-Caveat Lector-
Top Ten Censored Stories of 1990
THE BILL OF RIGHTS HAD A CLOSE CALL IN 1990
An anti-crime bill was introduced in both the U.S. Senate
and House in 1990 which, had it been enacted and signed into law,
would have essentially nullified the Bill of Rights.
Neither the Senate version, S. 2245, introduced by Senator
Phil Gramm (R-Texas), nor the House version, H.R. 4079,
introduced by Representative Newt Gingrich, (R-Georgia), the
minority whip, passed either chamber.
The Gramm-Gingrich bills both start out stating that the
U.S. criminal justice system is failing to achieve the "basic
objective of protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty."
Both bills call for "A Declaration of National Drug and Crime
Emergency."
The legislation stated: "Guided by the principles that
energized and sustained the mobilization of World War II, and in
order to remove violent criminals from the streets and meet the
extraordinary threat that is posed to the nation by the
trafficking of illegal drugs, the Congress declares the existence
of a National Drug and Crime Emergency beginning on the date of
enactment of the act and ending on the date that is 5 years after
the day of enactment of this act."
Both bills have provisions for utilizing tents and various
others shelters, including unused military facilities, for the
confinement of state and federal "violent criminals."
The bill prescribes mandatory incarceration, for at least
five years, of "every person who is convicted in a federal court
of a crime of violence against a person or a drug trafficking
felony, other than simple possession." A crime of violence "has
as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of
physical force against the person or property of another; or by
its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force
against the person or property of another may be used in the
course of committing the offense."
The bills also would suspend protection from unreasonable
search and seizure, excessive fines, bail, or punishment and the
right to be brought to trial.
Civil libertarians claim that a number of Executive Orders,
issued by presidents since World War II, which would suspend
civil rights and liberties, could take effect in the event of
"any national security emergency situation that might confront
the nation." It also appears that the president's signature would
declare the state "national security emergency" necessary to
empower the Federal Emergency Management Agency "to take over
government, suspend the Constitution and do what it wants."
Oliver North, former National Security Council aide, revealed
during the Iran-contra hearings, that plans had been formulated
to suspend the constitution.
While the legislation was not enacted during the 1990
session, obervers fear that oppressive parts of the
Gramm-Gingrich bills may be added to the omnibus anti-crime bill
which is slowly working its way through Congress. Nonethless,
despite the extraordinary attack on the Bill of Rights, and
despite the support of a number of Representatives and Senators
(including California's newly elected governor, Pete Wilson), the
oppressive legislation was not put on the national agenda by the
mass media for discussion by the public. In fact, the widest,
ongoing coverage of the progress of the two bills in 1990 was
found in a controversial weekly publication called The Spotlight.
SOURCES: THE SPOTLIGHT, 8/6/90, "Repressive Gingrich Bill:
Dangerous Attack On Rights"; 10/15/90, "Danger To Bill Of Rights"
by Mike Blair.
THE S&L CRISIS: THE SOLUTION IS WORSE THAN THE CRIME
SOURCES: THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, "No-Fault Capitalism Meets
Lemon Socialism," Aug 1990, by Sam Smith; WALL STREET JOURNAL
8/9/90, "Viewpoint: Biggest Robbery in History--You're the
Victim" by Michael Gartner.
An early estimate of the cost to taxpayers to bail out the
savings and loan industry was $155 billion. More recently, a Wall
Street Journal correspondent suggested a $1.4 trillion figure.
But the most "acceptable" figure for the bailout appears to be
$500 billion.
To put that $500 billion in perspective, it helps to realize
that the entire cost of World War II, in current dollars and
including service-connected veterans' benefits, is about $460
billion--or $40 billion less than the S&L bailout. The cost of
the Vietnam war, including benefits, was $172 billion; Korea was
$70 billion; World War I was $63 billion. The Civil War was $7
billion. The combined assets of Prudential, Metropolitan Life,
Equitable Life, Aetna, Teachers Insurance, New York Life,
Connecticut General, Travelers, John Hancock and Northwestern
Mutual don't add up to $500 billion.
The combined 1988 profits of all the companies on the
Fortune 500 list added up to just $115 billion. And the combined
1987 budgets of all 50 states didn't add up to $500 billion.
In fact, the total federal expenditures on one of the
nation's most widespread and tragic problems--the homeless--is
little more than one-tenth of one percent of the amount we'll
spend to bailout the savings and loan industry.
This bailout was engineered by the Resolution Trust
Corporation (RTC)--the government's misnamed S&L caretaker which
is engaged in a massive giveaway that will make Teapot Dome look
like a demitasse cup. The RTC is the nation's largest operator of
financial institutions and, according to The New York Times,
"quickly becoming the biggest financial institution in the world,
the largest single owner of real estate, the largest liquidation
company and the largest auction firm." The RTC solution includes
a little known $500 million in outside legal fees and $37 million
in administrative costs. And the RTC was established without any
meaningful public debate nor with any serious consideration of
alternatives.
Here's just one example of the RTC solution: an Arizona
insurance executive with a history of legal and regulatory
problems was allowed to buy 15 involvent Texas savings and loan
associations with $1000 of his own money and $70 million of
borrowed money and in turn was promised $1.85 billion of
taxpayers' money in federal subsidies. Commenting on this
revelation, Senator Howard Metzenbaum said "In all my years in
public office, I have never seen such an abandonment of public
responsibility ...". Remember, this case was not part of the S&L
crisis, but part of the so-called solution.
One can't expect Congress to be seriously concerned about
any solution considering that S&Ls gave $45 million to
congressional candidates during the past three elections,
including more than $1 million to members of current
congressional banking committees. What has taken place involves
fraud, malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance of a scope never
seen before. No war, no defense program, no social program, no
other scandal has ever cost what this will cost. And yet the
media, absorbed in human interest aspects of the crisis at best,
relegate important S&L stories to the business pages despite
their enormous effect on every American.
THE CIA ROLE IN THE SAVINGS AND LOAN CRISIS
SOURCES: THE HOUSTON POST, 2/4/90+ series of articles, by
Pete Brewton; THE NATION, 11/19/90, "The Looting Decade" by
Robert Sherrill; COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, Nov/Dec 1990, "The
Mob, The CIA, and the S&L Scandal" by Steven Weinberg.
It is now estimated that some 500 billion to 1.4 trillion
taxpayer dollars will be needed to bail out the savings and loan
crisis. One very obvious question, which has not been asked by
the major news media, is what happened to so much money?
At least one investigative journalist, Pete Brewton, of the
Houston Post, believes he has the answer. On February 4, 1990,
Brewton wrote "During an eight-month investigation into the role
of fraud in the nation's savings and loan crisis, The Post has
found evidence suggesting a possible link between the Central
Intelligence Agency and organized crime in the failure of at
least 22 thrifts, including 16 in Texas."
It was the first in a series of S&L articles by Brewton that
found links beween S&L's, organized crime figures, and CIA
operatives, including some involved in gun running, drug
smuggling, money laundering and covert aid to Nicaraguan contras.
If S&L funds went to the contras or other covert operations it
would help explain where some of the money went.
In his March 11, 1990, article, Brewton even suggested links
between President Bush's son Neil and the CIA/organized crime
figures: "A failed Colorado savings and loan whose board of
directors included a son of President Bush was part of an
intricate web of federally insured financial institutions that
had business links to organized crime figures and CIA operatives,
The Houston Post has learned."
Despite the blockbuster nature of Brewton's exposes, the
major news media have not been quick to follow-up. As Robert
Sherrill points out in his extraordinary analysis of the S&L
crisis in an unusual single subject issue of The Nation
(11/19/90), "Brewton's stories have not exactly stirred the
national press to action."
The strange silence on the part of the press led Steve
Weinberg, former executive director of Investigative Reporters &
Editors, to investigate the accuracy of Brewton's charges.
Weinberg raises two key questions: if Brewton's information is
wrong, what should other journalists be doing to set the record
straight, and if he is right, why have most news organizations
failed to assign their own reporters to the scandal?
C. David Burgin, The Post's executive editor, explained why
The Post has devoted so much space to such a controversial issue
aparently without conclusive proof. "At this juncture, at least,
the 'smoking gun' probably will have to be found by Congress or
the Justice Department, which have subpoena power... Meanwhile,
taxpayers somehow will have to foot the bill for these enormous
losses. The Post will continue its investigation and hopes at the
same time the national press, in the public's interest, will take
a harder look."
After reviewing Brewton's documentation and interviewing a
number of journalists, some of whom reject Brewton's thesis
totally, and others, mostly alternative journalists, who support
it, Weinberg concludes that the national press should take a
harder look at his charges.
Project Censored agrees that this undercovered aspect of the
S&L issue deserves the national media's critical attention.
THE PENTAGON'S SECRET BILLION DOLLAR BLACK BUDGET
SOURCE: ROLLING STONE, 9/6/90, "How the Pentagon Hides Its
Secret Spending" by Tim Weiner
While the nation enters a recession and budgets for federal
social and educational programs are cut, the Pentagon has a
secret stash, called "The Black Budget," which costs taxpayers
$100 million a day.
Despite the extraordinary changes in international
relationships, this secret money is still being spent on the
weapons to fight the cold war, the Third World War, and World War
IV.
The black budget funds every program the president of the
United States, the secretary of defense, and the director of
central intelligence want to keep hidden from view; in the past
three years, $100 billion has disappeared into the Pentagon's
classified cache.
The money to run America's ELEVEN intelligence agencies has
always been hidden in the Pentagon's budget. But something new
transformed the black budget when Ronald Reagan came to power. A
White House obsessed with secrecy began to conceal the costs of
many of its most expensive weapons, enshrouding them in the deep
cover once reserved for espionage.
The black budget exploded; by 1990 it quadrupled in size,
reaching about $36 billion a year.
The Pentagon keeps this money hidden by keeping two sets of
books: one for the general public, one for the generals. Hundreds
of "black programs" are concealed in the public budget it submits
to Congress, camouflaged under false names, their costs deleted,
their goals disguised.
The Pentagon simply stamps a secret code on the price of a
bomber, a missile, or a spy satellite, and open debate ceases.
The Pentagon also pads seemingly unclassified programs with
billions intended for black projects. In short, the Pentagon
budget, which is nationally debated, is a false document, an
elaborate cover story.
Behind this shield of secrecy, we are wasting fortunes
perfecting plans for nuclear war, building nuclear bombers that
cannot be used, launching spy satellites that fall from the sky,
conducting self-destructive covert operations against enemies
both real and imagined, running guns and missiles to warring
tribes 10,000 miles from home.
One of the big problems, according to Tim Weiner, a
Pultitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The
Philadelphia Inquirer, is that the terrible failures of secret
spending and research are never scrutinized.
"Today more than 100 multimillion- and mutibillion-dollar
black weapons are being built ... in windowless buildings."
The Pentagon which buys "bargains" such as $436 claw hammers
and $9606 wrenches from its favorite contractors, says that the
black programs are better managed, more efficient and less
susceptible to fraud than unclassified programs.
Frank Conahan, the head of the General Accounting Office's
national-security division says that's nonsense. "The only
difference between the two (programs) is the degree to which
things are kept from the public."
As Weiner says, if we are to be a truly open democracy, we
cannot allow our treasury to be spent in secret. "From the
creating of the atomic bomb through the construction of the
Stealth bomber, from the covert funding of the CIA's secret wars
through the clandestine conspiracies of the Iran-contra disaster,
the costs of secrecy have been high; billions wasted on useless
weapons and a series of renegade foreign policies. ... We are
told we must build secret weapons and fight secret wars to defend
our democracy. But the secrecy best suited for a nation at war
can be an enemy to a people at peace."
CONTINUED MEDIA BLACKOUT OF DRUG WAR FRAUD
SOURCES: EXTRA! July/Aug 1990, "Ex-DEA Agent Calls Drug War
a Fraud" by Martin A. Lee; THE HUMANIST, Sept/Oct 1990, "A Funny,
Dirty Little Drug War" by Rick Szykowny.
While the fire and brimstone of drug war rhetoric continues
to saturate the mainstream press, high-ranking drug war insiders
continue to come forward in attempts to expose the "war" for what
it really is: a battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of
the American public. And the media continue to be the
government's apparently willing ally in this war.
The latest to "go public" is Michael Levine, who recently
retired from the DEA after 25 years as a leading undercover agent
for various law enforcement agencies. Over the course of his
career, Levine has personally accounted for at least 3,000 people
serving a total of 15,000 years in jail, as well as several tons
of various illegal substances seized. Upon his retirement Levine
published a critical expose of the DEA in which he thoroughly
documents his journey from true believer to drug war heretic.
Levine documents numerous instances of CIA involvement in
the drug trade, State Department intervention, and DEA
cooperation with both parties. Levine's story closely parallels
that of Richard Gregorie whose defection from the Attorney
General's office was the fourth ranked "censored" story of 1989.
According to Levine, "the only thing we know with certainty
is that the drug war is not for real. The drug economy in the
United States is as much as $200 billion a year, and it is being
used to finance political operations, pay international debts --
all sorts of things."
While not being completely frozen out by the media, not one
DEA or other government official would appear to respond to his
charges.
Levine's appearance on The MacNeil/Lehrer show was
significant because Terrence Burke (the acting DEA chief), when
asked by Lehrer, agreed with Levine that "we (the U.S.), have
consistently chosen drugs over communism," but Burke only agreed
to appear on the show after the Levine interview (which was
taped) and with the proviso that he would not discuss any of the
charges made in the book.
Another strange media non-event was the proposed 60 Minutes
segment on "the drug war fraud". On January 24, 60 Minutes
producer Gail Eisen called Levine and explained that executive
producer Don Hewitt had ordered a "crash production" for a
segment on his experience with the DEA. Levine gave 60 Minutes
extensive documentation and he was nstructed to get his passport
in order to do on location shooting in Panama. He then received a
phone call informing him that 60 Minutes had suddenly and
inexplicably dropped the piece.
"The whole drug war is a media war," says Levine, "It's a
psychological war, aimed at convincing America through the press
that our government is seriously trying to deal with the drug
problem when they're not."
NORTH ACQUITTAL: ALL IN THE FAMILY
SOURCE: RANDOM LENGTHS, 8/16/90, "North Verdict Tainted" by
David Armstrong.
Substantial questions of conflict of interest should be
raised in connection with the July 20, 1990 decision by the U.S.
Court of Appeals in Washington to void the three-count conviction
of former White House aide Oliver North on charges stemming from
the Iran- contra scandal.
Judge Laurence H. Silberman, a member of the three- judge
panel that threw out the convictions, has ties to at least one of
North's co-conspirators, and participated in activities that
closely paralleled and possibly even initiated North's arms-for-
hostages dealings.
Silberman's vote proved decisive in the court's 2-1 ruling
to throw out North's convictions.
A key Iran-contra figure linked to Silberman is Robert
McFarlane, former-President Reagan's National Security Advisor,
and North's former boss. In the fall of 1980, Silberman and
McFarlane took part in a controversial meeting to discuss the
possible release of the 52 American hostages being held in
Teheran in exchange for U.S. military equipment.
Silberman, at the time, was a top advisor to the Reagan-Bush
presidential campaign. McFarlane was on the staff of the Senate
Armed Services Committee. Also present at the meeting was Richard
Allen, Silberman's immediate superior and chief foreign policy
analyst for the Republican campaign, and another man who claimed
to be a representative of the Iranian government.
The four men met in the lobby of the L'Enfant Hotel in
Washington D.C., shortly before the 1980 presidential election.
Significant details remain sketchy, however. "All I can remember
was that there was discussion about somehow releasing the
hostages to the Reagan campaign or under the auspices of the
Reagan campaign ... to humiliate Carter and influence our
election," Silberman told the San Jose Mercury News.
In 1988, Houshang Lavi, an Iranian-born arms dealer, stepped
forward claiming to be the "emissary" who met with Silberman,
McFarlane, and Allen. Silberman does not deny knowing Lavi, but
in an interview in Newsday, he stated that he was "sure" that
Lavi was not the emissary at L'Enfant Plaza. After being
confronted with Lavi's notes from the meeting, however, Silberman
downgraded his disclaimer to being "virtually certain."
As we now know, both Allen and McFarlane went on to become
President Reagan's National Security Advisor, and interestingly
enough, Silberman went on to become the Reagan-Bush transition
team's liason to the CIA during the period between the election
and the inauguration before being appointed to the federal
judiciary by President Reagan in 1985.
At this point, Judge Silberman, who made North's acquittal
possible, isn't returning phone calls, and independent counsel
Lawrence Walsh has refused comment on the matter.
And so, it seems, has the press.
<cont'd>
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