In this issue:

Cheney-gate: DOD Audit Agency Requests Formal Probe of Halliburton

What The Devil Possesses Ashcroft?

Rubin Warns Again of 'Horrendous' Fiscal Situation

Battle Over Attack on USS Liberty Flares Up

Beast-Man Safire Supports Caligula Foreign Policy

Pro-Dope Soros Continues His Cheney Protection Racket

From Volume 3, Issue Number 3 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Jan. 20, 2004

United States News Digest

Cheney-gate: DOD Audit Agency Requests Formal Probe of Halliburton

Dow Jones reported Jan. 14 that the Defense Contract Audit Agency has requested a Pentagon Inspector General investigation of Dick Cheney's Halliburton, concerning overcharging to import fuel from Kuwait to Iraq. Pentagon officials said the unusual request, which went to the Pentagon's Inspector General Jan. 13, suggests that the auditors had reached the limits of their own investigative powers. Moreover, one Pentagon official said that by requesting a formal probe, the Defense Contract Audit Agency saw "potential wrongdoing" that required the full reach of the Inspector General.

DCAA only performs audits of companies, not investigations. "Auditors may encounter, or receive from other sources, information constituting evidence or causing suspicion of potential unlawful activity," a Pentagon official was quoted by Dow Jones as saying. "Therefore, when we encounter such situations, we make a referral of a 'suspected irregularity' to the appropriate investigative organization for them to evaluate, and to open any investigations they deem appropriate."

What The Devil Possesses Ashcroft?

A devastating exposé of Attorney General John Ashcroft in the February issue of Vanity Fair, and a call for a Special Prosecutor to conduct a criminal probe of Ashcroft's finances, have the police-state "enforcer" under the gun.

In the Vanity Fair article, "John Ashcroft's Patriot Games," Judy Bachrach reports:

At a DOJ prayer meeting, Ashcroft stated that while forgiveness is perfectly fine in religion, it has no place in the Justice Department. "The law is not about forgiveness, it is oftentimes about vengeance, oftentimes about revenge." (This was before 9/11, the author notes.)

"Ashcroft routinely compares himself to Christ in his 1998 memoir, Lessons from a Father to His Son, in which he refers to his campaign victories as 'resurrections.' Conversely, his political defeats are compared to 'crucifixions.' "

When Missouri State Senator Harry Wiggins 15 years ago tried to raise funds for a home for AIDS patients, after then-Gov. Ashcroft vetoed the bill twice, Wiggins explained, "This is a place they go, Governor, but they don't come back." "I understand. You got my attention," Ashcroft said. "This is the place where it is cheapest for me to send them to die."

Following the death of his Senate opponent Mel Carnahan on the eve of the 2000 election, in which Carnahan was expected to defeat Ashcroft handily, Carnahan's family asked Ashcroft not to attend the funeral. He came anyway, and grandstanded further by claiming he had to "work through his grief over Mel by working at soup kitchens. He does this for exactly 12 minutes at one kitchen, showing up with cameras in tow. It was a photo op."

Bachrach notes that "The oddest details seemed to carry grave theological implications," as illustrated by a story from a conference in May 2001 in the Netherlands: "There, a trio of Siamese cats scampering about the residence of Cynthia Schneider, the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, produced alarm in the Justice advance team.... 'Are there any calico cats in residence?' they inquired of the embassy staff. Ashcroft, who would be dining with Schneider, considered such creatures 'instruments of the devil,' his people explained. (Ashcroft has denied any antipathy toward calico cats.)"

Meanwhile, in seeking a special prosecutor to probe Ashcroft for violating Federal campaign finance law during his 2000 Senate campaign, and for possible tax evasion, a coalition which includes the National Voting Rights Institute and the Public Citizen wrote to Deputy AG James Comey, "There can be no doubt that the appointment of an outside special counsel is required in this case to fully investigate potential criminal actions implicating the United States Attorney General himself."

Rubin Warns Again of 'Horrendous' Fiscal Situation

On Jan. 13, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin participated in two Washington, D.C. thinktank events where he sounded an alarm about the U.S. economy and Bush Administration policy. Rubin, now Executive Committee chairman of Citigroup, appeared at a Brookings Institution seminar on "Restoring Fiscal Sanity: How to Balance the Budget." Earlier in the day, he spoke on a conference call held by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Rubin spoke of the risks posed by the high budget deficits, Greenspan's interest-rate policy, and the sharp drop in the dollar. Rubin said, "While there is no way to quantify this risk, I think they are on levels of increase that could be very substantial.... I think the risk in all of this is that instead of having a gradual decline in the dollar, that you have a sharp decline in the dollar."

He added, "As to when these (adverse) events may occur, that, I think, is totally unpredictable." And, "It is critically important that we maintain the confidence of foreign markets in our fiscal regime and I think that there is serious risk that our current fiscal path will undermine that confidence."

See this week's Economics INDEPTH for more.

Battle Over Attack on USS Liberty Flares Up

The story of the USS Liberty was the first panel in a two-day event held at the State Department Jan. 12 and 13 to discuss the newly declassified compilation of documents, in the most recent volume of the State Department series "The Foreign Relations of the United States," relating to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

The destruction of the USS Liberty by Israeli forces off the coast of Israel in 1967—in this attack 34 U.S. sailors died and 171 were wounded—was understood as the most burning issue. On the panel were American and Israeli scholars, who claimed that the destruction of the Liberty was based on mistaken identity. But others, like author James Bramford, who had been given unprecedented access to National Security Agency files to write about this, argued that the Israeli attack on the Liberty was premeditated, conducted with full knowledge that the ship was American.

While the documents published probably do not give an unequivocal answer to the questions (for example, important transmissions between Israeli pilots and ground control just prior to the attack are not there), the overall evidence clearly indicates this was not simply misidentification, as the Israelis claim to this day. Bramford also quotes statements by the Deputy Director of the National Security Agency and by Richard Helms, then CIA Director, saying they believed the attack was intentional. However, the issue had become so hot that President Johnson made clear to Secretary of Defense McNamara that the Israelis were not to be found culpable.

During the question period, the issue become too hot to handle. Former sailors and officers on the Liberty were in the audience (although not on the panel), and they wished to be heard. But when they began presenting some of their eyewitness reports of the attack, contradicting some of the "evidence" presented to claim that the attack was based on faulty information, they were simply not permitted to speak. One woman whose brother had been wounded on the ship and had won the Silver Star for his gallantry, demanded a Congressional investigation, but was barely given the opportunity to get to the microphone, before she was shouted down. Nevertheless, at the end of the session, many American and Arab reporters gathered around the Liberty survivors to hear their story.

The State Department was able to use the event to focus attention on today's Mideast crisis, which, like so much in the region, can trace its origins in part to the 1967 war and its consequences.

Beast-Man Safire Supports Caligula Foreign Policy

"Let them hate us, so long as they fear us"—the quote said to be a favorite of the Roman Emperor Caligula. The neo-cons are under attack but, as Straussian-trained Sophists, they are never at a loss for "coming out on top" propaganda, and their prevailing new "party line" is that fear conquers all.

Continuing a broad propaganda drive led by the American Enterprise Institute, William Safire, in his Jan. 12 New York Times column, echoed the line that is the thrust of the new book, An End to Evil by two leading neo-cons—Richard Perle and David Frum (the junior White House speechwriter who was dumped after he claimed credit for the "axis of evil" line in Bush's Jan. 28, 2002 State of the Union speech). Perle is being quoted and interviewed worldwide in a drive to restart the policy offensive for preemptive war—against an "expanded axis of evil": Syria, Iran, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, and anywhere else deemed "necessary."

In his piece, Safire poses a phony answer to his question, "Is our preemptive policy working?" and was the war in Iraq "worth the cost?" Yes! he declares. The Iraq war is a success!, and it's responsible for all the "diplomatic victories" now occurring. Safire gives seven examples: Libya—Qaddafi backed down after taking "one look at our army massing for the invasion of Iraq"; Afghanistan—now has a constitution; Syria—"dictator Bashar al-Assad" is seeking to reopen negotiations with Israel, with the U.S. army massed on his border; Iran—it's also frightened of the "130,000 U.S. troops near the border"; Iraq—the only problem there is "growing pains"; North Korea—the U.S. show of force in Iraq has also taught the Chinese a lesson, so they are willing to broker a Libya-type deal.

While this has become a neo-con cliché, numerous letters to editorial pages castigate columnists like Safire and Charles Krauthammer for rewriting history.

Pro-Dope Soros Continues His Cheney Protection Racket

Billionaire speculator George Soros continued his protection of Dick Cheney, in presenting his new book The Bubble of American Supremacy during a Jan. 12 speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His nemesis, "Lyndon LaRouche," went unnamed, but hovered over his speech. Soros declared the 2004 election to be "a referendum on the Bush doctrine" of preemptive military action against any potential rival."

Soros lied that it is the "Bush propaganda machine" which has "demonized" him by only mentioning his drug legalization activities, and not his efforts on behalf of democracy. (Actually, the devastating exposés of Soros have come from LaRouche.) And he covered up his Nazi past: "I would have perished if my father had not had the foresight to procure false identities for his family."

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