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LiberalOasis Interviews Greg Palast Investigative journalist and best-selling author Greg Palast releases a new DVD documentary "Bush Family Fortunes" next week. The hard-hitting film features Palast's reports for the BBC, delving into Bush's financial dealings, his Saudi ties, the Florida election and his National Guard service. You can order "Bush Family Fortunes" by clicking here. Palast discussed Bush Family Fortunes with LiberalOasis on September 19, 2004. The following is an edited transcript. LiberalOasis: In Bush Family Fortunes, you talk to Bill Burkett who is very much in the news these days. What did he tell you, and what did you think of his overall credibility? Greg Palast: First of all, let's back up. The story is whether George Bush used his Daddy's and Granddaddy's connections to get out of Vietnam. Did George Bush Sr. get his son out of Vietnam while at the same voting to send other men's sons to Vietnam? And the answer is unequivocally yes. I first reported that Ben Barnes made the fix in 1999, which of course you didn't read in the US papers. That I did in the Guardian and on BBC. Last year, in the original filming for Bush Family Fortunes, we obtained and showed a document from inside the US Justice Department confirming...that the fix was done by George Bush Sr. for his son using Ben Barnes. Now, we also had film of Bill Burkett of Texas who was in the Air Guard and what he was witness to was destruction of pension documents...which may have indicated -- he didn't see what documents they were -- but it was pretty clear they would have told us whether George Bush was missing in action. And so we have that in the film, that evidence. But we also went out of our way to find corroborating witnesses for how the fix was done... ...It's important...it's a question of privilege. It's also something else, which is not being covered, which is why Ben Barnes was silent for three decades. And the answer is, the big payday. George W. Bush as governor gave a no-bid contract, over the strenuous objections of the state lottery director,...to a corporation called GTech, which is just a corrupt little outfit, to run the Texas lottery, a multi-billion dollar contract, no-bid. And their lobbyist was a guy named Ben Barnes, who received a fee of more than $23 million for locking in that deal. That's something again that hasn't come out in the US press. LO: Why do you think it is that Ben Barnes is talking now? GP: Good question...The answer is I don't know...but I think he feels safe that the rest of the story of his being well-rewarded for his silence is not going to come out at this point. In addition, we've seen what happens when a reporter, in this case, Dan Rather, steps out and does anything at all. They get their heads chopped off. In fact...Dan Rather was on my program in Britain, Newsnight, and he said anyone that asks tough questions in the US is going to be lynched...and therefore journalists have been censoring themselves. And he says, and until this moment, that includes me. And it was very clear, that when he was talking on my program, you could see the click in his head that he wasn't going to do it anymore. He was going to go to the mat... ...[Now,] the whip came down, and so he's learned why I report in exile. LO: Another person you speak to on the DVD is Grover Norquist, about his role in Iraq. GP: Yeah, I mean, why are we in Baghdad? You know, I was able to get inside documents. And, by the way, I have some more and will be reporting this for Harper's... ...but we have documents that we received from inside the US State Department, which indicate that the Bush Administration was in fact -- and we spoke to insiders -- that they've been dividing up the oil fields in Iraq from the first weeks of the Administration. Not only the oil, but the assets of Iraq, and re-writing the laws of Iraq. The idea was kind of a corporate takeover -- an armed corporate takeover of Iraq is what we have. We have a situation which we have rewritten their pollution laws, we've rewritten their banking laws, we've seized the state assets and are selling them off to US and other corporations, corporate cronies... ...everyone is looking at Halliburton [but] Bush is shoplifting everything in that nation that isn't bolted down, and then some. And that's a very dangerous thing. Because it means that our guys, our kids, are facing bullets in Fallujah for some wacky program which was literally devised by corporate lobbyists. And I bring out the guy I call the capo di capi of corporate lobbyists in America, Grover Norquist, who said: Yeah, I worked on devising these plans. LO: So he was candid with you? GP: Oh yeah, he was proud. He was glad someone came to him so he could claim credit… LO: You also revisit what happened in Florida in the 2000 election. What's your sense of how things will go this time around? GP: ...They're stealing it again. One of things that was crucial in the film which still hasn't come out in the US media here, which I think is going to determine this year's election, is the loss of the black vote. What I mean by that is, in the United States of America, two million votes are cast which are never counted. We call it "spoilage" in the vote biz. Technical reasons why votes are voided...ballot's blank, has extra marks, hanging chads. One million of those votes are cast by African-Americans. What I show in the film is how that is done. In Florida, 180,000 votes were not counted. 54 percent of those votes were cast in majority black precincts in Florida. And that's how they took that election... ...And it's done with bad machines. Just like you give the black communities...bad schools and they get bad hospitals. They get the crap voting machines. It's deliberate. Because they don't want those votes to count... ...Let me tell you something else to look for in this election. The number of absentee ballots is increasing by 500%. There's going to be something like 15 million absentee ballots in America. It's going to be wholesale theft... LO: What can they do with absentee ballots that they can't do with regular ballots? GP: One, throw them away. You get a receipt when you register to vote, but not when you actually vote by absentee ballot. They won't send you a note saying we've accepted your ballot, it's rare... ...And in Florida they make it easy because they put Democrat and Republican on the outside of the envelope. Theresa LaPore on the Aug. 31st primary, two weeks ago, counted 37,000 votes from absentee ballots. There were only 31,000 ballots cast in Palm Beach. 31,000 absentee ballots, 37,000 votes. That's a taste of what's coming... And by the way, LiberalOasis first: Election's going to be stolen in New Mexico and Colorado. LO: And what leads you to say that? GP: Same thing. Votes cast, not counted. Especially in Hispanic and Native American areas. Massive vote loss, massive. They just don't count the votes... ...I talked to Terry McAuliffe about [disenfranchisement]. He shrugged his shoulders. There is one guy who is very interested in it. John Edwards saw the film, by the way, and took it John Kerry and with some material from me. And Kerry has been adding to speeches -- unfortunately, only to black audiences -- that he's not going to stand for it, the disenfranchisement of a million votes. LO: Did you have a personal showing of the film with John Edwards? GP: What happened was that Jesse Jackson and John Edwards and I were having breakfast. And Jackson kept grabbing the bagel away from Edwards saying you're not eating until you read Greg's stuff -- I'm not kidding -- and you give it to Kerry. Edwards is concerned about these things. He really is, I'm very impressed with his concern about disenfranchisement of black voters. And I think that Kerry is sincere. The question is, other than putting together teams of lawyers, when it will be too late -- and it's not clear how they can help -- basically the Kerry team is kind of at a loss on what to do here. And also, it's pretty difficult. LO: Is there something that they should be doing that they're not doing? GP: I'm not to going to say that there is some great miracle that they can perform here. In Florida, you have an electoral army of occupation. This is no joke, the way they have set up the voting mechanisms. Everything from illegal removal of registering, to bad balloting machines, to refusal to identify where how and which votes they are obtaining through absentee voting... ...and the Democratic Party simply is not prepared, not prepared at all for this. And McAuliffe did tell me the cost and difficulty of mounting a defense is just pretty much overwhelming. LO: Is it helpful for people to donate to Kerry's legal fund, is that a way -- GP: I would say, not so much Kerry's fund. One is that I stay away from partisan stuff anyway because I'm a journalist. I would say that there are organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP National Voter Fund and others, that's going to be some help. I thing I recommend people do is don't vote absentee for God sakes. That's just really taking a chance with your vote. The safest vote you can cast would be an early vote. Go right into your elections supervisor's office and cast a vote right there, because if there's any challenge to your vote you'll have a chance to correct it. LO: And you can do that in all 50 states? GP: Yes, under federal law now, within two weeks of the election...go in and vote early and often! |
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