Home > Programs
> Peacewatch
> Wed., July. 2, 2003
Pacifica's PeaceWatch
Today's Stories:
Debate: Should President Bush be Impeached
for Misleading the Public on the Issue of Iraq’s Weapons
of Mass Destruction?
Veteran Intelligence Professional Ray McGovern: Bush administration
slanted intelligence info prior to Iraq war
911 widow Lorie Van Auken speaks out
Clear and Present Danger:
Note: if the audio link is incorrect, please check the Peacewatch
page at Radio4All.net
here
Debate: Should President Bush be Impeached for Misleading
the Public on the Issue of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction?
It's been two months now since President Bush stood on the
deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and announced the official
end of the military phase of the Iraq war. US military personnel
have scoured the country of Iraq, but credible evidence of
weapons of mass destruction-- as the US had claimed existed--
has yet to be found. A Gallup poll conducted earlier this
week for USA Today and CNN shows that almost 40% of Americans
now say they believe the Bush administration deliberately
misled the public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
More than half of those surveyed say that if this is proven,
it would matter a great deal to them.
Behind the scenes, activists led by former US Attorney General
Ramsey Clark have organized a campaign calling for the impeachment
of the President. They claim that Bush's unproven assertions
about Iraq's alleged weapons constitute a breach of the public
trust, a misuse of his authority and an abuse of his Presidential
power.
Tape: Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the
University of Illinois at Champaign, who’s drafted a
proposed Congressional resolution of articles of impeachment.
David Rivkin, who served in the Justice Department during
the Reagan and Bush Senior Administrations. His article entitled
"Saddam, Nikita and Virtual Weapons of Mass Destruction:
A Questions of Threat Perception and Intelligence Assessment"
appeared recently on the website http://www.inthenationalinterest.com
[top]
Veteran Intelligence Professional Ray McGovern:
Bush administration slanted intelligence info prior to Iraq
war
As more and more US troops die in Iraq each day, the U.S.
Congress, in closed door sessions, is examining the question
of whether the Bush administration used undue influence over
the intelligence community to slant intelligence information
to support invading Iraq.
Ray McGovern was a member of the CIA for 27 years and he
served as the “All Intelligence Agent” during
the Reagan administration. He was responsible for briefing
the President, the Vice President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
the Cabinet and National Security Advisor. He’s now
part of a group of former intelligence agents who are so dismayed
with the intelligence used to support going to war against
Iraq that they formed a group called Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity or VIPS.
In this commentary for Peace Watch Ray McGovern points to
an unsual pattern on the part of Vice President Dick Cheney
to visit the CIA headquarters, which he did 27 times prior
to the invasion.
Tape: Ray McGovern, spokesperson for Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
[top]
911 widow Lorie Van Auken speaks out
Approximately one year after terrorists flew planes into
the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon, Congressional
staffer Eleanor Hill released a 30 page statement that found
information on possible terrorist strikes continued to filter
through the nations’s intelligence system in the months
directly before the attacks.
It specifically mentions a possible attack by Osama Bin Laden’s
Al Qaida network against U.S. and or Israeli interests that
would be ‘spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties”
It warned that preparations had been made and would occur
with little or no warning. Hill’s report also said the
National Security Agency reported at least 33 communications
between May and July 2001 suggesting a ‘possible, imminent,
terrorist attack.’
Additionally, a 900 page bipartisan Congressional study completed
late last year remains stuck in national security limbo as
the people who completed the report negotiate with the White
House and intelligence agencies over which portions of the
report can be made public.
So who dropped the ball that led to the deaths of 3,000 people
in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania? The families of those
victims are fed up with the administration’s handling
of the facts around the tragedy. Lorie Van Auken is the widow
of Ben Van Auken, who worked in Tower One of the World Trade
Centers. Speaking recently with Peacewatch, she expressed
her frustration with the Bush administration’s response
to the 911 investigation.
Tape: Lorie Van Auken, the widow of Ben Van Auken, who worked
in Tower One of the World Trade Centers and was killed on
September 11th.
[top]
Clear and Present Danger:
Increased surveillance and intelligence-gathering activities
in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001,
have worried many civil libertarians. They fear that federal,
anti-terrorist legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and
its proposed sequel, the PATRIOT Act II are being enacted
at the expense of personal privacy and democratic freedoms
traditionally protected under the 1st, 4th and 6th amendments.
On this week's final edition of "Clear and Present Danger,"
Pacifica's 10-part series exploring the challenges of free
expression in an open society, we hear about these threats
from Charles Lewis, a former investigative reporter for ABC
and CBS who left the mainstream media behind in 1989 to found
a non-profit, non-partisan, investigative research organization
called the Center for Public Integrity.
Tape: Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity,
speaking with Stephen Rohde as part of "A Clear and Present
Danger," Pacifica's series exploring the challenges of
free expression in an open society. The show is a production
of PEN USA and the Pacifica Radio Archives. The Executive
Producer was Deborah Jones, the producer was Eileen Moskowitz,
and the editor was Mark Torres. To obtain a copy, you can
go to http://www.pacificaradioarchives.org,
and to find out more about PEN USA, go to http://www.penusa.org
[top]
For a copy of today's show, please contact Pacifica
Radio Archives at 800 735 0230.
|
Listen
to the show
Help
stream
whole show
download
part 1
