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STOP GLOBAL VIOLENCE
Related to country: United States

L.O.V.E.
Love Over Violence Everywhere
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December 28, 2007 | 1:03 PM Comments  0 comments
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Brothers in arms against apartheid, now Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma face each other in a bitter struggle for power
Related to country: South Africa
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg

Their families shared in the struggle against apartheid and both played a prominent role in ending white minority rule in South Africa. But Thabo Mbeki, the country’s President, and Jacob Zuma, his main challenger, come from very different worlds.

The two men, both 65 and once comrades in arms, are engaged in a bitter power struggle that threatens to destroy the movement that enfranchised black South Africans and drag the country deeper into turmoil.

Mr Mbeki — bookish, with a taste for pipes, Yeats and Wordsworth — has spent the past few days ensconced in the presidential study, drafting the speech that he hopes will persuade the African National Congress (ANC) to give him a third term as party leader.

In contrast Mr Zuma, a firebrand populist given to wearing tribal dress, was doing what he does best: greeting euphoric supporters at “victory” rallies up and down the country, confident that he will unseat his great rival.

If Mr Zuma is elected as ANC president during the party’s congress, which begins tomorrow, he is almost certain to be the party’s candidate in the 2009 presidential election; a poll that the ANC is assured of winning, given its total grip on power in the country 13 years after the end of apartheid.

Mr Mbeki, whose parents were teachers and activists, is constitutionally barred from standing for a third term as President of South Africa. But he is desperate to retain control of the ANC so that he can influence the choice of his successor as the leader of the country. It is unthinkable that he would anoint Mr Zuma, whom he dismissed as ANC deputy president in 2005 after he was linked to a multibillion-pound arms scandal.

Corruption charges against Mr Zuma, the son of a domestic maid, collapsed last year on a technicality. He also beat a separate rape charge last May, which many of his supporters believe was orchestrated by pro-Mbeki supporters in an attempt to consign him to political obscurity.

At first, it seemed to have worked.Public opinion was outraged by Mr Zuma’s admission that he had unprotected sex with the 32-year-old daughter of a family friend who was HIV positive and called him “uncle”.

He later said that he took a shower to reduce the chances of infection; a statement that appalled activists in a country where 900 people a day die of Aids.

Mr Zuma fought back, capitalising on Mr Mbeki’s unpopularity, particularly among the township poor, who have seen little benefit from business-friendly, pro-market economic policies that have led to an unparalleled period of economic growth.

The President’s “denialist” stand on Aids, his refusal to criticise events in neighbouring Zimbabwe, and failure to rein in — or even admit to — one of the world’s worst crime rates, and his frequent trips abroad to further his vision of an “African renaissance” all played into his rival’s hands.

In regional conferences to decide on nominations for the five-yearly National Conference, Mr Mbeki received only 1,400 votes and the backing of four out of nine provinces.

Mr Zuma took 2,232 votes and five provinces. He has also won the endorsement of the left-wing Youth League and, in an amazing setback for Mr Mbeki, who has consistently trumpeted gender rights, the ANC Women’s League. Mr Zuma’s astonishing comeback has come at a huge price. The mighty ANC, which defeated minority white rule through unity and tight organisation, now faces the worst split in its 95-year history, presenting the country with the biggest political crisis since the end of apartheid in 1994.

In a rare comment on the situation yesterday Mr Mbeki, who took office when Nelson Mandela stepped down, said that the bitter contest could destroy the party. “If division leads to retribution, that’s what will destroy the ANC . . . Part of our responsibility is to avoid such an outcome,” Mr Mbeki said in an interview with the weekly Mail and Guardian. “We must take this thing away from personalities. The masses of our people are not interested in who dances best,” he added.

Once again, however, Mr Mbeki, who has clearly been taken aback by the strength of the opposition to him, appears to have got it wrong. Responding to criticism that he has stifled debate, he said: “Do I look as if I’ve got horns? It’s said that I block debate and inhibit open discussion — that’s puzzling to me. It’s completely untrue.”

The tussle between the two men, which will be settled by a vote of 5,000 delegates on Monday, has been devoid of virtually any policy discussion, though Mr Zuma has promised to make Aids and crime national priorities.

He has also, recently, assiduously courted big business in an effort to lose his “champion of the poor” image and allay fears that he would drop free-market policies.

Political analysts suggest that white property and businesses would not be at risk, but say that a Zuma presidency would represent a major break with the past and the country could look much more like other African nations, with a “big man” ruler.

Buchizya Mseteka, an expert on southern Africa, said: “The country is at a turning point. A Zuma presidency would be very different in style and substance. He owes many people favours and so patronage, already important, would be even more critical.”

Others concur, saying that the days of “a little bit of Europe in Africa” would be numbered. “Culturally the country could be more confident and assertive,” one Zuma backer said. “It could look like a successful version of Nigeria.”

Ill at ease in a crowd and uncomfortable at traditional African ceremonies, Mr Mbeki’s rise to power came as a result of astute backroom politicking and his closeness to senior ANC figures. He joined the party at the age of 14, but spent most of his life in exile on ANC instructions. Even his marriage, in 1974, had to be approved by the party leadership. In contrast, Mr Zuma, a Zulu, moves easily from left-wing township militancy to traditional village ceremonies, where he dons leopardskin loincloths. He has fathered 17 children from four official wives, but turns such issues to his advantage. “Other political leaders hide the fact they have mistresses . . . I am an African man and proud of my culture,” he told The Times in a recent interview. “I admit my faults and don’t deny that I am human. Others lie.”

ANC officials are so concerned about a public humiliation of Mr Mbeki that they have banned all T-shirts emblazoned with slogans supporting one candidate or the other from the conference centre in the sleepy northern town of Polokwane, Limpopo Province. They know that few people will be wearing pro-Mbeki ones, whereas those bearing the legends “100 per cent Zuma” and “Zulu Boy” have been selling in their thousands for weeks.

Despite frantic last-minute horse trading and accusations of money changing hands and offers of jobs and promotions, ANC insiders rule out any chance of Mr Mbeki swinging votes back in his favour at the conference. “The best he could hope for now is a postponement, but he has played his cards badly and even that is an outside chance,” one official commented.

Prosecutors have indicated that they could still charge Mr Zuma again, but have so far failed to bring a case they are confident would result in a conviction. If he takes the ANC presidency it is doubtful whether any prosecutor would dare to bring charges.

“Jacob Zuma will have an unofficial presidential immunity — it would take a very brave man to charge the ANC president. I can’t see it happening,” said Allister Sparks, the veteran journalist and author. Most ANC members believe that Mr Zuma was a victim of a plot by Mbeki supporters. They argue that Mr Zuma, who spent ten years on Robben Island and then became the head of the ANC’s military wing, was badly treated. He is also credited with ending a vicious civil war in the 1990s between ANC and the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu-Natal.

Other figures involved in the arms scandal received much more than the £35,000 that Mr Zuma was accused of pocketing. They have not been pursued, leading to allegations that the President was misusing state funds to settle a political vendetta.

“Zuma is an African traditionalist. He can’t possibly deliver to all the constituencies who have supported him if he becomes President, but at the moment people don’t care, they just have had it with Mbeki and his perceived aloofness,” Mr Sparks said.

In Soweto yesterday there was little sympathy for the President. “We JWs are left to foot it while the bigwigs drive around in fast cars,” said Philemon, an unemployed builder, as he pointed at the BMWs and Mercedes of the new black elite — dubbed Black Diamonds — who have made fortunes in the booming economy. About 40 per cent of the country’s population remains jobless and have seen little improvement in living standards since the arrival of majority rule.

THE CANDIDATES

Thabo Mbeki age 65

Style Western-friendly proponent of an intellectual "African Renaissance"

Childhood His parents were teachers and ANC intellectuals, as close to a middle class upbringing as was possible at the time

Family One son by a teenage relationship, who was killed while trying to escape South Africa. Married his wife Zanele in 1974

The apartheid years Joined the ANC aged 14, but fled after arrests of Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela. He earned a masters degree in Britain at the University of Sussex, went to train in guerrilla tactics in Moscow, then moved to the ANC headquarters in exile in Zambia

Jacob Zuma age 65

Style African "Big Man", comfortable in tribal dress

Childhood Born into poverty, his father died in his infancy. Received no formal education

Family Four official wives and 17 children. “Other political leaders hide the fact they have mistresses . . . I am an African man and proud of my culture,” he said

The apartheid years Arrested on charges of conspiring to overthrow the government, Zuma was incarcerated in Robben Island prison for ten years. On his release he helped to set up the ANC underground resistance, before moving into exile between 1975 and 1990

Source: ANC

December 15, 2007 | 2:54 AM Comments  0 comments
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BODY COUNT
Related to country: Iraq

BODY COUNT. Global avoidable mortality since 1950

BODY COUNT. Global avoidable mortality since 1950

I am a highly published biological scientist and in 2003 published a huge pharmacological text entitled "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. A pharmacological reference guide to sites of action and biological effects" (Taylor & Francis, London & New York).

Over the last few years I have carefully researched, written, edited and finally published a science-based history book of very wide potential utility entitled “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007; 220 pages, 24 tables; ISBN 1921377051). In the interests of Humanity I am sending copies of this big reference book to key scholars, writers, journalists, humanitarians, media and libraries around the world.

In 1998 I published a detailed book entitled “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne; second edition in preparation) (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ). This book dealt with the 2 century atrocity of British rule over India culminating in the man-made Bengal Famine of 1943/1944, The man-made, WW2 Bengal Famine killed 4 million people (it is similar in death toll magnitude to the WW2 Jewish Holocaust) but has been largely deleted from British historiography in a continuing process of sustained, racist holocaust denial. “Body count” documents the similarly non-reported avoidable death of 1.3 billion people since 1950 on Spaceship Earth with the First World in control of the flight deck.

“Body Count” is a carefully researched book by a 4 decade career biological scientist on a key social parameter “avoidable mortality” (excess death, deaths that should not have happened) which is nevertheless largely ignored by Mainstream media and for good reason – the post-1950 global avoidable mortality totals about 1.3 billion. Even in the United States, the richest country in the World, it can be estimated from publicly available UN demographic data that 0.14 million under-5 year old American infants have died avoidably over the last 7 years due to the warped Bush Administration priorities of international wars (that have so far caused 3.4 million excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories alone, mostly of Women and Children) rather than of addressing urgent domestic priorities such as infant and maternal health.

I am a scientist and not an ideologue – my core humanitarian philosophy is simply that of the American Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal and have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“Body Count” is a number of books efficiently packaged in a user-friendly way as a KEY REFERENCE WORK for laypersons, high school and college students, teachers, researchers, journalists, human rights activists and workers and other people in public life.

“Body Count”:

(a) summarizes, tabulates and analyzes avoidable mortality for every country in the world since 1950;

(b) uniquely provides a succinct and systematically organized history of every country in the world coupled with key avoidable mortality statistics (a fabulous resource for students, scholars, journalists and human rights activists);

(c) a systematic analysis of the actual causes of excess death in the world (noting that 16 million people die avoidably in the world every year, this including 10 million under-5 avoidable infant deaths); and

(d) finally, sets out a brief and systematic series of practical suggestions for halting the First World-complicit global avoidable mortality holocaust.

A picture says a thousand words. If you indeed become interested in my dispassionately scientific and scholarly but deeply humanitarian book you may also be interested in using the following huge paintings I have painted to spread a message of Peace, Love and Respect for Mother, Child and Woman e.g. “Sydney Madonna”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10865/26/ , “Manhattan Madonna”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10766/26/ , “Qana”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9547/26/ , “Truelove”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11031/26/ , Isfahan Matisse: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14417/26/ , and Alhambra Pollock: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14082/42/ . Please forward these links to everyone you know in the interests of Peace, Love, Mother and Child – just as I am sending copies of my book to key writers, media and libraries around the world.

Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity. We are obliged to INFORM others about abuses of Humanity.

I have set out below a detailed outline of “Body Count” and its contents.

1. Statement of aims and rationale

Avoidable mortality (excess mortality) is the difference between the ACTUAL deaths in a country over a given period and the deaths EXPECTED for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics. Avoidable mortality provides the bottom-line measure of the consequences of human actions and the success or otherwise of societal, regional and global policies.

UN demographic data enabled calculation of avoidable mortality (and corroborative, independent under-5 infant mortality estimates) for every country in the world since 1950. The 1950-2005 avoidable mortality has totaled 1.3 billion for the world and 1.2 billion for the non-European world, these horrendous estimates being consonant with 1950-2005 under-5 infant mortality estimates of 0.88 billion for the world and 0.85 billion for the non-European world. The data have been tabulated for every country together with other key demographic data and important social indicators, namely adult literacy and annual per capita income.

The avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality outcomes have been best in Overseas European countries (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel) that have never been occupied but have frequently invaded other countries – and the worst outcomes have been for Non-Arab African countries that have variously been subject to centuries of invasion and occupation. Detailed, summarized histories of all countries of the world are accompanied by precise estimates of avoidable mortality in the post-1950 era due to war, occupation, genocide and passive genocide. Thus the post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess deaths) and under-5 infant mortality in Coalition-occupied Iraq now total 1.0 million and 0.5 million, respectively (as adjudged from the latest UN and medical literature data).

Rational global human risk management requires avoidable mortality information, scientific analysis and sensible systemic change. There is no public discussion of the actual human cost of First World policies. For example, the post-invasion avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan now total 3.4 million and 2.4 million, respectively – estimates directly derived from publicly-available UN Population Division data but which are comprehensively ignored by mainstream media.

Avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality correlate with war and foreign occupation, with the latter encompassing both explicit violent occupation and neo-colonial hegemony. An apocalyptic quartet of violence, deprivation, disease and LYING is responsible for the continuing carnage. The ruler is responsible for the ruled, death is equally final whether violent or non-violent and mass avoidable mortality of subject people is passive genocide in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Extensive analysis of the causes of avoidable mortality has revealed politically disparate successes (e.g. Cuba and Fiji) that point the way to rational, humane and low cost global solutions involving peace, independence, very low but sufficient incomes, high literacy, good primary health care and governance for the common good.

The three core sections of the book uniquely involve:

(1) detailed analysis and tabulation of avoidable mortality, infant mortality and linked demographic parameters for every country in the world in the period 1950-2005;

(2) a concise summary of the history of every country in the world in the context of avoidable mortality and its political causation; and

(3) a detailed analysis of the physical causes of avoidable mortality (thanatology) and detailed, scientific solutions to a continuing catastrophe that kills 16 million people a year (44,000 daily, about 60% of them infants).

It is a horrifying testament to Mainstream lying by omission and politically correct racism (PC racism) that there are, to my knowledge, NO books doing ANY of these three things in a systematic and comprehensive fashion.

2. Table of contents with listing of chapter headings & short description of each chapter/section

Preamble

Title, Publication Details, Table of Contents, Key Quotations, Detailed Contents, List of Tables & Preface.

Chapter 1. Introduction – global avoidable mortality

1.1 Science & history – history ignored yields history repeated;

1.2 Deleting history – the “forgotten”, man-made WW2 Bengal Famine;

1.3 Avoidable mortality (excess mortality), under-5 infant mortality and foreign occupation;

1.4 Global avoidable mortality (excess mortality);

1.5 Non-reportage of global avoidable mortality ensures its continuance;

1.6 Summary

Chapter 2. Global post-1950 excess mortality and under-5 infant mortality

2.1 Estimation of mortality and avoidable mortality (excess mortality);

2.2 Calculation of under-5 infant mortality;

2.3 Comparison of global and regional post-1950 total mortality and under-5 infant mortality;

2.4 Estimation of avoidable under-5 infant mortality;

2.5 Comparison of under-5 infant mortality and excess mortality;

2.6 “Humanizing” mortality;

2.7 “Humanizing” excess mortality;

2.8 The human aspect of under-5 infant mortality;

Tables 2.1-2.12;

2.9 Summary

Chapter 3. Correlates and causes of post-1950 avoidable global mass mortality

3.1 “Big picture” regional analysis of global post-1950 under-5 infant mortality and excess mortality;

3.2 Overseas Europe: domestic democracy, prosperity, peace and Anglo-American invasion of distant lands;

3.3 Western Europe: domestic bliss and colonial and neo-colonial wars abroad;

3.4 Eastern Europe: totalitarianism, Russian occupation, general peace and low mortality;

3.5 Latin America and Caribbean: colonial and US hegemony – increased violence yields increased mortality;

3.6 East Asia: remarkable resurgence from European wars and sanctions;

3.7 Turkey, Iran and Central Asia: European occupation, intervention and war;

3.8 Arab North Africa and the Middle East: decolonization, Anglo-American and Israeli wars and oil;

3.9 South East Asia – European-imposed colonialism, occupation, war and militarism; 3.10 The Pacific- mixed colonial occupation and post-colonial outcomes;

3.11 South Asia – crippled by the legacies from British imperialism;

3.12 Non-Arab Africa – colonialism, neo-colonialism, corruption, militarism, war and HIV-1;

3.13 To be or not to be - lowest mortality countries invading distant high mortality countries;

3.14 Quantitative assessment of the mortality consequences of occupation;

3.15 Summary

Chapter 4. Country-by-country analysis of avoidable mortality in European countries

4.1 Introduction – matching excess mortality with foreign occupation; followed by detailed summaries of the histories of each country with quantitation of major avoidable mortality episodes:

4.2 Overseas Europe – internal democracy, external violence;

4.3 Western Europe – participation in colonial, neo-colonial and US-led “democratic imperialist” wars;

4.4 Eastern Europe – Communism, foreign occupation and tyranny but peace and good social services;

4.5 Summary

Chapter 5. Latin America and the Caribbean – from European invasion, genocide and slavery to US hegemony

5.1 Overview; followed by detailed summaries of the histories of each country with quantitation of major avoidable mortality episodes:

5.2 Latin American and Caribbean histories;

5.3 Summary

Chapter 6. North Africa, Asia & Pacific – the impact of colonialism, neo-colonialism and war

6.1 Overview; followed by detailed summaries of the histories of each country with quantitation of major avoidable mortality episodes:

6.2 East Asia – recovery from First World-imposed war and sanctions;

6.3 Turkey, Iran and Central Asia - Russian occupation, US interference, war and peace;

6.4 Arab North Africa and Middle East – Anglo-American, French and Israeli war and occupation;

6.5 South East Asia – colonialism, colonial wars, US-driven war and militarization; 6.6 The Pacific – colonialism, disease, war and maladministration;

6.7 South Asia – the disastrous legacy of rapacious British imperialism;

6.8 Summary

Chapter 7. Non-Arab Africa – colonialism, neo-colonialism, militarism, debt, economic constraint and incompetence

7.1 Overview of the continuing African tragedy; followed by detailed summaries of the histories of each country with quantitation of major avoidable mortality episodes: 7.2 Short histories of the countries of Non-Arab Africa;

7.3 Summary

Chapter 8. Synthesis, conclusions and suggestions

8.1 Finding causes and solutions;

8.2 Risk management;

8.3 Violent versus non-violent death;

8.4 The ruler is responsible for the ruled;

8.5 Passive genocide in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan;

8.6 Genocide;

8.7 Famine;

8.8 Disease;

8.9 Human cost of occupation;

8.10 High technology war, horrendous civilian/invader death ratios and PC racism; 8.11 Killing by default – arms, debt, globalization and economic constraint;

8.12 Excuses for war and the War on Terror;

8.13 Feminist perspective - right to life, women and allo-mothering;

8.14 Academic, media, political and sectarian lying;

8.15 Conclusions and suggestions – how to save the world

Section 9. Notes

Notes for the Preamble and Chapters 1-8.

Section 10. Bibliography.

3. Brief description of each chapter/section:

The preamble contains title page, table of contents, detailed contents (chapter, sub-headings and tables), key quotes and a succinct preface.

Chapter 1 summarizes the overall thrust of the book, specifically that history ignored yields history repeated. The deadly consequences of tardy reportage of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and the general non-reportage of the WW2 Bengal Famine (holocaust denial) (see Gideon Polya’s Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History), are used to support the argument that non-reportage of global avoidable mortality ensures its continuance. Thus the non-reported 1950-2005 avoidable mortality has totaled 1.3 billion for the world, 1.2 billion for the non-European world and 0.6 billion for the Muslim world – a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) or the “forgotten” WW2 Bengal Famine in British-ruled India (4 million victims).

Chapter 2 deals with the methodology used and presents detailed Tables summarizing regional and national avoidable mortality, under-5 infant mortality and other key demographic parameters and social indicators. The tables are organized by region in ascending order of post-1950 avoidable mortality. The best avoidable mortality outcomes have been in European countries and the worst in South Asia and non-Arab Africa. A useful way of comparing avoidable mortality outcomes is by “1950-2005 avoidable mortality”/“2005 population” ratios expressed as a percentage e.g. 2.9% for Australia but an appalling 81.0% for East Timor. The average “1950-2005 avoidable mortality”/ “2000 population ratio” in increasing order for the major global groupings is as follows: 2.7% (Overseas Europe) < st="on">atin America and Caribbean) < style=""> 27.3% (the Pacific) < style="" lang="EN-US">

Chapter 3 specifically addresses the correlates and causes of post-1950 avoidable mortality. Avoidable mortality correlates with foreign occupation which simply ensures rulers with decreased intrinsic regard for the ruled. Avoidable mortality provides a key measure of how rulers regard their domestic and foreign subjects and has been used to quantify the intrinsic racism of past and present imperialist powers. The surprising result is that the worst avoidable mortality-based “intrinsic racism scores” for the major First World “occupiers” have been for the Netherlands, Israel and Portugal and the best score for Russia, with the results for the UK, France and the US in between.

Chapters 4 to 7 provide detailed, summary “occupation histories” of all the countries of the world together with precise estimates for each country of avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality for particular post-1950 periods. The reader will be shocked by the magnitude of the actual human cost of specific post-1950 wars, occupations and other events as illustrated by the following three examples.

The post-invasion avoidable mortality in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories totals 0.3, 1.0 and 2.4 million, respectively, and the post-invasion under-5 infant mortality totals 0.2, 0.5 and 1.9 million, respectively (as of mid-2007). Avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality reached a minimum in post-colonial Iraq but doubled after the return of Western forces with sanctions in 1990 and have remained high ever since – the post-1990 avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality in Iraq now total 2.7 million and 1.7 million, respectively.

Similar avoidable carnage but for reasons of First World-complicit incompetent indigenous governance has occurred in Southern Africa in the post-Apartheid era. Careful inspection of the dynamics of avoidable mortality reveals that avoidable mortality increased dramatically in South Africa and its neighbours in the mid-1990s due to the utterly preventable HIV/AIDS epidemic. The percentage of the population now HIV positive (2003) is 20.6% (Swaziland), 19.9% (Botswana), 17.9% (Lesotho), 14.1% (Zimbabwe), 11.9% (South Africa), 10.7% (Namibia), 8.6% (Zambia) and 7.0% (Mozambique).

At the other end of the scale, relative to other European countries there has been markedly higher than average avoidable mortality in some Central and Eastern European countries subject to post-war Soviet occupation (specifically Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia and the Ukraine). Thus, while Hungary has one of the best post-1950 under-5 infant mortality outcomes in the world, it has the worst post-1950 avoidable mortality outcome for any European country (1.4 million avoidable deaths since 1950 and currently 35,000 annually). Possible explanations for the excessive avoidable mortality in Hungary (and these other “frontline” countries also subject to partial or complete Soviet occupation in the post-war era) include smoking, drinking, depression, pollution, economically depressed Roma minorities and non-reported deliberate or accidental radiological contamination.

Chapter 8 provides a detailed summary of the causes of avoidable mortality including war, occupation, deprivation, famine, disease, genocide and passive genocide. Avoidable mortality is fundamentally caused by violence, deprivation, disease and lying. Requisite responses to man-made mass mortality include Cessation, Acknowledgement, Apology, Amends and Assertion of non-repetition (acronym: CAAAA or C4A) as exemplified by post-Holocaust Germany; this book attempts to at least enable “Acknowledgment” of the ongoing, First World-complicit avoidable mortality holocaust (16 million avoidable deaths per year – 44,000 per day - due to deprivation-related causes). Carefully considered, low cost, practical and humanitarian suggestions are made for halting the global avoidable mortality holocaust.

A Chapter 8 Appendix composed of 12 detailed Tables 8.1-8.12 summarizes the roughly current state of play (2003) for all regions and countries of the World in relation to the following parameters: mortality, excess mortality, under-5 infant mortality, mortality/population, excess mortality/population, under-5 infant mortality/population, under-5 infants/population, “annual under-5 infant death rate”, and % HIV positive.

Each of the above sections commences with 5 carefully chosen quotations that capture the essence of the book or its specific chapters. Each chapter is split into numbered and entitled sub-sections and concludes with a carefully constructed summary. For ease of reading and efficiency, all documenting references and notes are indicated by superscript numbers and listed in Section 9. The Bibliography Section 10 lists all works quoted in Section 9 in a consistent fashion e.g. author(s), year, title, publisher, city (for books); author(s), year, title, journal, volume, pages (for journal articles); and similarly defined documentation for other references (notably URLs for Web-accessible documents).

There is no Subject Index because the book has been carefully designed with a comprehensive Detailed Contents section and with systematically Alphabetized historical contents. “Body Count” represents both a powerful humanitarian statement and a key reference work for students, scholars, journalists, the general public and humanitarian activists.

4. People who would benefit from the “Body Count” resource

This book is special, original and important in that it is the ONLY work available that comprehensively quantifies the horrendous global human avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality that has occurred over the last half century and is still occurring unchecked. It is also a very useful reference resource in that it is the only book currently available (as far as I know) that provides a detailed summary history for every country in the world from the Neolithic era to the present.

This book by a humanist biological scientist is a relatively dispassionate scientific catalogue and analysis of an appalling human reality that the world comprehensively ignores, namely global avoidable mortality. The book represents an encyclopaedic, quantitative resource for students, scholars, journalists and the general public and an unanswerable moral weapon for humanitarian activists in all countries.

People who would particularly benefit from Body Count” include senior high school students, undergraduate and postgraduate university students and scholars. The academic areas that this book relates to include history (general and specific areas), economics (environmental economics, world trade), commerce, management (risk management), business, law (international law), sociology (racism, feminism, conflict), women’s studies, biology (disease, human ecology, biological sustainability), medicine (epidemiology, risk management), journalism, media studies and politics (political science).

This book is designed for ordinary citizens in all walks of life. Thus I have recently given a 16 lecture course based on this book and entitled “Science, History and Avoidable Mortality” to a University of the Third Age (U3A) class of retired citizens from many former occupations – teaching, science, librarianship, secretarial, armed services, medicine, nursing, surgery, management, business and academia.

In addition to the UK and the British Commonwealth there would be a very large potential readership in North America in particular. Thus there is a wonderful, humane North American constituency that is committed to the “equality of man and the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and which is profoundly opposed to war.

Many in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific would find “Body Count” useful. In particular the huge population of educated, English-speaking Indians and Chinese should find utility in a detailed reference book quantitatively exposing the impact of the First World on the non-European world.

This book provides a wealth of quantitative data, thoughtful analysis and radical insights for students, scholars and humanitarian activists who demand humane global change but are enmeshed in a dominant global culture of comprehensive DENIAL. The dominant, prosperous, “politically correct racist” First World societies DENY their intrinsic racism, ignore the global carnage in which they are complicit and demonize their victims.

5. Related books

There are no such books about global avoidable mortality although there are many books dealing with specific conflict areas (e.g. the Iraq War) that constitute only a small part of my book. Thus Richard Hil and Paul Wilson have recently published “Dead Bodies Don’t Count: Civilian Casualties and the Forgotten Costs of the Iraq Conflict” (Zeus Publishing, Australia, 2007). Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel” deals in part with some major mass mortality events covered in parts of my book ( the Black Death and the effects of introduced disease in the Americas, Australasia and the Pacific).

Published books that come closest in subject matter to my book are some excellent books on past genocides [Chalk, F. & Jonassohn, K. (1990), The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies (Yale University Press, New Haven); Laqueur, W. (1980), The Terrible Secret. Suppression of the Truth about Hitler’s “Final Solution” (Penguin, London, 1982);

Wasserstein, B. (1979), Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1988)], famine [Davis, M. (2001), Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (Verso, London); Greenough, P.R. (1982), Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: the Famine of 1943-1944 (Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York); Polya, G.M. (1998), Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability (Polya, Melbourne)] and the historical genesis of genocidal European racism [Lindqvist, S. (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes (Granta Books, London, 2002)] – all matters summarized quantitatively in my book with reference to these and many other works. However NONE of these books even touch on the 1.3 billion post-1950 avoidable mortality holocaust.

Various recent books and articles by humane writers such as John Pilger, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, George Monbiot, Scott Ritter, Edward Said, Paul Roberts, John Perkins, Emmanuel Todd and William Blum reveal much about the dishonesty and violence of post-war US and related imperialism but do not provide comprehensive quantitation of the human cost. My book does not go into the details of violent deaths and political machinations – it is simply largely concerned with the war- and occupation-related avoidable mortality of which violent death can be a relatively small part. My book provides a detailed statistical and historical complement to the works of these other writers.

In writing Chapters 4-7 of this book I would have loved to have been able to refer to a succinct summary of world history from about 2000BC onwards [the best I could find, albeit an account that finished in mid-1952, was Langer, W.L. (1953), An Encyclopaedia of World History (Harrap, London)] and the best such compendium of more recent Third World history finished in about 1990 [Bissio, R.R. (1990), Third World Guide 91/92 (Instituto del Tercer Mondo, Montevideo)].

I am not aware of any other current history book that succinctly summarizes the history of all countries in the world from the Neolithic era to 2005 (as is achieved by Chapters 4-7 of my book). No other book even attempts to deal with post-1950 avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality, let alone in a comprehensive fashion.

6. Brief CV of Dr Gideon Polya

Gideon Polya was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1944 and raised in Hobart, Tasmania. A graduate of the University of Tasmania, he gained a PhD in Biochemistry from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. After postdoctoral research at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, he returned to the Australian National University as a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and thence took up a position at La Trobe University, Melbourne in 1972. In 2003 he retired from a senior position at La Trobe University but returned in 2007 to deliver a big second year science subject (Biochemistry for Agricultural Science students).

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career (search Google Advanced Scholar for many of these publications), most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. A pharmacological reference guide to sites of action and biological effects" (860 pages; 500 pages of tables; 4 indexes; Taylor & Francis/CRC Press, London & New York, 2003). In 1998 he published “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability” (Polya, Melbourne).

In recent years, in addition to writing “Body Count”, Dr Polya has written extensively about global avoidable mortality (numerous articles on this and related matters can be found by a simple Google search for "Gideon Polya" and on his websites: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html , http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ , http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ , http://gpolya.newsvine.com/ and http://gideon.sulekha.com/default.htm ).

Gideon Polya is married with 3 children. A keen artist he has published numerous cartoons (including illustrations for a statistics textbook), has painted a thousand paintings (abstract figurative and landscapes) and has drawn thousands of portraits.

Humanitarian Words having evidently failed (16 million people die avoidably each year i.e. 44,000 each day) Gideon Polya recently turned to Painting for Peace, painting HUGE works to spread a message of Peace, Love and respect for Woman and for Mother and Child, including: Sydney Madonna: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10865/26/ , Manhattan Madonna: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10766/26/ , Truelove: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11031/254/ , Melbourne Madonna: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/13950/26/ , Qana (conceptually related to Pablo Picasso’s 1937 antiwar masterpiece Guernica about the Nazi bombing of the town of the same name): http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9547/26/ , Isfahan Matisse: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14417/26/ , and Alhambra Pollock: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14082/42/ (that is explained by the Acronym PEACE – Pólya, Escher, Alhambra, Cultural Ecumenism). I would be delighted if you would pass on these links on to your friends, colleagues, associates and local media in the interests of Peace, Amity and respect for Woman, Mother and Child.

7 . Inquiries about “Body Count”

Inquiries about “Body Count” can be addressed to G.M. Polya at: gpolya@optusnet.com.au or to 29 Dwyer Street, Macleod, Melbourne, Victoria, 3085, Australia.

By Dr Gideon Polya

December 14, 2007 | 11:48 PM Comments  0 comments
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Chapter 3
United States v. John M. Poindexter

Navy Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter was appointed as President Reagan's national security adviser on December 4, 1985, succeeding Robert C. McFarlane, whom Poindexter had served under as deputy for two years. Poindexter's White House career ended November 25, 1986, when he was forced to resign in the wake of the public disclosure of the Iran/contra diversion.

Poindexter, Lt. Col. Oliver North and McFarlane were the three individuals Attorney General Edwin Meese III identified on November 25, 1986, as knowledgeable of the diversion. Poindexter's supervision of North and his own participation in the Iran and contra operations were early focuses of Independent Counsel's investigation.

As in the case against North, criminal evidence against Poindexter had to be gathered quickly before he was compelled to testify on Capitol Hill in the summer of 1987 under a grant of limited immunity. Otherwise, the prosecution of Poindexter was likely to be challenged on the grounds that it was derived from or in some way influenced by his immunized congressional testimony.

On March 16, 1988, Poindexter was indicted on seven felony charges arising from his involvement in the Iran/contra affair, as part of a 23-count multi-defendant indictment. He was named with North, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim as a member of the conspiracy to defraud the United States Government by effecting the Iran/contra diversion and other acts.

After the cases were severed and two of the original charges dismissed, Poindexter was tried and convicted in April 1990 of five felonies, including: one count of conspiring to obstruct official inquiries and proceedings, two counts of obstructing Congress, and two counts of false statements to Congress.1 U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene sentenced him to a six-month prison term. In November 1991, Poindexter's convictions were overturned on appeal. In December 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.

1 The Poindexter case was tried by Associate Counsel Dan K. Webb, Christian J. Mixter, Howard M. Pearl, and Louise R. Radin.

Poindexter joined the National Security Council staff in June 1981, following a distinguished naval career that included battleship command and high-ranking Pentagon posts. In October 1983 he became deputy to National Security Adviser McFarlane; among his subordinates was North. During Poindexter's one-year tenure as national security adviser, which began in December 1985, he oversaw the Iran/contra operations in which North was directly involved.

In November 1986, as the secret operations were becoming publicly exposed, Poindexter became the senior Administration official responsible for briefing the President's other top advisers about the Iran arms sales. In a series of White House meetings with other officials and members of Congress throughout the month, he repeatedly laid out a false version of the transactions that distanced President Reagan from the legally questionable 1985 arms shipments made through Israel, particularly the November 1985 HAWK-missile transaction.

Although Poindexter was the spokesman, he was not alone responsible for knowing the facts. Virtually every other senior official, including President Reagan, who heard his version of the arms sales in briefings throughout November 1986 had reason to believe it was wrong. Yet no one, according to contemporaneous notes of those briefings, spoke up to correct Poindexter.

Poindexter along with North and others in November 1986 attempted to shred and alter the paper trail reflecting their Iran/contra activities. Among other things, Poindexter destroyed the only existing signed presidential covert-action Finding that was intended to authorize retroactively CIA involvement in the November 1985 HAWKs shipment.

Poindexter and North were less successful in eradicating the computer-message trail of their Iran/contra activities. Poindexter and North often communicated through a special channel that Poindexter, a computer expert, had set up on the NSC computer system. This channel, known as ``Private Blank Check,'' allowed Poindexter and North to relay messages to each other without their being routed through channels in which others on the NSC staff could screen them.

Between November 22 to 29, 1986, North deleted from his computer file 736 messages, and Poindexter deleted 5,012 messages during the same period.2 Despite these deletions, the White House routinely saved back-up tapes containing all data in the system for two weeks to protect against inadvertent loss. When the Iran/contra affair was exposed in late November 1986, the White House Communications Agency, which manages the NSC computer system, retained the back-up tapes dating from November 15. Investigators, therefore, were able to retrieve copies of all messages that were in the Poindexter-North computer files in mid-November 1986 before most of the deletions occurred. These computer messages became important evidence in both the Poindexter and North trials.

2 Williams, Poindexter Trial Testimony, 3/15/90, pp. 1752-65.

Poindexter admitted to many of his activities before the Select Committees in July 1987 under a grant of testimonial immunity, which prevented his admissions from being used against him in any criminal proceeding. Because President Reagan did not testify in that forum, Poindexter was called to answer the question that dominated the hearings: Did the President know about and approve the diversion of the Iran arms sales proceeds to the contras? Poindexter answered no, ``the buck stops here with me.'' 3 He said he deliberately withheld the information from President Reagan because ``I wanted the President to have some deniability so that he would be protected. . . .'' 4

3 Poindexter, Select Committees Testimony, 7/15/87, p. 95.

4 Ibid., p. 101.

Facing a criminal trial, Poindexter confronted a different dilemma: It was no longer a question of protecting the President but defending himself against five felony charges. Before Congress, Poindexter's most significant testimony corroborated President Reagan's repeated denials of awareness of the Iran/contra diversion. In the courtroom, Poindexter mounted a higher-authorization defense, attempting to convince the jury that the President had approved his actions, including those that resulted in criminal charges. Instead of taking the stand in his own defense, however, he called President Reagan to testify.

Pre-Trial Proceedings

U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell in June 1988 ordered that the multi-defendant case against Poindexter, North, Secord and Hakim be severed.5 Following severance, Poindexter's case was transferred to Chief Judge Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., and then to Judge Greene, who presided over further proceedings.

5 For a more detailed description of the severance of the multi-defendant case, see North chapter.

All of Poindexter's substantive challenges to the validity of the indictment were dismissed before trial. The remaining important issues concerned: (1) the preservation of the conspiracy charge; (2) the resolution of classified-information disputes; (3) the resolution of issues related to Poindexter's immunized congressional testimony, under the ruling known as Kastigar; and (4) the defendant's successful effort to secure trial testimony from former President Reagan.

Preserving and Narrowing the Conspiracy Charge

Problems with classified information led to the dismissal of the central conspiracy charges before the North trial, and similar problems were expected to arise in the case against Poindexter. On June 20, 1989, Independent Counsel moved to eliminate the original broad conspiracy charges based upon the supply of the contras and the diversion and to substantially narrow the charge of conspiracy to violate other substantive criminal statutes, forbidding false statements and obstruction. After filings and oral argument, the court granted the Government's motion.

The charge was refocused on the illegal act of conspiring with North and Secord to conceal activities from Congress. Independent Counsel argued successfully that this narrowing of the conspiracy charge would minimize the classified-information problems that plagued the North prosecution.

Classified Information Issues

The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) allowed the trial court effectively to resolve issues involving the use of classified documents and testimony in Poindexter. Judge Greene's supervision of the CIPA process and fruitful negotiations between counsel for the Government and Poindexter resolved most disputes with a minimum of delay.

In contrast to North, there was no prolonged or significant litigation concerning the form or scope of Poindexter's CIPA notices to the court to disclose classified information at trial. Between November 27, 1989, and March 13, 1990, Poindexter served 11 such notices, including eight that listed classified documents he wanted to use at trial, two describing possible classified testimony, and one focused solely on information he wanted to elicit at the deposition of President Reagan.

Judge Greene ordered that all differences over classified information be negotiated between the parties before being brought before the court. Judge Greene held six closed CIPA hearings before the trial began and supplemented those with several shorter hearings during trial. Most of his rulings on the relevance and admissibility of classified information, and on the adequacy of substitutions proposed by the Government, were made from the bench.

Taken together, Poindexter's CIPA notices listed approximately 1,200 documents, only a small fraction of which were ultimately introduced at trial. Most classified information was covered by Government stipulations to certain facts and other unclassified substitutions. This allowed the trial to proceed smoothly, without the conflicts that complicated North or the case against former CIA station chief Joseph F. Fernandez, which was dismissed due to classified-information problems.6

6 See Fernandez chapter.

Kastigar Proceedings

Poindexter was compelled under a grant of use immunity to testify in 1987 before the Select Committees investigating Iran/contra. As did the other Iran/contra defendants who gave immunized testimony before Congress, Poindexter moved to dismiss the indictment on the theory that it violated the standards enunciated in Kastigar v. United States,7 arguing that his immunized testimony was used against him in the Grand Jury and at trial. This argument proved unsuccessful on the trial level but ultimately prevailed in the Court of Appeals.

7 406 U.S. 411 (1972).

Before their trials were severed, Poindexter moved jointly with North and Hakim, who also had received immunity to testify before Congress, to have the charges against them dismissed on the ground that the evidence against them was tainted by their immunized testimony. Judge Gesell denied that motion. However, in deference to defense claims that they would use one another's possibly exculpatory immunized testimony, Judge Gesell in June 1988 severed the trials.

Poindexter renewed his Kastigar motion before Judge Greene in August 1989. After briefing and argument,8 the court ordered that two evidentiary hearings be held. At the first, the court heard testimony from Associate Counsel Dan K. Webb and Howard M. Pearl concerning their exposure to Poindexter's immunized testimony before joining the Office of Independent Counsel. Webb and Pearl joined the OIC staff in 1989 and had not, before their appointments, been subject to OIC's procedures to insulate itself from Poindexter's immunized testimony. Judge Greene found their exposure to Poindexter's testimony to be insignificant and allowed both attorneys to participate in the trial.

8 The Poindexter case was tried before the Court of Appeals ruled in North that witness hearings were necessary to permit the trial of an immunized defendant.

The second set of court hearings concerned trial witnesses, whose testimony may have been tainted by Poindexter's immunized testimony. Judge Greene accepted Judge Gesell's earlier review of Grand Jury witnesses and declined to re-examine his findings. He also refused to dismiss the indictment on the basis of potential grand juror exposure to the immunized testimony.

Regarding trial witnesses, the court took extensive measures to ensure that Poindexter's immunized statements were not used against him. The court ordered the Government to make an ex parte submission (later disclosed to Poindexter) of all statements made by potential trial witnesses before Poindexter gave his immunized testimony before Congress in July 1987. The court found that all of the proposed testimony of most of the potential witnesses had been memorialized before Poindexter appeared publicly on July 15, 1987, and therefore was not tainted.

As for those witnesses whose expected trial testimony would not be limited to the evidence OIC had sealed with the court prior to Poindexter's immunized testimony, Judge Greene required additional information. He concluded that the Government had failed to establish that five of its potential witnesses were free of taint and ordered them to appear at a pre-trial hearing. Two of the three witnesses who ultimately appeared at trial credibly affirmed that their anticipated testimony would not be influenced in any way by Poindexter's immunized testimony; the third, North, refused to do so.

North stated at the pre-trial hearing that he was unable, with respect to any subject, to distinguish what he had personally done, observed or experienced from what he had learned from watching Poindexter's immunized testimony.9 As for Poindexter's destruction of the December 1985 presidential covert-action Finding -- important evidence in the obstruction of Congress -- North acknowledged that he had seen Poindexter destroy a piece of paper but insisted that he did not know it was a Finding until Poindexter stated that fact in his immunized testimony before Congress.

9 North Testimony, Poindexter Pre-trial Hearing, 12/13/89, pp. 374-77.

The court rejected North's pre-trial testimony as not believable. North, the court found, ``appears to have been embarked at that time [at the hearing] upon the calculated course of attempting to assist his former colleague and co-defendant . . . by prevaricating on various issues . . .'' 10

10 Opinion, Poindexter, 3/8/90, p. 9.

In a separate post-trial ruling, the court added that as far as the destruction of the Finding was concerned, North's testimony at his own trial about the event was inconsistent with his claim that he could not remember it independent of Poindexter's immunized testimony. The court found it ``inherently incredible'' that North did not remember ``his participation in an event he witnessed first hand and that was as dramatic, indeed historic, as the tearing up of an extremely rare Presidential Finding.'' 11

11 Ibid., 5/29/90, pp. 32-40.

The Reagan Subpoena

One of the most notable aspects of the Poindexter case was the defendant's successful attempt to call former President Reagan to testify at his trial by videotaped deposition.

Poindexter first sought presidential and vice presidential notes from OIC as part of his pre-trial discovery requests. In a pre-trial hearing on September 6, 1989, Poindexter's attorneys told the court that presidential notes would reflect that Poindexter informed the President of his denials to Congress in 1986 of NSC activity in support of the contras, and that the notes would ``show what the President was told about what was being done to support the contras in Central America, and the President's consent and ratification and approval of that activity.'' 12 In seeking vice presidential notes, Poindexter's attorneys told the court that ``anytime he [Bush] missed a meeting, Admiral Poindexter briefed him on it afterwards.'' 13

12 Robinson, Poindexter Pre-trial Hearing, 9/6/89, p. 18.

13 Ibid., p. 19.

The court, before making a decision on whether to compel OIC to produce these documents, on September 11, 1989, directed Poindexter to file an ex parte memo explaining precisely how these documents would assist his defense.14 It required from Independent Counsel a legal memorandum concerning its responsibility to produce presidential and vice presidential documents not in OIC's possession.

14 Opinion, Poindexter, 9/11/89, p. 22.

Independent Counsel in a filing on September 18, 1989, told the court that the office did not have in its possession presidential notes, but rather had been granted access to notes and allowed to copy only a portion of them with special permission. As far as President Reagan's diary was concerned, Independent Counsel had been allowed to review typed extracts of portions deemed relevant by White House counsel, but the President had retained custody of his diary, which both he and the national archivist regarded as personal records, making them unaccessible under the Presidential Records Act unless their production were compelled by subpoena.15

15 Government's Memorandum Concerning Presidential and Vice Presidential Documents that Are Not in the Possession of Independent Counsel, 9/18/89.

Attached to Independent Counsel's filing was a declaration by John Fawcett, assistant archivist for the Office of Presidential Libraries of the National Archives and Records Administration. Fawcett stated that President Bush's vice presidential records were transferred to the archives at the end of the Reagan Administration, but, ``No personal diary of former Vice President Bush has been specifically identified as being included in the Vice Presidential records. However, these Vice Presidential records have not yet been processed.'' 16

16 Ibid., Exhibit A. President Bush in December 1992 for the first time informed Independent Counsel that he had kept a diary as vice president from 1986 to 1988. See Bush chapter.

On September 25, 1989, Poindexter's attorneys informed the court that ``the defendant is willing to seek access to the personal diaries and notes of former President Reagan and former Vice President Bush pursuant to a . . . subpoena.'' 17 After reviewing Poindexter's ex parte submission on the materiality of presidential and vice presidential documents, the court on October 24, 1989, ruled that there was sufficient likelihood that President Reagan's documents would be material to the defense. Judge Greene differentiated between Reagan and Bush documents, however, because ``the Vice President had no operational authority with respect to Poindexter,'' because the information contained in vice presidential papers may be largely cumulative, and because of deference to the sitting President Bush.18

17 Defendant's Response to Government's Memorandum Concerning Presidential and Vice President Documents That Are Not in the Possession of Independent Counsel, 9/25/89, p. 2.

18 U.S. v. Poindexter, 725 F. Supp. 13, 28-31 (D.D.C. 1989). Judge Greene added that with respect to Bush documents, he would reevaluate the matter if Poindexter at a later date showed a more pressing need for them.

On November 3, 1989, Poindexter filed with the court a classified petition for leave to serve subpoenas on former President Reagan and the National Archives, seeking materials and testimony relevant to Iran/contra activities in 67 categories. On November 16, Judge Greene granted Poindexter's petition. Both President Reagan and the National Archives moved to quash the subpoena for documents.

In a pre-trial hearing December 4 the court stated that its order covered only documents, and not the President's possible trial testimony. On December 18 Poindexter sought the court's leave to subpoena President Reagan to testify at trial. In deciding whether Poindexter could subpoena President Reagan's testimony, Judge Greene asked Poindexter to submit a list of specific questions he intended to ask. Poindexter submitted a list of 183 questions, which were not made available to Independent Counsel.19 The court ruled that the questions directly related to the charges in the indictment and to Poindexter's anticipated defense.

19 In 1993, during preparation of this report, Independent Counsel obtained copies of these questions and other ex parte submissions from Poindexter's case.

In his February 5, 1990, ruling upholding the testimonial subpoena of Reagan, Judge Greene described Poindexter's proposed questions as falling into 12 categories. These included: (1) the frequency and occasions on which President Reagan and Poindexter met; (2) the President's view of the Boland Amendment and how it applied to contra support; (3) whether the President authorized Poindexter to seek foreign support for the contras; (4) what instructions the President gave Poindexter regarding meetings with Central American officials, and what information Poindexter subsequently relayed back to the President; (5) presidential discussions with Central American leaders concerning contra support; (6) presidential discussions with Poindexter regarding actions to be taken if Congress did not renew contra aid; (7) presidential knowledge of North's relationship to Iran/contra figures; (8) Poindexter's briefings of the President regarding a congressional inquiry in 1986 into North's activities; (9) Poindexter's communications with Congress at the direction of the President; (10) whether Poindexter informed the President about Secord's status; (11) discussions Poindexter had with the President regarding a chronology of the Iran arms sales prepared in November 1986; and (12) the President's knowledge of the arms shipments to Iran.

In his opinion explaining his decision to uphold Poindexter's subpoena of President Reagan, Judge Greene concluded:

Former President Ronald Reagan is claimed by Admiral Poindexter to have direct and important knowledge that will help to exonerate him from the criminal charges lodged against him. In view of the prior professional relationship between the two men, and defendant's showing discussed above, that claim cannot be dismissed as fanciful or frivolous. That being so, it would be inconceivable -- in a Republic that subscribes neither to the ancient doctrine of the divine right of kings nor to the more modern conceit of dictators that they are not accountable to the people whom they claim to represent or to their courts of law -- to exempt Mr. Reagan from the duty of every citizen to give evidence that will permit the reaching of a just outcome of this criminal prosecution. Defendant has shown that the evidence of the former President is needed to protect his right to a fair trial, and he will be given the opportunity to secure that evidence.20

20 U.S. v. Poindexter, 732 F. Supp. 142, 159-60 (D.D.C. 1990)

President Reagan did not claim executive privilege once he was ordered to testify.

The seven-hour videotaped deposition of the former President was taken February 16 and 17, 1990, in the Los Angeles federal courthouse, near his residence. The public and the press were not allowed to attend the deposition. Transcripts and the opportunity to view the videotape were made available to members of the press before the trial.

As for Poindexter's subpoena for documents from the former President, Judge Greene ordered President Reagan to make diary entries available for the court's in camera review. After its review, the court ordered President Reagan to produce the relevant diary entries to Poindexter in the absence of a claim of executive privilege. President Reagan, joined by the Bush Administration, claimed executive privilege as to the diary entries on February 5, 1990. On March 21, the court granted the Reagan-Bush motions to quash the subpoena for the diary entries, concluding that Poindexter's defense would be adequately served by the President's testimony.

The Poindexter Trial

The month-long Poindexter trial, which resulted in a five-count conviction on April 7, 1990, centered largely on the testimony of two witnesses: Oliver North for the prosecution and former President Reagan for the defense.

Both men attempted to help the defendant in their appearances on the witness stand, but each had given prior testimony harmful to Poindexter, and they could not deviate from that under threat of perjury charges.21 North could not abandon his earlier defense stance that he dutifully reported his activities -- including those found to be crimes -- to his superior, Poindexter. President Reagan was compelled at trial to state, as he had previously, that he repeatedly told his aides to obey the law and that he was unaware of their criminal acts.

21 Before taking the witness stand in Poindexter, North had testified before the Select Committees in July 1987, at his own trial in 1989, and at a Poindexter pre-trial hearing in 1990.

President Reagan was questioned by his Tower Commission on two occasions in early 1987. More significantly, the President in November 1987 answered 53 written interrogatories from Independent Counsel, which were submitted as sworn testimony to the federal Grand Jury investigating the Iran/contra affair.

Poindexter chose not to testify at his trial.

Although Poindexter and North had destroyed and altered official papers and computer messages, the prosecution offered convincing documentary evidence that Poindexter was kept apprised of North's efforts to provide military aid to the Nicaraguan contras while it was outlawed from October 1984-October 1986 by the Boland Amendment; that Poindexter adopted false statements McFarlane and North made to Congress; and that Poindexter had been fully aware of the ill-fated November 1985 HAWK missile shipment to Iran, which he subsequently tried to conceal from Congress.

The Trial Testimony of Oliver L. North

The testimony of North, named as a co-conspirator in the case, was important to proving each of the five charges against Poindexter:

-- Count One, that Poindexter conspired with North and Secord to obstruct congressional inquiries of Iran- and contra-related matters, to make false statements to Congress, and to falsify, remove and destroy official documents.

-- Count Two, that Poindexter obstructed Congress in 1986 when it was investigating media allegations that North was raising funds and providing military aid to the contras. In letters to three committees, Poindexter answered questions by repeating denials McFarlane made before Congress in 1985 of North's involvement in contra-support activities, even though Poindexter knew the denials to be false. He set up a meeting with the House Intelligence Committee in August 1986 in which he knew North would have to give false testimony, and afterward congratulated North on his performance.

-- Count Three, that Poindexter obstructed Congress in November 1986 by participating with North in the preparation of false chronologies of the secret U.S. arms sales to Iran and by making false statements to the House and Senate intelligence committees. Specifically, Poindexter falsely asserted that no U.S. official knew before January 1986 that HAWK missiles had been shipped to Iran in November 1985. The indictment stated that North as early as November 20, 1985, told Poindexter about the shipment in advance and advised him of it again after the fact in late 1985.

-- Counts Four and Five, that Poindexter made false statements about the HAWK shipment to the House and Senate intelligence committees on November 21, 1986. As in Count Three, the false statement charges were based on North's informing Poindexter about the shipment in 1985.

In four days of trial testimony, North reluctantly recounted his central operational role in the Iran/contra affair. He described the extensive contra-resupply network he ran with Secord and Hakim,22 his contra fund-raising efforts, and the military advice he gave the contras. He testified that he kept his bosses McFarlane and Poindexter fully informed of his activities and that he acted only with their approval.23

22 North objected to the prosecutor's use of the word ``Enterprise'' to describe the profit-making web of contra- and Iran-related operations he undertook with Secord and Hakim. He also objected to the use of the word ``testimony'' in reference to the false statements he made before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in August 1986, and the word ``diversion'' to describe the scheme in which he, Poindexter and others diverted Iran arms sales proceeds to the contras.

23 North, Poindexter Trial Testimony, 3/12/90, pp. 1275-76.

North, who was forced to testify for the prosecution under a grant of immunity, frequently claimed that he could not recall many of the incidents in question, some of which had occurred several years before. North admitted a wide range of contra-support and Iran-related actions only when confronted with prior testimony in which he had provided extensive details.

North admitted that he lied in August 1986 when he told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) he was not engaged in raising funds or providing military support to the Nicaraguan contras.24 North described exchanges with Poindexter before and after the meeting that directly implicated Poindexter in a scheme to frustrate the congressional investigation.25

24 Ibid., 3/9/90, pp. 1042-43.

25 Ibid., 3/12/90, p. 1083.

HPSCI was one of three congressional committees pursuing a House inquiry into reports of North's contra-aid activities. North testified that prior to appearing before the committee in the White House Situation Room, he told Poindexter he would be asked about ``things that I had been told never to reveal.'' 26 In response, Poindexter told him, ``You can handle it, you can take care of it,'' according to North.27

26 Ibid., 3/9/90, p. 1033.

27 Ibid.

After receiving reports of North's statements to HPSCI, which Poindexter knew were false, Poindexter by way of his computer sent North a terse congratulatory message: ``Well done.'' 28

28 PROFs Note from Poindexter to North, 8/11/86, AKW 018921.

Based on the statements of North and Poindexter, HPSCI Chairman Lee Hamilton informed other members of Congress that the media allegations about North could not be proven. North's false testimony, in combination with Poindexter's perpetuation of McFarlane's previous lies, successfully frustrated the congressional oversight process. It was not until Nicaraguan soldiers on October 5, 1986, shot down a contra-resupply plane carrying American Eugene Hasenfus that Congress renewed its investigation into North's activities.

North testified that he kept Poindexter apprised of his involvement in the covert sales of U.S. arms to Iran in 1985 and 1986, including the operation's most secret aspect: the Iran/contra diversion. He sent Poindexter five or six memos stating that overcharges to the Iranian buyers would generate millions of dollars for diversion to the contras.29 North said Poindexter told him the diversion should never be revealed.30 North said he reported the diversion plan to Poindexter because he thought that projects funded by it ``ought to have the authority of the President behind them.'' 31

29 North, Poindexter Trial Testimony, 3/12/90, pp. 1107-11.

30 Ibid., pp. 1103-05.

31 Ibid., p. 1111.

North testified that in November 1985, he became directly involved in an Israeli shipment of U.S. HAWK missiles to Iran at McFarlane's behest.32 North said he got permission from both McFarlane, who was then the national security adviser, and Poindexter, then deputy national security adviser, to enlist Secord's help in resolving logistical problems surrounding the shipment.33 He also got McFarlane and Poindexter's permission to supply the Israelis with the name of a CIA-connected airline to assist.34 North outlined the details of the planned HAWK shipment in a computer note to Poindexter on November 20, 1985.35 By memoranda on December 4 and on December 9, 1985, North informed Poindexter that the Iranians were unhappy with the shipment and wanted the missiles to be retrieved.36

32 Ibid., pp. 1118-20.

33 Ibid., pp. 1121-22.

34 Ibid., pp. 1122-27.

35 PROFs Note from North to Poindexter, 11/20/85, AKW 002066.

36 PROFs Note from North to Poindexter, 12/4/85, AKW 002070-73; Memorandum from North to McFarlane and Poindexter, 12/9/85, AKW 002088-91.

When CIA officials insisted after the HAWK shipment that the President should retroactively authorize the agency's participation in the operation, CIA Director William J. Casey on November 26, 1985, gave Poindexter a covert-action Finding for President Reagan's signature.37 North testified that he saw the signed Finding either in Poindexter's office safe or in the safe of NSC counsel Paul Thompson.38

37 Memorandum from Casey to Poindexter, 11/26/85, AMY 000651-52.

38 North, Poindexter Trial Testimony, 3/12/90, p. 1245.

After public exposure of the Iran arms sales in November 1986, North -- at Poindexter's request -- prepared a chronology of U.S. involvement in the Iran arms sales, which underwent a series of re-writes. North testified that McFarlane removed from the chronology North's factual account of the November 1985 HAWKs shipment and substituted a cover story: that although the CIA became involved in the November 1985 shipment after Israel encountered logistical difficulties, U.S. officials at the time believed the cargo to be oil-drilling parts and did not learn until January 1986 that the true cargo was weapons.39

39 Ibid., pp. 1188-98.

Asked whether the McFarlane revision was part of a plan to ``cover up'' the existence of the November 1985 Finding, North answered: ``I don't know that cover up is the right word. I listened to the President's press conferences, I listened to statements being made by people and they just didn't talk about it.'' 40 North said McFarlane told him the cover story should be incorporated into the chronology because the 1985 Finding authorizing the weapons shipment described too directly an arms-for-hostages swap, which, if exposed, would politically embarrass the President.41

40 Ibid., p. 1191.

41 Ibid., pp. 1190-91.

The same oil-drilling-parts cover story was part of a CIA-prepared chronology that Casey and his deputy, Robert Gates, brought to a White House meeting on November 20, 1986, with Poindexter, North, Meese, Cooper and Thompson. The purpose of the meeting was to prepare Casey and Poindexter for their congressional testimony the following day. North was asked at trial:

Q: . . . did it become clear to you by the time McFarlane tells you that [the finding was too close to an arms-for-hostage swap] and by the time you see the CIA show up with this phony chronology, then at least did it appear to you that there was some effort or plan going on to cover up with U.S. involvement because of that finding?

A: Well, there is no doubt in my mind that I came to realize that finding was a disaster, and I understood that.42

42 Ibid., pp. 1208-09.

North testified that he altered and destroyed numerous documents in October and November 1986 that would have revealed details of the Iran and contra operations. He said he assured Poindexter that he had ``taken care of'' the documents that reflected his activities.43 He said he told Poindexter all the documents describing the Iran/contra diversion were destroyed, after learning from Poindexter on November 21, 1986, that Attorney General Meese would be conducting a weekend investigation into the Iran arms sales.44 North also testified that he altered other original NSC documents, after receiving Poindexter's permission to retrieve them from the NSC document-archiving system.45

43 Ibid., p. 1218.

44 Ibid., pp. 1120-21.

45 Ibid., pp. 1224-27.

More important, North reluctantly testified that he saw Poindexter destroy the only known copy of the signed presidential Finding that sought to authorize retroactively the November 1985 shipment of HAWK missiles to Iran.46 North's eyewitness account of the destruction of the Finding provided significant proof of Poindexter's intent to conceal facts about the HAWK missile shipment from Congress in November 1986.47

46 Ibid., 1252-54.

47 The destruction of the 1985 Finding was not charged as a separate crime in the indictment of Poindexter because Independent Counsel did not learn of it until North testified about it at his own trial in April 1989. Poindexter had told the Select Committees in 1987 that he destroyed the only signed copy of the 1985 presidential Finding. Independent Counsel did not learn of this statement at the time, however, because the OIC had taken measures to insulate itself from all immunized testimony. Even if Independent Counsel had been aware of the Poindexter testimony, OIC could not have used it in any criminal proceeding against Poindexter under the terms of immunity grant.

North's wide-ranging testimony enabled the prosecution to streamline its witness list to only nine other individuals, many of whom supplemented the central details provided by North.

The Trial Testimony of President Reagan

Before the trial of Poindexter, President Reagan had not testified publicly about Iran/contra. On February 16 and 17, 1990, he gave a seven-hour videotaped deposition as a defense witness. No classified matters were discussed and executive privilege was not invoked in response to any question. The videotaped deposition was shown in full, therefore, to the Poindexter jury during the trial on March 21 and 22, 1990.48

48 Immediately after each tape was shown to the jury, a copy was given to the television networks, allowing the public to see President Reagan's only courtroom testimony on the Iran/contra affair.

In direct examination, defense counsel sought to show presidential knowledge and approval of Poindexter's activities. But President Reagan frequently claimed memory lapses when questioned about specific exchanges he may have had with Poindexter and about his knowledge of individuals and details involved in the Iran and contra operations.

Although President Reagan exhibited virtually no detailed knowledge of the Iran/contra matter, he made clear to the jury that it had his imprimatur, calling it ``a covert action that was taken at my behest.'' 49 President Reagan said North was the only person he remembered being involved in the arms initiative.50 He could not recall being briefed by Poindexter on the May 1986 trip by McFarlane and North to Tehran, but he said he did recall signing a Bible for Iranians.51 President Reagan testified that the amount of weapons sold to Iran totaled $12.2 million.52

49 Reagan, Poindexter Trial Deposition, 2/16/90, p. 9.

50 Ibid., p. 21.

51 Ibid., p. 24.

52 Ibid., pp. 154-55.

Asked specifically about the November 1985 HAWK shipment to Iran, President Reagan said he recalled a plan in which the Israelis would turn their plane around in mid-delivery of the weapons if no hostages were released.53 He did not recall when he became aware of the November 1985 HAWK shipment; 54 he did not recall Poindexter telling him in November 1986 that others in the White House were having trouble remembering when they learned of it.55

53 Ibid., pp. 24-25.

54 Ibid., pp. 33-36.

55 Ibid., pp. 38-39.

President Reagan also claimed virtually no memory of the November 1986 period in which his top advisers were scrambling to limit public exposure of the Iran arms sales. He only generally recalled telling members of Congress about the arms sales on November 12, 1986.56 He could not remember receiving any information from Poindexter for any of his presentations on the matter in that time.57 The former President could not remember asking Poindexter to assemble the facts on the arms sales.58 He could not recall that Poindexter briefed the House and Senate intelligence committees on November 21, 1986.59

56 Ibid., pp. 37-38.

57 Ibid., p. 30.

58 Ibid., p. 28.

59 Ibid., pp. 44-45.

Defense counsel's questions suggested that their client had significant exchanges with the President during the arms-sale period and its aftermath. But Reagan's lack of recollection, and lack of specificity when he did remember events or individuals, left those questions unresolved.

President Reagan provided more helpful testimony for the defense on the subject of contra-support operations. Calling the Boland prohibition on contra funding a ``disaster,'' 60 Reagan testified that he urged his aides to do what they could to support the contras, while staying ``within the law.'' 61 Reagan recalled that Saudi Arabia's King Fahd pledged millions of dollars for the contras.62 He said he told his aides not to solicit contributions for the contras directly but to tell people how they could contribute if they wanted to help.63

60 Ibid., p. 69.

61 Ibid., pp. 53-54.

62 Ibid., pp. 74-75.

63 Ibid., pp. 53-54.

Asked whether Poindexter briefed him on the contras, President Reagan said: ``Oh yes, I depended on him for that.'' 64 He said he had no reason to believe that Poindexter was not keeping him fully informed.

64 Ibid., p. 116.

Asked to describe what he knew about North's responsibilities in the White House, President Reagan said:

Well, he was mainly performing tasks, as I understand it, for the NSC, but he -- his background and record had been one of being decorated for heroism and so forth in the Vietnamese conflict, and that he had been a very bold and brave soldier -- Marine.

And -- so, he was -- it was my impression, not from any specific reports or anything, that in through all of this that he was communicating back and forth between on the need for the support of the Contras and so forth.65

65 Ibid., p. 131.

In addition to professing a benign view of North and his activities, President Reagan indicated general knowledge of and support for the contra-resupply operation in Central America:

Q: Do you recall any discussions that he [Poindexter] may have had with you about the construction of an airstrip down there in Central America?

A: Well, I did hear -- we had learned that there was a rather primitive lane in there in the jungle near the border of Costa Rican [sic], and that was then being put into better shape as a usable airstrip.

Q: Did you have any -- do you recall any discussion about who was constructing the airstrip?

A: Well, no. I assume it was the Costa Rican government.

Q: And do you know what that airstrip was going to be used for?

A: Well, I know that -- I hoped that it would be used in the delivery of when once again we could supply, keep the Contras supplied, that it could be involved in the -- used there, if there was need for a refueling or anything of that kind of a plane.66

66 Ibid., p. 121.

President Reagan was then asked whether he knew who would be using the Costa Rican airstrip for contra resupply. His answer reflected knowledge of the operation supposedly being funded and run by private citizens -- the so-called ``private benefactors'' -- that was in fact being run by Secord at North's direction:

Q: Do you know who it was that was going to be using the airstrip? It was going to be used for supplying the Contras, but do you know who it was that was actually going to be doing the supplying and using the airstrip?

A: No, I do not on that. I don't think -- I don't think I ever considered that it would be military planes of ours. So, possibly some of those that weren't officially planes of ours that had been helping in the past in deliveries to the Contras and so forth.

Q: Earlier this morning or earlier today, I should say, you mentioned General Secord. That you knew that he was involved in the Contra supply effort.

Was it part of his operation you thought that he might be using the airstrip?

A: I can't say that I actually recall that, but it seems to me logical that he would have been involved in that.67

67 Ibid., p. 122.

President Reagan, who winked and smiled at Poindexter from the witness stand, did not hide his contempt toward congressional inquiries into NSC staff contra-support activities. Shown misleading letters written by Poindexter in July 1986 to the committees of Congress that were investigating allegations of North's contra efforts, Reagan said: ``I am in total agreement. If I had written it myself, I might have used a little profanity.'' 68

68 Ibid., pp. 146-47.

In cross-examination, the prosecution was able to impeach much of President Reagan's testimony. This was possible because Reagan late in 1987 had answered, under oath, 53 written interrogatories for Independent Counsel and the Grand Jury investigating the Iran/contra matter.

The July 21, 1986, letters -- in which Poindexter embraced and perpetuated the lies McFarlane had told Congress about North's contra-support activities a year earlier -- were a key element in the obstruction charges against the defendant. Under cross-examination by the prosecution, President Reagan was asked whether he was aware that the Poindexter letters repeated McFarlane's previous lies. The former President equivocated:

Well, I simply -- no, I did not have this information, but I have a great deal of confidence in the man who was quoted as sending these letters, McFarlane. And I have never -- I have never caught him or seen him doing anything that was in any way out of line or dishonest. And so, I was perfectly willing to accept his defense.69

69 Ibid., p. 151.

President Reagan said he did not know that McFarlane had pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in connection with the false letters.70

70 Ibid., pp. 220-21.

Asked whether he approved either the McFarlane or Poindexter letters to Congress, the former President said he had no recollection of doing so, adding that his memory could be faulty.71 Asked directly whether he would approve of sending false information to Congress, President Reagan conceded that he would not.72 Would he have authorized Poindexter to make false statements to Congress? President Reagan again attempted to assist his former aide: ``No. And I don't think any false statements were made.'' 73

71 Ibid., pp. 150-51.

72 Ibid., pp. 151-52.

73 Ibid., p. 158.

President Reagan also testified that he did not approve the destruction of Iran/contra documents by Poindexter, and that he was not told about their destruction.74 But the former President, in response to subsequent questioning, described the dilemma in which he placed his aides in November 1986 by instructing them that certain information could not be revealed because ``it will bring to risk and danger to people that are held and with the people that we were negotiating with.'' 75

74 Ibid., p. 160.

75 Ibid., p. 252.

Asked again whether he approved the destruction of alteration of any Iran/contra records, President Reagan said: ``And this, I cannot answer. I cannot recall because it is the possibility that there were such papers that would violate the secrecy that was protecting those individuals' lives.'' 76 President Reagan had denied in response to the earlier written interrogatories that he approved the destruction and alteration of documents; when confronted with his previous testimony he stated that it was truthful.

76 Ibid., p. 255.

On the issue of the contras, President Reagan said he ``never had any inkling'' that North was guiding their military strategy.77 But Reagan muddied the issue in a later statement about North:

77 Ibid., p. 170.

I know that he [North] was very active, and that was certainly with my approval, because I yesterday made plain how seriously I felt about the Contra situation and what it meant to all of us here in the Americas. And, so, obviously, there were many things that were being done. But, again, as I say, I was convinced that they were all being done within the law.78

78 Ibid., p. 189.

In questioning about the Iran/contra diversion, President Reagan surprisingly asserted that he had no proof that a diversion had occurred:

And to this day, I still with all of the investigations that have been made, I still have never been given one iota of evidence as to who collected the price, who delivered the final delivery of the weapons, or what was -- whether there was ever more money in that Swiss account that had been diverted someplace else. I am still waiting to find those things out and have never found them out.79

79 Ibid., p. 155.

Asked whether he had approved a diversion, Reagan again stated:

May I simply point out that I had no knowledge then or now that there had been a diversion, and I never used the term. And all I knew was that there was some money that came from some place in another account, and that the appearance was that it might have been a part of the negotiated sale. And to this day, I don't have any information or knowledge that that wasn't the total amount that -- or that there was a diversion.80

80 Ibid., p. 156.

Asked again whether he would have approved a diversion, President Reagan said he would not. But, he added, ``No one has proven to me that there was a diversion.'' 81

81 Ibid., p. 157.

President Reagan said he did not recall that the Tower Commission concluded in March 1987 that, in fact, a diversion had occurred. ``I, to this day, do not recall ever hearing that there was a diversion,'' he said.82 Shown that portion of the Tower Commission report describing the diversion, Reagan said: ``This report -- this is the first time that I have ever seen a reference that actually specified there was a diversion.'' 83

82 Ibid., p. 240.

83 Ibid., p. 243.

Asked whether Poindexter should have told him about an Iran/contra diversion, Reagan said: ``Yes. Unless maybe he thought he was protecting me from something.'' 84

84 Ibid., pp. 243-44.

The Verdict and Sentencing

After six days of deliberation, the jury on April 7, 1990, found Poindexter guilty of each of the five felony charges against him. Judge Greene on June 11, 1990, sentenced Poindexter to six months imprisonment on each of the five counts, to be served concurrently.

In imposing the sentence, Judge Greene noted complaints by Poindexter's supporters that the most he was guilty of was having become embroiled in a political quarrel between the White House and Congress. Judge Greene stated:

Whatever may have been the nature of the original dispute, what the defendant and his associates did was emphatically not a part of the normal political process.

. . . When Admiral Poindexter and his associates obstructed the Congress, what were they seeking to accomplish? In a word, it was to nullify the decision that body had made on the issue of supplies to the Contras. . . .

President Reagan did not, or for parliamentary reasons he could not, veto the bill [which contained the Boland prohibition on contra aid]. He did not attempt to assert his own constitutional powers or take the issue to the people, and at the conclusion of the political process the Boland Amendment thus became law.

No problem. What the president was unwilling or unable to do -- to defeat this law -- Admiral Poindexter, together with Oliver North and others, did on their own. They decided that the policy embodied in the Boland Amendment was wrong, and they went about to violate it on a large scale and for a lengthy period, and then to lie about their activities to prevent the Congress and the public from finding out. . . .

With all due respect to the distinguished military records of Admiral Poindexter, Colonel North, General Secord, and the others, they have no standing in a democratic society to invalidate the decisions made by elected officials . . . As I said several times during the trial, it is immaterial to this criminal case who was right and who was wrong about the wisdom of the Contra policy. That is not what this trial was about. The jury and this court were not competent to decide for this nation whether resistance forces in Nicaragua should or should not have been supplied with weapons.

But more importantly for present purposes, neither was Admiral Poindexter. When he and his associates took it upon themselves to make that decision anyway, to implement it on a broad scale, and to work actively to keep what they were doing from the Congress and the public, they not only violated various statutes. They were also in violation of a principle fundamental to this constitutional Republic -- that those elected by and responsible to the people shall make the important policy decisions, and that their decisions may not be nullified by appointed officials who happen to be in positions that give them the ability to operate programs prohibited by law. It is unfortunate that, whatever may be his view of his own purposes and actions, the defendant still gives no evidence of recognizing that principle and the seriousness of its violation.

Given the nature of the offenses, the sentencing principle that is primarily applicable here is that of deterrence, and as a practical matter, deterrence means meaningful penalties. If the court were not to impose such a penalty here, when the defendant before it was the decision-making head of the Iran-contra operation, its action would be tantamount to a statement that a scheme to lie to and obstruct Congress is of no great moment, and that even if the perpetrators are found out, the courts will treat their criminal acts as no more than minor infractions.

A message of that kind could not help but encourage others in positions of authority and secrecy to frustrate laws that fail to accord with their notions of what is best for this country, and to carry out their own private policies in the name of the United States. . . .85

85 Judge Greene, Poindexter Transcript of Sentencing, 6/11/90, pp. 18-22

The Appeal

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a 2-1 decision on November 15, 1991, reversed Poindexter's convictions on the grounds that his trial was impermissibly tainted by his immunized congressional testimony. The Poindexter ruling was based on the appeals court decision in the North case, which extended the protections of the use immunity statute to prohibit use of any witness whose testimony has been refreshed or shaped in any way by the defendant's immunized testimony. In his dissenting opinion, Chief Judge Abner Mikva noted that the majority ruling ``tells future defendants that all they need to evade responsibility [to testify at trial] is a well timed case of amnesia.'' 86

86 U.S. v. Poindexter, 951 F.2d 369, 390 (D.C. Cir. 1991).

The Poindexter appeals panel also overturned the two obstruction convictions on the grounds that the statute was ``unconstitutionally vague'' in its proscription of ``corruptly'' endeavoring to impede a congressional inquiry. The appeals panel ruled that a defendant's lying to Congress does not constitute obstruction unless the defendant corruptly influences someone else to do so. Again, Chief Judge Mikva dissented, finding it ``obvious . . . that Poindexter 'corruptly' obstructed the congressional investigation when he lied to Congress.'' 87

87 Ibid.

In October 1992, Independent Counsel petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Poindexter case. Independent Counsel said the appeals court ruling that the obstruction statute was unconstitutional ``leaves a large gap in the criminal law, while endorsing a method of analyzing constitutional vagueness challenges that could prove enormously destructive to a substantial body of federal legislation.'' 88 The petition noted that at least 17 other laws besides the obstruction statute at issue use the word ``corruptly'' to define an element of the offense.89

88 U.S. v. Poindexter, Crim. No. 88-0080-01, Petition for Writ of Certiorari by United States of America, at 9 (October 1992).

89 Ibid., p. 10.

On immunized testimony, Independent Counsel in its petition to the Supreme Court said the appeals ruling in Poindexter would

make almost impossible the prosecution of any case involving public immunized statements that requires testimony by persons sympathetic to the accused, such as co-conspirators or other associates. And the dangers of abuse and manipulation are magnified by the court of appeals' view, expressed in North, that a witness inclined to assist the defense may become disqualified from testifying at trial by the simple expedient of soaking himself in the defendant's immunized statements. 90

90 Ibid., p. 22.

Independent Counsel also noted that the appeals ruling

. . . will have its most profound impact on cases involving public immunized testimony before Congress -- cases that, by definition, involve issues of the most fundamental import. If the court of appeals has erred, this Court should right that error before significant further damage is done to the legislative oversight function. 91

91 Ibid., p. 29.

The U.S. Supreme Court in December 1992 declined, without comment, to review the Poindexter case.

Conclusion

Poindexter was responsible for providing President Reagan with advice on national-security matters of highest importance. What his conviction showed was that a jury of ordinary citizens can sort and weigh complex evidence and agree that obstructing and lying to Congress is a serious act worthy of felony conviction.

The Poindexter trial served the public interest in another sense. Poindexter's determination to call President Reagan as a witness allowed the public the rare opportunity to see him testify for seven hours about the Iran/contra matter.

The completion of the Poindexter trial in April 1990, two years after the original indictment was returned, necessitated the re-activation of the criminal investigation into Iran/contra. For the first time, Poindexter and North were available for questioning by Independent Counsel. Although this decision was questioned by some, Independent Counsel determined that his Iran/contra investigative mandate could not be fulfilled until the central operational figures were interrogated to find out whether other high-ranking officials helped support and cover up their activities.