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Arianna Huffington on the Retirement of Judith Miller and
Schwarzenegger’s Ballot Defeat
A Deadly Interrogation: Can The CIA Legally Kill a Prisoner?
Science Fiction Writer Octavia Butler on Race, Global Warming
and Religion
Arianna Huffington on the Retirement of Judith Miller
and Schwarzenegger’s Ballot Defeat
We speak with columnist and author Arianna Huffington about
the resignation of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ballot defeat.
Huffington says of Miller: “How can you be so cavalier
as a journalist about reporting that is so fundamentally wrong,
not about any matter, but matters of life and death, war and
peace?” [includes rush
transcript]
On Wednesday, the New York Times announced Miller would
be leaving the paper after a controversial 28-year career.
Miller said it was in part because “I have become the
news.”
For years, Judith Miller has been one of the most controversial
reporters at the New York Times. In the lead-up to the Iraq
war, she wrote a series of stories claiming that Saddam Hussein
possessed weapons of mass destruction. Her stories were often
cited by the Bush administration in its efforts to sell the
war against Iraq.
Judith Miller’s reporting was controversial, even within
the New York Times newsroom. In 2003, the paper’s executive
editor, Bill Keller, told Miller she could no longer cover
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Miller made headlines
this year when she went to jail for 85 days in order to protect
a source in the CIA leak investigation. That source turned
out to be Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the now-indicted
former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney.
For years, critics accused Miller of being too close to her
high-placed sources, from Libby to Iraqi exile leader Ahmed
Chalabi to top Pentagon officials. Last month, Miller revealed
she had a Pentagon security clearance while embedded with
US military teams hunting for banned weapons in Iraq. This
would have allowed the Pentagon to show her classified information,
but bar her from reporting on it.
Up until her resignation on Wednesday, tension had been growing
at the Times over her future. Two weeks ago columnist Maureen
Dowd described her as a “Woman of Mass Destruction.”
- Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor of the website
HuffingtonPost.com.
She has written extensively about Miller on her website.
She is a syndicated columnist and author of 10 books including
"Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back
America." In 2003 she ran for governor of California.
A Deadly Interrogation: Can The CIA Legally Kill
a Prisoner?
We speak with journalist Jane Mayer of The New Yorker as
the Senate rejects demands for an independent commission on
torture and the US military. We look at whether CIA agents
are being allowed to kill detainees in their custody. [includes
rush
transcript]
The Republican-led Senate has rejected a Democratic effort
this week to establish an independent commission to investigate
the U.S. military for its interrogation practices. The 55
to 43 vote was split largely along party lines. The Democrats
were trying to set up a panel along the lines of the 9/11
Commission to investigate how the U.S. has been treating detainees
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. The vote came a week
after the Washington Post revealed new details about a network
of secret overseas prisons run by the CIA. And it came two
weeks after Vice President Dick Cheney met with Senator John
McCain to urge him to exempt the CIA from a proposed law to
bar cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody.
The editors of The Washington Post responded to Cheney’s
request by describing him as “Vice President for Torture.”
On Thursday, Senator John McCain, who survived torture as
a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, spoke out against
torture and said the Abu Ghraib scandal has enormously harmed
the country.
- Senator John McCain:
“Torture does not work. The Israeli Supreme Court
in 1999 said that the Israelis could not torture or practice
cruel and inhumane processes on the people they take prisoners.
The Israeli defense officials who I have discussed this
with say that it doesn’t work and they use psychological
techniques and so on, it doesn’t work. And two, it’s
so damaging to us in an image fashion. And three, the next
conflict we’re in this government will use that same
rationale to inflict serious injuries to Americans who may
become captive.”
Last week former President Jimmy Carter criticized the administration’s
detainee policies.
- Jimmy Carter:
“The insistence by our government that the CIA or
others have a right to torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay
and around the world is just one indication of what this
administration has done that is a departure from past policies.”
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on Thursday that he
has no concerns about how detainees are being treated in secret
overseas prisons. He said, "I am not concerned about
what goes on and I’m not going to comment about the
nature of that."
However, Frist questioned how classified information about
the CIA’s secret prisons appeared in the pages of the
Washington Post. He said, "My concern is with leaks of
information that jeopardize your safety and security -- period.
That is a legitimate concern."
We look at whether CIA agents are being allowed to kill detainees
in their custody. In the new issue of The New Yorker, investigative
reporter Jane Mayer examines the death of Manadel al-Jamadi.
He suffocated two years ago during a CIA interrogation at
the Abu Ghraib prison. His head had been covered with a plastic
bag and he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited
his ability to breathe. The U.S. government classified Jamadi’s
death as a homicide. But the CIA officer who interrogated
Jamadi has never been charged with a crime and continues to
work with the agency.
Science Fiction Writer Octavia Butler on Race, Global
Warming and Religion
We speak with Octavia Butler, one of the few well-known
African-American women science fiction writers. For the past
thirty years, her work has tackled subjects not normally seen
in that genre such as race, the environment and religion.
[includes rush
transcript]
The Washington Post has called Octavia Butler “one
of the finest voices in fiction period. A master storyteller
who casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty and
ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of
human nature.” Octavia has described herself as an outsider,
and "a pessimist, a feminist always, a Black, a quiet
egoist, a former Baptist, and an oil-and-water combination
of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive."
Octavia Butler wrote her first story when she was ten years
old and as she has said, she has been writing ever since.
Race and slavery is a recurring theme in her work. Her first
novel, Kindred was published in 1979. It tells the story of
a black woman who is transported back in time to the antebellum
South. The woman has been summoned there to save the life
of a white son of a slave owner who turns out to be the woman’s
ancestor. Octavia is the author of ten other novels including
the Parable of the Sower series. She is the recipient of many
awards including the Nebula Award and the MacArthur “genius”
award. Her latest book is called Fledgling.
- Octavia Butler, award-winning science fiction author
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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