State flyers in Wisconsin, South Dakota ‘exhibit racism’

By John Byrne | RAW STORY editor

As campaigns across the country roll towards their bitter end, politics have grown ever-dirtier, with two flyers raising red flags of racism, RAW STORY has found. Both benefit the Republican Party, though one is unattributed.

In Wisconsin, flyers purporting to be from the “Milwaukee Black Voters League,” erroneously tell African Americans they can’t vote in the presidential election if anyone in their family has even been found guilty of a crime. An image of the flyer is reproduced below.

“IF YOU’VE EVER BEEN FOUND GUILTY OF ANYTHING, EVEN A TRAFFIC VIOLATION YOU CAN’T VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” it asserts. “IF ANYBODY IN YOUR FAMILY HAS EVER BEEN FOUND GUIULTY [sic] OF ANYTHING YOU CAN’T VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.”

And if they do vote, African Americans are told, they could go to prison for up to ten years.

“IF YOU VIOLATE ANY OF THESE LAWS YOU CAN GET TEN YEARS IN PRISON AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL GET TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU.”

In a statement, the Milwaukee branch of the AFL-CIO said the racist sentiment was not accident.

“This is an example of the type of tactic being done in the African American neighborhoods to suppress the vote,” said Secretary and Treasurer Sheila Cochran. “It is not an accident; it is intentional and it is aimed at the newly registered and infrequent voter.”

In South Dakota, meanwhile, the claims of racism are less transparent. Republican John Thune, who is fighting a tight race with Democratic Senate Minority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle, has mailed flyers stating that “the dogs are lining up to vote for Tom Daschle.”

Indian Country Today notes that the flyers evoke a time decades ago when many shops displayed signs that read, “No Dogs or Indians allowed.”

“The inference that American Indians are equated with dogs has carried on in the minds of many people middle aged and older,” the reporter writes, “and they have spoken of those memories to the younger people.”

Adding fuel to the fire, the paper says, Thune campaign workers were caught taking photos of people who voted early on a Dakotan reservation.

Thune supporters say the flyers reflect only Daschle’s position on prairie dogs. Daschle, however, has repeatedly campaigned to have prairie dogs removed from the endangered species list.

Click the images to enlarge.

A long and thoughtful piece in the Times; I’ve excerpted a few of the more interesting sections here.

There is a good deal of nail biting going on at the mostly picture-perfect campaign rallies held for President Bush.

Terry Buck, a first-grade teacher from Cleveland, feels the nervousness. So does Jim Nichols, a municipal purchasing officer from Saginaw, Mich. Both turned up this week at big events for the president near their homes. While they cheered endlessly, they also fretted some.

Ms. Buck and Mr. Nichols say the election is much too close. Mr. Bush should be trouncing Senator John Kerry. Something is not quite right, and like many of their fellow Republicans, they share the belief that the news media has played a role by skewing coverage in Mr. Kerry’s favor.

For unsettled Republican voters in battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire, the last leg of the presidential contest has at times been more of a group therapy session than a victory march.

In turning out by the thousands at airports, in stadiums, on farms and along roadsides - some waiting four or five hours for a chance to spend 40 minutes listening to the president - many Republican loyalists are seeking the strength and comfort that large numbers often bring.

While there is no panic, even areas formerly in the Republican column, like Ohio, are easily up for grabs.

Ms. Buck said the race’s worrisome arithmetic was as plain as counting the lawn signs on her way to a Bush rally that same day in Westlake, a suburb of Cleveland. Even on the front yards of Ohio, she lamented, Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry seemed locked in a dead heat, something she and most of her Republican friends did not expect this election.

“I tell my husband that I feel like I am pregnant and I just want to birth this baby so that I can know who it is,” said Ms. Buck, who wore an oversize F.D.N.Y. shirt at a rally where Gen. Tommy Franks joined the president. “My fear is that we will wake up Wednesday and we won’t have a president.”

Karl Rove remarked that the handpicked crowds the president’s handlers select give him the sense that everyone is wild for President Bush.

“He gets it,” Mr. Rove said of the president. “It is really, really energizing. Think about this crowd. Almost everywhere we go it is wild.”

Whether it is all the calculated showmanship of a skilled politician, or the genuine George W. Bush refusing to be smothered by the political process, is not up for discussion at the rallies.

When questions to that effect are posed by journalists, the reaction is typically hostile. Many Republicans who attend Mr. Bush’s rallies identify the news media as the main source of his problems, and they do not hesitate to challenge or heckle reporters traveling with the president.

And finally, some disgruntled Bush supporters have started boycotting progressive musicians.

Karen Ciccone, who waved a Bush-Cheney sign at the rally in Manchester, said the blame also extended to Hollywood actors and musicians. Mr. Bush often derides them as being out of touch with American values.

Ms. Ciccone said she refused to view the films or buy the compact discs of performers who campaigned for Mr. Kerry.

John and Ken Show cited for attacking Dreier

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

The General Counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee has filed a complaint against a California radio show for advocating the defeat of Republican Rep. David Dreier, saying the show’s advocacy is illegal and goes beyond their first amendment rights.

Dreier, a prominent Republican who chaired Arnold Schwarzenegger’s transition team, is largely under fire from the conservative show for his stance on illegal immigration. On the left, RAW STORY has investigated and reported on numerous charges of impropriety related to Dreier’s employment and high salary of a man he is said to have lived with in a gay relationship.

The show is known for their positioning on candidates; the attack on Dreier is called “Fire Dreier.”

Donald McGahn II, counsel for the NRCC, cites The John and Ken Show for providing “in-kind” corporate contributions to Dreier’s Democratic challenger, Cynthia Matthews. The complaint is available in a pdf file here.

“Conducting corporate radio shows and political rallies that expressly advocate for the election or defeat of a clearly identifiable federal candidate does not fall within the First Amendment ‘press exception,’” McGahn writes.

Citing federal code, he adds, “Corporations are also prohibited from ‘[m]aking expenditures with respect to a Federal election… for communications to those outside the restricted class that expressly advocated the election or defeat of one or more clearly identified candidate(s).”

Ultimately, he says, the show has participated in illegal activity and should be fined and possibly face criminal prosecution.

“The John and Ken Show and KFI AM 640 have participated in illegal corporate coordination by promoting Cynthia Matthew’s congressional campaign,” McGahn asserts.

If the FEC determines [the John and Ken Show] have illegally provided corporate in-kind contributions to benefit the Cynthia Matthews’ campaign [sic], then the FEC should fine the respective parties and, if knowing and willful, refer them to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.

To its knowledge, RAW STORY is not aware of any similar complaints made of Fox News, a strong advocate of President Bush, or Rush Limbaugh, a conservative talk show host who has routinely supported Republican candidates while lambasting Democrats during his long tenure on the public airwaves.

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

In a last ditch bid to win Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, where Democratic Sen. John Kerry is leading is most polls, President George W. Bush has engaged in mailings which contain myriad graphic images of the burning World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

The ad is three-fold. RAW STORY has acquired scans of two and a half pages.

On the front side, the ad asks in red print, “How Can John Kerry Lead America In A Time of War?” It adds three subsequent lines, “Kerry: Changing Positions,” “Kerry: Cutting Defense” and “Kerry: Slashing Intelligence.”

Following that, there are nine images of the front pages of Sept. 12, 2001 newspapers (shown below), all of which display the smoking towers of the World Trade Center before they collapsed, killing some 2,600 people. One includes the approach of the plane.

While the Bush-Cheney campaign has routinely used 9/11 as a keystone of their campaign, these are the first print advertisements this site is aware of which actually display multiple images of the burning twin towers. The ad states that it was paid for by the Republican National Committee, with the approval of Bush-Cheney ‘04.

The second side blames Kerry for “slashing intelligence,” though it neglects to note that the CIA did not believe there was a solid case for war. President Bush took America to war over the CIA’s objection, leaving it unclear what the relevance of Kerry’s alleged “slashing intelligence” means in this election.

The third side details the programs Kerry allegedly voted “to cut.” These programs were part of broad Defense Department packages, which Kerry is believed to have voted against in protest of excessive Pentagon spending .

Click the images to see them enlarged.

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

The granddaughter of Senator Jesse Helms, whom many consider the most anti-gay legislator in U.S. history and who is touting him during her elective campaign, is herself a partnered lesbian, friends of the couple tell RAW STORY.

Jennifer Knox, granddaughter of the retired North Carolina Republican senator, has been in a committed relationship with her partner Shields Carstarphen for over three years, they say. Knox is vying to become a district judge in North Carolina; Carstarphen is the treasurer of her campaign.

Knox did not respond to multiple detailed messages left at her home and office.

Throughout his long career, Senator Helms consistently excoriated gays for their “revolting conduct” and “unnatural acts.” Calling Martin Luther King a “pervert,” he dubbed the 1964 Civil Rights Act “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.”

Our sources, who asked RAW STORY to keep their names private, say they have known the parties for many years. They have also communicated with blogACTIVE.com, a site known for reporting on closeted anti-gay politicians.

The site reports that the Republican Party, while refusing to answer questions about Knox’s sexuality, mailed homophobic flyers in a Democratic state senate race, and that the GOP may have known Knox was gay but did nothing to rebuke her.

Knox and Carstarphen share a home in Raleigh, where they have lived for more than a year. They have an active social life in the Triangle area and travel together on vacations.

Knox’s mother confirmed that they resided together in a telephone conversation early this week, referring to Carstarphen as her roommate. Knox is 30.

Each of the sources expressed that they and their friends had wrangled with the consequences of outing Knox, but asserted that Knox’s decision to use Helms as a motivating force in her campaign pushed them to come forward.

When Knox announced her Wake County candidacy Apr. 30, she said Helms was the primary factor in driving her to run for elective office.

“He’s dedicated 30-plus years of his life to the American people and to the people of North Carolina and that has really made an impact on me,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing in making me want to go into elected office.”

These friends found the decision to bring Helms front and center in the campaign unacceptable.

“I think they’ve made a mistake,” one said. “I don’t feel good about throwing stones, but I don’t think this is right, and in today’s political climate I don’t think this type of hypocrisy should go on.”

The state’s Republican Party platform is unequivocal about homosexuality.

“We believe homosexuality is not normal and should not be established as an acceptable ‘alternative’ lifestyle either in public education or in public policy,” the platform states. “We do not believe public schools should be used to teach children that homosexuality is normal… We commend private organizations, such as the Boy Scouts, which defend moral decency and freedom.”

After her graduation from law school, Knox worked as a campaign coordinator for Helms’ final senate campaign. Organizing several statewide grassroots organizations, including Women for Helms and Students for Helms, she also coordinated vote-garnering efforts in 15 North Carolina counties.

Helms’ voting record, one friend remarked, speaks for itself.

“I’ve been around long enough to have heard the vitriol that has come out of his mouth. The world AIDS epidemic might not be what it would be today if Jesse Helms had not characterized AIDS as God’s retribution on the gay community.”

The friend professed to have asked Knox about whether Helms knew that she was a lesbian.

“I could never tell my grandfather,” Knox allegedly replied; “It would kill him.”

“If Jesse Helms knew the reality and truth of his granddaughter, then I cannot imagine he would have anything to do with her,” the other stated.

Both said their decision to out Knox was also grounded in the fact that they believed Helms used “race card” tactics in his last campaign, and that Knox’s challenger, Doug Brown, was also black. They believe the invocation of the 82-year-old’s name recalls previously racist campaigns. One said she was “rolling Jesse out” and “sending the same signal.”

They called attention to a series of comments made by the former senator during the final years of his tenure.

In the late 1990s, a mother who had lost her son to AIDS wrote to Senator Helms asking him if he really meant what he said when he remarked that those who contracted AIDS deserved to die. Helms wrote back.

“As for homosexuality, The Bible judges it, I do not,” Helms replied. “There is no justification for AIDS funding far exceeding that for other killer diseases such as cancer, heart trouble, etc.”

“As for [your son] Mark, I wish he had not played Russian roulette in his sexual activity,” he added. “There is no escaping the reality of what happened.”

The letter became the inspiration for a documentary called “Dear Jesse.” The film, which was reviewed in the New York Times and the Washington Post, enraged the senator, who again lashed out against gays.

“Those people are intellectually dishonest in just about everything they do or say. They start by pretending that it is just another form of love,” Helms said. “It’s sickening. The New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves.”

One friend asserted that Knox’s life will ultimately be more meaningful if led openly.

“I hope in the long run that the moderate people of North Carolina realize that Senator Helms has a homosexual in his own family, and that that is okay,” one friend said.

“So many families, in North Carolina and elsewhere, have gays and lesbians within them who are afraid to be themselves, to be honest and to live their lives openly,” the friend added. “I strongly hope that this coming out is a positive thing for both of their lives.”

Voters prefer Bush to pick Supreme Court: Post

The Washington Post has found that likely voters narrowly prefer President Bush over Sen. Kerry to make appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court, 49 to 42 percent.

The survey found that 49 percent of all likely voters surveyed said they had more confidence in the president to choose future Supreme Court justices while 42 percent favor Kerry – preferences that were sharply shaped by party identification. Three in four Democrats – 76 percent – believe Kerry would do a better job filling future vacancies while 89 percent of Republicans chose Bush. Political independents split equally between the two candidates.

Because high court justices serve for life, appointments to the Supreme Court bench are one of the most effective ways that presidents can attempt to shape national policy after they leave office. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, has been hospitalized for treatment of thyroid cancer. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is 74 and John Paul Stevens is 84. Court watchers predict that at least one of the three will retire during the next four years, particularly if Bush wins reelection.

The gender gap on Supreme Court appointments is smaller for women but larger for men than it is on the overall vote, the survey suggests. Women are two percentage points more likely – 47 percent to 45 percent – to have more confidence in Kerry to fill court vacancies. Men trust Bush more than Kerry, 54 percent to 37 percent, a 17-point gap.

Judge rules anthrax vaccine not licensed; Mandated use illegal

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

A District of Columbia Federal Court issued a long-awaited ruling on the licensure of the anthrax vaccine, ruling that the vaccine had never properly been tested or approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and that its mandated use by the U.S. military was voided without informed consent.

The outcome is the product of a suit filed by six anonymous servicemembers, some of whom became ill after taking the vaccine, which asserted that it was unsafe and never properly licensed.

Hundreds of servicemembers have become ill as a result of the vaccine. RAW STORY profiled four of them earlier this month. The site has also documented how the manufacturer of the vaccine, BioPort, used local fears to try and net a federal contract, while violating regulations.

In his ruling (pdf file), United States District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan rebuked the FDA for allowing the use of an untested vaccine.

“By refusing to give the American public an opportunity to submit meaningful comments on the anthrax vaccine, the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act,” Sullivan wrote in his conclusion.

“Congress has prohibited the administration of investigational drugs to service members without their consent,” he added. “This court will not allow the government to circumvent that requirement.”

As such, the military can no longer mandate that the anthrax vaccine be given to servicemembers. Some two million Americans have received the anthrax vaccine since it was developed over 50 years ago.

“The involuntary anthrax vaccine program, as applied to all persons, is rendered illegal absent informed consent or a presidential waiver,” Sullivan stated.

A party to the lawsuit, who asked not to be named, said he was “quietly satisfied” by the court’s ruling.

“He gave us the whole enchilada,” he said. “One of the troops I’m working with went in for a heart operation last night. In the same day we have him doing well, and we got this ruling today, so it’s a good day.”

But he noted that the Defense Department can still ask soldiers to take the vaccine, and that President Bush could sign a waiver of informed consent.

“The president can sign a waiver to mandate the vaccine for a threat that doesn’t exist and over which he started a war,” he remarked.

The Defense Department has not yet indicated whether they will file an emergency injunction.

DEVELOPING HARD…

Editor’s note: The ruling, some 40 pages long, will take me a bit of time to plod through, so keep checking back. Feel free to read the actual ruling in its entirety as linked above.

Pentagon tells Fox News of tape before authentication

SPECIAL to THE RAW STORY

A senior Bush federal official confirmed with the Drudge Report the existence of a previously unreported ‘terror’ tape early this afternoon, saying that it had been acquired by ABC News in Pakistan. The Pentagon has confirmed the tape’s existence with Fox News, which they mentioned live, noting that it had not been authenticated.

The CIA now says they cannot authenticate the tape.

Drudge asserts that ABC News is withholding the tape before the election; ABC says that it thinks it important to authenticate the tape before making it public.

As not a single tape has been released to the American press before the Arab media, the tape’s release will surely raises questions about it being politically engineered.

According to Drudge, the ‘terrorist’ is in fact an American, and says, “The streets will run with blood,” and “America will mourn in silence” because “they will be unable to count the number of the dead.” It is said to add that America has brought this on itself for electing George Bush who has made war on Islam by destroying the Taliban and making war on Qaeda.

The CIA is analyzing the tape, a senior Bush source informed Drudge (amplification: both the Pentagon and the federal government are overseen by the executive branch of the Bush administration).

Both the federal official and ABC News are sourced in the article; it appears Drudge contacted ABC News for confirmation. There is no suggestion from the story that Drudge acquired it from ABC, nor would it seem to be in the network’s interest to lose their exclusive story.

“We have been working 24 hours a day trying to authenticate,” Drudge claims ABC said in response to his query.

The terrorist’s face is concealed, and speaks with an American accent, he asserts, speculating the man “may be Adam Gadhan - aka Adam Pearlman - a southern California native who was highlighted by the FBI in May as an individual most likely to be involved in or have knowledge of the next al Qaeda attacks.”

The tape is reported to be an hour in length. The man “identifies himself as ‘Assam the American.’”

Correction: The original iteration of this article suggested that Drudge’s only source was a top Bush federal official. While unlikely, it is also possible that ABC gave away their exclusive story to Drudge.

A good roundup in the registration-restricted Washington Post.

The Orlando Sentinel has backed every Republican seeking the White House since Richard M. Nixon in 1968. Not this time.

“This president has utterly failed to fulfill our expectations,” the Florida paper said in supporting John F. Kerry, prompting some angry calls and a few dozen cancellations.

“A lot of people thought they could trust that the Sentinel would always go Republican, and when that didn’t happen, they felt betrayed,” said Jane Healy, the paper’s editorial page editor.

The Sentinel is among 36 newspapers that endorsed President Bush four years ago and have flip-flopped, to coin a phrase, into Kerry’s corner. These include the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, according to industry magazine Editor & Publisher. Bush has won over only six papers that backed Al Gore, including the Denver Post, which received 700 letters – all of them protesting the move.

Nine more papers, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer yesterday, abandoned Bush after four years but did not support the Massachusetts senator. Instead, these papers – the Detroit News, the Tampa Tribune and the New Orleans Times-Picayune among them – threw up their collective hands and made no endorsement.

“We have decided not to add one more potentially polarizing voice to a poisoned debate,” the Plain Dealer editorial said. Amid reports that Publisher Alex Machaskee, who chairs the editorial board, wanted to back Bush, the Ohio paper acknowledged that a majority of the board favored Kerry.

Even many editorial page editors say they do not believe their endorsements move many voters in an age of round-the-clock opinion-slinging on television and online. But the Bush defections may reflect a degree of disillusionment with the president, at least among opinion leaders, principally on Iraq but on domestic issues, as well.

“I’ve always argued that presidential endorsements, which may mean a lot to political activists and groupies, are the least important endorsements big-city newspapers make,” said Brent Larkin, the Plain Dealer’s editorial page editor, whose paper has backed a candidate in every election since at least World War II. “People make up their own minds and do not need our nickel’s worth.”

Nolan Finley, who runs the Detroit News editorial page, disagrees: “I’ve heard people speculate they don’t mean as much anymore, but I think they’re influential still, particularly in close races. Voters are looking for answers in an election like this one.” The decision not to endorse was “an agonizing process,” he said, noting that the News has backed every Republican seeking the White House since Ulysses S. Grant.

All told, Kerry leads Bush 142 to 123 in endorsements, and when measured by circulation, 17.5 million to 11.5 million, Editor & Publisher says. The Massachusetts senator has won the backing of the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Detroit Free Press, the Miami Herald, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Des Moines Register and both Seattle newspapers. The president has the support of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Post, the Arizona Republic, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Columbus Dispatch, the Dallas Morning News, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Washington Times and both Cincinnati newspapers.

Others that switched from Bush in 2000 to Kerry in 2004 include the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa.; the Idaho Statesman in Boise; and the Bangor Daily News in Maine.

Also contains a spreadsheet of more than 1,800 largely black Dem Florida voters; BBC believes hope is to intimidate blacks at polls

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

Emails intended for President Bush’s reelection campaign mistakenly sent to a parody site, georgewbush.org, reveal that White House and Capitol Hill staffers advised the campaign while on the clock, and that the campaign also received counsel from Libya leader Gaddafi’s D.C. public relations firm.

The site, which published the correspondence yesterday, also posted the email headers, which show how the message has been routed across the Internet, to confirm their veracity.

A BBC report also suggests that one of the emails, titled “caging” includes a list of the names and addresses 0f 1,886 largely black Jacksonville, Florida voters.

“Caging,” the BBC believes, is a reference to a plan to “cage” black voters, e.g., to keep them from voting. The BBC found a private detective was following black voters in an unmarked car with dark windows.

In addition, several messages were sent by Fahmy Hudome International, a company given a $1.2 million public relations contract by Libya’s President Moammar Gadhafi, to the campaign.

The firm is led by Randa Fahmy Hudome, who served as associate deputy secretary of energy in the current Bush White House.

The emails included a draft of a press release on the Middle Eastern American National Conference’s decision to endorse President Bush, and was sent to a professor in the conference, and cc:ed to Jafar Karim, Director of Coalitions for the campaign.

“PLEASE FILL IN YOUR CONTACT NUMBER LETTER HEAD ETC. ALSO I NEED CITY AND STATES TO SHOW GEOGRAPHICAL DIVERSITY,” Hudome wrote.

“Remember this,” Hudome added, “We do not want to do anything that might harm the President’s chances of re-election by exposing him to any controversy. If you have doubts about these names - perhaps we don’t need to do this press release at all.”

A message from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a government agency, also noted happily during a conference call that environmentalists weren’t able to ask a single question about a dam project.

“Luckily, none of them were given an opportunity to ask a question,” NOAA staffer Todd Ungerecht wrote.

Myriad emails were exchanged between the Executive Office of the President and the campaign, and one from a staffer for Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, copying the campaign on a media strategy following a local business that advertised on Sinclair Broadcasting being threatened with a boycott.

“I’d suggest an op-ed piece written by a” friend” that exposes the injustice of these attacks on a local family owned business,” wrote Bill Vail, an tax-paid employee of the senator.

“The friend could focus on the notion that Kerry supporters are apparently willing to damage local businesses and families in their effort to stifle free speech,” Vail added.

Wonkette, a popular D.C. gossip blogger, also noted that one supporter queried the campaign about crack.

Crack is supposed to be smoked?

Would you have rather him said “Mr. Rodriguez is wiping crack."?

I was just trying to educate myself.

One campaign staffer also wrote in an email with a photograph of Jenna Bush, “She and I would look good together.”

Another fired back, “Just stay away from Jenna or things could get ugly.”

DEVELOPING…

Sen. John Kerry took a slight lead in two national polls today, the first conducted by Washington Post/ABC News, in which Kerry led 49 to 48 percent, and the second poll, by Rasmussen Reports, with Kerry at 48 to Bush’s 46. A third poll, by Zogby International for Reuters, put Bush over Kerry 48 to 45 percent. Here’s a brief excerpt from the Post poll, which offered the most insight into the race.

Most notably, the Post poll found that independent and new voters were more likely to swing Kerry.

Fifty-five percent of the likely voters interviewed Oct. 21-24 said they believe the country was “pretty seriously off on the wrong track,” while 41 percent said it was “generally going in the right direction.” Among the larger pool of self-described registered voters, and among all adults, the proportions were the same.

Despite those pessimistic views of the country’s direction, the poll found the race for president remains virtually a dead heat. Kerry received 49 percent of the likely vote while Bush got 48 percent, marking only the second time since the Post began tracking the election on Oct. 1 that Kerry held the lead. Independent candidate Ralph Nader received 1 percent of the hypothetical vote.

Not surprisingly, most Bush supporters (82 percent) and Republicans (77 percent) believe the country is headed in the right direction, while Kerry partisans (94 percent) and Democrats (87 percent) overwhelmingly do not.

But the survey also found that dissatisfaction with the country’s progress is hurting Bush among two critical swing groups: independents and first-time voters.

Among self-described political independents, 57 percent think the country is on the wrong track, with only 39 percent thinking it is headed in the right direction. First-time voters take the pessimistic view by more than a 2-to-1 margin, and they give the majority of their votes to Kerry.

FDA press office: Site promoting vaccine paid for by company not necessary considered promotion

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

Quietly lurking in the shadows of all three presidential debates has been the specter of terrorism. And as the fear of terrorism followed one debate to the next, so too did BioPort, the U.S. military’s sole provider of the anthrax vaccine.

Marred by the reports from hundreds of servicemembers who say they’ve been made ill by the vaccine since it was mandated 1998, three federal lawsuits about the vaccine’s safety and financial woes related to the government’s refusal to add the vaccine to its civilian defense stockpile, the has company launched an aggressive grass-roots marketing push.

To ensure that it nets the lucrative civilian contract, BioPort has systematically sought to elevate concern about the risk of anthrax exposure, successfully playing on local fears and paying “experts” thousands of dollars to produce reports that assert the threat of anthrax is immediate and grave.

It has also retained a medical professor to run a lobbying group while masking its own affiliation. The group has disseminated misleading information about adverse reactions to the vaccine, putting BioPort in violation of federal regulations, FDA experts toldRAW STORY.

BioPort did not return repeated calls seeking comment. In the past, they have steadfastly defended their vaccine, which is their only financially significant product.

FDA PRESS OFFICE DODGES QUERY

A press officer for the Food and Drug Administration said Monday that if BioPort paid a third-party to promote their vaccine, it might not be considered promotion, in apparent contradiction with the agency’s own federal regulations and industry experts. She said she would contact a relevant FDA official and provide further comment later Monday, but never did.

Sarah Barak, editor of the independently published industry guide FDA Advertising and Promotion Manual, is certain FDA administrators will eventually chastize the company.

“The bottom line is: you can call a website what you want, you can call a website educational, you can call it anything,” Barak said, “but if there are promotional claims made on the website and the FDA is looking it at all, they will figure it out and they will nail the company, probably with a warning letter.”

BioPort is battling a nascent rival company, VaxGen, to net the civilian contract. How the corporate war pans out could determine who will supply up to 75 million anthrax vaccine units – and whether troops continue be injected by a vaccine with a questionable safety record. VaxGen promises a cheaper and more effective next generation vaccine which has yet to win FDA approval.

But BioPort, saying they rely solely on their defense contract for research and development, state they don’t have the means to produce a new vaccine.

Yet the company has raised the price of the vaccine to the Defense Department by nearly a factor of ten; their original contract said the vaccine would be priced at under $3 per dose after 3.3 million doses. According to a 2001 company interview, the Pentagon now pays $22 per dose.

Their predicted price to the public?

“Somewhere in the neighborhood of between $70 to $100 per dose,” the company’s owner recently told a reporter.

COMPANY LOBBY ‘IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS’

Like many companies, BioPort maintains a seemingly independent lobbying group. But unlike, say, the Recording Industry of America, whose financial backers are listed on their website, BioPort and their public relations firm have taken pains to mask their affiliation with the group.

Neither Bioport or their PR firm, Ruder Finn, are listed anywhere on the website of the group, the Partnership for Anthrax Vaccination Education.

The only member listed is George Washington University School of Public Health professor Muhiuddin Haider.

Haider, according to a listing of externally sponsored projects on the George Washington University website, is paid by BioPort. The “affiliated organization” is listed as Ruder Finn.

The site, which mentions the BioPort vaccine by name, provides misleading information about adverse effects of the vaccine, putting the company in likely violation of federal regulations.

Under a section titled “Myth vs. Fact about the Anthrax Vaccine,” the group asserts that it is a myth that the vaccine “has dangerous side effects including death.”

“Anthrax vaccine has never been determined by medical experts to have been the cause of any death,” the section states.

This contradicts facts presented by the Defense Department, which is a strong advocate of the vaccine.

Two 2003 military studies found that the vaccine was the probable cause of a reservist’s death. While Pentagon-paid physicians found the evidence was not conclusive because Specialist Rachel Lacy, 22, had also received other vaccines simultaneously, both panels asserted the vaccine was the probable cause of her death.

The Defense-issued press release was titled, “Panels Find Vaccines May Relate to Reservist’s Illness, Death.”

Additionally, the BioPort lobby fails to document any of the serious adverse reactions to the vaccine as mandated by federal regulations. According to the manufacturer’s own product package insert (view pdf file), the most common side effects reported to the government’s vaccine adverse effects reporting system were an allergic reaction in the skin, headaches, systemic joint pain and fatigue.

Not a single one of these effects are listed on the site.

Moreover, the insert also reports rare severe reactions to the vaccine, including systemic disorders in the nervous system, skin, musculoskeletal system, connective tissue, and bones.

None of these are listed or alluded to on the site, either.

BioPort’s insert, which increased to six pages from two in 2002 to document additional adverse effects, also notes that the Pentagon’s own survey studies found systemic adverse reactions in five to 35 percent of those vaccinated.

This, too, is not mentioned on the lobby’s site.

Under Part 202 of the Food and Drug Administration’s federal regulations, pharmaceutical companies are required to disclose the “true statement of information relating to side effects, contraindications, and effectiveness,” including “each specific side effect and contraindication.”

Wayne Pilot, a former assistant commissioner at the FDA and former employee of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturer’s Association, who now practices law specializing in FDA regulation, confirmed that BioPort was responsible for regulatory infractions of its lobbies.

“The party which has the licenses is responsible for any claims that are made about the product including those which are made by third parties,” Pilot said Monday. “The licensee is responsible for correcting those statements that may be incorrect or misleading.”

Barak, editor of the FDA Advertising and Promotion Manual, agrees.

“If you have information on a website that’s tantamount to promotion than you need to follow the rules of that area of promotion,” Barak said.

Pilot also asserted that BioPort is required to report any supportable claims made by the Defense Department about adverse effects.

“If the information is supportable,” he added, “that’s the company’s responsibility.”

Pilot also stressed that violating the regulations was not a minor infraction.

“Those regulations have the force and effect of law,” he said.

The BioPort lobby also states that it is a myth that miscarriages are linked to the vaccine. What it does not note is that a 2002 Navy study found that use of the anthrax vaccine in pregnant women may cause a higher incidence of birth defects.

The preliminary study, which was supposed to be disclosed in April 2002, was never released.

Out of nearly a hundred projects listed as externally sponsored at the university for 2004, Haider’s is the only affiliated with a public relations firm. Most are affiliated with foreign governments or specific medical centers.

SOWING FEAR AT THE DEBATES, FOR PROFIT

When the final presidential debate got under way in Tempe, Arizona, the firm sponsored a roundtable in Phoenix on terrorism preparation.

In a release for the event, BioPort noted “growing border security concerns with Mexico” and that Timothy McVeigh “concocted their deadly truck bomb in nearby Bullhead City, Arizona.”

“Many of the country’s terrorist-like patriot militia groups operate throughout the Southwest desert area,” the release added. “And even the relatively peaceful Scottsdale area was the scene of a July bombing at a local eatery.”

Arizona’s roundtable was only the most recent of the company’s panels. In fact, the company sponsored local roundtables at all three presidential debates, the vice presidential debate and at both parties’ national conventions.

While RAW STORY does not have independent knowledge of what transpired at these events, there is no indication from their press releases that they made any public mention of adverse effects.

Barak, who authored the FDA industry manual, said BioPort was obligated the report adverse effects if they were marketing the vaccine.

“If you have benefit claims then you must present the risk,” she said.

The Miami roundtable, BioPort stated in their release, ended on a “high note” when a county commissioner offered to propose legislation which would set aside a $5 million fund, under which “BioPort would hold and earn interest on the money given by the state” with the condition that vaccines would be “delivered immediately in the case of an outbreak or threat of [an] anthrax scare.”

In their announcement of a roundtable for the Republican convention, BioPort claimed that a biological terrorist attack on the U.S. before the election was high, citing unnamed ‘security analysts.’

In 2002, the company paid six bioterrorism “experts” $55,000 to produce a report which said the United States could experience other occurrences such as the 2001 anthrax mailings. The company’s president noted that Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea have weaponized anthrax or are working to obtain it.

This approach has paid dividends.

In June, BioPort successfully lobbied the U.S. Conference of Mayors – in a possible infraction of FDA regulations the requires a company to disclose all side effects in their lobbying efforts – to endorse a resolution supporting the inclusion of BioPort’s vaccine to the civilian defense stockpile.

Yet after years of pressure and an anthrax attack on Congress, the Department Health and Human Services has declined to add the vaccine to the stockpile. While they have not explicitly stated the reason is linked to the safety of the vaccine, many see the decision to be a tacit rebuke to BioPort.

The military police soldiers who ran the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq kept an unofficial log of their daily activities, a diary of sorts that documents the conditions that gripped the prison during the months that detainees were abused in what would later erupt into an international scandal, which was acquired by the Washington Post. An excerpt of the article is reprinted below, and the full (registration-restricted) article can be viewed here.

From Oct. 19, 2003, to Jan. 18, 2004 – just days after digital photographs of soldiers mistreating prisoners were turned in to Army criminal investigators – the members of the 372nd Military Police Company who ran tiers 1A and 1B at Abu Ghraib jotted their experiences in a light green ledger kept in a prison office. On the log’s cover is printed in large, handwritten letters: “MI Wing.” A copy of the log was obtained by The Washington Post.

Day after day, the log’s more than 50 pages of handwritten notes and observations describe a spartan prison where some inmates inexplicably vomited after meals, a detainee regularly covered himself in his own feces, and others sharpened toothbrushes into makeshift weapons. There were fights, attacks on soldiers and riots.

“Note: No power. No water. Prison in state of lockdown,” a soldier wrote on Nov. 17, 2003.

The Army soldiers, some of whom have been charged by the military with crimes for the abuses, logged a stream of mysterious and unregistered inmates held by unnamed U.S. government agents, a group of “ghost detainees” who were locked behind a row of 10 solid iron doors.

References to “OGA,” for Other Government Agency, appear throughout the logbook, meaning agencies such as the CIA and FBI, which had operatives in Iraq looking for the highest-value targets. “We didn’t know anything about them,” said one MP from the 372nd, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of ongoing investigations. “We called them X-Men. They were there, but they weren’t there.”

The soldiers also wrote about unclear orders being passed down orally from military intelligence officials to “put pressure” on detainees of high intelligence value – though none of the entries referred directly to the abuses made internationally infamous in digital photographs and in reports arising from multiple military investigations.

“MI handlers will be turning on heat to this one,” reads an entry at 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 12, referring to inmate No. 152529, identified in investigative documents as Asad Hamza Hanfosh. In a statement, Hanfosh alleged that soldiers stripped him, beat him and left him shackled naked to his bed overnight. “Sleep management program was requested but paperwork has not been approved yet,” the entry reads.

The Post obtained a digital copy of the logbook by e-mail and took several steps to verify its authenticity. Pentagon officials said the Criminal Investigations Division evidence tag on the log’s back cover, dated Jan. 19, matches the tag placed on the original logbook. Army officials who reviewed a copy of the logbook said its contents appeared to be consistent with what investigators have learned about the prison.

Sgt. Hydrue S. Joyner, who testified in a preliminary court hearing that he started the logbook on Oct. 19, 2003, reviewed The Post’s copy and said it appeared to be complete and accurate. Joyner declined to discuss the entries but pointed out his own handwriting and said he last saw the book when he gave it to a military Criminal Investigations Division agent Jan. 19.

The book shows that soldiers repeatedly counted the detainees, worked to get prisoners better food and clothing, and made sure those who were ill got to see the facility’s medics. The MPs noted that some detainees had problems urinating, suffered from constipation or lacked proper medication.

“Inmate #20092 continues to refuse to eat anything,” Joyner wrote. “He will have to receive another I.V. from medical.”

These guard duties were performed by a unit untrained in detention operations, at a facility that came under frequent enemy attack. The soldiers were forced to improvise. Detainees who were hard to control or had mental problems were handcuffed to their beds or fully restrained.

One detainee kept trying to kiss the guards. One ate chicken bones. Some would secret away weapons, such as sharpened toothbrushes, razors, medical needles and guns.

“Conducted bed check and prisoner count,” begins a Dec. 18 entry. “Note: Inmate #116451 was placed into isolation quiet room because night shift passed on that he attempted to burn the wood blocking his window. Once I came on shift I spoke to the inmate about the incident and he admitted to trying to commit suicide. . . . Note: After last night’s incident, NO MATCHES are to be given to inmates.”

None of the entries clearly states that military intelligence officials were asking the MPs to do anything abusive, as attorneys for some of the MPs have alleged. Numerous entries refer to military intelligence asking MPs to help keep detainees awake for long periods to break them down for questioning.

A quick excerpt from the Times article (currently still registration-restricted)

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man’s land, still picked over by looters as recently as Saturday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material. But the other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain. “This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk,” one senior Bush administration official said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

The Qaqaa facility was well known to American intelligence officials: Saddam Hussein made conventional warheads at the site. In the prelude to the 2003 invasion, Mr. Bush cited a number of other “dual use” items - including tubes that the administration contended could be converted to use for the nuclear program - as a justification for invading Iraq. After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping “themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history.”

To see the bunkers that makeup the vast Qaqaa complex today, it is hard to recall that just two years ago it was part of Saddam Hussein’s secret military complex. The bunkers are so large that they are reminiscent of pyramids, though with rounded edges and the tops chopped off. Several are blackened and eviscerated as a result of American bombing. Smokestacks rise in the distance.

“It’s like Mars on Earth,” said Maj. Dan Whisnant, an intelligence officer for the Second Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment. “It would take probably 10 battalions 10 years to clear that out.”

What are these explosives? The Associated Press explains:

HMX: High melting explosives, as they are scientifically known, are among the most powerful in use by the world’s militaries today. HMX, also known as octogen, is made from hexamine, ammonium nitrate, nitric acid and acetic acid. Because it detonates at high temperatures, it is used in various kinds of explosives, rocket fuels and burster chargers.

RDX: Also referred to as cyclonite or hexogen, RDX is a white crystalline solid usually used in mixtures with other explosives, oils or waxes. Rarely used alone, it has a high degree of stability in storage and is considered the most powerful of the high explosives used by militaries.

PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES: Experts say both HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as Semtex and C-4, puttylike military substances that easily can be shaped. Libyan terrorists used just 1 pound of Semtex in 1988 to down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

C-4 or its main ingredients were used in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole (news - web sites) in Yemen that killed 17 U.S. sailors. Traces of RDX were found in an investigation of explosions that crippled two heavily fortified Israeli tanks, indicating Palestinian militants have obtained at least small quantities of the extremely potent material. Just 5 pounds of either plastic explosive would be enough to blow up a dozen jetliners, experts say.

NUCLEAR USE: Experts say HMX can be used to create a highly powerful explosion with enough intensity to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.

The CIA is keeping the lid on a hard-hitting report about agency officials who might be held accountable for 9/11 intel failures, Michael Isikoff reports in the Nov. 1 issue of Newsweek. This from their press release.

The report identifies a host of current and former officials who could be candidates for possible disciplinary procedures imposed by a special CIA Accountability Board, sources familiar with the document tell NEWSWEEK.

The report by the agency’s inspector general’s office was completed last June. But it has not been made public or sent to the two congressional oversight committees, which first asked for the review more than two years ago. Officially, the agency’s position is that more work needs to be done.

In a recent private letter to CIA Director Porter Goss, House intelligence committee chairman Peter Hoekstra and ranking Democrat Jane Harman contrasted the CIA’s failure to turn over the report with the Pentagon’s ability to provide an exhaustive investigative report on the far more recent Abu Ghraib scandal. But Goss shows no inclination to release the document any time soon.

When an account of the suppressed report surfaced on the Los Angeles Times op-ed page last week, Goss’s top aide ordered the agency’s Office of Security to conduct a leak investigation. “Everybody feels it will be better off if this hits the fan after the election,” said one agency official. The 9/11 Commission was refused access to the report, Philip Zelikow, the commission’s executive director. But the panel’s staff was allowed to review the inspector general’s investigative files.

The inspector general’s report – which, sources say, is more pointed than the 9/11 panel’s report – is not the only critical intelligence report that won’t be seen by the public until after Election Day. Two Senate intelligence committee investigations – into whether the White House misused prewar intelligence about Iraq and whether a special Pentagon unit manipulated intel about Iraq-Al Qaeda links – won’t be finished until the end of the year at the earliest, say committee sources.

Sunday’s Los Angeles Times carries a (registration-restricted) report that the Bush administration is spearheading a campaign at the United Nations for a global treaty banning such research and all forms of human cloning. Notes Times reporter Maggie Farley, “Critics fear the U.S. move to create a U.N. treaty for a universal ban might undermine efforts to find cures for such afflictions as cancer, diabetes and spinal cord damage.”

All U.N. countries oppose cloning to create a human being, but the body is starkly divided on whether to ban cloning of human embryos for stem cell studies or other medical research, known as “therapeutic cloning.” The U.S., Costa Rica and 59 other mostly small nations with strong Catholic or Muslim majorities contend that medical research involving cloning results in the taking of human life. Their draft to ban all human cloning, which has been the subject of debate before a General Assembly committee this week, terms it “unethical and morally reproachable.”

Nearly 130 nations, including close U.S. allies such as Britain, Japan and India, say that each nation should be allowed to decide for itself whether to regulate therapeutic cloning.

“No country has the right to seek to impose on the rest of the world a ban on therapeutic cloning, when its own legislature won’t impose the ban nationally,” said British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry.

Jones Parry noted that therapeutic cloning uses technology similar to in vitro fertilization, which has helped people create families. Unused embryos can be donated to science instead of being destroyed, and stem cell banks can be established to reduce the need for the creation of new lines, he said.

Roberto Tovar, Costa Rica’s minister of foreign affairs and worship, countered Thursday that “cloning reduces the human being to a mere object of industrial production and manipulation.” He warned that women could be exploited as egg-making “factories” and that the international community must not allow human embryos to be destroyed for scientific experiments.

The U.N. began considering a global convention banning human cloning in 2001, but has twice delayed a vote because the issue of stem cell research has been so emotional and divisive.

The controversy touches on philosophical and religious issues, involving arguments that can be highly technical as well as passionate and personal. Discussions center on when human life actually begins and whether it is ethical to sacrifice the life embodied in a bundle of undifferentiated cells less than 15 days old to pursue a cure for a living person.

The U.N.’s dispute over cloning mirrors the debates in the presidential campaign and in California about the morality of embryonic stem cell research.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a move at odds with the position of the state and national Republican Party, Monday endorsed a $3-billion ballot measure to fund embryonic stem cell research.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan weighed in on the debate Thursday.

“Obviously, it is an issue for the member states to decide,” he told reporters at the U.N. “But as an individual and in my personal view, I think I would go for therapeutic cloning.”

A convention against human cloning, if eventually adopted by the General Assembly, would not be legally binding.

A registration-restricted article carried by the Akron-Beacon Journal asserts that the Army has denied most of the thousands of compensation claims Iraqis have made against the U.S. military, determining most people were hurt or killed or property was damaged in combat. The report was originally published by the Dayton Daily News, gained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The newspaper’s analysis of 4,611 civil claims in Iraq - hundreds alleging abuse and misconduct by American military personnel - showed just one in four resulted in some type of payment.

Iraqi claims in the database seek compensation for at least 437 deaths and 468 injuries, but those numbers are likely just a portion of the actual totals.

The military does not pay claims for incidents deemed to be caused by “combat operations,” which could include checkpoint shootings and other incidents involving civilians.

In response to a man who claimed that his two brothers were killed and his parents injured on March 29, 2003, when coalition forces bombed the Al Tajiya area of Babel city, the military concluded: “Coalition forces dropped ordnance during Operation Iraqi Freedom on legitimate targets. Your family was in an area that was being legitimately targeted and therefore regrettably harmed.”

Another case involved a man driving to get his infant daughter who became ill while staying with his wife’s parents. The man was killed when soldiers opened fire on his car at a checkpoint. His family’s claim for compensation was denied.

Victims and their families also filed claims for homes destroyed in bombings and confiscated property. In 29 cases, Iraqis claimed the military left a so-called “unexploded ordinance” that later detonated, killing 14 and injuring 25.

According to the analysis of the database, the average payment for a death in Iraq was $3,421. In addition to the formal claims system, Iraqis were sometimes given up to $2,500 in sympathy payments without any paperwork, said attorney Jack Bournazian, who held seminars to show Iraqi attorneys how to file the claims.

About 78 percent of the claims were for incidents that occurred after President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 2, 2003.

“When we first got there, the Iraqis were glad to see us. I believe things changed because there was disrespect to the people,” said Elizabeth Wisdorf, of Colorado Springs, Colo., who served for nearly a year in Iraq as a member of the Colorado National Guard’s 220th Military Police Company. “There were a lot of accidents, a lot of deaths.”

The Daily News sought to sample attitudes through interviews with Iraqis.

“Our point of view toward the Americans has changed. You can feel the fury inside you,” said Amir Shleman, who lost a brother who was a father of a 7-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl. “If they treated people like human beings, no one would take up weapons against them.”

The day after his brother was killed, soldiers left $2,000 near the pillow of his widow, money the family was told was for funeral expenses.

When the family filed a claim for compensation for the children, they encountered months of delays before finally receiving a letter denying the claim.

At the direction of the CIA, the Justice Department drafted a confidential memo that allows the agency to transfer detainees out of Iraq for interrogation – a practice that international legal specialists say contravenes the Geneva Conventions, the (registration-restricted) Washington Post reports Sunday. An intelligence official told the post that the draft memo has been used as a legal foundation for transporting as many as a dozen detainees out of the country and effectively hiding them from the International Red Cross. International law experts said they found the interpretation “unconventional and disturbing;” violation of the article specified is a war crime under U.S. federal law.

The draft opinion, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and dated March 19, 2004, refers to both Iraqi citizens and foreigners in Iraq, who the memo says are protected by the treaty. It permits the CIA to take Iraqis out of the country to be interrogated for a “brief but not indefinite period.” It also says the CIA can permanently remove persons deemed to be “illegal aliens” under “local immigration law.”

Some specialists in international law say the opinion amounts to a reinterpretation of one of the most basic rights of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians during wartime and occupation, including insurgents who were not part of Iraq’s military.

The treaty prohibits the “[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory . . . regardless of their motive.”

The 1949 treaty notes that a violation of this particular provision constitutes a “grave breach” of the accord, and thus a “war crime” under U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice Department draft. “For these reasons,” the footnote reads, “we recommend that any contemplated relocations of ‘protected persons’ from Iraq to facilitate interrogation be carefully evaluated for compliance with Article 49 on a case by case basis.” It says that even persons removed from Iraq retain the treaty’s protections, which would include humane treatment and access to international monitors.

During the war in Afghanistan, the administration ruled that al Qaeda fighters were not considered “protected persons” under the convention. Many of them were transferred out of the country to Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere for interrogations. By contrast, the U.S. government deems former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and military, as well as insurgents and other civilians in Iraq, to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.

International law experts contacted for this article described the legal reasoning contained in the Justice Department memo as unconventional and disturbing.

“The overall thrust of the Convention is to keep from moving people out of the country and out of the protection of the Convention,” said former senior military attorney Scott Silliman, executive director of Duke University’s Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. “The memorandum seeks to create a legal regime justifying conduct that the international community clearly considers in violation of international law and the Convention.” Silliman reviewed the document at The Post’s request.

The CIA, Justice Department and the author of the draft opinion, Jack L. Goldsmith, former director of the Office of Legal Counsel, declined to comment for this article.

CIA officials have not disclosed the identities or locations of its Iraq detainees to congressional oversight committees, the Defense Department or CIA investigators who are reviewing detention policy, according to two informed U.S. government officials and a confidential e-mail on the subject shown to The Washington Post.

White House officials disputed the notion that Goldsmith’s interpretation of the treaty was unusual, although they did not explain why. “The Geneva Conventions are applicable to the conflict in Iraq, and our policy is to comply with the Geneva Conventions,” White House spokesman Sean McCormick said.

The Office of Legal Counsel also wrote the Aug. 1, 2002, memo on torture that advised the CIA and White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad “may be justified,” and that international laws against torture “may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations” conducted in the war on terrorism. Bush’s aides repudiated that memo once it became public this June.

The Office of Legal Counsel writes legal opinions considered binding on federal agencies and departments. Although the March 19 document obtained by the Post is stamped “draft” and was never finalized, said one U.S. official involved in the legal deliberations. Copies of the memo were sent to the general counsels at the National Security Council, CIA and department of state and defense.

Florida voter rolls up; Dems have apparent edge

Excerpted from the registration-restricted Miami Herald. Full article here.

The number of new voters in Florida jumped by about 1.55 million since 2000, according to state registration figures released Friday. But the increase offers no clear edge for either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry with the presidential election just 10 days away.

In a deeply divided state where the presidency was decided by a few hundred votes four years ago, the new registration numbers break nearly evenly along party lines, reaffirming what polls keep saying: As in 2000, the race in Florida remains too close to call.

An unprecedented voter-registration drive in the final two months before the state closed its books has done little to clarify the picture. Though more than 382,000 new voters were added to state rolls in that recent period for the Nov. 2 election, Democrats registered only 7,770 more voters than Republicans.

More significant, voter registration since 2000 shows the parties with nearly identical gains, the GOP very slightly ahead with 462,254 new voters to the Democrats’ 458,161.

Add more than two million independent voters who registered with no party affiliation or as members of one of more than 20 minor parties and the uncertainty increases. The number of independents rose 41 percent from 2000, a stronger percentage gain than either Republicans or Democrats could muster.

The influx of new voters didn’t change the basic political makeup of the state, which remains more Democratic than Republican. Of the 10.3 million voters now on the rolls, more than 4.2 million are registered as Democrats and nearly 3.9 million are registered as Republicans. Nearly 1.9 million voters claimed no party affiliation. The rest belong to minor parties.

The state Division of Elections numbers also showed that black voters registered in increasing numbers, up by 36 percent since 2000 compared with an increase of 18 percent for all voters in Florida. That suggests that voter-registration groups had some measure of success in capturing minority voters.

However, some of the increases in both the overall number in registered voters and the specific rise in black voters may be attributable to the general increase in voting population in the last four years.

DEMS HAVE APPARENT EDGE

The voter registration drives reaped substantial increases in numbers in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Miami-Dade Democrats increased by 57,113, while Republican numbers rose by 29,460.

In Broward, a Democratic stronghold, the number of party faithful increased by 77,187, while Republicans saw an increase of just 16,907.

And in Palm Beach County, considered ground zero for the 2000 race, the number of Democrats rose by 34,047 and the number of Republicans barely changed, with an increase of just 2,262.

Knight Ridder, in something of a coup, has found a significant hole in the Bush timeline, which suggests that Bush lied about how he came to do ‘community service’ for a Texas organization in 1973. The article also lends credence to the idea that Bush was kicked out of his unit for something untoward sometime in 1972 or 1973. Those who remember Bush at the time, however, praise the work he did for the children involved, putting in unusually long hours. The article is registration-restricted.

President Bush often has cited his work in 1973 with a now-defunct inner-city program for troubled teens as the source for his belief in “compassionate conservatism.”

“I realized then that a society can change and must change one person at a time …” Bush said in a video shown at the 2000 Republican National Convention about his tenure at P.U.L.L., the Professional United Leadership League, whose executive director, John White, had played tight end for the Houston Oilers in the early 1960s.

But former associates of White, who died in 1988, have disputed in recent interviews much of Bush’s version of his time at the program.

“I was working full time for an inner-city poverty program known as Project P.U.L.L.,” Bush said in his 1999 autobiography, “A Charge to Keep.” “My friend John White … asked me to come help him run the program. … I was intrigued by John’s offer. … Now I had a chance to help people.”

But White’s administrative assistant and others associated with P.U.L.L., speaking on the record for the first time, say Bush was not helping to run the program and White had not asked Bush to come aboard. Instead, the associates said, White told them he agreed to take Bush on as a favor to Bush’s father, who was honorary co-chairman of the program at the time, and Bush was unpaid. They say White told them Bush had gotten into some kind of trouble but White never gave them specifics.

“We didn’t know what kind of trouble he’d been in, only that he’d done something that required him to put in the time,” said Althia Turner, White’s administrative assistant.

“John said he was doing a favor for George’s father because an arrangement had to be made for the son to be there,” said Willie Frazier, also a former player for the Houston Oilers and a P.U.L.L. summer volunteer in 1973.

Fred Maura, a close friend of White, refers to Bush as “43,” for 43rd president, and his father as “41,” for the 41st president.

“John didn’t say what kind of trouble 43 was in - just that he had done something and he (John) made a deal to take him in as a favor to 41 to get some funding,” Maura said.

“He didn’t help run the program. I was in charge of him and I wouldn’t say I helped run the program, either,” said David Anderson, a recreational director at P.U.L.L.

A White House spokesman, told about the interviews, denied Bush had been in any trouble or Bush’s father, who was ambassador to the United Nations at the time, had arranged the job at P.U.L.L. He acknowledged, however, Bush was not paid for his work there. Bush’s father declined a request for an interview.

“It was incorrect to say he was working there,” spokesman Trent Duffy said. “He was doing volunteer service and getting paid by the Guard.”

Much like Bush’s disputed 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard, his tenure at P.U.L.L. has been the subject of speculation over the years. Knight Ridder began asking questions more than two months ago about Bush’s service at P.U.L.L. as part of an effort to fill in the facts about his early adulthood.

In the video shown at the 2000 Republican National Convention, Bush recalled how he came to the program.

“Well, a wonderful man named John White asked me to come and work with him in a project in the Third Ward of Houston,” the president said in the video. “If we don’t help others, if we don’t step up and lead, who will?”

Other accounts have suggested his service was involuntary. A book published in 2000, largely discredited, said Bush was there to serve out a community service sentence for a drug arrest. At the time, however, Harris County, Texas, where Houston is located, had no formal community service program. A 1999 book, by a political reporter for The Dallas Morning News, said Bush’s father had insisted on the service after Bush was involved in a drunk-driving incident.

No documents from Bush’s time with P.U.L.L. exist. The agency, which closed in 1989, left most of its records behind when it moved to a new location in 1984. The building’s owner, Southern Leather Co., said those were discarded. No one seems to know what happened to any remaining records after 1989. White’s widow declined to be interviewed.

But many people recall Bush’s tenure at the agency.

Turner, who said she has avoided reporters for years, agreed to be interviewed only after phoning her pastor for advice.

When she hung up the phone, she turned to a reporter: “My pastor says if you found me, I should tell the truth.”

Even then, Turner was hesitant. About 15 minutes into the interview, she asked if the reporter would accompany her to her pastor’s home because she needed her support. Once there, she talked in detail for the first time while her pastor, Theresa Times, of Bless One Ministries, and five people who had been attending a prayer meeting listened.

“George had to sign in and out - I remember his signature was a hurried cursive - but he wasn’t an employee. He was not a volunteer either,” she said. “John said he had to keep track of George’s hours because George had to put in a lot of hours because he was in trouble.”

The organization, which brought in children from Houston’s poverty-stricken Third Ward community for sports, table games, tutoring and counseling, was a favorite charity for many Houstonians, including professional football players, who were frequent volunteers. While it was not unusual for other Houstonians to volunteer, none apparently kept the kind of hours Bush did.

The Times hasn’t released their non-restricted link yet, but this one is a killer so I had to post it for the morning. Link to full story at bottom.

As recently as January 2004, a top Defense Department official misrepresented to Congress the view of American intelligence agencies about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to a new report by a Senate Democrat.

The report said a classified document prepared by Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, not only asserted that there were ties between the Baghdad government and the terrorist network, but also did not reflect accurately the intelligence agencies’ assessment - even while claiming that it did.

In issuing the report, the senator, Carl M. Levin, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he would ask the panel to take “appropriate action'’ against Mr. Feith. Senator Levin said Mr. Feith had repeatedly described the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as far more significant and extensive than the intelligence agencies had.

The broad outlines of Mr. Feith’s efforts to promote the idea of such close links have been previously disclosed.

The view, a staple of the Bush administration’s public statements before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, has since been discredited by the Sept. 11 commission, which concluded that Iraq and Al Qaeda had “no close collaborative relationship.'’

The 46-page report by Senator Levin and the Democratic staff of the Armed Services Committee is the first to focus narrowly on the role played by Mr. Feith’s office. Democrats had sought to include that line of inquiry in a report completed in June by the Senate Intelligence Committee, but Republicans on the panel postponed that phase of the study until after the presidential election.

In an interview, Mr. Levin said he had concluded that Mr. Feith had practiced “continuing deception of Congress.'’ But he said he had no evidence that Mr. Feith’s conduct had been illegal.

More at the Times.

A fascinating (registration-restricted) Washington Post article, excerpted here, plays around with theory that Ralph Nader may have scant impact in the 2004 presidential election, unlike his Florida-busting following in the 2000 race.

In a state where he has been vilified by Democrats for siphoning votes from Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, Ralph Nader was typically unstinting in his criticisms of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry on Thursday, referring to the choice facing voters as one between “heart disease and cancer.”

It was the final swing through Florida before the Nov. 2 presidential election for the independent candidate, who drew several hundred people to a speech at the University of South Florida here in Pinellas County, the area where he received the most votes in 2000. But even in this bedrock of his small political following, Nader’s prospects are bleak.

“This year’s tough for him,” said Mark Kamleiter, a St. Petersburg lawyer and longtime supporter. “They’ve turned on him. They’re so afraid of Bush.”

Nader’s dwindling support is no accident. Democrats and left-leaning groups have mounted a months-long legal and public relations campaign to keep the consumer advocate off ballots and otherwise minimize his impact. While independent pollsters and some Kerry strategists say Nader could still have an impact in a number of very closely contested states, Democratic officials seem less concerned that he will influence the 2004 election as they believe he did in 2000.

A survey conducted this month for the Democratic National Committee by pollster Stanley Greenberg showed Nader averaging 1.5 percent of the vote in a dozen battleground states where his name appears on the ballot, compared with about 3 percent in the summer. It also showed most of the support Nader lost had shifted to Kerry and indicated his remaining backers would be as likely to vote for Bush as for the Massachusetts Democrat, if Nader were not running.

Four years ago, Nader received about 2.8 million votes nationwide, and Democrats charged that his presence on the ballot handed Bush victories in New Hampshire and Florida. Had the Republican lost either of those states, he would not have become president.

But since that time, legions of Nader’s most prominent backers, including his 2000 running mate Winona LaDuke and filmmaker Michael Moore, have urged him to abandon his campaign and asked his followers to support Kerry.

As a result, Nader registers at around 1 percent in most national polls. In the latest sign of his struggles, he disclosed in a Federal Election Commission filing this week that he had loaned his cash-strapped campaign $100,000.

Nader has qualified for at least 33 state ballots plus the District, 10 fewer than he appeared on four years ago. Evidence of fraud on Nader petitions has been found in several states. Judicial processes related to his ballot access in battlegrounds Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are still playing out.

Dems say portraying Nader as a spoiled – if Kerry loses – will likely be disingenous.

Democrats acknowledge privately that if Kerry loses to Bush it will be harder to portray Nader as a spoiler – as they did in 2000, or as Republicans did with independent candidate H. Ross Perot in 1992. Polls show that the 2004 election could produce the smallest number of votes for third-party presidential candidates since 1988, when representatives of 17 minor parties earned fewer than 1 million votes.

Groups seeking to minimize Nader’s impact are focusing on at least seven states – Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Minnesota, Maine and New Hampshire – where Bush and Kerry are in a virtual dead heat. In all of those but Minnesota, according to aggregates of nine recent polls compiled by the Web site RealClear Politics, Nader’s share of the vote exceeds the thin margin separating Bush and Kerry.

In Florida, for example, where Nader received more than 97,000 votes (2 percent) in 2000, and Bush won by 537 votes, the state Supreme Court put Nader on the ballot last month after a lower court ruled him off. He is polling at about 1 percent and has campaigned often in the state.

Desperate for media play and flaunting his intelligence, Nader even appealed to the pan-Arabic news channel Al Jazeera.

Throughout Nader’s stop in Florida on Thursday, including a 45-minute live interview broadcast on the al-Jazeera television network in which Nader flawlessly delivered several answers in Arabic, he referred to Bush and his brother Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida, as “the Bush Boys and the Bush Gang.” The brothers, he said, are responsible for turning Florida into a “political Disneyland.”

“Disneyland should open up a new sector which is to show how unscrupulous corporatist politicians fool voters,” Nader said at news conference in Orlando.

Both candidates, he said, are “corporatist politicians” controlled by the large companies that Nader believes hold the true power in the United States. He described Bush as “a giant corporation in the White House disguised as a human being.”

Former CIA director Tenet calls Iraq war ‘wrong’

An enterprising young reporter caught former CIA director George Tenet in a casual setting and retrieved an incredible scoop: Tenet said the Iraq war was wrong. A short bit from a piece in Editor & Publisher. Tenet is the second retired Bush official to make offhand remarks on Iraq that were gobbled up by liberal bloggers – the last was by former head of the coalition authority, L. Paul Bremer, who said that he has asked for more U.S. troops.

Addressing the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan Wednesday night, George Tenet, former director of central intelligence, called the war on Iraq “wrong,” according to Clark’s article on Thursday, although it was unclear whether he meant the war itself or mainly the intelligence it was based on.

Tenet also said that the Iraq war was “rightly being challenged,” but the CIA was making important strides toward success in the greater war on terrorism, according to the reporter.

Tenet added that while the CIA boasts “tremendously talented men and women,” the agency “did not live up to our expectations as professionals” regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the search for WMDs in Iraq, according to Clark.

“We had inconsistent information, and we did not inform others in the community of gaps in our intelligence,” Tenet said, with surprising frankness, as recorded by Clark, who recently covered a speech by Paul Bremer before the same group. “The extraordinary men and women who do magnificent work in the CIA are held accountable every day for what they do, and as part of keeping our faith with the American people, we will tell you when we’re right or wrong.”

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

A controversial new book released Tuesday by prize-winning New York journalist Gary Matsumoto alleges that the U.S. military tested a new and unlicensed anthrax vaccine on troops without their knowledge.

The book, Vaccine-A, also contends that the military used an additive which Matsumoto asserts has been responsible for autoimmune diseases among American servicemembers.

Since the vaccine was mandated for all soldiers by the Defense Department in 1998, hundreds of servicemembers have complained of ailments directly related to the vaccine.

The additive is an oil called squalene, which was discovered in some batches of the vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration in 1999. Before it was found, Defense officials claimed that it was not present; after, officials backtracked.

On May 11, 1999, Air Force Surgeon General Charles H. Roadman told pilots and others at Dover Air Force Base, “There is not, there never has been, squalene used as a adjuvant in the anthrax immunization, period.”

Six weeks later, the FDA discovered squalene in five lots of the vaccine. Dover has been the site of much media attention in recent weeks, as a Delaware paper has tracked the ill effects of squalene on local troops.

“Dover Air Force base has about 3,000 military personnel and that place is a train wreck,” Matsumoto says.

Perhaps most terrifying of the points in Matsumoto’s book is that squalene is still widely used in various vaccines, including a European influenza vaccine and other vaccines in the U.S. pipeline. But despite myriad studies to the contrary, the military still refuses to acknowledge the substance is unsafe.

In October 1990, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, concerned about a shortage of the anthrax vaccine during the Gulf War, ordered the Defense Department to produce a “second source.”

That month a task force convened to make a new and improved vaccine, but had scant luck over the next few months.

There was another option, Matsumoto says. The standard vaccination series required six shots – but if it could be made more effective it would require fewer – or one.

Soon thereafter, the project seems to have taken on a life of its own. Much of the material remains classified, but the initial group, enjoined by Cheney, began working on a project casually dubbed the “Manhattan Project,” aimed at testing experimental medicines and vaccines.

Though the military denies it, Matsumoto theorizes that Defense added squalene to the vaccines, hoping to make them more effective, but yielding disastrous results.

Strikingly, the adverse effects cited by the sole manufacturer of the vaccine, BioPort, rose 2500 to 150,000 percent when the FDA ordered the company to update their adverse effects insert in 2002, after pressure from pending lawsuits over the vaccine’s safety.

The insert now says the systemic adverse effects of the vaccine range from five to 35 percent. Prior to 2002, it was just .2 percent.

Currently, there are three federal lawsuits awaiting judgment over the safety of the vaccine.

Still mandated today, the vaccine may wreak havoc for years to come, Matsumoto says, citing a study that demonstrated that soldiers being deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom were still being injected with a squalene vaccine. In the book, he says the military has again “turned the battlefield into a gigantic laboratory.”

In June 2004, Tulane University Medical School ran tests on 36 blood samples of soldiers from Air Force bases across the country to see if they tested positive for antibodies to squalene. Of the 36, 20 tested positive – evidence that they had received injections from a vaccine containing the noxious additive.

“Based on the clinical evidence that’s come from Tulane’s laboratory just this summer,” he says, “people vaccinated for this war got shot up with this stuff.”

Matsumoto notes the high incidence of aseptic (non-bacterial) cases of pneumonia among male troops. Aseptic pneumonia is rare among young males, but it is a product of an autoimmune reaction – something common to many of the soldiers who have experienced adverse effects from the vaccine.

“You have a whole bunch of men who are developing autoimmune disease in young males,” he notes. “That’s a tip-off right there.”

Matsumoto says the trouble with the U.S. vaccine’s efficacy is that it relies on a single protein generated by anthrax exposure. Many vaccines, such as the vaccine for smallpox, rely on weaker iterations of the actual disease.

“The only anthrax vaccine that provides comprehensive protection against all strains is made from the whole germ,” he remarks. “And that’s what the Russians use.”

He states that he would certainly support an anthrax vaccine, were it safe and effective.

“I’m not against the anthrax vaccine,” he says. And if they could come up with a better vaccine, I would support it.”

Matsumoto has been researching this story for over six years and has conducted hundreds of interviews with scientists, military personnel and government officials.

He was part of an award-winning ABC News team that covered the anthrax attacks of 2001, and says he’s proud of his military heritage, having had three uncles who served in the U.S. Army. His father was an Army private.

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

A local chapter of the National Organization for Women is sponsored a press conference on domestic violence in the district of a New York state senator running for Congress who allegedly threatened to shoot his wife with two shotguns at a dinner party.

The conference, at 3 p.m. Wednesday, is part of an annual meeting by the Elmira-Corning NOW chapter to raise awareness of domestic violence during October, national domestic violence awareness month.

Its organizer, Karen Biesanz, said before the event that there would be attention paid to Senator Kuhl’s record.

“There’s always an event, but we’ll mention him and the charges about him and the allegations in the past,” Biesanz said.

Kuhl’s divorce records, which were supposed to have been sealed for 100 years under New York law, was copied and released by a county clerk. It was then released to numerous media organizations, and first published by RAW STORY.

The story has since gained media attention, with articles in the New York Times and Capitol Hill’s weekly Roll Call.

Biesanz said she thought voters should take Kuhl’s divorce records into account when going into the polls.

“I do,” she said. “I don’t think that many voters who are going to vote for him are aware he isn’t the person they thought he was, and now they are.”

The meeting, she said, would be held at a Democratic hall. She stated that they had planned to hold it outside a restaurant until they knew the hall was available.

Kuhl has charged the release of the records was tied to his Democratic opponent, Samara Barend, a former aide to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). His office did not return a call placed for comment today.

Barend said that the issue was of vital importance, especially as the Violence Against Women Act is up for reauthorization in the next Congress.

“Domestic violence is a pervasive problem that directly affects one in four women and touches the lives of everyone in the community,” Barend said. “As the representative for the 29th district of New York, I want to make a difference when Congress considers the reauthorization of VAWA and I will support a strong and enhanced bill when it comes up next year.”

By Jason Leopold | Special to RAW STORY

Sinclair Broadcasting Group has tried to influence the outcome of elections long before the media company became a lightning rod for criticism due to its decision to air a controversial documentary ten days before the Nov. 2 election critical of Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry’s activities during the Vietnam War.

Two years ago, Duncan Smith, vice president of Sinclair, gave then Maryland GOP gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich extensive use of a luxury helicopter Smith owned and billed Ehrlich’s campaign—at a discounted rate of $1,000 an hour—only after an inquiry by the Baltimore Sun. Smith’s company, Whirlwind Aviation, Inc., rents out the aircraft for $2,500 an hour. “Ehrlich used the helicopter at least six times during and after the gubernatorial campaign,” according to a Nov. 20, 2002 Baltimore Sun story. Smith said at the time that the remaining fee of more than $13,750 would be picked up by Whirlwind and listed by the company as an “in-kind” contribution to Ehrlich’s campaign.

The campaign donation appeared to violate campaign finance laws because it wasn’t reported in a timely fashion. Moreover, the donation raised ethical issues for Sinclair. The media company owns two television stations in Maryland and was providing Ehrlich’s campaign with favorable news coverage, while attacking Democratic incumbent, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

“If you’re an entity that owns a news outlet that is supposed to provide fair and balanced coverage of the campaign, and yet at the same time are providing aid to one of the candidates in the campaign, that puts them in a severe position of conflict,” Christopher Hanson, who teaches journalism ethics at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, told the Sun. “I don’t see any way around that.”

Sinclair never told its television viewers that it gave Ehrlich use of Smith’s helicopter during its coverage of the campaign. Furthermore, none of the trips Ehrlich took in the helicopter were reported in campaign finance documents his committee filed months after Ehrlich first started using the helicopter, a violation of state law requiring donations to be listed when they are received. Sinclair’s Smith refused to comment about the two-year old scandal.

But the conflict went even further and it highlights the problems with relaxing federal rules governing media ownership. While Ehrlich campaigned for governor, a campaign that he eventually won, he also lobbied the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Sinclair who was embroiled in a licensing dispute with the agency. The FCC chastised Ehrlich for intervening on Sinclair’s behalf without disclosing that the company provided him with use of its helicopter.

In September, Sinclair and Ehrlich once again made headlines as a result of the media company’s cozy relationship with the governor. Sinclair produced a series of tourism ads in which Ehrlich appeared and waived its production fee on the condition that the state of Maryland purchase $60,000 worth of time on a Sinclair-owned station to air them, a deal which Ehrlich agreed to.

A week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sinclair Chief Executive David Smith and his three brothers who control the media company handed down an edict to their news and sports reporters, and even a weatherman, at the company’s flagship Baltimore television station, WBFF, requiring the broadcasters to follow up each on-air report with a statement conveying full support for President Bush and the war on terror.

The Sun reported that several journalists objected on the grounds that it would undermine their objectivity. Reporters and management, however, reached a compromise. The message read by reporters on-air said that it came from “station management.”

“Still, according to at least four people at WBFF, some staffers believe they now look as though they are endorsing specific government actions,” the Sun reported in Sept. 18, 2001 story. “Several people interviewed at WBFF described the choice as “no-win": do something that could erode their reputations as objective journalists, or appear unpatriotic and uncaring toward the victims of last week’s terrorist attacks.”

Sinclair also aired spots on its 60 other stations during the aftermath of 9/11 declaring support for President Bush and other government leaders to battle terrorist groups

The controversies continued to pile up.

Then in December of 2001, Sinclair was fined $40,000 by the FCC in December 2001 for exercising illegal control of business partner Glencairn Ltd., the FCC determined after spending three years investigating the companies’ relationship.

The FCC’s three Republican commissioners said Sinclair and Glencairn were liable for misinterpreting FCC policies. Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps wanted the FCC to pursue harsher penalties against Sinclair, saying Sinclair has repeatedly ’stretched the limits’ of FCC ownership rules. “Several factors contributed to the FCC’s finding that Glencairn’s president and former Sinclair employee Edwin Edwards did not exercise control of his companies,” according to a Dec. 1, 2001 report in the trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable.

”His incorrect report on the amount of debt Glencairn would assume with the purchase of several Sullivan stations. Purchase rights held by Sinclair for Glencairn stations at prices well below market rate. Glencairn’s agreement to sell all but two of its stations to Sinclair as soon as the FCC relaxed rules restricting ownership of local TV stations,” the trade publication reported.

The controversies surrounding Sinclair’s blatant political leanings took its toll on the company’s stock, but none more so than an announcement the company made on Christmas Eve 2002 by Sinclair’s board of directors who voted in favor of investing $20 million in cash in Summa Holdings Ltd., which owns auto dealerships, retail tire franchises and a leasing company controlled by Sinclair CEO David Smith.

In a post-Enron world, the deal appeared to be a serious conflict-of-interest. Sinclair said Summa would spend money to advertise its auto dealerships on Sinclair-owned television stations. The deal sent Sinclair’s stock plummeting 17 percent on Christmas Eve, a historically light day for trading, and sparked shareholder outrage, with many stockholders calling for a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and threatening to file shareholder lawsuits.

Sinclair told its shareholders at the time that it set up a special committee of outside directors to evaluate the investment and approved the deal, saying a conflict did not exist.

“Because the automobile industry represents the largest category of advertisers for television stations, and because Summa is a profitable and well-run company, we believe that the Summa investment is an attractive one for Sinclair,” said communications attorney Martin Leader, who chaired the committee of outside directors.

Now, two years later, Sinclair plans to air a controversial documentary on Friday, 10 days before the Nov. 2 election, highlighting Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry’s antiwar activities during the Vietnam War. But the move is backfiring on the company big time.

More than 80 of Sinclair’s advertisers have abandoned the media company’s five-dozen television stations since last week, according to National Public Radio, due to fears of a massive public boycott. Moreover, Sinclair’s stock has been battered over the past two days, falling 10 percent to settle Tuesday at a 3 ½ year low of $6.35—a direct result of its decision to air the anti-Kerry film, “Stolen Honor,” on a majority of its television stations.

The company’s decision to broadcast the documentary and its impact on Sinclair’s shares has led to another shareholder revolt and at least one prominent securities litigator, William Lerach, has threatened to take legal action against the company.

But on Tuesday, David Smith, Sinclair’s chief executive, said Sinclair would not air the anti-Kerry documentary “Stolen Honor.” Instead, Sinclair stations will broadcast a “special one-hour news program” entitled “A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media,” which will “focus in part on the use of documentaries other media to influence voting, which emerged during the 2004 political campaigns, as well as on the content of certain of these documentaries.”

“The program will also examine the role of the media in filtering the information contained in these documentaries, allegations of media bias by media organizations that ignore or filter legitimate news and the attempts by candidates and other organizations to influence media coverage,” according to the news release.

But, according to the company’s news release, excerpts of “Stolen Honor” will be aired “in the context of the broader discussion outlined above” and will discuss the allegations surrounding Senator John Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activities in the early 1970s raised by a number of former POWs in “Stolen Honor.”

Joe DeFeo, Sinclair’s Vice President of News said, “As with all news programming produced by Sinclair’s News Central, ‘A POW Story’ is being produced with the highest journalistic standards and integrity. We have not ceded, and will not in the future cede, control of our news reporting to any outside organization or political group. We are endeavoring, as we do with all of our news coverage, to present both sides of the issues covered in an equal and impartial manner.”

Sinclair claimed on Tuesday that company executives have met privately with members of Kerry’s campaign, “including a recent face-to-face meeting with senior campaign officials, for approximately two weeks in order to negotiate participation in the special by either Senator Kerry or his designee.”

Kerry has declined Sinclair’s invitation.

Smith said those involved in producing the documentary “have endured personal attacks of the vilest nature, as well as calls on our advertisers and our viewers to boycott our stations and on our shareholders to sell their stock. In addition, and more shockingly, we have received threats of retribution from a member of Senator John Kerry’s campaign.”

A spokesman for the Kerry campaign vehemently denied the allegations, and Wall Street doesn’t buy it either. Many of Sinclair’s largest shareholders have said privately that Smith has failed to take responsibility for the firestorm he created and has blamed Democrats for the toll his actions have taken on the Sinclair’s finances.

Indeed, as Jim Glickenhaus, general partner of Glickenhaus & Co., a Wall Street firm whose clients own about 6,100 shares of Sinclair stock, said Tuesday in an interview with CBS Marketwatch, Sinclair “management is not acting in the interest of shareholders. By showing something that’s clearly propaganda, they are damaging the (broadcast) network.”

Activist to seek Bush FBI files outside FBI building Wednesday

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

A California activist will fly to Washington D.C. tomorrow to demand the release of President George W. Bush’s Federal Bureau of Investigation surveillance file on the steps of the FBI headquarters in Washington Wednesday.

Michael Petrelis, who says he placed a Freedom of Information Act request for the President’s file July 6, says he has not received the file. He made a request that the request be expedited due to the presidential election, but it was denied.

The FBI confirmed to RAW STORY today that it had received Petrelis’ request July 28. In their letter denying an expedited release, the bureau said that the request had been placed in their regular processing queue.

The FBI would not confirm or deny whether they kept a file on Bush.

“Based on information you have provided, I have determined you have not demonstrated any particular urgency to inform the public about the subject matter of your requests beyond the public’s right to know about government activity generally,” wrote Records Management Division Section Chief David M. Hardy. “Accordingly, your request has been placed in our regular processing queue.”

The July 28 letter, in which Hardy said he thoroughly reviewed the request, did not state that the request was out of order. But a public affairs spokesman for the FBI told RAW STORY Tuesday afternoon that the bureau could not furnish a file on a living person without their consent. The FBI also states this on their FOIA website.

“You can’t put in a request for a living person,” the spokesman said.

FOIA attorney says FBI has responsibility to release, expedite files

Michael Fitzpatrick, an attorney for the advocacy group Public Citizen, calls the FBI’s statement an “oversimplification.” He notes that under the law’s exemption number six, documents are only withheld if disclosure would amount to an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

“It’s a balanacing test between the interest in personal privacy and the public interest in disclosure of government records,” Fitzpatrick said. “Certain kinds of records like medical records or the personnel file of a government employee, those are generally exempt. But information on individuals’ business activities or professional activities – those things are generally disclosed.

“When we’re dealing with a public official, the privacy interest is not as strong as it would be if we were dealing with a purely private individual,” he added.

Fitzpatrick also stated that Petrelis had a strong case for expedition of the documents’ release, but that part of the problem is that one needs to know what’s being requested before it can be expedited.

“Expedition is warranted when there is widespread media interest and the documents reflect on the integrity of the government,” he said. “I would think that most any records about the president that are not exempt from disclosure would meet that criteria.

“It is difficult to demonstrate why the documents meet the criteria before one knows what kind of documents are there, he continued. “It’s a little bit of a Catch-22.”

Petrelis said he wondered why the FBI didn’t state this in their July letter.

“Why wouldn’t the FBI explain this in their July letter?” he asked. “Why wouldn’t the FBI say that I need to get permission from the third party?”

I “believe that there still must be a public demand for his FBI file to be released,” he said. “If the White House responded to the pressure in February for his National Guard record, maybe they’ll respond to pressure if it’s created.”

Debbie Beatty, who works in the Historical and Executive Review Unit at the FBI and spoke for the FOIA office, stated the request was in the queue. She said that to her knowledge, no other media organization has requested Bush’s file.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Beatty said. “I supervise all incoming mail.”

Thousands of pages related to Kerry surveillance already released

Thousands of pages of FBI surveillance files relating to Sen. John Kerry’s anti-war protests when he was a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War have been released in the last decade. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI is obliged to release files on organizations, and can do so without the organization’s consent.

The FBI trailed Kerry in the early 1970s as he traveled the country, speaking out against the war and raising money.

Kerry, who obtained his personal FBI files years ago, knew of the surveillance, but the VVAW files obtained by a historian detail more extensive surveillance. Some of the files were stolen from the historian in March.

“It is almost surreal to learn the extent to which I was followed by the FBI,” Kerry said in a March statement. “The experience of having been spied on for the act of engaging in peaceful patriotic protest makes you respect civil rights and the Constitution even more.”

Petrelis has routinely championed causes that would have otherwise gotten scant media attention. He will be joined in Washington with his friend and fellow activist Wayne Turner. Both were members of the AIDS activist group ACT UP.

He organized boycotts against Miller and Marlboro because their parent company was the largest corporate donor to Senator Jesse Helms, and boycotts against Florida orange juice when growers hired Rush Limbaugh as a spokesperson, and the Coors Brewery for its donations to antigay think tanks.

In November of 2001, he and another activist were arrested for harassing the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Health Department with obscene and threatening phone calls regarding a proposed federal quarantine on people with AIDS.

All felony charges were dismissed in July 2003. Petrelis plead no contest to two charges of making threatening or annoying phone calls.

Ultimately, Petrelis says he hopes Bush will agree to release his files. He noted that even candidate’s wives – Theresa Heinz Kerry – had begun releasing personal information. Heinz Kerry released her tax returns.

“The candidates have released financial and medical records to the press,” he said. “I think that’s good thing, and I think they should release their FBI files.”

“I would hope that the media scrutiny of the files would be equal to that on Kerry’s files,” he concluded.

Promising lives shattered by anthrax vaccine

By John Byrne | RAW STORY

As an Air Force police officer, Kerri Dorsey worked twelve to fourteen hour days. She did physical training after work. She volunteered.

“When somebody’s wife had a baby, I did showers for them,” Dorsey says. “I did shop-with-a-cop programs where we took underprivileged kids to get gifts for the holidays.”

“I even held a second job as a DJ just for extra money,” she adds softly, “because you know we don’t make much.”

Now everything has changed. It has been six years since the 28-year-old Floridian got her fourth anthrax vaccine shot – there are six in the initial series – and she has since developed muscular sclerosis. She walks with a cane, and finds it hard to remember ordinary things, like grocery lists.

“I know I’m supposed to go the grocery store,” she says, “but when I get there I can’t remember those three things I need.”

Dorsey is not alone. RAW STORY has spoken with other servicemembers whose promising careers have been truncated by the vaccine. Dozens more have shared their personal tragedies with news organizations around the country.

A 2002 study published in Emerging Drugs & Devices found a “statistically significant relationship existed between anthrax vaccination and arthralgia, arthritis, arthrosis, joint disease, myelitis, vasculitis, Guillain-Barre’ syndrome, myalgia, flu syndrome, diarrhea, liver function test abnormalities, gastrointestinal disease, weight loss and nausea.”

Another study the same year, commissioned by Congress and paid for by the Defense Department, and is regularly used by the Pentagon and the manufacturer, came to other conclusions.

The National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine study found the vaccine to be “sufficiently safe,” though they stated that a new vaccine was “urgently needed.”

“The most prudent course of action is to develop a new vaccine,” said committee chair Brian L. Strom, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

The report did not identify any unexpected short-term adverse reactions to the anthrax vaccine.

Yet hundreds of soldiers have suffered permanent afflictions as a result of the vaccine. The military, however, continues to assert that it is safe and has court-martialed those who refuse to take it since it was required for all troops in 1998.

The Pentagon’s anthrax vaccine website, anthrax.mil, has a tagline, “a matter of health, a matter of trust, a matter of national security.”

“Your health and safety are our number one concerns,” the site claims. “The anthrax vaccine is safe and effective.”

Six servicemembers filed suit in March 2003 against the Defense Department questioning the mandate for an unsafe vaccine. That case is awaiting a final ruling.

Dorsey asserts she noticed early warning signs after taking the shots. Doctors brushed her concerns aside, she says.

After the first shot caused an allergic reaction, and the second and third injections caused flu-like symptoms and diarrhea, the Air Force slated her for the fourth in the series. This time Dorsey had more than an allergic reaction – she went into anaphylactic shock.

“I thought I was gonna die for a minute there,” she says.

But being on the verge of death wasn’t enough for her military doctors to cancel the rest of the shots.

“They said they could not prove that it was from the vaccine even though my doctor said it was,” she says. “The higher ranking doctor said it wasn’t because they didn’t want the stigma from the vaccine.”

So she dodged the fifth shot, claiming she was pregnant (she wasn’t). Soon thereafter, she was retired from the military for more serious health ailments. The service tried to reduce her disability payments as much as possible.

Even though it was clear her condition wouldn’t allow her to keep a steady job, they offered her a scant 30 percent disability. She fought, and got 50 percent. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs later qualified her for 100 percent, 70 percent of which was tagged directly to her MS.

In February of 2001, while skiing in Montana, the whole left side of her body went numb. That June, she went blind. Each of these incidents, known as MS exacerbations, were temporary. But her condition is not.

“I have to take a nap every single day,” she says. “I’m so wore down. I take a shot three times a week for my MS, usually in my stomach or my legs. I take a pill every morning. I have a son who is going to be three in December.”

Disabled by vaccine, he’s recalled to serve

Jason Cordova was a jumpmaster; he helped soldiers jump out of planes. He was an Army captain and a communications detachment commander for the Special Forces.

Now he has pain in the lymph nodes of his groin, and trouble urinating. His diagnosis? Nobody knows.

Cordova says he’s seen urologists and infectious disease specialists six to ten times. The VA gave him a 10 percent disability, linking it directly to the anthrax vaccine.

“I can still feel where I got the shot, even after four years,” Cordova says.

On June 21, he was recalled to Operation Enduring Freedom, an operation primarily focused in Afghanistan. Cordova says he expects the Army will medically exempt him from the further vaccine shots, though he doesn’t understand why they would send him into what the Army has classified a high-threat area without protection.

“How can all of the soldiers at the left, right, rear and front require it and why don’t I?” he asks.

“How about the fact that if I get called back into active duty my disability benefits stop?” he queries, his voice rising. “How absurd is that?”

Cordova penned letters to his local officials. He wrote to his senator, Arlen Specter (R-PA), who is the chairman of the Veteran’s Affairs committee in the Senate.

“This is about leadership, principle and trust in our government,” he wrote. “If I can’t be adequately protected from a deadly risk of infection — as described by the highest levels of government — how could it be legally, ethically and/or morally justified to deploy anywhere without a life-protecting vaccination?”

Last Thursday, Sen. Specter’s office told him that they had submitted an inquiry to the Army on his behalf.

“If I got called up for Operation Enduring Freedom and it didn’t require being in an area with a high risk of anthrax exposure I would have boots on the ground immediately,” he says. “I would be there in a heartbeat.”

Cordova notes he has a George W. Bush sign in his front yard, and that he supports the global war on terror. He says his concern regarding the vaccine isn’t about politics.

“I support the president. This isn’t about left or right,” he says. “This is about right or wrong.”

Click here to continue: Two more survivors

Bitterness and suspicion

Dwayne Fitzpatrick says he never knew he was getting the anthrax shot.

“I didn’t even know I got the first one,” Fitzpatrick says.

He claims that the vaccine’s application was slipshod, and not always documented. He coughs sometimes as he speaks.

“I know guys who have gone into tents and have gotten shots and it was written in a document but wasn’t transferred to their records,” he states.

“I’ve known people that got six or seven before,” he adds. “They forgot to write it down.”

Since he got his fifth shot, Fitzpatrick has experienced pain all over his body, coughs and memory loss. A civilian doctor confirmed in 2003 that his illness was “associated with the anthrax vaccination,” and a military doctor in 2004 that his cognitive deficits were “secondary to anthrax vaccination.”

“After each shot I got this huge lump and broke out in a fever, and was just sick for days,” he says.

“Thirty eight doctors later,” he adds soberly, “it hasn’t gotten any better.”

Fitzpatrick rattles off a list of 25 medications he’s been on, including anti-depressants he says he didn’t even know he was taking. The list reads like that of a senior citizen’s – naproxen, Vioxx, Ambien, Trazadone, Celebrex, Lexapro – though he’s just 43.

“I was given sleeping pills over in Saudi Arabia,” he says. “I was over there for almost four months. I was supposed to be over there for six months but the Air Force doctor felt so bad for me that he requested I go back to the U.S.”

Before the shots, Fitzpatrick says he was a runner, a biker and a swimmer. Now he’s too weak to do much of anything. But he’s more worried about his memory loss.

“It took me three months to remember my Army password,” he confesses. “Three months of repetitions to remember my own password.”

“The pain thing, I’ll get used to,” he says, “but the memory thing – I’ll never get used to that.”

Fitzpatrick says he’s angry at the company that made the vaccine, and the military for requiring it. The military accepts the idea of collateral damage, even if it applies to their own troops, he asserts.

“If it protects ten people and it kills one,” he says, “that’s acceptable losses.”

Twenty-two, and unemployable

Michael Girard, also a military police officer, used to work twelve to fourteen hour days.

“Now a day for me consists of rolling out of bed in the morning and lying on the couch,” he says. “That’s about it.”

Twenty-two, Girard lives in constant pain. After his third year of his enlistment, he was discharged from the Air Force with a 30 percent disability. Veterans’ Affairs increased it to 100 percent and will give him money to support him, his wife and his fifteen-month old son at least until 2006 when his disability status will be reevaluated.

According to military doctors, the source of his disability was a “temporal reaction to the anthrax vaccine.”

Girard, too, says he was never told he was getting the vaccine.

“The first shot I had wasn’t even in the medical clinic on base, it was in the education center, in the auditorium,” he says. “They said, “Roll up your left sleeve,” and just stuck us.”

Shortly after his second shot, Girard developed pain all over his body. He has suffered pain in his groin, stomach, head, knees and joints for the two years since he got his last shot. He also experiences dizziness.

When he told commanders that he thought his condition resulted from the shots, they cut him off financially and told him not to speak out.

“I would get calls from my first sergeant telling me to keep my mouth shut,” he says.

Girard has upcoming appointments with a gastrointestinal specialist and a neurologist, but doubts that anything will come of it.

“I still hope one day that I won’t wake up in pain,” he says, “But I guess there’s just a certain extent to which you can hope.”

“Who’s gonna want to hire a guy who can some days barely get out of bed?”

Coming later this week: The firm that manufactures the vaccine claims it produces no adverse health effects. They’ve convinced the U.S. conference of mayors to put pressure on the Health and Human Service Department so the vaccine can be approved for civilian use. They sent marketing delegations to all three of the presidential debates. Just how far will a company go to make money, and how do they respond to charges their vaccine is unsafe?

The following are excerpts from the first article in a three-part exclusive RAW STORY series about the horrors of the anthrax vaccine, which was required by the military for all troops starting in 1998. The first piece traces the tale of at least three survivors, all of whose careers ended because of reactions to the vaccine. The second and third will deal with the company that produces the vaccine, and the military’s collusion in promoting a product they’ve known was damaging the health of their troops.

The first piece will run on Monday.

***

As an Air Force police officer, Kerri Dorsey worked twelve to fourteen hour days. She did physical training after work. She volunteered.

“When somebody’s wife had a baby, I did showers for them,” Dorsey says. “I did shop with a cop programs where we took underprivileged kids to get gifts during the holidays.”

“I even held a second job as a DJ just for extra money,” she adds demurely, “because you know we don’t make much.”

Now everything has changed. It has been six years since the 28-year-old got her fourth anthrax shot – there are six in the series – and she has developed muscular sclerosis. She walks with a cane, and she finds it hard to remember even ordinary things, like grocery lists.

***

Jason Cordova was a jumpmaster; he helped soldiers jump out of planes. He was an Army captain and a communications detachment commander for the Special Forces.

Now he has pain in his groin, and trouble urinating. His diagnosis? Nobody knows. Cordova says he’s seen urologists and infectious disease doctors six to ten times. The VA gave him a 10 percent disability, linking it directly to the anthrax vaccine.

“I can still feel where I got the shot, even after four years,” Cordova says.

A few weeks ago, he was recalled to Iraq. Cordova says he expects the Army will medically exempt him from the final shot in the vaccine series, but doesn’t understand why they would send someone to what he believes is a high-risk zone without protection.

“How can all of the soldiers at the left, right, rear and front require it and why don’t I?” he asks.

Here is a quick rundown of newspaper endorsements for the 2004 election. Some are active links, others are not. This is, of course, just a partial list and I’ll try to update it as often as humanly possible. Feel free to comment with links to the editorials and/or additional endorsements.

• Akron Beacon-Journal: Kerry
• Albuquerque Tribune: Kerry
• Amarillo Globe-News: Bush
• Arizona Daily Star: Kerry
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Kerry
• Boston Globe: Kerry
• Miami Herald: Kerry
• Chicago Tribune: Bush
• Crawford Iconoclast: Kerry
• Detroit Free Press: Kerry
• Kansas City Star: Kerry
• Las Vegas Review-Journal: Bush
• Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Kerry
• Mobile Register: Bush
• New York Times: Kerry
• Philadelphia Daily News: Kerry
• Philadelphia Inquirer: Kerry
• Portland Oregonian: Kerry
• Pueblo Cheiftain: Bush
• Roanoke Times: Kerry
• Sacramento Bee: Kerry
• San Fransisco Chronicle-Examiner: Kerry
• San Jose Mercury News: Kerry
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Kerry
• St. Petersburg Times: Kerry
• Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Kerry
• Seattle Times: Kerry
• Tulsa World: Bush

Excerpts from a rather blistering New York Times magazine article by Ron Suskind tearing into President Bush and his stewardship of the country.

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ‘’if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'’ The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

‘’Just in the past few months,'’ Bartlett said, ‘’I think a light has gone off for people who’ve spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'’ Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush’s governance, went on to say: ‘’This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'’ Bartlett went on to say. ‘’He truly believes he’s on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'’ Bartlett paused, then said, ‘’But you can’t run the world on faith.'’

***

The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush’s intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility – a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains – is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ‘’In meetings, I’d ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!'’ (Whitman, whose faith in Bush has since been renewed, denies making these remarks and is now a leader of the president’s re-election effort in New Jersey.)

***

There is one story about Bush’s particular brand of certainty I am able to piece together and tell for the record.

In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ‘’road map'’ for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman – the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress – mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

‘’I don’t know why you’re talking about Sweden,'’ Bush said. ‘’They’re the neutral one. They don’t have an army.'’

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ‘’Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They’re the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'’ Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. ‘’No, no, it’s Sweden that has no army.'’

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

***

Can the unfinished American experiment in self-governance – sputtering on the watery fuel of illusion and assertion – deal with something as nuanced as the subtleties of one man’s faith? What, after all, is the nature of the particular conversation the president feels he has with God – a colloquy upon which the world now precariously turns?

That very issue is what Jim Wallis wishes he could sit and talk about with George W. Bush. That’s impossible now, he says. He is no longer invited to the White House.

‘’Faith can cut in so many ways,'’ he said. ‘’If you’re penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it’s designed to certify our righteousness – that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self-criticism aside. There’s no reflection.

‘’Where people often get lost is on this very point,'’ he said after a moment of thought. ‘’Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not – not ever – to the thing we as humans so very much want.'’

And what is that?

‘’Easy certainty.'’

Filmmaker Michael Moore, whose progressive film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ was recently refused by a pay-per-view service who had contractually agreed to release the film, offered it free of charge to Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a network that has forced all 62 of its stations to broadcast an anti-Kerry film in prime time.

Moore announced the offer to comedian Jay Leno on ‘The Tonight Show’ Friday evening.

The film would likely get a cold reception from Sinclair, a conservative broadcasting company, at which 95 percent of voting shares are owned by two conservative brothers. They have slotted ‘Stolen Honor: Wounds that Never Heal,’ just two weeks before the November election, and have ordered all their stations to broadcast the film without commercials.

A lawyer for the Kerry campaign has asked for equal time on the network, but Sinclair has not agreed.

A company subsidiary was also awarded a military contract in the ‘war on terror,’ and the firm that is pushing the film and provides rental space to its production company is owned by a Bush appointee and longtime Republican apparatchik.

Nevada voters can’t reregister, judge rules

Clark County District Court Judge Valerie Adair told the Associated Press she wants people whose voter registration applications might have been torn up to be allowed to vote, but apparently not enough to actually allow them to vote.

“While this court believes that each individual’s vote is important and must be protected … the court finds the requested relief is not warranted,” she told reporters last night.

Adair is an elected Republican judge.

In a ruling this evening, Adair ruled that re-registration Monday for a small number of Clark County residents whose applications to vote might have been destroyed by a Republican-funded group could not go forward. It was reported tonight on the Las Vegas television station KLAS.

Earlier, Adair said she was concerned about opening what she called “floodgates” to manipulation of the voter rolls. The judge held an emergency hearing this morning on a Nevada Democratic Party lawsuit accusing a canvassing company called Voters Outreach of America of collecting and destroying Democratic registration forms in the Las Vegas and Reno areas.

Several employees of the company in different areas of the country say that it systematically told employees not to accept Democratic registrations. Some said they actually ripped up Democratic registrations.

The deadline to register for the November second election was Tuesday.

NEWS ANALYSIS: Bush’s hump (or wire?) that just won’t go away

By John Steinberg | Special to RAW STORY

The Internet is buzzing (at least the Internet I am familiar with – who knows what is being said on the other internets Bush mentioned during the second debate) with speculation about the odd bulges in the back of Bush’s suit jacket in all three debates. The White House has denied that Bush is wearing a radio receiver, but they don’t have a lot of credibility these days, and the video captures are suspicious at best.

And after the second debate, there was also a lot of talk about how Bush muffed the “name a mistake you’ve made” question – again. When asked at one of his rare press conferences in April what his biggest mistake as President had been, he hemmed and hawed and hemmed some more before finally saying “I’m sure something will pop into my head here…” In the second debate, a citizen asked Bush to name three mistakes he had made, and Bambi-in-the-high beams made a repeat appearance.

Put these two stories together, and you gain an understanding you couldn’t reach from looking at either one alone.

We know that Bush has been more insulated against criticism than any leader in recent memory (though perhaps Saddam Hussein might have given him a run for our money). As in pre-war Iraq, Bush’s minions are known to be afraid to bring the boss bad news, or to suggest that there are any flies in the official ointment. As the real-world consequences of the Administration’s screw-ups have begun to leak through gaps in the White House insulation, Bush is reported to be increasingly irritable and fragile, unused as he is to the real world.

That is the most obvious explanation for Bush’s “Furious George” performances in the first two debates – how dare insubordinates like John Kerry, Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and the ordinary human fodder units in the audience question him? Dissent is indistinguishable from treason in the bubble-boy White House, and hard questions are the moral equivalent of dissent.

Just ask Paul O’Neill, Joe Wilson, or Richard Clarke – the Administration has gone after everyone who has publicly differed with the boss. What they have done to those who were heard to say discouraging words in private is less obvious, but probably almost as vicious.

Against that background, imagine that you are part of the debate prep team. Your all hat, no cattle candidate has been teeing off on aides right and left, showing increasing signs of instability. You know the mistake question is ripe for a rerun, but how would you broach the subject – “Mr. President, we need to practice talking about your mistakes…?” Are you going to drill him on this line of questioning? Not if you like your life you won’t. So Bush likely did not get much practice with this one.

Now imagine that you are the aide charged with being the President’s electronic Cyrano, whispering in Bush’s ear for press conferences and debates. You hear the mistake question – and you realize that answering would require you to tell your boss what a screw-up he is while millions watch. Hear the blood pounding in your ears? What are you going to say? Would you volunteer for the Dead Messenger Society? How many seconds ticked off while you contemplated your fate?

I don’t want to climb onto the Area-51/grassy knoll train here – yet. But it has to be said that a single hypothesis fits both data points rather neatly – Edgar Bergen got laryngitis when Charlie McCarthy had to admit imperfection, and for some odd reason an answer didn’t “pop into his head.”

From today’s PM edition of Congress Daily, an email publication of The National Journal.

In the Southern Tier’s 29th District, local media outlets have yet to report on the contents of divorce records of Republican state Sen. Randy Kuhl, but the documents were posted Tuesday on a liberal Internet site called “The Raw Story.” The Web site posted a story and five partially redacted pages of the records, which paint an unflattering portrait of Kuhl, who is running for the seat of retiring GOP Rep. Amo Houghton. Kuhl held a news conference last Tuesday to acknowledge that sealed records from his 2000 divorce had been released by the Steuben County clerk’s office. He called for an investigation and said the release was likely an attempt at “political sabotage.” Unflattering divorce records effectively ended the race of former GOP Senate nominee Jack Ryan in Illinois. His divorce records became public by court order after media outlets sued for their release.

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

Charles R. Gerow, the owner of the company which provides rental space and handles checks for the anti-Kerry film ordered to be shown by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, was appointed by President Bush to serve on a multi-year, multi-million dollar celebration committee, RAW STORY has learned.

The committee, the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Committee in Philadelphia, is only one in a long list of Republican Party advocacy positions for Gerow.

Gerow’s company, Quantum Communications, handles public relations for the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal. The film claims that Kerry’s anti-war activities undermined morale of POWs then held in Vietnam.

A spokesman said Wednesday that the firm also provides rental space to Stolen Honor’s production company, Red, White and Blue Productions, handles checks for video mailings and helps set up interviews for the film’s producer.

“We provide rental space for Red White and Blue Productions,” the spokesman said.

He added that the company handles checks for those seeking to buy a copy of the film on video over the Internet.

“We handle the checks that come in,” he said.

Also, as the public relations company for Red, White and Blue Productions, they help to push the film and its producer, Carlton Sherwood.

“We arrange interviews for Carlton.”

Gerow, a member of the Republican National Lawyer’s Association, was a member of the Reagan/Bush campaign Field Staff in 1980, and was a member of the Reagan Alumni Association. He had “active involvement” in numerous Republican campaigns, and did “advance work” to six presidential campaigns.

In 1988, he was an alternate delegate-at-large to the Republican National Committee and was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Republican convention in New York this year.

In addition, he was a member of “Lawyers for Bush” in 2000, a Republican candidate for Congress in 2000, and a member of Pennsylvania’s Reagan Legacy Project State Advisory Committee. He was also a surrogate speaker for the Sen. Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential bid.

Gerow’s history was discovered by a poster on the popular progressive forum, Democratic Underground.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the company under fire for ordering its 62 networks to broadcast the anti-Kerry film in prime time without commercials, is a major investor in a company recently awarded a military contract by the Bush Administration.

For the 2004 election, Sinclair executives have donated nearly $59,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign or the Republican National Committee (RNC), including a $50,000 gift to the RNC from Sinclair Vice President Fred Smith.

Sinclair Broadcasting (NASDAQ: SBGI) announced this week that it intends to air an anti-Kerry film on all of its 62 television stations, many of which are in battleground states.

Sinclair received national attention earlier this year when it preempted the April 30th Nightline television program on which host Ted Koppel read the names of the 523 American soldiers killed in Iraq up to that date.

The Los Angeles Times continues to be hot on the trail of the unfolding fiasco that is a dubious $5.3 billion in contracts to build a natural gas complex in Nigeria. Writing from Paris, Ken Silverstein writes in this (registration-restricted) article that Halliburton and its subsidiary company have been disingenous about their dealings with the contract.

A widening investigation here has implicated some of the world’s largest oil services firms in an alleged scheme to bribe Nigerian officials to win $5.3 billion in contracts to build a natural gas complex in the African country.

As details of the case unfolded, one of the key players, Houston-based Halliburton Co., said that the questionable conduct occurred almost entirely before it became a partner in the multinational consortium that built the complex.

But information obtained by The Times, including documents from a French investigation, shows that Halliburton, through a subsidiary, was more involved in some of the suspicious deals than it has acknowledged. In his deposition to an investigating judge, Jeffrey Tesler — a British lawyer who served as the consortium’s agent in Nigeria and the central figure in the alleged bribery scandal — stated that Halliburton fought to retain him even after a consortium partner moved to have him dismissed.

French investigators, along with others in the United States and Nigeria, are trying to determine whether Tesler managed a slush fund from which he funneled bribes to Nigerian officials.

Payments are alleged to have come from $176 million that the consortium paid to Tesler in five contracts signed between 1995 and 2002. Four of the five contracts were signed after Halliburton joined the consortium in 1998 through its purchase of Dresser Industries.

The documents show that one of the consortium’s contracts with Tesler was signed in 1999, while Dick Cheney, now vice president of the United States, was Halliburton’s chief executive. No evidence has emerged that Cheney, who headed the company from 1995 to 2000, was aware of any wrongdoing.

During last week’s debate between vice presidential candidates, Democrat Sen. John Edwards blasted Halliburton and referred to the Nigeria case in noting that the company was being investigated “for having bribed foreign officials” during Cheney’s tenure as CEO. Cheney replied that there was “no substance” to Edwards’ allegations.

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said an internal investigation found evidence that the consortium had considered bribing Nigerian officials, but those discussions took place before Halliburton joined the partnership. A Halliburton investigation so far has not found that bribes were paid, she said.

Hall said company lawyers interviewed Tesler several times and that he denied making illegal payments. She said the consortium had severed ties with Tesler.

Cheney’s office referred questions about the Nigeria case to Halliburton. Hall said the company found no evidence that would implicate Cheney.

An attorney for Georges Krammer, a former executive with another consortium member, the French firm Technip, said that although the alleged bribery scheme was believed to have been hatched before Halliburton’s involvement, Tesler made questionable payments after Halliburton became involved in the project.

“The plan was to corrupt Nigerian officials,” Olivier Schnerb, Krammer’s attorney, said in an interview at his Paris office.

Tesler declined requests for an interview. His Paris attorney, Thierry Marembert, did not respond to questions from The Times. In previous comments to the media, Marembert denied any wrongdoing on Tesler’s part and said $130 million in payments Tesler received from the consortium were for his fees. The remainder, he said, was used to support and promote the natural gas project.

STORY UPDATED 4:20 p.m.

Latest at RAW STORY: GOP congressional candidate threatened to shoot wife, according to divorce records

By John Steinberg | Special to RAW STORY

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, under fire for ordering its 62 networks to broadcast a film sharply critical of John Kerry’s opposition to the Vietnam War, is a major investor in a company recently awarded a military contract by the Bush Administration, RAW STORY has learned.

Jadoo Power Systems, Inc., a producer of portable power systems, announced Sept. 28 that it had been awarded a contract to supply its products, which are used for covert surveillance operations, to US Special Operations Command. According to the SOCOM website, SOCOM “plans, directs, and executes special operations in the conduct of the War on Terrorism.”

Jadoo, whose name in Hindi means “magic,” is owned by Sinclair Ventures, Inc. and Contango Capital Management. Sinclair Ventures is “a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. as well as other individuals.”

A Jadoo press release (in PDF format) reveals that in February, 2003, President Bush was personally briefed by the CEO of Jadoo, Larry Bawden, about Jadoo products.

According to Fortune Magazine, Jadoo has sold its fuel cells to Boeing; government agencies like the CIA, the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; and the U.S. Army.

For the 2004 election, Sinclair executives have donated nearly $59,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign or the Republican National Committee (RNC), including a $50,000 gift to the RNC from Sinclair Vice President Fred Smith.

Sinclair Broadcasting (NASDAQ: SBGI) announced this week that it intends to air an anti-Kerry film on all of its 62 television stations, many of which are in battleground states. The film, Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, claims that Kerry’s anti-war activities undermined morale of POWs then held in Vietnam.

Sinclair received national attention earlier this year when it preempted the April 30th Nightline television program on which host Ted Koppel read the names of the 523 American soldiers killed in Iraq up to that date.

###

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Jadoo is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcasting. Sinclair Ventures, one of two investors in Jadoo, is the wholly owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcasting.

CLICK HERE FOR REDACTED DIVORCE RECORDS AT RAWSTORY.COM

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

New York Republican state senator John “Randy” Kuhl, who is vying for a spot in the U.S. House of Representatives, once brandished two shotguns and threatened to shoot his wife at a dinner party, according to divorce records acquired by RAW STORY.

Kuhl engaged in “cruel and inhuman treatment and other such conduct as may render it unsafe and improper for the plaintiff to cohabit with the defendant,” the divorce court’s finding of fact stated. According to the documents, he solicited other women, humiliated his ex-wife and refused to seek treatment for his drinking.

Reached for comment Tuesday morning, Kuhl campaign manager Ira Treuhaft said, “I can’t comment on this.”

The formerly sealed records, which are the subject of some debate, were erroneously photocopied and released by a clerk on Sept. 9. RAW STORY acquired a copy of the records through an anonymous source. It is publishing their contents because they differ greatly from their public characterization the senator has made, and the grave nature of the charges.

Kuhl’s divorce records document manifold emotional abuse towards his ex-wife, mostly under the influence of alcohol. They show that the senator had a history of drinking to excess and repeatedly refused to seek counseling for his condition.

The most serious charge leveled by Kuhl’s ex-wife was that he wielded two shotguns during a dinner party and threatened to shoot her.

“In or about 1994, while the parties were hosting a dinner party at their home, the defendant took out two shotguns and threatened to shoot plaintiff,” the record says.

The remaining allegations are of soliciting other women, abuse, humiliation and refusing to seek treatment for his drinking.

“In the summer of 1995 and with increasing frequency thereafter, defendant repeatedly belittled, criticized, humiliated and embarrassed plaintiff in front of the parties’ friends,” another charge reads.

On at least two instances, Kuhl is said to have solicited the attention of other women in his wife’s presence.

In 1994, while the senator and his wife attended a dinner party in Syracuse, Kuhl “drank excessively and hustled women at the bar.” Later that same year, his wife stated that he “inappropriately invited the parties’ waitress to join the parties at Governor Pataki’s inauguration.”

The senator has a public record of abusing alcohol.

In September 1997, Kuhl was arrested for driving under the influence. A police videotape showed that he had told police “you guys are really pushing it,” and had sought the favor of the local mayor by calling him at three a.m. that morning.

The mayor later told reporters that the Finger Lakes senator didn’t “lean on his political strength” or ask him for anything. Kuhl was fined $590 and had his license suspended for six months.

The senator refused repeated appeals by his wife in 1997 to seek counseling for his excessive alcohol consumption, the record states. His wife filed for divorce in 1998.

The divorce concluded in May of 2000.

At a press conference last Wednesday, Kuhl said he suspected the release was part of an “orchestrated political sabotage.” He entreated the media not to release their contents to the public.

Referring to his opponent, Democrat Samara Barend, who moved into the district last year, Senator Kuhl blamed the release of the records on “outside influences: maybe driven by people who don’t truly understand who we are and what we value here in the Southern Tier and Western New York.”

Barend’s campaign denied having anything to do with release of the documents.

Kuhl’s ex-wife, Jennifer Kuhl-Peterson, joined him at the conference, saying that the legal terms of any divorce are “inherently adversarial” but that couple didn’t end their 26-year marriage on bad terms.

Local newspapers have also received anonymous copies of the report, including the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and a newspaper in Bath, New York. None have printed the allegations or the court’s findings.

One paper, the Corning Leader, mounted a defense for the media’s suppression.

“Copies of the confidential file that were sent to newspapers in Rochester and Bath have not been printed,” penned Leader Managing Editor Joe Dunning in an editorial. “It’s [sic] contents, I’ve been told, don’t remotely come close to Ryan’s sexcapades.”

“This latest attempt to discredit and embarass [sic] Kuhl clearly crosses the line,” Dunning continues. “It would for any candidate or private citizen.”

Dunning all but indicts Kuhl’s Democratic opponent for illegally obtaining the records.

“Barend and her handlers denied involvement in the incident during the week, but did so unconvincingly,” he wrote. “The response was consistent on local television, in The Leader, and during a recent interview with this paper’s editorial board.”

First elected to the state senate in 1986, Kuhl is chairman of the New York Senate Standing Committee on Transportation, and is a member of numerous senate committees including Agriculture, Crime Victims, Crime and Correction, Education and Finance.

Senator Kuhl joined a unanimous vote on a 2002 bill to tighten New York’s drunk driving law, reducing the maximum blood alcohol level from .10 to .08.

Kuhl and his Democratic opponent Barend hope to replace retiring Republican Rep. Amory Houghton, Jr. in New York’s 29th congressional district.

###

RAW STORY has released the records, with all references to the couples’ children and certain personal information, like Social Security numbers, redacted, at RawStory.com.

A very worthwhile article from the (registration-restricted) Washington Post. Unlike those who were welcomed during Vietnam, Canada’s relative non-position on the war in Iraq leaves some who quit the armed services in a bind.

TORONTO – Jeremy Hinzman enlisted in the Army in Boston, did a tour in Afghanistan and prepared for elite Ranger school. Then came orders to go to Iraq. He neatly piled his Army gear in his living room at Fort Bragg and fled to Canada with his wife and baby.

Spec. Hinzman is a deserter, one of at least four who have followed the path of Vietnam War resisters a generation before to seek refuge in Canada. Here, they have been embraced by many from that time – former peaceniks who are now pillars of the community.

The government is less welcoming. Despite Canada’s opposition to the Iraq war, the government also is opposing the deserters’ refugee applications, saying the soldiers are not persecuted. It is resisting the argument that the Iraq war is illegal.

“Canada is worried if they grant us refugee status, others would come up,” said Hinzman.

The deserters in Canada provoke anger in United States among people who argue they are shirking a duty to which they willingly agreed. “There’s no draft. These people volunteered for the military,” said Jerry Newberry, a spokesman of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in St. Louis. “These people want to have their cake and eat it, too.”

Hinzman, a slender, studious young man, accepts the criticisms. He replies that his objections to the military evolved after he enlisted. Well before he was ordered to Iraq, he applied for noncombatant duty. Had that been granted, he said, he would have served his obligation, would even have gone to Iraq as a medic or cook or anything that did not involve offensive operations.

“If I was in a situation where bullets were whizzing by, I’d be fine with that,” he said. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t be scared, but I would have soldiered on – as long as I wasn’t pulling a trigger.”

Hinzman spends his days reading and taking care of Liam, his 2 1/2-year-old son, in the small back yard of the family’s basement apartment in downtown Toronto. He and his wife Nga Nguyen, a biologist and social worker who was barely 3 when her family fled Laos after the Vietnam War, take turns cooking vegetarian meals.

They are in legal limbo while Hinzman’s case works its way through the Immigration and Refugee Board, which has scheduled a hearing for Dec. 6. They hope to get work permits and find jobs, but until then, as they pay for rent, food and lawyer’s fees, their savings from Jeremy’s three years in the Army dwindles away.

“I told Jeremy I would support his decision, whether he left or he went to prison,” said Nguyen, 31. “At least we are together as a family, and alive.”

Hinzman makes occasional speeches along with two other U.S. deserters who have gone public, Pvt. Brandon Hughey, 19, and David Sanders, a Navy enlistee. At least one other deserter is in Canada, according to Jeffrey House, a lawyer for the Americans, but has remained out of sight.

House, 57, said he felt a chill of recognition when Hinzman first came to his office. Thirty-four years earlier, House had crossed the border from Wisconsin rather than obey a draft notice during the Vietnam War.

Estimates of how many Americans came to Canada in those times to avoid service in the war range from 30,000 to 90,000. They were invited by the prime minister at the time, Pierre Trudeau, who in 1969 declared Canada to be “a refuge from militarism.”

More at The Post

This from the (registration-restricted) L.A. Times – where the article can be read in full.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.

Although American commanders in Iraq have been buoyed by recent successes in insurgent-held towns such as Samarra and Tall Afar, administration and Pentagon officials say they will not try to retake cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi – where insurgents’ grip is strongest and U.S. military casualties could be the greatest – until after Americans vote in what is likely to be a close election.

“When this election’s over, you’ll see us move very vigorously,” said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Once you’re past the election, it changes the political ramifications” of a large-scale offensive, the official said. “We’re not on hold right now. We’re just not as aggressive.”

Any delay in pacifying Iraq’s most troublesome cities, however, could alter the dynamics of a different election – the one in January, when Iraqis are to elect members of a national assembly.

With only four months remaining, U.S. commanders are scrambling to enable voting in as many Iraqi cities as possible to shore up the poll’s legitimacy.

U.S. officials point out that there have been no direct orders to commanders in the field to pause operations in the weeks before the Nov. 2 election. Top administration officials in Washington are simply reluctant to sign off on a major offensive in Iraq at the height of the political season.

Pentagon officials said they see a benefit to holding off on an offensive in the Sunni Triangle, the insurgent-dominated region north and west of Baghdad. By waiting, they allow more time for political negotiations and targeted airstrikes in Fallujah to weaken insurgents.

“We’re having more impact with our airstrikes than we had expected,” said a senior Defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We see no need to rush headlong with hundreds of tanks into Fallujah right now.”

Because U.S. commanders no longer have carte blanche to run military operations inside Iraq, they must seek approval from interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who has his own political future to consider – even though he owes his position to the United States.

Larry DiRita, a Pentagon spokesman, asked whether Allawi supported delaying the operations until after the U.S. election, said: “It’s his view, and it’s shared by the commanders, that the timing has to be based on the circumstances and nothing else.”

U.S. officials said Allawi had signed off on a broad plan to retake insurgent-controlled cities in Iraq before the January election. Allawi approved the recent successful U.S. offensive into Samarra, which U.S. commanders considered necessary only after a local government installed by Allawi buckled under constant attack by insurgents.

Yet there has been occasional friction between U.S. commanders in Baghdad and the Iraqi government that took power after the U.S.-led coalition handed over sovereignty June 28.

In August, top U.S. officers in Iraq and Pentagon officials were angry when Allawi ordered a halt to a day-old, U.S.-led offensive against Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia as it holed up inside the sacred Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf.

Allawi called the cease-fire to allow time for negotiations with al-Sadr that ultimately broke down. U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington argued that such frictions were just part of a gradual process of reducing Iraq’s dependence on the U.S. military.

“We made a deal, and that’s what you get when you set up an interim government,” a senior military official at the Pentagon said. “But the alternative is not recognizing them.”

U.S. officials said the recent offensive operation into Samarra went more smoothly than they had expected and has boosted optimism that more cities can be wrested from insurgent hands before January’s election.

This was the front page of the Delaware News-Journal today. Because their site is running extremely slow this morning, I’ve produced the beginning of the article here, with a link to the full article at the bottom.

By LEE WILLIAMS and HIRAN RATNAYAKE
The News Journal

A former Dover Air Force Base commander says military officials used his troops as guinea pigs in illegal medical experiments under the government’s controversial anthrax vaccination program.

After some of his troops in their 20s and 30s began developing arthritis, neurological problems, memory loss and incapacitating migraine headaches, Col. Felix Grieder took a drastic step. In 1999, he halted the vaccination program in Dover, a move he said ended his military career. The decorated Air Force colonel has spent the past five years trying to discover the truth about the vaccine program in Dover, where he commanded 4,000 troops.

“In my opinion, there was illegal medical experimentation going on,” says Grieder, who lives in Texas.

Grieder has interviewed scores of his former pilots and crew who say they have had life-altering reactions to the vaccine.

“They would have no reason to lie. I believed them,” he recalls. “I wanted to talk to them face to face.”

Dover is now ground zero in the controversy because troops there were injected with anthrax vaccine containing squalene, a fat-like substance that occurs naturally in the body. Squalene boosts a vaccine’s effect, but some scientists say injecting even trace amounts of it into the body can cause serious illness.

Government officials have acknowledged that the Department of Defense secretly tested squalene on human beings in Thailand. Grieder believes they did the same in Dover.

In a March 1999 report, the General Accounting Office accused the Defense Department of a “pattern of deception” and said the military confirmed human tests involving squalene only after investigators found out about them.

The Department of Defense says vaccine sent to Dover was accidentally contaminated with squalene. Grieder and other officers believe, however, that it was intentionally introduced to test pilots and crew in Dover.

The Defense Department made anthrax inoculations mandatory for all active-duty military personnel in 1998. The immunization order, which remains in effect today, calls for six shots over an 18-month period. Defense officials deny that military personnel were illegally used as guinea pigs to test a vaccine containing squalene.

But a News Journal investigation raises significant questions about the military’s denials and the safety of the vaccine:

• Of the first 50 batches of vaccine distributed worldwide for the mandatory inoculations, only five contained squalene - and those were all shipped to Dover. After denying for more than a year that there was squalene in the vaccinations given at Dover, the Air Force admitted in 2000 that it had been wrong.

• The five batches of vaccine sent to Dover contained increasing concentrations of squalene, Food and Drug Administration tests show. Some scientists say the pattern of squalene concentration could indicate that the military was measuring the troops’ response to different dosages. Professor Dave Smith, a microbiologist at the University of Delaware, is one: “I’m certainly not saying they did or didn’t do it. But you have to ask yourself, if you have five data points like that, what are the odds of that happening?”

• The Defense Department has rejected the evidence that the vaccine ever contained squalene. It has steadfastly contended that FDA technicians introduced squalene into the vaccine test via a “dirty fingerprint.” The FDA has refused to explain its laboratory procedures for the tests. The military has never retested its stockpile of vaccine for squalene, claiming that, even if the amounts of squalene detected by the FDA were accurate, the concentrations were too low to affect human health. The department continues to require the vaccination for all military personnel - active duty, reserve and National Guard.

• Tulane University professor Robert Garry testified before Congress that even trace amounts of squalene injected into the human body suppress the immune system. In an interview with The News Journal, he said the body’s response can cause some young and middle-age people to get illnesses normally associated with aging.

• Tulane University professor Pamela Asa and Baylor College of Medicine professor Dorothy Lewis have concluded that squalene’s possible links to serious human illnesses should be studied further. The military has dismissed Asa’s studies as inconclusive, although it has conducted no follow-up research on the health effects of squalene.

You can read the full article here.

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

An online poll that showed clear evidence of tampering in favor of President Bush remained online at CNN for almost 26 hours, though when a similarly-worded poll favored Sen. John Edwards on Tuesday, CNN yanked the poll and started anew.

Friday and Saturday’s poll, which asked, “Who won the second presidential debate?” favored Senator Kerry by a three-to-one margin at 11 a.m. EDT Saturday. By five p.m. Saturday, President Bush led Kerry 50 to 48 percent.

The ratio of those who voted for Bush versus those who voted for Kerry in that six hour stretch was greater than four to one, with Bush outpacing Kerry 83 to 17 percent, among those who didn’t feel the debate was a draw, RAW STORY has found.

And whereas votes for Bush rose 523 percent in the six hour period, votes for Kerry climbed a scanty 27 percent.

The chart below shows the total votes in red, the votes for Kerry in blue, for Bush in green, and for a tie in magenta. The starting point is 7:39 p.m. Pacific time, when the poll went live, and each successive hour afterward is an increase of one. Click the image for the full pdf file.

Yet when Sen. John Edwards led CNN’s debate poll Tuesday night, the Time Warner network abruptly yanked it from their front, only to replace it 13 hours later with a blank poll. Edwards had been leading in the first poll 78-18.

Some 200,000 previous responses to the poll were deleted when the new poll was posted.

CNN did not return a request for comment. The poll was replaced with a question about baseball at midnight Sunday in most markets, “Who do you think will win baseball’s American League pennant?”

Latest at RAW STORY:
–9/11 victims to be buried in world’s largest dump
–CNN allows skewed poll favoring Bush

UPDATED Saturday 10:45 PM EDT

RAW STORY has received numerous e-mails suggesting that President Bush wore an earpiece during the Florida debate Thursday with Senator Kerry. While at this point the suggestion is simply rumor, the volume of emails and the demands of our readers required we at least post the information for public review.

The crux of the rumor centers around a part of the debate where President Bush says, “let me finish,” though neither Senator Kerry or moderator Jim Lehrer have moved to interrupt him. The video file can be seen here.

Viewers also note the numerous pauses during Bush’s answers, though some also note that Bush regularly uses dramatic pauses as part of his replies.

The final element of the rumor surrounds an alleged wire in the back of the president’s suit jacket, the photograph of which appears below.

Some have also suggested the “hump” appears in the second debate, which is shown in the image below, acquired from bobfertik.com.

The Bush campaign has said the rumors are ludicrous.

“There was nothing under his suit jacket,” the Bush campaign’s communications director told the New York Times. “It was most likely a rumpling of that portion of his suit jacket, or a wrinkle in the fabric.”

Bush’s tailor later said that the bulge was nothing more than a pucker along the jacket’s back seam, according to the BBC.

Georges de Paris, who made the suit worn by Mr Bush, said the bulge stood out particularly when the president crossed his arms and leaned forward. Bush’s aides, however, contradicted this in a statement to the Washington Post; they said the suit was well-tailored and did not have a roll in back.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative television conglomerate whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation’s homes, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacking Sen. John F. Kerry’s position on the Vietnam War, network executives told the (registration-restricted) L.A. Times Friday. Experts call the move highly unusual.

Already, a move is being made to convince Sinclair to change their decision by putting pressure on Sinclair advertisers, with a “Boycott Sinclair advertisers” blog at http://boycottsinclair.blogspot.com.

Sinclair’s programming plan, communicated to executives in recent days and coming in the thick of a close and intense presidential race, is highly unusual even in a political season that has been marked by media controversies.

Sinclair has told its stations — many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida — to air “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal,” sources said. The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry — a decorated Navy veteran turned war protester — of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the war. Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan.

Executives at Sinclair did not return calls seeking comment, but the Kerry campaign accused the company of pressuring its stations to influence the political process.

“It’s not the American way for powerful corporations to strong-arm local broadcasters to air lies promoting a political agenda,” said David Wade, a spokesman for the Democratic nominee’s campaign. “It’s beyond yellow journalism; it’s a smear bankrolled by Republican money, and I don’t think Americans will stand for it.”

Station and network sources said they have been told the Sinclair stations — which include affiliates of Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as WB and UPN — will be preempting regular programming for one hour between Oct. 21 and Oct. 24, depending on the city. The airing of “Stolen Honor” will be followed by a panel discussion, which Kerry will be asked to join, thus potentially satisfying fairness regulations, the sources said.

Kerry campaign officials said they had been unaware of Sinclair’s plans to air the film, and said Kerry had not received an invitation to appear.

No one familiar with the plan was willing to criticize it publicly, some because they said they don’t know all the details of what Sinclair plans for the panel that follows. But a number of people privately expressed outrage at the seemingly overt nature of the political attack, which comes during a tight election and at a time when the media are under assault as never before. Cable’s Fox News Channel was attacked in the summer by a coalition of liberal groups for what they said were its efforts to boost Republicans; in recent weeks, CBS’ Dan Rather has been criticized by conservatives, as well as some nonpartisan journalists, for a “60 Minutes” broadcast that used now-discredited documents in a report saying President Bush received favorable treatment when in the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970s.

Democrats have for some time accused Sinclair, a publicly traded company based in Maryland, of a having a right-wing agenda.

The company made headlines in April when it ordered seven of its stations not to air Ted Koppel’s “Nightline” roll call of military dead in Iraq, deeming it a political statement “disguised as news content.” Sen. John McCain, the Republican from Arizona who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was among those who criticized Sinclair’s decision not to air the “Nightline” program, which featured the names and pictures of more than 700 U.S. troops.

Even before the “Nightline” controversy, Sinclair drew criticism because of the combination of its highly centralized news operations, which often include conservative commentary, and its almost exclusively Republican political giving. In the 2004 political cycle, Sinclair executives have given nearly $68,000 in political contributions, 97% to Republicans, ranking it 12th among top radio and TV station group contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group.

Calling it news poses its own problems, said Keith Woods, dean of the faculty at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Fla., that teaches professional ethics. “To air a documentary intended to provide a one-sided view of Kerry’s record and call it news — it’s like calling Michael Moore’s movie news,” he said, adding that the closer to an election that a controversial news report is aired, the “higher the bar has to go” in terms of fairness.

Clearly, Sinclair’s reach will bring a much wider audience to the film. The 42-minute film has only been available on DVD or for $4.99 through an Internet download, although fans had been mounting an Internet campaign to get it wider exposure.

“Stolen Honor” was made by Carlton Sherwood, a Vietnam veteran and former reporter for the conservative Washington Times who is also the author of a book about the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. On the website for the film, he tells viewers, “Intended or not, Lt. Kerry painted a depraved portrait of Vietnam veterans, literally creating the images of those who served in combat as deranged drug-addicted psychopaths, baby killers” that endured for 30 years in the popular culture.

Sherwood did not return calls seeking comment.

President Bush lied and joked about not owning a timber company while president during the debate, RAW STORY has found.

When Sen. John Kerry said that President Bush and Dick Cheney would have qualified as being among the 900,000 ’small business’ owners who would be affected by his tax rollback plan, Bush shook his head and laughed.

“Need some wood?” he asked.

However, Kerry’s statement was entirely accurate. This from Factcheck.org.

President Bush himself would have qualified as a “small business owner” under the Republican definition, based on his 2001 federal income tax returns. He reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise. However, 99.99% of Bush’s total income came from other sources that year. (Bush also qualified as a “small business owner” in 2000 based on $314 of “business income,” but not in 2002 and 2003 when he reported his timber income as “royalties” on a different tax schedule.)

Vice President Cheney and his wife Lynne qualify as “small business owners” for 2003 because 3.5% of the total income reported on their tax returns was business income from Mrs. Cheney’s consulting business. She reported $44,580 in business income on Schedule C, nearly all of it from fees paid to her as a director of the Reader’s Digest . But giving the Cheneys a tax cut didn’t stimulate any hiring; she reported zero employees.

A Birmingham freelance writer is suing biographer Kitty Kelley and her publisher Random House, claiming the author plagiarized his work in her new book about President Bush and his family, the (registration-restricted) Birmingham News reports.

“I’m trying to make a living down here as a freelance writer and these New York writers rip you off,” writer Glynn Wilson said. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Birmingham federal court against Kelley and Random House Inc.

Suzanne Herz, an associate publisher at Random House division Doubleday, said the publisher had no comment on the lawsuit because it had not been served. The lawsuit asks that the book not be sold while the lawsuit is pending.

Doubleday published Kelley’s latest work: “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty.”

Wilson wrote a 4,000-word article that appeared in February on an independent journalism Web site, Southerner Daily News. The article detailed Bush’s time in Montgomery in 1972.

“It was not just about the National Guard business,” Wilson said. “I wanted to know what he did while he was here. What did he do on the campaign? I tried to answer those questions.”

The $5 million lawsuit claims that Kelley, on pages 304 and 305 of her book, lifted passages verbatim from Wilson’s article, specifically passages about Bush’s drinking and drug use while in Alabama. “I was surprised that so much of it was lifted so exactly,” Wilson said.

It was the lurid allegations of drug use by Bush that generated a buzz about the book. One of Kelley’s sources in support of the allegation was the president’s ex-sister-in-law, Sharon Bush.

Sharon Bush later claimed she did not make any such statement.

Concerning the president’s supposed drug use in Alabama, Wilson said Kelley borrowed “right out of my story.”

“It think it’s a clear violation of copyright law,” said Wilson’s attorney, Steve Heninger.

Heninger said Random House used portions of the passages in question in promotional materials. “They used his work as a selling tool,” he said. “They are profiting from someone else’s creative work.”

Kelley has made a name for herself with unauthorized biographies on the British royal family, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Nancy Reagan. Kelley’s book on the Bush family is No. 2 on The New York Times best-seller list and 10th on the USA Today best-seller list.

The Department of Education destroyed 300,000 booklets designed for parents to help their children learn history this summer to remove references to national standards after Lynne Cheney complained about it, the (registration-restricted) L.A. Times reports today.

In June, during a routine update, the Education Department began distributing a new edition of a 10-year-old how-to guide called “Helping Your Child Learn History.” Aimed at parents of children from preschool through fifth grade, the 73-page booklet presented an assortment of advice, including taking children to museums and visiting historical sites.

The booklet included several brief references to the National Standards for History, which were developed at UCLA in the mid-1990s with federal support. Created by scholars and educators to help school officials design better history courses, they are voluntary benchmarks, not mandatory requirements.

At the time, Lynne Cheney, the wife of now-Vice President Cheney, led a vociferous campaign complaining that the standards were not positive enough about America’s achievements and paid too little attention to figures such as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Paul Revere and Thomas Edison.

At one point in the initial controversy, Cheney denounced the standards as “politicized history.”

In response to the criticism, the UCLA standards were heavily revised, most critics were mollified and the controversy faded — but not for Cheney and her staff.

“Helping Your Child Learn History” is not unique. The Education Department produces a series of similar booklets on topics such as science, geography, reading and math. The booklets are designed to encourage parents to get involved in their children’s education. Often, they contain passing references to the kinds of curriculum standards that scholars and educators have developed in recent years to improve school courses. More than 9 million copies of such booklets have been distributed.

Seldom have the booklets sparked controversy. That changed this summer.

As the wife of the vice president, Cheney has no executive position in the federal government. But when her office spotted the references to the National Standards for History in the new edition of the history booklet, her staff communicated its displeasure to the Education Department.

Subsequently, the department decided it was necessary to kill the new edition and reprint it with references to the standards removed. Though about 61,000 copies of “Helping Your Child Learn History” had been distributed, the remaining 300,000-plus copies were destroyed. Asked about the decision, one department official said they had been “recycled.”

The Times obtained a copy of the booklet as originally printed.

A new version of the booklet, the basis for the version that is being printed, is on the Education Department’s website. It has been edited to remove references to the standards.

For example, a clause in the foreword was removed that suggested President Bush supported instruction based on teaching standards that had been developed for various academic subjects.

Also missing from the department’s Internet version is a suggestion that parents ask whether their children’s curriculum incorporates the National Standards for History. An Internet address for the standards in a list of more than a dozen websites for parents was also removed, as well as a footnote elsewhere in the text that shows where to find more information about the history standards.

When The Times initially approached the Education Department to inquire about the booklets, the department issued a statement saying it had taken the unusual action because of “mistakes, including typos and incomplete information.”

Later, Susan Aspey, the department’s press secretary, admitted that typographical errors were not the reason. Asked about the role of Cheney’s office, Aspey responded:

“The decision was ours to stop distribution and reprint. Both offices were on parallel tracks and obviously neither of us were pleased that the final document was not the accurate reflection of policy that was approved originally.”

A representative for Cheney said her office did not order the destruction of the booklets.

To read the full article, click here.

No – I’m not making it up – it’s headline from a Hartford Courant article by Kim Martineau today that I’ve missed until now. Because the article is registration-restricted, I’ll reprint it here.

NEW HAVEN – Her dad was Skull and Bones. So was her grandfather and great-grandfather. By not joining Yale’s secret society, Barbara Bush broke with that tradition.

But she embraced another - the naked party.

Yale’s naked parties have been described as an intellectual salon without the clothes. Incoming freshmen hear about the ritual long before setting foot on campus.

The creme de la creme of naked parties is the springtime event held by the Pundits, a society synonymous with streaking through the library during finals. This one is invitation only for about 40 to 50 “A-list” guests. A bouncer checks names at the door.

In the spring of 2002, Barbara Bush, then a sophomore, arrived at a house on Crown Street for the fun, according to at least two people who saw her there. Not known: the whereabouts of her Secret Service protection.

Like everyone else at the party, sources say, she left her inhibitions at the door and her clothes in a changing room, then mingled with the other guests over wine, cheese and pool.

Naked parties are not orgies, not even close, despite their name, say those who attend. Stripped of clothing and other status markers, students are rendered equal. There’s more eye contact, less small talk. Everyone’s vulnerable.

“At most clothed parties, it’s more overt that people are hitting on each other - naked parties are actually less sexual,” one student was quoted as saying in a 1999 Yale Daily News story titled, “Nude Haven.”

In 2002, rumors about Barbara in the buff ran rampant on campus. A year later, porn king Larry Flynt caught wind of it and reportedly offered a million bucks for film of the presidential twin, according to a blurb in The New York Post. But nothing materialized. In fact, aside from a vague reference in a student newspaper, nothing more about Bush’s party appearance surfaced until police were deep into their investigation of a sexual assault on another guest who had left the party.

Rumpus, an off-color tabloid produced by Yale students, alluded to the soiree in a May 2002 column titled, “Rumpus Rumpus: Rumors, Truths We Couldn’t Prove and Other Allegations.”

“If you are a daughter of a very important person and shun media exposure, why would you expose your whole self at a naked party this spring?” the editors wondered. “Secret exhibitionist tendencies? Following in the family tradition of doing stupid [expletive] at college that will come back to haunt you later? Or just showing off that reportedly blissfully cellulite-free booty?”

A call to the White House seeking comment from Barbara Bush was referred to the office of her mother, first lady Laura Bush, which declined to comment this week.

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

In an unprecedented move, the Democratic candidate for Congress in Ohio’s 16th district has fired his campaign manager and hired the “Internet community” to dictate his campaign schedule, via his website.

The event, which Jeff Seeman’s campaign says has been met with overwhelming support, is the campaign’s latest opportunity to give bloggers a virtual seat at the campaign table.

The race pits Seemann against 32-year incumbent Republican Representative Ralph Regula, a seat which would be an unlikely victory for any Democrat. The campaign notes that Regula has been forced to return to the district to campaign and purchase radio and television time.

“If Representative Regula had his way,” Seemann said in a statement, “that time and money would be spent criss-crossing the country campaigning for endangered Republican Congressional candidates in his quest for Chairman of the Appropriations Committee.”

More individuals have contributed to Jeff Seemann’s campaign than any other challenger to Ralph Regula in over 2 decades, the campaign says – over 1,300 people from 45 states.

Today, bloggers from around the country using popular sites like, DailyKos, Atrios and RAW STORY, among others will be directed to Jeff’s website and asked to choose Thursday’s campaign schedule.

On Thursday, participants will return to the website and get updates including photos from the events the community selected along with commentary from Jeff about how the day is progressing. The day will culminate with a live on-line chat at 10:30 P.M. (EsT) Unless the net-roots choose to let Jeff off the hook and get to bed early.

You can help dictate Seemann’s schedule by clicking here.

A new book published in France this week states that French officials were ready to send as many as 15,000 troops for an invasion of Iraq before relations soured between Bush and French leaders over the attack’s timing, reports Glenn Kessler of the (registration-restricted)Washington Post.

The book, “Chirac Contre Bush: L’Autre Guerre” ("Chirac vs. Bush: The Other War"), reports that a French general, Jean Patrick Gaviard, visited the Pentagon to meet with Central Command staff on Dec. 16, 2002 – three months before the war began – to discuss a French contribution of 10,000 to 15,000 troops and to negotiate landing and docking rights for French jets and ships.

French military officials were especially interested in joining in an attack, because they felt that not participating with the United States in a major war would leave French forces unprepared for future conflicts, according to Thomas Cantaloube, one of the authors. But the negotiations did not progress far before French President Jacques Chirac decided that the Americans were pushing too fast to short-circuit inspections by U.N. weapons inspectors.

Chirac, the book says, was prepared to join in an attack if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had not allowed inspectors into Iraq. “Up until December 2002, what everyone told us is that France thought Saddam Hussein was going to make a mistake and not allow inspections,” Cantaloube said in an interview. After inspectors appeared to make progress in Iraq, Chirac’s thinking changed, especially after polls in France showed vast opposition to an attack.

White House officials declined to comment.

The book is a detailed recounting of the deteriorating relationship between President Bush and Chirac by two journalists based in Washington and Paris for the newspaper Le Parisien. The journalists, Cantaloube and Henri Vernet, said they interviewed more than 50 military and diplomatic officials in both countries.

The book also discloses that French officials became convinced the United States had eavesdropped on Chirac’s phone conversations after a U.S. official warned a French military official that “the relationship between your president and ours is irreparable on the personal level. You have to understand that President Bush knows exactly what President Chirac thinks of him.”

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

Time Warner’s Cable News Network abruptly yanked a poll from the front page of their website Tuesday which was favoring Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards by more than a three-to-one margin. They then replaced it in the 12 p.m EDT hour today, completely eliminating all previous results.

The original poll, which asked simply, “Who do you think won the vice presidential debate?” was replaced in the eleven o’clock p.m. hour Tuesday with “Did the vice presidential debate help you decide which way you will vote?”

Wednesday, the original question was reinstated, but the results from the original poll were discounted.

Some 200,000 previous responses to the poll were deleted when the new poll was posted. The previous poll can be seen here where at press time 78 percent of the vote went to Edwards, 18 percent for Cheney, and four percent declaring that the contest had been a tie. The new poll has Cheney with nearly twice as much support.

CNN did not return a request for comment placed this morning.

Fox News also pulled a poll from their front page asking who won the debate late Tuesday. Edwards had been leading in the Fox poll by a smaller margin.

LATEST: CNN pulls vote favoring Edwards, deletes results, then replaces it

An absentee ballot in Michigan, misprinted with arrows aligned one candidate lower than appropriate for presidential selection, favors President Bush by placing the voting area for President Bush by John Kerry and the John Kerry voting area next to Ralph Nader.

For a full copy of the ballot, and the information about the company that printed it, click the image below.

UPDATE: RAW STORY has learned that the company that printed the ballot, Miller Consultations & Elections, Inc., is aware of the snafu and are reprinting the ballots. They acknowledged the printing error and said the corrected ballots have already been sent out.

Saying that they are united by a deep concern about the Bush administration’s go-it-alone foreign policy, more than 180 former United States ambassadors of Republican and Democratic presidents endorsed John Kerry for president on Monday. Collectively, they served nine presidents and have decades of diplomatic service between them.

At a news conference at the National Press Club, members of Ambassadors for Kerry-Edwards issued a letter stating, “We believe it is imperative to our national security that we change the leadership of the nation we all love and elect John Kerry and John Edwards.” The statement criticized President Bush for needlessly squandering the good will and support of the world following the September 11 attacks and undermining our ability to win the war on terror by eroding our strong international alliances.

“The war on terror can only be won with the active cooperation of people and governments around the world,” said Ambassador Sol Polansky, who represented the United States to Bulgaria, and served as a Foreign Service officer for almost 40 years before his retirement in 1990. “We’ve spent our careers building that kind of cooperation for the sake of our country’s security. But in the last three years, the Bush administration has undermined the strong alliances American leaders worked half a century to build.”

“Senator Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will vote for him enthusiastically,” wrote John Eisenhower in an opinion article entitled, “Why I will vote for John Kerry for President” in New Hampshire’s Union Leader. “The fact is that today’s ‘Republican’ Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.” Eisenhower, who served as Ambassador to Belgium is a lifelong Republican and the son of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.

This unprecedented show of support from this group of former Ambassadors and national security professionals includes more than 80 career Foreign Service Officers and 100 non-career appointees, who have represented the United States under both Republican and Democratic administrations in postings around the world.

“John Kerry has the capacity to renew America’s credibility around the world and find solutions to global problems. John Kerry will fight a more effective war on terror, and he has a plan to win the peace in Iraq. He has the strength, experience, and resolve to make America safer and more secure,” said Ambassador Pete Peterson, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam.

Kerry was obviously pleased. His campaign issued this statement.

“After September 11, the world was fully behind us, but George W. Bush has needlessly squandered much of that support and undermined our ability to win the war on terror. He has also seriously eroded the alliances we need to keep our nation safe. Now, we face a loss of respect and trust amongst our allies such as we have never seen. As a result, our troops and taxpayers must bear the risks and costs of building a safer world virtually alone.

“The Congress and the American people were misled by an ever- changing rationale for launching a preemptive war in Iraq. We failed to finish the mission in Afghanistan and stood on the sidelines while North Korea and Iran advanced their nuclear programs. George W. Bush’s failings have made the threat of terrorism worse, not better.

“The Bush administration’s go-it-alone polices are making Americans less safe at home and abroad. Even the world’s only superpower needs friends and allies, and we are blessed with the challenge of using our position for good. War should be the last resort – not the first.

“John Kerry has the experience, strength and wisdom to lead us in fighting the war on terrorism, winning the peace in Iraq, making America more secure, and restoring America as the beacon of democracy and freedom in the world.”

White House withheld critical proportionately spaced document until after CBS flap waned

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

A newly released document from President George W. Bush’s military records lends credence to rumors that the recent flap over ‘forged memos’ was in fact engineered from within the White House, RAW STORY has learned.

At the very least, the timing of the release shows that the White House deliberately withheld a genuine document which contained the characteristics of the memos which are said to have been forged. From the beginning, Bush’s supporters have claimed that typewriters of the period could not produce the documents.

It’s also the fourth time the White House has released Bush documents since they said they had released all of Bush’s non-medical documents. White House communications director Dan Bartlett told the Washington Post that he had put out “absolutely everything” he had of Bush’s nonmedical military records in February.

The document in question was released to an independent researcher as part of a Freedom of Information Act request in 2000, but was not made available to the general media until the White House released it – under a federal court order after a lawsuit by the Associated Press – on Sept. 24.

The document is a memo written to Bush notifying him of his promotion to First Lieutenant. Dated Feb. 19, 1971, it was typed more than a year before the first of the CBS memos.

And, like the CBS memos, this document uses a proportionately spaced font and has the characteristics of a document produced on contemporary computers using Microsoft Word. Proportionately spaced fonts, in which characters had different widths, replaced older typewriter fonts in which all the characters were of the same width.

The discovery was made by Paul Lukasiak, a Philadelphia researcher who was the source of research proving that Bush did not complete his required Guard service, which RAW STORY reported Aug. 1, and was carried in September by the Boston Globe.

Bush’s Defense Department fought the AP lawsuit filed in July to have the original microfiche records examined to determine if documents were withheld by the White House.

And even though Defense released Bush’s flight records on Sept. 10, just when the memo controversy was gaining steam, and another 200 pages of records on Sept. 17th, it did not release the proportionately spaced memo at either point.

It was not until Sept. 24, under a federal court order, that the Pentagon finally released the proportionately spaced document, even though this document had been released in 2000.

The document was not made available to the general public on the department’s website until the following week.

Was Karl Rove involved?

James Moore, author of acclaimed best-seller Bush’s Brain, the acclaimed best seller about Bush and the relationship with his advisor Karl Rove, said the timing of the release was dubious.

“I find the timing of the release of this proportionally spaced document to be very curious,” Moore said. “The CBS documents were attacked for similar spacing because of an argument that typewriters did not have that capability more than 30 years ago. But this new document clearly proves that to be wrong.”

Moore said he suspects Rove was involved with the scandal.

“My suspicions about Rove’s involvement in the CBS document controversy arose after the well-coordinated attack on the memos,” he said. “Critics were ready with their analysis almost before CBS got off the air. And they knew precisely the forensic arguments to make.”

“This didn’t happen through simple due diligence,” he added. “They were tipped in advance. And that was only possible if Rove was involved in the creation and leaking of the documents or if he got
them in advance.”

“If anybody can pull those off, it’s Rove.”

Other studies of Bush’s Guard files

Another recent study appears to prove that the CBS memos were produced by a typewriter.

Director of the Interactive Media Research Laboratory Dr. David Hailey at Utah State University demonstrates that the CBS memos were produced on a typewriter, and not by a contemporary computer. Dr. Hailey is an expert on images, and has demonstrated that there are consistent flaws in certain letters that can only be attributed to a typewritten document.

Hailey’s study has received scant attention from mainstream media, despite the fact that it refutes the primary “evidence” that the Killian memos were forgeries.

He did, however, receive attention after a conservative blog, WizBang, started deriding his claims and research. Since then, he has been flooded with angry emails charging “academic fraud.”

This story comes on the tail of another story revealing that some of Bush’s genuine Guard files may have been tampered with. Physical anomalies in two documents suggest that changes were made to the documents after they were generated, perhaps to mask embarrassing information about the President’s service.

Fakes, or not fakes?

It has yet to be proven whether the CBS documents were actually fakes; CBS has said only that they can no longer be certain they are genuine. The alleged source of their documents was former Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett.

Some have suggested that the attacks were engineered to destroy Burkett’s credibility, who has been a thorn in the Bush’s side for many years. He was the source for USA Today’s 2001 series which proved the Texas National Guard (among other state Guards) was receiving federal funding for the training of Guardsmen who did not show up.

Burkett subsequently asserted he had observed Bush campaign officials in the act of purging Bush’s Texas Air National Guard files.

RAW STORY has followed the forgery claims from the beginning, noting Sept. 9 that the initial sources of the Matt Drudge’s forgery claim – CNS News and Powerline, are run by a conservative who chairs the Conservative Victory Committee and sits on the board of a conservative thinktank, respectively.

Salon followed with another story Sept. 10, stating that the same conservative operatives who attacked Kerry as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth pushed the forgery claims.

Another blogger, “Buckhead,” posted a highly technical explanation posted within hours of 6o Minutes citing proportional spacing and font styles, the New York Times reported.

“It was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal,” the Times wrote.

“Reached by telephone,” the piece continued, “MacDougald confirmed that he is Buckhead, but declined to answer questions about his political background or how he knew so much about the CBS documents so fast.”

DEVELOPING….

Sen. Kerry has taken a broad lead in New Jersey, climbing an alleged eight points since Thursday’s presidential debate. Though most strategists thought New Jersey would end up swinging Democratic, Kerry and Bush were neck and neck in a poll just before the debate. This from the registration-restricted New Jersey Record.

A poll conducted Friday by The Record showed John Kerry with an eight-point lead over President Bush in New Jersey, despite other polls in recent weeks indicating a virtual deadlock in the race for the state’s 15 electoral votes.

Of the 502 likely voters polled in the Garden State, 50 percent said they were planning to vote for the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, and 42 percent said they would vote to reelect Bush, a Republican. Six percent remained undecided, while 2 percent said they would vote for independent Ralph Nader.

The poll was taken the day after the first debate between Bush and Kerry, which was watched by more than 80 percent of those polled by The Record. Nearly half of those who saw the debate said Kerry won, and 34 percent said Bush won.

“There are two bottom lines,” said Del Ali, whose firm, Research 2000 of Rockville, Md., conducted the poll on behalf of The Record. “New Jersey is a Kerry state, No. 1. And, No. 2, Kerry did very well in the debate. Bush did not do very well.”

The poll results are consistent with initial assessments of Thursday’s 90-minute debate in Florida, which political observers on both sides said gave Kerry’s image a much-needed boost.

After the Republican National Convention in New York a month ago - where the GOP hammered Kerry on seemingly inconsistent statements about his Iraq war position and questioned his resolve to fight terrorism - Bush gained a significant bounce in many national polls. In terrorism-scarred New Jersey, Kerry’s once double-digit leads were reduced to a statistical dead heat, many polls showed.

Kerry sought to turn the tables on the national security issue during the widely watched debate, saying the president erred in invading Iraq and starting a war that diverted attention from the hunt for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Despite the widespread belief that Kerry won the debate, only 3 percent of those who watched it said it affected their choice between the two men.

Still, Ali said, “That insignificant three points can be huge in a very close race.”

Ali said the split bodes well for Kerry, whose main objective has been to draw a distinction between the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq - as opposed to Bush’s message that the war in Iraq is a war on terror.

“If [Kerry] separates Iraq from the war on terror, bottom line is he wins the election,” Ali said.

A spokesman for the Bush campaign said that despite the indication in The Record poll that Kerry has pulled ahead in New Jersey, the state remains very much in play.

More than 62 million viewers tuned into the debate Thursday, a much larger audience than the one that watched the first presidential debate in 2000 between Bush and former Vice President Al Gore. Still, the audience did not come close to the record-setting 80.6 million viewers who watched the Oct. 28, 1980, debate between Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter.

A smattering of billboards have sprung up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area with the simple message: Don’t vote. The billboards, owned by the advertising and radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications, have drawn the ire of local activists. Fifteen of them are concentrated in areas with high minority populations. This from the registration-restricted Pioneer Press.

A series of billboards around the Twin Cities that brazenly declare “DON’T VOTE” have angered civil rights activists.

Fifteen of the billboards have sprung up in Minneapolis, St. Paul and its suburbs in the last few days. Several are in areas with large minority populations, including the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis, leading the NAACP and other groups to criticize even the suggestion that citizens shouldn’t exercise the right to vote.

“This is a highly sensitive election season, and to put it in areas like the Phillips neighborhood, that’s a minority community that’s been disenfranchised enough,” Brett Buckner, NAACP branch president in Minneapolis, said Friday. “I don’t care what kind of campaign this is, that community’s been through enough.”

The billboards are owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc. Lee Ann Muller, the company’s general manager for outdoor advertising in Minnesota, wouldn’t say who is paying for the billboards, but said it’s a “teaser” campaign and its full meaning would become clear soon.

“I made the judgment call that the end of the campaign has value and a positive message, positive benefits for the community,” Muller said.

Muller said the sponsor, which is paying about $60,000 to have the billboards up for a month, is not advertising a product. She said the “reveal,” when new billboards replace the “DON’T VOTE” message, would be Oct. 11.

“It will all be clear then,” she said.

But Buckner and others said that concerns in recent years over voter registration and suppression make the marketing scheme dubious.

“I understand teaser ad campaigns, but the timing is terrible,” said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, whose office has received questions and complaints from constituents who’ve seen the billboards. “This is the wrong time to play with people’s emotions over voting.”

Buckner said the NAACP and other local groups are considering a press conference next week to criticize the billboards.

From a press release, and now in an AP story.

New York-Sixty-one percent of Americans who watched the first presidential debate on September 30 say Sen. John Kerry won; 19 percent say President George W. Bush won and 16 percent say they tied, according to the latest Newsweek Poll which was conducted after the debate ended. Fifty-six percent say Kerry did better than they expected; 11 percent say so for Bush. Thirty-eight percent say Bush did worse than expected; 3 percent say so for Kerry, the poll shows.

The debate erased the lead the Bush/Cheney ticket has held over Kerry/Edwards in the Newsweek Poll since the Republican convention. In a three-way trial heat including Ralph Nader/Peter Camejo, among registered voters Kerry/Edwards leads Bush/Cheney 47 percent v. 45 percent with 2 percent for Nader/Camejo. In a two-way heat, Kerry/Edwards leads 49 percent v. 46 percent for Bush/Cheney, the poll shows.

A 62-percent majority of viewers says Kerry seemed more confident and self-assured (26% say so for Bush) and 51 percent say Kerry had better command of issues and facts (37% for Bush). Forty-seven percent say Kerry seemed more personally likeable (41 % for Bush) and 49 percent say Kerry came closer to reflecting their own views on most foreign policy issues (43% for Bush). The two were nearly even on several other points, including who came across as a strong leader (47% Kerry, 44% Bush) and who had a better plan for dealing with the situation in Iraq (45% for both). Forty percent of viewers thought Kerry was too wordy and 57 percent thought Bush was too repetitive.

Fifty-seven percent of all poll respondents say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time. Bush’s job approval rating dropped two points from the Sept. 9-10 Newsweek Poll to 46 percent-a 6-point drop since the poll taken during and after the Republican convention. Forty-eight percent of registered voters polled say they would not like to see Bush re-elected but almost as many (46%) say they would.

Among registered voters, 60 percent say they know “a lot” about what Bush stands for, compared to 38 percent who say so about Kerry, the poll shows.

During the debate, President Bush said the military would remain “an all-volunteer army,” but if Bush is re-elected, 38 percent of registered voters say the draft is likely to be reinstated; 51 percent say it’s not, according to the poll. If Kerry is elected president, 18 percent say the draft is likely to be reinstated; 67 percent say it is not. And 62 percent of registered voters say reinstating the draft should not be considered at this time; 28 percent say it should be considered.

A 60-percent majority of registered voters say Bush administration policies and diplomatic efforts have led to more anti-Americanism around the world and 51 percent say the administration has not done enough to involve major allies and international organizations in trying to achieve its foreign policy goals, the poll shows.

As for who will handle issues better overall, among registered voters Bush leads Kerry 52 to 40 percent on terrorism and homeland security; the situation in Iraq (49% vs. 44%); the situation involving Israel and the Palestinians (46% vs. 39%) and controlling the spread of nuclear weapons (47% v. 43%). Kerry scores better on the economy (52% vs. 39%); health care, including Medicare (56% to 34%) and American jobs and foreign competition (54% vs. 36%), the poll shows.

Overall, 62 percent say Bush has strong leadership qualities (compared to 56% who say so for Kerry). Sixty-six percent say Bush says what he believes, not just what people want to hear, compared to 48 percent for Kerry. Sixty-five percent say Bush is personally likeable (63% say so for Kerry). But more registered voters (57%) say Kerry is honest and ethical (vs. 55% for Bush); the same amount (51%) says they would trust Kerry to make the right decisions during an international crisis as would trust Bush (51%); and more (57%) say Kerry cares about people like them (vs. 49% for Bush). And 80 percent of registered voters say Kerry is intelligent and well informed, compared to 59 percent for Bush.

On Iraq, 50 percent of registered voters polled say the war in Iraq was not necessary; 46 percent say it was. And 55 percent of registered voters say going to war in Iraq has not made Americans safer from terrorism; 41 percent say it has. Fifty-one percent of registered voters say the Bush administration misinterpreted or misanalyzed the intelligence reports it said indicated Iraq had banned weapons; 41 percent say it didn’t. And 45 percent say the administration purposely misled the public about evidence that Iraq had banned weapons in order to build support for the war; 50 percent say it did not.

During is 19-year career in the U.S. Senate, Kerry has changed his position on a number of issues. From what they know about Kerry, 47 percent of registered voters say this is because Kerry is thoughtful and changes position as circumstances change or he learns more about an issue; the same number (47%) say it’s because Kerry is politically-motivated and changes his position when he thinks it will improve his image or help him win an election.

For this Newsweek Poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates International interviewed 1,013 registered voters on Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2004.

Here’s the full article, as it’s gone pay-restricted.

ARNIE ALLY DUCKS FILM AWARDS

POWERFUL Republican Congressman David Dreier — one of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s staunchest allies — appears to be lying low after the L.A. Weekly alleged that Dreier had a gay affair with his chief of staff.

Dreier, chairman of the House Rules Committee, co-chair of Californians for Bush and chairman of Schwarzenegger’s transition team, was a no-show at Wednesday’s Directors Guild of America awards at the Waldorf-Astoria, where he and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) were honored for fighting “runaway production.” (The lawmakers have proposed tax breaks for TV and movie projects to stop them from going to Canada.)

Dreier and Berman instead appeared in a video thanking the black-tie crowd, which included Oprah Winfrey, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Jude Law, Edward Furlong, Ben Affleck, Martin Scorsese, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Harvey Keitel, Jonathan Demme, Mike Nichols, Sherry Lansing and host Dave Chappelle.

Dreier’s office did not respond to several detailed requests by PAGE SIX for comment yesterday. DGA spokesman Morgan Rumpf said awards organizers had known for weeks that Dreier and Berman would likely be too busy with the end of the legislative session.

But another source claimed that Dreier was expected as recently as last week, when Doug Ireland’s bombshell L.A. Weekly story hit the stands. Ireland reported that Mike Rogers, a former development director for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, wrote on his blogactive.com that he had given Dreier the “Roy Cohn Award in recognition of 24 years of working against gay and lesbian rights while living as a gay man yourself.”

L.A. Weekly cited another blog, Raw Story, which interviewed Dreier’s former Democratic opponent. Dr. Janice Nelson said she knew during the 2000 campaign that Dreier was living with his chief of staff, Brad Smith. She said she came forward after learning that Hustler magazine was planning an expose on Dreier’s “secret gay life.”

Raw Story also reported that Smith’s $156,000 salary made him the highest-paid chief of staff to any House committee chair, just $400 less than White House Chief of Staff Andy Card.

In each of the three major polls that have been taken since the debate last night between Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush, Kerry appears the clear winner. He’s also received favorable reviews from both side of the aisle. Critics often saw Bush as being on the defensive, or reacting to Kerry’s attacks, generally the opposite of what Kerry and Bush have experienced on the campaign trail.

ABC News also reported that while Kerry was seen as the winner of the debate, few voters actually changed their minds about the candidates.

CNN / Gallup poll on who won debate

Kerry: 53
Bush: 37

CBS poll on whoe won debate

Kerry: 44
Bush: 26
Tie: 30

ABC poll on who won debate

Kerry: 45
Bush 36:
Tie: 17

Mort Kondracke: “This is the President’s turf, this is the place that the President is supposed to dominate, terror and the war in Iraq. I don’t think he really dominated tonight. I think Kerry looked like a commander-in-chief.”

Kate O’Beirne, National Review Online’s the Corner: “I thought the President was repetitive and reactive.”

Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online’s the Corner: “The Bush campaign miscalculated on having the first night be foreign policy night.”

Bob Schieffer: “The President was somewhat defensive in the beginning”

Mark Shields: “The President showed a few times obvious anger”

Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard: “I think Kerry did pretty well tonight, he was forceful and articulate.”

Bob Schieffer: “Kerry got off to a very good start.”

Joe Scarborough: “It was John Kerry’s best performance ever…As far as the debate goes, I don’t see how anybody could look at this debate and not score this a very clear win on points for John Kerry.” (MSNBC)

Andrea Mitchell: “This is the toughest we’ve ever seen John Kerry. He attacked the very core of the President’s popularity. He’s basically saying, who do you believe?” (MSNBC)

Tim Russert: “Tonight he seemed to find his voice for the Democratic view of the world.”

Fred Barnes on FNC: “Kerry did very well and we will have a Presidential race from here on out.”