Great Articles on Washington Culture of Corruption and Secrecy

[TexasLawyer]

From Asia Times

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB10Ak01.html

Feb 10, 2005
Idealists without illusions
By Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK - When researchers from the Center for Public Integrity decided to delve into the arcane world of US government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were met with the bureaucratic equivalent of stony silence. Although the deals were paid for with taxpayer money, the Pentagon and the State Department fought tooth and nail to avoid disclosing details. This was perhaps not surprising, since it turned out that nearly every one of the 10 largest contracts was awarded to companies employing former high-ranking government officials.

After filing 73 Freedom of Information Act requests and several lawsuits, Center investigators also discovered that nearly one-third of the members of the influential Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon advisory group, had ties to companies that earned more than US$76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. "It's stunning to me, the level of control and increasing secrecy," said Charles Lewis, who stepped down as the Washington-based Center's executive director last month. "And there's no dissent on Capitol Hill. The oversight mechanism is not working because it's the same party."

In a new essay on the decline of investigative reporting in the United States titled "A Culture of Secrecy", Lewis examines the increasingly "cozy" relationship between the US news media and the officials and institutions they cover, and the advent of a "national security state" since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

"What concerns me is that the so-called mainstream media overly reliant on officialdom and not independent outside the talking points," he said in an Inter Press Service interview. "This means that there is no dissonant information from official sources to speak of. And when you cover national security and intelligence, the ability to report outside officialdom is 10 times harder.

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Lewis's article is one of a four-part series (link found in article)published by the Center last week in which leading reporters from four countries share compelling, first-person accounts of their probes into state corruption. "It helps reporters get new information on the mechanisms to prevent abuse of power," said Marianne Camerer, who organized the project. "These scandals don't just come out of nowhere."

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Here's the link to the part of the series dealing with US corruption:

http://publicintegrity.org/ga/report.aspx?aid=649

Commentary
A Culture of Secrecy

What has happened to the principle that American democracy should be accessible and transparent?

"Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." –George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

By Charles Lewis

WASHINGTON, February 3, 2005 — In the world's oldest democracy, pressure on investigative journalists is usually exerted in sophisticated, non-lethal ways, under the public radar. Every day in Washington, D.C., thousands of government and corporate public relations flaks and lobbyists purvey their "talking points" with a friendly smile, no matter how odious the client, no matter how intellectually dishonest or morally dubious their message. Journalists must trudge through the shameless "spin"-that vanilla word admiringly used these days instead of "lying," which has a harshly judgmental, jarringly rude ring in Washington power circles.


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Public apathy, though, is another matter. Take our 2003 Center report in which we posted and tallied up all of the major U.S. government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan-a project which won the George Polk Award for online journalism. Center investigators found that nearly every one of the 10 largest contracts awarded for work in Iraq and Afghanistan went to companies employing former high-ranking government officials, and all 10 top contractors are established donors in American politics, contributing nearly $11 million to national political parties, candidates, and political action committees since 1990. And on the eve of the Iraq war, at least nine of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon, had ties to companies that had won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.

The personal financial disclosure forms of those advisers are secret, and much about the entire contracting process is deliberately hidden, and therefore unknown to the public. For example, it took 20 researchers, writers, and editors at the Center for Public Integrity six months and 73 Freedom of Information Act requests, including successful litigation in federal court against the Army and State Department, to begin to discern who was getting the Iraq and Afghanistan contracts, and for how much. Why? What has happened to the principles of accessible information and transparency in the decision-making process in our democracy?

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The world of journalism is in a crisis that goes well beyond the spate of recent, highly-publicized scandals involving fraudulent or poorly reported stories. The country has witnessed Sumner Redstone, the chief executive officer of Viacom, home of CBS News and its hallowed legacy of journalistic excellence dating back to Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, publicly endorse an incumbent President on the eve of a national election-something once considered unimaginable. Over the years CBS and many news organizations have become hollow shells of their former selves, letting go of hundreds of newsroom people and positions in order to achieve ever higher profits and corporate consolidation. The result? Less investigative reporting, reduced scrutiny of those in power and, ultimately, a more easily bamboozled populace.

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[KingoftheJungle]

1. Good stuff..

just got *kicked*

[sadiesworld]

2. .

[TexasLawyer]

3. Richard Perle, scumbag

Regarding the finding that "at least nine of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, the government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon, had ties to companies that had won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002."

One of the major casher-iners is Richard Perle, my personal most-hated neo-con. Here are just some of his side-lines. And don't EVEN get me started on Perle's defense company, "Trireme." I like the title to this article.


March 21, 2003

http://www.thebishop.net/geodog/archives/2003/03/21/richard_perle_prince_of_darkness_and_scum_cashes_in_on_pentagon_role.html

Richard Perle, Prince of Darkness and Scum, cashes in on Pentagon role

Richard Perle, Prince of Darkness, is scum. This man's past achievements include being the preeminent foe of arms control treaties and international organizations in the Reagan administration, serving as a lobbyist for Turkey and Israel, being the intellectual godfather of Bush's War on Iraq, and recently calling one of America's best journalists, Sy Hersh, "the next thing to a terrorist". Today he was revealed to be cashing in on his position as head of the Defense Advisory Board and his closeness to the Pentagon. According to an article in the NYT, Pentagon Adviser Is Also Advising Global Crossing, Perle will be paid more than half a million dollars if he can convince the Pentagon that it's OK for the Chinese to own the fiber network that the US uses for communications. Some quotes:


"Perle is to be paid $725,000 by the company , including $600,000 if the government approves the sale of the company...Perle has taken on a particularly important role, they said, since the company recently pulled back its request for the government to clear the sale in the face of opposition from the Defense Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those agencies have said that the proposed deal presents national security and law enforcement problems, because it would put Global Crossing's worldwide fiber optics network — one used by the United States government — under Chinese ownership... Mr. Perle and his lawyers were preparing to file an affidavit dated March 7 and a legal notice dated today, March 20, that said he was uniquely qualified to advise the company on the matter because of his job as head of the Defense Policy Board...Mr. Perle's fee was largely contingent on the deal's being approved, an unusual arrangement in Washington legal circles.

Mr. Perle, who as chairman of the Defense Policy Board has been a leading advocate of the United States' invasion of Iraq, spoke on Wednesday in a conference call sponsored by Goldman Sachs, in which he advised participants on possible investment opportunities arising from the war. The conference's title was "Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?""

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