The power of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency

Two articles published shortly after Benazir Bhutto's death (the cause still a mystery) caught my attention.

1. Ken Silverstein, who blogs for Harper’s Magazine at Washinton Babylon, posted "Support for Taliban Missing from Bhutto Obits" on December 29th. Silverstein quotes from Steve Coll's best-seller, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden: “Benazir Bhutto, who was secretly authorizing the Taliban’s covert aid, did not let the Americans know. She visited Washington in the spring of 1995, met with President Clinton, and promoted the Taliban as a pro-Pakistan force that could help stabilize Afghanistan… During her visit and for many months afterward Bhutto and her aides repeatedly lied to American government officials and members of Congress about the extent of Pakistani military and financial aid to the Taliban… Bhutto had decided it was more important to appease the Pakistani army and intelligence service than to level with her American friends.”

The intelligence service Coll referred to is the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. I have Ghost Wars, so I checked the index for references to the ISI. There are 26 separate references, including:

A. Bhutto opposed by, 191-92, 212, 217, 289, 349
B. bin Laden’s collaboration with, 16, 212, 327, 341, 375, 407, 439, 452, 456, 477
C. CIA collaboration with, 11, 63-65, 99, 127, 129, 131-132, 148, 150, 152, 164, 180, 183-84, 191. 207, 208, 211, 213, 217-20, 225, 233-37, 277, 315, 329, 336, 373, 374, 375, 415, 436. 442-43, 505, 508, 513, 516, 551-52,
D. Taliban aided by, 291, 292-94,296, 331, 332, 348, 414. 456, 510, 517, 565.

2. The next item appeared in an e-mail from my election integrity allies at Election Defense Alliance, linking to a McClatchy Newspapers article posted on December 31st, "Bhutto report: Musharraf planned to fix elections": “The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging the country's upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.

“Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.”

(symbolic intelligence agent and Pakistan flag: BBC News)

Why is WellCare wooing me?

Late last week, I noted Ken Silverstein’s post, Alert: A mega-scandal in the making, and quickly glanced at it. Because it involved WellCare, a health care firm I had never heard of before, I decided to read the post later.

On Saturday, I received a brochure in the mail from WellCare Health Plans. The ten-panel brochure (click to enlarge) with cute cartoons urged to me sign up for Part D Medicare (prescription drugs) for “just $19.00.”

Hmmm, now I was curious about the WellCare "mega-scandal" and why it's now wooing me, so I went back to read Silverstein's post.

According to Silverstein, who is the Washington editor for Harper's Magazine, “There’s a new scandal unraveling that has a great cast of characters and sounds like it should be fun to watch unravel." Six bullet points of information follow.

Here’s the first:

"Yesterday, the Feds raided WellCare, a fast-growing Florida health care firm which has a Cayman Islands subsidiary and whose “independent sales agents in Georgia enrolled dead people in Medicare plans.”

And the last:

"In the aftermath of the raid, WellCare’s stock has fallen through the floor. 'Some WellCare insiders managed to escape that crash,' TheStreet.com reports. 'Director Neal Moszkowski executed the most recent transaction, selling more than $1 million worth of stock four days before the raid. Meanwhile, WellCare CEO Todd Farha has been unloading company stock for months. He executed his last big transaction, which generated more than $1 million as well, just two weeks ago.'"

The points in between are fascinating.

Silverstein concludes, “Enjoy–and spend some time on Google, because there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit still to be picked.”

(scanned image of one panel of the WellCare brochure I received)

Ken Silverstein posts about Henry Siegman's article on Israel and the peace process

Yesterday, Ken Silverstein, who blogs for Harper's Magazine at Washington Babylon, posted Siegman on Israel, linking to the same article I did in my most recent post.

(frog from banner at Silverstein's blog)

Scott Horton and Ken Silverstein - Two reasons why you should read the July issue of Harper's Magazine

Last Thursday, I posted Ken Silverstein goes undercover to report on D.C.'s lobbyists for hire. That this is an important story is confirmed by Bill Moyers’ interview of Silverstein, Scott Horton’s post about it, and the link to Silverstein’s article at AlterNet, all of which appeared in the last two days.

If you don’t have a Harper's Magazine clutched in your hand at this point, I urge you to get one not just for Silverstein’s incredible report but also for Scott Horton’s (photo) equally important article, STATE OF EXCEPTION - Bush's war on the rule of law.

Like Silverstein, Horton blogs for Harper’s. Horton is the most prolific blogger I’ve ever come across. In his article, Horton moves beyond the space and time constraints (or the reader’s attention span) of a blog to fully flesh out the “carefully orchestrated Bush Administration policy that goes under the rubric of ‘lawfare.’

“According to Major General Charles J. Dunlap Jr., now the Air Force’s deputy judge advocate general, lawfare is the ‘strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective.’”

Horton writes, “…under the current administration, those designated as enemies have no rights, neither under the laws of war nor under any notion of criminal justice. A radical rupture has occurred; American legal tradition has been swept aside and, with it, long-established precedents for dealing with adversaries in wartime—even those accused of heinous crimes. Nowhere is that more clear than in the treatment of the so-called habeas lawyers (so named because of their repeated attempts to enforce the rights of their clients through the writ of habeas corpus—the legal procedure that allows an imprisoned person to test the legality of his detention) who counsel the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The habeas lawyers have been tarred with ethnic slurs and accusations of homosexuality, accused of undermining national security, subjected to continual petty harassment. They have also had their livelihoods threatened through appeals to their paying clients.”

Horton ends the article, “By providing an exception to the application of the rule of law, our nation may have unleashed a radical new constitutional order.”

The whole article is worth reading. With two “must read” articles in one Harper’s issue, It’s well worth the $6.95 newsstand price if you aren’t a subscriber.

(photo of Scott Horton – PBS)

Ken Silverstein goes undercover to report on D.C.'s lobbyists for hire

For some time now, I’ve been reading Ken Silverstein’s blog, Washington Babylon. Silverstein is the Washington Editor of Harper's magazine and always fascinating.

A couple of weeks ago, I jumped at the opportunity to read Silverstein’s article online, now available in the July issue of Harper’s, Their Men in Washington - Undercover with D.C.'s lobbyists for hire. This is a not-to-be-missed article and well worth the price of the magazine at the newsstand if you aren’t a subscriber.

As you read this article, keep in mind Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s declaration in March of this year that “…[W]e are recommitting ourselves to call every government to account that still treats the basic rights of its citizens as options rather than, in President Bush’s words, the non-negotiable demands of human dignity.”

Silverstein has caught our government at its apex of hypocrisy and at its nadir in championing human rights by its actions, not its words. How did he do this? He went “undercover” by presenting himself as a consultant for the “Maldon Group, a mysterious (and fictitious) firm that claimed to have a financial stake in improving Turkmenistan’s public image.”

Turkmenistan? Silverstein explains that he picked Turkmenistan because if was "...a suitably distasteful would-be client.... Any opposition to the Turkmen government is considered to be treason, and thousands of political dissidents have been imprisoned. In 2004 a man seeking permission to hold a peaceful demonstration was sent to a psychiatric hospital for two years.”

Silverstein’s targets were various D.C. lobbying firms, which were known to help repressive regimes win favors from the government. As Silverstein-as-consultant-for-the-Maldon-Group makes his way from lobbying firm to lobbying firm, it becomes very clear that these firms were prepared to do anything and everything to secure a contract to improve a repressive regime’s public image. It’s also very clear that our government is willing to go along with the lobbyists’ efforts.

(photo of Silverstein “incognito” – WritingCompanyBlogs.com)