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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz "Let the dollars soar"Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft cashes in as Homeland Security lobbyistOf the many cronies, chums and political appointees that have come and gone through the Bush Administration's revolving door, former U.S. Attorney General One of the Christian Right's most stalwart allies within the Bush Administration, Ashcroft hasn't written a best-selling book. He hasn't, as far as I can tell, sung his self-penned paean to America, "Let the Eagle Soar" -- a performance of which is captured in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. (According to Wikipedia, Ashcroft has written and sung a number of other songs and created compilation tapes, including In the Spirit of Life and Liberty and Gospel (Music) According to John.) And Ashcroft apparently isn't going around the country throwing protective curtains over nude statues. (In January 2002, in a bit of unintended DOJ comic relief, the partially nude female statue of the "Spirit of Justice," which stands in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, where Ashcroft held press conferences, was covered with blue curtains, along with its male counterpart, the "Majesty of Law.") Instead, the former Attorney General has started up a lobbying firm, and in a few months has managed to rake in a fair amount of money representing an assortment of corporate clients, several of whom stand to reap great profits from the president's war on terrorism. Five years ago, Ashcroft's nomination as Attorney General was sent to the floor of the Senate by a narrow 10-to-eight vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee (all but one Democrat voted against him). The former Senator and Governor from Missouri was then confirmed by the Senate by a 58-42 vote. (A precious Ashcroft sidebar from Wikipedia: "In his bid for reelection to the Senate, Ashcroft faced a challenge from then-Governor Mel Carnahan ... [who] died in an airplane crash two weeks prior to the election, but [whose] ... name remained on the ballot due to Missouri state election laws. Lieutenant Governor Roger Wilson became Governor upon Carnahan's death. Wilson announced that should Carnahan be elected he would appoint his widow, Jean Carnahan, to serve in her husband's place; Mrs. Carnahan agreed to this arrangement.") In looking at Ashcroft's controversial tenure in office, several things stand out. As the major pitchman for the Patriot Act and Operation Tips, he was no friend of civil liberties. The Patriot Act (now being reconsidered as the Patriot Act II) allowed police and intelligence agencies greater latitude to conduct secret surveillance and gather information on people even if they were not alleged to be terrorists. Ashcroft's short-lived Operation Tips was a program designed to get workers and government employees to inform the government of any suspicious activities they encountered while performing their duties. (For more on Operation Tips, see "AmeriSnitch," which first appeared in the May 2002 issue of the Progressive magazine.) As the "Great Distracter," Ashcroft seemed to frequently deflect the public's attention away from the scads of bad news emanating from the administration by his "timely" appearances at the Justice Department podium announcing the apprehension of yet another suspected terrorist. Ashcroft's Justice Department was also responsible for the "torture memos" which, Lance Morrow wrote in a recent review of two new collections of essays on torture in the New York Times Book Review, gave "legal cover for getting rough, for 'taking the gloves off' in America's war on terror." And, recently, by a 6-3 decision, the United States Supreme Court "rejected the Bush administration's challenge to the nation's only right-to-die law [1994's Death With Dignity Act] ... and ruled that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft overstepped his authority when he sought to punish the Oregon doctors who helped terminally ill people end their lives," the Los Angeles Times reported. After Ashcroft took office in 2001, he reversed Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno's decision allowing doctors to give medication to end a person's life, declaring that it did not serve a "legitimate medical purpose." Ashcroft, "citing a federal law against drug trafficking ... said Oregon's doctors who persisted in the face of his edict would lose their right to prescribe medication," the Los Angeles Times pointed out. But, that was then. In early January, the former AG reappeared in the news in matters related to his new lobbying company. According to the Chicago Tribune, "Less than three months after registering as a lobbyist ... Ashcroft has banked at least $269,000 from just four clients and appears to be developing a practice centered on firms that want to capitalize on a government demand for homeland security technology that boomed under sometimes controversial policies he promoted while in office." Ashcroft's firm, The Ashcroft Group LLC, received over $200,000 from the San Francisco, Ca.-based Oracle Corp., which the Chicago Tribune reported, "won justice department approval of a multibillion acquisition less than a month after hiring Ashcroft in October." Oracle, one of the world's largest software companies, "makes large databases, including some used by intelligence services, and plans to use Ashcroft as a consultant for business opportunities on homeland security issues, a company spokesman said." The Ashcroft Group is also working with ChoicePoint, which the Tribune describes as "a data broker that sells credit reports and other personal information to the FBI and other federal agencies." Another client, LTU Technologies Inc., is a Washington and Paris-based "maker of software for analyzing large batches of video and other visual images." According to The Hill's Jonathan E. Kaplan, in late-December, Ashcroft's company was hired by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), a major Israeli aerospace company, to "to help secure the U.S. government's approval to sell a weapons system to the South Korean Air Force." "The South Koreans are choosing between an early-warning radar system built by ... IAI and a similar, more expensive system built by Chicago-based Boeing Co. The radar systems enhance an air force's ability to track enemy fighter jets during combat," The Hill reported. Any country wanting to resell American military technology, must receive approval from the Department of State's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, an agency, Kaplan pointed out, "can also consult with the Pentagon on whether to issue an export license." "While Ashcroft's lobbying is within government rules for former officials," the Chicago Tribune noted, it is nonetheless a departure from the practice of attorneys general for at least the last 30 years." Other former AGs have "counseled corporate clients or perhaps even lobbied in a specific case as part of law firm business, [but] Ashcroft is the first in recent memory to open a lobbying firm." "One would have thought that a former attorney general wouldn't be doing that," John Schmidt, a former associate attorney general in the Clinton administration, who is now a lawyer at Mayer Brown, told the Chicago Tribune. "To take the kind of prestige and stature of the attorney general" and lobby "seems a little demeaning of the office, honestly," he said. Attorneys General have tended to avoid the role of "a hired gun selling his connections," said Charles Tiefer, a former deputy general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives and author "Veering Right, How the Bush Administration Subverts the Law for Conservative Causes." "The attorney general is very much supposed to embody the pure rule of law like the" Department of Justice's "statue of 'Blind Justice' and he's not expected afterwards to cloak with the mantle of his former office a bunch of greedy interests," said Tiefer, who teaches law at the University of Baltimore. Edwin Meese, who served President Ronald Reagan as the nation's 75th Attorney General, is currently part of the Senior Management team at the Heritage Foundation -- one of the nation's premier right wing think tanks -- where he directs its Center for Legal and Juridical Studies. President Richard Nixon's former Attorney General John Mitchell wound up in a stickier situation. He was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice as part of the Watergate scandal, and served 19 months of a two-and-a-half-to-eight year prison sentence. "I'm sure that anything John Ashcroft would do would be guided by the highest ethical standards, because that's the kind of person he is," Meese told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Without knowing the nature of his clients, this is not different really from former Attorneys General going into law firms, where they do the kind of counseling and advising that he's undoubtedly doing here... In this period tainted by the Abramoff Affair, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., had a contrary view of Ashcroft's endeavors: "It is surprising that he moved this quickly into lobbying. I can't think of another Attorney General who has done this. I think it does raise concerns about elected officials. If there is a perception we're not in this for public service but for profit, I think it really could raise questions about our credibility." According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in addition to the lobbying, Ashcroft teaches law at the Rev. Pat Robertson's Regent University, "engages in Republican Party activities - including speaking out last week on behalf of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and gives speeches - from Europe to Las Vegas - at $75,000 apiece." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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