War Without End

Alpha

Chalmers Johnson on Empire, Blowback and a daffy President+ Israel blocks UN food aid to Palestinians

Fickle, Bitter, and Dangerous

An interview with Chalmers Johnson by David Ross

Chalmers Johnson served in the Navy during the Korean War. He earned his
Ph.D. in political science at UC Berkeley and taught there and at UC San
Diego until 1992. He served as chairman of the Center for Chinese
Studies and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. Chalmers Johnson is president and co-founder of the Japan
Policy Research Institute (www.jpri.org). He has written numerous
articles and reviews and twelve books on Asian subjects, including,
Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power, MITI and the Japanese Miracle,
and Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. His latest
book is titled, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End
of the Republic.

David Ross (D.R.): Throughout the Internet after the September 11th
attacks, there was a lot of talk of blowback. When, in fact, a year
before the attacks, you wrote the book Blowback: The Costs and
Consequences of American Empire, where you predicted events such as
9-11. What is blowback and what are its causes?

Chalmers Johnson: "Blowback" is a CIA term. It was first invented after
the CIA intervention against the government of Iran in 1953 when we
overthrew an elected government there for the interests of the British
and American petroleum industries. Blowback refers to the unintended
consequences of clandestine policies that have been kept secret from the
American public. I think it's important to stress that any policy may
have unintended consequences, but here we're talking about unintended
consequences of policies that the public knows nothing about, therefore,
has no context within which to place them, and ends up with a daffy
president going around asking, "Why do they hate us?"

My analysis was that the things we had done during the cold war, and the
first decade after the cold war, were generating almost uncontrollable
blowback. I did not, obviously, specifically anticipate anything like
9-11, but I certainly did anticipate and predict terrorist acts against
Americans-military and civilian, abroad and at home-and therefore, was
not particularly surprised when the attacks came on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon in September of 2001. At the time, I did not
think that they were necessarily Islamic terrorists; I thought they
could have been from Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Okinawa, Greece, or
any number of places on earth where we have carried out clandestine
activities that unquestionably generate hostility toward the United
States.

My book was written as an explicit warning to my fellow Americans of the
likely consequences of their policies over the previous decade and
earlier. The warning was unheeded in the United States. The book was
very well received abroad, particularly in Germany and Italy. But it was
more or less ignored here until after 9-11, when, as you say, it became
somewhat of an underground bestseller because of the surprise that the
world finally came home to the Americans.

DR: What are some instances of past blowback and possible future
blowback against the U.S?

Chalmers Johnson: First of all, I think the obvious thing right now is
our mistaken reaction to 9-11. It became almost taboo in this country
after 9-11 to even ask what the motives of the attackers were. The
public has now been so confused by lies from our government that they
believe Saddam Hussein was the one behind it. Of course, we know he
wasn't, and since there is no evidence that he could have been, the
people have gotten that idea only from listening to the disinformation
that comes from the White House and the Pentagon.

September 11th was not an attack on America's values or America's
democracy or America's wealth. It was an attack on American foreign
policy and there were some fairly obvious things that should have been
done at once which would have defused the situation. First, we should
have withdrawn the troops at once that we had based in Saudi Arabia.
Since the first war with Iraq in 1991, they were just exacerbating the
situation rather than serving any real function. Second, we should have
said that we do support the continuity of the state of Israel, but we do
not support Israeli Zionist imperialism. And that until the settlements
in the West Bank are closed-which are a cancer working on Israeli
society in a destructive manner-we're going to cease our continued
bankrolling of Israel, both financially and militarily. Last, we should
have instituted at once a crash program of fuel conservation that could
have easily eliminated our dependence on Persian Gulf petroleum imports.

We didn't do any of those things. Instead, we set out to use our massive
military power against two peculiarly puny and defenseless
targets-Afghanistan and Iraq-producing untold misery. This will without
question generate and recruit more people committed to the idea of
attacking the United States.

The Department of Defense has said for years that nobody can meet us
militarily except in one of two ways: one, with the use of nuclear
weapons, which would deter us; and the other is what they call, in
typical Pentagon jargon, "asymmetrical warfare," meaning the weak
attacking the super powerful via terrorism. There is every reason to
anticipate that we will have more terrorism as we increasingly sink into
the two quagmires that we have created in Afghanistan and Iraq.

DR: You've done a lot of research on U.S./Asian relations. Can you give
us a historical thumbnail sketch of the U.S. involvement in South Korea?

Chalmers Johnson: It goes back to the Korean War in 1950-1953 and we've
been stationed there ever since. We have over one hundred military bases
in South Korea. Peace began to break out in Korea in the year 2000 when
the new South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung, on his own initiative,
without asking permission from the United States, went north and tried
to end the cold war on the Korean peninsula by opening direct
negotiations with North Korea-with Kim Jong Il's regime. He came back
after a triumph. It appeared as though, as he said in an op-ed in the
Los Angeles Times, the chances of war on the Korean peninsula had just
vanished.

This development was extremely threatening to the American military, the
military-industrial complex, and those who believe in some form of
American empire in that part of the world, they have done everything
since then to cause this situation to backtrack-to not allow peace to
break out on the Korean peninsula.

With the extremely belligerent remarks coming from the Bush
Administration, including Bush's statement in the State of the Union
address in 2002 that North Korea was part of something that he called an
"axis of evil," the North Koreans concluded that, indeed, they were
targeted by the United States for a regime change in the violent manner
they've already seen happen in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the threat
implicit in American policy became manifest with the massive attack on
Iraq, the North Koreans concluded that the only way they could defend
themselves was with the threat of nuclear weapons. The thing that was
wrong with Saddam Hussein in Iraq is he didn't actually have any weapons
of mass destruction and therefore, was vulnerable to the bullying of the
Donald Rumsfelds and the Condoleezza Rices of this world.

Therefore, we have a genuine crisis today. The North Koreans have
reopened their nuclear reactor, begun to reprocess old spent fuel rods
from their reactor and convert them into plutonium, and are well on
their way toward developing a nuclear arsenal. I believe the issue can
still be controlled because the surrounding nations-South Korea, Japan,
and China-all recognize that North Korea's activities are essentially
defensive. It is an isolated country that was ruined by the end of the
cold war, a failed communist country that has no real future and is
desperately trying to come in from the cold the way China did 20 years
ago.

But the chief issue is the volatility in Washington and whether or not
we can cause the president and his advisors to back down and assume a
more reasonable position in what is clearly a negotiable situation. The
North Koreans have said they would dismantle their nuclear weapons
capability in return for some guarantee that the Americans don't intend
to simply squash them the way they did Iraq. They want a non-aggression
treaty or at least some other very public statement by the United States
that it will not carry out aggression against North Korea. This has
struck our allies in South Korea as utterly reasonable, and it has
helped to fuel a very considerable anti-American movement in South Korea
at the present time.

DR: I've read in several different sources that near four million
Koreans were killed by U.S. military forces and U.S. client forces
before and during the Korean War. Would you agree with this figure?

Chalmers Johnson: I don't know if the number is accurate or not. But
certainly the revelations of the killing of unarmed civilians at Nogunri
during the Korean War, the almost relentless carpet bombing of North
Korea, and the general atrocities carried out by American troops that
seemed to have a basis in racism, have been suppressed for a long time
in South Korea but are coming to the fore again as they begin to see
American aggression in the field.

DR: In your book, Blowback, you also talk about how Japan is still a
client state of the U.S. government as is South Korea. Can you give us a
thumbnail sketch of the U.S. involvement in Japan?

Chalmers Johnson: We created satellites in East Asia after World War II
in the areas that we had conquered in exactly the same way and for more
or less the same reasons that the Soviet Union created satellites in
Eastern Europe-satellites that gained their independence from the Soviet
Union after the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989. Then, of course, the
Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. One of the reasons for my writing
Blowback was the end of the cold war in 1991 and the disappearance of
the menace of the Soviet Union. The United States, far from demobilizing
and trying to generate a peace dividend, was instead doing everything in
its power throughout the 1990s to shore up cold war structures in East
Asia and expand our empire of military bases into the Middle East, the
Persian Gulf, and Central Asia.

The problem is that this old structure is quite wobbly today, above all,
on economic grounds. Economics was the one thing that was really
different between our satellites and those of the Soviet Union. We said
to Japan and South Korea: In return for allowing us to station American
forces on your soil, indefinitely, without your having any control over
them despite all the nuisances that come with that, we would, in return,
give you free and open access to the American market, then and still
today, the world's largest market. And more importantly, we would
tolerate their protectionism, developing their own economies at our
expense. We said this in the early 1950's when we couldn't imagine that
they could ever become economic competitors

This has now come to the point where East Asia is quite industrialized.
It produces the largest trade surpluses in economic history that are
destined for the United States-trade surpluses in places like Japan,
South Korea, and Mainland China. This trade imbalance is something that
simply can't go on forever. At some point, the economic consequences of
our empire will bankrupt us, which is one of the sorrows of empire that
I talk about in my new book.

Meanwhile, the presence of American military bases in places like
Okinawa where we have 38 bases on an island smaller than Kauai in the
Hawaiian Islands, has produced a place that is almost volcanic in its
anti-Americanism. These military bases continue to generate
incidents-sexual violence, accidents, pollution, airplane crashes,
etc.-that build long-term distrust and dislike. What we're seeing is
almost a classic situation of subordinated peoples slowly developing the
attitudes and the alliances to resist American imperialism.

DR: In your book, Blowback, you also describe how the Asian financial
crisis, which infected Brazil and Russia also, was actually caused by
U.S. interests in order to weaken the Asian economic tigers and keep
them in their place.

Chalmers Johnson: One of the things that worried the United States
throughout the 1980s was that it became the world's largest net debtor
nation-we owed more money to other people than anybody else-whereas
Japan became the world's largest creditor nation. This should have been
a signal right then and there to alter this old relationship. We didn't.
Instead, the Japanese clung to us more tightly and we enjoyed having
them as our satellite in permanent orbit around our foreign policy.
Their foreign policy is essentially being dictated to them by Washington
D.C. Over time this situation becomes more and more unstable.

We became deeply concerned, however, about the fact that Japan was
becoming such a rich and powerful manufacturing country. All you have to
do is look at any American parking lot to see what I'm talking about:
The kind of enormous competition that Japan offered to the American
automobile industry, and the fact that virtually all consumer
electronics are made in Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan today.

Therefore, there's no question that we used organizations that are our
surrogates, our proxies-the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World
Bank, and the World Trade Organization-to destabilize various nations in
East Asia and to make them subordinate to us.

It was a shocking development for the Asian economic tigers. They've
slowly begun to recover from it. South Korea has recovered very nicely.
But the legacy it has left is that the United States is considered
fickle, bitter, and dangerous, and that an alliance with the United
States is probably more costly than it's worth. These attitudes now
carry over into places like Argentina, which was formerly the fine pupil
of American economic theories; the election of Lula da Silva in Brazil;
and the anti-American attitudes caused by the great poverty imposed by
the IMF in places like Ecuador and Venezuela.

These attitudes are now hardening. If we look forward and ask when will
the American empire start to unravel, I would predict that our military
is so strong, I don't really expect it to occur on military grounds, but
I think we can expect an economic crisis in the not too distant future.
The attempt to dominate the entire globe militarily is an extremely
expensive proposition, and we are not in a very good position to do that
compared to other empires. The British Empire, on the eve of the First
World War, had trade surpluses in the neighborhood of 7 percent of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP). They were a rich country and could afford to do
what they wanted to do, even make mistakes, like the Boer War in South
Africa.

The United States for the last 15 years has had trade deficits that are
the largest ever recorded in economic history and today are running at
around 5 percent of GDP. The buoyancy of our financial markets-since we
save almost nothing in this country-depends almost entirely on capital
imports from savings-oriented countries, particularly those in East
Asia. Anytime these countries start concluding that the United States is
not a safe place to invest or that there are alternatives, such as the
emerging European Union, then the United States will find itself in
extremely serious trouble with a howling deflation.

DR: In June 2003, Paul Wolfowitz was in Japan advocating that Japanese
troops be sent to Iraq. Could you comment on that?

Chalmers Johnson: The odd thing in East Asia, which is, except for
places like North Korea, one of the richest parts of the world today is
that peace is breaking out. China has turned decisively in a commercial
direction and is today one of the major manufacturing centers on earth.
Except for the United States and Britain, it absorbs more direct foreign
investment than any other country on earth. It is quite integrated into
the world's manufacturing system at the present time and has a huge
trade surplus with the United States.

There is no enemy that requires our military presence in East Asia,
except in so far as we are worried that China, 50 years from now, with
the world's largest population and an economy that's growing faster than
any other economy on earth, may well rival us in terms of our power to
push people around. I don't believe there is any real sense of a
military threat.

Nonetheless, we have now become so committed to military
means- and militarism is so far advanced in our country and we have such
massive forces deployed in East Asia-that Wolfowitz and the like are
doing their best to ensure that peace does not break out. They do
everything in their power to push Japan into further rearmament, to
exacerbate the situation on the Korean peninsula, and to continue to
talk to the Taiwanese about the possibility of war with China. In fact,
the Taiwanese situation is largely being resolved by economic
integration between the mainland and Taiwan.

Wolfowitz was touring the area from Singapore up through Korea and
Japan, making belligerent statements everywhere he went. What does it
sound like? It sounds like the Roman Empire. They are concerned about
the potential growth-not any genuine, serious threat-of China over the
long term.

D.R.: What solid evidence is there that the Bush Administration is lying
to the general public about the recent invasion of Iraq; and secondly,
do you think they're going to attack other nations in the Middle East?

Chalmers Johnson: The evidence is now overwhelming that the so-called
main reason for the attack on Iraq-the threat that Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction, meaning nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons-has evaporated. And there's ample evidence that the
administration lied to the public, and knew they were lying in the sense
that the documents alleging, for example, that Iraq was importing
uranium from Niger were forged. They relied on intelligence from the
British government that was plagiarized from other open and public
sources. The credibility of Colin Powell simply is gone after his
performance at the United Nations on February 5th, 2003. No one in their
right mind would ever believe a thing he said again.

As for further war in the Middle East, the people who have been making
policy, concentrated above all in the Pentagon around people like Paul
Wolfowitz and under the influence of Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, have
certainly proclaimed their desire to carry the war further. They are
also deeply influenced by the right wing in Israel, by the Likud Party,
the party of Ariel Sharon.

Therefore, the only thing that apparently might stop them from further
wars in, for example, Syria or Iran-which there's already evidence
they're trying to destabilize-is the growing quagmire in Iraq itself.
The American public, whether they're informed about the war or not, will
not tolerate many further casualties of the sort that have been
occurring after the president so flamboyantly declared the war was over.

David Ross hosts a talk show on KMUD radio in Redway, CA. He can be
reached at daveross27@h....
________________________________________________________________________
Jewish settlement removal a 'big lie'
> >
> > By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
> >
> > Aljazeera.net
> > 31 January 2004
> >
> > http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/18CBDE5A-5813-4B12-AC8C-
> > A1FE5ADCE175.htm
> >
> > Palestinians have dismissed Israeli claims that it dismantled a
> > Jewish settlement near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron as a
> > "big lie".
> >
> > The Israeli army said on Wednesday it removed an uninhabited
> > settlement near the Jewish outpost of Kiryat Arba next to Hebron.
> >
> > Under international law, all Jewish settlements are illegal, a
> > stance not recognised by Israel.
> >
> > Israeli media quoted Jewish settler leaders in Hebron as accusing
> > the army of "destroying a synagogue and targeting Jewish presence in
> > this area".
> >
> > "This obviously is a big lie," Abd al-Hadi Hantash, a Hebron
> > municipal official and expert on Jewish settlements in the West
> > Bank, told Aljazeera.net.
> >
> > "It seems to me that [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon wants to
> > give an impression that he is dismantling settlements ahead of his
> > planned visit to Washington.
> >
> > "In fact, we are talking about the removal of a tent and two
> > secondhand mobile homes from a hilltop south of Kiryat Arba. In any
> > case, the settlers will move them back on to the same site tomorrow
> > or after tomorrow after the whole world got the impression that a
> > settlement had been dismantled.
> >
> > "It is a cynical public relations game, nothing more than that."
> >
> > Armed settlers throw stones at Palestinians in Hebron before being
> > arrested by Israeli police and soldiers.
> >
> > However, Hantash said the Israeli army coordinates with settlers.
> >
> > "Israel claims to be a state of law. But how come a state of law
> > allows the building of so many illegal settlements on usurped land
> > belonging to Arab villagers?
> >
> > "And why does the army pave roads to these outposts and give them
> > water and electricity. The army and the settlers are two sides of
> > the same coin."
> > Even before the army hauled the two mobile homes away from the
> > hilltop overlooking the Hebron-Bani Naim road, die-hard settlers in
> > the area converged on the site to protest and try to block the
> > removal of the tent.
> >
> > Kiryat Arba mayor Zvi Katzover accused the army of destroying "a
> > synagogue", an apparent reference to the dismantled tent in which
> > the settlers occasionally held their prayer.
> >
> > "We will do all we can to rebuild the outpost and save the country,"
> > he said.
> >
> > Meanwhile, rampaging Jewish settlers raided and seized a
> > multi-storey Arab building in the Silwan neighbourhood of occupied
> > Arab East Jerusalem early on Wednesday, sparking clashes with local
> > Palestinian youths.
> >
> > Israeli police forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas at the
> > Palestinians.
> >
> > Medical sources in East Jerusalem said at least three Palestinians
> > were injured.
> >
> > It is not clear if the incident is connected with the removal of the
> > two mobile homes near Hebron.
> >
> > The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the seizure of the
> > building might have been intended as a protest against what happened
> > in Hebron.
> >
> > But it could also be an attempt by Jewish settler groups to
> > confiscate yet more Arab-owned real estate.
> >
> > Many of the settlers are affiliated with an extremist group, Oteret
> > Cohanim, dedicated to ridding Jerusalem of all non-Jews.
> >
> > Palestinian leaders in East Jerusalem say the recurrent seizure of
> > Arab property is carried out through deception, falsification of
> > documents and outright bullying, sometimes with government support.

Alpha · Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2004 10:49 pm Post subject: Israel Starves Out Gaza

01/04/2004 17:15

> http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/411471.html
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)
> announced Thursday it stopped distributing emergency food aid to some
600,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip.
>
> UNRWA said in a statement that the suspension followed restrictions
introduced by Israel on the sole commercial crossing into Gaza through which it
is able
to bring in humanitarian assistance.
>
> The agency said it had now completely run out of stocks of rice, flour,
cooking oil and other essential products.
>
> "Under normal circumstances, UNRWA delivers some 250 tons of food aid per
day in Gaza alone as part of a wider program of emergency assistance to
refugees,
> initiated shortly after the outbreak of strife in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip in September 2000," the statement said.
>
> Almost two out of three households in Gaza live below the poverty line and
more than half its workforce is unemployed.
>
> UNRWA said it urged Israel to loosen its restrictions in Gaza in a joint
> statement with other UN agencies on March, but thus far without success.
>
>

Alpha

Subject: Why Americans are sending billions to Israel? - By Paul J. Balles

Why Americans are sending billions to Israel

By Paul J. Balles

Al-Jazeerah, March 30, 2004

Redress, 29 March 2004

You asked why the US gives billions of dollars to Israel, despite the fact that the Israelis attacked the USS Liberty. You apparently learned only recently of how the Israelis got away with that attack. You seem completely unaware of how Israel and its American Zionists control America.

You should know that Zionists control the US government and the media. If you have a significant position in the government or are a significant voice in public, the Zionists will destroy you! If you object to blind support of Israel, they will label you anti-Semitic and threaten you and cost you your job.

Do you know that if you complain about Zionist influence, you will receive hate mail and threats of violence? If you object to the billions of dollars of your taxpayer money going to Israel, the Zionists will label you a Jew-hating Aryan, and they will pretend that you don't care that "6 million Jews were exterminated in the holocaust".

They will use that "history" to play on yours and everyone else's collective guilt. They will also use it to distract attention from slaughterers like Sharon who kill and maim and destroy everything Palestinian.

Zionist Israel and its American supporters will continue the blatant murders of Palestinians - old men, women, children and cripples - until the Zionist genocide of Palestinians is complete. They truly learned much from the Nazis!

And, yes, America and Americans' billions supports it all - the killing, the maiming, the destruction of property, the deprivation, the imposed poverty, the theft of water rights, the Bantustans, the Apartheid Wall and the suicide bombers.

Do you wonder how America supports the suicide bombers? When an entire people are overpowered, tortured, repressed, subjugated and subdued beyond hope, with America standing on the sidelines applauding and paying for it while Europe turns its head away, what do you expect the people to do?

They can't cry. They have no tears left. They can't fight tanks and Apache helicopters and F-16s with stones! If they fire a rocket that hits no one, the source of the rocket will be destroyed anyway. Firing rockets against Israelis with the latest American military detection equipment amounts to suicide with no results.

The suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves in a weak attempt at resistance are actually creations of Israel and America. Thanks again to the billions of dollars Americans cough up each year for their endowment.

Don't ever again ask why. Ask fellow Americans when you're going to put a stop to the long distance support for a Mafioso of Zionist hit men.

When are you going to insist that the president and his men - Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmser, Feith, Cohen - all closer to Israel than they are to America - get prosecuted as members of an organized crime syndicate? Make no mistake: Zionism in America is organized crime!

When will you stop electing Senators and Representatives to Congress who can't resist the lure of Zionist support? They're nothing more than legislators who embrace the same organized crime syndicate.

When will you stop reading the crap written and published by the New York Times, the Washington Post and US News? When will you stop being influenced by the broadcasts of the Murdoch empire and Fox News?

When will you stop supporting organized Zionist crime and take America back from Israel for Americans?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 34 years. For more information, see http://www.writerfreelance.com and http://www.pballes.com.

Alpha

Fallujah killings linked to Yassin's death April 2, 2004 - 1

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/01/fallujah-killings-linked-to-yassin-s-death-april-2-2004-1.php

Alpha

You can see the US taxpayer BILLIONS going to Israel (while US states, Social Security and Medicare are going broke) via the ticker at the top left at www.wrmea.com (see the USS Liberty and Neocon Corner drop-down menus at www.wrmea.com as well). Also see the the 'A Clean Break' and 'Arab v. Israeli Conflict (USS Liberty)' link at www.irmep.org

Alpha

Cheney is associated with the JINSA/PNAC Zionist extremist cabal that pushed Us to war in Iraq for Israel:

Iraq War to Protect Israel:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/03/29/iraq-war-launched-to-protect-israel.php

See the 'War Conceived in Israel' article which is linked on the left (after scrolling down to it) under the map of 'greater Israel' at:

http://www.nowarforisrael.com

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/31/dean/index.html

Creepier than Nixon
The man who brought down Richard Nixon says Bush and "co-president" Cheney are an even greater threat to the country.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David Talbot

March 31, 2004 | As Richard Nixon's White House counsel during the Watergate scandal, John Dean famously warned his boss that there was "a cancer on the presidency" that would bring down the administration unless Nixon came clean. In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush," Dean warns the country that the Bush administration is even more secretive and authoritarian than Nixon's -- in fact, he writes, it's "the most secretive presidency of my lifetime."
"To say that the [Bush-Cheney] secret presidency is undemocratic is an understatement," he adds. "I'm anything but skittish about government, but I must say this administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous."

Dean's new book is being published, appropriately, as the country is being treated to another spectacle of Nixonian smearing and stonewalling by the Bush White House. Rather than come clean about its pre-9/11 security policies, the administration has engaged in a frenzied counterattack on its whistle-blowing former terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, while refusing to let National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testify before the bipartisan panel investigating the terror attack until the political pressure became overwhelming.
Dean conversed with Salon by e-mail from his Los Angeles home.

Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
by John W. Dean
Little Brown
192 pages
Nonfiction

How is the Bush-Cheney administration more secretive than Nixon's?
A few examples make the point. Nixon became a secretive president, as his presidency proceeded, while Bush and Cheney were secretive from the outset. Nixon actually tried to reduce the excessive national security classification of documents (through a panel headed by the man who is now chief justice of the United States), while Bush and Cheney have tried to increase classification (and 9/11 does not hold up as the reason for much of it). Nixon only abused executive privilege (the power of a president to withhold information from his constitutional co-equals) after Watergate, while Bush and Cheney have sought to abuse the privilege from the outset. Nixon was never taken to court by the General Accounting Office for refusing to provide information about executive activities, while Bush and Cheney forced GAO to go to court (where GAO lost under a recently appointed Bush judge). Nixon believed presidential papers should be available for historians, but Bush has undermined the laws to make such records available to the public.
While Nixon's presidency gave currency to the term "stonewalling," Bush and Cheney have made stonewalling their standard procedure, far in excess of Nixon. In short, in every area one looks, Bush and Cheney are more secretive than Nixon ever imagined being. I have mentioned but a few.
Why have Congress and the press allowed Dick Cheney to get away with his stonewalling tactics on the energy task force, Halliburton, duck hunting with Justice Scalia, and other questionable aspects of his vice presidency?
I would add to the list Cheney's outrageous stonewalling about his health, which we know is bad, notwithstanding his effort to keep the details secret. The Congress lets Cheney do anything he wants because Republicans control it, and Cheney is their heavy in the White House for getting things done. Cheney, so long as Republicans control, will not have to answer, but should we return to divided government in 2004 or 2006 and Cheney is still in the White House, that will end.
There has never been a vice president -- ever (and even including Spiro Agnew who was Nixon's) -- who needed to be investigated more than Cheney. Nor has there ever been such a secretive vice president. Dick Cheney is the power behind the Bush throne. Frankly, I am baffled why the mainstream news media has given Cheney (not to mention Bush) a free ride. I don't know if it is generational, or corporate ownership, or political bias, but it is clear that Cheney has been given a pass by the major news organizations.
Do you feel the vice president has, after more than three years of secretive governing from an undisclosed location, become a political liability to the president? How likely is it that Bush will drop him from the ticket this year?
Dick Cheney is a political disaster awaiting recognition. In the book, I set forth a relatively long list of inchoate scandals, not to mention problems worse than scandals. They all involve Cheney in varying degrees. Bush can't dump Cheney, for it is Cheney, not Rove, who is Bush's backroom brain. He is actually a co-president. Bush doesn't enjoy studying and devising policy. Cheney does. While Cheney has tutored Bush for almost four years, and Bush is better prepared today than when he entered the job, Cheney is quietly guiding this administration. Cheney knows how to play Bush so that Cheney is absolutely no threat to him, makes him feel he is president, but Bush can't function without a script, or without Cheney. Bush is head of state; Cheney is head of government.
If, say, the Securities and Exchange Commission's current investigation of Halliburton's accounting also discovers that Cheney engaged in insider trading when he left Halliburton (which the facts suggest is highly likely), and this matter erupts before the Republican convention, then Cheney might be forced to step aside. Cheney always has his bad-health excuse anytime he wants to take it -- because it is a fact. He has a certain immunity as vice president, but if he were to be dropped from the ticket (or he and Bush lose), I believe Cheney would have serious problems which he would no longer be able to deflect. Thus, he will stay and fight like hell to win.
I quote Cheney from his time in the Ford White House when he said, "Principle is okay up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose." I think this statement sums up Cheney's thinking nicely.
You write that Bush and Cheney have not leveled with America about their true agenda. What is it?
Because of their secrecy, it takes a lot of work to connect the dots. I've not connected them all, but enough of them to know that the only agenda they had during the first term was to get a second term -- which meant secretly taking care of their major contributors. Should they get a second term, we know their secret agenda, for they have quietly stated it: They intend to make sure the Republicans control the federal government (all three branches) indefinitely, if possible. In short, the Bush-Cheney agenda is about perpetuating Republican rule by taking particularly good care of major contributors who share their views of the world.

Karl Rove also plays a unique role in the Bush administration. One close observer says in your book that he's "Haldeman and Ehrlichman all in one." Explain.
Rove's unique role is that he is a political guy making policy decisions for political reasons. Decisions in the Bush White House are made not based on what is best for the public interest, rather what will get the president the most mileage with his base, and best political advantage. Not since Nixon's so-called responsiveness program -- which was uncovered during the Watergate investigation -- have we had such overt political decision-making.

The reference to Haldeman and Ehrlichman as explaining Rove was a quip from a friend of mine from the Nixon White House who has had dealings with Rove. Since Rove is a revengeful fellow, my friend will remain nameless. But my friend was telegraphing a lot of information about Rove with this bit of shorthand -- for anyone who has any knowledge of the Nixon White House and Watergate, they know Haldeman and Ehrlichman were the heavies. First, it is a compliment in that both Haldeman and Ehrlichman were very smart, and highly efficient. But what it tells us is that Rove is ruthless, for both Haldeman and Ehrlichman were that too.
Both Haldeman and Ehrlichman saw the world through a political lens, and what was most likely to help Richard Nixon get reelected. So does Rove. Haldeman was involved with procedure (broadly speaking, I mean who was doing what at the White House, arranging the presidential travel and appearances for maximum political benefit, and constantly mindful of the president's image and making him look good), and Ehrlichman was the substance guy (who developed domestic policies, but accounting for the political impact). Rove controls both.
Had Haldeman and Ehrlichman not received the longest sentences of any of those involved in Watergate, Rove would probably be pleased by the comparison.
Karl Rove first came to your attention during Watergate. In what ways is he the reincarnation of Nixon dirty tricksters like Charles Colson and Donald Segretti?
He is way beyond anything Nixon had at his disposal. He is closer to a behind-the-scenes Nixon operator named Murray Chotiner, who could cut off an opponent at the knees so quickly the person did not immediately realize he had been crippled. As I note in the book, the first time I heard the name Karl Rove was when I was asked if I knew anything about him by one of the Watergate special prosecutors who was investigating campaign dirty tricks. I didn't have any knowledge. But I recalled that question when working on this book, and located a memorandum in the files of the Watergate prosecutor's office that indicates they were asking others as well about Rove. Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him.
Colson was brutal, cruel and vicious before he found God (during Watergate). While he once famously said he would run over his grandmother to get Nixon reelected, today I suspect he'd run over his grandmother to convert a few heathens to Christ. Segretti did not engage in the kind of dirty politics that Colson liked to play. Segretti was a political prankster, who only by accident got associated with Watergate. Nothing that Segretti did, that I know of, could be called sinister. Colson, on the other hand, was as nasty a political operative as could be found. Indeed, to this day we don't know the full extent of Colson's activities. He even refused to tell Nixon some of the things he had done (while boasting to Nixon he had done things he didn't want to tell the president). Colson walked out of the White House with any of his papers and records that might cause him a problem. Karl Rove, from what I've seen, makes Colson look like a novice.
Bush has managed to stay above the ugly tactics used against opponents like John McCain and now John Kerry. Does he privately give them his blessing?
Of course. All candidates control their campaigns, and if they don't want such activity, it doesn't occur. As I discovered in talking to people about Bush, he is a highly sophisticated political operator. I've noted in the book that Rove gets the credit for being Bush's political brain. It's an arrangement both men like, because it raises Rove's importance as a political operator, and lowers Bush's exposure. In truth, Bush is probably more politically savvy than Rove. Both men learned their politics from Lee Atwater, who ran Bush senior's 1988 campaign. Atwater made dirty politics into an art form, by which I mean he provided those for whom dirty deeds were done deniability while Atwater's people tore up an opponent's pea-patch and everything else. I expect the 2004 presidential campaign to make Richard Nixon look like a high-road campaigner.
At least until recently, the Bush administration has successfully used the public's fear of terrorism to advance its agenda. You go so far as to agree with Gen. Tommy Franks' dark prediction that another major terror attack on U.S. citizens will drive the country to suspend the Constitution. Why do you fear that?
As I state in the book, I agree for reasons that probably differ from those of Gen. Franks. The short summary of what is really a thread that runs through the book is that when you have a presidency that has no regard for human life, that develops and implements all (not just national security) policy in secrecy, and is driven by political motives and a radical philosophy, it is impossible not to conclude that they will overreact -- and at the expense of our constitutional safeguards. Bush and Cheney enjoy using power to make and wield swords, not ploughs. They prefer to rule by fear. We've had three years to take the measure of these men. I've done so and reported what I found in a book I never planned to write, but because others were not talking about these issues, I believed they needed to be placed on the table.
Bush and Cheney have exploited terrorism ever since 9/11. Now they are exploiting it to get reelected. Should there be an even more serious threat, they have found that when Americans are frightened they can be governed like sheep, which suits Bush and Cheney perfectly. Rather than taking the terror out of terrorism by educating and informing Americans, they have sought to make terrorism as frightening as possible -- using terrorism to launch a war of aggression that is breeding a new generation of terrorists and getting the Congress to pass the most repressive new laws imaginable and calling it an act of patriotism.
Do you think Bush has an enemies list? Are you on it?
I don't believe that Bush, Cheney or Rove are foolish enough to actually maintain such a list -- as was foolishly done in the Nixon White House. But I believe they have long memories. As to how they feel about me, I could care less. As I explain in the book, I used many of my sources on background because this is a White House that takes revenge, and its supporters and surrogates play as dirty as they can get away with. The truth for this White House is not very pleasant, and my writing about it will not be appreciated. I didn't write this book for those who believe that Bush and Cheney have got it right, and don't want to hear otherwise. Rather I wrote it because a lot of people suspect that they've gotten it wrong, and needed someone who knows the workings of the White House to explain what is going on and why.
If the Bush-Cheney scandals are "worse than Watergate," why hasn't this administration produced a whistle-blowing John Dean?
First, I make very clear in the book that while the underlying conduct is worse than Watergate, it has not -- yet -- erupted into a scandal like Watergate. Like anyone at the White House, yours truly included, you first try to work within the system -- to right things you know are wrong. Take former terrorism czar Richard Clarke. He certainly tried to get the Bush administration to address the problems of terrorism sooner rather than later, but failed. After leaving government he remained troubled about the Bush administration's failures to deal with terrorism, for he knows better than most that the war in Iraq only added to the problems. So he testified truthfully before the 9/11 commission -- which is all I did. Or take former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. He tried to work within the system. However, he was fired for telling the truth and expressing his well-founded concern about Bush's excessive tax cuts for the upper incomes. This is a presidency that does not like the truth told about their activities.
If, as I believe to be the case, things are going to get rough for Bush and Cheney given the potential scandals they face, others like Clarke and O'Neill may fill the role I found myself having to fulfill. But the stakes are higher now. No one died because of the abuses of power known as Watergate. Too many have died (and more in the future may) because of the abuses of power by this presidency. That's why their abuses are worse than Watergate.

salon.com

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EVIDENCE JUSTIFIES REOPENING USS LIBERTY CASE:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/02/bush-and-co-president-cheney-are-an-even-greater.php

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Racist Zionist Extremist Elliot Abrams Rigs Bush Regime for Israel

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/02/1516227

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http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2004/04/03/the-import-of-the-9-11-commission.php

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The global war against terror, news about the illegal invasion of Iraq, the corporate puppet presidents, the war criminal Tony Blair, September 11th 2001, the USS Liberty and New World Order crimes against humanity.

Chalmers Johnson on Empire, Blowback and a daffy President+