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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! How Cops Extort Confessions;
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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
How Cops Extort Confessions;
How the U.S. “Justice System” Really WorksNinety-two per cent of felony convictions in the U.S. are obtained by plea bargains or confessions. Without them the “justice system” would grind to a halt. In an important piece in our latest newsletter, available only to subscribers, Emily Horowitz shows how totally innocent people will “confess” under police pressure, even without physical torture. Horowitz outlines the powerful case for banning confessions altogether. Also in this new edition Marcus Rediker, co-author of the legendary The Many Headed Hydra, writes of popular heroism and resistance in the favelas of Medellin, Colombia. Alexander Cockburn reports on how America’s oldest bank, patronized by the global elites, washed billions smuggled out of Russia, and how the Russians might win their money back, shaking the world’s banking system if they do so. Serge Halimi describes the real battle for the soul of Europe. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories August 20, 2008 Michael Neumann August 19, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Deepak Tripathi Marwan Bishara Saul Landau William S. Lind Martha Rosenberg James Brittain Pratyush Chandra David Macaray Website of the Day August 18, 2008 Tariq Ali Gary Leupp Uri Avnery John Ross Farooq Sulehria Luis Rodriguez Manuel Garcia, Jr. Noah Baker Merrill Charles Thomson Website of the Day August 16 / 17, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Deepak Tripathi Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Robert Fantina Ray McGovern Nicole Colson Fatima Bhutto Jean-Luis Rocca David Michael Green Ramzi Kysia Dave Lindorff Lisa Martinovic Richard Rhames Don Santina Rannie Amiri Ramzy Baroud John Stanton Howard Lisnoff Ron Jacobs Seth Sandronsky Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
August 15, 2008 Steve Niva David Remington Michael Winship Paul Craig Roberts Farzana Versey Harvey Wasserman Felice Pace Julian Critchley Website of the Day August 14, 2008 Saul Landau / Conn Hallinan Mike Whitney Reza Fiyouzat Ralph Nader Christopher Brauchli The Cheerleader in China Jack Bradigan Spula Patrick Irelan John Walsh Dan Bacher Website of the Day
August 13, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts David Remington Brian Cloughley Glen Ford Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Tom Lewis Stan Cox Alan Farago Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day August 12, 2008 Uri Avnery Anthony DiMaggio Bill Christison Eric Walberg Kate Connolly Diane Farsetta Peter Morici Thom Rutledge Lee Patton Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day August 11, 2008 Ishmael Reed Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Douglas Kammen William Willers Greg Moses Jeff Leys Cynthia McKinney Alan Farago Website of the Day August 9 / 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Bruce Jackson Kevin Young Chris Floyd Joshua Frank Robert Fantina Brendan Cooney Mark Almond Lois Gibbs Rev. William Alberts Kathy Kelly John Ross David Michael Green Bill Moyers / Ron Jacobs Richard Rhames David Yearsley Lee Sustar Brenda Norrell Ben Terrall Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 8, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Manuel Garcia, Jr. M. Shahid Alam Andy Worthington Lawrence J. Korb David Model Alan Farago Diop Olugbala Firmin DeBrabander Website of the Day August 7, 2008 Dr. Trudy Bond William Blum Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Robert Weitzel Jacob G. Hornberger Binoy Kampmark David Macaray Howard Lisnoff Website of the Day August 6, 2008 Marc Herold Greg Moses Sheldon Rampton Kevin Young Michael Estrada Robert Weissman Dr. Susan Block Cindy Sheehan Ace Hoffman Website of the Day August 5, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Jeff Halper Patrick Cockburn Nancy Welch Peter Morici Sousan Hammad Eamon Martin Shepherd Bliss Tim Matson Website of the Day August 4, 2008 Uri Avnery Saul Landau David W. Remington Rev. Jesse Jackson Dave Lindorff Peter Morici Joanne Mariner Ramzy Baroud Christian Wright Website of the Day August 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patrick Cockburn Winslow T. Wheeler James Abourezk Andy Worthington Brian Cloughley Robert Fantina Benjamin Dangl Marlene Martin David Yearsley Fatemeh Keshavarz David Michael Green Obama as Dukakis Harvey Wasserman Jason Hribal Phyllis Pollack Laray Polk Ron Jacobs David Macaray David Rosen Dan Bacher Joe Allen Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 1, 2008 Jonathan Cook Nikolas Kozloff Rannie Amiri Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli M. K. Bhadrakumar Patrick Cockburn James J. Brittain Dan Bacher Website of the Day
July 31, 2008 Michael Hudson Carl Finamore Mike Whitney Joshua Frank Andy Worthington Ralph Nader Bill Moyers / Robert Weissman Dave Lindorff Website of the Day July 30, 2008 Brian M. Downing Chuck Spinney William S. Lind David Ker Thomson Karl Grossman Mike Whitney Martha Rosenberg James Murren Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Website of the Day July 29, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair John Ross Peter Morici Alison Weir Gary Leupp David Macaray Brenda Norrell Marjorie Cohn Eric Ruder Website of the Day July 28, 2008 Dr. Bryant Welch Kathy Kelly Mike Whitney Peter Morici Christopher Brauchli Clifton Ross Stephen Lendman Website of the Day
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August 20, 2008 Jeb Babbin's PropagandaThe Pentagon's Most Prolific PunditBy DANIEL HAACK The morning of June 20, 2006, an email message circulated amongst U.S. Defense Department officials. "Jed Babbin, one of our military analysts, is hosting the Michael Medved nationally syndicated radio show this afternoon. He would like to see if General [George W.] Casey would be available for a phone interview," the Pentagon staffer wrote. "This would be a softball interview and the show is 8th or 9th in the nation." Why would the Pentagon help set up a radio interview? And how did they know that the interview would be "softball"? From early 2002 to April 2008, the Defense Department offered talking points, organized trips to places such as Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, and gave private briefings to a legion of retired military officers working as media pundits. The Pentagon's military analyst program, a covert effort to promote a positive image of the Bush administration's wartime performance, was a multi-level campaign involving quite a few colorful characters. Flipping through the over 8,000 pages of documents released in connection with the program, one Pentagon pundit arguably steals the spotlight: Jed Babbin. A former Pentagon official himself, the retired Air Force officer served as a deputy undersecretary of defense with the George H.W. Bush administration. Since then, he has kept busy authoring books, serving as a contributing editor to the conservative monthly American Spectator, frequently filling in for right-wing radio hosts such as Laura Ingraham and Hugh Hewitt, and appearing as a military pundit on cable television. The Pentagon Producers Babbin repeatedly appears in the Pentagon pundit documents, usually either emailing his American Spectator articles to Pentagon officials, or using his special access to arrange interviews with high-ranking government and military officers for his articles and radio guest host gigs. "We can work it," Bryan Whitman wrote in a message to fellow Pentagon public affairs staffer Eric Ruff in July 2005. Whitman had just secured deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs Matthew Waxman for Babbin's guest host slot on "The Mark Larson Show," a conservative radio program out of California. "I hope you are getting a cut of Babbin's action as his agent," Whitman joked to Ruff. In February 2006, Babbin emailed Pentagon legal advisor Thomas Hemingway. "I'm subbing for Hugh Hewitt again tomorrow and want to bash the UN report," he wrote, referring to an inquiry into conditions at Guantanamo Bay that led the United Nations to call for the detention center to be closed. "I asked for [U.S. Army Major General] Jay Hood and got the answer that the military isn't going out on that now. Can you do it? Please call asap." Babbin didn't just use Pentagon public affairs staffers as his radio bookers. He also asked them for their thoughts on what he should say, as a pundit. "I just got a call from Jed Babbin," wrote one Pentagon public affairs officer in October 2006. "He is going to be on [the CNBC show] Kudlow [& Company] tonight and want [sic] to be prepared if they ask him about the [Al-Qaeda] threat to Saudi oil fields. ... Anything we could share with him??" The Pentagon was also more than proactive. "[Fox News'] Hannity and Colmes is having Jed Babbin on today to talk about North Korea," emailed Pentagon public affairs staffer Dallas Lawrence to Ruff and Whitman in February 2005. "We are getting Jed a one pager on the status of forces in the Korean Peninsula (the message being, we still have a massive deterrent there for [North Korea]). We will also put him into touch with State for talking points on the 6 party talks." An Ethical Dilemma In a phone interview, Babbin defended his communications with the Pentagon. "I am a journalist," he told me. "I have information that's given to me by sources of all sorts. Private information is what you normally do in Washington. You get confidential sources and you rely on them. I'm not compromised. I can't speak for anybody else other than myself, but I have no relationship with defense contractors, I have no contracts with the Pentagon. There's no conflict there." But Babbin's contacts with the Pentagon are still problematic, according to Kelly McBride, Ethics Group Leader at the Poynter Institute for media studies. "When you hire a former general [as a media commentator], you're hiring him for his expertise and his ability to independently analyze what's going on," she explained. "If you're assuming because he's retired he has a measure of independence and then you find out, no, he's actually been to all these trainings where he's received talking points, that's a problem. You have promised your audience that you're going to deliver them independent analysis -- not a mouthpiece for the Pentagon." That raises the question of whether the responsibility to ensure the integrity and independence of military analysts lies with the pundits themselves or with the media outlets that hired them. In this case, says McBride, it's the latter. "The journalists had the obligation to figure out if their sources were independent," she said. "Each show decided how they were going to use these people, and at that point, somebody should've been having a conversation about what they're bringing to the product and how that works, and then finally, there should be an overall standard that says when we hire people, here is what we should ask of them." In his defense, Babbin said that "everyone I wrote for and so forth knew I was talking to people in the Pentagon." Babbin also went on government-funded trips to Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, but said he doesn't believe that any of the media outlets he writes or appears on-air for have policies against such activity. So, Babbin concludes that he had no conflicts of interest. Do the media outlets that Babbin appeared on feel the same way? Salem Radio Network, which produces both "The Hugh Hewitt Show" and "The Michael Medved Show," radio programs that Babbin appeared on while participating in the Pentagon's pundit program, refused comment. Phone calls to the American Spectator and WMET of Washington, D.C., were not returned. Todd Meyer, a producer for Greg Garrison's show on Indianapolis radio station WIBC, one of Babbin's more frequent stomping grounds, said, "I'm not sure if Jed mentioned he was a part of [the Department of Defense's military analyst program]. He might at some point. He said over the years, though, that he's been part of many, many briefings at the Pentagon, most when he was actually working there under Bush 41." Meyer added that Babbin was never presented on the show as an independent analyst. "Jed Babbin is the editor of Human Events, he wrote for National Review, he wrote for American Spectator. He's conservative,” stressed Meyer. "We're a conservative talk show. Mr. Babbin's been on our show many, many times over the years and he comes from a conservative background. He was privy to a number of briefings. We took advantage of hearing what was in those briefings." But is being conservative synonymous with being a mouthpiece for the Pentagon? Babbin contends that he was nothing of the sort. "If they were buying my loyalty, they got a pretty bad bargain. If they thought they were buying my reporting, they really had a very poor investment. Look at my stories, look at what I've written. I've been very highly critical at times of the president and a lot of the people who conduct the war." A Very Helpful Pundit (Not Like Some) Judging by the Pentagon pundit documents, the Defense Department sees Babbin as an ardent supporter. "Babbin will do us well,” Pentagon PR staffer Bryan Whitman wrote in a March 2005 email. In June 2005, Larry Di Rita told fellow Pentagon public affairs officers, "We really should try to help [Babbin secure guests for his radio hosting gigs]. ... He is consistently solid and helpful." Another message, from Thomas Hemingway to Eric Ruff in June 2006, reads: "I'm sure all your folks are familiar with the tremendous support we've received from Jed." And that's in addition to the aforementioned "softball interview" comment. Not all the military analysts were as enthusiastic as Babbin. Kenneth Allard started out that way. In 2005, he told the Pentagon that he was working on a book about the role of military analysts on cable television. "I have lined up the support of most of them but also wanted to highlight the Secretary's role in having started these gatherings," Allard wrote in an email message to Ruff in December 2005. "You see, the Clinton crowd simply ignored us and hoped we would just go away. ... You guys deserve credit for having had the smarts to invite us into the fold. With all the hell that gets raised in Washington about government cover-ups and concealments, it's actually refreshing that somebody thought to inform some rather knowledgeable observers about what was really going on." The deteriorating situation in Iraq changed Allard's outlook on the Pentagon pundit program. In 2008, he told the New York Times that he recognized a growing chasm between what the Department of Defense was telling the military analysts and what independent reports showed. "Night and day,” Allard said. "I felt we'd been hosed." "I know Ken quite well and I don't know why he gave it that characterization," Babbin told me. "I asked a lot of tough questions and sometimes got answers that were satisfactory and some that weren't." However, Babbin doesn't seem to have shared his concern with his readers, listeners or viewers when the Pentagon's answers were unsatisfactory. The experience of another analyst, William V. Cowan, best illustrates the Pentagon's low tolerance for dissent. After Cowan criticized U.S. military operations in Iraq on Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor," he was "precipitously fired from the analysts group," according to the New York Times. While Jed Babbin was only one of some 75 retired military officers that the Department of Defense used as their so-called "message force multipliers" and "surrogates," and while he wasn't seeking defense contracts like some of his fellow pundits, his case is representative of the breakdown of transparency and accountability consequent to the Pentagon's covert program. Babbin's experience also shows that someone could consistently parrot the administration's talking points, while believing himself to be independent and even, at times, critical of the official narrative. Following the New York Times report exposing the military analyst program, Pentagon spokesperson Robert Hastings said, "The briefings and all other interactions with the military analysts had been suspended indefinitely pending an internal review." However, even that may be misleading. "The program has stopped," Babbin told me. "But obviously I talk to a lot of people in this town." Daniel Haack interned at the Center for Media and Democracy this summer. He's studying international communications and integrated marketing communications at Ithaca College.
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