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February
20, 2002
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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February 20,
2002
The "Shallow Throat"
Documents:
A Pre-9/11 Bush
& Co. Scenario
By Bernard Weiner
The Bush Administration seemed to have everything
so well coordinated after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. How, many
wondered, could they have put the whole shebang together so
quickly? We may never know all the details, but recently some
minutes of a pre-9/11 Bush inner-cabinet meeting have come our
way, from someone inside the Administration.
We're not at liberty to reveal that mole's
identity, but the job held by this person -- whom we'll call
"Shallow Throat" -- includes access to important papers
and thus the undated transcript below, believed to have been
recorded in July or August of 2001, could well be authentic.
P [presumably George W. Bush]: This Jeffords thing
is terrible, Karl! Why the hell didn't you massage the guy?
With the Dems in charge of the Senate, we can't push anything
through anymore, and Lott is steaming! Our entire conservative
program is on hold!
KH [presumably Karen Hughes]: Karl's already groveled,
Mr. President. Many times since June. We all blew that one.
Let's figure out what to do NOW.
VP [presumably Vice President Dick Cheney]: The
Democrats are gloating; they know they have our agenda stymied.
We've got to do something, something dramatic, to regain the
momentum.
KR [presumably Karl Rove]: Dick's right. It's
got to be something big, something that will change the way
things work in Washington. Not just a new piece of legislation
but something that will reduce liberal power now and for the
next generation.
P: Anything on the horizon, Conny?
CR [presumably Condoleeza Rice]: "Something
big." Those same words have been picked up in known terrorist
circles. The word is that Osama bin Laden's organization is
planning "something big," against America, probably
in America. We've been watching him closely, but not -- .
DR (interrupting) [presumably Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld]: We've been unable to find out what he means
by "something big," and a date and time. But clearly
he and his boys are excited by what's about to happen. If he
initiates an attack on American soil, your stock as commander-in-chief
shoots up a mile.
P: You mean it would be like Pearl Harbor and FDR?
VP: Exactly. But his Something Big has to be countered
by our Something Bigger. Look what happened to Clinton. The
African embassies were bombed and Clinton flung a few missiles
at Sudan and Afghanistan, all for show. Nothing changed. Something's
got to change, Mr. President, if and when you decide to take
action.
CR: From the wider perspective, the U.S. could act
because the new face of warfare in the 21st Century is terrorism
-- cyber, biological, chemical, nuclear -- threatening all countries.
We'd have instant support.
DR: The reason why bin Laden can keep coming up
with one attack after another against American interests is
that he's been offered sanctuary by the Afghan regime, the Taliban.
If we go after bin Laden, we should go after them as well.
Overthrow the Taliban, hunt down bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.
P: You forget, Don, that we were negotiating with
the Taliban just a few months ago, even invited them to Texas.
We thought we could convince them to protect the pipelines that
our friends want to build through Afghanistan. But those Islams
wanted too much money -- imagine, threatening us with sabotage
of the pipeline if we didn't cough up the dough.
CR: Well, we can kill two birds with one stone,
if we take on the Taliban for harboring bin Laden. Get them,
put him in a box. But that's still a halfway measure, as I see
it. It doesnâ't address the problem of how to rule effectively,
with the Democrat majority in the Senate.
P: As I've always said, things sure would be a
lot easier if I were a dictator. (laughter)
KH: Very funny, Mr. President. But maybe you're
on to something here. If we were to go all the way, whole hog
on the barbecue -- by which I mean a full-scale war on terrorists,
wherever they are --
CR (interrupting): Bin Laden's organization has
sleeper agents in nearly 60 countries, we're told.
KR: That's it! We make this a PERMANENT war on terrorism,
no clear-cut victory because no end in sight, get the country
all riled up, frightened -- and no doubt there will be more
terror attacks on American soil, so we wonâ't be making
all this up out of nothing -- and you'll get your easier rule,
Mr. President. The Democrats will back you all the way for fear
of looking like the unpatriotic namby-pambys they are; we'll
play the war and patriotism and national-security cards for
all they're worth. And you're in charge, totally, Mr. President,
for two terms.
JA [presumably Attorney General John Ashcroft]:
I think you guys have got the foreign part down pat. I've been
sitting over here trying to figure out the domestic part, and
I've got a few ideas.
KH: Go, John!
JA: Well, think back to when we on the Right could
more or less run the show in this country: When we had communists
as the common enemy. No matter what you think of Joe McCarthy,
he put the fear of God into liberals and leftists. Nobody wanted
to be considered even a little bit pink. We can do that with
terrorism, too. Once bin Laden and his boys deliver whatever
they're going to deliver, it'll be easy to bell our liberal
cows, make them seem treasonous if they argue with what we're
doing.
KH: I'm already thinking of how we might phrase
that one, John: "You're either with our hunt for terrorists
or you're a supporter of the terrorists," something like
that.
P: I like that. Don't you, Dick?
VP: I do indeed. But I think you can take that idea
further. Make it universal. We retaliate against bin Laden's
organization all over the world, and you say to other countries:
"If you're not with our war on terrorism, you're with the
terrorists and you'll have to suffer the consequences."
CR: It's brilliant! The world will have to give
in to us, or risk being attacked by us. It's better than Nixon's
madman strategy.
DR: Powell's not going to go for it, you know. He'll
whine about our allies in Europe and how we have to consult them
and so on.
VP: Well, we will consult, we will. AFTER we've
begun to move on what we want to do, of course. (laughter)
KH: You realize what we're talking about here, don't
you? It takes my breath away. As the only superpower in the world,
we're finally going to assert, openly and boldly, American authority
all over the globe. It's like us as the Roman Empire. With nobody
to stop us. It's power and profit and freedom all
around. And a fully supportive, patriotic, martial-type society
at home.
VP: Hail, Caesar! (laughter)
P: I like it. But I especially like
what John was talking about: being able to act without having
to fly through all that Democrat ak-ak in Congress. If we play
our cards right, we should be able to get anything we want in
the way of legislation, budget allocations, tax cuts, conservative
judges, eventually repeal of Roe v. Wade, removal of all those
old Clinton environmental regs that hogtied our business friends.
KR: And, best of all, with so much of our budget
locked up for the war on terrorism, and with our tax cut tying
up funds for the next ten years, we can drastically reduce all
that Democrat social spending and not have to pay any political
price for it. It's the war, stupid, not us.
P: But I don't want to be blindsided, by anything.
No more Jeffords! I need to know if there's anything out there
that could blow up in our faces.
(long silence)
VP: This has GOT to be absolutely confidential.
But my friends at Haliburton say that Kenny Boy's company is
leaking money badly. Might be a good time to examine your portfolios,
if you get my drift.
KH: You mean there's a danger Enron could go under?
No way! The company is too big and successful.
KR: If this is true, we're all in big trouble. We've
got Enron money and Ken's hands all over this administration;
we even let him pick officials regulating the energy industry.
Christ! We could get hurt on this one.
P: Let's not go crazy here. It's just boring old
Repubican business practices. There'll be a big thing made of
it for awhile and then it'll go away. It's not serious; it's
not sex.
DR: And we can always ratchet up the war if an influence-peddling
probe starts to get too hot for comfort, play a little wag-the-dog
distraction game. Invade Iraq or something. Hussein is an even
better villain than bin Laden anyway -- mean-looking, you know
what I mean?
P: Well, you stay on top of this one, Dick. And
keep your records private, executive-privilege them if you
have to. Worse comes to worst, it'll wind up in the Supreme
Court.
VP: Too bad we don't have any influence there. (laughter)
*****
The transcript ends at that point. Again,
we can't prove the genuineness of the document brought to us
by "Shallow Throat." But it kinda passes the smell
test, don't you think?
Bernard Weiner,
a playwright and poet, was the San Francisco Chronicle's theater
critic for nearly two decades. A Ph.D., he has taught American
politics and international relations at Western Washington University
and San Diego State University, and has written for The Nation,
Village Voice, The Progressive and other political journals.
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