Joe Conason
O'Neill Tells All, And It's Not Pretty
Sun Jan 18 19:12:24 2004
67.1.158.190

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5545.htm
O'Neill Tells All, And It's Not Pretty

by Joe Conason

01/08/04: (THE NEW YORK OBSERVER)

The White House believes that massive deficits don't matter.

The White House serves the narrow interests of the wealthiest few.

The White House diligently heeds oil men and coal operators.
The White House willfully ignores scientists and environmentalists.
The President and his advisers care about politics rather than policy.
The President and his advisers prefer scripted consensus to candid
debate.
The President and his advisers jump at the command of corporate donors.
The President won't read any document longer than three pages.
The President can't discuss substantive policy issues.
The Vice President is in charge.

Few of those statements are likely to surprise Americans who have been
paying attention to their government for the past three years. Most fall
neatly within the category of what everyone has heard or read. But this
week, a high-ranking insider with a reputation for honesty validated all
those unflattering assessments. In The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush,
the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury
Secretary presents a candid portrait of the Bush administration to
author Ron Suskind.

Although he writes for a monthly magazine, Mr. Suskind continues to
unearth stories that elude the very important daily and weekly
journalists in the White House press corps. A year ago, his searing (
Link ) Esquire profile of John DiIulio, the former director of the
President's "faith-based initiative," exposed how cynical political
calculations and right-wing ideology had ruined "compassionate
conservatism"-and how little serious thought supports the weak policy
process in this administration. Somehow, Mr. DiIulio was induced to
recant what he had told Mr. Suskind after conversations with some White
House officials.

By contrast, Mr. O'Neill is unlikely to succumb to the intimidation that
apparently overwhelmed Mr. DiIulio. As he told Mr. Suskind during their
initial conversation, he could understand why anyone might shy away from
"a 50-year battle with this gang," because "these people are nasty, and
they have a very long memory." But, he added, "I'm an old guy, and I'm
rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me."

Unfortunately for the White House, the path of least resistance is also
closed. It isn't possible to simply ignore the Suskind book's
revelations. Topping the list of embarrassments are Mr. O'Neill's
recollections about "regime change" in Iraq-which he said had obsessed
the administration from its earliest days, without real justification
based on intelligence or policy. Privy to classified briefings and data
as a national security official, he told Mr. Suskind that there had been
only one real reason for attacking Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001. Unlike
extirpating Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, a difficult
task that might "develop into a mess," deposing Saddam Hussein and the
corrupt Baathist regime would most assuredly be "doable."

Long before the book appeared, administration officials attempted to
dissuade Mr. O'Neill from cooperating in its preparation. Old friends
implored him, and officials whispered offers of sinecures and
ambassadorial posts. He didn't want anything, and when the book's
details began to leak out, White House operatives decided to get tough.

They called him an embittered loser. They accused him of belatedly
attempting to justify rejected ideas. And suddenly from his old
headquarters emanated the charge that he had disclosed "classified"
information.

His successor at the Treasury Department-a team player of no great
distinction-announced instantaneously and eagerly that the inspector
general would "investigate" whether Mr. O'Neill had purloined a paper
marked "Secret" that showed up during a televised interview.

It isn't difficult to imagine the conversation between a Treasury aide
and a White House political operative that preceded the announcement of
the O'Neill probe. As Mr. O'Neill placidly pointed out, however, his
pursuers would have served themselves better by inquiring about the
circumstances that attended his departure.

When he and Mr. Suskind began their literary collaboration last year, he
provided an enormous volume of materials collected during his Treasury
tenure. This was, as Mr. Suskind explains, perfectly legal: "O'Neill
approached his former colleagues at the Treasury Department for what he
insisted was his due: copies of every document that had crossed his
desk. One day, as he was leaving Washington for Pittsburgh, he passed me
a few unopened CD-ROMs. 'This is what they gave me,' he said. When I
started to open the disks, I wondered if there was an error on my hard
drive: nineteen thousand documents were listed." In the hands of the
Pulitzer-winning reporter, those documents will probably discourage any
charges of fabrication.

Indeed, nobody at the White House has accused Mr. O'Neill of lying, so
far. That would be hard to say about a man who was fired for his
excessive bluntness.

You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason@observer.com .

Joe Conason is the author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year
Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton

• You bring the tar, and I'll bring the feathers! :)) — Sallie, Sun Jan 18 20:06