News Release Archive - 2006

Iraqi Fatalities: Truth and Consequences

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Last week at a news conference, President Bush said that a new study on deaths in Iraq is “not credible.” The White House and Pentagon have cited much lower figures without clear documentation.

LES ROBERTS
Co-author of the study “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey” published last week in The Lancet, Roberts was with Johns Hopkins University when he co-authored the study but has just taken a post at Columbia University. The study is available at The Lancet [PDF].

Roberts said today: “We estimate that there have been 655,000 excess deaths since the invasion of Iraq, and we’re 95 percent sure it’s between about 400,000 and 950,000. We estimate that 600,000 were violent deaths. We found violence from coalition forces continuing to increase but is becoming a smaller share of the cause of death. Our method was to sample 47 random clusters in 16 governorates, with every cluster consisting of 40 households. Information on deaths before the invasion from these households was gathered so we could establish a baseline. … In terms of the reaction from our governmental and military leaders: at a moment when we as a society should be showing contrition, downplaying the death toll seems particularly imprudent.”

PAUL BOLTON
Associate professor of international health at Boston University School of Public Heath, Bolton said today: “This study uses the standard methodology that we use all over the world. Actually, what they did was superior because at the end of the interview process, they asked for a death certificate 87 percent of the time and the interviewees were able to produce it 92 percent of the time. We normally don’t have that kind of verification.”

PATRICK BALL
Ball is a co-author of the book State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996, and wrote the chapter “On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations” in the book “Repression and Mobilization.” Questioned about the disparity between the Lancet study and figures from media reports and efforts like IraqBodyCount.net, Ball said: “I’ve found a similar disparity between reported deaths and likely deaths in other conflicts that I’ve studied in Guatemala, Kosovo, Peru and Timor-Leste. Methods such as media reports typically capture violence well when it is moderate, but when it really increases, they miss a great deal. There are a series of biases regarding what gets reported — we get very good reports about journalists killed, but not rural peasants; we know about big landowners, but not grassroots union organizers.”

Ball is director of the human rights program at Benetech, a firm that uses technology for social good, and works extensively on human rights data analysis.
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BEAU GROSSCUP
Author of the new book Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment, Grosscup is professor of international relations at California State University in Chico. He said today: “President Bush and the Pentagon have deemed as ‘not credible’ a new report claiming around 650,000 Iraqis dead since the start of the U.S. invasion. Neither offer any reason why. The New York Times questions the accuracy of the methodology but fails to note that the researchers have been doing ‘body counts’ for awhile, in the Congo and Sudan among other places, and never have their methodology challenged there. Of course, Africans killing Africans is of little political concern to U.S. politicians.

“But the numbers in the Lancet 2004 report [by the same researchers] — 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians, 79 percent from ‘coalition’ (U.S.) bombing — and the new count are very ‘politically inconvenient’ to an administration bent on proving that victory is close, the insurgency [is] on the run, the Iraqis are better off now than under Saddam and there is no civil war. Both reports also challenge the claim that the U.S. has precision weapons which result in ‘minimal’ civilian deaths to be dismissed as products of the ‘fog of war’ or ‘collateral damage.’ …

“In short, it is not that the Iraqi deaths are unacceptable in human terms — we are always reminded that ‘war is hell.’ It is that they are politically unacceptable, to be summarily dismissed without comment or question. After all, if the president or a general says the numbers are not credible — it must be so.”

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

Bush and “Diplomacy”: Korea and the Record with Iraq

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At his news conference today, President Bush made repeated use of the word “diplomacy” with reference to both the decision to invade Iraq and relations with North Korea.

Bush said: “My point was: Bilateral negotiations [with North Korea] didn’t work. You know, I appreciate the efforts of previous administrations. It just didn’t work. … It’s important for the president to say to the American people: Diplomacy was what is our first choice. … And I believe the diplomacy is, you know, we’re making progress when we’ve got others at the table, you know? I will ask myself a follow-up: If that’s the case, why did you use military action in Iraq? And the reason why is because we tried the diplomacy. Remember it? We tried resolution after resolution after resolution.”

JOHN BRADY KIESLING
Kiesling resigned in protest from the U.S. Foreign Service in February 2003, just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, after almost 20 years in the State Department. He is author of the just-released book Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower. He said today: “Bush’s description of what happened with Iraq is ludicrous. Diplomacy was used during the buildup to the Iraq invasion only to reduce the cost to U.S. national interests of a war the president had decided on well before. The UN resolutions had been completely effective in disarming Iraq, but the U.S. had used the sanctions for regime change rather than disarmament. After the inspectors returned [in 2002], they found no evidence of violations by Saddam — because there was no evidence to find. If the U.S. government were serious about diplomacy, we would never have gone to war in Iraq.”
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ANN WRIGHT
Wright is a retired Army Colonel and former State Department diplomat. She resigned in protest in March of 2003. She said today: “In 2003 the Bush administration preempted the weapons inspectors’ work in Iraq and quickly moved to unilateral military action. Real diplomacy was nowhere in sight on Iraq. And it’s similar to the Bush administration’s policy toward North Korea. While the North Koreans were appealing for international dialogue for years the Bush administration for a long time avoided even engaging in multilateral talks — and would not give a commitment of nonaggression toward North Korea. I am not surprised the North Koreans detonated some type of explosion — if you have a bomb, the U.S. may leave you alone; if you don’t have one, watch out for U.S. military action!”
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THOMAS P. KIM
Executive director of the Korea Policy Institute and professor of politics and international relations at Scripps College, Kim said today: “Those who claim that North Korea’s nuclear test is the result of a failure of U.S. diplomacy are wrong because this claim presupposes that the Bush administration has actually engaged in good-faith efforts to negotiate with North Korea. On the contrary, ever since it came into office, the administration has avoided being drawn into meaningful negotiations with North Korea. …

“In September 2005, the United States, North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia agreed on a basic trade: North Korean denuclearization in return for something approaching normal relations between the U.S. and North Korea. The latter agreed to ‘abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs’ on the grounds that both countries would ‘respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize relations.’ However, four days after the agreement was signed, the U.S. virtually declared economic war on North Korea by imposing new financial sanctions with the goal of cutting off North Korean access to the international banking system. …

“Faced with a Bush administration that has never committed itself to genuine diplomacy — not only in North Korea but virtually everywhere else in the world — the North Koreans are deeply skeptical that talking with a U.S. government unwilling to negotiate in good faith can lead to real progress. If the U.S. truly wants North Korea to come to the table, it must treat diplomatic negotiation as a starting point for dialogue, rather than as a reward for unilateral concessions.”
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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

Will the Nuclear Powers Please Stand Up?

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This week, U.S. political statements and media reports about which countries possess nuclear weapons have commonly ignored or downplayed Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity. But exclusion of Israel from the list of countries with nuclear weaponry is inaccurate.

In the interest of accuracy, asking the Israeli and U.S. governments about the existence of an Israeli nuclear arsenal would be appropriate for diplomats and journalists.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire told the Institute for Public Accuracy today that it was crucial for Israel and the U.S. to come clean about Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity. She referred to the Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, who in 1986 made public detailed information on Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity via the Sunday Times of London and was then imprisoned by the Israeli government for 18 years for doing so.

MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maguire said today: “I went to Israel in September and attended the hearings on the continuing restrictions on Mordechai. One of the arguments put forward was that he has secrets on nuclear weapons which impact the national security of Israel. Mordechai is not allowed to speak to foreigners or the media and is restricted to a small area. He has no secrets after 20 years because the whole world knows that Israel has nuclear weapons.

“The debate about Israel having nuclear weapons needs to be brought into the Israeli and international arena — Israel and the U.S. should acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons and it should sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And of course, we should come clean that the arms race is being led by the U.S. and U.K. The U.S. should ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty so we can get out of this nuclear depravity.” Maguire founded the Northern Ireland Peace Movement, which is now known as Community of Peace People.
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JOSEPH GERSON
Author of the forthcoming book Empire and the Bomb: How the United States Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World and With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion, and Moral Imagination, Gerson said today: “The U.S. government is threatening nuclear attacks — against seven countries as per the Bush Nuclear Posture Review — while providing military support to Israel, India, and Pakistan — all of which developed nuclear weapons outside of the NPT framework.

“As is now widely known, with French assistance following their disastrous 1956 invasion of Egypt, Israel has developed a nuclear arsenal which is estimated to contain between 200 and 400 of these weapons. Although President Kennedy attempted to challenge Israel’s efforts to build the A-bomb, since the Johnson years successive U.S. presidents have turned blind eyes to the arsenal whose existence the Israeli government refuses to confirm or deny. …

“In addition to addressing the underlying causes of conflict and tension in the Middle East, the surest ways to ensure that these conflicts do not spark nuclear catastrophe is to build on diplomatic proposals to create a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. Such zones exist in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and now Central Asia. The refusal of the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states to honor their Article VI commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear arsenals and the legacies of U.S. nuclear blackmail remain the two greatest forces driving nuclear weapons proliferation today.” Gerson is Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England.
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Background:

The U.S. government has apparently never acknowledged Israel’s arsenal.

The Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, was recently asked by Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy, “Do you know that Israel has nuclear weapons?” Negroponte replied “I don’t want to get into a discussion about Israel’s nuclear powers.”
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When he was White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer was asked “Does Israel have nuclear weapons?” He replied: “That’s a question you need to ask to Israel.”
CommonDreams.org

AP reported on Sept. 22: “More than a dozen Arab countries were blocked by a Canadian motion in their bid to have a vote on a resolution labelling Israel’s nuclear capabilities a threat on the final day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s annual meeting.”
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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

North Korea Nuclear Test

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BRUCE CUMINGS
A specialist in Korea, Cumings is a professor at the University of Chicago. His latest book is North Korea: Another Country. Cumings said today: “There is no military solution to the North Korean problem. Sanctions also do not work — the North has been under American sanctions since 1950. The only solution is direct bilateral negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.”
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JOHN FEFFER
Editor of the just-released book The Future of U.S.-Korean Relations: The Imbalance of Power, Feffer said today: “The stated policy of the Bush administration has been to prevent North Korea from going nuclear. If that’s the actual policy, then the nuclear test marks a serious failure for the Bush administration’s North Korean policy. It’s also a setback for nonproliferation generally and for efforts to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. If, on the other hand, a nuclear North Korea serves the administration as a rationale for policies it wants, like anti-missile systems and higher military spending, then the recent nuclear test will cheer some individuals around the White House, such as Vice President Dick Cheney. …

“North Korea knows that a preemptive nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies in the region would be suicidal. Pyongyang wants the bomb for two different, but in some ways mutually exclusive, reasons: to deter any attacks by the United States and to trade for a package of economic incentives that can help rehabilitate its crumbling industrial and agricultural sectors.”

Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus and director of Global Affairs at the International Relations Center.
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NORMAN SOLOMON
Executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and has written extensively on nuclear issues since the 1970s.

In a piece titled “Welcome to the Nuclear Club,” he wrote today: “For more than 50 years, Washington has preached the global virtues of ‘peaceful’ nuclear power reactors — while denying their huge inherent dangers and their crucial role in proliferating nuclear weaponry. …

“Running parallel to the mendacious career of the ‘peaceful atom,’ U.S. foreign policy has hit new lows during the last several years. The invasion of Iraq, on the pretext of non-existent WMDs, sent a powerful message. If the U.S. government was inclined to launch an attack before a country had the capability to generate a mushroom cloud, then the country would be protected from such attack by developing nuclear weapons as soon as possible.”
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PAUL CARROLL
Carroll is a program officer at the Ploughshares Fund, which works on disarmament issues. In July, he was in North Korea, where he had rare, detailed conversations with North Korean officials, including Vice Foreign Minister for U.S. Relations Kim Gae Gwan and his deputy, Li Gun, North Korea’s former UN ambassador.

Carroll said today: “This is particularly tragic because it marks the first time that a country has left the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and conducted a nuclear test.”
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ALICE SLATER
Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Slater said today: “The U.S. has refused North Korea’s demands to enter into direct negotiations and normalize relations resolving issues which have never been addressed since the 1953 ceasefire in Korea. The world is a much more dangerous place, with other countries likely to revisit their latent nuclear weapons capability, such as Japan and South Korea. This is a time for new U.S. leadership for nuclear disarmament. A recent report from the Blix Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction noted the complicity of the nuclear weapons states in causing nuclear proliferation because of their lack of good faith in negotiating an end to their own arsenals, as promised in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“There are no sane military options for dealing with nuclear proliferation. Only a firm commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons with meaningful negotiations to that end can make the world secure. There is an offer on the table from Putin to cut the respective arsenals of the U.S. and Russia to 1,500 nuclear weapons or less. China has repeatedly committed to negotiating a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. What is the U.S. waiting for?”
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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

Bush “Pardons”: Covering Criminality

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ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN
Holtzman has been a Congresswoman and the district attorney of Brooklyn; she was a member of the House panel that impeached Richard Nixon. She recently wrote in the Chicago Sun Times: “President Bush … is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees. “The ‘pardon’ is buried in Bush’s … legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ‘pardon’ provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.

“Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national. Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11.”

Holtzman is co-author with Cynthia L. Cooper of the forthcoming book The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens.
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ELIZABETH DE LA VEGA
Elizabeth de la Vega served as a federal prosecutor in Minneapolis and San Jose for 20 years. She wrote the piece “The White House Criminal Conspiracy” and most recently “Pardon Me? Scooter Libby’s Trial Strategy,” in which she writes: “U.S. v. Libby is not only alive and well; it is also set to begin on January 16, 2007, just three and a half months from now. … Last year, not long after Libby was indicted … the Democratic leadership was asking the president to reassure the public that he would not pardon Libby or anyone else ultimately convicted of a crime as a result of the CIA leak investigation.

“The president never responded. … And Vice President Cheney, when asked recently by Tim Russert on ‘Meet the Press’ whether the president should pardon Scooter Libby, refused to answer. …

“December would be an excellent month for a pardon — it’s the holiday season after all — and the mid-term elections would be over. The best way to head off this possibility is to call attention to it. Now.”

De la Vega is author of the forthcoming book U.S. v. George W. Bush et. al.
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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

Koreas: Nuclear Testing and UN Post

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The North Korean government has announced that it will “conduct a nuclear test.”
Full statement

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon is expected to become the next Secretary General of the United Nations.

BRUCE CUMINGS
A specialist in Korea, Cumings is a professor at the University of Chicago. His latest book is North Korea: Another Country.” Cumings said today: “The North Korean announcement needs to be read carefully; the ‘nuclear test’ may be a bomb or it might be a detonation device. It’s odd to announce such things ahead of time because they might fail.

“In any case, this is a very dangerous thing and may lead to further proliferation in the region. But it is a clear response to the U.S. preemption policy announced in 2002, which was particularly dangerous for the volatile Korean DMZ. The lessons that the North Koreans took from the Iraq invasion were: The UN agencies went into Iraq and disarmed it and then the U.S. invaded. Their logical conclusion is not to disarm, but to go nuclear.”
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JONATHAN GRANOFF
Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute, states: “North Korea’s announcement that it plans to test a nuclear weapon is the logical extension of the failure of the international community to obtain a universal ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, known as a comprehensive test ban treaty. The U.S. government has tested these weapons more than 1,000 times and has a conventional arsenal unrivaled in human history. Should not the U.S. take the lead in prohibiting any more tests, by anyone, anywhere? This crisis should be a wakeup call for a universal ban on the testing of nuclear weapons.”
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MEREDITH JUNG-EN WOO
Professor of political science at the University of Michigan, Woo is author of several books including Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization. She is able to comment on South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon’s anticipated designation as Secretary General of the United Nations.
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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

Beyond Foley

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ROBERT PARRY
Editor of ConsortiumNews.com and a former investigative reporter for AP, Parry’s latest piece is “Why Capitol Pages Fear Retaliation,” in which he writes: “For generations, American parents have sent their high-school-age children to Washington to serve as Capitol Hill pages and to learn about the real world of politics. In the scandal surrounding Rep. Mark Foley’s salacious e-mails, it’s clear that one lesson the pages learned was to fear Republican retaliation.

“It now appears that one of the chief reasons why Foley’s e-mails remained secret for so long — and why some former pages still won’t speak publicly — is that they recognize that divulging what Foley did to them could kill their hopes for future careers in politics.” Parry’s latest book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.
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CRAIG HOLMAN
Holman is government ethics lobbyist for Public Citizen. He said today: “The Foley scandal is a reflection of this Congress, which is the most scandal-ridden in decades. The Jack Abramoff scandal is something that has only begun to play out. Back in January when Abramoff worked out his plea bargain, there was substantial momentum for meaningful lobbying reform, but that got scaled back and two weeks ago was quietly killed in committee. Had the Ney indictment and Doolittle investigation come early this year, there would have been a good chance for some reform this year.”

Wednesday evening at 9 p.m., PBS airs “Capitol Crimes,” a Bill Moyers special on the Abramoff scandal; see Moyers’ most recent article, “Lincoln Weeps,” at TomPaine.com.
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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

Gun Violence

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ZACH RAGBOURN
A spokesperson for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Ragbourn can address various aspects of gun violence in the United States, particularly problems with illegal guns.
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JEREMY HOBBS
DAVID KING
Today, Oxfam released (with Amnesty International and International Action Network on Small Arms) the report “Arms Without Borders: Why a Globalized Trade Needs Global Controls.”

Among the findings of the report: “On average a thousand people die every day as a direct result of armed violence.”

Director of Oxfam International, Hobbs said today: “This report reveals a litany of loopholes and destroyed lives. Arms companies are global, yet arms regulations are not, and the result is the arming of abusive regimes. Europe and North America are fast becoming the IKEA of the arms industry, supplying parts for human rights abusers to assemble at home, with the morals not included. It is time for an Arms Trade Treaty.” King is humanitarian communications manager for Oxfam America.
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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

Ellsberg Named for Right Livelihood Award

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Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, was announced today as a recipient of this year’s Right Livelihood Award, sometimes referred to as the “alternative Nobel Peace Prize.”

The award jury noted about Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers: “In October 1969 he started copying this and passing it to Senator Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When Fulbright did nothing, and after the invasion of Laos and Cambodia, he gave it to the New York Times, then the Washington Post and, when injunctions not to publish rained down on these papers, to seventeen other newspapers. The Pentagon Papers were out. They showed that the government had misled the U.S. public about the war in Vietnam. …

“President Nixon was so concerned that Ellsberg might have even more sensitive papers that he would leak, that he illegally arranged the burglary of Ellsberg’s former psychoanalyst, hoping to find information with which to blackmail Ellsberg into silence. This became part of the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon’s resignation and, ultimately, the end of the Vietnam War. …

“In 2004 Ellsberg founded the Truth-Telling Project to encourage the insiders to expose official lying.” [More information]

Other recipients of the award this year are Brazilian Chico Whitaker Ferreira, who helped found the World Social Forum, and Indian social activist Ruth Manorama.

DANIEL ELLSBERG
Ellsberg said today: “I’m hopeful that my receiving the Award for my own past and current efforts to blow the whistle on war or on deeply undemocratic and dangerous government activity will encourage others to do likewise, not in hopes of personal reward but because this unusual public recognition makes them aware that doing so can be widely regarded as ‘right livelihood,’ as the right thing to do, despite official condemnation and personal costs to themselves and their own families.”

Ellsberg’s most recent article, “The Next War,” is in the current issue of Harper’s Magazine and calls on government officials to leak documents regarding war plans on Iran. In the piece, Ellsberg writes of his regret for not leaking the Pentagon Papers earlier, and his wish that Bush administration officials like Richard Clarke had shared crucial information with the public before the invasion of Iraq. Ellsberg is author of the book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.
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BEN H. BAGDIKIAN
Bagdikian was an editor at the Washington Post and was leaked portions of the Pentagon Papers by Ellsberg in 1971. He said today: “I’m glad this is getting the recognition it deserves. It’s timely because we’re right back with our government lying about a … war and doing it by violating not just the Geneva Conventions, but also the Constitution. It’s a reminder that Ellsberg was justified in what he did in … the Vietnam War. We can never take for granted that the government has a right to tell us that to criticize is to be unpatriotic. We need people to stand up to the government when we disagree and fight to preserve the constitutional rights that are in jeopardy today.”

Author of the groundbreaking book The Media Monopoly, Bagdikian is professor emeritus and former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
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MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE
Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maguire wrote today: “I would like to congratulate Dan Ellsberg on being awarded the Right Livelihood Award. His courage and self-sacrifice for humanity’s sake, when he followed his conscience and revealed to the World the Pentagon Papers, is an example and a challenge to all those who today know the truth of governments’ plans for war, invasion and occupation of other people’s countries. The war plans made and carried out, undemocratically, by a political and military elite, in contradiction to the wishes of the World’s people as represented by the United Nations, must be exposed. Those who have such information should be encouraged and supported to make public such information. It will not be easy but the consequences of their silence continue to condemn many thousands of people, both now and in the future, to needless death and suffering.”

Maguire founded the Northern Ireland Peace Movement, which is now known as Community of Peace People.
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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

NIE Issues: Terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan

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ROBERT DREYFUSS
Dreyfuss wrote the piece “Beware the NIE” this week about the latest National Intelligence Estimate controversy. He is author of the book Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.
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CAMILO MEJIA
A former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, Mejia served nine months in a U.S. Army jail for refusing to return to his Florida Guard unit in Iraq, saying he did not want to participate in torture. His Iraq war memoir, Road From Ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Staff Sergeant Mejia, is forthcoming.

On March 15, 2004, just before surrendering to military authorities after refusing to return to the war, Mejia said at a news conference that morale among U.S. troops was really low because they lacked a sense of mission and because “we were all lied to about weapons of mass destruction and connections between Iraq and terrorism to justify the war. In reality, we’re giving terrorism a reason to exist with this war.”

Mejia said today that the worst outcome following the NIE “would be for the people of the United States to allow this ‘new report’ — many of us have been saying this for years — to be misused for political gain rather than for a more appropriate action: the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.”
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ANNE E. BRODSKY
Bush dines this evening with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Brodsky is author of the book With All Our Strength, which chronicles the experiences of Afghan women; she returned last month from her fifth trip to Afghanistan.
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STEVEN KULL
Kull is director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which just released a poll that found that “seven in ten Iraqis want U.S.-led forces to commit to withdraw within a year. An overwhelming majority believes that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing and there is growing confidence in the Iraqi army. If the U.S. made a commitment to withdraw, a majority believes that this would strengthen the Iraqi government. Support for attacks on U.S.-led forces has grown to a majority position — now six in ten. Support appears to be related to a widespread perception, held by all ethnic groups, that the U.S. government plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq.”
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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