E-Mail This Article to a Friend How big media shortchange the public (continued)

8) Secrets of Cheney’s energy task force come to light

As the Bush administration continues to protect the iron wall of secrecy it’s erected around Vice-President Dick Cheney’s energy task force, at least two documents confirm long-standing suspicions that the administration’s foreign policy is being driven by the dictates of the energy industry.

When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, he said that tackling the country’s energy crisis would be a top priority. The United States faced nationwide oil and natural-gas shortages, and a series of electrical blackouts were rolling across California. The president established the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) and appointed former Halliburton CEO Cheney as its head.

One of the big issues on the table was oil, which accounted for 40 percent of the nation’s energy supply and provided fuel for the overwhelming majority of the country’s transportation — as well as its vast war machine. And, for the first time in history, the US had become reliant on foreign imports for more than 50 percent of its oil supply.

But rather than lay the groundwork for converting the economy to alternative, renewable sources, NEPDG’s report, later released by Bush as the National Energy Policy report, in May 2001, promoted "mak[ing] energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy" as a central goal. In other words, Cheney’s group wanted to find additional sources of oil overseas, and ensure US access to that oil — whatever it took.

Documents recently obtained from Cheney’s energy task force as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the public-interest group Judicial Watch indicate that Cheney and his colleagues had their sights on the black gold under the Iraqi desert well before the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Last July, the Commerce Department finally turned over records that included "a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries, and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,’" according to Judicial Watch’s subsequent press release. There were also similar maps and charts for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The documents were dated March 2001.

"The major news media are beginning to pay much closer attention to the links between political turmoil abroad and the economies of oil at home," wrote Michael Klare in Project Censored’s book, Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Seven Stories Press). "Still, the media remains reluctant to explain the close link between the energy policies of the Bush administration and US military strategy."

9) Widow brings RICO case against US government for 9/11

As the National Commission on Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, completed its first year, Ellen Mariani and her attorney held a press conference on the steps of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to announce her own startling conclusions. Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when terrorists flew United Airlines flight 175 into the World Trade Center’s south tower, had come to believe that top American officials — including President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and others — had foreknowledge of the attacks, purposefully failed to prevent them, and had since taken pains to cover up the truth.

The administration, she argues in a federal lawsuit, allowed September 11 to happen so that Bush and Co. could launch their seemingly endless, global "war on terror" for their own personal and financial gain. The suit uses the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) — a law created to go after organized crime — to charge the nation’s leaders with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and wrongful death.

Her lawyer, Philip J. Berg, a former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania, filed a 62-page complaint that included 40 pages of evidence. "Compelling evidence ... will be presented in this case through discovery, subpoena power by this Court, and testimony at trial," he wrote in a press release sent to 3000 print and broadcast journalists announcing both the lawsuit and a press conference on the court steps that day.

At the very least, the case presents the potential to uncover and publicize critical documents and testimony about the Bush administration’s handling of the Al Qaeda threat and its aftermath. But only Fox News showed up to the press conference, and it never ran anything on the topic.

10) New nuke plants: Taxpayers support, industry profits

If you thought nuclear energy was dead, think again. The Bush administration’s energy bill — yet another product of Cheney’s industry-stacked energy task force — doesn’t offer any incentives for companies to switch to renewable energy sources. But it does provide taxpayer cash for companies that build new nukes.

A secretly crafted provision of the bill, released late on a Saturday night last November, offers energy companies as much as $7.5 billion in tax credits to build six new nuclear reactors. This, in addition to almost $4 billion set aside for other nuclear-energy programs.

"Nuclear power already has had 50 years of subsidy totaling over $140 billion," reported the Nuclear Information and Resource Service’s Cindy Folkers.

The administration also removed terrorism-protection provisions included in the House version of the bill, and reversed a previous ban on the export of enriched uranium, which may be used to construct nuclear bombs.

The press has been "woefully silent on the bill’s nuclear provisions," wrote Folkers and Michael Mariotte in their update for Censored 2005. And while both Democrats and Republicans managed to defeat the version of the bill NIRS warned about last fall, supporters — particularly Republican senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico — are still trying to push those provisions through, in some cases as riders on other bills. Current estimates of the amount of tax credits being considered have since risen to "as much as $15 or even $19 billion."

Camille T. Taiara is a staff reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Project Censored’s book, Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories, will be available in bookstores this fall. For more information, go to www.projectcensored.org