http://www.cooperativeresearch.org The Center for Grassroots Oversight aims to provide the public with a means to collaborate on investigations at the grassroots level. en-us http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a042302goldbergwall#a042302goldbergwall http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a042302goldbergwall#a042302goldbergwall In a column for the National Review advocating the immediate overthrow of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, neoconservative Jonah Goldberg praises his fellow neoconservative Michael Ledeen and urges the US to implement what he calls the "Ledeen Doctrine," which he paraphrases as: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small, crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." Goldberg says that he heard Ledeen make this statement in an early 1990s speech. blackmax 2008-11-17T00:01:17-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=asummer96paknukeintelwarning#asummer96paknukeintelwarning http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=asummer96paknukeintelwarning#asummer96paknukeintelwarning British and American intelligence agencies warn their governments of Pakistan's nuclear proliferation activities, according to senior sources at the British Foreign Office and the CIA. One of the warnings states that Pakistan is "readying itself to sell or [is] selling already" to North Korea and possibly Iran. KJF 2008-11-16T23:58:35-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a031296chonsung#a031296chonsung http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a031296chonsung#a031296chonsung The ''Chon Sung'', a North Korean ship bound for Pakistan, is held in Taiwan. Fifteen tons of rocket propellants are discovered on board. The propellants are being shipped under an agreement for North Korea to assist Pakistan with its nuclear missile program (see and ). KJF 2008-11-16T23:58:14-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a11061001cheneyterror#a11061001cheneyterror http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a11061001cheneyterror#a11061001cheneyterror John Yoo, a lawyer for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and a member of Vice President Cheney's ad hoc legal team tasked to radically expand the power of the presidency, writes a legal brief declaring that President Bush does not need approval from Congress or the federal courts for denying suspected terrorists access to US courts, and instead can be tried in military commissions . Two other team members, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington and White House deputy counsel Timothy Flanigan, have decided that the government bureaucrats need to see that Bush can and will act, in the words of author Craig Unger, "without their blessing--and without the interminable process that goes along with getting that blessing." Yoo's opinion is a powerful object lesson. Yoo later says that he saw no need to seek the opinion of the State Department's lawyers; that department hosts the archives of the Geneva Conventions and its lawyers are among the government's top experts on the laws of war. "The issue we dealt with was: Can the president do it constitutionally?" Yoo will say. "State--they wouldn't have views on that." Neither does Yoo see a need to consult with his own superiors at the Justice Department. Attorney General John Ashcroft is livid upon learning that the draft gives the Justice Department no say in which alleged terrorists will be tried in military commissions. According to witnesses, Ashcroft confronts Cheney and David Addington over the brief, reminding Cheney that he is the president's senior law enforcement officer; he supervises the FBI and oversees terrorism prosecutions throughout the nation. The Justice Department must have a voice in the tribunal process. He is enraged, participants in the meeting recall, that Yoo had recommended otherwise as part of the White House's strategy to deny jurisdiction to the courts. Ashcroft talks over Addington and brushes aside interjections from Cheney: "The thing I remember about it is how rude, there's no other word for it, the attorney general was to the vice president," one participant recalls. But Cheney refuses to acquiesce to Ashcroft's objections. Worse for Ashcroft, Bush refuses to discuss the matter with him, leaving Cheney as the final arbiter of the matter. In the following days, Cheney, a master of bureaucratic manipulation, will steer the new policy towards Bush's desk for approval while avoiding the usual, and legal, oversight from the State Department, the Justice Department, Congress, and potentially troublesome White House lawyers and presidential advisers. Cheney will bring the order to Bush for his signature, brushing aside any involvement by Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, or National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice . Paul 2008-11-16T23:58:06-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0194khannorthkorea#a0194khannorthkorea http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0194khannorthkorea#a0194khannorthkorea Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan begins a series of more than a dozen trips to North Korea. The trips, supervised by General Khawaja Ziauddin, follow an agreement concluded by Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the North Koreans to supply Khan with missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads designed by Khan deep inside India . Khan presumably travels to North Korea to facilitate the acquisition of the missiles, although he may also be passing on nuclear secrets to the North Koreans. Khan is accompanied by one of his key associates Brigadier Sajawal Khan Malik, whose son Dr. Muhammad Shafiq ur-Rehman will tell journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark of the trips in 2006. KJF 2008-11-16T23:56:39-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0194mutualassistancepact#a0194mutualassistancepact http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0194mutualassistancepact#a0194mutualassistancepact Pakistan, China, and North Korea sign a formal technical assistance pact regarding some military systems. According to Jane's Defence Weekly, the pact officially concerns missiles and guidance systems. Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had recently visited North Korea to clinch an agreement under which the North Koreans would provide Pakistan with missiles that could carry nuclear warheads deep inside India , and this visit may have played a role in spurring the pact. KJF 2008-11-16T23:56:20-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a101601scowcroftcoalition#a101601scowcroftcoalition http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a101601scowcroftcoalition#a101601scowcroftcoalition Brent Scowcroft, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a close adviser and friend of former President George H. W. Bush, is becoming increasingly marginalized in the current administration. Realizing he has little real influence in the White House, he goes public with his measured objections to a US invasion of Iraq by publishing an editorial in the Washington Post entitled "Build a Coalition." Scowcroft reflects on the decision not to invade Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War , and writes that if the US had then overthrown Saddam Hussein, "Our Arab allies ... would have deserted us, creating an atmosphere of hostility to the United States [that] might have well spawned scores of Osama bin Ladens. [We] already hear voices declaring that the United States is too focused on a multilateral approach. The United States knows what needs to be done, these voices say, and we should just go ahead and do it. Coalition partners just tie our hands, and they all will exact a price for their support. Those are the same siren songs of delusion and defeat that we heard in 1990. We can no more succeed in our present campaign by acting unilaterally than we could have in 1990." If the "war on terror" is to succeed, he writes, it will have to be "even more dependent on coalition-building than was the Gulf War." Scowcroft finally understands, author Craig Unger will observe, that the neoconservatives are using 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq. "He knew they were going to try to manipulate the president into thinking there was unfinished business" in Iraq, an administration official will recall in 2007. "For [Scowcroft] to say something publicly was a watershed. This was where the roads diverged." Paul 2008-11-16T23:53:55-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a020602tenetconcern#a020602tenetconcern http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a020602tenetconcern#a020602tenetconcern CIA Director George Tenet tells the Senate Intelligence Committee that one of the agency's "highest concerns" is a terrorist attack on an American chemical facility . blackmax 2008-11-16T23:52:49-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0501bushabdullah#a0501bushabdullah http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0501bushabdullah#a0501bushabdullah Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah refuses an invitation to meet with President George Bush at the White House. Abdullah, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia with King Fahd unable to perform his position due to illness, says: "We want [the US] to consider their own conscience. Don't they see what is happening to the Palestinian children, women, the elderly, the humiliation, the hunger?" Brent Scowcroft, a close friend of the president's father and former national security adviser, echoes Abdullah's concerns, warning Bush that moderate Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia are "deeply disappointed with this administration and its failure to do something to moderate the attitude of Israel." Scowcroft adds that the Palestinians will not stop their own violence towards Israel without the prospect of a viable Palestinian state. According to author Craig Unger, it is virtually unthinkable that Scowcroft would have publicly spoken so critically of the Bush administration without the approval of Bush's father, former President George H. W. Bush, so Scowcroft's statement has, in effect, put the two Bushes at loggerheads. Unger will write, "In effect, in their own constrained fashion, the father and son had drawn swords." blackmax 2008-11-16T23:52:21-08:00 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=aearly02scowcroftpolicy#aearly02scowcroftpolicy http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=aearly02scowcroftpolicy#aearly02scowcroftpolicy Former ambassador Joseph Wilson has numerous conversations with Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser to the first President Bush , and the head of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, about what Wilson sees as the worrisome drive to war with Iraq in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Wilson is particularly worried about the neoconservatives in the current Bush administration and their call for the implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act by declaring war against Iraq. Scowcroft is dismissive of the administration neoconservatives, calling them "right-wing nuts" and assuring Wilson, "They will not win the policy." Wilson is not so sure, telling Scowcroft that, as he will write in 2004, "[w]e were committing our future ... to a band of fanatics whose approach was the opposite of that pursued by the first President Bush, or articulated by candidate George W. Bush (see and )..." Wilson believes, wrongly that Scowcroft's "sage counsel [is] being listened to in the White House" . blackmax 2008-11-16T23:51:05-08:00