Jesus Camp - God Help Us All!

I've just finished watching one of the most disturbing documentaries ever produced. It's called 'Jesus Camp' (Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady/Magnolia) and deals with non-denominational ultra-fundamentalist Christian church groups and one of the bizarre, psychotic camps they send their children to for two weeks of intense brain washing. I label it as such as one who has been inside the ultra-fundamentalist Christian community and not as an outsider merely perplexed at practices or spiritual/religious activities foreign to me. Since I extricated myself from the ultra-fundamentalists some ten years ago, things have clearly gone from worse to abominable. Maybe Rosie O'Donnell wasn't being too radical when she said fundamentalist Christianity is as dangerous here in America as fundamentalist Islam is elsewhere in the world. And for me to cough up the slightest acknowledgement of a Rosie O'Donnell statement is really saying something, it barely makes it to the tips of my typing fingers without inducing a small stroke.

Let me say at the outset that there are many wonderful, inspiring, decent Christian camps for kids run by churches that are harmless, that foster intelligent inquiry and respect for the individual while instilling deeply cherished values. But what you will see in 'Jesus Camp' is so abusive, so cultic, so depraved you may not make it through the whole DVD. I had to stop it several times just to sigh and pray. You will see little children being indoctrinated with irrefutable mind control techniques and the use of emotional contagion and peer-group/group-think manipulations so dastardly, so underhanded and blatantly hypnotic that tears will likely come to your eyes, if rage doesn't settle in first.

Emotionally distraught children -- When she should be thinking
about yucky boys and hopscotch, she's weighted down with
intense emotions and worry over 'the state of the nation' by
the Pastors' incessant political, apocalyptic ranting

Perhaps the most disturbing moment was when one of the camp counselors brought out a life size cardboard popup of George W. Bush. and stood it in the pulpit, a waving American flag graphic projected behind him, saying "Here's President Bush, come to visit us...!" and then calling the children to come forward and touch his likeness, "pray over him! Make warfare over him" (note: to those not familiar with certain fundamentalist colloquialisms, "warfare" is in reference to the Apostle Paul's admonition "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places," and "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds" speaking of spiritual warfare -- prayer and intercession). Little children clamor and cluster at the feet of this cutout, straining to touch it like the woman with the issue of blood in the Gospels reaching to touch the hem of Jesus' garment. Though the weapons of their warfare are not carnal, there is no lack of the use of utterly carnal, even military symbolisms. In one scene several children had devised a 'dance' to go along with some Christian Heavy Metal music, clad in fatigues and faces painted in camo, brandishing fighting sticks which they were thrusting and flailing about, shouting "War! Warfare!" The girls in the group had war-paint faces and wore black.

'Pastor' Becky Fisher and her oft pointing finger
"Harry Potter is an evil warlock and would've been
put to death in Old Testament times!"

Pastor Becky Fisher, the master manipulator of this sect, is a frighteningly twisted character. The look in her eyes is overwhelmingly dark as she gazes out over the sea of little faces weeping and travailing and cackling in 'tongues' as she stirs her 'army' to frenzy, fear and then utter fanaticism. This significantly rotund woman has the audacity at one point to admonish the children for not having the strength of faith to fast, even mentioning a 40 day fast. If this woman fasted two hours she'd likely faint and then rise up and personally demolish a Dairy Queen. The hypocrisy is simply revolting.

One of the twisted 'methods' at Jesus Camp, mouths
were taped shut with red duct tape inscribed with the word LIFE
in part of a protest against abortion

There are no ifs, ands or buts in this documentary, the people involved say plainly they are raising up, indoctrinating and forming a generation of "Conservative Christian Republicans" -- WE know them as 'Neo-cons.' In one scene they bring the children to such an emotional mania over abortion that one could clearly argue that this is as much child-abuse as taking a child into a porno flick.

The mixed ages of the children is one very disturbing element. Some are merely toddlers barely out of diapers, others are in their very early teens. Not every message is suitable for every age, but these unthinking yahoo's, propelled along by the 'The Spirit' (may God have mercy on them for grieving the blessed Spirit of grace and truth in claiming their own perverted emotional and political rants to be the same 'Spirit'), splatter the whole group with machine-gunned verbal assaults with no qualms about its effect on the littlest and most impressionable. You simply do NOT tell toddlers and little ones that Satan, an invisible but terrifyingly evil monster that personally knows them and watches them, is looking to destroy them! Little children cannot possibly rightly process such a message without trauma. And that trauma is more than abundantly evident in 'Jesus Camp.' Among these ultra-fundamentalists, 'The Spirit' is an excuse for every manner of bizarre behavior, most of which looks frighteningly similar to the kinds of twitching, jolting and bellowing seen among primitives involved in trance-inducing voodoo. None of it makes sense, nothing about it is remotely biblical or uplifting and most of the children are beet-red faced with distemper, exhausted emotionally, strained to tears and nowhere near coherent; The perfect state to implant very powerful directives at the subconscious level.

One little boy named Levi, who looked to be around 10, was a focus for the adult manipulators. It becomes evident in the documentary that he is being groomed to be a big mover and shaker in the years to come. At one point he is heard saying, "I don't like being around people who are non-Christian, it just makes me feel... gross...I feel bad inside... in my spirit." This boy doesn't know the real Jesus from a hole in the ground! And that is the essential point here -- there is no Jesus in Jesus Camp. There's everything BUT Jesus in Jesus Camp. Though His name is tacked onto everything and every sentence ends with his name being bandied about like a magic wand, the real Jesus Christ of the Gospels is entirely missing; his teachings, his truths clearly are abandoned for a new and better Jesus. A fighting Jesus. A Republican Neo-Con Jesus. A Jesus Dick Cheney could know and love and probably make a few 'bidniss' deals with. A Jesus that is red, white and blue, and no other colors have any meaning or significance. THIS Jesus doesn't ride a donkey, He rides an elephant! As Pastor Becky Fisher puts it (while comparing radical Islamic training of children to fundamentalist Christian training of children) "...the difference being, we're right and they're wrong." The bombs these children are being taught to strap on are bombs of polarization, exclusion, discrimination, xenophobia and these are sure to 'go off' at some point when they are older.

As a bible-believing Christian, this documentary made me want to puke. It is even more disheartening to know full well that the documentary itself will effect millions of people and their attitudes toward all Christians, unfortunately. If this is the backbone of the great cultural divide in this nation, we're in for some really nasty confrontations in the next twenty to fifty years. Who will OWN the Constitution and the nation? Radical ultra-fundamentalist Christian Neo-Cons or a thinking, responsible republic of fair-minded, rational and magnanimous people from all walks of life and every religious persuasion? That is what is on the table, when you hear Bill O'Reilly characterize his "Culture Warriors," the "traditionalists" vs the "SPs" (Secular Progressives). Bill doesn't realize that in his camp are some serious crazies and among the "traditionalists" are people who have zero comprehension of the Constitution, much less real conservative traditionalism. The Neo-Con-spiracy is one big, bad mother... and it has got to be opposed at every step. Right now, it's a lumbering, idiotic baby making a big stink. But given a few years and exposure to nuclear radiation, it will mutate into a Godzilla of political, social and spiritual tyranny that will make the Taliban and Sharia Law look like mere beatniks.

(Shortly after its release, the movie gained a new notoriety when Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who appears near the end of the film, resigned his post amid a male prostitute's allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct. - Amazon.com review)

A Split Emerges as Conservatives Discuss Darwin

By PATRICIA COHEN

Evolution has long generated bitter fights between the left and the right about whether God or science better explains the origins of life. But now a dispute has cropped up within conservative circles, not over science, but over political ideology: Does Darwinian theory undermine conservative notions of religion and morality or does it actually support conservative philosophy?

On one level the debate can be seen as a polite discussion of political theory among the members of a small group of intellectuals. But the argument also exposes tensions within the Republicans’ “big tent,” as could be seen Thursday night when the party’s 10 candidates for president were asked during their first debate whether they believed in evolution. Three — Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas; and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado — indicated they did not.

For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they abhor. As an alternative to Darwin, many advocate intelligent design, which holds that life is so intricately organized that only an intelligent power could have created it.

Yet it is that very embrace of intelligent design — not to mention creationism, which takes a literal view of the Bible’s Book of Genesis — that has led conservative opponents to speak out for fear their ideology will be branded as out of touch and anti-science.

Some of these thinkers have gone one step further, arguing that Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and that natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.

“I do indeed believe conservatives need Charles Darwin,” said Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, who has spearheaded the cause. “The intellectual vitality of conservatism in the 21st century will depend on the success of conservatives in appealing to advances in the biology of human nature as confirming conservative thought.”

The arguments have played out in recent books, magazine articles and blogs, as well as at a conference on Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. There Mr. Arnhart was grouped with John Derbyshire, a contributing editor at National Review, against John G. West and George Gilder, who both are associated with the Discovery Institute, which advocates intelligent design.

Mr. Derbyshire, who has described himself as the “designated point man” against creationists and intelligent-design proponents at National Review, later said that many conservatives were disturbed by positions taken by the religious right.

“There are plenty of people glad to call themselves conservatives,” he said, “who don’t see any reason not to support stem cell research.”

The reference to stem cells suggests just how wide the split is. “The current debate is not primarily about religious fundamentalism,” Mr. West, the author of “Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest” (2006), said at Thursday’s conference. “Nor is it simply an irrelevant rehashing of certain esoteric points of biology and philosophy. Darwinian reductionism has become culturally pervasive and inextricably intertwined with contemporary conflicts over traditional morality, personal responsibility, sex and family, and bioethics.”

The technocrats, he charged, wanted to grab control from “ordinary citizens and their elected representatives” so that they alone could make decisions over “controversial issues such as sex education, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and global warming.”

Advances in biotechnology — and pressure on elected Republicans to curb them — are partly responsible for the surge of interest in linking evolutionary and political theory, said those in the thick of the debate.

The fledgling field of evolutionary psychology also spurred some conservatives to invoke Darwinism in the 1990s. In “The Moral Sense” (1993), followed by “The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families” (2002), James Q. Wilson used evolution to explain the genesis of morality and to support traditional family and sex roles. Conservative thinkers from Francis Fukuyama to Richard Pipes have drawn on evolutionary psychology to support ideas like a natural human desire for private property and a biological basis for morality.

Debates over Darwinism became more pointed in 2005, however, as school districts considered teaching intelligent design, and President Bush stated that it should be taught along with evolution. The conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer wrote in Time magazine that to teach intelligent design “as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of a religious authority.” George F. Will wrote that Kansas school board officials who favored intelligent design were “the kind of conservatives who make conservatism repulsive to temperate people.”

Mr. Arnhart, in his 2005 book, “Darwinian Conservatism,” tackled the issue of conservatism’s compatibility with evolutionary theory head on, saying Darwinists and conservatives share a similar view of human beings: they are imperfect; they have organized in male-dominated hierarchies; they have a natural instinct for accumulation and power; and their moral thought has evolved over time.

The institutions that successfully evolved to deal with this natural order were conservative ones, founded in sentiment, tradition and judgment, like limited government and a system of balances to curb unchecked power, he explains. Unlike leftists, who assume “a utopian vision of human nature” liberated from the constraints of biology, Mr. Arnhart says, conservatives assume that evolved social traditions have more wisdom than rationally planned reforms.

While Darwinism does not resolve specific policy debates, Mr. Arnhart said in an interview on Thursday, it can provide overarching guidelines. Policies that are in tune with human nature, for example, like a male military or traditional social and sex roles, he said, are more likely to succeed. He added that “moral sympathy for the suffering of fellow human beings” allows for aid to the poor, weak and ill.

To many people, asking whether evolution is good for conservatism is like asking if gravity is good for liberalism; nature is morally neutral. Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard and Carson Holloway in his 2006 book, “The Right Darwin? Evolution, Religion and the Future of Democracy,” for example, have written that jumping from evolutionary science to moral conclusions and policy proposals is absurd.

Skeptics of Darwinism like William F. Buckley, Mr. West and Mr. Gilder also object. The notion that “the whole universe contains no intelligence,” Mr. Gilder said at Thursday’s conference, is perpetuated by “Darwinian storm troopers.”

“Both Nazism and communism were inspired by Darwinism,” he continued. “Why conservatives should toady to these storm troopers is beyond me.”

Of Mr. Arnhart, he said, “Larry has a beautiful Darwinism, a James Dobson Darwinism” — referring to the chairman of the Christian organization Focus on the Family — “a supply-side Darwinism.” But in capitalism, he added, “the winners don’t eat the losers.” Mr. West made a similar point, saying you could find justification in Darwin for both maternal instinct and for infanticide.

It is true that political interpretations of Darwinism have turned out to be quite pliable. Victorian-era social Darwinists like Herbert Spencer adopted evolutionary theory to justify colonialism and imperialism, opposition to labor unions and the withdrawal of aid to the sick and needy. Francis Galton based his “science” of eugenics on it. Arguing that cooperation was actually what enabled the species to survive, Pyotr Kropotkin used it to justify anarchism.

Karl Marx wrote that “Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.” Woodrow Wilson declared, “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.”

More recently the bioethicist and animal rights activist Peter Singer’s “Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation” (1999) urged people to reject the notion that there is a “fundamental difference in kind between human beings and nonhuman animals.”

At the American Enterprise Institute’s conference, the tension between the proponents of intelligent design and of evolution was occasionally on display. When Mr. Derbyshire described himself as a “lapsed Anglican,” which he compared to “falling out of a first-floor window,” Mr. Gilder piped up, “Did you fall on your head?”

What both sides do agree on is that conservatives who have shied away from these debates should speak up. Mr. Arnhart said that having been so badly burned by social Darwinism, many conservatives today did not want “to get involved in these moral and political debates, and I think that’s evasive.”

Yet getting involved is more important than ever, after “the disaster” of “President Bush’s compassionate conservatism,” he said, because the only hope for Republicans is a “fusion of libertarianism and traditionalism, and Darwinian nature supports that conservative fusion.”

Mr. West agreed that “conservatives who are discomfited by the continuing debate over Darwin’s theory need to understand that it is not about to go away”; that it “fundamentally challenges the traditional Western understanding of human nature and the universe.”

“If conservatives want to address root causes rather than just symptoms,” he said, “they need to join the debate over Darwinism, not scorn it or ignore it.”

As for Mr. Derbyshire, he would not say whether he thought evolutionary theory was good or bad for conservatism; the only thing that mattered was whether it was true. And, he said, if that turns out to be “bad for conservatives, then so much the worse for conservatism.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Dozens of Heads Were Bowed

By Dana Milbank
Friday, May 4, 2007; A02

Let us pray.

Let us pray that, on next year's National Day of Prayer, there is better attendance at the "Bible Reading Marathon" on the West Front of the Capitol.

Organizers put out 600 folding chairs on the lawn -- the spot where presidents are inaugurated -- and set up a huge stage with powerful amplifiers. But at 9:30 a.m. yesterday, not one of the 600 seats was occupied. By 11 a.m., as a woman read a passage from Revelations, attendance had grown -- to four people. Finally, at 1 p.m., 37 of the 600 seats were occupied, though many of those people were tourists eating lunch.

Where was everybody?

"This isn't that kind of event," explained Jeff Gannon, spokesman for the host, the International Bible Reading Association. Gannon, actually a pseudonym for James Guckert, had earned fame in 2005 representing a conservative Web site at White House briefings until it was revealed that he posted nude pictures of himself on the Web to offer his services as a $200-an-hour gay escort.

Let us pray for the power to understand how Gannon made his way from HotMilitaryStud.com to the International Bible Reading Association.

* * *

While we are at it, let us pray for the atheists, because -- Lord knows -- they need it. To protest the National Day of Prayer, American Atheists held a counterdemonstration across from the White House yesterday, called the National Day of Reason. Rick Wingrove, co-founder of a group called Beltway Atheists, stood on a coffee table in Lafayette Park and used a bullhorn to get his message out.

The atheists directed particular irreverence at President Bush. "This is the beginning of a theocratic dictatorship, or maybe a better name is a holy decidership," Wingrove announced. "You might as well be reading the charter documents for the freaking Taliban."

But those participating in the National Day of Prayer did not find the National Day of Reason to be much of a threat. Wingrove attracted a crowd of only five fellow atheists, and they reported no confrontations with believers. Just "lots of tourists and schoolkids," said one man handing out Beltway Atheists literature.

* * *

Let us pray, as well, for the beleaguered practitioners of Christian street theater, for they deserve greater press coverage.

The Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition scheduled a "National Day of Prayer observance" and news conference for 3 p.m. yesterday in front of the Supreme Court. Gannon, wearing a Marines baseball cap, arrived to help with the press outreach.

But the event attracted only one photographer (from the Washington Times), one reporter (author of the Washington Sketch) and not a single television camera. The participants themselves were late, and only eight showed up.

Mahoney acknowledged that his total attendance was only slightly larger than the atheists' six. "Yeah, but we had a bigger crowd at Cannon," Mahoney boasted.

This was true. In the storied Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building, 350 people came for the day's main National Day of Prayer event. But even this crowd, secure in their numbers, felt endangered.

"Today we seemingly live in a society totally dominated by secularism," James Smith, the Mississippi chief justice, told the believers, "which would without our vigilance, I submit, remove all vestiges of the Bible, religion and prayer from our government."

Smith chose an odd location to speak of encroaching secularism: He and fellow participants spent three hours praying in a government building with a military band and color guard, the House chaplain, a senior military commander, several congressmen and a member of the president's Cabinet; earlier in the day, many of the same people were at the White House to hear Bush tell them "our Eternal Father inclines his ear to the voice of his children."

* * *

Finally, let us save a prayer for the Democrats, who don't have a prayer of keeping up with Republicans on Prayer Day. Some of them attended Bush's event at the White House. Others released statements recognizing the day; House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer even found Democratic roots in the occasion, saying that "55 years ago, President Harry Truman signed a bill proclaiming a National Day of Prayer."

But the National Day of Prayer Task Force was run by Shirley Dobson, wife of James Dobson, one of the most influential conservative Christian leaders in the country. That explains the list of speakers at the main event in the Cannon Building yesterday, which included Bush Cabinet member and former Republican national chairman Jim Nicholson as well as Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), the House's leading opponent of gay marriage.

Barbara Byerly, a member of the National Prayer Committee, introduced some abortion politics in her prayer for the judiciary: "We thank you for the recent decision, oh God, to protect that unborn child."

The closing lines of Byerly's prayer drew a loud ovation in the caucus room. "The power of God consumeth," she said. "We pray that that name is above every, every name, that by mention of that name, everything is going to bow and every tongue is going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

Oliver Stone's New Ad

Exclusive: Imus Says CBS got what it bargained for.

Liberal Christian is always right. It is so lonely living on the far right side of the bell curve.

ABC News' Law & Justice Unit Has Obtained a Draft Copy of the Imus Lawsuit.
By ELLEN DAVIS & CHRIS FRANCESCANI
ABC News Law & Justice Unit

May 3, 2007 —

Radio host Don Imus is going to sue CBS for $120 million, according to a draft copy of the complaint obtained by ABC News' Law & Justice Unit.

The suit is expected to be filed next week.

A draft copy of Imus's lawsuit says that the network expected him to be controversial and irreverent under the terms of his contract. And he claims Imus's show was on a five second delay that allowed the network to censor him if they wanted.

The draft points out that Imus wasn't fired for two weeks after the remarks were made.

Meanwhile, four former FCC commissioners contacted by ABC News say they do not believe that the speech was actionable under current federal guidelines that prohibit profanity or indecency on public airwaves.

Imus was fired April 12, after he made insensitive remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

Martin Garbus -- a powerful First Amendment lawyer who represented controversial comedian Lenny Bruce -- said he would file a complaint against the network in the days ahead.

In a statement released by CBS in response to news stories about the impending lawsuit, CBS said that "We terminated Mr. Imus for cause. Based on the comments in question and relevant contract terms, we believe that the termination was appropriate and CBS would expect to prevail in any attempt by Mr. Imus to recover money for his actions."

The network is expected to rely on a clause in the radio talk show host's contract that says he can be terminated for 'just cause' if CBS determines that he used "distasteful or offensive words or phrases, the broadcast of which [CBS] believes would not be in the public interest or may jeopardize [the networks's] Federal license to operate..."

But Garbus, who has successfully defended hundreds of high profile First Amendment cases, said CBS still breached Imus' contract when the company fired him.

He cited a section of his client's employment contract today that says Imus' "services to be rendered & are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial and personal character & and & these components are desired by Company and are consistent with Company rules and policies."

While the lawsuit focuses on the contract, hovering above the dispute is the question of whether Imus's comments put the network in jeopardy with the FCC - which has been uncharacteristically aggressive in policing the airwaves in recently years.

One former FCC commissioner who spoke to ABC News suggested that CBS had gotten exactly what it had bargained for.

"The issue is one more of extremely poor judgement than it is an FCC issue," said ex-commissioner Harold Furtchgott-Roth. "That's what Imus' schtick has been for years."

Former FCC commissioner Kathleen Abernathy said Imus' comments were "definitely in bad taste and inappropriate language."

"But in order to prohibit such language, it has to rise to the level of being legally profane, and I do not think that it rises to that level because of our legal history of protecting free speech.''

Former commissioner James Quello concurred, telling ABC News that he thought "it was a mistake and that [Imus] had a First Amendment right to be wrong."

And former commissioner Gloria Tristani said she did "not believe that what [Imus] said would rise to the level of what [the FCC] has found profane of late. & But they are very fact-specific inquiries."

Was Imus Warned?

Imus' contract also stipulated that he must be given a warning in writing before being fired for stepping over the line.

It's unclear whether CBS had privately warned the radio talk show host about his language. Garbus says Imus wasn't warned. And it's also unclear whether the FCC would actually penalize CBS and/or its affiliates over Imus' comments remains unclear.

Current FCC chairman Kevin Martin told a congressional panel last month that "Imus' comments were obviously very, very offensive and were indeed more offensive than some of the indecency remarks that have been made that the commission has fined people for in the past. But I think it's important to understand that the commission doesn't fine any broadcaster for anything related to how offensive what they say is."

However, Martin also indicated that these kinds of issues could be raised in the context of a station's license renewal.

"When stations have their license coming up for renewal, the community that they serve has an opportunity to complain about the broadcasters and how they've used their license," he said.

The FCC and the F-Word

The FCC first put Hollywood on notice that indecent speech would not be tolerated in 2004.

On NBC's broadcast of the 2003 Golden Globes, U2 frontman Bono used the f-word to describe how "brilliant" it was to be honored with a statue that night.

Without penalizing NBC, then-FCC chairman Michael Powell sent a public message, saying, "The gratuitous use of such vulgar language on broadcast television will not be tolerated." Under the government's definition, profane language includes those words that are so highly offensive that their mere utterance in the context presented may, in legal terms, amount to a "nuisance."

The FCC says indecency is "patently offensive sexual or excretory references" that can only air in the "safe harbor" from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m, when it is expected that children would not be listening.

Congress gives the FCC the authority to punish anyone who "utters any obscene, indecent, or profane language by means of radio communication [and that person] shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

George Tenet, spook for all seasons

The former CIA chief seems strangely oblivious that his self-serving defense is shredding the remains of his reputation.

By Sidney Blumenthal

May. 03, 2007 | If former CIA director George Tenet's "At the Center of the Storm" were an intelligence operation, it would have to be assessed as achieving precisely the opposite of the results intended. Tenet hoped that his elaborate apology for his government service would cast him as honest, prudent and professional; his admission of his own mistakes would shine a light on his integrity; his disclosures of the machinations of Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservative cabal would show him as a truth teller; and his refusal to say nary a bad word about President Bush would demonstrate his respect for the presidency.

But Tenet's sketchy book, devastating in patches, is glaringly misleading about many decisive events in which he played an important role. By depicting himself as a spook for all seasons, moreover, he has simply exposed himself as a self-serving poseur. Tenet, after all, never served as an intelligence agent and was never posted overseas. For years he was the staff director of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, until then CIA director John Deutch chose him as deputy director, in great part on the strength of his congressional ties. When Deutch self-immolated for downloading classified files onto his personal computer, Tenet was promoted by President Clinton to the directorship and retained by President Bush, who seemed to appreciate his chameleon-like quality of adapting to any environment.

Despite this résumé as a consummate bureaucratic player, Tenet has shown himself to be politically impaired. He appears unable to perceive what he has done or what he is doing. He has only the dimmest sense of the moment into which he has inserted himself. Rather than being hailed for bravery, he finds himself in a hail of fire. He seems strangely oblivious that his supposed self-defense is shredding the remains of his reputation. His promotional performances on TV reveal an angry man careening out of emotional control, attempting to deflect difficult questions by demanding deference to his departed and tarnished authority. "Now you see what we've had to deal with," a former high CIA official told me. "And I like George."

Tenet's version of his notorious statement assuring the president that the intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction were a "slam-dunk" may clarify the historical record, but his account only reveals his poor judgment. In an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 21, 2002, Tenet did not use the phrase as Bob Woodward reported in his book "Plan of Attack" but, as he tells it, "Instead, I told the president that strengthening the public presentation was a 'slam dunk.'" If true, Tenet is confessing that as director of the CIA he engaged in freewheeling political strategy meetings on the propaganda campaign to the American public to sell them the Iraq war, skirting close to the edge of violating the CIA's charter against involvement in domestic affairs. Unaware of the egregious inappropriateness of his revelation, Tenet is consumed with rage against the source that "later described the scene to Bob Woodward," making him the scapegoat for bad intelligence. "It's the most despicable thing that ever happened to me," Tenet said on CBS's "60 Minutes." But he is blind that his alternative account is equally undermining.

In his TV appearances, Tenet proclaims his devotion to the professionalism of the men and women of the agency he once headed, but his book depicts him as feckless in defending them from the intimidation of Cheney and the neoconservatives. He acknowledges that Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, frequently turned up at the Langley, Va., headquarters to browbeat analysts into accepting their disinformation that there were direct links between Saddam and al-Qaida. Tenet describes how analysts, in response to the pressure, produced a study, "Iraq and al-Qa'ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship," which "made clear that there were no conclusive signs between Iraq and al-Qa'ida with regard to terrorist operations" but indicated there were signs "to at least require us to be very concerned." In fact, there were no such ties, and the "murky" conclusion was a middle ground between the utter absence of any solid evidence and the falsehoods that Cheney & Co. were pushing. Libby and then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz rejected the paper out of hand.

Trying to produce a more "comprehensive paper," the parallel intelligence operation at the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans, set up to counter the CIA's vetting process, was churning disinformation straight into the White House. Tenet attended a meeting for one of its slide show presentations on Aug. 15, 2002, "Iraq and al-Qa'ida -- Making the Case." "It is an open-and-shut case," said a member of the Pentagon team. "No further analysis is required."

Tenet never confronted Cheney or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. While Tenet was eager to offer his opinion to the president on political propaganda -- "slam-dunk" -- he never told him of the attack on the integrity of the intelligence process. Tenet never shielded his analysts from Libby. His passivity fed the momentum of the neocons. Then he lent his weight to the National Intelligence Estimate on WMD, presented to Congress only days before it voted in October 2002 on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq: "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade." Tenet admits now that the conclusions of the NIE were "not facts and should not have been so characterized." Nonetheless, he briefed members of Congress at the time that they were indeed facts. Even Democratic senators who voted against the authorization in their floor speeches gave credence to the supposedly indisputable fact that Saddam had WMD.

Tenet confesses that he believed the information from an Iraqi source called "Curve Ball." Only later, he claims, did he learn that Curve Ball was a complete fraud. But Tyler Drumheller, former chief of CIA operations in Europe, has emerged to brand Tenet's account as false. In fact, says Drumheller, he had communicated the reports from German intelligence that Curve Ball was a fabricator, and in November and December 2002 debated the issue inside the agency. (Drumheller's version appears in his recent book, "On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence.") But Tenet brushed off those serious concerns and approved disinformation based on Curve Ball that served as the heart of Secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the United Nations Security Council. Tenet now writes, "It was a great presentation, but unfortunately the substance didn't hold up." One principal reason it did not is that Tenet had carefully failed to perform his due diligence, all the while assuring Powell that he had.

Tenet's account of the July 20, 2002, meeting of CIA officials and British intelligence officers in Washington is also misleading, according to a former high CIA official with firsthand knowledge, who described it to me as "total bullshit." That meeting was important as the basis of the subsequent briefing of Prime Minister Tony Blair that took place at Downing Street three days later, summarized in the famous so-called Downing Street memo. In the memo, Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of MI6, is quoted: "Military action was now seen as inevitable ... Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD." Even more ominously, Dearlove warned that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Tenet writes that Dearlove told him he was misquoted and that Tenet "corrected it to reflect the truth of the matter." "Tenet doesn't say what the truth of the matter is," the former CIA officer told me. "Dearlove just didn't want to be blamed." Dearlove, the former CIA official emphatically insists, claiming direct knowledge, was accurately relating what Tenet had personally told him.

The former CIA official explains that the Washington meeting was an annual U.S.-U.K. event, usually held in Bermuda. But in 2002, as the drums of war were beating, Tenet wanted to blow off the British. British intelligence officials threatened that if they were not briefed with the latest material, they would have Blair call Bush and force the meeting to happen. Still, Cofer Black, the State Department chief of counterterrorism, tried to block it. The overwhelming factor working in the Brits' favor was the figure of Blair. "They could deliver Tony Blair, and he was important as the one major international figure who supported Bush and was popular with the American public," the former official told me. So the meeting was held at Langley. After a daylong briefing in the director's conference room and private dining room, Tenet took Dearlove into his office. According to the CIA source, "That's where Dearlove asked where the intelligence was going, was it heading to war, did it matter what the intelligence was. Tenet said, that's the way things are heading, they are looking for intelligence to fit into this." Dearlove's "fix" was simply the British version of "fit." He was not misquoted; he was spot on.

In his interview with "60 Minutes," Tenet echoed Bush's refrain, "We do not torture." Tenet used the word like the Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland." It means whatever he says it means. Torture becomes "not torture" by saying so.

Tenet has written his book as an act of self-exculpation to distance himself from Cheney & Co. But the controversies he has revisited entangle him even deeper in the making of the false case for war. His book underlines his failure to protect his agency. And in his hollow defense of torture he has lashed himself to Bush and Cheney.

-- By Sidney Blumenthal