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Exclusive to CounterPunch Newsletter Subscribers! Hillary Clinton's Fatal Vices Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair dissect HRC in her White House years and conclude their series on the woman who may be the next president. PLUS Eva Liddell on the man who really set the course of the Bush presidency PLUS Andy Worthington on the battle for the rights of the Guantanamo detainees PLUS Debbie Nathan on what the border crackdown has done to the women crossing the Rio Grande. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Remember contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now Order CounterPunch By Email for Only $35 a Year and Receive a Free Copy of "Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Now Available! How the Press Led the US into War Buy End Times Now! Today's Stories September 14, 2007 Debbie Nathan New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" Franklin Lamb Sabra-Shatilla, 25 Years Later Patrick Cockburn Greet Bush and Die: The Killing of Abu Risha Farzana Versey The World's Richest Muslim Tycoon Alan Farago This is Florida, Epicenter of the Housing Bust and of Public Corruption Hank Edson Bill's New Book is Giving Me a Headache September 13, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Petraeus Confided Presidential Ambitions to Iraqi Official Scott Vest, former Air Force Captain at Minot The Barksdale Nukes Andy Worthington Guantánamo: "Ghost" Prisoners Speak At Last Michael Baney Mr. Fixit of Quake-Stricken Peru Has Death Squad Past Dr. Susan Block Is U.S. Run by Secret Homintern? September 12, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts American Economy: RIP Stan Goff The Petraeus Report William Blum When Soldiers Mutiny...Only Those Fighting the War Can End It. Manuel Garcia Forgetting 9/11 Debbie Nathan Why One Sex Survey Didn't Make the Big Time September 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn The Fakery of General Petraeus Iain Boal Specters of Malthus: Scarcity, Poverty, Apocalypse Michael Dickinson Osama on 9/11 Guerry Hoddersen Free Speech is Not Given, but Taken Bill Hatch Irish Politics in Old Time California Gary Leupp The Legacy of Luciano Pavarotti Website of the Day Elisa Salasin's "My September 11th" September 10, 2007 Uri Avnery A Big Victory Against the Wall Patrick Cockburn Petraeus's Closet Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Screwing Up In Iraq David Michael Green Why Fred Thompson is Uniquely Qualified to be the GOP's Nominee Pius Adesanmi A Solidarity Letter to a Victim of Michael Vick Betty Schneider How to Deal With Sex Offenders September 8 / 9, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Will the US Really Bomb Iran? Saul Landau The Irrational Drama of a Declining Empire Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Hurricane Katrina and Bush's Wars Ray McGovern Petraeus, the Westmoreland of Iraq Matthew Abraham Finkelstein's Legacy at DePaul Alan Farago The Governor and the Growth Machine Christopher Brauchli Grand Old Party Animals Rannie Amiri Battle of the Camps Fred Gardner Will Snoops Get Stopped? James L. Secor B-52 Flexing Nuclear Muscles: H-Bombs Over Barksdale Missy Comley Beattie Choices: Shall We Stay or Shall We Go Now? Ben Tripp Still in the Clover Francis Boyle The University of Illinois' Little Red Sambo Show Joe Allen and Paul D'Amato Jason Bourne vs. James Bond Website of the Weekend Drilling Wyoming: the View from Above September 7, 2007 Robert Fantina Those Iraq Reports: Bush vs. Reality John Ross Coca-Cola's Raid on a Sacred Mountain James Brooks The Occupation Within Russell Mokhiber Robert Reich and the Elimination of Corporate Criminal Liability Joshua Frank The Green Implosion Continues: Cyberlynching John Murphy John Walsh On the Green Party Mark Brenner New York Taxi Workers Strike Over Tracking Devices Mike Ferner "I Will Salute No More Forever" Website of the Day Help Save Osny Zachary's Life   September 6, 2007 Kathleen and Bill Christison Bush, Iran and Israel's Hidden Hand Allan J. Lichtman When General Petraeus Speaks, Don't Listen ... Norman Solomon The Secret Addiction of Thomas Friedman Yifat Susskind Hurricane Felix's First Responders: Courage and Tragedy on the Miskito Coast Catherine Fenton Why I Am Going to the Protest Laura Santina Can the War Machine be Contained? Farzana Versey Fission Kashmir Yves Engler Haiti: Where a Wage of $2 a Day is Too Much for the Lords of Industry to Pay Kelly Overton Bang Bang; Shoot Shoot: Is Hunting Racist? Michael Simmons One Jew's Views: The Strange Genius of Drew Friedman and Kominsky Crumb Website of the Day Dams and Genocide in Guatemala     September 5, 2007 Stan Goff The End Begins Michael Dickinson Working for Mother Teresa: Memoirs of a Rebellious Volunteer Matthew Abraham Standing Firm with Norman Finkelstein and DePaul's Heroic Students: a Defining Moment Patrick Cockburn The Basra Debacle Dave Lindorff Beware the Wounded Beast Paul Craig Roberts Who Are the Fanatics? Clifton Ross Ecuador and the Struggle for Latin American Unity Elizabeth Schulte Katrina's Forgotten Refugees Joseph Grosso Labor Day in New York City Ben Terrall Where's Nancy? On Trying to Protest Pelosi in San Francisco Website of the Day A Guide to Narco Dollars   September 4, 2007 Jean Bricmont Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran Patrick Cockburn Cut and Run in Iraq Ron Jacobs The Haditha Massacre: Spinning a War Crime Tom Kerr Buried Alive on San Quentin's Death Row Gary Leupp The Case of Jose Maria Sison Sonja Karkar The Weeping Olive Trees of Palestine Heather Gray The Best and Worst of America: 9/11, Joseph Lowery and the Lethal Silence of Billy Graham Fidel Castro The Super-Revolutionaries Jackie Corr Home Depot Comes to Butte--Begging Bowl in Hand Sunsara Taylor Katrina and the Progress of the System Website of the Day Colombia Journal   September 3, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Brits Flee from Basra Eamon McCann Qana, Derry: The Dead Lie in Familiar Shapes Joshua Frank The End of the Green Party? Chris Floyd Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph Marjorie Cohn A Look at Bush's Iran War Plans Walter Brasch The News Drones: How Fake Photos Helped Lead the US to War in Iraq Matt Reichel Redefining the American Dream Website of the Day Don't Get Fooled Again   September 1 / 2, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Entrapment Snares Larry Craig Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo Saul Landau The Tragic Ordeal of the Cuban Five David Keen An Occident Waiting to Happen: Intellectuals and the War on Terror Patrick Cockburn The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services Diana Johnstone Back in Uncle Sam's Pocket George Longstreth, MD & Karen Longstreth, RN The Sorrows of Occupation: Life in the West Bank Linda M. Woolf A Sad Day for Psychologists--a Sadder Day for Human Rights Ralph Nader Wrapping the World with Advertising Fred Gardner The Trial of Mollie Fry, MD Ben Tripp Enquiry in America Today David Michael Green American Indigestion: Why Bush Governs from the Gut Missy Comley Beattie Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: What the GOP Hasn't Learned About Tolerance Michael Dickinson Who's Cheating: Remembering Princess Diana Paul Krassner Assholes of the Week: From Larry Craig to Wesley Clark Ron Jacobs A Sports Nation of Millions Poets' Basement Buknatski, Davies and Mickey Z   August 31, 2007 Jeff Gibbs Why I Am Not Going to the Protest Paul Craig Roberts The War Criminal in the Living Room Ray McGovern Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran? Robert Weissman The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing Matt Vidal Subprime Lending and Shady Mortgages Robin Mittenthal The Biofuels Trap Chris Kutalik Auto Makers Push Health Care Trust Solution for Industry in Crisis Richard Forno Watching Freedom's Watch Binoy Kampmark Dianified Dave Zirin Kenneth Foster Lives Website of the Day Free the Jena 6   August 30, 2007 Gary Leupp Larry Craig on the Seat John Ross Dead Forest Defenders Anthony DiMaggio Arabic as a Terrorist Language: the Right-Wing Assault on the Gibran Academy Jordan Flaherty Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans Michael Donnelly The Sierra Club Greenwashes Al Gore (and Desecrates John Muir) Russell Mokhiber Whiskey is for Drinking, Water is for Fighting Dennis Brutus and Patrick Bond Global Financial Apartheid William S. Lind The Truth Tellers Martha Rosenberg They Call Him Dr. Cruel Jeff Leys / Brian Terrell Seasons of Discontent: a Presidential Occupation Project Website of the Day Bragg: "Old Clash Fan Fight Song" August 29, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Maliki and The Mass Shia Pilgrimage to Kerbala Winslow T. Wheeler The Costs of the Afghanistan War David Rosen The GOP's Outed All-Stars: The Forced Freeing of Gay Men from the Republican Closet Dave Zirin Confronting Katrina Paul Craig Roberts More Shame, More Sorrow Diane Farsetta Christie Todd Whitman's Nuclear Spinning Wheel Ben Davis Who Won't Stand Up for Kenneth Foster?: Charles Rangel, For One Alan Farago The Housing Crisis and the Environment Jenna Orkin Echoes of 9/11: Another Fire at Ground Zero Don Monkerud The Vanishing American Vacation Richard Nasser Surfing Gaza: More Uplifting News from NPR Website of the Day Don't Sleep on the Struggle   August 28, 2007 Uri Avnery The Language of Force Bill Quigley Katrina, Two Years Later Joshua Frank The Fight to Save the Rocky Mountains China Hand "I am Alden Pyle:" Bush's Vietnam Fantasy Firmin DeBrabander Drug Wars: From Afghanistan to Baltimore Charles Peña Nuclear Fear Factor Andy Worthington Good Riddance, Gonzales Ramzy Baroud Abbas and the Abyss Anthony Papa Roger Stone's New Patsy Ashley Smith Drawing the Line at Kennebunkport Website of the Day B is for Bomb August 27, 2007 Jorge Mariscal The General Reports Bill Christison Why the US and Israel Should Lose Middle East Wars Manuel Garcia, Jr. 911 Emergency! Calling Robert Fisk!: You are Now Entering a Black Hole Anthony DiMaggio Chronicle of a Coup Foretold?: Bush, al-Maliki and the Press Bruce A. Roth India and the New Nuclear Era John Walsh Abe Foxman's Genocide Denial Roadshow, Part 2 Dave Lindorff Gonzo's Gone Ron Jacobs Taking It to the Streets Binoy Kampmark Poshed Up: Why the Beckhams Should Go Back to Brighty Russell D. Hoffman My Favorite Scientist: John Gofman, Bane of the Nuclear Industry Website of the Day George W. Told the Nation             Subscribe Online

September 14, 2007 New York Times reporter was a member of an illegal underage porn site, claims he was only "posing as online predator" By DEBBIE NATHAN A New York Times reporter not only gave money to a child pornographer, but did business with him and even signed on to an illegal porn website as a member and administrator, documents unsealed yesterday in a federal criminal proceeding in Nashville reveal. He claims in one court document, he only "posed" as a pedophile.   The reporter is Kurt Eichenwald, who quit the Times in October, 2006.  He already had a lot of explaining to do earlier this year about his conduct while working on the Justin Berry story when it was revealed in March that, without telling his editors, he gave $2,000 to Berry -- an 18-year-old who'd spent five years making child porn of himself,  when Eichenwald first contacted him in 2005. By then, Berry was an adult recruiting minors to perform sexually on webcams. After discovering this, Eichenwald found Berry a lawyer, who took him to the Department of Justice and got him immunity from prosecution in exchange for turning state's evidence against four mostly gay and young men. All were eventually charged and convicted of making and distributing porn depicting underage teen boys. After Eichenwald  wrote a blockbuster story about Berry for the Times, his  journalism techniques aroused controversy in press circles. Even so, no one knew about the $2,000 check, and most of the media feted him. Press adulation evaporated in March of this year however, when revelations of the $2,000 check emerged at a criminal trial in Michigan for one of the four accused men. Testifying there, Eichenwald said he was not acting as a reporter when he gave Berry the money, but was trying to save him from sexual exploitation and later demanded the money back before he started doing a Times piece. This summer, a court hearing in the Nashville case revealed that Eichenwald gave yet more money to Berry, again without telling his editors. CounterPunch was the first to report this, and days later, the Times picked up the story. The Times didn't say what the money -- $1,184 -- bought, and Eichenwald demurred that he had no independent recollection of having spent it. Two days after the Times report, he resigned from the Conde Nast financial magazine Portfolio without explanation. The Nashville court documents unsealed yesterday reveal the following: • Using a fake name, Eichenwald spent $1,184 to buy digital photos from Berry. It is not clear whether they were pornographic, or if they were made when Berry was under age 18 or older. But PayPal allows purchasers to send memos with their money, and  Eichenwald sent Berry several messages discussing the quality of the pictures he bought. "I found a pretty good one but the lighting sucks… still worth 100." "There are just 20 in the file, and most of them are nothing (shots of beds and driveways, or you rolling a joint).” “I found 3 so far that I either didn't already have and were good.” “100…we gotta talk about what the really good ones are." (The ellipses are in the court document.)   • Eichenwald encouraged Berry in his business endeavors while Berry was making child porn. In one PayPal message from June 2005, cited in the Nashville documents, Eichenwald writes Berry that "I'll be online today. Find me and lemme know what to do. And I have other proposals for you that would get you even more money." • During this same period, Eichenwald sent Berry the $2,000 check. In the Michigan trial, he testified that he assumed when he sent it that Berry was broke. Documents just unsealed in Nashville reveal that hours after receiving the money, Berry videotaped a 14-year-old boy masturbating. A few days later, he uploaded the illegal tape to JustinsFriends.com, his gay porn website that had lain dormant for months. Soon JustinFriends.com was up and running again, with new content, including masturbatory images of the 14-year old. •   Under the pseudonym "Roy Rogers," Eichenwald was signed on as a member of the revivified JustinsFriends.com. But he was no ordinary member: He had administrative privileges, meaning he could enter areas of the internet open only to site managers with an administrative password. He used this privilege to enter an area where one could monitor new subscriptions to the illegal porn site. He visited this area over 20 times in late June, 2005. All this information has come out in Tennessee federal court because one of the four convicted men, Timothy Richards, is trying to convince a judge that Eichenwald and Berry engaged in a conspiracy to entrap him into Berry's criminal activities with underage pornography. In extensive filings which Eichenwald and his lawyers tried for weeks to keep sealed, Richards'  allegations are vigorously contested. Rather than conspiring, Eichenwald says in one filing, he was just trying to learn more about Berry. After consultation with his wife, he adopted the tactic of "posing as an online predator." In 1999, National Public Radio freelancer Larry Matthews was successfully prosecuted by the Department of Justice after working on a story about child porn in which he impersonated a pedophile online by using a pseudonym and downloading illegal material. In addition to two civil attorneys, Eichenwald recently retained a criminal defense lawyer. He is Stephen Ryan, whom Eichenwald often cited in financial stories when he worked for the New York Times. Ryan is also the defense attorney for Justin Berry. Not only Eichenwald but also the Times has a lot more explaining to do. In March the paper's public editor,  Byron Calame,  savaged Eichenwald over the $2,000 check, while giving Eichenwald's editor, Larry Ingrassia, a pass. But now it seems more and more extraordinary that New York Times editors did not conclude that Eichenwald's dealings with Berry had far transcended anything that could be regarded as appropriate for an objective reporter. Even so, the Times was happy to publish a hyped story which led to a hysterical circus of congressional hearings and fueled witch-hunting legislation against not just sex offenders, but even teen networking sites such as MySpace. After the documents were unsealed this reporter contacted the New York Times asking whether they were previously aware of Eichenwald’s actions as now revealed in the court documents in Nashville. The Times was asked specifically about five points: 1. Eichenwald used the $1,184 PayPal payments he paid Justin Berry to buy photos from Justin. Was Eichenwald's editor or anyone else at the Times aware that Eichenwald was engaged in business transactions with Justin in 2005 around the time of the buying of photos? 2. Eichenwald told Berry during this time that he could help him with ideas to make more money. Is this something the Times was aware of? 3. Hours after Eichenwald paid Justin Berry $2,000 on June 8, 2005, Berry produced a video of a 14-year-old boy masturbating. Was the Times aware of this? 4. Images of the 14-year old masturbating were uploaded a few days later to a heretofore dormant gay porn website run by Berry. During this period, Eichenwald became a member of the same website. Was the Times aware he was a member? 5. Eichenwald was not merely a member of the illegal site mentioned above. He also had administrative privileges to enter it, involving a special password available only to those managing the site. He used the password more than 20 times in late June, 2005 to sign onto the site. Was the Times aware of this? The Times responded that it is "in the process of independently reviewing" the documents unsealed in Nashville. Debbie Nathan is a New York City-based journalist who writes about sexual politics and immigration. She can be reached at naess2@gmail.com   Your Ad Here

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