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The July firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan by Gov. Sarah Palin, who was announced as John McCain's running mate on Friday, has unearthed a stream of soap-opera-like details about Palin, her husband, her family and top state appointees. The controversy has also cut against Palin's reputation for holding an ethical line and standing up to colleagues in the Republican Party over matters of principle.
Monegan, 57, a respected former chief of the Anchorage Police Department, said in an interview with The Washington Post's James V. Grimaldi on Friday that the governor repeatedly brought up the topic of her ex-brother-in-law, Michael Wooten, after Monegan became the state's commissioner of public safety in December 2006. Palin's husband, Todd, met with Monegan and presented a dossier of information about Wooten, who was going through a bitter custody battle with Palin's sister, Molly. Monegan also said Sarah Palin sent him e-mails on the subject, but Monegan declined to disclose them, saying he planned to give them to a legislative investigator looking into the matter.
Palin initially denied that she or anyone in her administration had ever pressured Monegan to fire the trooper, but this summer acknowledged more than a half a dozen contacts over the matter, including one phone call from a Palin administration official to a state police lieutenant. The call was recorded and was released by Palin's office this month. Todd Palin told a television reporter in Alaska that he did meet with Monegan, but said he was just "informing" Monegan about the issue, not exerting pressure.
"She never directly asked me to fire him," Monegan said.
But he said Todd Palin told him Wooten "shouldn't be a trooper. I've tried to explain to him, you can't head hunt like this. What you need to do is back off, because if the trooper does make a mistake, and it is a terminable offense, it can look like political interference.
"I think he's emotionally committed in trying to see that his former brother-in-law is punished."
The allegation against Palin, "undercuts one of the points they are making that she is an ethical reformer," said Democratic state Sen. Hollis French, who is managing a $100,000 investigation into the firing of Walter Monegan.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
The CIA, Contras, Gangs, and Crack
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In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News initiated an extended series of articles linking the CIA’s "contra" army to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles.1 Based on a year-long investigation, reporter Gary Webb wrote that during the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua’s leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross. The series unleashed a storm of protest, spearheaded by black radio stations and the congressional Black Caucus, with demands for official inquiries. The Mercury News’ Web page, with supporting documents and updates, received hundreds of thousands of "hits" a day.
In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News initiated an extended series of articles linking the CIA’s "contra" army to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles.1 Based on a year-long investigation, reporter Gary Webb wrote that during the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua’s leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross. The series unleashed a storm of protest, spearheaded by black radio stations and the congressional Black Caucus, with demands for official inquiries. The Mercury News’ Web page, with supporting documents and updates, received hundreds of thousands of "hits" a day.
While much of the CIA-contra-drug story had been revealed years ago in the press and in congressional hearings, the Mercury News series added a crucial missing link: It followed the cocaine trail to Ross and black L.A. gangs who became street-level distributors of crack, a cheap and powerful form of cocaine. The CIA’s drug network, wrote Webb, "opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the ’crack’ capital of the world." Black gangs used their profits to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from one of the CIA-linked drug dealers.
CIA Director John Deutch declared that he found "no connection whatsoever" between the CIA and cocaine traffickers. And major media--the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post--have run long pieces refuting the Mercury News series. They deny that Bay Area-based Nicaraguan drug dealers, Juan Norwin Meneses and Oscar Danilo Blandon, worked for the CIA or contributed "millions in drug profits" to the contras, as Webb contended. They also note that neither Ross nor the gangs were the first or sole distributors of crack in L.A. Webb, however, did not claim this. He wrote that the huge influx of cocaine happened to come at just the time that street-level drug dealers were figuring out how to make cocaine affordable by changing it into crack.
Many in the media have also postulated that any drug-trafficking contras involved were "rogue" elements, not supported by the CIA. But these denials overlook much of the Mercury News’ evidence of CIA complicity. For example:
CIA-supplied contra planes and pilots carried cocaine from Central America to U.S. airports and military bases. In 1985, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Celerino Castillo reported to his superiors that cocaine was being stored at the CIA’s contra-supply warehouse at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador for shipment to the U.S.2 The DEA did nothing, and Castillo was gradually forced out of the agency.
When Danilo Blandón was finally arrested in 1986, he admitted to drug crimes that would have sent others away for life. The Justice Department, however, freed Blandón after only 28 months behind bars and then hired him as a full-time DEA informant, paying him more than $166,000. When Blandón testified in a 1996 trial against Ricky Ross, the Justice Department blocked any inquiry about Blandón’s connection to the CIA.
Although Norwin Meneses is listed in DEA computers as a major international drug smuggler implicated in 45 separate federal investigations since 1974, he lived conspicuously in California until 1989 and was never arrested in the U.S.
Senate investigators and agents from four organizations all complained that their contra-drug investigations "were hampered," Webb wrote, "by the CIA or unnamed ’national security’ interests." In the 1984 "Frogman Case," for instance, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco returned $36,800 seized from a Nicaraguan drug dealer after two contra leaders sent letters to the court arguing that the cash was intended for the contras. Federal prosecutors ordered the letter and other case evidence sealed for "national security" reasons. When Senate investigators later asked the Justice Department to explain this unusual turn of events, they ran into a wall of secrecy.
History of CIA Involvement in Drug Trafficking
"In my 30year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA." -- Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit.3
The foregoing discussion should not be regarded as any kind of historical aberration inasmuch as the CIA has had a long and virtually continuous involvement with drug trafficking since the end of World War II.
1947 to 1951, France
CIA arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in Marseille to wrest control of labor unions from the Communist Party. The Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks--ideal conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors, which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world. Marseille’s first heroin laboratories were opened in 1951, only months after the Corsicans took over the waterfront.4
Early 1950s, Southeast Asia
The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war against Communist China, became the opium baron of The Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand, and Laos), the world’s largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the CIA’s principal proprietary airline, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia.5
1950s to early 1970s, Indochina
During U.S. military involvement in Laos and other parts of Indochina, Air America flew opium and heroin throughout the area. Many GI’s in Vietnam became addicts. A laboratory built at CIA headquarters in northern Laos was used to refine heroin. After a decade of American military intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of 70 percent of the world’s illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America’s booming heroin market.6
1973 to 1980, Australia
The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its officers were a network of U.S. generals, admirals, and CIA men--including former CIA Director William Colby, who was also one of its lawyers. With branches in Saudi Arabia, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America, and the U.S., Nugan Hand Bank financed drug trafficking, money laundering, and international arms dealing. In 1980, amidst several mysterious deaths, the bank collapsed, $50 million in debt.7
1970s and 1980s, Panama
For more than a decade, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Noriega facilitated "guns-for-drugs" flights for the contras, providing protection and pilots, safe havens for drug cartel officials, and discreet banking facilities. U.S. officials, including then-CIA Director William Webster and several DEA officers, sent Noriega letters of praise for efforts to thwart drug trafficking (albeit only against competitors of his Medellín cartel patrons). The U.S. government only turned against Noriega, invading Panama in December 1989 and kidnapping the general, once they discovered he was providing intelligence and services to the Cubans and Sandinistas. Ironically, drug trafficking through Panama increased after the U.S. invasion.8
1980s, Central America
The San Jose Mercury News series documents just one thread of the interwoven operations linking the CIA, the contras, and the cocaine cartels. Obsessed with overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials tolerated drug trafficking as long as the traffickers gave support to the contras. In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (the Kerry committee) concluded a three-year investigation by stating: "There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual contras, contra suppliers, contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the contras, and contra supporters throughout the region. . . . U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua. . . . In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter. . . . Senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the contras’ funding problems."9
In Costa Rica, which served as the "Southern Front" for the contras (Honduras being the Northern Front), there were several CIA-contra networks involved in drug trafficking. In addition to those servicing the Meneses-Blandon operation (detailed by the Mercury News) and Noriega’s operation, there was CIA operative John Hull, whose farms along Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua were the main staging area for the contras. Hull and other CIA-connected contra supporters and pilots teamed up with George Morales, a major Miami-based Colombian drug trafficker who later admitted to giving $3 million in cash and several planes to contra leaders.10 In 1989, after the Costa Rica government indicted Hull for drug trafficking, a DEA-hired plane clandestinely and illegally flew the CIA operative to Miami, via Haiti. The U.S. repeatedly thwarted Costa Rican efforts to extradite Hull to Costa Rica to stand trial.11
Another Costa Rican-based drug ring involved a group of Cuban Americans whom the CIA had hired as military trainers for the contras. Many had long been involved with the CIA and drug trafficking. They used contra planes and a Costa Rican-based shrimp company, which laundered money for the CIA, to channel cocaine to the U.S.12
Costa Rica was not the only route. Guatemala, whose military intelligence service--closely associated with the CIA--harbored many drug traffickers, according to the DEA, was another way station along the cocaine highway.13 Additionally, the Medellín cartel’s Miami accountant, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, testified that he funneled nearly $10 million to Nicaraguan contras through long-time CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was based at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador.14
The contras provided both protection and infrastructure (planes, pilots, airstrips, warehouses, front companies, and banks) to these CIA-linked drug networks. At least four transport companies under investigation for drug trafficking received U.S. government contracts to carry nonlethal supplies to the contras.15 Southern Air Transport, "formerly" CIA-owned and later under Pentagon contract, was involved in the drug running as well.16 Cocaine-laden planes flew to Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and other locations, including several military bases. Designated as "Contra Craft," these shipments were not to be inspected. When some authority wasn’t apprised and made an arrest, powerful strings were pulled to result in dropping the case, acquittal, reduced sentence, or deportation.17
Mid-1980s to early 1990s, Haiti
While working to keep key Haitian military and political leaders in power, the CIA turned a blind eye to their clients’ drug trafficking. In 1986, the Agency added some more names to its payroll by creating a new Haitian organization, the National Intelligence Service (SIN). SIN’s mandate included countering the cocaine trade, though SIN officers themselves engaged in trafficking, a trade aided and abetted by some Haitian military and political leaders.18
1980s to early 1990s, Afghanistan
CIA-supported Moujahedeen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting the Soviet-supported government, which had plans to reform Afghan society. The Agency’s principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading drug lords and the biggest heroin refiner, who was also the largest recipient of CIA military support. CIA-supplied trucks and mules that had carried arms into Afghanistan were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The output provided up to one-half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. U.S. officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies.19 In 1993, an official of the DEA dubbed Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world.20
Endnotes
1 Gary Webb, "Dark Alliance" series, San Jose Mercury News. Beginning August 18, 1996.
2 Celerino Castillo, Powder Burns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War (Mosaic Press, 1994). Los Angeles Times lengthy series of articles, October 20, 21, 22, 1996. Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus, "The CIA and Crack: Evidence is Lacking of Alleged Plot" (Washington Post, October 4, 1996). Howard Kurtz, "Running with the CIA Story" (Washington Post, October 2, 1996). Douglas Farah and Walter Pincus "CIA, Contras and Drugs: Questions on Links Linger" (Washington Post, October 31, 1996). Tim Golden,"Though Evidence is Thin, Tale of CIA and Drugs Has a Life of Its Own" (New York Times, October 21, 1996).
3 Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) pp. x-xi.
4 Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York City, New York: Harper & Row, 1972, chapter 2).
5 Christopher Robbins, Air America (New York City, New York: Avon Books, 1985) chapter 9. McCoy, Politics of Heroin.
6 McCoy, Politics of Heroin, chapter 9.
7 Robbins, Air America, p. 128 and chapter 9. Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA (New York City, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987). William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995) p. 420, note 33.
8 Scott & Marshall, Cocaine Politics; John Dinges, Our Man in Panama (NY, New York: Random House, 1991); Murray Waas, "Cocaine and the White House Connection", Los Angeles Weekly, Sept. 30-Oct. 6 and Oct. 7-13, 1988; National Security Archive Documentation Packet: The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations (Washington, DC).
9 "Kerry Report": Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, a Report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, 1989, pp. 2, 36, 41.
10 Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1994).
11 Martha Honey and David Myers, "U.S. Probing Drug Agent’s Activities in Costa Rica," San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 1991.
12 Honey, Hostile Acts.
13 Frank Smyth, "In Guatemala, The DEA Fights the CIA", New Republic, June 5, 1995; Blum, Killing Hope, p. 239.
14 Martha Honey, "Drug Figure Says Cartel Gave Drugs to Contras" Washington Post, June 30, 1987.
15 Kerry report, Drugs.
16 Scott & Marshall, Cocaine Politics, pp. 17-18.
17 Scott & Marshall, Cocaine Politics; Waas, "Cocaine and the White House"; NSA, The Contras.
18 New York Times, Nov. 14, 1993; The Nation, Oct. 3, 1994, p. 346.
19 Blum, Killing Hope, p. 351; Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget (New York City, New York: Warner Books, 1990) pp. 151-2.
20 Los Angeles Times, Aug. 22, 1993
Sources for more information
World Wide Web
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Covert Action Quarterly
http://www.worldmedia.com/caq/
The National Security Archive
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/
Organizations
The National Security Archive
Gelman Library, Ste. 7012130 H Street NW
Washington, DC 20037
Voice: (202) 994-7000
Email: nsarchiv@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
Contact: Peter Kornbluh
Congresswoman Maxine Waters
330 Cannon House Building
Washington, DC 20515
Voice: (202) 225-2201
Contact: Joseph Lee
Covert Action Quarterly
1500 Mass Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20005
Voice: (202) 331-9763
Fax: (202) 331-9751
Email: caq@igc.apc.org
Contact: Terry Allen
Latin American Working Group
110 Maryland Ave. NE Box 15
Washington, DC 20002
Voice: (202) 546-7010
Fax: (202) 543-7647
Contact: Lisa Hargaard
Publications
Lorraine Adams, "North Didn’t Relay Drug Tips", The Washington Post, Oct. 22, 1994, p. 1.
William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995).
Celerino Castillo with David Harmon, Powder Burns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War (Mosaic Press, 1994).
John Dinges, Our Man in Panama (New York City, NY: Random House, 1991).
Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1994).
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, December 1988.
Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA (New York City, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987).
Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1972).
Clarence Lusane, Pipe Dream Blues: Racism and the War on Drugs (Boston: South End Press, 1991).
National Security Archive, Documentation Packet: The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations (Washington, D.C. October 1996).
Christopher Robbins, Air America (New York City, New York: Avon Books, 1985).
Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley, California: University of CA Press, 1991).
Murray Waas, "Cocaine and the White House Connection", Los Angeles Weekly, Sept. 30-Oct. 6 and Oct. 7-13, 1988.
Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget (New York City, New York: Warner Books, 1990).
Palin, with reputation as reformer, faces probe over firing
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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, picked Friday to be Sen. John McCain's running mate in his pursuit of the presidency, has a reputation as a reformer in a state where the Republican party is under siege by prosecutors in a long-running corruption probe.
Palin shocked fellow Republicans in March when she quickly endorsed Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell in his primary bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Don Young, who has been Alaska's lone member of the U.S. House for three decades. Young has been the focus of federal prosecutors, though he has not been charged with a crime. The results of Tuesday's primary will not be known for several more days, but Young currently is leading Parnell by 151 votes out of more than 90,000 cast.
Palin also acted quickly in July to call for the resignation of State Sen. John Cowdery, the oldest member of the Alaska legislature and a Republican power when he was indicted on federal bribery charges for his role in an effort to buy the support of another senator in the battle over tax legislation favored by North Slope oil producers.
She has been more circumspect, however, regarding the highest profile corruption investigation involving an Alaska politician, the indictment of the state's senior U.S. senator, Ted Stevens, on charges he failed to report more than $250,000 in gifts from an Alaska businessman.
Stevens and Palin remain close. Palin's former chief of staff serves as manager of Steven's re-election campaign. Stevens trounced six opponents in Tuesday's Republican primary, but faces a tough November battle against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Stevens' trial on the seven-count indictment is set to begin Sept. 24 in Washington.
Palin also faces problems in her own state over what appears to have been questionable efforts by her staff to force the firing of her sister's ex-husband from the Alaska Public Safety Department. The state legislature hired a private investigator to investigate after the governor fired the head of the Public Safety Department, Walt Monegan, who says she did so because he would not fire the trooper.
After initially denying that her staff had brought pressure to have the trooper, Mike Wooten, who was involved in a child custody dispute with Palin's sister, dismissed, Palin had to reverse course after an audio recording emerged in which Frank Bailey, the governor's director of boards and commissions, urged the dismissal of the trooper.
Plain suspended Bailey, but she also admitted that people close to her, including her chief of staff, the state attorney general, and her husband also contacted Monegan about the trooper.
"Many of these inquiries were completely appropriate. However, the serial nature of the contacts could be perceived as some kind of pressure, presumably at my direction," Palin said.
Like most Alaskan politicians, Palin is an advocate of opening oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a position that puts her in conflict with McCain.
She recently was criticized as well for declaring herself opposed to a ballot measure that would have limited discharge from mining operations in the state. Proponents of the measure said she was attempting to improperly influence the outcome of the vote. The measure was overwhelmingly defeated on Tuesday.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, picked Friday to be Sen. John McCain's running mate in his pursuit of the presidency, has a reputation as a reformer in a state where the Republican party is under siege by prosecutors in a long-running corruption probe.
Palin shocked fellow Republicans in March when she quickly endorsed Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell in his primary bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Don Young, who has been Alaska's lone member of the U.S. House for three decades. Young has been the focus of federal prosecutors, though he has not been charged with a crime. The results of Tuesday's primary will not be known for several more days, but Young currently is leading Parnell by 151 votes out of more than 90,000 cast.
Palin also acted quickly in July to call for the resignation of State Sen. John Cowdery, the oldest member of the Alaska legislature and a Republican power when he was indicted on federal bribery charges for his role in an effort to buy the support of another senator in the battle over tax legislation favored by North Slope oil producers.
She has been more circumspect, however, regarding the highest profile corruption investigation involving an Alaska politician, the indictment of the state's senior U.S. senator, Ted Stevens, on charges he failed to report more than $250,000 in gifts from an Alaska businessman.
Stevens and Palin remain close. Palin's former chief of staff serves as manager of Steven's re-election campaign. Stevens trounced six opponents in Tuesday's Republican primary, but faces a tough November battle against Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Stevens' trial on the seven-count indictment is set to begin Sept. 24 in Washington.
Palin also faces problems in her own state over what appears to have been questionable efforts by her staff to force the firing of her sister's ex-husband from the Alaska Public Safety Department. The state legislature hired a private investigator to investigate after the governor fired the head of the Public Safety Department, Walt Monegan, who says she did so because he would not fire the trooper.
After initially denying that her staff had brought pressure to have the trooper, Mike Wooten, who was involved in a child custody dispute with Palin's sister, dismissed, Palin had to reverse course after an audio recording emerged in which Frank Bailey, the governor's director of boards and commissions, urged the dismissal of the trooper.
Plain suspended Bailey, but she also admitted that people close to her, including her chief of staff, the state attorney general, and her husband also contacted Monegan about the trooper.
"Many of these inquiries were completely appropriate. However, the serial nature of the contacts could be perceived as some kind of pressure, presumably at my direction," Palin said.
Like most Alaskan politicians, Palin is an advocate of opening oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a position that puts her in conflict with McCain.
She recently was criticized as well for declaring herself opposed to a ballot measure that would have limited discharge from mining operations in the state. Proponents of the measure said she was attempting to improperly influence the outcome of the vote. The measure was overwhelmingly defeated on Tuesday.
Storm is called Gustav, but New Orleans hears 'Katrina'
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By Howard Witt
They had to cut short the funerals for the final seven victims of the last catastrophic hurricane so that officials could rush off to begin a massive evacuation Saturday ahead of the next one.
Precisely three years to the hour after Hurricane Katrina slammed into metropolitan New Orleans, flooding the city, killing more than 1,800 people and displacing at least a million others, city officials interred the last unidentified bodies of Katrina victims inside austere granite crypts at a new memorial cemetery.
Hundreds of bells were rung, a lone trumpet played a gospel hymn then the mayor, the police chief, the coroner and other emergency officials raced back to a command post Friday to prepare for a possible citywide evacuation ahead of Gustav, the storm newly elevated to hurricane status. If it stays on its current trajectory into the Gulf of Mexico, Gustav is aimed straight for the Louisiana coast.
"God is reminding us on the [anniversary] of Katrina that he can send Mother Nature back," said Russel Honore, the retired Army lieutenant general who commanded New Orleans rescue efforts after Katrina.
State and federal officials in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama—all of which could lie in Gustav's potential path—activated voluntary coastal evacuation plans beginning Saturday, with mandatory evacuation orders to follow early Sunday if necessary.
At its current speed, the National Hurricane Center warned, Gustav could strike the Gulf Coast on Monday afternoon as a major Category 3 or 4 storm after passing over the Cayman Islands and western Cuba before heading into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
A sense of foreboding and urgency mounted Friday across this stricken city still struggling to resurrect itself from Katrina's destruction even as local, state and federal officials declared that, unlike three years ago, they would not leave tens of thousands of the poorest New Orleanians behind to fend for themselves.
With the city's loose network of protective levees still only partially rebuilt after Katrina smashed them, 700 chartered buses headed toward New Orleans while mustering posts were readied across the city to accommodate an estimated 30,000 ailing, infirm or impoverished citizens without the means to evacuate themselves. They were to begin leaving the city Saturday morning for shelters in the interior of Louisiana and surrounding states.
A mandatory evacuation order for this below-sea-level city could come early Sunday morning, Mayor Ray Nagin announced, when "contraflow" provisions will kick in on the region's highways, directing all lanes away from the coast.
This time, officials said, there will be no "shelters of last resort" inside the city—meaning there will be no repeat of the hellish post-Katrina scenes at the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center, where tens of thousands of hurricane victims sweltered for nearly a week awaiting rescue.
Any of New Orleans' estimated 310,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept "all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones," announced Jerry Sneed, the city's emergency preparedness director.
Meanwhile, schools and universities announced they would shut down well into the week. All the city's hotels planned to close down beginning Saturday as a way to force tourists to leave. Officials began transporting prisoners out of area jails. At least 1,500 National Guard troops arrived in the city to help keep order and enforce a curfew that's expected if the city is ordered to be emptied.
"I want to put everyone on alert that this storm is a very serious matter," Nagin told a news conference Friday afternoon.
"What you're going to see is the product of three years of planning, training and exercising at all levels of government, starting with the local and the state level and leading up to the federal level," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday from New Orleans. "So we're clearly better prepared."
Despite the official assurances that their property would be protected, many New Orleans business owners stung by the chaotic and lawless aftermath of Katrina were taking no chances.
ATMs along Canal Street sported fresh signs saying they would remain empty until after the storm passes. Workers who had been using plywood sheets to rebuild houses and businesses abruptly shifted their efforts to boarding up windows and doors as protection against looters.
"It's not the wind or the water I'm worried about," said Tyler Malejko as he nailed thick wooden planks to the window frames of his wife's upscale kitchen cabinetry store in the Mid-City neighborhood. "The police couldn't protect anybody the last time, and I have no confidence things will be any different now."
Elsewhere across the city, pockmarked with 65,000 blighted houses destroyed by Katrina and yet to be razed or rebuilt, there were signs of mounting psychological distress. Calls to a mental health hot line at the Louisiana State University medical center in New Orleans spiked Thursday and Friday.
"The stress is obviously compounded by the fact that there is now the threat of a major hurricane again," said Dr. Howard Osofsky, chairman of the LSU psychiatry department. "People are worrying what will happen to their homes they have worked so hard to rebuild. People are tired. They've been through so much."
Some beleaguered New Orleans residents were predicting they might choose to never return if Gustav drives them out again. Osofsky said he spoke with one exhausted professional who was planning a "last supper"—a dinner among friends before they evacuated the city forever.
Down in the Lower 9th Ward, one of the areas worst hit by Katrina's flooding, Willie Fernandez and his elderly mother were making a similarly grim calculation. After nearly three years spent painstakingly rebuilding his family's two homes on Caffin Avenue, Fernandez, a flooring contractor, was loading up a trailer with building materials and large home appliances and preparing to take his family to safety.
"This just reawakens all of Katrina's horrors," Fernandez said. "We are lifelong 9th Ward residents. But it really makes you wonder if it's all going to be worth it again."
By Howard Witt
They had to cut short the funerals for the final seven victims of the last catastrophic hurricane so that officials could rush off to begin a massive evacuation Saturday ahead of the next one.
Precisely three years to the hour after Hurricane Katrina slammed into metropolitan New Orleans, flooding the city, killing more than 1,800 people and displacing at least a million others, city officials interred the last unidentified bodies of Katrina victims inside austere granite crypts at a new memorial cemetery.
Hundreds of bells were rung, a lone trumpet played a gospel hymn then the mayor, the police chief, the coroner and other emergency officials raced back to a command post Friday to prepare for a possible citywide evacuation ahead of Gustav, the storm newly elevated to hurricane status. If it stays on its current trajectory into the Gulf of Mexico, Gustav is aimed straight for the Louisiana coast.
"God is reminding us on the [anniversary] of Katrina that he can send Mother Nature back," said Russel Honore, the retired Army lieutenant general who commanded New Orleans rescue efforts after Katrina.
State and federal officials in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama—all of which could lie in Gustav's potential path—activated voluntary coastal evacuation plans beginning Saturday, with mandatory evacuation orders to follow early Sunday if necessary.
At its current speed, the National Hurricane Center warned, Gustav could strike the Gulf Coast on Monday afternoon as a major Category 3 or 4 storm after passing over the Cayman Islands and western Cuba before heading into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
A sense of foreboding and urgency mounted Friday across this stricken city still struggling to resurrect itself from Katrina's destruction even as local, state and federal officials declared that, unlike three years ago, they would not leave tens of thousands of the poorest New Orleanians behind to fend for themselves.
With the city's loose network of protective levees still only partially rebuilt after Katrina smashed them, 700 chartered buses headed toward New Orleans while mustering posts were readied across the city to accommodate an estimated 30,000 ailing, infirm or impoverished citizens without the means to evacuate themselves. They were to begin leaving the city Saturday morning for shelters in the interior of Louisiana and surrounding states.
A mandatory evacuation order for this below-sea-level city could come early Sunday morning, Mayor Ray Nagin announced, when "contraflow" provisions will kick in on the region's highways, directing all lanes away from the coast.
This time, officials said, there will be no "shelters of last resort" inside the city—meaning there will be no repeat of the hellish post-Katrina scenes at the New Orleans Superdome and Convention Center, where tens of thousands of hurricane victims sweltered for nearly a week awaiting rescue.
Any of New Orleans' estimated 310,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept "all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones," announced Jerry Sneed, the city's emergency preparedness director.
Meanwhile, schools and universities announced they would shut down well into the week. All the city's hotels planned to close down beginning Saturday as a way to force tourists to leave. Officials began transporting prisoners out of area jails. At least 1,500 National Guard troops arrived in the city to help keep order and enforce a curfew that's expected if the city is ordered to be emptied.
"I want to put everyone on alert that this storm is a very serious matter," Nagin told a news conference Friday afternoon.
"What you're going to see is the product of three years of planning, training and exercising at all levels of government, starting with the local and the state level and leading up to the federal level," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday from New Orleans. "So we're clearly better prepared."
Despite the official assurances that their property would be protected, many New Orleans business owners stung by the chaotic and lawless aftermath of Katrina were taking no chances.
ATMs along Canal Street sported fresh signs saying they would remain empty until after the storm passes. Workers who had been using plywood sheets to rebuild houses and businesses abruptly shifted their efforts to boarding up windows and doors as protection against looters.
"It's not the wind or the water I'm worried about," said Tyler Malejko as he nailed thick wooden planks to the window frames of his wife's upscale kitchen cabinetry store in the Mid-City neighborhood. "The police couldn't protect anybody the last time, and I have no confidence things will be any different now."
Elsewhere across the city, pockmarked with 65,000 blighted houses destroyed by Katrina and yet to be razed or rebuilt, there were signs of mounting psychological distress. Calls to a mental health hot line at the Louisiana State University medical center in New Orleans spiked Thursday and Friday.
"The stress is obviously compounded by the fact that there is now the threat of a major hurricane again," said Dr. Howard Osofsky, chairman of the LSU psychiatry department. "People are worrying what will happen to their homes they have worked so hard to rebuild. People are tired. They've been through so much."
Some beleaguered New Orleans residents were predicting they might choose to never return if Gustav drives them out again. Osofsky said he spoke with one exhausted professional who was planning a "last supper"—a dinner among friends before they evacuated the city forever.
Down in the Lower 9th Ward, one of the areas worst hit by Katrina's flooding, Willie Fernandez and his elderly mother were making a similarly grim calculation. After nearly three years spent painstakingly rebuilding his family's two homes on Caffin Avenue, Fernandez, a flooring contractor, was loading up a trailer with building materials and large home appliances and preparing to take his family to safety.
"This just reawakens all of Katrina's horrors," Fernandez said. "We are lifelong 9th Ward residents. But it really makes you wonder if it's all going to be worth it again."
Study: Bankruptcies soar for senior citizens
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Rate falling for those under 55 while many elderly retire with debt
First came the health problems. Then, unable to work, Ada Noda watched the bills pile up. And then, suffocating in debt, the 80-year-old did something she never thought she'd be forced to do.
She declared bankruptcy.
While the bankruptcy filing rate for those under 55 has fallen, it has soared for older Americans, according to a new analysis from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, which examined a sampling of noncommercial bankruptcies filed between 1991 and 2007.
The older the age group, the worse it got — people 65 and up became more than twice as likely to file during that period, and the filing rate for those 75 and older more than quadrupled.
"Older Americans are hit by a one-two punch of jobs and medical problems and the two are often intertwined," said Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who was one of the authors of the study. "They discover that they must work to keep some form of economic balance and when they can't, they're lost."
That's precisely what happened to Noda. She worked all her life, on a hospital's housekeeping staff, and later selling boat tickets to tourists. She cut corners when she needed to but always paid the bills she neatly logged in a ledger.
"I was born during the Depression," she said. "I paid the bills whether I ate or didn't, whether I went to the doctor or not."
It all worked fine for Noda, a widow for 23 years, until she was forced to undergo double-bypass surgery and deal with respiratory problems. She started using two credit cards more frequently for food and bills. Before long, she was $8,000 in debt and behind on car payments.
"I'd go to bed and all I had on my mind was bankruptcy," she said. "I had nothing left."
Noda's car was repossessed, but her trailer home wasn't in jeopardy because her daughter owns it. While she's covered by Medicare and receives $968 in Social Security each month, she relied on her job for other expenses. She had no choice but to get help from Jacksonville Legal Aid and declare bankruptcy.
Most bankruptcies are still filed by people far younger than Noda, but the percentage the younger filers make up has fallen over the 16-year period, according to the Consumer Bankruptcy Project analysis, which will be published in the Harvard Law and Policy Review in January.
In 1991, the 55-plus age group accounted for about 8 percent of bankruptcy filers, according to the study, which looked at more than 6,000 cases filed in 1991, 2001 or 2007. By last year, filers 55 and over accounted for 22 percent.
Each age group under 55 saw double-digit percentage drops in their bankruptcy filing rates over the survey period, older Americans saw remarkable increases. The filing rate per thousand people ages 55-64 was up 40 percent; among 65- to 74-year-olds it increased 125 percent; and among the 75-to-84-year-old set, it was up 433 percent.
A number of factors are contributing to the increase. Higher prices for ordinary consumer goods have hit seniors on fixed budgets. For older Americans living below the poverty level, or not far above, a safety net likely doesn't exist for economic setbacks such as medical problems. And some fall prey to scams that cripple their finances.
Warren noted increasing numbers of Americans are entering their retirement years with significant debt and are still paying off mortgages. She said it was wrong to assume that lives of luxury are bankrupting seniors; rather, they're incurring debts to meet needs such as medical treatment.
"There's no evidence that the problem is consumerism," the professor said.
Nor is there a significant aging trend to blame. While the country is set to experience a notable age shift in the coming years, no major one took place between 1991, when the average age was 33, and 2007, when it was 36.
Frank and Hazel Peters lived frugally their entire 53-year marriage. They always rented a home but decided after the husband's retirement from a factory job that they would cash in his 401(k) and buy a manufactured home down a gravel road in tiny Hastings, a town of cornfields and potato farms.
But they fell victim to fraud when they tried to fix a plumbing problem that had black, sulphur-smelling water coming through the pipes of their new home without enough funds to fall back on. They declared bankruptcy.
"We knew we had no other option," 73-year-old Hazel Peters said. "We'd probably be out on the street."
Bankruptcy, tough no matter a person's age, is especially hard when you don't have many years left to recover. Warren said some seniors fear telling their families because they're afraid they'll be put in a nursing home if they're seen as unable to take care of their affairs.
Many who file also express a sense of relief.
Wilona Harris, 71, filed bankruptcy two years ago because of medical bills she and her husband accrued.
"This phone rang all the time. It made you not even want to pick up. Sometimes you think, 'Let me go jump off a bridge somewhere,'" Harris said at her Jacksonville home. "You have to cry and try and figure out what in the world could I do."
At least now, Harris says, she can fall asleep without crying.
Rate falling for those under 55 while many elderly retire with debt
First came the health problems. Then, unable to work, Ada Noda watched the bills pile up. And then, suffocating in debt, the 80-year-old did something she never thought she'd be forced to do.
She declared bankruptcy.
While the bankruptcy filing rate for those under 55 has fallen, it has soared for older Americans, according to a new analysis from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, which examined a sampling of noncommercial bankruptcies filed between 1991 and 2007.
The older the age group, the worse it got — people 65 and up became more than twice as likely to file during that period, and the filing rate for those 75 and older more than quadrupled.
"Older Americans are hit by a one-two punch of jobs and medical problems and the two are often intertwined," said Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who was one of the authors of the study. "They discover that they must work to keep some form of economic balance and when they can't, they're lost."
That's precisely what happened to Noda. She worked all her life, on a hospital's housekeeping staff, and later selling boat tickets to tourists. She cut corners when she needed to but always paid the bills she neatly logged in a ledger.
"I was born during the Depression," she said. "I paid the bills whether I ate or didn't, whether I went to the doctor or not."
It all worked fine for Noda, a widow for 23 years, until she was forced to undergo double-bypass surgery and deal with respiratory problems. She started using two credit cards more frequently for food and bills. Before long, she was $8,000 in debt and behind on car payments.
"I'd go to bed and all I had on my mind was bankruptcy," she said. "I had nothing left."
Noda's car was repossessed, but her trailer home wasn't in jeopardy because her daughter owns it. While she's covered by Medicare and receives $968 in Social Security each month, she relied on her job for other expenses. She had no choice but to get help from Jacksonville Legal Aid and declare bankruptcy.
Most bankruptcies are still filed by people far younger than Noda, but the percentage the younger filers make up has fallen over the 16-year period, according to the Consumer Bankruptcy Project analysis, which will be published in the Harvard Law and Policy Review in January.
In 1991, the 55-plus age group accounted for about 8 percent of bankruptcy filers, according to the study, which looked at more than 6,000 cases filed in 1991, 2001 or 2007. By last year, filers 55 and over accounted for 22 percent.
Each age group under 55 saw double-digit percentage drops in their bankruptcy filing rates over the survey period, older Americans saw remarkable increases. The filing rate per thousand people ages 55-64 was up 40 percent; among 65- to 74-year-olds it increased 125 percent; and among the 75-to-84-year-old set, it was up 433 percent.
A number of factors are contributing to the increase. Higher prices for ordinary consumer goods have hit seniors on fixed budgets. For older Americans living below the poverty level, or not far above, a safety net likely doesn't exist for economic setbacks such as medical problems. And some fall prey to scams that cripple their finances.
Warren noted increasing numbers of Americans are entering their retirement years with significant debt and are still paying off mortgages. She said it was wrong to assume that lives of luxury are bankrupting seniors; rather, they're incurring debts to meet needs such as medical treatment.
"There's no evidence that the problem is consumerism," the professor said.
Nor is there a significant aging trend to blame. While the country is set to experience a notable age shift in the coming years, no major one took place between 1991, when the average age was 33, and 2007, when it was 36.
Frank and Hazel Peters lived frugally their entire 53-year marriage. They always rented a home but decided after the husband's retirement from a factory job that they would cash in his 401(k) and buy a manufactured home down a gravel road in tiny Hastings, a town of cornfields and potato farms.
But they fell victim to fraud when they tried to fix a plumbing problem that had black, sulphur-smelling water coming through the pipes of their new home without enough funds to fall back on. They declared bankruptcy.
"We knew we had no other option," 73-year-old Hazel Peters said. "We'd probably be out on the street."
Bankruptcy, tough no matter a person's age, is especially hard when you don't have many years left to recover. Warren said some seniors fear telling their families because they're afraid they'll be put in a nursing home if they're seen as unable to take care of their affairs.
Many who file also express a sense of relief.
Wilona Harris, 71, filed bankruptcy two years ago because of medical bills she and her husband accrued.
"This phone rang all the time. It made you not even want to pick up. Sometimes you think, 'Let me go jump off a bridge somewhere,'" Harris said at her Jacksonville home. "You have to cry and try and figure out what in the world could I do."
At least now, Harris says, she can fall asleep without crying.
Why CIA Veterans Are Scared of McCain
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By Laura Rozen
This is part one of a two-part series on the main presidential candidates' intelligence policies. Next week we'll look at Barack Obama.
Tall, broad-shouldered, mustached, Michael Kostiw looks like the former oilman and CIA case officer in Africa he once was. Now, as Republican staff director for Sen. John McCain on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, Kostiw, 61, is probably the closest top former CIA official to the Republican presidential candidate, and is discussed as a possible candidate for a senior intelligence position should McCain win the presidency. But his relationship with his former Agency is complex. Standing in his large office in the Senate Russell building on a quiet day during August congressional recess, Kostiw shows off a pair of wooden statuettes that were given to him by an African nation's ambassador—and longtime top official in his country's government—to Washington. The envoy, Kostiw says, is an old contact that he proposed trying to recruit two decades ago when he was a CIA case officer in the country. But his Agency boss at the time waved him off the recruitment, saying, "That guy isn't going anywhere."
It's a small but telling anecdote in an almost two-hour conversation with a man whose career trajectory from CIA Soviet East Europe division operations officer to Texaco oilman to cochair of the International Republican Institute to top Porter Goss and McCain Senate aide may signal what a McCain presidency would mean for the intelligence community—and why many from the CIA are quietly worried about a McCain presidency. The Bush years have been brutal for the CIA, which was pilloried for getting Iraq intelligence wrong while accused of downplaying and withholding intelligence from the White House that would have justified military action. Many current and former US spies expect a McCain administration guided by neoconservatives to treat them with hostility and mistrust. They also say McCain would likely weaken the CIA by giving broad new spying authorities to the Pentagon, which CIA officials believe is more amenable to giving policymakers the intelligence they want, while being subject to less congressional oversight.
These critics point especially to the McCain campaign's top national security adviser Randy Scheunemann—who ran a front group promoting war with Iraq and the fabrications of controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and who has lobbied for aggressive NATO expansion. Scheunemann's record, they argue, encapsulates everything wrong with the past eight years of Bush leadership on intelligence issues, from a penchant for foreign policy freelancing and secret contacts with unreliable fabricators, to neoconservatives' disdain for the perceived bureaucratic timidity of the CIA and State Department, to their avowed hostility for diplomacy with adversaries. If McCain wins, "the military has won," says one former senior CIA officer. "We will no longer have a civilian intelligence arm. Yes, we will have analysts. But we won't have any real civilian intelligence capability."
"McCain would be an absolute disaster," says a second recently retired senior US intelligence operations officer. "He is prejudiced against the CIA. The day after the 2004 election when Bush won, McCain came on TV and gave an interview in which he said something to the effect of, 'The CIA tried to sabotage this election. They've made their bed and now they have to lay in it.' I used to like McCain, but he is inconsistent." Columnist Robert Novak quoted McCain in November 2004 as saying, "With CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue organization."
McCain is influenced by a circle of hardline Republican legislators and congressional staff as well as disgruntled former Agency officials "who all had these long-standing grudges against people in the Agency," the former senior intelligence officer said. "They think the CIA is a hotbed of liberals. Right-wing, nutty paranoia stuff. They all love the military and hate the CIA. Because the CIA tells them stuff they don't want to hear."
But Kostiw says such fears are overblown. He insists that McCain's national security inclinations are more independent than the neoconservative caste of his campaign's advisory brain trust would suggest. "McCain on intelligence will favor an OSS-type agency," Kostiw said, referring to the CIA's World War II-era predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. What does that mean? "An effective intelligence professional element that will take risks and will be responsive to civilian control and made up of the best and brightest officers the US has to offer." A civilian agency? "It has to have a civilian function, but will have a vast military element as well. I always say, you have to keep the Central in the Central Intelligence Agency."
"Lots of people talk to John on foreign policy matters—not just Randy Scheunemann," Kostiw adds, ticking off a list of realist Republican foreign policy hands: Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, General Jim Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, former defense secretary James Schlesinger. But are these people really in McCain's inner circle? "The inner circle is the critical issue," Kostiw concedes.
"There has been a battle within the McCain campaign between neoconservatives and realists, but by and large, neoconservatives hold the high ground," says a former White House official now advising the Obama campaign on intelligence issues, on condition of anonymity. "And some of their positions have been deeply troubling," he added, citing McCain's proposal to kick Russia out of the group of eight leading industrialized countries.
Kostiw downplays any damage done by the McCain camp's rhetorical hostility to Moscow. And he says that McCain has been around so long, he is not overly susceptible to the influence of his national security brain trust. "I've been in meetings with McCain, where some adviser is discussing a policy issue," Kostiw said. "And at the end, McCain thanks them and says he's made up his own mind, and the outcome is the other way." Take his position against torture, Kostiw points out, a position that put McCain at stark odds with the Bush/Cheney White House.
But former CIA hands say they have heard such reassurances from Kostiw before—about former House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss, who served as CIA director from 2004 until his sudden resignation in 2006—and they proved delusionally unfounded. "Mike [Kostiw] is a nice guy," says the former senior CIA operations officer. "But this is the guy who sat around talking to all of us when Porter came in [as CIA director in 2004], and told us how much Porter respected us, and not to worry about the stories we hear. He was trying to reassure us that Goss was not out to destroy the Agency. He told us everything is going to be fine." Goss (for whom Kostiw was a special adviser) brought to Langley several ultrapartisan House Republican aides—the "Gosslings"—whose hostility to the Agency's senior operations officers and conviction that they were not loyal to the Republican president was so blatant, it led to the angry departure of the two top operations veterans—and dozens more—and sent morale plummeting. After Goss' proposal that Kostiw serve in the CIA No. 3 spot crumbled when it was leaked that Kostiw had been fired from the Agency two decades earlier, allegedly for not paying for a package of bacon from a grocery store (some colleagues say that was just the cover story, and that Kostiw had in fact left the Agency for other financial-related reasons), Goss, against the advice of senior CIA officers, appointed a controversial, womanizing administrative officer, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, to be the CIA executive director. Foggo's indictment on corruption charges related to the Congressman Duke Cunningham corruption case in May 2006 coincided with Goss' abrupt resignation the same month. (Foggo is slated to go on trial in October.) The top two Agency operations vets who had quit in disputes with the Gosslings—Steve Kappes and Michael Sulick—returned to the Agency after Goss' departure. And Kostiw, after serving as Goss' "special adviser" at the Agency, went to work for McCain on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Kostiw may insist that a McCain presidency would steer away from his advisers' ideological zeal. But his fellow former intelligence officers are skeptical, fearing his assurances will prove as overly optimistic as his promises to them about Goss.
By Laura Rozen
This is part one of a two-part series on the main presidential candidates' intelligence policies. Next week we'll look at Barack Obama.
Tall, broad-shouldered, mustached, Michael Kostiw looks like the former oilman and CIA case officer in Africa he once was. Now, as Republican staff director for Sen. John McCain on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, Kostiw, 61, is probably the closest top former CIA official to the Republican presidential candidate, and is discussed as a possible candidate for a senior intelligence position should McCain win the presidency. But his relationship with his former Agency is complex. Standing in his large office in the Senate Russell building on a quiet day during August congressional recess, Kostiw shows off a pair of wooden statuettes that were given to him by an African nation's ambassador—and longtime top official in his country's government—to Washington. The envoy, Kostiw says, is an old contact that he proposed trying to recruit two decades ago when he was a CIA case officer in the country. But his Agency boss at the time waved him off the recruitment, saying, "That guy isn't going anywhere."
It's a small but telling anecdote in an almost two-hour conversation with a man whose career trajectory from CIA Soviet East Europe division operations officer to Texaco oilman to cochair of the International Republican Institute to top Porter Goss and McCain Senate aide may signal what a McCain presidency would mean for the intelligence community—and why many from the CIA are quietly worried about a McCain presidency. The Bush years have been brutal for the CIA, which was pilloried for getting Iraq intelligence wrong while accused of downplaying and withholding intelligence from the White House that would have justified military action. Many current and former US spies expect a McCain administration guided by neoconservatives to treat them with hostility and mistrust. They also say McCain would likely weaken the CIA by giving broad new spying authorities to the Pentagon, which CIA officials believe is more amenable to giving policymakers the intelligence they want, while being subject to less congressional oversight.
These critics point especially to the McCain campaign's top national security adviser Randy Scheunemann—who ran a front group promoting war with Iraq and the fabrications of controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and who has lobbied for aggressive NATO expansion. Scheunemann's record, they argue, encapsulates everything wrong with the past eight years of Bush leadership on intelligence issues, from a penchant for foreign policy freelancing and secret contacts with unreliable fabricators, to neoconservatives' disdain for the perceived bureaucratic timidity of the CIA and State Department, to their avowed hostility for diplomacy with adversaries. If McCain wins, "the military has won," says one former senior CIA officer. "We will no longer have a civilian intelligence arm. Yes, we will have analysts. But we won't have any real civilian intelligence capability."
"McCain would be an absolute disaster," says a second recently retired senior US intelligence operations officer. "He is prejudiced against the CIA. The day after the 2004 election when Bush won, McCain came on TV and gave an interview in which he said something to the effect of, 'The CIA tried to sabotage this election. They've made their bed and now they have to lay in it.' I used to like McCain, but he is inconsistent." Columnist Robert Novak quoted McCain in November 2004 as saying, "With CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue organization."
McCain is influenced by a circle of hardline Republican legislators and congressional staff as well as disgruntled former Agency officials "who all had these long-standing grudges against people in the Agency," the former senior intelligence officer said. "They think the CIA is a hotbed of liberals. Right-wing, nutty paranoia stuff. They all love the military and hate the CIA. Because the CIA tells them stuff they don't want to hear."
But Kostiw says such fears are overblown. He insists that McCain's national security inclinations are more independent than the neoconservative caste of his campaign's advisory brain trust would suggest. "McCain on intelligence will favor an OSS-type agency," Kostiw said, referring to the CIA's World War II-era predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. What does that mean? "An effective intelligence professional element that will take risks and will be responsive to civilian control and made up of the best and brightest officers the US has to offer." A civilian agency? "It has to have a civilian function, but will have a vast military element as well. I always say, you have to keep the Central in the Central Intelligence Agency."
"Lots of people talk to John on foreign policy matters—not just Randy Scheunemann," Kostiw adds, ticking off a list of realist Republican foreign policy hands: Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, General Jim Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, former defense secretary James Schlesinger. But are these people really in McCain's inner circle? "The inner circle is the critical issue," Kostiw concedes.
"There has been a battle within the McCain campaign between neoconservatives and realists, but by and large, neoconservatives hold the high ground," says a former White House official now advising the Obama campaign on intelligence issues, on condition of anonymity. "And some of their positions have been deeply troubling," he added, citing McCain's proposal to kick Russia out of the group of eight leading industrialized countries.
Kostiw downplays any damage done by the McCain camp's rhetorical hostility to Moscow. And he says that McCain has been around so long, he is not overly susceptible to the influence of his national security brain trust. "I've been in meetings with McCain, where some adviser is discussing a policy issue," Kostiw said. "And at the end, McCain thanks them and says he's made up his own mind, and the outcome is the other way." Take his position against torture, Kostiw points out, a position that put McCain at stark odds with the Bush/Cheney White House.
But former CIA hands say they have heard such reassurances from Kostiw before—about former House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss, who served as CIA director from 2004 until his sudden resignation in 2006—and they proved delusionally unfounded. "Mike [Kostiw] is a nice guy," says the former senior CIA operations officer. "But this is the guy who sat around talking to all of us when Porter came in [as CIA director in 2004], and told us how much Porter respected us, and not to worry about the stories we hear. He was trying to reassure us that Goss was not out to destroy the Agency. He told us everything is going to be fine." Goss (for whom Kostiw was a special adviser) brought to Langley several ultrapartisan House Republican aides—the "Gosslings"—whose hostility to the Agency's senior operations officers and conviction that they were not loyal to the Republican president was so blatant, it led to the angry departure of the two top operations veterans—and dozens more—and sent morale plummeting. After Goss' proposal that Kostiw serve in the CIA No. 3 spot crumbled when it was leaked that Kostiw had been fired from the Agency two decades earlier, allegedly for not paying for a package of bacon from a grocery store (some colleagues say that was just the cover story, and that Kostiw had in fact left the Agency for other financial-related reasons), Goss, against the advice of senior CIA officers, appointed a controversial, womanizing administrative officer, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, to be the CIA executive director. Foggo's indictment on corruption charges related to the Congressman Duke Cunningham corruption case in May 2006 coincided with Goss' abrupt resignation the same month. (Foggo is slated to go on trial in October.) The top two Agency operations vets who had quit in disputes with the Gosslings—Steve Kappes and Michael Sulick—returned to the Agency after Goss' departure. And Kostiw, after serving as Goss' "special adviser" at the Agency, went to work for McCain on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Kostiw may insist that a McCain presidency would steer away from his advisers' ideological zeal. But his fellow former intelligence officers are skeptical, fearing his assurances will prove as overly optimistic as his promises to them about Goss.
The Dark Side Of The "Free World"
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By Rob Gowland
The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, published in mid-July, is written by US journalist Jane Mayer, whose specialty is writing about counter-terrorism for The New Yorker.
The book has particularly peeved the CIA and its boss in the White House for, apparently, Ms Mayer has had access to a secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross issued last year labelling the CIA’s interrogation methods for "high-level Qaeda prisoners" as "categorically" torture. In consequence, the Bush administration officials who approved these methods would be guilty of war crimes.
The book says the Red Cross report was shared with the CIA, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
It would not be the first time of course that US authorities (civil, intelligence or military) have indulged in or turned a blind eye to torture or other forms of horrifying brutality.
One thinks of their blood-soaked activities to thwart the former Communist Resistance leaders from gaining political power in Western Europe after WW2, or their even more bloody destruction of democracy in Guatemala or Chile, El Salvador and pre-Castro Cuba.
The many atrocities by US forces in Korea and Vietnam were far too numerous to be the work of "rotten apples"; they were clearly the result of US government and military policy, just like the actions of the US military in charge of the Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
A society that bases itself on force and brutality, on state terrorism, while simultaneously indulging in the most hypocritical lip-service to the ideals of humaneness and justice, cannot but find excuses for torture.
Only last year or the year before, Amnesty International — an organisation not noted for being hostile to the USA — stated that the procedures in many US civilian jails amounted to torture. Military prisons operated by the US in other countries must surely be hell on earth.
Red Cross representatives were only permitted to interview high-level "terrorist" detainees in late 2006, after they were moved to the military detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until then, while the prisoners were being "interrogated" in the CIA’s secret prisons, the Red Cross was not given access to them.
It is now well known that these secret prisons are located in US client states, some in Eastern Europe where anti-Communist regimes are all too willing to co-operate with their US backers, and some in states like Egypt that are equally dependent on US support. Significantly, they all practice torture.
We have all seen the images from Guantánamo Bay of prisoners, shackled and manacled, stumbling along with a guard on either side. But all the time, the particularly frightening threat hangs over them of being taken from there and returned to one of the secret prisons away from any prying eyes.
In testimony to the Red Cross, Abu Zubaydah, the first major Al Qaeda figure the United States captured, told how he was confined in a box "so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the foetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls".
The CIA has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were water-boarded, a form of torture in which water is poured in the nose and mouth of the victim to simulate the sensation of suffocation and drowning.
The Pentagon and the CIA have both defended water-boarding on the same grounds: "because it works", the torturer’s classic justification. Jane Mayer’s book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been water-boarded at least ten times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.
The Red Cross report says that another high level prisoner, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged chief planner of the attacks of September 11, 2001, told them that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been "kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room".
A New York Times article on the report says the prisoners considered the "most excruciating" of the methods was being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. This is a well-known torture technique that has severe physical effects on the victim’s body.
According to The New York Times article, eleven of the 14 prisoners reported to the Red Cross that they had suffered prolonged sleep deprivation, including "bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day".
The New York Times reported that a CIA spokesman had confirmed that Red Cross workers had been "granted access to the detained terrorists at Guantánamo and heard their claims".
The same CIA spokesman said the agency’s interrogations were based on "detailed legal guidance from the Department of Justice" and had "produced solid information that has contributed directly to the disruption of terrorist activities". There’s that justification of torture again.
Bernard Barrett of the International Committee of the Red Cross declined to comment on the book when asked by The New York Times. He did not deny any of the book’s claims, but regretted "that any information has been attributed to us" because, it seems, the International Committee of the Red Cross "believes its work is more effective when confidential"!
He went on to say: "We have an ongoing confidential dialogue with members of the US intelligence community, and we would share any observations or recommendations with them."
So that’s OK then.
By Rob Gowland
The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, published in mid-July, is written by US journalist Jane Mayer, whose specialty is writing about counter-terrorism for The New Yorker.
The book has particularly peeved the CIA and its boss in the White House for, apparently, Ms Mayer has had access to a secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross issued last year labelling the CIA’s interrogation methods for "high-level Qaeda prisoners" as "categorically" torture. In consequence, the Bush administration officials who approved these methods would be guilty of war crimes.
The book says the Red Cross report was shared with the CIA, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
It would not be the first time of course that US authorities (civil, intelligence or military) have indulged in or turned a blind eye to torture or other forms of horrifying brutality.
One thinks of their blood-soaked activities to thwart the former Communist Resistance leaders from gaining political power in Western Europe after WW2, or their even more bloody destruction of democracy in Guatemala or Chile, El Salvador and pre-Castro Cuba.
The many atrocities by US forces in Korea and Vietnam were far too numerous to be the work of "rotten apples"; they were clearly the result of US government and military policy, just like the actions of the US military in charge of the Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
A society that bases itself on force and brutality, on state terrorism, while simultaneously indulging in the most hypocritical lip-service to the ideals of humaneness and justice, cannot but find excuses for torture.
Only last year or the year before, Amnesty International — an organisation not noted for being hostile to the USA — stated that the procedures in many US civilian jails amounted to torture. Military prisons operated by the US in other countries must surely be hell on earth.
Red Cross representatives were only permitted to interview high-level "terrorist" detainees in late 2006, after they were moved to the military detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until then, while the prisoners were being "interrogated" in the CIA’s secret prisons, the Red Cross was not given access to them.
It is now well known that these secret prisons are located in US client states, some in Eastern Europe where anti-Communist regimes are all too willing to co-operate with their US backers, and some in states like Egypt that are equally dependent on US support. Significantly, they all practice torture.
We have all seen the images from Guantánamo Bay of prisoners, shackled and manacled, stumbling along with a guard on either side. But all the time, the particularly frightening threat hangs over them of being taken from there and returned to one of the secret prisons away from any prying eyes.
In testimony to the Red Cross, Abu Zubaydah, the first major Al Qaeda figure the United States captured, told how he was confined in a box "so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the foetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls".
The CIA has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were water-boarded, a form of torture in which water is poured in the nose and mouth of the victim to simulate the sensation of suffocation and drowning.
The Pentagon and the CIA have both defended water-boarding on the same grounds: "because it works", the torturer’s classic justification. Jane Mayer’s book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been water-boarded at least ten times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.
The Red Cross report says that another high level prisoner, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged chief planner of the attacks of September 11, 2001, told them that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been "kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room".
A New York Times article on the report says the prisoners considered the "most excruciating" of the methods was being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. This is a well-known torture technique that has severe physical effects on the victim’s body.
According to The New York Times article, eleven of the 14 prisoners reported to the Red Cross that they had suffered prolonged sleep deprivation, including "bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day".
The New York Times reported that a CIA spokesman had confirmed that Red Cross workers had been "granted access to the detained terrorists at Guantánamo and heard their claims".
The same CIA spokesman said the agency’s interrogations were based on "detailed legal guidance from the Department of Justice" and had "produced solid information that has contributed directly to the disruption of terrorist activities". There’s that justification of torture again.
Bernard Barrett of the International Committee of the Red Cross declined to comment on the book when asked by The New York Times. He did not deny any of the book’s claims, but regretted "that any information has been attributed to us" because, it seems, the International Committee of the Red Cross "believes its work is more effective when confidential"!
He went on to say: "We have an ongoing confidential dialogue with members of the US intelligence community, and we would share any observations or recommendations with them."
So that’s OK then.
Stars, Stripes, War and Shame
Go to Original
By MISSY COMLEY BEATTIE
The Pentagon says “only” five civilians were killed Friday, a week ago, by US aerial bombardment. According to Afghan officials and a United Nations report, 90 Afghan civilians died, 60 of whom were children.
By MISSY COMLEY BEATTIE
The Pentagon says “only” five civilians were killed Friday, a week ago, by US aerial bombardment. According to Afghan officials and a United Nations report, 90 Afghan civilians died, 60 of whom were children.
Just days after this carnage, the Democrats, so many dressed in red, white, and blue, opened their convention in Denver. In the wake of the barbarity in Afghanistan and the continued suicide bombings in Iraq, the revelry and flag waving in Colorado seemed inappropriate. Sure, I understand that hope was and is in the air, but I reached for the remote and powered off.
Thursday night, I tuned in to hear a sweet, young voice, pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of American. “With freedom and justice for all.”
Freedom and justice are concepts we can no longer take for granted. They aren’t guaranteed by stars, stripes, and platitudes. The truth is that George and Dick have sucked the life out of our Constitution, aided by Congressional Republicans and Democrats as well as too many among the electorate who are guilty by reason of fear or complacency.
The events of 9/11 sent masses rushing to either purchase or dust off their Bibles and reference scripture for guidance and to to justify “an eye for an eye.” Never mind that we leveled a country with no link to those who used our commercial airplanes as weapons. The attack on our soil provided the neocons the excuse they needed to implement their plan for domination of Earth’s bounties. Add to this the groupies convinced that George Bush was chosen by God to be president at this particular time of crisis. That Bush himself believed this should have been a red-flag warming that the path he demanded we follow would lead us, not to an Eden of security and prosperity but, to a miasma of endless conflict and contempt from most of the world.
The warmongers forgot the song learned in childhood:
“Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”
The lyrics crawl through my consciousness as war rages on and candidates for the highest office in our land spar in their own war of words for the power prize, which is the authority to declare war. To John Bomb Bomb McCain, war is something about which to joke, promote, and accelerate. He reminds us repeatedly of his years as a tortured prisoner of war. Yet he never mentions the targets whose eyes he didn’t see--all those Vietnamese peasants, men, women, and children, whose bodies he melted. For Barack Obama who opposed the invasion of Iraq but, without fail, has voted to fund it, the prudent foreign policy strategy is to send more troops to the “right” hotspot, Afghanistan. Russia must love this.
Monday is the beginning of the Republican version of Denver. When McCain, who seems to have a "thing" for beauty queens, speaks, we’ll probably hear about that trip he’s going to take to the “gates of hell.” Also, he’ll offer the usual “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here,” and “if we leave too soon, they’ll follow us home,” and that we “must achieve victory.”
But no one is defining victory, so allow me: Victory is pledging allegiance to peace.
Imagine if we had a candidate who said:
So much of the history of our country has been sanitized. The truth is that we have battled unnecessarily, illegally, immorally. We have sent our sons and daughters to die, to return maimed, to sustain traumatic brain injuries and post traumatic stress disorder while destroying the lives of those we call the enemy, the other. We have invaded for resources that we call our “interests” and for superior positioning. Just to show we can. Just to show our might. Not to defend ourselves. I say no more. Not on my watch. As your president, I pledge allegiance to the people. I pledge allegiance to peace.
Actually, we do have aspirants who have said as much. Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney certainly are transformational choices. Bob Barr, the Libertarian, gets it, too, when he says that war “should be the last rather than the first resort.” But our corporate media give them little credibility and even less airtime.
So, we wait. Some wave their flags and hope while others feel despair and shame at what continues to be done in our names.
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