G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Time to Apologize to Plame/Wilson
By Robert Parry
Created Nov 1 2007 - 9:44am
During the scandal known as "Plame-gate," it became an article of faith in
many Washington power centers that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson wasn't
"covert" and thus there was no "underlying crime" when the Bush
administration intentionally blew her cover.
This view was pushed not only by right-wing acolytes of George W. Bush but
by leading media outlets, such as the Washington Post editorial page, which
championed an argument from Republican lawyer Victoria Toensing that the
CIA-headquarters-based Plame wasn't covered by the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act [1] of 1982.
In statements on TV, in the Post's Outlook section and before a
congressional committee, Toensing argued that the law defined "covert" CIA
officers who got legal protection as those who "resided" or were "stationed"
abroad in the previous five years.
Since Plame, the mother of young twins, had been assigned to CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in recent years, Toensing argued that
Plame didn't qualify under the law and thus wasn't "covert."
However, a reading of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and new
information revealed in Plame's memoir, Fair Game, show just how wrong
Toensing, the Post's editors and many other Washington pundits have been.
The law's relevant clause doesn't use the words "resided" or "stationed."
The law states that the identities of classified U.S. intelligence officers
are protected if they have "served within the last five years outside the
United States."
An intelligence officer (or a Special Forces soldier) clearly can "serve"
abroad in dangerous situations without being "stationed" or "residing"
abroad. Toensing, who promoted herself as an author of the 1982 statute,
surely knew the law's actual wording on this point but instead substituted
other words to alter the law's meaning.
In Fair Game, the CIA censors blacked out many of Plame's career details,
but enough was left in to show that Plame traveled abroad in the five years
prior to the Bush administration blowing her cover in summer 2003.
At that time, the White House was mounting a campaign to discredit Plame's
husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the
administration's
misuse of intelligence about Iraq's alleged pursuit of uranium in Niger.
Foreign Trips
"As I worked with our small team on our sensitive operations, I traveled
often and sometimes at a moment's notice," wrote Plame, who was assigned to
a counter-proliferation office that monitored weapon development in the
Middle East. "I traveled domestically and abroad using a variety of aliases,
confident that my tradecraft skills and solid cover would keep me out of the
worst trouble." [p. 71]
More specifically, Plame wrote: "In the late summer of 2002, I went on a
whirlwind tour of several Middle Eastern countries to collect intelligence
on the presumed cache of Iraqi WMD." [p. 114]
In other words, Plame "served" abroad in her covert capacity as a CIA
officer and thus was covered by the 1982 law, a conclusion also shared by
the CIA when it referred her exposure to the Justice Department for criminal
investigation in summer 2003.
The CIA reaffirmed her "covert" status at a March 16, 2007, hearing of the
House Oversight Committee. Chairman Henry Waxman, D-California, read a
statement approved by CIA Director Michael Hayden describing Plame's status
at the CIA as "covert," "undercover" and "classified."
"Ms. Wilson worked on the most sensitive and highly secretive matters
handled by the CIA," Waxman's statement said, adding that her work dealt
with "prevention of development and use of WMD against the United States."
Appearing as a Republican witness at the same hearing, Toensing continued to
employ her word substitutions to attack the CIA statement. Toensing was
asked about her bald assertion that "Plame was not covert."
"Not under the law," Toensing responded. "I'm giving you the legal
interpretation under the law and I helped draft the law. The person is
supposed to reside outside the United States."
But that's not what the law says regarding CIA officers. It says "served"
abroad, not "resided" abroad.
When asked whether she had spoken to the CIA or Plame about Plame's covert
status, Toensing said, "I didn't talk to Ms. Plame or the CIA. I can just
tell you what's required under the law. They can call anybody anything they
want to do in the halls" of the CIA.
So, Toensing had no idea about the facts of the matter, nor did she know how
often Plame had traveled abroad in the five years before her exposure.
Still, the opinion circles of Washington treated Toensing as a respected
legal expert on the law.
Outlook 'Indictments'
On Feb. 18, 2007, as a federal jury was about to start deliberating perjury
and obstruction of justice charges against White House aide I. Lewis Libby
for his role in the "Plame-gate" affair, the Washington Post's Outlook [2]
section gave Toensing front-page space to issue what she called
"indictments" of Wilson, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and others who
helped expose the White House hand behind the Plame leak.
To illustrate Toensing's article, the Post's editors even ordered up
fabricated "mug shots" of Wilson, Fitzgerald and others.
In the article, Toensing wrote that "Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA
headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years of the
date" of the administration's leak of her identity in a July 14, 2003,
column by Robert Novak. (Again, note the use of "stationed" rather than the
law's actual language, "served.")
Even ignoring the word substitutions, Toensing's claim was legalistic at
best since it obscured the larger point that Plame was working undercover in
a classified CIA position and was running agents abroad whose safety would
be put at risk by an unauthorized disclosure of Plame's identity.
Yet, the strange parlor game of excusing the Bush administration for its
retaliatory leak of Plame's identity continued.
In a March 7, 2007, editorial [3], after Libby was convicted of perjury and
obstructing justice, Washington Post editors reserved their harshest words
for Wilson, declaring that the former ambassador "will be remembered as a
blowhard" and a liar for claiming that the White House had sought
retribution for his public criticism of Bush's Niger claims.
"The [Libby] trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no
conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity - and no
evidence that she was, in fact, covert," the Post editorial stated.
But everything in the Post attack on Wilson was either a gross distortion or
a lie. Wilson was correct when he alleged that the White House was punishing
him for his Iraq War criticism. Indeed, the Washington Post's own reporters
had described this reality in the news pages.
On Sept. 28, 2003, a Post news article reported that a White House official
disclosed that the administration had informed at least six reporters about
Plame's identity and did so "purely and simply out of revenge" against
Wilson.
Special prosecutor Fitzgerald made the same point in a court filing in the
Libby case, stating that the investigation had uncovered a "concerted"
effort by the White House to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against"
Wilson because of his criticism of the administration. [Washington Post,
April 9, 2006 [4]]
As for the March 7, 2007, editorial's statement about Plame not being
"covert," the Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt apparently was still
hanging his hat on Victoria Toensing's erroneous definition of a "covert"
officer under the identities law.
Regarding the supposed lack of evidence at the Libby trial about Plame's
covert status, the Post editorial left out the context: Libby's defense
attorneys argued against admission of that evidence because it would
prejudice the jury and the judge ruled Plame's covert status to be largely
irrelevant to a case narrowly constructed about Libby's lying.
But the Post's editorial was part of a long pattern of Iraq War deceptions
pushed by Hiatt and his editorial team. They let their neoconservative
ideology - and their support for the Iraq War - blind them to facts, reason
and fairness. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com's "Shame on the Post's
Editorial Page, [5]" "Smearing Joe Wilson Again [6]" and "Shame of the
WPost, Again [7]."]
Personal Pain
Plame's memoir, Fair Game, is notable in another way. It describes the
personal pain of an American family caught up in the duplicitous power games
of Washington, where influential people - from the White House to the Post's
editorial offices - can hammer any set of facts into a weapon to attack
someone who gets in the way.
"Plame-gate" was a classic story of how arrogant leaders destroy a messenger
who speaks truth to power, except this one had the extraordinary collateral
damage of wrecking a U.S. national security program.
What happened was this:
In early 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney asked about a dubious report that
Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger; a CIA
officer working in a counter-proliferation office with Plame suggested that
her husband, a former diplomat who had served in both Iraq and Africa might
help check out the report.
At the urging of her boss, Plame sounded out her husband who met with
Plame's
superiors and agreed to take the unpaid assignment; Wilson traveled to Niger
and - like others who checked out the report - concluded that it was almost
certainly false; on his return, Wilson relayed his findings to CIA
debriefers along with an anecdotal comment from one former Nigerien official
who had feared that one Iraqi delegation might want uranium, though it
turned out not to be the case.
Nevertheless, while grasping at intelligence straws to justify invading
Iraq, President Bush cited the Niger/yellowcake suspicions during his 2003
State of the Union address; the invasion went ahead in March 2003 but U.S.
forces didn't find any nuclear program or other WMD evidence; in summer
2003, Wilson went public with details about his Niger trip and challenged
the administration's misuse of WMD intelligence.
At that point, the Bush administration unleashed the full force of its
propaganda machinery to disparage Wilson. The chosen attack line was to
portray his trip as a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but that strategy
required divulging that Plame was a CIA officer.
Nevertheless, administration insiders - including Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage; his friend and White House political adviser Karl Rove;
Cheney's chief of staff Libby; and press secretary Ari Fleischer - did just
that, alerting reporters to the Plame angle.
Eight days after Wilson went public about his Niger trip, right-wing
columnist Robert Novak attacked the ex-ambassador's credibility by
portraying the trip as a junket arranged by his CIA wife. Plame's identity
was exposed, most notably when the Post ran Novak's column on its op-ed
page.
At that point, upon realizing the harm that was being done to Plame's
network of foreign agents, honorable people might have pulled back and tried
to limit the damage. But that would have required Bush, Cheney and their
underlings to admit complicity in a dirty operation. Instead, they chose to
cover up their roles and divert attention by further attacking the
Plame-Wilson family.
When the CIA sought a criminal investigation into the leaking of Plame's
identity in late summer 2003, the stakes rose higher for the White House.
For his part, Bush pretended to want a full investigation, declaring in
September 2003 that he was determined to get to the bottom of who blew
Plame's
cover. In reality, however, the White House never undertook even an
administrative review to assess responsibility for the leak.
James Knodell, White House security office director, later told Congress
that no internal security investigation was performed; no security
clearances were suspended or revoked; no punishment of any kind was meted
out even when Rove later acknowledged that he had helped reveal Plame's
classified identity.
Beyond hiding the White House role in the leak, the cover-up strategy
shoveled more dirt onto Wilson.
Congressional Republicans, the right-wing news media and many mainstream
journalists cherry-picked pieces of the story (like the anecdote about the
suspected Iraqi desire for yellowcake) to make Wilson out to be a liar. In
late 2005, Plame quit the CIA.
Still, Washington Post editor Hiatt and his powerful editorial page made
trashing Wilson and mocking the seriousness of Plame's exposure almost a
regular feature, often recycling White House talking points.
In effect, the Washington culture created a permissive environment for Bush
to complete the "Plame-gate" cover-up on July 2, 2007, by commuting Libby's
30-month prison sentence. That ensured that Libby would be spared jail time
and have no incentive to tell the full truth. [See Consortiumnews.com "The
Libby Cover-up Completed [8]."]
Career Damage
Indeed, thanks to the Washington Post and other news outlets, the harshest
penalties may have fallen on Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, whose careers
were shattered first by the leaking of Plame's identity and then by the
incessant assaults on Wilson's credibility.
After reading Fair Game, one is left with the sickening realization that
Bush's Washington has become a mean and mendacious place so lacking in honor
that the city's preeminent politicians and pundits don't see any need to
apologize to the Wilson family for all the harm that was done.
In a decent world, political leaders and journalists, especially, would
praise Joe Wilson for his patriotism - both for undertaking the CIA mission
and for blowing the whistle on the President's abuse of intelligence to lead
the nation to war.
But Washington is not that kind of place. Instead it is a city where having
power - whether inside the White House or in the Post's editorial offices -
means never having to say you're sorry.
_______
About author Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s
for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege:
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at
secrecyandprivilege.com [9]. It's also available at Amazon.com [10], as is
his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Robert Parry's web site is Consortium News [11]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Robert Parry
Created Nov 1 2007 - 9:44am
During the scandal known as "Plame-gate," it became an article of faith in
many Washington power centers that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson wasn't
"covert" and thus there was no "underlying crime" when the Bush
administration intentionally blew her cover.
This view was pushed not only by right-wing acolytes of George W. Bush but
by leading media outlets, such as the Washington Post editorial page, which
championed an argument from Republican lawyer Victoria Toensing that the
CIA-headquarters-based Plame wasn't covered by the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act [1] of 1982.
In statements on TV, in the Post's Outlook section and before a
congressional committee, Toensing argued that the law defined "covert" CIA
officers who got legal protection as those who "resided" or were "stationed"
abroad in the previous five years.
Since Plame, the mother of young twins, had been assigned to CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in recent years, Toensing argued that
Plame didn't qualify under the law and thus wasn't "covert."
However, a reading of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and new
information revealed in Plame's memoir, Fair Game, show just how wrong
Toensing, the Post's editors and many other Washington pundits have been.
The law's relevant clause doesn't use the words "resided" or "stationed."
The law states that the identities of classified U.S. intelligence officers
are protected if they have "served within the last five years outside the
United States."
An intelligence officer (or a Special Forces soldier) clearly can "serve"
abroad in dangerous situations without being "stationed" or "residing"
abroad. Toensing, who promoted herself as an author of the 1982 statute,
surely knew the law's actual wording on this point but instead substituted
other words to alter the law's meaning.
In Fair Game, the CIA censors blacked out many of Plame's career details,
but enough was left in to show that Plame traveled abroad in the five years
prior to the Bush administration blowing her cover in summer 2003.
At that time, the White House was mounting a campaign to discredit Plame's
husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the
administration's
misuse of intelligence about Iraq's alleged pursuit of uranium in Niger.
Foreign Trips
"As I worked with our small team on our sensitive operations, I traveled
often and sometimes at a moment's notice," wrote Plame, who was assigned to
a counter-proliferation office that monitored weapon development in the
Middle East. "I traveled domestically and abroad using a variety of aliases,
confident that my tradecraft skills and solid cover would keep me out of the
worst trouble." [p. 71]
More specifically, Plame wrote: "In the late summer of 2002, I went on a
whirlwind tour of several Middle Eastern countries to collect intelligence
on the presumed cache of Iraqi WMD." [p. 114]
In other words, Plame "served" abroad in her covert capacity as a CIA
officer and thus was covered by the 1982 law, a conclusion also shared by
the CIA when it referred her exposure to the Justice Department for criminal
investigation in summer 2003.
The CIA reaffirmed her "covert" status at a March 16, 2007, hearing of the
House Oversight Committee. Chairman Henry Waxman, D-California, read a
statement approved by CIA Director Michael Hayden describing Plame's status
at the CIA as "covert," "undercover" and "classified."
"Ms. Wilson worked on the most sensitive and highly secretive matters
handled by the CIA," Waxman's statement said, adding that her work dealt
with "prevention of development and use of WMD against the United States."
Appearing as a Republican witness at the same hearing, Toensing continued to
employ her word substitutions to attack the CIA statement. Toensing was
asked about her bald assertion that "Plame was not covert."
"Not under the law," Toensing responded. "I'm giving you the legal
interpretation under the law and I helped draft the law. The person is
supposed to reside outside the United States."
But that's not what the law says regarding CIA officers. It says "served"
abroad, not "resided" abroad.
When asked whether she had spoken to the CIA or Plame about Plame's covert
status, Toensing said, "I didn't talk to Ms. Plame or the CIA. I can just
tell you what's required under the law. They can call anybody anything they
want to do in the halls" of the CIA.
So, Toensing had no idea about the facts of the matter, nor did she know how
often Plame had traveled abroad in the five years before her exposure.
Still, the opinion circles of Washington treated Toensing as a respected
legal expert on the law.
Outlook 'Indictments'
On Feb. 18, 2007, as a federal jury was about to start deliberating perjury
and obstruction of justice charges against White House aide I. Lewis Libby
for his role in the "Plame-gate" affair, the Washington Post's Outlook [2]
section gave Toensing front-page space to issue what she called
"indictments" of Wilson, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and others who
helped expose the White House hand behind the Plame leak.
To illustrate Toensing's article, the Post's editors even ordered up
fabricated "mug shots" of Wilson, Fitzgerald and others.
In the article, Toensing wrote that "Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA
headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years of the
date" of the administration's leak of her identity in a July 14, 2003,
column by Robert Novak. (Again, note the use of "stationed" rather than the
law's actual language, "served.")
Even ignoring the word substitutions, Toensing's claim was legalistic at
best since it obscured the larger point that Plame was working undercover in
a classified CIA position and was running agents abroad whose safety would
be put at risk by an unauthorized disclosure of Plame's identity.
Yet, the strange parlor game of excusing the Bush administration for its
retaliatory leak of Plame's identity continued.
In a March 7, 2007, editorial [3], after Libby was convicted of perjury and
obstructing justice, Washington Post editors reserved their harshest words
for Wilson, declaring that the former ambassador "will be remembered as a
blowhard" and a liar for claiming that the White House had sought
retribution for his public criticism of Bush's Niger claims.
"The [Libby] trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no
conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame's identity - and no
evidence that she was, in fact, covert," the Post editorial stated.
But everything in the Post attack on Wilson was either a gross distortion or
a lie. Wilson was correct when he alleged that the White House was punishing
him for his Iraq War criticism. Indeed, the Washington Post's own reporters
had described this reality in the news pages.
On Sept. 28, 2003, a Post news article reported that a White House official
disclosed that the administration had informed at least six reporters about
Plame's identity and did so "purely and simply out of revenge" against
Wilson.
Special prosecutor Fitzgerald made the same point in a court filing in the
Libby case, stating that the investigation had uncovered a "concerted"
effort by the White House to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against"
Wilson because of his criticism of the administration. [Washington Post,
April 9, 2006 [4]]
As for the March 7, 2007, editorial's statement about Plame not being
"covert," the Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt apparently was still
hanging his hat on Victoria Toensing's erroneous definition of a "covert"
officer under the identities law.
Regarding the supposed lack of evidence at the Libby trial about Plame's
covert status, the Post editorial left out the context: Libby's defense
attorneys argued against admission of that evidence because it would
prejudice the jury and the judge ruled Plame's covert status to be largely
irrelevant to a case narrowly constructed about Libby's lying.
But the Post's editorial was part of a long pattern of Iraq War deceptions
pushed by Hiatt and his editorial team. They let their neoconservative
ideology - and their support for the Iraq War - blind them to facts, reason
and fairness. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com's "Shame on the Post's
Editorial Page, [5]" "Smearing Joe Wilson Again [6]" and "Shame of the
WPost, Again [7]."]
Personal Pain
Plame's memoir, Fair Game, is notable in another way. It describes the
personal pain of an American family caught up in the duplicitous power games
of Washington, where influential people - from the White House to the Post's
editorial offices - can hammer any set of facts into a weapon to attack
someone who gets in the way.
"Plame-gate" was a classic story of how arrogant leaders destroy a messenger
who speaks truth to power, except this one had the extraordinary collateral
damage of wrecking a U.S. national security program.
What happened was this:
In early 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney asked about a dubious report that
Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger; a CIA
officer working in a counter-proliferation office with Plame suggested that
her husband, a former diplomat who had served in both Iraq and Africa might
help check out the report.
At the urging of her boss, Plame sounded out her husband who met with
Plame's
superiors and agreed to take the unpaid assignment; Wilson traveled to Niger
and - like others who checked out the report - concluded that it was almost
certainly false; on his return, Wilson relayed his findings to CIA
debriefers along with an anecdotal comment from one former Nigerien official
who had feared that one Iraqi delegation might want uranium, though it
turned out not to be the case.
Nevertheless, while grasping at intelligence straws to justify invading
Iraq, President Bush cited the Niger/yellowcake suspicions during his 2003
State of the Union address; the invasion went ahead in March 2003 but U.S.
forces didn't find any nuclear program or other WMD evidence; in summer
2003, Wilson went public with details about his Niger trip and challenged
the administration's misuse of WMD intelligence.
At that point, the Bush administration unleashed the full force of its
propaganda machinery to disparage Wilson. The chosen attack line was to
portray his trip as a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but that strategy
required divulging that Plame was a CIA officer.
Nevertheless, administration insiders - including Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage; his friend and White House political adviser Karl Rove;
Cheney's chief of staff Libby; and press secretary Ari Fleischer - did just
that, alerting reporters to the Plame angle.
Eight days after Wilson went public about his Niger trip, right-wing
columnist Robert Novak attacked the ex-ambassador's credibility by
portraying the trip as a junket arranged by his CIA wife. Plame's identity
was exposed, most notably when the Post ran Novak's column on its op-ed
page.
At that point, upon realizing the harm that was being done to Plame's
network of foreign agents, honorable people might have pulled back and tried
to limit the damage. But that would have required Bush, Cheney and their
underlings to admit complicity in a dirty operation. Instead, they chose to
cover up their roles and divert attention by further attacking the
Plame-Wilson family.
When the CIA sought a criminal investigation into the leaking of Plame's
identity in late summer 2003, the stakes rose higher for the White House.
For his part, Bush pretended to want a full investigation, declaring in
September 2003 that he was determined to get to the bottom of who blew
Plame's
cover. In reality, however, the White House never undertook even an
administrative review to assess responsibility for the leak.
James Knodell, White House security office director, later told Congress
that no internal security investigation was performed; no security
clearances were suspended or revoked; no punishment of any kind was meted
out even when Rove later acknowledged that he had helped reveal Plame's
classified identity.
Beyond hiding the White House role in the leak, the cover-up strategy
shoveled more dirt onto Wilson.
Congressional Republicans, the right-wing news media and many mainstream
journalists cherry-picked pieces of the story (like the anecdote about the
suspected Iraqi desire for yellowcake) to make Wilson out to be a liar. In
late 2005, Plame quit the CIA.
Still, Washington Post editor Hiatt and his powerful editorial page made
trashing Wilson and mocking the seriousness of Plame's exposure almost a
regular feature, often recycling White House talking points.
In effect, the Washington culture created a permissive environment for Bush
to complete the "Plame-gate" cover-up on July 2, 2007, by commuting Libby's
30-month prison sentence. That ensured that Libby would be spared jail time
and have no incentive to tell the full truth. [See Consortiumnews.com "The
Libby Cover-up Completed [8]."]
Career Damage
Indeed, thanks to the Washington Post and other news outlets, the harshest
penalties may have fallen on Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, whose careers
were shattered first by the leaking of Plame's identity and then by the
incessant assaults on Wilson's credibility.
After reading Fair Game, one is left with the sickening realization that
Bush's Washington has become a mean and mendacious place so lacking in honor
that the city's preeminent politicians and pundits don't see any need to
apologize to the Wilson family for all the harm that was done.
In a decent world, political leaders and journalists, especially, would
praise Joe Wilson for his patriotism - both for undertaking the CIA mission
and for blowing the whistle on the President's abuse of intelligence to lead
the nation to war.
But Washington is not that kind of place. Instead it is a city where having
power - whether inside the White House or in the Post's editorial offices -
means never having to say you're sorry.
_______
About author Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s
for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege:
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at
secrecyandprivilege.com [9]. It's also available at Amazon.com [10], as is
his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Robert Parry's web site is Consortium News [11]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
