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Today's
Stories
March 11, 2004
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
March 5, 2004
Chris Floyd
Uncle
Sugar: How the WMD Scam Put Money in Bush Family Pockets
Ron Jacobs
Chaos
Reigns: Haiti and Iraq
Lisa Viscidi
Guatemalan
Refugees: a Difficult Return
Yves Engler
Canada and the Coup in Haiti
Mike Legro
Those Bush Ads: Some Dead Bodies Are Worth More Than Others
Javier Armas
A Night of Inspiration: Oakland Benefit for Grocery Workers Strike
Bennett Hoffman
"Who Cares About Haiti, Anyway?"
Bill Christison
Faltering Neo-Cons Still Dangerous
Website of the Day
Haiti Support Group
March 4, 2004
Diane Christian
Sex
and Ideals
Sen. Robert Byrd
Stop the Stonewalling, Mr. President: Fairy Tales, Bush and the
9/11 Commission
Norman Solomon
Assuming the Right to Intervene: The US Press and Haiti
Jack Brown
A Fragrant Saga of Mexico's Greens
Hal Cranmer
The
John Kerry Experience
David Lindorff
Greenspan's Pension
Sam Smith
The Election is Over, We Lost
Christopher Brauchli
Goin'
to the Chapel: The Gay and the Dead
Brian D. Barry
The "Perfect" World of E-Voting: A Computer Scientist
Reports from the Polling Booth
Richard Oxman
Arsonists for Haiti?
Peter Phillips
Haitian
Fantasies: Mainstream Media Fails Itself, Again
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
Website of the Day
What If Boeing Ads Told the Truth?
March 3, 2004
Heather Williams / Karl
Laraque
Marines
Retake Haiti
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
March
11, 2004
The FBI is on My Trail
They
Want to Question Me About Lies Sami Al-Arian Allegedly Told,
But What About the Lies Al-Arian's Enemies Fed the Government
and the Tampa Tribune?
By JOHN SUGG
"You're all over the wiretaps,"
said the FBI agent who called me in mid-February. "We want
to talk to you."
This was not the sort of phone call a
journalist wants to receive. The case in question is that of
fired University of South Florida professor (and accused terrorist
mastermind) Sami Al-Arian.
The FBI agent spiced his appeal with
the comment, "We don't want to jam you, but ... ."
I'm not quite sure of his meaning. I guess it could be interpreted
as: They don't let us beat reluctant witnesses with rubber hoses
any longer, but ... .
I'd say it was an implied (although mild)
bit of coercion.
No doubt I'm all over the wiretap, I
observed to the agent, Kerry Myers, a nice guy, a good cop with
whom I've dealt in the past. After all, I have covered the government's
relentless pursuit of Al-Arian for eight years and have talked
to him, I'm sure, many hundreds of times. I'm writing a book,
and I've spent endless hours learning about Islam, the arcane
nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the histories of
the groups in the region, the personalities. A lot of that process
involves Al-Arian. I confess: I even once played horseshoes
with Al-Arian in an effort to engage him in conversation.
I asked Myers why he wanted to talk to
me.
He recited (apparently in violation of
a gag order issued at federal prosecutors' own request) some
dialogue from the wiretaps, in which I discuss with Al-Arian
what a government source had told me in the late 1990s about
the federal agent who originally was chasing the USF Muslims.
The source had said the agent, Barry Carmody, had a debilitating
disease and was trying to make a bigger deal of the case than
it was so that he could stay on the FBI payroll.
That corresponded with what a top federal
prosecutor in Tampa had said to me -- that the facts didn't
merit an indictment. And with what the FBI's national counterterrorism
chief, Bob Blitzer, had commented to me -- that Al-Arian and
his associates had broken no federal laws.
But I never printed this theory about
Carmody because I knew the source, a now retired federal official,
intensely disliked and distrusted Carmody. Now, however, I asked
Myers if Carmody had really been ill, and he acknowledged that
he had.
"We want to know your sources,"
he said. "Which agent told you about" Carmody? "Who
are your sources" in the Justice Department and the FBI?
He can't be serious, I mused.
It occurred to me while talking to Myers
that the top federal lawman in Tampa, U.S. Attorney Paul Perez,
had gotten some bad news only a day or so before. Perez didn't
get a federal judgeship -- and my sources had told me he had
thought he would. Moreover, he did not even get the courtesy
of an interview from the judicial selection committee. Quite
a slap.
Why?
I may have played a minor role.
I've written that working in Perez's
office is a prosecutor, Bob O'Neill, who owns a Hyde Park bar
that for years has been raising money for Ireland's Sinn Fein
and its very, very, very terrorist arm, the Irish Republican
Army. The IRA has killed several times the number of innocent
civilians than the group Al-Arian is accused of supporting,
the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. O'Neill's partner is unabashed
in his support of the IRA.
It certainly points to hypocrisy inherent
in the government's case -- that it prosecutes Al-Arian, holding
the professor under despicably inhumane conditions in an attempt
to break him, while one of the prosecutors is indisputably indulging
in activities very similar to those alleged against the Muslims.
More important, my disclosures on O'Neill
are the foundation for one of at least three complaints against
Perez filed with the Justice Department in Washington. Investigators
from Washington have been rolling into Tampa asking tough questions
of Perez, so my sources say. Not hard to figure out why Perez's
judicial quest merited only a rebuff.
Would Perez be so vindictive as to unleash
the FBI on me?
Another complaint against his office
came from state Circuit Court Judge Greg Holder, who claims
the U.S. Attorney's Office scuttled an investigation of courthouse
corruption.
(Perez, appointed in early 2002, would
be one of a succession of law enforcement officials in Tampa
who, curiously, don't want to take on the powerfully corrupt,
or corruptly powerful, judicial establishment.)
In 2001, as Holder was beginning to get
uneasy about how seriously the U.S. Attorney's Office was chasing
the courthouse mob -- and as he was making his discontent known,
a document was slipped under a federal prosecutor's door. That
paper purported to show that Holder had plagiarized a research
assignment needed to get a promotion in the Air Force Reserve.
The U.S. Attorney's Office did nothing
with the paper for a year -- until Holder turned his unease
into a formal complaint with the Justice Department, asserting
that Tampa's federal prosecutors had squelched the courthouse
probe. Then, the allegedly plagiarized paper was sent to the
Air Force, and Holder's life has been hell ever since.
The Air Force first suspended Holder
from duties as a military judge, then reinstated him. The Florida
Judicial Qualifications Commission instituted action that could
result in Holder losing his job -- a hearing is pending. The
JQC's case is circumstantial, and most of the evidence so far
has tended to vindicate Holder.
Interestingly, Perez won't let any of
his minions involved in the apparent smear job testify, nor
will he open his files. His survival may well depend on keeping
the lid on his office's actions.
But Perez and the feds have friends --
notably at The Tampa Tribune, which among other omissions has
never reported that the U.S. Attorney was dissed in his attempt
to become a federal judge. Nor has the daily ever reported on
the substance of the complaints against Perez's office -- notably
the one relating to O'Neill's involvement with Sinn Fein/IRA.
More important, when the agents need
someone to carry water for them, they know whom to call -- the
Trib. It's the quo following years of quid from the feds.
On Feb. 22, the Trib printed a curious
story. It had retained three "experts" to review the
Holder case, and these people had concluded the judge was likely
guilty. That conclusion was based on, as the daily recounted,
"Occam's Razor" -- a medieval philosopher's notion
that the simplest solution that addresses all of the facts is
likely correct.
The secret to getting a close shave by
Occam is to control the facts. Here's what the Trib didn't tell
you.
First, it tried to brush aside the importance
of who leaked the allegedly plagiarized document. "It might
not be relevant," the newspaper said, suggesting that the
deed-doer was a commendable "whistleblower" rather
than a "conspirator."
Did you get that? The identity of the
person who slipped the knife between Holder's ribs isn't "relevant."
This from a newspaper that once prided itself on uncovering
real news.
More precisely, the Trib doesn't want
readers heading in that direction. Any conspiracy hinted at
by the paper is limited to the courthouse crowd. The Trib isn't
about to consider that its friends, the federal prosecutors,
might have a reason to "get" Holder.
The bulk of the Trib's article claims
that it would have been all but impossible for the cigar-chomping,
ass-grabbing judges around the courthouse to have produced so
perfect a fabrication as the allegedly plagiarized paper.
True. But who did have motive and the
technical capability to frog up the document? Who had the knowledge
of how, and the opportunity, to get it to an out-of-the-loop
member of Perez's own staff (thereby creating a Mafia-style
gap in knowledge of the act)? Hmmm. Maybe someone doing Perez's
bidding?
Second, the key "expert" is
recently retired FBI agent Joe Navarro. The newspaper tells
you some of his credentials -- but not the most interesting
fact. For years, Navarro has been one of the team chasing Al-Arian.
And, the feds have been furiously leaking their spin on the
Palestinian professor through their media allies at the Trib.
Indeed, the newspaper's terrorism Svengali, Steve Emerson, knew
about Al-Arian's indictment long before Al-Arian did -- and
that information could only have originated from the feds.
(Navarro until he retired was partners
with Myers, the agent who wants to know my sources. If these
guys really are interested in which Justice employees are passing
info to scribes, they might start asking the folks at the Trib.
But, then, they already know the answers.)
Third, the Trib makes much of the fact
that an initial Air Force investigator, David Leta, felt Holder
was guilty. What the daily doesn't say is that Leta, when not
an Air Force reservist, is an assistant U.S. Attorney in Atlanta
with close ties to his brethren in Tampa. It's a clear conflict
of interest, not that the Trib would clue you in.
So, with Holder, it seems like Perez
may have indulged in retaliation, aided and abetted (as the
lawmen say) by the Trib. His refusal to open his office to scrutiny
underscores that suspicion.
Quite frankly, the Justice Department
should demand transparency about complaints against Perez --
if the feds want people to have faith in the justice system.
And if there is substance -- especially if it turns out Holder
was a victim of dirty tricks -- then Perez should be fired.
The Planet's attorney, Dave Snyder, responded
to the government that, no, I wouldn't be revealing <sources.Snyder>
also pointed out to the feds that they haven't complied with
any of their own rules about questioning reporters, beginning
with the necessity to have the personal approval of Attorney
General John Ashcroft.
Al-Arian's chief prosecutor, Terry Zitek,
apparently realizing that Myers had strayed from the reservation
and was inviting sanctions for revealing contents of the wiretap,
tried what looked like damage control. Zitek wrote Snyder that
the government wasn't primarily interested in my sources (but
he didn't preclude asking me about them once they started the
third degree).
Zitek said, "The principal purpose
of the requested interview is to determine whether Mr. Sugg
has any relevant information ..." about Paragraph 42 of
Al-Arian's indictment.
That paragraph states that the Muslims
"did make false statements and misrepresent facts to representatives
of the media to promote the goals of the" Islamic Jihad.
I'm more inclined to believe Myers as
to the reason for his call, but here's the context of Zitek's
statement:
Al-Arian has filed a motion to dismiss
charges against him based mainly on the contention that what
the government is really doing is attacking the First Amendment
by criminalizing speech that advocates for the Palestinian
cause.
"The indictment characterizes one
side of [the Middle East conflict] as good and the other side
as evil," Bill Moffitt, Al-Arian's attorney, wrote in his
motion. "While the indictment tracks the death of Israelis
at the hands of Palestinians, it never references the deaths
of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis. The indictment's historical
oversights provide a framework by which the U.S. attempts to
criminalize legitimate political expression. It is clear that
the express purpose of the indictment is to chill any and all
support for the Palestinian cause and any additional advocacy
in favor of the rights of Arabs."
That, of course, is what has been going
on ever since faux journalist (and very real disinformation
mouthpiece for Israel's extreme right Likud party) Steve Emerson
slithered into town and found a rock to hide under at the Trib.
Moffitt contends that the Palestinian
groups have never targeted America. They may be a threat to
Israel, but they're not our problem, he says.
More to the point, for most of the time
Al-Arian is alleged to have been connected to the Islamic Jihad,
it would have been perfectly legal activity in the United States.
After years of screeching from Emerson
and the Tribune, the feds couldn't make a case -- but they did
pour lots of corrosive innuendo on the Bill of Rights. That
changed only when the Bush regime managed to find a way to circumvent
the Constitution and use foreign intelligence wiretaps, and
after Israel provided what it claimed to be "intelligence."
(It might be instructive to remember that a motto of Israel's
crack Mossad spy agency is: By way of deception, thou shalt
do war. And to remember other recent episodes of foreign "intelligence"
that didn't stand up in the light of day.)
Where no indictment had been possible
before, it now was, or at least that's what the government wants
us to believe.
The wiretaps, according to my Justice
sources, are going to be very problematic for the government.
(It wouldn't be the first time. Remember the Aisenberg tapes?
That's another one of agent Myers' cases. Hell, the government
is in such a sorry state this time that it's been forced to
ask for Al-Arian's help in translating Arabic faxes. The scholar's
attorney responded, tongue in cheek, by asking if the government
was willing to pay for the services.)
And Israel, which has long sought to
eradicate any Arab voice in America, has refused to allow scrutiny
of its "intelligence," prompting Moffitt to demand
of the prosecutors whether things have gotten so bad that we're
allowing a foreign power to dictate criminal proceedings in
our courts.
What Zitek really wanted was something
to shoot down Moffitt's motion to dismiss. (Several weeks later,
Myers approached at least two other reporters to question them
about their conversations with Al-Arian. One of them is Planet
editor Jim Harper, who covered the story for the St. Petersburg
Times in the mid '90s. Now following Zitek's lead, Myers told
Harper he was gathering information to support Paragraph 42
in the indictment. Harper, like any independent-minded journalist,
declined to become a witness for the prosecution, and the Times
has promised to back him.)But here's my answer for all to see
-- if that's really the reason for the fed's inquiry:
There's nothing that I know that could
prove the guilt or innocence of Al-Arian and his co-defendants,
and the government is aware of that.
Al-Arian refrained from answering some
(but not many) questions that I have put to him over the years.
I didn't like that, but considering that Al-Arian has been a
target of the Emerson-inspired government crusade for almost
a decade, I can understand his reluctance to be absolutely
forthcoming.
I had specifically asked Al-Arian about
his role, if any, with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He explained
-- and his account is consistent with academics and independent
intelligence experts who have studied the Palestinian movements
-- that the "religious opposition" to the secular
Palestinian Liberation Organization had spawned both political
and militant branches. Similarly, Zionism has boasted eloquent
advocates for peace -- and it has produced terrorist outfits
such as the Stern Gang, Irgun, the Unit 101 death squad (of
which Ariel Sharon was a member), and in the United States,
the groups associated with Meir Kahane.
Al-Arian clearly has political affinity
with the "religious opposition" groups such as Hamas
and the Islamic Jihad (as is his First Amendment right). He
has stated emphatically that while supporting the right of his
people to oppose the occupation, he opposes killing innocent
civilians.
While Al-Arian has stated opinions with
which I disagree, sometimes vehemently, I have never caught
him in a factual lie or intentional deception.
On the other hand, if Zitek and the government
really want to prosecute someone for misleading the media and
the public, why don't they start with Emerson, his sidekicks
and some of their own agents?
The government, in the early years of
this case, repeatedly leaked incendiary "facts" that
turned out to be bogus. For example, they used the Tribune to
broadcast that documents on MacDill Air Force Base had been
found among Al-Arian's files -- implying that he had some dastardly,
perhaps lethal, purpose. The truth was that Al-Arian had twice,
by invitation, addressed conferences at Central Command, and
the documents were the handout materials from those events.
(The Trib's reporter, revealing his non-journalism motives,
told me it wasn't his job to question what those documents
really were. Which meant, he saw his job as merely furthering
the feds' spin.)
Or, at a 2000 deportation hearing for
Al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, it became painfully
clear that government agent Bill West repeatedly misrepresented
facts (or exhibited extraordinary ignorance) under oath. For
example, he said that all of the "martyrs" in the
Palestinians' uprising in the late 1980s and early 1990s were
suicide bombers. The truth: None were.
The media were at the hearing. Maybe
West misled them.
With Emerson, there's a wealth of calumnies.
As Harper reported in the Times, Emerson told the St. Petersburg
Tiger Bay Club in February 1996 that Palestinian advocates at
USF were involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Emerson
promised proof "in the near term." The proof never
came, and the Justice Department said it had no records supporting
the allegation.
And, if misleading reporters merits a
criminal investigation, consider that Associated Press reporters
gave Emerson the heave-ho in a 1997 series on terrorism after
they came to doubt the origin of material he gave them. Emerson
responded with an eight-page rant to AP. In it, Emerson alleged
that a wire service editor (and former Times scribe), Bob Port,
had provided him with inside information about AP, specifically
that another editor had a "vendetta" against Emerson.
Last September, Port wrote, in response
to questions from me, "I never told Mr. Emerson that anyone
at the AP had a vendetta against him, nor did any vendetta exist."
Port has a lot better reputation for
truth-telling than does Emerson.
Emerson's researcher -- until a rupture
two years ago -- was the truly weird Rita Katz, who claimed
in her book Terrorist Hunter that federal agents were bowled
over by her sexual appeal. She also wrote that an individual
left Tampa the "next day" after a leader of the Islamic
Jihad was assassinated. The truth is that he left almost a half-year
before then, but Katz's deception puts a far more sinister
cast on events in Tampa. At the very least, it arguably was
intended to mislead the public -- and the press.
So, Mr. Zitek, bust Katz's butt, and
Emerson's, and your own agents', if fibbing to the media is
suddenly a crime.
John Sugg
is the former editor of and frequent contributor to the Weekly Planet, where
this account originally appear. Last year he won a lawsuit that
Steve Emerson filed against him and the Planet. After four years,
Emerson was unable to produce proof of his allegations and dropped
the suit. Sugg is now senior editor of Creative Loafing in
Atlanta. He can be reached at at john.sugg@cln.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
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