wages. Click here to read part of a chapter discussing
healthcare reform in this country from Robert Kuttners
excellent book called "Everything for Sale"
Europe
the last election
articles written by Robert Kuttner
Dean's book worse than Watergate.
Michael Parenti
Chomsky
conservative propaganda
the media to control media reporting
public mind
Mario Cuomo will actually be president and tell Bush what to say and do. Bill Clinton will dictate US foreign
policy. Hillary Clinton will dictate a national health plan. Robert Reich and Kuttner will dictate the government
agenda for any and all things having economic implications. Bill Clinton will approve all judicial nominees.
A friend of mine was telling me she heard brain dead Bush on the Daily show state that the reason Social
security should be privatized is because black men die ealier and after paying in all their life they get little back.
This may sound like a rational arguement to theconservative mind because their biased perspective gives them
a superficial understanding of all economic issues. I read a study in college that found that affluent black males
actually lived longer than their white counter part. If the fool in the White House wants to help black men he
should address black poverty. To do that he should start by raising the minimum wage a few dollars and
managing trade. Robert Kuttner has written on the topic of managed trade. Bush is too stupid to address any
issue. He should shut his stupid mouth and resign. Robert Kuttner and Robert Reich should dictate the White
Houses agenda for any and all things with economic implications, Bill Clinton and Brezinski should mediate a
middle east peace plan. Bill Clinton should approve all judicial nominees. Hillary Clinton with the help of her
hand picked task force should draw up a national healthcare plan and Bush needs to ram it through congress.
I always thought Cheney was a bit sleezey just having anything to do with ignorant sleeze like the Bushs, Roves
or Atwaters but i really never knew anything about him. Now I heard enough.
I just finished reading the conclusion to chapter 2 in John Dean's book "Worse than Watergate". I wondered
why asbestos legislation that had been pending for years all of a sudden was settled last week. Now it alI makes
sense. Cheney was going to fix the problem but it all was recently exposed. In light of what I read about
Cheney's involvement in the asbestos litigation taken on with Halliburtons merger with Dresser industries and
other things,
Something along the following lines needs to transpire. Cheney will decline a second term for health reasons.
Bush appoint John McCain his VP. McCain will chose the cabinet for the second term and start making all
decisions. Soon after the inaugeration Bush will need to find a reason to resign.
Bush invited Ted Kennedy to watch the movie 13 Days. He indicated to Kennedy that the Bush's were also a
political dynasty. So Bush wants to be thought of like the Kennedys. That means papa Bush will have to be
scrapin the kids bodies off the sidewalk. But some sick fuckers from Texas killed the KENNEDY clan. There are
plenty of sick fuckers IN TEXAS to do away with the Bushs also. G. H. W. Bush hired the white trash Lee
Atwater to run his campaign. Anyone who hires the likes of Atwater and Rove deserves a fate worse than the
Kennedies. Bush expressed a desire to be like the Kennedies. So be it.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of John Dean's book, "Worse than Watergate"
Chapter Two "Stonewalling
'I don't give a shit what happens, I want you all to stonewall it.)!'- Richard Nixon
Understandably, presidential candidates (and presidents) donot like talking about matters they consider
personal and private, particularly when the information reveals problems or prior misconduct. But to seek and
attain the presidency (or vice presidency) is to voluntarily give up much of one's privacy. The(National Review
has flatly stated that "a presidential candidate, in
the role he aspires to, is not a private person. "l Hardly less can be said about those who attain the office.
When private matters become public business, privacy must yield. This certainly did not
seem to be an issue for Republicans when they recently insisted that the then president reveal whether or not
his erect, and very democratic Democratic, penis had "distinguishing characteristics." Indeed, with such
demands Republics obliterated all the remaining areas of personal presidential privacy. But when the U.S.
Supreme Court looked at the question, they held that a \\ president's privacy must be balanced against the
right of the public to know.
However, the Court provided no real guidance whatsoever since for all practical purposes, it has consistently
held that the public has the right to know anything the news media deems "newsworthy" about public figures
(and public officials), as long as the information is understood by the publisher of the information to be true.s
Common sense guides journalists and public judgment, and it is widely agreed that matters relating to
character, such as honesty and integrity, and a candidate's background are appropriate areas for exploration.
Another area that has consistently been deemed not only fair but necessary is the health of a candidate for the
highest office. From the outset of the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, and throughout their first term, questions
relating to background, character, and health have been consistently stonewalled. Thus, they have refused to
provide information that the public by all prior standards, has a right to know.
The Character Issue
Voters believe that good character is the first essential for presidents (and vice presidents).6 Accordingly, when
presidential candidate Gary Hart invited scrutiny of his private sex life in 1987 by challenging the news media to
catch him fooling around, reporters from the Miami Herald did just that and ended his candidacy. Character
inquiries regularly probe a candidate's Or presidents financial dealings.( Compare this with Dan Rather’s story
that was true.) In 1992, _or example, the New York Times initiated its inquiring into President Clinton's pre
presidential business affairs, focusing on his investment in a failed land deal at Whitewater, Arkansas. That
inquiry prompted an independent counsel investigation, which took on a life of its own and spanned the entirety
of his presidency - only to find no financial impropriety by the president or his wife. journalists regularly look for
conflicts of interest, graft, shady deals hypocrisy, and duplicity.
Bush made character an issue in his 2000 campaign, and by doing so he asked voters to judge his character. It
started when Bush, and his campaign, questioned the character of Senator
John McCain in the primaries, and then Vice President AI Gore's character in the general election. Yet Bush
simply refuses to answer questions about his own background and character, More remarkably, he has gotten
away with it. For example, Bush ran repeated television ads questioning Gore's character, claiming that Gore
had switched his position on debating, with his ad proclaiming: "If we can't trust AI Gore on debates, why should
we trust him on anything?"7 Yet when forced to admit his own long concealed drunken-driving arrest, which he
said he had wanted "to keep secret so he would not be a bad role model for his teenage daughters and other
children," Bush refused to elaborate. Instead he went on the attack making the. Issue who had reported his
drunk driving record so 1ate.in.the. campaign, so the messenger became the issue, not his actions
No modern president has risen so high revealing so little about himself.
Bush's Hidden Background
While Bush claims to be independent of dynasty, before being elected president, he was both running on his
family name and being given a pass because of it. For the public and reporters,
Bush's formative years - which he extends to age forty are. out of bounds. Yet those are the years when one's
character and values are formed. During his 1994 campaign for governor of Texas, Bush acknowledged that as
a "young man" he had on occasion overindulged with alcohol and been a bit of an irresponsible youth. Asked in
1999 if he had been an alcoholic, he said he did not think he was "clinically an alcoholic," although one of his
close friends countered that "there's a fine line between heavy social drinking and alcoholism" - close enough
for a friend to have raised it with Bush. During the 2000 campaign, he was asked if he had ever used
marijuana or cocaine. Bush said, "I'm not going to talk about what I did as a child," adding "What's relevant is
that I have learned from any mistakes I made." And yet it was impossible to know what he learned, since he
refused to explain what he had learned from, and once again he turned the issue from the allegations against
him to who was making them. Before launching his presidential campaign, Bush hired a private investigator to
snoop into his own past to see what others might discover about his personal life and financial activities.
Knowing his worst-case downside, during the campaign he told the news media, "I will not play the game of
political 'gotcha. Will not respond to the rumor du jou r. I have told people what they need to know about me.
But his defiance has only raised more questions: Was he just a party guy until he turned forty, or does he have
a serious problem with alcohol? What about that . missing time during his military service - was Bush AWOL?
(Rather told the truth-cover up here news papers didn’t scream about) Has he truly replaced abusive
substances with healthy running,
making endorphins his new drug of choice? And what about the ,rumors that Prozac is for Bush what Dilantin
was for Nixon? Or the rumors he has been nipping a bit? Does alcohol remove inhibitions and show the real,
albeit darker, inner self (who had no problem calling a Wall Street Journal columnist, accompanied by his wife
and young child, a "fucking son of a bitch")?13
Clearly, Bush is ashamed and embarrassed by his personal behavior during the first four decades of his life.
But why refuse to talk about one's business affairs as well? Business conduct is a good way to judge character,
if not a person's acumen. "When Bush is asked to cite the career accomplishments of which he is most proud,"
the Washington Post reported, "they begin at the age of 42, when he led an investment group that bought the
Texas Rangers." His official White House biography is notable in that between his graduation from Harvard
Business School in 1975 and his work helping run the Texas Rangers baseball team, his only reported activity
is working on his father's 1988cpresidential campaign. There is a reason for this.
When questioned about his business dealings, Bush bristles at the suggestion that his family name and father's
prominence were significant factors in his business success (or stated differently, in repeated saves from
serious business and financial failures). But one need only look at his record, which he has been unable to
bury, to see that such was not the case. Bush had only one business success in his entire career; the rest,
which he will not discuss, were a string of failures. Virtually every reporter who has examined Bush’s business
career has found that his fathers influence was pervasive and decisive. "Bush's entire business career was built
on little more than the kindness rich men often bestow on the children of powerful politicians," Richard Cohen
concluded after his investigation at the Washington Post. 16 Byron York, an investigative writer for the
American Spectator (not exactly a Republican-hostile publication), similarly concluded that "if one superimposes
a timeline over the Bush career path, one sees that his rise in business coincides with his father's rise to the
highest levels of government. . . . But it may be that provided no evidence of wrongdoing emerges - there's little
more to say than the obvious: Of course Bush benefited from his connections, but that's just the way the world
works.” There is, however, more to say, because there is evidence of wrongdoing. Bush's claims about his one
successful venture with the Texas Rangers are well known. He used it to run for governor and featured it
prominently in his 1999 campaign biography, in which he recounts how he was working on his father's 1988
presidential campaign when he had a call from Bill DeWitt jr. a Cincinnati businessman. He leaves out the part
about how four years earlier, DeWitt (a Yale and Harvard graduate like himself) bailed him out of his first
business venture - Arbusto (Spanish for "bush"), later renamed Bush Exploration. After going through millions,
in 1984 the Arbusto/Bush Exploration operation had one asset left - the unsuccessful son of the vice president
of the United States. Bill DeWitt merged Bush's company into Spectrum 7. With Bush serving as chairman and
CEO, Spectrum 7 quickly failed. But another oil-exploration company, Harken Oil, was eager to have George W.
Bush's name on its board.
(No wonder Soros said he would spend his last dime getting rid of the fool-he really knows him)
George Soros, a part owner of Harken, who was not active in the management of the company but was aware
of its activities, later told Washington journalist David Corn, "We were buying
political influence. That was it. [Bush] was not much of a businessman."18 David Rubenstein, the cofounder
and managing director of the Carlyle Group, a group of top-level former
Washington officials who until recently touted Bush's father as one of their high-profile advisers, has shared an
account of Bush as a director. In 2001, Rubenstein gave a public speech to the
Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, not aware the event was being recorded.
, A'Rubenstein explained that in 1991 one of Bush's friends said, "Look, there is a guy who would like to be on
the board [of Caterair]," an airline-catering company the Carlyle Group had just acquired from Marriott.
Rubenstein continued, " So we put [Bush] on the board and [he] spent three years. Came to all the meetings.
Told a lot of jokes - not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years,
you know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're
adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company." (Of course, the punch line
to this story is that Bush did do something else - he became the president of the United States.
Rubenstein said that he has not "been invited to the White House for any things.") Savvy business people such
as Rubenstein know talent when they see it, and Bush didn't have it.
At Harken, Bush was relieved of day-today management responsibility but still served on the board of directors.
So when Bill De WItt called in 1988, during the campaign, who can really
doubt he was looking for a bit more of that magic Bush name? De WItt, whose family once owned the Cincinnati
Reds baseball team, told Bush when he called that he had heard from others in baseball that the Texas
Rangers might be for sale. * "This could be a natural for you," Bush quotes De WItt as telling him. So It was, for
Bush loves baseball and, as a matter of fact, just happened to know the owner of the Texas Rangers, Eddie
Chiles, a longtime supporter of his father. Chiles's widow has said that when Eddie learned of Bush's interest,
he didn't want to deal with anyone else. This fact made Bush instrumental to the deal. But neither Bush nor
DeWItt (apparently) nor the other potential partners Bush rounded up had the $86 million that Chiles wanted to
sell his ball club. According to the Wall Street Journal's account (which differs significantly from Bush's
autobiography), following "a pattern repeated through his business career, Mr. Bush's play did not quite make
the grade." Rather, "Baseball Commissioner Peter Ubberroth stepped in, brokering a deal that brought Fort
Worth financier Richard Rainwater together with the Bush group. Mr. Ueberroth's pitch to Mr. Rainwater was
that he join the deal partly 'out of respect' for President Bush."21 Also brought in was a successful Harvard
MBA, Edward "Rusty" Rose III (who'd made his millions in the nasty business of short selling overvalued
companies). It was agreed that Rusty would crunch numbers and run the club's finances, and Bush would be
the front man. The deal went through, and
Bush had his baseball team while DeWItt and the others could now further leverage the presence of the
president’s son. Their next step was to get a new stadium built. The stadium would
turn out to be the source of the money Bush made with the Texas R.angers, and making that money would
involve a fair bit of very dubious wheeling and dealing with public money.
(*In October 2003, Bush appointed his friend William O. DeWitt Jr. to the)' sixteen-member Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, which requires a clearance so high that it is classified. The FIAB is supposed to keep an eye
on the intelligence community and let the president know if they are doing their job. See Cincinnati Enquirer
(Oct. 10, 2003).)
.Karen Hughes describes the spin placed on the deal in Bush's autobiography. It is called "a public-private
partnership, in which the Rangers put up part of the money to construct a new stadium, and the citizens of
Arlington would put up the rest, using a half cent of the sales tax allocated for economic development" an
arrangement Bush says he was "comfortable with so long as taxpayers of Arlington knew all the facts and were
allowed to vote on the proposition."23 Bush says this "ingenious plan" was embraced by "another big thinker,
the mayor of Arlington, Richard Greene." But keep your eye on the shell covering the part of the deal "in which
the Rangers put up part of the money to construct a new stadium."
(It might not have been a happy story for the folks of Arlington, but it was for
Bush and former mayor Richard Greene, whom Bush appointed as an admin
istrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. See U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency at www.epa.gov/region6/6xa/greeneZ.htm.
According to the American Spectator, it was, in fact, nothing short of a bait and switch on Texas voters. Bush
and his partners I were to receive $135 million from the city of Arlington, of an estimated $189 million needed to
build a new stadium. "Arlington Mayor Richard Greene aggressively promoted the deal," the American
Spectator reported, by explaining the alleged benefit to 1 the city, justifying the half cent sales tax and
promising that "the Rangers would put in $30 million 'up front, like a down payment on a house,' to get the deal
going." Not until voters had overwhelmingly approved the deal was it revealed that "the Rangers would not
produce the money up front, rather over time, in the form of a $1-a-ticket surcharge, paid by the fans." And the
Rangers, who would pay $5 million a year in rent for twelve years (or $60 million), could then purchase the
stadium at the
End of their lease - for nothing! So for every dollar Bush and his fellow partners put into the stadium, they got
to take more than two dollars back from every Arlington taxpayer. And the money that Bush and his new
business associates put in was actually money they garnished from inflating the prices paid by Ranger fans for
tickets. At the end of the day those fans and the
city would not have a single asset to call their own. In addition, Bush and his partners arranged for the state of
Texas to condemn the land around the stadium so it could be commercially developed, another sweet deal for
the Rangers partnership. Remarkably, most of this information was ignored
during the 2000 presidential campaign, although the American Spectator, which ferociously investigated Bill
and Hillary Clinton's business affairs (under a grant from Richard Mellon Scaife)
for years, thought "a healthy inquiry [of Bush's business affairs would be] a good thing." It never happened.*.
To participate in the Rangers deal, Bush borrowed $500,000 from the United Bank of Midland (Texas), where
he had earlier served as a director. It appears he collateralized this loan with his 'shares of Harken stock, which
had about the same value. (He had been given 212,000 shares of Harken when it acquired Spectrum 7, plus he
had acquired additional shares through a special offering to directors.) Harken paid Bush an annual consulting
fee that ranged between $42,000 and $120,000. (dropping when he was off working on his father's campaign,
which would have paid him as well, or certainly covered all his expenses - again, he will not discuss or reveal
such matters). In
1989 and 1990, when Bush was working on the Rangers deal, he was still on the board of directors of Harken,
as well as being on the board's audit committee. In June 1990, he sold 212,140 Harken shares at $4 each in a
private transaction for $848,560.* Eight days after the sale, Harken reported a $23.2 million loss, and the
share price fell to $2.37. Bush used his proceeds to pay off his half-million-dollar loan and pocketed almost
$350,000 from the deal. Bush parlayed his Rangers investment into a staggering $14.5 million when he sold his
interest in 1998. Did Bush take advantage of his insider information when selling his Harken stock? Of course
he did. But when the Securities and Exchange Commission looked at the transaction and Bush's late filings of
his insider trade, they said no enforcement action was called for against him, nor did any U.S. attorney convene
a grand jury to look at the potential federal offenses. Of course, all 4: those people worked for his father.
Incredibly, Bush actually touts the fact that he was not charged as evidence of his exonertion, which is like OJ
saying the fact he is free proves he did not murder his wife. Many of the facts surrounding Bush's sale of his
Harken stock remain buried, and Bush has stonewalled all efforts to find out more. If this information could
withstand scrutiny, it would have been spread out for all to see. The SEC chairman had been appointed by
Bush's dad and was also a partner from the law firm of James Baker, Bush senior's White House chief of staff
and later secretary of state. Bush's attorney during the SEC investigation just happened to be a -former partner
of the lead SEC investigator. The lead investigator at the SEC into Bush's Harken trade just happened to be
Bush's former personal attorney who had helped put together the Texas Rangers deal. These conflicts of
interest - or worse - troubled no one. Not withstanding these serious problems and less-than-satisfactory
results from Freedom of Information Act inquiries, Bush's stonewalling has kept the truth hidden.
*The private purchaser has never been revealed, and the stockbroker who
handled the transaction refuses to discuss it. The broker has not yet received a
federal appointment, but anything is possible in a second Bush administration)
This I can say after having gone through the available record."; With the exception of the Texas Rangers deal,
which screwed! lots of little people but otherwise appears clean, Bush's business background has remained
buried in order to conceal either sleaze or stupidity, or both. Bush the businessman would not qualify to sit in
any president's cabinet, and it is even doubtful he could withstand an FBI background check, which you need to
for work for a president but not to be president. I
Few potential presidents could carry the baggage Bush does filled with dirty laundry - right into the Oval Office
with no one stopping to check it. Now, with the powers of the presidency, he is even better able to keep his past
hidden. And with Dick Cheney as a partner, Bush found more than a soul mate, for Cheney is a man more
secretive than Bush, as well as a wonderful mentor in the workings of government secrecy and stonewalling.
Cheney has shown his mettle in refusing to reveal important information about his' precarious health
throughout the 2000 campaign, and as his condition has deteriorated as vice president, his secrecy has
become only more pronounced - now at the risk of the nation.
* I spent many years in the merger and acquisitions business, including over
five years studying accounting and taking business courses. I have examined
and/or participated in countless business transactions. Though I have retired from the world of commerce, I
mention this because I believe by experience (and training) I am fully qualified to talk about Bush's (and
Cheney's) dubious business affairs.
Cheney's Health Secrets
Before Bush named Dick Cheney as his running mate, Bush senior requested that a heart doctor friend check
with Cheney's physicians to determine if Dick "was up to a strenuous campaign." Soon word came from Poppy
Bush's friend, renowned Texas cardiologist Dr. Denton Cooley, that Cheney's "health problems in the past
should not interfere with a strenuous political campaign." Cheney, then fifty-nine years of age, had suffered his
first heart attack in 1978, when still in his thirties, and he had two additional heart attacks, in 1984 and 1988.
After the last attack, he had quadruple-bypass surgery. Cheney's cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, later
clarified that Dr. Cooley had overstated things by saying Cheney had normal cardiac function. That was not the
case, for Cheney's heart attacks had destroyed his heart muscle cells, and he has a severely damaged heart.
Nonetheless, Dr. Reiner assured the public that his patient was up to the task (not that his patient would have
permitted him to say otherwise), regardless of his condition. When asked for more details, Dr. Reiner said he
could provide no further information until he received permission. He never got such permission. Karen
Hughes, as communications director of the Bush campaign, released a letter from another doctor, Cheney's
primary-care physician, confirming that Cheney was otherwise in good health. Hughes promised more details
would be released later. They never were. And several New York Times reports by Dr. Lawrence K. Altman, its
medical expert who reports on such matters, noted that the medical information that had been provided was
useless, totally insufficient for any other medical professional to draw any conclusions. Still, throughout the
2000 presidential campaign no further information on D Cheney's health was made available, even though it
was regularly requested.
During the chad and vote counting in Florida, Cheney was taken from his McLean, Virginia, home at 3 A.M. on
the morning of November 22, 2000, to George Washington University Hospital, suffering from chest pains.
Bush, who was at his ranch in Texas, later announced that it was nothing serious, that Cheney had not suffered
another heart attack. But Bush's information was wrong. Cheney had suffered another heart attack. In addition,
as a so-called precautionary procedure, Cheney's doctors had performed an angioplasty (which involves
threading a small balloon-tipped wire into the clogged heart artery to open it) and inserted a stent (a metal
mesh tube) to brace and keep open the narrowing artery. Putting the best face on a bad situation, Bush's
campaign assured all that Cheney would be back on the job within days, working on the transition. Yet again,
no detailed information about Cheney's condition was provided. Instead, the Bush campaign played pure public
relations, having Cheney call into the Larry King Live show from his hospital bed. "I can report that when they
got in there today, they didn't find any pregnant chads at all," a less-than-chipper Cheney quipped in a pathetic
effort at Reaganesque humor, trying to convince everyone that when he and Bush were elected, he would be
ready to serve. As the Bush campaign and American journalists played it as a minor matter, an eminent British
heart specialist pointed out, "No heart attack is minor."
Dr. Altman, reporting for the New York Times, once again noted that Cheney's physicians had consistently
been less than forthcoming with meaningful information, even though the Times and several other news
organizations again made repeated requests for more relevant medical information. Cheney declined to be
interviewed or to permit his doctors to be questioned. "American culture holds that public figures surrender
much of their privacy," Dr. Altman wrote, "and no one is forced to run for office." Though there is no legal
requirement that a candidate disclose health information, Dr. Altman observed that "the way health information
is disclosed has become a test of a campaign. The public as an employer has come to expect timely information
about the health of a candidate just as shareholders do about the health of a top corporate executive." The
next day the' Times editorial board added its voice by asserting that "the public deserves a fuller medical
accounting." Even Bush Cheney supporter New York Times columnist (and former Nixon
speechwriter) Bill Safire wrote, "Throughout the campaign, Cheney [has] ducked detailed questions about his
heart disease. His blood pressure and daily medications were not revealed. We
now know that our toleration of his brushoffs was a mistake." As for Cheney's effort to defuse the matter with an
interview on Cheney-friendly NBC Nightly News, Safire said, "Cheney stonewalled again."'" Given the obvious
importance of this information, other journalists continued to press the issue. Los Angeles Times reporter
Marlene Cimons quoted the concern of Douglas Zipes, president-elect of the .American College of Cardiology:
"This guy is the potential vice president, and they're not really telling us anything about his cardiac status." Dr.
Zipes said it was important to know whether Cheney had any heart-rhythm problems, because arrhythmias are
often fatal. USA today noted that "Cheney refuses to release comprehensive medical data that is crucial to any
independent assessment of his health." Even Republican officials recognized the problem. Former New
Hampshire governor Stephen Merrill bemoaned the failure of Bush to "truly grasp how significant Dick Cheney
is perceived to this presidency" and predicted (incorrectly) that they would "eventually release every document
to prove this is not a significant health issue. It is a political issue." Although other newspapers across the
country joined the chorus, Bush and Cheney refused to provide more information. '"
Stonewalling is a stall, the hope that with time or an intervening event, the matter will be forgotten as new issues
become current. Few reporters (and their editors) want to harp, even when the matter is important. Politicians
know this, and it encourages their stonewalling. The issue of Cheney's heart might have faded in the light of
other problems, except Cheney was headed back to the hospital, now as the vice president of the United
States, not as a candidate - and a uniquely powerful vice president. By March 2001, three months into the new
presidency, Beltway insiders appreciated that Cheney was doing what he did best, operating out of sight but
running the White House. "Bush [is] the nation's chairman of the board, Cheney[is] America's chief executive,"
the Washington Post explained. USA Today columnist Susan Page described the inner workings at Bush's
White House even more bluntly: "You name it, [Cheney] runs it." He "quietly has become prime minister, the go-
to guy on everything from appointments to budget to congressional relations." Cheney resolves disputes
between cabinet officers without having to take the issues to Bush; he is the dominant man on the National
Security Council, the only person capable of mediating between the high-horsepower players like Colin Powell
and Don Rumsfeld; and Cheney heads key policy task forces (on everything from terrorism to energy) and
even resolves departmental budget disputes. In addition, Cheney has become the White House's key lobbyist
on Capitol Hill (with offices in both the Senate and the House), where legislators and party leaders prefer to
meet with him rather than thepresident to get matters resolved. Cynics say that if anything happened to
Cheney, Bush would become president.
Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, worried that Bush was being treated as a joke, put out the word to downplay
Cheney's latest visit to the hospital. Cheney, a shrewd political operator who told Bush he has no interest in
being president (given his health and age), understood his power would be greater if he acted as if he had
none at all. As a result, he has increasingly downplayed his bad health and made himself as consciously
subservient to Bush as possible.
Cheney broke his silence, or pretended to, by suddenly appearing in the White House briefing room on Friday,
June 29, 2001. No advance notice was given, however, so no news organizations had time to dispatch
reporters with medical knowledge (or appropriate medical briefing) to ask questions. Cheney told the reporters,
those who hang around the White House for such unexpected events, "I thought it was important' to come down
because there obviously is great interest, for understandable reasons, in the health of the vice president." He
said, "I'm going to undergo a test tomorrow at George Washington University Hospital. It's called an
electrophysiology study. And it specifically is performed for the purpose of determining the prospective risk for
me going forward in terms of abnormal heart rhythms." He explained that if the test indicated irregular
heartbeats, he was likely to have a pacemaker-type device installed. But he maintained that he would still be
able to serve, that he was exercising regularly and watching his diet.
Cheney entered the hospital the next morning and the tests showed irregular heart activity, so he had an
implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) placed in his chest, which his doctor said could run for five to eight
years before it needed replacing. While Cheney and his physicians were all very sanguine, downplaying it all,
other heart specialists noted that Cheney's ICD was typically used with "high risk" patients, that it was there for
a dire emergency but did nothing to reverse Cheney's chronic problems. Dr. Alan Moss, a University of
Rochester cardiologist and a leading authority on the ICD device Cheney had implanted, had earlier published
a study in the'" New England Journal of Medicine, reporting that "heart patient fitted with an [ICD] had a 1-in-9
chance of dying within two years, compared with about a 1-in-1 00 chance for a healthy man Cheney's age.
Cheney, in a staged departure from the hospital, walked rather than use a wheelchair as required by all other
patients being discharged after similar surgeries. Following the pattern, little information was provided. The
Christian Science Monitor scolded: "Instead of politicians deciding in secret whether they are fit to serve, the
voting public armed with health information should make the call." The Monitor called for more "transparency."
The New York Times asked Harry J. Pearce, the new chairman of Hughes Electronics, a General Motors
subsidiary, ""What would a Fortune 100 company say publicly if a top executive suffered from a heart condition
like that of the vice president, and what should be disclosed?" Pearce responded, "There is an absolute
requirement to make full disclosure. And by full disclosure I mean full public disclosure." The vice president of
the largest organization in the world, however, had no intention of making full disclosure and has refused to do
so.
Since 9/11, Cheney has increasingly disappeared from public view, causing those inside the Beltway to
speculate about his heart. All that is known about Cheney's heart condition is that it has become progressively
more serious. It is known, for example, that a mammary arterial bypass like Cheney's lasts "at least 20 years,"
according to Dr. Stephen Siegel, a cardiologist at NYU Medical Center 45 Cheney's twenty-year period will end
in 2004, during the campaign. Cheney's doctors have refused, because Cheney refuses, to discuss his
restenosis, which is the renarrowing of an arterial vessel due to scarring from angioplasty. Yet this occurs in a
significant number of cases, because the angioplasty cracks the vessel wall and causes damage. None of
these are matters that can be solved by diet and exercise; rather, they are a natural biological process. I have
gone on at some length about Cheney's health because few people realize how little we know about a vice
president who is, in fact, sick. He is not a healthy man. It is difficult to imagine any candidate, or recruiting team,
who would select a vice president in Cheney's poor health. Of course, we all hope Cheney beats the odds and
lives to a ripe old age. But the stakes are too high to ignore the gamble, which is what Bush and Cheney are
demanding that Americans do. This is not an issue that should be brushed aside, as it raises questions about
the 2004 election and any possible second term:
For anyone who has considered the potential problems, one looms larger than all others. Bush's health
appears to be a non issue, as long as he stays away from pretzels. Presidential protection, however, is never
easy, and it has become aggravated in an era of terrorism. Given the condition of Cheney's heart, the true
"worst case" would be for a terrorist to kill the president, and the strain of the event also prove fatal to Cheney
(recall that he had a heart attack during the strain of the Florida recount) without his having yet selected and
confirmed a new vice president. Are we really ready for Illinois congressman Denny Hastert, the Speaker of the
House, to be president of the United States? Or more likely, Texas congressman Tom DeLay, the power behind
Hastert, who could easily insist under such circumstances that Hastert step down (as Speaker temporarily), with
the former exterminator being elected Speaker, then proceeding to the White House?
Why have Bush and Cheney refused to provide full medical information?
. The Bush-Cheney administration does most of its planning based on "worst-case scenario" situations. What
plans have they made should Cheney not be able to complete his next term?
. Who is on Bush's short list of potential men or women he would nominate to fill any vacancy in the vice
presidency, should that be necessary? . .
. Is Cheney's health going to be used after the election assuming reelection - as a ploy to select another vice
president? Is Cheney really going to stay on the ticket throughout the 2004 campaign?
But with Bush it is more than terrorism. He is the most hated president in recent history. As columnist Nicholas
'von Hoffman points out, "Whenever President George W Bush ventures abroad to meet foreign officials the
question is not what will he get accomplished but whether or not he will be murdered. Dick Cheney does not
evoke warm and fuzzy feelings around the world, either. These men are greater targets, I'm sad to say, than
any of their predecessors.
Regrettably, the denial of such fundamental information about the vice president's medical condition is
consistent with his denial of information about his character, as revealed by his business conduct. After leaving
government service and thinking he would never return, Dick Cheney picked up some baggage filled with ugly
stuff, as well as a few unsavory friends, all of which he has managed to keep hidden during the 2000 campaign
and while serving as vice president. No one realizes better than Cheney that as long as he keeps all this
concealed, not only can he operate as the most powerful vice president in American history, but when he
completes that assignment (his heart willing), he can become even richer with part-time visits to the corporate
boardrooms and the folks he is now taking such good care of as our first co-president. He has proceeded from
poster boy of the military-industrial complex to the godfather of almost every industry providing services to the
American military (and many foreign ones).
Cheney's Halliburton Secrets
Dick Cheney served as chief executive officer, and later as chairman of the board also, of Halliburton Company
from October 1995 to August 2000. He was running this energy-industry giant when Bush asked him to be his
running mate. (Actually, he was heading a search committee for a vice presidential running mate for Bush and
had promised the Halliburton board that he would not be leaving "any time soon.") Cheney's selection
proceeded on "a track so secret" that no one other than Bush and his campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh (who
vetted Cheney); Bush senior; and probably Karl Rove and Karen Hughes knew that Bush had actually made his
choice. It was not announced until mid-July 2000. Had he vetted himself as he was other candidates for vice
president, Cheney would likely have vetoed himself because of his medical condition, if not because of his
financial and business dealings. Cearly, Cheney had never contemplated returning to politics and public
service, and had acted accordingly. Cheney was hired by Halliburton not for his business skills (for he bad
none) but rather for his Rolodex (no one has a better one), given his career and extensive contacts, particularly
in Arab oil nations, from his tenure as secretary of defense. Cheney's contacts gave! Halliburton "a level of
access that [no one] else in the oil sector [could] duplicate," according to Halliburton's president, David Lesar.
Cheney told Business Week in 1998 during an interview at Halliburton, "This is where I expect to spend the rest
of my career." In 1998, after three years in the oil business, Cheney shared with a group of oil-industry
executives the essence of his business philosophy. For Cheney, it all boiled down to business: "You've got to
go where the oil is," he told them. That meant trading with the enemy, and regimes ruled by leaders who employ
unspeakable horrors against_their people proved to be good places to do business. Under Cheney, Halliburton
did business with Iraq, Iran, Libya, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Azerbaijan – to name a few of the countries
that use its oil to exploit its people, countries notorious for violating human rights. Several of them are avowed
enemies of the United States. This issue arose only fleetingly during the 2000 campaign. In late July the New
York Times reported that "Mr. Cheney's company has already done business in countries still facing American
sanctions, including Libya and Iraq, the enemy Mr. Cheney helped vanquish in the gulf war."55 It was a
question Cheney had to have known was
coming when he appeared on ABC's This Week a few days later, and he was ready: In fact, no one did more oil-
related equipment business with Saddam. The Post also noted that Cheney had managed to compound his
initial false statement to ABC's This Week by later adding, during another appearance, a bit of obfuscation in
claiming that he was unaware of the business they had "inherited" but that they had "divested ourselves of
those interests." That was a real stretch, since the divestiture did not take place until Halliburton's subsidiary
completed some $30 million in business with Saddam. By then, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof also
discovered that the Cheney-led Halliburton had "sold more equipment to' Iraq than any other company did
"Principle is okay up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose," Cheney once advised one
of his White House associates during a campaign. This appears to be the guiding philosophy of Cheney's
political and business careers. For example, not much principle was involved in Cheney's courting and
befriending the notoriously cruel and cunning dictator and former Soviet apparatchik Heydar Aliyev, the late
leader of Azerbaijan. Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor at the New Republic, was one of the few journalists who
found Cheney's relationship with Aliyev sufficiently offensive to write about it.
Aliyev, who was first dispatched to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan by the KGB to run the country, later
staged a successful coup against the country's elected president when the USSR fell apart. As president of
Azerbaijan, Aliyev "presided over" the final phases of "a vicious war and blockade" of the Armenian enclave
ofNagorno-Karabakh, Kaplan reported. Aliyev, who was known for his "the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijan's
Armenian population" and disposing of personal enemies by treason trials or simply through brutal detention,
was befriended by Cheney.
The U.S. Congress, recognizing the atrocious mistreatment of Armenians by Aliyev, enacted legislation making
it illegal for the United States to provide financial aid to Azerbaijan, in sec
tion 907 of the Freedom Support Act. Kaplan pointed out that the reason for this legislation - Aliyev's
inhumanity - "seems not to have made the slightest impression on Cheney, who has
become one of Aliyev's biggest backers in the United States, schmoozing with the aging dictator when he
comes to Washington."61 Clearly, Azerbaijan's oil was irresistible to Cheney. The Caspian Sea area oil
reserves are believed by many to equal, if not exceed, the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Cheney was positioning
Halliburton to have a significant role in recovering this
landlocked oil. Rather than using Halliburton's (and other American compa
nies') money to build the necessary pipeline to get Azerbaijan's oil to the West, Cheney wanted American
taxpayers to take the risk. (Just as Bush had done with Arlington, Texas, Cheney
"hoped to do with all of America.) As a result, Cheney lobbied Congress to repeal the aid embargo against
Azerbaijan, section 1907, but he had not succeeded before Bush called him to run
and serve. Even then he did not resign from the Azerbaijani front organization in Washington, which is devoted
to "educating" Americans and their officials about the wonders of this
Caspian seaside nation - the United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC).62
What Cheney as chairman of Halliburton could not accomplish for Heydar Aliyev, however, he could as vice
president. In January 2003, Bush quietly sent a letter to Congress exercising his authority, as president, to
waive section 907, thereby starting, a flow of U.S. government financial assistance to Azerbaijan.63 And in late
February 2003, Bush invited Heydar Aliyev to visit
the Oval Office to chat about terrorism, strengthening global energy security, and the endless Nagorno-
Karabakh conflict. Not surprisingly, the dictator's troops were (alphabetically, anyway) at the top of the list of the
"coalition of the willing" for America's war in Iraq - all 15 men (designated for law enforcement and protection of
religious and historic monuments). In October 2003, Heydar Aliyev gave his personal fiefdom to his son, ham,
through a rigged election that would have made Joe Stalin proud. But these "irregularities" did not trouble Bush
(although his State Department gagged and had to hold its nose), as the president quickly sent Ilham,
described by the New York Times as a "businessman, playboy and novice politician," his hearty congratulations
upon receiving what the Times called "a nice gift from his father." Clearly, Bush could identify with ham. On a
more serious note, the Times added that "President Bush has said he went to war in Iraq in part to create
democratic models in Islamic nations. But America's support for the Aliyevs suggests the administration has not
learned the lessons of its oil inspired support for the shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein and successive Saudi
governments.
Given that he simply upped and unexpectedly walked out on Halliburton in July 2000, Cheney's severance
package was stunning. Rather than hold Cheney to his agreement, Halliburton's board swapped it for a futures
contract, betting that Cheney would become vice president and that when he did, it would be good for
Halliburton and the oil industry. It proved a very smart investment.
Cheney's departure from Halliburton should have been treated as a "resignation"; instead, Halliburton called it
an "early retirement," which enabled Cheney to keep his options for shares of the company earned earlier. By
any norm, the deal Cheney cut when he left was exceptional for a CEO with a "mixed record" at best. Halliburton
had given other senior executives (those who did not happen to be running for vice president of the United
States) rather shabby treatment. In fact, at the time they fashioned the deal for Cheney the company was being
sued for denying the former president of Dresser Oil Tools (a subsidiary of a company that had merged with
Halliburton) his Halliburton options.67 CNN reported that Cheney's "golden parachute" gave him stocks and
options with a market value of an astonishing $62.6 million, plus deferred income and supplementary benefits.
Others guessed it to be less, around $45 million. No one really knows, because only the bare minimum of
information, that necessary to comply with vague ethics laws, has been made public. And Bush and Cheney
have done all they can to make sure that no further clarification will be forthcoming. During the campaign
Cheney refused to talk about his business career, but in a prepared statement he promised that if elected, he
would sell his Halliburton stock and "forfeit any
options that have not vested by the time I assume office."68 (He did sell his stock but not his options - which
apparently had restrictions or were below the strike price - rather, he purportedly gave them to a charity, so it
was a half-truth.) But his business career did come up in a forum where he could notdodge it completely.
During the vice presidential candidates debate, Joe Lieberman said, "And I'm pleased to see, Dick, fromthe
newspapers, that you're better off than you were eight years
ago, too." Cheney stiffened his back slightly and shot back, "And most of it - and I can tell you, Joe, that the
government had absolutely nothing to do with it."69 To say that this was a
disingenuous response would be disingenuous, if not farcical. WIthin a few hours, John Rega of Bloomberg
News, after a quick fact check, blew Cheney's throwaway line out of the water as
false,7° Of course, neither Cheney nor the Bush-Cheney campaign issued a correction.
Had Enron not imploded, proving itself to be a colossal accounting scam, aided and abetted by its auditor
Arthur Andersen, followed by Global Crossing, WorldCom, etc., Cheney's stonewalling about Halliburton might
have succeeded and his business career faded from public concern. But as the contagion of corporate
corruption unfolded in the summer of 2002, the New York Times learned that Halliburton, under Cheney, had
employed its own Enronesque accounting practices. Rather than take a hit on its corporate earnings in the last
quarter of 1998 after the Dresser Industries merger (which Cheney had engineered) Halliburton clanged its
accounting method in a manner that covered the potential loss - and did so without reporting "" this fact to the
SEC as required."" .....
In late December 2002, the SEC went from an informal to a formal investigation (giving it subpoena power). It is
not clear where the SEC is going, or why it is taking so long; as of this writing, it has remained silent. But if it is
doing its job, Cheney's problems appear to run potentially much deeper than failing to report a change in
accounting practices to the SEC (Even a Bush/Cheney-friendly National Review thinks that it was a violation
and that the remaining question is whether it was fraudulent and thus criminal? I believe even more is involved.
Once the SEC investigative camel gets its nose in the tent, so to speak, it has been known to smell other
problems cooking. Time has shown that Cheney's sweetheart severance deal may have been too sweet.
Cheney sold his Halliburton shares at over $50 per share. By July 2002, Halliburton's stock was trading at just
over $13 per share. So precipitous was this decline in value, it is impossible not to wonder if Cheney made
himself "available" to serve as vice president (knowing the job was his if he wanted it) because it gave him a
unique way to escape from Halliburton and cash out - before the collapse. Bush had used his insider
knowledge to cash out of Harken, leaving other investors behind for the red ink. Greedy minds think alike. Bill
and Hillary Clinton's relatively small, money-losing investment in an Arkansas land deal at Whitewater was
justification for a special counsel investigation (with the special counsel investigation later becoming an
independent counsel investigation when the IC law was revived), by taking the standards of that IC law -
whether there are "reasonable grounds to further investigate" - then a special counsel investigation of
Cheney's financial relationship with Halliburton is in order. There are also questions about war profiteering by
Halliburton that a special counsel should explore. * There is certainly evidence strongly, suggesting the
possibility of securities fraud regarding Cheney's
I sale of his Halliburton stock, for it is unlawful to trade shares based on nonpublic (and material) information.
Indeed, a person with insider information who undertakes such trades can be fined up to $1 million and sent to
prison for up to ten years,? Martha Stewart's purported insider-trading activities have resulted in a massive
investigation to which she has been exposed and charged. Her trades are inconsequential in comparison with
Cheney's.
Obviously, there is the matter of the accounting change. David Lesar, Cheney's successor, who had run the
day-to-day operations for Cheney, told Newsweek that Cheney was well aware of the accounting practice
changes that prompted the SEC investigation. In addition, Cheney was very close to the Arthur Andersen
partner in charge of the Halliburton account, " with Cheney even providing the accounting firm with a personal
videotaped endorsement of its practices (before it was
criminally indicted because of those practices at Enron). Cheney would not be the first CEO to play accounting
games and get caught. But he would be the first CEO to use the vice presidency to escape an approaching
boardroom disaster. That is an accurate description of what the deal with Dresser became - a_, disaster.
Cheney initiated this merger when salmon fishing with
Dresser's top man. The two competing companies had been warily eyeing each other for years, but the two
men got along so well that they decided to do the deal. Cheney spent $7.7 billion to merge his rival, but
Dresser was a time bomb. Time reported that Cheney knew of this developing crisis, which was asbestos
litigation at a former Dresser subsidiary. When reporting the merger with Dresser, Halliburton stated that the
asbestos litigation would have no material financial impact on the business. Later, when the significance of this
litigation became clear, Halliburton officials claimed that they had been kept in the dark about the Dresser
problem until after the merger. The New York Times, however, reported that "undisclosed court documents
show Dresser was notified a month before the merger that it might face greater asbestos liability from its former
subsidiary than it had disclosed," and the Times also quoted a spokeswoman from Halliburton, who
acknowledged that the "asbestos litigation environment deteriorated after 1998."
(.*News stories of Halliburton's secretly awarded multibillion-dollar no-bid
contracts (the contents of which are also secret) and overbilling have been
front-page news. The Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan organization,
has reported that so far some seventy American companies and individuals who were substantial campaign
contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign have been awarded billions of dollars in contracts in Iraq, all with
secrecy clauses prohibiting the companies from disclosing their profits, and the White House has direct (if not
exclusive) oversight over most of this activity.
Not until March 2000, when Cheney was getting ready to help Bush vet running mates, did Halliburton disclose
that it had a whopping 107,650 asbestos claims against it. The company blithely said the claims were no big
deal, and would be resolved without significant financial harm. Yet in May 2000, Cheney unloaded 100,000
shares of his stock at $50.97 a share, bagging almost $5.1 million. It is not clear when he put himself in playas
vice president, but it was certainly sometime in Mayor June, for he and Bush agreed on it as a done deal over
the July 4 holiday. In August, Cheney resigned from Halliburton (with his sweetheart "retirement" deal) and
promptly sold another 660,000 shares of the stock, at between $50 and $54 a share, collecting nearly $36
million. Three months later, Halliburton reported another 10,000 asbestos cases but still claimed they would
have no significant impact on the company's finances.
In fact, the 117,000 pending asbestos claims were (and remain) a financial disaster for Halliburton. This
problem, when the truth became known, sent the company's stock value plum
meting. According to SEC filings, since Cheney's departure, Dresser's asbestos claims are going to cost
Halliburton an estimated $3.4 billion. If Cheney was not aware of the problem he was sitting on as chairman of
Halliburton, he is not half as smart , as people give him credit for. Indeed, he could have been unaware of the
potential problem only if he had stopped reading the newspaper about 1998 (when journalists began reporting
significant verdicts in asbestos cases), stopped talking with other CEOs (who trembled at the potential of
asbestos claims), and failed to notice that Congress was holding hearings and considering various proposals to
deal with the problem. In fact, Dick Cheney operated one of the most sophisticated intelligence operations of
any CEO in America, even hiring former CIA agents to serve as superspooks for him while at Halliburton. And
he was known for asking his accountants and lawyers and insurance carriers and others penetrating questions
about everything. It is thus extremely unlikely he could have truly believed that the asbestos claims were "no
significant" financial problem for his company. One need only look at a chart of Halliburton's stock value for
years 1999 through 2002 to realize that Cheney - either miraculously or maliciously - sold his shares at the
height of the market. Maybe miracles do happen. And miracle of all miracles will be if Cheney can get the
Republican Congress to pass the pending legislation that will solve much of Halliburton's asbestos problem and
if the SEC somehow simply looks! the other way at Cheney's relationship with Halliburton. "What a remarkable
coincidence all that would be.
What does Cheney have to say about all this? Nothing. To paraphrase Nixon, Cheney doesn't give a shit, so
he's going to just keep right on stonewalling. It has worked too well to consider doing otherwise. After all,
stonewalling is gamesmanship, " which both Bush and Cheney play with gusto. But the game of
stonewalling could not begin to satisfy their need to conceal their "White House activities and the workings of
their presidency, where their demand for secrecy has become nothing less than obsessive."
I.
