Blackwater’s New Ethics Chief: John Ashcroft

Spencer Ackerman
May 4, 2011
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/blackwaters-new-ethics-chief-john-ashcroft/

The consortium in charge of restructuring the world’s most infamous private-security firm just added a new chief in charge of keeping the company on the straight and narrow. Yes, John Ashcroft, the former U.S. attorney general, is now an “independent director” of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater.

Ashcroft will head Xe’s new “subcommittee on governance,” its backers announced early Wednesday in a statement. The subcommittee is designed to “maximize governance, compliance and accountability” and “promote the highest degrees of ethics and professionalism within the private-security industry.”

In other words, no more shooting civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, no more signing for weapons its guards aren’t authorized to carry in war zones, no more impersonations of cartoon characters to acquire said weaponry, and no more ‘roids and coke on the job.

Ashcroft’s arrival at Xe is yet another clear signal it’s not giving up the quest for lucrative government security contracts now that it’s no longer owned by founder Erik Prince, even as it emphasizes the side of its business that trains law enforcement officers. In September, it won part of a $10 billion State Department contract to protect diplomats, starting with the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem.

Ashcroft, a U.S. senator before becoming attorney general in the Bush administration, is a very known quantity to the federal officials that Xe will pitch. Even if he’s not lobbying for Blackwater, Ashcroft’s addition on the board is meant to inspire confidence in government officials of its newfound rectitude.

To some, Ashcroft will be forever known as the face of Bush-era counterterrorism: the official who vigorously defended the Patriot Act’s sweeping surveillance powers; told civil libertarians that their dissents “only aid terrorists,” and covered up the Spirit of Justice’s boob. At the same time, when Ashcroft was critically ill in 2005, he resisted a White House mission to his hospital bed entreating him to reauthorize warrantless surveillance in defiance of the acting attorney general.

“This is a company with a strong history of service to its country, and a reputation of best-in-class offerings to its public and private customers,” Ashcroft said in a statement. “I look forward to helping USTC enhance its governance and oversight capabilities as the company moves forward,” referring to U.S. Training Center, another of Blackwater’s many names. Like scores of other senior security officials, Ashcroft has spent his post-government career running a Washington consulting firm.

Xe is still sorting out its leadership and searching for a permanent CEO. For now, the investor team that bought the company in December assembled and empowered a board of directors to run the shop along with the existing management. That board includes former National Security Agency director Bobby Ray Inman. Its chairman is Clear Channel co-founder Red McCombs.

Ashcroft and his new subcommittee will report to the board. “With the formation of this subcommittee, and with Ashcroft as its chair,” the firm says in the statement, “USTC aims to set the bar for industry standards against which all other companies will be measured.”

Why liberals should love the Second Amendment

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/4/881431/-Why-liberals-should-love-the-Second-Amendment

Why liberals should love the Second Amendment
by Kaili Joy Gray aka Angry Mouse
Sun Jul 04, 2010

Liberals love the Constitution.

Ask anyone on the street. They'll tell you the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a liberal organization. During the dark days of the Bush Administration, membership doubled because so many Americans feared increasing restrictions on their civil liberties. If you were to ask liberals to list their top five complaints about the Bush Administration, and they would invariably say the words "shredding" and "Constitution" in the same sentence. They might also add "Fourth Amendment" and "due process." It's possible they'll talk about "free speech zones" and "habeus corpus."

There's a good chance they will mention, probably in combination with several FCC-prohibited adjectives, former Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales.

And while liberals certainly do not argue for lawlessness, and will acknowledge the necessity of certain restrictions, it is generally understood that liberals fight to broadly interpret and expand our rights and to question the necessity and wisdom of any restrictions of them.

Liberals can quote legal precedent, news reports, and exhaustive studies. They can talk about the intentions of the Founders. They can argue at length against the tyranny of the government. And they will, almost without exception, conclude the necessity of respecting, and not restricting, civil liberties.

Except for one: the right to keep and bear arms.

When it comes to discussing the Second Amendment, liberals check rational thought at the door. They dismiss approximately 40% of American households that own one or more guns, and those who fight to protect the Second Amendment, as "gun nuts." They argue for greater restrictions. And they pursue these policies at the risk of alienating voters who might otherwise vote for Democrats.

And they do so in a way that is wholly inconsistent with their approach to all of our other civil liberties.

Those who fight against Second Amendment rights cite statistics about gun violence, as if such numbers are evidence enough that our rights should be restricted. But Chicago and Washington DC, the two cities from which came the most recent Supreme Court decisions on Second Amendment rights, had some of the most restrictive laws in the nation, and also some of the highest rates of violent crime. Clearly, such restrictions do not correlate with preventing crime.

So rather than continuing to fight for greater restrictions on Second Amendment rights, it is time for liberals to defend Second Amendment rights as vigorously as they fight to protect all of our other rights. Because it is by fighting to protect each right that we protect all rights.

And this is why:

(Reasons below the fold)
::
No. 1: The Bill of Rights protects individual rights.

If you've read the Bill of Rights -- and who among us hasn't? -- you will notice a phrase that appears in nearly all of them: "the people."

First Amendment:

...the right of the people peaceably to assemble

Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects...

Ninth Amendment:

...shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people

Tenth Amendment:

...are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Certainly, no good liberal would argue that any of these rights are collective rights, and not individual rights. We believe that the First Amendment is an individual right to criticize our government.

We would not condone a state-regulated news organization. We certainly would not condone state regulation of religion. We talk about "separation of church and state," although there is no mention of "separation of church and state" in the First Amendment.

But we know what they meant. The anti-Federalists refused to ratify the Constitution without a Bill of Rights; they intended for our rights to be interpreted expansively.

We believe the Founders intended for us to be able to say damn near anything we want, protest damn near anything we want, print damn near anything we want, and believe damn near anything we want. Individually, without the interference or regulation of government.

And yet, despite the recent Heller and McDonald decisions, liberals stumble at the idea of the Second Amendment as an individual right. They take the position that the Founders intended an entirely different meaning by the phrase "the right of the people" in the Second Amendment, even though they are so positively clear about what that phrase means in the First Amendment.

If we can agree that the First Amendment protects not only powerful organizations such as the New York Times or MSNBC, but also the individual commenter on the internet, the individual at the anti-war rally, the individual driving the car with the "Fuck Bush" bumper sticker, can we not also agree that the Second Amendment's use of "the people" has the same meaning?

But it's different! The Second Amendment is talking about the militia! If you want to "bear arms," join the National Guard!

Right?

Wrong.

The United States Militia Code:

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Aside from the fact that the National Guard did not exist in the 1700s, the term "militia" does not mean "National Guard," even today. The code clearly states that two classes comprise the militia: the National Guard and Naval Militia, and everyone else.

Everyone else. Individuals. The People.

The Founders well understood that the militia is the people, for it was not only the right but the obligation of all citizens to protect and preserve their liberty and to defend themselves from the tyranny of the government.

And fighting against the tyranny of the government is certainly a liberal value.

No. 2: We oppose restrictions to our civil liberties.

All of our rights, even the ones enumerated in the Bill of Rights, are restricted. You can't shout "Fire!" in a crowd. You can't threaten to kill the president. You can't publish someone else's words as your own. We have copyright laws and libel laws and slander laws. We have the FCC to regulate our radio and television content. We have plenty of restrictions on our First Amendment rights.

But we don't like them. We fight them. Any card-carrying member of the ACLU will tell you that while we might agree that certain restrictions are reasonable, we keep a close eye whenever anyone in government gets an itch to pass a new law that restricts our First Amendment rights. Or our Fourth. Or our Fifth, Sixth, or Eighth.

We complain about free speech zones. The whole country is supposed to be a free speech zone, after all. It says so right in the First Amendment.

But when it comes further restrictions on the manufacture, sale, or possession of firearms, liberals are not even silent; they are vociferously in favor of such restrictions.

Suddenly, overly broad restrictions are "reasonable." The Chicago and Washington D.C. bans on handguns -- all handguns -- is reasonable, even though the Supreme Court has now said otherwise.

Would we tolerate such a sweeping regulation of, say, the Thirteenth Amendment?

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

What if a member of Congress -- say, a Republican from a red state in the south -- were to introduce a bill that permits enslaving black women? Would we consider that reasonable? It's not like the law would enslave all people, or even all black people. Just the women. There's no mention of enslaving women in the Thirteenth Amendment. Clearly, when Lincoln wanted to free the slaves, he didn't intend to free all the slaves. And we restrict all the other Amendments, so obviously the Thirteenth Amendment is not supposed to be absolute. What's the big deal?

Except that such an argument is ridiculous, of course. Liberals would take to the streets, send angry letters to their representatives in Washington, organize marches, call progressive radio programs to quote, verbatim, the Thirteenth Amendment. Quite bluntly, although not literally, liberals would be up in arms.

And yet...A ban on all handguns seems reasonable to many liberals. Never mind that of 192 million firearms in America, 65 million -- about one third -- are handguns.

Such a narrow interpretation of this particular right is inconsistent with the otherwise broad interpretation of the Bill of Rights. And just as conservatives weaken their own arguments about protecting the Second Amendment when they will not fight as vigilantly for protecting all the others, so too do liberals weaken their arguments for civil liberties, when they pick and choose which civil liberties they deem worthy of defense.

No. 3: It doesn't matter that it's not 1776 anymore.

When the Founders drafted the Bill of Rights, they could not have imagined machine guns. Or armor-piercing bullets (which are not available to the public anyway, and are actually less lethal than conventional ammunition). Or handguns that hold 18 rounds. A drive-by shooting, back in 1776, would have been a guy on a horse with a musket.

Of course, they couldn't have imagined the internet, either. Or 24-hour cable news networks. Or talk radio. When they drafted the First Amendment, did they really mean to protect the rights of Bill O'Reilly to make incredibly stupid, and frequently inaccurate, statements for an entire hour, five nights a week?

Actually, yes. They did. Bill O'Reilly bilious ravings, and Keith Olbermann's Special Comments, and the insipid chatter of the entire cast of the Today show are, and were intended to be, protected by the First Amendment.

Liberals are supposed to understand that just because we don't agree with something doesn't mean it is not protected. At least when it comes to the First Amendment. And one's personal dislike of guns should be no better a reason for fighting against the Second Amendment than should one's personal dislike of Bill O'Reilly justify fighting against the First Amendment.

And yet, when discussing the Second Amendment, liberals become obtuse in their literalism. The Second Amendment does not protect the right to own all guns. Or all ammunition. It doesn't protect the right of the people as individuals.

Liberals will defend the right of Cindy Sheehan to wear an anti-war T-shirt, even though the First Amendment says nothing about T-shirts.

They will defend the rights of alleged terrorists to a public trial, even though the Founders certainly could not have imagined a world in which terrorists would plot to blow up building with airplanes.

But we do not quibble about the methods by which we practice our First Amendment rights because methodology is not the point. Red herring arguments about types of ammunition or magazine capacity or handguns versus rifles are just that -- red herrings. They distract us from the underlying purpose of that right -- to ensure a free society that can hold its government accountable. The Second Amendment is no more about guns than the First Amendment is about quill pens.

No. 4: It doesn't matter if you can use it.

Fine, you say. Have your big, scary guns. It's not like you actually stand a chance in fighting against the United States government. The Army has bigger, badder weapons than any private citizen. Your most deadly gun is no match for their tanks, their helicopters, their atom bombs. Maybe two hundred years ago, citizens stood a chance in a fight against government, but not today. The Second Amendment is obsolete.

Tell that to the Iraqi "insurgents" who are putting up a pretty good fight against our military might with fairly primitive weapons.

The Second Amendment is obsolete?

What other rights might be considered obsolete in today's day and age?

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

When was the last time a soldier showed up at your door and said, "I'll be staying with you for the indefinite future"?

It's probably been a while. But of course, were it to happen, you'd dust off your Third Amendment and say, "I don't think so, pal."

And you'd be right.

What about the Twenty-Sixth Amendment? How much use does that get?

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

We all know the youth vote is typically pretty abysmal. Those lazy kids can barely get out of bed before noon, let alone get themselves to the voting booth. If they're not going to use their Twenty-Sixth Amendment rights, shouldn't we just delete the damn thing altogether?

Hell no. And this is why liberals work so hard to get out and rock the vote -- to encourage citizens to exercise their rights. That is our obligation as citizens, to protect against the government infringing upon our rights by making full use of them.

And yet, when it comes to the Second Amendment, liberals do not fight to protect that right. Instead them demand more laws. Regulate, regulate, regulate -- until the Second Amendment is nearly regulated out of existence because no one needs to have a gun anyway.

And that, sadly, is the biggest mistake of all.

No. 5: The Second Amendment is about revolution.

In no other country, at no other time, has such a right existed. It is not the right to hunt. It is not the right to shoot at soda cans in an empty field. It is not even the right to shoot at a home invader in the middle of the night.

It is the right of revolution.

Let me say that again: It is the right of revolution.

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.

To alter or abolish the government. These are not mild words; they are powerful. They are revolutionary.

The Founders might never have imagined automatic weapons. But they probably also never imagined a total ban on handguns either.

We talk about the First Amendment as a unique and revolutionary concept -- that we have the right to criticize our government. Does it matter whether we do so while standing on a soapbox on the corner of the street or on a blog? No. Because the concept, not the methodology, is what matters.

And the Second Amendment is no different. It is not about how much ammunition is "excessive" or what types of guns are and are not permissible. Liberals cling to such minutia at the expense of understanding and appreciating the larger concept that underlies this right.

So.

What is the point? Is this a rallying cry for liberals to rush right out and purchase a gun? Absolutely not. Guns are dangerous when used by people who are not trained to use them, just as cars are dangerous when driven by people who have not been taught how to drive.

No, this is a rallying cry for the Bill of Rights -- for all of our rights.

This is an appeal to every liberal who says, "I just don't like guns."

This is an appeal to every liberal who says, "No one needs that much ammunition."

This is an appeal to every liberal who says, "That's not what the Founders meant."

This is an appeal to every liberal who supports the ACLU.

This is an appeal to every liberal who has complained about the Bush Administration's trading of our civil liberties for the illusion of greater security. (I believe I’ve seen a T-shirt or two about Benjamin Franklin’s thoughts on that.)

This is an appeal to every liberal who believes in fighting against the abuses of government, against the infringement of our civil liberties, and for the greater expansion of our rights.

This is an appeal to every liberal who never wants to lose another election to Republicans because they have successfully persuaded the voters that Democrats will not protect their Second Amendment rights.

This is an appeal to liberals, not merely to tolerate the Second Amendment, but to embrace it. To love it and defend it and guard it as carefully as you do all the others.

Because we are liberals. And fighting for our rights -- for all of our rights, for all people -- is what we do.

Because we are revolutionaries.

Report: Bush surveillance program was massive

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090710/ap_on_go_co/us_domestic_surveillance

Report: Bush surveillance program was massive
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer Pamela Hess, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jul 10, 2009

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.

The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the IGs pointedly say that any continued use of the secret programs must be "carefully monitored."

The report says too few relevant officials knew of the size and depth of the program, let alone signed off on it. They particularly criticize John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos undergirding the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says.

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the "President's Surveillance Program" did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the "mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile."

The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the government, but five former Bush administration officials refused to be questioned. They were Ashcroft, Yoo, former CIA Director George Tenet, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and David Addington, an aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to the report, Addington could personally decide who in the administration was "read into" — allowed access to — the classified program.

The only piece of the intelligence-gathering operation acknowledged by the Bush White House was the wiretapping-without-warrants effort. The administration admitted in 2005 that it had allowed the National Security Agency to intercept international communications that passed through U.S. cables without seeking court orders.

Although the report documents Bush administration policies, its fallout could be a problem for the Obama administration if it inherited any or all of the still-classified operations.

Bush started the warrantless wiretapping program under the authority of a secret court in 2006, and Congress authorized most of the intercepts in a 2008 electronic surveillance law. The fate of the remaining and still classified aspects of the wider surveillance program is not clear from the report.

The report's revelations came the same day that House Democrats said that CIA Director Leon Panetta had ordered one eight-year-old classified program shut down after learning lawmakers had never been apprised of its existence.

The IG report said that President Bush signed off on both the warrantless wiretapping and other top-secret operations shortly after Sept. 11 in a single presidential authorization. All the programs were periodically reauthorized, but except for the acknowledged wiretapping, they "remain highly classified."

The report says it's unclear how much valuable intelligence the program has yielded.

The report, mandated by Congress last year, was delivered to lawmakers Friday.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Ca., told The Associated Press she was shocked to learn of the existence of other classified programs beyond the warrantless wiretapping.

Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a terse reference to other classified programs during an August 2007 letter to Congress. But Harman said that when she had asked Gonzales two years earlier if the government was conducting any other undisclosed intelligence activities, he denied it.

"He looked me in the eye and said 'no,'" she said Friday.

Robert Bork Jr., Gonzales' spokesman, said, "It has clearly been determined that he did not intend to mislead anyone."

In the wake of the new report, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt, renewed his call Friday for a formal nonpartisan inquiry into the government's information-gathering programs.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden — the primary architect of the program_ told the report's authors that the surveillance was "extremely valuable" in preventing further al-Qaida attacks. Hayden said the operations amounted to an "early warning system" allowing top officials to make critical judgments and carefully allocate national security resources to counter threats.

Information gathered by the secret program played a limited role in the FBI's overall counterterrorism efforts, according to the report. Very few CIA analysts even knew about the program and therefore were unable to fully exploit it in their counterrorism work, the report said.

The report questioned the legal advice used by Bush to set up the program, pinpointing omissions and questionable legal memos written by Yoo, in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The Justice Department withdrew the memos years ago.

The report says Yoo's analysis approving the program ignored a law designed to restrict the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime, and did so without fully notifying Congress. And it said flaws in Yoo's memos later presented "a serious impediment" to recertifying the program.

Yoo insisted that the president's wiretapping program had only to comply with Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure — but the report said Yoo ignored the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, which had previously overseen federal national security surveillance.

"The notion that basically one person at the Justice Department, John Yoo, and Hayden and the vice president's office were running a program around the laws that Congress passed, including a reinterpretation of the Fourth Amendment, is mind boggling," Harman said.

House Democrats are pressing for legislation that would expand congressional access to secret intelligence briefings, but the White House has threatened to veto it.

Free John Walker Lindh

Robalini's Note: This may be the most important story of the year. Simply put, anyone who defends the continued jailing of John Walker Lindh has no reason to feign outrage over any of the Bush Team's war crimes of torture...

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/303

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh, Bush's and Cheney's First Torture Victim!
Fri, 04/24/2009

Enough is enough. It’s time to free John Walker Lindh, poster boy for George Bush’s, Dick Cheney’s and John Ashcroft’s “War on Terror,” and quite likely first victim of these men’s secret campaign of torture.

Lindh is in the seventh year of a 20-year sentence for “carrying a weapon” in Afghanistan and for “providing assistance” to an enemy of the United States. The first charge is ridiculously minor (after all, it’s what almost everyone in Texas does everyday). The second is actually a violation of a law intended for use against US companies that trade with proscribed countries on a government “no trade” list like Cuba or North Korea. Ordinarily, violation results in a fine for the executives involved.

As I wrote in an article in the Nation back in 2005 (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050214/lindorff), Lindh was put away for so long on these minor charges not because he was a traitor or terrorist, but because he was living proof, back at the time of his trial in 2002, that the US had begun, way back in late 2001, a program of brutal torture in the so-called “War on Terror.”

Lindh, in fact, was never really an enemy of the US. Son of middle-class white parents in suburban San Francisco, he had developed an interest in Islam which, following his graduation from high school, he decided to pursue by traveling to Pakistan. In 2001, still just 18, he began studying at a religious madressa. There he learned about the struggle of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan to free that nation of the influence of warlords who had collaborated with a brutal Soviet occupation. Attracted by what he saw as the nobility of that struggle, and with a youthful sense of adventure, Lindh volunteered. In August of 2001, at a time that Bush administration officials were negotiating about a possible oil pipeline deal with Afghanistan’s Taliban government, and talking about providing funds for a program to get farmers to shift away from opium cultivation to more useful cash crops—a time, that is, when the Taliban were not considered America’s enemy—Lindh crossed the border and started training to be a fighter.

A month later, of course, the World Trade Center in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington, were struck, and the US launched a war against both Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lindh, who was still just in training, found himself suddenly in the wilds of the Hindu Kush, with American planes bombing and with US Special Forces troops firing at him and his companions. Whether he wanted to be there or not, he was in no position at that point to change sides. You don’t just walk away from a group like the Taliban—especially if you are an American to begin with, and you’re deep in the bush.

Eventually, a malnourished, dehydrated, and wounded (in the leg) Lindh was taken prisoner along with a group of Taliban fighters by American forces.

At that point, when the Americans discovered they had an American amont their captives, Lindh’s situation worsened dramatically. Stripped naked and duct-taped, blindfolded, to a gurney, he was then placed inside an unheated metal shipping container. Left there for days in the cold and dark, Lindh was removed once daily and interrogated. His interrogators allegedly tortured him, as well as threatening him repeatedly with death. His pleas to see an attorney were mocked, and word that his parents had already arranged for representation was withheld from him (a situation that led a government lawyer involved in his case to protest and ultimately resign).

At some point during this abuse, Lindh caved in to his fears of death at the hands of his captors and signed a “confession” to being a traitor to America. At that point he was flown back to the US, where Attorney General Ashcroft touted him as the “American Taliban,” initially vowing to try him for treason (which carries a death sentence).

What changed things dramatically, as I reported in 2005, was a surprise decision by Federal District Judge T.S.Ellis (a Vietnam-era fighter pilot and Reagan appointee to the bench) to permit Lindh and his defense team—over strenuous government objections--to challenge that confession letter by introducing evidence that Lindh had signed it while being subjected to torture at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. The judge ruled that Lindh would be able to call witnesses from Guantanamo and from among the soldiers where he had been held in Afghanistan. Suddenly, the Justice Department, in the person of Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s criminal division and in charge of terrorism prosecutions, offered a one-day-only, take-it-or-leave-it a plea deal. Chertoff (acting with an alacrity that stands in marked contrast to his sluggish response time several years later when faced, as secretary of homeland security, with the Katrina disaster in New Orleans) offered to drop the serious charges in return for a guilty plea to the two minor charges, but only if—and this is the key—Lindh would cancel the scheduled evidentiary hearing into torture. Under the offered deal, Lindh was also required to sign a letter stating that he had “not been intentionally mistreated” by his American captors, and waiving any right to claim such mistreatment or torture any time in the future. Lindh agreed, but following sentencing, Chertoff also added a gag order, technically a “special administrative measure,” barring Lindh from even talking about his experience for the duration of his sentence.

It is now clear why Chertoff went to such hurried great lengths to completely silence Lindh. His wasn’t just the first trial in the “War on Terror.” Lindh was the first victim of the secret Bush/Cheney torture program.

Now that we have the trail of memoranda that set that wretched torture campaign in motion, it’s time for the Obama Justice Department to free Lindh. If President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder think Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens suffered from malicious prosecution and were willing to drop charges against him, they certainly should toss out the case against Lindh, who besides being innocent of the original serious charges leveled against him, was a victim of war crimes perpetrated by his own fellow Americans, and authorized by his own government. His arrest, conviction and sentencing are a travesty of justice, and perhaps, given that torture is a criminal offense in the US Code, even constitute a crime of cover-up. He should be the first witness in any official investigation by Congress or the attorney general’s office into the origins of the Bush/Cheney torture campaign.

Free John Walker Lindh!
__________________________
(Note: This article was offered to the Nation magazine, and rejected. It was also offered to Salon magazine, which never responded.)

Barry Bonds in Context

Folks – there is a shakeup at MSNBC and they are adding new programming at the 10 PM hour. If you think MSNBC could use a left wing sports commentator, please drop a quick note to letters@msnbc.com and tell them that a little Dave Z could go a long way.

In struggle and sports,

Dave Z

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090316/zirin

Barry Bonds in Context
Southpaw
By Dave Zirin
March 4, 2009

As he has done with countless pitchers over the last quarter-century, Barry Bonds made the Justice Department sweat, cower and blink. Faced with entering a court of law with a losing hand, the US Attorney's office in San Francisco has delayed the case of The US v. Barry Bonds indefinitely. Efforts to prove that the home-run king lied in grand jury testimony about his anabolic intake have for now been benched.

The prosecution will now start a lengthy appeal of Judge Susan Ilston's devastating pretrial dismissal of most of their case. It had wanted to submit reams of evidence seized from Bonds's trainer Greg Anderson, without having Anderson testify to its authenticity. Ilston refused to let them. This left the prosecution with nothing but scatological testimony from Bonds's ex-mistress that dwelled more on testicles than test results, so they chose to retreat and regroup.

The Justice Department wins 95 percent of the cases it brings to trial, and make no mistake: this case was about to become part of the other 5 percent. The only thing the Justice Department had in its favor is what it always has, unlimited time and funds, so it's rolling the dice in hopes that a three-judge panel rules against Ilston. It wants the wiretaps, the illegal search and seizures and the acts of intimidation against Anderson's family all to stand legally. This is frightening, but prosecutors will likely find themselves very disappointed. The page appears to be turning on the entire Bush era of outlaw justice, and Barry Bonds will likely benefit.

The case started when Attorney General John Ashcroft, the great champion of the Patriot Act, held a press conference in 2004 to announce that the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative was officially underway. Having the Attorney General convene a grand jury to look into steroid use was extreme overkill, but as commentators remarked at the time, it was a shot across the bow at Bonds. Most sports fans were very comfortable with seeing the despoiler of the national pastime get crushed. Bonds has had notoriously difficult relationships with the press, fans, teammates and management throughout his career. He is also black, which makes him an easier target. But the desire to see Bonds punished came at a terrible collective cost.

The Bonds case has always been about more than the sports media have chosen to dwell on. It's not about the scourge of anabolic steroids, or a surly, arrogant athlete getting his comeuppance. It isn't even about perjury. It's about how the Justice Department under Bush became untethered from the Bill of Rights.

This week, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has released a series of post-9/11 memos that chill the spine. As the Washington Post reported:

Justice Department appointee John Yoo argued that constitutional provisions ensuring free speech and barring warrantless searches could be disregarded by the president in wartime, allowing troops to storm a building if they suspected terrorists might be inside. In another, the department asserted that detainees could be transferred to countries known to commit human rights abuses so long as US officials did not intentionally seek their torture.

And as Michael Isikoff wrote in Newsweek:

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the US military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against US citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.

Bonds has been the most public victim of this frightening approach to law and justice. But while Americans followed the Bonds saga, and many cheered his professional demise, the real damage to civil liberties was being done. Shamefully underreported throughout the last decade were the stories of hundreds of Arabs and Muslims imprisoned and harassed through the Patriot Act, or the persecution of Sami Al Arian, or the hundreds of Maryland activists, who were spied upon for being environmentalists or anti-death penalty. They were all caught in the same net.

It is a very good thing that Holder is releasing these memos. But it's not enough. Repealing the Patriot Act is the best way to truly turn the page on a shameful era in the history of US law.

Still, the ruling of Judge Ilston and the backstepping of the San Francisco US Attorney's office is a good start. If they want to prove Bonds perjured himself, let's see if they can do it without torching the Bill of Rights in the process.

About Dave Zirin

Dave Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket) and the forthcoming A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press). and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated.com, New York Newsday and The Progressive. He is the host of XM Radio's Edge of Sports Radio.

Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.

The US v. Barry Bonds

The US v. Barry Bonds
By Dave Zirin

This is a story about garbage. There's the actual garbage overzealous federal investigators examined in their efforts to prosecute a surly sports celebrity. There's the shredding of the Bill of Rights, crudely ignored by the government in the name of obsession and ambition. Finally, there's the thorough trashing of people's reputations, not to mention the game of baseball. Welcome to The US v. Barry Bonds ; please disregard the stench.

The trial to prove that slugger Barry Bonds perjured himself in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) steroid investigation begins March 2. Yet after seven years of investigation, millions of dollars in work hours and countless ruined reputations, the US Attorney's Office will arrive in court with virtually no leg to stand on. Judge Susan Illston struck down most of the prosecution's case, a move ESPN legal expert Lester Munson called a "devastating" setback for prosecutors. The ruling was an indictment of not only the government's case but its entire approach toward Bonds from day one.

John Ashcroft's Justice Department always seemed irrationally determined to prosecute Bonds. It was as obsessive as the fisherman Santiago attempting to bring home the great marlin in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea . The embodiment of this obsession was IRS agent Jeff Novitzky. He broke open the BALCO case after spending a great deal of time, to the adulation of the press, literally sifting through the company's garbage and sewage.

Novitzky was given the green light by President Bush and Ashcroft to go for the jugular. In 2004, accompanied by eleven agents, he marched into Comprehensive Drug Testing, the nation's largest sports-drug testing company. Armed with a warrant to see the confidential drug tests of ten baseball players, he walked out with 4,000 supposedly sealed medical files, including every baseball player in the major leagues. As Jon Pessah wrote in ESPN magazine, "Three federal judges reviewed the raid. One asked, incredulously, if the Fourth Amendment had been repealed. Another, Susan Illston, who has presided over the BALCO trials, called Novitzky's actions a 'callous disregard' for constitutional rights. All three instructed him to return the records. Instead, Novitzky kept the evidence...."

It was a frightening abuse of power, all aimed at imprisoning a prominent African-American athlete. Yet despite the landfills of trash, the government's case always rested on a flimsy premise. Bonds's contention under oath was that anything illegal he may have ingested was without prior knowledge. The only person who could contradict Bonds was his trainer and longtime friend Greg Anderson. The government pressed Anderson to give testimony. He refused, citing a promise made by the feds that he wouldn't have to testify after pleading guilty to steroid distribution and money laundering in 2005. The feds stuck him in jail for thirteen months to soften him up, but he didn't crack.

Anderson has remained firm even though in January, twenty FBI and IRS agents raided the home of his mother-in-law and threatened to punish her for tax evasion if Anderson didn't spill. Similar threats have been made against his wife. Mark Geragos, Anderson's attorney, told Yahoo Sports, "It's such a blatant and transparent attempt to intimidate Greg. They're acting like the Gestapo. Even the mafia spares the women and children." Without Anderson, the state's case was always weak. But now itis on serious life support. Illston ruled most of Novitzky and the government's case inadmissible, for good reason.

The prosecution wanted to submit a surreptitiously recorded statement from Anderson as well as notations on what it calls his "drug calendar," even though he would not testify to authenticate any of the evidence. Illston, to her credit, said no dice and declared those items inadmissible. The government has raised the specter of jailing Anderson again, but Illston remarked in a "raised voice" that jailing someone twice for refusing to testify would be beyond the pale.

The government is hinting that it will appeal Illston's ruling, but that would indefinitely delay the trial. If the US Attorney's Office does continue the case, it has made clear its next line of offense: it will have Bonds's former mistress, Kimberly Bell, testify in detail about the alleged "shriveling" of Bonds's testicles. Jeff Novitzky should be proud.

It's way past time to say enough is enough.

Whether or not you are a Barry Bonds fan, or consider him to be just a step above a seal-clubbing, pit bull-fighting bank executive, every person of good conscience should be aghast at the way the Justice Department has gone about its business. Barry Bonds, Greg Anderson and maybe thousands of others have had their rights trampled on, all for the glory of a perjury case that looks to be going absolutely nowhere. Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama have strongly indicated that the government is getting out of the steroid monitoring business. That is welcome, but after so many years, so many tax dollars and so many reputations destroyed, it all feels positively Pyrrhic.

At the end of The Old Man and the Sea, when Santiago finally returns to shore, his 18-foot catch has been reduced to a skeleton. A crowd gathers to gawk and imagine what the magnificent marlin once was. Santiago completed his journey with nothing, but he felt purified for the battle and slept deeply and proudly. As we pick through the bones of Barry Bonds, I can't imagine Jeff Novitzky feels the same.

Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com .

a/k/a Tommy Chong

http://www.sacredcowstore.com/aka-tommy-chong.html

a/k/a Tommy Chong
Regular price: $24.99
Sale price: $19.95

a/k/a Tommy Chong chronicles the entrapment and incarceration of comedic legend Tommy Chong. Josh Gilbert's award winning documentary offers a sometimes frightening, often hilarious account of "Operation PipeDreams", a nationwide drug paraphernalia sting operation spearheaded by former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

FBI agents created “war crimes file”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/tort-m22.shtml

FBI agents created “war crimes file” documenting US torture
By Joe Kay
22 May 2008

FBI agents who witnessed the torture of detainees at the US prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba created what they called a “war crimes” file documenting what they had seen, according to a report released Tuesday by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

The file, initiated in 2002, was ordered shut down by higher-ups in 2003 and agents were told to stop keeping records of the illegal acts that they had seen. Nonetheless, the use of the term “war crimes” by the US government’s main domestic intelligence arm, an agency with its own long record of political repression, is an extraordinary confirmation of charges that have long been leveled by opponents of the Bush administration and the criminal practices it has carried out in the so-called “global war on terror.”

According to the OIG report, FBI agents objected to the use by the CIA and the US military of techniques that one FBI official called “borderline torture.” Some agents raised concerns within the agency, but these concerns were ignored or squelched by the White House.

The report is on the role of the FBI in observing or participating in abusive practices, and is based on a survey of several hundred FBI agents. It seeks to absolve the bureau and its agents of responsibility for the abuse.

Although it deliberately ignores the question of accountability, the 437-page report by Inspector General Glenn Fine makes clear once again that the policy of torture was approved at the highest levels.

Among the techniques used by the military and the CIA to which the FBI agents objected were: sleep deprivation; prolonged “short-shackling,” or the shackling of the hands and feet together; the use of dogs to terrorize detainees; humiliation, including tying a detainee to a leash and forcing him to perform tricks; and sexual humiliation, including enforced nudity and touching.

The military and CIA used these methods against prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. Many of these same torture techniques would become notorious when they were depicted in photographs involving prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Their replication makes it clear that the crimes in Abu Ghraib were not an aberration perpetrated by rouge prison guards, but rather a deliberate and planned implementation of methods designed to “break” detainees.

The FBI agents objected to the methods largely on the grounds that they would not provide “actionable intelligence.” They were also worried that the use of torture could undermine future trials and might cast the FBI and the US government in a bad light if they were publicly revealed.

According to the report, some FBI personnel began complaining to their supervisors as early as 2002. These complaints were reported to at least one meeting of the National Security Council at the White House in 2003. However, there was no change in policy and the torture continued.

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft reportedly questioned some of the methods, including to then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. However, Ashcroft refused to be interviewed by Fine, citing the confidentiality of the discussions.

It is hardly surprising that the FBI agents’ concerns were ignored, since the impetus behind the use of torture came from the White House itself. Beginning with the capture of alleged Al Qaeda members Mohammed Al-Qahtani in December 2001 and Abu Zubaydah in March 2002, top administration officials saw an opportunity to shred international law and employ torture more openly on the pretext of the “war on terror.” Administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, were closely involved in directing the details of the interrogations.

A report by ABC news last month found that top Bush administration officials participated in discussion about torture techniques that were so detailed that “some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed—down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.”

In part as a response to concerns within the CIA and military over legal accountability, the Justice Department itself issued at least two legal opinions in 2002 and 2003 that provided a pseudo-legal rationale for torture.

The focus of the OIG report is on military-controlled facilities between 2001 and 2004. The report has very limited information on the torture of prisoners at the hands of the CIA, as the CIA refused to cooperate with the investigation. According to the report, “we were unable to obtain highly classified information about CIA-controlled facilities, what occurred there, and what legal authorities governed their operations.”

The CIA also refused to allow the OIG to interview Abu Zubaydah. The White House has acknowledged that it used waterboarding on Zubaydah, among other methods. The CIA claimed that the inspector general had no pressing need to interview Zubaydah, and that he might provide false allegations against CIA agents.

The report’s section on the interrogation of Zubaydah seeks to exonerate FBI Special Agent Gibson, who has been accused of participating in the torture. An email written by an acquaintance of Gibson charged that Gibson “spoke openly and with much enthusiasm about the torturing of captured al-Qaeda terrorists [including Zubaydah], undisclosed locations and the brutal interrogation techniques by both CIA and FBI which Agent [Gibson] was involved.”

The interrogation of Zubaydah was initially in the hands of the FBI but was quickly taken over by the CIA. Much of the details in the report about the treatment of Zubaydah are redacted. It does note, however, “Gibson stated that the CIA personnel assured him that the procedures being used on Zubaydah had been approved ‘at the highest levels’ and that Gibson would not get in trouble” for participating.

The report cites an email from Spike Bowman, head of the national security law unit at the FBI, declaring in July 2003: “Beyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don’t know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these enemy prisoners of war,” referring to the treatment of Zubaydah.

Another section of the report deals with a facility in Iraq, the name and location of which is redacted along with large portions of the section. It notes that an FBI Agent, referred to as Ryan, worked at the facility in the spring and summer of 2004 and reported that “a military interrogator told him that detainees at the facility were confined in ‘inhumane conditions’ and were subjected to abusive interrogation techniques, including food, water, and sleep deprivation and ‘water interrogation.’”

“Water interrogation” is apparently a reference to “waterboarding,” which would indicate that this particular torture technique was more widely employed than the Bush administration has acknowledged.

A substantial section of the report is devoted to disputes between FBI agents and the military over the treatment of Mohammed Al-Qahtani at Guantánamo Bay in 2002. The report found that these disputes were ultimately resolved in favor of the more aggressive methods employed by the military, which was operating under the close supervision of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The brutal interrogation methods used on Al-Qahtani have been reported already—including the use of dogs, tying him to a chain and forcing him to perform dog tricks, and sexual humiliation.

The report details, however, the close interest of the military—including General Geoffrey Miller, who was then in charge of Guantánamo Bay and was later sent by Rumsfeld to Iraq—in the interrogation of Al-Qahtani. Citing an FBI agent, the report states that Miller used such terms as “relentless” and “sustained attack” to describe the way that he wanted Al-Qahtani to be treated.

The fact that several FBI agents protested strongly against the treatment of prisoners held by the military and CIA is an indication of how blatantly illegal this treatment was. They were clearly seen by some agents as “war crimes” for which the authors could ultimately be prosecuted.

In implementing this policy, the Bush administration systematically violated the most basic tenants of international and domestic law, including anti-torture statutes and the Geneva Conventions.

This policy has been known for years. Leading figures from both political parties were briefed on it from the very beginning. What is most remarkable is that not a single individual responsible for its implementation has been held accountable.

Tortured Logic

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/04/30/tortured-logic-scalia-torture-is-not-punishment/

Tortured Logic: Scalia Says ‘Torture’ Is Not Unconstitutional Because It Is Not ‘Punishment’
Jon Ponder Apr. 30, 2008

The meaning of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution could not be clearer:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

And yet, beginning in 2002, the most senior members of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Sec. of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft and others, met dozens of times to draft a set of torture guidelines for use by CIA interrogators. It’s no wonder that Jonathan Turley, a strong advocate of impeaching Pres. Clinton, called their actions a war crime and compared their sessions to a meeting of gangster Tony Soprano’s Bada Bing Club.

On “60 Minutes” Last Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia offered a new and, well, tortured rationale for the legality of what Bush has euphemistically called “advanced interrogation techniques”:

STAHL: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized, by a law enforcement person — if you listen to the expression “cruel and unusual punishment,” doesn’t that apply?

SCALIA: No. To the contrary. You think — Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.

STAHL: Well I think if you’re in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody–

SCALIA: And you say he’s punishing you? What’s he punishing you for? … When he’s hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn’t say he’s punishing you. What is he punishing you for?

As often happens, Keith Olbermann speaks for every sane American:

The second most senior associate justice on Mr. Bush‘s Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, on TV now repeating in essence what he said earlier, that torture is not really as the Constitution prohibits, cruel and unusual punishment…

So you can torture the innocent or not yet proved guilty but you can‘t punish the guilty with torture? You don‘t see any logical inconsistency in that idea? The concept of punishment being in and of itself, torture or vice versa, that isn’t very pretty obvious to you? You, still there, Justice buddy? OK. Not only do I want to see your diploma, now, I want to see your grade point average.

Media types and conservatives still deride Bill Clinton for saying in a deposition in a civil lawsuit a decade ago, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” And yet, here we have a Supreme Court justice playing semantics over the definition of torture — and the media has barely taken notice.

White House ‘Meeting of the Bada Bing Club’

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/04/12/turley-bush-torture-conspirators-like-a-meeting-of-the-bada-bing-club/

Turley: White House Torture Planning Was Like a ‘Meeting of the Bada Bing Club’
Jon Ponder Apr. 12, 2008
Suggests Cheney, Rice, Powell and Other White House Officials Committed War Crimes

In the 1990s, Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and constitutional expert, was a strong advocate for impeaching Pres. Bill Clinton because Clinton lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky while under oath in a deposition for a civil lawsuit.

The issue today is far more serious. According to ABC News, starting in 2002, senior Bush officials, including Vice President Cheney and Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice, who was then the national security adviser, were involved hands-on in drafting torture guidelines for the CIA. Because torture is illegal under U.S. and international law, Jonathan Turley says he believes the drafting of these guidelines was a war crime.

Late Friday afternoon, George Bush confirmed to ABC News that Cheney, Rice and the other officials — including then Sec. of State Colin Powell, then Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, then Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then CIA Director George Tenet and their aides — were working at his behest.

This new development — the president’s admission that he commissioned alleged war crimes — is being ignored in the media today (Saturday). It will be interesting to see if it makes it onto the Sunday political shows, including even ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous.”

The transcript for Turley’s “Countdown” interview follows:

OLBERMANN: What if the step-by-step and case-by-case details of the torture of detainees had been discussed at the highest levels of government, inside the White House? It might prove to be the core to unraveling an entire administration‘s policy on torture. It might even one day find its way into a trial of war criminals. In our third story on the COUNTDOWN, such meetings were regular occurrences in the Bush White House.

The group called itself the National Security Principals Committee. It held dozens of top-secret decisions in the White House. This according to an ABC News investigation, sourced with unnamed, high-ranking officials. The Principals included Vice President Dick Cheney, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of State Colin Powell, also the CIA Director at the time, George Tenet, and then Attorney General John Ashcroft, who according to a top official said, quote, why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.

The Principals signed off on exactly how the CIA would interrogate supposed top al Qaeda suspects and approved of combined techniques, including, but not limited to, water boarding. A choreography, if you will. Such meetings began in the spring of 2002, according to the ABC report, after the CIA had captured a top al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, who the CIA has since confirmed was one of the three al Qaeda suspects who were, indeed, water boarded.

All the Principals present approved at each discussion, reportedly, yet the CIA wanted the principals to sign off on each case, each time. When then director George Tenet sometimes made elaborate presentations, and that was even after a so-called golden shield was issued—that was in an August 2002 memo from the Justice Department giving formal legal authority to government interrogators to use enhanced interrogation techniques.

Let‘s turn now to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. Jon, good evening.

JONATHAN TURLEY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Hi, Keith.

OLBERMANN: If this is accurate or nearly accurate, what is the fullest interruption, as you see it, of what went on in those meetings?

TURLEY: This is one meeting of principal. They‘re not talking about the LE kind. What you have are a bunch of people talking about what is something that‘s a crime. For those of us who look at the criminal code and see torture for what it is, this is like a meeting of the Bada Bing club. These people are sitting around regularly talking about something defined as a crime.

Then you have John Ashcroft standing up and saying, maybe we shouldn‘t be talking about this at the White House. Well, obviously, that‘s quite disturbing. It shows that this was a program, not just some incident, not just someone going too far. It was a torture program, implemented by the United States of America and approved as the very highest level. And it goes right to the president‘s desk.

And it‘s notable that this group wanted to get lawyers to sign off on this, and they found those lawyers, people like Jay Buyby (ph), and John Yoo. And those people were handsomely rewarded. In Buyby‘s case, he became a federal judge after signing off on a rather grotesque memo that said that they could do everything short of causing organ failure or death.

OLBERMANN: The point that you made up—mentioned there that Attorney General Ashcroft said, why do this in the White House, why do it at such a high level; between the location and the resumes, you said it goes to President Bush‘s desk here. Is it the smoking gun that President Bush authorized torture by the United States of America?

TURLEY: We really don‘t have much of a question about the president‘s role here. He‘s never denied that he was fully informed of these measures. He, in fact, early on in his presidency—he seemed to brag that they were using harsh and tough methods. And I don‘t think there‘s any doubt that he was aware of this. The doubt is simply whether anybody cares enough to do anything about it.

OLBERMANN: The meetings, obviously, were not conducted to serve the purposes of historians or those of us who analyze this situation. It looks like it was 100 percent CYA. The question I have here, am I reading this right; did the lower-level interrogators, did the lower-level people in that food chain of principals, people like the director of the CIA, come out ranked a lot lower than, say, the vice president of United States in any kind of ceding of cabinet positions—were they there to protect themselves at the cost of the most powerful people in the nation? In other words, did they play these people? Did they—who was being protected here?

TURLEY: Well, you know, as a criminal defense attorney, we call meetings like this meetings of the designated defendant, because they are people who are signing off and will have to bear witness and bear responsibility. And here you have the CIA, which is basically saying, we‘re not going to have a repeat of the 1970s, where you guys have us go exploding cigars and trying to take out leaders and then you say you didn‘t know about it.

So the CIA has learned a lot. So these meetings certainly cover them in that respect. And they establish a rather clear record, that this was a program that was done with intention, knowingly done, and repeatedly a subject for meetings at the White House itself.

OLBERMANN: If there‘s a paper trail regarding this, John, is this—is this a war crimes trial waiting to happen somewhere some day?

TURLEY: It‘s always been a war crimes trial ready to happen. But Congress is like a convention of Claude Raines actors. Everyone‘s saying, we‘re shocked, shocked; there‘s torture being discussed in the White House. But no one is doing anything about it. So what we have is the need for someone to get off the theater and move to the actual in going and trying to investigate these crimes.

OLBERMANN: And all the attorneys talk about movie characters; they‘re all Burt Lancaster, the Ernst Janning character in “Judgment at Nuremberg,” all the people who authorized this. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University I‘ll save you a seat down front if we ever have this trial.

TURLEY: Thank you, Keith.

Topics: Impeachment, Worst President Ever, Torture

Tommy Chong

http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/tommy_chong

Tommy Chong
Interviewed by Brian Polk
January 30th, 2008

Tommy Chong is more of a rite of passage than a comedian. As half of the stoner-focused comedy duo Cheech & Chong—not to mention his role as burnout Leo Chingkwake in That '70s Show—he's given generations of high-school kids something to giggle at while experimenting with pot. But the Bush administration wasn't laughing four years ago, when former Attorney General John Ashcroft launched Operation Pipe Dream—which targeted, among companies, Chong's son's Nice Dreams Enterprises, which sold bongs across state lines. Although Chong wasn't an active owner of the company, he was sentenced to nine months in federal prison, as documented in Josh Gilbert's new documentary A/K/A Tommy Chong. While serving his time, he wrote his first book, The I Chong: Meditations From The Joint, a memoir and account of the bust. Now 69 years old and still smokin', Chong recently spoke with The A.V. Club about prison, the demonic nature of the War On Drugs, and performing stand-up with his wife Shelby.

The A.V. Club: It's hard to believe you served nine months in federal prison for selling bongs.

Tommy Chong: It was one of those defining moments in someone's career. You have to be careful what you ask for. I remember just before I got busted, I was saying to the guy that did the documentary, "You know, we need some kind of publicity gimmick." And then the next week, I got busted. [Laughs.] It was weird.

AVC: In The I Chong, you present yourself in a light that's very different from your stoner persona. If the Bush administration knew you were a family man who has a personal relationship with God, do you think they would have gone after you?

TC: Oh, yeah. These guys are really demons. You look at Cheney, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and Bush—if you saw them on Halloween, they wouldn't need a costume. You'd give them a treat and compliment them on what great-looking demons they were. They are demons. There's no doubt about it.

AVC: Why were you such a high priority for them?

TC: Because they're trivial. These guys were doing wrong, and they knew they were doing wrong. They knew they had no business going into Iraq. And for all we know, they have something to do with 9/11—maybe not physically doing it, but they knew it was coming. It was the only way they could grab the power they grabbed. Had it not been for 9/11, they would've never been elected the second time, for sure. As trivial as they are, they don't look at the big picture, ever. So when they saw the chance to take a stoner like me down—I'm like a right-wing wet dream. While I'm walking around touting the joys of pot-smoking, these guys are looking to put black and brown people in jail for life for just having possession of a joint. And I played right into their hands.

AVC: Do you think the raid deterred people from buying bongs and smoking pot?

TC: [Laughs.] No, not at all. That's never been their intent. They want to control the population. It's all about control with these guys: mind control, thought control. They're thought police. There's no end to it. They're exactly what the founders of the Constitution were talking about when they wrote the Constitution. They were saying, "We don't want these idiots to be able to do this." That's why Bush and the boys are doing their best to tear [the Constitution] up. You can't become a dictator through checks and balances.

AVC: Did your sentence inspire your political activism?

TC: Totally. Before that, I used to pride myself on being just a pot-smoker, a musician more than anything. Cheech and I used to call ourselves musicians; we never called ourselves comedians. We were musicians that were funny. I never gave a thought about the activism part of it. Marijuana and marching don't go good together. Marijuana and munching, maybe. But I've really evolved into quite a spokesman.

AVC: When you make appearances on talk shows, they don't seem to be expecting your vehement criticisms of the government. Is it frustrating when they imply you must be high to say things like that?

TC: [Laughs.] I love it when they say that. "Are you high right now, Tommy Chong? What are you thinking?" I am high, as a matter of fact. I stay as high as I can now. But I do have a plan for the country. It needs education. And there should be drug education—only they should teach people how to smoke pot, because even potheads don't know how to smoke pot. I intend to make that part of my lifestyle from now on. I've evolved into not only an activist, but an educator. I want to show people how, when, and why they should smoke pot.

AVC: How should they smoke pot?

TC: First of all, you have to be involved in the arts. If you're not a writer, actor, musician, poet, astronomer, athlete—people should only smoke pot who absolutely need to smoke pot. If you're a right-wing Republican, pot would hold you back. But if you feel you need to smoke pot, then you should smoke it.

AVC: How have the events of the last few years shaped your stand-up act? Are you more political?

TC: More spiritual. I think there's something very comedic about a pothead getting spiritual. [Laughs.] But awakening your spiritual side is really what artists do. When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world. The spirits whisper the ideas in your brain and prod you along. They're the ones that are really happy.

AVC: And you claim the demons in power are keeping people from experiencing their personal spirituality.

TC: That's the difference between religion and spirituality. Religion is run by thought police. "Obey. Listen. This is what you do. Don't ask questions. Go die for your country." The spirituality says, "Okay, you can die for your country, but know what you're doing while you're doing it."

AVC: Based on the reactions from talk-show hosts, mainstream America doesn't appear to be ready to embrace your message.

TC: Mainstream America will never be ready. Mainstream anybody. I look at the world like musicians do. Jazz, for instance, will never be mainstream, no matter how much a jazz person would like it to be. It's just like good literature—the average person will never read the great literature that's available. Only a handful of people will understand even a fraction of what I know now. But I don't care about mainstream people. I never have. There's no reason to.

AVC: How did you end up performing with your wife, Shelby?

TC: My wife started out introducing me onstage, and now she does 20-30 minutes on her own. She's really come into her own. Women come out to see her; they don't give a shit about me. That's the biggest compliment ever, though, because I help her write her stuff. When I had my wife onstage with me, I was told by a few comics, "What are you doing? What are you getting your wife out here for?" It makes them look like assholes. Their wives are going, "Tommy Chong's wife's working, why can't I?" That's really my biggest thrill—to see her evolve.

AVC: Are you two the new Cheech & Chong?

TC: We're coming into our own, Shelby and I, to the point where I don't get questioned about Cheech anymore. It was a sad but beautiful transition that's almost completed. Eventually, I'll do a show where I won't have to sign a Cheech & Chong album. I sign quite a few still. But Shelby and I are coming into our own, and that's the exciting part about comedy. If you catch an act just before they go mainstream, that's the best. After they hit the mainstream, everything gets watered down a little bit.

Govt. Looks for Leaker on Warrantless Wiretaps

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20121795/site/newsweek/

Govt. Looks for Leaker on Warrantless Wiretaps
Newsweek

Aug. 13, 2007 issue - The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer. The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")

A veteran federal prosecutor who left DOJ last year, Tamm worked at OIPR during a critical period in 2004 when senior Justice officials first strongly objected to the surveillance program. Those protests led to a crisis that March when, according to recent Senate testimony, then A.G. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign, prompting Bush to scale the program back. Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest.

The FBI raid on Tamm's home comes when Gonzales himself is facing criticism for allegedly misleading Congress by denying there had been "serious disagreement" within Justice about the surveillance program. The A.G. last week apologized for "creating confusion," but Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy said he is weighing asking Justice's inspector general to review Gonzales's testimony.

The raid also came while the White House and Congress were battling over expanding NSA wiretapping authority in order to plug purported "surveillance gaps." James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the raid was "amazing" and shows the administration's misplaced priorities: using FBI agents to track down leakers instead of processing intel warrants to close the gaps. A Justice spokesman declined to comment.

-Michael Isikoff

Randi Rhodes of Air America, No Holds Barred

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/interviews/063

Randi Rhodes of Air America, No Holds Barred
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 05/29/2007
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

I was a woman and in the Air Force. ... I ... understood that the reason why the American military is the proudest and the most fierce fighting force on the planet is because we feel like we’re doing a legitimate job for a legitimate government. When you look at why the Iraqis won’t fight, they don’t feel like they’re legitimate, and they don’t feel they’re fighting for a legitimate government. ... Plus, I can’t imagine being on foreign soil making thirteen hundred dollars a month, with a family at home, car payments and house payments and the whole nine yards, and serving next to a guy who’s getting eighty grand to pump gas. In my military experience, that can’t happen. You don’t serve alongside somebody who’s making eighty grand to put the gas in the vehicle. I put the gas in the plane. I put the jet fuel in the plane. I put the oxygen in the airplane. I can’t imagine having to serve with somebody who is making a fricking fortune and is on the payroll of the company, not the country. That screws up the entire camaraderie, the entire feeling that you are a legitimate fighting force. All of a sudden, you see it’s for profit, and you don’t feel legitimate anymore.

-- Randi Rhodes, Air America Radio Host

* * *

Yes, Randi Rhodes did serve in the military, so unlike Dick Cheney -- let's say -- she can tell you a thing or two about what it means to be in the Armed Forces.

Randi is the second interview in our series of conversations with progressive talk show hosts, because BuzzFlash is very supportive of making sure progressive radio succeeds. (By the way, there is nothing to read into the order that our interviews are posted. It is random, although we are interviewing some of the top-rated progressive hosts upfront.) Thom Hartmann was our first.

BuzzFlash, according to Randi, played a key role in getting her a national program. You see, way back when, we interviewed her about how the mainstream media wouldn't give a progressive radio host a chance to go country wide, even though she was an enormous success in the West Palm Beach, Florida, market. After the interview with BuzzFlash, she got a flurry of phone calls, which led to her contract with Air America -- and a move back to her native New York (although she is quick to point out that she was raised in Brooklyn, not Manhattan).

We listen to all of the progressive talk show hosts in this periodic BuzzFlash series of conversations. They each have their different styles.

Randi, as her fans know, gives an informed, passionate voice to the outrage felt by patriotic Americans who think the nation has lost its Constitutional anchor, and sailed far adrift of the vision formed in 1776.

As you will see in the interview, we don't think Randi is a flaming liberal at all. She's a gal from Brooklyn who just applies common sense and the facts to what she sees. And applying common sense to the blinded, destructive zealotry of the Bush cabal can infuriate a person.

You get the feeling that if George Bush had to spend five minutes alone in a room with Randi Rhodes, he'd end up wimpering in the corner and crying out for mercy.

* * *

BuzzFlash: First, I just want BuzzFlash readers to know what stations you’re on -- and at what times -- and where your show can be accessed on the Internet.

Randi Rhodes: I would say go to AirAmerica.com, or therandirhodesshow.com. And if you click on the left sidebar there, the affiliates come up.

BuzzFlash: And you can downstream it on Air America?

Randi Rhodes: AirAmerica.com, yes. You click on "Listen Live."

BuzzFlash: All the progressive talk show hosts whom we’re talking to have a different style. How do you describe your style?

Randi Rhodes: It’s fact-based scatological rants. The stuff is in my head because I read everything in the morning. And of course, all weekend long I’m watching C-span. So I have the facts. But it’s scatological. It just comes out. And one thing leads to another, and another, and another. Sometimes I don’t know how I got there, you know? I need to follow my own train of thought. And then, a caller can change the whole fricking show. Somebody calls in and they have something on their mind that is just like wild, or wildly wrong, or they fricking hate me. And it could change the whole direction of the show.

BuzzFlash: Let me ask a Barbara Walters question here. If we were at a bar, would it be the same Randi Rhodes that I hear on the air?

Randi Rhodes: Yeah, except drunk. Except drunk and really horny.

BuzzFlash: So it’s safe to say you represent the rage that a lot of people feel about what’s going on politically.

Randi Rhodes: I don’t even know that I’m raging. It's just beyond belief because -- people take the oath and then you hear like Gonzales lately, you just hear him lying his ass off. And you say, how come I see him walking out of there not in handcuffs? I mean, if you went into a courtroom and you told this crap, you’d be in handcuffs. Or you look at their tax returns, and they’re submitting their assets as somewhere between 20 million and 120 million. And you’re thinking to yourself, let me try that. I’m going to put on my tax returns that I made somewhere between $70,000 and 150,000. Let’s see if I can get away with that? And you just wonder how are they not in jail?

So it’s frustration, not really anger. I know sometimes I come off angry. I’m not really angry. I’m frustrated beyond belief. And sometimes I’m just plain sickened. Katrina was sickening. The Iraq war -- you just look at it and you just can’t believe it. Every day I look at the body counts and I hear them saying 60,000 Iraqis are dead. And The Lancet, the British medical journal, has got the number, oh, a little higher, at 655,000 or 650,000 if you want to be conservative. And I’m like: Why are they not in jail?

BuzzFlash: When I listen to your show, a lot of what you say is based on common sense. Bill O’Reilly would portray you as some liberal, Islamo-fascist lover. But I’m listening to it, and it’s common sense.

Randi Rhodes: Yes.

BuzzFlash: What sort of happened to common sense? Is that part of your frustration?

Randi Rhodes: I think people wanted to believe that the government, after 9/11, would never lie about what happened that day, because it was just too awful. And they wanted to believe that we were going to be protected and taken care of by this government. When they found out that it was all a lot of bulls**t, I think they just couldn’t believe it.

It was almost like people had been stunned. Like when a car is coming at you and instinct kicks in and, partly, it’s what you’ve been taught, an, partly, it’s what your body tells you to do. Some people innately know to fight. Some people innately know to flee. Some people just freeze. They just freeze. And it’s really no fault of their own. It’s just how they’re hard-wired. A lot of people froze. And a lot of people wanted to fight. And a lot of people just wanted to flee from the truth. I don’t think it’s really common sense. I think it’s like prayer -- like the insides dictated what they were going to do about this information that we were attacked by an unfamiliar country.

BuzzFlash: On a daily basis you bring up common-sense things about people. You'll say that this doesn’t make sense. Or it doesn’t pass the smell test.

Randi Rhodes: I was just brought up to question authority. I was. I was brought up to be curious, and to question authority. Of course, when you grow up in a neighborhood that’s rough, you find survival skills. Mine was if I was funny, I could live. So I just learned how to look at a situation and figure it out real quick, and know what my place in it was.

A lot of people haven’t figured out what their place in America is. They just don’t know where they belong. So they throw in with this side or that side, or they don’t. But nuance means figuring out where your place is, you know? A lot of people don’t want to do that. They just don’t want to figure it out. They talk a great game about being citizens, but they don’t really know what that means. When they find out it means that you have to pay attention, they’re like, no, that’s for somebody else. Their common sense tells them that the government will take care of it, that the President doesn’t lie, that the people who stand in the pulpit on Sunday are only asking for money so they could run a daycare center. Their common sense -- the way they were nurtured -- tells them one story, and the facts tell them another. And they can’t reconcile it, so they tend to just shut down.

BuzzFlash: Let’s take one for instance -- the infamous visit by then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and then Chief of Staff Andrew Card to the hospital room of then not-for-the-moment Attorney General John Ashcroft. It was about getting him to try to sign off on whatever Draconian domestic spying program Bush was involved with that we don’t know the nature of. We only know it was bad enough that John Ashcroft wouldn’t sign off on it. In the White House, Tony Snow said last week that, well, what’s the big deal? If you have an appendectomy, you still have a brain -- I believe that paraphrases his comment.

What common sense says is, we had two guys go here. The Acting Attorney General Comey indicates that Bush called to get Card and Gonzales in, because Ashcroft’s wife had put an FBI seal around the room. Comey calls Mueller, the head of the FBI. And they both race over to the hospital room, so there are witnesses to this encounter. Card and Gonzales were actually talking to Ashcroft, who did not have the legal authority to sign any papers, because Comey was officially serving as the Attorney General. So common sense would say, if you look at that situation, that this was an attempt to illegally procure from a man who is highly medicated, and whose wife felt he was in no condition to see anyone, and they were going to force him, in essence, to sign this document that he had originally and still objected to on Constitutional grounds. But he wasn’t even Attorney General at that moment because he was so ill. So Card and Gonzales were going to have to pre-date the document or something to make it legal. Yet the press hardly even picks up on this. This was like a Mafia job. Fortunately, Comey was able to get their fast enough, along with the head of the FBI, to prevent an illegal act from being carried out -- and Ashcroft was conscious enough not to sign the unConstitutional wiretapping authority for Bush.

Randi Rhodes: With Tony Snow, common sense says Tony Snow has colon cancer. That would be like me saying: oh, Tony, why are you whining because you have an enlarged prostate? That’s how it minimizes the condition that Ashcroft was in. So that was insulting right there. And common sense would tell you that a guy who is fighting cancer currently -- colon cancer -- would not want you to say: oh, Tony, stop whining. It’s an enlarged prostate, you know? That’s number one. Number two, the idea of going in there when Ashcroft was was just out of surgery, the sixth day of intensive care, with pancreatitis on top of the removed gall bladder 24 hours earlier -- to make it real simple for people, it’s like doing a tattoo when you’re drunk versus forcing your friend to get tattooed while you are drunk. It doesn’t happen. How does it happen that the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States and the counsel to the President of the United States go into an Attorney General who’s recused himself and passed power to a subordinate -- and they say you are going to sign off on this because we can’t find anybody else to. And we know that you think it’s illegal, but you’re compromised now, so we’re taking advantage of you. It’s crazy.

BuzzFlash: A key point we keep pointing out on BuzzFlash, because we really haven’t seen it pointed out much elsewhere at all, is that Ashcroft -- who was apparently lucid enough to recognize this -- did not have any legal authority at that time. He had turned the Attorney General’s position over to Comey, who was the Acting Attorney General. So even if Ashcroft had signed it, technically it would not be a legal document.

Randi Rhodes: There’s a lot of law that needs to be brought out in that scenario. First is that, yes, he had passed power to Comey, so he wasn’t legitimately able to sign anything as the Attorney General of the United States. He had said I’m not the Attorney General -- there’s the Attorney General [pointing to Comey].

BuzzFlash: He told this to Card and Gonzales in the hospital room with the head of the FBI and Comey there as witnesses.

Randi Rhodes: Right. Second thing is, they’re discussing issues of national security -- something so secret that, to this day, because of national security, we don’t know what was in that program. We don’t know what was in the warrantless wiretapping program. Arlen Spector was asked on "Meet the Press," does he know what was in it? And he said, “No, no, I don’t know what was in it.” It’s so secret that no one knows what’s in it. So that’s the second. The counsel to the President of the United States is well aware of where issues of national security need to be discussed, and that, of course, is in a protected environment -- either the Oval Office or a secret situation hearing room. They’re not supposed to be talking about issues of national security in a public place, which a hospital is.

And, Comey keeps his mouth shut until this testimony, right? He keeps his job, too. He threatened to resign, but he doesn’t. Ashcroft threatens to resign, but doesn’t until after the election. The real hero, believe it or not, is Mrs. Ashcroft, who knows to call Comey. She knows to call. She knows why they’re coming. And she knows that they’re trying to take advantage of her husband, who is not the Attorney General at that moment, and who is in excruciating pain, and is fresh out of surgery, and is in his sixth day in intensive care. She knows that he’s not supposed to have phone calls from the White House. She knows that the orders were no visitors. She calls Comey. She’s the hero in this story, as unlikely a hero as you might think. Mrs. Ashcroft is the one who actually sent up the red flag.

America is desperate to hear the truth. Comey kept his job, did not resign, he knew about this when the wiretapping program was reauthorized without anybody in Justice signing off on it. Finally, he is called to testify under oath, and only then he tells us the bad news. So it’s interesting who gets to be a hero in this country, simply for telling a truth that should have been told, you know, in 2003.

BuzzFlash: That’s an example of where you apply common sense. You come in as an outside observer, and you ask the questions. What’s going on here? There’s an ill man. His wife has said no one should come in. Yet they try to muscle in on an extremely ill man into signing a document that he has determined prior to that, and they know it, not to be legal. Common sense, to us and to you, is just, well, this is an enforcement kind of hit man activity going on, not a respectable Administration.

Randi Rhodes: It’s way beyond Mafia. This is almost Abu Ghraib stuff, where you take advantage of a guy with a tube, you know?

BuzzFlash: We should recall before we move on that the intention was that only Gonzales and Card would have been in the room with Ashcroft. And no one would have known what had gone on except for the fact that Mrs. Ashcroft alerted Comey, and he then got Mueller to come down with him to witness this and stifle their efforts.

Randi Rhodes: That’s why Mrs. Ashcroft gets props for knowing that something was wrong with that. I don’t know what she knew, but she knew something was wrong with that scenario.

BuzzFlash: Let’s get back to your kind of radio personality and style. You’ve got a comic edge to you. You're very open about yourself, and self-deprecatory. You tell wonderfully comic anecdotes. Where does that side of you come from? And do you think ahead about how to integrate these comic elements into your program, or do they just sort of emerge?

Randi Rhodes: Like I say, it’s scatological, fact-based chaos in my head. Yes, I give thought to it -- to how I can make it accessible. I mean, you watch C-Span and suddenly your eyes glaze over. But I sit there and go: ooh, good TV. So I have got to make it accessible, and entertaining.

Maybe it just comes easy because I really want people to know. I really want them to wrap their brains around it. And why should it be work? Everybody’s got a job. So my job is to do it so that you can see how simple it all is. There’s no reason you can’t make this understandable to somebody with a little bit of comedy. I can say, I’ve gotten drunk and gotten tattooed, but I don’t remember taking my mother with me. Or when someone says things like obesity is a disease, I might say, well, what’s the disease? Is it everything tastes good? Is that a disease now? An idea gets elevated into the political discourse, and it becomes almost unrecognizable, when it’s really very basic stuff, like obesity as a disease. I’m like, well, what is the disease? You can’t stop eating fries? If government is going to decide a lot of things about your life, and if it can come from me, then people might understand how stupid it all is -- that this is what they’re concentrated on.

BuzzFlash: You don’t have any compunction talking about yourself or some comic situations you’ve been in -- involving girdles, for instance.

Randi Rhodes: Believe me, I’m picking and choosing what I’m going to share with you. I’m not telling you everything. All talk show hosts pick and choose.

BuzzFlash: Obviously you enjoy your program. It's not just, sort of like, oh, I’m glad when I’m going to be able to retire. What would you be doing if you weren’t doing radio? That’s my Barbara Walters second question.

Randi Rhodes: I told you. I’m serious as a heart attack about this. Right now, it sounds ridiculous, I know. But I’m a woman, first and foremost. And I got to tell you that the idea of girdles and making them gorgeous, and helping women smooth out underneath those dress -- I want to do that so bad!

BuzzFlash: Well, you’re in New York. The garment district is there.

Randi Rhodes: I have been trying so hard to find out how you get things manufactured, because I really want to do it. And I won’t be happy until I’m on QVC. That is really what I want to do. I know -- everybody laughs. A girl’s got to have a dream, and that’s mine.

BuzzFlash: You aren’t living your dream? Because it certainly seems like you’re living your dream.

Randi Rhodes: Well, I’m lucky. I wanted to do this more than anything -- for a really long time. And then I started doing it, and, you know, you helped me. You know that you did at the beginning. I was sitting in the 47th market in the country. My God, it was like, I’m defending this program ‘til my fricking spleen came out of my nose, and nobody cared. It was a tiny little place.

I was very happy there, though. I had a wonderful, wonderful situation and I had great people. I worked there for a long time. Had friends at work that were just irreplaceable. Had a family, a house. My kid was young. Things were good. But when she got accepted into college, then I realized I could focus on my career again. And I wanted to be national more than anything. And you guys totally helped put me on the radar screen to the point where people said, oh, who’s this girl? So I got the shot and made the most of it. But now that I’m doing that -- you got to have another dream, and you’ve got to keep dreaming and dreaming big. So girdles are huge now. I’m serious -- I really want to do this. You’ll laugh. But when everybody’s wearing Randi Wear, you’ll say, oh, my God! When I’m on Oprah, and she’s declaring me the manufacturer of the best -- I mean, she does bra shows -- Oprah’s obsessed with this, too.

I will never be on Oprah for my politics, because she doesn’t do politics. We’ll be on Oprah for body wear, for shape wear.

BuzzFlash: From my Mom, who shops at QVC and sends us automatic sealers and many other things -- I’m expecting a supply of Randi Rhodes girdles. What I will do with them, I don’t know.

Randi Rhodes: I want to do this. That’s my next thing.

BuzzFlash: Okay, but now while you’re on this show, you’ve got this audience. I just feel, listening to you, that you are totally into this.

Randi Rhodes: I am into the show. But the situation I’m in is a difficult one. It’s the most difficult one that I’ve ever been in. The three hours I’m on are mine, and I protect the content from any interference so I can do with it what I want. Nobody has input into the show at all as far as management or owners or whatever. But it’s been a really, really difficult three years.

BuzzFlash: Nonetheless, you are gaining market share.

Randi Rhodes: I’m number one in New York City. But people don’t know how radio ratings work. We can’t tell people how to vote for us, which always just amused me. It’s like, let’s have an election and not tell anybody how to vote. That’s something that makes radio a frustrating enterprise.

But in New York, I’m number one in this crowded radio market, in time spent listening, which is my job. A host’s job time you keep them listening to you. Are you compelling? If you’re interesting or if you’re funny, can you keep them listening to you through the commercials for the longest period of time possible? I’m number one in time spent listening in New York City, but I’m number 33 in how many people are listening to. That’s the company’s job. The company’s job is to market it, and to bring the people in. Your job is to entertain them once they’re in the seats. I’m succeeding at my job.

BuzzFlash: Well, and deservedly so. Technically, how do you decide when to break -- how to build up to a break and get people to keep listening through the break?

Randi Rhodes: Well, I have some fundamental problems with doing radio that I will always have. When I throw in with you, I’m really throwing in with you to have a conversation with you. I swear to God, when people meet me, they shake. Now it’s really overwhelming, because I’m nervous anyway. I get very star-struck, and I shake when I meet famous people. I wish I could be at ease, but I’m one of those babbling idiots that doesn’t know what to say. I shake and sweat. So when people do it when they meet me, it makes me feel like I have to help them, because I know how that feels.

So I don’t know how to move on and walk away, and meet the next person. And it’s the same thing on the radio. I don’t know how to take the break. I never did. I don’t tease the next segment properly -- tease what you have coming up, promote your guests, give the phone number. I have a hard time giving out the phone number because my mother raised me that a grown woman does not give out her number, and that’s engrained in me. It’s amazing. I succeed in spite of myself. It’s really weird. I break all the rules. I don’t know how I do it.

BuzzFlash: That reminds me of Eric Bogosian in the film, Talk Radio. He did a tremendous job conveying the sense of intimacy that radio involves. Without the visual element that you have on television, it’s the person’s voice, and your trust in that person’s voice, and your relationship with them that carries the program.

Randi Rhodes: Right.

BuzzFlash: So if they’re listening, if they’re a Randi Rhodes fan -- they’re feeling a trust in you and a comfort level with you that they can follow you on your path and your journey, particularly because of the nature of your show. And radio is an intimate medium.

Randi Rhodes: It is. Because you’re almost always talking to one person. You know, listening to talk radio is a very solitary experience. You’re alone in your car or you’re in your house late at night. It’s a real one-on-one thing. That’s why I look at it as meeting somebody or a conversation with them. But it also has anonymity. The more public I become, the less I have anonymity, but I still have some. And people can’t see what I’m gesturing to my producer to do, or when I’m rolling my eyes at a caller, or writing down something so that I can revisit what they said. They can’t see what you’re doing. And you can’t see them. And half the time, they don’ use their real name. It’s almost like going on an Internet dating site. You’re posting a picture that’s thirty years old. It’s all a big surprise when you finally meet.

But with television you’re watching with somebody else -- your kids, your husband, your wife. You watch sports in a group. Radio is a more solitary thing. But I will say, the power of radio is that it gets under your skin, it gets in your soul. The power of TV is the visuals get in your head, and it’s the same thing with the government. People trust TV entirely too much. They think that the news media is credible, and that they’ll never lie, they’ll never distort, they’ll never put something on the TV that isn't 100% untrue, like there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s reconstituted nuclear weapons. They just can’t believe it would be on TV and be that untrue.

And I don’t get that. I don’t know why people aren’t more skeptical of the media that they ingest, whether it’s radio or TV. And I’m always telling people: I know what company I keep on talk radio. Don’t believe a word you hear, including me. Don’t believe me. Go look it up. And I provide the links that I relied on to make that show. I tell them, you've got homework. If they go to read one article, read this one.

BuzzFlash: Let's talk about how you handle callers. I would say, if I can, that you don’t suffer fools gladly.

Randi Rhodes: No.

BuzzFlash: Sometimes someone is calling you, and there’s a pause. Are you basically saying, so what’s your point?

Randi Rhodes: Like I said, people don’t have to show themselves or use their real names. So sometimes they take the opportunity to tell me their personal story, or to get caught up in minutia, or to argue based on somebody else’s talking point, or something somebody said which is wholly untrue. And there are people who get the facts wrong. As long as they’re asking the question -- is this right? -- I have no problem with them. But when they’re insisting that they’re right, it drives me crazy. Like I said, I don’t think it’s anger as much as frustration.

The other day, I got something wrong, and a woman called me up. In a very easy-to-follow, easy-to-research manner, she told me how I was getting it wrong. And I said to her, “I didn’t know that. This is a good day. I learned something.” So I don’t care if I’m wrong. I just care when people are wrong and insist that they’re not. I can’t take it.

BuzzFlash: How do you end a call?

Randi Rhodes: If I have to hang up on someone, I do it in an obvious way -- like, no, I will not have this on my show. Or, I make it clear that you don’t start a conversation with an insult, because you’re not going to last very long. I will tell them that and hang up on them.

Unfortunately, in national radio, there are hard breaks, which means the computer is going to cut you off, and there is nothing you can do about it. And it’s so specific. It’s like at 27 minutes and 40 seconds, you’re getting cut off. And it happens again at 57 minutes -- I think 57 minutes and 10 seconds, you’re getting cut off. So sometimes, I have to let somebody go as soon as they finish their point, and I have to drop the call and finish it up so I can do a time check or whatever. It’s one of the things I don’t like about being on a national feed. You've got to break at certain times, and everybody has to be on the same page, so there’s no wiggle room.

BuzzFlash: I recall a few months ago -- I think this was a day when some birdbrain proposed that people who are of the Islamic faith go in separate lines at airports for security. You had two or three callers who actually supported this idea. And you were becoming more frustrated and upset with each caller.

Randi Rhodes: Well, what do you want to do? Do you want people to drop their drawers and see if they’re circumcised or not?

BuzzFlash: A woman called in, and she was just as hot as blazing nails about this. You know -- Randi, I know people who died in 9/11 and so on. And you just kept coming back to the question. Well, but how would you know? As a practical matter -- we’re talking common sense again. I mean, even if you accepted this very racist sort of approach, how would you enforce it?

Randi Rhodes: Syrians have red hair and green eyes. Indonesians are Asian-looking -- and Malaysians, too. It’s one of the largest religions in the world. There are people who think every Muslim is Arab. It’s just not true, and it plays into the stereotype. But, you know, the Bush Administration is very keen on having your think that Muslims look the same. I don’t get it. I don’t understand.

BuzzFlash: And only Muslims are terrorists. And that most of them are risky.

Randi Rhodes: How do you know who is and who is not Islamic? Why do you think that the only terrorists on this planet are Islamic? Does anybody in America know about Northern Ireland?

BuzzFlash: The feeling that I get in listening to a call like that, the one that I’m recalling, is that this woman just believed they’re going to kill all of us. She was just a totally unhinged. When people have a real strong opinion, and they’re kind of slugging it out, how are you feeling in a moment like that?

Randi Rhodes: Frustrated. The frustration with a call like that is, how can you possibly have lived through 9/11 and still be so ignorant? How can you just sit there and think that there’s no reason that we were attacked, but that they hate us for our freedoms? Does anybody realize the kind of crap we pulled in the Arab countries? Does anybody understand what's happened in our recent history?

I mean, when 15 hijackers were flying into the World Trade Center, we weren’t in Iraq. We were in Saudi Arabia. I don’t understand how people don’t think -- they hear a sound bite, and it sounds good enough for them. We’re talking about the largest attack on American soil since the Civil War -- to me, not knowing the facts is just a stunning thing.

BuzzFlash: Let me ask how your service in the military, which you occasionally speak about, reflects or relates to your empathy for what is happening to our service people in Iraq, and how the Bush Administration is betraying them by under equipping them, underpaying them.

Randi Rhodes: Well, I never fought. I wasn’t asked to fight. I was a woman and in the Air Force. We’re not usually ground-pounders. So it’s limited. I can’t speak for everyone who joins the military, but I can speak for a lot of people that joined. People like me join because there was no future. There was no college ahead. There was no great job. In my case, my father said, “You know, you’re smart and you’re not pretty. Men don’t like that. You’re not going to marry well. You need to get a job.”

And women’s jobs -- it was secretarial work. That was all I could get. So I drove over to Fort Hamilton and signed up for the Air Force. I thought, if I have to go to war, I’ll be in an airplane. I’ll probably be taking the dead people out -- that kind of thing. So I understand why some people enlist. I understand why they join, and why they’re willing to surrender their civil rights -- because you do. You literally surrender your civil rights. You can’t question authority. You will wear the same clothes. Your buttons will all be in a row. You will make your bed, and get dressed, and be downstairs in two minutes flat. You will stand at attention. You’ll salute garbage cans. I understand what it is to be brainwashed. I understood I was being brainwashed.

I understood why I was being brainwashed, which most people don’t. But I understood that I had to fold my t-shirts in little four-inch squares because, God forbid, one day I had to pack a parachute, I’d have to really be a good folder. I understood it was paying attention to detail. I understood that you were only as good as the weakest among you because that person could get you killed. I understood why I was going through it, and what they were trying to teach me.

But I also understood that the reason why the American military is the proudest and the most fierce fighting force on the planet is because we feel like we’re doing a legitimate job for a legitimate government. When you look at why the Iraqis won’t fight, they don’t feel like they’re legitimate, and they don’t feel they’re fighting for a legitimate government. So it helps me understand the problems. It helps me understand the underfunding of the troops -- that they’re not giving them the best equipment in the world. They’re not giving them what they need to do their job. I understand because I was in the Air Force. And if they give you a sick plane, you could die. If the plane wasn’t fixed by a mechanic who knew what he was doing, you could die. When they are giving them substandard vehicles -- they’re dying. So I have insight into it in that way.

BuzzFlash: You’ve expressed on your show the sense of betrayal.

Randi Rhodes: Oh, there’s insidious betrayal. Plus, I can’t imagine being on foreign soil making thirteen hundred dollars a month, with a family at home, car payments and house payments and the whole nine yards, and serving next to a guy who’s getting eighty grand to pump gas. In my military experience, that can’t happen. You don’t serve alongside somebody who’s making eighty grand to put the gas in the vehicle. I put the gas in the plane. I put the jet fuel in the plane. I put the oxygen in the airplane. I can’t imagine having to serve with somebody who is making a fricking fortune and is on the payroll of the company, not the country. That screws up the entire camaraderie, the entire feeling that you are a legitimate fighting force. All of a sudden, you see it’s for profit, and you don’t feel legitimate anymore.

BuzzFlash: Well, it is, to a great extent, a war for profit. Much of the hundreds of billions has gone to the private contractors.

Randi Rhodes: When people of good faith and common sense call me and say why don’t we cut off the money for the contractors, they’re absolutely right. I went up to the Senate -- I get to talk to the senators every once in awhile privately -- just the Democrats and me -- or a couple talk-show hosts and the Democrats only. And I posed this question: Why don’t you just cut off the money to the contractors? This war will end tomorrow. The President will stop it tomorrow if there’s no profit in it. And you get this look, like you don’t understand how politics works. This is why they don’t want to come on my show, too.

Because if I interview -- like today, there’s a canned interview with John Kerry. I was trying to be nonconfrontational, because I was under orders not to be confrontational with these canned interviews, which really just blew my mind. So I asked him in a nonconfrontational way: What regrets do you have from the 2004 election. I was thinking and hoping that, with all this information about the U.S. attorneys and that it was all for election rigging, and to make sure swing states swung in the right direction, you know, he would have an opinion. When I asked him that, he said, “I don’t look backwards. I only look forward.” And you can hear that I wanted to start something,, but I was in the room with somebody who was like shaking their head no -- don’t go there. It really cast a shadow over this what I do and what I do best.

I understand that that limits my access to senators. But why do I want to waste my listeners’ time with a senator -- and it’s typically the senators, not the congressmen -- the House is much more open and honest and upfront. I can only conclude it’s because they don’t need as much money to run as senators do. But they don’t want to talk about anything, so why do I want to waste my time talking to them? I’d rather not waste my listeners’ time with interviewing somebody who’s going to talk in sound bites.

He literally says to me, “I don’t look backwards. I look forwards. I’m thinking today about global warming and this war in Iraq.” And I’m like: this is bulls**t, you know? If you don’t look at 2004, it’s going to happen in 2008. I don’t get it. I mean, I do get it. I understand what that is. But why do we let them get away with it? Why are the people who are in control of interviewing these politicians agreeing to these ground rules? They say, oh, she won’t be confrontational with you -- she’s not going to press you. What the hell’s that?

BuzzFlash: You occasionally have a mutual colleague who we also love, Greg Palast, on your show. What do you find so interesting about Greg? We certainly find him to be invaluable.

Randi Rhodes: I love him that he doesn’t stay in the Beltway. He does not stay there. He lives in New York. He’s a BBC reporter. When I first talked to him, it was years ago. It was probably when I first talked to you. It was like right around 2000, after the election. Greg was the only guy who knew what happened to us in West Palm.

I voted in Palm Beach County, and I remember that day. I’ll never forget that day. I went and I voted. I came back, and was a known, trusted person in the community. I came back and the first thing I said was something’s wrong. I had trouble voting today. What the hell were those punch cards? I couldn’t figure out who I voted for. The phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree, one after the other, after the other. And then the voters spoke up -- the people who were suppressed from voting. And then the stories about they never got the registration card. And the stories about the polling ... And I didn’t understand the story. It was a big, big, huge, detailed multi-faceted voter suppression story that had so many angles. They thought of everything.

And I just remember the weeks leading up to the actual vote -- the news media said it’s all going to come down to Palm Beach County. I kept thinking: Why Palm Beach County? I knew I was in a special place, but I didn’t know why. And then I went and voted. So then I called the first person. I called Joe Lieberman's office, because I had interviewed his wife Hadassah. I was at a level of broadcasting where you didn’t get to talk to the candidates, but you could talk to their wives, grudgingly. Hadassah was on my show complaining about the Port-A-Potties on the campaign trail. She hated them. And she hated campaigning, and she hated the bus, and she hated the Port-A-Potties. And so I had their number. My producer had their number, and it was a cell phone. So I said, get me Joe Lieberman. Call his wife, because we have her cell phone. And get me Joe Lieberman now, because they’re about to lose this election, and it’s going to be for nefarious reasons.

I get him on the air and he says, “Oh, it’s all going to be fine. Everything’s fine.” And of course, it wasn’t fine. And at one o’clock in the morning they switched who got what. And it was just so bizarre. And I couldn’t figure out the story. I tried and tried and tried. And I looked everywhere. And I became a Florida State election law maven. And I thought, you know, the contest period, and the protest period -- and then I came across Palast on the BBC because I was reading BuzzFlash.

I found him. I called him up. I talked to him. And he told me, "You don’t know what happened to you?" And I said no. And he started telling me what happened. I put him on the air. And I remember the first time I ever heard his voice -- I thought he’d be British like everybody there, right? He said, no, I have to come here [to Britain] to report the truth. [Palast now lives in New York.] And I realized we are in for a really strange time. This Bush Administration thing is going to be a really strange time. So he was my lifeline. He was like my umbilical cord, really. He kept me breathing. He says he had information that no American hears.

BuzzFlash: And he’s a statistician from the University of Chicago by background, so I’m sure you’ve seen his laptop presentation.

Randi Rhodes: He is a shameless self-promoter. I wish I had half of what he’s got. I don’t know how he does it. He’s a great public speaker, and I get stage fright. I really, really freeze. My brain locks up when I have to look at people. It’s funny. He says to me, you talk to millions of people every day, which still to me is just amazing. I can’t even process that, so I don’t think of it like that.

BuzzFlash: When you’re sitting there, doing the program, and light goes on. You have your cue to begin. Who are you talking to in your mind?

Randi Rhodes: Well, I’m actually talking to the control room, you know? So I get my reaction from them. I’m actually talking to a person. For all these years, I’ve been talking to whoever is sitting in that producer chair. I can actually see if they’re laughing. I can get real-time reaction from a real human being. It’s not like I have to sit there and rely on my sick fantasy, because I’d probably be talking to some ultimate dungeon master.

BuzzFlash: Randi, thanks so much.

Randi Rhodes: And here's part of this cool story that I wanted to tell you.

BuzzFlash: Okay.

Randi Rhodes: I was at a big, big New York AIDS walk. I mean it’s huge. There’s hundreds of thousands of people. And so I’m out there at a table with no banner, by the way. When I would say, I’m from Air America, they go: Oh, my God, you’re Randi. And I was hunched over a table because they forgot to bring me a chair. So I’m sitting at the card table signing autographs, and trying to do it as fast as possible because the line was long. But people always want to know what do you read? What do you read? How do you do your show?

I can’t tell you how many people I talked to said: I love BuzzFlash -- first thing I do in the morning is I go to BuzzFlash. It was amazing because, you know, there’s a lot of competition now. And when you first started, you were uniquely available. It was just like this little tiny piece of diamond in the middle of the sand. There was something there that you could get -- a compilation of news from every newspaper. I loved BuzzFlash. Every day, I use it. But I was stunned because I can’t tell you how many people said BuzzFlash to me -- so you should be really excited.

BuzzFlash: Thank you, Randi.
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BuzzFlash Interview conducted by Mark Karlin.