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…


  • First Casualties of War

    ROGER NORMAND Executive director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights, which has recently put out several fact sheets on Afghanistan, Normand said today: “Afghanistan was one of the world’s poorest and most devastated countries even before this crisis. The UN has abandoned its relief operations, and all neighboring countries have sealed their borders.…

  • Foreign Policy and Terrorism

    ZIEBA SHORISH-SHAMLEY Founder and director of the Women’s Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan, Shorish-Shamley said today: “It is unfortunate that it took a tragedy of this magnitude for the world to take notice of the ongoing tragedy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several years ago, I quit my position as a university professor…

  • Opponents of Terrorism and War

    THOMAS GUMBLETON A Catholic Bishop from Detroit, Gumbleton said today: “The Pope has called for ‘peaceful negotiations and dialogue’ in the current crisis…. Some have rushed to portray us who are opposed to the Bush administration’s plans as naïve and lacking realism. But if you look at the facts, it is clear that it is…

  • Preventing Further Disaster

    HARVEY WASSERMAN A specialist in nuclear issues, Wasserman warns of the possibility of a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility. More Information CHRIS TOENSING Toensing is editor of Middle East Report. More Information PERVEZ HOODBHOY Hoodbhoy is a professor at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. More Information REV. GRAYLAN S. HAGLER Pastor at the Plymouth…

  • “Not in Our Names”

    Some family members of the victims killed in the September 11 attacks are speaking out in opposition to the administration’s apparent military plans. Judy Keane, who lost her husband Richard, said: “Bombing Afghanistan is just going to create more widows, more homeless, fatherless children.” [CNN, 9/25] Jill Gartenberg, whose husband Jim was killed, said that…

  • Legal Issues: * Where’s the Evidence? * Civil Liberties

    On Monday, President Bush said: “We’re acting based on clear evidence, much of which is classified, so it will not be disclosed.” Today, Attorney General Ashcroft testified in favor of granting the government new powers. The following legal analysts are available for interviews: JOHN QUIGLEY Professor of international law at Ohio State University, Quigley said…

  • The Economy: Now What?

    ROBERT POLLIN Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Pollin wrote “Economic Slide Makes Spending Respectable” in today’s Los Angeles Times. He said today: “U.S. economic policymakers have failed for almost a year to respond adequately to the looming global recession. As the stock market plunge makes clear, the calamitous events of…

  • Critical Voices

    PHYLLIS BENNIS Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-editor of Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader, Bennis said today: “In Bush’s speech we got no doctrine, no strategy, no evidence. What we did get was a lot of Wild West rhetoric — dead or alive material. In Afghanistan, 25 percent of the…

  • Military Options: Where Would They Lead?

    AS’AD ABUKHALIL Associate professor of political science at California State University at Stanislaus and fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, AbuKhalil is author of the article “Islam and the Study of Central Asia.” He said today: “Learning about Islam is not terribly instructive here, just as…

  • Alternatives to More Violence?

    ALI ABUNIMAH Vice president of the Arab-American Action Network, Abunimah drove from Chicago to New York City just after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. His writings since then have elicited substantial response. He said today: “While we grieve and come to terms with this outrage, people in the Mideast and in the…

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