Fatal balance: An Ice Age falls on the newsroom

“The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before.” —William Safire

By Hal Crowther



Bob Woodward: A symbol of everything that’s desperately wrong with the media culture in Washington, D.C.
I have a serious problem with Bob Woodward. As venal conglomerates, an indifferent public, a septic culture and a hostile government rapidly drain the lifeblood from a free press that was once the envy of the world's democracies, it's no time, I know, for journalists to turn cannibal. But this legendary reporter, who took a crooked president's scalp and was once the torchbearer for every journalist who hoped to make a difference, has become, instead, a symbol of everything that's desperately wrong with the media culture in Washington, D.C.
As an unrestrained admirer of investigative reporters, who practice a critical art for which I was never suited, I concede without a murmur that Woodward may have been the greatest of them all. (I despise rewrite artists who will try to tell us, now, that Barry Bonds was overrated anyway.) For all I know, Woodward may still be a great reporter. If you sent the two of us out on a high-priority investigation and gave us a 24-hour deadline, I might turn up with a phone number--one digit missing--and he'd come back with a fistful of signed confessions. But success has been the undoing of this reporter, and his decline coincides precisely with the demoralizing decline of his trade.

I pointed out 10 years ago that Woodward, at the height of his Watergate celebrity, appeared to be exempt from all the rules of the game as I had learned them. How was it possible, I wondered, for him to be a salaried, favored employee of The Washington Post and yet withhold front-page information from his editors because he was saving it for his books? From my own experience of managing editors, this was a sin most of them would punish with instant unemployment, if not actual physical assault. In some cases, the reporter's children would not be safe from retribution. Yet Woodward was clearly authorized to hoard his scoops as he pleased; he was such a sacred cow that his editor, Len Downie, was clearly obliged to endure it.

We were encouraged to believe that Downie actually knew what Woodward had squirreled away--hiding information from the boss is the capital offense in every newsroom--but that myth was exploded when Woodward turned out to be a silent player in the Scooter Libby leak case. He never came clean until subpoenas loomed, leaving Downie covered with eggshells and albumen for the second time in a year: The editor's first humiliation came when Woodward declined to break the long-hidden identity of Watergate's Deep Throat in the Post before DT told the world.

Downie tried to save face by letting his smirking competitors understand that he had "taken Woodward to the woodshed" on the Libby case ("Aw gee, Bob, how could ya?"), but there's no apparent change in Woodward's status at the Post, or in the way he does his business. The Legend made it clear that he was just trying to protect key sources for his next big book from deep inside the Bush administration.

His biggest source, of course, is George Bush, to whom he's had unprecedented access--celebrity trading with celebrity, Washington style, while editors and readers of the Post, like the rest of us, watch the world go up in flames and wait patiently to see what pearls of revelation the president has bestowed on Bob Woodward and his hardcover publisher. The top man in the White House and the top man in the press room, both sworn to serve the public, instead serve each other while we wait and whistle.


Besides embarrassing his own newspaper, Woodward's private agenda tends to impeach its own importance. He's a reporter, not a historian. Iraq is a breaking story. If the content of his books is so earthshaking, if the secrets of a new generation of Deep Throats are so vital to the debate, couldn't they influence an election or a turn in foreign policy, even save some lives? Their shelf life, by definition, is brief. How could Woodward sit on them until his next book tour? "Unconscionable" is a strong enough word, but a journalist might favor a stronger one, like "sellout."

Can you sense my irritation? Ad hominem is always distasteful, and intramural media stories usually bore me. But the Scooter Libby case raises many unflattering questions about Woodward and his methods. To many beleaguered journalists, he's a pariah for the selfish way he exploited his celebrity and turned his back on the newsroom. Yet far beyond the Beltway, in places like Chapel Hill, Woodward descends in clouds of glory as the patron saint of the Fourth Estate, charging the natives $26,000 just to look at him.

"Journalist Woodward delights UNC audience," said the headline. Standing ovation, autographs, etc. I guess many of the locals just came to look at the man who bagged Nixon, the way they'd come to see the man who shot Jesse James. But the local reporter, Leah Friedman, was no fool. She tucked her own questions between the lines, noting the way Woodward recited the names of his publishers and nearly all his books, and that his "objectivity" was of an unprecedented purity: "He ended almost every point with an on-the-other-hand remark."

"I've been wrong in so many personal evaluations that I've taught myself not to have them," he boasted. Opinions are for lesser beings; Mr. Woodward soars high above personal feelings, like a god--or an info-cyborg, an organic tape recorder. Thirty-five years in the business, he said, has eradicated both emotion and intuition.

This nonsense is the final insult. After 40 years in that same business, I can't recall a time when it was easier to form opinions with confidence. Without benefit of Woodward's high-level sources, I've yet to make a prediction about the Iraq war that proved inaccurate, or offered a criticism of this administration that proved to be unfair--though many were too timid or too generous. In spite of its obsessive secrecy, the Bush White House is as obvious as Donald Trump's combover. Liars, bullies and bunglers, these conspirators are the authors and owners of the single worst mistake an American government has ever made. Ever. It takes no insight whatsoever to see through them, yet considerable courage to oppose them. They've created a national crisis where every credible voice can make a difference, where experienced journalists who close their eyes or mask their responses are something worse than useless.

Of course Woodward, who's neither an idiot nor a robot, has strong opinions about President Bush and Iraq. But if he expressed these views in public, he might lose his lucrative franchise as The Scribe Who Talks to Presidents. So the stubborn silence he presents as professional objectivity is, in my humble opinion, the most self-centered kind of hypocrisy.

I long to hear what Woodward might say in his own defense. But any response to his critics might place him in mortal danger of uttering a lowly opinion. Fortunately, many of his colleagues--further down the investigative food chain--object to placing their critical faculties in blind trusts. They shy from voluntary intellectual castration. In a furious memo to his editors, Ken Silverstein, an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, ridiculed "spurious balance" that produces "utterly spineless reporting."

"I am completely exasperated by this approach to the news," Silverstein wrote. "The idea seems to be that we go out to report but when it comes time to write we turn off our brains and repeat the spin from both sides. God forbid we should attempt to fairly assess what we see with our own eyes. 'Balanced' is not fair, it's just an easy way of avoiding real reporting and shirking our responsibility to inform readers." In a column headed "A False Balance," Paul Krugman of The New York Times mocked "journalists who believe they must be 'balanced' even when the truth isn't balanced."


A depressing truth is that most media, in a politically charged marketplace, accept the Woodward Doctrine that opinions are bad for business. To imagine how Woodward might have behaved, hero-hungry Americans can turn nostalgically to Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney's Academy Award-nominated Good Night, and Good Luck, a title that increases in irony every time you hear it. This timely film attracted my attention because Murrow's producer Fred Friendly, the character played by Clooney, was my broadcasting professor and faculty advisor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. How it would have delighted the late Fred, no matinee idol by any stretch, to see himself played by an actor once voted "the sexiest man alive" by readers of People magazine.

At Columbia, the voluble Friendly, recently president of CBS News, served as a sort of St. Paul of Tarsus to Murrow's Jesus Christ, a ministry that had increased in passion after Murrow's death in 1965. Everyone who studied with Fred was baptized in his idealistic Gospel of Murrow. For its optimism and aspirations, this pre-Watergate moment in the late '60s may have been the high watermark for American journalism, a nexus of self-confidence and public confidence without which Woodward and Bernstein would have been impossible.

There are two critically important messages in Clooney's film. The explicit one, expressed by David Strathairn as Murrow, is that certain events--in this case the Communist witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy--push a responsible journalist beyond the convention of reportorial "balance." There are times when it's a question of right and wrong, not Right and Left, and a journalist's "objectivity" becomes a lame excuse for cowardice. Murrow was by nature a cautious man who had earned his spurs in the era of the FCC's Mayflower Doctrine, which prohibited all editorializing on the air, and its successor the Fairness Doctrine, which sanctioned opinion only if anyone who disagreed was granted air time to respond. Yet Murrow came to be convinced, after years of holding his fire, that McCarthy was evil and dangerous and had to be stopped. The risk he took and the dramatic way it changed the public's perception--on television, Sen. McCarthy, a sweaty, inarticulate drunk, was no match for Murrow's suave, controlled indignation--set a precedent that empowered American journalists in all media for 20 years to come.

With a license to editorialize and to criticize the government, broadcast news, which had been in its infancy, came of age. How brief, in retrospect, was that maturity, that Golden Age of confidence and competence. The second critical message in Good Night, and Good Luck--one that Bob Woodward might have missed--is that it takes a giant, a Paul Bunyan of a newsman, to cut down a runaway demagogue wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. "The Murrow broadcasts were far more nakedly political than anything on network television today," Nicholas Lemann writes in The New Yorker ("The Murrow Doctrine," Jan. 23), "and came from a source with a much bigger share of--and more adoration from--the audience than anybody has now." He adds, with regret, "the days when a major figure on network television can pick that kind of fight, and openly state political opinions on prime time, are long gone."

Apparently Lemann exempts Fox News from "network television," which is fine with me. But he's dead on about the miniaturization of media personalities, who've traded their authority for a lucrative but empty celebrity. Walter Cronkite could have shamed a president and Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward's Kennedy-connected Watergate editor, actually did. Katie Couric couldn't thwart a county commissioner.

"He's betting that a senator trumps a newsman," Strathairn's Murrow says of Sen. McCarthy in Good Night, and Good Luck, and resolves to call his bluff. With TV news in its second infancy and newspapers suffocating in the coils of their chains, who's left with the credibility and prestige to call George Bush's bluff? Possibly someone carrying a reputation from the newsroom's glory days, like Bob Woodward. But he clams up like the Tar Baby and clutches his cards to his vest.



Lower tech, higher impact: The risk Edward R. Murrow took and the dramatic way it changed the public’s perception set a precedent that empowered American journalists in all media for 20 years to come.
The only living heir to powerful, opinionated journalists of yore--Murrow, Walter Lippmann, H.L. Mencken--is a movie star like George Clooney, who puts his money where his heart is and uses his celebrity in the service of his conscience. Some people find this influence regrettable. A celebrity-addled culture where movie stars trump senators, journalists, philosophers and archbishops makes a sad comment on democracy. But in this late phase of a warped society, we take the field with the team that shows up to play. Clooney has all my blessings, and he's earned them. These political films of his, Good Night and Syriana, are no polarizing passion plays but thoughtful, scrupulous warnings ("ambitious and stylishly done," Lemann calls the Murrow film) of clear and present dangers that no American can afford to ignore.

One hostile critic called Clooney's films "left-leaning movies ... so narcissistic and shallow as to suggest that 'liberal' is fast becoming a synonym for 'lobotomized,'" an assessment that leaves me scratching my head. Since when has a defense of the First Amendment against Joe McCarthy or Karl Rove been a "liberal" commitment, and why is it "left-leaning" to deplore the pathological dependency on Arab oil and fickle sheiks from which, in the light of the trillion-dollar debacle in Baghdad, the United States may never recover? It seems to me that conservatives of many stripes would share these concerns most anxiously. And of course they do; new books by neoconservative Francis Fukuyama and ex-GOP strategist Kevin Phillips describe substantial segments of the principled Right in open rebellion.


The word "liberal" has been too ruthlessly overworked and misused to retain any stable meaning. The innocent creatures it once called to mind exist only on hermetically sealed college campuses and small magazines, a remnant slightly less influential than the Branch Davidians. In current usage, "liberal" seems to cover everyone who doubts that the United States of America can survive much more of George W. Bush. "The Hollywood liberal," that vain, superficial limousine lefty who pontificates on talk shows, has become such a weary cliche that every time I hear it I expect, in the next breath, to hear about "liberal bias in the media." Maybe entertainers like Clooney and Warren Beatty, not to mention Michael Moore, shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of dissent because self-serving celebrities like Hillary Clinton and Bob Woodward--and a timorous host of other politicians and journalists--lack the clarity and courage to take the lead.

Though the lockstep Right rarely wins an argument in the open court of reason, its propagandists enjoy tremendous success portraying America as a Manichaean society where political opinion comes in two flavors only, in vanilla and chocolate and no fudge ripple, please. This ultra-polarized model, pure myth, is the cornerstone of reactionary rhetoric. "Here's a time-saving tip," writes my favorite local columnist, Barry Saunders, in The News & Observer. "When the first word out of someone's mouth is 'liberal' or 'conservative,' run away--because not one original thought will be forthcoming. Most people with brains ... consider themselves liberal or conservative depending on the issue."

What's true of "most people with brains" is 10 times true for journalists, who've spent their working lives watching inflexible ideologies founder on the facts. An ideologue with a press pass is always a whore or a fool. But this widespread perception of politics as partisan ping-pong and pundits as team players--a cretinous legacy of Fox News and the Sunday shouting shows--has worked to marginalize legitimate dissent just when the republic most urgently needs to hear it.

Oldtimers beyond the grip of ambition, like Cronkite and Sen. Robert Byrd--and most admirably, Jimmy Carter--don't hesitate to join the resistance and say what they think. But whisper "liberal" to Sen. Clinton with her eye on the White House, or to Bob Woodward with his seven-figure book contract, and you'd think they'd been asked to wear a yellow star. In Murrow's day, of course, McCarthy had to label you a communist to wreck your reputation. People were proud to call themselves liberals, and many of those people, like my late father, were diehard Republicans. Dad was so stubborn he might have remained a Republican through it all--or at least to the point where George W. Bush surveyed his ruinous wars and tax cuts and declared that deficits don't matter.


On the Richter scale of history, Watergate and the McCarthy hearings were mild tremors compared to this globe-rending, nation-grinding earthquake with its epicenter in Iraq. Is Bob Woodward, who knows that, too frightened to come clean? There are better role models, other examples besides the sorry one he set in Chapel Hill. The other night in Greensboro I had a conversation with Bill Moyers and heard him address a large audience of North Carolinians who share his misgivings about the White House and its war. Moyers, for my money the most significant broadcast journalist of his generation, is in the Paul Revere phase of his career. Frozen out of network TV by the dumbing-down of news shows, hounded toward retirement by the right-wing administrators of public television--not for editorializing, but for asking hard questions and tackling issues neutered newsmen and women avoid--Moyers has reached the end of his patience.

Impartial? Think instead of Tom Paine, of Martin Luther King Jr.--of Martin Luther. Moyers has at least 95 grievances to nail on the door of the White House; his hammer is raised and ready. He sees bad faith, arrogance, atrocious judgment and irreversible damage. The media and the Democrats, he believes, are nearly all intimidated or self-servingly supine. It breaks his heart to see Americans accept deceit and abuse from an empty suit like George Bush, whom every unposed photo seems to expose for what he is--an inept con artist, a furtive low-rent hustler about to be caught in the act.

The soft-spoken Moyers, with his East Texas Baptist roots, was always committed to civil dialogue, always more interested in principles than politics. But in speeches like the one in Greensboro, sponsored by the Quakers of Guilford College, he embraces dissent and resistance and puts his professional reputation on the line. He will never be invited to visit with the president. Comparing Moyers' exile to his own exclusive access, is Woodward still proud of the 500 questions he was allowed to ask George Bush? (One question--"How in hell ...?"--might do for me.) Does he think the stories Bush tells him are the ones his poor readers need to hear?

As Murrow demonstrated in 1954 and Moyers is telling us now, any journalism of substance has a moral, judgmental component. Two sides, sure--but rarely two sides of equal merit. And at the point when the side with the power begins to ignore the facts, the laws, and other people's rights--a point Bush passed years ago--anyone with special knowledge, access or influence is ethically obligated to tell the public what he knows and what he thinks. No matter who proclaims it, "objectivity" that ducks this responsibility is a contemptible sham.

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/29/2006 11:37:00 AM 0 comments

No Way to Treat a Relative
By PAMELA ANDERSON
April 28, 2006; Page A14

King Kong is my hero. He's big, muscular, sensitive, a terrific actor -- and he's not real. The use of computer-generated imagery has really taken off in Hollywood. So why has Madison Avenue suddenly gone bananas for real apes? Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, with at least 95% of the same DNA. We're closer to them than they are to gorillas, so when I see chimpanzees being used as on-screen comedians, dressed up in silly costumes to sell credit cards, I think, Is this any way to treat a relative?

This issue has been on my mind a lot lately. It started when my kids went on a field trip to what was billed as an exotic animal refuge in Malibu. I excitedly tagged along only to find that it was like a shabby petting zoo that rents lions, tigers and a fascinating pair of chimpanzees to productions like "The Gong Show" to perform pathetic tricks under lights in front of loud crowds -- conditions that are very stressful. I chose to have that kind of life; these animals didn't.

In the wild, baby chimpanzees and their mothers are inseparable. Moms carry babies with them as they forage and sleep in the same nests with them at night. Chimpanzees start climbing and eating on their own when they're 3 years old, but never stray far from mom. They're not independent until 7, so it broke my heart to learn that the chimpanzees used in ads and shows are babies, snatched from their mothers when they're infants so they'll be manageable in front of the camera. While it's possible to train animals using only kindness, as Jane Goodall pointed out, "this requires the kind of time and patience which is usually lacking in the fast moving world of 'show biz.'"

A primatologist who spent 14 months working undercover for a facility that trains great apes for film and TV saw trainers kick and punch the animals to make them obedient. Bright, energetic chimpanzees were reduced to zombies who cowered in fear of being struck. These same chimpanzees were later seen at an "animal sanctuary," which compassionate people were charged $200 to visit. Most abuse by "animal trainers" goes on behind closed doors, where the PR teams that dream up ad campaigns featuring costumed chimpanzees -- and the consumers buying their products -- never even see it.

That's just the beginning. By the time chimpanzees are 7, they're stronger than Vin Diesel and can pull your head off. When they can no longer be disciplined, they're abandoned like trash. Zoos don't want them, and the few sanctuaries for abused apes can't possibly take them all. So they're sold to tawdry attractions, or to breeders who churn out even more chimpanzee babies for "entertainment." A performing chimpanzee's life consists of about seven years of being lugged around sets and then 40 years of being caged, often in solitary confinement.

I've vowed never to be involved with a production that uses live apes because I don't want to be a part of this cruelty, and I bet you don't either. Let's drop the curtain on ape "actors" by sticking to animatronic animals or willing human performers for our ads. It's not like there's a shortage of struggling starlets willing to embarrass themselves if it means getting on TV.

Ms. Anderson, an actress, is honorary chair of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Copyright 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/29/2006 04:29:00 AM 0 comments

New U.S. Post Aims to Guard Public's Privacy

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/20/2006 03:50:00 AM 0 comments

...courtesy of the bubbling-lava imagination of TBogg:

"No slight to America is too small for Michelle not to fake a back-arching ragegasm guaranteed to engorge her loyal one-handed readers..."

Michelle is hate merchant Michelle Malkin, and I'll never be able to look at her again on Fox News without picturing her howling like Eartha Kitt possessed as sparrows explode from the trees across North America, or at least the parts of it that haven't been reconquista'd.

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/20/2006 03:41:00 AM 0 comments

The Decider

Well, I’m the type of guy who will always let you down
Where Rummy critics are, well, you know my disdain will abound
I hate ‘em and ignore ‘em, ‘cause to me they’re all the same
I hate ‘em and ignore ‘em; I don’t even know their names
They call me The Decider, yeah, The Decider
I spin around around around around around…

Well, there’s Rove on my left and there’s Cheney on my right
But Condi is the girl, yeah, that I’ll be with tonight
And when she asks me which one I love the best
I tear open my shirt and I got Rummy on my chest
‘Cause I’m The Decider, yeah, The Decider
I spin around around around around around…

Oh well I spin from town to town
I go through life without a care
I sound as dopey as a clown
With my head full of iron and I’m going nowhere

I’m the type of guy that likes to spin the media
I never read a book, not even the encyclopedia
And when I find the haters a-hatin’ on my chum
I tell them no one’s better than my buddy Donny Rum
‘Cause I’m The Decider, yeah, The Decider
I spin around around around around…

‘Cause I’m The Decider, yeah, The Decider
I spin around around around around…

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/20/2006 03:26:00 AM 0 comments

The questions McClellan never answered

White House press secretary Scott McClellan is on his way out the door, but there are more than a few questions we'd still like to ask him. Among them:

1. On Sept. 29, 2003, you said that "the president knows" that Karl Rove wasn't involved in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame. When you were asked how Bush "knew," you said: "I'm not going to get into conversations that the president has with advisors or staff or anything of that nature; that's not my practice." We subsequently learned that Rove had leaked Plame's identity to both Robert Novak and Matthew Cooper. What was your basis for saying that the president knew that Rove wasn't involved? Did the president ever ask Rove about his involvement? Did Rove lie to the president about his involvement? Did the president lie to you? Or did you lie to the American public?

2. On Oct. 10, 2003, you said that you had spoken with Rove and Scooter Libby about the Plame leak, and you said that they had "assured" you that "they were not involved in this." As it turns out, both men were deeply involved. Had both men lied to you about their involvement, or did you lie to the American public? If they lied to you, when did you first learn the truth? And if you lied to the American people -- and, as a result, helped keep alive a false account of history up to and through the 2004 presidential election -- do you owe the public an apology now?

3. On Oct. 31, 2005, a reporter began a question by saying, "We know that Karl Rove, based on what he and his lawyer have said, did have a conversation about somebody who Patrick Fitzgerald said was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. We know that Scooter Libby also had conversations." A videotape of the press conference shows you interjecting and saying, "That's accurate." But in the White House transcript of the press briefing, you're quoted as saying, "I don't think that's accurate." Why were your words altered in the transcript? Who made the decision to ask the Federal News Service and Congressional Quarterly to change their transcripts? Did you support that decision? Did you really think it would work?

4. On July 18, 2003, you said that portions of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq had been "officially declassified today." But after Patrick Fitzgerald revealed that Scooter Libby has testified that the president, through the vice president, authorized him to leak portions of the NIE prior to Libby's July 8, 2003, meeting with Judy Miller, you refused to say when the NIE was actually declassified, claiming that doing so would involve commenting on an "ongoing legal proceeding." Did the president declassify the NIE before he authorized Libby to leak it, or did the president authorize the leak of information that was still classified at the time? And while we're on this subject, what ever happened to your Oct. 6, 2003, claim that anyone "responsible for the leaking of classified information" would "no longer work in this administration"?

5. On April 12, 2006, and April 13, 2006, you dodged questions about whether Bush knew, when he was asserting unequivocally that the United States had discovered mobile weapons labs in Iraq, that a team of experts dispatched by the Defense Intelligence Agency had already concluded that the trailers in question weren't labs at all. The vice president had made similar claims about the labs-that-weren't, and you dodged questions about those, too. What did the president know about the trailers, and when did he know it? What did the vice president know, and when did he know it?

-- Tim Grieve

McClellan's Greatest Hits
April 19, 2006 11:23 p.m.

Since taking the job as White House spokesman in the summer of 2003, Scott McClellan has dealt with some major news events, including Hurricane Katrina and the leak of the identity of a CIA officer. Below are some more memorable exchanges with the press.

* * *

Comments to the press about the war in Iraq

Sept. 2, 2003

Q: [W]ere you able to chase down the motivation for the policy in the Washington Post report this morning on the refusal to issue numbers of troops wounded unless there are troops killed in Iraq?

McClellan: Well, I think that that's an issue that you need to talk to the Department of Defense about, about what their policy is, what it has been, what it is and what it will be moving forward.

Q: While that may be a Pentagon policy in your view, from an administration standpoint, doesn't this appear to downplay the sacrifice made by people who are wounded over there?

McClellan: Well, a couple of things. One, I think that you are seeing the outstanding job that our medical forces are doing to save lives in Iraq. That's important. Our troops continue to make sacrifices in this important effort that is under way in Iraq, and we appreciate the sacrifices that are being made. It's for an important cause; it's for making the world a safer place; it's for bringing about peace and security in the Middle East; and it's about bringing about a free and democratic Iraq.

Nov. 3, 2003 -- The Monday after the deaths of 17 U.S. soldiers on a single day

Q: Will we hear from the President today about the attack in Iraq?

McClellan: He often talks about -- again, he often talks about Iraq, and … he tends to talk in about every speech about how we mourn the loss the life and the sacrifices that our troops are making.

Q: But he's not going to hold a --

McClellan: In many speeches, he --

Q: But he's not going to say, the 15 -- the 16 lives that were lost --

McClellan: Again, I think it's important to remember that there are a number of our men and women in the military who are serving and sacrificing. And we mourn the loss of every one who has fallen in the cause of defending freedom and making the world a better and safer place.

Aug. 19, 2004 -- On a standoff in Najaf, Iraq, with militant Islamic cleric Moqtada al Sadr

Q: Does the administration think this is just the latest game of chicken, so to speak, or do you think that this is a very serious situation right there now, and that a blood bath is possible?

McClellan: This is a serious security problem that the Iraqi government is working to address. And they are taking a very firm and tough stand with Sadr and his militia. And they've made very clear what their demands are, and what he needs to do. And we've seen a lot of comments coming out of his spokespeople. We need to see action by him to follow through on those demands.

* * *

Comments at media briefings when asked by reporters about whether Rove was involved in the leak of a CIA officer's identity.

Sept. 29, 2003

Q: You said this morning, quote, "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved." How does he know that?

McClellan: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. .. I've said that it's not true. .. And I have spoken with Karl Rove.

Q: When you talked to Mr. Rove, did you discuss, "Did you ever have this information?"

McClellan: I've made it very clear, he was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was.

Oct. 7, 2003

Q: You have said that you personally went to Scooter Libby (Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff), Karl Rove and Elliott Abrams (National Security Council official) to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Why did you do that? And can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked?

McClellan: Unfortunately, in Washington, D.C., at a time like this there are a lot of rumors and innuendo. There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that's exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They are good individuals. They are important members of our White House team. And that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt with that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it's accurate before I report back to you, and that's exactly what I did.

Oct. 10, 2003

Q: Earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

McClellan: I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands.

Q: So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

McClellan: They assured me that they were not involved in this.

Q: They were not involved in what?

McClellan: The leaking of classified information.

July 11, 2005

Q: Do you want to retract your statement that Rove, Karl Rove, was not involved in the Valerie Plame expose?

McClellan: I appreciate the question. This is an ongoing investigation at this point. The president directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation, and as part of cooperating fully with the investigation, that means we're not going to be commenting on it while it is ongoing.

* * *

Comments at media briefings in the days after Hurricane Katrina

Sept. 1, 2005

Q: People on the ground, though, Scott, are questioning why it's taken three days or more for federal help to arrive, notwithstanding all of the preparations. There's considerable bitterness in some places. We had one woman ask on camera last night, where's the cavalry? And then there's been editorial criticism across the country of the President for not acting sooner, or not coming back sooner. What do you say to all that?

McClellan: I can understand how frustrated people are in the region who have been affected by this. There are some immediate priorities that we must remain focused on. First and foremost, that is saving lives. And second, right along with that, is sustaining lives. That's why the federal government is working in close partnership with state and local authorities. This is a massive undertaking by the federal government. It is unprecedented. We continue -- remember, we pre-positioned assets in the region prior to the storm hitting. You have more than 50 disaster medical assistance teams in the region. You have some 28-plus search and rescue teams deployed in the region. … [I]f you look at what the Department of Transportation, for instance, has done, they have moved I think approximately 1,000 truckloads containing more than -- nearly 7 million Meals Ready to Eat to the region. They have moved millions of gallons of water, 15,000-plus tarps, 10,000-plus rolls of plastic sheeting, 3.4 million pounds of ice that they have helped to transport to those who are in need of those supplies.

Sept. 6, 2005

Q: Scott, the reality at hand right now is that the president said that we still live in an unsettled world. This is an administration that has told us since 9/11 that it's not a matter of "if," but "when" that we could be struck by a terror attack and, obviously, other disasters that are the result of Mother Nature. So at this point, where is the accountability? Is the president prepared to say where this White House, where this administration, went wrong in its response to Katrina?

McClellan: You know, David, there are some that are interested in playing the blame game. The president is interested in solving problems and getting help to the people who need it. There will be a time --

Q: Wait a minute. Is it a blame game when the president, himself, says that we remain at risk for either another catastrophe of this dimension, that's not manmade, or a terrorist attack? Isn't it incumbent upon this administration to immediately have accountability to find out what went wrong, when at any time this could happen again?

McClellan: This is a massive federal response effort that we have under way. We've got to stay focused on helping those who are in need right now and help them rebuild their lives and get back up on their feet. It's a time of many challenges, enormous challenges. We've got to stay focused on the task at hand. That is what the president is doing.

Now, in terms of addressing threats, we've made a lot of progress since the attacks of Sept 11. And one of the most important things we're doing is staying on the offensive abroad. There are important priorities that we have to continue to address and we are working to address those priorities, too. But we have a major disaster that has occurred over a 90,000 square mile [sic] here in the United States. There are people --

Q: Right. And there are people who want to know why this government couldn't respond --

McClellan: Hang on. There are people who are suffering, and we've got to respond to their needs, and that's what we're going to keep our focus.

Q: So no one is prepared to say what went wrong?

McClellan: We will look back at the facts and we will get to the bottom of the facts and determine what went wrong and what went right. But right now --

Q: Will the president support an outside investigation, or does he want to do it himself?

McClellan: -- but, David, right now, we've got to continue helping the people in the region.

Sept. 7, 2005

Q: Scott, in the conversations that the president had with Gov. Blanco, was there any moment where Gov. Blanco had asked, prior to the storm hitting, that they begin to dispatch either National Guard troops or federal troops in New Orleans?

McClellan: If you go back to that time period, we were in close contact with governors and local officials. And if you recall, that the request for -- and the disaster declaration is issued by the president, but it comes at the request of the state. And that's why we were consulting closely, and I think we mentioned this at the time, with the governors. And Gov. Blanco got a request into us ahead of time so that we could issue that disaster declaration.

Now, in terms of the National Guard troops, I think that General Blum and the military have talked about how things were pre-positioned in the region, and I would leave it to them to describe the deployment of military troops and the requests that were made. I think they've been briefing on that the last couple of days and --

Q: My question, though, I think was, did Gov. Blanco ask the president for the dispatch --

McClellan: I'm not aware of that, David, and I don't want to try to get into going back through every single detail of this. I mean, we're going to look at all this. Right now we're trying to stay focused on what's ahead, not what's passed, because we need --

* * *

Comments at media briefings in the days after Vice President Cheney shot a friend, Harry Whittington, while hunting quail in Texas

Feb. 13, 2006

Q: [A]s the Press Secretary, are you satisfied with the way this was handled?

McClellan: Well, I know that the Vice President's Office was working to pull together information and make sure that information got out. And the Vice President felt that Mrs. Armstrong should be the first one to go out there and provide that information to the public, which she did -- and she reached out early Sunday morning to do so.

Q: And you're satisfied with the way --

McClellan: You can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job.

…

Q: [H]as he taken a hunting safety course in Texas?

McClellan: I'd check with his office. I don't have those facts, Mike. I haven't checked into that.

Q: Will the Vice President be available soon to answer all questions, himself, about the incident?

McClellan: think you ought to direct questions like that to his office. He has a press office you can direct questions to. ...

Q: You've repeatedly said that the Vice President's Office will share this information with us. Will you tell us -- will you now ask them to share this information with us, because they're not.

McClellan: Share what information?

Q: Details of what happened during the shooting and more information about --

McClellan: Well, Mrs. Armstrong provided that information. She was the eyewitness to what took place.

Q: Can we get someone from his office in here to answer --

Q: Why can't we get someone from his office to answer some questions?

Q: Or get him?

McClellan: Well, talk to his office. I think they have provided a response to the questions.

…

McClellan: They contacted the local -- Mrs. Armstrong contacted the local paper early Sunday morning.

Q: Scott, that's not the answer to the question. Come on. You're totally ducking and weaving here.

McClellan: No, I'm not.

Q: You are, Scott. We don't --

McClellan: I'm telling you what the Vice President's Office --

Q: We don't care if some ranch owner calls a local paper.

McClellan: Hold on. Cameras aren't on right now. You can do this later.

Q: You know what, Scott? You may think that's cute and funny, but you're not answering the question, and that's a dodge. And don't accuse me of trying to pose for the cameras. Don't be a jerk to me, personally. When I'm asking you a serious question, you should give us a serious answer --

McClellan: You don't have to yell.

Q: -- instead of jerking us around.

McClellan: You don't have to yell.

Q: I will yell. If you want to use that podium and try to take shots at me personally, which I don't appreciate, then I will raise my voice, because that's wrong.

McClellan: Calm down, David.

Q: So answer the question.

McClellan: Calm down.

Q: I'll calm down when I feel like calming down. You answer the question.

McClellan: I have answered the question, and I'm sorry you're getting all riled up about it.

Q: I am riled up because you're not answering the question....

* * *

Comments to the press about his tenure in the job

March 15, 2006

Q: Scott, at the risk of making you even more tired, I'm wondering --

McClellan: I'm not tired, Jim. You might be --

Q: Well, after this question you may be. The calls from the current senators, and even former senators, from what we understand, to change the staffing, expand it, if not swap out, is there anything to it? Are any staff changes at the White House imminent?

McClellan: Jim, let me speak very clearly to this. This is part of the inside Washington babble that goes on in this town. It's part of the parlor game. We are focused on the priorities that the American people care most about and getting things done. We are focused on helping the President advance his agenda, to make America safer and more prosperous. There are a lot of important priorities we're working to advance, and we're working to advance, and we're working to build upon a record of great accomplishment. And that's where our focus is.

April 17, 2006

Q: Scott, you're one of those visible members of the President's senior staff. Do you plan to stay on?

McClellan: Are you trying to tempt me here?

Q: Not at all.

McClellan: Look, I never speculate about personnel matters.

Q: "Personnel" or "personal" or both?

McClellan: Two years in this position is a long time, I'm very mindful of that. But, look, I never get into any of that speculation.

Source: the White House, Associated Press, the New Republic

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/20/2006 03:14:00 AM 0 comments

"Those who expect to reap the blessings
of freedom, must, like men, undergo the
fatigues of supporting it."
-- Tom Paine, "The American Crisis

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/19/2006 04:22:00 AM 0 comments

"Well, you know, 'This, too, will pass.'"

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/19/2006 03:58:00 AM 0 comments

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today ===================================================

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and
Hillary Clinton.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when
Bush's daddy made war on him; a good guy when Cheney did
business with him; and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't
find Bin Laden" diversion.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but
trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of
international harmony.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and
our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions
against Iraq.

A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but
multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all
mankind without regulation.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops
in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time
allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but
providing health care to all Americans is socialism. HMOs and
insurance companies have the best interests of the public at
heart.

Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science,
but creationism should be taught in schools. A president lying
about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a
president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands
die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the
Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring
the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but
George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're
a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our
prayers for your recovery.

You support states' rights, but the Attorney General can tell
states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest,
but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/18/2006 04:34:00 AM 0 comments

The War Prayer
by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country
was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the
holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands
playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers
hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the
receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a
fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily
the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and
fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers
and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices
choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the
packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory
which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which
they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of
applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while;
in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and
country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid
in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which
moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious
time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to
disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteous-
ness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that
for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out
of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave
for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were
there, their young faces alight with martial dreams --
visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the
rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe,
the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the
surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes,
welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With
the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and
envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and
brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to
win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble
deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old
Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was
followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and
with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and
beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:

*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy
clarion and lightning thy sword!*

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like
of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful
language. The burden of its supplication was, that an
ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch
over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and
encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield
them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them
in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident,
invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the
foe, grant to them and to their flag and country
imperishable honor and glory --

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless
step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister,
his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet,
his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy
cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale,
pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and
wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he
ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting.
With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence,
continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it
with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms,
grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector
of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside
-- which the startled minister did -- and took his place.
During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience
with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then
in a deep voice he said:

"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty
God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the
stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard
the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it
if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall
have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its
full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of
men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is
aware of -- except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he
paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two
-- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear
of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the
unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would
beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without
intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same
time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop
which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for
a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain
and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part
of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other
part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in
your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly
and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these
words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is
sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact
into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary.
When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many
unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow
it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit
of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He
commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts,
go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in
spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our
beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help
us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms
of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the
guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;
help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane
of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending
widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out
roofless with little children to wander unfriended the
wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and
thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy
winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail,
imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it
-- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes,
blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make
heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain
the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We
ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source
of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of
all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and
contrite hearts. Amen.

(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire
it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic,
because there was no sense in what he said.

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/16/2006 08:13:00 AM 0 comments

Berlusconi's Allies Start to Question His Insistence on Recount

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/15/2006 06:23:00 AM 0 comments

The Real Story of John Walker Lindh

By Frank Lindh, AlterNet
Posted on January 24, 2006, Printed on April 14, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31211/

Editor's Note: The public has heard little about John Walker Lindh since the media frenzy over his capture in the winter of 2001. On January 19, John's father Frank Lindh delivered an address at The Commonwealth Club of California. Lindh explained that he and his family have avoided the press for nearly four years; he now wants the public to understand the truth about his son, who he says didn't stand a chance of getting a fair trial in the emotional days following 9/11. Immediately characterized as a "terrorist" by the press and politicians, Lindh faced a jury in Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Pentagon. The trial date scheduled by the judge was the anniversary of 9/11. Initially facing 11 criminal counts -- most relating to terrorism -- the only charge that John Lindh was found guilty of was violating economic sanctions by supporting the Taliban government, for which the 20-year-old was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The following is excerpted from Frank Lindh's speech.

I believe the case of John Lindh is an important story and worthy of this audience's attention. In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man, embarked on a spiritual quest, who became the focus of the grief and anger of an entire nation over an event in which he had no part. I refer to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The reason I think this story is important is because our system broke down in the case of John Lindh. My goals today are first, just to tell you the story of John Lindh. Second, to ask you to reflect, based on the fact of John's case, on the importance and the fragility of the rights we enjoy under our Constitution. And my third point is to suggest that the so-called war on terrorism lacks a hearts and minds component.

I want to begin by asking you to call to mind the September 11th terrorist attacks and the shock and horror they engendered in the hearts of everyone. On that awful day, a band of terrorists, who claimed Islam as their cause, hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them full of passengers into occupied buildings without warning -- the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. They crashed the fourth airplane, also filled with passengers, into a field in Pennsylvania. Three thousand innocent Americans lost their lives that day.

But for those attacks, John's activities, which I will describe, would have been treated with indifference, or perhaps curiosity here in the United States. But, viewed through the prism of the September 11th attacks, those very same activities caused this young man to be vilified as a traitor and a terrorist.

Childhood

John was born in February 1981 in Washington, D.C., during a time when I was working for the federal government. He's the second of my three children. John was the kind of kid that any parent would want. From the time he was a baby, he was very centered, peaceful and content. Later, after he converted to Islam, I told John that I thought he had always been a Muslim, and he simply had to find it for himself.

I'm a practicing Catholic myself, and we raised John as a Catholic. He attended Sunday school along with his brother in Washington. In 1991, when John was 10 years old, we moved from the D.C. area to the Bay Area. At age 12, John saw the movie "Malcolm X" by Spike Lee and became deeply interested in Islam. He later wrote in his autobiographical statement for the court, "I had first become interested in Islam during 1993, after becoming aware of the Hajj, in which thousands of Muslims all over the world gather at Mecca, a holy site in Saudi Arabia. I learned that all Muslims are required to make this religious journey at least once in their life. I was very moved by the image of thousands of people praying together. Perfectly equal and perfectly humble. I began to read all that I could about Islam."

When he was 16, John formally converted to Islam at a mosque in Mill Valley in Marin County where we live. An elder at the Mill Valley mosque testified in John's case and wrote a statement for the court in which he said that in all of his experience in knowing Americans who had converted to Islam, "no one has come close to John in the embodiment of piety and of the true noble Islamic character." By the time he was 17, John was ready to embark on a course of studies overseas and he went to Yemen to study Arabic.

Travels in the Middle East

His first trip to Yemen lasted from July of 1998 to May of 1999, and then his visa expired, so he came home for a few months. Then, in February of 2000, just before his 19th birthday, John returned to Yemen to continue his study of classical Arabic and Islam at a school in Sanaa, Yemen. Again, he had visa trouble, so in November of 2000, John made a decision to go to Pakistan and to continue his Islamic study, memorizing the Koran. It's the goal of every scholarly Muslim to memorize the entire Koran verbatim, and John's goal was to become both fluent in Arabic and to memorize the Koran so that he could then go on and become a Muslim scholar. His goal was to attend the Islamic university at Medina in Saudi Arabia or a comparable world-class Islamic university.

It is November of 2000 when John goes to Pakistan with my blessing. In late April of 2001, John wrote to me and his mother to say that he wanted to go up to the mountains of Pakistan to get away from the heat. That made sense. John never tolerated the heat in Washington, D.C. What he didn't tell us, what we didn't learn until later was that John was going over the mountains, into Afghanistan, intent on volunteering for military service in the army of Afghanistan.

Civil war in Afghanistan

The Soviet Union, as you know, invaded Afghanistan in 1979. They imposed a communist puppet government upon the country. From the time of that invasion, right up through 2001, Afghanistan was engulfed in constant war. After the Soviets withdrew, the country descended into a civil war among the factions -- many of whom had been funded by the United States in the war against the Soviets, and the consequent civil was resulted in terrible devastation in the country.

Afghanistan had by far the largest refugee population in the world. Many of these refugees lived in terrible conditions in refugee camps in Pakistan, across the border. Eventually, the Taliban, which rose up out of those refugee camps, managed to consolidate power over most of the country. So by the year 2001, they had consolidated power over all except the Northeastern region of the country, which was still controlled by the Russian-backed Northern Alliance, a group of warlords.

America's allegiance with the anti-Russian factions in Afghanistan extended not only through the presidency of Carter, Reagan and the first President Bush, but also to the current Bush administration. In the spring of 2001, roughly at the same time John went to Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell personally announced a grant of $43 million to the Taliban government for opium eradication, which the New York Times then refers to as "a first cautious step towards reducing the isolation of the Taliban incoming by the new Bush administration." Secretary of State Powell released a press release in which he said "we will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans." This is the context in which John goes to Afghanistan.

When he did go into Afghanistan, John received infantry training at a government-run military training camp. But the training camp was funded by Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden really had two operations going on. One was to finance the Afghan army operations -- these training camps for infantry. But he also, as we all know now, had a terrorist organization under way, a highly secretive terrorist organization that we call al Qaeda.

Twice in the course of his training there, John actually saw Osama bin Laden and met him on one occasion. He came away from those encounters very skeptical about bin Laden because John recognized instantly that bin Laden was not an authentic Islamic scholar based on what John himself knows. In the course of John's subsequent criminal cases, attorneys hired a professor named Rohan Gunaratna. He is the world's leading authority on al Qaeda and author of the book "Inside al Qaeda."

Gunaratna has been employed by the U.N., but also by the government of the United States as an expert in al Qaeda, and he interviewed John extensively. After all these interviews, he made this following conclusion: "Those who, like Mr. Lindh, merely fought the Northern Alliance, cannot be deemed terrorists. Their motivation was to serve and to protect suffering Muslims in Afghanistan, not to kill civilians."

U.S. in Afghanistan post-9/11

After the September 11th attacks, the United States goes to war with Afghanistan. There's a period of one month in which the United States attempts to negotiate the extradition of bin Laden and his terrorist group. Those negotiations failed, and so, in October, almost a month later, the United States begins an invasion.

I wanted to introduce an important player in these events. It's a notorious Northern Alliance warlord named Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum had served as an officer in the Soviet-backed communist puppet government in Afghanistan. The New Yorker magazine last year said he was "perhaps Afghanistan's most notorious war lord," and he's viewed by most human rights organizations as among the worst war criminals in the country. Throughout the 1990s as well as during the U.S. invasion of 2001, Dostum was involved in numerous documented cases of torture and murder of prisoners of war. He dominates the area of North Central Afghanistan around the city of Masari Sharif.

In the period in late 2001, Taliban forces in Northern Afghanistan were overrun by the Northern Alliance forces after an aerial bombing by the United States. The American strategy was to use Northern Alliance troops as a proxy rather than commit American troops to the ground. This may have been a sound military strategy; however, it appears that the American generals who planned this invasion made no provision for the handling of the prisoners of war.

What happened as a consequence was the murder of thousands of Taliban prisoners by the Northern Alliance during the period of November and December of 2001, the same time when John's case comes to our attention. These war crimes have been documented by Physicians for Human Rights and in the mainstream media here in the United States, including a cover story in Newsweek magazine.

Capture in Afghanistan

Let us return now to the story of John. In early September, before the 11th, John arrived at the frontline in Tahar. The two armies there -- the Taliban army and the Northern Alliance army, were locked in an old-fashioned stalemate. John arrived, he was issued the standard rifle and two hand grenades and performed sentry duty there at the front. He never fired his weapons. After the American bombing campaign began in October, the line broke. Again, no American troops are here in Tahar, it's all Northern Alliance troops, but the American bombing happens.

The frontline breaks, the Taliban soldiers retreat to the capital of Tahar -- Kunduz. It's a confused retreat. Many of them are killed. If they're captured by the Northern Alliance, they're killed. There's a chilling series of pictures in the New York Times of a prisoner as he's taken, castrated and then killed. This is what John faced. He was very desperate and near dead by the time he got to Kunduz.

Then there's a deal made by General Dostum for safe passage of these prisoners from Kunduz to a city in the west called Herat, near the border of Iran. John is one of the 400 that are part of this deal with Dostum. They make this deal, and a large amount of money is given to Dostum in return for the safe passage. The only condition Dostum imposes is that the soldiers must give up their weapons before he'll allow them to pass through. So they give up the weapons and then immediately Dostum breaks the deal. He diverts the prisoners from their path into his fortress -- a place called Kuala Jungi. It's an old 15th- or 16th-century walled fortress near Mazari Sharif. And there all hell broke loose.

The next morning, John was brought out along with these other prisoners, with their hands tied behind their backs for interrogation. There are no American troops present here, but there are two American CIA agents, and they're doing the interrogation of the prisoners as they're brought out of the basement. Their arms are tied behind their backs at the elbow, and they are being very brutally abused by Dostum's troops. All of them are afraid that they are going to be killed by Gen. Dostum given his reputation.

John is struck in the back of the head with a rifle butt by one of the Northern Alliance troops as he's brought out of the basement just moments before some video was taken of John being interrogated by the two U.S. agents. They threatened John with death. John remained silent (Lindh believed the two agents were working for Dostum.) His only goal was to get to Herat so that he could get back to Pakistan.

Moments after this video is shot, the last of the remaining 400 or 500 prisoners, as they're brought out of the basement, jumped Dostum's guards, seized their weapons, and a melee broke out. Dostum's troops panic and begin to shoot down all the prisoners in the yard, most of them, like John with their hands and arms tied behind their backs. Dozens and dozens of these Taliban prisoners are killed on the spot. John gets up and starts to run. He is shot immediately in the thigh.

He lay on the ground there for 12 hours, pretending to be dead while the carnage continued around him. That night, some of the survivors managed to get back down into the basement of the building where they had been taken when they first were brought to the fortress. They went in among the dead and found the wounded and brought them down into the basement. John was one of them.

In the days that followed, there was a deliberate effort by Dostum, supported by the United States Special Forces, to simply exterminate all of the Taliban prisoners in the fortress. By the end of that week, most of them were dead. John and a group of them were still holed up. They were unarmed, they were wounded, and they were in the basement of the fortress. They dropped hand grenades down, they poured burning oil down. At one point, they attempted to drop a 1,000-pound bomb on the building, but it was misdirected and actually killed some of Dostum's troops, so they stopped with the bombing, but they continued to try to exterminate these prisoners.

There was a British journalist there named Luke Harding, and he wrote at the time that "Dostum's Northern Alliance and his British and American allies had only one plan: to kill all those in the compound." On Friday, the 30th of November, after six days, they flooded the basement with water from an irrigation stream and that killed many of the remaining soldiers down there in the basement. As Luke Harding wrote, "For those who had died, it had been a cold, terrifying, and squalid extinction." Harding wrote, "We had expected slaughter, but I was unprepared for its hellish scale."

Media storm

John was discovered among the 86 survivors of this massacre in the basement of the building, and he instantly became an international sensation. He was quickly dubbed the "American Taliban" in Newsweek magazine which initially broke the story. The coverage from the beginning was overwhelmingly negative and prejudicial, and falsely linked John with terrorism. After the prisoners emerged from the basement of the fortress, they were taken to Sheberghen -- a town nearby -- for medical treatment. They were all starving, they had nothing to eat the entire week. They were suffering from exposure, and pretty much all of them were wounded, including John.

John had the AK-47 bullet in his thigh and numerous shrapnel wounds. He was very near death when he arrived at Sheberghen. As he's lifted onto a gurney by attending medics, a CNN cameraman named Robert Pelton began to film John. The tape shows John saying to Pelton, "Look, you don't have my permission to film me. If you're concerned about my welfare, don't film me." The ethical thing to do at that point would have been to turn off the camera. But Robert Pelton did not do the ethical thing. He kept the camera running and the microphone on as John was interviewed.

The sensation that resulted from the CNN interview is difficult to describe. I think you probably all have seen it. The interesting thing about the CNN interview, from my perspective, is that it was completely exculpatory. He was injected with morphine, and of course then begins to talk, and he forgets about turning off the camera. He tells his story and it's completely exculpatory. He says everything that I've told you -- "I was in the Taliban army, I met bin Laden," and then all the terrible events around this massacre, but the effect in the United States at that time, given the post-9/11 mood, was just terrible. The effect of this video seemed to confirm people's suspicions that John was a terrorist.

It wasn't just the television media that caused this prejudice, it was the print media as well. Newsweek magazine published a terrible cover story saying that John had supported the 9/11 attacks. The tabloid media was on to the case as well. The National Enquirer, which appeared at grocery store checkout lines throughout the country, featured a cover story with John's picture saying "America's traitor tells all." But even worse than this coverage by the tabloids, I believe, was the treatment that John received in the mainstream media including the New York Times.

On Tuesday, the 11th of December 2001, the Times published a front page article above the fold featuring a very compelling photograph of the funeral of Mike Spann, the CIA agent who had been killed at Kuala Jungi at the uprising. The theme of the entire story was that John had fought against his country and had caused the death of Mike Spann.

Interestingly, directly alongside of this incredible damaging article on page 1 of the New York Times, there appeared a leading article that same day about the widespread killing of the Taliban prisoners by General Dostum and the Northern Alliance. The byline of the article was Sheberghen, the very place where John had been taken and filmed by the CNN crew. But the New York Times overlooked the fact that this was the context in which John had been found, that John was the fortunate survivor of a mass killing of prisoners by the Northern Alliance.

Mistreatment by the military

Upon his capture, John was quickly transferred from Dostum's custody to the custody of the U.S. military. I would have thought at that point that John was in safe hands, and John himself thought the same thing because he said so in a brief letter that he dictated to the Red Cross who visited him that first day. But an order, emanating directly from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, instructed the U.S. military to "take the gloves off" in the questioning of John Lindh.

Rumsfeld's order is documented in a letter that was provided to John's lawyers by the prosecutors, and it also has been reported as a front-page story in the L.A. Times. I do not want to dwell here on the military's mistreatment of my son, but I will say categorically that he was treated in a way that is shameful to our nation and its ideals. John's bullet wound was left festering and untreated; he was blindfolded and bound hand and foot with tight plastic strips that caused severe pain. He was stripped naked and duct-taped and, in this condition, blindfolded, bound naked to a stretcher and then left in the cold in an unheated metal shipping container on the desert floor in Afghanistan.

After one initial visit, the Red Cross was denied any further access to John. The letters I wrote to John through the Red Cross were never delivered to him. All of this conduct was in violation of the Geneva Conventions of war. It was beyond what any civilized nation should tolerate. Yet, despite the fact that the torture and abuse of John Lindh was fully disclosed in the press, there was no outcry here in the United States, so strong was the emotion at that time against this young man.

What I find most troubling about this treatment, however, was that it was completely gratuitous and unnecessary. John Lindh did not need to be tortured in order to tell American forces what he knew, where he had been and what he had seen. He was glad to be rescued, he had nothing to hide. I cannot fathom why the military would have felt it necessary to humiliate him in this way.

Prejudicial commentary

I would venture to say that never before in the history of this country has any criminal defendant been subject to anything approaching the kind of prejudicial statements made by officials in John's case. Interestingly, though, in the very beginning, when John was first captured, President Bush had a sympathetic response. He said, "I don't know what we're going to do with the poor fellow" in an interview with Barbara Walters. And he referred to him by name, he said, "John." Sen. John McCain had sympathetic words, and Sen. Orrin Hatch also said that he thought that John was on a spiritual quest. But after the CNN interview was aired, the whole mood shifted.

It was both parties, Republicans and Democrats. All of these statements were broadcast and covered in the national media and came into everyone's home in the country. In an Oval Office interview on December 21st, President Bush said, "Obviously Walker is unique in that he is the first American al Qaeda fighter we have captured."

John had never even heard of al Qaeda.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, in a nationally televised interview on "Meet the Press," calls John a "traitor." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld says, "John Lindh was captured by U.S. forces with an AK-47 in his hands." Imagine the prejudice to John from such a false and inflammatory statement. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the same Colin Powell who had sent the money to Afghanistan in April says, "John Walker Lindh has brought shame upon his family." Former President George Herbert Walker Bush says this: "He's just despicable. I thought of a unique penalty: Make him leave his hair the way it is and his face as dirty as it is, and let him go wandering around this country and see what kind of sympathy he would get." This was on Good Morning America, December 19th.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, said that John was a "terrorist" who belonged to "an organization that took American lives and came against the American Constitution." Sen. McCain says, "I'd like to take him to Ground Zero, and show him Ground Zero and see how he feels after that." Rudy Giuliani was the person of the year in Time magazine, and what does he do with that bully pulpit? He says, "When you commit treason against the United States of America, particularly at time when the U.S. is in peril of a further attack, I believe the death penalty is the appropriate remedy to consider."

But the most prejudicial commentary of all came from Attorney General Ashcroft. He held two nationally televised press conferences in John's case. I have a copy of the New York Times, the page 1 article on the first of those conferences. This was on the 15th of February. Mind you, John is still overseas, still hasn't even had a chance to visit with his lawyer. He says, "We cannot overlook attacks on America when they come from United States citizens." This is announcing the criminal complaint against John. He's the leading prosecutor in the United States. The same day he says, "We may never know why he turned his back on our country and its values, but we cannot ignore that he did. Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against one's country."

In the second of these conferences, announcing the indictment, the attorney general says, "The reasons for his choices may never be fully known to us, but the fact of those choices is clear. Americans who love their country do not dedicate themselves to killing Americans." As any lawyer would know, it is a breach of professional ethics for a prosecutor to make prejudicial comments about a criminal defendant who is awaiting trial.

Criminal case

Then we get to the criminal case which the Boston Globe refers to as a "collapsed terror case." Initially, the government charged John with 11 criminal counts, most of terrorism-related charges such as supporting al Qaeda. In the end, the government dropped all of the terrorism-related charges in a plea bargain. The one charge that John pleaded guilty to was providing assistance to the Taliban government in violation of the economic sanctions that President Clinton had imposed.

I think it's clear that the government really had to stretch to find any criminal statute that John's conduct had actually violated. But for that one offense, and because he carried a weapon in the commission of the offense, John has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, and he's serving that sentence now in Southern California.

On the basis of the inherent unfairness, and also the fact that John has been a model prisoner from the beginning, John's lawyers have filed a petition with President Bush asking that John's sentence be commuted, and that petition is currently pending with the president.

Conclusions

Quickly, I have three conclusions that I have based on the facts of John's case. First, the rights we enjoy as citizens under the Constitution at times of war and national crisis, and they can be undermined by politicians and the media. Recall that every one of the government officials who I quoted took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution when they were sworn into office. And yet look how quick they were to disregard the Constitution in order to make rhetorical points about John Lindh.

As I tell law students when I speak with them about John's case, the Constitution of the United States does not live in a vault at the National Archives, the Constitution lives in our hearts, and it's up to us as people to maintain the values embedded in the Constitution. We cannot trust the politicians and the media to do the job for us. I think I have to say, too, that it was only the intervention of a courageous legal team, headed by Jim Brosnahan, that literally saved my son's life. I cannot even contemplate what might have happened if these lawyers had not stepped up to defend John.

I think it's clear that the United States really made a mistake in treating Taliban footsoldiers and the Afghan army as if they were al Qaeda terrorists. This was unjust in the eyes of the whole world, but especially among Muslims. And finally, I hope you will indulge me when I say that the mistreatment and the imprisonment of John Lindh was and is a human rights violation. It was based purely on an emotional response to the 9/11 attacks, and not on an objective assessment of John's case.

# posted by The Seditionist @ 4/14/2006 03:20:00 AM 0 comments