Hannah's Blog

OPMS?

Just another OPMS?

Dear Editor,
Why, exactly, are we supposed to trust the Uncles on Wall Street and the
Aunts at Enron to handle our pension and disability investments, instead of
good old Uncle Sam?

If the interest paid by the General Fund for the loan of our Social
Security dollars isn't high enough, let them raise it. After all, it's the
feds who set the basic interest rates that everyone else follows.

If the administration had a stellar record of managing the nation's assets,
keeping us in the black and the dollar strong, suggestions about how to
allocate our investments might make sense. But, one would have to be a
fool to take advice from the crew that has looted the Treasury, dropped
billions of dollars and thousands of bombs on the Persion Gulf and wasted
our National Guard in the desert.

Running a fraudulent electronic election, imposing new restrictions on our
inalienable right to travel, monitoring our bank accounts and, in general,
assaulting our civil liberties are not behaviors that we can put up with,
much less enable by accepting a national identification number.

It might be reassuring if this were just another OPMS (Other People's Money
Scheme). But everything taken together can only mean that our democracy is
under attack.

And yesterday I sent out the following:

Democrats don't seem to know how to talk to the press. Perhaps it's because they're basically honest. But, they don't seem to realize that every reporter's story needs an end that makes some prediction about what will happen next. The honest answer--that we don't know--doesn't serve us well.

Case in point. Almost every story on the recount in Ohio ends with the assertion that nobody expects the results to change anything or make any difference. This is obviously a true answer to the reporter's question. But it doesn't help our case because it leaves the reader with the question, "Then why are they doing it?"
Sometimes that question is even answered by a Republican making the observation that it's all a waste of money, time and effort.

Republicans never have that problem. They answer the question with wild speculation which contains the seeds of what they HOPE will be the result, having learned, no doubt, that, while the prediction may turn out to be wrong, it might also create the conditions which will make it right.

In any event, though we might be tempted to characterize such assertions about the future as lies. They are not. And ordinary mortals even know the difference. So the characterization of speculation as lies makes Democrats look bad.

Honesty is not the best policy when we're talking about the future. Not to mention that by focusing on somebody else's future, we often miss the bad things that were done in the present and past.

Hamburg Report

"Way to Go, Ohio" : Former U.S. Congressman Dan Hamburg Reports on his Brush with the Columbus Police
This is a first hand account by former United States Congressman Dan Hamburg of the arrest of himself and his wife, while in Ohio.

Way to Go, Ohio!
By Dan Hamburg
12/13/04

On Monday, December 6, my wife Carrie and I, accompanied by a local ABC cameraman and a local radio talk show host, attempted to deliver a letter to the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell. Mr. Blackwell is housed on two floors of the Borden Building (yes, that?s the Elsie the Cow Borden Building) in downtown Columbus. The letter contained four demands that had been raised at a well-attended rally outside the Ohio Statehouse on the previous Saturday.

We requested that Secretary Blackwell commence the recount of votes in Ohio (as he had said he would do based on payment for same by the Green and Libertarian parties), that he refrain from certifying Republican electors until the recount was completed, that he respond to questions posed to him by twelve House Judiciary Committee members led by Rep. John Conyers regarding the election, and that he formally recuse himself from the recount.

These issues have consumed quite a few bytes on the Internet over the past weeks, although mainstream media coverage has been scant. Since the day after the election, close observers have noted that Mr. Blackwell has been engaged in a tactic known in basketball jargon as ?running out the clock.? In other words, he has taken as much time as possible with each step of the certification process, rather than speed that process along. In so doing, Mr. Blackwell makes it increasingly difficult for a meaningful recount that meets state and federal deadlines.

I was surprised that few Ohioans I spoke with over my week there knew that the Secretary of State, in addition to being the constitutional officer in charge of the election, also served as co-chair of the Ohio campaign to elect Bush/Cheney, and as the spokesman for the state ballot initiative to ban gay marriage. This is the second time in two elections that the Secretary of State in the crucial battleground state has also served as Bush/Cheney campaign chair. In 2000, it was Katherine Harris, who now represents Florida?s 13th district in the US Congress. Word in Ohio is that Blackwell?s sights are even higher. He intends to run for governor of Ohio in two years, no doubt with significant help from the Bush machine.

From the moment we presented identification (God forbid anyone should try to pass go anywhere in post-9/11 America without picture identification!), there was trouble. Private security officers, having noted that there was a thoroughly peaceful picket on the sidewalk in front of the building, moved in to discourage us to pass through the now-omnipresent metal detectors and on to the elevators. However, we breezed past them, found an elevator and whom should we find on the same elevator that we were taking but J. Kenneth Blackwell himself.

?Hello, Mr. Secretary.? I said. ?I?m former congressman Dan Hamburg from California. We have a letter for you, requesting that you recuse yourself from the upcoming recount of Ohio?s presidential vote. We have also raised several other issues that need your attention immediately.? Blackwell quickly launched into a blustering monologue about how we didn?t understand Ohio law because if we did, we?d know that he had nothing to do with counting the votes. With the floors whizzing by, my wife Carrie asked Blackwell whether he thought there might be at least the appearance of a conflict of interest in his serving as both final arbiter of the vote and as co-chair of Ohio Bush/Cheney. Blackwell frowned, the elevator door opened, he made a beeline for his private office and disappeared behind glass and steel.

However, we were far from alone. There to meet us as we stepped out was a phalanx of law enforcement and security officers?Columbus Police, Ohio Highway Patrol, Borden Building security, and several husky plainclothesmen. All seemed to feel the same way about any further attempts at interaction with Mr. Blackwell or his staff. As they were explaining to us our choices?leave immediately or be arrested--who should pop back out of his office but the Secretary of State?

?Here,? he said to me, ?read this. It should take care of your concerns.? He handed me a two-page copy of an article that had appeared in Sunday?s Cleveland Plain Dealer titled ?Conspiracy theories on Ohio vote refuse to die.? I asked the Secretary if it would be all right if I sat in his foyer and read the article. He quickly did an about face and returned to his private digs. We were left alone again with the officers. (Later, I read the article and found that while it addressed a few of the issues that have been raised regarding the Ohio vote, it left out many others.) One plainclothesman, nattily attired in a black trench coat over a gray suit, a conspicuous wire running up the side of his neck ending in an earpiece, let us know, in the famous words of Al Gore, that it was ?time for us to go.?

So we left, tails between our legs. But at least we?d been able to confront the man himself and perhaps made him feel a few moments of discomfort for all the hours of discomfort he helped put the citizens of Ohio through on voting day, not to mention the four years of discomfort ahead for the country and the world under W.

Monday was also the day that Secretary of State Blackwell was finally going to announce the certified vote for the Ohio presidential election. Obviously, he hadn?t been in much of a hurry. It had taken his office five full weeks to certify, making Ohio the last state to accomplish this task. Blackwell had run the clock as far as he could without actually being charged with ?delay of game.?

After quite a bit of confusion about the time and venue of the certification announcement, we learned at about 3 pm that the Secretary would announce the certification at a media-only press conference to begin in a half hour at the Borden Building. Fortunately, we had brought press credentials from a small newspaper based in our hometown of Ukiah, California. But lo and behold, when we approached the front desk with our credentials in hand, we were again rebuffed.

Many of the same officers we?d gotten to know in the morning quickly converged to prevent us from boarding the elevator to the floor where the press conference would take place. I remember thinking that Columbus must be a really safe town since they had the capacity to assign so many officers to a couple of 50 year-olds who hadn?t even let off a loud chant. Finally, a ?representative? from Mr. Blackwell?s office emerged with the official word ?from the Secretary? that I could go on up to the press conference but Carrie could not. Rebuffing their rebuff, we brushed past the security entourage at which point Mr. Black Trench Coat looked over at the Blackwell aide with imploring eyes. ?It?s all right, let her come,? the woman sighed.

Victory! We were going to be able to attend the press conference! We might even be able to ask a question in a press forum where it would be difficult for the power-talking Mr. Blackwell to hide. But our win was ephemeral. Just as we arrived at the conference room, the Secretary of State was leaving the podium. He gave us a toothy grin as he passed us by. We hung out in the room for a few minutes asking what had happened. A brief statement of the ?results? had been given, a few softball questions tossed, and that was that. Ten minutes! These guys definitely knew how to use the clock. We learned from people who had been privileged to attend the quickie conference that Blackwell had referred to stories of irregularities in the vote as ?hiccups.? As we left to go back downstairs, our ?escorts? stood in a lineup outside the room, looking like the proverbial cats that ate the canaries. ?Very slick,? was the only comment I could manage.

Wednesday at 10 am was the scheduled time for the forum in Washington called by Rep. John Conyers and the Judiciary Committee members. We knew that Blackwell had received a fourteen-page letter dated December 2 with thirty-four specific questions under two main categories: counting irregularities and procedural irregularities. Counting irregularities referred to everything from the ?security lockdown? on election night in Warren County (supposedly due to a ?Level 10? alert from Homeland Security, about which the agency later denied any knowledge) to the situation in one Franklin County precinct where the president was initially awarded 3900 votes in a precinct that boasted fewer than 700 registered voters! Procedural irregularities included issues like machine shortages in heavily African-American and college precincts, interminably long lines, invalidated provisional ballots, and directives issued by Mr. Blackwell regarding acceptable paperweight for registration applications.

We also knew that Mr. Blackwell had received an invitation to come to Washington in order to address the committee members. It?s a $39 ticket from Columbus to the nation?s capital so we thought the Secretary of State could dip into his budget and come up with the bucks. However, if financial considerations or the affairs of state weighed too heavy to allow his on-site presence, the committee had indicated its willingness to allow telephonic testimony.

So at around 10 am, Carrie and I went to the front desk with a copy of the Conyers letter and presented our driver's licenses. We were told to wait while the receptionist called the Secretary of State's office, which told her "someone will come down and get the letter."

At that point, we retreated to Zuppa's, a very untrendy cafe located on the north side of the lobby. We ordered orange juice and sat down at a table. Within minutes, security was all over us.

"You must leave this building now,? said an exasperated Borden security cop, his hands shaking quite visibly.

?What?s the charge?? I asked. ?Are we trespassing or do you just ?reserve the right to refuse service to anyone???

?You must leave this building now,? he repeated.

"Sorry, we're not going. We don?t believe we?re trespassing by sitting here drinking our orange juice. We?re not interfering with other patrons of the building. We?re not blocking or obstructing anything. But we understand that you're just doing your job. Please try to understand that we also need to do ours.?

It took about fifteen minutes for several white-shirted Columbus police and heavily-velcroed Highway Patrol officers to appear on the scene. We were cuffed, and taken out behind the building to a waiting patrol car. That was the beginning of our experience as arrested misdemeanants under the authority of Franklin County. Over the next thirty hours, we were printed (not just fingers but hands) twice, photographed three times, cuffed and uncuffed more times than we could count, held in scantily heated and odor-challenged holding tanks for hours on end, served endless smashed baloney-on-white sandwiches, and subjected continuously to the sneers and snide tongues of our keepers.

We also had the opportunity to meet some of the people we had come to Ohio to see--poor, mostly African-American folks, the very people for whom voting on November 2 had been such a challenge. By this, I don't mean that the prison population at Franklin County Corrections Center (known affectionately as "The Workhouse") was necessarily a voter-rich environment (though I did hear several stories inside the jail from people who at least knew others who had waited many hours and braved lousy weather in order to cast a vote that might rid the country of the horror that is the Bush presidency).

What I mean is that within the walls of the FCCC were men and women who hadn't had a lot of breaks in life. They were the people who suffered the worst housing, the worst schools, and the worst public services. In Ohio in 2004, they also suffered, as had happened in Florida in 2000 and in countless other elections across this country since its birth, the worst (and least) voting equipment and overall ease of voting. It was not by chance that in Franklin County there were less voting machines available than in 2000, despite the fact that election officials, from Ken Blackwell on down, knew that Democratic registration was up nearly 25%. By contrast, strong GOP precincts were provided with more machines.

Katherine Harris rode her performance in the duel roles of Florida Secretary of State and co-chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign to the US congress. How far might Ken Blackwell go, having delivered Ohio in 2004?

Elected officials like Harris and Blackwell sow discord by taking on multiple, and conflicting roles, especially when the presidency is at stake. Blackwell has created another problem by housing himself in a private building, isolated from the public that pays his keep. A private corporation like Borden should not be running interference for elected officials. Nor should the police. It would have been more appropriate for Borden security, or Blackwell himself, to have made citizen?s arrests and then let the court decide whether those arrests were appropriate to the circumstances.

We met some wonderful people in Ohio. Unfortunately, by and large they weren?t the ones that we taxpayers are supporting. Over the next few weeks, the people of Ohio have a unique opportunity. A recount of the vote will begin on December 13, with the January 6 date on which Congress certifies the Electoral College coming up fast. Only the watchful eyes of Ohioans can force that recount to be full and fair, Blackwell or no Blackwell. Nothing less than the fate of the nation, and even the world, could be at stake.

Ohio Fraud--Triad

This following is RAW STORY ?s transcript Cobb?s speech as recorded by Inside Track News? broadcast (mp3 file), an independent media outlet that covered the event. The story has been followed in detail at The Brad Blog.

?A representative from Triad Systems came into this county?s Board of Election?s office unannounced, that is on this Friday. He said he was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the upcoming recount.

?He then headed into the back room where Triad supplies tabulators, that is the machine that counts the ballots, is kept. This Triad representative told them that there was problem with the system, that the system had a bad battery and it had ?lost all its data.?

?He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out of it. And in another [incomprehensible] in the room. And he had spare parts in his coat, as one of the people moved in [sic] remarked how very heavy it was.

?He finally reassembled everything and said it was working but not to turn it off. He then asked which precinct would be counted in the 3 percent recount test and that one which had been selected as if it had the right number of votes was relayed to him he then went back and did something else to the tabulator.

?The Triad Systems representative suggested that since the hand recount had to match the machine count exactly and since it would hard to memorize the several numbers which would be needed to get the count exactly right, that they should post this series of numbers on the wall where they would not be noticed by observers such as to make them look like employee information or something similar.

?The people doing the hand count could then he said just report those numbers no matter what the actually counted in the ballot. This would then ?match? the tabulator report for this precinct exactly.

Minority leader of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) replied, ?David Cobb, I need to you to arrange a meeting with our staff immediately.?

Cobb asserted that such practices were ?going on across the state.?

The Cleveland Free Press? Editor David Fitrakis also submitted a list of documented Ohio voting irregularities Dec. 8, which Conyers? office has posted online in pdf format.

Audio of testimony:
http://www.kathymcmahon.utvinternet.com/mrn/audio/InsideTrackNews041213_3pm.mp3

Big Story or Forgetable Fraud

What's the big story of 2004?  The election, of course.  After all, over a hundred and twenty million people went to the polls to choose the American president--more than ever voted before.  And then there were the hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million or more, who wanted to vote but didn't get to, for one reason or another.

There were the two black ladies in Indiana who got all dressed up and when they got to the voting place, two men in suits, asked whom they were going to vote for and when they said, "Kerry," the men smiled and said "Oh, too bad, don't you know that Democrats vote tomorrow?" So now those two ladies will never forget that in 2004 somebody made a fool of them on election day.

Then there were the people in Denver who came in from work and found their answering machines blinking madly to have someone tell them that there, too, voting had been delayed to November 3rd.  Caller ID said that this helpful message came from a Republican party office.

The twenty-five Texans, who spent election day at the Holiday Inn, may not remember that they were part of a dirty trick in forgetable Ohio, making phone calls from pay phones to tell people who had once been in prison that,if they dared to vote, the FBI would arrest them and haul them back in. But the people they threatened probably won't forget, whether they actually intended to vote or not, yet one more instance of some people being to be able to break the law without getting caught.

And then there are all the people who stood for hours and hours waiting to vote in Ohio, until well after dark, and then were sent home before they ever saw a ballot because the poll workers, who had been sitting all day, were now tired and wanted to lock the doors and go home.  Though Americans don't seem to mind standing in long lines, probably because they expect to get what they're after, when they get to the head, going home without having cast a ballot is not what they should expect and not something they'll forget.

In the sunshine state, on the other hand, the lines weren't all that long.  Certainly not as long as the lines at Disney World or the Magic Kingdom.  But, here too, people got a surprise--the magical transformation of one candidate's name into that of another when they touched the screen on the electronic voting machine.  Whether their votes counted in 2004 will remain a mystery.

All in all, though it's not over, the election of 2004 is turning out to be most memorable. And yet, for some peculiar reason, as far as the major media are concerned, it might as well not be happening at all. Why is that?

SNAFU

Decorated Army officer accused of thefts seeks clemency


By Liz Zemba
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, November 1, 2004

First the Army gave Chief Warrant Officer Darrell E. Birt a medal.

Then they handed the former Hempfield Township man six months behind bars.

Birt said the Bronze Star and prison sentence he received while serving in Iraq were his reward -- and punishment -- for plugging holes in a faulty supply network that even the military has painted as flawed.

"The supply system was broke," Birt said. "From the time we left Kuwait until the time we got into Iraq, it took two months to get the computer codes loaded for supply. So for two months, we couldn't get new supplies."

Short of vehicles and spare parts critical to his unit's ability to haul fuel to infantrymen and helicopter pilots, Birt said he and other high-ranking soldiers agreed to procure the needed equipment improperly.

They took tractor-trailers that belonged to other units, and they scavenged repair parts off abandoned vehicles.

Birt's Bronze Star citation commends the officer for demonstrating "initiative and courage" during the first four months of the war. His actions, according to the citation, "proved vital to successful combat operations in Iraq."

But the medal was authorized before a sergeant in Birt's unit reported the thefts, initiating an investigation that ended with the Army filing criminal charges against Birt and five others, including his company commander, Maj. Catherine Kaus.

Birt's 23-year military career was about to end: If found guilty, he said, he faced 80 years in prison.

Birt, 45, joined the U.S. Marines in 1978, a year after graduating from Hempfield Area High School. He served 12 years on active duty before leaving the Corps in 1990 to spend more time with his wife, Janet, also a Hempfield Area grad, and their son, Jacob, then 9 months old.

Birt enlisted in the Army Reserve before moving to Springfield, Ohio, with his wife and child. He took a civilian mechanic's job and was reassigned to the 656th Transportation Company, a fuel-support reserve unit based in Springfield.

Birt was called to war in January 2003, when he and the 656th were ordered to prepare to deploy to Iraq. Just two months later, the unit was at Camp New York, in Kuwait, awaiting the go-ahead to haul its initial load of 300,000 gallons of fuel to Tikrit, Iraq.

The 656th was eager to proceed, Birt said, but supply problems were immediately evident: For starters, he said, the unit was missing eight ring mounts needed to attach machine guns and grenade launchers to 10 of its 70 vehicles.

Then, just days before they were to make the "jump" into Iraq, higher-ups told the soldiers they would have to go without most of their tools, spare parts, machine guns, chemical protective gear, night-vision goggles, tents, computers and personal belongings.

The reason: None of the vehicles belonging to the unit were capable of towing shipping containers that held their gear.

"So you have a dilemma," Birt said, during a recent visit with his parents and in-laws in Hempfield Township.

"You have to make a choice," he said. "You either go forward without your stuff and not be able to support yourself, or you refuse to go until you get support. The third is to find something to move your stuff."

Birt said equipment the reservists needed was readily available at the camp. Trucks belonging to active duty units that had already pushed into Iraq sat idle, but the 656th lacked authorization to use them.

With the unit poised to move into Iraq, Birt said, he and the others took possession of four unclaimed vehicles and loaded them with their gear.

Birt said he wasn't entirely comfortable with his actions, but with orders in hand to enter the fight, he felt he had no other choice.

"I don't know how else we would have moved all those night-vision goggles and crew-served weapons," Birt said, referring to the machine guns. "It all belonged to the Army. As far as borrowing, we didn't like it, but we figured when we were done we would bring it back and drop it off."

The Army, in paperwork supporting criminal charges of conspiracy, larceny and destruction and abandonment of government property, laid out a far more incriminating scenario.

According to a stipulation-of-fact document introduced at Birt's court-martial, Birt admitted to conspiring with Kaus and other high-ranking members of his unit to acquire trucks and equipment by any means.

When another warrant officer told Kaus he knew where to obtain vehicles, Kaus, according to the document, allegedly replied, "Do what you've got to do to make it happen. I don't want to know about it."

According to the document, Birt took Kaus' comment "to mean that if he or anyone else at this meeting had to steal a vehicle/transportation to facilitate the move, then he should do it."

Kaus, who was court-martialed and sentenced to six to nine months in prison and dismissal from the Army, could not be reached for comment.

In all, according to a criminal charge sheet, Birt and the others stole two tractors, two trailers, a five-ton truck and a parts van. The soldiers kept some of the vehicles for nearly a year, despite repeated admonitions from a "nervous" Kaus to "get rid of these vehicles/equipment."

Most of the vehicles eventually were abandoned at military bases in Iraq and Kuwait. On some, bumper numbers used to identify the units owning the vehicles had been sanded off and repainted.

The frame of another -- stripped bare for its parts -- was buried.

Birt doesn't deny any wrongdoing.

"I did what they said," he said. "I'm not denying that. "But it wasn't for me to have my own truck. It was not for personal gain.

"It was to put us in the fight, to complete the mission at all costs."

On the advice of his military attorney, Capt. John A. Heath, Birt said he pleaded guilty to the charges. In exchange, he said, the maximum amount of time he faced in jail was reduced to 16 months.

"I didn't want to," Birt said. "But (the attorney) insinuated that they had a lot of evidence on me, and that they would convict me. At that point, it was damage control. It was, how best can I support my family?"

Birt said he also felt he stood little chance of proving his innocence at trial, because many of the soldiers he believed would testify on his behalf had been returned stateside.

Birt was sentenced to six months of confinement and forfeiture of all pay and allowances, including retirement benefits. He also was dismissed from the service.

When asked for comment on the case from the Army, Maj. Richard W. Spiegel, a public affairs officer, said he could speak only on behalf of the 13th Corps Support Command, a combat-support unit in Balad, Iraq. He pointed out that Birt entered a guilty plea at his court-martial and signed a document acknowledging he violated several provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The Army released Birt from a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., on Oct. 17. He had served portions of his sentence in Kuwait and in Mannheim, Germany, and was released one month early for good behavior.

His time served, he now is awaiting word from the Army on a request for clemency.

Birt said he feels clemency is warranted because his actions were a direct result of the Army's faulty supply channels. He helped to take the trucks, he said, only because he wanted to ensure that everyone in his unit had the weapons and tools they needed to survive.

A 500-page study of the war commissioned by the Army, "On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom," lends credence to Birt's assertions. The report, on several occasions, notes delays in delivery of equipment to soldiers in the field.

"More than enough parts reached the theater and were duly processed, but almost none reached the intended customers during the fighting," the report states. "Forward, the troops made do by cannibalizing broken-down equipment and towing what they could not repair."

If his clemency request is granted, Birt said, his career still will be over, but his retirement benefits will be reinstated.

If not, he said, "They won't bury me. I won't get a flag. I won't get VA benefits."

But the veterans benefits, Janet Birt said, aren't her husband's greatest loss.

"It's a shame, all the years he was in the service," she said. "That's the worst part. He gave up his life for the service."

Liz Zemba can be reached at lzemba@tribweb.com or (724) 836-6646.

Witness

If only you knew.

My mother lives in Indiana. In Northwest Indiana (where all the Democrats live), one of her co-workers, an African-American woman, showed up to vote with her mother. They were asked who they'd be voting for by two men wearing suits.

"Kerry," they said.

"Oh?" they said with a smile. "Didn't you know? Those voting democrat cast their votes tomorrow."

THAT'S why Indiana's not a swing state.

We need to get the word out not only on the Ohio problems, but also on the massive Jim Crow campaign Republicans have been waging for decades.

I was in Wisconsin, watching polls on election day, ensuring Kerry took the state.

In four years, we need Dems in every single state making sure that not a single African-American voter faces what their parents faced and what is supposed to be ancient history: Jim Crow voter suppression at the hands of Republican scum.

by kosmologist on Sat Dec 11th, 2004 at 00:55:26 PST

War Crime Wash

http://www.salon.com

Whitewashing torture?

A veteran sergeant who told his commanding officers that he witnessed his colleagues torturing Iraqi detainees was strapped to a gurney and flown out of Iraq -- even though there was nothing wrong with him.

by David DeBatto

Dec. 8, 2004 | On June 15, 2002, Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford, a counterintelligence agent in the California National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence (M.I.) Battalion stationed in Samarra, Iraq, told his commanding officer, Capt. Victor Artiga, that he had witnessed five incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at his base, and requested a formal investigation. Thirty-six hours later, Ford, a 49-year-old with over 30 years of military service in the Coast Guard, Army and Navy, was ordered by U.S. Army medical personnel to lie down on a gurney, was then strapped down, loaded onto a military plane and medevac'd to a military medical center outside the country.

Although no "medevac" order appears to have been written, in violation of Army policy, Ford was clearly shipped out because of a diagnosis that he was suffering from combat stress. After Ford raised the torture allegations, Artiga immediately said Ford was "delusional" and ordered a psychiatric examination, according to Ford. But that examination, carried out by an Army psychiatrist, diagnosed him as "completely normal."

A witness, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Marciello, claims that Artiga became enraged when he read the initial medical report finding nothing wrong with Ford and intimidated the psychiatrist into changing it. According to Marciello, Artiga angrily told the psychiatrist that it was a "C.I. [counterintelligence] or M.I. matter" and insisted that she had to change her report and get Ford out of Iraq.

Documents show that all subsequent examinations of Ford by Army mental-health professionals, over many months, confirmed his initial diagnosis as normal.

An officer at the California Office of the Adjutant General in Sacramento, Calif., Sgt. Maj. Patrick Hammond, has known Ford for over 15 years during their service in the California National Guard. Hammond said, "I have never had any reason to question his honesty and I don't do so now." This reporter served in the military with Ford in Iraq for seven months and can also attest that he is sane and level-headed.

Ford, who has since left the military, claims that his superiors shipped him out of the country to prevent him from exposing the abusive behavior. "They were determined to protect their own asses no matter who they had to take down," he says.

Col. C. Tsai, a military doctor who examined Ford in Germany and found nothing wrong with him, told a film crew for Spiegel Television that he was "not surprised" at Ford's diagnosis. Tsai told Spiegel that he had treated "three or four" other U.S. soldiers from Iraq that were also sent to Landstuhl for psychological evaluations or "combat stress counseling" after they reported incidents of detainee abuse or other wrongdoing by American soldiers.

Artiga and other higher-ups in the 223rd M.I. Battalion deny Ford's charges. But in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, federal agencies including the Department of Defense, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID), and the FBI are finally looking into them. The Department of the Army's Office of the Inspector General has launched an investigation, according to Ford and his attorney, Kevin Healy, who have been contacted by investigators. If Ford's allegations are proven, the Army would be faced with evidence that its prisoner abuse problem is even more widespread than previously acknowledged -- and that some of its own officers not only turned a blind eye to abuses but actively participated in covering them up.

The 223rd M.I. Battalion was one of the first divisions to enter Iraq after the U.S. "Shock and Awe" aerial bombardment ended, in mid-April 2003. (I also served in that unit in-country from April through October 2003. I met Ford in February 2003, at Fort Bragg, N.C., and continued to stay in contact with him until he was shipped out of the country. I have also since left the military.) The battalion's mission was to collect counterintelligence. Its agents, highly trained soldiers responsible for force protection and for investigating national security crimes committed against the Army, were divided into small units called Tactical Human Intelligence Teams, or THTs. Every day, these teams went out from their forward operating bases in Iraq and interacted with the local people in an effort to gather critical intelligence on such matters as the location of conventional and unconventional weapons and the whereabouts of the fugitives depicted on the Pentagon's 55-most-wanted playing cards. It was arguably one of the most sensitive and important jobs in the entire Iraqi theater of operations. As the team sergeant of his THT, Ford was second in command of his four-person team and responsible for training, discipline, logistics and supervision of day-to-day operations. He was also the team's designated combat life saver, or medic.

Ford spent his first weeks in Iraq at Balad Air Base, also known as Camp Anaconda, about 50 kilometers north of Baghdad along the Tigris. In early May, he was assigned to a THT that was headed for Samarra, another 20 kilometers to the northeast. An ancient trading center that dates to the Mesopotamian era, Samarra was known as a hotbed of Sunni Arab loyalists, ex-Baath Party officials, and Islamist extremists. The two-story police station the Army occupied was located in the center of town, closely surrounded by taller buildings, giving anyone who cared to fire on the Americans an excellent field in which to do so. And fire they did. Almost every night, Ford and his teammates would be forced to dive from their bunks for cover as mortar rounds rocked the compound. The concussions shook the foundation and broke whatever glass windows remained. Fortunately, the Iraqi mortar crews proved wildly inaccurate, and no Americans were killed, but several were wounded and the attacks never let up. There was immense pressure on the THT to find out who was behind the attacks and to supply the information to the "gunslingers" of the 4th Infantry Division. It was in that environment that Ford says he saw the incidents that led to the end of his long military career.

Late last summer I met Ford for lunch on a sunny afternoon at the Delta King Riverboat, which is tied to the docks in downtown Sacramento. Ford has returned to his longtime job as a corrections officer at Folsom Prison, and his wavy brown hair is longer than it was when I knew him in Iraq. He has spent the past year trying to clear his name, but apart from a few newspaper interviews he gave after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke last spring, he has not told his story to anyone until now.

Ford seemed calm and resolute as he talked about how the events that took place in Samarra contradicted everything he thought he knew about the military. For more than three decades, he said, he had always served with "people that I knew I could depend on when it really mattered. They were people that I would have sacrificed my life to save if need be, and I knew they would do the same for me, no questions asked."

He went on, "There were also rules and regulations to follow. Some of the rules applied only in peacetime, some only in time of war. Some always applied. You knew which was which. These simple, basic rules were pounded into your head from the day you got off the bus at basic training. You broke the rules, you paid the price. Period. Everyone knew that simple fact, and everyone accepted it."

But Ford said those rules were savagely broken in Samarra in June 2003. He described multiple incidents of what he called "war crimes" and "torture" of Iraqi detainees ranging in age from about 15 to 35. According to Ford, his teammates, three counterintelligence agents like himself -- one of them a woman -- systematically and repeatedly abused several Iraqi male detainees over a two-to three-week time period. Ford describes incidents of asphyxiation, mock executions, arms being pulled out of sockets, and lit cigarettes forced into detainee's ears while they were blindfolded and bound. These atrocities took place in an Iraqi police station, Ford said. His attempts to stop the abuse were met with either indifference or threats by his team leader, who was himself one of the abusers, according to Ford.

Ford clenched his fists tightly and shook his head slowly from side to side. "I guess one of the things that pisses me off most is the arrogance," he said. "The condescending attitude that my team had. Some of the medics, too. Saying things like 'So what, he's just another haji,' like they were scum or some kind of animal, really just pisses me off."

Ford said he was fighting a raging battle with himself over whether to report what he'd seen to his superiors at Anaconda or to confront the team leader one last time. He felt "sick inside" about the mistreatment of detainees, but he did not want to be a "rat," either. Having worked as a corrections officer for almost 20 years, Ford knew how he would be perceived among the troops if he snitched. "I didn't want to have to watch my back at the same time I was dodging mortar rounds from the Iraqis. I decided that I had to confront [the team leader] and tell him, in no uncertain terms, that I would not stand for any more of that kind of shit toward the detainees."

Ford said he found the team leader and had it out with him. "I told him that if there was ever a court-martial over these incidents, I would absolutely testify against him. I said that this kind of crap has to stop or else I would report it to Artiga." According to Ford, the team leader replied, "Fine, Greg, you do what you have to do." By then, Ford said, he'd "had enough." He told the team leader that he would be filing a complaint against him and the other agent as soon as possible. He said the team leader told him he was "crazy" and "seeing things" and no one would believe him anyway, so "knock yourself out."

The next day, Ford said he rode with the rest of his team down to Camp Anaconda, where the 223rd had its headquarters, as did the 205th M.I. Brigade, which was made infamous by the Abu Ghraib scandal. Both divisions were commanded by Col. Thomas Pappas. Upon his arrival, Ford said that he immediately went to the company headquarters and met with Artiga and 1st Sgt. John Vegilla. Ford said that it was clear that Artiga knew he was coming. "I told them that I wanted to request a formal investigation into allegations of war crimes committed by my team against Iraqi detainees. I said I wanted to request a removal of this whole team and their replacement by a senior team, because they're bringing the house down. He looked right at me and said, 'Nope, that never happened. You're delusional, you imagined the whole thing. And you've got 30 seconds to withdraw your complaint. If you do, it will be as if this conversation never took place.'" Ford refused, and Artiga told him to "get out of here" and that he would call him when the complaint was ready.

In an interview, Artiga denied making those statements. Vegilla did not respond to interview requests.

A few hours later, Marciello, a senior counterintelligence agent, arrived to accompany Ford from the transient tent where he was staying to company headquarters to see Artiga and Vegilla. The slight and bespectacled Marciello, who looks like a cross between Woody Allen and Wally Cox, recently retired from the National Guard after almost 35 years of service. According to Marciello, "Artiga then instructed Vegilla to take Ford's M-16 and ammunition away from him for safekeeping and said that he was revoking Ford's security clearance. He [Artiga] also said that I was being assigned to escort Ford 24 hours a day until further notice." Artiga then ordered Ford to report immediately to Capt. Angela Madera, an Army psychiatrist, at the base mental-health facility for a "combat stress evaluation." Marciello says he escorted Ford to his meeting with Madera.

According to Marciello, he waited outside Madera's office for approximately one hour while Madera interviewed Ford. After the interview, "I escorted Ford back to his tent and then stayed with him for the remainder of the day." To Marciello, Ford seemed frustrated at the situation but calm and under control.

Marciello remembers being summoned the next morning, June 16, to company headquarters by Artiga, who according to Marciello was "really pissed" about the report Madera had written regarding Ford. "He was pacing around in the office holding the report up," Marciello said. "Dr. Madera had diagnosed Ford as completely 'normal' and 'not a danger to himself or others.'" Artiga was "just livid," Marciello recalls. "He took me in tow over to meet with Madera. Just me and him. We practically ran over there. Once we got there, he held up her report and asked her what she thought she was doing. He walked right over to her and got right in her face. Then he told her that this report cannot stay the way it is. He said that she will change it to read that Ford is unstable and must be sent out of [the Iraqi] theater immediately. He then said something to the effect that this was a C.I. or M.I. matter and that he was telling her that she had better see to these changes right now."

Artiga denied pressuring Madera to change her diagnosis and said he did not recall whether Marciello or anyone else was in the room during the meeting.

According to Marciello, "Madera was really shook up by the encounter with Artiga ... She was trembling." With that, Marciello said, "Me and Artiga just up and left Madera's office and headed back to the company area. Artiga went back to the office and I went to find Ford." Marciello found Ford in his tent and related what had just occurred. "I told him to stay put and that I would return in a little while." It was the last time Marciello saw Greg Ford.

The Geneva Conventions signed by the United States and 114 other countries in 1949 give prisoners of war strict protections. They cannot be assaulted, photographed (except for counterintelligence purposes), threatened with physical harm, denied medical care and medication, or deprived of food, water, clothing or sleep. They are also entitled to have mail access and regular visits from the Red Cross or other humanitarian groups.

The photographs from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad that became public in the spring showed interrogators flagrantly violating those conventions. Seven low-level soldiers have since been charged, with one conviction, but no one up the ladder has been held accountable. Meanwhile, it has become increasingly clear that the mistreatment at Abu Ghraib was symptomatic of a wider problem. The Department of Defense is currently investigating more than a hundred allegations of prisoner abuse. So far, not a single officer or high-ranking enlisted soldier has been charged in any of them.

There are striking parallels between the conditions at Abu Ghraib when the abuses took place and those at Samarra when Greg Ford says he saw his colleagues torturing detainees. Both facilities were suffering heavy casualties as the result of daily mortar attacks from an invisible enemy. In both cases, the command became increasingly frustrated at its inability to identify, locate and stop the attackers and -- bolstered by directives from top military brass to "set the conditions" for information collection -- allowed combat troops and military intelligence operatives to use harsh tactics. Both facilities were populated mostly by young reservists with no combat experience. The majority of detainees, meanwhile, were adolescents or old men of little to no intelligence value.

The M.I. units at both centers also shared a commanding officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, who arrived in Iraq sometime in the middle of June 2003 and formally took charge of the 205th M.I. Brigade at an elaborate change-of-command ceremony at Anaconda on July 1. The 205th comprises Ford's 223rd M.I. Battalion and the 519th M.I. Battalion, which played a part in the both the Abu Ghraib scandal and at least one detainee death in Afghanistan, resulting in criminal charges being filed. After Pappas ordered all members of the 205th to be present at his change-of-command ceremony, three soldiers from the 519th were killed in a vehicular accident while traveling through hostile territory from northern Iraq in order to attend.

The Army has already dealt with one case of abuse by soldiers stationed at Samarra. At a recent court-martial in Fort Hood, Texas, four enlisted soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division in Samarra were convicted of manslaughter for forcing two handcuffed Iraqi men to jump off a bridge over the Tigris River during an interrogation. One of the Iraqis drowned. The soldiers' commanding officer, a lieutenant colonel that regularly worked with agents of the 223rd, was administratively disciplined for helping to cover up the incident.

Not long after Marciello left him, Ford said, Madera, accompanied by an unknown male captain, entered Ford's tent and told him to get ready because he was going to be "medevac'd" to Germany immediately. "What the hell is going on here?" Ford remembered demanding, but Madera told him to "be quiet," that he "had to leave," and that she would explain once they were airborne. She escorted him to a waiting Humvee that took them to the base airstrip, where a C-130 was warming up on the tarmac.

"Madera ordered me to lie down on a gurney that had been in the rear of the Humvee so she could strap me down. I again asked what was going on, only this time a lot more pissed off. I said that I was perfectly able to walk." Ford said Madera insisted, telling him it was the order of "[Lt. Col. Timothy] Ryan and Artiga" that he be "bound and secured" when taken "out of country." "I saw that I had no choice and finally said OK, anything just to get the fuck out of there," Ford recalled. With the help of the male captain, who Ford said identified himself as a medical officer, Madera strapped him to the gurney.

Just then, Ford claimed, Ryan, Artiga's superior officer, pulled up in his Humvee and walked over to where Ford was lying on the gurney. "He looked down at me and said, 'Don't worry. We are going to get you the best treatment available.' I was enraged at that point, and it was a good thing I was strapped down. I just stared back at Ryan with looks that I hoped could kill, but I didn't say nothing. What was the point? He had won that round."

Ryan did not respond to interview requests for this story.

The propellers of the huge turboprop engines on the C-130 sent scorching blasts of superheated air back toward the group, almost hot enough to singe the skin on a face. (When I left Iraq from the same tarmac a few months later, I did get burned from the blasts.) As Ford's gurney sank into the steaming tarmac, Madera and the other medical officer wheeled him up the long ramp and into the aircraft's cavernous interior. Once they were airborne, Madera unstrapped Ford and motioned for him to sit next to her on one of the hard benches that run along the sides of the plane. "She told me that she was forced to get me out of Iraq ASAP by Ryan and Artiga, who she claimed were scared to death by what I might say. She also told me that she wanted me to get out of Iraq as soon as possible because she feared for my safety." Ford said Madera also told him, "These people are serious and very scary." She apologized for having orchestrated such an exit, but said there was no other way. "I told her that I understood, but felt as though I had just been kidnapped." According to Ford, Madera replied, "You were."

Madera did not respond to several requests to be interviewed for this story.

The C-130 took Ford to Kuwait, where he cooled his heels inside transient tents for two to three days and waited for the 223rd to issue him an order. The order never came -- in violation of Army regulations -- but eventually he boarded another aircraft, still accompanied by Madera and the other officer but now acting on his own volition, and flew to the Army Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany. "The first thing they kept asking me at Landstuhl was, 'Where are your orders?' How'd you get out of theater?' I mean, I was probably asked that 50 times when I was there. Everybody asked me that. They have a reception group that meets you there and even the Air Force people when I was getting off the plane said, "We don't how you got on this plane because you don't have any orders. We don't have a single set of orders for you."

According to a senior official at the California National Guard headquarters in Sacramento, Ford should have had what is known as a "medevac" order from his unit in Iraq (205th M.I. Brigade) in order to leave the country. No one is allowed out of a theater of operations without either a medevac order or a standard set of written orders authorizing travel to a destination. Ford had neither, which is a violation of Army policy.

After a brief stay for evaluation at Landstuhl, Ford says, he was flown to the United States, where he went first to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and then to Fort Lewis, Wash., where he was placed in the Madigan Army Medical Center. At Fort Lewis, Ford filed a complaint with the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, or CID, in which he cited both the uninvestigated "war crimes" allegations and the retaliation that he says followed.

At every stop along the way, from Kuwait to Germany to the United States, Ford was evaluated by Army mental-health professionals and given a clean bill of health. Doctors at each location confirmed Madera's original diagnosis -- that he was mentally stable. Ford supplied me with documents from all of the hospitals he visited, showing diagnoses of "normal," "not delusional," "not paranoid," "no evidence of hallucination," "stable mental condition," and other similar remarks. There is nothing to suggest that any of the Army medical personnel who evaluated Greg Ford after he made his allegations in Iraq felt that there was anything wrong with him. Tsai at the Army Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, gave Ford a final diagnosis of "Stable Mental Condition." Dr. Thomas Hardaway of the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, wrote, "there was not any indication of overt paranoia or delusional quality to what he was saying about his circumstances." He went on to say, "There is nothing on my initial screening evaluation indicating any overt pathology or personality problems ... Release patient from Behavioral Medicine Clinic."

Finally, in February 2004, eight months after he blew the whistle, Ford was released from active duty and given an honorable discharge, and in October, 10 months after his initial application, he was formally retired from the Army.

Even if Ford's allegations of prisoner abuse turn out to be false, the Army's treatment of him betrays an outrageous attempt to cover up a potential scandal and a blatant disregard for its own rules. According to both Ford and a credible witness, Marciello, Ford was strapped to a gurney and bundled off to a mental ward on the basis of a coerced diagnosis for an indefinite period of time, all before any investigation was even started, much less completed. When a CID investigator finally began pursuing the matter in the fall, Artiga told the investigator that the 223rd had "looked into it" and found "nothing wrong." If what Ford and his witnesses say turns out to be true, then the officers involved could face criminal charges ranging from threatening and intimidation, perjury, and assault to false imprisonment, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The list of potential breaches of Army regulations is just as long, including "conduct unbecoming of an officer," a serious offense in the military.

In addition to Ford and the other soldiers treated by Tsai, other Army whistle-blowers have also reported this type of mistreatment. According to a May 25 report by United Press International, Julian Goodrum, a decorated lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves, was allegedly locked in a psychiatric ward as punishment for filing a complaint over the death of a soldier in his command. He had also testified before Congress about the poor medical care Reserve soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were receiving at Fort Knox, Ky. After he escaped from the locked ward, he was charged with being AWOL and was even given a $6,000 bill for room and board during his involuntary hospital stay. Still another whistle-blower, Sgt. Samuel Provance of the 205th M.I. Brigade, was stripped of his security clearance and assigned to administrative duties in Germany after reporting abuses at Abu Ghraib. Provance told me in recent e-mails that he has been harassed by other soldiers and commanders since he made his allegations and has become something of a pariah in his unit.

In August 2004, Ford filed a report on his allegations of war crimes and abduction with the Sacramento office of the FBI. That office forwarded the report to the Bureau's headquarters in Washington, which in turn passed it along to the Department of Defense. Ford says he met with investigators from the DoD's Office of the Inspector General in the last week of September. "It was obvious from their line of questioning that their mission was to cover up for DoD and the Army," Ford said. Special Agent Karen Ernst of the FBI's Sacramento office told me that the Bureau "may" have jurisdiction in the matter and is prepared to step in if the DoD "drops the ball on this." Although she would not offer an opinion of Ford's case, she did say that they only file reports if they believe the allegations have "some merit."

The Department of the Army Office of the Inspector General has also launched an investigation into Ford's allegations. Although by policy they can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a current investigation, Ford said that investigators have flown out to California to interview him and have conducted several follow-up interviews as well as requested documents and e-mail records from him. Requests through the Freedom of Information Act to the Army or the DoD for any reports relating to Ford and his allegations have resulted in a flurry of letters stating essentially that the case is "complex" and that it will take additional time to compile all of the requested documents.

Neither the California Office of the Adjutant General in Sacramento nor the state's Judge Advocate General (JAG) office would officially comment, but staff at both places told me off the record that they hoped Ford would be vindicated and the officers in question punished for "abuse of authority."

According to an Army CID special agent who is familiar with Ford's case, "This is a classic case of a whitewash. A coverup. The agent in Iraq never even looked at the 15-6 investigation the 223rd supposedly did. No one was ever interviewed until Abu Ghraib hit the fan." When I asked him whether the CID was complicit in an Army coverup of the case, he said, "Absolutely ... Do you have any idea how ugly this case could get if they ever really looked into it? It would open up a whole can of worms that they just don't want to touch." The agent, who refused to give his name for fear of retaliation, added, "Based on everything I know about this case, I believe Ford. I have seen too many similar cases not to. It fits the pattern. Everyone involved in this blatant coverup should be criminally prosecuted. For this to have dragged on for over a year without being investigated is ridiculous." In September, the CID conducted two telephone interviews with Marciello, but no one else in the 223rd has yet been interviewed, including myself.

His nightmarish experience with the Army in Iraq has changed him forever, Ford told me as we sat on a bench near the fountain in front of California National Guard headquarters in Sacramento. He said that he intended to devote the next few years, and maybe even the rest of his life, to working with individuals and organizations in the fight for human rights and dignity. He specifically mentioned Amnesty International and the World Organization for Human Rights. The latter has formally requested that Attorney General John Ashcroft file criminal war-crimes charges against high-ranking administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush, over the revelations coming out of Abu Ghraib. Ford said he hoped to join in pushing for that action.

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About the writer

David DeBatto is an author and former U.S. Army counterintelligence agent who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lost or Stolen

When your wallet has gone missing, which do you prefer to think? That you've lost it, or that it's been stolen? That it's lost, of course. Because losing a wallet is your own fault; if you can remember where you last had it, you can go back and try to find it. Or, if somebody else finds it, it might even be returned.

When your wallet has gone missing, which do you prefer to think? That you've lost it, or that it's been stolen? That it's lost, of course. Because losing a wallet is your own fault; if you can remember where you last had it, you can go back and try to find it. Or, if somebody else finds it, it might even be returned. And, if there was a bit of cash that's been taken, you won't even mind. In fact, you'll probably be glad there was a little something to make it worth the finder's trouble to send the wallet back.

And even if you never find it and have to go to the trouble to replace your identification and credit cards and whatever important information you carried around on those little chits of paper that probably swelled the wallet and made it hard to fit in some pockets (which may be why you lost it), that's just a time-consuming nuissance and might even teach you to be more careful in the future.

But, if it's been stolen, that's another matter entirely. Even after all your identification has been replaced, you can't be sure for months and maybe even years, that the thief won't use your personal information to commit crimes against you and others. You'll have to be constantly aware, perhaps even on the edge of terror, that the thievery will go on and on. That's the nature of theft. It's an invasion of privacy, especially if the things taken are essentially worthless chits of plastic or bits of paper on which you've made a record of your thoughts and intentions.

The same is true of a stolen vote. Or maybe it's even worse. Because a vote is really a record of your consent to be governed, to be represented by a particular person. So, when that representation of your intent is stolen and given to someone else, every trace of your choice is taken and, at the risk of being dramatic, the very essence of democratic society is destroyed.

Which is why Rev. Jesse Jackson got it exactly right when he said we can live with a loss, but we cannot live with a stolen election.

51 Capital March

The 51 Capital Marches Scheduled for Sunday December 12th All Across the Nation are "On the March"!!!
A nationwide "51 Capital March" is scheduled ALL ACROSS THE NATION, for each state capital, and for our nation's capital in Washington, D.C., for noon on December 12th, the day before the electoral college meets.

It is part of a great citizens' uprising over the Bush administration's attempt to stage a coup d'etat in the guise of an election, and to thus convert our nation from a democracy into a dictatorship.

For the most up to date information on local coordination activities in your state, go to
http://www.51capitalmarch.com/stateContacts.shtml
If your state doesn't have a coordinator appointed, contact Kip Humphrey
kiphumphrey@51capitalmarch.com

A Fly on the Wall

http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/

Another Election Held and Another Election Stolen

Another election held and another election stolen. In 2000 Bush stole the election by restricting the ability to vote by those people most likely to vote against him. The abuses were wide spread and the Democrats and other groups that believe in each individuals right to vote put together an impressive attempt to make sure that every individual that wanted to vote would not be turned away. Everywhere you went there was booths where new voters could register. Celebrities in commercials were urging voters to get out and vote. Poll watchers were placed in polling stations across the country to guarantee that every voter would not be turned away on any technicality.

What these well meaning groups failed to account for was that they were defending the 2000 election fixing plan and not taking into account that this election would be decided not by voters but by the rise of technology. Every one might be allowed to vote but their vote, and your vote made no difference at all. The programmers had already decided who would win and by how much.

Prior to this election I personally sent out information to the media which should have been provided to the electorate. It was not. The biggest turnout in history had no chance to win this election or any other unless the programmers of the voting machine allowed it. I believe they will allow it less and less as the machines control the elections and the Republicans control the machines.

This is not speculation. It is not a rant designed to make the losers feel better. I speak from first hand information and unless people stand up and act, democracy in this country is ended.

While employed at Wong Enterprises, Congressman Feeney had requested if Wong could write a voting program that could alter the vote and be undetectable. As the technology advisor, I explained that as long as the source code was provided and complied under supervision, code which altered the vote and was undetectable could not be built. Another problem would be that no one would trust a program that provided for no paper trail to substantiate its accuracy. When the vote was flipped the paper trail could easily detect the fraud.

This request was early in my exposure to Congressman Feeney, so I was not familiar with what a total piece of crap he truly was. My assumption was that he was worried that the other side (the Democrats) would introduce voting machines which could manipulate the vote. Mrs. Wong volunteered that we (meaning me) could put together a quick prototype that he could view and show others.

I have recreated that prototype and posted it at http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram.htm. It is essentially the same code that I built for the vote fraud demo for Congressman Feeney. You will notice that by clicking on the correct hidden spots on the screen, the vote will flip so that the Republican candidate will receive fifty one percent of the vote. The hot spots make it possible to flip the vote as often as necessary yet it will never fire accidentally so as to avoid detection. My prototype was actually very simplistic. The actual sequence to flip the vote could be as complex as the programmer wished or even to operate automatically. In cases when the Republican is already leading, the vote is left as is. I built the program to demonstrate that with proper supervision that the election machines would be safe. The code would not be able to be hidden.

The next day I complete the prototype and presented it to Mrs. Wong. I stressed how the tampering could be detected. She quickly set me straight as the to true intention. Her exact words were "If we can?t hide the manipulation, we won?t get the contract the program is needed to control the south Florida vote." Another confirmation of why I needed to get a different job. I would not build something that would defraud every voter in this country. Even better, I knew that as long as the election supervisors used proper computer procedures, no one else would or could either.

What I did not anticipate was that this country would allow the placement of voting machines where the source code was not provided. The programs were pre-compiled (you have no idea what is in them or what hidden triggers exist), and where no paper trail would be required to check their accuracy. Any moron could build a voting program that could flip the vote under those circumstances and no amount of testing could discover the deception.

A reproduction of the prototype I developed at Wong for Congressman Feeney can be downloaded at http://www.justaflyonthewall.com/votefraudprogram.htm. It also includes the instructions for installing the program and manipulating the voting. Under normal circumstances it will accurately record the vote totals. By clicking on the proper hidden triggers the vote is manipulated and without a paper trail becomes altered in such a way as to be untraceable.

A major question might be why. Why would the Republicans choose to cheat? Vote fraud is by no means a new occurrence nor, is it confined to one particular party. The first vote fraud was very likely not far behind the first election ever held. The people who run and many of those who support them have a vested interest in making sure that their candidate wins. It?s about policy. It?s about ideology. Mostly, it?s about the money. By simply placing the proper technology in place they have assured victory in perpetuity. Each of their victories will weaken any opposition parties. You can already see it happening.

The Democrats have already started looking inward and pointing fingers at each other in order to explain a loss that was not possible. This is precisely what the Republicans expected. Exactly what occurred when Bush stole the 2000 election. The fighting and the finger pointing within the Democratic party does more to boost the Republicans than anything the Republicans can ever do. As they grouse about changing their message or their method of delivery, they project a message to the public that their message is insincere. Democrats need to believe what they believe. If that is what makes them a minority party then so be it. Be true to yourself, your goals and don?t change the package just to impress the masses. Most importantly make sure that the wins and losses are real and not just manipulations by a side that will do anything to win.

Did Bush win? Bush could not have won. Take Florida or Ohio. A switch of either would change the outcome. In reality Bush probably lost both. There have been many reports of people being registered as Republicans without their knowledge. Even with these inflated figures in Florida alone the Democrats out number the Republicans by over a half million votes. The exit polling, where voters are surveyed at the polling place immediately after voting, showed Kerry ahead by as much as nine percent in Florida. In Ohio the exit polling showed Kerry with a 60 to 40 lead. At the same time the actual vote continued to hover at the 51 to 49 margin in favor of Bush. We must assume that either the voters consistently lied to the surveyors or the vote was flipped. Even more telling was the extremely small margin of victory in the south Florida counties. The very counties that Mrs. Wong had told me were the ones that the vote fraud program was intended to control.

This was not an election where people were not strongly committed. The massive turnout and the new registration of voters were at an all time high. Even more important the Democrats were at the forefront. An Associated Press story less than a month before the election showed that the Democrats had registered more voters in the swing states such as Arizona, Iowa, New Mexico and New Hampshire.

Most important was the fact that everyone who viewed themselves as a Democrat was highly committed to voting Democratic. I personally did not meet a single person who said they were normally Democratic but were changing their vote this year.

Conversely, I spoke with several pre-Bush Republicans that were not only voting for the Democrats candidates but actively volunteering their time to help campaign for the Democrats. So in a highly polarized election where the Democrats outnumbered the Republicans in the swing states by several million votes, and the exit poll consistently demonstrated a Democratic lead, the Republicans still won. Who actually believes that?

What can we do about it? Not only has another election been stolen but our democracy is now gone. The machines decide, not the voters. First and foremost, we must insist that the machine be replaced by machines that can be verified vote for vote. Integrity of the vote is paramount to democracy. The breakdown of trust in the system will rob this country of any legitimacy. We must force out of office any Republicans that have been benefited by this betrayal.

Now if we were still in the mindset of the 1960?s the answer would be protest marches, personal attacks on Bush supporters, and destruction of government buildings. This has never been an approach that appeals to me. We can fix the problems without such aggressive tactics. We do however, have to make some noise. I believe we can do so through economic boycott and the recall of questionable election results. In areas where the machines that were used could not be validated or any other place where there is a possibility that the vote was manipulated, we need to begin recalls of any Republicans that came into office under questionable conditions. In cases where the recalls occur we need to insist that we use paper ballots and then report our votes to an non-partisan reporting group. Through these measures we can force them to replace the suspect machines with verifiable machines. If they fail to respond, we can simple recall the offenders until the machines are replaced. Cost is not a factor. I personally will provide a program free of charge to any election official that will electronically tabulate votes. It will be able to run on any standard computer. In fact, I am sure there are a thousand other programmers that would donate their time to provide code that would be publicly viewable, able to be compiled under non-partisan supervision, and provide a verifiable paper trail