Author: Joe Conason

In the wake of the Bernard Kerik fiasco, nearly everyone who endorsed the former New York police commissioner looks naive at best and irresponsible at worst. The president’s attempt to place this disreputable figure in charge of the Department of Homeland Security reads like a bad sitcom plot.

Such blunders are inevitable when the chief executive prefers political fidelity and tough posturing to competence and judgment. It’s hardly surprising that George W. Bush would be attracted to a figure like Kerik, who apparently compensates for his meager credentials with extra swaggering.

The White House counsel’s office, under the direction of Alberto Gonzales, our next likely attorney general, has yet to justify its failure to uncover Kerik’s checkered history. The president’s advisers have faulted Kerik himself, as if the government could simply depend on nominees for self-vetting. Their strange passivity reflects the same Bush administration attitude that trusts major corporations to report their own environmental pollution and consumer swindling.

Any exercise in shifting blame inevitably pointed to Kerik’s most important endorser: his mentor, confidant, employer, and business partner, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Whether the former New York City mayor actually accepts any responsibility for the Kerik error wasn’t clear from his public statements, but he apologized to President Bush at a White House dinner.

Unfortunately for Giuliani, no apology will satisfy the appetite of the press for tawdry Kerik tales. Very rarely does a story exposing abuse of police authority include such beguiling details as a jewel-encrusted badge, a mobbed-up crony, a multimillion-dollar stock trade, and a flashy mistress or two. The more we hear about the bodyguard and driver whom Giuliani promoted to police commissioner, the more we also learn about the man who likes to be called America’s mayor.

The scrutinizing of Kerik reopened questions about the Giuliani administration that seemed to have been closed forever on September 11, 2001. A government that prides itself on ostentatious religiosity and moralizing is probably most embarrassed by the sexual peccadilloes of its backers. But what could embarrass Giuliani most is his wayward protégé’s coddling of a city contractor with alleged Mafia connections.

That firm, known as Interstate Industrial Corporation, hired Kerik’s close friend Lawrence Ray to overcome obstacles to doing business with the city. Interstate’s main problem was that city officials suspected the New Jersey company and its principal, Frank DiTommaso, of long and intimate ties with organized crime. According to reports in the Daily News and The New York Times, Ray gave Kerik “more than $7,000 in cash and other gifts while Kerik was commissioner of correction and the police.”

In 1999, when he was running the city’s prisons, Kerik reportedly spoke up for Interstate in a chat with Raymond V. Casey, the chief of enforcement for the city’s Trade Waste Commission. Although Kerik says he doesn’t recall the conversation, Casey told reporters that Kerik had vouched for the integrity of Ray, the Interstate lobbyist, which he considered a “weird” sort of endorsement by the then-corrections commissioner. Ray was indicted in 2000 for his role in a mob-connected financial fraud. And it later turned out that Kerik was also quite friendly with DiTommaso, who vehemently denies doing business with the Gambino and DeCavalcante crime families, as government agencies have alleged.

Turning the multibillion-dollar Homeland Security budget over to a hack who took money and favors in that seedy milieu doesn’t seem prudent, but it almost happened.

So the mayor who sponsored Kerik’s rise has some explaining to do. What did Giuliani know about his corrections commissioner’s “weird” relationships and behavior when he promoted him to police commissioner? He might well have learned about the Interstate matter from Casey, a regulator he appointed who also happens to be his cousin.

Two months before Kerik was named Giuliani’s police commissioner, the city Department of Investigation opened an inquiry into Kerik’s relationship with DiTommaso. Giuliani says he was not aware of the probe.

Now Giuliani has welcomed Kerik back into the fold at Giuliani Partners, where the disappointed office-seeker will presumably remain discreet about their shared secrets.

Much like the president, Giuliani as mayor increasingly surrounded himself with a tight circle of lackeys and cronies. His post-disaster performance obscured those negative qualities for a while, and rightly so. But now we’re reminded how the former prosecutor discarded important values of independence and integrity when they conflicted with his political needs.

He’ll make a terrific presidential candidate. •

Joe Conason writes a weekly column on politics for The New York Observer.

Exactly one week after president Bush accepts his party’s nomination in New York on September 2nd, two days before the anniversary of 9/11 and seven weeks before Election Day, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge plans to hold a Washington press conference to announce that September will be “National Preparedness Month.”

The government’s “partners” in this month-long, well-meaning public-awareness campaign will include many national groups, such as the American Red Cross, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the Advertising Council. Newspapers and airwaves will be saturated with messages urging worried citizens to learn how to cope with “emergencies.”

Let’s hope that Ridge can set politics aside when he inaugurates this campaign. (For a darkly amusing chart that plots terror alerts against the president’s poll ratings and various political events, see http://juliusblog.blogspot.com.) Unfortunately, the news that has emerged about the administration’s bungling of its latest orange alert suggests otherwise. Their first mistake came when Ridge misled the press about the information that prompted him to elevate the threat level after the Democratic convention. The alert was based on information that was at least three years old. His remarks obfuscated that truth.

Administration officials quickly explained they had acted on the basis of current intelligence that amplified the alarm raised by the old computer files. But Ridge’s British counterpart, Home Secretary David Blunkett, soon denounced the entire exercise. Writing in a London newspaper on August 7th, Blunkett asked acidly: “Is that really the job of a senior cabinet minister in charge of counter-terrorism? To feed the media? To increase concern? Of course not. This is arrant nonsense.”

According to press reports, the Bush administration’s closest allies in the Blair government were “dismayed by the nakedly political use made of recent intelligence breakthroughs both in the U.S. and in Pakistan.” The Brits simply didn’t believe there was any imminent threat justifying a public alert.

That brings us to the second, more serious error committed by the Bush administration last week. To justify the Ridge announcement, unnamed officials revealed that an al-Qaeda operative arrested in Pakistan had provided fresh information. On August 2nd, The New York Times named the captured operative, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan.

Leaking Khan’s name enhanced nobody’s safety — with the possible exception of certain al-Qaeda members warned of their own impending capture when they read the morning newspapers. Within a few days, Reuters reported that following his arrest, Khan had been “turned.” A computer expert, Khan was said to be helping the authorities break up terrorist cells in Britain and the United States.

Security officials in London are still enraged because the Khan leak from Washington forced them to act too precipitously, rushing to arrest 13 suspects in raids across Britain the next day. No doubt the C.I.A. officials whose high-tech tracking efforts led to Khan’s capture felt similar frustration. In a war against terrorist groups that have proved nearly impossible to penetrate with human agents, the loss of such a well-placed turncoat could prove tragic.

There is no question about who perpetrated the leak. On August 8th, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice admitted that the administration had disclosed Khan’s arrest to the Times “on background.” Experts around the world are still astonished by this reckless decision.

“The whole thing smacks of either incompetence or worse,” said Tim Ripley, a security expert who writes for Jane’s Defense publications. “You have to ask: What are they doing compromising a deep mole within al-Qaeda, when it’s so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place?”

That is the pertinent question, and the answer is all too obvious.

What useful purpose was served by Ridge’s press conference remains unclear. His defenders say that he would be mercilessly criticized if he failed to warn the public about a real attack. But the problem during the months before 9/11 was not the government’s failure to post constant vague alerts of impending disaster, true as they eventually would have proved to be. The problem was that the agencies and individuals responsible for protecting the United States, including the president, failed to mobilize and act together, despite many warnings from within and outside the government.

It is encouraging that American intelligence agencies and their allies in Britain and Pakistan have begun to roll up al-Qaeda cells. It is troubling that their efforts were compromised for political advantage.

Joe Conason writes a weekly column on politics for The New York Observer, where this column first appeared.

You don’t have to be a Marxist to remember what may be the most widely quoted (and misquoted) passage from the works of Karl Marx: “Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities in world history reappear in one way or another. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

During his long, legendary career on the left, Ralph Nader must have read or heard versions of that quotation on many occasions. Now, as he resumes his impossible quest with the open assistance of Republicans and conservatives, he is acting out Marx’s maxim.

“Tragedy” may or may not describe what happened in 2000, when the Nader candidacy drew enough votes from Al Gore in Florida and New Hampshire to deprive the Democratic nominee of victory. But to hear his impassioned rhetoric, Nader believes that the Bush administration’s selling and renting of national policy to corporate interests is tragic indeed.

“Farce” aptly describes what is happening in 2004, at least so far as the latest Nader candidacy is concerned. Perhaps pining for the crowds and acclaim he evoked so well in Crashing the Party, his memoir of his last campaign, the consumer advocate and youth idol announced that he will run again this year, no matter the consequences.

Then, to his dismay, Nader discovered that three-plus years of the Bush-Cheney regime have concentrated the minds of many of his erstwhile supporters. The first to abandon his cause were celebrities like Michael Moore, who declared his preference for retired general Wesley Clark last fall and urges current visitors to his Web site to devote themselves to electing Democrats in November. (According to Nader, he wasn’t even invited to the Washington premiere of Moore’s blockbuster movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. His response was an embittered open letter to his “old friend” that made sport of the filmmaker’s waist size.)

The defection of Moore anticipated the rejection of the Nader candidacy by the Green Party, whose leaders also seem to be familiar with that old Marx quip. Rather than renominate their 2000 candidate, they put up an unknown whose chief campaign promise is that he won’t hamper the Democratic presidential candidate. The Natural Law Party also displayed little enthusiasm for Nader.

These developments are worse than embarrassing, since they have deprived Nader of easy ballot access in dozens of states where the Greens have earned a November line. Meanwhile, Democratic officials in various states are seeking to keep him off the ballot by challenging the validity of his petitions (in much the same way that President Bush tried to keep his rivals off the New York primary ballot in 2000).

Although the prospects for Nader are quickly shrinking, his would-be rescuers are already revealing themselves. The new Naderites include the strange Manhattan therapy cult that now dominates the Reform Party, which will provide ballot access in some states after endorsing him in a teleconference call last May. He can also count on at least one group of activists who are absolutely determined to see him succeed: right-wing Republicans.

Tens of thousands of dollars from major Bush donors are pouring into Nader’s coffers, and he is using that money to pay for petition signatures that will get him on the ballot in swing states. The American Prospect reports that earlier this year, Nader’s aides solicited a California company that usually performs such tasks for Republican candidates.

In Arizona, a former Christian Coalition staffer circulated the Nader petitions along with an anti-immigration initiative. (The resulting petitions were so riddled with error and alleged fraud that they were thrown out by the state authorities.) In Florida, the GOP chairwoman (who answers to Governor Jeb Bush, the president’s brother) demanded that Democrats drop any legal effort to disqualify the Nader candidacy.

And in Oregon, where Nader recently became a featured guest on right-wing radio, two conservative organizations phoned their members to urge their attendance at a state petitioning convention in Portland. Leaders of Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Oregon Family Council explained bluntly that they have no use for Nader — except as an instrument to siphon votes from John Kerry.

Reluctant to leave the national stage, he has accepted a bit part in a farce written and directed by the corporate politicians he affects to despise. That is a kind of tragedy too. n

Joe Conason writes a weekly column on politics for The New York Observer.

George W. Bush lied about his military service record. The lie can be found in his 1999 campaign autobiography (as written by Karen Hughes), where he dramatically describes his experience as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

On page 34 of A Charge To Keep, Bush claims that after learning to fly the F-102 fighter jet, he was turned down for Vietnam duty because he “had not logged enough flight hours” to qualify for a combat assignment. Before going on to recall the “challenging moments” that involved close formation drills at night during poor weather, he adds: “I continued flying with my unit for the next several years.”

In light of what journalists and other researchers have learned since the publication of Bush’s book, his account is unmistakably fraudulent.

The issue is relevant because Michael Moore, the author and filmmaker who supports Wesley Clark’s presidential campaign, recently impugned the president as a “deserter.” During the final Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire, moderator Peter Jennings called Moore’s statement “a reckless charge not supported by the facts” and demanded that Clark repudiate his celebrity backer.

As the ABC newsman may (or, more likely, may not) know, the facts about the president’s National Guard stint are complex, disputed, and, in many respects, unflattering. To call him a “deserter” was wrong and inflammatory, even if Moore was joking, as he now insists. Although Bush may well have been absent without leave, he was never prosecuted for that offense, let alone desertion, and he eventually received an honorable discharge. But to suggest that the Bush record is beyond criticism, as Jennings did, is both misleading and biased. That bias reflects an enduring double standard on this topic that has protected Bush ever since he first declared his presidential candidacy.

The facts, established by Boston Globe reporter Walter Robinson in 2000, explode the lyrical flights of fancy penned by Hughes.

Bush graduated from Yale in June 1968. After his father’s influential friends contacted Texas Air National Guard officials, they awarded young George a safe berth in Houston’s famed “champagne unit,” where sons of the Texas elite avoided Vietnam. His very special treatment included instant admission to flight training and an extraordinary commission as a second lieutenant. According to his former superiors, Bush performed admirably as a pilot while patrolling the coastal waters of the United States.

But in May 1972, only 22 months after he completed pilot training, he stopped flying. In August 1972, he failed to show up for his annual physical examination and was automatically grounded. According to The Times of London, a conservative newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, Bush’s campaign spokesman said he knew that he would be suspended if he missed that physical.

He never flew a military aircraft again (or not until his flight-suit photo-op last spring, when he briefly took the controls of an S-3B Viking jet before landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln). Instead, he left his Guard unit in Houston and went to Alabama to work in a Republican Senate campaign. He claims to have continued to serve in an Alabama Guard unit, but there is no evidence to support that assertion and much contradictory evidence. The commanding officer of the Alabama Guard unit told the Globe that Bush never showed up for duty there. Nor is there any evidence that he sought duty in Vietnam.

In fact, there is considerable evidence that Bush skipped all duty for a full year, until April 1973. At that point, his two superior officers in Houston noted in writing in an official document: “Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report.” They erroneously believed that he had been completing his duty in Alabama. Yet he somehow received an honorable discharge eight months before he completed his six-year commitment so that he could begin attending Harvard Business School.

As the Globe noted, the “champagne unit” and others like it back then displayed “a tendency to excuse shirking by those with political connections.”

So Bush’s claim that he “continued flying with my unit for the next several years” is an unabashed falsehood. Yet the spotty coverage of his military record in the mainstream press — aside from the Globe investigation and similar efforts in the Dallas Morning News and the Los Angeles Times — elided that lie. Compare this soft treatment with the media scourging of Bill Clinton, who was held accountable during the 1992 campaign for every word he uttered about his draft record.

What the Jennings episode validates is not Bush’s strange military career but the Bush method of press management. Treat journalists like vassals, with nicknames, cheek-pinching, and — whenever they forget their place momentarily — sneering disdain. It works brilliantly.

Joe Conason writes a weekly column for The New York Observer.

President George W. Bush and the provisional Iraqi authorities have promised that before Saddam Hussein is executed, he will most certainly receive a fair trial. Conveniently enough, the Iraqis set up a war-crimes tribunal in Baghdad for this purpose just last week. So sometime after Saddam’s Army interrogators are finished sweating the old monster, the preparations shall begin for what promises to be a courtroom spectacle.

Advocates of human rights and international law hope that the prosecution of Saddam will improve somewhat on his regime’s standard of criminal justice, which generally entailed horrific torture followed by confession and punishment. They have urged that Saddam’s trial be conducted with complete fairness and transparency. Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon’s favorite member of the Iraqi Governing Council, says that Saddam must be afforded the lawful treatment he denied his victims.

Those laudable aims presumably require that he be permitted to defend himself legally, no matter how indefensible he actually is. Human Rights Watch insists that the captured dictator “must be allowed to conduct a vigorous defense that includes the right to legal counsel at an early stage.”

Apart from blaming his underlings for the genocidal crimes on his indictment, what defense can he (or his lawyers) offer? Following in the style of Slobodan Milosevic, he may well wish to spend his final days on the public stage bringing shame to those who brought him down.

Unfortunately, it isn’t hard to imagine how he might accomplish that if he can call witnesses and subpoena documents. Charged with the use of poison gas against Kurds and Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam could summon a long list of Reagan and Bush administration officials who ignored or excused those atrocities when they were occurring.

An obvious prospective witness is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who acted as a special envoy to Baghdad during the early 1980s. On a courtroom easel, Saddam might display the famous December 1983 photograph of him shaking hands with Mr. Rumsfeld, who acknowledges that the United States knew Iraq was using chemical weapons. If his forces were using Tabun, mustard gas, and other forbidden poisons, he might ask, why did Washington restore diplomatic relations with Baghdad in November 1984?

As for his horrendous persecution of the Kurds in 1988, Saddam could call executives from the banks and defense and pharmaceutical companies from various countries that sold him the equipment and materials he is alleged to have used. He might put former President George Herbert Walker Bush on the witness stand and ask, “Why did your administration and Ronald Reagan’s sell my government biological toxins such as anthrax and botulism, as well as poisonous chemicals and helicopters?”

Saddam could also subpoena Henry Kissinger, whose consulting firm’s chief economist ventured to Baghdad in June 1989 to advise the Iraqi government on restructuring its debt. “After my forces allegedly murdered thousands of Kurdish civilians in 1988,” he might inquire, “why would you and other American businessmen want to help me refinance and rearm my government?”

Indeed, Saddam could conceivably seek the testimony of dozens of men and women who once served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, starting with former Secretary of State George Shultz, and ask them to explain why they opposed every congressional effort to place sanctions on his government, up until the moment his army invaded Kuwait during the summer of 1990. Pursuing the same general theme, he might call Vice President Dick Cheney, who sought to remove sanctions against Iraq when he served as the chief executive of Halliburton.

The long, shadowy history of American relations with Saddam would also be illuminated by literally thousands of documents in U.S. government files. Memos uncovered by the National Security Archive show that Reagan and Bush administration officials knew exactly how the Iraqi government was procuring what it needed to build weapons of mass destruction, including equipment for a nuclear arsenal.

From time to time, during those crucial years when Saddam consolidated his power and prepared for war, U.S. diplomats issued rote condemnations of his worst actions. Then, as the record shows, they would privately reassure Saddam that the United States still desired close and productive relations.

Pertinent as these issues are to Saddam’s case, they do not mitigate his record of murder and corruption. And the man dragged from his pathetic hideout near Tikrit hardly seems to possess the will or the capability to raise them. Yet it will be hard to boast that justice and history have been fully served if his foreign accomplices escape their share of opprobrium.

Joe Conason writes a weekly column on politics for The New York Observer.