The JvL Bi-Weekly

James van Luik

Publisher & Editor & Compiler

 Please forward The Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested

 Thursday, April 15th, 2004

Volume 3, No. 7

 

6 Articles

 

1. Secrets and Lies Becoming Commonplace

2. Anti Semitism on the Rise in Europe

3. The American Elections, the Future of Alliances and the Lessons of Spain

4. Bolivia: The Battle Over Natural Gas

5. A Wall as a Weapon

6. Theft of the Presidency

  

1. SECRETS  AND LIES BECOMING COMMONPLACE

BY

WALTER CRONKITE

 

The initial refusal of President Bush to let his national security adviser appear under oath  before the 9/11 Commission might have been in keeping with a principle followed by other presidents – the principle being, according to Bush, that calling his advisers to testify under oath is a congressional encroachment on the executive branch's turf.

 

(Never mind that this commission is not a congressional body, but one he created and whose members he handpicked.)

 

But standing on that principle has proved to be politically damaging, in part because this administration --  the most secretive since Richard Nixon's – already suffers from a deepening credibility problem. It all brings to mind something I've wondered about for some time: Are secrecy and credibility natural enemies.

 

When you stop to think about it. You keep secrets from people when you don't want them to know the truth. Secrets, even when legitimate and necessary, as in genuine national-security cases, are what you might call passive lies.

 

Take the recent flap over Richard Foster, the Medicare official whose boss threatened to fire him if he revealed to Congress that the prescription-drug bill would be a lot more expensive than the administration claimed. The White House tried to pass it all off as the excessive and unauthorized action of Foster's supervisor (who shortly after the threatened firing left  the government).

 

Maybe. But the point is that the administration had the newer, higher numbers, and Congress had been misled. This was a clear case of secrecy being used to protect a lie. I can't help but wonder how many other faulty estimates by this administration have actually been misinformation explained as error.

 

The Foster story followed by only a few weeks the case of the US Park police chief who got the ax for telling a congressional staffer – and the Washington Post – that budget cuts planned for her department would impair its ability to perform its duties. Chief Teresa Chambers since has accepted forced retirement from government service.

 

Isolated incidents? Not really. Looking back at the past three years reveals a pattern of secrecy and of dishonesty in the service of secrecy. Some New Yorkers felt they had been lied to following the horrific collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Proposed warnings by the Environmental Protection Agency – that the air quality near ground zero might pose health hazards – were watered down or deleted by the White House and replaced with the reassuring message that the air was safe to breathe.

 

The EPA's own inspector general said later that the agency did not have sufficient data to claim the air was safe. However, the reassurance was in keeping with the president's defiant back-to-work/business-as-usual theme to demonstrate the nation's strength and resilience. It also was an early example of a Bush administration reflex described by one physicist as "never let science get in the way of policy."

 

In April 2002, the EPA had prepared a nationwide warning about a brand of asbestos called Zonolite, which contained a form of the substance far more lethally dangerous than ordinary asbestos. However, reportedly, at the last minute, the White House stopped the warning. Why? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which broke the story, noted that the Bush administration at the time was pushing legislation limiting the asbestos manufacturer's liability. Whatever the reason, such silence by an agency charged with protecting our health is a silent lie in my book.

 

One sometimes gets the impression that this administration believes that how it runs the government is its business and no one else's. It is certainly not the business of Congress. And if it's not the business of the people's representatives, it's certainly no business of yours or mine.

 

But this is a dangerous condition for any representative democracy to find itself in. The tight control of information, as well as the dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up a disturbing image of a very different kind of society.

 

Democracies are not well-run nor long preserved with secrecy and lies.

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2. ANTI SEMITISM ON THE RISE IN EUROPE

BY

THE STAFF OF THE EUROPEAN MONITORING CENTER ON RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA (EUMC)

 

The most recent report of the EUMC staff found that anti Semitic attacks, ranging from hate mail to arson, increased in Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium last year, 2003 and the year before, 2002.

 

"Europe has a problem with anti Semitism, manifestations of which have been getting more frequent in some parts of the EU over the last two or three years," the report said.

 

It identified as the largest group of perpetrators, "young disaffected white Europeans," and identified a further source of anti Semitic attacks to be "young Muslims of North African or Asian extraction."

 

That finding contradicts an earlier, controversial report, commissioned by the EUMC administration, that had found most of those carrying out anti Semitic attacks were young Muslims.

 

The current 344-page document, whose authors conducted research in all 15 EU states, also found that anti Semitic comments were "particularly virulent" in Austria, Italy, Spain and Greece, although attacks were "relatively rare."

 

Incidents against Jews were not reported in Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal or Finland, although the EUMC report warns that data-gathering techniques varied greatly among EU nations, which made it difficult to make clear comparisons.

 

France, home to Europe's largest Jewish community, had the highest number of incidents. In 2002, anti Semitic attacks increased six-fold from the year before.

 

"There were many incidents of Jewish people assaulted and insulted, attacks against synagogues, cemeteries and other Jewish property, and arson against a Jewish school," the report staff said.

 

Skinheads in Germany

 

Germany saw anti Semitic attacks rise by 69 percent from 1999 to 2000, although they eased somewhat in 2002. The reporters noted that Jewish organizations in the country have seen a "great increase" in anti Semitic letters, emails and telephone calls over the last two years.

 

Attacks in Germany were largely the actions of skinheads, according to Beate Winkler, director of the monitoring center.

 

"That is still the largest group," she said, adding that the report's overall findings were enough to cause "fear and great distress" among Europe's 1.2 million Jews.

 

While the statistics were not positive, the reporters did say that action by the EU to confront the problem could be effective. They encouraged EU leaders to take a "strong leadership position" on the topic and urged members of European governments to cooperate more closely to fight racism.

 

The Report's staff proposed that nations check schoolbooks for racist bias and recommended that teachers be trained to talk about race discrimination in the classroom.

 

"Cancer is back"

 

Jewish leaders were split over their reactions. Cobi Benatoff, president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), hailed the report for raising awareness of anti Semitism and calling for European leaders to take action.

 

"The old cancer is back," he said.

 

However, speaking at the report's launching, he mentioned that there were "some contradictions" between it and a previous investigation that had found that many of the perpetrators of anti Semitic attacks were young Muslims.

 

Taking a harsher tone, Serge Cwajgenbaum the EJC's  secretary, said the report was " full of contractions" and criticized the findings for not properly addressing the identity of the culprits.

 

"How can you fight anti Semitism without having the courage to identify its authors?" he said.

 

His comments could reignite the controversy that broke out in December after it emerged that the EUMC administration had shelved a report compiled by Berlin's Technical University due to its sensitive content. That investigation had blamed rising anti Semitic attacks on Muslim immigrant and pro-Palestinian groups who were angered by Israeli policy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

 

At the time, Benatoff said the issue smacked of censorship.

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3. THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS, THE FUTURE OF ALLIANCES AND THE LESSONS OF SPAIN

BY

Gabriel Kolko

(Spain is the first nation to sack a pro-war leader.)

 

We are now experiencing fundamental changes in the international system whose implications and consequences  may ultimately be as far-reaching as the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.

 

The United States' strength, to a crucial extent, has rested on its ability to convince other nations that it was to their vital interests to see America prevail in its global role. But the scope and ultimate consequences of its world mission, including its extraordinarily vague doctrine of "preemptive wars," is today far more dangerous and open-ended than when Communism existed. Enemies have disappeared and new ones – many once former allies and even congenial friends -  have taken their places. The United States, to a degree to which it is itself uncertain, needs alliances, but these allies will be bound into uncritical "coalitions of the willing."

 

But the events in Spain over the past days, from the massive deadly explosions in Madrid to the defeat of the ruling party because it supported the Iraq war despite overwhelming public opposition to doing so, have greatly raised the costs to its allies of following Washington's lead.

 

So long as the future is to a large degree – to paraphrase Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – "unknowable," it is not to the national interest of its traditional allies to perpetuate the relationships created from 1945 to 1990. The Bush Administration, through ineptness and a vague ideology of American power that acknowledges no limits on its global ambitions, and a preference for unilateralist initiatives which discounts consultations with its friends much less the United Nations, has seriously eroded the alliance system upon which US foreign policy from 1947 onwards was based. With the proliferation of all sorts of destructive weaponry the world will become increasingly dangerous.

 

If Bush is elected then the international order may be very different in 2008 than it is today, much less in 1999, but there is no reason to believe that objective assessments of the costs and consequences of its actions will significantly alter American foreign policy priorities over the next four years.

 

If the Democrats win they will attempt in the name of internationalism to reconstruct the alliance system as it existed before the Yugoslav war of 1999, when even the Clinton Administration turned against the veto powers built into the NATO system. America's power to act on the world scene would therefore be greater. Kerry voted for many of Bush's key foreign and domestic measures and he is, at best, an indifferent candidate. His statements and interviews over the past weeks dealing with foreign affairs have been both vague and incoherent. Kerry is neither articulate nor impressive as a candidate or as someone who is likely to formulate an alternative to Bush's foreign and defense policies, which have much more in common with Clinton's than they have differences. To be critical of Bush is scarcely justification for wishful thinking about Kerry. Since 1947, the foreign policies of the Democrats and Republicans have been essentially consensual on crucial issues – "bipartisan" as both parties phrase it – but they often utilize quite different rhetoric.

 

Critics of the existing foreign or domestic order will not take over Washington this November. As dangerous as it is, Bush's election may be a lesser evil because he is much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power. One does not have to believe that the worse the better but we have to consider candidly the foreign policy consequences of a renewal of Bush's mandate.

 

Bush's policies have managed to alienate, in varying degrees, innumerable nations, and even its firmest allies – such as Britain, Australia, and Canada – are being required to ask if giving Washington a blank check is to their national interest or if it undermines the tenure of parties in power. Foreign affairs, as the terrorism in Madrid has so dramatically shown, are too important to simply endorse American policies. Not only the parties in power can pay dearly for it; more important are the innumerable victims among the people.

 

Germany has already called for European Union action to prevent repetitions of the Madrid catastrophe but nations that have supported the Iraq war enthusiastically, particularly Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands, have made their populations especially vulnerable to terrorism, and they now have the expensive responsibility of protecting them – if they can.

 

The way the war in Iraq was justified compelled France and Germany to become far more independent, much earlier, than they had intended, and NATO's future role is now questioned in a way that was inconceivable two years ago. Europe's future defense arrangements are today an open question but there will be some sort of European military force independent of NATO and American control.

 

Germany, with French support, strongly opposes the Bush doctrine of preemption. Tony Blair, however, much he intends acting as a proxy for the US on military questions, must return Britain to the European project, and his willingness since late 2003 to emphasize his nation's role in Europe reflects political necessities. To do otherwise is to alienate his increasingly powerful neighbors and risk losing elections. His domestic creditability is already at its nadir due to his slavish support for the war in Iraq.

 

In a word, politicians who place America's imperious demands over national interest have less future than those who are responsive to domestic opinion and needs. The tragedy in Madrid and the defeat of the ruling party in last Sunday's (April 26^th) Spanish election is a warning that no politician in or out of power will ignore.

 

This process of alienating traditional close friends is best seen in Australia, but in different ways and for quite distinctive reasons it is also true elsewhere – especially Canada and Mexico, the US' two neighbors. In the case of Australia, Washington is willing to allow it to do the onerous chores of policing the vast South Pacific and even take greater initiatives, at least to a point, on Indonesia.

 

But the Bush Administration passed along to it false intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction which many of Australia's own experts disputed, and Bush even telephoned Prime Minister John Howard to convince him to support America's efforts in innumerable ways. As Alexander Downer, the foreign minister, admitted earlier this month, "it wasn't a time in our history to have a great historic breach with the US," and the desire to preserve the alliance became paramount. But true alliances are based on consultation and an element of reciprocity is possible, and the Bush Administration prefers "coalitions of the willing" that raise no substantive questions about American actions – in effect, a blank check. Giving it produced strong criticism of the Howard government's reliance on Washington's false information on WMD and it has been compelled to endorse a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the intelligence system – sure to play in to opposition hands this election year.

 

Even more dangerous, the Bush Administration has managed to turn what was in the mid-1990s a blossoming cordial friendship with the former Soviet Union into an increasingly tense relationship. Despite a 1997 non-binding American pledge not to station substantial numbers of combat troops in the territories of new members, Washington plans to extend NATO to Russia's very borders–Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania especially concern Moscow – and it is in the process of establishing a vague number of bases in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

 

Russia has stated that the US encircling it warrants its retaining and modernizing its nuclear arsenal - to remain a military superpower – that will be more than a match for the increasing expensive and ambitious missile defense system the Pentagon is now building. It has over 4,600 strategic nuclear warheads and over 1,000 ballistic missiles to deliver them. Last month Russia threatened to pull out of the Crucial Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which has yet to enter into force, because it regards America's ambitions in the former Soviet Bloc as provocation.

 

"I would like to remind the representatives of [NATO]," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told a security conference in Munich last February, "that with its expansion they are beginning to operate in the zone of vitally important interest of our country."

 

The question Washington's allies will ask themselves is whether their traditional alliances have far more risks than benefits – and if they are necessary.

 

In the case of China, Bush's key advisers were publicly committed to constraining its burgeoning military and geopolitical power. The moment they took office. But China's military budget is growing rapidly – 12 percent this coming year – and  the European Union wants to lift its 15-year old arms embargo and get a share of the enticingly large market. The Bush Administration, of course, is strongly resisting any relaxation of the export ban. Establishing bases on China's western borders is the logic of its ambitions.

 

The United States is not so much engaged in "power projection" against an amorphously defined terrorism by installing bases in small or weak Eastern European and Central Asian nations as again confronting Russia and China in an  open-ended context which may have profound and protracted consequences neither America's allies nor its own people have any interest or inclination to support. Even some Pentagon analysts have warned against this strategy because any American attempt to save failed states in the Caucasus or Central Asia, implicit in its new obligations, will risk exhausting what are ultimately its finite military resources.

 

There is no way to predict what emergencies will arise or what these commitments entail, either for the US or its allies, not the least because – as Iraq proved last year and Vietnam long before it – its intelligence on the capabilities and intentions of possible enemies against which it is ready to preempt is so completely faulty.

 

Without accurate information a state can believe and do anything, and this is the predicament the Bush Administration's allies are in. It is simply not to their national interest, much less to their political interest or the security of their people, to pursue foreign policies based on a blind, uncritical acceptance of fictions or flamboyant adventurism premised on false premises and information. It is far too open-ended both in terms of time and political costs.

 

If Bush is reelected, America's allies and friends will have to confront such stark choices, a painful process that will redefine and perhaps shatter existing alliances. Independent , realistic foreign policies are likely to be the outcome, and the dramatic events in Spain over the past days have reinforced this probability.

 

But America will be more prudent and the world will be far safer only if the Bush Administration is constrained by a lack of allies and isolated.

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4. BOLIVIA: THE BATTLE OVER NATURAL GAS

BY

NOAH ENELOW

 

You would think the discovery of massive natural gas deposits in the heart of a developing country would present itself as an enormous windfall. All this country would have to do is find a source of financing, extract and refine the gas, sell part of it on the world market, and keep the rest, along with the profits, for domestic development.

 

Unfortunately, in Bolivia it hasn't worked out quite so rosily. The battle over natural gas has exacerbated the country's class and ethnic tensions to the point of warfare. Dozens of people have been killed in massive street protests; the president has resigned; the country is in chaos. What happened?

 

Upon first glance at the problem, there appear to be two root causes. The first issue was that the gas would have had to be exported through Chile, a longtime rival of Bolivia, which usurped Bolivia's only seaport over a hundred years ago. The deal would thus enrich Chilean export companies at the expense of the Bolivians. The second issues was that the extraction and refining of the gas were to be undertaken entirely by a multinational company, Repsol-YPF. Their contract, signed long before the latest and largest gas deposits were discovered, was to provide the Bolivian public sector with 18% of the profits from sales. The rest would leave the country – a typical pattern for extractive industries in underdeveloped countries.

 

But those two issues are just the tip of the iceberg. The peasants who make up the bulk of the protesters have good reason to believe they'd never see a dime of even those meager profits. Over the last two centuries, numerous raw materials have been extracted from Bolivia: silver, rubber, guano, and tin. The result? Underdevelopment, poverty, and disease. The leading cash crop of Bolivia, coca leaf, has been targeted for eradication by both the domestic government and the United States, as a part of the "War on Drugs".

 

Furthermore, as Bolivia has become increasingly beholden to the IMF's structural adjustment program, life has steadily grown worse for the poor. In the last 3 years, the poorest 10% of the people have  seen their incomes decline 15%, as the wealthiest 10% have seen their incomes increase 16%. Social services have been slashed while taxes have increased, to pay off the country's high debt. How far can one expect a country to tighten its belt when its poverty rate is 70%?

 

Finally, the entire conflict is rife with ethnic and class tensions. The Bolivian elites are overwhelmingly of Spanish descent, while the poor are overwhelmingly indigenous. As a group, the former have proven untrustworthy, unaccountable, and corrupt; the latter grow more irate by the day.

 

The resignation of the US-endorsed president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who supported the gas plan, thus represents a victory for the poor. But the struggle is not over. The primary representative of the indigenous people, the self-described socialist and coca grower Evo Morales, in a recent speech declared the West a "culture of death"; meanwhile, in Sanchez's resignation speech, he referred to Morales a as a "narco-syndicalist" and warned of the power of the coca growers.

 

Is an agreement possible? A broad, highly organized coalition of labor and indigenous groups, the National Coalition in Defense of our Gas, has drawn up a list o f demands. These include the formation of a constituent assembly to ensure greater  popular participation in government, and the re-nationalization of Bolivia's gas resources. The coalition has given the new president, Carlos Mesa, a 90-day truce to allow him to implement their demands. Will the two sides of Bolivia forge a new social contract, or will the country's exports continue to enrich the few while leaving the many impoverished? Stay tuned.

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 5. A WALL AS A WEAPON

BY

NOAM CHOMSKY

 

It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else. Careful scrutiny is always in order. Israel's so-called security fence, which is the subject of hearings starting today (022604) at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, is a case in point.

 

Few would question Israel's right to protect its citizens from terrorists attacks like the one yesterday, even to build a security wall if that were an appropriate means. It is also clear where such a wall would be built if security were the guiding concern: inside Israel, within the internationally recognized border, the Green Line established after the 1948-49 war. The wall could then be as forbidding as the authorities chose: patrolled by the army on both sides, heavily mined, impenetrable. Such a wall would maximize security, and there would be no international protest or violation of international law.

 

This observation is well understood. While Britain supports America's opposition to the Hague hearings, its foreign minister, Jack Straw, has written that the wall is "unlawful." Another ministry official, who inspected the "security fence," said it should be on the Green Line or "indeed on the Israeli side of the line." A British parliamentary investigative commission also called for the wall to be built on Israeli land, condemning the barrier as part of a "deliberate" Israeli "strategy of bringing the population to heel."

 

What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. It is also—as the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Israel's war of "politicide" against the Palestinians—helping turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the Bantustans of South Africa look like symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self determination.

 

Even before construction of the barrier was under way, the United Nations estimated that Israeli barriers, infrastructure projects and settlements had created 50 disconnected Palestinian pockets in the West Bank. As the design of the wall was coming into view, the World Bank estimated that it might isolate 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians, more than 10 percent of the population, and that it might effectively annex up to 10 percent of West Bank Land. And when the government of Ariel Sharon finally published its proposed map, it became clear the wall would cut the West Bank into 16 isolated enclaves, confined to just 42 percent of the West Bank land that Mr. Sharon had previously said could be ceded to a Palestinian state.

 

The wall has already claimed some of the most fertile lands of the West Bank. And crucially, it extends Israel's control of critical water resources, which Israel and its settlers can appropriate as they choose, while the indigenous population often lacks water for drinking.

 

Palestinians in the seam between the wall and the Green line will be permitted to apply for the right to live in their own homes; Israelis automatically have the right to use these lands. "hiding behind security rationales and the seemingly neutral bureaucratic language of military orders is the gateway for expulsion," the Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote in the daily Haaretz. "Drop by drop, unseen, not so many that it would be noticed internationally and shock public opinion."  The same is true of the regular killings, terror and daily brutality and humiliation of the past 35 years of harsh occupation, while land and resources have been taken for settlers enticed by ample subsidies.

 

It also seems likely that Israel will transfer to the occupied West Bank the 7,500 settlers it said this month it would remove from the Gaza Strip. These Israelis now enjoy ample land and fresh water, while one million Palestinians barely survive, their meager water supplies virtually unusable. Gaza is a cage, and as the city of Rafah in the south is systematically demolished, residents may be blocked from any contact with Egypt and blockaded from the sea.

 

It is misleading to call these Israeli policies. They are American-Israeli policies—made possible by unremitting United States military, economic and diplomatic support of Israel. This has been true since 1971 when, with American support, Israel rejected a full peace offer from Egypt, preferring expansion to security. In 1976, the Untied States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement in accord with an overwhelming international consensus. The two-state proposal has the support of a majority of Americans today, and could be enacted immediately if Washington wanted to do so.

 

At most, the Hague hearings will end in an advisory ruling that the wall is illegal. It will change nothing. Any real chance for a political settlement—and for decent lives for the people of the region—depends on the US.

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6. THEFT OF THE PRESIDENCY

BY

GREG PALAST

(based on a video produced by Greg Palast)

 

Greg Palast: Washington, the marine band plays 'Hail to the Chief' for George W. Bush, 43^rd President of the Untied States. But in Florida, some are singing 'Hail to the Thief'.

 

Country Song: After hundreds of lies Fake alibis.

 

Palast: We are coming into Tallahassee. We want to know whether George W. Bush won the election or did brother Jeb steal it for him? Our investigation suggests the answer lies in this shuttered building and in a very expensive contract between Governor Jeb's division of elections and a private company name DBT, which accidentally wiped off the voter rolls thousands of Democratic voters. 18^th floor division of elections, we have come to ask Mr. Clayton Roberts, the director, a few question. Roberts agreed to talk, but became a bit uncomfortable when he learned that we had obtained the secret DBT contract, and asked him if he knew what DBT were up to.

 

Clayton Roberts: Florida Director of Elections No, I didn't ask DBT. They do what we contract them to do. We have a statute that says we have to have a private company to do this. We put it out for bid, we put it our for bid, and I think I'm done with this interview.

 

Palast: Let me show you the contract if I could Mr. Roberts. It says here in the contract that the verification is supposed to be done by DBT. That you paid them $4 million to purchase this election for the Republican party. 95% wrong on the felon list. Mr. Roberts, could you answer the question regarding the contract… Instead, Mr. Roberts called out State troopers. It's interesting here?

 

State Trooper: Oh, man! Never a dull moment.

 

Palast: I don't know why he had to call the police. We hadn't gotten to our difficult question yet! The difficult questions are: Did Governor Jeb Bush, his Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and her Director of Elections, Clayton Roberts, know they had wrongly barred 22,000 black, Democrat voters before the elections? After the elections did they use their power to prevent the count of 20,000 votes for the Democrats? The Democrats say the answers to both questions are yes.

 

Commissioner: In any other country in the world, if this had occurred, there probably would have been riots or military troops throughout the streets.

 

Party Chairman: Al Gore won the election. He won the popular vote and he won the vote in Florida. I think that that's pretty clear.

 

Voter: It wasn't done fairly. They shouldn't allow you to contest an election then give you no way to contest it.

 

Legislator: Jeb Bush promised his brother he was going to deliver Florida. I believe the Republicans strategy was at all costs we deliver Florida.

 

Campaigner: Were people taken out of polls and stopped from voting? Yes, I think that was not right. I smell a rat!

 

Palast: This is Database Technologies. This is the company that the state of Florida hired to remove the names of people who committed serious crimes from the voter lists. I have obtained a document marked "confidential and trade secret". It says the company was paid millions of dollars to make  telephone calls to verify they got the right names – but they didn't. There is nothing in the state of Florida files that says they made these telephone calls. So the question remains, why did the Republican leaders of this state pay millions for a list that stopped thousands of innocent Democrats from voting? The first list from DBT include 8,000 names from Texas supplied by George Bush's state officials. They said they were all felons, serious criminals barred from voting. As it turns out, almost none were. Local officials raised a ruckus and DBT issued a new list naming 58,000 felons. But the one county which went through the whole expensive process of checking the new list  name by name found it was still 95% wrong. Reverend Willie Whiting was on of those removed form voter roles after DBT wrongly labeled him a serious criminal.

 

Reverend Willie Whiting: I have never spent a night in jail.

 

Palast: Were you ever busted?

 

Whiting: No. I had a speeding ticket probably 25-30 years ago, I guess, but that's about it.

 

Palast: Do you think you should be allowed to vote if you had a speeding ticket?

 

Whiting: Absolutely.

 

Palast: The Florida legislature like to see young prisoners paraded in front of the capital in old cavalry uniforms.

 

Prison Guard: Me and superman had a fight.

 

Prisoners: Me and superman had a fight.

 

Prison Guard: I hit him in the head with some Kryptonite.

 

Prisoners: I hit him in the head with some Kryptonite.

 

Palast: More often than not in America, the prisoner's colour is black. Because of the way DBT generated the list, every genuine black felon in the United States could knock out every black voter in Florida with the same surname and similar date of birth. That's why the NAACP is suing Florida for violating voters' civil rights.

 

Larry Ottinger: Lawyer for NAACP: Governor Bush, the Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Clayton Roberts, the head of elections, all knew or should have known in advance that certain election policies and practices would disproportionately impact low-income areas, and in particular black citizens and other minority citizens, and that this would disproportionately impact Democratic voters, based on historical voting trends.

 

Al Gore: Thank you, Florida!

 

Palast: Altogether, it looks like this cost the Democrats about 22,000 votes in Florida, which George Bush won by only 537 votes. The US civil rights commission is also on the trail. They called in Bush, Harris and Roberts. Bush did not convince his critics.

 

Unnamed man: You screwed up this state. You sealed the ballot.

 

Palast: Commissioner Edley and his colleagues will be in Miami tomorrow to hear from voters wrongly disqualified.

 

Dr. Christopher Edley: US Civil Rights Commissioner: If you are going to do it, by all means as a matter of due process and fairness, it's got to be done with excruciating care. It's a democracy, the vote counts. There is a lot of public concern that the contractor selected is a firm that seems to have ties to the Republican party.

 

Palast: They will be putting our evidence to Database Technologies. Their vice-president told us that "manual verification by telephone calls" does not mean ringing people up to check they have got the right person. So were they paid to produce a list which they knew would name thousands of innocent black people? In fact DBT told Newsnight that Clayton Roberts and the State of Florida: "… wanted there to be more names than were actually verified as being a convicted felon." So did they use their powers to prevent the count of 20,000 votes for the Democrats? You don't have to be black. In Palm Beach, America's privileged nurse their tans and their anger.

 

Unnamed woman: I thought I voted for Al Gore but unfortunately I voted for Pat Buchanan, and I wasn't happy about that, because I am a Jewish voter and he would have been the last person in the world I would have voted for.

 

Palast: Wacky butterfly ballots caused thousands in this Democrat town to accidentally mess up and they were refused replacement ballots promised them by state law.

 

Joanne Carbone: From the time the elections started until that awful decision that the Supreme Court made, I came across hundreds of people who  hade a mistake and I saw over 13,000 complaints filed by people who live in Palm Beach county.

 

Palast: In all, Palm Beach voting machines misread 27,000 ballots. Jeb Bush's Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, stopped them counting these votes by hand. She did the same to Gadstone, one of Florida's blackest, poorest and most Democrat counties, where machines failed to count one in eight ballots. Again Harris stopped the hand count. This alone cost Gore another 700 votes, in an election in which Harris declared George Bush winner by only 537 votes.

 

Katharine Harris: In accordance with the laws of the State of Florida, I hereby declare Governor George W. Bush the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes for the President of the United States.

 

Palast: Harris was a busy woman. In charge of Florida's vote count and co-chair of Bush's presidential campaign.

 

Lois Frankel: Had she really been unbiased? Wouldn't the appropriate actions for her to be to say – let's really get to the bottom of this election and let's make sure every vote is counted.

 

Palast: Lois Frankel represents Palm Beach, in the State legislature where she leads the Democratic opposition.

 

Frankel: She wanted George Bush to win. She interpreted every rule, every law in a way to help George Bush.

 

Palast: We are driving down to Miami to witness an American ritual. In Britain, you count the votes, then announce the winner. In Florida they declare the winner first and here we are, still counting the votes.

 

Woman's voice: She is showing the ballot in front of the light. They can see the light through where the card have been punched through. Then she holds it in front because sometimes you can see things in different light. They have a whole column.

 

Palast: Normally these are machine-read, right?

 

Unnamed woman: Right.

 

Palast: They are carefully going through the 179,855 uncounted ballots that Harris did not want tallied. They'll know the winner next month. Sources tell Newsnight that Gore's ahead by 20,000 votes. The Biltmore, grandest hotel in Miami. Democrats are upstairs eating with their riches friends charging $5,000 a plate. Let's see if we can get in. Nor far away from the millionaires on the balcony a voter had taken hostages at gun point protesting against the election fraud. But here it is back to champagne politics as usual. One Democrat whispered they would have done the same as Katharine Harris if they had the chance. But another , party chairman, Bob Poe remains bitter about this.

 

Bob Poe: Chairman, Florida Democrats: Jeb Bush, Katharine Harris, Clay Roberts did everything they could to stop every legitimate count of the vote. And that's what did us in.

 

Palast: All fingers point to the Jeb Bush crew in Tallahassee. Investigators want to break through the iron shutters.

 

Edley: I have to say that thus far we have been disappointed by the explanations, or perhaps I should say the lack of explanation provided by the state officials. When we spoke with the Governor and the Secretary of State and even with the director of the Bureau of Elections underneath the Secretary of State, they were pointing fingers at everybody else, saying "look it wasn't our responsibility", they were in charge, which is a disheartening disquieting thing for us to hear – who should be held accountable for what clearly was a system that broke down.

 

Palast: State officials point the finger at the counties and say its  their responsibility to check f the names on the list are real felons before disqualifying them Clayton Roberts say his job is just to pass on the list. Roberts now admits he didn't bother to check with DBT, if innocent people were on it.

 

Roberts: Please turn off that camera.

 

Palast: Off camera he said: We did not call and say did you check the list again… the whole tenor of this is like OK you screwed up you didn't check with DBT and if you want to hang this on me that's fine. It is certainly fine for George W. Bush. Even if investigators conclude that Jeb Bush and the Republicans conspired to steal this election, the man in that house for the next four years will be George W. Bush.

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