Talk Nation Radio for July 21, 2010
Leaks, Pressure, and Storm Risks in the Gulf of Mexico, interview with Dr. Samantha Joye and q/a with National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen
UPDATE: There was an evacuation of all ships from region of blown BP oil rig in Gulf of Mexico as a possible cat 3 hurricane approached. The storm has been downgraded as it now moves into the Gulf.
AND: Second Federal Analysis Gives Further Clues about Location and Movement of Subsurface Oil
News updates for 7/22/10 on BP spill:
Drilling safety hearings here, see, David Hammer, The Times-Picayune, David Hammer, Oil Regulator to hold meetings in New Orleans, re Drilling Safety here and Tropical Depression 3 forms off Bahamas here
With a storm approaching, we hear from Admiral Thad Allen, and scientist Samantha Joye describes the dangers she is familiar with as we discuss the Deep Water Horizon spill and complications involving Methane and other gases.
Produced in Connecticut by Dori Smith and syndicated nationally with Pacifica Network TRT: 29:00
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org
With bad weather, a tropical depression storm approaching the Gulf of Mexico, the government and BP Joint Task Force called a press conference and Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander, took our questions. We asked him first what percentage of oil versus methane and other gas may be leaking from the well head, the cap or other leaks identified after the most recent test capping of the blown well. We also asked Thad Allen to describe all of the leaks identified since the capping test, and to talk about any new ones they have discovered. Scientists have been closely watching to determine if the cap is displacing pressure and causing leaks underground. If they can’t observe the cap because of bad weather for up to four days, Allen said. They could decide to reopen the cap to avoid missing signs the well is buckling”
Unified Command for Deep Water BP Oil Spill, Transcript Press Brief with National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen July 21, 2010. Full Press Conference:
Dori Smith: (initial portion of question not avail)…”to what the percentage of oil versus methane is in any of the leaks that have been identified, either on the cap area of the well or in any plumes nearby within the radius that you’ve been looking at, concerned, of course, about the pressure?”
Thad Allen: “We believe, especially around the current blowout preventer the capping stack that it is a mixture of the hydrocarbon column itself, which would be some mixture of oil, some natural gas, and some water. The existence of hydrates on the blowout preventer and the capping stack is indeed that there is gas there because the gas combined with the cold water and pressure is what produces hydrates. So there is some amount of methane gas in that.
The exact percentages, we have taken samples and they’re being analyzed ashore. Some samples done on scene based on the samples that were taken in around the wellhead indicated there was about 16 percent methane, but that needs to be validated by a shore test”.
Dori Smith: “And can you finally, on follow up, tell us is – has BP or has anyone identified new plumes or new leaks beyond what were already being studied in the vicinity?”
Thad Allen: “What we have asked BP to do is actually number these events so we can follow them. And I can take you through the general grouping of them. On the 17th of July, that was the event that we noted that was three kilometers southwest of the wellhead that we now have attributed to be in place before this started, probably attributable to another well.
Then we had a series of anomalies that were detected on the 18th of July. And these are just differences in density and return on both the seismic and the acoustic sensors. They were investigated with ROVs. They thought there might be some plumes. There were some gas bubbles brewing and they were followed up with ROVs. There were no other indications observed, and we closed out on those.
Following that, on the 19th is when we started to observe the bubbles around the current wellhead in the blowout preventer. Those have already been reported. And these are emanated from the wellhead itself through gaskets and seals that happen to be leaking.
And finally, we found another leak just yesterday in the BOP in the annular preventer. That’s the upper part of the BOP or the lower marine riser package. And that’s attributed to a leak in a gasket as well.
I think what you’re generally starting to see is from the blowout preventer—it’s been down there a long time under a lot of stress. And just like any other piece of equipment, we’re starting to see some small leaks around it. But that’s been it so far”. ) From Joint Task force transcript..7/21/2010
Our interview with Dr. Samantha Joye was recorded July 9, 2010
It is roughly three months since the start of the worst oil disaster in US history and according to our guest, Dr. Samantha Joye, of the University of Georgia Marine Science Department, it is more accurate to call this a “hydrocarbon spill”. Dr. Joye explains why the high concentrations of methane gas leaking from the well head and from seeps near it have presented the core of the problem all along.
Dr. Samantha Joye and a team conducting research with funding from NOAH, have been providing regular updates on Gulf of Mexico water values. We asked Dr. Joye to discuss the rather unique problems at the drill site of the Deep Water Horizon rig explosion. She explained that the seabed where BP drilled is sand and gravel, not salt which would be the preferred platform material for an ocean drill site of this kind.
Dr. Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia became prominent in the headlines after establishing new problems in the Gulf of Mexico due to large plumes of oil and methane that posed a risk to oxygen levels in the water column. BP downplayed the results, but Joye has persisted in her research, and she points out that the type of scientific testing she has been doing takes time and multiple tests. She documents her research at Gulf Oil Blog and a documentary produced by the University of Georgia is airing this week through the Georgia Public Broadcasting network.
We established during previous shows that the rig would have produced a very large amount of oil had it been operational. The amount that BP saw as a ‘worst case scenario’ blow out leak amount would be 100,000 barrels per day. This is far more than average given that all 33 proposed wells to be drilled in the Gulf of Mexico would produce 80,000 to 100,000 barrels per day combined over a six-month period.
BP actually drilled into a vast Methane gas field at the Deep Water Horizon site, which could pose further risk. Pressure from the capped well could put too much pressure on weak points, a known fissure identified along the pipeline, and other locations at or near the BP rig. Dr. Joye explains in scientific terms what the dangers are, and shares the work of her team at the University of Georgia which has been studying life in the Gulf of Mexico and oxygen levels in the water column near the spill. They have been going to the region with test equipment to identify problems caused by plumes of oil and gas located at various sites near the Deep Water Horizon rig disaster.
She has also said the use of chemical dispersant presents another environmental problem, as they can be more toxic than the oil itself to some species.
British Petroluem capped the well experimentally prior to completion of the relief wells which are apparently nearly complete and may be ready this week end depending on rain storms bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico. BP plans a static kill, flooding the well head with mud and cement for this weekend, however, incident commander Thad Allen explained that weather conditions could prompt an evacuation of all ships from the region, which would mean loss of the visual from the leaking well head.
Dr. Samantha Joye, film uploaded to YouTube by the University of Georgia. The film was shown on Georgia Public Broadcasting Network on 7/21/10. Dr. Joye’s work takes her to the ocean’s depths in the Gulf of Mexico, and initially, she explained, they predicted what would occur and then began scientific testing in the Gulf to establish the facts. She is shown in the film using testing equipment to locate oil and gas plumes in the Gulf of Mexico near the Deep Water Horizon rig.
Mark Perry on the leaked Pentagon Red Team Report on Hamas and Hezbollah, we asked him to examine Israel’s reasons for refusing Turkey’s offer to negotiate a way out of the crisis posed by the Gaza flotilla killings.
Mark Perry is a military and political analyst and author of eight books, including Partners In Command, George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, and Talking with Terrorists.
Journalist Mark Perry joins us to talk about a sensational five page Pentagon report from a so-called, “Red Team.” The report written by senior intelligence officers at the US Central Command, CENTCOM. It suggests that marginalizing Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have worked against US interests in the Middle East. The report drafted May 7th describes a US Military view that runs contrary to Israeli policies of isolating Hamas in Gaza, and the officers suggested integration of Hamas and Hezbollah into their respective political mainstreams.
The Red Team report could mean that Israeli Government and Military officials will have a more difficult time arguing that humanitarian aid workers on board the Mavi Marmara were terrorists. Nine were shot and killed and fifty shot and wounded by Israeli commandos on May 31st.
An Israeli military investigation found mistakes made, but said the US of live rounds were justified. Israeli leaders first called the incident self defense, later claiming that the passengers were terrorists after a video showed them targeting and firing from above prior to landing on the Turkish aid vessel. The ship was one of eight vessels trying to bring aid into Gaza to break a blockade that left hundreds of thousands without a way to rebuild homes and government buildings after Israeli air strikes of 2009.
Israel’s portrayal of the aid workers on the Mavi Marmara as terrorists appears to be based on the links some passengers had to the Hamas government in Gaza. If the Military does not classify them as terrorists, that could remove Israel’s argument for militant policy including the blockade and occupation of Palestine.
Ret. U.S. Col. Ann Wright, who was a passenger on one of the other ships, told an audience in Hartford June 30th that a passenger on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara appears to have been shot before the Israeli commandos landed on the aid ship.
Portions of our interview with Mark Perry were also used in Sprouts, a Pacifica weekly, you can download it at audioport.org. You can also find audio of the talk given by Ret. Col. Ann Wright about the Mavi Marmara killings and the Gaza Freedom Movement at WHUS Radio, FM 91.7, online at WHUS.org.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon said the Turkish flotilla activists, “Had ties to agents of international terror, international Islam, Hamas, al Qaeda, and others”. Mark Perry’s source said: “Putting Hizballah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda in the same sentence, as if they are all the same, is just stupid”. – “I don’t know any intelligence officer at CENTCOM who buys that.”
We will be providing more of this interview with Mark Perry asap.
Music by: Roger Waters, We Shall Overcome, inspired by the Gaza Freedom Movement, we found it at GazaFreedomMarch.org.
This week’s stories:
This week on Sprouts we hear portions of a talk given by Ret. Col. Ann Wright at Real Art Ways, in Hartford, Connecticut. June 30, 2010. WHUS Radio sponsored the event.
Ret. Col. Wright recounted her experiences while on board one of eight vessels that made up the Gaza Freedom Flotilla boarded by Israeli commandos May 31, 2010. Nine people were killed, fifty shot, according to Wright. She talked about Israeli weapons fire that came before the commandos landed on the Mavi Marmara, stun grenades, and went over other evidence that is likely to be discussed under conditions of independent investigations.
Journalist Mark Perry talks about his story in Foreign Policy Magazine on ‘The Red Team Report’, on the Middle East. The report was critical of U.S. and Israeli policy that marginalizes Hamas and Hezbollah, and suggests they be mainstreamed. According to Mark Perry, a senior officer he spoke with was not impressed by comments like that of Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon who charged that the Turkish flotilla activists, “had ties to agents of international terror, international Islam, Hamas, al Qaeda, and others”.
Mark Perry’s Pentagon source said: “Putting Hizballah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda in the same sentence, as if they are all the same, is just stupid”. – “I don’t know any intelligence officer at CENTCOM who buys that.”
Sprouts is a weekly program that features local radio production and stories from many radio stations and local media groups around the world. It is produced in collaboration with community radio stations and independent producers across the country. The program is coordinated and distributed by Pacifica Radio and offered free of charge to all radio stations.
For information, or if you would like to feature your work on Sprouts, contact Ursula Ruedenberg at ursula@pacifica.org.
Talk Nation Radio
Josh Ruebner on the Decline in Israel’s International Standing
Suddenly Israel seems unable to control the debate. Josh Ruebner calls the recent behavior of Israeli leaders, “erratic”. Is there a policy shift on the horizon?
TRT: 29:29
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org
Josh Ruebner, the National Advocacy Director for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation joins us to look at US and Israel policy toward Palestine, a slight opening now in Washington DC after Israel decides to stand down from some of its restrictions of goods and building supplies into Gaza.
US Military Aid to Israel: “It’s not just a distant conflict it’s one that we’re intimately involved with because we provide Israel with every conceivable weapon available that it uses to engage in it’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories and the kinds of horrific human rights abuses that were witnessed for example with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. If you go to one of our web sites which is Aid to Israel.org you’ll see that our support for Israel in the form of Military aid comes at a price that we really cannot afford–30 billion dollars in weapons between 2009 and 2018 and if you go onto our web site you can look at your own town, congressional district or state and see how much that geographical unit is providing in tax dollars to Israel and what that money could fund instead in terms of unmet domestic needs that we need to take care of here at home such as affordable housing, green jobs retraining, health care, etc, so we could think of a lot better ways to put our tax dollars to than Israeli occupation and apartheid.”
Josh Ruebner’s group represents a national coalition of more than 250 organizations working together to change U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine in recognition of the need for equality, an improvement in human rights and respect for international law.
It’s been an interesting week in Washington thus far as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in meetings with President Obama, the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglo has demanded an apology from Israel for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla killings. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said flat out, “no”. Then, a surprising story by Mark Perry about behind the scenes discussions at CENTCOM about a possible opening to reevaluate the wisdom of isolating Hamas and Hezbollah. Perry’s source at CENTCOM scoffing at Israel’s portrayal of the Palestinian Security Forces as linked to al Qaeda.
Mark Perry reported June 30th that CENTCOM, the US Central Command, has been discussing the previously taboo subject of engaging diplomatically with militant groups like Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. A “Red Team Report” according to Perry, was issued May 7th, just weeks before Israeli commando forces boarded the Mavi Marmara and other ships in the Flotilla trying to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The event in international waters has turned diplomacy on its head between Israel and Turkey. Stay tuned for our upcoming interview with Mark Perry.
CLIPS: Mark Regev, Israel’s spokesperson, from BBC. Hartford WHUS EVENT: Former US Military Col. Ann Wright spoke to an audience in Hartford, Connecticut about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla she was on that was attacked by Israeli Commandos. You can listen to the entire program online at WHUS.org. Wright explained that there were many reporters on board the various flotilla ships, and on the Mavi Marmara, an Al Jazeera reporter reported seeing someone slump over on the top deck as if shot from the Israeli helicopter above prior to the landing on deck of Israeli commandos. She said fifty people were wounded by gunfire, another nine were killed, eight Turkish citizens and one American.
Talk Nation radio for July 1, 2010
Marine Biologist, Dr. Craig McClain, A Tipping Point in Gulf of Mexico
We continue to look at the science and what hundreds of thousands, probably millions of barrels of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico is doing to the ecosystem.
Dr. Craig R. McClain at McClain Laboratories, is Assistant Director of Science at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, in Durham North Carolina. He has been researching the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and other locations for 11 years, studying the fascinating and often newly discovered life he finds there.
He blogs at Deep Sea News with fellow marine biologists Dr. Kevin Zelnio and Miriam Goldstein (PFD Goldstein soon to be Ph.D. Goldstein). McClain was raised in the Gulf Coast region and now works with his various scientific teams to study it. On their blog, McClain, Zelnio and Goldstein are working to help people understand the science of the BP disaster.
We’ll also hear from BP’s spokesperson Mark Proegler who took our questions on the amounts of oil we’re looking at, and the dangers we face from the Gulf Coast of Mexico region, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and all along the Eastern seaboard if the oil gets into the Loop Current. Proegler said it was not in the loop current, yet The Examiner says it has already entered the it, as did this, this, and concern expressed on this news site.
RESPONSE: We are contacting scientists to collect responses to what BP told us. Stay tuned for upcoming interviews with: Dr. Ed Overton, LSU, taped 7/2/10, air date as soon as edit permits, Dr. Samantha Joye, University of Georgia, scheduled for next week. Contact us at talknationradio@gmal.com.
After saying BP had allocated a large amount of funding for scientific research, BP’s spokesperson would not commit to the way it will be allocated, and whether or not scientists invited into the recovery effort will have to be associated with the government/private sector effort, or Joint Task Force. He said the company has not said they will refuse claims from states further up the East Coast in the event that the oil is carried there in the Loop Current.
Photo by Times-Picayune, A. Boyd The arrival of hurricane Alex shut down relief operations near the Deepwater Horizon rig and throughout the region, as oil is now hitting precious marshes and fisheries in Louisiana hard, and making its way into Lake Pontchartrain Basin at the Chandeleur Islands and the Mississippi River Delta.
Oil has already had devastating impacts in the western portions of the Louisiana coastline and has contaminated Florida’s white sand beaches. amid the chaos about what is really happening to the wildlife in the region, and what it means to us, we asked Dr. McClain what concerns him most about BP’s oil spill, and he explained that it is the as yet unknown short and long term consequences of the disaster.
Oceanographers are increasingly concerned about high concentrations of methane in plumes of oil rising from the area near the blown drilling rig in the Gulf, the mixture of oil rising from a plume of oil a short distance from the rig is 40 percent methane and 60 percent oil, according to Oceanographer John Kessler of Texas A&M, Dr. Samantha Joye holds weekly press conferences and uses her blog, gulfoilblog.org to share data as it is recorded.
We have calls in to several other scientists and will provide their reactions to what BP has told us in upcoming broadcasts. Also, well known journalist Dahr Jamail is now reporting from the Gulf of Mexico, dahr.org for his stories, the latest from Louisiana is titled, living on a dying delta. (Click here for Dahr.org)
hccreekkeeper | June 26, 2010 This was the most emotionally disturbing video I have ever done!
A flight over the BP Slick Source where I saw at least 100 Dolphins in the oil, some dying. I also photographed a Sperm Whale covered in oil all around it’s blow hole.
Please spread this around the world. Send me any links to places it gets posted so I can follow. I want to piss off the world. Who will answer for these gentle creatures?
Blogs with scientific information about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico: Gulf Oil Blog, Dr. Samantha Joye, University of Georgia,
Talk Nation Radio, for the week of June 16, 2010
Robert Jensen, Media in Age of Calamity, BP Spill update
We look at media coverage of the BP oil spill, of the drilling regulation “debate” and U.S. policy in the Middle east.
Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT
TRT: 29:12
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org
US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to break records for cost in dollars and lives and time served by US and other forces. In the meantime, the American people seem to be more at risk than ever of losing all hope of home ownership, or even financial security.
We look at media coverage of these leading cataclysmic stories, How can we improve the media and be more actively engaged in helping?
Journalist Robert Jensen is at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a Ph.D. in media ethics and law from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. He worked as a journalist for a decade prior to joining academia, and presently teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics.
Next week, we’ll hear more on the BP spill from scientist Craig McClain, Assistant Director of Science for the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. He focuses on the ecological and evolutionary drivers of marine invertebrate biodiversity:
Craig McClain: “Because of a variety of things, ocean warming, ocean acidification, the sort of things that have been gong on for a while now, the depletion of the reef and the fish throughout the Gulf of Mexico, the degradation of the marshes and wetlands along the Gulf Coast especially around Louisiana; those things were already occurring before the oil spill. And now we’ve asked all of those other systems to take another impact which is the oil spill and so the question is, now have we pushed all of these systems past their tipping points? Have we created irreversible damage?”
Talk Nation Radio for June 17, 2010 Talk Nation Radio for June 17, 2010
Amjad Shawa, Palestine, Cecelia Goin, Jerusalem, and Francis A. Boyle, on Gaza, Was a deal struck to lighten the blockade of Gaza in exchange for cooperation with investigation of flotilla killings?
Israel announced it will add more items to the list of goods allowed into Gaza. We contacted Palestinian aid coordinator Amjad Shawa of PNGO, as the story was developing, ICRC, spokesperson Cecelia Goin for comment on their strongest call yet for Israel to lift its blockade, (see below) and Law Professor Francis A. Boyle for analysis of the blockade negotiations and Israel’s investigation of the Gaza flotilla deaths.
‘Four of our 14 specialized ventilators for newborn babies are out of order. It is currently impossible to get spare parts into Gaza so that we can have the ventilators fixed. This is a real problem if we have many newborns in the intensive care unit at the same time’. Majdia Jouda, head of the neo-natal department at Shifa Hospital
INTRO: The entire process of easing the blockade went on over roughly two weeks. Israel first announced it would allow more food items like catchup and mayonnaise into Gaza, insulting Palestinians who said they wanted the blockade lifted, not eased for condiments. UN spokesperson Chris Gunness echoed their call. Then, in surprise global coordination, their voices were joined by top government officials in Turkey, the US, the EU, and at the Arab League: Ireland‘s most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal Sean Brady, said both the economic and military blockade of Gaza should be lifted. And former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on June 16th that he was confident that Israel had agreed to a partial lifting of the blockade, that there would now be a list of non allowed goods, rather than the short list of 80 types of items to be allowed into Gaza by Israel.
ANALYSIS: Also, International Law expert Francis A. Boyle responds to Israel’s appointment of new members to their panel looking into deaths on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. He says the new members do not afford independence, and says he expects a whitewash. He expects neither Turkish or Palestinian officials to accept Israel’s investigation.Professor Francis A. Boyle has written definitive texts on international legal rights under conditions of war and occupation. He is skeptical about Israel’s ability to investigate itself about the Gaza flotilla killings.
Last week Israel announced it would be adding two non Israelis to the investigating panel, Brigadier Gen. Ken Watkin, former attorney to Canada’s military, and Lord David Trimble, former Ulster Unionist party head in Northern Ireland. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. Fellow Nobel peace prize winner Mairead Corrigan Mcguire, a 1976 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, questioned Trimble’s ability to be impartial.
(NYT, The Lede) Two weeks ago Lord Trimble attended an event set up by the Israeli government to combat what they called, a quote: “unprecedented delegitimization campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities.”
The new Friends of Israel Initiative includes former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, and Bush’s staunch supporter in Spain, former Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar. Also, Netanayahu ally, and former Israeli ambassador Dore Gold addressed the event.
Spokespersons for Israel at their embassy in Washington declined to comment on air about any changes to the blockade of Gaza. They did not return our press call. Finally, during our second call to them we were able to confirm only that there was a cabinet meeting scheduled for June 17th to discuss Tony Blair’s recommendations. Their spokesperson said he preferred to be unnamed.
It was a rare crack in Israel’s usual tight control over news and information. But what was really going on, and would the easing of the blockade be meaningful? As the story was unfolding we asked Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois school of Law to comment. Professor Boyle has been advising members of the flotilla on international legal rights and has represented the Palestinians in the past.
See latest, Al Jazeera report on this matter here. “The new Israeli decision would allow the entry of some 120 types of goods and products that Israel embargoed after claiming that such goods could be used for military purposes.—Furthermore, Israel is expected to grant the UNRWA a green line to implement some projects and reconstruct schools and public building that were bombarded by the Israeli army during the war”.
BBC News on Details of Gaza blockade revealed in court case Aid group brings lawsuit over Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Why some things not other, why no “fruit juice”? — Gisha’s director, Sari Bashi, says she is no security expert, “but preventing children from receiving toys, preventing manufacturers from getting raw materials – I don’t see how that’s responsive to Israeli security needs.” The Israelis maintain that: “The limitation on the transfer of goods is a central pillar in the means at the disposal of the State of Israel in the armed conflict between it and Hamas.”
See BBC clip Growing international concern over conditions in Gaza. Israel violating International law with blockade of Gaza, “unsustainable” and “unlawful”.
ICRC gravely concerned about humanitarian situation in Gaza, June 13, 2010
ICRC gravely concerned about humanitarian situation in Gaza
Geneva (ICRC) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is alarmed about the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.
The continuing escalation of violence, with military operations taking place in highly populated areas, has serious consequences for the civilian population.
Over the past two weeks, Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip have led to the deaths of dozens of people and the wounding of many more, among them a large number of civilians. In one single incident on 12 July, nine family members – including children – were killed in their home by an air strike in Gaza City. In some cases, people living near operations have been unable to leave their homes for several days.
The ICRC has urged and continues to urge Israel to respect the rules of international humanitarian law. In particular, in the conduct of hostilities, Israel must take all precautions to spare civilian life and property. It must also ensure that the wounded have access to medical facilities.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is continuing to deteriorate. The strike on Gaza’s only power plant on 28 June reduced the power supply in the Strip by half, with direct and indirect effects on the population. Hospitals and a large part of the water and wastewater systems now depend on generators that consume considerable amounts of fuel, which is also in short supply owing to recurrent closures of the Strip. Furthermore, the strict controls imposed on the passage of basic items into the Strip have exacerbated the difficulties faced by residents, who were already living in precarious conditions. Under international humanitarian law, Israel is responsible for meeting the basic needs of the population, which include food, medical supplies and means of shelter.
As a further consequence of the ongoing situation in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinians have been stranded on the Egyptian side of the Rafah terminal, two of whom have reportedly died. The material and psychological conditions in which these people live are deteriorating day by day and no solution to their plight has been found by the parties concerned. The ICRC has already offered its services to facilitate their passage into the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, together with the Egyptian Red Crescent, it is providing the affected people with assistance.
The ICRC is seriously concerned about the consequences of the repeated launching of rockets from the Gaza Strip against the civilian population in Israel. These attacks, which have wounded several people, are indiscriminate and thus prohibited by international humanitarian law.
Finally, the ICRC urges those detaining IDF corporal Gilad Shalit to treat him humanely and allow him to contact his family. It has informed all the parties that it stands ready to provide its services.
Talk Nation Radio, for the week of June 16, 2010 A Discussion with Journalist Robert Jensen, Media in an Age of Cataclysm http://talknationradio.com/?p=1384
We look at media coverage of the leading cataclysmic stories, the BP spill, war in the Middle East and recent events in international waters where aid workers were targeted by Israeli commandos, plus the state of government in America. How can we improve the media and be more actively engaged in helping?
Journalist Robert Jensen is at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He has a Ph.D. in media ethics and law from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. He worked as a journalist for a decade prior to joining academia, and presently teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics.
Cataclysm One: There is a discussion raging about how to save the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s oil. The oceans provide us with air, and stabilize the atmosphere. What will thousands of barrels of oil per day going into the gulf do to the production of oxygen in the world’s most effective lung system?
Scientists at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Minerals Management Service that granted BP deep water drilling rights, are frantically searching for ways to repair the problem. The head of America’s joint task force on the containment operation, Admiral Thad Allen, is becoming more flustered as he tries to answer questions from a few of the more astute reporters. They have begun to press the Admiral and BP for answers about the scale of the disaster. Reading between the lines, when field reporters tell major TV news anchors that the oceanographers they interviewed are “terrified” we know there is something dark and terrible shaking the core of America’s belief system that we are too big to fail.
How did we reach this level of cataclysm, and what role has the media played?
Airing on WHUS Radio, Wed. June 16th at 5:00 PM EST www.whus.org before upload to other fine radio stations in the Pacifica community and any LPFM, Net-radio, podcasting stations that wish to air us weekly.
Talk Nation Radio for June 10, 2010
BP Tries to Disperse Concern amid Calls for Prosecutions and Reform, Dr. Ira Leifer, Flow Rate Tech Group, Scott West, Retired EPA Special Agent
Transcript below:
Breaking News Update: The White House has announced that they have received a new flow rate assessment about the BP spill. The company is now promising an ability to contain as much as 60,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil per day from their leaking pipe in the Gulf of Mexico. Here is a paragraph from the statement that arrived via the White House list serve to Talk Nation Radio: “The Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) cap that is currently in place can capture up to 18,000 barrels of oil per day. At the direction of the federal government, BP is deploying today a second containment option, called the Q4000, which could expand total leak containment capacity to 20,000-28,000 barrels per day. Overall, the leak containment strategy that BP was required to develop projects containment capacity expanding to 40,000-53,000 barrels per day by the end of June and 60,000-80,000 barrels per day by mid-July”.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu said: “This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP’s well.”
They are now claiming that they have planned for contingencies to deal with a worst case scenario, which is exactly what our guest last week, Dr. Ira Leifer of the Government’s Flow Rate Technical Group, indicated was the best approach. We transcribed our interviews for last week’s show and you can read them below.
Dori Smith, talknationradio@gmail.com
Dr. Ira Leifer speaking about BP’s shear and cap effort to stop the flow of oil coming from their blown pipe in the Gulf of New Mexico: ‘What I would argue from looking at the videos is however much oil is coming out its large enough relative to 15,000 that it did not make an appreciable dent in it. That means it’s certainly more than double that and the amount is something that we should be able to figure out within a day with the results of the new data’. (more below)
Produced by Dori Smith
TRT: 29:00
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here and at Radio4all.net and Archive.org Dr. Ira Leifer, an associate researcher at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Flow Rate Technical Group, Scott West, former Special Agent in Charge, EPA
BP gives out low numbers on flow from broken pipe. We hear better analysis. If the DOJ and Bush administration had backed EPA official’s call for criminal prosecution, safety might have improved. Plus Nalco, manufacturer of chemical dispersant. See: BP Tries to Disperse Concern amid Calls for Prosecutions and Reform.
Transcript: Talk Nation Radio, June 9, 2010
Producer/host: Dori Smith
‘I’m quite confidence that in the long term, that basically the truth will out’.
Dr. Ira Leifer joins us to talk about his assessment as part of the government’s flow rate technical group analyzing the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP/Transocean spill.
‘And BP, which is able to afford a great number of attorneys can just simply overwhelm the federal government with its legal representation’.
Then, former EPA investigator Scott West joins us to go over BP’s history of criminal negligence and catastrophe. We look at the problem of getting good information from BP or the government, as a pattern has been forming. BP tries to disperse public concern by offering low numbers and the Obama administration reinforces them.
In May, NPR’s Richard Harris asked Dr. Steven Wereley, at Purdue University, to study the videotape of the oil flowing out of the pipe and use his technique for calculating low rate from speed of particle movement. ‘We’re talking more than a factor of 10 difference between what I calculate and the number that’s being thrown around’.
BP had said 5,000 barrels of oil were flowing from the pipe per day. Wereley told NPR that the flow rate was more like 70,000 barrels a day. Other researchers also got the much higher numbers.
At a press conference June 9th, the National Incident Commander on the spill, Admiral Thad Allen, said between 19 and 25,000 gallons were coming out of the pipe per day at this point:
Admiral Thad Allen: ‘We have a bunch of technical experts got together and they came up with two ranges; of 12,000 to 19,000 and 12,000 to 25,000. Until we get better data that becomes the rebuttable uh assumption on flow and everything else’.
That after the pipe was sheared to accommodate a containment cap. The company had trapped 15,000 barrels during the previous twenty-four hour period and hoped to double that in the coming weeks. But again, NPR wanted more clear information. Where the numbers came from, BP or the government? ‘My knowledge was it was the task group but I will check back and if I misunderstood it I will make a clarification on it. They are going to be looking at that again they have high-resolution video that was taken after the riser pipe was cut, that’s been brought back on hard disk and that’s exactly what the group is analyzing right now’.
When we spoke with one of those technical experts working for the government’s team, Dr. Ira Leifer, he confirmed his assessment based on BP’s own data, that the flow could be more like their worst-case scenario of 100,000 barrels per day. We asked him to confirm the reports in McClatchy and then Reuters, citing the 100,000 figure:
Dr. Ira Leifer: Let me just say what I had intended to say which is that in the absence of good quality data which was our situation until very recently, the flow clearly had increased significantly. The question is how much. And there are two ways two ways to do go about that. One is you get data and you analyze it, that’s called science. The other way was to just take BP’s own estimate of a worst case scenario of freely flowing pipes and just put that out there: This is what BP thinks would happen when a pipe freely flows from that reservoir, now by pipe I mean the pipe that is the problem with this well, into the ocean. And BP’s number was 100,000 barrels per day. It does not mean that I think 100,000 barrels per day is flowing out, it could be less it could be more. The whole point of science and being a scientist and agencies working on this and the people is to actually come up with a number. And again, previously BP was very reticent about providing data, not letting us do our work. Now they have become much more helpful and forward looking at providing the data. I assumed they kind of realized that they don’t like their own number very much and they would actually finally like for us to be able to come up with a good number.
Dori Smith: Well Dr. Leifer we heard this morning from Admiral Thad Allen that BP captured 15,000 barrels overnight in 24 hours. That still leaves 85,000 according to your estimation.
Dr. Ira Leifer: I would just point out again its BP’s worst case scenario. The question is, is the flow from that well worst case? Is it even worse than that? Or is it not as bad. So what I would argue from looking at the videos is however much oil is coming out its large enough relative to 15,000 that it did not make an appreciable dent in it. That means it’s certainly more than double that and the amount is something that we should be able to figure out within a day with the results of the new data.
So the amount of oil that still remains to be captured could be conceivably within another mere expansion to 30,000 total but it also could be larger. And this is where we need to know by analyzing data and I think what has come out of including BP’s own worst case scenario is that they are much more cooperative and forward looking now and helpful so that we can actually do out job so that the efforts that go on are done safely.
Dori Smith: And of course NOAA is testing deeper samples of water to try to discover oil there, but why is it so difficult to assess this and does it have to do with the Corexit, the Nalco product that was used to disperse the oil. And if so would that affect the tests that are now being sent to laboratories like ALPHA here in New England.
Dr. Ira Leifer: the challenge is, it’s hard enough to figure out where the oil is going to go at the sea surface where you actually can look at it from an airplane or boat and track it. In the three dimensions of the ocean it is far more difficult challenge to find where hit has gone. Because the other thing is that the ocean is vast. If the oil is dispersed throughout the water column, that’s the idea behind dispersants, then the concentrates go down to very small amounts. That should not have anything to say with whether or not those very small amounts are problematic to the ecosystem. Very small amounts of petroleum hydrocarbon in the water column are known to cause all sorts of problems with fish and so on. But because the amounts are so small, they are hard to find. It’s not easy to find when something gets so diluted. And there was a lot of word done on this particular aspect after the Exxon Valdez because scientists were in fact able to take a look at the effects on fish and other life forms in the ocean from the petroleum hydrocarbon dose, even years later from he sediment into the water column.
Dori Smith: Well we were concerned when one of NOAA’s tests turned out to establish that there was a similarity between oil they found at more than 3,000 ft down and the oil spewing from the spill but then on later follow tests they couldn’t establish that. Then we read that there may be a conflict of interest with the labs or that even BP is doing some of these tests themselves.
Dr. Ira Leifer: In that regard I’m quite confident that in the long term, that basically the truth will out. It is not possible for anyone to have a complete control of all of these oil samples from the ocean and I think the laboratories know that if they did not do a very high quality analysis that other entities with own boats collecting water samples would very rapidly be releasing information that would be in contradiction to their laboratory. The one thing that these laboratories value above everything else is their reputation and I would imagine that in order to protect their reputation they would, realizing that other people would also be collecting and analyzing water samples, would be very honest in that regard. I certainly can’t promise that but I imagine that they would want to do that because this is such a large spill, there are so many people who are going to be trying to understand what happened, and so on, that you can’t hide things for very long when so many people are looking.
Dori Smith: Dr. Ira Leifer is a well-known scholar at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California. We turn now to Scott West, an EPA agent in the criminal division, he took calls from workers complaining that BP’s pipeline in Prudhoe Bay Alaska, was vulnerable.
Scott West: What I did with the EPA, I was a criminal investigator with the criminal investigation division and in Seattle I was special agent in charge up until I retired in October of 2008. The State of Alaska fell under my area of responsibility. And in 2005 I received information from some employees working on the North Slope up at Prudhoe Bay that a particular transit line was full of sludge and they had grave concerns about erosion causing the pipeline to rupture. They had brought these concerns to their officials, supervisors and other officials at BP and they were ignored and even chastised. So they came to me and there wasn’t much we could do until March of 2006 when that pipeline did indeed rupture and cause the second largest oil spill in Alaska.
We started a criminal investigation immediately and carried it forward for the next year and a half. It was a robust investigation enjoying a great deal of support by the EPA and the Department of Justice. Then unexpectedly in August of 2007 I was informed that the Justice Department had decided to grant BP’s wishes to settle this case along with the cases involving an explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, and a propane trading violation in Chicago.
They wanted to wrap these all up together and so the Justice Department shut down my investigation, worked out the misdemeanor plea with the company for the Alaska case and that was that. And so when the rig exploded in the Gulf, and once I found out it was BP’s rig, I felt that nothing had changed within the criminal corporate culture that we had found and indeed that this was no accident, it was the result of criminal decisions.
Dori Smith: And of course, the U.S. Justice Department, once again investigating British Petroleum, we’re reading about a lot of money…
Scott West: …They’re not investigating British Petroleum.
Dori Smith: OK, correct me.
Scott West: Yeah, the Attorney General Last Tuesday came out publicly and under I believe pressure that’s been coming on from the public about why isn’t there a criminal investigation? And he made the statement that indeed there is an investigation and he cited the statutes that one would expect: The Clean Water Act, the Rivers and Harbors of the Refuse Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Now short of calling the Attorney General a liar I’m going to say he practiced the art of deception. There is an investigation underway by the Department of the Interior, Office of Inspector General, having to do with some improprieties at Mines and Minerals Service. By all logic the EPA Criminal Investigation Division has indeed gone into the computer system and officially opened a file for an investigation into BP. But in terms of their being an actual investigation under way, there is none.
Dori Smith: Let’s talk about first the Prudhoe Bay spill and then Texas because I know by the time the Texas spill [refinery explosion] happened you were already aware of safety violations. Walk us through the series of events.
Scott West: Well that’s correct and because the corporation was charged the only things you can do to a corporation is take money away from it and put it under scrutiny. Corporations though do not make the decisions that led to these events. Individuals within them do.
What had been my aim using the criminal tool had been to carry the investigation to the point where we could determine if we could charge individuals for those decisions. And that’s what we wanted to do was to hold individuals accountable and hopefully that that would change the corporate culture. A $20 million dollar fine, which is ultimately what BP had to pay, it was $12 million in fines and then $8 million in restitution, but essentially it was a $20 million dollar deal, is a rounding error when you look at the amount of money that they pulled off the slopes and certainly worldwide. It wasn’t enough to get their attention and they were at that time had already been convicted of felony hazardous waste violations up on the North Slope. Then with the Texas City, also the Clean Air Act, they became serial environmental criminals.
Dori Smith: What were some of the aspects of the Prudhoe Bay Alaska spill that BP did wrong, that contributed to the disaster happening in the first place.
Scott West: It was the cost cutting, and ignoring the concerns raised by its own engineers that was the problem.
Dori Smith: And how could this leak have gone on for a number of days undetected by this company?
Scott West: (chuckles) Well they operate a quite elaborate system of leak detection equipment and they are quite known for having false reports all the time so the alarm goes off and its summarily ignored. That’s what happened here. The alarms were going off, and because they had gone off so often they weren’t paying much attention. It wasn’t until one of the workers was driving down one of the roads along the pipeline and he actually smelled crude, and so he got out and looked around and that’s how the leak was discovered.
Dori Smith: Can you explain where the criminal negligence was in that case.
Scott West: The criminal negligence was in the fact that the company was not following industry standard practices in terms of maintaining that pipeline. They had internal knowledge from their own employees and experts that they had a serious problem. They chose to ignore that problem saying that they didn’t have the money to address it and it was low on their priority list. They had other concerns. This sort of thing: That’s how you get from an unfortunate series of events turns into criminality when people who have the responsibility to keep up with these things fail to do so.
Dori Smith: And then let’s go to Texas where BP again their plant blue up, I believe it was 15 workers killed and 170 injured. That of course also linked to safety violations at their facility Again, they got placed on probation, pretty much walked away and went on to Deep Ocean drilling.
Scott West: That’s correct. I wasn’t involved in the investigation into Texas City but I was talking to my counterparts who were and we found an awful lot of similarities between BP operating in Alaska and then BP operating at that refinery in Texas, City. It was a whole host of cutting corners, saving money, trying to stretch every penny which is very difficult to understand when you look at the size of the profits that this company was making worldwide and continues to make worldwide as to why they would risk these catastrophic events for nickels and dime. But yet they do, and they did, and now we are seeing that the same sort of behavior most likely led to what happened out in the Gulf.
Dori Smith: The Deep Water Horizon explosion in April, there was someone killed on board that rig and he had been very concerned, his name is Jason Anderson. He was a rig manager and prior to dying had spoken t about his concerns, was shut down by the industry, they were in a hurry, why don’t you take it from there.
Scott West: Well I certainly wasn’t on the rig and I did not speak to Mr. Anderson at any time prior to his death, but what you just told me is certainly consistent with what I had learned about BP when I was investigating them criminally up in Alaska and what my counterparts found in Texas City is that time is money, they are always in a hurry, and workers concerns are often ignored and more so than ignored many workers fear retaliation for speaking out.
They certainly watched a number of their friends get fired or blacklisted from the industry for raising concerns. Then it was also something that we saw that BP would often blame the dead guy. I don’t mean to be crude here but that was what some employees shared with us and that’s how he put it is that when something went terribly wrong and there were deaths it was often the company’s way to say that those individuals that were killed had done something at fault.
Dori Smith: What about BP’s response to accusations of criminal negligence? I assume given the way they lobby in Congress that they came up with a very bold plan to counter such charges.
Scott Well they did but the fact remains that they pled guilty in Alaska to negligence, which led to the rupture of that pipe and the discharge of oil onto the tundra. They pled guilty to felony Clean Air Act in Texas City which led to the explosion and then the deaths of those workers. They pled guilty in Alaska earlier to illegally handling hazardous waste. There’s only so much they can claim when indeed they come into a courtroom and please guilty to these crimes.
The other thing to look at here, and I don’t totally blame BP: They are from my experience the worst of the oil companies operating in the United States, but I blame the Department of Justice for being so lenient with BP in the past that they’ve allowed them to believe that they can continue to operate this way without sanctions.
Dori Smith: Scott West, you are making these charges as a retired Special Agent in Charge at the EPA Environmental Protection Agency. You work in the Department of Intelligence and Investigations, what is that?
Scott West: That’s for Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, it’s a non-government entity but we enforce international law on the high seas, Marine Conservation Law, where other nations fail to do so. So bringing in a criminal investigative element was a move on the part of Captain Paul Watson to strengthen what we do in terms of dealing with crimes on the seas.
Dori Smith: Financial concerns were really on the minds of many of the politicians who for years argued in favor of drilling in the ANWR, drilling in the ocean, and also on the North Slope. People up there needing jobs, needing money, were divided over whether or not this was a good idea. But talk about the environmental risks first of all from these big oil pipeline systems and then from deep water drilling and what that means to us as citizens of this planet.
Scott West: We’ve certainly seen the risk from deep water drilling, there’s no question about that. Then, also these major pipelines that carry the oil and of course with the Exxon Valdez, the ships that carry the soil: They are inherently dangerous, inherently pose significant environmental risks. However, there is a great deal of technology out there that if employed properly can reduce those risks considerably. This is what’s causing me the most concern with this particular company is that by my experience investigating them, and then certainly what we are seeing in the Gulf, is that they are not taking advantage of that technology.
Dori Smith: We heard from Attorney Patti Goldman last week, of Earth Justice, that their complaint now in litigation is that BP did not provide the government, MMS, (Minerals Management Service) with an adequate plan to deal with a blow out scenario like the one that happened.
Scott West: Yeah well what your suggesting is that the regulators failed in doing their job and insuring that the operators followed the law. And I think that that’s probably an accurate assessment. I was never involved in the regulatory side of these rigs, and certainly not the Deep Water Horizon spill. We’ll have to see what comes out of that but I would not be at all surprised if we find that there was inadequate oversight, that people either chose to look the other way or simply were not qualified to even understand what was being presented to them in these documents.
Dori Smith: Just summarize the EPA, how it works and what does or does not work about it.
Scott West: That’s the big question. I worked for the EPA for just under 19 years, the entire time as a criminal investigator. It’s a large bureaucracy, it certainly has issues related to that, but I do have to admit I did find it to be quite effective, at least from my perspective in what I was doing, I was proud to work there, and I felt it was a good use of my time and talent towards protecting the environment. I did run into some concerns with the Alaska case when my own management failed to back me up and fell into lock step with the Department of Justice. I did have some concerns back shortly after 9/11 when within the criminal program it seemed to forget all about protecting the environment and wanted to jump on the bandwagon of homeland security. But a lot of those issues I understand have been resolved, or at least are being addressed significantly, so in terms of how the greater part of the agency functions, that was kind of on the other side of the door from where I was as a criminal investigator.
Dori Smith: As it turns out BP was fined [by OSHA] for their Texas operation, 87.45 million, it was the largest find in agency history, for failure to repair potential safety hazards. They also issued notifications, 270 of them, plus another 449 willful violations; there you are talking about worker safety.
Scott West: Correct.
Dori Smith: So what’s the difference essentially in terms of the enforcement capacity of either EPA or OSHA today?
Scott West: A different type of regulations, but we can look at how the EPA, the civil side of the House of Representatives have been able to address the conditions and the actual results of the oil spill in Alaska. They certainly have been trying to bring about fines and BP, which is able to afford a great number of attorneys can just simply overwhelm the federal government with its legal representation and essentially just tie it up in court for years. The EPA is still trying to get some kind of civil resolution to the oil spill of 2006 up on the slope and the BP attorneys just seem to keep overwhelming them and bullying them in meeting after meeting and its not going anywhere. So that’s of concern to me.
Dori Smith: How can an agency that’s had two instances of being put on probation..
Scott West: Three!
Dori Smith: Oh OK three. Well how can they move on to do this deep ocean drilling at this incredible depth, I think its 5,000 feet, and the Bush administration and the MMS, Minerals Management Service, they gave them permission.
Scott West: Well we’d have to ask those officials, those are the ones that grant permission for the drilling and they need to be quizzed as to with this abysmal criminal record, environmental criminal record, and worker safety record, why was not more care taken to make sure that things were being done right before they granted those permits? That’s where you will have to go for that answer.
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http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/posted/2931/MEDIA.582663.PDF Press Advisory:” This correspondence serves as a written reminder to all parties involved, in any matter whatsoever, and at any level of the response organization, that media shall, at all times, be afforded access to the response operations and shall only be asked to leave an area when their presence is in violation of an existing law or regulation, clearly violates the written site safety plan for the area or interferes with effective operations”. National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen.
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UPDATE 6/16: The President was very critical of MMS, Minerals Management Service, and a new leader has been appointed to head the agency. Here we see part of the nature of the problem. There was a sense of emergency to get oil resources for the US, and MMS appears to be doing PR for the general idea of how good an idea this deep water drilling was. Note the paragraph on: “Massive blowout preventers, some 45 feet high and weighing 320 tons, are installed on the ocean floor to protect the environment from the threat of an accidental deep water oil release. Remotely controlled robots operate effectively in the high pressure, cold and dark environment of the ocean bottom to construct, maintain and repair costly drilling equipment. New drill ships capable of carrying the tons of necessary pipe and other drilling equipment have been constructed to support deep water operations. These ships are specially equipped with thrusters controlled by computers and geospatial positioning systems to maintain their position and reduce tension on their riser systems”. — They were 100% bought in, and clearly part of the problem as Attorney Patti Smith said during our interview below.
UPDATE: Under pressure from EPA and Earth Justice as well as others, Nalco released the list of ingredients in their Corexit product being used in the Gulf of Mexico. NYT: Marine Biologist Rick Steiner expresses concern re safety testing on Corexit here.
Patti Goldman, Vice President for Litigation, at Earth Justice Environmental Law. (Blog here).
In this report: Corexit, BP, Oil Spill, Earth Justice, link between pesticides with organophosphates and ADHD, pesticide drift, roadside spraying, government ties between oil companies like BP, and companies that profit from manufacturing pesticides.
Produced by Dori Smith
TRT: 29:00
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org.
Music by Fritz Heede
The BP Spill, litigation, and health dangers from Pesticides
Earthjustice attorney Patti Goldman here uses her 4-foot tall son Martin to “measure” a tree in Siskiyou National Forest. The grove harboring this tree was saved by her work with Earthjustice.
Patty Goldman,Vice President of Litigation at Earth Justice Environmental Law, joins us to talk about litigation involving British Petroleum, BP. Earth Justice filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Friday, May 29, 2010, (see FOIA below) seeking the full contents of the Corexit chemical dispersant being poured into the Gulf of Mexico by BP. The manufacturer, Nalco, and BP, have not made all of the ingredients in Corexit public, but has released the information that it may contain cosmetic products and/or stain blocker chemicals in Corexit. (See this page for health risks.)
The chemical is supposed to break up the oil that has been destroyed fishing along Louisiana’s coast. Yet, some scientists worry that it may be more dangerous over the long run than the oil itself. Concerns have also been raised that the dispersant chemical has sent the oil much further into the ocean surrounding the Gulf of Mexico. Presently, the oil is moving toward the Florida coast.
BP is under criminal investigation by the US Justice Dept., and its not the first time. After a spill in Prudhoe bay in 2006 because of pipeline corrosion, and a faulty shut down valve, the company was fined put on probation for three years. A year later 15 workers died and 170 were injured in an explosion linked to safety violations at a BP facility in Texas, again BP was placed on probation. You can read more about the history at Truthout.org in a May story by Jason Leopold.
UPDATE re Jason Anderson, manager killed on Deep Water Horizon. He was worried about safety, felt pressured. “Jason Anderson talked of his concerns about BP putting rising pressure on the crew to bypass safety precautions during the seven-day shore visits he was allowed between three-week stints aboard the Deepwater Horizon, said Billy Anderson, who’s been involved in the oilfield-services equipment industry for 35 years”.
Patty Goldman has also been working on a longer standing crisis created by the massive use of pesticides throughout America. Old data showed them to be dangerous to neurological systems, a new study showed the presence of markers for organophosphates in the urine of children with ADHD.
“The FOIA seeks the identities of all chemical ingredients in the dispersants eligible for use in the Gulf spill. It also seeks all health and safety studies and data and potential adverse effects reports for the chemical ingredients in the dispersants and unredacted correspondence between BP and EPA about dispersants in connection with the Gulf spill”. From Earth Justice, 28 May 2010, 12:26 PM
Terry Winckler, “What’s In Oil Spill’s Toxic Stew? We Demand An Answer
Earthjustice files action to discover what’s in chemical dispersant” at “Unearthed”.
Listeners might also wish to go to the web site for Earthbeat Radio, which has been covering the BP spill extensively. The host, Daphne Wysham is excellent.
Also Related to this program: The University of Connecticut has strong ties to Monstanto. Thus, when we learned that state residents were using the site to decide on which herbicides/pesticides to select for home and business use we contacted them. We were given detailed, lengthy, verbal instructions, on how to click many ‘tabs’ on their web page to locate safety requirements. Clearly, their disclaimer that the school does not endorse use merely because they list all of these products is not working.
Crisis at Sea, Gaza Ships attacked by Israeli Commandos
Produced by Dori Smith
Talk Nation Radio special
UPDATE 6-7-10 Video, in French, is clearly different from video provided by Israeli Military. See it here
6-4-10, recorded public opinion in Hartford, CT and will edit for the show. People were very concerned, and also angry. There was a reading of the names of those killed on board the Turkish aid ship that was part of the Gaza freedom flotilla.
Nora Barrows Friedman writes “Four days have passed since the outrageously illegal and lethal Israeli raid on the humanitarian aid flotilla, as the blood dries, the facts are boiling to the surface. And they don’t look good for Israel”. She posted a few paragraphs of a piece by Max Blumenthal from Tel Aviv:
“Statements by senior Israeli military commanders made in the Hebrew media days before the massacre revealed that the raid was planned over a week in advance by the Israeli military and was personally approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. The elite Israeli commando unit known as Unit 13 was tasked with carrying out the mission and its role was known by the Israeli public well before the raid took place. Details of the plan show that the use of deadly force was authorized and calculated. The massacre of activists should not have been unexpected”.
“On May 28, three days before the raid, top Israeli military officials revealed details of their strategy to Maariv, Israel’s most widely circulated paper. The caption of the Maariv article reflected the military command’s plan to use force: “On the way to violence; one of the boats is on its way”. See, The Flotilla Raid was Not Bungled, Max Blumenthal.
Updating 6/3/10 (write talknationradio@gmail.com with information)
Sheikh Raed Salah was wounded on board the Turkish ship, and there was fear of an even deeper crisis had he died. He has survived his wounds and is discussing what happened.
Alternet and other publications now publishing eye witness accounts of Israeli commando attack on passengers on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the Turkish ship: here and here as well as here.
Will Israel ‘permit’ an independent investigation? Their record on this involving both the Gaza attacks on the UN compound and killings of internationals and journalists is not good.
From Jodi Evans at Codepink, 5 Actions you Can Take here in Response to Israel’s Attacks on the Gaza Flotilla.
Interview with Dr. Stephen Zunes, U. San Francisco, expert on the Middle East here at Archive.org and at Radio4all.net or click/play here:
TRT: 29:29
Produced by Dori Smith
5:30 PM EST: We will be conducting interviews as long as people contact us to provide them, during this international emergency in the Middle East. We are preparing to upload audio of interviews with Dr. Stephen Zunes, and Frank Barat, of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
Freedom Flotilla Attacked by Israel, troops land shooting. as of 4:49 PM Eastern Time, an update here at Truthout.org. Also note that Mosaic, LinkTV, and Democracy Now will be covering this story intensively, check their sites for video updates.
“We expected that they might try to stop us, they might try to board us. We never expected that they would shoot. What they didn’t understand is that when they came on board the Turkish ship we had live streaming video. So when they landed, and they came off the helicopter, you can see them come off the helicopter, turn around, look at each other and start to shoot. Now, this is at 4:30 in the morning this morning when everybody is asleep. There was no resistance, there was nobody there who was threatening them…” Greta Berlin, a founder of Free Gaza Flotilla.
Even Israel has backed down on earlier comments that there were weapons, according to Free Gaza’s, Greta Berlin.
They repel down to Italian vessel, at least 9 DEAD, (some reports have said 16 to 20) with many wounded.. we hear from Greta Berlin, founder of Free Gaza, as she give us breaking news on events on board the Turkish passenger ship, the Mavi Marmara, and a European vessel, both attacked, and towed by Israel. Some 700 people detained by Israel. They did not have weapons, states Berlin. And Israel has confirmed that this is the case. No weapons. Broadcast available here. This interview includes part of a longer interview with Prof. Stephen Zunes, (length: 29 min) upload asap on that.
Confirms, European Campaign Vessel also attacked, no word on casualties. Sheik Salah
We are trying to get whatever information we can for a Talk Nation special on events in international waters off Gaza. As many as 15 people are said to have been killed, dozens wounded, after Israeli commandos stormed an Italian vessel with the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Democracy Now has an interview here.
Obama administration concerned about Gaza “incident”.
Photo from AP, partial caption: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, shakes hands with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, during their meeting in Jerusalem, Wednesday, May 26, 2010. President Barack Obama’s chief of staff has invited the Israeli prime minister to the White House next week”.
The US State Dept. is working on a statement now, after receiving messages in “bits and pieces” out of Tel Aviv, according to spokesperson Fred Lash. He said he was not in a position to confirm that Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador from Israel.
See: ANKARA, Turkey — “Turkey’s deputy prime minister says Turkey is withdrawing its ambassador to Israel, canceling three joint military drills and calling on the U.N. Security Council to convene in an emergency session about Israel”.
Quotes: PRIOR to the shootings
“This is nothing more than media provocation and has nothing to do with actually providing aid to residents of the Gaza Strip,” said military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitch. “They have everything they need.”
Speaking at a Monday news conference in Tel Aviv, Ehud Barak called the aid flotilla a “political provocation” by anti-Israel forces. He said the sponsors of the flotilla are violent.
Al Jazeera video, Live Coverage here: their reporter on board Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship says Israeli commandos still shooting. White Flag Raised. As many as 16 people may be dead. 1:59pm: The Israeli army has released its first official version of today’s events, including an aerial video of the first commandos landing on the Mavi Marmara. The IDF statement says the commandos “first employed riot dispersal means, followed by live fire.”
Haaretz updates:Muslim leader Raed Salah may be among the dead. see Maan New Agency here too that he was shot on the head. Earlier reports listed him as wounded, Israeli officials saying he lived injuries sustained when Israelis opened fire.
Live image from the flotilla shows that Israeli soldiers from the helicopter and a number of speedboats boarded one of the ships at night. Activists wearing life vests were treating what appeared to be injuries for unknown reasons.– Israeli navy on Sunday night sighted the pro-Palestinian “Freedom Flotilla” bound for the Gaza Strip and ordered the convoy to dock at an Israeli harbor. — The flotilla, originally made up of nine ships from Turkey, Britain, Ireland, Greece, Kuwait and Algeria, were carrying around 10,000 tons of aid including cement, water purification systems and wheelchairs. One of the ships had not arrived and two others had been damaged.
Earlier this morning:
Al Jazeera reporter on board ship says as many as 16 people may be dead. Israeli commandos reportedly lowered themselves onto the ship and opened fire. Peace activists deny anyone attacked the Israelis.
Al Jazeera reporter notes, the white flag has been raised, a woman can be seen carrying a ‘white flag’ (it was a white cloth deck chair) that is stained with blood.
Jim Naureckas cites double standards for Democrats versus Republicans on military service, slips of the tongue, or worse.
He cites a case involving what Ronald Reagan said about visiting Hitler’s death camps in Europe during WWII as one example. He didn’t! Yet the press gave this story a pass. The press also tended to ‘correct’ glaring mistakes by former V.P. Dan Quayle, among many others not to mention George W. Bush.
Produced by Dori Smith
TRT: 29:00
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here if a member or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org
Jim Naureckas of the media watch group FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, joins us for a look at questions of fairness and double standards in media coverage about the military service records of Democrats versus Republicans. We discuss media coverage of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal who is running for U.S. Senate. He has been under scrutiny for remarks he made about serving in Vietnam, he didn’t.
But in this, and other stories involving Republicans it has been a case of double standards, according to Jim Naureckas. The media seems happy to critique the military service records of Democrats during campaigns, yet tend to pass on stories about the service of Republicans. Jim Naureckas compares coverage when Democrats versus Republicans torture words and or the truth.
First a review of the Richard Blumenthal story. Throughout his career, the Connecticut Democrat has made it clear to voters and veterans that he didn’t serve in Vietnam, but served stateside. Was he trying to intentionally misrepresent his record? Even Rob Simmons, who has just withdrawn from the race against Blumenthal, didn’t think so. Simmons said he never thought Blumenthal was actually trying to get away with a lie. But the press quoted him on many occasions attacking Blumenthal for his “in Vietnam” comments.
Conventional political wisdom here had it that Simmons would benefit from Blumenthal’s misspeak on Vietnam, Simmons is after all someone who served in Vietnam. But it was Linda McMahon who garnered points for the Blumenthal story. The media became fixated on the story through the coverage of primary races and conventions. All other issues fell by the wayside, especially the matter of Richard Blumenthal’s long successful record, and Linda McMahon’s lack of one.
Democrats are now trying to bring the conversation back to Blumenthal’s record as an Attorney General, since 1990. He is well liked, and has not been shy at taking on big corporations on behalf of state voters: Big tobacco, utility companies, health care, Lyme Disease treatment, charity fraud, the list is long and it includes work on behalf of veterans.
FOX 61, now part of a state conglomerate with The Hartford Courant, nevertheless gave Republicans, Simmons and McMahon, endless opportunities to express outrage about a comment from Blumenthal shown on the New York Times web site alongside a damning story: “We have learned something very important since the days that I served in Vietnam. And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call Afghanistan or Iraq, we owe our military men and women unconditional support. And we owe it to them not only while they are away but when they come home. And that is why your effort is not only important for the physical comfort that you bring to those men and women who come home, whatever their condition, severely wounded or over in the battlefields now, but as a message to others”. The question of resources for wounded veterans fell by the wayside.
Using a family fortune earned through running the World Wrestling Federation, Linda McMahon bought daily spots on Fox 61 and other channels like NBC’s channel 30 here. Her name recognition as a media personality has gone a long way toward preparing voters to hear what she has to say. A chill fell over the story after this additional segment of the damning Norwich video was posted on both McMahon’s web site and the New York Times web site: “But I really want to add my words of thanks as someone who served in the military during the Vietnam era, in the Marine Corps”.
While press coverage is dying down a bit, this issue is sure to come up again during the election. McMahon has been seen in negative terms given that she was the one who gave the tape to the New York Times, and seemed to withhold the first part where Blumenthal said he didn’t serve in Vietnam, but during. She did pull ahead of other challengers just after the tape incident, pushing Rob Simmons out of the race, but she has not been able to dominate Blumenthal in the polls. He is up by 25% as of the latest Quinnipiac University Poll. The AG has enjoyed a 78% or higher approval rating.
This story may yet have a few new twists to be revealed. McMahon and her husband Vince McMahon who took over the World Wrestling Federation when she stepped down as CEO, have a history of federal investigations over violations of steroid laws. And Vince McMahon is more than colorful. An interview by Oakland sports reporter Joel Drucker, was peppered with Vince McMahon quotes where he used the F word liberally and seemed to disdain authority. As a teen, Vince McMahon was the first student ever courts martialed from his former military school, after he used threatening language to an official there. He went on to attend East Carolina University, during the 1960s, possibly on a student deferment of some kind.
Ultimately, McMahon will also likely face more questions about accusations that she tried to buy votes. The scandal was written off to her inexperience, but McMahon launched then withdrew a voter registration effort where University of Connecticut Republicans were offered $5 bonuses for registering new Republicans during an on-campus voter drive.
McMahon‘s fellow Republican candidate Peter Schiff called her tactic “ACORN-ish” this a reference to the non profit group that helps voters register, largely poor voters under served by their own voting systems. ACORN was ironically also accused by Republicans, but was cleared accusations of fraud and one set up involving a man posing as a pimp who tried to implicate them on tape. A court has completely cleared the organization, but the damage to them was severe. They are trying to regroup.
Jim Naureckas of Fair, says the coverage of Republican candidates has been highly different in general, and particularly in terms of war records. In Extra, the magazine published by Fair, he says the media tends to overlook the gross errors, even lies, of Republicans, like for example former President Ronald Reagan, who spoke emotionally about having visited Hitler’s death camps during WWII, but he didn’t.
Jim Naureckas writes: “It is commendable to hold misleading politicians to account. Our question is how universal this concern is at the New York Times”. We discuss the media’s campaign coverage of the two leading parties, in general.
HISTORICAL, Dori Smith: ‘How well I remember two things in my own experience at looking into media stories, and following the lead of your group FAIR, in fact, at a workshop on the media at the Hartford Public Library, April 1st, 1989. We were following the Latin America tour of the inimitable Vice President Dan Quayle, and I’ve got the story here, the New York Times headline February 4th was: ‘Quayle in San Salvador, Discusses Human Rights‘. The author of the piece, Lindsey Gruson, quoted Quayle, saying of the El Salvadorean Government: ‘We expect them to work toward the elimination of human rights, the elimination of human rights in accordance with the pursuit of justice’. He left out the word, violations, twice.
The Hartford Courant reported February 4, p A7 that, ‘Quayle said that the United States expects the Salvadoran military to work toward the elimination of human rights violations’.
Produced by Dori Smith
TRT: 29.00 music fades
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‘There are countless CIA people in Afghanistan who are on the front lines, who are actually fighting’. Author H.P. Albarelli, Jr.
There have been messages in solidarity from students all over the world so I think the message is out there and its powerful and I think the government will have to listen now because now they are looking bad. General Strike May 18, 2010.
UPDATE Student media has continued to be a source for information on the general strike. An online newspaper, UPR, links to Radio Huelga, a radio station created by the students and transmitting directly from the strike. there are also videos. Now they are transmitting a demo with music!
University of Puerto Rico Administrator RESIGNS: The Chancellor of Arecibo, one of the campuses, was asked by the president of the university to resign. As a result the deans of all schools resigned in solidarity!!!
More from H.P. Albarelli on the CIA. Then reports from the University of Puerto Rico on a General Strike that has caught the imagination of students all over the world. The students are camped out at The University of Puerto Rico after an unsuccessful attempt to get the administration and governor to drop plans for a tuition hike that would likely end the educational dreams of some 60% of the student body, this, the mostly poor people in college in Puerto Rico.
H.P. Albarelli Jr., is author of the book, A Terrible Mistake, The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments. He describes what key people at the CIA have created. They were fervent anti communists, and had wealth and privilege, and saw themselves as modern day Knights Templar, above known laws.
On page 42 of ‘A Terrible Mistake’ H.P. Albarelli Jr., writes about the start up of a biological warfare project at then new Fort Detrick, (Detrick Field) in early 1942. The Roosevelt Administration ordered the DOD to ‘take whatever measures were necessary to bring the United States up to speed with Axis and Allied powers’.
‘In response, the War Department created the War Research Service (WRS), and installed George Wilhelm Merck as its director. Merck was a natural for the job, as he was already a high ranking consultant to the War Department on biological warfare. He was also head of Merck & Co., one of the oldest and largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The firm had its beginnings in the late-1600’s in Darmstadt, Germany as the E. Merck chemical factory. In 1891, George Merck, George Wilhalm’s father, left Germany to establish Merck & Co., in New York City. His son, George Wilhelm Merck, born in West Orange, New Jersey and a Harvard graduate, had assumed control of the company in 1925. The younger Merck dynamically guided the company to become the largest full-line producer and distributor of pharmaceuticals in the world. Merck & Co. has since been responsible for countless innovations in the drug industry, including many in the controversial areas of enthnogenic products and shamanic inebriants’.
‘In 1914, Merck’s German operation was the first company worldwide to synthesize and patent methylene dioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA. As readers shall see, MDMA, a semi-synthetic psychoactive drug popularly known today as Ecstasy, was tested in the early-1950’s under the codename EA-1475 at the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal’.
TRT: 29:04 Produced by Dori Smith, Storrs, CT, part 2
Part 1: H.P. Albarelli Jr. on his book, A Terrible Mistake, the Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Cold War Experiments
Previous portions of this interview are here part 2 and here part 3
… ‘So he seeks to stop us, to claim our treasure for himself. Pure madness. Let him try, every angel can fall…. Why do you not join us brother’. The Hollywood version of, The Knights Templar, a film – at that particular moment in the film, a Knight has been stabbed in the back. Frank Olson was likewise stabbed in the back, killed in fact, after being dosed with LSD without his knowledge. He was pushed out a window, according to this groundbreaking new book by H.P. Albarelli, Jr.
(See clip of film we used by that name here.)
The creators of the CIA had a fascination with the crusades and other Knights Templar stories involving the Middle East, with stories of the Ark of the Covenant, Soloman’s Temple, and the visions of Ezekiel, important to Jewish mystics.
In Hank Albarelli’s book, A Terrible Mistake, we find that the men who created the CIA had a by any means necessary attitude about their version of national security, but they were also after corporate and political power. There was Allen Dulles, an oil industry executive, Dr. Sidney Gottleib, head of the TSS Technical Services Division that researched all means of controlling human beings, John Mulholland, an expert at sleight of hand and deception, and the former OSS officers, William Colby, Frank Wisner, and others, who saw themselves as modern day saints, saving Western civilization from the dark forces of communism.
Hank Albarelli is an investigative journalist who studied law, and worked in the Carter White House before turning to the study of financial institutions, unions, and biological and chemical warfare operations. His web site is www.albarelli.net
Rene Vargas, a law student on the negotiating committee at the University of Puerto Rico. He explained that they are worried about dramatic budget cuts and what would amount to an end to education for thousands of students. We hear a portion of a video by Alberto Bartelemi, filmed in the streets outside the campus full of people, parents, siblings, and others, handing food over the gate where police stood guard. Students had been camped out at the school since early April.
More than 60% of the student body could lose the ability to attend college altogether. During her interview at the University of Puerto Rico May 18, 2010, Rene Vargas explained that initially the school board refused their requests for meetings, then, when they were given a meeting little came of it, As the students learned more about what the school administrators plan to do, they wanted information but were shut out of the process. Now they accuse the school board and government of a lack of transparency.
The widespread support for the students in Puerto Rico stems from the way they have been treated. First, the seriousness of their requests has been downplayed. and finally, the Governor delivered a state of the union address in which he chastised students, telling them their educations were inexpensive anyway.
The General Strike involved many different levels of students, and also some government workers. The Unions have negotiated a separate agreement with medical students as they work with patients.
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Update on Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s comments in Norwich about Vietnam. It is looking more and more like this was a sophisticated political smear.
When you view the whole tape it is very clear that Richard Blumenthal stated that he DID NOT serve in Vietnam. During his opening remarks to the same group of people he said, “I really want to add my words of thanks as someone who served in the Military during the Vietnam era, in the Marine Corps”. Why did the New York Times make it seem that Blumenthal was intentionally trying to mischaracterize his service, and imply he served in the Vietnam War zone? Could it be that the additional information provided by others involved convinced them that Blumenthal has done this repeatedly, and with intent? We are looking into this.
Here is the long version embedded in a story by The Day’s Ted Mann, Published 05/19/2010 In the video,
In Mann’s story he explains that, “Blumenthal also appears to differentiate himself from combat veterans near the end of his remarks, a section not included in the video excerpt cited by his opponents, including Republicans Rob Simmons and Linda McMahon”.
Commentary from Dori Smith
May 18, 2010
Rob Simmons is running against Richard Blumenthal for U.S. Senate in CT. He has been criticizing Blumenthal for his unfortunate comment about Vietnam. (NYT) Yet Simmons has been brazen in his deceptions about what he did in Vietnam.
Rob Simmons has told the media often that he carried a copy of the Geneva Conventions in his pocket while serving “in the Army”. In fact, Simmons was an adviser to a Province Interrogation Center that came under the CIA’s notorious Phoenix Program in Vietnam. He admitted during taped interviews with author Douglas Valentine that he did the interrogations himself while running an interrogation center in Vietnam. (Douglas Valentine,”The Phoenix Program”). We aired portions of Valentine’s taped interviews on Talk Nation Radio back in 2006. (Below, see my story with David Morse in CTNewsJunkie here. Download audio programs here.
On the tape, Rob Simmons clearly said: “Occasionally I would do the interrogation myself”. Even so, in 2004, he told USA Today’s Andrea Stone that he merely observed interrogations while serving in the Army: “That’s the way he characterized it,” Andrea Stone told us. Listen to the tape here and here.
Below is an audio clip of Rob Simmons, recorded by Douglas Valentine for his book, The Phoenix Program. Simmons clearly says he did interrogations, and that he was the man in charge at the centers.
In 2006 Rob Simmons gave a similar version of events to other members of the media. He has left out the relevant fact that he did interrogations, ran an interrogation center, even when he was being interviewed about his views on U.S. interrogation policies instituted by Bush/Cheney. (He wholeheartedly supported the practices at Guantanamo, claiming conditions were better there than in US prisons.)
It seems very clear that Rob Simmons does not want to admit that he participated in a project that came under scrutiny during Congressional hearings conducted by the Church Committee in Washington D.C. about his CIA program, Phoenix. And the Phoenix Program was notorious for assassination and torture. Testimony given about what went on in the interrogation centers was horrifying.
Finally, Simmons’ reticence about his CIA work is not about national security. He has said quite a bit about his CIA work. For instance, he gave a 15 minute plus introduction to former President George H. W. Bush, when Bush came to CT to campaign for him during his unsuccessful bid for reelection to Congress in 2006.
The long introduction Rob Simmons gave to George H. W. Bush, includes Simmons’ screaming, and Bush saying “down”… to him to get him to calm down. Montage for show, without music.
And in May of 2002 he told an audience in Norwich, CT, (Three Rivers Community College) about his work for the CIA in Vietnam, making it clear that it likely helped him to review documents he said proved that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Simmons held some papers in his hand, apparently for effect, as he never shared them with the audience. He played a crucial role in helping George W. Bush sell his Iraq invasion plan back in September of 2002 when he claimed that Saddam Hussein’s WMD were “a threat to the Continental United States and Israel”. That of course turned out to have been a lie. So it rings kind of hollow when Rob Simmons points a finger at Richard Blumenthal’s unfortunate comment about Vietnam.
It is not easy to understand why Blumenthal said at one point that he served in Vietnam, after saying in many other settings that he did not serve in Vietnam. Hopefully, we will get more clarity as the campaign continues. But let’s keep some perspective here, keeping in mind that this is going to be a heated political season.
Rob Simmons should stop pointing fingers and come clean on his role for the CIA in Vietnam. Also the state and national press should ask him about what he did there, and clarify what he has and has not said about it.
As to Republican candidate for US Senate Linda McMahon, it was difficult for us to locate any video taped history of her comments about Vietnam or Iraq. We did find a video from her World Wrestling Federation days, footage of her faking a frightened look, then being slammed upside down against the impressive physique of a man in a shining red suit… He flipped her upside down so that her hair hung between his legs and then slammed her to the floor beneath him. Linda McMahon pretended to be unconscious, they pretended to phone an ambulance.
Her campaign was unable to provide us with a comment earlier in the day about the video tape they provided to the New York Times.
Seriously, it would be good to fully document what all of these candidates have said, and what they plan to do for the State of CT.
Talk Nation Radio, Interview with Douglas Valentine, Rob Simmons, interrogations while working for CIA in Vietnam under Phoenix
Another Version: Douglas Valentine on Rob Simmons, on Pacifica Weekly show, Sprouts: October 2006 (download full show or clips here)
Talk Nation Radio, The Church Committee:
Connecticut, 2006: Rob Simmons, George H. W. Bush, Two former CIA men reminisce about the past. Christopher H. Pyle, worked for Senator Church. (more here.
From 2006, CT News Junkie, Part 1 of 3: A Report on the CIA Interrogator turned Congressman
by Dori Smith and David Morse, Nov 3, 2006
For all the splash of national spotlight on the Connecticut Congressional campaign, surprisingly little has been written about Congressman Rob Simmons’ experience as a CIA interrogator. Simmons, an incumbent Republican, is fighting for his political life in one of those hotly contested seats that could tip the House majority from Republican to Democrat on November 7.
He denigrates his Democratic challenger Joe Courtney for having “no war experience.” Yet the shadowy circumstances of Simmons’ own war experience of running an interrogation center during the Vietnam war has gone unexamined by the mainstream press, even as a feckless Congress rolls back the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war.
During four campaigns Simmons, a lanky “aw shucks” kind of guy, has touted his experience as a “soldier and spy” to gain political traction in Connecticut’s sprawling blue-collar Second District, which includes Electric Boat, the Groton Submarine Base, and assorted military subcontractors that have sustained the region’s economy for two and three generations. He has struggled for union support while his opponent has become the choice of most union locals in the Second District.
Courtney has overtaken Simmons by as little as one percentage point in recent polls and the race is sure to be a nail bitter right down to the finish.
Simmons’ close ties with the President and Vice President have been a problem in the 2006 race, and when the President visited the state to fundraise the candidate stayed away from the event. Simmons’ web site also promoted a visit by Prescott Bush, Jr., however, the controversial uncle to the President kept a low profile. He has been something of a business czar to China, helping negotiate U.S.–China deals and run Chinese defense companies like Norinco, sanctioned by the U.S. in 2004 over the sale of missile parts to Iran.
Thanks to poor media scrutiny, Simmons has been able to hold onto support from conservatives and a core group of veterans that have been behind him since the 2000 election. For some of them, Simmons’ figurative waving of his dog tags has brought welcome relief from their own painful baggage about the Vietnam War. This in itself is not a bad thing. But Simmons’ Disneyfied rewriting of Vietnam War history omits the carpet bombing, the defoliation, the napalm. And, of course, it leaves out the torture that shocked members of U.S. Congress during hearings in the 1970s.
Simmons has been feeding the media a murky picture of his Vietnam story for years, but he has walked a fine line between truth and lies during interviews about torture, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the recently approved Military Commissions Act of 2006.In 2004, USA Today’s Andrea Stone spent the day with him on the campaign trail. Her focus was the impact of the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal on the GOP’s chances for reelection.
Political analysts had described Simmons as “one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress,” but he didn’t come across as vulnerable. He came across as a defender of anti-torture laws. Stone’s May 28, 2004 story began, “Everywhere Rep. Rob Simmons goes these days he lugs a 2-inch-thick binder. Inside are a summary of an investigation into the Iraq prisoner-abuse scandal and the Army’s field manual on interrogation.” She described Simmons as, “a former Army intelligence officer who observed prisoner interrogations in Vietnam,” leaving out the facts about Simmons work for the CIA. “That’s the way he characterized it,” she explained carefully during a phone conversation. “He observed or was in the room when interrogations were conducted, I wouldn’t have put that in otherwise.” Had Simmons been intentionally unclear? Probably, and there was an uncanny similarity between the opening lines of Stone’s piece and the opening lines of a more recent one by Hartford Courant Washington Bureau Chief, David Lightman.
His September 28, 2006 article began: “When U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer during the Vietnam War, he kept a card in his wallet summarizing key provisions of the Geneva Conventions, the rules that dictate how wartime prisoners should be treated.” Lightman said he spent about a half an hour interviewing Rob Simmons about his “yes” vote for the House version of the Military Commissions Act, and he wrote that Simmons found conditions at Guantanamo “favorable to anything I saw in Vietnam.” It was the perfect opportunity to ask Simmons what he had seen in Vietnam, but the reporter didn’t take it.
It was one of many examples that the state and national press has ignored the relevance of Simmons’ work for the CIA, in general, and as an interrogator in particular. That aspect of Simmons’ role in Vietnam was well documented. Simmons was one of many CIA agents interviewed by Douglas Valentine for a book released in 1990, entitled, “The Phoenix Program.”
In taped interviews he told Valentine he had been the Commander at the Phu-Yen Province Interrogation Center, or PIC. He said, “I was the special police advisor overall. In a way I outranked the guy at the PIC and when the guy at the PIC left he wasn’t replaced and I assumed responsibility for that.” Simmons also admitted, “Occasionally I would do the interrogation myself.—For somebody that seemed to be reluctant to work with the South Vietnamese or with any Vietnamese because you know if an American comes in and he’s alone and he speaks a little bit of the language maybe they’ll warm up to him.“As he shared the contents of his tapes Valentine pointed out that Simmons was careful not to say things that would incriminate him, although he did “let his hair down” when discussing the Phoenix Program and various aspects of how the Phu Yen interrogation center had been set up.
He had gotten names from Phoenix, and the interrogation program was part of Phoenix. While others in Valentine’s book mentioned the torture that went on at the centers, Simmons put a more positive spin on things. But as it turns out there was a darker side to his story too.The tapes reveal a Simmons entirely different from the squeaky-clean public persona.
This Simmons used the “F”-word and at times seemed boastful, speaking of his peers as “boomers” – those who pulled the trigger – and “knuckle draggers,” or sadists. He referred easily to the “Special Branch” police he worked with and they were notorious for their use of “the old french methods,” according to another CIA source Valentine interviewed named John Patrick Muldoon.
He was the director of the CIA’s first interrogation center in Vietnam. Simmons was also interviewed by Mark Moyar, conservative author of, Birds of Prey, published in 1997. He told him his success rate during interrogations was raised by 50 percent when prisoners were wounded. That, he explained, was because he would withhold their medical care to get them to talk.
Moyar took a revisionist’s view that the U.S. actually won the war in Vietnam. Even so, Simmons’ disclosures to him remain important. On page 105 in his chapter on “Prisoners: Interrogation, Torture, and Execution,” Simmons told Moyar, “I knew some American doctors who helped me out from time to time. I’d bring in an American doctor with a big bag full of pills and devices and everything, and he’d put his gear on and listen to a heartbeat and go through a fairly elaborate routine, which seemed quite sophisticated to a peasant. Then the doctor would look at the wound and say, “Oh that looks very bad. It could get infected. You could lose that limb.”
Simmons would then send the doctor away. “I’d usually let the doctor go and then tell the prisoner, “We’d like to help, but it’s hard to get the medicine—I can’t do anything to help you without getting some sort of help in return.”“That delay ran contrary to the mandate of the Geneva Conventions, which were originally written to deal with problems that would arise when prisoners at war would be brought in from the war zone with wounds.
According to Wells Dixon, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, “The denial of medical care to someone in the custody of the United States certainly would be illegal and unconscionable and it would violate the Geneva Conventions. No question about it.”
Valentine explored the possible violation in his November 4, 2000, story in Counterpunch. He wrote, “The specific charge against Simmons is that he routinely violated the Geneva Conventions while interrogating civilian prisoners during his 20 months of service with the CIA in Vietnam.” He referred to a 1994 profile of Simmons published in Connecticut’s, New London Day, and “in that profile,” he explained, “Simmons said he would threaten to withhold medicine from injured prisoners, in order to obtain information, but that he would never actually make good on the threat. According to Simmons, such coercive tactics are perfectly legitimate and do not reach the threshold of a war crime.“During an interview on Connecticut’s WHUS Radio in October, Valentine pointed out the physical and psychological impact of withholding medical care from a wounded detainee during the Vietnam War. “Let’s assume that the person has a bullet wound,” he said. “That’s pretty painful. These people aren’t being brought in with paper cuts.—We’re usually talking about wounds that occurred while the person was being arrested, because people did not go to these interrogation centers voluntarily, counter-terror teams went out to snatch them from their homes at midnight. Or they were snatched up in Special Branch, FBI, or Police round ups.”
Simmons had become defensive in 1994 when students got wind of the story and argued that he shouldn’t run against incumbent Democrat Sam Gejdenson. According to separate reports in The New London Day, in 1994 and 2001, the students called Simmons a “war criminal,” a charge he claimed was politically motivated. Writing for The Day, January 14, 2001, Stan DeCoster said, “He considered it a smear, pure and simple. He was particularly offended, he said, because for nearly three decades he has tried to redirect any negative energy from the war years into a productive life.”
According to DeCoster, Simmons got angry and said, “It’s crap like this—that takes us right back to where we were. And that’s not good for me personally, and it’s not good for America.” Clearly, the charges had hit home with Simmons. But his anger should have raised serious questions. Why didn’t he simply respond to questions he must have known would be asked?
To make matters worse a connection was found between the Gejdenson campaign and one of the protesters raising the question of Simmons’ alleged “war crimes.” In the ensuing chaos Gejdenson disowned his supporter and apologized for the “war crimes” charge. At that point Connecticut reporters began to think of the charges as the “smear” Simmons said they were.By 2001, Connecticut’s media had been purchased by multinational corporations. The Hartford Courant, for example, is now run by the Tribune out of Chicago. Political candidates were stymied when trying to communicate complex ideas to voters. In that climate of low press scrutiny Rob Simmons caught the wave of post 9/11 neo-conservatism that empowered George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Unchecked by the national media in Washington, he has found it easy to lobby for even controversial legislation such as the Military Commissions Act, which relaxes restrictions on some of the same interrogation tactics Congress said were illegal when the CIA and Military used them in Vietnam. In 1984, U.S. Navy Seal and Vietnam veteran Elton Manzione told Valentine, “the story [of Phoenix] needs to be told. Because the whole aura of the Vietnam War was influenced by what went on in the ‘hunter-killer’ teams of Phoenix, Delta, etc. That was the point at which many of us realized we were no longer the good guys in the white hats defending freedom—that we were assassins, pure and simple. That disillusionment carried over to all other aspects of the war and was eventually responsible for it becoming America’s most unpopular war.“Now, the Iraq War rivals Vietnam for unpopularity and grim statistics on death, torture, and the heavy civilian cost.
Dori Smith is an independent radio producer and host of “Talk Nation Radio” airing weekly at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, Connecticut. She can be reached at her web site at talknationradio@gmail.com.
David Morse is an independent journalist and political analyst and author of the historical novel, “The Iron Bridge”, [Harcourt Brace, 1998.] His articles have appeared in Progressive Populist, Salon, the New York Times Magazine, Dissent, the Nation, Friends Journal, and Esquire. His most recent article, “War of the Future, Oil Drives the Genocide in Darfur,” appeared in TomDispatch. He can be reached at his website at dmorse@david-morse.com
With a storm approaching, we hear from Admiral Thad Allen, and scientist Samantha Joye describes the dangers she is familiar with as we discuss the Deep Water Horizon spill and complications involving Methane and other gases.
With bad weather, a tropical depression storm approaching the Gulf of Mexico, the government and BP Joint Task Force called a press conference and Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander, took our questions. We asked him first what percentage of oil versus methane and other gas may be leaking from the well head, the cap or other leaks identified after the most recent test capping of the blown well. We also asked Thad Allen to describe all of the leaks identified since the capping test, and to talk about any new ones they have discovered. Scientists have been closely watching to determine if the cap is displacing pressure and causing leaks underground. If they can’t observe the cap because of bad weather for up to four days, Allen said. They could decide to reopen the cap to avoid missing signs the well is buckling”
H.P. Albarelli Jr., is author of the book, A Terrible Mistake, The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments. He describes what key people at the CIA have created. They were fervent anti communists, and had wealth and privilege, and saw themselves as modern day Knights Templar, above known laws. 
The creators of the CIA had a fascination with the crusades and other Knights Templar stories involving the Middle East, with stories of the Ark of the Covenant, Soloman’s Temple, and the visions of Ezekiel, important to Jewish mystics.