Armed Madhouse

by Greg Palast

  They can’t get you to ignore that man behind the curtain, Dorothy, unless there’s a fascinating show on stage to distract you. And, for the final days of the presidential campaign, they gave us the lynching of Dan Rather.

  We know George Bush was a Naval Aviator because it says so right on his toy box. Actually, he never was a Naval Aviator and never once landed a plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier. During the Vietnam War, our future President flew in the Texas Air National Guard protecting Houston from Viet Cong attack.

  Our President obtained that job the same way he got the current one: The fix was in. Congressman Poppy Bush, said Rather, put in the fix for his son, despite Junior’s too-dumb-to-fly test scores, by putting in a call to the head of the Texas Air Guard via Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes. That’s what Dan Rather reported on 60 Minutes, that Bush Jr. got the Texas top gun post, and thereby dodged the draft and the bullets of Vietnam.

  It was a hell of a scoop and his network rewarded him and his producer, Mary Mapes, by firing their sorry asses. That wasn’t enough. The president of CBS, Leslie Moonves, bullwhipped his network’s stars and, with his own spit, polished the soiled war record of our President, declaring that Rather’s producer:

  …ignored information that cast doubt on the story she had set out to report—that President Bush had received special treatment thirty years ago, getting to the Guard ahead of many other applicants.23

  Really? Well, Mr. Moonves, look at this evidence:

  “His [George W. Bush’s] dad called then–Lt. Gov. Barnes to ask for his help to get his son not just in the Guard, but to get one of the coveted pilot slots which were extremely hard to get. [Barnes, through a “cut-out,” a third party,] contacted General Rose at the Guard and took care of it. George Bush was placed ahead of thousands of young men, some of whom died in Vietnam.”

  This is from a letter which had remained locked for years in the file cabinets of the U.S. Justice Department prosecutor in Austin, Texas. How I got it does not matter. Our War President has not challenged authenticity. And its contents, Mr. Moonves, were confirmed by the “cut-out” himself, the man who made the call to the Texas Air Guard for young George. (Would the cut-out, a major figure in the Lone Star State, allow BBC to film his statement? He said, “Do I look like the dumbest Texan on the prairie?”)

  But you knew that, if you’re not American. At the Guardian and on BBC we also reported, before the presidential election, that Lt. Governor Barnes had put in the fix for George Jr. at the Air Guard. We reported that in 1999, before Bush’s first run for office.24

  War Hero or War Zero?

  “His dad called then Lt. Gov. Barnes…to get his son…in the Guard….” The BBC obtained this memo in 1999 from the Justice Department U.S. Attorney’s Office in Texas.

  Justice for Miers

  But there’s much, much more to the story than Rather had cojones to report.

  Barnes had two tasks—one, to get little George into the Air Guard and the other was to shut up about it. Keep it quiet. Barnes’s good deeds and long silence were, indeed, well rewarded.

  Barnes, who left office under a cloud of impropriety, stayed on in Austin as a big-fee lobbyist. And the biggest fee he received, maybe the biggest ever in the history of the lobbying art, was at least $23 million for representing a company called GTech when it got the contract to operate the Texas lottery. GTech’s creepy ways of doing business caught up with it in 1997, when, after questionable payments to the Texas lottery director’s boyfriend were exposed, GTech lost its contract by order of the new, uncorrupted, lottery director. The lottery work was put up for bid and GTech’s replacement chosen.

  But then something quite extraordinary happened: The new state lottery director was fired, the bids tossed out and GTech given back the lottery work—no bidding required. The governor at the time: George W. Bush.

  Now, let’s go back to the letter buried at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Austin:

  Governor Bush thru [another cut-out] made a deal with Ben Barnes not to rebid because Barnes could confirm that Bush had lied during the ’94 campaign. During that campaign [for Governor of Texas], Bush was asked if his father… had helped him get in the National Guard. Bush said no he had not, but the fact is his dad called then–Lt. Gov. Barnes….

  Silence has a price and Barnes, the letter says, got his: safety for his client GTech, with whom he maintained hidden ties. I can’t imagine that Barnes would make such a raw demand on Bush. But the war hero Governor’s team made damn sure that no harm came to Barnes and his business associates.

  The Governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid.

  Did Governor Bush put in the fix for GTech as alleged? I wasn’t on the phone when he spoke to the lottery board Chairwoman. Maybe they talked about their newfound faith in the Lord, which they both discovered together at the same time. The Chairwoman? Harriet Miers.

  We don’t know if Miers gave the overpriced GTech its contract back to help the governor keep his Air Guard secret a secret or simply because she liked GTech’s record of high costs and corruption. In 2005, George W. Bush’s attempted appointment of Miers to the United States Supreme Court surprised the U.S. media and even the President’s own supporters. But I wasn’t surprised at all.

  The Shredder-in-Chief

  Loose lips can sink presidential ships. And there was a whole lot more to be silent about. Once in the Guard, there were questions about the Congressman’s son showing up for duty. When asked if he, in fact, had gone AWOL during the war, our President said, “Ask my commander,” whom, he knew, we would have trouble interviewing. His commander was dead.

  When Dan Rather faced the predictable jackal attack on his Bush draft story, Rather did the courageous thing: blamed someone else.

  In this case, Rather and his producer, Mapes, loaded their corporate guilt on a guy you’ve probably never heard of before, rancher Bill Burkett of Abilene, a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Texas Air National Guard. Burkett had given CBS a memo, which had been passed to him, which had nothing to do with the main story about Bush’s dodging the draft. It was a teeny side story—whether young Bush had asked his commander if he could skip a drill. No question, Rather should not have aired it without telling the audience, “We can’t fully authenticate this memo.” Frankly, it wasn’t worth airing at all.

  But back to Lt. Col. Burkett. Once Rather and CBS hung out their source and painted a target on him, Rove-ing gangs of media hit men finished him off. Burkett’s an evidence “fabricator,” “Bush-hater” and even, suggests William Safire in The New York Times, a felon ready for hard time.

  Let me tell you about this Burkett “criminal.” In 2003, I dropped by his ranch while filming a BBC documentary. It’s a place halfway to nowhere, in tumbleweed land. He has cows (or cattle—I’m too much of a New York–London boy to tell the difference). Burkett a “Bush-hater”? “George W. Bush was an excellent pilot,” Burkett told me. “He had the right leadership skills, he had the ‘Top Gun’ approach.”

  But I didn’t go interview Burkett to chat about our President’s days when he flew high. The Guardsman had an important story to tell that is far more important than some memo asking for a day off from drill. It has to do with a phone call and a shredder.

  In 1997, Burkett was working at Camp Mabry with Major General Daniel James when a call came in from Joe Allbaugh, Governor Bush’s Chief of Staff. Bush was about to get a political polishing up for his White House run, with a ghostwritten autobiography. Allbaugh, according to Burkett, stated that Bush political operative Karen Hughes would be dropping by the Air Guard offices to look at the war record and wanted to “make sure there’s nothing in there that’ll embarrass the Governor.” According to Burkett, the General and his minions took this as an unsubtle hint to “clean up” the boss’s record. (Bush, as Governor, was also Commander-in-Chief of the Texas Air Guard.) Lt. Col. Burkett, both curious and disturbed
by the call, wondered how his fellow comrades-in-arms would respond. His answer was in the trash-to-be-shredded bin: George Bush’s military pay records. “I saw what are called LES (leave and earnings statements), which are pay documents. I saw retirement points documents and other administrative information.”

  He did not see their content, only Bush’s name, and therefore cannot answer The Big Question: Did those records, now “missing,” indicate that our President went AWOL from the Air Guard? Other soldiers who failed to show up for duty twice lost their Air Guard posts and were then subject to the draft and shipment to ’Nam. Here was a whole new matter: Not just whether Bush got into the Guard on a family fix, but whether Bush, once in, failed to show up for duty.

  Weirdly, when we checked at Camp Mabry, Austin, where Air Guard duty records are kept, Bush’s were gone. That was extraordinary: Military records don’t go AWOL by themselves. Were these the files Burkett said he saw in the shredder? Destruction of military records is serious business. However, the U.S. press, which belatedly launched a hunt into Bush’s war record in 2004, has dropped the story, and Bill Burkett in particular, as radioactive because of Burkett’s supposedly fabricating the memo used by Rather.

  But he hadn’t. Burkett is as capable of master forgery as I am of painting a passable Picasso. William Safire in The New York Times demanded the government prosecute Burkett for allegedly fabricating the document. Darned right they should have—if he did it. They haven’t. Why not? Maybe they don’t want to check into this “fake” document because maybe it’s not fake.

  So where are they now, the alleged polishers of Bush’s war record? They’re doing quite well, thank you. After a month in office, in February 2001, Bush made Allbaugh chief of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency whose main job is preparing for hurricanes and other disasters. To make way for Allbaugh, Bush dumped the technical expert in charge of disaster planning. Allbaugh didn’t think FEMA should worry so much about hurricanes and he redirected FEMA’s main efforts to the War on Terror. In 2003, Allbaugh quit and took up work as a registered lobbyist for Halliburton Corp.

  Karen Hughes, who reviewed the clean and shiny Bush files to ghostwrite his autobiography, went on to glory as Bush’s White House “Manager of Communications and Media Affairs.” In April 2002, Hughes left to write a book, Ten Minutes from Normal, telling other women that there’s more to life than politics. She appeared on a blizzard of TV shows chatting about how she decided to give up the public life and spend time with her family. It was a real affirmation of “Bush Family Values.” However, once her book fell off the bestseller list, she dumped her family and went back to work on Bush’s campaign full time. Her mission accomplished (Bush’s reelection), she selflessly gave up a return to her family to accept, in July 2005, the title of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. The charming Ms. Hughes’s job is to change the image of America among Arabs so they won’t want to kill us. Lord, help us.

  “They Hated His Guts”

  And what about George W. Bush: war hero or war zero? In all the hullabaloo about CBS’s “counterfeit” memo, no one asked, Did he serve his country?

  I talked with an unassailable source: a former Guardsman and current compatriot of Bush. In strict confidence, he told me about Bush’s flyboy days. It seemed that the other airmen had strong feelings about Bush. “They hated his guts. As far as they were concerned, he was a goof-off and a coward”—because Bush refused to volunteer for combat missions. According to Bush’s comrade in the Guard, Little George was one of the only airmen who ran from combat. While Air Guard flyers were not required to fly combat runs in Vietnam, nearly all did, voluntarily, except for George.

  Darkness at Noon at Black Rock

  CBS and the U.S. media could have cleared up the entire business by simply asking the President point-blank, “Did you or did you not ask your commander to get out of drill?” Better yet, “Did you, as Governor, call ‘Justice’ Miers to restore the lottery contract to Mr. Barnes’s associates?”

  But CBS didn’t ask. They had an execution to attend to, Rather’s. But before the execution, they had to hold a trial. To judge Rather and the veracity of his story that Bush Sr. had helped his son dodge the draft, CBS put together an “independent panel.”

  “Independent,” my ass.

  The “panel” was just two guys as qualified for the job as they are for landing the space shuttle: Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi.

  Remember Dickie Thornburgh? He was on the Bush 41 Administration’s payroll. His grand accomplishment as Bush Sr.’s Attorney General was to whitewash the investigation of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, letting the oil giant off the hook on big damages. Today, Thornburgh earns fat pay as counsel to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, the Washington law-and-lobbying outfit which promotes his services by hawking his former job as a retainer of Bush Sr. “Independent”? Why not just appoint Karl Rove as CBS’s grand inquisitor and be done with it?

  Then there’s Boccardi, not exactly a prince of journalism. This is the gent who, as CEO of the Associated Press, spiked his own wire service’s exposure of Oliver North and his treasonous dealings with the Ayatollah Khomeini. Legendary AP investigative reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger found their stories outing the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986 stopped by their bosses. They did not know that Boccardi was on those very days deep in the midst of talks with Lt. Col. Oliver North, strategizing on how to get the hostages, one of whom was an AP reporter. Parry later discovered a 1986 e-mail from North, which gleefully notes that Boccardi “is supportive of our terropism [sic] policy” and wants to keep the story “quiet.” The AP demoted journalist Barger and forced him to quit over the offense of trying to report the biggest story of the decade. This is “Spike” Boccardi’s qualification to pass judgment on working journalists.

  Why did CBS need the Stanlinesque show trial, the Moonves confession, dead-wrong resurrection of the President’s war record, and the ritual slaughter of the network’s own star?

  The answer is more likely to be found, not at Blackrock (the unpleasant nickname for CBS headquarters), but in a distant corporate tower. The network’s famous eyeball logo is now just a pimple on the corporate rectum of media monolith Viacom Corp. And when Viacom winks, the CBS eyeball blinks. And what did Viacom want?

  From a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on.…I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.

  That was the voice of Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom, speaking just weeks before the 2004 presidential election. It looks like Viacom needed George Bush to stay in the White House and some over-the-hill journalist who makes less than Redstone’s dry-cleaning bill wasn’t going to screw it up with some cockamamie story about the Texas Air Guard.

  Decades ago, CBS’s competitor, RCA/NBC, had a logo of a little dog listening to a phonograph record, responding happily to “its master’s voice.” CBS didn’t have to put an old vinyl disk on the Victrola to hear its master’s voice.

  Silence of the Media Lambs

  Quiz time. Who said this?

  What is going on to a very large extent, I’m sorry to say, is a belief that the public doesn’t need to know, limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war. It’s extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted, and I’m sorry to say that up to and including this moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge in that.

  Dan Rather said it in 2002, but to a British audience, on BBC TV’s Newsnight, the show that carries my reports. But in the USA, he said:

  George Bush is the President! He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up, just tell me where!

  Good boy, D
an. Good boy.

  But across the ocean, Dan slipped his leash:

  There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people’s necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here [in America], you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions.

  In 2004, he knew exactly what would happen when he finally asked those questions. He had already delivered his own eulogy.

  The lynching of Dan Rather is a cautionary tale of how news is made in the USA—and unmade—and topics permissible during an election. The story that cannot be reported is not about George Bush’s special treatment but about the special treatment of the specially privileged. The real story, for me, is that Little George was just one of a dozen privileged princelings saved from the dangers of their powerful daddies’ wars. Barnes did not give help to Bushes only. The man who actually made the call to the Air Guard for Little George at Barnes’s request also confirmed that at Barnes’ request, he also put in the fix for sons of Democratic big-wigs, Governor John Connally and Congressman, later Senator, Lloyd Bentsen. Vietnam was one front in a class war, and only one class was sent to fight it. I don’t blame Congressmen Bush Sr. or Bentsen for keeping their sons out of Vietnam. I do blame them for sending other men’s sons in their place.