October 27, 2004

Robert Parry Exposes the Secrecy, Privilege and Intrigue Underlying the Bush Dynasty

George Bush... is surrounded by a very aggressive and effective infrastructure that will go after reporters and go after people in the political world if they're out of line. the consequences are that the American people just don't get a very fair picture of the world. They see it through a prism that is distorted, and it makes democracy very difficult.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW | Part 1 | Part 2

Part 1 of our interview with veteran journalist Robert Parry focused on the scandals surrounding George Herbert Walker Bush. In Part 2, we talk more about George W. Bush and events surrounding September 11th and the Iraq war. Parry also gives us some perspective on the Rev. Moon, owner of the right-wing newspaper, The Washington Times, financier of right-wing endeavors, and a figure who seems to come more from a work of fiction rather than real life.

The new book by veteran journalist Robert Parry, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, explains how members of the Bush family figure in the major scandals of the past 30 years. Its author, Robert Parry, broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-Contra affair while reporting for the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. His well-researched history connects the dots on the Bushes -- many of which will surprise you.

If you have ever asked yourself, "How did America get here?" then you simply must read this book. It gives a concise history of contemporary politics -- including Watergate, the October Surprise, the Iran-Contra Affair, the arming of Saddam Hussein, U.S. support of death squads in Latin and South America, the birth of the right-wing media, the witch hunt of Bill Clinton, Al Gore’s unfair shake from the press, Bush’s failure on September 11th and Bush's lies to invade Iraq.

Robert Parry started Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc., in 1995. As editor of the Internet’s first investigative magazine, consortiumnews.com, he continues to research and write in-depth articles. Parry also maintains an astonishing archive and clearinghouse for information on the Bush Family and a running list of scandals and corruption long forgotten by most of the media.

Robert Parry epitomizes the eloquent quote from Czech writer Milan Kundera: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

We are pleased to bring you Part 2 of our interview.

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BuzzFlash: You wrote in Secrecy & Privilege that in the months and weeks leading up to September 11, "Counterterrorism staffers tried to shock Bush administration officials out of their lethargy by using blunter and blunter language." For example, the headline on a June 30 briefing stated, "Bin Laden Planning High-Profile Attacks." And also on June 30, a senior executive intelligence brief was titled, "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."

I have two questions for you. It seems that the thrust of the 9/11 Commission should have been steered toward the Bush administration's failure to answer in clear and in no uncertain terms what they did in response to receiving those stark warnings of an imminent attack. The second is the media, and how and why they politely avoided the fact that warnings were so clear and didn't ask the president: What actions did you take in response to these warnings from counterterrorism staffers?

Robert Parry: There's been a phenomenon in Washington for a number of years -- I talk about it in terms of decades -- of letting the Bush family off the hook. It's a phenomenon that I think, from a historical point, is hard to explain, and you have to go into the details of how this situation developed. In large part, it developed because the conservatives built this powerful infrastructure of media, think tanks, attack groups, and over time produced timidity within the Washington establishment press corps. Reporters basically were afraid for their jobs.

In addition, Democratic leaders who took on or faced down the Republicans, especially the Bush family, often found themselves punished. They faced heavier threats from better-funded challengers. They had to deal with attacks on their personal lives, often done through the conservative news media. So there was a tendency, because of this imbalance, for the press and mainstream Democrats to give the Republicans in general, and the Bush family in particular, a break when it came to holding them accountable for mistakes. So when you get to George W. Bush, you have him even throughout the 2000 campaign not being held to account in any way similar to the way Al Gore was held to account.

Saying Bush and Cheney could get away with stretching the truth would be putting it mildly. The New York Times kept insisting there was no evidence that George W. Bush had used cocaine, even though he effectively admitted it when he said he could pass his father's requirements, which had set a time limit into how far back you had to look on whether you had used illegal drugs.

So you have this pattern that then went through the election -- the Washington press corps was largely looking out for its own interests. It did not want to get on the wrong side of these guys. So after the recount in 2000, there was a palpable feeling within the Washington press corps to rally behind Bush for the good of the country -- that was sort of the excuse. There was no reason for divisiveness any more. Let's move ahead. Forget about the close election. Yeah, Bush may have really lost, but it was close enough. Don't worry about those things.

There was always this impetus not to challenge these folks. When we got to September 11, when there was this terrible attack, the press corps didn't want to raise serious questions. The feeling was that it would make them really out of step with an American public that was rallying behind the president. They saw the poll numbers. So instead of doing their jobs, which would be to hold politicians accountable and tell the story as honestly and fairly as you can, the tendency was to go soft on Bush. That's why we didn’t really know that he had frozen for seven minutes after being told the nation was under attack. It took Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9/11" to really drive that point home. The Washington press corps didn't want to do that kind of story.

We saw it again when the newspaper recount was finished in October of 2001, showing that, under all circumstances, if the legally cast votes in Florida had been counted, Gore would have won. The story was sort of redone by The New York Times and Washington Post. They played the key angle way, way, way back into the story, and they focused on somewhat hypothetical cases in which Bush might have won. So that was the climate going into the period of the 9/11 report.

Again, you have Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, who was Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, and Hamilton had a history of always going soft on Republicans. Instead of holding Republicans accountable, he's preferred to be seen as a bipartisan figure who doesn't hold them accountable. And he's been rewarded for that. After he took a dive on the October Surprise investigation in 1992 about the 1980 election, he was hailed by David Broder, one of the most prominent columnists in Washington, as the conscience of the Congress because he had let the Republicans off the hook.

So we ended up with this twisted view of what it was to be responsible in journalism. Instead of it being responsible to do the hard stories, even when the outcomes aren’t pleasant -- or in politics, doing investigations even when the outcomes weren’t pleasant -- the rewards were unbalanced. If you took a dive and didn't really challenge the Bush family or the Republicans, you were rewarded. Your career would be enhanced. You'd live an easier life. I think that explains a lot of why, when it comes to making tough judgments based on the facts, we often don't see that happening anymore.

BuzzFlash: Several pages of the report are still classified, but nonetheless, the thrust of the 9/11 Commission's report should have focused on what the Bush administration did after receiving the warnings of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. It seems to me that the administration never gave the American people a proper and truthful explanation of that point.

Robert Parry: What you say is true. The public did get a fair and honest accounting from Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief for both the Clinton and the Bush administrations. He said they didn't do much of anything. I think what you're talking about is the fact that the 9/11 Commission would not come to any hard conclusions.

What you don't see in the 9/11 Commission is any holding people to account. The feeling -- and again, this was articulated by Hamilton -- was they did not want to point the finger of blame. They wanted to just lay the facts out. But there is a point where judgments have to be made, and that should be the reason that investigations are conducted -- not to just assemble a bunch of scattered information, but to explain to the public what that information means and who dropped the ball. But the 9/11 Commission, because it didn't want to have any partisan battles, chose not to do that.

BuzzFlash: With respect to the Iraq war and to the buildup of the invasion, Bush repeatedly stated that going to war was a last resort. I never once believed it, and I felt like I and a lot of people saw right through it. But even now, although most people see Bush as having no credibility on the issue of invading Iraq, he still seems to get away with saying things like, "I hate war. Nobody wants to go to war. We only use war as a last resort."

How does a reporter or an editor who feels like they see through the rhetoric deal with such utterly transparent spin and falsehoods? I kept waiting for a major newspaper editorial headline to say: "Mr. President, who are you kidding?" The fundamental question is: How does a reporter deal with it when someone essentially lies? Do newspapers and the media itself feel that they have to print it or air it, and just rely on somebody else in the story to refute it?

Robert Parry: That's a good question, and it's one that as a professional journalist I've dealt with for a lot of years. When I was with the Associated Press back in the 1980s, I raised this point with some of my editors. I felt that the Reagan administration at the time was engaging in widespread deception and distortion of facts concerning what was going on in Central America, and, for that matter, about their policies that became known as Iran-Contra later. They were simply not telling us the truth.

It is hard for journalists to deal with wholesale lying. It's one thing to deal with the sort of low-level lying, where someone on a personal point says something that's not true. You can, maybe, catch them and make it clear that they're not telling the truth. But in government, when it becomes a matter of policy to overwhelm the process with deception, and when it can be protected by its own powerful infrastructure, it becomes very difficult to refute. That's why the infrastructure part is key: it makes it very difficult for reporters to challenge them in any meaningful way.

That was the case during the '80s and early '90s. Under Clinton, there were cases of personal lying, as we know, which he paid a high price for, but there wasn't the wholesale lying that we saw during the Reagan-Bush period. Now the second Bush administration has brought back the approach of essentially overwhelming the process with distortions, exaggerations and lies.

It's very hard even for honest journalists to deal with it in a climate where they know they'll be attacked. If there's the smallest misstep, you can expect to have your career taken away. And even if there are no missteps, you will suffer serious career consequences for being seen as too aggressive or too hostile.

So one of the results has been that the press has fallen back into this pattern of saying everybody does it. Everybody's the same. They tried to balance maybe some minor inconsistencies on one side versus a major lie on the other, and pretend their balanced. They're wrong. That's the pattern we're now into.

Paul Krugman had a piece a week or so ago challenging the press corps to be honest about it and not to pretend that some slight misstatement or slip of the tongue is equal to an intentional lie. I think that makes sense. It's just very hard for the press to do it, especially when you have to come down against someone like George Bush, who is surrounded by a very aggressive and effective infrastructure that will go after reporters and go after people in the political world if they're out of line. the consequences are that the American people just don't get a very fair picture of the world. They see it through a prism that is distorted, and it makes democracy very difficult.

BuzzFlash: The right-wing infrastructure in the media is key. You wrote and researched a few chapters on the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who publishes the right-wing newspaper, The Washington Times. Your research alleges that he has a very shady past, including evidence of some charges of his involvement in drug trafficking, among many other things. He's a very mysterious man, and I think very few people know about him and The Washington Times. Tell us how this reclusive man rose in influence to become part of the nucleus of the right-wing media, and the Republican Party.

Robert Parry: Rev. Moon is perhaps the deepest pocket for the conservative infrastructure when looked at over the past quarter century. That money has been very important. We're not talking small sums -- we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars, really into the billions of dollars. His sources of money have never been clarified, but we know from research that has been done by federal investigators and by experts in certain journalistic areas that Moon's history goes back to an association with Japanese organized crime figures from the so-called yakuza gangs -- that Moon's big step into becoming an international figure came when a relationship was brokered with a yakuza leader named Ryoichi Sasakawa.

Sasakawa and another leader named Yoshio Kodama were World War II war criminals. They'd been fascists during World War II. They were let out by the U.S. military after some imprisonment, and they used their wealth and their ruthlessness to become political kingpins as well as crime kingpins in Japan. They helped Rev. Moon, along with some other Asian leaders, essentially build the World Anticommunist League into an international force. And through the World Anticommunist League, Moon developed very important ties to South America, to some of the right-wing governments that were then controlling most of that continent.

Many of those groups also were involved in the drug trade. For instance, Moon and his people helped support a right-wing coup in Bolivia in 1980 which overthrew a left-of-center government. The coup has come to be known as the cocaine coup because it was financed and organized by drug dealers and by their allies in the Bolivian military and security forces, and many other drug traffickers were let out of jail. That Bolivian coup provided a secure source of raw coca which was then shipped across the border into Colombia to help start a group called the Medellin Cartel, which became the principal supplier of cocaine into the United States.

Now Moon sent his top officials, including Bo Hi Pak down to Bolivia right after the coup to congratulate the new leaders. The Moon organization had a very close association with them. Later the corruption in Bolivia became so severe that eventually the cocaine coup government collapsed. But Moon never paid a price for his association with them. By that point, he suddenly was sitting on top of vast sums of money, and he used it to start The Washington Times in 1982.

Moon was also at that time still fending off in the United States evidence that had been developed by a Congressional investigation, known as the Koreagate investigation, which had found that he was part of a Korean influence-buying scheme whose main purpose was to spread money around Washington to politicians, to set up newspapers, and to invest in academia.

That investigation determined that there were unexplained sources of money coming into his group from overseas. That led to his prosecution and conviction on a tax evasion charge, so he did go to jail. But when he came out of jail, he simply resumed those practices. The evidence is now overwhelming that he and his organization continued, essentially, money-laundering operations, and they maintained contacts with the drug-trafficking groups throughout South America and in Central America, where some of the contra groups that were working with the same drug traffickers. Moon’s newspaper, The Washington Times, then became a major defender or protector of these groups like the contras and fended off efforts by Congress to investigate.

So, for instance, when a young senator named John Kerry sought to investigate the problems of Contra drug trafficking, it was The Washington Times that led the attack against Kerry, denouncing him for engaging in a witch hunt, for accusing his investigators of violating some rules, generally trying to make it impossible for them to do their job. So Moon has had this history of working with unsavory characters and making it harder for American officials to look into it. His alliances with the conservatives have effectively given him political protection. And his alliances particularly with the Bush family have proven to be extremely important to him.

BuzzFlash: What's astonishing about Rev. Moon's philosophy is that one would think it would offend or upset conservatives. You quoted him your book as he was speaking in the third person while delivering a speech, and Moon said, "History will make the position of Rev. Moon clear, and his enemies, the American population and government, will bow down to him."

He later continued "That this is Father's tactic, the natural subjugation of the American government and population," (p.239). And despite that kind of rhetoric, clearly money talks. Moon's financial contributions to conservative causes have basically bought him a seat at the table, including bailing out Jerry Falwell when his Liberty University was in debt. The conservatives have looked the other way, including during Moon's very sordid divorce with his wife, because of the money that's coming in. Is that right?

Robert Parry: Right. Rev. Moon has bought a position of influence in Washington. And he has paid a large, large sum of money to do it. Despite his fierce anti-Americanism -- his speeches are quite clear on these points -- he has been accepted and protected by the conservative movement in Washington because he has given them far more money than anybody else. When we talk to you about the hundreds of millions of dollars, that money alone has altered the balance of political power at the center of the U.S. government.

Moon himself said that in the first 10 years of The Washington Times, from '82 to '92, he had spent a billion dollars on its operation. He is continuing to lose vast sums of money, and there really are no explanations of where this money's coming from. I interviewed a number of his supporters who said that a lot of the little scam operations that he runs -- the selling of carnations, of trinkets of various kinds -- don’t really raise him much money at all. They may help pay for some local offices, but they don't pay for any of the big-ticket items. And most of the companies that people connect with him -- he has an absolute maze of companies -- don't make money either. Many of them are big money losers. So the question has always been, where does this money come from? What kind of enterprise generates that kind of cash that can be thrown around? And why hasn't the U.S. government followed up on its earlier investigations in the late '70s and early '80s into what appears to be a continuing criminal enterprise?

I think the only answer you can give to those questions is that he has bought himself protection. Especially when the Republicans have been in power, they find every reason possible not to investigate him. When Clinton was in power, there was, I think, a general fear that if they took on Moon, it would be seen as a retaliation against a political enemy, so there was hesitancy there, too. But the evidence from his people who are close associates to Moon, including his ex-daughter-in-law -- the evidence has been that he has continued smuggling cash into the United States and engaging in money-laundering activities.

BuzzFlash: Robert, let me ask you one last question. It's more of a personal question in some ways. What makes you keep trying to give people a more accurate account of our recent history? I'm sure it's come at a sacrifice, both personal and professional. And I'm sure it has also seemed as if you were the only one even fighting this fight. So what keeps you going? What drives you?

Robert Parry: Well, that's a good question, because I don't think I'm the only one doing it. I think there are a lot of people who have done what they could, and they take seriously their responsibilities toward this country and toward our remarkable system of government. I was a journalist. That was what I took on to do as a young man. I felt the job was both rather simple and perhaps rather complicated: It was to try to tell the truth the best I could.

I also worked for the Associated Press, which had a tradition of sort of a "just the facts, ma'am" approach. What I encountered, in the 1980s especially, was a great deal of resistance to that kind of simple, honest journalism. I just had a sense of professionalism that we were supposed to tell the story, and it upset me, it offended me, when I was being stopped from telling the story.

On a personal level, I have four children. I have a 16-year-old son, my youngest. And I've always felt that if, in a democracy, the country decides to do something like go to war, or put people in harm's way, that we all have a responsibility to try to make sure that those decisions are based on the best possible information. That's not just some kind of abstract thing; it seemed to me to be a personal responsibility. I guess I always think back on a lot of Americans who had done a lot more than I have ever come close to doing. They've suffered a lot more. I think I opened the book with the quote from "Saving Private Ryan," and I always have to think of those American soldiers who went on the beach of Normandy. They hadn't done anything to deserve that hellish situation. But they had a responsibility. And I think we all do. I guess I gave a long answer, but it's a mix of things. It's partly a kind of professional commitment, and it's also a sense that in a democracy we all have to do our share.

BuzzFlash: Robert Parry, thanks so much for speaking with us.

Robert Parry: My pleasure.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

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Resources:

Part 1 of BuzzFlash's Interview with Robert Parry
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/10/int04054.html

Robert Parry’s web site Consortium News
http://www.consortiumnews.com/

Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, by Robert Parry (A BuzzFlash Premium)
http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/04/10/pre04065.html