Bashing Bush; New York Press is a Bunch of Losers
Among the missing facts:
1. Judi Bari said I wasn't the bomber. She spent the last seven years of her life investigating every detail of the case. On p. 313 of her book Timber Wars she wrote: "The bomb in my car had a 12 hour timer, so it couldn't have been placed anywhere but in Oakland, where I stayed the night before it exploded." And, on p. 139: "My ex-husband and I have a cooperative relationship in our divorce, and he has no motive at all to bomb me. Mike was taking care of our children at his girlfriend's house when the bomb was planted, and she can verify that Mike did not leave her house at any time when he would have had the opportunity to place the bomb."
2. Darryl Cherney (the other victim) says I wasn't the bomber. In an article Darryl has written, entitled "The Lies of Bruce Anderson," Darryl says: "Mike Sweeney has an airtight alibi of his whereabouts during the timespan that the bomb could have been put in the car... Anderson has given accounts of his theory and they contradict, leading many to believe that Bruce does not even believe his own theories."
3. The Redwood Summer Justice Project says I wasn't the bomber. This is the organization Judi and Darryl set up seven years ago to investigate the bombing and prosecute their lawsuit against the FBI. In a statement made in February 1999, the project denounced Anderson's claims as "Blatantly false charges being spread by long-time enemies of Judi Bari." Recently, the Project's director wrote, "There is no 'counter case' to our reasonable suspicion that Judi and Darryl were bombed by agents of Big Timber and/or the government" (Ukiah Daily Journal, 11/10/99).
4. Judi Bari denied on Steve Talbot's video, and later in Timber Wars (p. 140), that she or I had anything to do with arson at a Santa Rosa airfield. She compares the slanderous charge to the display of photos of burning logging equipment, "which have also been falsely associated with me."
5. Our local district attorney says Bruce Anderson is wasting his time. After reviewing everything Anderson could come up with (which hasn't changed in a year), District Attorney Norman Vroman declined to investigate, and told him: "You need hard facts, not conjecture, innuendo, speculation, guesses" (KZYX radio, 5/24/99).
6. Bruce Anderson and Alexander Cockburn were foremost among Judi Bari's enemies among the lunatic left. Anderson raged against her for seven years in his Anderson Valley Advertiser, accusing her of being the bomber, running a cartoon of her wearing a swastika and denouncing her as "a lie factory." When Judi died of cancer in 1997, Cockburn wrote a nasty obituary in The Nation calling Judi "prickly and arrogant," and declaring, "There were many on the North Coast who detested her." Now that Judi can no longer defend herself, these enemies are trying to drag her name through the mud and undermine public support for her lawsuit against the FBI. There's more detail on my website: www.pacific.net/~bari.
7. This isn't the first hoax attempted by Bruce Anderson. In 1988, he published a completely phony interview with our congressman, using the byline of an actual reporter from the Des Moines Register. For six days, Anderson insisted the interview was genuine, in the face of outraged denials from the congressman and the Register's reporter. Finally he admitted it was a fabrication. As for the outraged reporter, Anderson said: "Fuck him if he can't take a joke" (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, 2/10/88). Anderson was universally condemned as a dangerous liar, except by Alexander Cockburn, who wrote a column praising the hoax and describing Anderson's rag as "everything a local paper should be" (The Wall Street Journal, 3/3/88). Now we see history repeated, with Anderson perpetrating a hoax and Cockburn cheering him on.
The falsehoods about me in Cockburn's article are too numerous to list in this brief letter. Virtually every statement is wrong, even down to simple details like where I grew up, or what my Ramparts article was about. Most serious are the libelous statements that I attempted murder, rape, domestic violence and arson. Under law, repeating these libels is the same as inventing them yourself. You have no right to print these lies. Retract them.
Mike Sweeney, Ukiah, CA
Alexander Cockburn replies: I should say I was never an enemy of Bari, and the piece I wrote about her in The Nation when she died in l997 praised her courage and her brilliance in turning the destruction of the redwood forests into a national story. Sure, she was prickly and arrogant, and yes, a lot of people on the North Coast did hate her, including the sicko who put a pipe bomb under her seat, aimed at her private parts and perhaps also those of her sometime lover Cherney, who was sitting beside her. I don't think that "agents of Big Timber and/or the government" set that bomb, and the Redwood Summer Justice Project seems mostly to be angered that the case being made by Bruce and the others might get in the way of a plump million-dollar settlement from the government, for Bari and Cherney's wrongful arrest.
"Virtually every statement is wrong"? No, Mr. Sweeney, my article was an accurate outline of the case being made publicly against you, charges I gave you the opportunity to comment on and, where appropriate, to deny. The best person to answer the points in this letter is the man who's been making the case against Sweeney, Bruce Anderson, editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser. So, here's Bruce:
"1. As everyone associated with the case knows, including Sweeney and his late ex, the device was not active until all the time on the clock elapsed. In other words, if the bomb had been placed in Oakland with 12 hours on its clock, it would not have exploded until sometime well after JB had arrived in Santa Cruz, her destination that day. As for their amicable post-divorce relationship, there are lots of people, including Judi Bari's last landlord, who are prepared to testify that neither their divorce nor their post-divorce relationship was a happy one. Indeed, it was stormy and replete with mutual recriminations.
"To date, Sweeney has offered no less than three separate, contradictory accounts of where he was the day before the Oakland explosion, presumably a day etched sharply in his memory: (1) At work (which was his desk at the MEC in downtown Ukiah, the town where we think the device was placed in JB's car; (2) at home with his children, home being the Redwood Valley property he still shared with Bari; and (3) with his girlfriend and his daughters at the girlfriend's house, wherever that was at the time. Why doesn't Meredyth Rinehart verify or testify Sweeney was with her?
"2. Invoking Cherney as an authority on anything is a stretch. The article called 'The Lies of Bruce Anderson' hasn't been published anywhere I'm aware of. My theories of the case, like everyone else's, have been revised to fit new findings. And which contradictions Sweeney and Cherney are referring to here is unstated.
"3. Redwood Summer Justice Project was organized by Judi Bari and Carryl Cherney to pay their lawyers. Note that Earth First! was dropped as a plaintiff in the suit. RSJP employs female-only friends of the late Bari and operates out of a Sonoma County post-office box. They've never revealed their books.
"4. The producer of the KQED documentary on the Bari bombing, Steve Talbot, says that Judi Bari herself told him that Sweeney destroyed the hangar in Santa Rosa. He is preparing an article on the case in which he plans to reveal more about the case which is not currently known. Bari did pressure Talbot into including an on-camera disclaimer about Sweeney in the film, but she never denied telling Talbot that Sweeney had in fact destroyed the hangar in Santa Rosa.
"5. D.A. Vroman's stance is a lot more complicated. What he has also said is that he lacks the resources and the tools to investigate a 10-year-old case as complicated as this one. He remains interested in it but requires more hard evidence to act.
"6. The Bosco interview was an exercise of my great satirical gift. It's not my fault people can't read. It was also, by the way, my way of attempting to smoke Bosco out on the offshore oil issue then raging. Also, the Press Democrat never says fuck. And fuck Cherney and Sweeney if they can't take the Bosco joke. Cherney thought it was boffo at the time."
My friends and I are sick of Democrats and Republicans alike, and we're in our early 40s, so I guess that puts your average ages at about, oh, late 80s. And I'm also wondering if your incomes are over $40K, because that would additionally explain your strange love for Bush Jr. (Have you forgotten how terrible a president his father was? Or maybe you think politicians should always pardon their cronies when they violate the law, as Bush Sr. did with all those Reagan crooks after the Iran-Contra scandal.)
J. Carpio, Manhattan
If George W. were truly the "compassionate conservative" he claims to be, he would call for a moratorium on the death penalty, as George Ryan, the pro-death-penalty governor of Illinois, did last month after he discovered that many innocent people had been executed in his state. When Larry King asked Bush, who has authorized 122 executions in Texas since he became governor, if he should not follow Ryan's example, Bush responded in the negative and claimed that he knew "absolutely" that "everybody" who was executed in Texas was guilty. Considering that it has now been discovered that one of out seven people executed nationwide was innocent, Bush was either blatantly lying or the victim of a delusion of psychotic proportions.
In fact there is reason to believe that there are a greater proportion of innocent people executed in Texas than in Illinois, as the quality of legal representation is so poor in Texas that in at least three cases defendants were sentenced to die by judges after their lawyers slept through substantial portions of the trial?and these trials were upheld by Texas' higher courts! Apparently in Texas the constitutional right to a lawyer does not mean that the lawyer has to be conscious. Not only does Bush deny that any innocent people have been executed in Texas, but he has vigorously opposed measures designed to minimize the number of innocent people murdered by the state: He vetoed a bill that would have created a new public defender's office and he quashed a bill banning the execution of the mentally retarded.
One does not have to be an anti-death-penalty "card-carrying member of the ACLU" to realize that George W.'s sense of compassion and justice is no more developed than that of a typical member of a lynch mob who is so blinded by his desire to find scapegoats to satisfy his primitive blood lust that he is not concerned with whether the accused is innocent or guilty?although in W's case the motive is more likely to be a primitive lust for political power than for blood.
As a convert myself to the Christian faith, I cannot think of any of W's actions that more dramatically conflicts with Christian principles than his refusal to make any effort to intervene?despite the pleas of both the Pope and Pat Robertson?to save the life of his fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker. Bush did not question the sincerity of this woman, who asked that she be spared so that she could spend her life in prison ministering to sinners. Rather he claimed it had no relevance in his consideration of whether to grant her mercy. Apparently Bush's understanding of Christianity is even more deficient than his knowledge of foreign affairs, as one of Jesus' main teachings is that God desires us to forgive others, and that as Christians it is our obligation to welcome and show mercy to repentant sinners?not to murder them. In an interview in Talk magazine?that the interviewer admitted he found quite disturbing?Bush did a mock imitation (in falsetto voice) of Karla Faye Tucker (that he had frequently performed in the past to amuse his friends) pleading for her life: "Please, please, Guv'nor, Guv'nor, don't kill me, save me, save me!" George W. Bush has betrayed the basic tenets of Christianity and has about as much right to call himself a Christian as did Judas Iscariot.
W. is a reformed substance abuser?who learned from the mistakes he made in his youth (so he says)?and a self-proclaimed Christian. Thus one would have hoped that he would have shown particular sympathy to other abusers who were not graced with his family fortune and status, and who unlike him could not afford the finest lawyers to get them out of a jam when they faced the prospect of spending time in prison. Yet as governor of Texas, George W. cracked down on first-time drug offenders from poor neighborhoods, most of whom had probably used far less drugs than W did during his "irresponsible youth." Under the previous governor, Ann Richards, first-time offenders received automatic probation with drug counseling; when W ran against her he ridiculed this approach, calling it "Penal Code Lite." Once in office Gov. Bush signed a law mandating that first-time offenders, even those caught with less than a gram, be forced to serve jail time from six months to two years. Whereas under Gov. Richards the parole rate was about 80 percent, under Bush it fell to an all-time low of 20 percent. As a result of the compassionate conservative's punitive policies aimed at poor people who had made the same kind of mistakes he himself made in his youth, the prison population in Texas has risen from 41,000 to 150,000 since he has taken office.
One does not have to be a Clinton sympathizer to realize that George W. is a vile scion of privilege who lacks compassion for the disadvantaged, and a representative of corporate America whose primary driving force is his hunger for power. I hope that the writers and readers of New York Press will take every propitious occasion to make it clear that although Russ Smith provides New York Press' guiding editorial inspiration and is its original financier, he did not authentically speak for New York Press in the "New York Press editorial" that hailed the Great Executioner as America's knight in shining armor prepared to save her from the forces of political corruption and moral decay.
Seth Farber, Manhattan
Bill Bradley's boilerplate rhetoric about technology changing people's lives, though trite, is quite correct. Thanks to technology there are many things available today to everybody that were not even available to kings 50 years ago. Think about that. One of the greatest things about computers is that software can spread around the world and filter down to everybody rapidly, at nominal or no cost. In how many other fields can you say that?
If AskJeeves.com is just "a website that answers your questions by, er, referring you to other websites," well, that is what a search engine is. It's not eccentric, it's not a dodge or a runaround. It's indispensable, and if you don't see why then you'd better just forget about writing about the Internet. You don't get it.
As for your assertion that the tech sector is "being invaded by an army of opportunists and slackers," doubtless you are right about opportunists?just like Wall Street. But slackers? If demand outstrips supply, employers are going to try to compromise in hiring where they can, but there's nothing unusual about that. Most people in the tech industry work extremely hard. Whatever they are, they are not slackers.
Joe Rodrigue, New Haven
M. Doughty, Manhattan
The grass is always greener...
Robert Gampert, Cambridge, MA
Rove's weekend talk show appearances didn't help much. He still uses the political equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I?" when responding to criticism. Though at least we now know where Shrub learned that the best debating technique is to shout when others speak.
Harley Peyton, Santa Monica, CA
Keep up the good work.
Henry C. Smart, Suisun City, CA
Michael Briggs, El Cajon, CA
"In later life his behavior was not so heroic. He benefited politically from the intervention of others on his behalf and benefited socially from a second marriage to a wealthy, much younger woman. But his old habits of disdain for others and a willingness to skirt the law brought him condemnation by Congress on ethics charges. And when his pride was injured he was willing to betray the principles for which he had previously fought, even to the point of giving an enemy aid and comfort.
"His name is not John McCain. It was Benedict Arnold."
Bruce Youngblood, Austin, TX
Why don't you offer yourself to the Bush campaign in the role of debate strategist? You can submit your resume via a document in which you outline both Bush's and Gore's attacks and counterattacks, in a concise, objective and pragmatic manner. Even though Gore has insulated himself from the press, there is more than enough fodder in his debates, speeches, campaign commercials and public record to allow the delimiting of at least 80 to 90 percent of the sum and substance that he will exhibit during the debates. The only way Gore can win the election is if he trashes Bush during the debates. If the debates are a draw, Bush wins.
You would be doing us all a great service if you applied your political acumen and communication skills for our guy George. You're better than William Safire. If Safire can do it, you can do it better.
Sorry if this is too much stroking, but please consider it.
George Mikos, Concord, CA
And if she happens to wander over to ChooseorLose.com and reads some of the letters submitted to our "Speak Up" section by our users, she might even rethink her assumption that the teenagers in our audience are stupid.
Jon Levin, associate producer, ChooseorLose.com, Manhattan
Theo Caldwell, Manhattan
There were more than 500 people at the recent WFP gathering. About half were white, half people of color. About 40 percent were union members. This lively, diverse group was there because they support the core issues in the WFP's program: living wage laws, affordable health care, genuine campaign finance reform, investment in education and more.
When Slivka singles out "this elderly, black guy standing over here, yelling at Hillary to testify, pumping an occasional fist, this retired Transit man, or whatever he is," he betrays a contempt for the working-class people in New York, who, we are proud to say, are the bedrock of our party. Your readers deserve a more serious exploration of the WFP than this overheated rant. Sending us an e-mail at wfp@workingfamiliesparty.org is one way to get that more thorough look at an unusual and interesting new political formation in the city and state.
Dan Cantor, executive director, Working Families Party, Brooklyn
Andrey Slivka replies: The thesis of my piece was that the Working Families Party is shoving the corrupt, right-leaning, authoritarian harridan and corporate apologist Hillary Clinton down the throats of its vulnerable, gullible working-class constituency in a sleazy grab for power, and that this is a bad thing. A "left" organization works to elect a sold-out, pro-death penalty, pro-corporate, Drug War-supporting, human rights-violating, Iran- and Sudan-bombing, stock-cheating shyster and political hack whom leftists of integrity despise?and I'm the one who's cynical? Cantor's a week-too-late spin doctor for an organization that's pimped its members out in the street for a couple shekels each.
Cantor is correct, however, in calling my article "insulting."
Rather, the fanny-pack catfight between Taki and Tom Phillips serves only to obscure the fact they are both hypocrites. Both of them profess Shogun politics and medieval attitudes, yet both lead lives that are oh-so-moderne! Taki admits to a libertine sex life and, according to "Page Six," Tom Phillips used a phony diagnosis of depression to obtain handicapped license plates for his sports car.
The rumors Mr. Phillips repeated about Mr. Harris are just rumors. Whether you dine at Veruka, Patroon, Pastis or even Moomba, you've heard them. That doesn't make them so. However, New York Press readers should note that Mr. Phillips is no longer welcome at Nan Kempner's parties, and Ed Koch got him banned from Marylou's. Why do others continue to kiss his ass? At least Taki can write.
Tom Phillips' idea of an intellectual argument is one part physical intimidation and two parts drunken screaming. His idea of chummy company is washed-up actors like Dabney Coleman and booze-addled strumpets like Candy Bushnell. Don't take my word for it. Ask anyone at Jean Doumanian's holiday party last year. Woody Allen didn't appreciate jokes about his "mother-in-law," and I didn't find them tasteful at all. He may be a spokesman for Generation X, but he certainly doesn't speak for me.
T. O'Toole, Ridgewood, NJ
New York Press, I'm surprised. Perhaps next issue we can expect insightful commentary on the plight of white colonialists in Zimbabwe, or a supportive piece on the Russian death squads operating in Chechnya. Mr. O'Sullivan may wear his racism on his sleeve, but as an institution I would expect more of you.
Sam Hutchins, Manhattan