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March
5, 2002
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
Terry
Diggs
Why
Twain's Pudd'nhead
Wilson Still Matters
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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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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CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
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
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by Douglas Valentine
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March 5, 2002
The Rebel Angel
"They Don't Know
How I Really Feel"
Billy Graham, Tangled Up in Tape
By David Vest
Almost thirty years after President Nixon resigned
in disgrace, the tapes continue to come out, their power to
sully reputations undimmed by time.
Now it is the Rev. Billy Graham who has
been made to feel the lash of his own words, secretly taped
by the president who sought his spiritual counsel and used him
for "cover."
We knew, long ago, of Nixon's own anti-Semitism.
We heard his voice on the first wave of tapes, wanting to know
how his daughters were being deployed in his re-election campaign.
When staffers told him they were scheduled to appear at functions
in support of the arts, he protested, "No, no, that's Jews
and queers."
Nixon himself has long since lost the
power to shock us, even when we hear him proposing to drop nuclear
weapons on Vietnam.
But this conversation with Billy Graham
is something else again. Here is the most admired and influential
religious leader in America complaining to the president of
the United States about the Jews and their "stranglehold"
on the media, and blaming them for "all the pornography."
Even when Nixon replies that he agrees
but "can't say that" in public, Graham presses the
point: Yes, right, but if you get elected to a second term,
then we could do something about the problem.
Graham adds that while many Jews are
friendly to him, "they don't know how I really feel about
what they are doing to this country."
Today, Graham claims to have no memory
of the conversation, as if to throw ever-so-slight a doubt on
whether it actually occurred. Alas, we have the tapes. Advisers
(and network news anchors bending over backward to sound respectful)
point out that the old evangelist is in his eighties and suffering
from Parkinson's disease, an argument similar to the one used
to try to keep war criminals from being brought to trial.
What they might have pointed out instead
is that Billy Graham, at a time when he was presenting himself
as a moral leader and conducting "Crusades for Christ,"
was saying things no person with the slightest claim to moral
stature could be imagined saying, under any circumstances.
Given nearly unfettered access to the
highest halls of power, the minister used his influence to slander
an entire people, to betray the trust of those who had by his
own account been good to him, to urge the most powerful person
in the world to act vigorously in the service of bigotry.
Closer in time to Dachau than to the
present moment, the "preacher to the presidents" counseled
the rankest, crudest, most heart-sickening anti-Semitism.
This news is especially painful to people
who have revered Billy Graham, seeing him as a class act who
operated on a much higher level than the Jerry Falwells, Pat
Robertsons and Jimmy Swaggarts who came after him. I recall
how some people who loathed and feared Nixon took comfort in
the thought that "at least he's talking to Billy Graham."
Now that we know what poison he was pouring
into the president's ear, it will be impossible ever to think
of him in the same way again. As paranoid as Nixon was, his
spiritual advisor sounds even nuttier.
Dr. Graham says that the statements he
cannot remember saying do not reflect his real views, and that
he apologizes. For what, one wonders. The word "repentance"
has been conspicuously absent from news accounts.
The very thought of all the times Billy
Graham has "led the nation in prayer" is painful today,
and not just to people who never liked him in the first place,
who found him hard to take even at his best.
Had he been caught with a hooker, or
with his hand in the till, or busted trying to pick up a boy
in a bus station washroom, and it had come out only now, we'd
probably just feel embarrassment for the old guy. But this goes
way deeper. We have all said things we regret, things we'd never
want made public. Graham said them to the president of the
United States, from a position of privilege, by way of advice.
What must people be feeling who attended
his "Crusades" around the time of that phone call,
who heard him preach, who poured down out of the stadium seats
at his call to conversion, now that they know what was really
on his mind?
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He is a poet
and piano-player for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band,
The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
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