Tilting at Windmills - critiquing SUV's

Washington Monthly, Dec, 2002 by Charles Peters

DEMOCRATS' LOSS OF THE SENATE Judiciary Committee means that we're doomed to see the federal judiciary increasingly dominated by clones of John Ashcroft, whom a respected friend of mine from Missouri says is the greatest threat to civil liberties since J. Edgar Hoover. The loss of the other committees means that there is no one to investigate wrongdoing by the Bush administration. Our only hope is that media stars will stop dreaming about being on talk shows and get back to doing investigative reporting in the great tradition of Woodward and Bernstein at their best.

SPEAKING OF SCANDALS, WHY did the Bush administration withhold the news about North Korea's development of nuclear weapons until after the Iraq war resolution had been passed? If it is true, as it appears to be, that North Korea is actually closer than Iraq to possessing a weapon of mass destruction, why shouldn't it take priority over Iraq? It seems like the White House didn't want to confuse the Congress with facts.

IF YOU TEND to get riled up about the moral health of our society, ponder Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a new videogame that's sweeping the country. The player is the bad guy, free to kill anyone he wants. He can pick up a prostitute, pay her for her services, then, after they are rendered, kill her and get his money back.

AT A RECENT HEARING, WHEN CIA director George Tenet was asked why the FBI was not alerted by the CIA to a cable saying that one of the 9/11 terrorists was coming to this country, he replied, "The cable that came in from the field at that time, sir, was labeled `information only,' and I know that nobody read that cable" The senators did not follow up on that answer. They should have. If the cable contained information important enough to have been sent, why wasn't it important enough for someone at the CIA to read?

THE FACT IS THAT THE FOREIGN affairs/national security establishment is awash in unread cables. A State Department friend tells me, "Nobody reads the cables. That is, nobody but the desk officer." At State, the desk officer for a particular country knows he will be the one to face the music if a relevant cable is ignored. At the CIA, however, it appears that no one feels responsible. Remember, Tenet could confidently say, "I know that nobody read that cable"

One reason that cables are not read is that too many of them are sent and too many are distributed to too many people. The truly important messages are buried amongst the travel itineraries of colleagues, statistics on the annual rainfall in Zimbabwe, and other such odds and ends that you don't need or want to know. The system of distribution and accountability desperately needs reform so that people get only the cables that are truly relevant to their work and then are held accountable for reading them.

WASHINGTON'S FARCICAL TENDENCIES have rarely been on more conspicuous display than at the Civil Rights Commission, where there is a four-to-four deadlock. The conservatives include a law professor who was appointed by George W. Bush just after she wrote an article urging that the commission be abolished. The liberals are led by chair Mary Francis Berry, who critics have labeled "abrasive," "obnoxious," a "race-baiter," and a "Maoist," according to The Washington Post's Peter Carlson, to whom I'm indebted for these facts. Recently, Berry announced there would be a meeting of the commission in Wilmington, Del. The conservatives decided to boycott the meeting, but two of them showed up in Washington and demanded that they be connected to the meeting by speakerphone. When their demand was denied, they issued a press release, "For immediate release: Two commissioners show up at U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Headquarters; Told they cannot participate in meeting"