John Denton
Re: "We will never be quiet about Truth!!!"
Thu Oct 18 18:06:33 2001


These people in the White House, and in the Congress simply do no know that the
U.S. is a REPUBLIC, and not a DEMOCRACY! If they don't know this simple
truth, it is obvious that they don't know much else either, and they
should be asked to resign, or we should call for another election to replace them!

The U.S.A., is a Republic, and that is guaranteed to the states under
Article 4, Section 4, of the U.S.Constitution! Debt-Free Constitutional
Funds can be created under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, of the
Constitution, by order of Congress to the Treasury! There need be no
debt, no borrowed funds at interest, no IRS, and no Federal Reserve!
And, we can have a strong national defence, without lack of adequate
funding under the authority of the same article! Many other needs can be met the same way!

Picking our pockets to support the government, is unconsitutional pick pocket
economics, the reason for our inflation and debt!

Jack Denton 10-18-01

ADD300K@webtv.net
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U.S. asks of newspapers: No unedited bin Laden comments
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/sns-worldtrade-secrecy-nyn.story

By Ken Fireman
Newsday Staff Writer

October 12, 2001

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration Thursday expanded its effort to ride
herd on information about the campaign against terrorism, asking newspapers
and all electronic media not to run unedited comments by Osama bin Laden or
spokesmen for his al-Qaida network.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said administration officials planned to
contact newspapers, radio networks and possibly international television
channels to convey the same request made on Wednesday to the five major TV
networks: Do not run unedited statements by bin Laden or his representatives
because they might contain inflammatory propaganda or hidden instructions to
supporters.

"The president is pleased by the reaction of the network executives," Fleischer
said. "There will be some additional phone calls made. ... The same request
that was made yesterday of the network executives will also be made to other
media because of the same principle ... which is not allowing Osama bin Laden
or the terrorists to provide information that could facilitate any of their objectives
in terms of killing Americans, bringing harm to Americans or using those
messages as a way of sending a code to their terrorists."

U.S. networks have agreed not to air live, unedited tapes or transmissions of
statements from bin Laden or al-Qaida, as they did on Sunday and Tuesday.

Several newspapers ran transcripts of bin Laden's taped statement. Leonard
Downie Jr., the executive editor of The Washington Post, which did so, said he
would not regard an administration request to do otherwise as inherently
improper but would grant it only if the government could pinpoint a specific
security threat.

"We would do as we do with all such requests," Downie said. "We will consider
each one individually and we would talk to the administration about why they
would want us not to run a full text. . . If there was a real possibility of them sending a message to
Washington-based terrorists, we would want to hear about it and consider it."

A generalized concern about allowing bin Laden to disseminate propaganda, Downie said, would not be
sufficient. "We print other texts that have some propaganda in them," he said. "That's not a worry to me."

Howell Raines, the executive editor of The New York Times, which also ran a transcript of bin Laden's
statement, received a call from Fleischer Thursday morning, according to Times spokeswoman Catherine
Mathis.

"Howell's response was that in ordinary circumstances our practice is to fully inform our readers," she
said. "He did say that we would certainly listen to any information from the government that there was a
specific danger involved and then make a judgment."

Anthony Marro, the editor of Newsday, which also ran a transcript of the bin Laden statement, said he
would deal with any request on a case-by-case basis. "We'll use our best independent news judgment in
weighing the importance of the information to readers and whatever concerns the government has," he
said. "If there is a compelling argument that damage could be done by publishing something, we'll listen
to it. But our goal is to give readers as much information as we can."

Downie said he did not see the White House's requests to the news media as a constitutional issue, but
rather a reflection of the natural tension over control of information that exists between an administration
and the media.

Several critics of secrecy in government complained that the Bush administration was using the crisis
created by the terror attacks to clamp down inappropriately on the flow of information to the public. They
cited several examples:

An attempt by President Bush, later aborted, to narrow drastically the circle of members of Congress
authorized to receive classified or "sensitive" information about the anti-terrorist campaign.

An unsuccessful attempt by the State Department to prevent the Voice of America radio network from
running a rare and exclusive interview with the leader of Afghanistan's Taliban regime, Mullah Mohammed
Omar.

The administration's reneging on a pledge to issue a document detailing why it believed bin Laden was
responsible for the terror attacks -- a document that was later issued with no apparent ill consequences
by the British government.

A pointed warning by Fleischer, in commenting on a controversial statement by TV comic Bill Maher,
that "all Americans ... need to watch what they do."

"The administration has squandered a good deal of its credibility on this subject by overreaching and
suppressing information unnecessarily," said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government
secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit public policy group. "They began with a
presumption in their favor that there is a legitimate need for operational security. But they have
squandered a good bit of it."

Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc.