FBI translator says she was bribed not to spill beans on 9-11 cover-up. Bush's Department of Justice (DOJ) gave her "incentive" to not reveal what the government knew prior to 9-11.
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Thursday, March 25, 2004
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Richard Clarke Interview from Salon
Richard Clark
terrorizes the White House
In a provocative Salon interview,
the former terrorism czar fires back at the Bush administration, blasting its
"big lie" strategy and "attack dog" Dick Cheney.
terrorizes the White House
In a provocative Salon interview,
the former terrorism czar fires back at the Bush administration, blasting its
"big lie" strategy and "attack dog" Dick Cheney.
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- - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason
March 24, 2004
| NEW YORK
-- After more than 30 years
of dedicated service, including stints as the National Security Council's
counterterrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and Bush, Richard A. Clarke has
delivered a scathing assessment of Bush administration policy and personnel in
his new memoir, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on
Terror." Clarke portrays the president and his top aides as arrogant,
insular and uninformed about the changed world they faced when they entered the
White House in January 2001. They did little about the growing peril from
al-Qaida, despite urgent briefings from the outgoing Clinton national security
team, and remained willfully ignorant despite repeated, even obsessive warnings
from Clarke and CIA director George Tenet.
For almost nine months,
according to Clarke, he sought approval from top Bush officials for an
aggressive strategy against Osama bin Laden. Clarke writes that he could not
convince National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to schedule meetings to
advance an action plan against al-Qaida. Instead, George W. Bush and his most
powerful officials -- Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz -- pursued an
obsession with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. When the Sept. 11 attacks took place,
their first instinct was to bomb Iraq -- even though Clarke and other experts
had long assured them that there was no intelligence connecting Iraq to any
recent acts of terrorism against the United States. On Sept. 12, Bush pulled
Clarke aside to demand that he search for evidence of Saddam's involvement,
which never existed.
Since Clarke's debut on CBS's
"60 Minutes" on Sunday, administration officials have been bombarding
him with personal calumny and abuse. They have called him an embittered
job-seeker, a publicity-seeking author, a fabricator, a Democratic partisan
and, perhaps worst of all, a friend of a friend of John Kerry. On Tuesday Bush
himself responded to Clarke's charges, insisting "had my administration
had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on 9/11,
we would have acted."
Clarke, an expert on surprise
attacks, is not shocked by the ferocity of the White House response. During an
interview with Salon on Tuesday, on the eve of his scheduled public testimony
before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the
9/11 Commission), Clarke blasted Cheney as an "attack dog" and
described the administration's attacks on his credibility as another example of
the "big lie" strategy it has pursued since winning the White House.
While he is critical of all four of the presidents he served, Clarke draws
sharp contrasts between the records of the Clinton and Bush administrations. He
compares Clinton's understanding of terrorism as the most significant threat to
U.S. and international security and his efforts to combat it to the neglect and
illusions of Bush.
You said on "60
Minutes" that you expected "their dogs" to be set on you when
your book was published, but did you think that the attacks would be so
personal?
Oh yeah, absolutely, for two
reasons. For one, the Bush White House assumes that everyone who works for them
is part of a personal loyalty network, rather than part of the government. And
that their first loyalty is to Bush rather than to the people. When you cross
that line or violate that trust, they get very upset. That's the first reason.
But the second reason is that I think they're trying to bait me -- and people
who agree with me -- into talking about all the trivial little things that they
are raising, rather than talking about the big issues in the book.
Why did you write the book
now? That's a question they raise. Did it occur to you that this would be an
election year and it would be especially controversial because of that, and
that these commission hearings were coming up?
I wanted the book to come out
much earlier, but the White House has a policy of reviewing the text of all
books written by former White House personnel -- to review them for security
reasons. And they actually took a very long time to do that. This book could
have come out much earlier. It's the White House that decided when it would be
published, not me. I turned it in toward the end of last year, and even though
there was nothing in it that was not already obviously unclassified, they took
a very, very long time.
Were you seeking to make a
political impact, in the way that the White House spokesmen have accused you of
trying to do?
I was seeking to create a debate
about how we should have, in the past, and how we should, in the future, deal
with the war on terrorism. When they say it's an election year, and therefore
you're creating not just a debate but a political debate, what are they
suggesting? That I should have waited until November to publish it, waited
until after the election? I don't see why we have to delay that debate, just
because there's an election.
Vice President Cheney told
Rush Limbaugh that you were not "in the loop," and that you're angry
because you were passed over by Condi Rice for greater authority. And in fact
you were dropped from Cabinet-level position to something less than that. How
do you respond to what the Vice President said?
The vice president is becoming
an attack dog, on a personal level, which should be beneath him but evidently
is not.
I was in the same meetings that
Dick Cheney was in, during the days after 9/11. Condi Rice and Dick Cheney
appointed me as co-chairman of the interagency committee called the
"Campaign Committee" -- the "campaign" being the war on
terrorism. So I was co-chairing the interagency process to fight the war on
terrorism after 9/11. I don't think I was "out of the loop."
The vice president commented
that there was "no great success in dealing with terrorists" during
the 1990s, when you were serving under President Clinton. He asked, "What
were they doing?"
It's possible that the vice
president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he
doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton
administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through
military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States,
through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence
in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many
other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began
a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military
strikes against al-Qaida. Maybe the vice president was so busy running
Halliburton at the time that he didn't notice.
Did Cheney ever ask you a
question of that kind when you were in the White House with him?
No.
Why did they keep you on, if
they were so uninterested in what you were focused on? And then why did they
downgrade your position?
They said, in so many words, at
the time, that they didn't have anyone in their Republican coterie of people
that came in with Bush, who had an expertise in this [counterterrorism] area
[and] who wanted the job. And they actually said they found the job a little
strange -- since it wasn't there when they had been in power before.
Dr. Rice said that.
Yes, Dr. Rice said that. And the
first thing they asked was for me to look at taking some of the
responsibilities, with regard to domestic security and cyber-security, and
spinning them off so that they were no longer part of the National Security
Council.
Why do you think Cheney --
and the Bush administration in general -- ignored the warnings that were put to
them by [former national security advisor] Sandy Berger, by you, by George
Tenet, who is apparently somebody they hold in great esteem?
They had a preconceived set of
national security priorities: Star Wars, Iraq, Russia. And they were not going
to change those preconceived notions based on people from the Clinton
administration telling them that was the wrong set of priorities. They also
looked at the statistics and saw that during eight years of the Clinton
administration, al-Qaida killed fewer than 50 Americans. And that's relatively
few, compared to the 300 dead during the Reagan administration at the hands of
terrorists in Beirut -- and by the way, there was no military retaliation for
that from Reagan. It was relatively few compared to the 259 dead on Pan Am 103
in the first Bush administration, and there was no military retaliation for
that. So looking at the low number of American fatalities at the hands of
al-Qaida, they might have thought that it wasn't a big threat.
Dr. Rice now says that your
plans to "roll back" al-Qaida were not aggressive enough for the Bush
administration. How do you answer that, in light of what we know about what
they did and didn't do?
I just think it's funny that
they can engage in this sort of "big lie" approach to things. The
plan that they adopted after Sept. 11 was the plan that I had proposed in
January [2001}. If my plan wasn't aggressive enough, I suppose theirs wasn't
either.
Is it true that you're a
registered Republican, as someone told me yesterday?
Well, I vote in Virginia, and
you can't register as a Republican or a Democrat in Virginia. The only way that
anybody ever knows your party affiliation in Virginia is when you vote in a
primary, because you have to ask for either a Republican or a Democratic
ballot. And in the year 2000, I voted in the Republican presidential primary.
That's the only record in the state of Virginia of my interest or allegiance.
Will you tell me whom you
voted for in the Republican presidential primary in Virginia in 2000?
Yeah, I voted for John McCain.
[Bush press secretary] Scott
McClellan said he was deeply offended that you suggested the Sept. 11 attacks
could have been prevented, but I didn't hear you say that.
I didn't say it. I said we'll
never know, and I've said that over and over again. We will never know. There
were certainly some steps that, had they been taken, would have perhaps
resulted in the arrest of two of the hijackers. But we'll never know whether
that would have led to the arrests of the others.
McClellan also said that
although you criticize the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in
the book, you had attempted to become the No. 2 in that department and were
passed over -- and that's yet another reason why you wrote this critical book.
They're trying to bait me, and
they're trying to get me to answer all these personal issues. You know, the
fact is that Tom Ridge opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland
Security. George Bush opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland
Security. And then one day, they turned on a dime and supported it. Why?
As I said in the book, the White
House legislative affairs people counted votes. Senator [Joseph] Lieberman had
proposed the bill to create the Department of Homeland Security -- and the
legislative affairs people said Lieberman has the votes; it's going to pass.
They said, "You've got the possible situation here, Mr. President, where
you're going to have to veto the creation of the Department of Homeland
Security. And if you don't support it now, if you don't make it your proposal,
not only will it pass but it will be called the Lieberman bill."
The Lieberman-McCain bill.
The Lieberman-McCain bill, in
fact. So that there were two outcomes possible. One in which we have this
Frankenstein department, created during the middle of the war on terrorism,
reorganizing during the middle of a war. That was possible. It was also
possible that a second thing would happen, and that was that Lieberman would
get credit for it. And therefore the president changed his position overnight,
and became a big supporter of the Department of Homeland Security.
Did you see a memo to that
effect? I wondered about that when I was reading the book, because you don't
say how you know they gave the president that advice.
No, I don't say ... It was from
oral conversations in the White House.
In the first chapter of your
book, which I must say is gripping, you give your account of your actions on
9/11, when great authority was turned over to you [by Cheney and Rice]. Is
there an issue of disloyalty or ingratitude there? To be honest, it seemed to
me that you saved their asses that day.
Well, that's for other people to
say. As regards my loyalty to President Bush, I was a career civil servant. I
wasn't loyal to any particular political machine. When the president makes a
big mistake -- like he has in the way that he has fought the war on terrorism
by going into Iraq -- I think personal loyalty or party loyalty has got to be
put aside.
Did you speak up about the
U.S. going into Iraq? Now, one of the more substantive criticisms of you by the
White House is that you didn't say anything about it. You let that go, you kept
your job and didn't resign in protest -- or according to them, do anything that
suggested you were so strongly opposed to their plan for war.
If they were listening, they
would have heard me. I started saying on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12 that their idea
of responding to the terrorist attacks by going to war with Iraq was not only
misplaced but counterproductive.
Before Sept. 11, I was so
frustrated with the way they were handling terrorism that I had asked to be
reassigned to a different job. And the job I proposed was a job I helped to
create -- a job to look at the nation's vulnerability to cyber-attack. So that
job was supposed to be one that I went into on Oct. 1 [2001]; the actual
transfer was delayed, of course, because Sept. 11 intervened. But it's
important to realize that I asked for that transfer out of the counterterrorism
job before Sept. 11, out of frustration with the Bush administration's handling
of terrorism.
When I was doing the
cyber-security job, toward the end of 2001 and into 2002, I wasn't asked for my
opinion on Iraq. I wasn't in a position to give my opinion on Iraq. I was
carrying a different portfolio. They certainly didn't come and ask me. But I
made it very clear to Condi Rice, although she may choose to forget it, that I
thought going into Iraq was a mistake. And I thought if you did have to go in
-- if the president was determined to do that -- then it had to be done within
the United Nations context.
What is your estimation of
Dr. Rice, given that you have known and worked with the past seven or eight
national security advisors?
I don't want to get involved in
personal attacks on her just because she's involved in personal attacks on me.
I think she has a great personal relationship with the president, and that's
one of the best things a national security advisor can have. I think she has a
great understanding of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Central Europe,
which was the area of her expertise before she became national security advisor
... She's very, very knowledgeable about that.
You criticize both the Bush
and Clinton administrations, although I have to say the press coverage of your
discussion of the Clinton administration varies considerably from what is
actually in your book ...
I'm glad you noticed.
I did notice that ... How
different were the two administrations in their approaches to terrorism?
Well, prior to 9/11, the Bush
administration didn't have an approach to terrorism. They'd never gotten around
to creating an administration policy. It was in the process of doing so, but it
hadn't achieved that. And it was clear that the national security advisor
didn't like this kind of issue; she didn't have meetings on this issue. The
president didn't have meetings on the issue of terrorism.
Now the White House is saying,
oh, they had meetings every day. But let's be clear about what those meetings
every day were. Every day George Tenet, the CIA director, would do the morning
intelligence briefing of the president, and he would raise the al-Qaida threat
with great frequency. That's not the same as having a meeting to decide what to
do about it. That's not the same as the president shaking the lapels of the FBI
director and the attorney general and saying, "You've got to stop the
attack."
Apparently on one occasion -- of
all these many, many days when George Tenet mentioned the al-Qaida threat --
the president on one occasion said, "I want a strategy. I don't want to
swat flies." Well, months or certainly weeks went by after that, and he
didn't get his strategy because Condi Rice didn't hold the meeting necessary to
approve it and give it to him. And yet George Bush appears not to have asked
for it a second time.
In fact, he told Bob Woodward in
"Bush at War" that he kind of knew there was a strategy being
developed out there, but he didn't know at what stage it was in the process.
Well, if he was so focused on it, he would have kept asking where the strategy
was. He would have known where it was in the process. He would have demanded
that it be brought forward. He had a fleeting interest.
Did you have access to the
president's daily briefings?
On a daily basis, no; I did see
some of them. There was never any system in place that worked to get them to me
every day.
Did you see the PDB for Aug.
6, 2001 [which reportedly contained references to an impending attack by
al-Qaida]?
I really can't recall it. I think
its importance has been overblown. What happens in the presidential daily
briefing is that the president asks questions of the briefer, which is usually
Tenet on Monday through Friday. And the briefer then takes notes of the
questions and goes back to CIA to get papers written to respond to the
questions.
In response to the drumbeat day
after day of intelligence that there was going to be an al-Qaida attack, the
president apparently said, "Tell me what al-Qaida could do." And in
response to that the CIA went off and wrote a paper that listed everything
possible that al-Qaida could do. It didn't say we have intelligence that tells
us the attack will be here or there, the attack method will be this or that. It
was rather a laundry list of possible things they could do.
Do you think it's true that
the Saudis gained added influence when the Bush crowd returned to the White
House?
The Saudi ambassador to the
United States, Prince Bandar, had worn out his welcome in the Clinton White
House. But he had very, very good ties to the Bush family. His standing, his
influence greatly increased when the Bush people came back into power.
Were you aware of the Saudi
airlifts of their nationals after 9/11, at the time that they were happening?
What I am aware of is that
sometime after 9/11, in the days immediately thereafter, the Saudi embassy
requested to evacuate some of its nationals because it feared there would be
retribution. That information came to me and I was asked to approve it. I said
no, I would not approve it, until the FBI approved it. And I asked the FBI to
approve it, to look at the names of people on the flight manifests, and the FBI
approved it.
Now, there's a big tempest about
this in retrospect. People think the FBI should have done a better job of
looking at the names. The FBI could have called me and said they wanted more
time, and I would have given it to them. They could have said they want this
individual or that individual detained, and I would have said fine. I am still
unaware to this day of anyone who left on any of those flights who the FBI now
wants.
Were you concerned about your
friendship with Rand Beers being used, as it is now, to suggest that you did
this in order to help John Kerry in his presidential campaign?
This is the most interesting
charge against me -- that I am a friend of Rand Beers, as if that's some
terrible thing. Who is Rand Beers? Until a year ago, he was someone who was
working for George Bush in the White House. He worked for George Bush's father
in the White House. He worked for Ronald Reagan in the White House. But now
it's a terrible thing to be a friend of Rand Beers? He and I have been friends
for 25 years. I'm not going to disown him because he's working for John Kerry.
He's my friend, he's going to stay my friend, we teach a course together [at
Harvard]. He works for John Kerry. I don't.
Thursday, January 29, 2004
How a 24-Year-Old Got a Job Rebuilding Iraq's Stock Market
How a 24-Year-Old Got a Job Rebuilding Iraq's Stock Market
By Yochi J. Dreazen Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- At Yale University, Jay Hallen majored in political science, rarely watched financial news stations and didn't follow the stock market.
All of which made the 24-year-old an unlikely pick for the difficult task of rebuilding Iraq's shuttered stock exchange. But Mr. Hallen, a private-sector development officer for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, was given the job immediately after arriving in Baghdad in September.
The headquarters of the old Iraqi exchange, where brokers in blue vests scribbled trades on boards, was looted after the war and is now occupied by squatters. Several listed companies no longer exist, and many Iraqi companies' majority shareholders -- Saddam Hussein and his friends and relatives -- are either dead or in prison. A new exchange is supposed to open in temporary quarters next month, but impatient brokers already meet privately in their homes and offices to trade shares.
Mr. Hallen admits that he wound up in Iraq rather by accident. In 2002, he began pursuing a White House job, and though none materialized, he stayed in close contact with the man who interviewed him, Reuben Jeffrey. When Mr. Jeffrey went to Iraq last summer as a senior economic-development adviser, Mr. Hallen e-mailed to ask whether there were any job openings. "Be careful what you wish for," Mr. Jeffrey, who is now an aide to Iraqi administrator Paul Bremer, told him in reply.
A few weeks later, Mr. Hallen got a phone call from a Pentagon personnel officer, who told him he had been given a job in the Coalition Provisional Authority and needed to be in Baghdad in less than a month. "Needless to say, I was in a mild state of shock," he says.
Mr. Hallen, who graduated in 2001, has spent the past few months in a crash course in high finance. He has worked with a team of volunteer financial experts and lawyers from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York and Philadelphia stock exchanges to revise and modernize the trading rules and disclosure requirements for the new market. He has created a watchdog agency for the exchange modeled on the SEC, and an association of Iraqi securities brokers. He has met with every Iraqi company that wants to be listed on the new exchange.
The old market would never have been confused with the New York Stock Exchange. It was open just three days a week. Volume was low, and government rules barred prices from fluctuating more than 5% a day in either direction. At its peak, it had about 120 listed companies -- many of them hotels and banks -- and a total capitalization of less than $30 million. The biggest Iraqi companies were state controlled and weren't traded on the exchange.
The market closely tracked America's contentious relationship with Iraq, plummeting in November 1998 when the U.S. threatened air strikes against the country but soaring a few weeks later when the two countries appeared to reach an agreement allowing U.N. inspectors back into the country.
Brokers kept trading even when tensions between the two countries boiled into open conflict. Hassan alDahan was at the exchange when air-raid sirens began blaring at the start of a bombing campaign by U.S. and U.K. warplanes in December 1998. He remembers hearing the roar of planes overhead but says trading continued without interruption. "No one wanted to leave money on the table," Mr. alDahan says.
The market was rising sharply early last year as Iraqis placed bullish bets that the war would benefit their investments. Investors haven't had the chance to test their instincts: The market closed down on March 19, the day U.S. air strikes on Baghdad opened the war, and it has yet to reopen.
Mr. Hallen's most difficult task has been winning and keeping the confidence of Iraqi investors and traders alarmed by his youth and lack of experience in the financial sector. It hasn't been easy.
In early November, Mr. Hallen traveled to Baghdad's Hamra Hotel for a lunch meeting with Luay Nafa Elias, who runs an investment company here. Mr. Elias says he was expecting to meet a middle-age man and therefore was astonished to see the baby-face Mr. Hallen sit down at the table and order a plate of kabobs. "I had thought the Americans would send someone who was at least 50 years old, someone with gray hair," says Mr. Elias.
As the lunch continued, Mr. Elias found himself impressed by Mr. Hallen's confident tone and his repeated promises to quickly open a stock market that is the envy of the Arab world.
Mr. Elias's faith in Mr. Hallen, however, began to evaporate when the market's opening was delayed without explanation, first to the middle of this month and then into February. "Maybe someone older and more experienced could have gotten this done on time," Mr. Elias says.
Mr. Hallen says he understands the frustration but urges traders to be patient. "What they need to understand is that we're not reopening the old Baghdad stock market," he says. "We're building an entirely new one."
Trader Hussain Kubba pointed recently to a wall-size chalkboard in his office showing stock prices from the day before the market closed. "The prices are a fraction of what those shares are worth today, but no one can take advantage of that until Mr. Hallen and the Americans stop dillydallying," he said.
Mr. Hallen says the delays were caused by the difficulties of getting the market's new computer and communications systems up and running. He insists that the market is now on course to reopen next month in temporary space in a Baghdad hotel before moving to its permanent home in a building that once housed a satellite office of the Iraqi intelligence service, a bank branch and the city's finest Indian restaurant.
UPDATE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html
Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01
Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.
Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.
"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."
Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.
But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.
By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.
To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.
Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and pronounced him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.
O'Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.
He and his staff used an obscure provision in federal law to hire many CPA staffers as temporary political appointees, which exempted the interviewers from employment regulations that prohibit questions about personal political beliefs.
There were a few Democrats who wound up getting jobs with the CPA, but almost all of them were active-duty soldiers or State Department Foreign Service officers. Because they were career government employees, not temporary hires, O'Beirne's office could not query them directly about their political leanings.
One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."
As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.
"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."
When Gordon Robison, who worked in the Strategic Communications office, opened a care package from his mother to find a book by Paul Krugman, a liberal New York Times columnist, people around him stared. "It was like I had just unwrapped a radioactive brick," he recalled.
Finance Background Not Required
Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.
He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?
"Be careful what you wish for," Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen's resume to O'Beirne's office.
Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?
The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.
"Are you sure?" Hallen said to Foley. "I don't have a finance background."
It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be the project manager. He would rely on other people to get things done. He would be "the main point of contact."
Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked. Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free enterprise.
The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority.
Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system.
Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting a new securities law. "People are broke and bewildered," broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. "Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were."
Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was unrealistic. "It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn't be accomplished," he said.
But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."
Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."
To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.
The exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however, saw themselves in charge.
Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more months for the computerized trading system to be up and running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and that's how they'd do it again.
The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make the stock market a target for insurgents.
When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. "We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize," Tabatabai said of Hallen. "Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia."
'Loyalist' Replaces Public Health Expert
The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.
That's what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.
Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.
Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.
Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.
He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."
But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.
Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.
He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team -- who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.
Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was "to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don't get health care unless you go to a hospital."
But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public health challenge.
Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.
To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption, physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an approved list, known as a formulary.
Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia, and start buying from the United States.
He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center in San Antonio.
A few weeks later, three formulary experts were on their way to Iraq.
The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was: "Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home." By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary "really wasn't that bad." Second, his mission was really about "redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale." Third, Haveman and his advisers "really didn't know what they were doing."
Haveman "viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack," said George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's health team. "Somehow if you went into the ghettos and projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire state -- that's what he was coming to save."
Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.
Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial first step in improving the distribution of medicines. "It was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and distribute them," he said.
When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.
Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.
The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share what they could. He sought to increase production at a state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was a fool's errand.
"We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs," he said. "But the Americans did not understand that."
A 9/11 Hero's Public Relations Blitz
In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq's police forces.
The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.
Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.
Kerik had been New York City's police commissioner when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His courage (he shouted evacuation orders from a block away as the south tower collapsed), his stamina (he worked around the clock and catnapped in his office for weeks), and his charisma (he was a master of the television interview) turned him into a national hero. When White House officials were casting about for a prominent individual to take charge of Iraq's Interior Ministry and assume the challenge of rebuilding the Iraqi police, Kerik's name came up. Bush pronounced it an excellent idea.
Kerik had worked in the Middle East before, as the security director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled from the country amid a government investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. He lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House viewed that as an asset.
Veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to the goal of democratizing the region. Post-conflict experts, many of whom worked for the State Department, the United Nations or nongovernmental organizations, were deemed too liberal. Men such as Kerik -- committed Republicans with an accomplished career in business or government -- were ideal. They were loyal, and they shared the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding Iraq in an American image. With Kerik, there were bonuses: The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.
Robert Gifford, a State Department expert in international law enforcement, was one of the first CPA staff members to meet Kerik when he arrived in Baghdad. Gifford was the senior adviser to the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the police. Kerik was to take over Gifford's job.
"I understand you are going to be the man, and we are here to support you," Gifford told Kerik.
"I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on police because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is," Kerik replied.
As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace, Gifford offered to brief Kerik. "It was during that period I realized he wasn't with me," Gifford recalled. "He didn't listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals."
Kerik wasn't a details guy. He was content to let Gifford figure out how to train Iraqi officers to work in a democratic society. Kerik would take care of briefing the viceroy and the media. And he'd be going out for a few missions himself.
Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad "is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes." He went on NBC's "Today" show to pronounce the situation "better than I expected." To Time magazine, he said that "people are starting to feel more confident. They're coming back out. Markets and shops that I saw closed one week ago have opened."
When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest.
The first months after liberation were a critical period for Iraq's police. Officers needed to be called back to work and screened for Baath Party connections. They'd have to learn about due process, how to interrogate without torture, how to walk the beat. They required new weapons. New chiefs had to be selected. Tens of thousands more officers would have to be hired to put the genie of anarchy back in the bottle.
Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter, according to Gerald Burke, a former Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the initial Justice Department assessment mission. Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers. With no help on the way, the task of organizing and training Iraqi officers fell to U.S. military police soldiers, many of whom had no experience in civilian law enforcement.
"He was the wrong guy at the wrong time," Burke said later. "Bernie didn't have the skills. What we needed was a chief executive-level person. . . . Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality."
Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had formed since the war, and he often joined the group on nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer's senior staff meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the night's adventures and read off the latest crime statistics prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.
Several members of the CPA's Interior Ministry team wanted to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any complaints would be brushed off. "Bremer's staff thought he was the silver bullet," a member of the Justice Department assessment mission said. "Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11."
Kerik contended that he did his best in what was, ultimately, an untenable situation. He said he wasn't given sufficient funding to hire foreign police advisers or establish large-scale training programs.
Three months after he arrived, Kerik attended a meeting of local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. When it was his turn to address the group, he stood and bid everyone farewell. Although he had informed Bremer of his decision a few days earlier, Kerik hadn't told most of the people who worked for him. He flew out of Iraq a few hours later.
"I was in my own world," he said later. "I did my own thing."
By Yochi J. Dreazen Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- At Yale University, Jay Hallen majored in political science, rarely watched financial news stations and didn't follow the stock market.
All of which made the 24-year-old an unlikely pick for the difficult task of rebuilding Iraq's shuttered stock exchange. But Mr. Hallen, a private-sector development officer for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, was given the job immediately after arriving in Baghdad in September.
The headquarters of the old Iraqi exchange, where brokers in blue vests scribbled trades on boards, was looted after the war and is now occupied by squatters. Several listed companies no longer exist, and many Iraqi companies' majority shareholders -- Saddam Hussein and his friends and relatives -- are either dead or in prison. A new exchange is supposed to open in temporary quarters next month, but impatient brokers already meet privately in their homes and offices to trade shares.
Mr. Hallen admits that he wound up in Iraq rather by accident. In 2002, he began pursuing a White House job, and though none materialized, he stayed in close contact with the man who interviewed him, Reuben Jeffrey. When Mr. Jeffrey went to Iraq last summer as a senior economic-development adviser, Mr. Hallen e-mailed to ask whether there were any job openings. "Be careful what you wish for," Mr. Jeffrey, who is now an aide to Iraqi administrator Paul Bremer, told him in reply.
A few weeks later, Mr. Hallen got a phone call from a Pentagon personnel officer, who told him he had been given a job in the Coalition Provisional Authority and needed to be in Baghdad in less than a month. "Needless to say, I was in a mild state of shock," he says.
Mr. Hallen, who graduated in 2001, has spent the past few months in a crash course in high finance. He has worked with a team of volunteer financial experts and lawyers from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York and Philadelphia stock exchanges to revise and modernize the trading rules and disclosure requirements for the new market. He has created a watchdog agency for the exchange modeled on the SEC, and an association of Iraqi securities brokers. He has met with every Iraqi company that wants to be listed on the new exchange.
The old market would never have been confused with the New York Stock Exchange. It was open just three days a week. Volume was low, and government rules barred prices from fluctuating more than 5% a day in either direction. At its peak, it had about 120 listed companies -- many of them hotels and banks -- and a total capitalization of less than $30 million. The biggest Iraqi companies were state controlled and weren't traded on the exchange.
The market closely tracked America's contentious relationship with Iraq, plummeting in November 1998 when the U.S. threatened air strikes against the country but soaring a few weeks later when the two countries appeared to reach an agreement allowing U.N. inspectors back into the country.
Brokers kept trading even when tensions between the two countries boiled into open conflict. Hassan alDahan was at the exchange when air-raid sirens began blaring at the start of a bombing campaign by U.S. and U.K. warplanes in December 1998. He remembers hearing the roar of planes overhead but says trading continued without interruption. "No one wanted to leave money on the table," Mr. alDahan says.
The market was rising sharply early last year as Iraqis placed bullish bets that the war would benefit their investments. Investors haven't had the chance to test their instincts: The market closed down on March 19, the day U.S. air strikes on Baghdad opened the war, and it has yet to reopen.
Mr. Hallen's most difficult task has been winning and keeping the confidence of Iraqi investors and traders alarmed by his youth and lack of experience in the financial sector. It hasn't been easy.
In early November, Mr. Hallen traveled to Baghdad's Hamra Hotel for a lunch meeting with Luay Nafa Elias, who runs an investment company here. Mr. Elias says he was expecting to meet a middle-age man and therefore was astonished to see the baby-face Mr. Hallen sit down at the table and order a plate of kabobs. "I had thought the Americans would send someone who was at least 50 years old, someone with gray hair," says Mr. Elias.
As the lunch continued, Mr. Elias found himself impressed by Mr. Hallen's confident tone and his repeated promises to quickly open a stock market that is the envy of the Arab world.
Mr. Elias's faith in Mr. Hallen, however, began to evaporate when the market's opening was delayed without explanation, first to the middle of this month and then into February. "Maybe someone older and more experienced could have gotten this done on time," Mr. Elias says.
Mr. Hallen says he understands the frustration but urges traders to be patient. "What they need to understand is that we're not reopening the old Baghdad stock market," he says. "We're building an entirely new one."
Trader Hussain Kubba pointed recently to a wall-size chalkboard in his office showing stock prices from the day before the market closed. "The prices are a fraction of what those shares are worth today, but no one can take advantage of that until Mr. Hallen and the Americans stop dillydallying," he said.
Mr. Hallen says the delays were caused by the difficulties of getting the market's new computer and communications systems up and running. He insists that the market is now on course to reopen next month in temporary space in a Baghdad hotel before moving to its permanent home in a building that once housed a satellite office of the Iraqi intelligence service, a bank branch and the city's finest Indian restaurant.
UPDATE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html
Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01
Adapted from "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.
Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.
"We didn't tap -- and it should have started from the White House on down -- just didn't tap the right people to do this job," said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA's Washington office. "It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings."
Endowed with $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds and a comparatively quiescent environment in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the CPA was the U.S. government's first and best hope to resuscitate Iraq -- to establish order, promote rebuilding and assemble a viable government, all of which, experts believe, would have constricted the insurgency and mitigated the chances of civil war. Many of the basic tasks Americans struggle to accomplish today in Iraq -- training the army, vetting the police, increasing electricity generation -- could have been performed far more effectively in 2003 by the CPA.
But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.
By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq's interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.
To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.
Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and pronounced him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.
O'Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.
He and his staff used an obscure provision in federal law to hire many CPA staffers as temporary political appointees, which exempted the interviewers from employment regulations that prohibit questions about personal political beliefs.
There were a few Democrats who wound up getting jobs with the CPA, but almost all of them were active-duty soldiers or State Department Foreign Service officers. Because they were career government employees, not temporary hires, O'Beirne's office could not query them directly about their political leanings.
One former CPA employee who had an office near O'Beirne's wrote an e-mail to a friend describing the recruitment process: "I watched résumés of immensely talented individuals who had sought out CPA to help the country thrown in the trash because their adherence to 'the President's vision for Iraq' (a frequently heard phrase at CPA) was 'uncertain.' I saw senior civil servants from agencies like Treasury, Energy . . . and Commerce denied advisory positions in Baghdad that were instead handed to prominent RNC (Republican National Committee) contributors."
As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.
"I'm not here for the Iraqis," one staffer noted to a reporter over lunch. "I'm here for George Bush."
When Gordon Robison, who worked in the Strategic Communications office, opened a care package from his mother to find a book by Paul Krugman, a liberal New York Times columnist, people around him stared. "It was like I had just unwrapped a radioactive brick," he recalled.
Finance Background Not Required
Twenty-four-year-old Jay Hallen was restless. He had graduated from Yale two years earlier, and he didn't much like his job at a commercial real-estate firm. His passion was the Middle East, and although he had never been there, he was intrigued enough to take Arabic classes and read histories of the region in his spare time.
He had mixed feelings about the war in Iraq, but he viewed the American occupation as a ripe opportunity. In the summer of 2003, he sent an e-mail to Reuben Jeffrey III, whom he had met when applying for a White House job a year earlier. Hallen had a simple query for Jeffrey, who was working as an adviser to Bremer: Might there be any job openings in Baghdad?
"Be careful what you wish for," Jeffrey wrote in response. Then he forwarded Hallen's resume to O'Beirne's office.
Three weeks later, Hallen got a call from the Pentagon. The CPA wanted him in Baghdad. Pronto. Could he be ready in three to four weeks?
The day he arrived in Baghdad, he met with Thomas C. Foley, the CPA official in charge of privatizing state-owned enterprises. (Foley, a major Republican Party donor, went to Harvard Business School with President Bush.) Hallen was shocked to learn that Foley wanted him to take charge of reopening the stock exchange.
"Are you sure?" Hallen said to Foley. "I don't have a finance background."
It's fine, Foley replied. He told Hallen that he was to be the project manager. He would rely on other people to get things done. He would be "the main point of contact."
Before the war, Baghdad's stock exchange looked nothing like its counterparts elsewhere in the world. There were no computers, electronic displays or men in colorful coats scurrying around on the trading floor. Trades were scrawled on pieces of paper and noted on large blackboards. If you wanted to buy or sell, you came to the exchange yourself and shouted your order to one of the traders. There was no air-conditioning. It was loud and boisterous. But it worked. Private firms raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling stock, and ordinary people learned about free enterprise.
The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority.
Quickly absorbing the CPA's ambition during the optimistic days before the insurgency flared, Hallen decided that he didn't just want to reopen the exchange, he wanted to make it the best, most modern stock market in the Arab world. He wanted to promulgate a new securities law that would make the exchange independent of the Finance Ministry, with its own bylaws and board of directors. He wanted to set up a securities and exchange commission to oversee the market. He wanted brokers to be licensed and listed companies to provide financial disclosures. He wanted to install a computerized trading and settlement system.
Iraqis cringed at Hallen's plan. Their top priority was reopening the exchange, not setting up computers or enacting a new securities law. "People are broke and bewildered," broker Talib Tabatabai told Hallen. "Why do you want to create enemies? Let us open the way we were."
Tabatabai, who held a doctorate in political science from Florida State University, believed Hallen's plan was unrealistic. "It was something so fancy, so great, that it couldn't be accomplished," he said.
But Hallen was convinced that major changes had to be enacted. "Their laws and regulations were completely out of step with the modern world," he said. "There was just no transparency in anything. It was more of a place for Saddam and his friends to buy up private companies that they otherwise didn't have a stake in."
Opening the stock exchange without legal and structural changes, Hallen maintained, "would have been irresponsible and short-sighted."
To help rewrite the securities law, train brokers and purchase the necessary computers, Hallen recruited a team of American volunteers. In the spring of 2004, Bremer approved the new law and simultaneously appointed the nine Iraqis selected by Hallen to become the exchange's board of governors.
The exchange's board selected Tabatabai as its chairman. The new securities law that Hallen had nursed into life gave the board control over the exchange's operations, but it didn't say a thing about the role of the CPA adviser. Hallen assumed that he'd have a part in decision-making until the handover of sovereignty. Tabatabai and the board, however, saw themselves in charge.
Tabatabai and the other governors decided to open the market as soon as possible. They didn't want to wait several more months for the computerized trading system to be up and running. They ordered dozens of dry-erase boards to be installed on the trading floor. They used such boards to keep track of buying and selling prices before the war, and that's how they'd do it again.
The exchange opened two days after Hallen's tour in Iraq ended. Brokers barked orders to floor traders, who used their trusty white boards. Transactions were recorded not with computers but with small chits written in ink. CPA staffers stayed away, afraid that their presence would make the stock market a target for insurgents.
When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn't been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. "We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize," Tabatabai said of Hallen. "Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia."
'Loyalist' Replaces Public Health Expert
The hiring of Bremer's most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.
That's what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.
Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.
Haveman was well-traveled, but most of his overseas trips were in his capacity as a director of International Aid, a faith-based relief organization that provided health care while promoting Christianity in the developing world. Before his stint in government, Haveman ran a large Christian adoption agency in Michigan that urged pregnant women not to have abortions.
Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master's degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.
He had worked in Kosovo and Somalia and in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A USAID colleague called him the "single most talented and experienced post-conflict health specialist working for the United States government."
But a week after Baghdad's liberation, Burkle was informed he was being replaced. A senior official at USAID sent Burkle an e-mail saying the White House wanted a "loyalist" in the job. Burkle had a wall of degrees, but he didn't have a picture with the president.
Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.
He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team -- who turned out to be a closet smoker himself -- to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman's staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA's limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.
Haveman didn't like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry's $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was "to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don't get health care unless you go to a hospital."
But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country's single largest public health challenge.
Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.
To prepare it for a sale, he wanted to attempt something he had done in Michigan. When he was the state's director of community health, he sought to slash the huge amount of money Michigan spent on prescription drugs for the poor by limiting the medications doctors could prescribe for Medicaid patients. Unless they received an exemption, physicians could only prescribe drugs that were on an approved list, known as a formulary.
Haveman figured the same strategy could bring down the cost of medicine in Iraq. The country had 4,500 items on its drug formulary. Haveman deemed it too large. If private firms were going to bid for the job of supplying drugs to government hospitals, they needed a smaller, more manageable list. A new formulary would also outline new requirements about where approved drugs could be manufactured, forcing Iraq to stop buying medicines from Syria, Iran and Russia, and start buying from the United States.
He asked the people who had drawn up the formulary in Michigan whether they wanted to come to Baghdad. They declined. So he beseeched the Pentagon for help. His request made its way to the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center in San Antonio.
A few weeks later, three formulary experts were on their way to Iraq.
The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman's order, as Briski remembered it, was: "Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home." By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary "really wasn't that bad." Second, his mission was really about "redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope -- on a grand scale." Third, Haveman and his advisers "really didn't know what they were doing."
Haveman "viewed Iraq as Michigan after a huge attack," said George Guszcza, an Army captain who worked on the CPA's health team. "Somehow if you went into the ghettos and projects of Michigan and just extended it out for the entire state -- that's what he was coming to save."
Haveman's critics, including more than a dozen people who worked for him in Baghdad, contend that rewriting the formulary was a distraction. Instead, they said, the CPA should have focused on restructuring, but not privatizing, the drug-delivery system and on ordering more emergency shipments of medicine to address shortages of essential medicines. The first emergency procurement did not occur until early 2004, after the Americans had been in Iraq for more than eight months.
Haveman insisted that revising the formulary was a crucial first step in improving the distribution of medicines. "It was unwieldy to order 4,500 different drugs, and to test and distribute them," he said.
When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad's hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city's largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient's blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy's shelves were bare.
Nationwide, the Health Ministry reported that 40 percent of the 900 drugs it deemed essential were out of stock in hospitals. Of the 32 medicines used in public clinics for the management of chronic diseases, 26 were unavailable.
The new health minister, Aladin Alwan, beseeched the United Nations for help, and he asked neighboring nations to share what they could. He sought to increase production at a state-run manufacturing plant in the city of Samarra. And he put the creation of a new formulary on hold. To him, it was a fool's errand.
"We didn't need a new formulary. We needed drugs," he said. "But the Americans did not understand that."
A 9/11 Hero's Public Relations Blitz
In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq's police forces.
The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.
Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.
Kerik had been New York City's police commissioner when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. His courage (he shouted evacuation orders from a block away as the south tower collapsed), his stamina (he worked around the clock and catnapped in his office for weeks), and his charisma (he was a master of the television interview) turned him into a national hero. When White House officials were casting about for a prominent individual to take charge of Iraq's Interior Ministry and assume the challenge of rebuilding the Iraqi police, Kerik's name came up. Bush pronounced it an excellent idea.
Kerik had worked in the Middle East before, as the security director for a government hospital in Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled from the country amid a government investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff. He lacked postwar policing experience, but the White House viewed that as an asset.
Veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to the goal of democratizing the region. Post-conflict experts, many of whom worked for the State Department, the United Nations or nongovernmental organizations, were deemed too liberal. Men such as Kerik -- committed Republicans with an accomplished career in business or government -- were ideal. They were loyal, and they shared the Bush administration's goal of rebuilding Iraq in an American image. With Kerik, there were bonuses: The media loved him, and the American public trusted him.
Robert Gifford, a State Department expert in international law enforcement, was one of the first CPA staff members to meet Kerik when he arrived in Baghdad. Gifford was the senior adviser to the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the police. Kerik was to take over Gifford's job.
"I understand you are going to be the man, and we are here to support you," Gifford told Kerik.
"I'm here to bring more media attention to the good work on police because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is," Kerik replied.
As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace, Gifford offered to brief Kerik. "It was during that period I realized he wasn't with me," Gifford recalled. "He didn't listen to anything. He hadn't read anything except his e-mails. I don't think he read a single one of our proposals."
Kerik wasn't a details guy. He was content to let Gifford figure out how to train Iraqi officers to work in a democratic society. Kerik would take care of briefing the viceroy and the media. And he'd be going out for a few missions himself.
Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad "is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes." He went on NBC's "Today" show to pronounce the situation "better than I expected." To Time magazine, he said that "people are starting to feel more confident. They're coming back out. Markets and shops that I saw closed one week ago have opened."
When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest.
The first months after liberation were a critical period for Iraq's police. Officers needed to be called back to work and screened for Baath Party connections. They'd have to learn about due process, how to interrogate without torture, how to walk the beat. They required new weapons. New chiefs had to be selected. Tens of thousands more officers would have to be hired to put the genie of anarchy back in the bottle.
Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter, according to Gerald Burke, a former Massachusetts State Police commander who participated in the initial Justice Department assessment mission. Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers. With no help on the way, the task of organizing and training Iraqi officers fell to U.S. military police soldiers, many of whom had no experience in civilian law enforcement.
"He was the wrong guy at the wrong time," Burke said later. "Bernie didn't have the skills. What we needed was a chief executive-level person. . . . Bernie came in with a street-cop mentality."
Kerik authorized the formation of a hundred-man Iraqi police paramilitary unit to pursue criminal syndicates that had formed since the war, and he often joined the group on nighttime raids, departing the Green Zone at midnight and returning at dawn, in time to attend Bremer's senior staff meeting, where he would crack a few jokes, describe the night's adventures and read off the latest crime statistics prepared by an aide. The unit did bust a few kidnapping gangs and car-theft rings, generating a stream of positive news stories that Kerik basked in and Bremer applauded. But the all-nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping.
Several members of the CPA's Interior Ministry team wanted to blow the whistle on Kerik, but they concluded any complaints would be brushed off. "Bremer's staff thought he was the silver bullet," a member of the Justice Department assessment mission said. "Nobody wanted to question the [man who was] police chief during 9/11."
Kerik contended that he did his best in what was, ultimately, an untenable situation. He said he wasn't given sufficient funding to hire foreign police advisers or establish large-scale training programs.
Three months after he arrived, Kerik attended a meeting of local police chiefs in Baghdad's Convention Center. When it was his turn to address the group, he stood and bid everyone farewell. Although he had informed Bremer of his decision a few days earlier, Kerik hadn't told most of the people who worked for him. He flew out of Iraq a few hours later.
"I was in my own world," he said later. "I did my own thing."
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
Army War College Report
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Iraq invasion was "an unnecessary preventive war of
choice" that has robbed resources and attention from the more critical fight against al Qaeda in a
hopeless U.S. quest for absolute security, according to a study recently published by the U.S.
Army War College.
choice" that has robbed resources and attention from the more critical fight against al Qaeda in a
hopeless U.S. quest for absolute security, according to a study recently published by the U.S.
Army War College.
The 56-page document written by Jeffrey Record, a veteran defense expert who serves as a visiting
research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College, represents a
blistering assessment of what President Bush calls the U.S. global war on
terrorism.
Wednesday, November 1, 2000
Americans Mock Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet - Tragedies of the 2000 Election
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/
On September 28, 2000, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf released a statement to key Internet mailing lists
stating their unequivocal belief that Gore played an important role during his congressional years
in supporting the Internet:
Introduction
It has become an automatic laugh. Jay Leno, David Letterman, or any other comedic talent can crack
a joke about Al Gore "inventing the Internet," and the audience is likely to respond with howls of
laughter. Even Gore himself participates in the merriment: in a recent episode of Leno's Tonight
Show, Vice President Al Gore was seen holding the cue cards. The joke? "Al Gore invented cue
cards" - a clear reference to Gore's supposed claim about the invention of the Internet. In his
September 26, 2000 town hall meeting held as part of MTV's "Choose or Lose" series before a group
of students at the Media Union at the University of Michigan, Gore joked, "I invented the
environment." The students erupted in laughter. Gore is at once the object and progenitor of the
humor.
The commonly accepted wisdom is that Al Gore, prone to exaggerating his record, claimed at one
point on national television that he "invented the Internet." Not only is this fodder for
comedians' monologues, this widely accepted folklore may have materially affected the 2000
Presidential campaign:
Gore is seen by many pundits, and presumably by millions in the public at large, as a politician
who makes up the facts to fit the desires of the audience. Given the putative "fact" that he
claimed to have "invented the Internet," this tendency towards exaggeration apparently even
extends to Gore's own resume. No one would hire a new employee who was known to have padded a
resume; who would vote for a candidate for the presidency who had done the same?
Gore has been effectively estopped from engaging in serious discussion of Internet issues from the
perspective of a politician who knew and cared about the evolution of the national information
infrastructure. The 2000 Presidential campaign has been deprived of debate and discourse that
could have been informative and beneficial to the Internet community and the citizenry at large.
One might see these consequences as the natural - and deserved - outcome of Gore's own
exaggeration. There is only one problem with this evaluation. It simply isn't true. Just as Rick
never said "Play it again, Sam," in Casablanca, Al Gore never claimed to have "invented the
Internet." That simple fact apparently isn't important to the journalists and comedians who repeat
the claim.
This article explores how the perception arose that Gore in essence padded his resume by claiming
to have invented the Internet. We will then explore Gore's actual record, in particular as a U.S.
Senator in the late 1980s, as an advocate for high-speed national networking. Finally we will
examine this case as an example of the trivialization of discourse and debate in American
politics.
What Gore Said
Although Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet, he did discuss his role in Internet
development in an interview with Wolf Blitzer of Cable News Network. The interview took place on
March 9, 1999 during CNN's "Late Edition" show. Specifically, what Gore said was "I took the
initiative in creating the Internet."
A cynic might observe that "creating the Internet" and "inventing the Internet" are tantamount to
the same exaggeration. But let's look at the entire quote in the context of the colloquy with
Blitzer. Here is Blitzer's entire query to Gore:
BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute,
but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now.
Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill
Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this
that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?
Clearly, Blitzer is asking Gore to offer an explanation of how he differs as a politician from
other politicians in general, and his rival at the time, Bill Bradley, in particular. Here is
Gore's entire response to Blitzer's question:
GORE: Well, I will be offering - I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will
be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward
it. I feel that it will be.
But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this
country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the
initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of
initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental
protection, improvements in our educational system.
During a quarter century of public service, including most of it long before I came into my
current job, I have worked to try to improve the quality of life in our country and in our world.
And what I've seen during that experience is an emerging future that's very exciting, about which
I'm very optimistic, and toward which I want to lead.
Here Gore appears to have been caught off guard a bit by the question, rambling a bit as he seeks
to vocalize a responsive answer. He emphasizes his work during his years in the Congress - Gore
served in the House and later the Senate - as well as his leadership on various issues. Perhaps
not showing the most elegant variation in words, he mentions "initiative" three times. Clearly his
overall message is that he worked hard on a number of issues, and took a leadership position
relative to others - presumably including his rival Bradley. The overall thrust is that Gore
paints himself as a forward-looking legislator and political leader.
The rest of the interview dealt with George Bush and Elizabeth Dole as potential rivals, with
Clinton proposals for community policing, with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and with the notion
of engagement with China. If Blitzer thought he had caught Gore in a gaffe, he did not take note
of it during the interview.
But if Blitzer didn't notice (or try to exploit) the gaffe, the rest of the press had a field day.
Articles and television coverage ridiculed Gore's statement. Most of these reports covered the
issue rather lightly, and dismissing the veracity of Gore's remark with a superficial statement
along the lines that "The Internet was invented in the late 1960s" or "The Internet was invented
in 1969."
Of course, Internet history is not that easily characterized. Any news report that tries to
summarize Internet history by dating its origin to the 1960s or the year 1969 is oversimplifying.
Such a news report is as sloppy as the statement for which they take Gore to task. There were too
many significant milestones in Internet history to allow for a sound-bite length description of
that history.
Many reports linked Gore's misstatement with previous Gore gaffes. For instance, the St.
Petersburg (Fla.) Times editorialized in its March 24, 1999 edition:
Gore's recent statement that as a member of Congress he had taken the initiative in "creating the
Internet" drew hoots of laughter, especially from Republicans. Gore has long been a promoter of
the Internet, but he didn't invent it. Trying to keep a straight face, Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott quickly issued a news release claiming that he invented the paper clip. This was not
the first time Gore has overreached. A year ago Gore told reporters that he and his wife, Tipper,
at the time when they were college sweethearts, were the inspiration for the novel "Love Story."
That came as news to the befuddled author, Erich Segal.
The editorialist saw the Internet statement as part of a pattern of hype, of Gore overstating his
own accomplishments. Like Lott, other politicians saw Gore's statement as fodder for ridicule. Dan
Quayle took up the bait, quoted as saying, "If Gore invented the Internet, then I invented
Spell-Check."
The Arizona Republic noted in an editorial that "Gore has a way of morphing, Zelig-like into the
lives of whomever he's addressing." The editorial showed Gore some mercy, however, continuing: "In
fact, as the chairman of a key science subcommittee in 1986, Gore did foster the creation of five
supercomputer centers through the National Science Foundation that became the cornerstone of the
Internet."
The Republic was in the minority with this balanced reportage. Most other media outlets downplayed
or omitted Gore's role as a Senator in supporting national networking initiatives, instead
concentrating on the apparent gaffe. By this point, there was little hope of correcting the record
in journalists' minds. And, as the Republic observed, "Alas, too late. Leno's already worked him
into the monologue."
And indeed, Jay Leno and David Letterman had worked the story into their monologues - and other
material. Letterman's "Top Ten List" for June 16, 1999, was entitled the "Top Ten Things Starr Has
Found Out About Al Gore." Entry number 7 was:
Although he didn't invent the internet [sic], he did invent those annoying bits of punctuation
that look like sideways faces :-)
By December the joke hadn't lost its appeal to Letterman and his writers. The December 3, 1999 Top
Ten list demonstrates:
Top Ten Other Achievements Claimed By Al Gore
10. Was first human to grow an opposable thumb
9. Only man in world to sleep with someone named "Tipper"
8. Current Vice President - Moesha fan club
7. He invented the dog
6. While riding bicycle one day, accidentally invented the orgasm
5. Pulled U.S. out of early 90's recession by personally buying 6,000 T-shirts
4. Starred in CBS situation comedy with Juan Valdez, "Juan for Al, Al for Juan"
3. Was inspiration for Ozzy Osboune song "Crazy Train"
2. Came up with popular catchphrase "Don't go there, girlfriend"
1. Gave mankind fire
The public quickly chimed into the fray soon after the CNN interview, as well. Note, for instance,
this letter from Lew Pritchett of Placentia, California printed on March 19, 1999 in the Los
Angeles Times:
Up until Gore's announcement, all I knew of his inventions was global warming. And now, the
Internet too? Wow, what a guy!
Even President Bill Clinton joined the frivolity, joking to the Gridiron Club a week after the CNN
interview:
"Al Gore invented the Internet. For the record, I, too, am an inventor. I invented George
Stephanopoulos."
(Source: Boston Globe, March 28, 1999.)
Repetition Equals Reality
Once Leno and Letterman, pundits, and opposition politicians had worked up one-liners based on the
false "invented the Internet" phrase, the stage was set for the phrase to become the permanent,
common understanding of the public at large. Today's journalists are notorious for moving in
packs, and the packs tended to quote the phrase without citation - and without checking the facts
or the context. Months after the CNN interview, husband-and-wife columnists Steve & Cokie Roberts
reported on a series of person-in-the-street exchanges. They noted in a January 2000 column:
When Gore does try to assert himself, it often backfires - witness his claim that he helped invent
the Internet. "He sounded naive when he said that; he was just trying to make himself look good,"
says Mike, a telephone lineman. "I just don't trust him; he doesn't know his facts."
Mike, the telephone repairman, appears to believe that Gore simply made up a claim of inventing
the Internet out of whole cloth - as if it were a random, wanton schoolyard boast. Millions of
people may share Mike's superficial assessment. The phrase "Gore invented the Internet" has since
been burned into the public consciousness. Exploiting the situation, the George W. Bush campaign
has inserted the "issue" into the current Presidential campaign, with a female voice on a national
television ad intoning, "If Al Gore invented the Internet, then I invented the remote control." A
Republican-sponsored Web site, gorewillsayanything.com, expands on the theme.
Of course, Gore is a seasoned politician, noted for his caution - even woodenness - when he is
under the lights. We expect such a politician to choose his words carefully. The question is
whether journalists like Cokie & Steve Roberts should be held to an equally high standard in
quoting the Vice President. After all, his remarks were made during a live-on-tape, informal
interview. The Robertses were writing for their syndicated column, and presumably have plenty of
resources at their disposal for fact checking - and good fact checking includes getting quotes
down accurately. Unlike Gore in a live-on-tape interview, the Robertses also had plenty of real
time to get their facts and phrasing completely accurate. Even opinion pieces ought to have their
factual components rendered, well, factually. If telephone lineman Mike and millions of other
citizens had heard the accurate quote of "I took the initiative in creating the Internet," and if
they understood the statement in the context of Gore's actual legislative record, then they might
have a very different impression of the Vice President.
The press, the politicians, the comedians, and the public all ended up with the same image of Gore
as resume fabricator. But if we assess Gore's remarks in light of what he actually said, and
examine his legislative record, we find that Gore is guilty of somewhat sloppy terminology, not a
bold-faced lie.
Who Invented What, and When Did They Invent It?
Although Gore never said that he "invented the Internet," he did say he "took the initiative in
creating the Internet." Can that claim be substantiated? As we will see, Gore did indeed take an
intellectual and legislative interest in promoting high-speed data networks in the United States,
and he did this during the 1980s, at a time long before most members of the public - let alone
most politicians - were thinking about such issues.
The Internet Society hosts a monograph called called "A Brief History of the Internet." (See
http://www.isoc.org/internet-history/brief.html) The authors include some of the designers of the
essential components of how the Internet works today: Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D.
Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, and
Stephen Wolff. The paper notes these key milestones in Internet history:
1961: Leonard Kleinrock writes the first paper on packet switched networks.
1962: J.C.R. Licklider of MIT writes a paper describing a globally connected "Galactic Network" of
computers.
1966: Larry Roberts proposes the ARPANET to the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA).
1968: ARPA issues Request for Quotations for the Interface Message Processors (IMPs), which became
the first routers.
1969: First IMP is installed at UCLA.
Early 1970s: Universities and defense agencies and contractors begin to connect to ARPANET.
1973: Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf begin research into what eventually becomes IP - the Internet
Protocol and its companion, TCP - the Transmission Control Protocol.
1973: Bob Metcalfe develops Ethernet, which had been the subject of his PhD thesis, while working
at Xerox.
Early 1980s: The Personal Computer revolution begins.
Mid 1980s: Local Area Networks (LANs) begin to flourish in business and university environments.
Campus area networks soon follow.
January 1, 1983: All "old-style" traffic on the ARPANET ceases, as TCP/IP becomes the only
protocol used. [Arguably, this is the date of the birth of the Internet as a functioning,
practical, production network.]
1985: Dennis Jennings chooses TCP/IP as the protocol for the planned National Science Foundation
Network (NSFnet).
1988: NSF sponsors a series of workshops at Harvard on the commercialization and privatization of
the Internet.
1988: Kahn et al. write a paper "Towards a National Research Network." According to the Brief
History, "This report was influential on then Senator Al Gore, and ushered in high speed networks
that laid the networking foundation for the future information superhighway." [Emphasis added.]
Note that these authors of (and participants in) Internet history state clearly that as early as
1988, then-Senator Gore became involved in the goal of building a national research network. We'll
examine his role in more detail later.
"The Brief History" by Cerf et al. details the key milestones in the development of the Internet
infrastructure that were essential for the Internet to evolve into what we know and use today.
They cite the conscious decision to transition the Internet from a primarily defense, research,
and education network into a national network of networks incorporating private as well as
commercial traffic.
More recent developments brought about the global Internet as we know it today. Before this
infrastructure could be widely adopted, the world demanded applications programs that large
numbers of end users could in fact use. By the early 1990s, most users of desktop computers were
moving from line-mode interfaces (e.g. MS-DOS) to graphical user interfaces (MacOS, Windows,
X-Window, etc.) At this time new applications programs transformed the Internet into a tool the
masses could use:
1991: Mark McCahill et al. (University of Minnesota) release the Internet Gopher, the first
widely-adopted menu-based system for browsing and retrieving Internet-based documents.
1991: Tim Berners-Lee et al. at the European Center for High-Energy Physics (CERN) describe the
World Wide Web. The first browser is a line-mode tool.
March 1993: Mark Andreessen et al. at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
at the University of Illinois release Mosaic, the first widely-adopted graphical browser for the
Web
September 1993: NCSA releases Macintosh and Windows versions of Mosaic.
Recent Internet history is well understood, with the commercialization of long-haul networks, of
Internet access companies, the creation of the portal sites, and the rise of the dot-coms and of
e-commerce.
Al Gore Meets the Information Highway
We have seen that Internet history cannot be easily summarized; there is no one single moment of
discovery or invention. Press reports that claim the "Internet was invented in 1969" simply are
not accurate; the term "internet" had not yet been coined. The most accurate summary would avoid
use of the word "invent" altogether, as the Internet is not a single technology or device. One
might date the birth of the Internet to the 1970s, when Kahn and Cerf began research on the
Internet Protocol, or the 1980s, when it came into widespread use. But as the timeline shows, the
basic underlying ideas date back as far as the early 1960s.
Clearly, then, if we take Gore literally at his word, he could not have "taken the initiative in
creating the Internet." As the ARPANET moved from research to deployment, Gore was finishing
college and serving in the Army in Vietnam. From 1976 to 1985, Gore served in the House of
Representatives. From 1985 to 1992, he served in the Senate. The record shows that his interest in
national computer networking issues became acute during his years in the Senate - when the
Internet clearly was fully in operation.
So let us grant to Gore's critics that he was in no position to "take the initiative in creating
the Internet." But is it possible that Gore's declaration, chosen in real time during a
live-on-tape interview, could be simply a poor choice of words - sloppy speaking on his part - and
that a slightly different formulation might be quite reasonably interpreted as totally accurate?
While the "Brief History" timeline gives us a good understanding of the milestones in creating
today's Internet, some perspective is required. The mid-1980s until the early 1990s were the years
when the Internet's potential was proven, primarily in the realm of university activity. But
during this time, very few people in the public at large observed or understood the importance of
what was evolving. During the late 1980s, Internet activity exploded, driven in large part by the
National Science Foundation's NSFnet. This national backbone connected universities at then-high
speeds (first 56 kilobits per second, then 1.5 megabits per second, and finally in the early 1990s
at 45 megabits per second).
A primary goal of the NSFnet was to allow university-based scientists, located at a geographically
dispersed range of institutions (both domestically and internationally) to exploit the resources
of five supercomputer centers, also funded by the NSF and located at U.S. universities and
national labs. The fact that TCP/IP was selected for this network in 1985 is probably one of the
most unheralded milestones in Internet history. It might have been different; a different choice
of protocol standard, such as X.25, DECnet, or even IBM's System Network Architecture, might have
been selected. Had that happened, the NSFnet would not have played the important role it did in
cementing TCP/IP in particular, and the Internet in general, as the appropriate choice for a
global information infrastructure. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the NSFnet exposed
ever-growing audiences on university campuses to the potential for ubiquitous wide-area
networking.
All of this remained by and large unknown to the general public until the explosion of the Web
beginning late in 1993. The media took little note of the Web revolution until 1994 and later.
Just as Isaac Newton explained that he "stood on the shoulders of giants," the primary inventor of
the Web, Tim-Berners Lee, acknowledges "the Web revolution depended on a much quieter revolution -
the Internet revolution." (Source: interview with Berners-Lee, 1995.)
In terms of the Internet's effects on people and on commerce, then, the real revolution took place
in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Now let's examine Al Gore's legislative record during that
time period and see what role he might have played.
Senator Gore's Activities
An examination of floor speeches, hearings, and other activity by then-Senator Gore shows an
active interest in a broad range of topics. A search of the Congressional Information Service
database reveals examples such as:
A 1983 proposal to build a national computer-based registry of organ donors and those in need of
transplants.
Legislation in 1987 to mandate copy protection mechanisms for Digital Audio Tape [ironic given the
much greater copying problem introduced years later by the Internet and by Napster].
A 1989 bill, unenacted, "to amend the Antarctic Conservation Act of 1978 to protect the
environment of Antarctica."
A 1989 resolution, not passed, to "designate the month of May 1989 as National Digestive Disease
Awareness Month."
A 1989 resolution, not passed, to "urge Noble Commission to consider awarding Nobel Prize
recognition for achievements in preservation of the world environment."
A proposed resolution in 1990 calling on the government of Malaysia to preserve tropical
rainforests.
Proposed 1992 legislation, not enacted, that would "stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide to
protect the global climate, and for other purposes."
Various bills over the years supporting funding for NASA.
A resolution to establish the month of October 1989, as Country Music Month (not enacted).
Clearly Gore's legislative activity reflects a broad range of interests. Not surprisingly, much of
his activity centered on the environment. Like any member of Congress, much of the legislation he
proposed was not enacted, no matter the issue or the merits.
But it is Gore's activity with respect to the Internet that interests us. His legislative activity
demonstrates his interest and involvement in issues relating to computing and networking; for
instance, he co-sponsored the Computer Abuse Amendments Act of 1990, to complement the Computer
Security and Fraud Act of 1989, which had been used to prosecute Robert Morris, Jr., the author of
the Internet Worm (one of the first widespread viruses).
Gore's support for national computer networking initiatives came in a very different milieu in
terms of science funding than one might perceive in the year 2000. In the 1980s, the United States
was worried about its competitive position internationally, specifically with respect to Japan,
Europe, and Soviet Union. Topics included:
Superconducting magnets (e.g. how to build "mag lev" trains).
What nation would make breakthroughs in particle physics (and whether to build a superconducting
supercollider).
The prospective loss of U.S. dominance in the semiconductor industry.
Basic issues of how science and technology could support a national industrial policy.
While consistently supported funding for agencies involved in science and technology, such as the
National Science Foundation and for NASA, Gore also began to give speeches and hold hearings in
support of high-performance computing and networking. In 1987, for instance, Gore spoke on the
floor in support of research into superconducting supercomputers:
Mr. President, I rise to discuss the subject of superconductivity and to make my colleagues aware
of dramatic new developments which have been disclosed in the news media and which have been
taking place in the field of science during the last 6 weeks. Last week in New York City, there
was an unprecedented conference which was described by participants as unlike anything the field
of science had ever seen before. A series of rapid-fire dramatic new discoveries in the science of
superconductivity, which means the creation of materials which conduct electricity with no
resistance whatsoever, promise to open up tremendous new applications in fields from electricity
transmission to high-speed rail transit to the construction of appliances and the like. We must
have a national response to this new opportunity.
It's a safe bet that very few members of Congress at the time would have felt the urge to make
this kind of speech. Many may have felt little desire to listen to it, either. The point, however,
is clear: Gore took an active interest in promoting the United States position in science and
technology. As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, Gore held
hearings on these issues. During a 1989 hearing colloquy with Dr. Craig Fields of ARPA and Dr.
William Wulf of NSF, Gore solicited information about what constituted a high-speed network and
where technology was headed. He asked how much sooner NSFnet speed could be enhanced 30-fold if
more Federal funding was provided. During this hearing, Gore made fun of himself during an
exchange about high-speed networking speeds: "That's all right. I think of my [1988] presidential
campaign as a gigaflop." [The witness had explained that "gigaflop" referred to one billion
floating point operations per second.]
But Gore's interest and support for U.S. high-speed networking begins much earlier than 1989. As
early as 1986, Gore called for, in the context of funding for the NSF, support for basic research
in computer networking:
Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure to support the proposed National Science Foundation
Authorization Act.
MR. PRESIDENT, IT GIVES ME GREAT PLEASURE TO SUPPORT THE PROPOSED NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
AUTHORIZATION ACT.
WITHIN THIS BILL I HAVE TWO AMENDMENTS, THE COMPUTER NETWORK STUDY AND THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
REPORT. THE FIRST AMENDMENT WAS ORIGINALLY INTRODUCED WITH SENATOR GORTON AS S. 2594. IT CALLS FOR
A 2-YEAR STUDY OF THE CRITICAL PROBLEMS AND CURRENT AND FUTURE OPTIONS REGARDING COMMUNICATIONS
NETWORKS FOR RESEARCH COMPUTERS. THE SECOND AMENDMENT REQUIRES THE PRESIDENT TO SUBMIT A REPORT TO
CONGRESS ON THE ACTIONS TAKEN TO ESTABLISH AN INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT.
BOTH OF THESE AMENDMENTS SEEK NEW INFORMATION ON CRITICAL PROBLEMS OF TODAY. THE COMPUTER NETWORK
STUDY ACT IS DESIGNED TO ANSWER CRITICAL QUESTIONS ON THE NEEDS OF COMPUTER TELECOMMUNICATIONS
SYSTEMS OVER THE NEXT 15 YEARS. FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT ARE THE FUTURE REQUIREMENTS FOR COMPUTERS IN
TERMS OF QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF DATA TRANSMISSION, DATA SECURITY, AND SOFTWEAR [sic]
COMPATIBILITY? WHAT EQUIPMENT MUST BE DEVELOPED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HIGH TRANSMISSION RATES
OFFERED BY FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS?
BOTH SYSTEMS DESIGNED TO HANDLE THE SPECIAL NEEDS OF SUPERCOMPUTERS AND SYSTEMS DESIGNED TO MEET
THE NEEDS OF SMALLER RESEARCH COMPUTERS WILL BE EVALUATED. THE EMPHASIS IS ON RESEARCH COMPUTERS,
BUT THE USERS OF ALL COMPUTERS WILL BENEFIT FROM THIS STUDY. TODAY, WE CAN BANK BY COMPUTER, SHOP
BY COMPUTER, AND SEND LETTERS BY COMPUTER. ONLY A FEW COMPANIES AND INDIVIDUALS USE THESE
SERVICES, BUT THE NUMBER IS GROWING AND EXISTING CAPABILITIES ARE LIMITED.
IN ORDER TO COPE WITH THE EXPLOSION OF COMPUTER USE IN THE COUNTRY, WE MUST LOOK TO NEW WAYS TO
ADVANCE THE STATE-OF-THE-ART IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS -- NEW WAYS TO INCREASE THE SPEED AND QUALITY
OF THE DATA TRANSMISSION. WITHOUT THESE IMPROVEMENTS, THE TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORKS FACE DATA
BOTTLENECKS LIKE THOSE WE FACE EVERY DAY ON OUR CROWDED HIGHWAYS.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR IS ALREADY AWARE OF THE NEED TO EVALUATE AND ADOPT NEW TECHNOLOGIES. ONE
PROMISING TECHNOLOGY IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS FOR VOICE AND DATA TRANSMISSION.
EVENTUALLY WE WILL SEE A SYSTEM OF FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS BEING INSTALLED NATIONWIDE.
AMERICA'S HIGHWAYS TRANSPORT PEOPLE AND MATERIALS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. FEDERAL FREEWAYS CONNECT
WITH STATE HIGHWAYS WHICH CONNECT IN TURN WITH COUNTY ROADS AND CITY STREETS. TO TRANSPORT DATA
AND IDEAS, WE WILL NEED A TELECOMMUNICATIONS HIGHWAY CONNECTING USERS COAST TO COAST, STATE TO
STATE, CITY TO CITY. THE STUDY REQUIRED IN THIS AMENDMENT WILL IDENTIFY THE PROBLEMS AND
OPPORTUNITIES THE NATION WILL FACE IN ESTABLISHING THAT HIGHWAY.
[Upper case shown, indicating a contemporaneous insertion into the Congressional Record at the
time of corresponding floor debate.]
That Gore wrote about a national "data highway" as far back as 1986 is extremely significant. It
is important to make clear the context of the state of computing at that time. The IBM PC was only
four years old. The Apple II computer was still in widespread use. The number of hosts on the
Internet numbered, as counted by Mark Lottor's Internet Domain Survey, was 5,089. Entire
universities (such as Michigan State University) made their initial connection to the Internet in
1986. In order for Gore to make this kind of speech in 1986, he had to have been conversant with
the thinking of computer scientists and Internet pioneers. Such pioneers included such as Vint
Cerf, Steven Wolf, and Larry Smarr - then director of the National Center for Supercomputer
Applications at the University of Illinois (NCSA), where Mosaic would be born some seven years
later.
In 1988, Gore argued for the creation of a high-capacity national data network:
THIS LEGISLATION TAKES THE FIRST CRITICAL STEPS TO ADDRESS THOROUGHLY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S
ROLE IN PROMOTING HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING. OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL MONTHS, WE CAN REFINE THIS
LEGISLATION. BUT WE MUST ACT. THE UNITED STATES HAS MAYBE A 1-YEAR LEAD OVER OUR CLOSEST
COMPETITORS IN THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING FIELD. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO HESITATE IN CRAFTING A
BLUEPRINT TO ENSURE THAT LEAD FOR THE [*S16898] NEXT DOZEN YEARS OF THIS CENTURY AND TO POSITION
OURSELVES FOR THE NEXT CENTURY. REPRESENTATIVES FROM INDUSTRY, ACADEMIA, AND FEDERAL AGENCIES
SHOULD DISCUSS WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, USING THIS BILL AS A FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION.
THE NATIONAL HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY ACT OF 1988 WOULD EXPAND AND IMPROVE FEDERAL
SUPPORT FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND THE APPLICATION OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY.
SPECIFICALLY, THIS ACT WOULD ESTABLISH A HIGH-CAPACITY NATIONAL RESEARCH COMPUTER NETWORK, DEVELOP
AND DISTRIBUTE SOFTWARE, DEVELOP ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAMS, STIMULATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF
HARDWARE, AND INVEST IN BASIC RESEARCH AND EDUCATION.
THE ACT WOULD DEFINE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING. THE ACT WOULD
PROVIDE FOR A 3-GIGABIT-PER-SECOND NATIONAL NETWORK, DEVELOP FEDERAL STANDARDS, TAKE INTO ACCOUNT
USER VIEWS, EXAMINE TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY, BUILD AN INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE COMPOSED OF
DATA BASES AND KNOWLEDGE BANKS, CREATE A NATIONAL SOFTWARE CORPORATION TO DEVELOP IMPORTANT
SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, ESTABLISH A CLEARINGHOUSE TO VALIDATE AND DISTRIBUTE SOFTWARE, PROMOTE
ARTICIFIAL INTELLIGENCE DATA BASES, INCREASE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS, STUDY EXPORT
CONTROLS AFFECTING COMPUTERS, REVIEW PROCUREMENT POLICIES TO STIMULATE THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY, AND
ENHANCE COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS. IT ALSO CLEARLY DEFINES AGENCY MISSIONS AND
RESPONSIBILITIES WITH RESPECT TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING.
Gore made explicit the need for high-speed networking, specifically a 3-gigabit per second
national network. In 1989 floor debate Gore continued his support for federally funded research in
high-performance computing and networking. His words presage the Internet as we know it today:
Well, we could do more and we should be doing more. I'd take a slightly different view of this
question. I agree totally with those who say, education is the key to it. But I genuinely believe
that the creation of this nationwide network and the broader installation of lower capacity fiber
optic cables to all parts of this country, will create an environment where work stations are
common in homes and even small businesses with access to supercomputing capability being very,
very widespread. It's sort of like, once the interstate highway system existed, then a college
student in California who lived in North Carolina would be more likely to buy a car, drive back
and forth instead of taking the bus. Once that network for supercomputing is in place, you're
going to have a lot more people gaining access to the capability, developing an interest in it.
That will lead to more people getting training and more purchases of machines.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the term "information superhighway" became a sort of mantra
in Gore's speeches. Some observers, in fact, credit Gore with coining that very term. Actually,
for Senator Gore to seek to build a national data network analogous to the interstate highway
system should not surprise us; his father, Al Gore Sr., as a senator in the 1950s was a major
proponent of the creation of the Interstate Highway System, modeled after the German autobahns. No
doubt Gore Jr. was inspired by the model and metaphor of his father's efforts. Gore Jr.'s remarks
in 1989 reflect this throwback to Gore pere's earlier role:
THREE YEARS AGO, ON THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM, I SPONSORED THE
SUPERCOMPUTER NETWORK STUDY ACT TO EXPLORE A FIBER OPTIC NETWORK TO LINK THE NATION'S
SUPERCOMPUTERS INTO ONE SYSTEM. HIGH-CAPACITY FIBER OPTIC NETWORKS WILL BE THE INFORMATION
SUPERHIGHWAYS OF TOMORROW. A NATIONAL NETWORK WITH ASSOCIATED SUPERCOMPUTERS AND DATA BASES WILL
LINK ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS AND INDUSTRY IN A NATIONAL COLABORATORY. THIS INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE
WILL CLUSTER RESEARCH CENTERS AND BUSINESSES AROUND NETWORK INTERCHANGES, USING THE NATION'S VAST
DATA BANKS AS THE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR INCREASING INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTIVITY, CREATING NEW PRODUCTS,
AND IMPROVING ACCESS TO EDUCATION. LIBRARIES, RURAL SCHOOLS, MINORITY INSTITUTIONS, AND VOCATIONAL
EDUCATION PROGRAMS WILL HAVE ACCESS TO THE SAME NATIONAL RESOURCES -- DATA BASES, SUPERCOMPUTERS,
ACCELERATORS -- AS MORE AFFLUENT AND BETTER KNOWN INSTITUTIONS.
CAN WE RELY ON THE MARKET SYSTEM TO PROVIDE THIS KIND OF INFRASTRUCTURE? WE CERTAINLY COULDN'T
WHERE THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM WAS CONCERNED, ALTHOUGH PRIVATE INDUSTRY ULTIMATELY BENEFITED
A GREAT DEAL FROM THE GOVERNMENT'S LEADERSHIP AND INVESTMENT. I BELIEVE THAT THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT MUST AGAIN BE A CATALYST, TO GET COMPANIES INTERESTED IN THOSE INFORMATION NETWORKS AND
SHOW THEM THAT THERE IS A MARKET OUT THERE. CLEARLY, THE TECHNOLOGICAL SPINOFFS AND PRODUCTIVITY
GAINS WOULD BE ENORMOUS, FROM A NETWORK THAT WOULD COST THE GOVERNMENT LESS THAN ONE STEALTH
BOMBER.
Although the press took relatively little note of Gore's speeches, hearings, and proposed
legislation on national networking, some coverage did appear. John Markoff wrote for the December
29, 1988 edition of the New York Times:
Computer scientists and Government officials are urging the creation of a nationwide "data
superhighway" that they believe would have a dramatic economic impact, rivaling that of the
nation's interstate highway system.
This highway would consist of a high-speed fiber-optic data network joining dozens of
supercomputers at national laboratories and making them available to thousands of academic and
industry researchers around the country ...
Legislation introduced in October by Senator Albert Gore, Democrat of Tennessee, included initial
financing for development and construction of a National Research Network. Backers of the measure
say that Federal financing for the project is necessary to develop the technology and convince
industry that vastly speedier computer networks are commercially viable.
Gore's efforts in the mid to late 1980s to promote national networking initiatives eventually paid
off, when the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 was passed by both houses of Congress. The
Houston Chronicle ran an article under the headline "Data superhighway' for nation's computers
approved by Congress" on November 30, 1991, crediting Gore's role:
A plan to create a high-tech "data superhighway" likened in importance to the creation of the
nation's highway system has been approved by Congress and sent to President Bush for his
signature.
The plan would create a high-speed national computer networking infrastructure that would link
computers in the nation's research, education and military establishments.
Proponents say that this network eventually will evolve into a universally available National
Public Telecomputing Network that may be the successor to the telephone system, marrying the
entertainment, communications and computer industries.
The High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, which contains the plan, was approved by a
House-Senate conference committee over the weekend after being stalled for several weeks because
of disagreement over a "buy American first" provision.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Albert Gore, D-Tenn., does not provide funding for the effort. Budget
allocations and appropriations must be made individually during each year of the program.
No less an authority than Vint Cerf, inventor of the Internet Protocol, has gone on record
confirming Gore's role in U.S. Internet development. On June 14, 2000, Time Magazine hosted a live
Internet forum with Cerf. The (anonymous) moderator joined his journalistic wisecrackers by
invoking Gore's Internet inventor "claim." Cerf abstained from the frivolity:
Timehost: Welcome to the TIME auditorium. We're thrilled to have as our guest Vinton Cerf, one of
the inventors of the Internet. Mr. Cerf has just written an article for TIME magazine, in which he
says that the Internet will be everywhere. Even, literally, in our bodies! So send in your
questions about the past, present and future of the Internet. Who better to answer those questions
than the man who invented the Internet? (Sorry, Al Gore)
Timehost: Mr. Cerf is now with us. Welcome!
Vinton Cerf: Good evening, or whatever time zone you are in, hi!! While we're waiting for
questions, I'd like to clear up one little item - about the Vice President ... He really does
deserve some credit for his early recognition of the importance of the Internet and the technology
that makes it work. He was certainly among the first if not the first in Congress to realize how
powerful the information revolution would be and both as Senator and Vice President he has been
enormously helpful in supporting legislation and programs to help further develop the Internet -
for example the Next Generation Internet program. I get to see a lot of this stuff because I am a
member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee and we regularly review the
R&D programs of the US Government and many have relevance to the evolving Internet.
On September 28, 2000, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf released a statement to key Internet mailing lists
stating their unequivocal belief that Gore played an important role during his congressional years
in supporting the Internet:
I am taking the liberty of sending to you both a brief summary of Al Gore's Internet involvement,
prepared by Bob Kahn and me. As you know, there have been a seemingly unending series of jokes
chiding the vice president for his assertion that he "took the initiative in creating the
Internet."
Bob and I believe that the vice president deserves significant credit for his early recognition of
the importance of what has become the Internet.
I thought you might find this short summary of sufficient interest to share it with Politech and
the IP lists, respectively.
==============================================================
Al Gore and the Internet
By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote
and support its development.
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result
of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community.
But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and
as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution
over a longer period of time.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my
service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't
think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet.
Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had
a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that
Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel
it is timely to offer our perspective.
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an
engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first
elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than
just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time
this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was
based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it
today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its
deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the
potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings
on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of
government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.
As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate what at the time were
several dozen different and unconnected networks into an "Interagency Network." Working in a
bi-partisan manner with officials in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore secured
the passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991. This "Gore Act"
supported the National Research and Education Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the
major vehicles for the spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer science.
As Vice President Gore promoted building the Internet both up and out, as well as releasing the
Internet from the control of the government agencies that spawned it. He served as the major
administration proponent for continued investment in advanced computing and networking and private
sector initiatives such as Net Day. He was and is a strong proponent of extending access to the
network to schools and libraries. Today, approximately 95% of our nation's schools are on the
Internet. Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization of the Internet
when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-driven operation.
There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid growth since the later 1980s,
not the least of which has been political support for its privatization and continued support for
research in advanced networking technology. No one in public life has been more intellectually
engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has
been a clear champion of this effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at
large.
The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of high speed computing and
communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the
Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.
Gore Is Not Alone
Unfortunately, our penchant for drawing deep conclusions about the character of national leaders
based on a spontaneous, in-the-moment, reaction, later oft-repeated but seldom presented in
context, is not limited to Mr. Gore. In 1992, President Bush visited a trade show where
state-of-the-art grocery store equipment was being demonstrated. The pool reporter assigned to
cover the event, Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times, wrote a short article describing Bush's
astonishment at the technology of a grocery scanner. Rosenthal's resulting piece portrayed Bush as
being surprised at supermarket UPC bar code scanning technology, which was old hat by 1992 and
quite familiar to the voting public.
Once the story was out, the die was cast: as far as casual commentators and the general public
were concerned, George Bush was a patrician President out of touch with the lives of everyday
Americans. At that time, and since that time, Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, has
protested vehemently that Rosenthal completely misinterpreted the situation - that Bush had long
since known what a grocery store UPC scanner was, but that he was merely politely acknowledging
the sales pitch of an NCR official. On November 5, 1995, Fitzwater detailed his complaint on
C-Span's "Booknotes" program:
FITZWATER: Well, President Bush during the 1992 campaign went to a convention in Florida of
grocery manufacturers, and before the speech, he was being shown some demonstrations and displays,
and he walked up to a new checkout scanner that was being displayed by National Cash Register
Company, and the fellow who was at the cash register says, "This is our latest thing. This can do
everything but slice bread, and it reads credit cards, and does billing, and everything." And that
fellow - the cash register guy - said, "That's amazing!" And President Bush, to be gracious, said,
"Yes, it is amazing." And we just kind of withdrew away. Nobody paid much attention to it. And
then later on, when the President was asked about the technology, he said, "I saw some amazing
technology on the cash register." And Andy wrote up the story as if the President was so out of
touch with American life that he'd never seen a cash register - a supermarket scanner - before.
And it was one of those kind of tragic situations where we could never catch up with the story.
And it painted the President as being out of touch, and I think it was also interesting that - you
know, in a sense, it touched on a truth - which is why this story had so many legs - in that we
were out of touch on the economy. We really didn't know where the American people were hurting and
how they were reacting to economic problems at that time. The problem was the President wasn't
awed by this scanner. It wasn't really true. He hadn't expressed his amazement over something he
had never seen before, and it wasn't a case that he'd never been in a grocery store before. So it
was a case of where the story that Andy wrote - which was from a pool reporter, really - was not
true or accurate in the sense of what the President did.
Note Fitzwater's point: that "we never could catch up to the story." Once the punditry and the
comediocracy have latched onto a theme, it is impossible for facts to intercede.
If Fitzwater has his facts straight, the supermarket scanner story is quite similar to Gore's
situation: through distortion of the candidate's statement, and repetition and magnification of
the distortion, the public's judgment of the candidate is materially affected. In both cases, it
is unfair to the candidate to be judged on the basis of an off-the-cuff comment, misquoted,
misinterpreted, and magnified through repetition and ridicule by those who neither know nor care
what was said - or the context in which it was said. The entire process is also a disservice to
the Republic.
William Safire, writing in his political column for the New York Times on September 14, 2000,
derided the "snickering campaign" - the modern phenomenon whereby Saturday Night Live transformed
Gerald Ford into a bumbling fool thanks to repetitive Chevy Chase routines and George W. Bush is
painted as illiterate due to the repeated ridicule of his mispronunciation of "subliminal."
Why This Matters
Any fair review of the legislative record makes it clear that Senator Gore was an early and
forceful advocate for high-speed national networks, and that he understood how this vision could
lead to widespread benefits for the citizenry and for commerce in the United States.
No doubt that record is what he sought to convey in his answer to Blitzer. If Al Gore had chosen a
slightly different formulation for his extemporaneous statement, none of this discussion would
have ensued. For instance, this statement might have avoided the repetition and ridicule:
While I was serving in the Senate, I took the initiative in supporting the basic research
necessary to create the Internet as we know it today.
But Gore - and the nation - are stuck with the words he chose and the reaction that followed.
Gore's slight misstatement, and its subsequent magnification, distortion, and frequent repetition,
stymie Gore in any attempt he might want to make to use his record on Internet issues during the
current campaign. He simply can't raise the subject in a serious way. He is reduced to joining in
the joking himself. This citizenry is thus deprived of any serious discourse in the 2000
Presidential campaign relating to Internet issues. In point of fact, serious issues remain as to
the proper role of government and the Internet. These include:
Internet taxation: Is the moratorium on Internet taxation justified? George W. Bush, as a sitting
governor, might have an interesting perspective on this issue, given the importance of sales taxes
to most states' budgets.
Media and distribution amalgamation: is the AOL/Time-Warner merger (and others sure to follow) a
threat to free and equal access to Internet content?
Pornography and filtering: how can the nation provide the control parents seek over access to
erotic content in a way that does not offend the First Amendment or children's need to access
medical and scientific content?
The role of government in fostering continued United States leadership in Internet and information
technologies: The Internet was the fruit of United States government investment, by ARPA, the NSF,
and other agencies. At this point in Internet history, what role remains for government investment
in Internet research?
The "digital divide." Is it the responsibility of government to assure a minimum level of basic
access to the Internet for all citizens? How much money should be budgeted for this effort? Is the
"E-rate" the correct mechanism for achieving universal access?
Civil liberties: How can law enforcement be given the access to evidence it needs to apprehend and
prosecute criminals in a way that does not threaten basic constitutional rights? Is the FBI
"Carnivore" program justified?
E-government: how can government transform itself into a provider of services as efficient as an
Amazon.com?
One could imagine an entire Presidential debate dealing with these issues, along with the broader
subject of the role of government in the information age. Alas, this is not to be. If the Internet
is raised as a topic in any of the debates during this campaign, it is likely to be a prepared
zinger that Bush unleashes - perhaps to deflect attention from one of his own shortcomings. If
this happens, once again the easy laugh will triumph over serious discourse.
Too many media personalities share a yen for the cheap laugh; too many Jay Lenos and Tony Snows
and Cokie & Steve Robertses have the microphone. These comedians and pundits will choose the easy
laugh or the facile debating point every time - even if it cheapens the discourse of the political
campaign. For them, the goal is the laugh or the superficial - even infantile - theme for a
television bit or a syndicated print piece. Their goal is not illuminating the issues of the day,
or the candidates' thinking about those issues; the goal is elevating the comedian or journalist
by ridiculing the candidate. Over time, the cumulative effect of all the Gore Internet jokes is a
diminution of the quality of real debate in the real campaign.
The public at large is also not innocent in this process. Too many voters are satisfied with sound
bite character assessment - and sound bite character assassination. Citizens should demand more of
their journalists - and more of themselves - in assessing those who would lead the country. Wolf
Blitzer himself reports an ironic twist in the superficial manner in which media portrayals define
a candidate: his own daughter told him, "I'm gonna vote for Gore ... Because he was cool on the
Tonight Show." Wolf Blitzer concludes: "There's no doubt that all of this comedy has an impact.
Elections are won and lost on public perception in that kind of popular culture." Leno giveth, and
Leno taketh away. (Source: "The Stiff Guy vs. the Dumb Guy," by Marshall Sella, the New York Times
Magazine, September 24, 2000. [This article analyzes the interplay of politics and late-night
comedy. Sella concludes that due to the liberal bias of comedians and comedy writers, the ultimate
effect of the genre obtains to the benefit of liberal candidates. Such analysis is beyond the
scope of this article.])
From all evidence, Jay Leno is a decent person - a truly nice guy, who, based on his "Jay Walking"
segments, is pained by the sorry state of basic knowledge exhibited by the average person on the
street in this country. Far be it from me to suggest that Jay Leno is unpatriotic, but every time
he repeats a Gore Internet joke, he is dumbing down the Presidential campaign one more notch. Does
the nation really want Jay Leno and his comrades to define the level of political discourse in the
United States? In the spirit of fairness, don't the candidates deserve better? In the spirit of
democracy, doesn't the nation deserve better?
About the Author
Richard Wiggins is an author and speaker specializing in Internet topics. He has presented at
numerous conferences nationally and internationally. Wiggins co-hosts a television program, North
Coast Digital. He discusses computers and Internet topics monthly on WKAR-AM / wkar.org, National
Public Radio for mid-Michigan. He is writing a book, A Guide to the Literature of the Internet
(Libraries Unlimited, forthcoming). Wiggins currently serves as a senior information technologist
in the Computer Laboratory at Michigan State University.
E-mail: wiggins@mail.com
Web: www.netfact.com/rww
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Editorial history
Paper received 30 September 2000; accepted 30 September 2000; revision received 1 October 2000.
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Copyright ©2000, First Monday
Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet by Richard Wiggins
First Monday, volume 5, number 10 (October 2000),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/index.html
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