HEARTLESS IN DC


It is awful “that anybody would be so cold and heartless as to hold an American flier for all this period of time without notification to his family.”

This was George W. Bush on Wednesday speaking of the possibility that Saddam Hussein is holding Gulf War pilot Lt. Commander Michael Scott Speicher as a POW in Baghdad.

“Sit down and shut up!”

That was then-President George H.W. Bush yelling at hundreds of POW/MIA family members in June 1992 when they were pleading with him to tell the truth about the US POW’s left behind in Vietnam at the end of the war.

Funny, isn’t it, how indignant this President can be about a US POW left behind by his father’s administration in Iraq – and how ‘sympathetic’ he can act toward that POW’s family. Yet his father’s administration lied to, insulted, and demeaned those very families.

And virtually each and every member of the father’s administration who dealt with the POW issue is now in a key post in this administration.

Cheney, Powell, Armitage, Wolfowitz, Scowcroft – and Rummy, too, from his days as Defense Secretary in the mid-1970’s – all have been guilty of covering up, lying and writing off the POW’s.

So now all of a sudden we are supposed to buy this ‘sympathy act’?

On Wednesday at his 4:00PM press conference, President Bush said of Hussein, “Let me just say this to you: I know the man has had an MIA status, and it reminds me once again about the nature of Saddam Hussein, if in fact he (Speicher) is alive.”

This Bush Administration may want to use the fact that Saddam has kept Speicher as a POW as a pretext – as if we need another one - to attack the Iraqi regime.

But this sudden indignation – Speicher would now have been held for eleven years – is as phony as anything any President has ever faked.

Where was the anger and indignation from Bush, the father, or Cheney or Powell in 1991 or 1992 – while they were still in power? And what about for the past 13 months?

It was only because of Monday’s new revelation that British intelligence had months ago given the CIA and the DIA intelligence that Speicher is alive that President Bush even talked of the Speicher case.

And, if holding a US pilot as a POW indicates the “nature” of a government, what about our coalition partner, Russia, who still has US POW’s from Vietnam, according to Boris Yeltsin?

And what about Hanoi? This President Bush signed into law a comprehensive trade bill with Vietnam and everyone in DC now acts as if the Vietnam War never happened. Everyone is kissing each other over our new ‘friendship’ with the communists in Vietnam – who are exactly the same people who ran the war 25 years ago. Those officials in Hanoi are also still holding hundreds of US POW’s – and then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush knew it all the way back in 1976. And guess who served in that administration and worked on the POW issue? Cheney, Armitage, Scowcroft and Rumsfeld.

Much, much more is to come out about this travesty – and the Bush Team’s total hypocrisy.

When all is said and done the American people need to know the truth. Of course, Saddam, the Russian KGB veterans like Putin and the communists in Hanoi are – to use W’s phrase, ‘Evil-Doers.’ But the senior officials of the two Bush Administrations are the true ‘heartless’ liars and cover-uppers who were complicit with the abandonment of our POW’s.

Our anger over the holding of US POW’s must also be aimed at these Team Bush members – including the two George Bushes for allowing it to happen.

SAME OLD...SAME OLD COVER-UP

Well, it didn’t take them long. One day, in fact.

The Cover-Up crowd inside the CIA and the Pentagon has already gone into overdrive to debunk and besmirch any story and any source that claims that Baghdad is holding Lt. Commander Michael Scott Speicher alive.

Through careful anonymous leaks, the US Intel Community has already been able to tamp down the excitement over yesterday’s revelation in the WASHINGTON TIMES that British intelligence has information that Speicher is indeed alive – 11 years after Dick Cheney declared him dead.

In today’s follow-up story in the WASHINGTON TIMES - http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020312-2969672.htm – intelligence and administration figures will not speak on the record. Instead, they hide behind the cloak of anonymity as they try to deceive us about Speicher’s status. For example, yesterday a high administration official was quoted by Reuters as saying, "We have no evidence whatsoever that he is alive."

Oh, really?

We are supposed to believe that the Brits are such fools that they came up with totally bogus information?

Or is the truth simpler: we screwed up 11 years ago when we declared him Killed in Action (KIA) and we now don’t want to admit our mistake?

More particularly, Cheney and Colin Powell – and former President Bush – all wrote off Speicher and now, back in power - can’t admit they blew it.

This “cover-up” is always worse than the crime itself. Why didn’t they just admit the truth back in 1991? All evidence then was that he survived his shootdown – and no body was ever recovered. So what happened to him? The Iraqis aren’t stupid. They saw in Vietnam and other conflicts how we Americans value each human life – especially captured military personnel. Certainly Saddam, who follows Soviet military doctrine, knew then and knows now that holding a US POW gives him tremendous leverage and negotiating ability.

Now, with the Bush Administration making threatening noises about a “regime change” in Baghdad, it is ‘interesting’ how all of a sudden the Speicher case is back front and center.

The Bush Team doesn’t want another Iranian Hostage Crisis – where they are squeezed daily to bring our people home but can’t do it.

So what do they do?

Deny the POW is alive after all.

That way the pressure is off – and the Administration can proceed on its own agenda at its own speed.

Someone – Baghdad or London perhaps – has tried to throw a monkey wrench named Speicher into that equation.

The Vietnam POW’s have suffered a similar fate to Speicher. Hanoi kept ‘em – to trade for money. Washington didn’t want to be ‘pressured’ by Hanoi so we simply wrote the men off. They simply no longer existed. Their families were told, “Sorry, but your man is dead. So move on with your life.”

But then new information started coming from refugees, boat people, defectors and fellow inmates in Vietnamese prisons. POW’s were alive after all!

That’s where CIA/DIA comes in. They were tasked with ‘debunking’ and ‘shooting down’ these reports and thus to keep the ‘heat’ off the government.

A generation later these same debunkers are masters of the art. They could deny the very air they breathe!

Yesterday and today these oily, slimy fellows went to work to deny, debunk, disprove and deflect all evidence that poor Michael Scott Speicher is still alive.

Our stupid media buys these denials – even if some skeptical US Senators – Smith and Roberts – know better.

Let us hope that a miracle occurs and Lt. Commander Speicher – he would be an Admiral by now – can somehow be recovered.

Sadly, I have little faith that our government even wants that.

POW ALIVE IN BAGHDAD


Today’s WASHINGTON TIME front page story (http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020311-40815350.htm) that Lt. Commander Michael Scott Speicher is indeed alive and held as a POW in Baghdad is a huge story with many ramifications.

Speicher was shot down on the first day of the Gulf War, January 17, 1991 and was immediately proclaimed dead by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, with then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell standing next to him.

There was then – and has been many times since then – strong evidence to refute Cheney’s quick-draw pronouncement of death.

Numerous on-the-ground sources have seen Speicher in an underground facility in Baghdad. These reports have been given to the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) over the years – and nothing has been done.

Late in Bill Clinton’s final days he suddenly changed Speicher’s status from KIA to Missing in Action (MIA) and said there was strong evidence that Speicher was alive.

In the 14 months since then, the Speicher case has again disappeared from the news.

Now today’s TIMES’ piece claims new evidence from British Intelligence proving Speicher’s status as a POW was given to CIA and DIA “several months ago.” But, guess what? Again nothing has been done to bring him home.

Analysis: the Brits are furious over the possibility that we are going to invade Iraq soon. Stories have recently claimed that some of Tony Blair’s Cabinet have threatened to resign if he goes along with an Iraqi invasion. Today now-Vice President Dick Cheney arrives in London on a ten-day trip designed to form a new coalition to go to war against Iraq. Is it merely coincidental that this story – based on British intelligence – leaks in the WASHINGTON TIMES on the same day Cheney gets to London?

No.

This is a deliberate leak by the British Government. They are furious over the Cheney/Powell cover-up of Speicher’s existence. And they are furious that nothing was done with the intelligence they provided to the US Government.

This ‘leak’ was a clear shot across Cheney’s – and both Bushes’ – bow. The Brits are going to use the Speicher case – and our own government’s obvious cover-up of it – to thwart our intended war with Saddam or at least to modify its scope and range.

The United States Congress needs to get off its duff and look at the Speicher case in the context of the repeated failure of our intelligence agencies – specifically the CIA and the DIA (which takes its orders from CIA anyway) – to do anything right and to tell it straight. Their record is deplorable.

Congress needs to open a large public investigation of the Speicher Case as a way to examine all the other lies we have been told by our own government.

Personally I know that hundreds of US POW’s are also still alive and held against their will in S.E. Asia. Our government has lied about them, too.

How long are we going to allow this deplorable conduct to go unpunished?

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST!

You read it here first: Bill Simon, Jr. indeed won yesterday’s crucial GOP gubernatorial primary – and Gary Condit was soundly defeated in his own party’s congressional primary.

Here is what these two races portend:

1) California for decades has been ‘ahead of the rest of the nation’ as a social and political laboratory. What first appears in California often then sweeps the rest of the nation an election cycle or two later. Let’s remember Proposition 13 – the grass roots movement to lower property taxes in California. Virtually everyone - including then former Governor Ronald Reagan – thought it would never make it. But, when it did, Old Dutch happily embraced it as part of his tax-cutting philosophy.

Soon, similar propositions were cropping up in almost every state.

Yesterday’s nomination of Bill Simon, Jr., is a new movement toward reigning in government’s out-of-control growth. One of Mr. Simon’s main planks was a 15% across the board cut in the cost of government in Sacramento.

Don’t we wish a similar reduction were possible in Washington?

Politically, Simon has a tough road ahead because many rock-ribbed conservative Republican voters have abandoned the state for nearby environs. Still, his defeat of the squishy, fuzzy moderate – Richard Riordan – is a decided vote against the recent drift of the GOP away from its principles in an effort to look ‘Democrat Lite.’

This race is the single most important election in November for the GOP. Because if we can re-capture California, then we can easily keep the White House in 2004 and perhaps beyond.


2) Condit: The people have spoken – and decidedly so. They blew his doors in – and he’s toast politically – and perhaps legally, too.


The sitting Grand Jury in DC will now step up the pressure on Condit. He’s finished politically and broke financially. He probably will not even be able to pay his lawyers. So the Feds are going to move in now and exert maximum pressure. And nary a peep will come from his House colleagues. They will now treat him as if he doesn’t exist. He’s an ‘invisible man’ as far as they are concerned.

And the girls? They won’t want any part of this political leper any more.

Gary Condit has now started to pay for whatever happened between him and Chandra Levy.

Let us hope the truth about her disappearance can soon come to light.

CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME!



Tomorrow – Tuesday March 5 – is a huge day in the political evolution of this decade.

Because it is Primary Day in California – the single biggest and most important state in the nation.

And the key races tomorrow are the Republican primary for governor – and the final race for Gary Condit. First, the GOP primary:

For months President Bush and the White House have been urging former LA Mayor Richard Riordan – a moderate-to-liberal independent businessman – to run against Governor Grey Davis. After much hemming and hawing, Riordan agreed. And then he ran a thoroughly miserable campaign.

Figuring he had the GOP nomination in the bag, he ignored hard-charging conservative business man William E. Simon, Jr., the son of the former Treasury Secretary and author of the bestseller, A TIME FOR TRUTH.

Bill Simon, Jr. – in the tradition of Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson – knows that the conservative candidate is going to win the GOP primary. Running “to the center” before you secure the nomination is a huge mistake. So, while Riordan concentrated on next fall’s general election – and while Grey Davis spent millions attacking Riordan in the GOP primary! figuring he would be a tougher opponent in the fall - Simon trudged along concentrating solely on GOP primary voters.

Sure enough the latest spate of polls have all shown huge upward momentum for Simon – and a leveling or downward directions for Riordan.

At the last minute, Riordan threw some of his own millions into the race – but it probably is too little too late.

Prediction: Bill Simon, Jr. will win the primary by a substantial margin.

The general election next November? That is hard to gauge right now. Davis remains ‘damaged goods’ since last year’s disastrous energy shortages. But California is also not the same California that used to elect statewide Republicans. Many GOP voters have abandoned the state for neighboring states such as Nevada, Arizona and Oregon.

If Simon could somehow defeat Davis, he would automatically become a national political figure of major significance. He would be mentioned for Vice President in 2004, should Cheney not run again.

California is where Clinton won twice and Gore soundly thrashed Bush. But if the GOP could suddenly recapture it, Bill Simon, Jr. would be the toast of the GOP.

Up north, near Modesto, hopefully we will see the end of Gary Condit’s arrogant political career. Even his own party’s leaders have abandoned him – and rightly so.

All polls show him losing badly to his former staffer, Dennis Cardozo, who received the endorsements of Democrats from all across the state – and many in DC, too.

Clearly the Democrat Party has had enough of this man who has caused so much pain and embarrassment to so many.

Prediction: Not only will Condit be soundly defeated in the primary, but not long thereafter the Grand Jury that is now exploring the Chandra Levy disappearance will ratchet up the pressure on Condit.

Once he is a lame duck, the Feds will delight in squeezing Condit without the fear of his congressional peers coming to his defense.

For Condit tomorrow marks the beginning of the end of a cushy, easy life where everyone has catered to his every whim.

And then, maybe, the truth can be uncovered about what really happened to Chandra.

CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME!



Tomorrow – Tuesday March 5 – is a huge day in the political evolution of this decade.

Because it is Primary Day in California – the single biggest and most important state in the nation.

And the key races tomorrow are the Republican primary for governor – and the final race for Gary Condit. First, the GOP primary:

For months President Bush and the White House have been urging former LA Mayor Richard Riordan – a moderate-to-liberal independent businessman – to run against Governor Grey Davis. After much hemming and hawing, Riordan agreed. And then he ran a thoroughly miserable campaign.

Figuring he had the GOP nomination in the bag, he ignored hard-charging conservative business man William E. Simon, Jr., the son of the former Treasury Secretary and author of the bestseller, A TIME FOR TRUTH.

Bill Simon, Jr. – in the tradition of Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson – knows that the conservative candidate is going to win the GOP primary. Running “to the center” before you secure the nomination is a huge mistake. So, while Riordan concentrated on next fall’s general election – and while Grey Davis spent millions attacking Riordan in the GOP primary! figuring he would be a tougher opponent in the fall - Simon trudged along concentrating solely on GOP primary voters.

Sure enough the latest spate of polls have all shown huge upward momentum for Simon – and a leveling or downward directions for Riordan.

At the last minute, Riordan threw some of his own millions into the race – but it probably is too little too late.

Prediction: Bill Simon, Jr. will win the primary by a substantial margin.

The general election next November? That is hard to gauge right now. Davis remains ‘damaged goods’ since last year’s disastrous energy shortages. But California is also not the same California that used to elect statewide Republicans. Many GOP voters have abandoned the state for neighboring states such as Nevada, Arizona and Oregon.

If Simon could somehow defeat Davis, he would automatically become a national political figure of major significance. He would be mentioned for Vice President in 2004, should Cheney not run again.

California is where Clinton won twice and Gore soundly thrashed Bush. But if the GOP could suddenly recapture it, Bill Simon, Jr. would be the toast of the GOP.

Up north, near Modesto, hopefully we will see the end of Gary Condit’s arrogant political career. Even his own party’s leaders have abandoned him – and rightly so.

All polls show him losing badly to his former staffer, Dennis Cardozo, who received the endorsements of Democrats from all across the state – and many in DC, too.

Clearly the Democrat Party has had enough of this man who has caused so much pain and embarrassment to so many.

Prediction: Not only will Condit be soundly defeated in the primary, but not long thereafter the Grand Jury that is now exploring the Chandra Levy disappearance will ratchet up the pressure on Condit.

Once he is a lame duck, the Feds will delight in squeezing Condit without the fear of his congressional peers coming to his defense.

For Condit tomorrow marks the beginning of the end of a cushy, easy life where everyone has catered to his every whim.

And then, maybe, the truth can be uncovered about what really happened to Chandra.

OUR HONOR IS OUR MOST VALUABLE ASSET



What a two weeks we have had.

Human nature never changes.

From the Olympics to Enron to historians admitting their plagiaristic behavior, we are rife with lying, dishonesty and cheating.

Out at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics – obtained through Utah officials bribing the decision-makers in the International Olympic Committee – we witnessed gross misconduct by the French pairs figure skating judge who clearly rigged her vote under pressure from above. Was that pressure merely confined to the French Figure Skating Association, or did the Russians – who ultimately “won” the gold medal – also make a deal with her?

Then we had the case of a new substance aimed at increasing red blood cells – and thus enabling cross-country skiers to ‘carry’ more oxygen during their grueling events. A Spaniard (German, actually) and two Russians were stripped of their medals.

None of this was new to the Olympics. We have seen almost identical behavior in each and every Olympic games.

While our attention was on the beauty of sports – and the ugliness of the cheaters – we had the sad spectacle of Jeffrey Skilling, my Harvard Business School section mate, twice telling Congress while under oath that he knew nothing was amiss at Enron.

Of course no one believes him. Not a word, in fact. And that is what is so sad. How can this obviously smart man be so dumb? How can he allow himself to look so pathetic – and venal – and vain and arrogant to the entire world?

The answer? Pure greed and total arrogance – and a total disregard for everything and everybody who gets in his way.

Twenty four years ago at Harvard Business School Skilling and I sat through a few classes taught by Professor Bruce Scott who made a point of telling us all how “you need balance in your life. If you get too skewed toward work, work, work the result will be sad: you’ll be rich, divorced and unhappy.”

Jeff Skilling – a very able and talented – man, obviously thought he knew better. And now, 24 years later, he is divorced, rich beyond anyone’s imagination and ridiculed on Jay Leno and David Letterman. He is the subject of federal criminal probes; congressional investigators are exploring perjury charges against him – and ripped-off shareholders and Enron employees have filed numerous civil suits aimed at stripping Skilling of all his money.

Skilling is in for a long, tough time ahead. But no matter how it all turns out for him, he has lost something more precious than the millions he has earned – or ‘taken’, some would say – or the freedom he may forsake if he is tried and convicted. He has lost – forever – his honor

Meanwhile, Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Harvard teacher of mine (she taught a basic Supreme Court course), is now going through the awful process of being stripped of her credibility after admitting she plagiarized “passages” from other writers.

The other famous ‘Television Historian’ – Stephen Ambrose – has already been forced to admit that he, too, literally stole the works of others without attribution.

What Goodwin and Ambrose did would have caused a student to be expelled from Harvard for plagiarism. Now all that seems to happen is they lose a TV gig or two. In fact, they have lost one of their most important attributes: their credibility.


All of these people have made mistakes motivated by the ago old sins of greed, avarice and excessive pride.

This is happening more and more today because our society has gotten seriously off track. What used to count more than anything else: one’s honor has been cast aside for a short-term enjoyment of fame and riches.

Too bad – for all concerned. Because what has made the United States a special place is that personal characteristics have in the past made one special. Honesty, selflessness, caring, empathy and optimism were what made our country survive the awful times of our birth and two World Wars since.

When we lose those special characteristics, we will lose our special place as a nation in a world looking for moral leadership.



A note to all of you who have emailed me. I apologize that so far I have not yet been able to answer each and every one of you, as I always try to do. I am swamped with emails – Thank You! – and just have not yet had the time to write everyone. But I will try!