News Release Archive - 2007

Human Rights Day

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Monday, December 10 is Human Rights Day, marking the day the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948. The following human rights advocates are available for interviews:

JAMES JENNINGS
Jennings is president of Conscience International, an Atlanta-based humanitarian aid/human rights organization. He has worked on human rights problems and relief efforts in many countries including Iraq, Sudan, Senegal, Iran, India, Indonesia, Haiti and Honduras. He said today: “Tragically, millions of people worldwide — especially children, women, and the aged — are denied their basic rights as human beings every day. Beyond the struggle to survive in harsh conditions, there is for many people the added, intolerable burden of political and economic oppression. Governments, supposedly the protectors of citizens’ rights, are actually the worst violators of human rights. In such cases it is incumbent on individuals, religious groups, and non-governmental organizations to make their voices heard, to act to defend the defenseless, and often to take the risk of opposing their own governments.”
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LORETTA ROSS
Founder of the National Center for Human Rights Education, Ross said today: “Instead of Bush agitating for war against Iran, we need a war against the economic problems people are facing, whether relating to housing or health care — they are human rights. Instead, victims of Katrina are being evicted from FEMA trailers and Bush vetoed the child health insurance program.”

The Washington Post reports: “The CIA made videotapes in 2002 of its officers administering harsh interrogation techniques to two al-Qaeda suspects but destroyed the tapes three years later, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.”

Said Ross: “The ‘war on terror’ has morphed into a war on human rights — we have not only human rights violations in Guantanamo, but also violations of civil rights with detainees not having access to real trials.

“Of course, there are a whole host of human rights violators around the world, some aligned with Bush and some not, and all need to be confronted.

“In the public discussion surrounding the recent speech by Mitt Romney, some seem to be ascribing our rights to a specific deity while others are saying they stem from something particular to the USA. But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says they are universal to all humanity without being bound to any religion — indeed, affirming the human right not to have anyone else’s religion imposed on us.”
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JUDITH CHOMSKY
Chomsky is an attorney working with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which stresses pursuit of violators as a method of ensuring human rights. On Monday, Human Rights Day, the Center for Constitutional Rights is filing a class action lawsuit against a former head of the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence, Lt. General Moshe Ya’alon (ret.) for the 1996 shelling of a United Nations Compound in Qana, Lebanon that left 106 civilians dead. The suit charges Ya’alon with several violations of international law including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment pursuant to the Alien Tort Statute and extrajudicial killing under the Torture Victim Protection Act.

Said Chomsky: “In 1996, the residents of Qana fled to the UN compound believing that they could be safe there, and the Israeli forces intentionally struck this refuge. One of the perpetrators of that attack came to enjoy the benefits of living in the United States. The U.S. should not be a safe haven for those responsible for a deadly attack on unarmed civilians.”
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TIGHE BARRY
MEDEA BENJAMIN
The activist group CodePink reports that Barry and Benjamin were deported at gun point on Wednesday from Pakistan after protesting for pro-democracy forces there. Upon their return, they went to a Senate Foreign Relations hearing today regarding assistance to Pakistan. Appalled by the State Department spokesperson’s defense of the Musharraf government, Barry spoke up and was arrested.

Said Barry: “Musharraf has beaten lawyers and students, destroyed the judiciary, and censored the press. The U.S. must freeze all funding to this military government until emergency rule is lifted, the independent judiciary is reinstated, the censorship of the media is lifted, and all judges, lawyers, students and human rights defenders are released.”

Barry was pulled out of the hearing room today, handcuffed, and put in a paddywagon. “I felt compelled to do this for the sake of my friends in Pakistan,” he said as he was taken away. “Pakistanis risk their lives standing up to their government; I have to stand up to mine.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

* Guantanamo * Al-Arian

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MARJORIE COHN
AFP reports: “The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday began considering the right of Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detention in civilian courts, in a landmark case over ‘war on terror’ detainee rights.”

Cohn is the author of the new book Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild.

She just wrote the piece “Guantanamo Detainees’ Fate at Stake in Boumediene.” The article says: “In February, two judges on a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that strips the statutory rights of all Guantanamo detainees to have their habeas corpus petitions heard by U.S. federal courts. The Supreme Court will decide in Boumediene whether these men still have a constitutional right to habeas corpus.

“If the lower court decision is left to stand, they can be held there for the rest of their lives without ever having a federal judge determine the legality of their detention.”
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JONATHAN TURLEY
Available for a limited number of interviews, Turley is lead counsel to Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian professor and activist who was found not guilty two years ago of terror-related charges, yet remains in jail in the United States. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School, Turley will be on a panel following the D.C. premier of the new Norwegian-made documentary “USA v. Al-Arian” this evening. A synopsis of the movie and case is at “Civics 101: USA v. Al Arian” by Russell Mokhiber. Further information on the case from Al-Arian’s defenders is available.

Turley said today: “The case of Dr. Sami Al-Arian is a chilling reminder of how the government can abuse existing laws to retaliate against those who refuse to yield to coercion and threats. Dr. Al-Arian’s continued incarceration shocks the conscience and has rightfully become an international cause for protest. … The fact is that the system worked in Florida [where Al-Arian was tried] with the help of a courageous jury. What failed was the commitment of the Bush administration to live up to its agreements and to live by the results of our jury system.”

JOHN SUGG
Sugg is a journalist and editor who has been covering charges against Al-Arian since 1995 and is currently working on a book on the case. His pieces include “Sami al-Arian’s Final Persecution.”

Sugg is senior editor of the Weekly Planet/Creative Loafing group of newspapers. He began covering Al-Arian while he was an editor of the group’s Tampa paper.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

Writers’ Strike: Problems and Solutions

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Entertainment Weekly reports: “Talks between the striking Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers resume today after breaking last Thursday. Since then, each side has circulated statements indicating that there remain considerable differences between them.”

STEVE BODOW
Head writer for “The Daily Show,” Bodow’s oped “Why I went from punch lines to the picket line” was published by the Daily News: “The execs have argued time and again that television content appearing online is strictly promotional, and under Guild rules, they don’t have to pay for promotional uses of our work.

“So I checked this out … and it was true! I watched last week’s episode of ‘The Office’ over at NBC.com, and it was promotional. It was promoting BlackBerrys and Fidelity Investments and Clorox bleach. Nice of NBC to give those ads away for free …

“What’s that? NBC got paid for those ads? Just like if they ran on TV? It’s the same over on the very fine new Web site for ‘The Daily Show,’ by the way: unlimited clips, sponsored in part by — get this — TiVo. I assume that’s some ad-sales guy’s idea of irony.”

Bodow and other New York City-based late-night, and other, writers are picketing Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp on Tuesday and NBC on Wednesday.

See the Web page for the Writers Guild of America, East; a blog for the writers is also online; a YouTube video “Not The Daily Show” featuring another “Daily Show” writer is available.
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DEAN BAKER
Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Baker wrote the paper “The Artistic Freedom Voucher: Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights,” which outlines a system that “would allow each individual to contribute a refundable tax credit of approximately $100 to a creative worker of their choice” as an alternative to copyright.

He said today: “The writers’ strike stems directly from the difficulty of trying to adapt copyright, a relic of the feudal system, to the 21st century economy. The entertainment industry relies on the fees it collects from restricting the free flow of creative material through copyright protection. These restrictions, and the industry’s effort to garner the fees for itself, harm both the public and creative workers. It would be far more efficient to develop a system that pays creative workers up front, like a publicly funded Artistic Freedom Voucher system, and then lets their material circulate freely across the Internet.”
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STEPHEN SHALOM
Professor of political science at William Paterson University, Shalom is author of the essay “In Search of Economic Justice” and is part of the participatory economics group at Zmag.org. He said today: “Is there an alternative to an economy based on greed and competition? In fact, analysts and activists have put forward a vision and a rather detailed model of how an alternative economy — one based on democracy and equitable cooperation — might operate.”
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NELSON LICHTENSTEIN
Lichtenstein is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. He is the author of State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, and Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism.

Lichtenstein said today: “For years the conventional wisdom has assured us that in the U.S.’s creative new knowledge economy, strikes, unions and labor-management conflict were utterly passe, perhaps a remnant of the old rust-belt, but certainly out of place in the hip world of new media and iPod downloads. But here we are in the second month of a strike by 12,000 TV and film writers, some of the coolest, most imaginative, and certainly post-industrial ‘workers’ in our technologically innovative economy. If such conflicts can take place in Hollywood, they can happen anywhere.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

U.S. Report Stating Iran Halted Nuke Program Finally Released

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The New York Times lead headline this afternoon on its website was “U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work: Report Contradicts Prior Intelligence Assessment.”

The report in question is the National Intelligence Estimate, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capablities.”

REESE ERLICH
Foreign correspondent and author of the new book The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis, Erlich is available for a limited number of interviews. He said today: “The NIE released today has been suppressed by the Bush Administration since February. It clearly indicates that the White House, and Vice President Cheney in particular, have been lying about the nuclear threat from Iran as part of a conscious effort to whip up public support for bombing Iran. But the ‘realist’ wing of the White House seems to be prevailing for the moment. The official press release emphasizes negotiations, not bombing.

“Yet the U.S. continues its covert war against Iran, using Kurdish and other minority group organizations to blow up buildings, kill soldiers and civilians. All factions in the White House continue to seek the overthrow of the Iranian government, in complete violation of international law and the 1981 Algiers Accords signed by the U.S. and Iran, which prohibit political or military interference in the internal affairs of Iran.”
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MUHAMMAD SAHIMI
Sahimi is professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California. His articles on U.S./Iranian relations include “The follies of Bush’s Iran policy,” which he co-wrote with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. Also: “Norman Podhoretz’s War Prayer.”

Sahimi said today: “After nearly two decades of accusing Iran of having a secret nuclear weapon program, the United States is finally acknowledging that Iran does not have such a program. This is completely in line with what the Iranian government has been saying all along, that its nuclear facilities that have been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency are the only facilities that it has, and because they are safeguarded and monitored by the IAEA, they cannot be used in illicit weapon activities. The time has come for direct negotiations between Iran and the United States to resolve the outstanding issues between the two nations, which will help the peace and stability in the Middle East.”

CARAH ONG
Ong is Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation and is writing regularly on Iran’s nuclear program; her most recent piece is “Long-Awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iran Finally Released.” Ong said today: “This NIE, which represents the consensus view of all 16 American intelligence agencies, says that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold. This new assessment contradicts the 2005 NIE, which assessed with ‘high confidence’ that Iran was determined to have a nuclear weapon and was working inexorably towards this end.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

Pakistan: What Musharraf Stole

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ALI AHSAN
The Chicago Tribune notes in a profile published Wednesday that leading dissident Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, was the first person jailed when Musharraf declared a state of emergency on Nov. 3 and remains under house arrest. See “Musharraf not among lawyer’s many fans.”

Aitzaz’s son, Ali Ahsan, also a lawyer, is in the U.S. until Wednesday. He said today: “Musharraf’s military coup was designed to fulfill certain objectives, and having fulfilled them, he’s now moving to ease some of the emergency restrictions. Some in Western capitals may be singing Kumbaya, but this is like a robber having left the scene of a crime; you don’t exonerate him and pretend everything is fine — you look at what he stole.

“Musharraf ousted most of the Supreme Court — those members continue to be detained. The upcoming elections are being set up to be a sham because they are devoid of the rule of law. The rule of law doesn’t come from elections, it has to be the basis for any meaningful election — and that’s exactly what Musharraf has stolen from the Pakistani people, with substantial outside cooperation.”

ANITA WEISS
Just back from Pakistan, Weiss is co-editor of the book Power and Civil Society in Pakistan and professor of international studies at the University of Oregon. She said today: “After promising to do so for many years, Pervez Musharraf has resigned his military commission and installed General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani as Chief of the Army Staff. He took the oath as president as a civilian Thursday, though as such he retains the power to continue or lift the emergency. …

“Musharraf last week claimed to the BBC that he did not ‘go mad’nor become a ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ though his actions in abrogating theliberal, parliamentary solutions he has championed since seizing power in October 1999 in the name of ‘enlightened moderation’ certainly don’t sustain his arguments.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

New Bush-Malaki Agreement: “Undermines Iraqi Sovereignty, Democracy”

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On Monday President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed — via video conference — a Declaration of Principles covering a host of military and economic issues. The AP reported on Monday: “Iraqi officials foresee a long-term presence of about 50,000 U.S. troops…” stemming from the agreement. The agreement is on the White House webpage.

JOSEPH GERSON
Author of The Sun Never Sets, a book about U.S. military bases overseas, Gerson said today: “With the media focused on Annapolis, little attention has been paid to an arrangement which will commit the next U.S. president to indefinitely maintaining a 50,000 strong U.S. foreign legion in Iraq. …

“Since shortly after the invasion, the U.S. has been building an infrastructure of permanent military bases — 14 in number — from which, over the long term, it can influence the political dynamics of Iraq and threaten military attacks against other oil-rich Middle East and Caspian Sea nations.”

Gerson is director of programs at the American Friends Service Committee in New England. His latest book is Empire and the Bomb: How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.
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RAED JARRAR
Born and raised in Iraq, Jarrar is Iraq consultant for the American Friends Service Committee. He said today: “While the agreement gives lip service to protecting Iraqi sovereignty and democracy, it in fact undermines these very things. It is a major step in the attempt to make permanent U.S. domination of Iraq, thus undermining any real sovereignty. And it attempts to circumvent any democratic process whereby the Iraqi people or parliament have a say over agreements like this.

“A majority of members of parliament have gone on record opposing any kind of longterm military bases for the occupation forces — and have affirmed that this year’s renewal of the Multi-National Force mandate should not happen without attaching a number of conditions that include setting a timetable to withdraw all foreign troops and mercenaries.”

“A poll conducted by World Public Opinion found that around 8 out of 10 Iraqis say that the United States plans to have permanent military bases, but they want a complete withdrawal of all occupation forces. Around the same percentage of Americans oppose leaving permanent U.S. bases in Iraq.”
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SAMEER DOSSANI
Director of 50 Years Is Enough, a group that scrutinizes major international financial institutions, Dossani said today: “The agreement, which expressly mentions ‘U.S. investments’ and ‘transition to a market economy,’ can be seen as a shift from a primarily military occupation of Iraq towards expanding the already ongoing economic occupation of Iraq.

“While questions of the ownership of Iraq’s oil reserves, for example, should be answered by the Iraqi people through democratic processes, this agreement indicates that the U.S. would continue to have a strong hand in such decisions. If meaningful democracy is to be even an option in Iraq, questions over economic policy must be left up to Iraqis and not officials in the U.S., who would make such decisions with their own interests in mind, not those of ordinary Iraqis.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

Broken Peace Process?

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STEPHEN ZUNES
Zunes just wrote the piece “Broken Peace Process.”

He writes: “Ever since direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks began in the early 1990s, U.S. policy has been based on the assumption that both sides need to work out a solution among themselves and both sides need to accept territorial compromise. As reasonable as that may seem on the surface, it ignores the fact that … there is a grossly unequal balance of power between the occupied Palestinians and the occupying Israelis. It also avoids acknowledging the fact that the Palestinians, through the Oslo agreement, have recognized the state of Israel on a full 78 percent of [historic] Palestine, and what Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is asking for is simply the remaining 22 percent of Palestine that was seized by Israel in the 1967 war and is recognized by the international community as being under belligerent occupation.”

Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.
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URI AVNERY
Avnery is founder of Gush-Shalom, the Israeli “Peace Bloc.” His latest piece about the Annapolis conference is “How to Get Out?”
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NASEER ARURI
Aruri is chancellor professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and author of the book Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine. He is also the editor of the book Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return.
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ALI ABUNIMAH
Author of the book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and co-founder of ElectronicIntifada.net, Abunimah said today: “Bush is talking about two states living side by side in peace. What we have already is a one state reality of an apartheid Israeli Jewish state … with settlements, Jewish-only roads and [Israel] taking the land, water and resources needed to make Palestinian sovereignty viable. What has been ignored is that none of these facts would change in President Bush’s ‘vision’ of two states. The two sides would simply agree to call the status quo ‘peace.’ But it would not be peace: Palestinians would still be living in walled ghettos inside the West Bank and Gaza, millions of refugees would remain in exile and Palestinian citizens inside Israel would be treated as foreigners in the country of their own birth because they do not fit into a ‘Jewish state.'”

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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

Annapolis Conference

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LAILA EL-HADDAD
A journalist based in the U.S. and the Gaza Strip, El-Haddad recently wrote the piece “Annapolis, as seen from Gaza.
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Amb. ROBERT KEELEY
DANIEL LIEBERMAN
A former U.S. ambassador to Greece, Zimbabwe and Mauritius, Keeley was recently on an 18-day delegation to five Mideast countries organized by the Council for the National Interest Foundation, which Keeley now chairs. Lieberman, editor of Alternative Insight, a monthly web-based newsletter, accompanied the delegation and wrote the piece “The Turbulent Winds of the Annapolis Conference: A Voyage Through Middle East Capitals Reveals the Suppressed Truths.”
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MOSSI RAZ
NIDAL FAQAHA
The Geneva Initiative arose after the last official Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ended unsuccessfully in 2001. Negotiators from both sides refused to end talks and privately continued negotiations. Supported by the Swiss government, they agreed on a Model Permanent Status Agreement in Geneva in 2003. Raz serves on the board of the Israeli Geneva Initiative and is a former member of the Knesset, the Israeli legislature. Foqaha is executive director of the Palestinian Geneva Initiative. They will speak at St. Anne’s Church in Annapolis this evening at an event that begins at 5 p.m., they begin their talks at 7 p.m.
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PHYLLIS BENNIS
A fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Bennis’s most recent book is Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer. She recently wrote the piece “Middle East Talks in Annapolis: Photo-Op or Talk-Fest?”

Bennis said today: “This conference is not about bringing justice to the Palestinians or security to the Israelis, both of which are desperately needed. It’s about isolating Iran and polishing the U.S. image and especially that of Condoleezza Rice, who is perhaps best remembered in the region for encouraging the Israeli attack on Lebanon to continue.

“It is important to remember that the U.S. as well as Israel bear significant responsibility for the divisions, tensions and violence inside the Palestinian polity. In his leaked confidential report, former UN representative to the so-called Quartet, Peruvian diplomat Alvaro de Soto stated directly that ‘the U.S. clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas — so much so that, a week before Mecca [the Saudi-brokered unity agreement between the two factions], the U.S. envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,” referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas”.’

“The talks in Annapolis will likely not even address the current humanitarian (as well as political) crisis currently ravaging the 1.6 million people of Gaza. The U.S./Israeli-led international boycott of Gaza, as well as Israel’s designation of Gaza as an ‘enemy entity,’ will remain in place.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

Scott McClellan and Iraq Lies: What Happened?

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“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself.”
— From former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s forthcoming book What Happened regarding the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity. An excerpt was released Tuesday.

MEL GOODMAN
Goodman, a former CIA analyst, is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and author of the forthcoming book The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA. He said today: “The fabrications about Plame were an outgrowth of a larger set of lies to justify the Iraq invasion. The administration of course went after Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame because he was exposing some of those lies.

“But there were many things showing how deep the deceptions went. In 2002 I spoke with Alan Foley, the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center — we had invited him to give a talk at the National War College. After the talk, I asked him what WMDs he expected to find in Iraq. ‘Not much, if anything’ he replied. The attitude at the CIA was that the President wanted to invade Iraq and their job was to produce the justification for it.”

DAVID MacMICHAEL
A former analyst for the CIA, MacMichael said today: “McClellan has apparently joined the ranks of those who now regret getting caught up in the administration’s falsehoods. This should be one more nail in the coffin of the administration’s credibility. But there’s a continuum of administration misinformation that is uncritically relayed to the public via spokespeople and the press.”

ROBERT PARRY
Available for a limited number of interviews, Parry just wrote the piece “Bush’s Plame-gate Cover-up,” which states: “In early fall 2003, George W. Bush joined in what appears to have been a criminal cover-up to conceal the role of his White House in exposing the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

“That is the logical conclusion one would draw from a new statement by then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan when it is put into a mosaic with previously known evidence. …

“In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted Libby on five counts of lying to federal investigators and obstructing an investigation. Libby was convicted on four of five counts in March 2007 and sentenced to 30 months in jail, but Bush commuted Libby’s sentence to spare him any jail time. That also eliminated any incentive for Libby to turn state’s evidence against Bush and Cheney.

“Now, however, McClellan has become the first White House insider to acknowledge the original lies that senior administration [officials] told about the Plame-gate affair — and to put the President in the middle of the cover-up.

“The next question might reasonably be: what are the Democrats in Congress going to do about it?”

Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

* “Born to Buy” * Toxic Toys

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JULIET SCHOR
Chair and professor of Sociology at Boston College, Schor is author most recently of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture. Her past books include The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure and The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer.

MARK SCHAPIRO
Reuters reports: “The California attorney general and Los Angeles city attorney filed a lawsuit on Monday against 20 companies accusing them of manufacturing or selling toys with unlawfully high levels of lead.”

Schapiro wrote the recent piece “Toxic Toys” and the book Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products. He said today: “The current focus on Chinese imports obscures the deep responsibility of U.S. regulatory authorities in permitting toxins such as lead into the country to begin with. Another important aspect to this controversy: the array of consumer products that are perfectly legal to import into the U.S., but which many other countries — in step with the European Union — are banning from use in cosmetics, toys, electronics and other consumer products due to their toxicity.

“In the big picture, while the U.S. retreats from environmental protection, much of the world is moving forward — again, led by the EU, which in 2005 became the world’s largest single market. The power that comes with the EU’s economic heft radiates through the global economy — leaving the United States isolated in its unwillingness to actively protect the health of its citizens and the environment. The pressure to sell into Europe’s market means that some Americans are becoming the accidental beneficiaries of environmental protection laws passed in Brussels (over which they have no input); while, at the same time, the U.S. is becoming a dumping ground for toxic products banned elsewhere in the world.”

Schapiro is editorial director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, based in California. His latest book is the just-published What’s at Stake for American Power.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.