. And those abstinence-only programs, researchers say, actually increase the risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

It's all couched in arcane bureaucratese, but this is the Bush administration's Big Stick -- do exactly as we say, or lose your federal funding. And nearly all of the some 3,800 AIDS service organizations (ASOs) that do the bulk of HIV-prevention education receive at least part of their budget from federal dollars. Without that money, they'd have to slash programs or even close their doors.

Aside from that, the guidelines also require the deliberate and wilful publication of misinformation (by conflating "obscene" with sexual, for instance), and material that is patently false to fact.
These new regs require the censoring of any "content" -- including "pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula," "audiovisual materials" and "pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings)," as well as "advertising" and Web-based info. They require all such "content" to eliminate anything even vaguely "sexually suggestive" or "obscene" -- like teaching how to use a condom correctly by putting it on a dildo, or even a cucumber.

And they demand that all such materials include information on the "lack of effectiveness of condom use" in preventing the spread of HIV and other STDs -- in other words, the Bush administration wants AIDS fighters to tell people: Condoms don't work. This demented exigency flies in the face of every competent medical body's judgment that, in the absence of an HIV-preventing vaccine, the condom is the single most effective tool available to protect someone from getting or spreading the AIDS virus.

[I just have to wonder how much this derives from the sancitification of legislated blackmail via CIPA. The article also blows the whistle on the further Church/State Entanglement of the Bush administration by detailing how funds for "faith-based" initiatives are disbursed and spent, as well as the misohomonist aspects of this ultra-conservatist movement. And my detractors wonder how I can liken Bush to Adolf Hitler. --MN]

The CDC is under siege by those who want to replace research-based prevention with ideology. [...] It's ideology versus science. This would be considered censorship in any day and age, but to do this in this era of AIDS is unthinkably irresponsible. --James Wagoner, president, Advocates for Youth, circa 2003

Return to chronology 16 Jun 2004

2004, June 20: Whistleblowing on Bush administration secrecy.

By Paul K. McMasters. Mr. McMasters examined the continuing and increasing trend for the furtive style of governance by President Bush, as well as looking at some of the societally deleterious latent functions of "Homeland Security". He reported that in 2003, the Bush administration created 14 million new secrets, an increase of 25% over 2002, and that many of those secrets derived from material being reclassified that were already declassified, or which could not reasonably be classified, but was declared secret anyway. He also reported that material due to be declassified was not being declassified due to slow downs in that area of administration. His commentary also states that the situation is so bad even many people in the intelligence community agree there are far too many secrets for good governance. See the source article for more background.

Return to chronology 20 Jun 2004

2004, June 28: A repudiation of Bush administration neo-fascism

By the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled that detainees and "enemy combatants" held by the United States are entitled to challenge their detention in court, thereby rejecting assertions by the Bush administration that its actions in the war on terrorism are beyond the rule of law. Some of the comments concerning the ruling and the case are: In the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 03-6696, Justices Souter, Ginsburg, Scalia and Stevens said that they would go further and order Hamdi’s immediate release, and Justice Souter in particular said that holding Hamdi incommunicado is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. In the case of Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 03-1027, the Justices evaded the substantive question of Padilla’s right to counsel, saying that his case had been brought in the wrong venue and must be refiled in South Carolina, where Padilla is being held. The Guantànamo detainees will now have a right to press their claim in the lower courts, and Hamdi will now receive a federal court hearing in which he will have an opportunity to establish that he should not have been designated an enemy combatant.

Return to chronology 28 Jun 2004

2004, July 03: Whistleblowing on American censorship of a "public trial"

By Robert Fisk. In an article that was reprinted at TruthOut.org, Mr. Fisk detailed the following censorship and skullduggery by American military officials in Iraq: On 04 Jul, Mr. Fisk had an piece in The Independent which was reprinted at TruthOut.org. One thing on which he reported was chillingly remininescent of the Taliban slippery slope:
In his last hours as US proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer decided to tighten up some of the laws that his occupation authority had placed across the land of Iraq.

He drafted a new piece of legislation forbidding Iraqi motorists to drive with only one hand on the wheel. Another document solemnly announced that it would henceforth be a crime for Iraqis to sound their car horns except in an emergency. That same day, three American soldiers were torn apart by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, one of more than 60 attacks on US forces over the weekend. And all the while, Mr Bremer was worrying about the standards of Iraqi driving.

Mr. Fisk was equally critical of the trial of Saddam Hussein in that article, as well as the ongoing occupation and the pretense of the handover of powers.

[Sloppy driving habits are acts of terrorism? Or maybe just unChristian. --MN]

Return to chronology 03 Jul 2004

2004, July 05: Whistleblowing on Bush administration anti-intellectualism

By Howard Dean. In a commentary in which he puportedly writes as a physician rather than as a politican, Governor Dean wrote, "The Bush administration has declared war on science. In the Orwellian world of 21st century America, two plus two no longer equals four where public policy is concerned, and science is no exception. When a right-wing theory is contradicted by an inconvenient scientific fact, the science is not refuted; it is simply discarded or ignored." He then detailed several instances of this censorship:

Return to chronology 05 Jul 2004

2004, July 08: Report on what is almost certainly a Bush cover-up

By the Pentagon. News reports on this day announced that some Pentagon records about Air National Guard military service which were kept on microfilm had "inadvertantly" been destroyed. The records that had been destroyed pertained to the service of President Bush. Specifically, those that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard. James Moore, author of Bush's War for Re-election, commented, "Those are records we've all been interested in. I think it's curious that the microfiche could resolve what days Mr. Bush worked and what days he was paid, and suddenly that is gone."

[The Pentagon went too far in trying to cover this up. If they had settled for destroying the records only from the questionable period of service, any allegations about a cover-up would come across as conspiracy theory. As it stands, any expectation that We The People are going to believe there was an entirely accidental destruction of two separate sets of records, both pertaining to Bush, is an insult to our intelligence. The chances of such a chain of events occurring by happenstance is completely implausible in light of Bush's concerted efforts to duck the question about his desertion from service and his long history of censorship. Unfortunately, this viewpoint is based almost entirely on an Argument of Personal Incredulity. --MN]

[Addendum (24 Jul 2004:) On 23 Jul the Pentagon released newly discovered payroll records from President Bush's service in the Alabama National Guard. These records do not shed any new light on his activities during that summer. Like the records released earlier by the White House, these computerized payroll records do not show that Bush drilled with the Alabama unit during July, August and September of the year in question. Payroll records would not say definitively whether he attended training, because they are kept separate from attendance records. C.Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon's Office of Freedom of Information, said in a letter to The Associated Press on this day, "Previous attempts to locate the missing records at the Federal Records Center had been unsuccessful due to the incorrect records accession numbers provided. [...] "The correct numbers were obtained ... and the records were found." He called the error an "inadvertant oversight". Yeah, maybe. But I have such a deep distrust of Bush and his administration that I have a hard time believing that. --MN]

[Addendum (09 Aug 2004:) On 03 Aug there was an article by Associated Press reporting that the goverment said all documents have already been made public. In a federal court affidavit filed in New York on 28 Jul, the government said every page from the Texas state archives had already been released by the president in February, from a separate set of records that were kept in St. Louis. --MN]

[Addendum (16 Aug 2004:) It seems I'm not the only one to wonder about records management in the U.S. military bureaucracy. On 05 Aug, The Nation published an article by Ian Williams that was adapted from a forthcoming book, and in which he expressed his own incredulity at the fragility of military records pertaining specifically to Bush. He also examines the veracity of certain statements made by Bush, and Bush's conduct in general. --MN]

Lying to other people is your business, but I'll tell you this: once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind. --Colonel [Pop] Baslim, Citizen of the Galaxy, pg 24

Return to chronology 08 Jul 2004

2004, July 10: More sacrifices on the altar of anti-intellectualism

By the Bush administration. In 2002, the United States sent a delegation of 236 employees from Health and Human Services (HHS) and other federal agencies to the International AIDS Conference, under funding to the tune of 3.6 million dollars. For the 2004 International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, there will be fifty delegates, and funding has been cut down to five hundred thousand dollars, and only half of that is for the American delegation. Attendance at the conference, which began on this day, was expected to be approximately 15,000. The Bush administration is pouring one-third of federal HIV education funding -- some 270 million dollars -- into abstinence-only programs.

Return to chronology 10 Jul 2004

2004, July 14: Constitutionalized misohomonism

By the Bush administration. On this day the U.S. Senate failed miserably in its attempt to write hatred and discrimination into the U.S. Constitution. The vote went 50 - 48 against the proposal, where the Senate needed sixty votes to force a vote and sixty-seven (a two thirds majority) to move any amendment to the Constitution forward. A few comments on the result include:

Return to chronology 14 Jul 2004

2004, July 15: CAPPS II

By the Bush administration. The American Civil Liberties Union today praised the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration for killing this passenger profiling system. The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System was going to be shut down. Under the program, the government would have conducted a background check on every person flying to, from, or within the United States, and made a judgement about them as to the risk they supposedly posed to aviation. ACLU officers commented variously:

[I wonder what they would have done about someone flying to the U.S. from Canada. Violated our sovereignty and freedom of movement by forbidding that person to fly to the U.S.? We don't need visas or passports to cross that border. Not to mention how CAPPS II violated the Fourth and Sixth Amendments. Still no word about the No Fly List at the moment. This has nothing to do with censorship, of course, I include it as part of the failure of the Bush administration to tear down civil liberties. --MN]

[Addendum (20 Jul 2004:) the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in an effort to clarify this situation. It seems there were some contradictory statements from DHS officials about the program's demise. Secretary Ridge had indicated to a reporter that CAPPS II was completely dead, but other officials said that the airline profiling plan would merely be "reshaped and repackaged." A second issues arises from the existence of personal information about American citizens and others which was collected to test the system. Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, commented, "Secretary Ridge is head of DHS, and when he says that CAPPS II is going to be terminated we take him at his word. But that termination will not be complete until the government purges the millions of records it has already collected." The letter read in part, "We remain deeply concerned about the fate of the large amounts of personal information about American citizens and others that DHS has already collected. The maintenance by the government of files on the innocent travel and associational activities of American citizens and others, collected without their knowledge or consent, raises numerous serious privacy issues - especially when those files are maintained for law enforcement purposes." The letter also asked whether any other any other Passenger Name Record (PNR) files had been collected -- and if so what use was made of it and whether that will be maintained -- and what data the Transport Security Agency intends to collect from future passengers, as well as what it proposes to do with that information. --MN]

Return to chronology 15 Jul 2004

2004, September 12: Report on government by secrecry lawsuit

By privacy advocate John Gilmore. A San Francisco resident who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, he first sued the government and several airlines in Jul 2002 after airline agents refused to let him board planes in San Francisco and Oakland without first showing an I.D. or submitting to a more intense search. He claimed in his lawsuit that the I.D. requirement was vague and ineffective and violated his constitutional protections against illegal searches and seizures. A U.S. District Court judge dismissed his claims against the airlines in 2004, but said his challenge to the government belonged in a federal appellate court.

The government said in court papers filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on 03 Sep, that a federal statute and other regulations "prohibit the disclosure of sensitive security information, and that is precisely what is alleged to be at issue here." Disclosing the restricted information, "would be detrimental to the security of transportation." In short, the government is saying: you cannot question the validity of a secret law because the law is a secret. James Harrison, one of Gilmore's attorneys, commented in a telephone interview: "We're dealing with the government's review of a secret law that now they want a secret judicial review for. This administration's use of a secret law is more dangerous to the security of the nation than any external threat."

The government contends its court arguments should be sealed from public view and heard before a judge outside the presence of Gilmore and his attorneys, but said it would plan to file another redacted public version of its arguments. A hearing date has not yet been set.

[Addendum (16 Sep 2004:) On 10 Sep the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the federal government must argue its case in public. This decision overturns an earlier ruling by a lower court. See the source article for more background. --MN]

Return to chronology 13 Sep 2004

2004, October 12: Report on the withholding of a CIA report on WTC attacks

By the Central Intelligence Agency. This report, by the inspector general's office of the CIA, was completed in June, yet it has not been made available to the Congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago. In the source article, Robert Scheer quotes an unnamed intelligence official who has read the report: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee is quoted, "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report. We are very concerned." See the source article for more background.

Return to chronology 12 Oct 2004

2004, October 18: Questions about a Secret Service investigation of an indymedia site

By Matt Toups, et al. Mr. Toups and his three fellow webmasters were involved in a Secret Service investigation after an anonymous poster listed the names, phone numbers and hotel addresses of delegates attending the Republican National Convention in New York City. The posting was included directions for readers to use the information "in whatever way they see fit." Calyx Internet Access, the host, was accused of voter intimidation. On 20 Aug, two days after the posting, Matt Toups was notified by Calyx that the service had been subpoenaed to testify about the it. The subpoena ordered Nicholas Merrill, Calyx’s president, to appear before a grand jury on 31 Aug or to release all information pertinent to the post. The American Civil Liberties Union responded to the subpoena on his behalf by releasing the names of the four administrators; each of them having given permission on condition that the ACLU would agree to represent them if the investigation persisted.

ACLU attorney Ann Beeson reported that her clients have had no contact with Secret Service agent regarding the investigation, and they also do not know the status of the investigation. Ms. Beeson hopes that making the case public will shame the Secret Service into ending the investigation; although she admits neither she nor her clients might ever know the end result. She is also quoted, "We couldn’t come up with any possible reason why [the Secret Service] would want this information except to harass and intimidate the people who posted this information, who have every right under the First Amendment to do so."

Return to chronology 18 Oct 2004

2004, October 20: The Last Straw

By Carl F. Worden. Finally infuriated past all tolerance by events, Mr. Worden turned his back on the Republican Party. He wrote in part in an article in Sierra Times:
The Last Straw - Carl Worden Makes His Vote Official

[...]

The absolute last straw for me took place at the Bush rally, held in Central Point, Oregon on October 14th. President Bush stayed in Jacksonville, Oregon overnight after the rally, and protesters and police clashed on the streets. I sent out a photo of a Jackson County Sheriff's Deputy, all Nazi'd up in black leather riot control gear and grinning evilly as he shoved a woman holding her 5 year-old daughter. It wasn't the finest hour for local law enforcement, but even that wasn't the last straw for me. No, the last straw for me happened just before the Bush rally itself.

Three local teachers got tickets to the Bush rally, passed all the security checkpoints and scrutiny and got in. They never created or caused a disturbance, and they were perfectly peaceful members of the audience waiting to hear Bush speak. But before they got to hear Bush, they were expelled from the rally by Bush rally staff who objected to the words printed on the T-shirts they were wearing.

No, the words on the T-shirts the ladies were wearing did not disparage Bush, nor did they suggest support for Kerry or any other candidate. The words did not condemn or support the war in Iraq, nor did they slam any Administration policy. No, the T-shirts the three women wore showed an American flag, and under it the words, "Protect Our Civil Liberties". That was all -- I kid you not.

That was it. That was the last straw for me. That was the defining moment I'll never forget. That was my epiphany.

Bryan Platt, Chairman of the Jackson County Republican Central Committee, said he stood 100 percent behind the person who made the decision to exclude the women, removing any doubt that one or two individuals exceeded their authority and blew it. No, it was solid, Republican neo-conservative fascist policy on open display, and the Brown Shirts weren't about to apologize for it. No way.

I am now a man without a political party. I will never again register as a Republican unless the party returns to what it was before the fascists took it over.

[...]

What I do know is that any party that would find the words, "Protect Our Civil Liberties" offensive or even threatening, is a party I won't belong to anymore.

That was the last straw.
--Carl F. Worden

Return to chronology 20 Oct 2004

2004, October 22: The "coalition of the willing"

By the White House internet site. Although this is not clearly a case of censorship, this incident does raise some questions which are in keeping with the Bush administration penchant for suppressing information that might make it look bad. The Agence France Presse reported on this day that a list of some fifty countries that supported the invasion of Iraq was once easily found by following a link from www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/coalition.html. A recent visit to the White House web site found that the list has disappeared, and that the link that led to it -- Who are the coalition members? -- was also removed.

White House spokesman Jimmy Orr told AFP, "This is not unusual. If there is incorrect, or out of date information, we take it down. What we're doing right now, with the entire Iraq site, is we're updating the information." He also said that the list was taken down "a couple of weeks ago"; and, the article reported: would not say when it would return. Some Bush critics have suggested the removal has an election-year motive, citing a tense exchange during the campaign between Vice President Dick Cheney and his Senator John Edwards on the topic of coalition casualties. What makes this removal so questionable is: why did the outdated information have to be removed so long before the updated material was ready for posting?

Return to chronology 22 Oct 2004

2004, October 29: Whistleblowing on attempted Pentagon cover-up and press complicity of same

By FAIR. On this date the media watchdog group issued a media advisory about obfuscations of the missing Iraqi explosives story. This story broke on 25 Oct in the New York Times, with the Bush adminstration quick to challenge it. On 28 Oct, ABC affiliate KSTP released footage that was shot on 18 Apr 2003 by its reporters that had been attached to the 101st Airborne Division. The tape shows U.S. servicemen breaking into an ammunition magazine with a seal from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) entwined in the bolt hole on the door. The same day the Pentagon released satellite images supposedly showing vehicles near some of the bunkers at the Al Qaqaa site on 17 Mar 2003; which seems to be an attempt to bolster the administration's claim that the explosives were removed by Saddam Hussein's forces. The White House also levied criticism against John Kerry for bringing up the issue at all. This left corporate press outlets in total confusion, which was reflected by subsequent reporting and analyses of this affair in which hard evidence was ignored in favour of statements by an administration that is founded almost entirely on secrecy, deception, and malfeasance or incompetence.

Return to chronology 29 Oct 2004

2004, November 16: Report on Soviet style political purge

By the Bush administration. Molly Ivins had a piece posted to Alternet.org entitled White House to 'Gut' CIA. She wrote in part:
"Disloyalty to Bush," or any president, is not the same as disloyalty to the country. In fact, in the intelligence biz, opposing the White House is sometimes the highest form of loyalty to country, since when we fight without good intelligence, we fight blind.

I would not have been troubled to learn there was to be a "purge" at the CIA of those responsible for giving bad information to the administration about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Even a "purge" of those who caved in under pressure from the White House to confirm the dubious WMD theory might be useful. (George Tenet is already gone.) But that's not what they're fixing to do here. This is not a purge of incompetent officers or of those who have caved under political pressure -- this is a political purge of those "disloyal to George W. Bush."

[You gotta wonder just how they're going to go about this. The first thing that comes to my mind is: "Why, yes, I did vote for Kerry. ... What do you mean fired?!" The only positive thing about this is that it is not another parallel between Bush and Hitler; this one is parallel to the purges by Joseph Stalin and his successors. Either way, it not what one would expect in a free county, although not surprising in light of the Bush regime blowing Valerie Plames's CIA cover. Chalk it up as another indication that Bush is just such an ineffably bad president. --MN]

Return to chronology 16 Nov 2004

2004, November 17: Whistleblowing on secrecy in government

By Sierra Club. On this day the Sierra Club released documents showing that the Bush administration gave special treatment to Texas-based Davis Brothers Oil Producers, Inc. The Sierra Club also issued an e-mail newsletter listing a few details and examining some of the scope of the action. They describe this perfidious action thusly:
Documents obtained by Sierra Club through the Freedom of Information Act show that the Bush administration changed the rule specifically at the request of Ross Davis, who runs Davis Brothers Oil Producers. Moreover, the administration made its decision in secret and bypassed the regular rulemaking process, which allows for public input and a high degree of transparency.
The Sierra Club took legal action to overturn this new rule, filing a complaint in federal district court arguing that the Bush administration had adopted the new rule in blatant disregard of its obligations to protect America's National Parks and asserting that the Bush administration broke the law by cutting the public out of a back-door process of adopting a new rule.

Return to chronology 17 Nov 2004

2004, November 22: Whistleblowing on oblique anti-intellectualism

By John Mangels, of the Cleveland Plain. In an article that was reprinted at CommonDreams.org, Mr. Mangels detailed how Bush administration officials had taken to asking discriminatory questions while screening some potential government science advisers. More than 5,000 scientists, 48 of whom are Nobel Prize winners, signed a letter accusing the Bush administration of undermining the scientific advisory process. The White House insisted that there is no attempt to stifle scientific dissent.

[Oh, yeah, like I'm going to believe there is no attempt to stifle dissent from a regime a censorial as this one when prospects are required to admit their politics. In a pig's eye. These committees don't determine policy themselves; they identify issues, gather information, and make recommendations to the policy-makers; who will have a much easier job of raping the environment, and opposing health care and sexuality programs and research, with reports in hand that agree with their personal prejudices because they were written by a bunch of yes men. --MN]

Return to chronology 22 Nov 2004

2004, November 24: Whistleblowing on the chilling effect of Bush administration censorship

By 22 national feminist, health, and population organizations. A North Carolina affiliate of National Public Radio has refused to run an underwriting announcement by a local group that carries out family-planning activities abroad. Coming as it does in the wake of funding cuts to an HIV/AIDS prevention organization that discusses homosexuality, and the investigation by the Internal Revenue Service of the National Association for the Advanced of Colored People, the action by the Chapel Hill-based WUNC radio station is being cited as evidence of a growing chilling effect on free expression. The radio station informed the non-profit group Ipas in Oct that it would no longer allow the word "rights" in announcements. After several weeks of negotions Ipas terminated its underwriting arrangement with the station, arguing that WUNC was denying Ipas the right to describe itself accurately and completely. WUNC general manager Joan Siefert Rose defended the decision, describing it as a precautionary measure designed to protect the station from possible action by the Federal Communications Commission.

[This sure smells like a prime example of a chilling effect to me. "We can't let you talk about 'reproductive rights' in that language because we might be looked at by the government." See the source article for more background. --MN]

Return to chronology 24 Nov 2004

2004, December 03: Whistleblowing on exploiting the media as a propaganda tool

By FAIR. On this day, the media watchdog issued the following a media advisory:

Date:Fri, 3 Dec 2004 14:50:44 -0800
Subject:The Return of PSYOPS
To:"XXXXXXXXXXXXX@XXXXX.XXX"
From:"FAIR" <fair@fair.org>

FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/cnn-psyops-fallujah.html

MEDIA ADVISORY:
The Return of PSYOPS
Military's media manipulation demands more investigation

December 3, 2004

The Los Angeles Times revealed this week (12/1/04) that the U.S. military lied to CNN in the course of executing psychological warfare operations, or PSYOPS, in advance of the recent attack on Fallujah. This incident raises serious questions about government disinformation and journalistic credibility, but recent discussions of the government's propaganda plans have excluded some valuable context.

In an October 14 on-air interview, Marine Lt. Lyle Gilbert told CNN Pentagon reporter Jamie McIntyre that a U.S. military assault on Fallujah had begun. In fact, the offensive would not actually begin for another three weeks. The goal of the psychological operation, according to the Times, was to deceive Iraqi insurgents into revealing what they would do in the event of an actual offensive.

This operation raises obvious questions about the government's use of media to broadcast disinformation at home and abroad-- not to mention questions about journalistic gullibility and reluctance to question official claims. But the CNN story has received little pick-up so far from other news outlets-- and when it is covered, it's treated like an isolated episode, even though recent history shows that U.S. government plans to deceive journalists and the public are widespread and systematic, not aberrational.

Shortly before the launch of the "war on terror," an unnamed Pentagon war planner seemed to warn journalists everywhere when he told Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz: "This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine.... We're going to lie about things." (9/24/01)

In February 2002, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was "developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations" in an effort "to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries."

The story got widespread attention, and the Pentagon announced that the office would be eliminated. But considerably less media attention was paid when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later said that, while the OSI had been closed, its mission would be taken up by other agencies.

As Rumsfeld put it, "I went down that next day and said 'Fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine-- I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.'" (FAIR Media Advisory, 11/27/02) So the revelation that a misinformation campaign bearing a striking resemblance to the description of the OSI was actually being carried out ought not to come as a total surprise.

Earlier this year, another Los Angeles Times scoop (6/3/04) revealed that one of the most enduring images of the war-- the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad square on April 9, 2003-- was a U.S. Army psychological warfare operation staged to look like a spontaneous Iraqi action:

"As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel-- not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images -- who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking."

CNN's history of voluntary cooperation with PSYOPS troops is also worth considering. In March 2000, FAIR and international news organizations revealed that CNN had allowed military propaganda specialists from an Army PSYOPS unit to work as interns in the news division of its Atlanta headquarters.

As FAIR reported at the time (3/27/00), some PSYOPS officers were eager to find ways to use media power to their advantage. One officer explained at a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place.

And a 1996 unofficial strategy paper written by an Army officer and published by the U.S. Naval War College ("Military Operations in the CNN World: Using the Media as a Force Multiplier") urged military commanders to find ways to "leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate" for the purposes of "communicating the [mission's] objective and endstate, boosting friendly morale, executing more effective psychological operations, playing a major role in deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection."

Of course, the full extent of these programs is not yet known. But the fact that the U.S. government is intentionally lying to journalists, and by extension to the public, should be big news. Unfortunately, the L.A. Times report is generating little mainstream media attention. CNN's Aaron Brown reported the story (12/1/04), admitting that "none of us are particularly comfortable when we're talking about things, about ourselves if you will."

Brown also made another, even more revealing comment:

"There is an important and explicit bargain between the press and the Pentagon in a time of war. We don't do anything to endanger the troops or operations. They don't lie to us. Each is essential in a free society and each is made more complicated by the information age, but it seems that sometimes in an effort to mislead the enemy the military has come close, very close, to crossing the line and misleading you."

Of course, in this case the military did not come "very close" to misleading the public; they did mislead the public. And while Brown may have confidence that such a "bargain" exists between the press and the military, it would appear that the Pentagon does not agree. If journalists were more willing to accept the old adage that "all governments lie," we might all be better served.

Return to chronology 03 Dec 2004

2004, December 20: Fallout from anti-terrorism hysteria

By the Bush adminstration. A federal appeals court reinstated indictments against seven residents of Los Angeles who had been accused of raising money for a terror organization with links to Saddam Hussein. On this day the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi who had declared the 1996 terror financing law unconstitutional. Judge Takasugi had invalidated the law on the grounds that it did not provide the groups a proper forum to contest their terrorist designations. But a three-judge panel of the appeals court overruled that decision and went a step further, saying that individuals accused of supporting the listed groups cannot challenge whether the groups should be listed. The ruling is that the government must prove the "fact that a particular organization was designated at the time the material support was given, not whether the government made a correct designation."

Before the World Trade Center attacks the government had rarely used this law; subsequently the Bush administration has used it to win dozens of terror convictions. David Cole, an expert on the law in question at the Georgetown University Law Center commented, "This is a troubling result for a nation that believes in freedom of association."

[So, any government flack can arbitrarily decide that a given group is a terrorist group, and noone is allowed to question these designations, and you can go to jail for making a donation to such a group; of which there are thirty as of this case. See the source article for more background. --MN]

Return to chronology 20 Dec 2004

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