Senior Political Correspondent Michael Winship

A couple of nights after 9/11, our Manhattan neighborhood still reeling from the tragedy that had taken place nearby, I was talking to two of our 6th Precinct cops, a man and a woman, each Irish-American. The precinct had just lost two of its members at the World Trade Center, Police Officer Jimbo Leahy and Bomb Squad Detective Danny Richardson.

The three of us walked into one of the two delis on our block, each run by Egyptians. As we paid for our purchases, I asked the owner, Mohammed, if everyone was treating him all right. Yes, he replied, and the male policeman said, “Listen, Mohammed, if anybody gives you any kind of crap, you just come over to the precinct and tell us, ’cause, you know, we all love you.”

Mohammed thanked him, and then added, with a rueful laugh, in his accented voice, “Well, I AM thinking of changing my name.”

With perfect comic timing, the cop said, “You know, Mohammed, I’ve always thought ‘Patrick’ had a lovely ring to it…”

According to the 2000 census, there are fewer than 100,000 people of Arab descent living in New York City (total population: 8.2 million), but their presence seems ubiquitous — running delicatessens and newsstands, working as locksmiths and cobblers, driving taxis. It’s not uncommon to see lines of cabs parked in front of local churches — the houses of worship make space available for Muslims to answer their five time daily call to prayer.

During those days and weeks immediately after the towers fell, there were remarkably few anti-Arab hate incidents reported in the city. In our shared identity as New Yorkers, we recognized what had happened for what it was: a crime against all of us. We chose not to lash out at those among us whose ethnicity was similar to the hijackers’.

So it remains among most New Yorkers today, even those who express their anger that the government would so blithely approve a deal with an Arab-owned company to run shipping terminals in greater New York and several other American cities. The immediate gut reaction may have been one that flirted with xenophobia, but the more considered and typically New York response could best be expressed as, “What the…?” followed by a snort of blunt derision.

“What the…?” because in the last four and half years we’ve seen so much anti-Arab hysteria stirred up in support of the Global War on Terrorism. It seems bizarre to have the White House suddenly turn and feign befuddled outrage that there should be such hostility toward the sale of Britain’s P&O Steam Navigation, operator of the cargo and cruise ship facilities, to Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirates.

We’re aware of and grateful for the United Arab Emirates’ support of the United States since 9/11, and cognizant of the anti-American feelings that could be conjured in the Arab world by putting a kibosh on the deal. But we also remember the UAE’s past associations with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. So while the ports contract may turn out to be okay, we’re wary. New Yorkers forgive but never forget — just ask Yankee Alex Rodriguez.

We also wonder, “What the…?” because the failure to tell us in advance about this new arrangement is part and parcel with the government’s pattern of not sharing or dissembling about information vital to the safety of New Yorkers.

That includes promised, post-9/11 Federal aid that has failed to materialize and goes back to those first days after the attack. The Environmental Protection Agency told New Yorkers, “It is safe… to go back to work in New York’s financial district,” although asbestos in some areas was three times higher than safe levels, and private tests indicated large amounts of benzene, mercury and lead in the air.

According to a 2003 EPA Inspector General’s report, “When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was ’safe’ to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement… Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced… the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.” A class action suit has just been filed.

Finally, New Yorkers ask, “What the…?” because the way in which the deal has been mismanaged feels like one more example of the government’s refusal to fully acknowledge and do something about the vulnerability of our ports to terrorism.

Nine million freight containers arrive at our 300 ports of entry every year: 2.5 billion tons of cargo, and that will at least double by 2020, Only six percent of those materials are physically inspected; the Coast Guard, charged with patrolling the harbors, is woefully understaffed and underfunded.

The Maritime Transportation Security Act, passed after 9/11, called for $5.4 billion over ten years to improve port security. According to the American Association of Port Authorities, “Federal money allocated in the first five rounds of the program — about $708 million — accounted for only about one-fifth of what seaports identified as needs.”

That DP World and the government have agreed to a 45 day investigation of the national security ramifications of the ports transaction is a good thing. So are DP’s assurances that a separate subsidiary will handle its North American operations and a United States citizen will be in charge of security — at least until the security review is complete.

But the inquiry must be far more open to congressional and public scrutiny than the secrecy with which the original deal was approved. That the same agencies that already signed off on it so willingly will be conducting the review is less than encouraging.

Last week, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a press conference to announce that a case of anthrax had been discovered in the city. It was accidental, contracted from animal skins and not an act of bio-terrorism, unlike the still-unsolved flurry of attacks shortly after 9/11.

The mayor stood there, gave straight answers for more than half an hour, and calmly reassured the public that every precaution was being taken. There seemed nothing to hide.

The contrast with the evasive and imperious behavior of the White House throughout the Dubai flap was striking. The mayor was blunt, direct and honest. He told it like it was. He told it like a post 9/11 New Yorker.
_________________________

copyright 2006 Messenger Post Newspapers

All newspaper editors want to know what their readers like. If you would like to read this feature in your local newspaper, please do not hesitate to share your enthusiasm with your local newspaper editor.

More audio at willyritch.com.

11:00-12:00
Big Time Radio Man/PD Jeff Wade/emails

12:00-1:00
Port Control/Cost of the War/Winship on Politics

1:00-2:00
Online Dating/Rock ‘n Roller John Eddie

A quick trip to NYC this week was a huge success. The goal was a Broadway Show or two with my daughters. Sally, who is ten, believes it is not a question of if, but when she becomes a Broadway star. She has already pledged to “remember me” when she is famous. (I’m only hoping that translates into “support me” when I’m old and decrepit, and she’s rich and famous.) The “Pajama Game” starring Harry Connick, Jr. opened on Broadway to to rave reviews this week, and the girls and I were there, dressed in black pants and white shirts and in charge of the mezzanine. I was able to land us a gig as ushers for the day, so we showed the theater goers, all dressed in their finery, to their seats. The show was good (although not exactly my style) but I think the magic of being in an ornate Broadway theater, and even being part of it in some small way, was what really made the moment something special for Sally.

We followed that show up with “Spamalot,” the Monty Python Musical. Now THAT was fun. And thanks to Senior Political Correspondent Michael Winship, not only were we able to get tickets to this hard-to-get-tickets-to show, we had fabulous seats, right down front.

Rocker John Eddie is coming to the Boothbay Opera House March 4th–we’ll give John a ring this weekend to check up on him. This show will be sure to sell out so get your tickets now!

Michael Winship

Almost thirty years ago, the first documentary on which I received a writing credit was a public television special titled “Vietnam: Picking Up the Pieces.” Produced by the independent documentarian Jon Alpert and his wife, Keiko, they were the first Western TV crew allowed into Vietnam after the 1975 fall of Saigon.

The program showed a Vietnam trying to recover from the devastation of years of combat. It was a nation desperately impoverished, reliant on Soviet aid, struggling to adjust to the reunification of north and south, and grappling with the aftermath of a war that they had seen as one of liberation but which the United States perceived as a battleground in the global struggle against Communism.

In retrospect, you can see in the documentary the seeds of the resilient society Vietnam has become today; a socialist state but one in which competitive markets and tourism — along with inflation and property rates — are thriving.

Diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States were restored more than a decade ago, but at the time of the documentary, the two nations were still at loggerheads. We arranged a screening at the State Department, and after viewing this hour that depicted a country building back from war, coping with its own dilemmas and inconsistencies, yet quite clearly, even stunningly, hopeful, a couple of the State analysts came up to us with a sort of comradely nudge nudge, wink wink.
Well, they said, we saw the pictures and heard what the people had to say, but we know what you really were trying to tell us: it’s hell on earth.

It was like that old joke about the guy who looks at the Rorschach ink blots, sees nothing but sexual acts and when questioned by the shrink about his obsession, says “Don’t look at me, doc, you’re the one with the dirty pictures.”

At the time, it seemed bizarre, but this weekend, after reading James Risen’s book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” it’s clear that such hammering of square pegs in round holes is standard operating procedure in intelligence gathering and American foreign policy, especially under the current administration. All too often, information had been shaped to conform to doctrine rather than the other way around, and we pay the price at a greater and potentially deadlier rate every day.

It was the imminent publication of Risen’s book that triggered the New York Times’ decision to go ahead with his front-page articles about the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program, a story the paper had sat on for a year, partly at the request of the White House. But “State of War” is about much more than supralegal surveillance. It’s an agonizing litany of how mismanagement, political infighting — with Cheney, Rumsfeld and their neo-con friends at the forefront, the president frequently and purposely left out of the loop — and good, old-fashioned pig ignorance led to a series of monstrous intelligence gaffes.

Those blunders contributed to the current bedlam in Iraq, the creation of a narco-state in Afghanistan, and the worldwide expansion of al Qaeda. There’s even the tale of an outrageous CIA scam called MERLIN that inadvertently may have handed Iran — as in Axis of Evil — blueprints for a nuclear weapon.

An especially surprising story is that of Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad, an Iraqi anesthesiologist living in Cleveland. In 2002, she was recruited by the CIA to travel to Baghdad and secretly question her brother, “a key figure in Saddam Hussein’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.”

On behalf of her adopted country and at great personal risk, she did as she was asked. Her brother was incredulous: Iraq’s nuclear program had been destroyed years before, he told her, and sanctions kept Saddam from beginning it anew. She even asked him about the alleged Iraqi attempts to buy yellowcake uranium from the African country Niger. Nothing like that was going on, she was told, and, Alhaddad said, her brother “kept wondering where the CIA was getting these crazy questions.”

CIA officials refused to believe her, nor did they believe thirty other Iraqis they sent to speak to family members, all of whom returned with identical versions of Alhaddad’s story. Their reports, Risen writes, “were buried in the bowels of the CIA and were never released for distribution to the State Department, Pentagon or the White House. The CIA had obtained hard evidence that Saddam Hussein had abandoned his efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction — and the agency chose not to share that information with the president of the United States, who was about to send American troops to fight and die in Iraq.” Hopes for peace were “dashed by the petty turf battles and tunnel vision of the agency’s officials.”

“State of War” chronicles this “war fever” that seized the CIA in its desire to tell Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld what they
wanted to hear; demonstrates how other intelligence failures contributed to the current insurgency and the ongoing crises in Afghanistan and Iran; and ends with a disturbing chapter on Saudi Arabia’s connections to al Qaeda:

“Even as the Bush Administration spent enormous time and energy trying in vain to prove connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in order to justify the war in Iraq, the administration was ignoring the far more conclusive ties with Saudi Arabia. Those links are much stronger and far more troubling than has ever been previously disclosed, and until they are thoroughly investigated, the roots of al Qaeda’s power and the full story of 9/11, will never be known.”

Especially chilling in light of everything from the current situation with Hamas in Palestine to the proposed turning over of six American ports to an Arab-owned company, Risen concludes, “Washington’s failure to confront questions about Saudi Arabia before and after 9/11 raises much broader questions, including whether the Bush administration really understands or knows how to deal with the rapid political change now underway in the Middle East.”

Now that’s what I call a dirty picture.

P.S. All this talk about the CIA demands noting the passing of Emmy Award winning documentary film maker Al Levin, who died last week, age 79. Among his many projects were several investigating and exposing CIA mischief, including “Who Invited U.S.?” and “The Secret Government” with Bill Moyers. Avuncular and wry, always willing to share advice or a good story, his commitment to social justice was solid and true. As Al would say, “Avanti!” Onward.

_______________________________________

copyright 2005 Messenger Post Newspapers

All newspaper editors want to know what their readers like. If you would like to read this feature in your local newspaper, please do not hesitate to share your enthusiasm with your local newspaper editor.

The Vice President is the Shooter….The Daily Show’s John Hodgeman…politics with Michael Winship…comedian Mike McDonald….my brother Tom…..and me, whining about my life. Listen and learn from my mistakes.

11:00-12:00
12:00-1:00
1:00-2:00

This is a weird one: a “contract of wifely expectations” from The Smoking Gun.

John Hodgeman, Daily Show Contributor, Professional Writer and author of The Areas of My Expertise will be joining us. Are there little known historical facts about Vice Presidents shooting other people. If anyone would know, it would be John Hodgeman.

Also Comediam Mike McDonald will be in the studio, my brother Tom checks in and the latest on the Vice Presidential Shooting and more from Sr. Political Correspondent Michael Winship.

On Town Meeting we’ll talk to Congressman Tom Allen, from 10-11. Call or email me with questions or comments.

That’s all Saturday from 10-2 on Newsradio560 WGAN. And if it’s any good at all, segments will be up on this blog on Sunday.

This week Lindsey Kildow (American skier) was involved in a serious wreck–she was immediately taken to the trauma center at the hospital in Torinio where she was visited by former American Olympic skiier Picabo Street. (This is true.)

So if the phone rang when Picabo was visiting Kildow, would she answer it “Picabo, ICU?”

Michael Winship

Timing — the secret of my success. I spent a few days in sunny, warm Key West last week and adroitly managed to coordinate returning to Manhattan with the worst blizzard ever recorded in New York City history.

Oddly, while strolling around that Florida island, its main boulevard, Duval Street, overflowing with tourist trap saloons and single entendre tee-shirt shops, two distinguished senior citizens of the 20th century came to mind: Harry Truman and my dad.

Truman because, during his White House years and after, he spent vacations in Key West, staying at the home of the naval base commandant. He loved it there: he could put on a tropical shirt and golf, fish, drink a little bourbon and play poker with his pals. He wrote his wife, Bess, “I’ve a notion to move the capitol to Key West and just stay.”

I thought of my dad because, in the old Strand movie theater on Duval, there’s now a big Walgreen’s drugstore. My father owned a Walgreen’s on the main street of my hometown in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

He was one of the last of the old breed of pharmacists, trained to concoct his own prescription remedies. And as a merchant, he ingrained in his employees the famous two Rules of Retail: 1) The customer is always right, and 2) See Rule 1.

What also links Truman and my father, other than buildings in Key West, is — wait for it — Medicare.

In 1965, Harry Truman sat next to President Lyndon Johnson at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, as Johnson signed into law the bill that created Medicare for the nation’s senior citizens. At the ceremony, Truman was issued the first Medicare card.

“I am so proud that this has come to pass in the Johnson administration,” LBJ said. “But it was really Harry Truman of Missouri who planted the seeds of compassion and duty which have today flowered into care for the sick, and serenity for the fearful.”

Now we’re engaged in great changes in Medicare, beginning with the new prescription drug benefit, aka Medicare Part D, and I wonder how my father, the pharmacist and retailer, would have reacted.

I suspect the complicated rules; the confusion, the bureaucratic loopholes, snafus and inadequacies of the prescription bill would have annoyed him. And the ways in which insurance and pharmaceutical companies, their lobbyists and paid-for legislators have flimflammed the public would have offended him as a flagrant violation of that first rule: the customer — in this case, America’s 42 million elderly and disabled — is always right.

The underlying dilemma, as outlined in a February 6 New York Times analysis, has been trying “to blend a classic big government program from the Great Society with the conservative, market-oriented philosophy of the Republicans in power.”

Administration officials continue to believe the benefit will work and bring those affected more coverage at much lower prices, but, as the Times reported, “In recent weeks, older Americans have struggled to choose from a dizzying array of 40 or more drug plans, with different premiums, co-payments and lists of covered drugs. States have intervened to cover many low-income elderly beneficiaries who were falling between the cracks in their transition to the new Medicare program. Pharmacists have reported delays and difficulties in determining who is eligible for which benefits.”

Liberals, as the Times pointed out, thought the best way to create a Medicare drug benefit was just to add one to the exiting program: “Let the federal government use its immense bargaining clout to secure discounts and provide a standard benefit, just as it does for hospitals and doctors.”

But Republicans wanted something more market-driven — if by market you mean a labyrinthine Turkish bazaar of private insurance plans that adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt and that may or may not suit your pharmacological needs. If, for example, a certain drug proves a drag on an insurer’s profit, they unilaterally can remove it from their plan at a moment’s notice.

What’s more, as California Congressman Pete Stark wrote last week in an op-ed for the Knight Ridder newspapers, “The law actually prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs… prices in the program are considerably higher than what the government pays through the Department of Veterans Affairs or Medicaid, and generally comparable to what the uninsured can get at drugstore.com or Costco. That’s a raw deal for beneficiaries and taxpayers, but a great deal for shareholders and corporate executives.”

For the problem isn’t just about philosophical differences between liberals and conservatives. Keep in mind the ignominious way in which the legislation was birthed back in 2003, an intrinsically flawed hodgepodge of various schemes hammered together by lawmakers working with 750 industry lobbyists. To make the benefit a reality, the pharmaceutical companies spent more than $100 million (not including campaign contributions).

With barely any time for deliberation, the 678-page bill was voted on in the wee hours of the morning, a vote held open two and a half hours beyond the normal 15 minutes while Republican leadership, including Speaker Denny Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay, cajoled, threatened and harangued members until it was passed, 220-215.

Its true cost — $534 billion, as opposed to $400 billion — was hidden from Congress. When a government actuary tried to blow the whistle, Medicare head Thomas Scully threatened to fire him. A week after the legislation was signed, Scully took a job with a legal firm representing major health care clients affected by the law.

Not long after that, one of the bill’s chief engineers, Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin, became head Washington lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association.

So what do we do? As Medicare expert and Urban Institute president Robert Reischauer told the New York Times, “We have in this country a long tradition of passing seriously flawed legislation, and then spending the next decade trying to fix it, to the extent possible.” Over the President’s Day recess, Democratic members of Congress are being urged by leadership to hold town meetings to urge an overhaul of the program, receive feedback and establish the benefit’s flaws as a midterm campaign issue for the fall.

Beyond that, we have to face facts, reason together and once more attempt what all sides have been avoiding for the last decade: comprehensive healthcare reform.

I know. Laughter is the best medicine.

copyright 2006 Messenger Post Newspapers
_________________________

All newspaper editors want to know what their readers like. If you would like to read this feature in your local newspaper, please do not hesitate to share your enthusiasm with your local newspaper editor.

keep looking »

Recently Written

• 1968: Always Something Next
• ‘Tis the Season to Plead Ignorance
• Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?
• Rudy’s Numbers Don’t Add Up
• Last Night’s Viewing and Other Afflictions
• “The Weak Slat under the Bed of Democracy”
• Behind Closed Doors, “The Big Ask”
• Tomorrow’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose
• California: Fear, Fugue and Fantasia
• Iraq: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Categories

• Michael Winship
• Show Audio
• Uncategorized

Archives

• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• November 2006
• October 2006
• September 2006
• August 2006
• July 2006
• June 2006
• May 2006
• April 2006
• March 2006
• February 2006
• January 2006
• December 2005

Blogroll

• Common Dreams
• Entertainment Resources
• Maine Humanities Council
• NYT's Andy Revkin
• Rev. Michael Elliott
• The Photo Album

Admin

• Login
• Wordpress
• XHTML

Search

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Furl
• Netscape
• Yahoo! My Web
• StumbleUpon
• Google Bookmarks
• Technorati
• BlinkList
• Newsvine
• ma.gnolia
• reddit
• Windows Live
• Tailrank

E-mail It

• To Address:
• Your Name:
• Your Address: