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ASHES and DIAMONDS
4
by Alexander Cockburn
f
Follow the Money
Half choking amid the toxic fog
caused by smoking guns introduced
into the Iran/contra hearings, Rep.
Les Aspin of Wisconsin advanced
cautiously along the trail of truth on
July 21, as Admiral Poindexter faced
the increasingly incredulous com
mittee.
“I have come to the conclusion,”
said Aspin, “that we’re missing
something—that there’s got to be
another source of funding for the con
tras.” He then said he had made a
spreadsheet of known funds going to
the contras from congressionally ap
proved sources, appropriated money,
countries such as Saudi Arabia, pri
vate donations and the “diversions” or
“residuals.” The results, Aspin said,,
“are very interesting” since they show
a big gap in funding. Whereas the con
tras had been getting by on $3.4
million a month until February, 1986,
“then for the next eight months the
money drops off precipitously and
from all sources . . . you’re talking
about . . . less than $3 million from
all sources ... for a total of an eight
month period.”
Two obvious sources come to mind
and to put the question on one of them
Aspin would have had only to turn in
his chair and address one of the com
mittee’s senior investigative staffers,
Tom Polgar. Polgar would have told
him smoothly that according to the
committee’s investigation the CIA had
most definitely not been giving secret
funds to the contras. But then that is
what Polgar would have been likely
to say, since Polgar was a career offi
cer in the CIA, most notably in Sai
gon during the Vietnam war. The hir
ing of Polgar—pressed by Senator
Warren Rudman—made it plain from
the start that the Iran/contra com
mittee was going to be circumspect
and ever mindful of the paramount
importance of not looking more than
a few inches beyond the end of its own
nose.
Even so, Aspin could have then
headed down the corridor to the two
separate Congressional hearings into
allegations of contra drug smuggling.
Here he could find an answer to this
interesting question of how the con
tra leadership kept going, either in the
field or in their other main sphere of
operations—the real estate market in
southern Florida.
The latest New York Times/CBS
poll showed that contra aid is still op
posed by 51 percent of all Americans,
down somewhat from the days before
the hearings became a contra-aid tele
thon. But as the Ollie craze subsides,
an increasingly high profile to the
drug/contra connection could erode
the chances of the next contra mili
tary aid package going through con
gress in the fall. The way things are
at the moment, enough Democrats
will vote for it unless given an unim
peachable reason not to. Killing
Nicaraguan civilians is not regarded
as sufficient cause for these swing
Democrats to withhold funds.
Putsch Plans
The disclosure that Colonel Oliver
North worked with the Federal Emer
gency Planning Administration on a
secret executive order to suspend the
constitution and run the country under
martial law was received with con
siderable shock as evidence of a put
schist mentality new in American
history. The thing to remember is that
the governing elites always tend to
look on the dark side and to fear that
the authority of the state rests on sand.
Among the emergencies against
which North and FEMA urged mar
tial law was domestic protest over a
U.S. invasion of a foreign country, i.e.
Nicaragua. Back at the time of the
Vietnam war there were undoubted
ly similar contingency plans. In 1967
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara
was already gloomily warning of im
mense domestic unrest and the need
to make major provision against it.
Then, after the Tet offensive, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff opposed the dispatch
of 200,000 extra troops to Vietnam,
arguing that they would be needed in
the U.S. to quell insurgency on the
home front and maintain law and
order. The feet that these troops were
withheld from Vietnam is one of the
great achievements of the antiwar
movement.
Drug Test at ABC
On July 9 Capital Cities/ABC alert
ed all its employees in a memorandum
from the company’s top executives.
Tom Murphy and Dan Burke, that as
from late August of this year all final
candidates for full-time employment
would be asked to pass a drug test.
Anyone failing the test would be con
sidered unsuitable for employment for
six months thereafter.
A three-page addendum addressed
itself to some obvious questions. The
test will screen for marijuana, co
caine, opiates such as heroin and co
deine, benzodiazepines such as
valium and librium, barbiturates,
PCP, amphetamines and quaaludes.
The testing process will be two-stage,
with a positive first result confirmed
by the gas chromatography/mass
spectrometry process. Murphy and
Burke note carefully that “nearly 40
percent of the Fortune 500 companies
have instituted pre-employment
testing," and say that in the case of
Capitol Cities/ABC “the subject of
drug abuse has been important to us
as a company and we have had an
anti-drug policy in effect since 1984
... in response to several unfortunate
incidents involving drug use on com
pany property. . . . We have inten
sified our education and rehabilitation
program for existing employees [who
will—as yet—not have to submit to the
testing program, A.C.]
Never
theless we know we are often not
reaching everyone who needs help
because the denial factor is so strong
with drug abusers.
“This fact is made more apparent
by the results obtained by another
media company that began pre-em
ployment testing over a year ago.
Though their policy was known and
understood by all applications, 17 per
cent failed the drug screen. Our
testing process will help us by not hir
ing additional drug users while we're
trying to aid current employees who
need help.”
As someone at one of the Capitol
Cities/ABC subsidiaries remarked to
me, “This all seems an invasion of
privacy. How would such a test help
workers currently employed here? By
screening out people who smoked
marijuana at a party days before their
job interview, or people who took
valium from a friend to calm down at
an exceptionally stressful time? How
about high-salaried executives here
who can best afford certain controlled
substances like cocaine? What about
the greatest hypocrisy of all—the
abuse of alcohol and cigarettes which
is a far greater threat to the health of
much larger percentages of Cap Ci
ties/ABC workers than any of the sub- 1
stances mentioned in this memo?”
Another thing the testing program
won’t help is the fanatical addiction
of Cap Cities/ABC owners and execu
tives to the drug called “money.”
Features of “money addiction” in
clude the irresistible urge to shovel
shit on a nightly basis into the face
of the American viewer in order to in
crease advertising revenue and thus
earn more profits which can then jus
tify increasing the already vast
salaries of the senior executives. The
Shoopley-Hartheim “money addict
profile" includes hyperventilation on
a seasonal basis around the time of the
quarterly earnings report, progressive
dilatation of the cerebral shame sup
pressors, absence of all emotions of
taste, humanity, compassion. Profes
sor Shoopley notes that “money
addiction is a marked feature of late
capitalism, in which the act of ac
cumulation subsumes all other indi
ces of achievement.”
Madman
in the old days newspaper tycoons
were a ghastly lot, but at least more
colorful in their eccentricities than the
present gang, who spend half their
time talking to stock analysts on Wall
Street and the other half answering
letters from Phyllis Schafly and Reed
Irvine. It’s a measure of how dull
things have gotten that probably the
most colorful major newspaper execu
tive is the unalluring Allen Neuharth,
chairman of the Gannett chain and,
with an annual salary of about $1.3
million, a confirmed money addict.
The Gannett chain is mostly made
up of small boring papers—about 90
—in monopoly situations, specializ
ing in the “local news” that is New
harth's recipe for keeping advertisers
happy and readers undisturbed by in
timations of the dangerous world that
lies beyond the county line. To cap
a career dedicated to mediocrity
Neuharth founded USA Today, hurl
ing money at the project in a desperate
attempt to keep it afloat since its
launch in 1982. USA Today is now
supposedly on sound footing and
Neuharth spends some of his time
trundling around the country in a
sumptuously appointed bus, keeping
his finger on die American pulse.
When it looked as though USA To
day might fail, Neuharth summoned
top managers to his home, called
“The Pumpkin Center” in Cocoa
Beach, Florida. He told them costs
had to be cut and advertising and cir
culation improved if the paper was go
ing to make it. After this urgent homi
ly Neuharth invited the executives to
join him in a “Last Supper." The din
ing room table was laid out with
Manischewitz wine and unleavened
bread and Neuharth stepped from
behind a curtain wearing a crown of
thorns. He stood in front of a wooden
cross and intoned, “I am the cruci
fied one.” Then he told the gape
mouthed audience that they would all
be “passed over” if USA Today fail
ed. For further details about Neuharth
and USA Today consult The Making
of McPaper Peter Prichard.
She Said It
“Nazis like Klaus Barbie and Adolf
Eichmann claimed that not only were
they obeying orders from the govern
ment, but that their obligation to
obedience had no limits. Their
prosecutors—at Nuremberg, in Je
rusalem, in Lyons and wherever the
Nazis were tried for such crimes—ar
gue that there are some things no gov
ernment has the right to require and
some things every citizen has the obli
gation to refuse: the cold-blooded
murder of civilians, the elimination
of inferior races. Such acts cannot be
excused or justified—not during war
time or by oaths of obedience. A
citizen is neither obliged nor per
mitted to commit “crimes against
humanity.”
This was Jeane Kirkpatrick in her
syndicated column. She should read
it to Oliver North, who said he would
stand on his head if ordered to do so
by his commander in chief, and who
planned and paid for the cold-blood
ed murder of civilians.
WHAT'S HAPPENING
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