News Releases

  • Still “Missing”: Truth About Chile

    A front page New York Times story reported Sunday on passages of State Department documents which show that the U.S. government knew far more than it acknowledged about the murder of two U.S. citizens in Chile. Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, who supported the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, were detained and murdered in September 1973 in the days following Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s bloody military coup backed by the U.S. government. Their execution was the subject of the film “Missing.” The following people are available for interviews: PETER KORNBLUH National Security Archive senior analyst Kornbluh, who has led the…


  • Pharmaceutical Drugs: Mergers and Medicare

    Pfizer Inc. announced today that it plans to buy Warner-Lambert Co. for $90 billion in stock in a deal that creates the world’s second largest pharmaceutical company. Meanwhile President Clinton and others are putting out proposals on Medicare. The following analysts are available for interviews on these and other subjects related to the pharmaceutical industry: SIDNEY WOLFE, M.D. Director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, Dr. Wolfe said today: “This would be the 29th significant merger in the pharmaceutical industry in the last decade. There is no evidence that the economies of scale have resulted in price savings to consumers…


  • Major Foreign Policy Issues: Austrian Neo-Nazis, Sanctions on Iraq, NATO and War Crimes, Israeli Nukes

    MARTIN A. LEE The author of “The Beast Reawakens,” a recent book about neofascism and right-wing extremism in Europe and the U.S., Lee said today: “The inclusion of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party, a movement with openly fascist roots, in the national governing coalition in Austria is one of the most dangerous developments in contemporary European politics. Holocaust-deniers and neofascist ideologues are influential figures within the Freedom Party, and its dramatic rise to power has coincided with a sharp increase in racist violence in Austria, where shocking levels of anti-Semitism persist. There is reason to be concerned about a spillover effect…


  • New Hampshire: Battle of the Big Bucks

    On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, some analysts argue that money has largely determined the front runners. GEORGE W. BUSH Raised in this race: $57,120,597. Top career patrons: Enron Corporation (natural gas), $555,275; Sanchez family (banking, oil and gas), $322,400; Vinson & Elkins (law firm), $316,950; Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst (a leverage buyout firm; its founder bought the Texas Rangers from Bush and his partners in 1998), $305,150; Bass family (financed Harken Energy’s drilling in Bahrain in 1990 when Bush was a Harken director), $273,927; The Sterling Group (merchant bank), $259,000; MBNA Corporation, $244,416; Pilgrim’s Pride (poultry),…


  • State of the Issues

    The following analysts are available to comment on President Clinton’s policies and his State of the Union address: KAREN DOLAN Coordinator of the Progressive Challenge project, Dolan said: “The economic boom has bypassed millions of Americans; there’s been a widening of the gap between rich and poor. We need more progressive taxation… Clinton has missed an incredible historic opportunity to reduce the military budget and shift spending to pressing human needs.” More Information EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON Author of “The Crisis in Black and Black,” Hutchinson said: “The government has not lived up to its promises in ’empowerment zones.’ You see…


  • Albright and Congo: Analysts

    As part of what the Clinton administration calls the “month of Africa,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will be presiding over a UN Security Council meeting today about the civil war in Congo (formerly Zaire). The following analysts are available for interviews: ADAM HOCHSCHILD Author of the widely acclaimed “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa,” Hochschild said today: “The unlucky Congo has known virtually nothing but plunder for the last several hundred years. First by the slave-traders; then by the rapacious King Leopold II of Belgium, who slashed the population of his privately-owned…


  • Iowa Caucuses: What’s Democracy Got to Do With It?

    BETTY AHRENS Program director for the Iowa Citizen Action Network, Ahrens said: “There’s really a wealth primary, we’ve already determined who the favorites are — largely based on how much money they’ve raised. The caucuses enable participants to introduce resolutions to the party platforms; they are debated and voted on. We have developed a resolution which calls for comprehensive campaign finance reform that 700 people have committed to introducing in their caucus on Monday night. This will send a strong message to elected officials and the political parties that Iowans are fed up with the current system and want comprehensive…


  • The Real Martin Luther King

    While Martin Luther King Jr. will be widely commemorated next Monday for his work in the civil rights movement, the following analysts are available to discuss King’s work — including aspects that are often overlooked. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered a year to the day before he was killed, King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” saying it was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” In his “Where Do We Go From Here?” speech he criticized the nature of capitalism, arguing that “we must come to see that an edifice…


  • Perspectives on Africa and AIDS

    Initiating what the Clinton administration calls “the month of Africa,” Vice President Al Gore spoke about AIDS in Africa at the UN Security Council on Monday. The following analysts are available for interviews on U.S. policy toward Africa and on AIDS drugs: DEBORAH TOLER A policy analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, Toler is working on a book on myths and realities about the causes of poverty and hunger in Africa. She said: “As horrendous as the AIDS epidemic is in Africa, the neo-liberal economic policies of the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization are resulting in the…


  • AOL-Time Warner Merger

    In the largest corporate merger in history, America Online and Time Warner announced a $350 billion deal today. The following analysts are available for interviews: ROBERT McCHESNEY Professor at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois and author of “Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times,” McChesney, who participated in a CNN discussion on the future of media with Time Warner head Gerald Levin a week ago, said today: “This deal culminates five years of frantic deal-making that have seen our media culture come to be dominated by less than 10 transnational media firms operating…


  • Missions to Baghdad: Value in Dialogue?

    JAMES ABOUREZK Members of Congress have been attacked for speaking out against U.S. policy while in Iraq. Former Sen. James Abourezk, who visited Iraq in mid-September, said today: “We’ve arrived at a very scary state in this country where people opposed to the administration are accused of not being patriotic. The real act of patriotism…

  • Interviews Available: New Congressional Visit to Iraq

    BERT SACKS Currently in Baghdad, Sacks is accompanying Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., who has begun a visit to Iraq along with two other members of Congress. Sacks is an activist with the Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq, based in Seattle. Also in Baghdad at: [email protected] More Information RAMZI KYSIA and DANNY…

  • Interviews Available as D.C. Protests Get Underway: World Bank and IMF: Problem or Solution?

    CAROLA KINASHA Kinasha is with the Tanzania Gender Networking Program. She said today: “The World Bank continues to support ‘user fees’ on primary health care in Tanzania, despite the opposition of women’s groups to this policy, and despite the fact that this policy blocks access to health care for the poor.” More Information SHELLY RAO…

  • Interviews Available: The U.S. Economy and War

    DEAN BAKER Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Baker said today: “The economy is facing the largest economic crisis since the great depression. The collapse of the stock market bubble destroyed more than $5 trillion of paper wealth, and the impending collapse of the housing bubble will destroy almost as much wealth….”…

  • Interviews on Iraq: Another UN Resolution?

    SCOTT RITTER Ritter, who was a chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, is available for a very limited number of interviews. He said today: “It is clear that the U.S. government doesn’t want a peaceful resolution to this. It is bent on war. The move for a new Security Council resolution is a deliberate provocation…

  • Delegation to Iraq: Interviews Available

    On Thursday two more members of a delegation organized by the Institute for Public Accuracy returned to the United States from Iraq. The delegation included Rep. Nick Rahall, D-WV, who returned on Tuesday. Other delegation members now available for interviews are: JAMES ABOUREZK A former senator and author of Advise & Dissent: Memoirs of South…

  • Interviews Available on Iraq: Truth and Consequences

    JOHN C. BERG Professor and director of graduate studies of the government department at Suffolk University, Berg said today: “The current plans by Congressional leaders to give the president a blank check in advance would be an abdication of their constitutional responsibility. The whole history of Congressional attempts to authorize military action with conditions is…

  • “We Have Seen This Game Before”

    DENIS HALLIDAY Halliday is former head of the UN oil-for-food program and a former UN Assistant Secretary General. Currently in his native Ireland, he said today: “Now the challenge is for the member states of the Security Council to do the right thing. By this I mean keep American military aggression at bay until the…

  • Members of U.S. Delegation to Baghdad Available for Interviews

    Interviews are available with members of a U.S. delegation to Iraq sponsored by the Institute for Public Accuracy. Members of the delegation met with Tariq Aziz and other Iraqi officials over the weekend. In Damascus: Rep. NICK RAHALL and former Sen. JAMES ABOUREZK, en route back to the U.S. from their visit to Baghdad. In…

  • Breakthrough: Interviews Available

    With Iraq agreeing to weapons inspections, the following analysts are available for interviews: JAMES ABOUREZK The former Senator is en route back to the United States. He was a member of a delegation to Iraq sponsored by the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is currently in Damascus. NORMAN SOLOMON Executive director of the Institute for…

Mastodon