-Caveat Lector-
Secret Weapons Deals Only a Scandal
When Republicans Make Them No Surprise: Media Ignore Goregate
By Tim Graham
Human Events
In the waning moments of presidential campaigns, political
junkies always look for potential "October Surprises"�last-minute
allegations, events, or decisions that could potentially sway the
race toward one party or the other.
In recent years, those surprises have often focused on foreign
policy controversies. Unsurprisingly, America�s "objective"
national news media have shown a partisan variability in
reporting or even creating these occurrences.
This year�s October Surprise is the story of the dog that didn�t
bark. That�s because the big foreign policy scandal this October
is a story that could kill the chances of the Democratic, not the
Republican, presidential candidate.
For years, ABC�s Ted Koppel and PBS�s "Frontline" investigated
the discredited theory that the 1980 Reagan campaign conspired
with the Iranians to delay the release of the American hostages
until after the election.
But, then, in 1992, no ABC or PBS specials probed Iran-Contra
independent counsel Lawrence Walsh�s October Surprise: Four days
before the election, he re-indicted former Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger and asserted that then-Vice President George
Bush was "in the loop" on Iran-Contra essentials. (In fact, ABC,
CBS, and NBC did not even mention Walsh by name in their reports,
characterizing Walsh�s extremely political maneuver as just the
unsuspicious emergence of "new material" or "new grand jury
evidence.")
Weapons to Iran
In October 1996, the Washington Post foreshadowed an Al Gore
scandal by reporting on the now-infamous fundraiser at the Hsi
Lai Buddhist Temple that would later lead to the conviction of
Gore fundraiser Maria Hsia for hiding contributions from the FEC.
But, this time, the networks stayed silent�not picking up the
story until the following March, after Clinton and Gore had been
safely reelected.
This October, the New York Times and the Washington Times have
uncovered another potentially damaging story concerning Gore.
First, in a 2,500-word front-page article in the October 13
edition of the New York Times, John Broder reported that in 1995
"Vice President Gore signed a secret agreement with Viktor S.
Chernomyrdin, then the Russian prime minister." The deal allowed
the Russians to continue selling conventional weapons to Iran
until 1999. Among these weapons was a super quiet Kilo-class
submarine that could threaten U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.
After the 1999 deadline passed, the Russian kept selling the
Iranians weapons despite Chernomyrdin�s secret deal with Gore.
Broder added that the secret deal undercut a 1992 law principally
sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and then-Sen. Gore
himself that required the administration to impose sanctions on
governments discovered to be selling weapons to nations, such as
Iran, that are tagged by the State Department for sponsoring
terrorism.
McCain told Broder that he was unaware of the Gore-Chernomyrdin
deal and that a "strong case can be made" that Russian arms
deliveries to Iran, especially the hard-to-detect Kilo-class
submarine, should have triggered sanctions under the Gore-McCain
law. "If the administration acquiesced in the sale," said
McCain, "then I believe they have violated both the intent and
the letter of the law."
Although he had been the darling of the media when he was
battling Bush in the primaries, McCain was not besieged by
interview requests from the major network to discuss Gore�s
illegal arms deal.
Four days after the New York Times story, Washington Times
reporter Bill Gertz uncovered another secret deal that Gore had
made with Chernomyrdin. In a classified 1995 letter, the Russian
prime minister had informed the Vice President about Moscow�s
involvement in helping Iran build and fuel a nuclear reactor.
The letter referred to a prior agreement between Chernomyrdin and
Gore on the matter, and insisted that the information about the
Russian-Iranian nuclear cooperation was "not to be conveyed to
third parties, including the U.S. Congress."
"Sources on Capitol Hill," reported Gertz, "said Mr. Gore
withheld the information from key senators who would normally be
told of such high-level security matters." He added that Gore�s
withholding of the information may have violated a provision of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, which requires the
administration to keep congressional oversight committees fully
informed on nuclear proliferation matters.
Senators began investigating the secret dealings, but their plans
to hold hearings spurred no advance stories at ABC, CBS, NBC, or
CNN. Only Fox News Channel covered the issue on "Special Report
with Brit Hume."
When the Senate actually held the hearings on October 25, "The
Early Show" on CBS and ABC�s "World News Tonight" noted them in
passing. CBS anchor Diana Olick reported: "Questions about a
secret arms deal and Vice President Al Gore. Today a Senate
panel investigates Gore�s role in a deal allowing Russia to sell
arms to Iran. Some former high-level Republican officials say
the 1995 agreement should have been fully disclosed to Congress.
A Gore official said it was and calls the charges political."
Peter Jennings� 17 Seconds
ABC�s Peter Jennings gave it 17 seconds: "Presidential politics
reached Capitol Hill today. When have they not? Republicans
held hearings which may embarrass Mr. Gore. Senators said that
Mr. Gore violated U.S. law by making secret deals about
Russia�s arms sales to Iran. The White House says no laws were
broken."
On the 26th, ABC "Good Morning America" co-host Charles Gibson
asked Gore about the deal by relaying "questions for you from our
audience through our website, and a number of them concerned a
piece of legislation that you co-authored with John McCain in
1992. Under that legislation, sanctions would be imposed against
any countries that sold advanced weapons to terrorist nations,
like Iran, and now comes word that there was a secret agreement
made with the Russians in 1995, that you signed with Russian
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, at that time, Prime Minister
Chernomyrdin, which gave Russia a pass on that situation.
"Let me just voice the questions as they were submitted. Arlon
Andrews, Corpus Christi, Tex.: �Why did you make a secret arms
deal with Chernomyrdin and not tell Congress about it?� Rob
Williams, Hawthorne, Calif.: �How do you explain the secret arms
agreement?� Scott Fisher, Portland, Maine: �Did you allow Russian
weapon sales to Iran to continue in defiance of the law you
personally co-sponsored?�"
Gibson followed up: "Sen. McCain himself said that this
agreement was intended to evade sanctions and Sen. McCain says
the argument that these weapons, the weapons that were sold, were
not covered by the agreement is provably false."
Gore tried to downplay the revelations: "Well, first of all, that
didn�t happen because what happened under the agreement, or the
understanding that we reached with them, stopped any new arms
sales for the last five years. Congress was briefed on it.
This has been the subject of extensive dialogue, and what
happened was the old contracts that were signed before the
Gore-McCain law was passed, and it didn�t apply to them, were
allowed to, they were allowed to finish out those contracts,
which did not include advanced weaponry, and they agreed not to
have any new ones, and that�s been in the best interests of our
country, for sure."
Gibson didn�t point out that the agreement called for an end to
sales to Iran at the end of 1999, which the Russians are now
violating. But he did follow up: "Senator McCain himself said
that this agreement was intended to evade sanctions and Senator
McCain says the argument that these weapons, the weapons that
were sold were not covered by the agreement is provably false."
Gore blamed politics: "Well, look, we�re in the final 12 days of
this election campaign, where the people in the other party are
throwing their hardest fastballs and we�re doing the same, but
the facts remain, Charlie, this understanding has been helpful to
our country and to the peace and it stopped the reaching of any
new agreements between Russia and Iran."
ABC gave McCain 14 morning show interviews while he was a
presidential candidate, but he hasn�t been invited yet to discuss
the Gore-Chernomyrdin deal.
This is a far cry from the approach the networks took in 1992 on
another alleged foreign policy scandal relating to dealing with a
loathsome Middle Eastern regime. As President Bush�s reelection
campaign floundered, several network programs aggressively
promoted "Iraqgate," charging that Bush knowingly armed Saddam
Hussein before the Gulf War.
Fanning the flames was vice-presidential candidate Al Gore, who
told a crowd in Marietta, Ga., on October 25 that "This is a
bigger cover-up than Watergate ever was ... It involves the
decision by George Bush to arm Saddam Hussein and to lead him to
miscalculate and launch a war that never should have taken place
and would not have except for the poor judgment and bad foreign
policy of George Bush, and he ought to be held accountable for
it."
�Gigantic Scandalburger�
In a November 1994 article in The American Lawyer, former New
York Times legal reporter Stuart Taylor declared that reporters
made a huge mistake in playing up the Iraqgate allegations: "Any
journalist�or judge�who took the (substantial) time necessary to
study the evidence on the public record in 1992 should have been
able to discern that there wasn�t much beef in this gigantic
scandalburger."
On October 28, six days before the presidential election, Ted
Koppel of ABC�s "Nightline" declared that 18 months of searching
by ABC had revealed a series of "legal and illegal technology
transfers" to Iraq. He began by underlining the massive legwork
the major media had done to expose the Bush Administration: "It�s
a story that �Nightline� has revisited repeatedly over the past
year and a half. The Los Angeles Times reported today that they
have done more than 100 stories on the subject, over 90,000
words. This week�s New Yorker did a massive report. New York
Times columnist William Safire has been relentless in pursuing
the issue."
Koppel then underlined how the still-unresolved allegations were
a political liability for Bush: "Indeed, last week a Wall Street
Journal/NBC poll showed that 68% of the American public has major
doubts about George Bush�s explanation of his administration�s
role in providing aid to Saddam Hussein before the Persian Gulf
war. For all that, there is little reason to believe that the
issue is having much impact on this campaign. So, why raise it
yet again? Precisely because the President�s denials have been so
emphatic while the evidence contradicting those denials keeps
mounting. We felt that we should present the story in all its
parts, together with new information that became available in the
past few days, one more time."
Koppel had aired at least eight shows on the Reagan-Bush tilt
toward Iraq (in addition to a one-hour special on Reagan�s
alleged "October Surprise"). A viewer could be forgiven for
getting the impression that Koppel was upset that his programs
weren�t hurting Bush more.
Koppel concluded his late-hit scandal program with charges by
Democratic Senators David Boren (Okla.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.)
of a Bush cover-up.
Koppel emphasized that this issue could not be dismissed as
political: "It is easy enough, given the political season, to
dismiss charges of a cover-up coming as they do from two
Democratic senators as purely partisan. As I told you at the
beginning of the broadcast, though, a number of serious news
organizations have been pursuing [the Italian bank] BNL and the
Iraqgate story for almost two years. And in a campaign where
trust has been made into such a central theme, this story is no
trivial issue."
Gonzo Gonzalez
On Sunday, November 1, two days before the 1992 election, CBS "60
Minutes" reporter Mike Wallace promoted the charges of flaky
liberal Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D.-Tex.) that Bush and his aides
were guilty of obstruction of justice and were "principally
responsible for arming Saddam Hussein."
Wallace began: "If you have trouble understanding exactly what it
is that people mean when they say Iraqgate, perhaps you�ll
understand it better after you hear from the man who has probed
into it longer than anyone else in Washington, the chairman. He
has never talked about it as fully and freely as he does
tonight."
Wallace�s first question to Gonzalez: "Who are the main players
who have tried to stop your investigation?"
In his American Lawyer expos�, former New York Times legal
reporter Stuart Taylor called the segment a "20-minute tag-team
number on the Bush Administration littered with distortions." No
critics of Gonzalez appeared.
Why would members of the Bush team want to put themselves in
front of Mike Wallace for an edited hit job two days before the
election?
Taylor, a political moderate, felt Iraqgate was as phony as he
felt Iran-Contra was real: "Most of the nation�s major news
organizations seemed intent upon spreading the impression that
much of the top echelon of the Bush Administration could be
implicated in illegally arming Iraq and covering it up. This
edifice of innuendo was erected on a foundation of factual errors
and distortions that spread like a contagion."
Instead of spending months and millions of dollars trying to
create a foreign-policy sleaze factor for Al Gore, the networks
have instead questioned whether Texas Gov. George W. Bush is up
the challenging job of handling foreign policy, since he does not
have the experience of the Vice President.
Although he mentioned the New York Times report on Gore and
Chernomyrdin in passing, Newsweek�s Jonathan Alter recently
wrote: "During his nearly quarter century in public life, Gore
has assiduously studied national-security issues. He has
arguably played the most significant foreign-policy role of any
Vice President in history."
No foreign failure, from the potential dangers of the Russian
arming of Iran to the recent low-intensity war in Israel and the
tragic loss of American lives aboard the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen,
has been investigated by the Wallaces and the Koppels as a
potential complication in Gore�s attempts to present himself as a
masterful foreign policy specialist.
That�s what we�re getting from the networks this October, and, of
course, it�s no surprise.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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