FTR#575—Interview with Robert Parry—(Two 30-minute segments) (Sources are
noted in parentheses.) (Recorded on 11/5/2006.)
Note: FTR#’s 260-316, 317,
324, FTR#325 and succeeding programs are streaming
on Real Audio at www.wfmu.org/daveemory.
FTR#’s 01-270, 316-324 are available for download
only, also on Real Audio, on their Archive Page.)
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NOTE: TWO
LECTURES PRESENTING MR. EMORY’S VIEWS OF WHAT WE CAN EXPECT IN THE FUTURE ARE
NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWLOAD FOR FREE IN
BOTH REAL AUDIO AND MP3. These lectures are:
L-1: ‘The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the ‘ET’ Myth’; and
L-2: ‘The Future--Technology, Theocracy and the Thousand-Year-Reich.’ Descriptions
are available in the Lecture
Series section.
NEW!! A number of
vitally important books are now available for download for FREE. The books are:
Martin Bormann: Nazi in
Exile by Paul Manning; The Nazis Go Underground
by Curt Reiss; and All Honorable Men (parts 1 and 2) by James
Stewart Martin. Taken together, these books will provide a significant
understanding of the concept and reality of The Underground Reich, and they can
be downloaded with a modem Internet connection. They are available at: Spitfirelist.com/Books. In addition, we have added Cairo to Damascus by John Roy Carlson [1951], Germany Plots with the Kremlin by T.H. Tetens [1953], and Armies of Spies by Joseph Golomb [1939].
Yet another recent addition is Germany’s
Master Plan by Joseph Borkin and Charles Welsh. (Borkin is the author of
the 1979 classic The Crime and Punishment
of I.G. Farben.) Another anti-fascist classic about I.G. Farben supplements
the Borkin and Welsh text—Treason’s Peace
by Howard Watson Ambruster. Two more recently-posted gems are The Thousand-Year Conspiracy by Paul
Winkler and Falange by Alan Chase,
both published in 1943. The Winkler text documents the evolution of militant
Pan-Germanism from the Teutonic Knights to the Nazis and Falange documents the Third Reich’s geopolitical goals in the
Spanish-speaking world. By the time many of you read this description, more of
the long-out-of-print anti-fascist books that are more than 50 years old will
have been added to the Spitfirelist.com/Books URL. The Manning text’s URL also features a discussion of
Paul Manning’s career and professional credentials. Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile is also available in html. Note also that FTR#305
has a synoptic overview of the Bormann organization. An understanding of the
Bormann organization is essential for an in-depth grasp of the arguments
presented on For The Record.
Note also that U.S. Government documents proving Prescott
Bush Sr.’s Money-Laundering on behalf of the Third Reich before and after World
War II are available at a linked website, along with commentary by John
Buchanan, who located the documentation. This material is discussed in FTR#435.
The website containing the documents is www.debatecomics.org/BushFamilyFortune/.
Summary of FTR#575—(Note: The massive
volume of ‘For The Record’ programs about 9/11 and related topics is summarized
and analyzed in the periodically-updated description for FTR#391.
FTR#’s 454,
455, 456 are compilations of
much of the key documentation culled from Mr. Emory’s investigation into 9/11.
Along with FTR#391, they should give
listeners/readers a substantive grasp of this momentous event. It is
recommended that listeners use this description and e-mail it to others.) Once again, Mr. Emory interviewed Robert
Parry, who runs the “Consortium News”
web site. The last program recorded before the 2006 election, this broadcast
examines how George W. Bush has actually worked with, not against, Osama bin
Laden. Beginning with analysis of a 2004 videotape released just before the
presidential election, the program highlights the CIA’s contention that bin Laden’s
intention in releasing the tape was to support Bush’s reelection bid! In addition, the program sets forth
intelligence that indicates that al-Qaeda doesn’t want the U.S. to withdraw
from Iraq, as Bush contends. Al-Qaeda is said to believe that staying in Iraq
is good for its cause. Revisiting past elections, the broadcast details the
media’s deliberate slanting of coverage of Al Gore’s 2004 campaign in favor of
the Republicans. Concluding with discussion of the recent North Korean nuclear
test, the program notes that the Moon organization (which is very close to the
Bush family) gave a great deal of money to North Korea in the early 1990’s—a
time at which that regime was seeking funds to further its nuclear program.
Program Highlights Include: The Washington press corps’ openly partisan behavior during a 1999 debate
between Al Gore and Bill Bradley; the truth concerning Gore’s alleged comments
about the Internet, the Love Canal and the novel “Love Story”; review of the
business relationship between the Bush and bin Laden families.
1.
Beginning with analysis of the business relationship between the Bush
and bin Laden families, the program reviews the involvement of the bin Laden
family with Arbusto Energy, Bush’s first energy venture. For more about this connection,
see—among other programs—FTR#’s 248,
310. In addition to the
Bush/bin Laden/Arbusto link, Robert discussed the Bush and bin Laden family’s
relationship to the Carlyle Group. For more about this, see—among other
programs—FTR#347.
2.
Moving from the subject of the business relationship between the Bush
and bin Laden families to the topic of the political symbiosis that the two
have manifested, the discussion notes that the CIA concluded that a videotape
released by bin Laden on the eve of the 2004 election was released
specifically to help George W. Bush! Mr. Emory noted in this context that
the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades (an Islamist group affiliated with al-Qaeda) and
al-Qaeda in Iraq released communiqués in the run-up to that election which were
openly supportive of George W. Bush. “On Oct. 29, 2004,
just four days before the U.S. presidential election, al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin-Laden released a videotape denouncing George W. Bush. Some Bush supporters
quickly spun the diatribe as ‘Osama’s endorsement of John Kerry.’ But behind
the walls of the CIA, analysts had concluded the opposite: that bin-Laden was
trying to help Bush gain a second term.
This stunning CIA disclosure is tucked away in a brief
passage near the end of Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, which
draws heavily from CIA insiders. Suskind wrote that the CIA analysts based their
troubling assessment on classified information, but the analysts still puzzled
over exactly why bin-Laden wanted Bush to stay in office.
According to Suskind’s book, CIA analysts had spent years ‘parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, [Ayman] Zawahiri. What they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin-Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. …
‘Their [the CIA’s] assessments, at day’s end, are a distillate of the kind of secret, internal conversations that the American public [was] not sanctioned to hear: strategic analysis. Today’s conclusion: bin-Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.
‘At the five o’clock meeting, [deputy CIA director] John
McLaughlin opened the issue with the consensus view: ‘Bin-Laden certainly did a
nice favor today for the President.’’
McLaughlin’s comment drew nods from CIA officers at the
table. Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, suggested
that the al-Qaeda founder may have come to Bush’s aid because bin-Laden felt
threatened by the rise in Iraq of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi;
bin-Laden might have thought his leadership would be diminished if Bush lost
the White House and their ‘eye-to-eye struggle’ ended.
But the CIA analysts also felt that bin-Laden might have
recognized how Bush’s policies – including the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu
Ghraib scandal and the endless bloodshed in Iraq – were serving al-Qaeda’s
strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.
‘Certainly,’ the CIA’s Miscik said, ‘he would want Bush to
keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years,’ according to Suskind’s
account of the meeting.
As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts
drifted into silence, troubled by the implications of their own conclusions.
‘An ocean of hard truths before them – such as what did it say about U.S.
policies that bin-Laden would want Bush reelected – remained untouched,’
Suskind wrote.
One immediate consequence of bin-Laden breaking nearly a
year of silence to issue the videotape the weekend before the U.S. presidential
election was to give the Bush campaign a much needed boost. From a virtual dead
heat, Bush opened up a six-point lead, according to one poll.
The implications of this new evidence are troubling, too,
for the American people as they head toward another election in November 2006
that also is viewed as a referendum on Bush’s prosecution of the ‘war on
terror.’
As we have reported previously at Consortiumnews.com, a
large body of evidence already existed supporting the view that the Bushes and
the bin-Ladens have long operated with a symbiotic relationship that may be
entirely unspoken but nevertheless has been a case of each family acting in
ways that advance the interests of the other. [See ‘Osama’s
Briar Patch‘ or ‘Is
Bush al-Qaeda's 'Useful Idiot?'‘]
Before al-Qaeda launched the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks
against New York and Washington, Bush was stumbling in a presidency that many
Americans felt was headed nowhere. As Bush took a month-long vacation at his
Texas ranch in August 2001, his big issue was a plan to restrict stem-cell
research on moral grounds.
Privately, Bush’s neoconservative advisers were chafing
under what they saw as the complacency of the American people unwilling to take
on the mantle of global policeman as the world’s sole superpower. The neocons
hoped for some ‘Pearl Harbor’ incident that would galvanize a public consensus
for action against Iraq and other ‘rogue states.’
Other senior administration officials, such as Vice
President Dick Cheney, dreamed of the restoration of the imperial presidency
that – after Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal – had been cut down to size by
Congress, the courts and the press. Only a national crisis would create a cover
for a new assertion of presidential power.
Meanwhile, halfway around the world, bin-Laden and his
al-Qaeda militants were facing defeat after defeat. Their brand of Islamic
fundamentalism had been rejected in Muslim societies from Algeria and Egypt to
Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Bin-Laden and his lieutenants had even been expelled
from the Sudan.
Bin-Laden’s extremists had been chased to the farthest
corners of the planet, in this case the caves of Afghanistan. At this critical
juncture, al-Qaeda’s brain trust decided that their best hope was to strike at
the United States and count on a clumsy reaction that would offend the Islamic
world and rally angry young Muslims to al-Qaeda’s banner.
So, by early summer 2001, the clock ticked down to 9/11 as
19 al-Qaeda operatives positioned themselves inside the United States and
prepared to attack. But U.S. intelligence analysts picked up evidence of
al-Qaeda’s plans by sifting through the ‘chatter’ of electronic intercepts. The
U.S. warning system was ‘blinking red.’
Over the weekend of July Fourth 2001, a well-placed U.S.
intelligence source passed on a disturbing piece of information to then-New
York Times reporter Judith Miller, who later recounted the incident in an
interview with Alternet.
‘The person told me that there was some concern about an
intercept that had been picked up,’ Miller said. ‘The incident that had gotten
everyone’s attention was a conversation between two members of al-Qaeda. And
they had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that
the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened
to the [destroyer USS] Cole [which was bombed on Oct. 12, 2000].
‘And one al-Qaeda operative was overheard saying to the
other, ‘Don’t worry; we’re planning something so big now that the U.S. will
have to respond.’’
In the Alternet interview, published in May 2006 after
Miller resigned from the Times, the reporter expressed regret that she had not
been able to nail down enough details about the intercept to get the story into
the newspaper.
But the significance of her recollection is that more than two
months before the 9/11 attacks, the CIA knew that al-Qaeda was planning a major
attack with the intent of inciting a U.S. military reaction – or in this case,
an overreaction.
The CIA tried to warn Bush about the threat on Aug. 6, 2001,
with the hope that presidential action could energize government agencies and
head off the attack. The CIA sent analysts to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, to
brief him and deliver a report entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.’
Bush was not pleased by the intrusion. He glared at the CIA
briefer and snapped, ‘All right, you’ve covered your ass,’ according to
Suskind’s book.
Then, putting the CIA’s warning in the back of his mind and
ordering no special response, Bush returned to a vacation of fishing, clearing
brush and working on a speech about stem-cell research.
For its part, al-Qaeda was running a risk that the United
States might strike a precise and devastating blow against the terrorist
organization, eliminating it as an effective force without alienating much of
the Muslim world.
If that happened, the cause of Islamic extremism could have
been set back years, without eliciting much sympathy from most Muslims for a
band of killers who wantonly murdered innocent civilians.
After the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda’s gamble almost failed as
the CIA, backed by U.S. Special Forces, ousted bin-Laden’s Taliban allies in
Afghanistan and cornered much of the al-Qaeda leadership in the mountains of
Tora Bora near the Pakistani border.
But instead of using U.S. ground troops to seal the border,
Bush relied on the Pakistani army, which was known to have mixed sympathies
about al-Qaeda. The Pakistani army moved its blocking force belatedly into
position while bin-Laden and others from his inner circle escaped.
Then, instead of staying focused on bin-Laden and his fellow
fugitives, Bush moved on to other objectives. Bush shifted U.S. Special Forces
away from bin-Laden and al-Qaeda and toward Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
Many U.S. terrorism experts, including White House
counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, were shocked at this strategy, since the
intelligence community didn’t believe that Hussein’s secular dictatorship had
any working relationship with al-Qaeda – and had no role in the 9/11 attacks.
Nevertheless, Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq on March 19,
2003, ousting Hussein from power but also unleashing mayhem across Iraqi
society. Soon, the Iraq War – combined with controversies over torture and
mistreatment of Muslim detainees – were serving as recruitment posters for
al-Qaeda.
Under Jordanian exile Zarqawi, al-Qaeda set up terrorist
cells in central Iraq, taking root amid the weeds of sectarian violence and the
nation’s general anarchy. Instead of an obscure group of misfits, al-Qaeda was
achieving legendary status among many Muslims as the defenders of the Islamic
holy lands, battling the new ‘crusaders’ led by Bush.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, the 9/11 attacks had
allowed Bush to reinvent himself as the ‘war president’ who operated almost
without oversight. He saw his approval ratings surge from the 50s to the 90s –
and watched as the Republican Party consolidated its control of the U.S.
Congress in 2002.
Though the worsening bloodshed in Iraq eroded Bush’s
popularity in 2004, political adviser Karl Rove still framed the election
around Bush’s aggressive moves to defend the United States and to punish
American enemies.
Whereas Bush was supposedly resolute, Democrat Kerry was
portrayed as weak and indecisive, a ‘flip-flopper.’ Kerry, however, scored some
political points in the presidential debates by citing the debacle at Tora Bora
that enabled bin-Laden to escape.
The race was considered neck-and-neck as it turned toward
the final weekend of campaigning. Then, the shimmering image of Osama bin-Laden
appeared on American televisions, speaking directly to the American people,
mocking Bush and offering a kind of truce if U.S. forces withdrew from the
Middle East.
‘He [Bush] was more interested in listening to the child’s
story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the [twin]
towers,’ bin-Laden said. ‘So, we had three times the time necessary
to accomplish the events. Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or
al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands. Any nation that does not attack
us will not be attacked.’
Though both Bush and Kerry denounced bin-Laden’s statement,
right-wing pundits, bloggers and talk-show hosts portrayed it as an effort to
hurt Bush and help Kerry – which understandably prompted the exact opposite
reaction among many Americans. [For instance, conservative blog site, Little
Green Footballs, headlined its Oct. 31, 2004, commentary as ‘Bin Laden
Threatens U.S. States Not to Vote for Bush.’]
However, behind the walls of secrecy at Langley, Virginia, U.S. intelligence experts reviewed the evidence and concluded that bin-Laden had precisely the opposite intent. He was fully aware that his videotape would encourage the American people to do the opposite of what he recommended.
By demanding an American surrender, bin-Laden knew U.S.
voters would instinctively want to fight. That way bin-Laden helped ensure that
George W. Bush would stay in power, would continue his clumsy ‘war on terror’ –
and would drive thousands of new recruits into al-Qaeda’s welcoming arms.” (“CIA: Osama Helped Bush in
2004” by Robert Parry; Consortium News; 7/4/2006; accessed at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/070306.html.)
3. The broadcast also notes
that George W. Bush’s claim that an American withdrawal from Iraq would play
into the hands of the terrorists is at variance with intelligence intercepts of
al-Qaeda communications. As Robert Parry notes, the Iraq conflict has actually
worked to the benefit of the Islamists including al-Qaeda. Not only has the war
served as an effective recruiting tool for the Islamists, but al-Qaeda in
particular feels that a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq could
undermine that organization’s efforts in that country. “George W. Bush’s blunt assertion
that a Democratic victory in the Nov. 7 elections means ‘the terrorists win and
America loses’ misses the point that Osama bin Laden stands to advance his
strategic goals much faster with a Republican victory.
Indeed,
as U.S. intelligence analysts have come to understand, there is a symbiotic
relationship between Bush’s blunderbuss ‘war on terror’ and bin Laden’s
ruthless strategy of terrorist violence – one helping the other.
Last
April, a National Intelligence Estimate, representing the consensus view of the
U.S. intelligence community, concluded that Bush’s Iraq War had become the
‘cause celebre’ that had helped spread Islamic extremism around the globe.
In June, U.S. intelligence also learned from an intercepted
al-Qaeda communiqué that bin Laden’s terrorist band wants to keep U.S. soldiers
bogged down in Iraq as the best way to maintain and expand al-Qaeda’s
influence.
‘Prolonging the war is in our interest,’ wrote ‘Atiyah,’
one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants.
Atiyah’s letter and other internal al-Qaeda communications
reveal that one of the group’s biggest worries has been that a prompt U.S.
military withdrawal might expose how fragile al-Qaeda’s position is in Iraq and
cause many young jihadists to lay down their guns and go home. [See below]
But a Republican victory in the Nov. 7 congressional
elections almost certainly would end that concern. A GOP-controlled Congress
would continue to give Bush a blank check, meaning the Iraq War would be
prolonged and, quite possibly, expanded into other Middle East countries.
Bush would be tempted to double up on his Iraq wager by
attacking Iran and Syria, two countries that U.S. officials have accused of
aiding Iraqi insurgents. A number of U.S. military experts also believe that
Bush would order the bombing of Iran if it doesn’t agree to curtail its nuclear
research.
An expanded war would thrill Bush’s neoconservative
advisers and other prominent Republicans, such as former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich, who have lusted publicly over the idea of fighting ‘World War III’
against radical Muslims around the globe.
But the continued war in Iraq and its regional expansion
would serve bin Laden’s interests, too, by proving to many of the world’s one
billion Muslims that the Saudi exile was right in his predictions of an
aggressive Western assault on Islam.
As the violence worsens, Middle East moderates would be
forced to choose between Washington and the Islamic extremists. Like any
violent revolutionary, bin Laden knows that the greater the polarization the
faster his extremist ideology can grow.
On the other hand, Bush realizes that his best chance to
retain and consolidate his political power in the United States is to exploit
the American people’s fear and loathing of bin Laden and portraying his rivals
as al-Qaeda’s fellow-travelers.
So, in an Oct. 30 speech in Statesboro, Georgia, Bush said,
‘However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The
terrorists win and America loses.’
The reality, however, is that Bush and bin Laden are the
proverbial two sides of the same coin, both benefiting from the other’s existence
and actions. Indeed, in the six years of the Bush administration, bin Laden
could not have found a more perfect foil – or some might say a more useful fool
– than George W. Bush.
First, in summer 2001, when al-Qaeda was an obscure band of
extremists hiding out in the Afghan mountains, Bush failed to react to U.S.
intelligence warnings about al-Qaeda’s plans for an impending attack.
After nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001,in
the worst terrorist attack in history, Bush reacted by ordering U.S. forces to
charge into the Middle East on what he called a ‘crusade’ to ‘rid the world of
evil.’ Bin Laden quickly jumped on the anti-Muslim connotation of the word
‘crusade.’
Though U.S.-led forces ousted bin Laden’s Taliban allies in
Afghanistan and cornered bin Laden at Tora Bora, Bush failed to close the trap,
allowing bin Laden and key followers to escape. Then, before Afghanistan was
brought under control, Bush diverted U.S. military forces to Iraq.
There, Bush eliminated secular dictator Saddam Hussein, one
of bin Laden’s Muslim enemies, and repeated the Afghanistan mistake by
celebrating ‘mission accomplished’ without devoting sufficient U.S. forces to
stabilize the country.
That blunder allowed al-Qaeda elements led by Jordanian Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi to set up shop in the Iraqi heartland. Though the force never
totaled more than about five percent of the anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq, it
conducted dramatic attacks, especially against Shiite targets, that worsened
Iraq’s Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife.
Meanwhile, in the United States, bin Laden’s murderous 9/11
assaults created a political climate that helped Bush establish one-party
Republican dominance. Citing the ‘war on terror,’ Bush also asserted ‘plenary’
– or unlimited – presidential powers for the conflict’s duration.
In effect, Bush suspended the American concept of
‘unalienable rights,’ as promised in the Declaration of Independence and
enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Under Bush’s theory
of presidential powers, gone are fundamental liberties such as the habeas
corpus right to a fair trial, protection from warrantless government
searches and prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments.
Then, whenever Bush has found himself in political trouble,
he has conjured up the frightening spirit of bin Laden to scare the American
people. Other times, bin Laden has stepped forward on his own to lend a hand.
On Oct. 29, 2004, just four days before the U.S.
presidential election, bin Laden took the personal risk of breaking nearly a
year of silence to release a videotape denouncing Bush. Right-wing pundits
immediately spun the videotape into bin Laden’s ‘endorsement’ of Democrat John
Kerry. Polls registered an immediate bump of about five points for Bush.
However, inside CIA headquarters, senior intelligence
analysts reached the remarkable conclusion that bin Laden’s real intent was to
help Bush win a second term.
‘Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the
President,’ said deputy CIA director John McLaughlin in opening a meeting to
review secret ‘strategic analysis’ after the videotape had dominated the day’s
news, according to Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, which draws
heavily from CIA insiders.
Suskind wrote that CIA analysts had spent years ‘parsing
each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Zawahiri. What
they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic
reasons. … Today’s conclusion: bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to
assist the President’s reelection.’
Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for
intelligence, expressed the consensus view that bin Laden recognized how Bush’s
heavy-handed policies – such as the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib
abuse scandal and the war in Iraq – were serving al-Qaeda’s strategic goals for
recruiting a new generation of jihadists.
‘Certainly,’ Miscik said, ‘he would want Bush to keep doing
what he’s doing for a few more years.’
As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts were
troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. ‘An ocean of hard truths
before them – such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would
want Bush reelected – remained untouched,’ Suskind wrote.
However, Bush’s campaign backers took bin Laden’s videotape
at face value, calling it proof the terrorist leader feared Bush and favored
Kerry.
In a pro-Bush book entitled Strategery: How George W.
Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats and Confounding the
Mainstream Media, right-wing journalist Bill Sammon devoted several pages
to bin Laden’s videotape, portraying it as an attempt by the terrorist leader
to persuade Americans to vote for Kerry.
‘Bin Laden stopped short of overtly endorsing Kerry,’
Sammon wrote, ‘but the terrorist offered a polemic against reelecting Bush.’
Sammon and other right-wing pundits didn’t weigh the
obvious possibility that the crafty bin Laden might have understood that his
‘endorsement’ of Kerry would achieve the opposite effect with the American
people.
Bush himself recognized this fact. ‘I thought it was going
to help,’ Bush said in a post-election interview with Sammon about bin Laden’s
videotape. ‘I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t
want Bush to be the President, something must be right with Bush.’
In Strategery, Sammon also quotes Republican
National Chairman Ken Mehlman as agreeing that bin Laden’s videotape helped
Bush. ‘It reminded people of the stakes,’ Mehlman said. ‘It reinforced an issue
on which Bush had a big lead over Kerry.’
But bin Laden, a student of American politics, surely
understood that, too.
Bin Laden had played Brer Rabbit to America’s Brer Fox as
in the old Uncle Remus fable about Brer Rabbit begging not to be thrown into
the briar patch when that was exactly where he wanted to go.
By rhetorically
merging the Iraq War and the ‘war on terror,’ Bush also has kept many Americans
from understanding the true nature of the Iraq conflict. From 2003 to 2005,
Bush presented the worsening violence in Iraq as mostly a case of al-Qaeda’s
outside terrorists attacking peace-loving Iraqis.
‘We’re helping the Iraqi people build a lasting democracy
that is peaceful and prosperous and an example for the broader Middle East,’
Bush said in one typical speech on Dec. 14, 2005. ‘The terrorists understand
this, and this is why they have now made Iraq the central front in the war on
terror.’
But this analysis blurred the varied motivations of the
armed groups fighting in Iraq. The main elements of the Iraqi insurgency are
Sunnis resisting the U.S. invasion of their country and the marginalization
they face in a new Iraq dominated by their Shiite rivals.
Non-Iraqi jihadists, a much smaller group estimated at
about 5 percent of the armed fighters, are driven by a religious fervor against
what they see as an intrusion by a non-Islamic foreign power into the Muslim
world.
As U.S. military officers in the field recognized – and as
new intelligence has confirmed – al-Qaeda’s position in Iraq was far more
fragile than Bush’s rhetoric suggested.
Indeed, an intercepted letter, purportedly from bin Laden’s
deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and dated July 9, 2005, urged Zarqawi, then al-Qaeda’s
leader in Iraq, to take steps to prevent mass desertions among young non-Iraqi
jihadists, who had come to fight the Americans, if the Americans left.
‘The mujahaddin must not have their mission end with the
expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and
silence the fighting zeal,’ wrote Zawahiri, according to a text released by the
U.S. Director of National Intelligence.
To avert mass desertions, Zawahiri suggested that Zarqawi
talk up the ‘idea’ of a ‘caliphate’ along the eastern Mediterranean. In other
words, al-Qaeda was looking for a hook to keep the jihadists around if the
Americans split.
A more recent letter – written on Dec. 11, 2005, by Atiyah
– elaborated on al-Qaeda’s hopes for ‘prolonging’ the Iraq War.
Atiyah lectured Zarqawi on the necessity of taking the long
view and building ties with elements of the Sunni-led Iraqi insurgency that had
little in common with al-Qaeda except hatred of the Americans.
‘The most important thing is that the jihad continues with
steadfastness and firm rooting, and that it grows in terms of supporters,
strength, clarity of justification, and visible proof each day,’ Atiyah wrote.
‘Indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest.’ [Emphasis added.]
The ‘Atiyah letter,’ which was discovered by U.S.
authorities at the time of Zarqawi’s death on June 7, 2006, and was translated
by the U.S. military’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, also stressed
the vulnerability of al-Qaeda’s position in Iraq.
‘Know that we, like all mujahaddin, are still weak,’ Atiyah
told Zarqawi. ‘We have not yet reached a level of stability. We have no
alternative but to not squander any element of the foundations of strength or
any helper or supporter.’ [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s ‘Al-Qaeda’s
Fragile Foothold.’]
What al-Qaeda leaders seemed to fear most was that a U.S.
military withdrawal would contribute to a disintegration of their fragile
position in Iraq, between the expected desertions of the foreign fighters and
the targeting of al-Qaeda’s remaining forces by Iraqis determined to rid their
country of violent outsiders.
In that sense, the longer the United States stays in Iraq,
the deeper al-Qaeda can put down roots and the more it can harden its new
recruits through indoctrination and training.
Just as U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the Bush
administration’s occupation of Iraq became a ‘cause celebre’ that spread
Islamic radicalism around the globe, so too does it appear that an extended
U.S. occupation of Iraq would help al-Qaeda achieve its goals there – and
elsewhere.
So, contrary to Bush’s assertion that a Democratic
congressional victory means “the terrorists win and America loses,” the
opposite might be much closer to the truth – that a continuation of Bush’s
strategies, left unchecked by Congress, might be the answer to bin Laden’s
dreams.” (“Al Qaeda Wants Republicans to Win” by Robert Parry; Consortium
News; 10/31/2006;
accessed at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/103106.html.)
4.
Much of the second side of the program focuses on the media’s metamorphosis
during the 2000 campaign from its role as the Fourth Estate into that of a
Fifth Column for the GOP. In particular, the mainstream press abandoned all
pretext of objectivity and systematically distorted statements made by Al Gore.
One of the examples of deliberate, partisan distortion by the media concerns
Gore’s recounting of his role in focusing attention on the issue of toxic waste
disposal. The media deliberately twisted Gore’s statements into the
false contention that he [Gore] claimed to have discovered the Love Canal. [The
Love Canal was a toxic waste disposal site in upstate New York that caused
illness among residents living in the area.] “ .
. . The lopsided coverage was a sign of how far the Republicans had come in
changing the national media environment in the quarter century since Watergate.
Across the board—from The Washington Post to The Washington Times,
from The New York Times to the New York Post, from NBC’s cable
networks to the traveling campaign press corps—journalists didn’t even disguise
their contempt for Gore. At one early Democratic debate, a gathering of about
300 reporters in a nearby press room hissed and hooted at Gore’s answers. . . .
In December 1999, for instance, the news media generated dozens of stories
about Gore’s supposed claim that he discovered the Love Canal toxic started it
all,’ he was quoted as saying. This ‘gaffe’ then let pundits recycle other
situations in which Gore allegedly exaggerated his role or, as some writers put
it, told ‘bold-faced lies.’ But behind these examples of Gore’s ‘lies’ often
was very sloppy journalism.” (Secrecy
and Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq; by Robert Parry; Copyright 2004 by Robert Parry; The
Media Consortium, Inc. [SC]; ISBN 1-893517-01-2; p. 297.)
5.
Parry relates the genesis of the controversy: “The Love Canal flap started when The Washington Post
and The New York Times misquoted Gore on a key point and cropped out the
context of another sentence to give readers a false impression of what he
meant. The error was then exploited by national Republicans and amplified
endlessly by the rest of the news media, even after the Post and Times
grudgingly filed corrections. Almost as remarkable, though, is how the two
newspapers finally agreed to run corrections. They were effectively shamed into
doing so by high school students in New Hampshire who heard Gore’s original
comment. The error also was cited by an Internet site called The Daily
Howler, edited by a stand-up comic named Bob Somerby. The Love Canal controversy
began on November 30. 1999, when Gore was speaking to a group of high school
students in Concord, New Hampshire. He was exhorting the students to reject
cynicism and to recognize that individual citizens can effect important
changes. As an example, he cited a high school girl from Toone, Tennessee, a
town that had experienced problems with toxic waste. She brought the issue to
the attention of Gore’s congressional office in the late 1970’s.” (Idem.)
6.
“ ‘I called for a congressional investigation and a
hearing,’ Gore told the students. ‘I looked around the country for other sites
like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had
the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee—that was the one that you
didn’t hear of. But that was the one that started it all.’ After the
congressional hearings, Gore Said, ‘we passed a major national law to clean up
hazardous dumpsites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices that ended up
poisoning water around the country. We’ve still got work to do. But we made a
huge difference. And it all happened because one high school student got
involved.’ The context of Gore’s comment was clear. What sparked his interest
in the toxic-waste issue was the situation in tone: ‘That was the one that you
didn’t hear of. But that was the one that started it all.’ After learning about
the Toone situation, Gore looked for other examples and ‘found’ a similar case
at Love Canal. He was not claiming to have been the first one to discover Love
Canal, which already had been evacuated. He simply needed other case studies
for the hearings.” (Ibid.; p. 298.)
7.
Note how the media deliberately butchered what Gore said: “The next day, The Washington Post stripped Gore’s
stripped Gore’s comments of their context and gave them a negative twist. ‘Gore
boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize the dangers of
toxic waste,’ the Post said. ‘I found a little place in upstate New York
called Love Canal,’ he said, referring to the Niagara homes evacuated in August
1978 because of chemical contamination. ‘I had the first hearing on this
issue.’ . . . Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. ‘I was the one that
started it all,’ he said.’ The New York Times ran a slightly less
contentious story with the same false quote: ‘I was the one that started it
all.’ . . . In just one day, the key quote had transformed from ‘that was the
one that started it all’ to ‘I was the one who started it all.’ But instead of
taking the offensive against these misquotes, Gore tried to head off the
controversy by clarifying his meaning and apologizing if anyone got the wrong
impression. But the fun was just beginning. The national pundit shows quickly
picked up the story of Gore’s new exaggeration. . . .” (Idem.)
8.
The media behaved in a similar, partisan manner with regard to Gore’s
statements of the caricature of him in
the novel Love Story. “The earliest of
these Gore ‘lies,’ dating back to 1997, was Gore’s comment about a media report
that he and his wife Tipper had served as models for the lead characters in the
sentimental bestseller and movie, Love Story. When the author, Erich
Segal, was asked about Gore’s impression, he stated that the preppy
hockey-playing male lead, Oliver Barrett IV, indeed was modeled after Gore and
Gore’s Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee Jones. But Segal said the female lead,
Jenny, was not modeled after Tipper Gore. Rather than treating this distinction
as a minor point of legitimate confusion, the news media concluded that Gore
had willfully lied. The media made the case an indictment against Gore’s
honesty. In doing so, however, the media repeatedly misstated the facts,
insisting that Segal had denied that Gore was the model for the lead male
character. In reality, Segal had confirmed that Gore was, at least partly, the
inspiration for the character, Barrett, played by Ryan O’Neal. . . .” (Ibid.;
pp. 302-303.)
9.
Robert Parry also details the origin and substance of the canard that
Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. Note, again, how the media
functioned as little more than an adjunct to the GOP’s propaganda operations: “The media’s treatment of the Internet comment followed a
similar course. Gore’s statement may have been poorly phrased, but its intent
was clear: he was trying to say that he worked in Congress to help develop the
Internet. Gore wasn’t claiming to have ‘invented’ the Internet,’ as many
journalists have asserted. Gore’s actual comment, in an interview with CNN’s
Wolf Blitzer that aired on March 9, 1999, was as follows: ‘During my service in
the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.’
Republicans quickly went to work on Gore’s statement. In press releases, they
noted that the precursor of the Internet, called ARPANET, existed in 1971, a
half dozen years before Gore entered Congress. But ARPANET was a tiny
networking of about 30 universities, a far cry from today’s ‘information
superhighway,’ ironically a phrase widely credited to Gore. As the media clamor
arose about Gore’s supposed claim that he had invented the Internet, Gore’s
spokesman Chris Lehane tried to explain. He noted that Gore ‘was the leader in
Congress on the connections between data transmission and computing power, what
we call information technology. And those efforts helped to create the Internet
that we know today.’ There was no disputing Lehane’s description of Gore’s lead
congressional role in developing today’s Internet. But the media was off and
running. Routinely, the reporters lopped off the introductory clause ‘during my
service in the United States Congress’ or simply jumped to word substitutions,
asserting that Gore claimed that he ‘invented’ the Internet, which carried the
notion of hands-on computer engineer. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 303.)
10.
Exemplifying the shamelessness of the media’s partisanship was the
behavior of reporters viewing a primary campaign debate between Bill Bradley
and Al Gore at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. “ . . . At times the media jettisoned any pretext of
objectivity. According to various accounts of the first Democratic debate in
Hanover, New Hampshire, reporters openly mocked Gore as they sat in a nearby
press room and watched the debate on television. Several journalists later
described the incident, but without overt criticism of their colleagues. As The
Daily Howler observed, Time’s Eric Pooley cited the reporters’
reaction only to underscore how Gore was failing in his ‘frenzied attempt to
connect.’ ‘The ache was unmistakable—and even touching—but the 300 media types
watching in the press room at Dartmouth were, to use the appropriate technical
term, totally grossed out by it,’ Pooley wrote. ‘Whenever Gore came on too
strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old
Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd.’ Hotline’s Howard Mortman
described the same behavior as the reporters ‘groaned, laughed and
howled’ at Gore’s comments. Later, during an appearance on C-SPAN’s ‘Washington
Journal,’ Salon.com’s Jake Tapper cited the Hanover incident, too. ‘I
can tell you that the only media bias I have detected in terms of a group media
bias was, at the first debate between Bill Bradley and Al Gore, there was
hissing for Gore in the media room up at Dartmouth College. The reporters were
hissing Gore, and that’s the only time I’ve ever heard the press room boo or
hiss any candidate of any party at any event.’ . . .” (Ibid.; p. 304.)
5. Concluding with discussion
of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Robert Parry highlights the financial
aid given to North Korea in the early 1990’s by Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s
business empire. This money may well have aided the Korean nuclear effort. In Secrecy
and Privilege, Parry notes the profound links between the Bush family and
the Moon organization. (For more about the Moon/Bush connection, see—among
other programs—FTR#’s 490,
491.) “The Rev. Sun Myung Moon's business
empire, which includes the right-wing Washington Times, paid millions of
dollars to North Korea's communist leaders in the early 1990s when the
hard-line government needed foreign currency to finance its weapons programs,
according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents.
The payments included a $3 million ‘birthday present’ to
current communist leader Kim Jong Il and offshore payments amounting to
‘several tens of million dollars’ to the previous communist dictator, Kim Il
Sung, the documents said.
Moon apparently was seeking a business foothold in North
Korea, but the transactions also raised potential legal questions for Moon, who
appears to have defied U.S. embargos on trade and financial relations with the
Pyongyang government. Those legal questions were never pursued, however,
apparently because of Moon's powerful political connections within the
Republican power structure of Washington, including financial and political
ties to the Bush family.
Besides making alleged payments to North Korea’s communist
leaders, the 86-year-old founder of the South Korean-based Unification Church
has funneled large sums of money, possibly millions of dollars, to former
President George H.W. Bush.
One well-placed former leader of Moon’s Unification Church
told me that the total earmarked for former President Bush was $10 million. The
father of the current U.S. President has declined to say how much Moon’s
organization actually paid him for speeches and other services in Asia, the
United States and South America.
At one Moon-sponsored speech in Argentina in 1996, Bush
declared, ‘I want to salute Reverend Moon,’ whom Bush praised as ‘the man with
the vision.’
Bush made these speeches at a time when Moon was expressing
intensely anti-American views. In his own speeches, Moon termed the United
States ‘Satan’s harvest’ and claimed that American women descended from a ‘line
of prostitutes.’
During the pivotal presidential campaign in 2000, Moon’s
Washington Times alsoattacked the Clinton-Gore administration for failing
to take more aggressive steps to block North Korea’s military research and
development. The newspaper called the Clinton-Gore administration’s decisions
an ‘abdication of responsibility for national security.’
Yet, in the 1990s when North Korea was scrambling for the
resources to develop missiles and nuclear technology, Moon was among a small
group of outside businessmen quietly investing in North Korea.
Moon’s activities attracted the attention of the Defense
Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for monitoring potential military
threats to the United States.
Though historically an ardent anticommunist, Moon
negotiated a business deal in 1991 with Kim Il Sung, the longtime communist
leader, the DIA documents said.
The deal called for construction of a hotel complex in
Pyongyang as well as a new Holy Land at the site of Moon's birth in North
Korea, one document said. The DIA said the deal sprang from face-to-face
negotiations between Moon and Kim Il Sung in North Korea from Nov. 30 to Dec.
8, 1991.
‘These talks took place secretly, without the knowledge of
the South Korean government,’ the DIA wrote on Feb. 2, 1994. ‘In the original
deal with Kim [Il Sung], Moon paid several tens of million dollars as a
down-payment into an overseas account,’ the DIA said in a cable dated Aug. 14,
1994.
The DIA said Moon's organization also delivered money to
Kim Il Sung's son and successor, Kim Jong Il.
‘In 1993, the Unification Church sold a piece of property
located in Pennsylvania,’ the DIA reported on Sept. 9, 1994. ‘The profit on the
sale, approximately $3 million was sent through a bank in China to the Hong
Kong branch of the KS [South Korean] company ‘Samsung Group.’ The money was
later presented to Kim Jung Il [Kim Jong Il] as a birthday present.’
After Kim Il Sung's death in 1994 and his succession by his
son, Kim Jong Il, Moon dispatched his longtime aide, Bo Hi Pak, to ensure that
the business deals were still on track with Kim Jong Il ‘and his coterie,’ the
DIA reported.
‘If necessary, Moon authorized Pak to deposit a second
payment for Kim Jong Il,’ the DIA wrote.
The DIA declined to elaborate on the documents that it
released to me under a Freedom of Information Act request in 2000. ‘As for the
documents you have, you have to draw your own conclusions,’ said DIA spokesman,
U.S. Navy Capt. Michael Stainbrook.
Contacted in Seoul, South Korea, in fall 2000, Bo
Hi Pak, a former publisher of The Washington Times, denied that
payments were made to individual North Korean leaders and called ‘absolutely
untrue’ the DIA's description of the $3 million land sale benefiting Kim Jong
Il.
But Bo Hi Pak acknowledged that Moon met with North Korean
officials and negotiated business deals with them in the early 1990s. Pak said
the North Korean business investments were structured through South Korean
entities.
‘Rev. Moon is not doing this in his own name,’ said Pak.
Pak said he went to North Korea in 1994, after Kim Il Sung’s
death, only to express ‘condolences’ to Kim Jong Il on behalf of Moon and his
wife. Pak denied that another purpose of the trip was to pass money to Kim Jong
Il or to his associates.
Asked about the seeming contradiction between Moon's avowed
anti-communism and his friendship with leaders of a communist state, Pak said,
‘This is time for reconciliation. We're not looking at ideological differences.
We are trying to help them out’ with food and other humanitarian needs.
Samsung officials said they could find no information in their
files about the alleged $3 million payment.
North Korean officials clearly valued their relationship with
Moon. In February of 2000, on Moon's 80th birthday, Kim Jong Il sent Moon a
gift of rare wild ginseng, an aromatic root used medicinally, Reuters
reported.
Because of the long-term U.S. embargo against North Korea, Moon’s
alleged payments to the communist leaders raised potential legal issues for
Moon, a South Korean citizen who is a U.S. permanent resident alien.
‘Nobody in the United States was supposed to be providing funding
to anybody in North Korea, period, under the Treasury (Department's) sanction
regime,’ said Jonathan Winer, former deputy assistant
secretary of state handling international crime.
The U.S. embargo of North Korea dates back to the Korean War. With
a few exceptions for humanitarian goods, the embargo barred trade and financial
dealings between North Korea and ‘all U.S. citizens and permanent residents
wherever they are located, … and all branches, subsidiaries and controlled
affiliates of U.S. organizations throughout the world.’
Moon became a permanent resident of the United States in 1973,
according to Justice Department records. Bo Hi Pak said Moon has kept his
‘green card’ status. Though often in South Korea and South America, Moon
maintained a residence near Tarrytown, north of New York City, and controls
dozens of affiliated U.S. companies.
Direct payments to foreign leaders in connection with business
deals also could have prompted questions about possible violations of the U.S.
Corrupt Practices Act, a prohibition against overseas bribery.
(But in the six years since we disclosed the Moon-North Korean
payments, George W. Bush's administration has taken no legal action against
Moon. Meanwhile, Moon's Washington Times has been one of Bush's most
consistent and aggressive backers in the U.S. news media.)
Moon's followers regard him as the second Messiah and grant him
broad power over their lives, even letting him pick their spouses. Critics,
including ex-Unification Church members, have accused Moon of brainwashing
young recruits and living extravagantly while his followers have little.
Around the world, Moon's business relationships long have been
cloaked in secrecy. His sources of money have been mysteries, too, although
witnesses – including his former daughter-in-law – have come forward in recent
years and alleged criminal money-laundering within the organization.
Moon ‘demonstrated contempt for U.S. law every time he accepted a
paper bag full of untraceable, undeclared cash collected from true believers’
who carried the money in from overseas, wrote his ex-daughter-in-law, Nansook
Hong, in her 1998 book, In the Shadows of the Moons.
Since Moon stepped onto the international stage in the 1970s, he
has used his fortune to build political alliances and to finance media,
academic and political institutions.
In 1978, Moon was identified by the congressional ‘Koreagate’
investigation as an operative of the South Korean CIA and part of an
influence-buying scheme aimed at the U.S. government. Moon denied the charges.
Though Moon later was convicted on federal tax evasion charges,
his political influence continued to grow when he founded The Washington
Times in 1982. The unabashedly right-wing newspaper won favor with
presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush by backing their policies and
hammering their opponents.
In 1988, when then-Vice President Bush was trailing early in the
presidential race, the Times spread a baseless rumor that the Democratic
presidential nominee Michael Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment. The
Moon-affiliated American Freedom Coalition also distributed millions of
pro-Bush flyers.
The elder George Bush personally expressed his gratitude. When
Wesley Pruden was appointed The Washington Times’ editor-in-chief in
1991, Bush invited Pruden to a private White House lunch ‘just to tell you how
valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day.’
[Washington Times, May 17, 1992].
While Bush was hosting Pruden in the White House, Pruden’s boss
was opening his financial and business channels to North Korea. According to
the DIA, Moon’s North Korean deal was ambitious and expensive.
‘There was an agreement regarding economic cooperation for the
reconstruction of KN's [North Korea's] economy which included establishment of
a joint venture to develop tourism at Kimkangsan, KN [North Korea]; investment
in the Tumangang River Development; and investment to construct the light
industry base at Wonsan, KN. It is believed that during their meeting Mun
[Moon] donated 450 billion yen to KN,’ one DIA report said.
In late 1991, the Japanese yen traded at about 130 yen to the U.S.
dollar, meaning Moon’s investment would have been about $3.5 billion, if the
DIA information is correct.
Moon’s aide Pak denied that Moon’s investments ever approached
that size. Though Pak did not give an overall figure, he said the initial phase
of an automobile factory was in the range of $3 million to $6 million.
The DIA depicted Moon’s business plans in North Korea as much
grander. The DIA valued the agreement for hotels in Pyongyang and the resort in
Kumgang-san, alone, at $500 million. The plans also called for creation of a kind
of Vatican City covering Moon’s birthplace.
‘In consideration of Mun's [Moon's] economic cooperation, Kim [Il
Sung] granted Mun a 99-year lease on a 9 square kilometer parcel of land
located in Chongchu, Pyonganpukto, KN. Chongchu is Mun's birthplace and the
property will be used as a center for the Unification Church. It is being
referred to as the Holy Land by Unification Church believers and Mun [h]as been
granted extraterritoriality during the life of the lease.’
North Korea granted Moon some smaller favors, too. Four months
after Moon’s meeting with Kim Il Sung, editors from The Washington Times
were allowed to interview the reclusive North Korean communist leader in what
the Times called ‘the first interview he has granted to an American
newspaper in many years.’
Later in 1992, the Times was again rallying to President
George H.W. Bush’s defense. The newspaper stepped up attacks against
Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh as his investigation homed in on
Bush and his inner circle. Walsh considered the Times’ relentless
criticism a distraction to the criminal investigation, according to his book, Firewall.
That fall, in the 1992 campaign, the Times turned its
editorial guns on Bush’s new rival, Bill Clinton. Some of the anti-Clinton
articles raised questions about Clinton’s patriotism, even suggesting that the
Rhodes scholar might have been recruited as a KGB agent during a collegiate
trip to Moscow.
George H.W. Bush’s loss of the White House did not end his
relationship with Moon’s organization. Out of office, Bush agreed to give paid
speeches to Moon-supported groups in the United States, Asia and South America.
In some cases, Barbara Bush joined in the events.
During this period, Moon grew increasingly hateful about the
United States and many of its ideals.
In a speech to his followers on Aug. 4, 1996, Moon vowed to
liquidate American individuality, declaring that his movement would ‘swallow
entire America.’ Moon said Americans who insisted on ‘their privacy and extreme
individualism … will be digested.’
Nevertheless, former President Bush continued to work for Moon’s
organization. In November 1996, the former U.S. President spoke at a dinner in
Buenos Aires, Argentina, launching Moon’s South American newspaper, Tiempos
del Mundo.
‘I want to salute Reverend Moon,’ Bush declared, according to a
transcript of the speech published in The Unification News, an internal
church newsletter.
‘A lot of my friends in South America don’t know about The
Washington Times, but it is an independent voice,’ Bush said. ‘The editors
of The Washington Times tell me that never once has the man with the
vision interfered with the running of the paper, a paper that in my view brings
sanity to Washington, D.C.’
Contrary to Bush’s claim, a number of senior editors and correspondents
have resigned in protest of editorial interference from Moon’s operatives. Bush
has refused to say how much he was paid for the speech in Buenos Aires or
others in Asia and the United States.
During the 2000 election cycle, Moon’s newspaper took up the cause
of Bush’s son and mounted harsh attacks against his rival, Vice President Al
Gore.
In 1999, the Times played a prominent role in promoting a
bogus quote attributed to Gore about his work on the toxic waste issue. In a
speech in Concord, N.H., Gore had referred to a toxic waste case in Toone,
Tennessee, and said, ‘that was the one that started it all.’
The New York Times and The Washington Post
garbled the quote, claiming that Gore had said, ‘I was the one that started it
all.’
The Washington Times took over from
there, accusing Gore of being clinically ‘delusional.’ The Times called
the Vice President ‘a politician who not only manufactures gross, obvious lies
about himself and his achievements but appears to actually believe these
confabulations.’ [Washington Times, Dec. 7, 1999]
Even after other papers corrected the false quote, The
Washington Times continued to use it. The notion of Gore as an exaggerator,
often based on this and other mis-reported incidents, became a powerful
Republican ‘theme’ as Texas Gov. Bush surged ahead of Gore in the presidential
preference polls.
Republicans also made the North Korean threat an issue against the
Clinton-Gore administration. In 1999, a report by a House Republican task force
warned that during the 1990s, North Korea and its missile program emerged as a
nuclear threat to Japan and possibly the Pacific Northwest of the United
States.
‘This threat has advanced considerably over the past five years,
particularly with the enhancement of North Korea's missile capabilities,’ the
Republican task force said. ‘Unlike five years ago, North Korea can now strike
the United States with a missile that could deliver high explosive, chemical,
biological, or possibly nuclear weapons.’
Moon’s newspaper joined in excoriating the Clinton-Gore
administration for postponing a U.S. missile defense system to counter missiles
from North Korea and other ‘rogue states.’ Gov. Bush favored such a system.
‘To its list of missed opportunities, the Clinton-Gore
administration can now add the abdication of responsibility for national
security,’ a Times editorial said.
‘By deciding not to begin construction of the Alaskan radar, Mr.
Clinton has indisputably delayed eventual deployment beyond 2005, when North
Korea is estimated to be capable of launching an intercontinental missile
against the United States.’ [Washington Times, Sept. 5, 2000]
The Washington Times did not note
that its founder – who has continued to subsidize the newspaper with tens of
millions of dollars a year – had defied a U.S. trade embargo aimed at
containing the military ambitions of North Korea.
By supplying money at a time when North Korea was desperate for
hard currency, Moon helped deliver the means for the communist state to advance
exactly the strategic threat that Moon’s newspaper chastised the Clinton-Gore
administration for failing to thwart.
That money
bought Moon influence inside North Korea. The Korean theocrat also appears to
have secured crucial protection from George W. Bush's administration, after
investing wisely for many years in the President's family.” (“Moon, North Korea and the Bushes”
by Robert Parry; Consortium News; 10/11/2006; accessed at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/101006a.html.)