Selective Security
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Selective Security It has been revealed that the Bush Administration had greater awareness of a terrorist threat before last September 11 than it let on....
...Were it not for two facts, his argument would carry greater weight...
...Sixteen years after the Chernobyl atomic energy plant explosion in Ukraine, children are being born with genetic mutations...
...In 1962, gunmen in Paris attacked a motorcade carrying President Charles de Gaulle, and missed...
...The names that have resurfaced stir memories for a Watergate reporter...
...Compare the three-page document to the previous ratified arms control agreement, START 1, signed by the elder President Bush and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in 1991...
...To paraphrase George Gershwin, "Summit time, and the livin' is easy...
...NATO expansion continues, headed toward 26 members...
...Rumsfeld, who is promoting a modernization and reform program, had concluded that the 40-ton Crusader—designed for some massive pitched battle with the Red Army—was obsolete in a day of fast-moving, Afghanistan-style battles...
...Army legislative liaison officials supplied talking points in support of the Crusader to Congressional committees...
...The latest phase in the war of the daughters has to do with a $ 19 million bequest to the library fromNixon's intimate friend, Miami banker Bebe Rebozo...
...Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, abducted by Red Brigade terrorists in 1978, was found dead in a car trunk after refusing to negotiate with them...
...For White—already in trouble over his Enron options and personal use of military aircraft—this meant one more controversy...
...Gerald R. Ford, threatened twice the same month in crowds in Sacramento and San Francisco...
...The second fact about keeping national security secrets is that the Bush Administration has acquired a reputation for being generally obsessed with secrecy...
...The first fact is that government agencies have a way of leaking classified information if it serves their purpose, especially if the purpose is putting down another agency...
...Julie eventually won out...
...The Bush-Putin treaty is a new kind of pact for a new kind of era: more like marriage vows than a verifiable contract, sentimental but not enforceable...
...British editor Will Hutton's book The World We re In, whose theme is the marked growth of "American selfishness and introversion," is a bestseller on the Continent...
...And then there are the daughters, so visibly grief-stricken when their father said farewell to the White House, yet now perpetuating his legacy of strife...
...Nuclear Protection Many in the Bush Administration are convinced Iraq may be on its way to developing a nuclear bomb...
...But it requires them to do nothing they were not already planning to do...
...The Administration seems unconcerned about possibly becoming the first since Hiroshima and Nagasaki to explode a nuclear weapon in anger...
...Four Presidents survived attempts on their lives—Andrew Jackson, attacked by someone laterjudged to be insane...
...Rumsfeld absolved White of blame for the actions of his subordinates...
...But the whole episode has struck a blow at the very idea of unified civilian control of the military...
...Some of us older folks remember his cool comment as he climbed out of his car...
...And if it did a better job of protecting its secrets from interagency feuds...
...But that is mainly nostalgia, NATO basically went out of business when the Berlin Wall came down...
...Other American political figures have died from assassin's bullets—Louisiana Senator Huey Long in 193 5 and Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968...
...Though President Bush talks of liquidating the legacy of the Cold War, he is not willing to liquidate nuclear warheads, only to store them—just in case...
...In return for this protection, Western Europe accepted American political and economic leadership, and an integrated military command that the popular General Dwight D. Eisenhower was brought out of retirement to head...
...It is sitting on Reagan-era documents that, by law, were scheduled to be released last year...
...Among other things, she would use the money to finance favorable Nixon biographies...
...General Colin L. Powell wrote in his autobiography that as a corps commander in Germany in 1986, he objected to plans to use nuclear artillery to stem a Soviet invasion, risking Soviet retaliation and possible escalation...
...It could not cross many bridges...
...Half a world away, people in south Nevada battle against depositing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain...
...Washington's abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in pursuit of a missile defense system has been widely condemned in Europe too...
...It does not prevent either side from pulling out of the treaty commitment on 90 days' notice...
...One is a memorandum dated July 5, from FBI agent Kenneth Williams in Phoenix, urging his superiors to investigate men from the Middle East training at American flying schools who might have connections with Osama bin Laden...
...Supporting the use of tactical nuclear weapons hurt Senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election...
...Robert Abplanalp, a businessman friend of Nixon's, is designated in the Rebozo will as one of those to control his bequest...
...That military-industrial giant is controlled by the Carlyle Group, whose chairman, former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, wields great influence in the Administration...
...Plus a special relationship with Russia, the onetime adversary...
...That made the CIA look bad...
...The European Union is assembling its own military force outside NATO...
...According to the New York Times, the Energy Department complained that Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels cut 93 per cent of the money that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham had wanted for nuclear security...
...Rebozo, who could spend hours with Nixon in silence, managed some of his illegal campaign contributions...
...The Pentagon had long ago determined it does not need more than 1,700 to 2,200 long-range nuclear warheads, and the Russian government had long ago determined it could not afford more...
...Still, the shock that ran through Holland after the Fortuyn killing serves to remind us how violence prone America is compared with Europe...
...But who could have imagined that 30 years after Watergate, and eight years after the death of the disgraced President, we would still be following Nixon-connected money and the discontents it has created...
...The one concession the Administration made late in the negotiating game—to have not simply a handshake agreement but a ratifiable treaty—was less a concession to Putin than to the U.S...
...The huge cannon could not be readily airlifted...
...And the Nuclear Posture Review has added to the tension, for Europe sees it as indicating the Bush Administration's intention to develop a scaled-down nuclear missile that it might use on its own against a nonnuclear foe...
...Alliances define themselves by whom they are against...
...NATO in a New Mode More than a half-century ago in Brussels, I was present at the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO...
...Well, maybe, but you would think that an administration spending billions for tanks the military does not want might put a little extra effort into nuclear protection...
...Afterward the daughters fought over whether it should be run by family members, as Tricia wanted, or a prestigious independent board, as Julie wanted...
...Now it appears that I may be present at the cremation...
...The memorandum was not acted on...
...That made the FBI look bad...
...But most mystifying of all is the way the White House is skimping on protection from nuclear danger...
...Violent Politics It was like the Dutch to suspend campaigning, hold a state funeral and drape their election posters in black in mourning for the assassinated Pirn Fortuyn...
...Some examples: The White House is resisting giving Congress information about Enron contacts with the Cheney energy task force...
...But as far as the Pentagon was concerned, the Secretary's decision, executing the will of the President, was supposed to be final...
...It struck me, though, that compared with the United States, political violence has been rare in the Netherlands, and in Europe generally...
...Administration officials are quoted as saying nuclear security is at a high level and adequate to meet the nuclear threat...
...The Administration would get more support for keeping real secrets if it did not try to make so much secret...
...The other document in question is the CIA's August 6 briefing memorandum for the President, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U. S." It was leaked to the Washington Post, along with word that the White House was disappointed in the analysis because it lacked focus and provided no new intelligence...
...Today, the Bush Administration operates through NATO less and less and parts company with Europe more and more on issues from Cuba to Iraq, from global warming to war crimes prosecution...
...First, they quarreled over the use of compensation for the Presidential papers Congress impounded when Nixon resigned in 1974...
...As a result, demands have gone up in Congress for a full investigation, and they have run into Administration resistance against releasing secret documents...
...To that end, initial studies are already in progress on something named the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator that could reach deeply buried targets...
...from developing small, cave-busting hydrogen bombs, as projected in the latest Nuclear Posture Review...
...Harry S. Truman, attacked by Puerto Rican nationalists...
...More significant than what the treaty does is what it does not do...
...Congressional staff people said Army Secretary Thomas E. White fielded phone calls from members of Congress...
...It does not inhibit the United States from developing a missile defense...
...Nukes have been a neuralgic issue in America since that initial mushroom cloud over Hiroshima...
...An Odd Kind of Arms Control High-level parleys remain popular with George the Younger as an escape from controversy...
...The CIA says it was belatedly advised of it...
...They really are bad shots...
...Here again, Tricia wants family control...
...retaining the right to decide when it would use nuclear weapons...
...Four Presidents were killed—Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy...
...The European allies were never happy about the U.S...
...President Bush is fond of the mantra that the alliance is the key to the security policy of the United States...
...So, behind the Administration's back, Crusader's friends plotted to save the big cannon...
...and Ronald Reagan, shot in 1981 outside a Washington hotel...
...In Moscow, Presidents Bush and Vladimir V Putin signed an arms control treaty on May 24 that sealed their friendship...
...There were also attempts on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and Presidential candidates Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and George C. Wallace in 1972...
...Even peaceful nuclear energy can set nerves on edge...
...The North Atlantic alliance has also become the Baltic, the Adriatic and the Black Sea alliance, its meaning contracting as its coverage expands...
...As noted, the most recent Nuclear Posture Review called for developing a small hydrogen bomb, an "advanced-concept nuclear weapon...
...The Army's inspector general has been looking into whether Army officials acted inappropriately in lobbying Congress against the Secretary of Defense's decision...
...Nor does it keep either side from rebuilding its nuclear arsenal when the treaty expires in 10 years...
...American history, by contrast, is blotched with shootings of our leaders...
...The Department of Defense was created by President Harry S. Truman in 1947 to establish a single line of civilian authority over the separate services and their separate procurement wish lists...
...The Administration has a peculiarly ambivalent attitude toward the nuclear danger...
...It does not prevent the U.S...
...Originally, NATO was an arrangement to spread America's nuclear umbrella over war-ravaged Western European countries fearful of Stalin's expansionist designs...
...The maverick Right-wing candidate had aspired to be the first gay prime minister...
...A captured Al Qaeda leader says the terrorist organization is close to having a crude nuclear device that could be smuggled into the U. S. We are told one dirty bomb—that is, nuclear fuel wrapped around dynamite— could affect half of Manhattan...
...From 12 members the alliance has grown to 19, and counting...
...Russia got a seat at the council table with a voice, but not a veto...
...and Medgar Evers and Malcolm X. A Web search turned up seven senators, nine representatives, 11 mayors, 17 state legislators, and 11 judges subjected to physical assaults...
...The Justice Department is refusing to provide information about witnesses held for interrogation in the September 11 investigation...
...For five years, Richard M. Nixon's daughters, Tricia Cox and Julie Eisenhower, have not talked to each other...
...We would be crossing a threshold," he said...
...The National Commission on Violence, named by President Lyndon B. Johnson after the King and Robert Kennedy murders, spoke of a tradition of violence going back to frontier days...
...White is an insider in the Bush official family, and the President seemed in no mood to lose a secretary...
...What is alarming about the controversy is the threat that it poses to constitutional order...
...The War of the Daughters "Follow the money," Deep Throat is supposed to have advised Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward...
...President George W. Bush learned of it only recently...
...The $380 million request was part of a $27 billion emergency bill, and it covered items like security for weapons storage and cleanup, security for nuclear science facilities, and a National Center for Combating Terrorism...
...The current uproar about what the President knew and when revolves around two classified documents...
...Meanwhile, a new transatlantic controversy over nuclear doctrine is developing...
...Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is not allowed to testify under oath before Congressional committees...
...Dwight Chapin, who was Nixon's appointment secretary and the "dirty tricks" manager in the 1972 campaign, is listed in a Nixon Library memo as trying to get foundation money to help finance a Nixon biography...
...The assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand by a militant Serb in 1914 precipitated World War I. Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was gunned down leaving a movie in 1986...
...On the other hand, his Administration is moving closer to the edge of the nuclear abyss...
...Until he died in 1994, the ex-President himself ran the Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation in Yorba Linda, California...
...FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and Attorney General John Ashcroft were told about the memo a few days after September 11, and still did not find it necessary to advise the White House...
...The Plot that Failed The Crusader howitzer project has been killed by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld but continues stirring in its gTave...
...Nevertheless, the $11 billion Crusader had powerful friends in the Army, in the Congressional delegation of Oklahoma, where many of the contracts would go, and in United Defense Industries...
...In Europe, that is increasingly the United States...
...On the one hand, the President is devoting his energies to protecting us against the "Axis of Evil" and weapons of mass destruction...
...The fruit of a decade of negotiation, it ran some 700 pages that were packed with limitations, timetables, throw-weight specifications, and verification procedures...
...It did not end behind-the-scenes lobbying of Congress by the services, in cahoots with defense contractors...
...Because of the ensuing court battle, the largest share of the $ 18 million the governmentpaidwentto lawyers...
...In France, analyst Philip Grasse writes of "American irresponsibility and ignorance...
...Senate's insistence on getting into the act with televised hearings...
...For all my journalistic bias in favor of disclosure, I can appreciate Vice President Dick Cheney's position that some information, involving sources and methods, must be protected...
...What is it with us...
...The dispute is currently the subject of court suits in California and Florida, and the Rebozo estate is awaiting their outcome...
...Also civil rights figures, like Martin Luther King Jr...
...Because I lived and worked in Holland half a century ago, and came to admire the tolerant and civil Dutch, I was, like them, shaken by the murder—apparently committed by an animal-rights activist...
...It said some comfort could be taken from the fact that assassination had not become part of our political system, as it had in the Middle East...
Vol. 85 • May 2002 • No. 3
