"...The Bush Administration lied about Iraq, illegally spied on US citizens, and continues war crimes in the Middle East. Despite corporate media's inability to hear the demands for impeachment, the groundswell of outrage continues..."

http://www.counterpunch.org/phillips03242006.html

March 24, 2006

Media Yawns

Impeachment Movement Gains National Momentum

By PETER PHILLIPS

If a national movement calling for the impeachment of the President is rapidly emerging and the corporate media are not covering it, is there really a national movement for the impeachment of the President?

Impeachment advocates are widely mobilizing in the U.S. Over 1,000 letters to the editors of major newspapers have been printed in the past six months asking for impeachment. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette letter writer George Matus says, "I am still enraged over unasked questions about exit polls, touch-screen voting, Iraq, the cost of the new Medicarewho formulated our energy policy, Jack Abramoff, the Downing Street Memos, and impeachment." David Anderson in McMinnville, Oregon pens to the Oregonian, "Where are the members of our congressional delegation now in demanding the current president's actions be investigated to see if impeachment or censure are appropriate actions?" William Dwyer's letter in the Charleston Gazette says, "Congress will never have the courage to start the impeachment process without a groundswell of outrage from the people."

City councils, boards of supervisors, and local and state level Democrat central committees have voted for impeachment. Arcata, California voted for impeachment on January 6. The City and County of San Francisco, voted Yes on February 28. The Sonoma County Democrat Central Committee (CA) voted for Impeachment on March 16. The townships of Newfane, Brookfield, Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney in Vermont all voted for impeachment the first week of March. The New Mexico State Democrat party convention rallied on March 18 for the "impeachment of George Bush and his lawful removal from office." The national Green Party called for impeachment on January 3. Op-ed writers at the St. Petersburg Times, Newsday, Yale Daily News, Barrons, Detroit Free Press, and the Boston Globe have called for impeachment. The Nation (1/30/06) and Harpers (3/06) magazines published cover articles calling for impeachment. Garrison Keillor, and Richard Dreyfuss both have come out for impeachment. As of March 16, thirty-two US House of Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors to House Resolution 635, which would create a Select Committee to look into the grounds for recommending President Bush's impeachment.

Polls show that nearly a majority of Americans favor impeachment. In October of 2005, Public Affairs Research found that 50% of Americans said that President Bush should be impeached if he lied about the war in Iraq. A Zogby International poll from early November 2005 found that 53% of Americans say, "If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment." A March 16, 2006 poll by American Research Group showed that 42% of Americans favored impeaching Bush.

Despite all this advocacy and sentiment for impeachment, corporate media have yet to cover this emerging mass movement. The Bangor Daily News simply reported on March 17 that former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark has set up the website Votetoimpeach.org and that other groups are using the internet to push impeachment. The Wall Street Journal, on March 16, editorialized about how it is just "the loony left" seeking impeachment, but perhaps some Democrats in Congress will join in feeding on the "bile of the censure/impeachment brigades."

The corporate media is ignoring the broadening call for impeachment - wishing perhaps it will just go away. Television news and talk shows have mentioned impeachment over 100 times in the past 30 days, mostly however in the context of Senator Russ Feingold's censure bill and the lack of broad Democrat support for censure or impeachment. Nothing on television news gives the impression that millions of Americans are calling for the impeachment of Bush and his cohorts.

The Bush Administration lied about Iraq, illegally spied on US citizens, and continues war crimes in the Middle East. Despite corporate media's inability to hear the demands for impeachment, the groundswell of outrage continues to expand.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored a media research organization. He is co-editor with Dennis Loo from Cal Poly Pomona of the The Case for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney scheduled for release this summer by Seven Stories Press.

"...In effect, the government is basing its demand for Moussaoui’s death on the notion that the failure to do something that might have prevented the tragedy of Sept. 11 should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

However, the Bush administration has taken almost the opposite position on its own culpability. Despite a strong case for criminal negligence – beginning with FBI officials and reaching up to the Oval Office – Bush and other senior officials have insisted they have nothing to apologize for..."

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/032306.html

9/11 & Bush's 'Negligence'

By Robert Parry

March 24, 2006

In the U.S. government’s pursuit of the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui, FBI officials have inadvertently revealed how an even mildly competent George W. Bush could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people – and set the country on a dangerous course for revenge.

FBI agent Harry Samit, who interrogated Moussaoui weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, sent 70 warnings to his superiors about suspicions that the al-Qaeda operative had been taking flight training in Minnesota because he was planning to hijack a plane for a terrorist operation.

But FBI officials in Washington showed “criminal negligence” in blocking requests for a search warrant on Moussaoui’s computer or taking other preventive action, Samit testified at Moussaoui’s death penalty hearing on March 20.

Samit’s futile warnings matched the frustrations of other federal agents in Minnesota and Arizona who had gotten wind of al-Qaeda’s audacious scheme to train pilots for operations in the United States. But the agents couldn’t get their warnings addressed by senior officials at FBI headquarters.

Another big part of the problem was the lack of urgency at the top. Bush, who had been President for half a year, was taking a month-long vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and shrugged off the growing alarm within the U.S. intelligence community.

Separate from the FBI field agents, the Central Intelligence Agency was piecing the puzzle together from tips, intercepts and other scraps of information. On Aug. 6, 2001, more than a month before the attacks, the CIA had enough evidence to send Bush a top-secret Presidential Daily Briefing paper, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US.”

The CIA told Bush about “threat reporting” that indicated bin-Laden wanted “to hijack a US aircraft.” The CIA also cited a call that had been made to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 “saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.”

“The system was blinking red” during the summer of 2001, CIA Director George Tenet later told the 9/11 Commission.

Bush’s Justice Department and FBI headquarters were in the loop on the CIA reporting, but didn’t reach out to their agents around the country, some of whom, it turned out, were frantically trying to get the attention of their superiors in Washington.

Then-acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard told the 9/11 Commission that he discussed the intelligence threat reports with FBI special agents from around the country in a conference call on July 19, 2001. But Pickard said the focus was on having “evidence response teams” ready to respond quickly in the event of an attack.

Pickard “did not task field offices to try to determine whether any plots were being considered within the United States or to take any action to disrupt any such plots,” according to the 9/11 Commission’s report.

Contrasting Styles

Amid this bureaucratic inertia, Bush’s role was crucial. As President, he was the best-positioned official to force the various parts of the government to undertake a top-down review of what was known, what evidence was being missed, what could be done.

Richard Clarke, who had been President Bill Clinton’s counterterrorism chief and stayed in that job after Bush took office, said the Clinton administration reacted to such threats with urgent top-level meetings to “shake the trees” at the FBI, CIA, Customs and other relevant agencies.

Clarke said senior managers would respond by going back to their agencies to demand a search for any overlooked information and to put rank-and-file personnel on high alert, as happened when an al-Qaeda plot to bomb Millennium celebrations was thwarted in 1999.

“In December 1999, we received intelligence reports that there were going to be major al-Qaeda attacks,” Clarke said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” two years ago. “President Clinton asked his national security adviser Sandy Berger to hold daily meetings with the attorney general, the FBI director, the CIA director and stop the attacks.

“Every day they went back from the White House to the FBI, to the Justice Department, to the CIA and they shook the trees to find out if there was any information. You know, when you know the United States is going to be attacked, the top people in the United States government ought to be working hands-on to prevent it and working together.

”Now, contrast that with what happened in the summer of 2001, when we even had more clear indications that there was going to be an attack. Did the President ask for daily meetings of his team to try to stop the attack? Did (national security adviser) Condi Rice hold meetings of her counterparts to try to stop the attack? No.”

In a March 19, 2006, speech in Florida, former Vice President Al Gore also noted this contrast between how the Clinton administration reacted to terrorist threats and how the Bush administration did in the weeks before Sept. 11.

“In eight years in the White House, President Clinton and I, a few times, got a direct and really immediate statement like that (Aug. 6, 2001 warning), in one of those daily briefings,” Gore said.

“Every time, as you would want and expect, we had a fire drill, brought everybody in, (asked) what else do we know about this, what have we done to prepare for this, what else could we do, are we certain of the sources, get us more information on that, we want to know everything about this, and we want to make sure our country is prepared.

“In August of 2001,” Gore added, “such a clear warning was given and nothing – nothing – happened. When there is no vision, the people perish.” [To see Gore’s speech on C-Span, click here. rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/rwh/rwh031906.rm ]

Gone Fishing

After receiving the CIA’s Aug. 6, 2001, warning, Bush is reported to have gone fishing and cleared brush at his ranch. There is no evidence that he did anything to energize or coordinate the government response to the expected attack.

“No CSG (Counterterrorism Security Group) or other NSC (National Security Council) meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States as a result of this (Aug. 6) report,” the 9/11 Commission wrote. “We have found no indication of any further discussion before Sept. 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al-Qaeda attack in the United States.”

Talking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on April 4, 2004, the commission’s chairman and vice chairman, New Jersey’s Republican former Gov. Thomas Kean and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., said they believed the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.

“The whole story might have been different,” Kean said, citing a string of law-enforcement blunders including the “lack of coordination within the FBI” and the FBI’s failure to understand the significance of suspected hijacker Moussaoui’s arrest in August 2001 while training to fly passenger jets.

However, from the recent testimony at Moussaoui’s sentencing hearing, it’s now clear that FBI agents in Minnesota did grasp the significance of the flight training and did send alarming messages to Washington-based FBI officials responsible for counterterrorism. But those officials at headquarters apparently missed or ignored the warnings.

Moussaoui’s defense attorney, Edward B. McMahon Jr., asked Michael E. Rolince, who was chief of the FBI’s International Terrorism Operations Section, if he was aware that FBI agent Samit had sent a memo to Rolince’s office on Aug. 18, 2001, warning that Moussaoui was a potential terrorist.

“No,” Rolince answered. “What document are you reading?”

Samit’s report “sent to your office,” McMahon replied. Rolince said he never saw the urgent memo. [Washington Post, March 22, 2006]

When the 9/11 Commission interviewed Rolince for its 2004 report, Rolince “recalled being told about Moussaoui in two passing hallway conversations but only in the context that he [Rolince] might be receiving telephone calls from Minneapolis complaining about how headquarters was handling the matter,” though the calls never came, the report said.

But Rolince was not the only senior FBI official oblivious to the missed clues. The 9/11 report said acting FBI director Pickard and assistant director for counterterrorism Dale Watson weren’t briefed on Moussaoui prior to Sept. 11, either.

The significance of the new information from Moussaoui’s hearing – which followed his guilty plea to charges that he had conspired with al-Qaeda to commit acts of terrorism – is that there’s no longer any doubt that key pieces of the puzzle were tantalizing close to the FBI officials who could have done something.

FBI headquarters also blew off a prescient memo from an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office. The July 2001 memo warned of the “possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Laden” to send student pilots to the United States. The agent noted “an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” attending American flight schools.

No action was taken on the Phoenix memo before Sept. 11.

How Incompetent?

Yet, if President Bush had demanded action from on high, the ripple effect through the FBI might well have jarred loose enough of the pieces to make the overall picture suddenly clear, especially in view of the information already compiled by the CIA.

Ironically, that is almost the same argument that federal prosecutors are making in seeking Moussaoui’s execution. It’s not that he was directly involved in the Sept. 11 plot, they say; it’s that the government might have been able to stop the attacks if he had immediately confessed what he was up to.

To some civil libertarians, the case raises troubling Fifth Amendment issues by creating a precedent for putting someone to death who didn’t promptly confess and thus didn’t provide clues that might have prevented a separate murder that the defendant didn’t specifically know about and wasn’t directly involved in.

In effect, the government is basing its demand for Moussaoui’s death on the notion that the failure to do something that might have prevented the tragedy of Sept. 11 should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

However, the Bush administration has taken almost the opposite position on its own culpability. Despite a strong case for criminal negligence – beginning with FBI officials and reaching up to the Oval Office – Bush and other senior officials have insisted they have nothing to apologize for.

Indeed, Bush has made his handling of the Sept. 11 terror attacks the centerpiece of his presidential legacy. Arguably, he rode the whirlwind from the attacks right through the war in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq to his second term as President.

Only recently – after a similar case of botched leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster – has the air whooshed out of the Bush balloon. Add in the disastrous decisions around the Iraq War and many Americans see a pattern of arrogant, incompetent leadership that fails to give adequate heed to evidence or attention to details.

For other Americans, the theory of Bush’s incompetence doesn’t go nearly far enough to explain the breathtaking lapses that let the Sept. 11 attacks happen.

Some 9/11 skeptics have come to believe that the destruction of the Twin Towers and the damage to the Pentagon must have been an “inside job” with some elements of the Bush administration conspiring with the attackers to create a modern-day Reichstag Fire that would justify invading Iraq and consolidating political power at home.

The new Moussaoui evidence, however, tends to support the theory of incompetence, though of a kind so gross that it would border on criminal negligence, at the FBI as well as the White House.

Perceptive field agents did their job in sending up warning flares to Washington, but a vacationing President and an inattentive FBI bureaucracy failed to take note or take the necessary actions to head off the tragedy.

Then, with the Twin Towers and the Pentagon still smoldering, Bush and his neoconservative advisers saw in the nation’s anger and fear the emotions needed to implement an agenda of authoritarian rule at home and preemptive wars abroad.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

"...I agree with Seymour Hersh's prediction that George W. Bush, after he leaves office, should be snatched by foreign law enforcement officers and whisked away to stand trial for war crimes. But it should not stop with Dubya -- his father and brother Jeb should also be hauled off to stand trial before an international court of justice -- for aiding and abetting terrorism..." - Wayne Madsen

http://waynemadsenreport.com/

March 24, 2006 -- Sponsor of terrorism: the United States. Imagine a group of five CIA officers dispatched to a foreign country to investigate and report on an Al Qaeda cell planning a series of major bombings in the United States, including hotel and shopping mall bombings. Then, imagine the outcry if the five CIA agents were arrested by the nation where they were assigned and hit with trumped up charges, found guilty before a kangaroo court, and sentence to life terms in prison for espionage. The United States would demand revenge and likely take military action against the host country. The harboring of terrorists was the justification used by the Bush administration to attack Afghanistan.

The above scenario is exactly what occurred to five Cuban intelligence agents dispatched to Miami to report on the activities of Cuban exiled terrorists who were planning a series of terrorist bombings against foreign tourists and Cuban civilians in Cuba during the 1990s. In September 1998, five Cubans -- Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramon Labanino Salazar, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, and Rene Gonzalez -- were arrested in Miami, and after the longest federal trial in U.S. history, were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage by a jury that was tampered with by the Department of Justice and FBI. They have been put in solitary confinement and some have not been allowed to see their wives and mothers because the Bush administration is denying them visas to travel to the U.S. Furthermore, the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, DC has been restricted to a 12-mile radius within the nation's capital -- they are not permitted to speak at symposia on behalf of their jailed agents beyond Washington. However, yesterday, this editor attended a symposium at George Washington University Law School in DC on the plight of the "Cuban Five."

After the federal trial judge in Miami rejected the defense request for a change of venue to Fort Lauderdale from Miami because of the nature of Miami's rabid, right-wing Cuban exile community, the defense appealed the decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which, on August 9, 2005, issued a 93-page opinion on the venue issue. Unanimously, a three judge panel ruled that the Cuban Five did not receive a fair trial in Miami. This was the first time a court reversed a decision based on venue. Immediately, the Bush Justice Department ordered an appeal of the decision to an en banc panel of the 11th Circuit (12 of the 13 judges on the court, one judge recused himself).

According to Leonard Weinglass, the attorney for Guerrero, "Miami is home to over 600,000 exiles that harbor a 'state of war' mentality against the Cuban government. Even the U.S. government, in a pretrial motion in another case one year later, argued to the Court that it was 'virtually impossible' for a fair trial to be held in Miami in a case that touched upon Cuban issues."

Weinglass added, "for forty years this country has hosted a network of terrorism in Florida directed at Cuba; it has recruited them, trained them and armed them, and when Cuba repeatedly asked if the United States, the host country, to rein in these terrorists, they were met with inaction, and so Cuba sent a group of people here to monitor the activities of the terrorist network in Florida, and when they for too close, the FBI stepped in and arrested the Five, and prosecuted them before the exiled community in Miami, and they were sentenced to life terms in prison."

In fact, many individuals close to this case report that southern Florida is a virtual independent right-wing republic acting with its own foreign policy, a foreign policy that is pampered and supported by southern Florida's Cuban GOP congressional delegation, particularly Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Weinglass said, "this case is more easily understood if you think of the case of Orlando Bosch, a member of that terrorist network, who planted a bomb on a Cubana airline in 1976, which exploded in midair, killing 73 people. Mr. Bosch applied for residence in the United States after that episode, and the Justice Department and the INS deemed him an undesirable person, pointed to 30 years of terrorist activity including the bombing, and asked that he be barred from entry in the United States. But Orlando Bosch had a friend in Florida, a young man who wanted to be governor: his name was Jeb Bush . . . He intervened with his father who was then the President of the United States, and George Bush Sr. overruled the Justice Department and the INS and granted Orlando Bosch's residence in the United States. He now walks as a free man in Miami, Florida. He walks as a free man, while the Five, who had no guns, no explosives, created no harm in the United States, did not involve themselves in any classified information here, did not interfere with national security, are serving life in maximum security prisons here in the United States. The next time the Bush administration moralizes about the war on terrorism, remember Orlando Bosch, and remember the Cuban Five."

It is also noteworthy that when Bosch and his CIA-trained team bombed the Cubana airliner off of Barbados on October 6, 1976, the director of the CIA was none other than George H. W. Bush. Bosch was assisted by Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born and naturalized Venezuelan terrorist who has been protected by Governor Bush in Florida and George W. Bush in Washington. On May 22, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ruled that Carriles would continued to be held in custody in El Paso after trying to illegally enter the country from Mexico and not be extradited to Venezuela for the terrorist bombing of the Cubana aircraft. The Venezuelan embassy in Washington reacted by stating, "We again call on the White House to honour its international treaty obligations and either extradite or prosecute Luis Posada Carriles for 73 counts of first degree murder." Recently declassified U.S. government documents show that Posada worked for the CIA at least from 1965 to 1976. Official investigations by the governments of Cuba, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana (several Guyanese perished in the bombing) concluded that the Cubana plane was downed in a terrorist attack. The United States never investigated the incident.

A Barbados official investigation found that their Trinidadian colleagues had discovered links between a Venezuelan in Trinidad involved in the bombing and the CIA. Chapter VIII of the report states: "one of the Venezuelans -- Mr. Lozano -- told the Trinidad and Tobago police chief that he was a member of the US Central Intelligence Agency, that his boss was a man who lived in Caracas and whose name was Luis Posada Carriles; that he had been three times to the US embassy in Barbados during the few hours that they [he and his Venezuelan bombing colleagues] were in that country after the plane blew up, hours they needed to do two things: go to the US embassy, and stop off at the hotel [Holiday Inn] to call a Caracas telephone number belonging to Luis Posada Carriles and another number belonging to Orlando Bosch Avila."


U.S. terrorism, directed by George H. W. Bush when he was CIA director, brought down a civilian jet liner off of Barbados. That makes Bush and his son, who continues to protect the bombers, no better than Osama Bin Laden -- or does it place them in the very same agent provocateur camp?

This editor arrived for Navy duty in Barbados less than a year after the Cuban exiles bombed the Cubana plane. The government of Barbados called for help from the US Naval Facility to assist in rescue operations. Rescue operations soon became an operation to recover bodies, including those of women and children. US Navy personnel who were scuba divers, as well as Navy corpsmen, assisted in the recovery operations. They were traumatized by what they saw but even more troubling was the what they later discovered -- the their own government aided and abetted in the terrorism. It was something my Barbadian friends often mentioned -- how could the U.S. assist in a terrorism operation in a friendly country like Barbados? I also became aware of the activities of Gerald Bull's Space Research Corporation near Grantley Adams International Airport. My Bajan friends in the government told me that it was a CIA operation to shoot rockets into the ionosphere for purposes of weather modification -- the ultimate goal was the steerage of Caribbean hurricanes to hit Cuba. An Intel Corporation activity near the deep water careenage in Bridgetown turned out to be a CIA front operation aimed at derailing leftist political parties in nearby islands like Grenada, Dominica, and St. Lucia. The Barbadians were incensed at these activities. As a U.S. Naval Officer with a Top Secret and Crypto/NATO COSMIC security clearance, I had no answer for them at the time. But I do now.

I agree with Seymour Hersh's prediction that George W. Bush, after he leaves office, should be snatched by foreign law enforcement officers and whisked away to stand trial for war crimes. But it should not stop with Dubya -- his father and brother Jeb should also be hauled off to stand trial before an international court of justice -- for aiding and abetting terrorism. Let's not forget Poppy Bush's involvement in the terrorism bombing off the coast of Barbados and the September 21, 1976 car bombing on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC that killed former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. Manuel Contreras, the Chilean intelligence head who planned the bombing, was being paid by George H. W. Bush as a CIA asset at the time of the car bombing.

The anti-terrorist Cuban Five team had uncovered plans by members of the Cuban exiled community in Florida, who were protected by Jeb Bush and his family, to launch terrorist attacks against civilian targets in Cuba. Poppy Bush provided three ex-US Air Force militarized Cessna aircraft to Jose Basulto, an ex-CIA veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion who founded the group "Brothers to the Rescue," a coordinating activity for the terrorist attacks on Cuba.

On October 7, 1992, Cuban exiles from Florida launched an armed seaborne attack against the Varadero Meilia Hotel in Cuba. The terrorists were later arrested by the FBI but released on orders from the Poppy Bush White House. On January 7, 1993, Tony Bryant, the leader of the terrorist group "Commandos L," announced plans to bomb more hotels and other targets in Cuba and warned foreign tourists to "stay away from Cuba." On November 7, 1993, Humberto Perez, spokesperson for the terrorist group Alpha 66, said "we consider anyone staying in a Cuban hotel to be an enemy."

On March 11, 1994, Miami-based terrorists fired on the Guitart Cayo Coco Hotel in Cuba. In November 1994 Posada and five accomplices smuggled weapons into Cartagena de Indias in Colombia to assassinated President Fidel Castro during the 5th Ibero-American Summit. The Coast Guard during the 1990s intercepted a number of vessels with armed men heading from Florida to Cuba. The FBI released all of thdetained terrorists. On April 12, 1997, a bomb exploded in the Melia Cohiba Hotel in Havana. On July 12, 1997, bombs exploded in the Capri and Nacional hotels. The GOP-connected Cuban American National Foundation gave unconditional support to these terrorist bombings in Cuba. On October 4, 1997, bombs exploded in the Triton, Chateau Miramar, and Copacabana hotels. The latter explosion killed a young Italian tourist, Fabio di Celmo. The same day, a bomb exploded at the Bodeguita del Medio restaurant. On October 27, 1997, the US Coast Guard stopped a vessel west of Puerto Rico that was manned by well-armed mercenaries. It was on its way to Venezuela's Margarita island with the intention of assassinating Fidel Castro during the Nov. 7, 1997 Ibero-American Summit. The vessel was registered to a Florida company whose chairman is a member of the board of directors of the Cuban American National Foundation. The mercenaries confessed about their intention to assassinate a foreign head of state but were acquitted in December 1999 following a rigged trial.

On July 12 and 13, 1998, Posada told the New York Times that he organized the bombing campaign against Cuban hotels and restaurants and that the Cuban American National Foundation and its chairman Jorge Mas Canosa was in charge of providing the funding mechanisms for the attacks. On November 17, 2000, a group of terrorists headed by Posada were arrested in Panama for planning to assassinate Fidel Castro at the 10th Ibero-American Summit. On October 22, 2002, Miami's Nuevo Herald revealed ties between the Cuban terrorist group Comandos F-4 and former members of the Venezuelan National Guard and the April 2002 coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. F-4 trained Venezuelan and Cuban commandos involved in the coup in "open fields in Homestead." In January 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported that Rodolfo Frometa, chief of Comandos F-4, announced in Miami the creation a of Cuban-Venezuelan "civic-military alliance" to overthrow Presidents Chavez and Castro and that 50 mercenaries were receiving military training "in a polygon located in The Everglades." On March 29, 2003, Orlando Bosch called for a march in Miami to support George W. Bush's military attack on Iraq. On March 22, 2004, Florida GOP Rep. Lincoln Diaz Balart called for the assassination of Fidel Castro.

On June 16 and 17, 1998, Cuba received an FBI delegation and turned over to them documents and other evidence pointing to the involvement of 40 terrorists in the United States in bombings and other attacks. The FBI took the information but obviously used it to determine that Cuba had obtained it from their agents in the United States -- three months later the Cuban Five were arrested in Miami. The Cuban-American terrorists were allowed to continue their terrorist activities against Cuban civilian targets.

Now we have this information from La Paz, Bolivia, where leftist Evo Morales recently took over as President. An American named Claudio Lestad, a.k.a. Triston Jay Arnero, formerly of of New Orleans, Washington state, and Placerville, California and his Uruguayan girlfriend were arrested for bombing two La Paza hotels, killing two Bolivian couple who were doctors and injuring at least seven other people. California authorities say that Arnero has a troubled past as a youth and was in and out of juvenile correctional facilities. Court records indicate that upon release from juvenile detention, Arnero wanted to move abroad to work at an oil refinery. Lestad also uses several aliases, including Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo. An Israeli citizen caught in Trinidad last year and investigated for detonating bombs in the country also used various aliases. The FBI investigated that incident but pressured Trinidad to release the man and he flew back to Israel. President Morales said, "This American was putting bombs in hotels . . . the U.S. government fights terrorism, and they send us terrorists." Bolivian authorities said the two were planning a bombing attack at a third hotel when they were caught and had been responsible for other hotel bombings around the country that did not cause any injuries. Bolivian police also said that Arnero was also planning to bomb the Chilean consulate in La Paz. The US Embassy in La Paz responded, "We're concerned about remarks made by the president and we have expressed those concerns to the Bolivian government." The embassy said nothing about the involvement of an American in terrorist attacks. Morales called on the Bush administration to stop sending terrorists to Bolivia to "disrupt democracy."




Bush I and II: International terrorists and war criminals
Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said the bombings were designed to halt and destabilize reforms that Evo Morales and his government are trying to introduce in the country.

Some right-wing news outlets in the United States began to spin the story that Arnero is a follower of the neo-cons' favorite bogeyman, Osama Bin Laden, a fairly amazing claim considering Arnero insists he is a Wiccan high priest. [Note: this is how we must wade through the neo-con/Bush propaganda purveyors, they are actually terrible spinmeisters and their lies, such as this about Arnero and Bin Laden, are extremely transparent]. One other issue of importance is that the Cuban Five story has been totally ignored by the US media. Cuba turned over the very same documents on terrorist activities in Florida that it gave to the FBI to The New York Times. The Times never published the documents or admitted it even had them. WMR will attempt to obtain these documents from the Cuban government and we will definitely publish them.

RawStory.com

Bush uncle set to earn millions from company that profited from Iraq war

03/23/2006 @ 12:02 am

Filed by RAW STORY

An uncle of President Bush is set to collect close to three million dollars from the sale of a company that profited from the war in Iraq, according to a story slated for Thursday's edition of the LA Times, RAW STORY has found.

Excerpts from the article written by Walter F. Roche Jr.:

As President Bush embarks on a new effort to shore up public support for the war in Iraq, an uncle of the chief executive is collecting $2.7 million in cash and stock from the recent sale of a company that profited from the war.

A report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows that William H.T. Bush collected a little less than $1.9 million in cash plus stock valued at more than $800,000 as a result of the sale of Engineered Support Systems Inc. to DRS Technologies of New Jersey.

The $1.7 billion deal closed Jan. 31. Both businesses have extensive military contracts.

The elder Bush was a director of Engineered Support Systems. Recent SEC filings show he was paid cash and DRS stock in exchange for shares and options he obtained as a director. Missouri-based ESSI experienced record growth prior to its purchase by DRS through expanded U.S. military contracts -- many to supply current U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and an aggressive buyout strategy targeted at other defense contractors.

ENTIRE ARTICLE BELOW:

www.southcoasttoday.com

Bush uncle benefits from war spending

By WALTER F. ROCHE JR.

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — As President Bush embarks on a new effort to shore up public support for the war in Iraq, an uncle of the chief executive is collecting $2.7 million in cash and stock from the recent sale of a company that profited from the war.

A report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows that William H.T. Bush collected a little less than $1.9 million in cash plus stock valued at more than $800,000 as a result of the sale of Engineered Support Systems Inc. to DRS Technologies of New Jersey.

The $1.7 billion deal closed Jan. 31. Both businesses have extensive military contracts.

The elder Bush was a director of Engineered Support Systems. Recent SEC filings show he was paid cash and DRS stock in exchange for shares and options he obtained as a director.

Missouri-based ESSI experienced record growth prior to its purchase by DRS through expanded U.S. military contracts — many to supply current U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan — and an aggressive buyout strategy targeted at other defense contractors. The military contracts, some awarded on a sole-source basis, include a $77 million pact to refit military vehicles used in Iraq with armor.

Other ESSI products used in the war include radar and detection services, field medical stations and field electrical generator units.

SEC filings show there are two ongoing federal investigations of ESSI — one involving a stop order issued by the federal government on the ESSI contract to supply field generators. The order was issued because of operational problems with the units.

The field-generator contract was a major source of revenue, but SEC files show ESSI did not inform stockholders of the stop order until last June, about seven months after it was issued.

During the interim, several ESSI executives, including Bush's uncle, cashed in stock and stock options worth millions of dollars, SEC filings show.

According to one recent filing, both the SEC and the U.S. attorney in St. Louis are investigating the delayed disclosure and other matters. Unnamed members of the ESSI board and corporate officers have been subpoenaed, according to documents filed with the SEC.

William Bush, 67, SEC filings show, exercised options on 8,348 shares of ESSI stock Jan. 18, 2005, about two months after the stop order was issued. He collected about $450,000 in cash.

Bush, known in the president's family as "Uncle Bucky," joined ESSI's board in 2000, several months before his nephew became president.

The Bush uncle heads a St. Louis investment firm and is a younger brother of former President Bush.

William Bush declined to comment yesterday.

However, in an interview last year, he said he played no role in ESSI getting federal contracts.

"I don't make any calls to the 202 (Washington, D.C.) area code," he said.

Patricia Williamson, a spokeswoman for DRS, would not comment on the status of the federal investigations. The company has disclosed that it is cooperating in the investigations, which also involve an inquiry into an ESSI insurance contract.

"This raises the disturbing question of whether Tobin, who worked for the RNC and the NRSC at the time and has since been convicted on two criminal charges for his role in the scheme, discussed the plan with one of the President's most important political strategists."

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/06/03/ale06035.html

March 23, 2006

Did White House Direct Phone Jamming Scheme?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

From the DNC

Washington, DC - A new report suggests that the national Republican establishment--including the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and even the Bush White House--may have had a role in the criminal Election Day phone jamming scheme that disenfranchised countless New Hampshire voters in 2002.

The Union Leader today reported that "court records show Ken Mehlman's office received more than 75 telephone calls from now-convicted phone-jam conspirator James Tobin from Sept. 30 to Nov. 22 of that year." At the time, Mehlman--the current RNC Chair--was White House political director. [Union Leader, 3/23/06] This raises the disturbing question of whether Tobin, who worked for the RNC and the NRSC at the time and has since been convicted on two criminal charges for his role in the scheme, discussed the plan with one of the President's most important political strategists.

Today's news also has important implications for other national Republican figures. At the time the phone jamming scheme was devised and implemented, Tobin's supervisor at the RNC was Terry Nelson, who Arizona Republican Senator John McCain recently hired as a senior strategist for his Political Action Committee. This means that McCain may have hired one of the key figures in the phone jamming scheme.

"Each new development in this case raises troubling questions about the extent to which key national Republicans had knowledge of or were involved in a criminal scheme to keep New Hampshire voters from getting to the polls," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Luis Miranda. "The revelation that, in the days leading up to the phone-jamming campaign, Ken Mehlman spoke regularly with a man who has been convicted of criminal charges in this case raises deeply disturbing questions about the Bush White House's commitment to protecting fundamental right of Americans to vote.

"The American people have a right to know whether the White House political director had a hand in building an Election Day game plan predicated on keeping people from voting. And they need to know why John McCain is turning a blind eye to the role one of his closest advisors may have played in this scandal. Democrats will continue to fight to protect every Americans' right to cast their vote and have their ballots counted."

McCain Strategist Terry Nelson Supervised James Tobin During NH Phone Jamming Scandal; Tobin Convicted of Federal Telephone Harassment Charges. Tobin worked for the RNC and the NRSC during 2002, and was supervised by RNC Political Director Terry Nelson. On Election Day, a telemarketer hired by the New Hampshire GOP jammed the telephones of five state Democratic and one firefighters union get-out-the-vote phone banks. James Tobin was found guilty in December of federal telephone harassment charges for his role in the scandal. [Manchester Union Leader, 10/20/05; Union Leader, 3/23/06]

Tobin Called The White House Office of Political Affairs 75 Times In Six Weeks. "In the days before and after the state Republican Party's 2002 Election Day phone-jamming scheme, the man who now chairs the Republican National Committee was the White House director of political affairs. Ken Mehlman's office received more than 75 telephone calls from now-convicted phone-jam conspirator James Tobin from Sept. 30 to Nov. 22 of that year." [Union Leader, 3/23/06]

McCain Strategist Terry Nelson Served As Middleman in DeLay TRMPAC Money Laundering Scheme, Named in Indictment and Had to Testify. Before the 2002 election, John Colyandro, the executive director of Texans for a Republican Majority, sent a blank check to Jim Ellis. According to the indictment, Ellis, who ran DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority, negotiated an exchange of corporate money for campaign donations with Terry Nelson, RNC Political Director. As a result, TRMPAC contributed $190,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee on September 20, 2002 - a contribution that included corporate money. Within two weeks, the RNSEC contributed the same amount back to seven Texas legislative candidates that were TRMPAC targets. Nelson testified to the grand jury investigating the DeLay scandal in March of 2004. [Austin American-Statesman, 9/14/05; Travis County District Court Bill of Indictment, Thomas Dale DeLay, 9/28/05; CQ Weekly, 3/20/2004; San Antonio Express-News, 3/15/2004; Austin American-Statesman, 2/26/2004; FEC,4/8/2004; Texas Ethics Commission, 4/8/2004; AP, 3/20/04; Houston Chronicle, 10/15/05]

Despite Convictions, Indictments and Grand Jury Testimony, McCain Says Charges are "Not True" But That He Would "Check It Out." When McCain was asked about Terry Nelson's involvement in these scandals by a caller on a Seattle radio show, he said flatly that the statement was "not true" but that he would "check it out." [WKVI Seattle, The John Carlson Show, 3/20/06]

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT