Bush came to a Republican-friendly heartland state for the first day of the blitz for public support for the National Security Agency operation first reported in the New York Times last month.

After initially refusing to confirm the existence of the program and then defending it from criticism, the administration now is vigorously promoting the wiretapping as vital in the struggle against terrorism.

"These are not phone calls within the United States," Bush said. "It's a phone call of an al-Qaida, a known al-Qaida suspect, making a phone call into the United States."

The president added, "I'm mindful of your civil liberties."

In two weeks, the Senate is set to open hearings on the program, which some lawmakers have assailed as a possible violation of the constitutional shield against unlawful search and seizure and a dangerous White House power grab in the guise of fighting terrorism. The program bypassed a special, secret government court that has granted almost all of the administration's requests for wiretapping warrants.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called Bush's claims misleading and unfair.

"If the president needs more powers to protect the American people from terrorism, he should come to Congress to modify current laws, not act arrogantly and unilaterally," Kennedy said.

Bush said members of Congress have been briefed on the program, which he has reauthorized more than 30 times since its inception in 2001.

"You know, it's amazing when people say of me, 'Well, he was just breaking the law,' " Bush said. "If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?"

Rep. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, charged in a letter to Bush this month that the briefings were so restricted in the amount of information and the number of congressmen involved that they violated the National Security Act.

The White House briefings included Republican chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees and the two corresponding Democrats. The law requires the president to keep all committee members fully informed of intelligence activities except for secret overseas operations.

Bush spoke as part of the same Kansas State University lecture series in which President Nixon asked in 1970 for patience about the Vietnam War.

After talk about terrorism, Bush called for questions in a format he is using more frequently as he seeks to raise his flagging public approval ratings through more spontaneous events with friendly audiences.

A soldier from nearby Fort Riley asked Bush how he copes with criticism and what advice he would give about it to future leaders.

Bush said "faith, family and friends," adding that exercise also is key to managing stress.

"There's nothing better than going home to somebody who understands and is sympathetic," Bush said. "I mean, Laura's job is just as important as mine in many ways." Of his twin daughters, the president added, "The girls still love me."

To a question about British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he expressed regret that Blair is seen by British critics as a Bush lap dog: "Sometimes I can be a little allergic for people overseas, if you know what I mean."

This interpretation, with its expansive view of the commander in chief's powers, would call into question Congress's ability to prevent the administration from engaging in torture or cruel and inhuman treatment or to establish rules for detainees and military tribunals -- exactly the areas in which we have been encouraging Congress to step up to the plate.

The administration, appropriately, would prefer to avoid the constitutional argument. Instead, it contends first that FISA's warrant requirements were superseded by the post-Sept. 11 congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which allows the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" to prevent "any future acts of international terrorism against the United States."

The administration cites this sweeping language and the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld , in which a plurality found that the AUMF allowed the president to detain U.S. citizens captured on the battlefield as enemy combatants. The administration says that reasoning applies equally to "all traditional and accepted incidents of force . . . including warrantless electronic surveillance to intercept enemy communications both at home and abroad."

A critical difference between detention and surveillance, however, is that Congress has already passed a law outlining detailed requirements for domestic surveillance -- even during wartime; FISA specifically provides a 15-day grace period for warrantless surveillance in time of war. The vague wording of the AUMF can't reasonably be read to implicitly trump FISA.

The administration goes on to say that if the AUMF doesn't provide such approval, and if FISA is interpreted to prohibit such wiretapping outside its procedures (the law says it is to be the "exclusive means" for authorizing foreign intelligence surveillance), the statute would be unconstitutional.

President Bush, the paper says, "determined that the speed and agility required to carry out the NSA activities successfully could not have been achieved under FISA." Because those activities "are necessary to the defense of the United States from a subsequent terrorist attack, FISA would impermissibly interfere with the President's most solemn constitutional obligation -- to defend the United States against foreign attack."

Before and since the 1978 passage of FISA, presidents have asserted that they also possess the inherent constitutional authority to authorize warrantless searches. Yet there is a major difference between claiming such inherent presidential power and stretching it -- too far in our view -- to conclude that, when Congress has spoken on an issue, the president is free to ignore that legislative action.

Especially without knowing the parameters of the surveillance, we hesitate to second-guess the president's argument that FISA's limits are unduly constraining. The surveillance may be critical for national security, and a law written in a different technological age may well need to be refurbished. But the proper way to handle that -- which the administration rejected -- would have been to seek changes in the law, not to do a stealthy end run around the legislative process. In such an amorphous, long-running conflict as the war against terrorism, it's critical to ensure that limits are in place to prevent the executive branch from overreaching.

Sources said the probe to determine whether the president violated the law will include Republicans, but that they may not be aware they could be helping to lay the groundwork for a Democratic impeachment campaign against Mr. Bush.

"Our arithmetic shows that a majority of the committee could vote against the president," the source said. "If we work hard, there could be a tie."


The law limits the government surveillance to no more than 72 hours without a court warrant. The president, citing his constitutional war powers, has pledged to continue wiretaps without a warrant.

The hearings would be accompanied by several lawsuits against the administration connected to the surveillance program. At the same time, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that demands information about the NSA spying.

Sen. Arlen Specter, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and Pennsylvania Republican, has acknowledged that the hearings could conclude with a vote of whether Mr. Bush violated the law. Mr. Specter, a critic of the administration’s surveillance program, stressed that, although he would not seek it, impeachment is a possible outcome.

"Impeachment is a remedy," Mr. Specter said on Jan. 15. "After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution. But the principal remedy under our society is to pay a political price."

Mr. Specter and other senior members of the committee have been told by legal constitutional experts that Mr. Bush did not have the authority to authorize unlimited secret electronic surveillance. Another leading Republican who has rejected the administration's argument is Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

On Jan. 16, former Vice President Al Gore set the tone for impeachment hearings against Mr. Bush by accusing the president of lying to the American people. Mr. Gore, who lost the 2000 election to Mr. Bush, accused the president of "indifference" to the Constitution and urged a serious congressional investigation. He said the administration decided to break the law after Congress refused to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," Mr. Gore said.

"I call upon members of Congress in both parties to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution,” he said. “Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of American government that you are supposed to be under the constitution of our country."

Impeachment proponents in Congress have been bolstered by a memorandum by the Congressional Research Service on Jan. 6. CRS, which is the research arm of Congress, asserted in a report by national security specialist Alfred Cumming that the amended 1947 law requires the president to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" of a domestic surveillance effort. It was the second CRS report in less than a month that questioned the administration's domestic surveillance program.

The latest CRS report said Mr. Bush should have briefed the intelligence committees in the House and Senate. The report said covert programs must be reported to House and Senate leaders as well as the chairs of the intelligence panels, termed the "Gang of Eight."

Administration sources said Mr. Bush would wage a vigorous defense of electronic surveillance and other controversial measures enacted after 9/11. They said the president would begin with pressure on Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Bush would then point to security measures taken by the former administration of President Bill Clinton.

"The argument is that the American people will never forgive any public official who knowingly hurts national security," an administration source said. "We will tell the American people that while we have done everything we can to protect them, our policies are being endangered by a hypocritical Congress."

OK, let's try to puzzle out together some recent political events. The unifying thread will appear; it always does because it's always there, even if sometimes out of conscious reach.

1. Why would the Bush Administration deliberately break the law by engaging in electronic surveillance of Americans without getting the required court warrants?

Since the rubber-stamp FISA court had turned down only five applications for domestic spying warrants out of about 15,000 since its inception in 1979, why wouldn't the Bush Administration automatically go to it for the required warrants? One implication, certainly, is that even the amenable FISA court might rebel when it found out the true motives and scope of the ongoing domestic spying, for, you see, Bush's order to NSA to engage in massive communication surveillance preceded 9/11. See "Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11" and "How Cheney Used the NSA for Domestic Spying Prior to 9/11.

The Busheviks say they decided not to use FISA because the government needs the speed and flexibility to move quickly, and agents can't keep running to the secret court each time. But the law has a built-in proviso that permits NSA to move quickly in an emergency and fill out the required paperwork later, within three days.

The technology is now much more advanced that it was in the old "wire-tapping" days, when police agencies wanted to listen in on someone's bedroom or office phone. Now humongous computer banks do data-mining of millions of phone calls (land-line, cell, satellite) and email messages to and from Americans; they sweep up, and government agents check out, masses of "suspects," based on words or patterns unearthed by the data-mining programs. Of course, the vast majority of those "clues" turn out to be worthless; see "Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends"
( www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0117-01.htm ). Yet, regardless of that reality and the invasion of ordinary citizens' privacy, the Bush Administration continues the massive intercepts, and apparently will be proudly citing this "national-security" program for the coming midterm elections.

Rather than stay within the law by going to Congress and saying "Look, the technology now requires blanket court warrants, so please amend the FISA bill," the Bush Administration simply chose to ignore all attempts to remain legal. They deliberately did not go to go to FISA court for permission, or to Congress for rewriting the authorization bill -- and they did (and are still doing) everything possible to keep the issue from going into the federal courts. In deepest secrecy, they made themselves the law and simply carried on, all the while trying to get into place their Federalist Society-type judges, who would rule in favor of the President, always.

The Bush Bunker crew wants the freedom desired by all authoritarian leaders: to act on their own, free of restraints, especially those coming from the courts or legislature. Arrogant and insecure, they need to know what everyone is thinking and doing, as a means of enhancing and protecting their political power. If they accidentally wind up getting some actionable intelligence about foreign terrorists, all the better.

So the short answer to the question as to why they Bush Administration broke the law is that they felt they could get away with this top-secret snooping on American citizens without anyone ever finding out. Once the word leaked about what they actually were doing, they hauled out the cockamamie "unitary executive" theory that asserts the President can violate whatever laws he wants, whenever he wants to, because he's "commander-in-chief" during "wartime." (The "war," never declared by Congress, is Bush's "war on terrorism," which, we're told, will last forever. Dictatorship for perpetuity.)

The Bush Administration utilized the same theory to justify Bush's authorization of torture of prisoners in U.S. care. And, as political insurance, it added one more rationale for the NSA spying: With a major leap in interpretation, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for decades a Bush toady, claims that the post-9/11 resolution authorizing Bush to use "force" against al Qaida provides even more justification to monitor U.S. citizens' communications. Even if this interpretation were correct -- and most legal scholars think the opposite -- this war-authorization rationale does not explain away the pre-9/11 surveillance of American citizens.

If I'm correct here, the reason the Bushies are fighting so hard to keep anyone, including the FISA judges, from learning more about the real reason for their massive domestic surveillance is that outsiders might discover that it has less to do with foreign terrorists and more to do with collecting info on their political enemies and thus creating conditions for more firm control of the American populace in general.

THE NEW BIN LADEN AUDIOTAPE

2. Why the new "Bin Laden audiotape" now, warning of a coming attack on the U.S.?

The CIA, rather than independent experts (as was the case in years past), announced that this audiotape was indeed made by bin Laden. Most of the CIA's "recalcitrant" analysts and agents were purged last year by Bush's hand-picked new director, Porter Goss, another malleable Bush loyalist. Should one automatically trust the CIA's claim that this is an authentic bin Laden tape?

The timing of its release is unusually convenient for the Administration, when Bush's favorable numbers are plummeting and so many scandals are exploding into public consciousness that impeachment possibilities are being mentioned -- even by Republicans! Let us not forget that just before the 2004 election, another such audiotape alleged to be from bin Laden appeared, and was believed to have helped Bush in the balloting.

If the Bush Administration takes seriously this Osama bin Laden threat to attack America again, why has the color-coded threat-level not been raised? Remember Tom Ridge admitting ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-10-ridge-alerts_x.htm?poe=newisva ), after he left the directorship of the Homeland Security Department, that his White House superiors sent him out to issue "terror-threat" warnings, with little or no evidence to back them up; the clear implication is that political reasons were at play whenever Bush's numbers started to tank or a new scandal erupted.

But even if the new "bin Laden tape" is genuine, it would merely demonstrate that both religious/political extremists require each other, for their own ends. In this theory, Bush needs bin Laden as the terrorist boogeyman, to increase the fear quotient in the American citizenry and thus permit his Administration to bend and twist the Constititution to aid his own political agenda. And bin Laden needs Bush as the Western imperialist boogeyman, for recruitment purposes and for solidfying the growing anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and his leading role in that revolt.

THE "DISAPPEARING" OF AL GORE

3. Why the virtual absence of mainstream-media coverage of Al Gore's amazingly tough speech last week?

Whether or not one finds merit in Gore's toughest charges in his incendiary speech, the former Vice President of the United States (who, don't forget, received more votes nationwide than Bush in the 2000 election) practically called the sitting President a lying crook whose policies approach police-state status. He urged a Special Counsel to investigate this Administration's alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, especially those having to do with the destruction of the checks-and-balances system in our governmental system, as evidenced by Bush's illegal behavior in the NSA spying scandal.

By any definition, a former Vice President saying that a sitting President is violating the Constitution is news. But one would be hard-pressed to find any signficant coverage, or even a mention, of it in the mainstream media. It was as if it never happened.

In the so-called "liberal" media, PBS's The News Hour had no mention Monday evening, even though the speech had been delivered around noontime, and then no coverage Tuesday as well. The New York Times, the "newspaper of record," buried a mention of Gore's speech in the final three paragraphs of a long story about something else. ABC News had a quick mention toward the end of its Monday broadcast, but no excerpts from the speech. Nothing on CBS or NBC newscasts. (The entire speech was covered verbatim on CSPAN, but not a lot of Americans watch that channel.)

One can only speculate why the mainstream media would freeze-out news of such major import. It's easy enough to understand why the rightwing cable networks and commentators would try to ignore or play down Gore's hard-hitting charges against Bush, but the more serious journalists at CBS? NBC? ABC? True, these are giant conglomerate-owned corporations, but they've covered big anti-Bush stories before. (PBS was somewhat declawed by its right-wing then-overseer, Ken Tomlinson, but usually the News Hour With Jim Lehrer is more even-handed.)

No, it's clear that Gore's frontal attack on Bush Administration mendacity and police-state tactics hit a raw nerve and network execs decided, either after having been warned by Bush officials or by self-censoring their own newscasts, that discretion was the better part of valor.

The result, of course, reminds one of the old koan: If a huge tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, was there a sound? Millions of American citizens were deprived of hearing that loud sound, and thus having more information available to make intelligent choices in a democracy. Precisely what the Rove/Bush/Cheney forces were hoping for.

FISHING IN THE SEARCH-ENGINE PONDS

4. Why the Bush Administration's demand that Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search-engines provide them with a week's worth of data about search requests by their users?

The Bush Administration says the aim is not to collect personal information, only generic patterns that will help convince the courts to keep certain anti-pornography laws in place. It's hard to imagine that any court would authorize such wide-sweeping fishing expeditions on an unrelated matter with no reasonable criminal reason for the search -- but, with Bush-appointed judges in place throughout the appellate court system, who knows? (Note: Google says it will go to court to resist the government's request for these archived, private records.)

The additional dangers of permitting such immense data searches are three-fold:

1) The government's massive computer system may be capable of back-tracking the data to email addresses of those seeking illegal porn on the 'net, with harrassment and arrests to follow.

The Busheviks assert that they have no such intent. But who supervises what the government will do with this raw information? In short, who polices the police? Would you trust the Bush Administration to do the right thing? They've shown no evidence of that before, and have displayed a willingness to hide the truth, distort and lie, to keep the public from ever learning their dirty little secrets. In general, it's not wise to trust ANY government with too much information about what you're up to, but especially this government.

2) On the surface, the government's demanding to see all those millions of searches focus on a subject designed to elicit support from the American people -- stopping kiddie-porn. But feed that search-engine data into NSA's massive computers and, voila, out comes whatever other info you want to look for. In short, it's data-mining from another angle -- not through phone calls and emails but through internet search-engines' databases. Once the precedent is established with pornography, other "topics of interest" might not be far behind.

3) One aim of the Bush Administration is to make citizens suspicious of information sources other than the government and its far-right media cohorts. The Busheviks already have made many people doubt the so-called "liberal" mainstream media; now the target is the internet, a free-flowing, difficult-to-control information-delivery system. How to remove some of the respectability of that source of non-official (and often anti-Bush) information? One way would be to let folks know that everything they do on the internet -- even logging onto a search-engine and surfing the web for information -- may well be observed by the thought-police. More citizens might then choose to retire into their individual data shells, and get their informational fixes through more "official" channels.

THE ARROGANCE OF UNCHECKED POWER

So, we've done the news-analysis dance. Can you spot the unstated throughline in all the items discussed above? Yes, of course, it's the reckless dangers associated with the arrogance and abuse of power, be it corporate or governmental. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

We are living through one of America's darkest periods in its history, when mendacity, the lust for power, and greed have corrupted even the best of our institutions. There must be some way out of here, and right now the exits can be found in stopping the worst actors from doing more damage (see: Alito, Sam), starting impeachment hearings to learn the whole rotten truth, and re-establishing electoral integrity by eschewing easily-manipulated computer-voting systems and returning to paper ballots hand-counted. A fair and honest election system certainly would help bring more light into this dark time.

So, friends, there are ways out of here, but it will take lots of hard work, money, energy and extreme courage. Get ready: It's going to get even nastier.

Let the rumpus begin.


First published by The Crisis Papers and Democratic Underground 1/24/06.

Copyright 2006 by Bernard Weiner.

www.crisispapers.org

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).

Under the new theories, Bush can act both domestically and internationally. His powers know no bounds and no boundaries.

Bush has made this radical change in the American political system by combining what his legal advisers call the “plenary” – or unlimited – powers of the Commander in Chief with the concept of a “unitary executive” in control of all laws and regulations.

Yet, maybe because Bush’s assertion of power is so extraordinary, almost no one dares connect the dots. After a 230-year run, the “unalienable rights” – as enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the Founding Fathers – are history.

Legal Analysis

The Justice Department spelled out Bush’s latest rationale for his new powers on Jan. 19 in a 42-page legal analysis defending Bush’s right to wiretap Americans without a warrant.

Bush’s lawyers said the congressional authorization to use force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “places the President at the zenith of his powers” and lets him use that authority domestically as well as overseas. [NYT, Jan. 20, 2006]

According to the analysis, the “zenith of his powers” allows Bush to override both the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against searches and seizures without court orders, and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created a special secret court to approve spying warrants inside the United States.

In its legal analysis, the Justice Department added, “The president has made clear that he will exercise all authority available to him, consistent with the Constitution, to protect the people of the United States.”

While the phrase “consistent with the Constitution” sounds reassuring to many Americans, what it means in this case is that Bush believes he has unlimited powers as Commander in Chief to do whatever he deems necessary in the War on Terror.

Since the War on Terror is a vague concept – unlike other wars the United States has fought – there also is no expectation that Bush’s usurpation of traditional American freedoms is just a short-term necessity. Instead it is a framework for future governance.

For a time, some Americans also may have thought that Bush’s commander-in-chief powers applied only to foreigners linked to al-Qaeda and to the occasional American who collaborated with the terrorist group. So they didn’t mind much when Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and locked up without charge as an “enemy combatant.”

That indefinite detention might have violated the constitutional principle of habeas corpus – the requirement that every citizen has a right to due process and a fair trial – but many Americans were swayed when Bush called Padilla a “bad guy” who was getting what he deserved.

Now, Americans have learned that Bush considers his powers to extend to a much broader category of citizens. That is the significance of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program directed against hundreds of American targets at any one time.

In bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Bush demonstrated his belief, too, that he has the power to ignore specific laws as well as broader constitutional principles.

Lies and Lies

Another factor complicating the ability of Americans to understand the emerging constitutional crisis is that Bush has shown a readiness to lie about the cases.

For instance, though he secretly approved the wiretap program in 2002, he kept telling the public that wiretaps could only be done with court warrants. In a speech in Buffalo, N.Y., on April 20, 2004, Bush went out of his way to state that he had not abrogated the rights of American citizens under the Fourth Amendment.

“By the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order,” Bush said. “Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

After the warrantless wiretaps became public in December 2005, Bush continued to misrepresent the program, calling it “limited” to “taking known al-Qaeda numbers – numbers from known al-Qaeda people – and just trying to find out why the phone calls are being made.”

In his folksy style, he told an audience in Louisville, Kentucky, on Jan. 11 that “it seems like to me that if somebody is talking to al-Qaeda, we want to know why.”

But Bush’s reassuring tale wasn’t true. The program that Bush described could easily be accomplished under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act using a provision that lets the government wiretap for 72 hours before going to the special court for a warrant.

The reality is that Bush has authorized the National Security Agency to scoop up a vast number of calls and e-mails. The operation is so large that it has generated thousands of tips each month, which are passed on to the FBI.

“But virtually all of [the tips], current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans,” the New York Times reported. “FBI officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. … Some FBI officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy.” [NYT, Jan. 17, 2006]

Another example of Bush’s assertion of his supremacy over laws enacted by Congress came in December 2005 when he signed Sen. John McCain’s amendment barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.

Bush then issued a so-called “signing statement” that reserved his right to ignore the law.

“The Executive Branch shall construe [the torture ban] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power,” the signing statement read.

In other words, since Bush considers his commander-in-chief authority boundless, he can waive the torture ban whenever he wants, making it virtually meaningless.

The Bush/Laden Symbiosis

But just as public skepticism about Bush’s exercise of authority was approaching critical mass, Osama bin-Laden resurfaced on Jan. 19 in a new audiotape sent to al-Jazeera TV, ending more than a year of silence.

The voice on the tape – identified as that of bin-Laden both by al-Jazeera and the CIA – predicted America’s defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq while warning of new attacks inside the United States.

“Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished,” said bin-Laden, according to a transcript of the tape.

So, Bush can now cite this new threat from al-Qaeda as well as the bloody conflict in Iraq as justifications for continuing to consolidate his powers as the “unitary executive.”

The latest bin-Laden audiotape also continues a long – and curious – symbiotic relationship between the Bush family and the bin-Ladens, dating back to Bush’s days as a young businessman.

In 1979, Bush’s friend James Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin-Laden, scion of the wealthy Saudi bin-Laden family and Osama’s half-brother. While fronting for Salem bin-Laden, Bath helped bankroll Bush’s first company, Arbusto Energy, by investing $50,000 for a five percent stake.

In the 1980s, Osama bin-Laden established himself as an Islamic fighter by battling side-by-side with Afghan rebels whose guerrilla war against the Soviet Army and its surrogates was staunchly supported by George H.W. Bush, first as vice president and then as president.

By the late 1990s, bin-Laden had become recognized as a major terrorist threat against the United States. Still, when the CIA warned George W. Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, that bin-Laden was determined “to strike in U.S.,” Bush went fishing and continued a month-long vacation, failing to rally the government to examine available clues and tighten security.

A little more than a month later, on Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes crashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the senior George Bush and members of the bin-Laden family were participating in a Carlyle Group investment meeting in Washington.

In the days that followed, as George W. Bush’s Justice Department rounded up hundreds of Arab cab drivers and other Muslims on minor visa violations, the bin-Ladens were spirited out of the United States after only cursory questioning. [For details, see Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud.]

Ironically, too, Bush’s accumulation of power since the Sept. 11 attacks has gone hand-in-hand with his failures connected to Osama bin-Laden. For instance, if Bush had finished off al-Qaeda’s leaders in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002, he would have a weaker foundation for his new authority now.

By letting bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders escape when they apparently were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, Bush kept alive a plausible scenario for additional al-Qaeda attacks inside the United States and thus the justification for his unrestrained powers as Commander in Chief.

The escape from the Americans in Afghanistan helped bin-Laden, too. He emerged as a folk hero to many Islamists.

By invading Iraq in 2003, Bush breathed more life into his presidential powers. But another winner was bin-Laden, who exploited Islamic resentment about the Iraq War to recruit new terrorist cadre and train them in direct conflict with American soldiers.

Just as Bush’s boasts about getting bin-Laden “dead or alive” boosted the Saudi’s standing with radical jihadists, bin-Laden’s public hostility to Bush has helped the president’s standing with the American people at key junctures.

In fall 2004, when Bush was locked in a tight race with Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, bin-Laden released a videotape that conservative pundits billed as Osama’s endorsement of Kerry, a development that predictably helped Bush gain ground in the campaign’s closing days.

Now, as Bush faces increased U.S. public skepticism about the Iraq War and his accretion of powers, bin-Laden shows up again with a statement that calls on the United States to admit defeat in Iraq and threatens new terror attacks on U.S. soil.

Not surprisingly, the reaction of many Americans to the bin-Laden tape is to harden their commitment to keep U.S. troops in Iraq – the outcome that both bin-Laden and Bush favor, albeit for different reasons.

Bin-Laden’s warning of a new terrorist assault also stokes the fears of Americans who are likely to react by giving Bush greater leeway in the War on Terror.

A day after bin-Laden’s audiotape was aired, Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove signaled that the Republicans would again try to ride the War on Terror to another round of victories in November 2006.

“Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview,” Rove told a Republican National Committee meeting on Jan. 20. “That doesn’t make them unpatriotic – not at all. But it does make them wrong – deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.” [Washington Post, Jan. 21, 2006]

Like the symbiotic relationship that exists when birds feed off ticks burrowed into the hides of rhinos, the Bush/Laden symbiosis may be entirely unspoken and even unintentional. But there can be little doubt that Bush has raised bin-Laden’s stature among radical Islamists while bin-Laden has helped Bush consolidate his authoritarian powers inside the United States.

Today’s Challenge

But the crucial question now is whether the American political system will acquiesce to Bush’s historic power grab – or resist it.

So far, the major U.S. news media and leading Democrats have closed their eyes to the totality of Bush’s claims to unprecedented Executive power. Senate Democrats have even shied away from threatening to filibuster Bush’s Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito, one of the legal architects of the Imperial Presidency.

One of the few political leaders who has sounded the alarm is former Vice President Al Gore, who addressed the issue in a speech on Jan. 16, the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

“An Executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution – an all-powerful Executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free,” Gore said.

“As the Executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.”

Except for Gore, however, few national leaders or news commentators have dared to draw clear conclusions about Bush’s authoritarian tendencies.

No one, it seems, wants to give up on the most memorable passage of the Declaration of Independence, that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Today, however, these truths are no longer “self-evident,” nor are the rights “unalienable.” They depend on the beneficence and generosity of George W. Bush.

Despite his assertion of unlimited power, Bush surely will not interfere in the lives of most Americans; just the small number who somehow get in his way. Most Americans probably won’t even notice their altered status, from citizens to subjects.

The 10-8 vote on Alito compares with the 13-5 committee vote in support of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Sept. 22. Roberts was approved on the floor by a 78-22 margin on Sept. 29.

While Democrats promised to make a fight of the Alito nomination on the floor, there are no signs now of any Republican opposition and confirmation is likely.

The partisan outcome prompted ominous-sounding comments about future nominations from both sides of the aisle.

Republicans on the committee accused Democrats of falsely portraying Alito as an extremist and of politicizing the nomination process in preparation for the next election. If this is what the Democrats want in the future, said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), "We'll clean their clock."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) held up a magazine photo of Alito's wife in tears during the hearing, and accused Democrats of "posturing," "name calling," "distortion" and "smear."

Democrats were equally critical of the president for nominating a man they consider a polarizing force. "I wish we could have someone who has the support of all Americans," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.,) the committee's ranking Democrat. "There are many, many, many people in this country who would have had 90 to 100 votes in the Senate."

"This is not just any nomination," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). "This is going to tip the balance."

The difference in the Roberts and Alito votes is in part a result of the fact that Alito, perceived as a conservative, is replacing a centrist swing vote, Sandra Day O'Connor, and could thus significantly alter the direction of the court, whereas Roberts replaced a conservative.

Alito also has a much more extensive public record than did Roberts, including statements critical of Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision legalizing abortion, and a long history disliked by liberals on the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Alito's confirmation would allow O'Connor to finally achieve her goal of retiring, albeit months later than she had anticipated when she announced her departure on July 1. O'Connor, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, is 75.

It would also complete one of the most controversy-filled years in recent memory for the court and for the nomination process. Both political camps have described the contests as among the most important to them in decades.

Roberts was originally nominated to replace O'Connor. But after the death of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Bush instead named Roberts to replace Rehnquist and nominated his White House counsel, Harriet Miers for the O'Connor spot.

Under intense pressure from his conservative base, which doubted Miers' credentials as a conservative and her intellectual skills, Miers withdrew her name on Oct. 27. Bush then nominated Alito, a former Reagan administration lawyer and an appeals court judge for 15 years.

Of all the bullying insults to democracy, George W. Bush, a man who has shown utter contempt for the rule of law and civilized governance, is about to pack the Supreme Court with a majority who will grant him the powers of a king.

The Democrats in the Senate, as we predicted in multiple editorials, will not filibuster Samuel Alito, short of some miraculous epiphany and spinal transplant.

(See "Sam Alito and the End of Constitutional Checks and Balances: The Senate Dems are About to Hang Themselves," which includes links to most of the pertinent BuzzFlash commentaries.)

Those chronically timid and cautious Democratic Senators who find comfort in passivity and enabling the dismantling of our Democracy should take note that times have changed.

The revolution to restore the gift of the American Revolution -- our Constitution -- is moving from a simmer to a boil, by the power of one exponentially multiplied into an army of patriots.

The biggest risk now of Democratic presidential "contenders" is in thinking that there is no risk in giving tyranny a pass. If you are a Democrat, let's say a John Kerry or Hillary Clinton, and you talk a tough "No" on Alito, that is not enough. Strong words against a bully mean nothing; swagger and verbal bravado are just blather against a political thug; all that matters is bold action in defense of the Republic.

A Democratic Senator voting for Alito in New York or Massachusetts would be risking political suicide. It is no profile in courage to vote "No."

The profile in courage would be taking a stand for the Constitution, for democracy, for a nation of civilized behavior, for a nation of laws.

It would be exercising the power of one and filibustering. It would be compelling the ever hesitant and limping Democrats in the Senate to stand up for all those men and women who have fought to preserve our Constitution and our freedoms. It would be in leading the party to 41 votes -- through a filibuster -- to keep Alito, a neo-monarchist, from confirmation.

Those Democratic Senators who think that they will fool us by declaring a symbolic "no" vote and not filibustering should be warned beforehand.

They will face the power of one, as is the American tradition, if they are seeking the Presidency in the cold, snow swept caucuses of Iowa and voting booths of New Hampshire in the 2008 primaries.

And by then that power of one will be a full-blown wave of outrage that will swell into an army of voters impassioned for justice. And the candidate who has channeled democracy -- instead of the craven advice of entrenched political advisors who only know defeat -- the candidate who inspires us in deed, not just in symbolic losses, that is the person who shall lead the Democratic Party in 2008.

The primary voters will not reward empty rhetoric.

The timid will lose. In avoiding risk, in bypassing the filibuster of Alito, the Joe Bidens and the Dianne Feinsteins of the world will have taken the biggest risk of all.

George Bush has broken the law and signaled in every way that he intends to keep doing it -- and to ignore the rule of law whenever he sees fit. He and Cheney are showing daily contempt for Congress and packing the Supreme Court with supporters of the "Unitary Executive," or dictatorship.

It is a concept that disdains democracy, that finds no support in the Constitution, and that destroys our system of checks and balances.

Those who would shrug off an Alito confirmation with a "No" vote -- without a filibuster -- are giving into the mugging of democracy.

This will not stand.

We will remember those 44 Democrats who would not fight for everything our soldiers throughout our nation's history have died for: our liberty, our freedoms, and our right to an elective government and the rule of law.

We will remember, by the power of one grown into a teeming sea of anger.

Because we cherish this country, and we will not be reduced to a choice of tyrants and enablers.

We will remember.

But for the moment, the Democrats are still hesitant to filibuster.

The Oregon decision should remind them of the stakes. It should remind any Republicans who'd remotely lay claim to the attribute of "moderate." It should give an incentive to challenge the nomination with every tool available, including the filibuster-particularly in a time when Bush has squandered his political standing through his own evasions, incompetencies and lies. Just as valuable New Deal programs like the National Recovery Administration and Agricultural Adjustment Act were struck down by a court that was the legacy of Presidents Hoover, Taft and Harding (some of whose justices also opposed progressive taxation, the minimum wage and any attempts at corporate regulation), the confirmation of Alito and Roberts could cast a shadow over American politics for the next thirty years.

As the Oregon opinion reminds us, the threat of Alito's nomination isn't abstract. It's a clear and present danger that can only be stopped by our Senators finding the courage to challenge an administration that respects only power. That means using the filibuster to talk about the assaults by this administration and their judicial surrogates on our democracy and on our ability to address our most urgent common problems. If not now, then when?


Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the "Number 3 Political Book of 2004" by the American Book Association. See www.paulloeb.org

A total of 14% of Americans say the national economy is getting better, which is down from 30% in December and 52% say the national economy is getting worse, which is up from 40% in December. When asked about the national economy a year from now, 15% say it will be better, which is down from 28% in December, and 62% say it will be worse, which is up from 39% in December.

The results presented here are based on 1,100 completed telephone interviews conducted among a nationwide random sample of adults 18 years and older. The interviews were completed January 19 through 22, 2006. The theoretical margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points, 95% of the time, on questions where opinion is evenly split.

Overall, 36% of Americans say that they approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president, 58% disapprove, and 6% are undecided.

Bush job approval	Approve	Disapprove	Undecided
Jan 2006	36%	58%	6%
Dec 2005	40%	56%	4%
Nov 2005	36%	58%	6%
Oct 2005	38%	55%	7%
Sep 2005	37%	57%	6%
Aug 2005	36%	58%	6%
July 2005	42%	52%	6%
Jun 2005	42%	53%	5%
May 2005	43%	51%	6%
Apr 2005	44%	50%	6%
Mar 2005	47%	48%	5%
Feb 2005	49%	45%	6%
Jan 2005	51%	44%	5%

Among Republicans (33% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 78% approve of the way Bush is handling his job and 17% disapprove. Among Democrats (37% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 11% approve and 83% disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job. Among Independents (30% of adults registered to vote in the survey), 24% approve and 71% disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president.

Overall, 34% of Americans say that they approve of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy, 60% disapprove, and 6% are undecided. Among registered voters, 35% approve and 60% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the economy.

Bush handling the economy	Approve	Disapprove	Undecided
Jan 2006	34%	60%	6%
Dec 2005	36%	59%	5%
Nov 2005	31%	62%	7%
Oct 2005	34%	59%	7%
Sep 2005	34%	60%	6%
Aug 2005	33%	62%	5%
July 2005	38%	54%	8%
Jun 2005	37%	59%	4%
May 2005	37%	57%	6%
Apr 2005	38%	56%	6%
Mar 2005	41%	53%	6%
Feb 2005	42%	51%	7%
Jan 2005	44%	50%	6%

Among Republicans, 73% approve of the way Bush is handling the economy and 22% disapprove. Among Democrats, 84% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the economy and 11% approve. Among Independents, 22% approve and 73% disapprove of the way Bush is handling the economy.

A total of 14% of Americans say that the national economy is getting better, 31% say it is staying the same, and 52% say the national economy is getting worse.

National economy	Getting better	Staying the same	Getting worse	Undecided
Jan 2006	14%	31%	52%	3%
Dec 2005	30%	27%	40%	3%
Nov 2005	13%	36%	50%	1%
Oct 2005	12%	18%	65%	5%
Sep 2005	11%	35%	53%	1%
Aug 2005	29%	17%	53%	1%
July 2005	25%	33%	41%	1%
Jun 2005	22%	17%	58%	3%
May 2005	19%	20%	59%	2%
Apr 2005	25%	21%	53%	1%
Mar 2005	27%	25%	46%	2%
Feb 2005	30%	28%	39%	3%
Jan 2005	36%	25%	37%	2%

Among those saying they approve of the way Bush is handling his job, 30% say getting better, 56% say staying the same, and 11% say getting worse. Of those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job, 78% say getting worse, 4% say getting better, and 15% say staying the same.

A total of 15% of Americans say they believe the national economy will be better a year from now, 19% say it will be the same, 62% say it will be worse, and 4% are undecided.

National economy a year from now	Better than today	The same as today	Worse than today	Undecided
Jan 2006	15%	19%	62%	4%
Dec 2005	28%	31%	39%	2%
Nov 2005	17%	20%	61%	2%
Oct 2005	29%	17%	51%	3%
Sep 2005	29%	14%	53%	4%
Aug 2005	31%	23%	44%	2%
July 2005	25%	31%	42%	2%
Jun 2005	26%	18%	50%	6%
May 2005	21%	21%	51%	7%
Apr 2005	27%	25%	44%	4%
Mar 2005	30%	27%	38%	5%
Feb 2005	38%	31%	25%	6%
Jan 2005	44%	26%	25%	5%

Among those saying they approve of the way Bush is handling his job, 33% say better, 37% say the same as today, and 26% say worse. Among those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president, 4% say better, 7% say the same, and 85% say worse.

Overall, 29% of Americans say they believe that the national economy is in a recession and 57% say they do not believe the economy is in a recession.

National economy in a recession	Yes	No	Undecided
Jan 2006	29%	57%	14%
Dec 2005	28%	54%	18%
Nov 2005	43%	44%	13%
Oct 2005	41%	44%	15%
Sep 2005	45%	41%	14%
Aug 2005	29%	50%	21%
July 2005	28%	53%	19%
Jun 2005	44%	45%	11%
May 2005	35%	57%	8%
Apr 2005	36%	59%	5%
Mar 2005	33%	63%	4%
Feb 2005	28%	68%	4%
Jan 2005	25%	72%	3%

Among those saying they approve of the way Bush is handling his job, 3% say the national economy is in a recession and 83% say is it not in a recession. Of those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job, 44% say the national economy is in a recession and 42% say the national economy is not in a recession.

A total of 43% of Americans rate the national economy as excellent, very good, or good and 55% rate it as bad, very bad, or terrible.

National economy	Excellent	Very good	Good	Bad	Very bad	Terrible	Undecided
Jan 2006	5%	9%	29%	29%	9%	17%	2%
Dec 2005	6%	19%	22%	26%	11%	14%	2%
Nov 2005	6%	11%	18%	31%	13%	19%	2%
Oct 2005	5%	12%	21%	28%	11%	19%	4%
Sep 2005	4%	10%	29%	20%	20%	13%	4%
Aug 2005	2%	7%	33%	29%	17%	9%	3%
July 2005	1%	4%	43%	37%	9%	5%	1%
Jun 2005	1%	5%	29%	44%	6%	13%	2%
May 2005	1%	2%	31%	45%	6%	13%	2%
Apr 2005	1%	1%	35%	46%	2%	14%	1%
Mar 2005	1%	1%	39%	42%	5%	11%	1%
Feb 2005	1%	2%	40%	39%	2%	15%	1%
Jan 2005	1%	3%	44%	36%	3%	12%	1%

Among those saying they approve of the way Bush is handling his job, 81% say excellent, very good, or good and 17% say bad, very bad, or terrible. Among those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job, 78% say bad, very bad, or terrible and 19% say excellent, very good, or good.

When it comes to rating their household financial situations, 55% of Americans give an excellent, very good, or good rating and 43% give a bad, very bad, or terrible rating.

Household financial situation	Excellent	Very good	Good	Bad	Very bad	Terrible	Undecided
Jan 2006	7%	20%	28%	19%	15%	9%	2%
Dec 2005	8%	15%	36%	21%	11%	6%	3%
Nov 2005	5%	16%	33%	21%	16%	7%	2%
Oct 2005	7%	21%	32%	16%	14%	7%	3%
Sep 2005	4%	25%	33%	17%	8%	11%	2%
Aug 2005	9%	12%	43%	23%	5%	7%	1%
July 2005	6%	15%	38%	26%	4%	10%	1%
Jun 2005	5%	8%	33%	33%	6%	13%	2%
May 2005	2%	6%	36%	34%	9%	11%	2%
Apr 2005	4%	8%	41%	27%	4%	15%	1%
Mar 2005	3%	11%	44%	24%	3%	13%	2%
Feb 2005	2%	12%	47%	22%	4%	10%	3%
Jan 2005	4%	12%	53%	20%	3%	7%	1%

Among those saying they approve of the way Bush is handling his job, 85% say excellent, very good, or good and 13% say bad, very bad, or terrible. Among those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job, 60% say bad, very bad, or terrible and 38% say excellent, very good, or good.

A total of 17% of Americans say they think the financial situations in their households are getting better, 30% say staying the same, and 51% say getting worse.

Household financial situation	Getting better	Staying the same	Getting worse	Undecided
Jan 2006	17%	30%	51%	2%
Dec 2005	23%	45%	29%	3%
Nov 2005	24%	40%	33%	3%
Oct 2005	15%	38%	43%	4%
Sep 2005	8%	62%	29%	1%
Aug 2005	24%	41%	33%	2%
July 2005	17%	44%	35%	4%
Jun 2005	17%	31%	50%	2%
May 2005	9%	28%	61%	2%
Apr 2005	15%	32%	50%	3%
Mar 2005	20%	39%	39%	2%
Feb 2005	18%	45%	34%	3%
Jan 2005	21%	49%	27%	3%

Among those saying they approve of the way Bush is handling his job, 41% say getting better, 36% say staying the same, and 21% say getting worse. Among those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job, 3% say getting better, 25% say staying the same, 70% say getting worse.

Looking to a year from now, 14% of Americans say that they think their household financial situations will be better than today, 55% say the same as today, and 29% say worse than today.

Household financial situation a year from now	Better than today	The same as today	Worse than today	Undecided
Jan 2006	14%	55%	29%	2%
Dec 2005	26%	45%	24%	5%
Nov 2005	31%	46%	20%	3%
Oct 2005	17%	38%	41%	4%
Sep 2005	15%	50%	30%	5%
Aug 2005	27%	41%	27%	5%
July 2005	21%	42%	30%	7%
Jun 2005	17%	25%	51%	7%
May 2005	23%	23%	50%	4%
Apr 2005	31%	28%	37%	4%
Mar 2005	37%	26%	32%	5%
Feb 2005	40%	31%	27%	2%
Jan 2005	45%	29%	23%	3%

Among those saying they approve of the way Bush is handling his job, 26% say better than today, 62% say the same as today, and 10% say worse than today. Among those saying they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job, 7% say better than today, 49% say the same as today, and 42% say worse than today.



About this Survey -

Survey Sponsor: American Research Group, Inc.

The American Research Group has been conducting national surveys of consumers since 1985.

Sample Size: 1,100 completed telephone interviews among a random sample of all adults age 18 and older living in telephone households in the continental United States.

Sample Dates: January 19-22, 2006

Margin of Error: ± 3 percentage points, 95% of the time, on questions where opinion is evenly split.

Question Wording:

How do you rate the condition of the national economy these days - would you say it is excellent, very good, good, bad, very bad, or terrible?

Do you think the national economy is getting better, staying the same, or getting worse?

Would you say that the national economy is in a recession, or not?

A year from now, do you expect the national economy to be better than it is today, the same as it is today, or worse than it is today?

How do you rate the condition of the financial situation in your household - would you say it is excellent, very good, good, bad, very bad, or terrible?

Do you think the financial situation in your household is getting better, staying the same, or getting worse?

A year from now, do you expect the financial situation in your household to be better than it is today, the same as it is today, or worse than it is today?

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy?

If anything, the officials argued on Air Force One - and on NBC, ABC and CBS - White House receiving-line photos like these are so common as to be almost meaningless.

"The president has participated in tens upon thousands of photo lines or pictures in photo lines over the course of the last five years," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One.

Earlier, Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor, weighed in on the network morning shows. "Any suggestion by critics or anybody else to suggest that the president was doing something nefarious with Jack Abramoff is absolutely wrong, and it's absurd," Mr. Bartlett told Katie Couric on the "Today" program on NBC.

White House officials nonetheless did not release copies of what a person close to the Abramoff investigation described as photographs of Mr. Abramoff or his children with Mr. Bush that Mr. Abramoff once displayed on his office wall. Two magazines, Washingtonian and Time, first reported over the weekend the existence of about a half-dozen Abramoff-Bush photographs.

The general assumption in Washington was that celebrity tabloids would eventually buy and publish the photographs as the unforgettable images of a scandal that Mr. Bush's aides have been anxious to keep outside the White House gates.

Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty on Jan. 3 to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion, and prosecutors said he had used campaign contributions, lavish trips and meals to influence lawmakers and their aides. At the White House, officials have repeatedly said that Mr. Bush had no personal relationship with Mr. Abramoff and that he did not even recall meeting him.

But White House officials have also said that Mr. Abramoff attended some "staff level" meetings at the White House as well as two White House Hanukkah receptions, in 2001 and 2002. On Monday, Mr. Bartlett suggested that some of the photographs of Mr. Bush and Mr. Abramoff might well have been from those two parties.

"I'm sure at a Hanukkah reception you would have your children with you," Mr. Bartlett said on NBC. "So I'm sure the president took pictures with him at events like that."

One other guest at the 2001 Hanukkah party was Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Mr. Foxman, who said in a telephone interview Monday that he had never met Mr. Abramoff, recalled that the party, for 400 to 500 guests, had a long receiving line for photographs.

"It's got to be tedious for the president," Mr. Foxman said. "He stands there with Laura, we're each introduced, he knows some, he doesn't know others, some people bend his ear. It's not an in-depth anything."

"Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?" Sancho asked. "The answer was yes."

Diebold and some officials have criticized Sancho's experiments and said his conclusions about the vulnerability of electronic voting systems are unfounded.

What Sancho did "is analogous to if I gave you the keys to my house and told you when I was gone," said David Bear, a Diebold spokesman. As Bear sees it, Sancho's experiment involved giving hackers "complete unfettered access" to the equipment, something a responsible elections administrator would never allow.

Questions about the security of electronic voting machines have been circulating widely in recent years. But many of the concerns have been dismissed as the fantasies of Internet conspiracy theorists or sore-loser partisans who could not accept that their candidates simply got fewer votes. Critics have not demonstrated that any real elections have had returns altered by the manipulation of electronic voting systems.

But the questions raised by Sancho, who has held his post since 1989, show how the concerns are being taken more seriously among elections professionals.

"While electronic voting systems hold promise for improving the election process," the Government Accountability Office said in a report to Congress last year, there are still pressing concerns about "security and reliability . . . design flaws" and other issues.

The questions about electronic balloting have become widespread as states and counties move to upgrade equipment, as required by the 2002 Help America Vote Act. The law and new state regulations were enacted to make voting more accessible and more accurate, a response to the controversy generated by the contested outcome in Florida in the 2000 presidential election.

Since the federal law was passed, though, a hodgepodge of federal and state requirements and debates over the best technology have complicated the task of upgrading. In a recent survey by the National Association of Secretaries of State, 17 of 43 states that responded said they expected to miss a congressionally imposed Jan. 1, 2006, deadline to upgrade voting systems. Election officials have repeatedly clashed with voting-machine manufacturers.

In Connecticut, for example, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz said she would scrap her plans to replace her state's lever machines after the company she planned to buy from "misrepresented" itself in negotiations about how accessible the machines would be for people with disabilities.

In Miami-Dade County, Fla., the elections chief -- the third in five years -- is thinking about tossing out touch-screen systems installed after 2000. The concern is that they do not leave a paper trail that auditors could examine in a disputed election and are expensive to use.

In California, the secretary of state recently asked Hursti to investigate whether Diebold machines the state was considering had similar vulnerabilities.

The events that set in motion Hursti and Sancho meeting, and a new wave of concern over today's voting technologies, started in 2003, when a Seattle-based activist named Bev Harris released thousands of Diebold documents she said she found on an unsecured portion of the company's Web site. Some computer scientists said the documents showed Diebold's systems were vulnerable to attack. Today, more than 800 jurisdictions use their technology, Harris said.

She wanted to find a way to test whether those vulnerabilities could be exploited. Sancho volunteered his equipment to be tested by experts Harris would select.

Harris recruited computer expert Herbert Thompson, and on Feb. 14, 2005, in Tallahassee, Thompson met with Sancho and tried to crack the Diebold system remotely. The first attempt failed. On a second attempt, by directly accessing a computer where the votes are counted in a final tally, he manipulated returns. They used a local high school election for the experiment.

In May, two more tests were held, this time with Hursti present. Using a device bought for about $200, he was able to easily alter the final vote by changing the program stored on the memory card.

"You have to admit these systems are vulnerable and act accordingly," Hursti said.

Diebold took a dim view of the experiments. On June 8, a senior company lawyer faxed Sancho: "You have willfully and intentionally allowed the manipulation of memory cards related to your elections... We believe this to have been a very foolish and irresponsible act."

The response frustrated Sancho. "More troubling than the test itself was the manner in which Diebold simply failed to respond to my concerns or the concerns of citizens who believe in American elections," he said. "I really think they're not engaged in this discussion of how to make elections safer."

He is also critical of state officials who he believes should have caught the vulnerabilities earlier. He said that vendors such as Diebold have too much influence in the administration of elections, a view that resonated with Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the founder of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. Sancho is "truly an advocate for voters," she said. "What he is doing in Leon County goes completely against the grain of county election commissioners elsewhere, who are allowing vendors to dictate how to run their own elections."

Johns Hopkins University computer sciences professor Avi Rubin, who is leading a group that has received a $7.5 million grant from the National Academy of Sciences to research election technology, said the vulnerabilities of electronic systems -- including new touch-screen voting machines -- point to the need for a paper trail in any election. "The more I see, I say we need voting to rely on paper," he said. About 26 states require paper ballots, according to Verified Voting, an advocacy group.

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Florida's secretary of state, said in the end the integrity of any voting system must be protected by the local officials who administer elections. "Machines are designed and certified to operate in a secure environment and under secure procedures that each supervisor puts in place and follows directly," she said.

To select which voting machine to use for the test, Ion drew a serial number of one voting machine from a container holding all the serial numbers of all the Leon County machines.

Since the test took place at the elections warehouse, all the voting machines were already stored there and the one machine, whose serial number was selected, was located and brought into the warehouse office, where it was plugged into an electrical outlet (so it could operate!). It was not networked to any other machines. We checked the serial number of the machine against the serial number that Ion had randomly selected.

Earlier, Ion had given ONE Diebold memory card to Hursti. Bev Harris and Kathleen Wynne of Black Box Voting were also present at the test.

Harri had programmed the memory card that morning, in his hotel room, using an off-the-shelf crop scanner. I drove Harri in my car from the hotel to the warehouse. When we arrived, Harri was asked to stay outside the warehouse office where the central tabulator is located, so that there would be no question about whether he had had any access to the central tabulator. When the randomly-selected voting machine was brought into the warehouse office, all of us went into the warehouse office except Harri, whom we could see sitting in a chair on the other side of a plate glass window separating the office from the rest of the warehouse.

Ion ran a complete mock election. He had had actual paper ballots pre-printed with the following question:

"Can the votes on this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?"

There were two possible answers: "Yes" or "No," with an oval to the left of each answer to be filled in by the voter.

Everything was conducted as in a normal election. Ion first printed a "zero tape" (a poll tape from the machine that is supposed to show that nothing has been altered before the election begins). This was the first step in the hack --the zero tape showed zero votes for both the "Yes" answer and the "No" answer, even though Harri had altered the memory card and votes had been subtracted from one answer and added to the other answer. Harri used the interpreted (executable) code to cover up the fact that he had changed the vote counters.

Then eight of us voted, filling in the oval on our paper ballot. Six of us voted "No," the election could not be hacked. Two of us voted "Yes," it could be hacked. Then, one by one, we inserted our ballots into the voting machine. Ion checked after each voter to make sure that the counter on the machine was counting properly as each ballot was inserted. So, we ended up with an accurate count of 8 ballots cast on the screen on the front of the voting machine. Then Ion placed an "ender card" in the machine to end the election and printed the poll tape.

Instead of two "Yes" votes, the poll tape showed seven "Yes" votes.

Instead of six "No" votes, the poll tape showed one "No" vote.

Harri did not just flip the votes, as he wanted to show how easy it was to change the totals completely.

At that point, Ion Sancho's technician, TJ, said, "Well, that doesn't prove anything because the printer template can be changed." (And that is true. The poll tape can be made to read anything at all, which was proved in an earlier test on a Leon County op-scan in May of 2005, when the poll-tape was made to say, at the bottom of the tape, "Is this real or is it Memorex?")

Ion responded to TJ that they were taking this to the next level and that he wanted TJ to upload the memory card to the central tabulator. TJ, who had quite apparently been talking to the Diebold reps, said he didn't want that to happen because he didn't know if Harri might have planted some kind of virus on the memory card that would infect the central tabulator. Ion then explained to TJ that, just an hour earlier, he had obtained permission from the Leon County Council to replace the Diebold system. That meant that the Leon County Diebold system would never be used in any election again, and thus Ion said it was all right to upload the memory card to the central tabulator. (The irony here, of course, is that Diebold would worry about a virus being planted on this particular memory card! What about all the thousands of people around the country who have access to memory cards...doesn't Diebold worry about one of them planting a virus? And the second irony is that ITA testing is supposed to catch these security vulnerabilities and yet Diebold claimed to be worried about a security exploitation by Harri Hursti AFTER all ITA testing had been completed).

So, TJ became convinced that it was all right to upload the memory card, which he did. And there, on the central tabulator screen, appeared the altered results: Seven "Yes" votes and one "No" vote, with absolutely no evidence that anything had been altered. It was a powerful moment and, I will admit, it had the unexpected result for me personally of causing me to break down and cry. Why did I cry? It was the last thing I thought I would do, but it happened for so many reasons. I cried because it was so clear that Diebold had been lying. I cried because there was proof, before my very eyes, that these machines were every bit as bad as we all had feared. I cried because we have been so unjustly attacked as "conspiracy theorists" and "technophobes" when Diebold knew full well that its voting system could alter election results. More than that, that Diebold planned to have a voting system that could alter results. And I cried because it suddenly hit me, like a Mack truck, that this was proof positive that our democracy is and has been, as we have all feared, truly at the mercy of unscrupulous vendors who are producing electronic voting machines that can change election results without detection.

Beyond this, however, what is the real significance of the "Harri Hursti hack?" There are several answers to that question.

First of all, the Hursti hack reveals only one vulnerability in an almost unlimited number of potential flaws or vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems (both op-scans and DREs). However, the Hursti hack is individually significant because the flaw it exposed is a planned vulnerability in the system, not something that is accidentally there. It had to be PUT there (programmed) on purpose. For Diebold to claim innocence about this would be absurd. It would be like saying you didn't know your garage had a door while you were standing there holding the garage door opener. Or, because this security vulnerability is so huge, it would more accurately be like saying you didn't know your house had a garage at all!!

Since something like 95% of computer scientists agree that electronic voting machines (op-scans and DREs) have an almost infinite number of potential flaws or vulnerabilities, the Hursti hack shows, above all, THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING PAPER BALLOTS for an independent confirmation of machine results. The beauty of paper ballots is that they are completely independent of any machine, unlike the printer paper trail. Therefore, they provide a true independent, manual audit of machine results. Paper ballots are also the only electronic voting method that eliminates, almost completely, any question about voter intent because the ballots are voter-generated, filled in by the voter's own hand, thus eliminating the need for a voter to confirm his/her choices on any printer-issued receipt. Paper ballots are the only way to have a fail-safe election with any electronic voting machine. You must have paper ballots and you must manually audit (count) a portion or all of those ballots in every election.

The ONLY evidence in the Hursti hack that could discredit his alteration of results were the paper ballots themselves.But these ballots can only be useful if they are actually counted after an election to check against the machine count. The Hursti hack shows clearly that there must be an independent paper trail that can be manually audited to confirm (or discredit) machine results. The hack exposes a serious electronic voting flaw, but then, ironically, re-instates optical scan as the only electronic voting method that provides truly independent, manual audit capabilities.

Redfern said letting O'Dell supply the machines for that election after making such a bold statement would be foolish.

Blackwell's office accused the Democrats of injecting party politics into a fair and open process.

"Secretary Blackwell has worked very hard to keep the process free of partisan influence," said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Blackwell. "Redfern and DiDonato want to exclude someone ... simply because they don't like their politics. That is disgraceful."

LoParo said Blackwell will not attend O'Dell's event and will not benefit from his fund-raising, because all of the money will be earmarked for federal elections.

But LoParo insisted that none of that was even considered by Blackwell during the bidding process and that his office is confident the process was free from favoritism.

Upgrading the voting machines has proven to be problematic for Blackwell. Last week, he announced having the machines in place for next March's primary will be impossible because of security concerns with the new technology and funding delays in paying for the equipment.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal suit saying punch-card machines are unfair and must be done away with before the March primary.

And a potential supplier eliminated from consideration -- Sequoia Voting Systems -- has sued Blackwell's office over its dismissal from the process.

The Sequoia lawsuit has prevented Blackwell from releasing information about the bidding process and three potential suppliers, but LoParo said that information will be made public once the legal issue is resolved.

"This has been a well-documented and comprehensive bid process," he said. "We invite the highest level of scrutiny."

Redfern said the least Blackwell should do is ask O'Dell to cancel the fund-raising event.

"For appearances' sake, the best thing we can do is to remove Diebold from the process," he said. "Otherwise, we risk giving Ohioans the impression that our very election process itself is unfair."

We spent that night in jail and the next day appeared, shackled together, before a judge who set bond at (this is all for real, pals) $3,000 each, no 10% business.

Earlier this week we went to one suburban court, plead to misdemeanors, and found out how much the Ohio Dept. of Transportation (ODOT) charges for the "preliminary" repair of each overpass (grey paint) --$600--with the final repair bill due at our sentencing next month. Technically, that includes up to 90 days in jail.

Today we went to the second suburban court and my brother plead to misdemeanors. I, on the other hand decided that if I'm going to pay that kind of money and face time in the cooler, I'm at least going to have a trial and speak my mind about the war. I've now been "bound over to the grand jury" (which may mean something to those of you who watch cop shows) for a trial in county common pleas court on the remaining felony charges.

Finally--our local paper, the Toledo Blade, ran an editorial last week titled "Defacing a reputation," referring to my time on city council and what it considered acceptable war protests, opining that I went too far with the spray-paint. Below is my response to the paper and our fellow citizens.


Response:

The Blade was gracious enough to list me in the company of some civilly disobedient heroes, indicating my behavior fell woefully short of those honorable standards. Spray paint wasn’t invented in Gandhi’s day, but might he at some point have scrawled “Brits Out Now” with whitewash and a brush? One might think so.

“But why break the law,” people ask? "What about this war troubles you enough to break the law?"

In one word: images.

Images that never leave me.

Images of young soldiers and marines lying in row upon row of hospital beds. Images of picking shrapnel out of Mike Ramsack’s backside…dressing Bob Butikofer’s wounds every day and trying not to make him scream… changing colostomy bags on guys hoping they won’t defecate out the hole in their guts caused by a gunshot wound to the abdomen…trying to give a brain scan to a young soldier missing his entire left temporal lobe… Images of eating in the chow hall as dozens of patients in wheelchairs, on crutches, missing arms and legs and eyes line up for dinner… Images of a young man sitting silent and broken in a corner of the psych ward.

And there are other, more recent images from my trips to Iraq that I cannot forget. Images of the kids I met on the streets of Baghdad, and the ones in Abu Siffa who shared their chicken and rice dinner with an American journalist two days after a cruise missile blew their orange grove to bits. Images of Fatima in the Sa’adoon St. copy shop who told me how beautiful she thought her country was and how she hoped there would be no war. Images of the young U.S. Army sergeant from West Virginia I accompanied on patrol one night near Balad, who answered my question, “why are you in Iraq?” with a tired shrug saying, “I really don’t know.” And his partner from North Dakota, just as bone-tired, who answered simply, “oil.”

I see these images every day. And I know that the young men in that Navy hospital 35 years ago, just like the ones I met last year in Iraq, are getting killed and maimed for a preposterous lie. As my blood boils I tell my government to “BRING THEM HOME NOW!” by writing letters, signing petitions, speaking, and yes, painting highway overpasses.

Our government is not only causing great suffering by this war, it is also violating dozens of international and domestic laws. See the Veterans For Peace “Case for Impeachment” for a partial list at . As citizens we are complicit in these crimes and suffering. That is why historian Howard Zinn’s words make more sense to me each day this war continues:

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.”

The most important mistake I made on New Year’s Day was not that I painted “Troops Out Now” on overpasses, it was choosing a form of civil disobedience not many people are comfortable adopting. If you believe we must end this war, what kind of civil disobedience would you choose? Refuse to pay part of your taxes this April? Sit in at a Congressional office? Organize a strike? Or will we be content to speak quietly, watching the petty criminals go to jail while the grand criminals continue the slaughter in our name?

Mike Ferner served as a Navy Corpsman from 1969 to 73, was discharged as a conscientious objector, and is a member of Veterans for Peace. He would like to add that any contributions to his legal defense fund above $5 will be returned.

For fairness, I have checked two other intelligence agencies’ websites to see whether they also cater for kids. The search for France’s Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE) was easy: one try gave me an empty screen, the other (via a government website) a brief organisational chart, an address and a telephone number: a communication policy reduced to its barest.

Britain’s MI5 is less secretive about what it is (“For a start, our staff are people just like you”?!) and what its broad aims are, though it doesn’t yet cater for budding spooks. But it does give you a chance to report (in a maximum of 1,800 characters) on sinister characters or incidents you may encounter: “if you know something about a threat to national security, we want to hear from you”.

The meagre offerings of its professional rivals are even more reason to congratulate the CIA – too often portrayed as the dark, undercover arm of an intrusive empire and criticised for its failures and its clumsiness – for having made espionage an amusing, interactive sport. Some might poke fun at its child-centred approach, others might say that it is never too early to warn citizens of the vulnerabilities of their societies. Nevertheless, every reader of openDemocracy – and not only kids – should be encouraged to discover the nooks and crannies of intelligence through the CIA’s variety of games.

“Dr Disguise”, for example, is accompanied by the sound of a repetitive, mysterious musical beat. You are a woman, black (looking a bit like Condoleezza Rice, bizarre, bizarre) who can quickly switch from a suit to a kaftan-like robe or a trendy trenchcoat, add a blonde wig or a male disguise with a goatee and sunglasses, wear ribbons, different hats and even have a friendly animal in tow (change the head of the dog and it becomes a cat!).

As a Wasp-like man, you can cover your white shirt and tie with one of those raincoats worn by spies in so many movies or with a sporting outfit, then exchange it for an Hawaiian shirt or add the same blonde wig as above – but this time with a piece of peacenik, anti-war neckwear.

If this is not exciting enough for long, dark, boring winter evenings, why not join the younger ones in a “Code Warriors” party and learn how to “break the code” of encrypted documents with the help of a decoder which directs you towards words like “Berlin wall”, “courage”, “intrigue” “headquarters” or “George Bush”.

You can also test your knowledge with the “Geography Trivia Game” (the 2003 edition is the latest available) through questions like “what two oceans are connected by the Panama Canal” (you’ll be given three hints), and “what is the object in the middle of the Lebanese flag?” (not a mushroom, a frog or a rocket, but a tree!) It would be comforting to know that the level of geographic knowledge demanded of the players – grown-ups or kids – is exceeded by the CIA’s operatives. But how can we be sure?

The “CIA’s homepage for kids” is less sophisticated when it tries to attract pre-teenagers. They are invited to visit the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia with Ginger (“That’s short for Virginia, where my home is”) the teddy-bear, who is taking advantage of the absence of her mistress, the analyst Marta, to show them around. They can learn through Ginger that Marta’s job “is a very important job because what she writes may be seen by the President and other important persons in the government. What she does is help them make important decisions about our country”. Which ones? We are not told.

We also learn about the members of the CIA canine corps (or K-9, which sounds more mysterious) – like Dallas, Tiwoz, Gerro, Whisper, Maggie, Zoltan, Nikky or Orry; and about the twin spy pigeons Harry (for Truman) and Aerial (“for our love of flying”) and their miniature cameras.

These web pages end with a “say no to drugs” section and a notice for parents: “We encourage parents and teachers to be involved in children’s Internet explorations. The CIA homepage for kids provides information about the Nation’s intelligence efforts as well as a geography quiz and other fun things for kids to do. We do not ask or collect any information regarding children’s visits to the kid’s homepage…”

No mention, then, of the war on terror, Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida; nor of the controversies about intelligence failures on Iraq and the Bush administration’s habits of being economical with the truth. These pages, like the CIA itself, are obviously built to outlast them all.

But, in these extraordinary times where the military and intelligence community often takes a stance of prudence and moderation against sabre-rattling civilian leaders with hardly any military knowledge or experience (like US presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush, or British prime minister Tony Blair), it is interesting to see the eyes and ears of the “hyperpower” adopting such a didactic and low-key approach. Where have all the old values gone?

TWA Flight 800 then allegedly "pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its last recorded altitude of about 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet." The CIA video claimed that this was what the eyewitnesses had seen – not missiles, but a rocketing, noseless 747 trailing fire.

The amended suit addresses two startling new discoveries. One is that the CIA generated its zoom-climb calculations after it produced and showed its notorious video. The second is that the NSA originated, and now withholds under FOIA exemptions, a flight-path simulation, apparently the one that was the basis of the CIA's zoom-climb conclusion.

Lahr and Clarke hope to wrestle this information from the exceedingly reluctant clutches of the nation's foremost surveillance agencies. The nation's mainstream media, with their watchdog enthusiasms lately aroused, might wish to help Lahr pry this information loose. If interested, they could begin their inquiries with the two pilots of an Eastwind Flight airborne the night of July 17, 1996, First Officer Vincent Fuschetti and Capt. David McCLaine.

The Eastwind pilots were about to begin a slow descent to Trenton when they first spotted TWA Flight 800 climbing toward them some 60 miles away on this "crystal clear" night. McClaine described the plane with its landing lights still on as "definitely the brightest light in the sky." As Flight 800 approached them at a slightly lower altitude and began crossing its path from right to left, McClaine flicked on his own inboard landing light to signal to the pilots of TWA 800 that he and Fuschetti had the aircraft in sight.

Just as he flicked on his light, wrote McClaine in his report, "The other aircraft exploded into a very large ball of flames." At this point, the two aircraft were less than 20 miles apart. "Almost immediately," observed McClaine, "two flaming objects, with flames trailing about 4,000 feet behind them, fell out of the bottom of the ball of flame." Within 10 seconds of witnessing the explosion, McClaine called in the explosion to Boston air-traffic control. He was the first one to do so. The FBI knew this by Day 2:

Eastwind: We just saw an explosion out here, Stinger Bee 507 (McClaine)

Controller: Stinger Bee 507 I'm sorry I missed it ... did you say something else?

Eastwind: We just saw an explosion up ahead of us here, somewhere about 16,000 feet or something like that. It just went down – in the water.

As the CIA told the story, the plane suffered a center-fuel-tank explosion "not seen by a single eyewitness" because the slower-moving sound had not yet alerted anyone – a contention easily disputed by the Eastwind pilots or any of the other excellent airborne eyewitnesses. According to the CIA, after the aircraft lost its nose, it zoom-climbed 3,200 feet where there was a secondary explosion. Then the aircraft nosed over and dived to about 8,000 feet where there was a third explosion and only then broke into two distinct fireballs, "more than 42 seconds" after the initial blast.

In reality, as Lahr contends, after the nose was gone, the aircraft could not have climbed and then dived nose first. It was so tail-heavy that it would have immediately pitched up, stalled, and fallen tail first. The weakened wing failed in the pitch up as indicated by two flaming streams falling out of the initial fireball.

One need only compare the CIA story with Eastwind First Officer Fuschetti's testimony to see through the CIA invention. "At the onset of the explosion the fireball spread horizontally then spilt into two columns of fire, which immediately began to fall slowly towards the water below." Lest anyone misinterpret him, Fuschetti adds, "At no time did I see any vertical travel of the aircraft after the explosion occurred."

The CIA's fiery climb was necessary to explain away the hundreds of claims from eyewitnesses on the ground. It does not, however, account for what McClaine and Fuschetti saw. They saw the plane clearly at every stage.

Although McClaine and Fuschetti could not see a missile streak from their angle, they undoubtedly saw the first explosion – indeed, the landing lights were still on, proof that the electrical system was working and the nose intact – and the immediate plunge of the plane into the sea. McClaine was telling Boston air-traffic control that the plane "just went down – in the water" within 10-15 seconds of that first blast.

This may well explain why the NTSB (or the media) never interviewed Fuschetti. The NTSB did not interview McClaine until March 25, 1999, nearly two and a half years after the accident and a year and a half after the FBI closed the criminal case with a showing of the CIA video. "You are a very key person as far as we are concerned," said Robert Young, TWA's representative on the NTSB witness group, "because you were the only person that was looking at it at the time."

McClaine was by no means the "only person." Within seconds after McClaine's initial report, two other airline crews confirmed his report. Still, Young's acknowledgement boldly refutes the CIA claim that no one had seen the initial explosion. Young, at least, wanted this to be known. He asked McClaine whether there were any noticeable climbing angle changes before or after. Answered McClaine, "None at all."

"I didn't see it pitch up, no," McClaine elaborated. "Everything ended right there at that explosion as far as I'm concerned."

ll of this evidence is presented in Lahr's case.These facts "come from an impressive array of 29 expert and fact witnesses," reads Lahr's court papers. Among those offering affidavits are two aerodynamicists and six air-crash investigators, three of whom were parties to the TWA Flight 800 probe. The case also includes the affidavits of former NTSB member Dr. Vernon Gross, and retired Rear Adm. Mark Hill. In addition, Lahr has gathered the real testimony of the two eyewitnesses featured in the CIA's animation, both of whom flatly reject the CIA scenario.

Lahr's court papers state that one would be "hard-pressed to imagine a more fit case" for the judge to find government illegality. Under the FOIA, writes attorney Clarke, because "the Flight 800 tragedy is the most controversial disaster in aviation history," the judge must evaluate the government's behavior during its Flight 800 probe. Clarke believes that Lahr clearly has the upper hand in the case.

Lahr knows that the Eastwind pilots are telling the truth. So does the CIA. Now, with the 10th anniversary approaching of TWA 800's demise, it is left to a California federal judge to insist that the truth be shared with the nation.

Lahr is not overly optimistic, but he is not about to give up.