News Release Archive - 2004

* Fox News Falsely Claims Students Registering to Vote Could Be a Felony * Universities and Their Legal Obligations vis-a-vis Student Registration

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JULIANA ZUCCARO
Zuccaro is a student at the University of Arizona and a member of the Network of Feminist Student Activists, which runs student voter registration drives. She said today: “We were registering students when we were interviewed by Fox News reporter Natalie Tejeda, who claimed that we were committing ‘unintentional felony’ by registering out-of-state students. She cited Pima County Voter Registrar Chris Roads, a Republican, who said that out-of-state students are committing a felony if they register to vote in Arizona and they don’t intend on remaining in the state ‘indefinitely.’ The report was broadcast with those statements. It felt like a blatant attempt at intimidation, an attempt to scare students away from exercising their constitutional rights.”

She added: “While Pima County Recorder Ann Rodriguez later issued a clarification that students can register in Arizona, we feel that the damage has been done, especially since Rodriguez did not retract her deputy Roads’ statement. Meanwhile, Chris Roads continues to sow seeds of confusion and possible intimidation with statements such as that future systemized voter databases across the country would help ‘catch those who have illegally voted’ and that ‘while a person may not be caught this month or this year, the chances of getting caught in the future are pretty significant.’ In other words, he’s trying to make students believe that if they vote while living in Arizona and move away anytime in the future, they will have committed a felony. We’ve been trying to inform students of their rights but I’m afraid this environment is already making many students scared to cast their vote.”
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ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
Chemerinsky is the Alston & Bird Professor of Law at Duke Law School. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court and the United States Courts of Appeals. He said today: “The law is clear that college students may vote, if they wish, in the area they live to attend college. Indeed, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that states must allow students to register to vote. Unfortunately, some counties and states still do not follow this law. Sometimes, the media misreports the law concerning where students may vote. This occurred in Tucson, Arizona, where a Fox news report falsely said that college students may be committing a felony by registering to vote there. That is clearly wrong, as the law is well established that students may vote in the place they live to go to school.”
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Universities and Their Legal Obligations vis-a-vis Student Registration

DAVID KING
King is the research director at the Institute of Politics at John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The Institute has just released a study titled “Survey of College and University Voter Registration and Mobilization Efforts,” which was carried out in collaboration with The Chronicle of Higher Education. King said today: “In 2000, only 36.1 percent of America’s 26.8 million citizens between the ages of 18 and 24 voted in the presidential election. The rate at which young people vote has declined significantly since 1972, when over half of them went to the polls. However, the future may not be as bleak as these numbers seem to predict, since 92 percent of college students believe more of their peers would vote if the processes of registering and voting by absentee ballot were easier. Universities entrusted with the education of this country’s youth may have a civic obligation to prepare them for our participatory republic. However, these institutions have more than a patriotic duty to provide their students with the means to register to vote; it is federal law. The Higher Education Act of 1998 requires that each college and university receiving federal funds commit to a ‘good faith effort to distribute a mail voter registration form’ to each student and to ‘make such forms widely available to students at the institution.’ … Using this ‘strict’ definition of the letter of the law, just 16.9 percent of the schools in our survey are in compliance with the Higher Education Act of 1998. While the overwhelming majority of schools are not in strict compliance with the law … most schools (65.5 percent) have programs in place that meet either the letter or the spirit of the law. One-third of schools fall seriously short of either the letter or the spirit of the law. … The absentee voting process can be difficult to navigate, when states have various deadlines and onerous rules, such as requiring multiple witnesses or demanding an acceptable excuse.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Hacking the Vote: A Real and Present Danger

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BEV HARRIS
KATHLEEN WYNNE
ABBE WALDMAN DELOZIER, VICKIE KARP
Black Box Voting and the National Ballot Integrity Project Task Force announced Wednesday that they “have been able to hack into both Diebold’s and Sequoia Voting Systems’ voting machines.” Harris is the executive director of Black Box Voting. Karp is a board member with Black Box Voting. Delozier works with the Texas Coalition for Visible Ballots. Wynne is with the National Ballot Integrity Project Task Force.

At the National Press Club this morning, Harris and others demonstrated methods of manipulating vote-counting programs. Harris said: “We are able to use a hidden program for vote manipulation, which resides on Diebold’s election software. This is a hidden feature enabled by a two-digit trigger (not a ‘bug’ or an accidental oversight; it’s there on purpose). Also participating is Dr. Herbert H. Thompson, computer security expert and editor/author of 12 books including How to Break Software Security. Thompson shows how easily an election can be rigged by implanting a virus. Also, Jeremiah Akin, an independent computer programmer from Riverside, Calif., shows how to manipulate Sequoia Voting Systems software just before an election by switching the labels on the names of candidates. Andy Stephenson, associate director of Black Box Voting, shows how an unscrupulous person with no computer skills whatsoever can sabotage an election.”

In addition to their demonstration at the Press Club, they scheduled a public demonstration Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. in “The Ballroom” at Heldref Publications, 1319 18th St. NW in Washington.
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BRIDGET WINBERG
KYLE CHRISTENSEN
Winberg and Christensen are spokespersons for Findlaw, the legal web site. Winberg said today: “According to our new poll, roughly four in 10 Americans say they are worried about potential problems with electronic voting machines to be used in the November election. Forty-two percent of those surveyed are concerned about potential vote tampering in electronic voting machines. Thirty-eight percent say they are worried about the accuracy of the machines. Roughly one-third of voters nationwide will use touch-screen computer voting machines in the upcoming November election. The machines are controversial because of concerns over testing procedures, security measures to prevent tampering, the accuracy of vote counts, lack of paper trails, the potential for software bugs and vulnerability to computer hackers. … New electronic voting machines are being installed in several states, including California, Ohio, Maryland, Connecticut and Florida, the site of several major vote-tallying controversies in the 2000 presidential election.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

With Bush at U.N.: Iraq War Illegal?

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Heads of state, including George W. Bush, address the U.N. General Assembly today. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan recently stated the invasion of Iraq “was not in conformity with the U.N. Charter from our point of view, from the Charter point of view, it was illegal.”

Here are some relevant excerpts from the U.N. Charter:

“All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations….

“The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice….

“The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken … to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
U.N. Charter (Chapter I, Article 2; Chapter VI, Article 33; Chapter VII, Article 39)

FRANCIS BOYLE
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois and author of the new book Destroying World Order. He said today: “The entire legal argument for the invasion of Iraq was a fraud and that was clear before the invasion took place. The U.S. government drove towards war, it did not attempt to avoid it as the Charter calls for. Kofi Annan should have clearly said that it was illegal at that time. But stating it now does pull the legal rug out from under continued U.S. military occupation of Iraq. The United Nations must ensure the immediate departure of all foreign military forces from Iraq, and the exercise of their sovereign right to self-determination by the Iraqi people freed from the current U.S.-imposed puppet government.”
[See Boyle’s quote on the IPA news release of Nov. 1, 2002, “Interviews on Iraq: U.N. Endgame,”] More Information

JOHN QUIGLEY
Professor of law at Ohio State University and author of the book The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II, Quigley said today: “Kofi Annan is correct that the war was not justified based on the resolutions the Security Council had adopted. Iraq complained at the time that this was aggression, but the U.N. did not respond. The U.N. should have been demanding that the U.S. stop its threats and would be responsible for any damage caused by an invasion. Of course it’s virtually impossible for that to happen since the U.S. is a permanent member of the Security Council; but that’s what should have happened.”
[See Quigley’s quote on the IPA news release of Feb. 10, 2003, “U.S. Credibility Problems,” just after Colin Powell presented the U.S. case for war at the U.N.]

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Ballot Access Obstruction by Democratic Operatives

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DARCY RICHARDSON
Richardson is completing a four-volume work on third parties. The first volume, Others: Third-Party Politics From the Nation’s Founding to the Rise and Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party, was released earlier this year; the second volume will be released in October. Richardson said today: “While pro-Bush forces helping independent candidate Ralph Nader get on the ballot have garnered headlines — most recently with lawyers in Florida representing Nader and the Reform Party who argued on behalf of Bush during the 2000 election fiasco — another important story is how pro-Kerry forces are blocking Nader from getting on the ballot across the country.

“These efforts are unparalleled in U.S. history and should gravely concern anyone who cares about the future of open politics in this country. The methods employed by the Democrats this year are far worse than any tactics used against the Progressive Party’s Henry A. Wallace in 1948 or against Eugene J. McCarthy, who waged a forlorn independent bid for the White House in 1976.

“Many of the legal challenges filed by the Democrats this summer have been simply frivolous in nature, deliberately designed to harass the consumer activist and drain his campaign’s dwindling resources. Former Democratic congressman Toby Moffett, a corporate lobbyist in D.C. and co-founder of something called Ballot Project, Inc. was quoted in the Washington Post: ‘We wanted to neutralize [Nader’s] campaign by forcing him to spend money and resources defending these things. But much to our astonishment we’ve actually been more successful than we thought we’d be in stopping him from getting on at all.’ [See Nader Still Unsure of Ballot Spot in Many States]

“The Post reported that ‘Moffett says his group has raised about $100,000 to fight Nader and is relying on pro bono work from lawyers across the country who have contributed up to $2 million worth of labor.’ Nader’s campaign, on the other hand, has barely raised $1.5 million for the entire campaign — compared to $239.8 million raised for Bush and $210.7 million for Kerry — and, understandably, hasn’t had the resources to effectively counter all of the legal challenges confronting them during the past few months.

“While pro-Bush groups can be legitimately criticized for trying to assist Nader’s ballot access drives in Oregon, Michigan, Florida and elsewhere, the efforts of the pro-Kerry forces potentially disenfranchise millions of voters this autumn by denying them a viable alternative to the two major parties and are a far cry from the ‘count every vote’ mantra echoed by these same Democrats four years ago in the wake of the Florida voting debacle.

“Democratic efforts to knock Nader off the ballot this year are unprecedented, but major party interference in third-party presidential campaigns is hardly a new phenomenon. In the razor-thin 1884 presidential election, the two major parties manipulated the Anti-Monopoly Party’s Benjamin Butler and Prohibitionist John St. John. In one of the dirtiest presidential campaigns in American history, the Democrats, anxious to regain the White House, put tremendous pressure on Butler to withdraw from the contest, essentially offering the former Massachusetts governor his choice of cabinet post in Grover Cleveland’s administration. Meanwhile, the Republicans, fearing that the Prohibition Party’s St. John would take votes from their candidate, desperately tried to bribe him to drop out of the race, while simultaneously secretly funding Butler’s third-party candidacy in the hope that he would siphon enough votes from Cleveland to throw the election to James G. Blaine, the Republican candidate.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Ballot Access: Restriction on Democracy?

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As independent candidate Ralph Nader and the Libertarian and Green Parties are fighting court battles to get on the presidential ballot in various states, the following analysts are available for interviews:

RICHARD WINGER
Editor of Ballot Access News, Winger said today: “Since the 1890s, when ballot access laws first came into existence in the U.S., both major parties have used the ballot access laws for their own partisan advantage…. This year, though, partisan use of the ballot access procedures for independent candidates has been unusually active. Democrats have challenged Ralph Nader’s signatures successfully in Arizona, and a Democratic challenge of Nader’s petition in Illinois will probably succeed. Republicans in Michigan have completed an independent candidate petition for Nader…. Republican efforts to get Nader on the ballot may be selfish and hypocritical, but these efforts do enhance the ability of voters to vote freely for the candidate of their choice. On the other hand, Democratic efforts to keep Nader’s name off the ballot do interfere with voting rights.”

Winger added: “The Democratic Party has tried to prevent voters from voting for certain minor party and independent presidential candidates in the past. [Progressive Party candidate and former vice president] Henry Wallace was kept off the Illinois and Oklahoma ballots in 1948 through Democratic Party efforts. Eugene McCarthy was kept off the New York ballot in 1976 by a Democratic Party challenge, and the Democratic National Committee intervened in legal proceedings in 1980 to try to keep John Anderson off the Massachusetts and North Carolina ballots…. This type of activity is virtually unknown in other advanced democracies. In Canada, the Liberal Party might be helped if it could keep the New Democratic Party off the ballot. And in Great Britain, the Labor Party might similarly be advantaged if it could keep the Liberal Democratic Party off the ballot. But that doesn’t happen in those countries; it would be considered unspeakably unethical. Ballot access in both Canada and Great Britain is very easy. Candidates for House of Commons in Britain only need 10 signatures plus a filing fee, and Canada is similar.”

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DARCY RICHARDSON
Richardson is completing a four-volume work on third parties. The first volume, “Others: Third-Party Politics From the Nation’s Founding to the Rise and Fall of the Greenback-Labor Party,” was released earlier this year; the second volume will be released in October. Richardson said today: “While ballot access laws are not necessarily getting more restrictive, Secretaries of State and various state election officials around the country are generally becoming more hostile to third parties. The Nader campaign is having difficulties in a number of states; sometimes because of obtrusive tactics. In Arizona, the Democrats hired five corporate law firms to challenge Nader’s petitions… In Oregon, Nader was forced to name a stand-in vice-presidential running mate when the director of elections ruled that Nader couldn’t petition as an independent on the frivolous grounds that his running mate, Peter Camejo, is a member of the Green Party.”

Richardson added: “Restrictions on ballot access have historically increased after third parties have had successes. Pennsylvania, for example, quadrupled its signature requirement shortly after George C. Wallace garnered nearly 10 million votes as a third-party candidate in 1968…. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, when Socialists were seen as a viable alternative, a number of states increased their signature requirements to restrict access to the ballot. Prior to the 1890s, political parties were free to print and distribute their own ballots and, consequently, minor parties throughout most of the 19th century weren’t faced with the kinds of discriminatory and burdensome ballot access laws that they encounter today.”

JIM MOORE
An independent political analyst in Portland, Oregon, Moore said today: “Both the Democratic and Republican party operatives are playing games with ballot access in Oregon. Groups like Citizens for a Sound Economy, which are allied with Bush, worked to get their membership out to support getting Nader on the ballot. Meanwhile, Democrats are using mechanisms which are also clearly unethical. When the Nader campaign tried to get on the ballot by getting 1,000 people in an auditorium to sign a petition, a local Democratic Party official sent out an email informing people about how they could sabotage Nader’s efforts. The email read: ‘We need as many Oregon Democrats as possible to fill that room and to NOT sign that petition. The rules state that once 1,000 fill into that room, as certified by state election officials, the doors close and those in the room sign the petition. If we attend in large numbers and politely refuse to sign, Nader is denied his needed numbers. It’s that simple.’ Other Democratic Party officials later disavowed this tactic, but if Nader doesn’t succeed in this attempt to get on the ballot [in Oregon], it could well be because of such tactics.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020

International Election Monitors Arrive in the U.S.

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BRIGALIA BAM
Dr. Brigalia Bam is the Chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa. She is the former General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. She said today: “We are civic leaders, parliamentarians, diplomats, academics, electoral officials, journalists, and veteran election monitors. We come from 15 countries on all five continents. We have worked for decades in our home countries to reform our electoral systems, to make them more responsive, more open, and more fair. We have been invited by the U.S. non-governmental organization Global Exchange with the aim of assisting Americans in the effort to increase confidence in the electoral process. … Our experience in dozens of countries around the world has shown that the presence of non-partisan, non-governmental observers from other countries can help ensure fair and transparent elections and build trust in democratic processes. … Through sharing with Americans the democratic innovations and advances occurring around the world, we hope to bring to light the best practices that may benefit the U.S. political system.”
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JASON MARK
Jason Mark works with Fair Election, a project of Global Exchange. He said today: “Electoral experts from 14 countries will arrive in the United States this week to begin an unprecedented international monitoring of the U.S. elections. The 20-person team consists of distinguished pro-democracy advocates who have spent much of their lives creating and improving electoral systems in their home countries. The electoral observers will spend two weeks in the U.S. investigating controversies that appear to be undermining public faith in the U.S. political process. … The pre-electoral fact-finding team will spend four days in Washington, D.C. … The delegation will then split into five groups to conduct further investigations in Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Missouri, and Ohio. In those states the monitors will meet with secretaries of state, hear from county voting registrars, talk with community organizations, observe voter registration drives, and hold town hall meetings to get a full picture of American democracy.”

Other members of the delegation include the following:

* Oscar Gonzalez. Mr. Gonzalez received the UNESCO Award for Human Rights in 2002, and he has been president of the Mexican Academy of Human Rights (1997-2002).

* Pansy Tlakula. She is chief Electoral Officer of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of South Africa, a position that makes her the overall head of elections in the country.

* Terence Humphreys. He is currently the Chief Executive of Electoral Reform International Services (ERIS), where he provides overall direction for all ERIS programs worldwide.

* Ms. Somsri Hananuntasuk. She is the Executive Director for Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) and has extensive experiences in election monitoring in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Laos and Vietnam.

* David MacDonald. MacDonald is a former Minister of Communications of the Canadian Parliament. He served as a Conservative under the Pearson, Trudeau, and Clark governments from 1965 to 1980.

* Victoria Somers. Ms. Somers has observed elections in South Africa, Bosnia, Tanzania, Kosovo and Sri Lanka on behalf of the Irish Government, United Nations and European Union.

* Damaso Guerrero Magbual. He is a member of the National Council and concurrently Chairman of the National Capital Region and Deputy Secretary General for the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), which was the very first election monitoring organization in Asia.

* K.J. Rao. Mr. Rao is currently the Elections and Training Advisor to the Election Commission of India.

* Shanta Martin. She is an international legal advisor currently working for the Commission for the Verification of Codes of Conduct (COVERCO) in Guatemala.

* Horacio Boneo. Since 2000, Boneo has served as a consultant on issues of democratic governance and elections for the United Nations, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Swedish International Development Agency, the National Democratic Institute, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, as well as a visiting professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Martin.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Vanunu on Mideast Nukes

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The U.S. government has been making demands regarding Iran’s nuclear program. On Thursday afternoon State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher was asked about “Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower” and his proposal that “there be a trade-off between the Iranian nuclear program and the ending of the Israeli one.” Boucher declined to comment on the proposal.

When asked about Israel’s nuclear capacity, Boucher said: “I’m not making judgments or presumptions about that. We’ve had a view on the universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that we’ve expressed many times, that applies in all cases.” Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. U.S. government officials have consistently avoided acknowledging Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

MORDECHAI VANUNU
Vanunu exposed the Israeli nuclear arsenal in 1986. He was released in April 2004 after serving an 18-year sentence, most of it in solitary confinement. Vanunu is available for a limited number of interviews. He said today:

* “The U.S. goes to Iraq in the name of fighting against weapons of mass destruction while it does not even acknowledge Israel’s capacity. The obvious thing to do is to ensure that all states in the region — including Israel and Iran — do not have nuclear weapons.”

* “Israeli governments which have been behind building these nuclear weapons are betraying the Israeli citizens, the Arab community and all of humanity. Israel has been building nuclear weapons, they now have enough material for hundreds of atomic bombs. I was a technician at the Dimona plant; my main job was making lithium-6 for use in hydrogen bombs. There is no justification for Israel having hydrogen bombs.”

* “In 1986 I was kidnapped by Israel in Rome after revealing its massive nuclear arsenal to the London Sunday Times. I was sentenced to 18 years because I revealed the truth to the world. I suffered 18 years of cruel, barbaric treatment under the Israeli authorities. I’m glad to have some freedom now, but I’m not allowed to speak to any foreigners or to go to any other country for one year. I would like to go to the U.S. where there are more freedoms. I do not feel safe in Israel, I have been threatened, I’m called a traitor in the street. Especially because I have become a Christian, I do not have equal human rights. The Israeli government and media have built a very bad image of my case here.”

* “With its nuclear weapons, Israel is much more aggressive, so it doesn’t move to a real peace with the Palestinians or Syria or Lebanon or Jordan. Its nuclear weapons are used as political power. Without even using them, the nuclear weapons help Israel do what it wants so it doesn’t respect international law. When he was defense minister, Sharon destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 so that no other country in the region would have nuclear weapons.”
Recent interview with Vanunu
More on Israel’s nuclear arsenal

FELICE COHEN-JOPPA
Cohen-Joppa is the coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu. She noted that Vanunu has just been awarded a peace grant by Yoko Ono.
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THOMAS COCHRAN
Director of the Nuclear Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Cochran wrote the paper “The Relevance of Mordechai Vanunu Disclosures to Israel’s National Security.”

____________________

From the State Department briefing, September 16, 2004:

QUESTION: Larry Franklin’s case had to do with presidential policy on Iran, for the most part, according to news reports. Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower, has been urging for some time that there be a trade-off between the Iranian nuclear program and the ending of the Israeli one. And there has been, as you know, negotiations in Jerusalem on that, or some information from IAEA has been transmitted to the Israeli government. Now, I wondered what the U.S. attitude is in Vienna at the IAEA on this subject of trading off Israeli nuclear program and the ending to it, whatever —

BOUCHER: I guess that’s being speculated about in the press, but that is not the issue in Vienna. The issue in Vienna is whether Iran has for almost two decades hidden covert programs designed to make nuclear weapons and whether or not Iran has complied with the obligations — the requirements of the Board of Governors’ resolutions, the requirements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the protocols that Iran has — well, I’m not sure of the status of the additional protocol, but the requirements of the treaty, and the commitments that Iran itself made. That’s the matter that’s before the International Atomic Energy Agency and that nations are currently discussing now.

QUESTION: Does the United States, then, feel that the Israeli nuclear program, which is now out — Avner Cohen has written a full book on it, Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in jail because of it. It’s obvious that they do have such a nuclear program. Does the United States consider that that’s absolutely essential to Israel’s security?

BOUCHER: I’m not making judgments or presumptions about that. We’ve had a view on the universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that we’ve expressed many times, that applies in all cases.

QUESTION: But Israel is not a member, has refused to be a member.

BOUCHER: That’s right. We encourage all nations to be members and adhere to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

____________________

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Will the Justice Department Enforce the Voting Rights Act?

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JOHN HICKEY
John Hickey is the executive director of the Missouri Progressive Vote Coalition. He said today: “While John Ashcroft was governor of Missouri, he vetoed two bills that were designed to equalize access to voter registration between St. Louis County (then mostly white) and St. Louis City (then about 50 percent African-American). Ashcroft’s vetoes show a disturbing commitment on his part to maintaining separate and unequal access to voter registration for African-Americans. When Ashcroft was governor, the Election Commissioners in St. Louis City and St. Louis County established different policies for appointing volunteer deputy registrars (VDRs). In St. Louis County (predominantly white and Republican at that time), the Election Commissioners would freely deputize VDRs from grassroots groups like the League of Women Voters. The City Election Commissioners, however, refused to deputize VDRs. As a result, it was more difficult to get registered to vote in the City of St. Louis than in St. Louis County. Citizens wishing to register had to travel to fixed sites, such as the Election Board headquarters downtown, which in many cases were only open during daytime hours. As a result, registration rates were significantly lower in the City than the County, i.e. 73 percent in the City versus 81 percent in the County (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 2, 1989).”

Hickey added: “The Missouri Legislature made at least two attempts to fix this inequity, through bills passed in 1988 and in 1989. … John Ashcroft vetoed both bills. … During the debate on the veto override, State Representative Christopher Kelley, a white representative from mid-Missouri, said this about opposition to the bill: ‘That is because the passage of this bill will result in the registration of black Missourians. The people in this chamber who care about racial equality ought to have the fundamental decency and courage to recognize that the St. Louis City Election Board is a fundamentally racist institution and is devoted to keeping black people from registering to vote.’ (St. Louis Post Dispatch, Sept. 8, 1988) … John Ashcroft ran for re-election for governor in November 1988. Following is the percentage of the vote he received in the two jurisdictions being discussed: St. Louis City — 39.4 percent for John Ashcroft, St. Louis County — 68.4 percent for John Ashcroft. Ashcroft’s veto of the voter reform bill in 1988 aided his re-election bid by suppressing black voter registration in St. Louis City. Meanwhile, Ashcroft continued to make voter registration more accessible in St. Louis County, where he carried the vote.”

MARK WEISBROT
Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Weisbrot said today: “Given what happened in our last presidential election, voting rights is probably more of an issue today than at any time since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Justice Department is charged with enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965; unfortunately, its current head, John Ashcroft, has a very questionable record on that very issue. As Missouri’s governor, Ashcroft did his best to keep the number of registered voters to a minimum — at least in those areas with higher concentrations of African-Americans, poor and working people, and of course Democrats. … But there is more — a lot more. He fought vehemently against even voluntary desegregation of St. Louis public schools. In 1999 he accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, which had a ban on interracial dating. And then there is his very friendly [1998] interview with the white supremacist magazine Southern Partisan, in which he defended the cause of the Confederacy.”
Center for Economic and Policy Research

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

With Iraq in Flames: Critical Perspectives

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KELLY DOUGHERTY
Dougherty is a co-founder of the newly formed group Iraq Veterans Against the War. She was in the Colorado Army National Guard for eight years and was a military police sergeant for a year in Iraq before returning to the U.S. in late February. She said today: “When we first arrived in Iraq, part of what struck me was the poverty and desperation of the Iraqi people, but they acted friendly towards us, often smiling and waving. As we continued to occupy Iraq, I began to feel a growing sense of apprehension, as though the situation was going to turn violent any day. I could sense a change in the Iraqi people, more of them would avert their eyes, scowl, or make insulting gestures when we passed. Many Iraqis truly believed that the presence of the Americans would help them to improve their lives. They didn’t expect to be living without electricity, fresh water, medical care, and other essential services, long after the war ended. They didn’t expect to be terrorized by the foreign troops and treated as trespassers in their own country. When the Shia’a uprisings began in Southern Iraq this spring, I was surprised only that the violence hadn’t begun earlier. I believe that as long as the U.S. continues to occupy Iraq, the Iraqis will continue to fight against us.”
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JAMES E. JENNINGS
President of Conscience International and coordinator of the Fallujah-Najaf Defense Committee, Jennings led humanitarian teams to Iraq before, during, and after the 2003 war. A former professor of Middle East history, he has done extensive work in Iraq since 1964, mainly for children’s health projects. He said today: “Only an outcry from U.S. citizens tired of this war will prevent Fallujah, Najaf, and other Iraqi cities from suffering the same fate as Grozny. If recent events tell us anything, they prove that pulverizing a city, as the Russians did in Chechnya, does not make people safer — quite the reverse…. The use of massive U.S. military firepower against heavily populated cities is simply wrong, because it results in high numbers of civilian casualties. Putting American troops in urban combat situations where they are constantly vulnerable to remote-controlled bombs is equally unacceptable, because of the casualty rate among the soldiers…. The logical solution is for U.S. troops to pull back immediately to bases far away from urban areas and to leave Iraq as soon as possible. A failed policy cannot be rescued by evermore brutal military tactics, as history makes abundantly clear.”
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RAHUL MAHAJAN
Currently in New York City, Mahajan is author of the book Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond. He said today: “Over the past four months, continuing U.S. airstrikes on ‘suspected Zarqawi safehouses’ have killed close to 100 people in Fallujah alone, with other attacks on Tall Afar and elsewhere. Even if you stipulated that the U.S. presence in Iraq was a legitimate occupation, there is no way to construe this as appropriate policing procedure…. These attacks come on the heels of a brutal assault on Fallujah in April where estimates are that 900 to 1,000 people, perhaps two-thirds or more of them civilians, were killed. I was in Fallujah during that assault, and saw evidence of numerous measures targeted at civilians. U.S. soldiers deliberately closed the main hospital and shut off access to it. They bombed the main power plant, so Fallujah was blacked out. Marine snipers turned the city into a series of mutually inaccessible zones separated by the ‘no-man’s-land’ of sniper fire paths. They shot indiscriminately at civilians, deliberately targeted ambulances, and made it impossible for most of the wounded to get timely medical aid.”
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ANDREW N. RUBIN
Director of the International Coalition of Academics Against Occupation, Rubin said today: “Even after the ‘transfer of authority’ the U.S. government remains in de facto military occupation of Iraq. The idea that the escalation of violence can be put to an end by the ‘interim’ government, while 140,000 U.S. troops remain in control of major Iraqi cities like Mosul and Baghdad, is far from the reality on the ground.” Rubin, a professor at Georgetown University, wrote the recent article “Blood Ba’ath” in the New Statesman. He wrote the forthcoming book Archives of Authority and is co-editor of The Edward Said Reader.
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STEPHEN ZUNES
Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. He serves as a professor of politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He said today: “On the eve of the third anniversary of 9/11, the U.S. House of Representatives — by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 406-16 — passed a resolution linking Iraq to the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This comes despite conclusions reached by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission and the consensus of independent strategic analysts familiar with the region that no such links ever existed.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

National Security Experts: 9/11 Commission Falls Short

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Today a group of 25 veteran former agents, analysts and other experts from a number of government agencies involved in national security are releasing a letter critical of the 9-11 Commission.

Among the 25 signers are John M. Cole, former FBI intelligence operations specialist, and Diane Kleiman, a former special agent with U.S. Customs assigned to JFK International Airport. Other signers, available for interviews, are:

SIBEL EDMONDS
Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI. After reporting security breaches, cover-ups, and blocking of intelligence, Edmonds was retaliated against and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, all her court proceedings have been blocked by the assertion of “State Secret Privilege” by Attorney General Ashcroft; the Congress has been gagged and prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification by the Department of Justice; and the report on her case issued by the DOJ-IG has been entirely classified.

BOGDAN DZAKOVIC
Dzakovic has worked for the Security Division of the Federal Aviation Administration since 1987 as a special agent and from 1995 until September 11, 2001, was a team leader of the “Red Team” (terrorist team). He has filed a whistleblower case against the Federal Aviation Administration and testified before the 9-11 Commission.

MELVIN A. GOODMAN
A senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, Goodman recently retired with 41 years of service with the Central Intelligence Agency (senior analyst and division chief). His recent books include Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk. Goodman is also available for interviews regarding the Porter Goss nomination.

DANIELLE BRIAN [via Beth Daley]
Brian is working with several of the signers and is legal director at the Project on Government Oversight.

Excerpts of the letter:

“Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission’s report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somehow escaped attention….

“The Commission in its report holds no one accountable, stating instead ‘our aim has not been to assign individual blame.’ That is to play the political game, and it shows that the goal of achieving unanimity overrode one of the primary purposes of this Commission’s establishment….

“Even before the Commission began its work, many honest and patriotic individuals from various agencies came forward with information and warnings regarding terrorism-related issues and serious problems within our intelligence and aviation security agencies. If it were not for these individuals, much of what we know today of significant issues and facts surrounding 9/11 would have remained in the dark. These ‘whistleblowers’ were able to put the safety of the American people above their own careers and jobs, even though they had reason to suspect that the deck was stacked against them. Sadly, it was. Retaliation took many forms…. No government workers have access to jury trials like Congress enacted for corporate workers after the Enron/MCI debacles. Government workers need genuine, enforceable rights just as much to protect America’s families, as corporate workers do to protect America’s investments….

“While we do not intend to imply that all recommendations of this report are flawed, we assert that the Commission’s list of recommendations does not include many urgently needed fixes, and further, we argue that some of their recommendations, such as the creation of an ‘intelligence czar,’ and haphazard increases in intelligence budgets, will lead to increases in the complexity and confusion of an already complex and highly bureaucratic system….

“Congress has been hearing not only from the commissioners but from a bevy of other career politicians, very few of whom have worked in the intelligence community, and from top-layer bureaucrats, many with vested interests in saving face and avoiding accountability….”
Project on Government Oversight

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167