Dear friends,
When I was arrested on Good Friday protesting at Lockheed Martin, I was carrying my Perception Dollar banner which has 9/11 Truth for Peace and Justice on it. I might have passed out a few Deception Dollars before we decided to block the road and hold up a crime scene ribbon and read a statement. The video is posted at-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVV7tlyfkVc Lockheed Martin is one of the companies whose name and logo is on the Deception Dollar and I know that they strongly benefited financially from 9/11, but the degree to which there is a revolving door between Lockheed Martin and the Defense Department and highest levels of the US government is rather staggering when one looks into it deeply.
The five of us who were arrested need to go to court on July 12th; we are supposed to each bring along our own lawyers (which
are very expensive) and it looks like the county is ready to really throw the book at us. Both the Stanford professor and I who missed the first court date on May 18th were rather shocked to get Bench Warrants for $10,000. We immediately went to court to try to clear things up and surrender to the judge and get new dates, but the police decided to go out of their way to arrest each of us at home on the weekend to make our lives especially difficult (which cost me a night's sleep and 15 hours, my husband 3 trips to San Jose to bail me out with the $10,000 cash that I, at least had on hand.) My friend who was roused from bed at 7 am on Sunday, was also frozen in a holding cell for 5-6 hours and it cost him more to get his friend to post a Bail Bond (they take 10% - or a cool thousand for their services...)
Initially I thought that it was Lockheed Martin behind the arrests, but then I learned that it was the D.A.'s office. Just who
does the D.A. serve? I wonder. I spoke to a lawyer today who did offer some advice that might get us off on a technicality, but I have been wondering whether we could go for jury nullification, justification, just by telling our story and getting the jury to see that we were actually defending people and planet, whereas Lockheed Martin is in gross violation of the law- nationally and internationally, as well as morally.
If you have time read this report about them and add it to what you know about 9/11...
http://www.yuricareport.com/Corporations/Lockheed.html Lockheed Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
If you think the Iraq War hasn't worked out well for anyone, think again. Defense contractors such as Lockheed are thriving. And no wonder: here's the story of how Lockheed's interests--as opposed to those of the
American citizenry--set the course of U.S. policy after 9/11.
by Richard Cummings
In November of 2002,
Stephen J. Hadley, deputy national security advisor, asked
Bruce Jackson to meet with him in the White House. They met in Hadley's office on the ground floor of the West Wing, not far from the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Hadley had an exterior office with windows, an overt indicator of his importance within the West Wing hierarchy.
This was months before Secretary of State Colin Powell would go to the United Nations to make the administration's case for the invasion of Iraq, touting the subsequently discredited evidence of weapons
of mass destruction. But according to Jackson, Hadley told him that "they were going to war and were struggling with a rationale" to justify it. Jackson, recalling the meeting, reports that Hadley said they were "still working out" a cause, too, but asked that he, Jackson, "set up something like the Committee on NATO" to come up with a rationale.
Jackson had launched the U.S. Committee on NATO, a nongovernmental pressure group, in 1996 with Hadley on board. The objective of the committee, originally called the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, was to push for membership in the NATO military alliance for former Soviet bloc countries including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
What Bruce Jackson came up with for Hadley this time, in 2002, was the
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. The mission statement of the committee says it was "formed
to promote regional peace, political freedom and international security by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations." The pressure group began pushing for regime change -- that is, military action to remove Hussein -- in the usual Washington ways, lobbying members of congress, working the media and throwing money around. The committee's pitch, or rationale as Hadley would call it, was that Saddam was a monster -- routinely violating human rights -- and a general menace in the Middle East.
"I didn't see the point about WMDs or an Al Queda connection," Jackson says. In his mind the human rights issue was sufficient to justify a war.
Jackson had long been a proponent of unseating Hussein, and the committee dovetailed with his quite real sense of mission. In addition to his role in the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and
the U.S. Committee on NATO, he had also been president of the Project for Transitional Democracies, organized to "accelerate democratic reform" in Eastern Europe.
Still, there is another way to view Jackson's activities. As
The New York Times put it in a 1997 article, "at night Bruce Jackson is president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, giving intimate dinners for senators and foreign officials. By day, he is director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world's biggest weapons maker."
That's how D.C. works. Many of the people making decisions have been in and out of the same set of revolving doors connecting government, conservative think tanks, lobbying firms, law firms and the defense industry. So strong is the bond between lobbyists, defense contractors and the Pentagon that it is known in Washington as "the iron triangle." And this triangle inevitably gets what it wants. Why? Because in the revolving
door system, a defense contractor executive can surface as an official in the Department of Defense, from which position he can give lucrative contracts to his former employer, and his prospects for an even better paying job in the private sector brighten. Former aides to members of congress become handsomely paid lobbyists for the companies they were able to help in their position on Capitol Hill. Such lobbyists can spread their corporate-funded largesse to the friendliest members and their aides on the Hill. And so on.
These "blow-dried Republican lobbyists," as one Washington district court judge calls them, wield far more power than most of the elected officials in town. Forget dime-a-dozen congressmen. It's these operatives who get the best tables at the
Capital Grille, where the power brokers
lunch and sup. The lobbyists have their own lockers there, with personalized nameplates, where they store their vintage wines, ports and whiskies. They dine on the fine aged beef you can see through a window that allows guests to gaze into the refrigerated meat storage area. These people make up the K Street oligarchy that, despite all the vituperative rhetoric in recent years about campaign finance reform and insidious special interests, run Washington.
Bruce Jackson is a perfect example of this. While vice president for strategy and planning for Lockheed from 1999 to 2002, Jackson, by his own account, was also "responsible for the foreign policy platform at the 2000 Republican National Convention," to which he was a delegate. (The platform involved a dramatic increase in defense spending.) His title at the convention was chair of the
platform subcommittee on foreign policy. He also served as co-chairman of the finance commission of Bob Dole's 1996 campaign. Prior to joining Lockheed, Jackson had served as executive director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the think tank whose principles included Dick Cheney. PNAC served as the Bush administration's blueprint for preemptive war and authored a 1998 open letter to President Bill Clinton calling for military force to oust Saddam Hussein.
But forget Jackson. In 2002, he was on the outside.
Stephen Hadley, looking out of the windows from his West Wing office, was on the inside. Sure, Hadley had the requisite government experience for a deputy national security advisor. He had been an assistant secretary of defense under Bush's dad. But he had been through the revolving door, too: Stephen Hadley, the
point man for justifying the invasion of Iraq, had also lawyered at Shea & Gardner, whose clients included Lockheed.
Of course, all the frothing at the mouth about lobbyists, money and special interests can seem from outside the Beltway as much ado about nothing. The government hands out contracts. The beneficiaries or those who want to be beneficiaries buy steak dinners for the officials who hold the purse strings. Big deal. The problem, though, is that, upon closer scrutiny, this is not how the system works. It's actually much more sinister than that, allowing the interests of America to be subverted by the interests of corporate America. As you'll see here, your elected officials did not deliberate on how best to protect their constituents, decide bombing Iraq was the best way and then order some provisions and weapons. On the contrary, this is the story of how Lockheed's interests, as opposed to those of the American citizenry, set the
course of U.S. policy after 9/11.
For the war companies, things have worked out perfectly. Whatever the rationale for the invasion of Iraq, business is booming. Not long after Bush took office, Lockheed Martin's revenues soared by more than 30 percent, as it was awarded $17 billion in contracts from the Department of Defense, a far cry from the lean years of the Clinton administration. (Under Clinton, it did win $2 billion in contracts with the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons activity; recently Bush called for 125 new nukes a year, opening up new contract horizons in that area, as well.) Its stock went from 16.375 in October of 1999 to 71.52 in June of 2002. As professor of finance at the State University at Buffalo Michael Rozeff observes, "the stock market anticipates many events."
Lockheed Martin reported 2002 sales of $26.6 billion, a backlog of more than $70 billion and free cash of $1.7 billion. And that was before the war
in Iraq.
When it came to organizing the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Jackson, by his own admission, "knew nothing about Iraq." So while he agreed to serve as its chairman, he turned day-to-day operations over to Republican operative
Randy Scheunemann, who took the position of executive director. Scheunemann was a member of the board of directors of
PNAC. Scheunemann also served as treasurer of Jackson's Project on Transitional Democracies, and had been a consultant on Iraq to Donald Rumsfeld. He had also been a staffer for Mississippi Senator Trent Lott when Lott was the senate majority leader -- Scheunemann had in fact authored the Iraq Liberation Act. The act authorized the $97 million in Pentagon aid that would fund
the I
raq National Congress, led by
Ahmed Chalabi, who subsequently got close to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, explaining to her where Saddam Hussein's WMDs were supposedly located.
Jackson then turned to his old friend
Julie Finley, whom he refers to as the "grande dame" of Washington Republican politics and fundraising, to serve as treasurer of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. She had held dozens of positions in Republican affiliated groups, and had served as chairman of the board of directors of Jackson's Project on Transitional Democracies. She also knew how to leverage her connections: Among
those signing on as board members of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in 2002 were
Richard Perle, then the chairman of the Defense Advisory Board, former U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick and former CIA Director James Woolsey. Former Secretary of State George Schultz signed on to the advisory board.
A key member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was
Rend Al-Rahim Francke, the founder of the Iraq Foundation, which, according to its tax return, was 99 percent funded by U.S. government grants.
The Iraq Foundation, in turn, provided logistical support for the anti-Saddam Hussein propaganda documentary Voices of Iraq and facilitated its distribution. The
objective was the manipulation of public opinion to support regime change to oust Saddam Hussein, all in support of the goals of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
If the names and organizations connected to the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq seem to blur together, it's no coincidence. Many of the people involved had been in and out of that set of revolving doors connecting government, conservative think tanks, lobbying firms and the defense industry. And many shared another common bond, as well: a link to Lockheed Martin.
By the time the committee had assembled, they had a number of contacts in the Bush administration -- many of whom also had Lockheed connections. Bush had appointed
Powell A. Moore assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs serving directly under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. From 1983 until 1998, when he
had become chief of staff to Republican Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Moore was a consultant and vice president for legislative affairs for Lockheed.
Albert Smith, Lockheed's executive vice president for integrated systems and solutions, was appointed to the Defense Science Board. Bush had appointed former Lockheed chief operating officer
Peter B. Teetsas undersecretary of the Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office, where he made decisions on the acquisition of reconnaissance satellites and space-based elements of missile defense. Former Secretary of Transportation
Norman Mineta, the only Democrat appointed by Bush to his cabinet,
worked for Lockheed, as did Bush's Secretary of the Navy,
Gordon England.
Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee before becoming the governor of Mississippi, worked for a Lockheed lobbying firm. Joe Allbaugh, national campaign manager of the Bush-Cheney ticket and director of FEMA during the first two years of the Bush administration (he appointed his college friend Michael Brown as FEMA's general counsel), was a Lockheed lobbyist for its rapidly growing intelligence division.
Dick Cheney's son-in-law,
Philip J. Perry, a registered Lockheed lobbyist who had, while working for a law firm, represented Lockheed with the Department of
Homeland Security, had been nominated by Bush to serve as general counsel to the Department of Homeland Security. His wife,
Elizabeth Cheney, serves as deputy assistant secretary of state for Middle Eastern affairs.
Vice President Cheney's wife,
Lynne, had, until her husband took office, served on the board of Lockheed, receiving deferred compensation in the form of half a million dollars in stock and fees. Even President Bush himself has a Lockheed Martin connection. As governor of Texas, he had attempted to give Lockheed a multimillion-dollar contract to reform the state's welfare system.
Soon after taking office in 2001, Bush had also appointed Lockheed president and CEO Robert J. Stevens to his
Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry. The future of that industry was, of course, in an expanding defense budget, and a war in Iraq wouldn't hurt Lockheed's bottom line.
Jackson has the perfect pedigree for this insular, incestuous world of interconnections. His father, William Jackson, was the first person to hold the position of national security advisor, under Dwight Eisenhower. Growing up, his neighbors had included the historian and diplomat George Kennan, author of the doctrine of containment during the Cold War, and William Bundy, a Johnson administration hawk. Jackson graduated from the elite St. Mark's boarding school in Massachusetts and then attended Princeton. In the 1980s Jackson worked for presidents Reagan and Bush under Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, as well as
Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.
Next Jackson worked in proprietary trading at Lehman Brothers, an investment bank, before leaving for Martin Marietta, then one of the top defense corporations. Jackson's role was director of strategic planning and corporate development projects, which involved the merger of Martin Marietta with the 800-pound gorilla of the industry, Lockheed. Jackson remained with the new entity, Lockheed Martin.
Today Jackson's Washington apartment is discreetly elegant. Aside from shelves of books, there is another item on the wall in Jackson's apartment worthy of note: It is a signed photograph of George W. Bush together with Jackson and Julie Finley, the fund-raiser who was treasurer of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Sitting in his apartment, which also serves as his office, Jackson describes his role at Lockheed Martin as "non-technical." He worked at developing strategies to improve sales and find new
markets, moving the company in directions that were profitable.
Meanwhile, in his "spare time," Jackson worked to promote the expansion of NATO and Iraq liberation, worked to get Bush elected and helped establish the administration's foreign policy. While Jackson sees his role as head of the
United States Committee on NATO as an idealistic one, separate from his job, NATO expansion proved a valuable marketing tool for Lockheed Martin, as Eastern European and Central Asian counties upgraded their obsolete militaries, and, as we'll see, also provided a way to gain support among former Soviet bloc countries for Bush's coming war in Iraq.
The collateral benefits of Jackson's activities to Lockheed Martin were unambiguous, leading one to conclude that while he might have thought he was using them, in reality they were using him. Jackson argues that only
"literary types" would see a connection between Lockheed Martin and the Iraq war as "seamless." He insists that his own activities were "not part of my day job. What I did at other times was my own business. There are lesbians who work for Lockheed Martin. One of them might be a belly dancer at night."
As for the same names -- many of them people with Lockheed Martin connections -- appearing on the letterhead of groups pressing for military action in Iraq and for NATO expansion, Jackson quips: "How many intellectuals are there in Washington? Twenty? We all share the same concerns."
Jackson acknowledges that he "gave
William Kristol money" to help start the
Weekly Standard, which advocated military action to remove Saddam Hussein, just as he had earlier joined with Kristol at
the PNAC -- all by virtue of their shared ideology, as he explains it. But if the connection between Lockheed Martin and the Iraq war was not seamless, neither was it serendipitous. For example, Lockheed also supported the pro-war Weekly Standard as a paying advertiser.
"It used to be just an airplane company," John Pike, a military analyst and director of
GlobalSecurity.org says about Lockheed Martin. "Now it's a
warfare company. It's an integrated solution provider. It's a one-stop shop. Anything you need to kill the enemy, they will sell you."
They also will tell you who the enemy is. And whether it was seamless or serendipitous, Stephen Hadley, referred to by T
he New York Times as one of the more significant Lockheed operatives in the Bush White House,
was there to tie it all together...
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sf911truth" group.
.
.
.
