Dan Rather's Departure from CBS News

Dan Rather's Departure from CBS News
Friday, November 26, 2004
This is a partial transcript of "Special Report With Brit Hume," Nov. 23, 2004, that has been edited for clarity.

BRIAN WILSON, GUEST HOST: Well, the big question. Is Dan Rather (search ) leaving of his free will or being shoved out the door? And what role does this controversy over those bogus National Guard documents Rather reported on during the campaign have to do with all this?

For more, we turn to David Blum, media writer, television critic, journalism teacher; he’s also the author of "Tick... Tick... Tick...: The Long Life & Turbulent Times of 60 Minutes."

David, thanks for joining us. What’s your assessment first blush of his announcement today, that Dan Rather will leave oh, March of next year?

DAVID BLUM, "NEW YORK SUN"/TV CRITIC: Well, I think this announcement was designed for Rather to leave his job in advance of the issuance of the report; the investigation into what happened in September on that now infamous National Guard (search ) story. Rumor has it that, that report is going to be devastating.

And I think Rather saw the opportunity to leave a little bit more gracefully by announcing his departure now, than having the report come out and having it look as though the two actions are directly related, even though they are, obviously directly related.

WILSON: Well, David, anybody who has been around journalism knows there’s the thing called "news management," where you try to manage bad news. And so one would guess that a good time to release really bad news would be around the Thanksgiving holiday, when people’s attention is diverted, when they’re traveling through out of pocket. If Dan Rather made this announcement today, would you expect to see this report come out, let’s say, I don’t know the day after Thanksgiving?

BLUM: Possibly during halftime at the Lions’ game on Thursday. I don’t know. Whenever it is most likely that media reporters are busy eating or drinking elsewhere.

You know, this is going to be very bad news for CBS. And in fact, the Rather departure is bad news in the sense that they have no successor named. Whereas Tom Brokaw (search ) is being carried down the street on everyone’s shoulders and talked about as a presidential candidate, Dan Rather is experiencing no such elation today. And there’s no successor.

WILSON: Well, let’s talk about the bench; people who might be on the bench who might step up and fill the void. You hear two names a lot of times. John Roberts, who has done his time at CBS for many, many years. And then the other name you hear is Scott Pelley, a former White House correspondent. We know Scott in this town, a guy who is doing his time now on "60 Minutes." Which of those two guys do you think might have the lead?

BLUM: You know, it’s hard to say. As your pictures reveal, as good reporters as they are, they do appear to be born and bred on an anchor farm somewhere.

(LAUGHTER)

BLUM: And you know, I don’t exactly think that either one of them have quite the stature of a Rather, or Jennings or Brokaw. Not to discredit them, they’re good journalists. But you know, the day when people turn to their anchormen for comfort in a difficult moment, such as a day like a 9/11 or Kennedy assassination (search ) are past. I don’t see Americans turning to Scott Pelley for comfort, as good a journalist as he might be. And that’s as deep as their bench is, two men. A little sad, I’d have to say.

WILSON: Well, listen to this sound bite. It was in the package. Listen to it one more time. Here’s Andy Rooney and what he had to say -- I’m sorry. Excuse me. I’m sorry. I thought we had that. We’ll not go to there.

But Andy Rooney saying well, look, he was in the chair longer than Cronkite was.

BLUM: That’s right.

WILSON: And maybe it’s time for him to move on. Kind of strange to hear that coming from a guy who’s been in the chair for what; about 106 years?

(LAUGHTER)

BLUM: Well, that’s fair enough. Although, you know, the fact is that he’s right. Rather held that job for 24 years. It’s long since been time for him to go. You know, people who are feeling sorry for Dan Rather today really shouldn’t. He’s had a quarter century of multimillion-dollar salary, high-profile job. You know, it’s time to move on and give somebody else a chance and -- it’s a third place now. It’s been third place for a long time. Under any other circumstances, the anchorman would have been forced out. But Dan Rather is the biggest star CBS has and they were not about to push him out without some plan for succession.

WILSON: You know as well as I do that one of the things that is important in TV is that you have a following, that you have some credibility, and that you have name recognition. With Dan Rather leaving in March and Tom Brokaw leaving now, are we going to see what some have called the further decline of the big network dinosaurs?

BLUM: Well, I’m leaving here to go to the big party at Peter Jennings’ house later.

(LAUGHTER)

BLUM: You know, it’s really not a happy day for the future of the evening news. You know, this is already to some extent an anachronism. Most people don’t wait until 6:30 in the

Annan `Surprised' by Son's Connection to Oil-for-Food Scandal

Annan `Surprised' by Son's Connection to Oil-for-Food Scandal
November 30, 2004

UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday he was "surprised and disappointed" by revelations that his son received payments until this year from a Swiss company that won a lucrative contract under the United Nations' scandal-ridden Iraqi oil-for-food program.

Annan confirmed news reports that his son, Kojo, 29, received $2,500 a month over four years from Cotecna Inspection SA, totaling $125,000.

Cotecna--and Annan--previously had claimed that Annan's son stopped working for the company in 1998. The company later said it had paid him a monthly stipend through 1999 to keep him from working for competitors and that he never worked on a project related to Iraq.

Uncovering Scandal at the U.N.

Uncovering Scandal at the U.N.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
By John Gibson

Two bits of news on the U.N.'s corrupt Oil for Food program by which Saddam Hussein tried to bribe members of the Security Council...

Now it turns out that Secretary-General Kofi Annan's son Kojo was also on the Oil for Food gravy train to the tune of about $150,000 a year.

And did you read in Monday's Los Angeles Times that Iraq is investing $3 billion in its oil fields next year, at which time it will exceed output of the Saddam regime?

Considering the so-called insurgents are trying to blow up oil facilities every day, that's quite an accomplishment.

FOX News Channel's Jonathan Hunt also went to France to interview the former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua.

He was listed as a recipient of oil vouchers — also known as bribes — from Saddam. This was the method by which the Iraqi dictator beat the sanctions against his government.

Some people suspect Pasqua was the conduit to distribute Saddam's dirty oil money around the French system, wherever it had to go in order for the French to tend to Saddam's interests on the world stage.

You might have noticed the French did just that.

Now Pasqua denies any wrongdoing, which you expect — he could hardly admit to doing Saddam's dirty work.

But you get to see him deny. You get to see Hunt pester him, you get to see him deny again, in a fashion that could be described as not exceptionally convincing.

By the way — near as I understand it — even if U.N. officials are eventually identified as part of Saddam's plot to cheat under U.N. sanctions... not much will happen.

The officials are, after all, basically beyond the law... that is, unless you foolishly expect the U.N. itself to do something about its own crooked executives.

That brings me back to an item at the top. Annan's son was in on the scam. The secretary-general says he is disappointed to learn about it.

You can expect he will express similar disappointment when the investigators he has hired find his own officials were bought by Saddam's dirty money.

That's My Word.

PM - Calls for Annan Resignation as Oil for Food Scandal Continues

ABC Online

PM - Calls for Annan resignation as oil for food scandal continues

[This is the print version of story
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1254955.htm]

PM - Tuesday, 30 November, 2004 18:25:58
Reporter: Alison Caldwell

MARK COLVIN: The United Nations oil for food scandal, already known to involve up to $20-billion, is starting to lap at the very top of the UN.

The Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has been forced to distance himself from the business dealings of his son Kojo. The reason - revelations that Kojo was paid by a company involved in the oil for food program as recently as February this year.

Kofi Annan has been forced to express his disappointment in his son's lack of disclosure on the matter, which has dogged the UN chief for the past three months.

The pressure on Kofi Annan has intensified in recent days with high profile columnists in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal now calling for him to resign.

It comes just two days ahead of the release of a major report recommending widespread reform of the UN, a report requested by the Secretary General himself.

Alison Caldwell reports.

ALISON CALDWELL: The controversy surrounding the UN's oil for food program is now threatening to destroy the credibility of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The latest chapter involves his son Kojo Annan and payments he received from a firm that had a contract under the oil for food program in Iraq.

Late last week, a spokesman for Kofi Annan was forced to admit that the monthly payments continued up until February this year, six years later than previously reported.

Today UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard fronted the media in New York to express the Secretary General's disappointment.

FRED ECKHARD: As to his son Kojo, and the specific allegations that he continued to receive payment from Cotecna until February of this year, the Secretary General said he had been under the impression that those payments had stopped in 1998. When he recently found out that had in fact continued until this year, the Secretary General said he was surprised and disappointed.

ALISON CALDWELL: Nigeria based Kojo Annan once worked for the Swiss company Cotecna Inspections. The UN had claimed that Kojo severed ties with the company in February 1999, but the monthly payments of more than $3,000 continued until February this year.

Fred Eckhard again.

FRED ECKHARD: He added that his son is a grown man, and that the Secretary General doesn't get involved in his son's business, and that his son doesn't get involved in the UN's business.

ALISON CALDWELL: The United Nations hired Cotecna to check civilian supplies reaching Iraq under the UN's oil for food program, from 1998 until 2003.

There's no evidence that Kojo Annan worked on Cotecna's Iraqi program, and according to Fred Eckhard, the Secretary General had no role in the distribution of UN contracts.

The oil for food scandal is the subject of six separate US congressional inquiries. Kofi Annan commissioned the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, to conduct his own independent inquiry.

Conservative commentator Frank Gaffney was a senior Defence Department official in the Reagan administration. Now with the Centre for Security Policy in Washington, he believes the story about Kofi Annan's son is just the tip of the iceberg.

FRANK GAFFNEY: It will be simply one more instance in which the integrity of the Secretary General is called into question. And my guess is that the institution will decide that if it's a question of his survival or its reputation, that it will be time for Kofi Annan to go.

ALISON CALDWELL: This has been the subject of an inquiry by Paul Volker's there, and Kofi Annan has also said that reporters should be patient and wait for the outcome of that inquiry. That's not going to stop the discussion is it?

FRANK GAFFNEY: I don't think so. There are a number of congressional investigations now in the United States that are going forward apace. It's a question of how long will it take for all of the relevant information to come out, not a question of whether it will come out. And the longer it takes, I think the more the damage will be to the reputation and the authority of the United Nations.

MARK COLVIN: The neo-conservative Frank Gaffney from the Centre for Security Policy in Washington, with Alison Caldwell.

The Problem is Putin

The Problem is Putin
George Will
November 30, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Now more than ever, the bedrock idea on which U.S. foreign policy rests is that the nation's security is enhanced by the spread of democracy. Since 9/11 the idea has been that security depends on democratization in nations with slight, if any, traditions of popular sovereignty.

However, the policy of promoting democracy is a sharp scythe that can mow down more than the persons wielding the tool might intend. In Ukraine's debased election, Russian President Vladimir Putin twice campaigned for the candidate who benefited from fraud, violence and other violations of civilized norms, incidents that seemed to bear Putin's signature. Commenting on Ukraine, Secretary of State Colin Powell said:

We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse.

Which could have been said of President Putin's own re-election earlier this year. What President Bush said three years ago was that he had ``a sense of'' Putin's soul -- formed by 15 years in the KGB -- and liked what he sensed: ``We share a lot of values." Events in Russia have not tempered the president's reiterated insistence that ``freedom is on the march.''

Putin stands athwart that march in Russia, where he has marginalized inconvenient parties, controlled the media and used the criminal justice system to intimidate potential rival sources of power and social authority. Now the Kremlin, which issued instructions to Ukrainian state-controlled media during the presidential campaign, seems determined to export Putinism to contiguous countries.

Putin calls Viktor Yanukovych's 49.46 percent of the Ukrainian vote a ``convincing'' victory over Viktor Yushchenko. He received 46.61 percent in his challenge to the authoritarian regime that backed Yanukovych, who favors closer relations with Russia, in the manner of some other ``managed democracies'' among former Soviet republics. Yushchenko favors Ukrainian membership in the European Union and, perhaps, in NATO.

Criminality against Yushchenko's campaign went beyond multiple instances of violence, intimidation and vote fraud. The Financial Times reports that when Yushchenko appeared before a large crowd of supporters in Kiev, and his face filled a large video screen, a woman exclaimed, ``Oh, how terrible. He was so handsome.'' His pockmarked and scarred features are the result of what seems to have been a poisoning that felled him hours after dining with the head of Ukraine's secret service.

Russia's attempt to control Ukraine's destiny is partly a reverberation from the dissolution of the Soviet empire. Russia's desire to envelop Ukraine within its sphere of influence is a centuries-old Russian tendency. The novel impulse at work here is the transformation of ``Europe'' from a geographic into a political expression -- and Putin's recoil against that.

In its admirably sharp criticism of Ukraine's election, the E.U. is postulating certain standards of civic hygiene integral to European identity. If the E.U. extends membership to Turkey, Europe's border will abut Iraq. And if, in time, Ukraine joins, Europe's border will be within 250 miles of Moscow.

The canon of European literature includes Pushkin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but that does not settle the question of Russia's identity -- its relationship to Europe. Charles de Gaulle spoke of Europe extending from the Atlantic (in some of his moods, from the English Channel) to the Ural Mountains. But there is a lot of Russia -- 8 time zones of it -- east of there.

Ukraine has been independent for 13 years -- the length of time between America's declaration of independence and the election of its first president, when the cohesion of the national entity was in doubt. Talk of secession is rife in Ukraine's eastern, Russian-oriented region.

The 19th century featured national consolidations -- the United States, Germany, Italy, Belgium, etc. Recently, the disintegrative forces of religion, ethnicity and language have driven events in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. Ukraine, where Catholicism and the Ukrainian language flourish in the west and Orthodox Christianity and Russian in the east, could be the latest cauldron to boil over.

The United States, with its foreign policy hostage to January elections by the Palestinian Authority and those in Iraq, has a stake in Ukrainian events that is much larger than its leverage. As Lech Walesa, hero of Poland's liberation, told a mass meeting of Yushchenko's supporters, Poland supports you but you must do this yourself.

The problem, in Ukraine and others among Russia's anxiously watching neighbors, is Putin. Perhaps Secretary Powell intended the wide arc of his scythe to encompass Moscow when he said that corrupt elections cannot create legitimate governments.

UN Chief's Son in Iraq Oil-for-Food Scandal

UN Chief's Son in Iraq Oil-for-Food Scandal
December 1, 2004
From: The Washington Post

Kofi Annan did not know his son, Kojo, received as much as $US150,000 ($193,000) from a Swiss company linked to the UN's scandal-plagued Iraqi oil-for-food program.

The UN Secretary-General said this yesterday as he accepted that the payments created a "perception of conflict of interests and wrongdoing". He was "very disappointed and surprised" that his son had not told him about them.

Kojo Annan's ties to the company, Cotecna Inspection Services, are the subject of US congressional inquiries and a UN investigation into influence peddling and mismanagement in the oil-for-food program.

Kofi Annan said he thought his son had severed financial links to Cotecna in 1998, shortly before the company received a contract to oversee UN-managed trade with Iraq.

He denied any wrongdoing. He had played no role in granting UN contracts to Cotecna or any other companies, he said.

"Naturally, I have warm, family relations with my son, but he is in a different field. He is an independent businessman. He is a grown man, and I don't get involved with his activities and he doesn't get involved in mine."

The oil-for-food program began operating in December 1996 as a way to allow Iraq to export oil to buy humanitarian goods for its people.

The UN oversaw the export of $US64 billion in oil before the program was transferred to US-led authorities in Iraq a year ago.

Allegations of wrongdoing by UN officials surfaced after the fall of Saddam Hussein and set off investigations by Congress and US prosecutors into the diversion of billions of dollars in oil money and kickbacks from the UN program to Saddam's government.

Kofi Annan appointed Paul Volcker, the former US Federal Reserve chairman, to investigate UN misconduct. He urged reporters to be patient until Mr Volcker, who has been looking into Kojo Annan's relationship with Cotecna, concludes his inquiry.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Danforth, said on Monday that his country took the allegations of UN misconduct "very seriously" but there should be no "rush to judgement until all of the facts are in".

Mr Danforth also urged Mr Volcker to release 55 internal UN audits and other documents to congressional investigators as "quickly as possible".

Mr Volcker said in a recent interview that he would hand over the audits when he finishes the first stage of his investigation in January.

Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna, first as a trainee and later as a consultant in Africa, from December 1995 to December 1998. The United Nations had previously asserted that his commercial relations with Cotecna ended in December 1998, the same month the company received a $4.8-million contract to monitor the import of humanitarian supplies in Iraq for the United Nations.

Verifying Victory

Verifying Victory
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
By Brit Hume

The latest from the Political Grapevine:

Verifying Victory

Miami Herald reporters who conducted an independent recount in three heavily democratic Florida counties say that President Bush's lopsided victory there is legitimate. Critics have questioned the President's strong showing in the Florida panhandle, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1.

But after reviewing more than 17,000 optical-scan ballots in northern Suwannee, Lafayette and Union counties, the Herald reporters conclude that charges of voter fraud are unfounded. In fact, while those three counties have long been overwhelmingly Democratic, they have reguarly voted for Republican presidential candidates, including Senator Bob Dole in 1996 and President Bush in 2000.

Misleading Survey?

A new AP/Ipsos poll shows that 59 percent of Americans say President Bush should choose a Supreme Court nominee who will uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. But the AP questions distorted the Roe v. Wade ruling, telling participants it made abortion legal only in the first three months of pregnancy. The ruling actually allows no limits on abortion until nearly six months into pregnancy.

What's more, an article accompanying the poll implied that overturning Roe would ban abortion — when a repeal of Roe v. Wade would remove constitutional protection and put the issue in the hands of individual states.

Swift Boat Broke

The only Swift Boat Veteran for Truth to serve on John Kerry's boat says his anti-Kerry stance cost him his job. Steve Gardner, who served as a gunner on Kerry's swift boat for four months, told Mary Laney of the Chicago Sun-Times that a representative from the Kerry campaign threatened to "look into his finances"after he spoke out against Kerry.

What's more, Gardner claims he was laid off from his job selling information technology to insurance companies — 24 hours after an article accusing him of being politically motivated was published online. Gardner says he's broke, but that if he had it to do over again, he would still speak out against Kerry.

Excuse their French

France's fight to slow the advance of the English language in French society continues. Last week, the government abandoned a plan requiring all elementary school students to learn "basic international English."

And ten years after a law making French usage mandatory in the workplace, technicians at a Paris branch of General Electric have filed suit claiming they are illegally being forced to use English on the job. A Union spokesman tells the London Times that the pressure to use English in e-mails and even in meetings between French staff is "unacceptable," adding that French employees merely want English speaking management to "make an effort on their side."

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report

Iraqi Bomb Labs Signal Attacks in the Works

U.S. and Iraqi troops in Fallujah uncovered a ''cookbook'' for making chemical and biological weapons, an indication the terrorists plan to use these arms in future attacks.

Iraqi Bomb Labs Signal Attacks in the Works
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
30 November 2004

Chemicals and bomb-making literature found at two houses in Fallujah, Iraq, last week show Iraqi rebels are prepared to use chemical and biological weapons in future attacks, a U.S. military spokesman said yesterday.

Rebels in Fallujah had materials for making chemical blood agents and also a "cookbook" on how to produce a deadly form of anthrax, said Army Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan in a telephone interview.

Col. Boylan said there are no signs to date that the terrorists actually used chemical or biological weapons in homemade bombs that the military calls improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

"But this definitely shows that they had the intent and willingness to go down that road," he said. "The intent is there to at least make it and potentially to use it."

A U.S. military team trained to handle chemical weapons removed the materials and equipment, and testing is under way, Col. Boylan said.

The two houses in Fallujah were used by terrorists linked to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the al Qaeda-linked leader who is behind many of the suicide bombings and attacks against Iraqi civilians and U.S. military personnel, Col. Boylan said.

Iraqi security forces and the U.S. military uncovered one chemical and bomb-making factory Wednesday, Col. Boylan said. A day later, a second residence was found with bomb-making and chemical-weapons material in another part of the city, he said.

The chemical lab was found during house-to-house searches of the city, where some 2,000 terrorists and former fighters for Saddam Hussein's regime were killed in recent battles.

"The chemical labs had cookbooks that had formulas for making explosives," Col. Boylan said. "One of them had directions on how to make anthrax. One of them had ingredients and directions on how to make blood agent."

Chemicals for the blood agent hydrogen cyanide that were found included potassium cyanide and hydrochloric acid, he said.

Hydrogen cyanide, which affects the blood, is extremely poisonous and can be used as a weapon in both vapor and liquid form.

In addition to chemical-weapons materials, the troops uncovered other bomb-making materials in the residence, including ammonium nitrate and military explosives that are used in making roadside and vehicle bombs, he said.

It is believed the Fallujah rebels had planned to lace their improvised bombs with hydrogen cyanide, he said.

Soldiers also found testing kits labeled "Soman, Sarin and V-Gases," which are used to test for the presence of chemical nerve agents.

The kits contained vials labeled in English, Russian and German that read, "For working instructions, refer to the instructions leaflet."

Col. Boylan noted that the chemical weapons are "indiscriminate" terror weapons that were to be used against Iraqi civilians as well as against U.S., Iraqi and allied troops.

He said Fallujah has been neutralized as a center for terrorist bombing operations by the U.S. military's ongoing operation there.

"We're finding tons of weapons — caches with hundreds of weapons, ammunition, IEDs and factories," he said.

"These locations were being used to do nothing but fabricate IEDs and other weapons."

He noted that Fallujah is considered the single largest place for weapons and explosives used by rebels in Iraq.

"We're still going house to house" in Fallujah, he said.

Troops are fighting to clear buildings of insurgents, but "we still have pockets [of resistance] and sporadic fighting as they find holdouts, and that's to be expected," Col. Boylan said.

"It's not an easy process. It's a slow, methodical process that once completed will have cleared the city" of insurgents, he said.

Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud said last week that the chemical laboratory "was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons."