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Read Cockburn and St. Clair's Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and discover how the CIA gave a helping hand to the opium lords who took over Afghanistan, thus ushering the Taliban into power.

New Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively to Subscribers: SAGAS OF BETRAYAL: The Full, Clear Story, Told by a Former CIA Analyst, of How the US Ditched Solemn Pledges; Dishonored Guarantees Stretching Back to LBJ; Lectured the Palestinians on Swapping Land-for-Peace and Then, in Clinton Time, Sold Them Down the River; The Equally Disgusting Saga of How Clinton and Holbrooke Sanctioned Indonesian Butchery of the East Timorese, Then This May Travelled to Dili to Preen at the Independence Celebration of Those Whose Slavery and Near Extermination They Had Calmly Okayed. Remember, the CounterPunch website is supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683

June 17, 2002

Dave Marsh
Corporate Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive

Robert Jensen
Rhetoric Distorts Realities

June 15 / 16, 2002

Tanweer Akram
A Review of Noam Chomsky's 9-11

Daniel Wolff
The Day They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant

Ralph Nader
A Corporate Crime State

David Vest
Have You Been Serviced?

Karl Kraus
A Minor Detail

Alexander Cockburn
The Terrorism of Everyday Life

June 14, 2002

Mark Weisbrot
US Trade Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"

Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier

David Krieger
Farewell to the ABM Treaty

Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth

Steve Perry
How the Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley

June 13, 2002

Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines

Amira Hass
Indefinite Siege

Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents

Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird War

Stanton / Madsen
Democracy in Crisis:
What is to be Done?

Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela: Five Facts
About the Coup

June 12, 2002

Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections

Dave Marsh
Shelley Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement

Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.

June 11, 2002

Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War

Robert Fisk
The Bush Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges

Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land

David Krieger
Stopping a Nuclear War
in South Asia

June 10, 2002

Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs

June 8/9, 2002

Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris

Susan Davis
Sleepless in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?

George Sunderland
"Send in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps

June 7, 2002

Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now

Tanweer Akram
Howard Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review

David Krieger
New Security Challenges

Sam Bahour
The Palestinian Intifada:
A Very American Struggle

Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership

June 6, 2002

Michael Colby
White House vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming

Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away

Francis Boyle
Take Sharon to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin

CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's Censored F-Word

Mark Weisbrot
Spying and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past

June 5, 2002

Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor

Danielle Brian
Nuclear Plants and Terrorism

Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?

George Monbiot
Kashmir on the Brink

Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?

June 4, 2002

Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot

William Evan / Francis Boyle
Kashmir: Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War

Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves

June 3, 2002

Ramdas / Makhijani
India, Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace

Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan

Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar Effect

Resources:
100s of Links About 9/11


CounterPunch:
Complete Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath


Five Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond

By Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula

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Published March 15, 2002

  • Facing Down Rehnquist and Scalia:
  • Jennifer Harbury at the Supreme Court;
  • ADL Throws in Towel, Pays Up:
  • How They Worked for Apartheid Regime and Spied on NAACP:
  • Cockburn on America the Bully:
  • From Teddy Roosevelt to George W.
  • St. Clair on Musicians Against the Death Penalty & The Legacy of the Mekons.


    Search CounterPunch

Read Whiteout and Find Out How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden

Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the Press

by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair

The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff

The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid

Edited by Roane Carey

 

A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair

The Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine

Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair

Buy This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
 

Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual


Private Warriors
by Ken Silverstein

CounterPunch's Booktalk

June 17, 2002

Watergate and All That

by Jack McCarthy

Happy 30th anniversary Watergate buffs!

Like all the preceding anniversaries of the Watergate break-in the big questions posed by the mainstream press are the old reliables:

"What are the lessons of Watergate?"

And of course, "Who was Deep Throat?"

First lets us note the irony that the real Deep Throat, Linda Lovelace died on April 14th.

In the parlance of the conspiracy buff, is it coincidence or conspiracy that April 14th is the date of the dearly departed Trick Nixon's demise?

The best answer to the "lesson of Watergate" question was provided by Noam Chomsky who, by the way, wrote the best article which appeared in the best book (a collection of essays) on the Watergate scandal, aptly titled "Big Brother and the Holding Company."

The lesson of Watergate, Chomsky noted, was that its perfectly fine in this country to use Gestapo tactics on those outside the mainstream of US politics, especially the political left: but to use fascistic tactics against one's peers in the power structure is to court banishment.

And so Nixon's fall from grace and power as CEO of the US empire transpired not because all of a sudden we realized Nixon was a criminal. As Chomsky further noted, Nixon--and Kissinger-- were demonstrably two of the biggest criminals of the 20th century.

Nixon's crime was he attacked fellow power brokers, DNC chief Larry O'Brien and Ted Kennedy and the Washington Post.

Crimes such as the secret bombing of Laos or Cambodia and the railroading of activists such as Vietnam veterans like the Gainesville 8's Scott Camille were briefly noted and/or ignored.

Indeed, the U.S. House impeachment committee ruled out the bombing of Cambodia as one of the articles of impeachment.

Another lesson of Watergate is that it literally takes a "smoking gun" i.e., tape to convict or impeach a US president (the Clinton exception noted) no matter how transparent the criminal behavior.

Ronald Reagan, for example, bragged to a grand jury that the Iran-contra was "my idea to begin with," but congress and the press pretended (ala Reagan) not to hear what he said.

Even today no reporter will go on record and admit that Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in --at least generically.

This despite the fact that transcripts of the Nixon tapes published in book form by professor Stanley Cutler, ("The Abuse of Power Tapes,") shows an obsessive and revenge minded Nixon ordering his henchmen to go after Larry O'Brien using any means necessary.

Without a smoking gun tape in which Nixon says ala his order to firebomb the Brookings Institute, "I want a break-in at the Watergate," we are supposed to pretend that Nixon only knew of the cover-up.

Deep Throat?

Silly parlor game that it is, I believe we will one day find out it was the man who revealed the existence of the Watergate tapes, Alexander Butterfield.

In their book "All the Presidents Men," WoodStein note that of all of HR (Bob)Haldeman's henchmen, the only one they never got around to interviewing was HR's head of "internal security," Butterfield.

Nice guy that he was, Woodward suggested to a Watergate committee investigator that they do the honors of interviewing Butterfield.

And the rest is history.

Perhaps an even more interesting question is "Who wrote All the Presidents Men?"

Several years ago Daniel Schorr wrote a fascinating article in the Christian Science Monitor about a mysterious conversation he had with Woodward.

Schorr says he told Woodward that he couldn't locate the famous phrase, "Follow the money," in the book. Woodward told Schorr that Deep Throat's famous utterance was indeed in the book. It wasn't, Schorr discovered on second and third read.

Then again, Woodward is the guy who conducted a death bed interview with clinically brain dead William Casey.

Follow the brain waves, Dan.

Jack McCarthy can be reached at: jackm32301@yahoo.com

Today's Features

Ron Sullivan
Law and Orders:
The Assault on Trial by Jury

Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Taking on the School of the Americas

Joan Smith
G.W. Bush: The Man is Stupid

Dave Marsh
Corporate Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive

Robert Jensen
Rhetoric Distorts Realities

David Vest
Shut Up and Clap

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