Greg Palast is Lying about Cynthia McKinney

By Brian Carnell

Friday, June 20, 2003

Alternet.Org is featuring an article by Greg Palast, The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney, which engages in outright lies and distortions about what McKinney did or did not say about the Bush administration's prior knowledge about the 9/11 attacks.

Palast cites several media accounts in which McKinney is described as having implied that the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time. But Palast says that such claims were simply fabricated. For example, Palast writes of NPR,


Have you heard about Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman?
According to those quoted on National Public Radio, McKinney’s “a loose cannon” (media expert) who “the people of Atlanta are embarrassed and disgusted” (politician) by, and she is also “loony” and “dangerous” (senator from her own party).

Yow! And why is McKinney dangerous/loony/disgusting? According to NPR, “McKinney implied that the [Bush] Administration knew in advance about September 11 and deliberately held back the information.”

. . .

Problem is, McKinney never said it.

That’s right. The “quote” from McKinney is a complete fabrication. A whopper, a fabulous fib, a fake, a flim-flam. Just freakin’ made up.

The first bizarre thing about this is that Palast never actually cites any direct quotes attributed to McKinney, but then turns around and says that this quote that was not attributed to her is fabricated. Huh? If someone fabricated a quote and put it into McKinney's mouth, it's odd that Palast doesn't once describe exactly what that fabricated quote was.

Second, that's because Palast is a liar who is really the one playing games with quotes here. Notice that the only direct quote from the NPR broadcast about McKinney's views on 9/11 is the paraphrase, "McKinney implied that the [Bush] Administration knew in advance about September 11 and deliberately held back the information." But here's the transcript of the start of that June 16, 2002 broadcast,


JOSHUA LEVS reporting:
A couple of months ago, Congresswoman McKinney was on radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California. She said people close to President Bush, such as his father, could profit from the new war on terrorism. The senior George Bush sits on the board of The Carlyle Group, an investment firm that does hundreds of millions of dollars in defense-related business with the government.

(Soundbite of KPFA broadcast)

Representative CYNTHIA McKINNEY (Democrat, Georgia): And so we get this presidency of questionable legitimacy requesting a nearly unprecedented amount of money to go into a defense budget for defense spending that will directly benefit his father. Where are the brakes on transparency and corruption?

LEVS: McKinney implied that the administration knew in advance about September 11th and deliberately held back information.

(Soundbite of KPFA broadcast)

Rep. McKINNEY: What did this administration know and when did it know it about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered?

NPR did not fabricate anything -- they included two soundbites that let McKinney speak for herself. Of course, those quotes from McKinney are nowhere to be found in Palast's article. Why let the facts get in the way of a smear campaign?

Palast does a similarly deceitful hack job on the New York Times coverage of McKinney,


The New York Times’ Lynette Clemetson revealed her comments went even further over the edge: “Ms. McKinney suggest[ed] that President Bush might have known about the September 11 attacks but did nothing so his supporters could make money in a war.”
That’s loony, all right.

Palast then includes a transcript of an interview he did with Clemetson in which Clemetson is unable to cite a direct quote of McKinney back up her reporting. Palast then claims that this quot doesn't exist ". . . in the Congressional Record, nor in any recorded talk, nor on her Website, nor in any of her radio talks." In fact, here's what McKinney said in a press release put out by her office and posted to her House web site shortly after her KPFA interview (emphasis added),


I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case. For example, it is known that President Bush's father, through the Carlyle Group had - at the time of the attacks - joint business interests with the bin Laden construction company and many defense industry holdings, the stocks of which, have soared since September 11.
On the other hand, what is undeniable is that corporations close to the Administration, have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11. The Carlyle Group, DynCorp, and Halliburton certainly stand out as companies close to this Administration. Secretary Rumsfeld maintained in a hearing before Congress that we can afford the new spending, even though the request for more defense spending is the highest increase in twenty years and the Pentagon has lost $2.3 trillion.

It is Clemetson who is correct and Palast who is doing a lousy job of reporting here. Doesn't Alternet have anyone doing any fact checking or do they simply run any Left wing Conspiracy theory that comes along?

Update: Palast apparently repeats this bogus claim in his book See No Evil. TomPaine.Com ran an excerpt from the book which included this,


She [McKinney] was labeled a traitor, a freak, a Conspiracy nut and "a looney" -- the latter by her state's Democratic Senator, who led the mob in the political lynching of the uppity Black woman. The New York Times wrote, "She angered some Black voters by suggesting that President Bush might have known in advance about the September 11 attacks but had done nothing so his supporters could make money in war." The fact that she said no such thing doesn't matter; the Times is always more influential than the truth. Dan Rather had warned her, shut up, don't ask questions, and you can avoid the neck-lacing. She didn't and it cost her her seat in Congress.
Is Palast using Michael Moore as a ghostwriter by any chance?

Update #2: In his extensive research for his book, Palast also apparently missed this article by McKinney published in Counterpunch,


We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, delivered one such warning. Those engaged in unusual stock trades immediately before September 11 knew enough to make millions of dollars from United and American airlines, certain insurance and brokerage firms' stocks. What did this Administration know, and when did it know it about the events of September 11? Who else knew and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered?
Source:

Weekend All Things Considered. NPR, June 16, 2002.

The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney. Greg Palast, AlterNet, June 18, 2003.

RE-LYNCHING CYNTHIA MCKINNEY
by Greg Palast
Monday, July 21, 2003
WEBLOG



Holy shit! Writing about Cynthia McKinney is like a blind date with Godzilla. You don't really know what you're in for until you've walked through the door.



In "The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney," (to read the original article click here: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=229&row=1 ) I thought I'd perform a minor but laudatory public service: correcting a cruelly false statement by the New York Times, a fib repeating or repeated by other sources from National Petroleum Radio to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.



The baying of wolves followed my simply noting that the former Congresswoman's political career was utterly destroyed by bald statements, such as the one in the New York Times which stated,



"Ms. McKinney suggest[ed] that President Bush might have known about the September 11 attacks but did nothing so his supporters could make money in a war."



When I called the Times reporter to ask for the source of this politically suicidal statement of McKinney's, she could not find it. When I pressed, she faked it, pathetically flailing about with false attempts to cover the sloppy reportage, citing for example the congressional record (where it did not appear).



NPR's hatchet job was much slicker. NPR said,



"[McKinney] suggested the Bush Administration may have known in advance about the September 11 attacks and allowed them to happen in order for people close to the President to profit"



Wow! And to back it up, NPR played her own words. She said,



“What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?"



And NPR added her statement,



"And so we get this Presidency requesting a nearly unprecedented amount of money to go into a defense budget for defense spending that will directly benefit his father."



Sounds damning, until we listen closer. First, the interview was not with NPR, but clipped from rival Free Speech Radio Network. Unfortunately for NPR, Free Speech posted the entire McKinney interview. The full transcript indicated that NPR's pronouncement -- was simply off the wall, gluing together two statements far apart in the interview, both out of context. John Sugg, the respected editor of Atlanta's weekly paper (and no big fan of McKinney) called NPR's free-form editing one of the most egregious cases of journalistic malfeasance he'd seen in years.



Is possible to READ INTO McKinney's statements that Bush knew about September 11 attacks and withheld the info to cash in? I suppose so, with the most malicious interpretation of her words. And that's NPR's real journalistic crime. There's a frightfully easy way to get it right: ASK HER. I did. The New York Times did not. NPR did not. The Atlanta Journal Constitution -- which wrote, hystrionically, "she practically accused the President of murder!" -- did not.



Now look back at McKinney's words. What was she saying? As she has explained again and again, she was citing reports from BBC Television and Britain's Guardian and Observer newspapers, even USA Today, that there was a massive intelligence failure before September 11. Crucial information was ignored by US intelligence agencies, these reports say. Furthermore, the BBC and Guardian reported, this blindness in intelligence gathering seems to have its source in the long-standing US government policy of not discomfiting Saudi Arabia, well-known source of terrorists and terrorist funding. Furthermore (and I'm sorry if there is a complex 'furthermore' – the REAL news does not always fit into nice one sentence sound-bites) … the Bush Administration's see-no-Saudi-evil policy may be prejudiced by the notable investments in Bush family enterprises by the self-same Saudis suspected by some European governments of funding terror.



It's a complex but important story, one the Congresswoman thought deserved investigation: the money-poisoning of America's foreign policy. It is NOT NOT NOT about Bush having specific knowledge of a September 11 al-Queda attack and deliberately withholding the info. I know, because I wrote two of the stories McKinney cited - and I discussed them with her in detail.



True, the New York Times report does not place her so-called quote inside quotation marks. This hardly lets the Paper of Record off the hook. Their reporter decided she could write the words into the Congresswoman's mouth. The paper mangled, twisted and abused her words … without the slightest journalistic check.



I spoke with McKinney by phone and via e-mail. “What did you mean?” She absolutely denied the wild interpretation put on her words. That's not a small matter. Nowhere did our press hounds say, “Some accuse McKinney of saying … but she denies it.” No, the black-ink lynch mob had tied the noose and would not be satisfied until McKinney's political career hung from the poplar tree.



It's not a small matter, and way beyond McKinney. This is at its heart the story about the marginalization and monsterizing of dissenters. This is exactly the lynching that Dan Rather has warned would come to those in politics or news who asked difficult questions.



When I challenged the news mob about the McKinney "quote," they recoiled. In Atlanta, McKinney's home town, the Atlanta Journal Constitution's gross mis-phrasing of the Congresswoman's phrases did not withstand even a glance of scrutiny. The AJC recently asked me to speak to their international reporters about ways to improve world-wide coverage. I suggested they stop fabricating stories. Specifically, privately, in the AJC offices, and publicly in a rival paper, I challenged the editorial writer of the AJC to state exactly where McKinney had made her wild accusation of Presidential “murder.” I tempted them with a personal offer: if they could substantiate the quote, I would ingest an entire edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, a paper of some heft. I left Atlanta hungry.



Can you read an evil accusation into McKinney's statement -- Bush planned September 11 attacks to enrich his daddy? Oh, yes, if that's what you WANT to read. But reporters are not supposed to play ‘Gotcha!' with such serious matters. If a statement can be read two ways – one devastating – then journalists have an obligation to ASK and probe, and certainly not spread an 'interpretation' as a quotation.



I myself interviewed McKinney for BBC television. Doing my job, I tried to goad her into making an incendiary comment about Bush and September 11. She would not. As a journalist, not a political hit man, I left her out of our broadcast. If, in my BBC report or in my Guardian/Observer column, I played games with a quotation and used the words of the New York Times or NPR reporters, I would lose my job in a heartbeat. (And my paper and network would offer apologies and cash compensation to the Congresswoman).



True, 'Net trawlers can find many quotes from McKinney which could be read to imply that Bush knew about the coming attack and kept it to himself, like this one:



"We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, delivered one such warning. What did this Administration know, and when did it know it about the events of September 11? Who else knew and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York?"



And her infamous 'cover-up' accusation,



"I think what the administration is concerned about is that we have connected the dots. They don't want the American people to know and be able to hold accountable the people who were involved in the lead up to September 11. …I call that a cover-up."



Once again, the obvious and more plausible reading of McKinney's words -- her own explanation, which ought to count for something -- is a story of intelligence failures caused by a disastrous Administration policy of going easy on Middle East potentates who fund terror. That's a far cry from saying Bush was in on the Conspiracy to attack America.



The reason I find the brouhaha over my correcting the record on McKinney so astonishing is that the complaints came in the main, NOT from defenders of the Times or NPR, but from those who do, in fact, believe that Bush DID know of, or even plan, the attack of September 11. These objectors are beside themselves with misery over losing the comfort of a kind of endorsement of their views extracted from the misreading of McKinney. From this crowd came the most vitriolic attacks – citing Saint McKinney's words despite her repeated objections.



And let's be blunt about a nastier side of this story: NPR and the Times wouldn't have done it to a white male congressman. And I'm not guessing. Recently, the nation's papers reported that Republican Senator Grassley called for an investigation of intelligence failures before the September 11 attack, demanding explanation for the Administration's failure to act on incoming intelligence. Senator Bob Graham did the same. Neither Grassley nor Graham was not called a 'looney' or a 'loose cannon' as NPR so graciously allowed others to label the uppity black woman McKinney. Apparently, they fell under the Times' Stupid White Senator exemption.



How do I know they treat white, right congressmen differently from a black, left congresswoman? Go back to McKinney's "cover-up" statement. ("[Bush] doesn't want the American people to know …those involved in the lead-up to September 11.") I was just having a little fun: McKinney never said it. Senator Bob Graham did.



My original story on the savaging of McKinney was an excerpt from the report that opens the volume "Abuse Your Illusions," the new tome of media and critiques of propaganda from Disinformatiom Press. There, the McKinney expose was imbedded among other tales of fibs, fabrications, Stalinized photos and various distortions from America's own Izvestias and Pravdas, the Times, the Washington Post, NPR and the others. (I pick on the Times and NPR only because they are acknowledged as the leading American daily new outlets. It goes downhill from there ... down past USA Today to the end of our nation's media colon, Fox News. I shed tears for, but do not bother to critique, these sloughs of darkness.)



Notably, the Times' and NPR's reactions illustrated the illusion of an unbiased US press. The Times imperiously ignored my findings of their manipulation of photos, quotes and outright falsities. However, NPR scheduled me to appear on the network's own national media review program -- regarding my criticism of the Times. Then, when the producers read my story on NPR's own prevarications, NPR decided that the best debate … is none at all -- "the story is too complicated and requires too much research time" NPR told me -- and I was yanked from the broadcast minutes before the recording. So God Bless America.



BLAIR PART II: THE UNICYCLE OF EVIL AND POPPY'S BOMB



July 18, 2003



Do you see it? Right there, right under Tony Blair and George Bush: During their press conference Thursday, Fox News ran a continuous ribbon of text at the bottom of the screen. It said, "THEY ARE LYING TO YOU. FIRST, BRITAIN'S PRIME MINISTER, STANDING BEFORE THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS, WILL TELL A BIG FAT FIB AND THEN OUR PRESIDENT, STANDING WITH HIM AT THE WHITE HOUSE, WILL STUTTER, SPUTTER AND THEN LIE IN YOUR FACE."



Well OK, that's not the exact phrase that the Fox Network ran, but that's what the text runner meant. While Tony Blair thumped his chest and told congress, "We promised Iraq democratic government - we will deliver it," the ticker-tape at the bottom of the TV screen said that our appointed chieftain in Iraq, Paul Bremer III, had announced that there would be no elections in Iraq - not until next year, or later.



Then it was our President's turn. He used the phrase "free Iraq" about half a dozen times. We know Iraq is free because Mr. Bush explained, he has just appointed Iraq's "governing council." The puppet show, our president told us gleefully, "is now meeting regularly." What about -- dare I mention the word -- ELECTIONS? To ask during a presidential press conference about the possibility that Iraqis be allowed to vote is considered as appropriate as passing wind at a debutante ball. "Democracy," Mr. Bush wagged his finger, "will take time to create." Indeed, it's only right that free and fair elections in Iraq should wait until after free and fair elections in Florida. And THAT is not scheduled until after 2004.



Democracy, Bush and Blair admonish us, is not something we can rush into. Their point was illustrated this week when, in a little noticed announcement, Bush's man Bremer, who issues his dictates from Saddam's old office, cancelled all local elections. Bremer has decided that what Iraqis really need now more than the chance to chose their government is an armed and unchallengeable strongman, himself.



At the press conference, the questions moved from democracy to Blair's and Bush's jointly written work of fiction: the tale of Saddam's buying up nuclear mud from the African nation of Niger. The story was, as the English say, "bollocks," but George Bush gamely insisted that, "I strongly BELIEVE [Saddam] was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program."



Mr. Bush used the term "believe" several times. It seems that as a child, our President was awestruck by the repetitive annunciation of faith to revive Tinkerbell ("We believe in fairies, Tink! We really BELIEVE!"). He is apparently unaware that the decision to go war is supposed to be based, not on beliefs, but on hard intelligence.



Blair visibly squirmed through Bush's twisting and ducking around the simple question of why Bush slithered this African hot-dirt fable into the State of the Union address.



Faced with having to unmuddle the President's inchoate response, Blair hiked up his eyebrows then fetched up this stunner: "People don't generally know… in the 1980s that Iraq purchased 270 tons of uranium from Niger." Indeed, people don't know that, Tony, because your government and the US government did its damned best to cover it up. In the 1980s, Saddam was OUR butcher in Baghdad, a buddy of Ronald Reagan and Bush Senior. During my investigations for BBC television, I discovered during the Reagan-Bush years, Saudi Arabians gave Saddam, with a wink and nod from the US and UK, $7 billion to build a nuclear weapon so he could incinerate his enemy, Iran. However, that was back before there was an 'Axis of Evil' and Iran was the Unicycle of Evil.



So that was today's news: no elections in Iraq, a confession about Poppy Bush's old bomb for Saddam, and photo ops of a boy and his lapdog.



If you listened carefully, our president salted his responses with some unintended truths. Standing next to Blair, George Bush concluded, "Freedom and self-government are hated and opposed by a radical and ruthless few." Yes, George - I can easily name two.



TONY BLAIR - PRISONER OF WAR



July 16, 2003



'Here, boy! Sit! Here y'go! Good boy!'



Poor George Bush. All week he's been practicing his lines for presenting Tony Blair a special medallion for his services to the USA. (The British Prime Minister arrives in Washington tomorrow.) Unfortunately for Bush, Mr. Blair's handlers realized what joy it would bring to England's political cartoonists for the President to hang a gilded collar around the man now known as 'Bush's poodle.'



Blair is in the doghouse with his own Labour Party for having been caught in a fib. Seems the Brits have their knickers in a twist about their leader's ludicrous fabrication of evidence that Saddam Hussein had jars of bad bugs, piles of atomic mud and an evil chemistry set in his basement capable of wiping away London. I've just read a Parliamentary report in which Blair's own minister calls his boss' claims about the bogus Weapons of Mass Destruction, 'a bunch of Horlicks.' The phrase defies translation, but you get the idea. So does Tony – which is why England's bookies are giving 2-to-9 odds Blair will ask our president for political asylum.



To Americans, the English Parliament's bad attitude is a mystery. After all, our own President repeated Blair's goofy allegations that Saddam was buying nuclear bomb fixings from Africa -- just one of our government's WMD howlers and whoppers. But in America, if you believe Fox TV, only whiners, traitors and the last three Democrats have some kind of problem with this official mendacity. In fact, that's why Blair was supposed to get the medal. Hell, anyone can go to war based on the facts; it takes a true ally like Mr. Tony to send kids into gunfire based on a packet of fictions.



How did Blair get into this fix? The answer is, he can't help himself: Blair's an 'Ameriphiliac.' I noticed the Prime Minister's mad affection for all things American in my job reporting from London for BBC and the Guardian/Observer. As a Yank in King Tony's court, I've seen during Blair's six years in office, what began as puppy love for Bill Clinton degenerate into pathetic poodledom at the heel of George Bush.



The Prime Minister's need to pad along behind Bush is the result of the strange pathologic politics that Blair calls, 'modernization.' Blair, you see, hates Britain.



This Prime Minister despises his storybook countryside and its grumbling farmers with their two little pigs and their tiny fields edged with dry stone. He cringes at the little bell ringing over the door of the village post office - so quaint and so maddeningly inefficient. He cannot fathom a nation that weeps when he shuts the last filthy coal pits.



Blair is frustrated to tears by what he sees as fossilized trade unions which chain workers to dead industries, rather than building new ones. Britain's Prime Minister dreams of birthing the Entrepreneurial State. Instead, he finds himself caretaker of a museum of nineteenth-century glories made somnolent by easy welfare and low ambitions.



So Tony gazes across the water with almost erotic envy at a thoroughly ‘modernized' America Inc., where Wal-Marts and McDonald's and Microsoft roam free, creating a shiny New Economic Order.



I saw Blair's America-mania up close and inside in 1998 when I went undercover to investigate US corporate influence on his government for the Observer, the Guardian's Sunday paper. Working out of an expensive hotel suite overlooking the Tower of London, my confederates and I pretended to represent Blair's favorite American corporation, a Texas company called, 'Enron.' We wanted to find out how much it would cost in 'consulting fees' to overturn England's environmental laws for the benefit of our US client.



It turns out the price for bending the rules for Enron would be ludicrously low. Blair's ministers and cronies were selling policy changes dirt cheap because they knew that Tony, like an amateur hooker, was giving it away for free. While I was pretending to get Blair to change energy policy rules for Enron, I discovered the real Enron was doing the same thing. The sleazy Houston power pirates successfully talked Blair, for example, into reversing his sworn campaign pledge not to let American companies build proposed electricity plants on English soil. It was no wonder that, one of Blair's closest advisors, after he weighed my checkbook, had no hesitation calling me from 10 Downing Street to invite me in. When it came to Enron and other handsome 'modern' American corporations, he knew his boss Mr. Blair just could not say, ‘no.'



From faith in Enron to faith in Enron's President is a short lover's leap. In January 2000, just before George Bush's inauguration, Rupert Murdoch's lobbyist warned the prime minister that for Blair to satisfy his lust for corporate America's affection, Britain must accede as well to the new US president's military mission.



Blair's decision to take that advice looked pretty good just after September 11, when tail-gunner Tony jumped into Bush's cockpit to avenge in Afghanistan the attacks on the USA. British sympathy for America was deep, sincere and wide – the one minute of silence for the World Trade Center victims was better observed in London than in New York. But joining in the conquest of Iraq has made Blair a prisoner of Bush's warmongering. Parliamentarians must now decide if their prime minister is a fraud or just a fool.



So Blair's one subtle act of independence is to refuse the award of Congress's golden collar. But Bush is hardly likely to let Tony off the leash.






BILL GATES: KILLING AFRICANS FOR PROFIT AND P.R. -- MR. BUSH'S BOGUS AIDS OFFER



Monday July 14, 2003





Bring back Jayson Blair! The New York Times has eliminated the scourge of plagiarized journalism by eliminating journalism altogether from its front page. Check this Sunday’s edition: “Bill Gates is no ordinary philanthropist,” gushes a Times reporter named Stephanie Strom, re-writing one of the digital diva’s self-loving press releases. Gates has saved 100,000 lives by providing vaccines to Africans, gushes Stephanie, according to someone on the payroll of … Bill Gates. And he’s making access to drugs for Africans, especially for AIDS victims, “cheaper and easier.” Stephanie knows because she asked Bill Gates himself!





Then we get to the real point of this journalistic Lewinsky: “Those who think of Mr. Gates as a ruthless billionaire monopolist … may find it hard to reconcile that image with one of a humorously self-deprecating philanthropist.”





Actually, that’s not hard at all.





Stephanie, let me let you in on a little secret about Bill and Melinda Gates so-called “Foundation.” Gate’s demi-trillionaire status is based on a nasty little monopoly-protecting trade treaty called “TRIPS” – the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights rules of the World Trade Organization. TRIPS gives Gates a hammerlock on computer operating systems worldwide, legally granting him the kind of monopoly the Robber Barons of yore could only dream of. But TRIPS, the rule which helps Gates rule, also bars African governments from buying AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medicine at cheap market prices.





Example: in June 2000, at the urging of Big Pharma, Bill Clinton threatened trade sanctions against Argentina for that nation’s daring to offer low-cost drugs to Southern Africa.





Gates knows darn well that “intellectual property rights” laws such as TRIPS – which keep him and Melinda richer than Saddam and the Mafia combined – are under attack by Nelson Mandela and front-line doctors trying to get cut-rate drugs to the 23 million Africans sick with the AIDS virus. Gate’s brilliant and self-serving solution: he’s spending an itsy-bitsy part of his monopoly profits (the $6 billion spent by Gates’ foundation is less than 2% of his net worth) to buy some drugs for a fraction of the dying. The bully billionaire’s “philanthropic” organization is currently working paw-in-claw with the big pharmaceutical companies in support of the blockade on cheap drug shipments.





Gates’ game is given away by the fact that his Foundation has invested $200 million in the very drug companies stopping the shipment of low-cost AIDS drugs to Africa.





Gates says his plan is to reach one million people with medicine by the end of the decade. Another way to read it: he’s locking in a trade system that will effectively block the delivery of medicine to over 20 million.





The computer magnate’s scheme has a powerful ally. “The president could have been reading from a script prepared by Mr. Gates,” enthuses the Times’ cub reporter, referring to Mr. Bush’s AIDS plan offered up this week to skeptical Africans. The US press does not understand why Africans don’t jump for Bush’s generous handout. None note that the money held out to the continent’s desperate nations has strings attached or, more accurately, chains and manacles. The billions offered are mostly loans at full interest which may be used only to buy patent drugs from US companies at a price several times that available from other nations. What Africans want, an end to the devastating tyranny of TRIPS and other trade rules, is dismissed by the Liberator of Baghdad.





We are all serfs on Microsoft’s and Big Pharma’s ‘intellectual property.’ If Gates’ fake philanthropy eviscerates the movement to free Africans from the tyranny of TRIPS, then Bill and Melinda’s donations could have the effect of killing more Africans than then even their PR agents claim they have saved. And for our own Republic, we can only hope that when the bully-boy billionaire injects his next wad of loot into the Bush political campaign, he uses a condom.


PRESIDENT TOP GUN: AFFIRMATIVELY MISSING IN ACTION



Wednesday July 9, 2003



Note: It’s getting mighty expensive replacing every television I throw through the window when Mr. O’Reilly appears. And ripping up the New York Times leaves me without the news I need to pick up after Pluto, my retriever. There’s only one thing to do: write the darn news myself. I am, I’ve heard, a journalist – but it’s only a rumor in the USA where my reports for BBC Television and the Guardian papers are stopped by the electronic Berlin Wall. So this missive today inaugurates Greg Palast’s Radio Free America, a web log of samizdat rants, raves and most important, hard-core must-know facts from my investigative stories appearing abroad. Three times a week at www.gregpalast.com you’ll find the news not in your news.




And here’s a taste, from the files of BBC Television’s just-broadcast one-hour special, “Bush Family Fortunes.”



President Top Gun: Affirmatively Missing in Action



Forty-eight hours before ordering our troops into Iraq, our President told us, “There’s no certainty in war but the certainty of sacrifice.” For most of us, yes, but not, however, if your name is ‘Bush.’ According to discomforting information my BBC investigative team reported last week. In 1968, former Congressman George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas, fresh from voting to send other men’s sons to Vietnam, enlisted his own son in a very special affirmative action program, the ‘champagne’ unit of the Texas Air National Guard. There, Top Gun fighter pilot George W was assigned the dangerous job of protecting Houston from Vietcong air attack.



BBC thought it worth a look into our Commander-in-Chief’s Vietnam war record after the White House staged our President’s dramatic landing by fighter jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abe Lincoln to announce our victory over Iraq. Hey, Churchill never did that. (And kudos to Tom Brokaw and the other US network performers for maintaining their patriotically solemn expressions -- even when our President, unlike experienced flyers, kept his parachute clips fastened under his crotch, making him look a little less like Tom Cruise and more like that first chimp in space.)



In 1968, to qualify for the single available pilot spot in the Air Guard, young George took a test. He scored, out of a possible 100, only 25. (Word is that the chimp scored 26.) How then, did our future President – opponent of affirmative action, who believes no one should get their post except through merit -- leap over thousands of other applicants and cinch the get-out-of-‘Nam post?



Here’s what you won’t see on US TV: Years back I got my hands on a copy of a document languishing in Justice Department files in Austin, Texas. In it, a tipster fingers two political friends of Bush Senior who, the source claimed, made the call to get young Bush out of the war and into the cockpit at the Air Guard. But the Feds could not act without corroboration. Now we have it. To the BBC crew, one of those named confessed to making the call – at Bush Senior’s request – to help George W dodge the draft. (I’ve posted the letter at http://www.gregpalast.com/ulf/documents/draftdodgeblanked.jpg).



Look, I don’t care if President Bush cowered and ran from Vietnam. I sure as hell didn’t volunteer … but then, my daddy didn’t send someone else in my place. And I don’t march around with parachute clips around my gonads talking about war and sacrifice.



But what the heck, Bush’s supporters respond that the man did at least he ‘serve his country’ in the Air Guard. Or did he? Questions have been raised over the years about whether the younger George, having nailed the cushy pilot seat, failed to report for duty. On camera, I spoke with Texas cattle rancher Bill Burkett, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the air guard. Seems that Burkett was in the office of the Guard’s Adjutant General when a call came in from then-Governor George W. Bush’s office. As is normal procedure, the call was put on the speaker box, but the request was not so normal. The Governor’s office was sending over an official biographer … and the Governor’s minions wanted to make sure the files did not contain not-so-heroic info. Burkett told me:



“I was in the General’s office, General Daniel James …. He gets a telephone call from Joe Albaugh, who was the Governor’s chief of staff, and Dan Bartlett … on the voice box … and they wanted General James to assemble all of the Governor’s files, that [Karen Hughes, Bush’s aide] was going to write a book…. But Joe told General James, ‘Make sure there’s not anything in there that’ll embarrass the Governor.’”



And there wouldn’t be. Burkett asked if the general’s staff really intended to purge the files; and sure enough, as evidence of the affirmative reply, he was shown the piles of pay and pension records in the garbage pails destined for the shredders. Colonel Burkett did not run off with those files so we can only conclude this: the only evidence that Bush showed up for duty during the war is now missing. Military pay records are public records – and now they are conveniently unavailable.



By the way, the White House, where Messrs. Albaugh, Bartlett and, of course, Mr. Bush, work, turned down BBC’s offer to deny the charges of the draft-dodge fix and the purging of Dubya’s files.



That’s far from the end of the story. There are only two men alive today (outside the Bush family) who knew exactly how George Bush ducked the draft. Both men became high-powered Texas lobbyists. To an influence peddler, having damning information on a sitting governor is worth it’s weight in gold – or, more precisely, there’s a value in keeping the info secret. One of the lobbyists, former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes, appears to have made lucrative use of his knowledge of our President’s slithering out of the draft as a lever to obtain a multi-billion dollar contract for a client. The happy client paid Barnes, the keeper of Governor Bush’s secret, a fee of over $23 million. Barnes, not surprisingly, denies that Bush took care of his client in return for Barnes’ silence. However, confronted with the evidence, the former Lt. Governor now admits to helping the young George stay out of Vietnam.



For the full story of our president’s war years and the $23 million payment, read the title chapter of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, nominated last month by the California State University’s for a Project Censored Award – and excerpted in this month’s Hustler Magazine. (To read the story with less lubricated illustrations, go to http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=233&row=1.)



This week, on July 6, George W. Bush turned 57. William White was born the same day in 1946. I mention this because, if you’re old enough, you’d remember that young men were drafted for Vietnam based on a grim lottery – if your birthday was picked out of a hat, you went. I got White’s name off a black wall in Washington. He went to Vietnam when George W went to the Air Guard in Houston. White never came back. Happy birthday, Mr. President.



Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin 2003). Read his comments and view his reports for BBC TV at www.GregPalast.com