Bush team has 'right' credentials Conservative picks seen eclipsing even Reagan's 3.25.01   Dana Milbank & Ellen Nakashima WashPost pA1	¢U L P R I T S	new R.Armitage AG J.Ashcroft Homeland Sec.Dir T.Ridge Sandy Berger J.Bolton Richard Breeden Wm Casey B.Chapman D.Cheney Richard Clarke Duke Cunningham Nigerian 419 L.Craner Wm Donaldson David Edwards Douglas Feith per Robert A. Hutchinson Mark Everson Jay Garner Porter Goss Alan Greenspan defence Col. Will Gunn Christopher Ryan Henry R.Huber W.Kansteiner Thos. Kean Bernard Kerik Lewis Scooter Libby Halford Mackinder J.Maisto Phillip Merrill J.Negroponte Treasury Sec. P.O'Neill Richard Perle Adm. John Poindexter C.Powell Wm Pryor C. Randt Jr O.Reich Condee Rice Tom Ridge Karl Rove D.Rumsfeld Jos. Schmitz Ted Shackley Geo. Soros J.P. Walters fils James Woolsey Shrub intl forecast foreign persecution nabobs Carrol Quigley diplomacy Nuoviso.com re 'noble' lies The Yes Men Bush league Vulcans bio Jack Abramoff Lyn Nofziger appt tracking embassy row Ctr for Public Inquiry CLW Euro summary FPIF national debt Perfectly Legal funeralgate Senator for Sale Joe Allbaugh   FEMA   Shrub's TX enforcer Walter Kansteiner   Scowcroft resources rapist; FIPF John Bolton State Dept asst atty general for Contra cocaine   CIRF nukes enthusiast; ¹   FPIF   CV John Maisto   NSC Nicaragua amb. for Contra cocaine John Negroponte   UN Honduras amb. for Contra cocaine Otto Juan Reich   State Dept Venezuela amb. for Contra cocaine Off. Public Diplomacy for LatinAm munitions pusher; FIPF Bruce Chapman   WHouse Special Sci&Tech asst to Pres. Intelligence Design Theory creationist Lorne Craner   State Dept GOP spinchief worked Balkan hustings Coup fixer for Contra cocaine Richard L. Huber   NorteSur uberNAFTA cheerleader John P. Walters   Narc czar another NatSec brat gets career payoff for Contra coke contrib.
Pres. GWBush is quietly building the most conservative administration in modern times, surpassing even R.Reagan in ideological commitment of his appts, WHouse officials & prominent conservatives say. As Bush fills out sub-Cabinet & WHouse staff, he turned to large number of formidable intellectuals drawn from conservative think tanks, journals & law firms. The appts surprised even to conservative leaders, who expected Bush, particularly after disputed presidential election, to follow centrist path closer to his father's. "This administration is shaping up to be the best," said Paul Weyrich, prominent conservative. "When Reagan ran for office, even when Nixon ran, it was the campaign that was lovey-dovey. Then, when they got in, they didn't know who you were. Here, the Bush campaign didn't pay any attention to us, but as soon as they got in, they started taking notice. This is something that I've never experienced before." Michael Horowitz, Reagan WHouse vet now with conservative Hudson Institute, concurred. "In many respects, this is better than the Reagan administration," he said. Bush's collection of "movement" conservatives, those identified with moral, religious or small-govt causes, is wide-ranging: Otto Reich, …; Christian activist Kay Coles James, … slated to be solicitor general is Theodore B. Olson, who served on Richard Mellon Scaife-funded American Spectator magazine's board & argued pivotal Supreme Court case against affirmative action. Bush admin officials say conservatives' appt should not be surprising because Bush is a conservative. They also say appts do not necessarily translate into right-wing agenda. They point out that Bush continues to make his campaign themes, incl education, tax cuts, and military & entitlement reform, top priorities. "The president is reaching out to experienced individuals of highest integrity who share his commitment to a conservative agenda with compassionate results," said Scott McClellan, Bush spokesman. Even moderate Republicans say they are pleased with the lineup. "I am struck by the depth of the Bush bench," said Rep. Phil English R-PA, noting that the appointments "don't run up any red flags." Still, Bush's appts surprise those who interpreted Bush's soothing campaign rhetoric to mean he was, if not a moderate, then a "new kind of Republican," as the campaign often said. Liberals believe such appts explain why Bush admin has taken actions on controversial issues that did not surface much during the election: abandoning pledge to limit carbon dioxide emissions, restricting labor unions & abortion rights, revoking ergonomic & arsenic regulations, and tightening bankruptcy law. "What you're seeing is an administration that, believe it or not, is further to the right than either the first Bush or the Reagan's," said Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way. "Across the board, it's obvious that the right wing is in control. And it's a right-wing agenda that's being implemented." At first, conservatives & other observers believed Bush's gestures to the right were simply "outreach," building up loyalty from his base of support in order to strike deals with Democrats later. After all, Bush's top 3 advisers, Karl Rove, Karen P. Hughes & Andrew H. Card Jr., ç were not regarded as movement conservatives, and his appts in Texas tended to be establishment Republicans. But conservatives no longer suspect Bush is merely placating them so they don't abandon him as they did his father. "These folks are good, solid conservatives, which warms my heart," said Frank Donatelli, who served as Reagan WHouse political adviser.

Although conservatives in the first Bush WHouse tended to be outcasts or relegated to VP Dan Quayle's office, they dominate many crucial areas of the White House now, incl VP Cheney's office. One reason for the larger number of conservatives in the new Bush admin is the expanded talent pool. "At the time Nixon became president, there just weren't many conservatives in America of a philosophical base," said David Boaz of libertarian Cato Institute, noting there were mostly country-club Republicans or segregationists. "By the time Reagan became president, people who had read [economist] Milton Friedman or who were kids during [Barry M. Goldwater's heyday] were ready to be sub-Cabinet or WHouse aides." Now these same people are seasoned and ready to govern, joined by clerks of conservative judges. At the same time, American culture has grown more conservative, with support for the welfare state fading. For conservatives now, "their views are based much more on academic support than Reagan ever had," said Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute.

Growing up in Texas, becoming a businessman during the Reagan revolution, serving as a governor of a southern state, Bush is the product of the changing times. "He's modernized the Reagan model," said GOP strategist Scott Reed. But perhaps the most significant reason the new Bush admin has eclipsed Reagan's in conservatism is the absence of moderate dissent. There is no equivalent to Richard Darman, Reagan's former budget chief, a New England moderate who had no patience for conservatives' ideas. "The Reagan administration was wracked by quarrels between people who had strong ideological commitment to the president's campaign positions who generally lacked expertise, and people who had expertise who, by and large, didn't respect the president's campaign positions," said a philosophical conservative working for Bush. Now, they're one and the same. There is a danger that the lack of competing views in the famously tight WHouse could cause Bush's advisers to become stale & insular, but there is no concern about that yet. "There isn't a lot of competition in the policy arena," a Bush official said with satisfaction. Bush seems to care about hiring more than Reagan did, accepting the idea that "personnel is policy." The new president also seems determined to avoid the ways of his father, who preferred businesslike managers. "They tended to be the moderates, the people who had gone to the prestige prep schools and disproportionately tended to have Roman numerals behind their names," said conservative Morton C. Blackwell, first term Reagan adviser & longtime GOP National Committee member. Bush & aides appear to have concurred with the advice sent in November by Hudson's Horowitz in memos to the transition team. He wrote that Bush should "assign greater weight to intellectual capital & moral credibility than to management skills. … The close vote & contested election sharply increases the value of appointees able to finesse the 'no mandate' pressures that will be placed on the governor." Ideological conservatives haven't won every influential position in the Bush admin. SecState Colin L. Powell & EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman have moderate credentials. And Transportation Sec Norman Y. Mineta is a Democrat. If there is one weak link in the administration for some movement conservatives, it is Treasury Sec Paul H. O'Neill, who has been advocating reductions in carbon dioxide emissions for years and supported the imposition of an energy tax in 1993. Another disappointment for conservatives is Tom Scully, chosen to head Health Care Finance Admin at Health & Human Services Dept. But social conservatives cheer Bush's pick of Claude A. Allen for deputy secretary. As Virginia's health secretary, Allen, former press secretary to Sen. Jesse Helms R-NC and a foe of right-to-die legislation, drew fire from health care advocates who charged he would cut services to women & children. Movement conservatives are generally delighted as many of their own take positions of power. The recent hirings go far beyond the early naming of conservatives such as John D. Ashcroft to head Justice Dept and Gale A. Norton to lead Interior Dept. In virtually every instance where moderate candidates have vied with conservatives for key jobs, a conservative has won. Ashcroft, for example, was selected over former Montana governor Marc Racicot; & J. Steven Griles, a coal mining lobbyist, was selected over the more moderate John Turner as the No. 2 at Interior. Conservatives are particularly pleased with Office of Mgmnt & Budget. There, Jay Lefkowitz, former law partner of Kenneth W. Starr, is chief counsel, joined by strong conservatives Sean O'Keefe & Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. This gives conservatives sway over most regulatory decisions. Justice Dept is another favorite location. Michael Chertoff, who advised Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato R-NY during Whitewater investigation, was named criminal division head. Larry Thompson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ally, is nominee for deputy atty general. In WHouse, Timothy Goeglein, former religious conservative Gary Bauer and Sen. Dan Coats R-IN aide, serves as liaison to conservative leaders. The speechwriting office features writers from the Weekly Standard & National Review, and former advisers to Wm Bennett, Jack Kemp & Quayle. WHouse counsel's office is staffed with former clerks to Justices William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy & Thomas, and members of the conservative Federalist Society. The group has been successful beyond the counsel's office; it counts as members Olson, Norton, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and his counsel, Lee Liberman Otis, among others. Several Bush nominees were endorsed by Heritage Foundation, leading conservative think tank that has full-time staffer devoted to helping the administration with its appts, and who is in contact with WHouse every day. Labor Sec Elaine L. Chao comes from Heritage, as does Cheney adviser Nina Rees. Paula Dobriansky, conservative causes champion recommended by Heritage, was nominated to undersecretary of state for global affairs. American Enterprise Institute, with which VP & wife Lynne V. Cheney have been affiliated, also claims John R. Bolton, nominated to be State Dept undersecretary for arms control & intl security. Bolton is foe of intl organizations and is a man with whom, Helms has said, "I would want to stand at Armageddon." The institute also can claim Lawrence B. Lindsey, Bush's top economic adviser, and Diana Furchgott-Roth, staff chief to Council of Economic Advisers. Most of the sub-Cabinet & WHouse appointees are unknown to public and will remain unknown throughout their terms. But they have extraordinary influence, and in some cases foes fear them more than Cabinet officers. A case in point is John D. Graham, named to head little-known Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs, which vets all significant or controversial regulations. Graham is founder of Harvard Ctr for Risk Analysis, which is funded by more than 100 large corporations & trade groups, incl Dow, 3M, Dupont, Monsanto, Exxon & American Petroleum Institute. He is leading proponent of "comparative risk analysis" to balance the need for regulation against risk of the event, and he was prominent in the 1995 regulatory reform battles. "John Graham has a long history of opposing even the most broadly accepted public health protection measures, incl the measure to reduce drinking water contamination," said Greg Wetstone, Natural Resources Defense Council spokesman. Graham's nomination, Wetstone said, "is arguably the single sharpest stick in the eye of the public interest community yet." J. Allbaugh The crony who prospered 9.16.05   Mark Benjamin Salon Joe Allbaugh was GW. Bush's good ol' boy in Texas. He hired his good friend Mike Brown to run FEMA. Now Brownie's gone and Allbaugh is living large. George W. Bush relied most heavily on 3 trusted staffers in his bid for the White House in 2000: political strategist Karl Rove, communications czar Karen Hughes and national campaign manager Joe Allbaugh, who had been Bush's chief of staff in Texas, when Bush was governor. The three were dubbed the "iron triangle" of Bush's top staff. Allbaugh was "the enforcer," says Texan Robert Bryce, auth. "Cronies," about Bush and the oil industry. "And he looked the part: crew-cut, cowboy boots, and just slightly smaller than a side-by-side refrigerator." When Bush moved into the Oval Office, Hughes took a job as counselor in a spacious White House corner office with a view of the Truman balcony. Rove moved in as senior advisor. Allbaugh, on the other hand, went down the road to C Street in southwest Washington to take over the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Everybody thought [Allbaugh] was going to be White House chief of staff," Robert Novak said on CNN at the time. "And your initial reaction is, boy, what did he have against Allbaugh? But as I talked to politicians, they say this was a brilliant maneuver because FEMA is very important, politically, to any president dealing with disasters." The FEMA director has turned out to have political consequences for the president all right, but not the kind that Bush supporters could have ever envisioned. Critics say Allbaugh hastened the decline of FEMA, even before he turned the agency over to his Oklahoma buddy Michael D. Brown, hapless captain when (Hurricane) Katrina struck (New Orleans 8/05), whose political career appears to have been shipwrecked for good. As for the president, a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of his response to Katrina. Allbaugh, meanwhile, has risen above the morass. He and his wife, Diane, now work as Washington lobbyists and consultants for such companies as Halliburton and Northrop Grumman, companies involved in homeland security and disaster relief that do business with the federal govt. When Allbaugh inherited FEMA Feb. 2001, the relief agency may have been in its best shape since its inception in 1979. It had been in the hands of James Lee Witt for the previous 7 years. Witt was an experienced disaster manager who had been Arkansas Office of Emergency Services dir. for 4 years before going to FEMA. Witt is credited with implementing sweeping reforms to speed disaster relief, and he was the first FEMA director to get Cabinet-level status, crucial access to the president. "Access to the president, I think, is critical in an agency like this," Witt told reporters over lunch just as he was leaving FEMA. Bush, however, did not hand the FEMA reins to Allbaugh because of any long experience in emergency services. "Look at Joe Allbaugh's qualifications," says the King County WA Office of Emergency Management dir. Eric Holdeman, who last month penned an editorial in the Washington Post, "Destroying FEMA." "He was campaign manager for Bush. He was a political strategist. He saw FEMA as a federal entitlement program for people. He had no interest in the mission and functions of the emergency management agency." At FEMA, Allbaugh led federal rescue efforts at Ground Zero with apparently good results, though NYC officials, notably Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, got most of the attention. Allbaugh could also move fast. In Feb. 2001, the Nisqually earthquake in Washington state occurred at 11 a.m. By 11 p.m., Allbaugh was in the Puget Sound area, leading a $157 million response. Following 9.11.01, Allbaugh backed plans to fold FEMA into the Homeland Security Dept. "I fully support FEMA's transfer into the new dept and commit myself to ensuring its success," Allbaugh told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in September 2002. "This is the right action, at the right time, for the good of the country." In March 2003, FEMA was folded into DHS. FEMA critic Holdeman explains that the move stripped the FEMA director of Cabinet-level status, buried the agency in red tape, and caused key talent to flee. DHS employees now rate it as one of the worst places to work in the federal govt, according to a nonprofit agency's report, "Best Places to Work in the Federal Govt," released this week. "FEMA first became ill with the appointment of Joe Allbaugh," Holdeman says. Not only is it on the back burner of DHS priorities, he says, "it is not even on the stove." After FEMA's move to DHS, Allbaugh promptly left the agency. "I have been a longtime advocate for the Homeland Security Dept, and now that it is a reality and the president has a great team in place, I feel I can move on to my next challenge," he said in a statement. Before he drove off, he appointed the now infamous Brown as team leader, whom he had brought to FEMA in 2001 as general counsel. Appearing before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in June 2002, Brown said: "My friend, Joe Allbaugh, whom I have known for some 25 years, has asked me to serve with him. Our friendship goes back many years." Allbaugh graduated from Oklahoma State University in 1975, the same year Brown moved from Southeastern Oklahoma State University to the University of Central Oklahoma. (It has been incorrectly reported that Allbaugh and Brown were college roommates. They did not attend the same college and were never college roommates.) Both were active in Oklahoma municipal or state govt. Allbaugh was once the Oklahoma deputy secretary of transportation, and Brown was the staff director of the Oklahoma Senate Finance Committee from 1980 to 1982. Patti Giglio, Allbaugh's spokeswoman, says Allbaugh is unavailable for interviews. She says that she is not sure exactly how Allbaugh and Brown met in Oklahoma, but that Allbaugh is "absolutely" responsible for first bringing Brown to FEMA. "He hired him because he was a solid attorney with a strong ethics background," she says. Like Allbaugh himself, Brown was no veteran of emergency services. He worked as general counsel for Dillingham Insurance in Enid OK 1988 to 1991, and evaluated judges for the Intl Arabian Horse Association for the 10 years ending in 2001. Brown's sole piece of emergency experience before FEMA came in the 1970s, working for the city of Edmond OK. Spring of 2002, Brown delivered written biographical materials to a Senate panel considering his nomination to FEMA as a political appointee. In those papers, Brown said he worked as "Asst City Manger, Police, Fire & Emergency Response," in Edmond 1975 to 1978. He signed an affidavit stating that his biographical material and written answers to that Senate panel were "current, accurate and complete." However, Edmond city spokeswoman Claudia Deakins says city records list Brown as an "assistant to the city manager", as opposed to "assistant city manager", from Aug. 1977 through Sept. 1980. Randel Shadid was on the Edmond City Council from 1979 to 1991 and was mayor from 1991 through 1995. He says he remembers Brown and described the Edmond job as relatively low level. "My best I can recall he was an assistant to the city manager, which basically means he did certain tasks for the city manager," he says. "He would not have been in charge of the police and fire depts. We had a fire chief and a police chief." Shadid says Brown may have assisted the city in preparing a response plan for a tornado or a freight train spill. "He was a nice guy, hard worker and pretty bright," he says. "But the scope of doing anything in the city of Edmond is nowhere near the scope of trying to handle what's going on in the gulf." Today, with the disgraced Brown having quit FEMA, and President Bush's post-Katrina poll numbers sinking, Allbaugh continues to prosper. His stint at FEMA has proven to be lucrative for him and his wife Diane, who are lobbyists and consultants for the Allbaugh Co. Review by Salon of lobbying registration records shows that 7 months after Allbaugh left what was to become Homeland Security Dept, Diane Allbaugh registered as a lobbyist with 3 companies to work on homeland security or disaster relief issues. Prior to that, she focused almost exclusively on energy companies and electric utility clients. Records also show that Diane Allbaugh contacted DHS for undisclosed reasons on behalf of 2 of those clients. She did less than $10,000 of work for each company and all 3 contracts were terminated in the summer of 2004. Washington is full of folks in power with spouses who are lobbyists. Allbaugh spokeswoman Giglio, points out that Diane has her own substantial credentials as an attorney and a lobbyist. "Her work is much broader than 'electric utility lobbyist,' as you have described it," Giglio says in an e-mail. "She is an experienced govt affairs consultant across many industry sectors." Federal ethics law bars sr employees from contacting their former employers on business matters for a period of one year. But not necessarily their spouses. Project on Government Oversight general counsel Scott Amey says it is unclear if Diane violated any of a complex web of ethics laws, but there are provisions intended to prevent the use of spouses to skirt restrictions. It is not the first time Diane's lobbying could be perceived as cashing in on her husband's connections. Then-governor Bush in 1996 learned from a report in the Dallas Morning News that Diane had been hired by TX utility companies who had business before the state. Diane and Joe Allbaugh had moved to Texas from Oklahoma because Joe had become Bush's exec. asst. The paper said Diane could get $250,000 from the companies, even though she "had no previous experience with Texas legislators." Diane later dropped the clients to avoid the "perception of a conflict," she wrote Bush's general counsel. This year, the Allbaugh Co. registered to lobby for Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, Northrop Grumman Corp., and Shaw Group, according to lobbying registration forms. In all 3 cases, the Allbaughs said they would "educate Congress" on either homeland security or disaster relief issues on the companies' behalf. The Washington Post reported last week that Allbaugh was in Baton Rouge LA helping his clients get business in the wake of Katrina. Allbaugh told the Post that he guides his clients toward "entities" that might need their services but, he said, "I don't do govt contracts." Press reports show that Kellogg Brown & Root received a $30 million contract to rebuild Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi, and Shaw got a $100 million FEMA contract for housing construction and management. Giglio says Allbaugh had nothing to do with those contracts at all. "He is not in the govert contracting business," she says. "Everybody is trying to connect the dots. They just don't connect. He did not secure these contracts for either of these companies." Watchdog Amey says Allbaugh clearly got the job at FEMA because he was a political operative and he appears to be cashing in on his FEMA post now. "Bush may have stacked the [FEMA] administration with people who may not have been the most qualified, and who then steer business their way afterward. Cronyism gets them into the White House. The revolving door gets them business".

More battles over Bush's judgeship nominees 4.6.02   Neil A. Lewis NYTimes ¹ Wash.D.C.   … Several conservative nominees. … Texas Supreme Court conservative justice Priscilla Owen for federal appeals court post. Justice Owen is an opponent of abortion rights for minors without their parents' permission. Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats banded together last month to defeat nomination of Charles W. Pickering Sr. of Mississippi to a seat on the federal appeals court based in New Orleans, provoking denunciations from Republicans. Some Democrats were blunt about what they hoped to accomplish. Sen. Charles E. Schumer D-NY said that in opposing the Pickering nomination they were sending a message to the White House that Mr. Bush should stop trying to stack the courts with conservatives. "The bottom line is that the administration has made ideology a major factor in their selection of judges," Senator Schumer said in an interview. "I think it's fine that ideology is being debated more openly now." But he added that the Judiciary Committee would not accept the administration's judicial nominees unless Mr. Bush broadened their ideological range. Justice Owen was elected in 1994 with help of an $8,600 donation from Enron, later wrote a majority opinion that reversed a lower court order, saving the company about $225,000 in taxes. Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick J. Leahy D-VT recently sent a series of questions to the White House asking for comment on the issue of any relationship between the donations & her rulings. Mr. Gonzales said that he had examined the issue and found nothing improper on Justice Owen's part. He said he would soon write to Mr. Leahy outlining his position. "Based on our review she's superbly qualified to serve on the Fifth Circuit," he said. "She's extremely bright, extraordinarily dedicated and very principled." Chief lawyer in the White House, however, rejected the idea that Mr. Bush would change his approach to choosing judicial nominees. "The president has made very clear he has definite ideas about the kind of people he wants to fill the judiciary," Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, said in an interview this week. "The intention here is to keep sending up people like the ones we have sent up who we believe are qualified and in the mainstream." Opponents of Justice Owen cite dispute that arose in 2000, when Mr. Gonzales was a fellow justice on the Texas court and Justice Owen was one of 3 court members who wrote dissents in a case involving a new Texas law regarding parental notification of abortions among minors. At the time, Mr. Gonzales suggested that the narrow reading of the law by the dissenters was "an unconscionable act of judicial activism." Anne Womack, a spokesman for Mr. Gonzales, minimized the significance of the disagreement. "Judge Gonzales's opinion and Justice Owen's dissent reflect an honest & legitimate difference of how to interpret a difficult & vague statute," Ms. Womack said. Justice Owen's nomination is likely to bring the abortion debate into play. Kate Michelman, the president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, said that abortion rights groups would strongly oppose her. "We regard her as someone who exemplifies the most extreme hostility to reproductive rights of any of the nominees that President Bush has named," Ms. Michelman said. On a recent campaign swing through the South, Pres.GWBush said he wanted a Republican-controlled Senate so he could put conservatives on the bench. Mr. Gonzales said the president was naming lawyers to the bench who are chosen for competence, character and a judicial philosophy that respects precedent and believes in judicial restraint. But Mr. Bush's use of the word conservatives in his campaign appearances was unusually direct. Republicans have generally shown themselves willing to take casualties in their efforts to shape the federal bench to their liking. Even though Mr. Bush suffered a defeat with the Pickering nomination, the Republican Party is trying to extract some political advantage from the experience. Mr. Bush tried to use the issue against Senator Max Cleland GA, who is running for re-election, and a Republican strategist said he expected the Pickering issue to play a role in several races in the South. Sen. Lamar Alexander R-TN broadcast a television advertisement arguing that the treatment of Judge Pickering was unfair to the South. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, which holds hearings on all judicial nominees, have also tried to send their message by arranging the order in which they will consider Mr. Bush's nominees, delaying votes on those they consider most conservative. Democrats, who control the committee, are generally planning to schedule hearings and votes on those Bush nominees they consider more acceptable, such as James Howard of NH, who has been nominated for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston. Mr. Howard is considered moderate & relatively noncontroversial candidate, Democratic staff aides said. Others whom committee members consider less ideological, and who thus may get early consideration, include Julia Smith Gibbons and John M. Rogers, both nominated for seats on U.S. Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati. Other Bush nominees who could become the subject of sharp battles include Miguel Estrada, a strong conservative who has been nominated to U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and D. Brooks Smith, nominated for U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia. Mr. Leahy has promised hearings this year to Ms. Owen, Mr. Estrada and Prof. Michael W. McConnell of the Univ. of Utah, nominated to a seat on U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver. Professor McConnell is considered the least likely to engender opposition because of support for him among academics across the ideological spectrum. There is a feel of something more creepy than just bad policies   8.11.03   M.Ivins op ed Salt Lake Tribune Camden, ME   … mileposts on downward path to utter degradation of political discourse in this country. A recent newspaper advertising campaign by "independent" groups supporting Pres. GWBush shows a closed courtroom door with the sign, "Catholics Need Not Apply," hanging on it. The ad argues that Wm Pryor Jr, Alabama atty general and right-wing anti-abortion nominee to the federal appeals court, is under attack for his "deeply held" Catholic beliefs. Actually, Pryor is under attack because he is a hopeless dipstick. That he also happens to be Catholic and anti- abortion has nothing to do with his unfitness for the federal bench. The only person I know who believes one's closely held religious & moral convictions should make one ineligible for the federal bench is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia argued last year that any judge who is opposed to the death penalty should resign, on account of it is the law. By that reasoning, any judge who is opposed to abortion out of deep moral conviction should also resign. That would include Scalia's resignation … Pryor has said Roe vs. Wade "ripped the Constitution and ripped out the life of millions of unborn children." … His record on civil rights, states' rights and gay rights is equally ideological. He has a record of incendiary comments, which certainly bring into question his "judicial temperament." When the Supreme Court delayed an execution in Alabama, Pryor called them "nine octogenarian lawyers." NY Times observed, "He has turned the Alabama atty general's office into a taxpayer-financed right-wing law firm." He has argued against a key part of the Voting Rights Act and was the only state atty general to argue against the Violence Against Women Act. Who cares if he's Catholic? He'd be a disgrace on the bench if he were a Buddhist. … now House Judiciary Committee threatens to investigate sentencing records of every federal judge in the country for suspected "political" bias. This stems from Minnesota Fed. Dist. Court chief judge James Rosenbaum, who thinks sentencing guidelines for low-level drug dealers are too harsh. Even Texas legislature decided we should provide treatment for first-time small drug offenders, rather than locking them up for years. Locking them up is getting to be a very expensive proposition in our very broke state, … After Rosenbaum's testimony, Rep. James Sensenbrenner chaired Judiciary Committee prepared to subpoena Rosenbaum's records to see if he had imposed any "unlawfully lenient sentences." In fact he had, giving one guy 4 years (9 months below the guidelines) and another a month less that the minimum recommended. Sentencing guidelines are consequent of 1984 crime law, passed at the height of the drug hysteria, that took effect in 1987. Rosenbaum's lawyer Victoria Toensing said: "I was present at the creation of those guidelines. May God forgive me for ever supporting them." … TX Rep. Lamar Smith, … claims the 7 member Sentencing Commission is "systematically trying to lessen the drug penalties." … "Watch on the Rhine" quality of our public life these days deserves serious attention. Buried stories on major newspapers' back pages (show) a creepy advance of something more menacing than bad policies. … Mussolini's definition of fascism: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism,' since it is the marriage of govt & corporate power." … Bush appointments avert Senate battles 1.5.06   Thomas B. Edsall Wash. Post President Bush yesterday made a raft of controversial recess appointments, including Julie L. Myers to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau at the Dept of Homeland Security, in a maneuver circumventing the need for approval by the Senate. Myers, a niece of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard B. Myers and the wife of the chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, had been criticized by GOP & Democrats who charged that she lacked experience in immigration matters. Myers's nomination faced a bruising and potentially embarrassing fight on the Senate floor, where Democrats were prepared to argue that politics, not merit, drove her selection for an important job preventing terrorists and weapons from entering the country. Bush appointed Tracy A. Henke as Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness exec. dir. She had been accused in her politically appointed post at the Justice Dept of demanding that information about racial disparities in police treatment of blacks in traffic cases be deleted from a news release. The president avoided an abortion rights battle with the recess appointment of former Maryland GOP gubernatorial candidate Ellen R. Sauerbrey as assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. Sauerbrey is an opponent of abortion rights. For the Federal Election Commission, Bush picked Justice Dept employee and former Fulton County GA GOP chair Hans von Spakovsky for one of 3 openings. Von Spakovsky is widely viewed as a key player in two disputed Justice Dept decisions to overrule career staff in voting rights cases. A Democratic vacancy will be filled by union lawyer Robert D. Lenhard. He has provoked opposition because of his participation as an attorney for the American Federation of State, Council and Municipal Employees in efforts to have the Supreme Court rule that the 2002 McCain-Feingold law is unconstitutional. Sen. John McCain R-AZ indicated that he would fight the Lenhard nomination when Democratic leaders first announced it in 2003. McCain and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy D-MA issued statements critical of the appointments. Von Spakovsky may have undermined "enforcement of our civil rights laws," Kennedy said. "By appointing von Spakovsky, the White House missed an opportunity to fill this important position with a person clearly committed to these fundamental rights." The other FEC appointment went to Nevada lawyer Steven T. Walther, who has close ties to Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid D-NV. At the Pentagon, Bush granted recess appointments to Gordon R. England as deputy secretary of defense and Dorrance Smith, a former ABC producer, as assistant secretary for public affairs. The recess appointments will end at the conclusion of the current congressional session in January 2007. Karl Rove to leave White House 8.13.07   Terence Hunt AP Wash.D.C.   Karl Rove, President Bush's close friend and chief political strategist, announced Monday he will leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final year & a half of the administration. On board with Bush since the beginning of his political career in Texas, Rove was nicknamed "the architect" and "boy genius" by the president for designing the strategy that twice won him the White House. Critics call Rove "Bush's brain". "Karl Rove is moving on down the road," Bush said, appearing grim-faced on the White House's South Lawn with Rove at his side. "We've been friends for a long time and we're still going to be friends ... I'll be on the road behind you here in a bit," he said ruefully. "I'm grateful to have been a witness to history. It has been the joy and the honor of a lifetime," said Rove, his voice quivering at times. "But now is the time. … At month's end," Rove said, "I will join those whom you meet in your travels, the ordinary Americans who tell you they are praying for you". After a lengthy hug from Bush and then his wife, Laura, Rove joined them on the president's helicopter. Rove, his wife and their son were flying with Bush on Air Force One to Texas, where the president is vacationing. A criminal investigation put Rove under scrutiny for months during the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name but he was never charged with any crime. In a more recent controversy, Rove, citing executive privilege, has refused to testify before Congress about the firing of U.S. attorneys. Rove's departure reinforces Bush's lame-duck stature and declining influence, particularly with Democrats in control on Capitol hill. "Obviously it's a big loss to us," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. "He's a great colleague, a good friend, and a brilliant mind. He will be greatly missed, but we know he wouldn't be going if he wasn't sure this was the right time to be giving more to his family, his wife Darby and their son. He will continue to be one of the president's greatest friends". Since Democrats won control of Congress in November, some top administration officials have announced their resignations. Among those who have left are White House counselor Dan Bartlett, budget director Rob Portman, chief White House attorney Harriet Miers, political director Sara Taylor, deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan, another deputy national security adviser who worked on Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was forced out immediately after the election as the unpopular war in Iraq dragged on. White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president's term in January 2009. Rove became one of Washington's most influential figures during Bush's presidency. He is known as a ruthless political warrior who has an encyclopedic command of political minutiae and a wonkish love of policy. Rove met Bush in the early 1970s, when both men were in their 20s. Once inside the White House, Rove grew into a right-hand man. Rove is expected to write a book after he leaves. He disclosed his departure in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "I just think it's time," Rove said in an interview at his home on Saturday. He first floated the idea of leaving to Bush a year ago, the newspaper said, and friends confirmed he'd been talking about it even earlier. However, he said he didn't want to depart right after the Democrats regained control of Congress and then got drawn into policy battles over the Iraq war and immigration. "There's always something that can keep you here, and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family," said Rove, who has been in the White House since Bush took office in 2001. Rove's son attends college in San Antonio and he said he and his wife plan to spend much of their time at their nearby home in Ingram. Rove, currently the deputy White House chief of staff, has been the president's political guru for years and worked with Bush since he first ran for governor of Texas in 1993. Even as he discussed his departure, Rove remained characteristically sunny. This quality of unrelenting optimism about the president, which matches Bush's own upbeat, never-admit-disappointment nature, has at times gotten Rove into trouble. Up to the end of the 2006 midterm elections, the political guru predicted a Republican win. That of course was not to be, and there was grumbling that Rove wasn't on his game during those elections as much as he had been before. In the interview, Rove predicted Bush will regain his popularity, which has sunk to record lows because of the war in Iraq. Rove also predicted conditions in Iraq would improve and that the Democrats would nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, calling her "a tough, tenacious, fatally flawed candidate". Rove does not intend to work for any candidate in the 2008 presidential election, White House press secretary Tony Snow said. Rove testified before a federal grand jury in the investigation into the leak of the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer whose husband was a critic of the war in Iraq.

That investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on charges of lying and obstructing justice. Plame contends the White House was trying to discredit her husband.

Attorneys for Libby told jurors at the onset of his trial that Libby was the victim of a conspiracy to protect Rove. Details of any save-Rove conspiracy were promised but never materialized.
The most explicit testimony on Rove came from columnist Robert Novak, who outed Plame in a July 2003 column. He testified that Rove, a frequent source, was one of two officials who told him about Plame. Libby, with whom he seldom spoke, was not a source. ¹

Rove, though, was not indicted after testifying 5 times before the grand jury, occasionally correcting misstatements he made in his earlier testimony. The jury in Libby's trial did not hear that testimony, nor did it hear that Rove is credited as an architect of Republican political victories and has been accused by opponents of playing dirty tricks.
All that jurors heard is that Rove leaked Plame's identity and, from the outset, got political cover from the White House. He was never charged with a crime.

Adm. John Poindexter Devil in the details Seeking men of convictions 2.22.02   American Prospect The title sounds reassuring: Information Awareness Office. A new little bureaucracy recently created by Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, this office is charged with focusing on new kinds of military threats, including terrorism. Who better to head it than a guy who himself was once a military threat to the rule of law here in America: Retired Adm. John Poindexter. Ollie North's erstwhile boss. Former Reagan national-security adviser who supervised the Iran-contra operation, selling guns to Iranians to fund an off-the-books war the contras were waging in Nicaragua, a war whose funding with federal dollars the Congress had specifically proscribed. Same John Poindexter convicted in 1990 on 5 felony counts of conspiracy, making false statements to Congress, and obstructing congressional inquiries into the affair. (Poindexter's convictions, along with North's, were later overturned by an appellate court on the grounds that he'd been granted immunity because of his forced testimony to Congress.) War on terrorism is redemption & rehiring hall for a slew of questionable characters govt was compelled to cashier in earlier, more normal times. Poindexter's fellow contra boosters Elliott Abrams & Otto Reich already are back in the fold. North is probably making too much money in talk radio to be coaxed back into secret ops. But why not hand homeland security over to a guy who's already demonstrated his zeal (if not his expertise) for spying on Americans? [ Iran-Contra, aka CIA fueled crack cocaine gang war, reborn by default; Bush² admin having no other contacts but those same bumbling villains to carry water for its agendas, hollow NatSec shadows. ] Poindexter would have made a fine bookie   ¹ 8.28.03   Patrick Daugherty SD Reader San Diego, CA   In the blue corner is the disgraced, desk hugging admiral, who, not that long ago, was forced to resign as Reagan's National Security Advisor due to his part in the Iran-Contra affair. Thereafter, the flag officer was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, defrauding the govt, altering evidence, destroying evidence, lying to Congress, only escaping jail w/ the aid of luck, good lawyers and technicalities. 10 years later he's back with a new govt job, this time as director of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office, whose mission is to "Imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype closed loop information systems." Which is govt blah-blah-blah for tracking every breathing human being residing in the U.S. by way of his bank account, credit cards, merchant receipts, brokerage statements, pay stubs, medical records, parking tickets, library cards, bar bills, school transcripts, e-mail, telephone calls, Net usage, utility bills, tax returns and drivers license. In other words, collect & warehouse every piece of paper or digital code that is or ever has been connected to you. That was no problem. What got him busted (Poindexter leaves govt service 8.29.03) was his one good idea, his attempt to become a reputable bookie. The idea was to create a Policy Analysis Market. It was a market that would have "allowed trading of futures contracts based on possible political developments in several MidEastern countries". This is govt talk for proposition bets. Poindexter's market would be an arena where one could legally buy or sell future contracts such as, "Will Yassar Arafat be assassinated before year's end? Will the Jordanian monarchy topple in the next 3 months? Will there be an attack on U.S. soil by year's end?" If given a choice, and a choice was given, between being outraged at the Pentagon's plans for collecting every byte & lick of your private life or being outraged at the Pentagon's plans for running a sportsbook, national politicians and the American public came down hard on sportsbooks. Using the model of a futures market as a predictor of future events has been around for a while. The template for this is the Iowa Election Markets, run by faculty at the University of Iowa. Since 1988, these academics have provided markets for 41 elections in 13 countries. You, me or anybody buys & sells future contracts on candidates, their vote share and so on. Right now, there are markets on the California (gubinatorial) recall, 2004 general election vote share and so on. Real money, real profits, real losses, real legal. Here's the point: the Iowa Election Market has been more accurate than any professional pollster, and this is where Poindexter came in. Something about the market, as a whole, knowing more than the individual, the market being able to predict future events more astutely than anyone else. It must have been one of those feet-on-the-desk moments when Poindexter conceived the following daydream. "We can start a futures market for less than one million bucks. We'll limit contracts to $100 in order to keep the action calm and see what happens. Maybe there's something to this random-pool-of-human-beings-motivated-by- profit stuff. What the hell? Maybe they'll know where Saddam is hiding." The good admiral must have been surprised at the shitstorm his tiny futures market provoked. As I recall, "trading in death" was one of the favored charges leveled against him. Of course, humans trade on death. Humans love to trade on death or anything else. They'll trade on commodities, currencies, whether the movie "Hulk" will rake in $202.45 million in its first 4 weeks of release. They'll trade on whether Kobe Bryant is guilty or not, whether Saddam will outlive bin Laden, or if bin Laden outlives Saddam. They'll trade on whether J-Lo & Ben Affleck will marry before Demi Moore does. They'll trade on if the Dow Jones closes above or below a certain number. They'll trade on which actor will win an Emmy for comedy. One Internet pioneer for these kinds of markets is tradesports.com, a Dublin Ireland based futures market backed by the country's largest bank. Most of their contracts are made up using a 0 to 100 method. That is, suppose the trading price for the San Diego Chargers winning the Super Bowl is 12. If the Bolts pull that off, then every contract acquired for the price of $12 will return a profit of $88. I was being optimistic. Actually, today's tradesports figures show the Chargers' last contract sold for $2. If Admiral Poindexter is right, Charger fans are in for another long season. Doulas Feith   ¹ ² Secret talks w/ Iranian arms dealer 8.8.03   K.Royce, T.M.Phelps, C.Gordon Newsday Wash.D.C.   Pentagon hardliners pressing for regime change in Iran held secret & unauthorized meetings in Paris with a controversial arms dealer who was a major figure in the Iran-contra scandal, according to administration officials, who said at least 2 Pentagon officials working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith have held "several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, Iranian middleman in U.S. arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s The admin officials who disclosed the secret meetings to Newsday said the talks with Ghorbanifar were not authorized by the White House and appeared to be aimed at undercutting current sensitive back channel negotiations with the Iranian regime. "They [the Pentagon officials] were talking to him about stuff which they weren't officially authorized to do,"said a sr admin official. "It was only accidentally that certain parts of our govt learned about it." The official would not identify those"parts "of the govt, but a former intelligence official confirmed they are the State Dept, the CIA and the White House itself. The sr official and another admin source who confirmed that the meetings had taken places aid that the ultimate policy objective of Feith and a group of neo-conservatives civilians inside the Pentagon is regime change in Iran. This second official said, "United States policy officially is not regime change, overtly or covertly, "but to engage Iranian officials in dialogue over contentious issues, such as Iran's nuclear weapons program, and to press the regime to extradite al-Qaida operatives. He said that the immediate objective of the Pentagon hardliners appears to be to "antagonize Iran so that they get frustrated and then by their reactions harden U.S. policy against them." He confirmed that Sec.State Powell complained directly to DefSec Rumsfeld several days ago about Feith's policy shop conducting missions that countered U.S. policy. A spokesman for Feith's NearEast, SouthAsia and SpecialPlans office, controversial intelligence office that sources said played a key role in the Ghorbanifar contacts, did not respond Thursday to an e-mailed inquiry about those contacts. Newsday's inquiry was e-mailed at the spokesman's request. The sr admin official identified 2 of the Defense officials who met with Ghorbanifar as Feith's top MidEast specialist Harold Rhode, and Defense Intelligence Agency analyst on loan to the undersecretary's office Larry Franklin. Rhode recently acted as a liaison between Feith's office, which drafted much of the admin post-Iraq planning, and Ahmed Chalabi, a former Iraqi exiled disdained by CIA & State Dept but groomed for leadership by the Pentagon. Rhode is a protege of Michael Ledeen, neo-conservative who was National Security Council consultant in the mid- 1980s when he introduced Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, National Security Council aide, and others in the opening stages of the Iran-contra affair. A former CIA officer who himself was involved in some aspects of the Iran-contra scandal said that current intelligence officers told him it was Ledeen who reopened the Ghorbanifar channel with Feith's staff. Ledeen, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and ardent advocate for regime change in Iran, would neither confirm nor deny that he arranged for Ghorbanifar meetings. "I'm not going to comment on any private meetings with any private people," he said."It's nobody's business." Ghorbanifar,said to live in Paris, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Ledeen once described him as "one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known." But CIA, noting he had failed 4 polygraph tests administered during the arms-for-hostages deals, warned its officers not to deal with him, asserting he "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and nuisance." The sr admin official said he was puzzled by the resurfacing of Ghorbanifar after all these years. "It would be amazing if anybody in govt hadn't learned the lessons of last time around," hesaid."These guys [including Ledeen] should have learned it, 'cause they lived it." Chavez calls Negroponte ‘professional killer’   Venezuelan leader also says enemies, including CIA, are plotting to kill him   3.4.07   AP Caracas, Venezuela   President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said he believes enemies including the CIA are out to kill him, and called U.S. diplomat John Negroponte a “professional killer.” Chavez said Venezuelan officials have intelligence that associates of jailed Cuban anti-communist militant Luis Posada Carriles also are involved in plotting to assassinate him. He said the death plot idea has “gained weight” due to various factors, including the recent appointment of former director of national intelligence Negroponte as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Who did they swear in … there at the White House as deputy secretary of state? A professional killer: John Negroponte,” Chavez said. Chavez did not elaborate, but his govt has previously accused Negroponte of playing a key role in the Contra war against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua when he served as ambassador to Honduras, haven for clandestine Contra bases, from 1981 to 1985. U.S. Embassy officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but they have denied Chavez’s repeated accusations that they are plotting to oust him. Chavez was asked about reports of assassination plots during a televised interview. “They have assigned special units of the CIA, true assassins, who go around not only here in Venezuela, in Central America, in South America,” Chavez said, without elaborating. He added that while former CIA operative Posada Carriles remains jailed in the U.S. on immigration charges, “Posada Carriles’ people are very active in Central America and searching for contacts in Venezuela … They are going around searching for explosives in large quantities, thinking about a sort of car bombing or searching for ground-to-air missiles, thinking about the presidential plane.” Chavez did not give details. His govt has demanded that the U.S. extradite Posada Carriles, a naturalized Venezuelan, to stand trial for allegedly masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. Posada Carriles denies involvement in that incident.

Bush LatinAm advisers' IranContra roles Colin Powell, Sec.State Sec.Defense military asst (known as "filter"). Autobio: Pentagon's "point man" for U.S. Contra support. Key role funding Contras via illegal arms sales to Iran. John Maisto, Natl Security Council Adviser Inter-American affairs, hence cohort of  Narc czar J.P. Walters Nicaragua ambassador during U.S. backed guerrilla war against Sandinista govt. John Negroponte, DNI, U.S. UN ambassador   FIPF Honduras ambassador 1981-85   Oversaw military buildup of country into anti-Sandinista contras' refuge   A carefully crafted deception 6.18.95   Ginger Thompson & G.C.Baltimore Sun pA1 Tegucigalpa, Honduras   A dangerous truth confronted John Dimitri Negroponte as he prepared to take over as U.S. ambassador to Honduras late in 1981. The military in Honduras, the country from which the Reagan administration had decided to run the battle for democracy in Central America, was kidnapping & murdering its own citizens. "GOH [Govt of Honduras] security forces have begun to resort to extralegal tactics, disappearances &, apparently, physical eliminations 'to control a perceived subversive threat','' Negroponte was told in a secret briefing book prepared by embassy staff. The assertion was true, and there was worse to come. Time & again during his tour of duty in Honduras 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was confronted with evidence that a Honduran army intelligence unit, trained by the CIA, was stalking, kidnapping, torturing and killing suspected subversives.   [ Subversive meaning able to read & write] 14-month investigation by The Sun, which included interviews with U.S. & Honduran officials who could not have spoken freely at the time, shows that Negroponte learned from numerous sources about the crimes of the unit called Battalion 316. The Honduran press was full of reports about military abuses, including hundreds of newspaper stories in 1982 alone. There were also direct pleas from Honduran officials to U.S. officials, including Negroponte. A disgruntled former Honduran intelligence chief publicly denounced Battalion 316. Relatives of the battalion's victims demonstrated in the streets and appealed to U.S. officials for intervention, including once in an open letter to President Reagan's presidential envoy to Central America. Rick Chidester, then jr political officer in Tegucigalpa U.S. Embassy, told The Sun that he compiled substantial evidence of abuses by the Honduran military in 1982, but was ordered to delete most of it from the annual human rights report prepared for the State Dept to deliver to Congress. Those reports consistently misled Congress & the public. "There are no political prisoners in Honduras,'' the State Dept asserted falsely in its 1983 human rights report. Reports to Congress were crafted to convey Honduran govt & military as committed to democratic ideals. It was important not to confront Congress with evidence that the military was trampling on civil liberties & murdering dissidents. The truth could have triggered congressional action under the Foreign Assistance Act, which generally prohibits military aid to any govt that "engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.'' Fact vs. fiction A comparison of the annual human rights reports prepared while Negroponte was ambassador with the facts as they were then known shows that Congress was deliberately misled. Assertion   "Student, worker, peasant and other interest groups have full freedom to organize & hold frequent public demonstrations without interference. … Trade unions are not hindered by the govt.'' State Dept Country Reports on HRts 1982 Fact   Highly publicized abductions of students and union leaders that year included: Saul Godinez, elementary school teacher & union activist, abducted 7.22.82; Eduardo Lanza, medical student & general secretary of Honduran Federation of University Students, kidnapped 8.1.82; German Perez Aleman, leader of an airport maintenance workers union, abducted 8.18.82; Hector Hernandez, president of a textile workers union, abducted 12.24.82 All are still missing and presumed dead. Assertion   "Legal guarantees exist against arbitrary arrest or imprisonment, and against torture or degrading treatment. Habeas corpus is guaranteed by the Constitution, and Honduran law provides for arraignment within 24 hours of arrest. This appears to be the standard practice.'' State Dept Country Reports on HRts 1982 Fact   "The court got so many petitions of habeas corpus. But whenever we sent them to the police, the police would say they did not have the prisoners,'' Rumaldo Iries Calix, a justice of the Supreme Court in 1982, said in an interview with The Sun. "They had moved the prisoners to some secret jail. It was like a game to them.'' The experience of Zenaida Velasquez was typical. Her brother, Manfredo, a 35-year-old graduate student, teacher and political activist, was abducted by Battalion 316 on 9.12.81, and has not been seen since. She filed habeas corpus petitions on her brother's behalf on 9.17.81, 2.6.82 and 7.4.83, asking that he be brought before a court and his detention justified. "It didn't do any good at all,'' she said. Assertion   "There have been reports in the press & by local sources of the use of torture by local police forces during interrogation. Honduran officials assert that it is a common practice for persons held in connection with politically motivated crimes to allege that they were tortured during the investigation & interrogation process.'' "The Honduran armed forces chief, Gustavo Alvarez, recently issued a public statement denying that the govt used torture and specifically stated that torture was not to be used on prisoners.'' State Dept Country Reports on HRts 1982 Fact   "Alvarez had made it clear to Ambassador Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns, that he intended to use Argentine-style, "extra-legal'' means to eliminate suspected subversives. Battalion 316 was created largely for this purpose. According to Florencio Caballero, a former sergeant in Battalion 316, Alvarez demanded torture as "the quickest way to get information.'' In one highly publicized case of torture &aamp; intimidation, human rights atty Rene Velasquez (no relation to Manfredo) was arrested 6.1.82 in front of his law office in Tegucigalpa and taken to a secret jail where he was kept for 4 days. "They undressed me, they tied my hands and they put a rubber mask over my face,'' he said. "They put something on me to attract flies, because those were my companions for four days. I was beaten a lot; they hit me in the ribs & stomach. & I could barely endure the pain.'' Assertion   "Access to prisoners is generally not a problem for relatives, attorneys, consular officers or international humanitarian organizations.'' State Dept Country Reports on HRts 1982 Fact   Not only were they denied access, dozens of relatives of the "disappeared'' told The Sun, but police would not even tell them if or where their relatives were being held. Fidelina Perez & Natalia Mendez visited every police station in Tegucigalpa after finding out that their sons, who were student leaders, had been arrested on a bus as it crossed the border from Nicaragua 1.24.82. Their sons have not been seen since and are presumed dead. "[The police] all said they had no information. They had not seen them,'' Perez said. "The police told us to go and look for them in Cuba or Nicaragua.'' Said Mendez: "They told us, why did we keep looking for them when they were already dead?'' Assertion   "Sanctity of the home is guaranteed by the Constitution and generally observed.'' State Dept Country Reports on HRts 1982 Fact   Raids of homes without warrants were common in Honduras. The military stormed neighborhoods in search of Communist safe houses. "They would burst into homes of people who were completely innocent and search for evidence,'' said Honduran journalist Noe Leyva. "Sometimes if they found Marxist books or pamphlets, they would arrest the resident without any warrant. It was ridiculous.'' Leyva, now an editor at the Honduran newspaper El Tiempo, reported on human rights abuses for that newspaper in the early 1980s. In July 1982, Oscar Reyes, a prominent journalist, was seized from his home along with his wife in an illegal raid. Upon their release from prison, the Reyeses found their home ransacked. Assertion   "In rare cases in which members of the security forces have been accused of murder, the govt has brought the perpetrators to justice.'' State Dept Country Reports on HRts 1983 Fact   "I don't recall one case of that,'' said Edmundo Orellana, Honduran atty general. Rumaldo Iries Calix, the former Honduran Supreme Court justice, said charges sometimes would be brought against low-level officers, but that the cases were always dismissed. "No judge dared to convict a military official,'' Iries said. "There was so much repression against anyone who opposed the military.'' Assertion   "There are no political prisoners in Honduras. Individuals are prosecuted not for their political beliefs but rather for criminal acts defined in the penal code.'' State Dept Country Reports on HRts 1983 Fact   Orellana, who is investigating the disappearances of Battalion 316's victims, shakes his head in amazement at that assertion. "This is totally untrue,'' he said. "There were political prisoners, and the disappeared are the proof. They followed, arrested & executed people who just thought differently.'' One senator serving at time as member of Senate intelligence committee describes what difference it might have made if the human rights reporting had been more truthful. "I think its extremely important that the State Department be right on human rights, said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy D-VT. "If we told the truth about Honduras and the whole Central American policy, … billions of American tax dollars would have been saved, [ Grounds for class action suit for fraud against Negroponte ] a large number of lives would have been saved, and the govts would have moved toward democracy quicker.'' Negroponte replies Negroponte, now U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, has declined repeated phone requests & in writing since July for interviews about this report. However, on Thursday, after publication of 3 parts of The Sun's series, he issued a written statement: "Under my leadership, the embassy worked to promote the restoration and consolidation of democracy in Honduras, including the advancement of human rights.'' He added, "At no time during my tenure in Honduras did the embassy condone or conceal human rights violations. To the contrary, the embassy & the State Dept cooperated with the Honduras govt to help remedy recognized deficiencies in the administration of justice.'' Negroponte's arrival in Honduras coincided with the Reagan administration's decision to reduce the emphasis that the Carter administration had put on rights issues in dealings with allies. The new policy had been made clear to Negroponte's predecessor, Ambassador Binns, a Carter appointee, after he repeatedly warned of human rights abuses by the Honduran military. In a June 1981 cable obtained by The Sun, Binns reported: "I am deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations of political and criminal targets, which clearly indicate [Govt of Honduras] repression has built up a head of steam much faster than we had anticipated.'' The reaction was swift & unexpected. Binns was summoned to Washington by Thomas O. Enders, new assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. "I was told to stop human rights reporting except in back channel. The fear was that if it came into the State Dept, it will leak,'' Binns recalled. "They wanted to keep assistance flowing. Increased violations by the Honduran military would prejudice that.'' "Back channel'' messages are unofficial or informal communications, often in code, sent outside the usual distribution system to restrict circulation of information. Enders confirmed the 1981 meeting with Binns. "I told him that whereas human rights violations had been the single most important focus of the previous administration's policy in Latin America, the Reagan administration had broader interests,'' Enders said. "It believed that the most effective way to overcome civil conflicts & human rights violations was to promote democratically elected govts and that should be his point of focus.''

• An account in Feb. of the discovery of 5 bodies in a makeshift grave in Las Montanitas, 15 miles outside Tegucigalpa.
• An account in April of the illegal arrest of 6 university students.
• A story in Sept. about union members marching through Tegucigalpa to demand the release of one of their leaders abducted a month earlier.
• Another story in Sept. about dozens of children protesting the disappearances outside the Honduran Congress as it considered forming a committee to investigate military abuses.

Evidence came from other sources.
Efrain Diaz Arrivillaga, then a delegate in the Honduran Congress and a voice of dissent in the prevailing atmosphere of intimidation, said he spoke several times to Negroponte about the military's human rights abuses. Diaz said that in meetings at the U.S. Embassy and at social occasions, he rebuked Negroponte for the U.S. govt's refusal to take a stand against the repression. The Honduran legislator said Negroponte reproached him for refusing to take a strong stand against Communists who were trying to seize control of Honduras. "I remember Negroponte told me, 'You and others, what you are proposing is to let communism take over this country & over the region,' " Diaz said. "The most important thing to him was to win public support for the presence of the U.S. military in Honduras,'' Diaz said. "Their [the U.S.] attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.''
Accusations against the military also came from former insiders. Aug. 1982, Col. Leonidas Torres Arias, ousted chief of intelligence for the Honduran military, issued a public warning about Battalion 316. In a news conference in Mexico City, he told reporters about "a death squad operating in Honduras led by armed forces chief General Gustavo Alvarez.'' The story made headlines in Mexico and across Central America. A reporter from the Honduran newspaper El Tiempo asked Negroponte about the colonel's allegations. Said Negroponte in an article that appeared 10.16.82 "Democracy is being consolidated in this country. The armed forces have supported that process. It was the armed forces that turned over power to the civilian constitutional leaders of Honduras. So, I have a lot of difficulty taking those kinds of accusations seriously.''

The evidence was also to be found in the streets of Tegucigalpa. Each week, hundreds marched through the streets of the capital demanding the release of the disappeared. Sometimes they marched past the U.S. Embassy, a hulking concrete complex on La Paz Avenue. The Committee of the Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) turned to the U.S. govt for help. 6.13.83, COFADEH addressed an open letter to Richard Stone, President Reagan's special envoy to Central America, complaining that the Honduran military was holding dissidents in clandestine jails. "More than 40 people have been illegally arrested & tortured,'' the letter said. "Some have never been heard from since their arrest.'' The letter was published in El Tiempo, one of the largest newspapers in Honduras. The U.S. govt never responded to the committee's pleas. In an interview, Stone said that he did not recall the letter.

Spurned at the embassy
Oct. 1983, members of COFADEH visited the U.S. Embassy to ask for help. They said they met with Scott Thayer, a junior political officer assigned to monitor human rights. Among the relatives who attended was Bertha Oliva, whose husband, Tomas Nativi, had been missing for more than 2 years. Also there was Zenaida Velasquez, whose brother, Manfredo, had been missing for more than 2 years. The parents of Eduardo Lanza attended. Lanza, a medical student, had been a prominent student leader when he was kidnapped by Battalion 316 Aug. 1982. The group told Thayer that they had searched jails & hospitals across Honduras for their missing relatives, that military officials only laughed at them and that judges were too afraid to help. They begged the embassy to use its influence with Honduran officials to win their relatives' freedom.
Zenaida Velasquez remembers that Thayer listened politely, then dismissed their allegations. "He said he knew Honduras had a democratic govt and [that] those kinds of practices were not going on,'' Velasquez said. "They were such a bunch of liars it was disgusting.''
Thayer, now a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Spain, said that meeting with Hondurans about human rights abuses "was part of my job. I recall having meetings like that, but I can't recall that specific meeting.'' Oliva still fumes over the meeting. In an interview in Tegucigalpa, she said that the embassy official acted as if they were fabricating the disappearances of their relatives. "He was very cold, very cold,'' she said, pursing her lips. "Any kindness was gone. He did not even smile at us.'' Roberto Becerra, father of the student Eduardo Lanza, said he came away from the meeting with a hopeless feeling. "We felt like we were screaming in the desert. No one heard us. No one would help us.''

In at least one case, Negroponte was confronted with evidence of abuse that he could not ignore, arrest & torture in July 1982 of journalist Oscar Reyes and his wife, Gloria. Reyes, founder of the journalism school at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, was openly sympathetic to Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua and had written numerous newspaper columns criticizing the Honduran military. The abduction of the Reyeses sparked newspaper stories & raucous student protests. The Reyeses said they were locked in a secret cell for a week, and beaten & tortured with electric shocks. At the U.S. Embassy, there was fear that if the story got to the U.S. it might damage carefully assembled public support for the Central America program operating out of Honduras. Cresencio S. Arcos, then the embassy press spokesman, alerted Negroponte that the Honduran military had abducted the Reyeses.
"If they do this guy, then we're in trouble,'' Arcos warned. "We cannot let this guy get hurt. … It would be a disaster for our policy. "The ambassador did approach [General] Alvarez about this to manifest his concern,'' Arcos said. The case clearly shows that Negroponte knew of the Reyeses' abduction and that the ambassador acted in such cases when he felt compelled to do so. Reyes & his wife were released from the clandestine jail after a week. They were taken before a public court and sentenced to 6 months in prison. Two weeks before their sentences ended, they were allowed to leave for the U.S. on condition that they keep quiet about the torture they endured. That condition was laid down personally by Alvarez, said the Reyeses, who now live in Vienna, Va.
The U.S. Embassy also kept quiet publicly about the Reyes case. It was not mentioned in the human rights report for 1982, even though it was widely covered in the Honduran press and illustrated the Honduran military's violation of human rights on several counts: illegal abduction, secret incarceration, torture and suppression of press freedom. Instead, the 1982 report asserted: "No incident of official interference with the media has been recorded for several years.''

Inside the embassy
Negroponte's aides at the embassy told The Sun that they knew about serious human rights abuses by the Honduran military, and that the violence was a subject of constant discussion. One of those aides was a junior political officer, Rick Chidester, who was assigned in 1982 to gather information for the embassy's annual report on human rights, a task that usually fell to a junior officer. Chidester, now 43 & a private businessman, said that while in Honduras, he interviewed human rights advocates & journalists who provided him with information that the Honduran military was illegally detaining, torturing & executing people. "I had allegations about vans coming up to police cells and taking out people they [the Honduran military] didn't want … and shooting them,'' Chidester said. "`I had allegations that, as part of the interrogation techniques, torture was being used.'' He said he included the allegations in his draft of the 1982 report.
A supervisor, who Chidester will not name, demanded proof, sworn testimony or photographs of torture victims. Chidester said he was admonished for basing his report on rumors when he was unable to produce such evidence. Chidester said he argued that while he had not interviewed torture victims, the allegations came from too many credible sources to be ignored, and that the reports were not supposed to be limited to provable facts. "While the State Dept is not an investigative body, we're supposed to analyze political events & identify trends,'' Chidester said. "Our analysis is valuable, even if based on opinion and not admissible as proof in a court of law.'' His arguments failed.
By the time the report reached the U.S. Congress, the serious accusations against the Honduran military had been removed. Allegations that remained were described as unsubstantiated or as isolated abuses that had been dealt with swiftly by the Honduran government. Overall, the report portrayed Honduras as an emerging democracy where the civilian govt & military respected human rights. The report was such a misrepresentation of the facts that Chidester recalls joking with others in the embassy: "What is this, the human rights report for Norway?''

An official explanation
While Negroponte has refused to be interviewed by The Sun, his boss at the time of his appointment to Honduras described the priorities on human rights. Thomas Enders, the asst secretary of state who told Negroponte's predecessor to stop reporting rights violations through normal channels, said it was crucial to keep U.S. aid flowing to Honduras. "What we were attempting to do was, on the one hand, to maintain our ability to act in Central America. That is, our congressional authority to send economic & military aid, so we avoided direct public confrontations against the military in El Salvador & Honduras,'' he said. "And at the same time, privately we were spending an enormous amount of effort in order to change the way they looked at how they behaved. There was endless jawboning.''
Instead of telling Congress what was going on in Central America, the Reagan administration employed the State Dept human rights reports as instruments to advance policy objectives. Consequently, the human rights reports differed sharply in tone, depending on whether the govt was a friend or foe. The 1982 report on Nicaragua, where the U.S. was trying to topple the Marxist Sandinista regime, made strong charges against that govt.
[ That govt brought literacy & universal health care to majority of population for first time in national history while fighting for independence against U.S. mercenaries ]

A section titled "Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from Killing'' said: "There is credible evidence that security forces have been responsible for the death of a number of detained persons in 1982.'' In the same section of the Honduras report for 1982, the State Department said: "Allegations that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras have not been substantiated.'' Cresencio Arcos, press spokes-man in the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa from June 1980 to July 1985 and U.S. ambassador from Dec. 1989 to July 1993, explained the difference:
"Invariably, the result in this process was to magnify your enemies' misdeeds and minimize your friends' misdeeds,'' he said. Amb. Negroponte also made numerous public statements praising Honduran military for supporting civilian govt and for respecting the rights of its people. In a letter to NYTimes, published 9.12.82, he wrote: "Honduras' increasingly professional armed forces are dedicated to defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, and they are publicly committed to civilian constitutional rule.'' In Oct. 1982, he wrote to The Economist: "Honduras' increasingly professional armed forces are fully supportive of this country's constitutional system.'' That was the same year journalist Oscar Reyes and his wife were abducted & tortured by the Honduran military for a week because of articles he had written.
8.12.83, the LATimes published a Negroponte column in which he acknowledged that there were "credible allegations of some disappearances.'' However, he added: "There is no indication that the infrequent human rights violations that do occur are part of deliberate govt policy."
[ CIA torture trainers instructed the military, not the civil govt. The torture was practice, not policy. ]
"Indeed, disciplinary action has been taken against members of the police & military (including officers) who have abused their authority.''

That year, in a case that gained notoriety, 24yr old leftist Ines Consuelo Murillo was held for more than 11 weeks naked, beaten, suffocated, shocked, fondled & threatened with rape. To this day, none of her torturers has been punished. Arcos said that Negroponte privately expressed concerns about abuses to Honduran officials. "The ambassador did pressure the Hondurans. Not publicly. Quietly,'' Arcos said. "We were concerned by the issue. Reports [of human rights abuses] were increasing.'' Even years after he left Honduras, Negroponte would not publicly acknowledge the crimes of kidnapping, torture and murder that were committed by the Honduran military.
During his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing as ambassador to Mexico in 1989, Negroponte was asked about Battalion 316 and its abuses. "I have never seen any convincing substantiation that they were involved in death squad-type activities,'' he said.

Otto Juan Reich, Asst Sec.State W.Hem.Affairs   FIPF

Propaganda of Otto Reich 4.18.02   Tom Turnipseed CounterPunch The Bush admin is engaging in damage control for their questionable involvement in the failed 2 day coup against democratically elected govt of Vz Pres. Chavez. Key player Otto Reich attempted to replace Chavez with an oligarchy of business, military and wealthy elites. Scrambling to distance themselves from botched overthrow of democratically elected govt, Bush admin admitted Reich called coup leader, Carmona, and asked him not to dissolve the National Assembly because it would be a "stupid thing to do". Next day the administration revised their story and said Reich only asked our ambassador to relay that message to Carmona. NYTimes noted that the disclosure raised questions as to whether Mr. Reich & other admin officials were stage-managing Carmona takeover . Although Bush admin admits their desire to replace the Chavez govt because of its opposition to U.S. policies and friendship with countries like Cuba & Iran, they now insist they were not involved in the armed coup but admit talking with various Vz officials prior to the coup incl military head Gen. Lucas Romero Rincon who met with Pentagon official Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, former close associate of the U. S. supported Contra forces in Nicaragua. Per NYTimes, Reich told congressional aides the admin received reports "foreign paramilitary forces, suspected to be Cuban, were involved in the bloody suppression of anti-Chavez demonstrators, in which at least 14 Vz people were killed. Reich, former U.S. Amb. to Vz and lobbyist with Vz ties to Mobil Oil, further told Cong. staffers Chavez meddled with historically independent state oil co., provided haven to Colombian guerillas, and bailed out Cuba with preferential rates on oil. … Senate Foreign Relations Committee had examples of Reich's malfeasance to ask him about when he was the dir. of State Dept Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD). 9.30.87 Republican appointed U.S. comptroller general found Reich had done things as director of the OPD that were "prohibited, covert propaganda activities, "beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities...". The same report said Mr. Reich's operation violated "restriction on State Dept's annual appropriations prohibiting use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress." Reich used covert propaganda to demonize democratically elected Sandinista govt of Nicaragua and establish the Contras as fearless freedom fighters to make the U.S. public afraid enough of the Sandinistas to get Congress to fund the Contras directly. Boland Amendment passed by Congress in 1982 prohibited U.S. funds from being used to overthrow the Nicaraguan govt. Meanwhile, Contras were illegally armed by the Reagan admin via the Iran-Contra arms deal. On night of Reagan's 1984 re-election, Reich's office put out news that "intelligence sources" revealed Soviet MIG fighter jets were arriving in Nicaragua. Andrea Mitchell interrupted election night coverage on NBC to give the phony report. This resembles Joseph Goebbel's fabrication that Polish troops had attacked German soldiers to give Third Reich an excuse to launch the Nazi blitzkrieg into Poland to begin World War II in 1939. Other Reich prevarications given to media sources incl Nicaragua had been given chemical weapons by the Soviets, per Miami Herald; and Sandinista leaders were involved in drug trafficking per Newsweek magazine.

First State Dept Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America & Caribbean dir. 1983-86. Engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities" to promote Reagan policies toward Nicaragua. Maintained private network of individuals & organizations coordinated with & sometimes directed by Col.Oliver North as well as other NSC officials that raised & spent funds for influencing congressional votes & U.S. domestic news media. Right-wing Cuban American & former Venezuela ambassador. Dallas Morning News Bush depending heavily on Cuban-Americans for key foreign policy advice. § Ideology Triumphs Ctr for Intl Policy GAO rpt Dems criticize apparent Bush choice 3.9.01   Carolyn Skorneck AP Wash.D.C.   Expected nomination of Cuban-born Otto J. Reich as State Dept's top Latin America official is drawing Democratic criticism based on his role in the 1980s Central American wars. [ aka U.S. military intervention against democratic revolutions ] Senators John Kerry D-MA & Christopher Dodd D-CT are trying to squelch nomination of the staunchly anti-Castro businessman & lobbyist by publicly criticizing Reich before he is named. "The issue is not his conservative politics", Kerry said Friday. It was his central part in "deeply divisive'' policies and domestic propaganda his office allegedly generated to support Reagan administration C.Am policies in 1980s. Kerry & Dodd are influential members of the evenly divided Senate Foreign Relations Committee which would handle the nomination if Pres. GWBush selects Reich as asst sec of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. Marc Thiessen, spokesman for committee chair Jesse Helms R-NC, dismissed the criticism, saying, "This is all about Cuba'' & Reich's adamant opposition to Castro. If Reich gets the job, Thiessen said, "he would probably be one of the most qualified people ever to hold the post.'' [ Qualified is no assurance of trustworthy. He aided violation of Boland Amendment & abetted South Central L.A. crack; Freeway Rick=O.Blandon=O.North=O.Reich ] Support for the former ambassador to Venezuela is also strong among fellow Cuban-Americans in Congress. "Otto is a good fit with the president and is a good team player as well as a person who has forward-thinking, innovative ideas on how to revamp U.S.-Latin American policy,'' Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Friday in phone interview from Miami. The Democrats' concerns over Reich focus on his leadership of the State Dept's one-time Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America & Caribbean. The office, which Reich led from its inception in June 1983 until January 1986, was accused of illegal, covert domestic propaganda against Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista govt and in favor of Contra rebels. Reich denied any wrongdoing. The office "was one of the most open operations the State Dept had,'' he said in 1987. Reich did not respond Friday to calls to his RMA Intl office in suburban Alexandria VA Kerry, who led early investigations in the 1980s into whether the U.S. govt was secretly arming the Contras, remains unconvinced. "Revelations that his office was the genesis of acts of propaganda not just prohibited in this country, but which reflect a kind of carelessness about the truth, ought to be of concern to any lawmaker,'' Kerry said. [ Propaganda & carelessness with truth is a federal govt sine qua non. Indict them all. ]

Eric Olson of liberal Washington Office on Latin America said Reich's background makes him "hugely controversial in Latin America'' and "not a good choice'' given Bush's desire to establish closer relations there. When Reich arrived in Caracas in 1986, he encountered official hostility because he was thought to be a right-wing extremist. Before he left in 1989, however, the country had given him its highest decoration. Critics also questioned Reich's lobbying work. He has lobbied for Bacardi-Martini, whose competitors can be sued for doing business in Cuba under Helms-Burton Act, which Reich played a role in writing. And his firm has lobbied to sell Lockheed-made F-16 fighters to Chile.

Otto Reich, WRAP star   "Feature Story   Special Report "
4.17.01   Alec Dubro The Nation   greenwash
We prefer links but The Nation removes articles so we copy this one

• Its board is dominated by industry representatives.
• It has no provision for public disclosure of any problems found in factories, or even where the factories are located.
• Its labor code is similar to antiunion right-to-work legislation in some US states.
• It only encourages manufacturers to apply self-imposed "environmentally conscious" practices.

AIFLD has been disbanded by the current AFL-CIO leadership, largely because of its compromised cold war mission. Otero, for instance, was identified by renegade CIA agent Philip Agee as a onetime CIA operative. And the Doherty family is also linked to the agency. William Doherty Sr., grandfather of WRAP director Lawrence, was a early labor leader associated with the CIA in the 1940s. And Bill worked with the CIA in Latin America. Reich, too, worked with the CIA on Central American during his tenure at OPD. But what can a professional anticommunist do these days other than denounce Cuba? Apparently, there's prosweatshop work, where the three adventurers now find themselves. If there's an any more precise explanation for Reich in the rag trade, he's keeping it to himself. Actually he's keeping everything to himself these days-he's not speaking to the press. Perhaps WRAP is no more than a corporate PR effort, but if that's so, why is it staffed with cold war relics like Otero, Doherty and Reich? And, if the former "labor guys" are running WRAP, why do they espouse an essentially unionbusting line? There may be as much ideology here as profiteering, but we don't yet know.
In any case, Otto Reich shows that he is indeed not merely focused on preserving the Cuba boycott. He is willing to link himself with other retrograde causes, including an implicitly antilabor, antienvironment, prosweatshop organization. Just the man we need to run US hemisphere policy.

Sen. John McCain's CFR minder & NSC rep
Around the Agencies
4.7.01   People §, National Journal

§UPPLEMENT   including

• McCain Rocks the Vote
  2.9.00   Christine Stone British Helsinki HRts Group   cryptoSerb agitprop?
  Sen. McCain … one of his most significant foreign policy roles, chairman of directors of Intl Republican Institute, founded in 1983 "to promote democracy, strengthen free markets & the rule of law … a global campaign against tyranny & totalitarianism". … Since collapse of Communism, IRI has concentrated activity in former Soviet bloc, and on elections in particular. … IRI, which had an office in the Albanian capital, parroted all the accusations against Berisha's party. An IRI official in Washington called the hero of the anti-Communist forces, Azem Haijdari, "a pig" in an interview in 1998 while supporting bona fides of ex-Communist Socialist Party of Albania.
• Craner HIRC Testimony
  10.2.98   HIRC E.Asian & Pacific Affairs subcomm   re election monitoring
  [ GOP Selection2K counting strategy from 1998 Cambodia election ]
• USAID Supports Election Observers in Mexico
  7.6.97   John Murphy IRI LatinAm pgm officer Global Ctr for Democracy & Governance
  [ putting Fox in charge with Mexico Cong. prelims using U.S. tax$ ]
• POWs and Truth Held Ransom
  1.24.94   Wm P. Hoar The New American
  review The Men We Left Behind Henry Kissinger, Politics of Deceit & Tragic Fate of POWs After Vietnam War, Mark Sauter & Jim Sanders National Press Books, Bethesda, MD 1993
  re father USAF pilot Robert Craner, Nam POW