Dan crashes - Bush flies high

[Guest guest]

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 14:19:36 -0400

" Greg Palast " <palast

Dan crashes - Bush flies high

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan crashes - Bush flies high

The power and the pay-off

By Greg Palast

 

They finally put Dan Rather out of his misery. Today, CBS finally

terminated him and sent him to the electronic glue factory -- all for

reporting the truth. But not all of it.

 

Rather's " unsubstantiated story of Bush's military service " (says USA

Today) got him canned. Yet, all the poor man did was repeat a story

we put on BBC Television a year earlier -- that Poppy Bush put in the

fix to get his son out of 'Nam and into the Texas Air Guard, spending

his war years guarding Houston from Viet Cong attack.

 

But Dan never reported this: the documentation from inside the US

Department of Justice detailing the fix. Why not? Because it opened

up a far more serious charge: that those who kept Little George out

of war's way ended up very well rewarded. We ran that full story --

from the evidence of the fix to the evidence of the lucrative

pay-backs -- on the world's biggest network, BBC, and we've never

retracted a comma of it. Nor, by the way, has the White House denied

our accusations despite our repeated offers to respond.

 

George's slithering out of combat turned into big pay-days for those

in on the fix and its cover-up: Harriett Miers (remember her?), Karen

Hughes and Texas lobbyists.

 

For the complete story, read, " The Necklace-ing of Dan Rather " in

Armed Madhouse. See below for a piece of the puzzle.

 

The Necklace-ing of Dan Rather

[Excerpted from Armed Madhouse, the new book by Greg Palast - order

your copy here or from your local bookstore.]

 

You aren't stupid, they just talk to you that way. It's 2004.

Falluja's on fire, your pension's burning away, the last General

Motors worker is turning out the lights in Detroit—and the biggest

issue of the election, aside from Christians who don't want

homosexuals to have families, was whether some elderly news celebrity,

Dan Rather, had besmirched the reputation of our President, a former

Naval Aviator. They can't get you to ignore that man behind the

curtain, Dorothy, unless there's a fascinating show on stage to

distract you. And, for the final days of the presidential campaign,

they gave us the lynching of Dan Rather.

 

We know George Bush was a Naval Aviator because it says so right on

his toy box. Actually, he never was a Naval Aviator and never once

landed a plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier. During the Vietnam

War, our future President flew in the Texas Air National Guard

protecting Houston from Viet Cong attack. Our President obtained that

job the same way he got the current one: The fix was in.

 

Congressman Poppy Bush, said Rather, put in the fix for his son,

despite Junior's too-dumb-to-fly test scores, by putting in a call to

the head of the Texas Air Guard via Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes.

That's what Dan Rather reported on 60 Minutes, that Bush Jr. got the

Texas top gun post, and thereby dodged the draft and the bullets of

Vietnam. It was a hell of a scoop and his network rewarded him and his

producer, Mary Mapes, by firing their sorry asses. That wasn't enough.

 

The president of CBS, Leslie Moonves, bullwhipped his network's stars

and, with his own spit, polished the soiled war record of our

President, declaring that Rather's producer: ...ignored information

that cast doubt on the story she had set out to report—that President

Bush had received special treatment thirty years ago, getting to the

Guard ahead of many other applicants.

 

Really? Well, Mr. Moonves, look at this evidence: " His [George W.

Bush's] dad called then–Lt. Gov. Barnes to ask for his help to get his

son not just in the Guard, but to get one of the coveted pilot slots

which were extremely hard to get. [barnes, through a " cut-out, " a

third party,] contacted General Rose at the Guard and took care of it.

 

George Bush was placed ahead of thousands of young men, some of whom

died in Vietnam. "

 

This is from a letter which had remained locked for years in the file

cabinets of the U.S. Justice Department prosecutor in Austin, Texas.

How I got it does not matter. Our War President has not challenged

authenticity. And its contents, Mr. Moonves, were confirmed by the

" cut-out " himself, the man who made the call to the Texas Air Guard

for young George. (Would the cut-out, a major figure in the Lone Star

State, allow BBC to film his statement? He said, " Do I look like the

dumbest Texan on the prairie? " ) But you knew that, if you're not

American. At the Guardian and on BBC we also reported, before the

presidential election, that Lt. Governor Barnes had put in the fix for

George Jr. at the Air Guard. We reported that in 1999, before Bush's

first run for office.

 

Justice for Miers

But there's much, much more to the story than Rather had cojones to

report. Barnes had two tasks—one, to get little George into the Air

Guard and the other was to shut up about it. Keep it quiet. Barnes's

good deeds and long silence were, indeed, well rewarded.

 

Barnes, who left office under a cloud of impropriety, stayed on in

Austin as a big-fee lobbyist. And the biggest fee he received, maybe

the biggest ever in the history of the lobbying art, was at least $23

million for representing a company called GTech when it got the

contract to operate the Texas lottery. GTech's creepy ways of doing

business caught up with it in 1997, when, after questionable payments

to the Texas lottery director's boyfriend were exposed, GTech lost its

contract by order of the new, uncorrupted, lottery director. The

lottery work was put up for bid and GTech's replacement chosen.

 

But then something quite extraordinary happened: The new state lottery

director was fired, the bids tossed out and GTech given back the

lottery work—no bidding required. The governor at the time: George W.

Bush. Now, let's go back to the letter buried at the U.S. Attorney's

Office in Austin: Governor Bush through [another cut-out] made a deal

with Ben Barnes not to re-bid because Barnes could confirm that Bush

had lied during the '94 campaign. During that campaign [for Governor

of Texas], Bush was asked if his father...had helped him get in the

National Guard. Bush said no he had not, but the fact is his dad

called then–Lt. Gov. Barnes.... Silence has a price and Barnes, the

letter says, got his: safety for his client GTech, with whom he

maintained hidden ties. I can't imagine that Barnes would make such a

raw demand on Bush.

 

But the war hero Governor's team made damn sure that no harm came to

Barnes and his business associates. The Governor talked to the chair

of the lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting

GTech keep the contract without a bid. Did Governor Bush put in the

fix for GTech as alleged?

 

I wasn't on the phone when he spoke to the lottery board Chairwoman.

Maybe they talked about their newfound faith in the Lord, which they

both discovered together at the same time. The Chairwoman? Harriet

Miers. We don't know if Miers gave the overpriced GTech its contract

back to help the governor keep his Air Guard secret a secret or simply

because she liked GTech's record of high costs and corruption.

 

In 2005, George W. Bush's attempted appointment of Miers to the United

States Supreme Court surprised the U.S. media and even the President's

own supporters. But I wasn't surprised at all.

 

Silence of the Media Lambs

In 2004, he knew exactly what would happen when he finally asked those

questions. He had already delivered his own eulogy.

 

On June 6, 2002 on the program I report for, BBC Newsnight, Rather said:

 

" It's an obscene comparison but there was a time in South Africa when

people would put flaming tyres around people's necks if they

dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here,

you will have a flaming tyre of lack of patriotism put around your

neck. It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest

of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough

questions so often. Again, I'm humbled to say I do not except myself

from this criticism. "

 

The lynching of Dan Rather is a cautionary tale of how news is made in

the USA—and unmade—and topics permissible during an election. The

story that cannot be reported is not about George Bush's special

treatment but about the special treatment of the specially privileged.

 

The real story, for me, is that Little George was just one of a dozen

privileged princelings saved from the dangers of their powerful

daddies' wars. Barnes did not give help to Bushes only. The man who

actually made the call to the Air Guard for Little George at Barnes's

request also confirmed that at Barnes' request, he also put in the fix

for sons of Democratic big-wigs, Governor John Connally and

Congressman, later Senator, Lloyd Bentsen.

 

Vietnam was one front in a class war, and only one class was sent to

fight it. I don't blame Congressmen Bush Sr. or Bentsen for keeping

their sons out of Vietnam. I do blame them for sending other men's

sons in their place.

 

 

Read the entire story, " The Necklace-ing of Dan Rather, " in Armed

Madhouse.

 

Greg Palast is the author of the new book, Armed Madhouse: Who's

Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, The Scheme to Steal

'08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines

of the Class War. Order your copy today or get it from your local

book store.

 

To read, watch, and listen to this report and others go to

www.GregPalast.com (The BBC Newsnight video of Dan Rather will be

available shortly at www.GregPalast.com)