When I rejected the plea bargain, Dr. Kleinman denied the conversation took place.
Ah, what a difference a tape recorder makes!
Shaughnessy was appalled. We filed a Motion for Reconsideration, but Judge Preska ignored our appeal.624
By this time, no fewer than five independent psychologists and psychiatrists in Maryland had filed evaluations that nothing was wrong with me. They included Dr. Taddesseh and his partner, Dr. Kennedy at Family Health Services; Dr. Tressa Burton at Counseling Plus, who observed me on a weekly basis in Maryland; a second psychiatrist hired by Pre-Trial Services to evaluate me after Carswell, who’s name Pre-Trial Services refused to reveal, after he issued a favorable evaluation. And Dr. Richard Ratner, retained by Shaughnessy for the competence hearing.
That was an unusually high number of psychiatrists for any case—and they all reported that they saw no evidence of “psychiatric symptoms” in my behavior.
Even Carswell admitted that I showed no signs of depression, delusions or hallucinations. In observation logs, prison staff on M-1 called me “cooperative and pleasant,” and noted I had “zero behavioral problems” and “functioned well on the unit.”
Once, when confronted about the fraud of psychiatry in the courtroom, Tressa Burton at Counseling Plus tried to wheedle an excuse. “Maybe they like your politics. If they’re lying, maybe they’re lying to save you. Don’t you want them to save you?”
“That’s the jury job,” I told her.
The Jury’s job, indeed. And no others.
CHAPTER 34:
DIALOGUE! DIALOGUE!
AND DEMOCRACY!
A friend asked what defines me more—my achievements, even if I carry them alone — or my tragedy, which has been very public and excoriating.
There’s a story that I like very much, about a woman who arrives in Heaven, exhausted and dispirited, after a long journey on the earth marked by many challenges and disappointments.
The Lord takes her to a stained glass window. “Look,” he says. “These are the fragments of your life that broke off on your journey. You thought that your soul was fragile like glass. You thought these broken pieces of you were lost forever.”
“But here, you see, I have saved them all for you. I have taken these broken parts, and made a picture of your life in the colors of the glass. Look how the colors form a mosaic that illustrates the story of who you are. All of those dark fragments come from the hard times. But look how those dark colors create shadows around the bright reds, the greens, and the blues from your happier days. And so the darkness accentuates the joyful moments of your life. The darkness calls attention to your light.”
“And together, all of it is beautiful.”
My friend, John Edward Hurley told me that story, and I think it’s lovely.
I tell that story, because I believe that whatever price I paid for my journey, it was fully worth the cost. It was a hellacious fight, however. The men and women who did this tried to destroy my confidence and spirituality, my sense of identity and pride in my achievements.
Most days I think they failed. I take satisfaction that I have never regretted my actions or choices. I never recanted my political or spiritual beliefs, no matter how badly I felt threatened.
I do believe, however, that my experience sends a warning shot across the bow that our democracy and precious liberties are not so strongly protected as Americans want to believe.
The attack on my activism was irredeemably corrupt from start to finish. Yet nothing stopped it. None of the civil rights enshrined in our Constitution had any impact slowing its momentum. Except for one shrewd and perceptive Judge, I would have been destroyed.
That’s the Patriot Act for you.
Franz Kafka would have been appalled by the deja vu.
Why go to so much trouble? What were Republican leaders hiding that they had to silence me under false indictment for five years without a trial?
I believe that answer is important—and surprisingly hopeful for our future.
Republican leaders wanted to hide the success of dialogue before the Iraqi war in winning Baghdad’s support for anti-terrorism and the 9/11 investigation. My efforts proved diplomacy could achieve results that would have defrayed the conflict, whereas leaders in Washington wanted the world to think War was the only solution.
They were wrong. Dialogue and engagement created a strong opportunity for peace.
I believe it’s important for all of us to know that, perhaps more important today than ever before. With conflicts and wildfires burning throughout the Middle East, there’s a sense of foreboding, as if our global community is racing to the edge of a cliff. Or getting pushed.
And what of us then?
For myself, I believe that we are ignoring a powerful tool that offers the possibility of ratcheting down those conflicts. It is simple. It is communication.
Dialogue and engagement offer a way forward. That is not idealistic or ineffectual. It can be vigorous and demanding, as Libya and Iraq have shown already.
In fact, it’s fairly simple. Changing the dynamic in Libya and Iraq started with one woman walking calmly into one embassy, and sitting down with diplomats, and sharing a cup of tea and friendly conversation. From that simple action, we created a back channel for discussion of the major issues interrupting our relationships.
That’s how the Lockerbie Trial happened. That’s how Libya stopped acting as a sanctuary for terrorists and embraced the concept of nuclear disarmament. Breaking through the isolation of sanctions, we found common ground. And we discovered that our two sides could adopt some measures of friendship. We identified a few common areas of agreement, and we built out from there.
Libya was totally transformed. And it’s because of dialogue.
It was the same with Iraq. Most critically, the success of back-channel dialogue achieved all U.S. objectives two years before the invasion.625 Once international loathing of Iraq’s humanitarian crisis pointed to the collapse of sanctions, U.S. Intelligence adopted an ambitious agenda for securing the maximum interests of the United States in any post-sanctions period. And we succeeded to a degree that would have astonished Russia, France and China on the Security Council.
The results of our dialogue were outstanding, if I say so myself.
Through a period of intense back channel talks from November 2000 to March 2002, the CIA forced Iraq to accept the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, “with no conditions,” such that Iraq agreed to the most rigorous standards of compliance and maximum transparency ever imposed in history.
Baghdad put up no fight. Quite the opposite, in December, 2000, Iraq’s Ambassador Dr. Saeed Hasan vowed “it would be a short conversation, because Iraq was ready to prove its sincerity on all known U.S. demands.”
Indeed, Iraq encouraged Washington to consider its vast market potential across all sectors in weighing the value of a future alliance. Senior diplomats voiced Baghdad’s hope that the United States would become a major trading partner after sanctions. Diplomats frequently reminded me that before the 1990 Gulf War, Iraq had been a strong ally of the United States, as a buttress against Iran. That friendship could be renewed, they said. Iraq would show its appreciation.
The CIA put Baghdad to the test— demanding a lion’s share of reconstruction contracts— a “peace bonanza” for U.S. Corporations. Back channel dialogue won guarantees that U.S. corporations would have the right to return to Baghdad at the same level of market share they enjoyed before the 1990 Gulf War, barring military sales or dual-use production. Most importantly, U.S. corporations would receive priority contracts in telecommunications; health care, hospital equipment, and pharmaceuticals; factory construction and transportation.
Baghdad offered to buy one million American manufactured automobiles every year for 10 years.
U.S. Oil access was safe and secure, too. As of November 2000, Iraq promised the U.S. would enjoy full rights to participate in all future oil concessions at the first tier level.
Iraq also guaranteed that U.S. oil would have rights to hold second and third tier concessions on contracts granted to France and Russia, as a way to guarantee U.S participation. There was no danger of the U.S. getting cut out of Iraqi oil exploration and production. And no other country lost oil contracts, under this arrangement, either.
From my own vantage point, some of the greatest success in back-channel talks involved Iraq’s cooperation with global anti-terrorism policy. Baghdad agreed that the FBI or Interpol or Scotland Yard could send a Task Force inside Iraq, with authorization to conduct terrorism investigations, interview witnesses, and arrest suspects. The FBI could have interviewed Al Anai, the Iraqi diplomat who allegedly met Mohammad Atta in Prague, Czechoslavakia, per the demands of Senator John McCain and Vice President Richard Cheney.
Moreover, Iraq offered to hand over a treasure trove of banking documents identifying the financial pipeline used by terrorists. And Baghdad freely offered to provide evidence of a Middle Eastern link to the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the Oklahoma City Bombing.
Finally, on my trip to Baghdad in March 2002, I developed an Iraqi source inside the Mukhabarat willing to act as a covert liaison to the FBI or Interpol. At great personal risk, he agreed to identify who entered the country, when, where they lived, who they met, and their activities. So the FBI Task Force could have tapped a local source for assistance, as well.
It was a phenomenal achievement—and the Justice Department prosecuted me for it. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished in Washington.
The help of my Iraqi Intelligence source was icing on the cake, really. If the United States and Britain cared about shutting down terrorist networks and sanctuaries after 9/11, Iraq’s cooperation would have produced the most substantial windfall of any nation.
These were practical actions—not propaganda.
Through my back channel, our team took the policy speeches in Washington and London, and turned them into something alive and meaningful. Our team understood the practical elements of successful terrorism containment. We’d done this work for a decade, and we understood the necessary structure required to implement it. Our blueprint was outstanding.
The opportunity for advancing key democratic reforms in Iraq—suggested by Iraqi officials themselves—surprised even me. It was tremendously exciting. Baghdad devised a highly creative platform for integrating Iraqi exiles into the political system. Iraq suggested that foreign embassies—which qualify as sovereign territory—could house returning Iraqi exiles, backed by embassy security, to guarantee their safety, while they re-absorbed into Baghdad society. Returning exiles would have enjoyed the rights to organize political parties with party headquarters, in competition with the Baathist Party, and full access to media, including the rights to create free opposition newspapers and apparatchik.
That was Iraq’s proposal in March, 2002—one year prior to the invasion. I think it’s an idea worth exploring in other conflict zones, where there’s a large exile population seeking to re-establish itself in the home country.
Weapons disarmament. Cooperation with global anti- terrorism. Economic reconstruction contracts. Oil contracts for the United States. Major democratic reforms.
It’s hard to imagine what more the U.S. and Europe could have required. At the risk of sounding crass to an international audience, if the CIA had thought of it, my team would have demanded it from Baghdad, shamelessly.
As a result, I can say confidently that Washington and London could have achieved every single objective that our leaders demanded from Iraq, without deploying a single soldier to occupy Baghdad, or firing a single missile to damage the country’s infrastructure. Not a single Iraqi mother or child had to die. Nor a single U.S. soldier.
I agreed to help as a back channel, because I hated the misery of sanctions for the Iraqi people. The pre-eminence of the United States was unchallenged at that time. I believed it would be necessary to satisfy U.S. demands in order to resolve the conflict. And so I accepted this role—gladly. And yes, I believe the world would have been better for it. The Middle East, too. And the Iraqi people most of all, for whom I have grieved.
War has cost us all so much. Iraq has imploded in a sectarian nightmare. The brutality of Occupation made a lie of liberation. Generations of Iraqi children will hate the West. The U.S. has lost a major regional ally in the Middle East for the future, while Iran has gained a powerful partner and neighbor, certain to check U.N. efforts at nuclear containment.
Our team kept our activities below radar, and out of media range. Yet our approach was results oriented and effective. We accomplished each part of our objectives, which promoted U.S. interests on a broad spectrum. Those were tough standards, too.
That’s why I was held under indictment for five years—through two Presidential elections in 2004 and 2008. Pro-War leaders in Washington would stop at nothing to hide those opportunities from daylight and public scrutiny. Republican leaders particularly enjoyed strutting about in the circus glitz of their national security policy, though it was purely spectacle and showmanship, without hard achievements to support the glamour. It suited Washington to pretend that Saddam’s government had been a stalwart supporter of terrorists in the Middle East, instead of a covetous western ally who despised—and in fact, persecuted— Islamic fundamentalists.
Why Truth Matters Today
Given the cynicism of our day—and the thundering rage and desperation the world now faces—I believe it’s critical for Americans and the international community to understand the truth of what dialogue accomplished in Iraq.
No matter that the conflict loomed large and appeared intractable, hope for peace remained undaunted right to the very end.
The greatest obstacle to peace in Iraq was the ambition of War itself, and the common belief that diplomacy could not achieve results, and therefore would not be worth the time to pursue aggressively.
That mentality handicapped us. It was wrong. And it needs to change.
Because contrary to what people think, dialogue did not fail. Our resolve for crisis resolution failed.
In my personal experience engaging directly with Libya and Iraq—two “pariah” nations in the 1990s— there is never a point at which dialogue cannot achieve results. No matter how difficult it appears, all things are possible through communication.
There are four necessary ingredients for success, I believe.
First, dialogue requires the courage of leadership to face problems head on, and to work beyond the level of propaganda.
Secondly, it requires a commitment to see solutions through to the end, without giving up at the first stumble. I have conservatively estimated that Libyan and Iraqi diplomats met with me 150 times each. In both cases, the work took longer than expected, but accomplished much more than we started out to achieve. By the time the United Nations jumped in, the scope of discussions was much broader and higher grade—and the scale of opportunities was much more dynamic than the public might have imagined.
Thirdly, I believe that crisis dialogue must be handled covertly at the start, as the most effective method of exploring creative options, and building possible scenarios that have not been considered before. Public debate in the media creates a demand for change, which is necessary and good. But media grandstanding does not advance the development of complex and intricate solutions. Premature media exposure can kill ideas. And that’s self-defeating. The goal should be to nurture an atmosphere of the possible, with a priority for exploring the most innovative strategies for achieving those goals.
Finally—and this is critical, though somewhat obvious—it’s vital to communicate respect for cultural and religious differences, even for those nations who qualify as our opponents. These individuals must be treated with dignity. They must become partners in bringing about a policy shift. As Iraq’s package of democracy reforms show, they too have ideas and strategies to contribute, which might surprise the most hardened cynic.
They, too, have a stake in the
project’s success. Their cooperation is vital for the end game.
That was the essence of the approach that I used. And I assure you that we achieved much more than we started off to win, by applying that approach.
For that matter, consider what my team accomplished with Libya:
Ongoing conversations with Libyan diplomats, starting in 1995, broke the impasse on the Lockerbie Trial. By 1998, Libya had stopped functioning as a sanctuary for terrorists, and by 2004, Tripoli had renounced the development of Weapons of Mass Destruction, (both causes I championed). Tripoli also moved to develop economic ties with Europe. As of today, Libya has filled a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Many attribute Libya’s change to the United Nations sanctions. They would be wrong. Dialogue and engagement changed the dynamic with Tripoli, thanks to my team’s efforts, joined by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who moved things forward in a highly effective and covert way. Our process of engagement made a deliberate point of showing respect for Libya’s identity and Islamic heritage, and appreciation for the value of Libya’s potential contributions to North Africa.
It was dialogue that accomplished those results.
Dialogue! Dialogue! Dialogue!
Finally, in the future, for the sake of world peace, the United Nations must embrace its fullest potential as a forum for engagement. The U.N. must take responsibility for attempting crisis resolution. When it came to Iraq and Libya, the United Nations stayed out of discussions until a structural framework for conflict resolution had been reached. In other words, U.N. diplomats only got involved once Libya had agreed to the Lockerbie Trial, and after Iraq agreed to resume weapons inspections, according to the maximum standards dictated by the United States.
Until an agreement was reached, the United Nations stayed out of crisis talks.
The United Nations expended no political capital to achieve those results. In fairness, with regards to Iraq, U.S. intelligence wanted to avoid U.N. input, so Washington could control the agenda. However, it’s also true that the U.N. showed no inclination to engage in conflict resolution with Iraq. They were quite happy to stay out of it. The United Nations was never at the front of leadership.
EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq Page 64