By Christopher Glenn Fichtner, M.D.

ON JUNE 16, 2011, the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s declaration of “war on drugs,” the New York Times published an op-ed titled “Call Off the Global Drug War.” It was written by none other than former President Jimmy Carter, who cited the “courageous and profoundly important recommendations” of the recent Global Commission on Drug Policy.

These recommendations harkened back to Carter’s own message to Congress on August 2, 1977: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana for personal use. The National Commission on Marijuana…concluded years ago that marijuana use should be decriminalized, and I believe it is time to implement those basic recommendations.”

More than three decades and millions of marijuana arrests later, roughly one-third of the states have passed laws reflecting consumer demand for access to herbal cannabis as medicine. There has been a resurgence of interest in marijuana decriminalization, and media coverage of Mexico’s drug-war violence has exploded. At an early 2009 Presidential town hall meeting, one of the most frequently submitted online questions was whether marijuana legalization might provide a valuable stimulus for economic growth.

I suggest in my book Cannabinomics: The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point that we can now observe an intersection of three policy trajectories: the growing consumer demand for herbal cannabis as medicine; the growing recognition of the drug war itself as a public health problem; and an economic crisis that places a premium on optimizing America’s management of its resources.

In 2005, the Colorado SAFER campaign organized and passed by majority vote a Denver initiative to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, arguing that cannabis is safer than alcohol. In November 2006, the SAFER campaign took its public health message statewide in Colorado, where it garnered 41% of the vote. That same election day, a South Dakota medical marijuana initiative mustered 48% approval, while 44% of Nevada voters weighed in favorably on an initiative to tax and regulate the herb. Nevada voters put the question of frank legalization on the ballot long before California’s Proposition 19 to tax and control cannabis came up short at 46% in 2010.

Michigan voters came on board with approval of a medical marijuana law in November 2008, while Massachusetts decriminalized possession with an impressive 65% majority. And only weeks before Proposition 19 failed, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill decriminalizing possession of less than an ounce. Late in 2011, a Gallup poll found 50% nationwide support for marijuana legalization, with only 46% opposed.

While serving as state mental health director for Illinois, noting similarities and overlap between jail and public psychiatric hospital populations, I reviewed 2003 data from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. It showed more arrests statewide for marijuana possession than for all other controlled substances combined. This was not far from the national norm. At the same time, I heard testimonials of patients and advocates fighting to pass a medical marijuana law in Illinois.

Julie, a bright and articulate woman in her early 40s who had suffered with multiple scle- rosis (MS) for over 20 years, schooled me on language. She would not talk about marijuana. In the first place, Julie was not a pot smoker, and more importantly, she refused to accept the hostile projections loaded into a term popularized during the Reefer Madness era and built upon racial tensions. Julie ingested herbal cannabis in the form of three small brownies a day, finding that she could then eliminate prescription muscle relaxants that had left her bedridden with sedation, not to mention keep her use of opiate narcotic pain relievers to a minimum.

In addition, Julie had been prescribed antidepressants— MS often induces mood disturbance through its effects on the brain—but tolerated them poorly due to side effects. Cannabis improved her mood without mental impairment. Julie repeatedly testified before Illinois legislative committees and was viewed by all as a clear-headed spokesperson and patient advocate. From Julie, I learned to reframe “marijuana policy debates” as public conversations on society’s management of cannabis—which I later termed cannabinomics.

Space will not accommodate all the stories of cannabis consumers chronicled in my book, but they include: Seth, who turned to cannabis to control his epileptic seizures when prescribed medicines didn’t work and whose doctor proposed brain surgery while refusing to discuss any possible benefits of marijuana; Jason, who used cannabis to ease phantom limb pain following the amputation of a leg; Mary, whose poststroke rehabilitation included cannabis for chronic pain in an alternative treatment approach that helped her get off prescription medications with uncomfortable side effects; Stuart, who completed his master’s degree despite the obstacle of being quadriplegic from cerebral palsy and who relied upon cannabis to relieve his muscle spasticity and improve his mood; plus the AIDS, cancer and hepatitis patients who use cannabis to relieve pain or chemotherapyinduced nausea or to stimulate appetite in wasting syndromes.

The case of Garry, a Southern California medical cannabis patient, illustrates the hazards of the drug war and its economic impact—and the intersection of both with healthcare. In 2006, when county law enforcement officials opposing the state’s medical cannabis law paid Garry an early-morning visit with the help of federal agents, he jumped out of bed in response to loud knocking. As he opened his front door, he was greeted by a battering ram and a physical takedown maneuver that left him with a dislocated left shoulder, right hand fractures, blunt head trauma and a back injury that aggravated the arthritis for which he grew cannabis in his garage. Before the raid, Garry earned a high six-figure income in his family-owned business installing custom window treatments. He now collects Social Security disability. Many physicians writing medical cannabis recommendations believe that the safety and side effects profile of herbal cannabis favor its availability over the counter rather than on a strict prescription basis, but with an age restriction because it is psychoactive. The “agerestricted, over-the-counter” idea begins to break down the distinction between medicinal and personal use. As a physician and psychiatrist, I would not hold that “all use is medicinal,” but I would offer the guiding principle that “all use should be therapeutic.” Cannabis use need not be pigeonholed into either the palliative care of dying patients, on one hand, or “substance abuse” on the other.

Herbal cannabis contains an array of chemical compounds—some psychoactive, or mind-altering— and others not. The best-studied of these cannabinoid compounds known to be primarily responsible for the mood-elevating or euphoric effects of marijuana (the “high”) is delta-(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), ironically available as medicine in the United States since 1985. THC is used to alleviate nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy, for stimulation of appetite in AIDS wasting and sometimes for pain relief.

Science tells us that built-in chemical receptors in the human body recognize these cannabinoid molecules. The receptors belong to a natural chemical messenger system that includes the bodily substance anandamide, which produces weak marijuanalike effects. (Ananda is the Sanskrit word for “bliss.”) With the discovery of this endocannabinoid system, numerous cannabinoid compounds other than THC are now being studied, with growing evidence of potential medicinal applications.

For example, cannabidiol (CBD) is a molecule chemically related to THC but is nonpsychoactive, meaning it won’t get you high. Emerging research suggests that CBD may be a better muscle relaxant and anticonvulsant than THC. In addition, CBD appears to have antianxiety effects (as does THC, at modest doses, for some individuals) and may even help alleviate symptoms of psychosis seen in cases of schizophrenia.

But what about reports that use of marijuana may lead to mental illness—especially schizophrenia? The best research to date on the weak statistical association between marijuana use and schizophrenia suggests that cause-and-effect may run in both directions. While research suggests that some people with schizophrenia are genetically vulnerable to adverse effects from marijuana, other research finds a subset whose cannabis use may be associated with improved cognitive functioning.

Academic contributors to the “marijuana and psychosis” research literature often cite the Yale University study that infused volunteer subjects intravenously with THC, only to find that some of them became paranoid and had perceptual disturbances. They ignore the University of Cologne study that compared CBD headto- head with an approved antipsychotic medication in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. This German study found that CBD was equally effective in decreasing psychotic symptoms with fewer side effects.

Individuals genetically vulnerable to schizophrenia may self-medicate with cannabis early in their illness for symptom relief. The failure of psychiatric researchers to consider this possibility results in a bias toward viewing marijuana use as the cause of later mental illness.

Until recently, California was the only state that did not discriminate against persons with mental illness in its medical cannabis law, which allows physicians to recommend herbal cannabis for debilitating mental health symptoms. But in 2009, New Mexico added post-traumatic stress disorder to its list of conditions for which a physician (or nurse practitioner) could recommend cannabis as medicine. As a psychiatrist with extensive experience prescribing FDA-approved medications to target trauma-related mental health symptoms in combat veterans and others, I consider the New Mexico decision to be an important step forward in making therapeutic alternatives available to those patients.

Regulatory labeling informing consumers about THC and CBD concentrations would better serve those with mental health issues and would do more for public health generally than the current, criminalizing federal policy of strict prohibition. California’s medicinal cannabis producers are beginning to label and standardize their products—which include liquid whole herbal cannabis extracts—in terms of THC and CBD concentrations. This evolving interest in product measurement, standardization and quality control helps build the case for commercial integration or full legalization within a tax-and-regulate framework. In October 2011, the California Medical Association announced its support for policy change in this direction.

Current economic circumstances invite comparisons with the Great Depression. Weary of the bloodshed stemming from illegal booze and the public health hazards of nonregulation, the America that embraced President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal also repealed alcohol prohibition. The realities of our time prompt us to acknowledge that drug criminalization, which never really works anyway, is unaffordable. Cannabis is the low-hanging fruit of drug-policy reform; and medical marijuana is so ripe, it’s falling off the trees in front of us.
————————————————-

Christopher Glenn Fichtner, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist with practices in California and Illinois. His book Cannabinomics: The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point (Well Mind Books, 2010) is available at Cannabinomics.com.

DISCLAIMER: The ideas expressed in this article are those of the author, are for informational and entertainment purposes only, and do not constitute medical advice of any kind.

by Karl Grossman for HUSTLER Magazine

The “whole world” is being “exposed to the radiation from Fukushima,” explains nuclear physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of physics at the City University of New York. The still-ongoing catastrophe at the sixreactor Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan has caused radioactivity to be “circulating around the entire Earth.”

Major health impacts can be expected in Japan, of course, but also wherever the Fukushima radioactivity has fallen or will fall, including in the United States, say toxicologist Janette D. Sherman, M.D., and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project. Already, they’ve discovered that infant mortality in parts of the United States has increased substantially as a result of Fukushima fallout.

Dr. Sherman and Mangano cross-checked data on infant mortality from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with records of fallout from the EPA and found that infant mortality had spiked by an average of 35% in eight cities west of the Rocky Mountains and by 48% in Philadelphia during a tenweek span immediately following the March 11, 2011, Fukushima accident. While Philadelphia and cities in Washington (Seattle), Oregon (Portland), Idaho (Boise) and northern California (Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Jose and Berkeley) reported drastic increases, infant mortality nationwide in this period rose 2.3%. Infant mortality—defined as the death of children from birth to one year old—is considered an early measure of radiation effects because there is rapid growth and cell division at this stage, increasing the impacts of radioactivity.

Cancer is a consequence of radiation that often takes years to manifest. “A global increase in cancer can be expected from the Fukushima discharges,” Dr. Sherman predicts. The radioactive iodine released will produce thyroid cancer, she notes, and “thyroid irregularities” have already been found in children evacuated from the Fukushima area. Cesium-137—another poison discharged in large quantities from Fukushima—will cause cancer in “soft tissues in the body, notably the breast tissue and the pancreas.” And strontium-90, yet another poison released in large amounts, “goes to the bone to cause leukemia.”

Dr. Sherman, an adviser to the National Cancer Institute, has been studying the impact of radiation since working for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s. Her books include Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer. She was also editor of Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, published by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009.

Authored by a team of European scientists, it determined from available medical data that the Chernobyl release caused some 985,000 people to die between 1986—the year of the nuclear power plant accident—and 2004.

“The Fukushima disaster will be worse than Chernobyl,” Dr. Sherman emphasizes. “No question. This is because it is continuing. They have not stopped the releases of radioactivity—God knows if they ever will.” Moreover, the area in that part of Japan is “far more populated” than the region around Chernobyl, about 60 miles from Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.

The lead author of the Chernobyl study, Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, agrees. “We are seeing something that has never happened— a multiple reactor catastrophe…happening within 200 kilometers [125 miles] of a metropolis [Tokyo] of 30 million people.”

Other scientists and medical experts concur that Fukushima will have far greater consequences than Chernobyl. Professor Chris Busby of the School of Biomedical Sciences of the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland says, “Chernobyl went up in one go.” But large amounts of radioactivity have been streaming from Fukushima since March 11 and spreading worldwide. “Fukushima is worse,” Busby adds. He projects more than a million deaths worldwide.

Radioactivity has been found in livestock, crops and other produce many miles from the Fukushima complex—including in beef, milk, leafy vegetables and most recently in rice, which constitutes a major part of the Japanese diet. Radioactive fallout has also been spreading to the United States, contaminating water, soil and farm-grown food products. Across the nation, radioactive iodine and cesium have been detected in milk linked to cows eating radioactive grass. In California—one of the few states conducting any kind of testing for radiation in food— strawberries, kale, spinach, arugula, wild-harvested mushrooms and other vegetables have tested positive for radioactive chemicals.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, says that based on the radioactive releases from Fukushima, she expects fatalities from the catastrophe will end up being “two to five times the million who have died because of Chernobyl.” Many of those deaths will be in Japan, but no place on Earth will escape this grim reality.

Besides blowing in the wind, the poisons from Fukushima are being spread through sea currents and through food, although some nations have restricted certain food imports from Japan. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned the importation of milk, dairy products, fresh vegetables and fruit originating in areas closest to the Fukushima complex—the prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma. (Japan is divided into 47 local governing units known as prefectures.) Also, the FDA has announced that it is screening for radiation in other foods imported from Japan, including fish. Epidemiologist Mangano comments: “Despite these efforts, many Americans are and should be concerned about the potential risks of importation of food into the U.S from Japan in general.” According to the U.S.

Department of Agriculture, about 2% of the seafood consumed in this country comes from Japan. Scallops are the largest seafood import from Japan, with some 3,300 metric tons (valued at $64 million) shipped to the United States in 2010. Tuna has been the second-biggest Japanese seafood import. Japan provided an estimated 350 metric tons of tuna (worth $4 million) in 2010.

The sea along the Fukushima site provides a vast pathway for spreading radioactivity. The amount of radioactive iodine in seawater near the power plant has been measured as thousands of times over what the government of Japan considers permissible. Fish caught 50 miles off the coast have been found to contain large amounts of radiation. Further, when radioactive poison gets into the marine environment, a “concentration factor” kicks in as the radiation moves up the food chain. Small fish eat radiation-contaminated seaweed, and medium-size fish eat the small fish. Then big fish eat the medium-size fish, and radioactivity becomes increasingly concentrated. Some of the fish affected by the Fukushima radi- ation are migratory, so it’s not just sushi in Tokyo that’s impacted but also fish consumed globally. Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, led a research expedition off the northeast coast of Japan to assess the impact of the Fukushima disaster. Buesseler, a recognized expert in the study of radioisotope geochemistry, reported, “When we saw the numbers—hundreds of millions of becquerels [a measure of radioactivity]—we knew this was the largest delivery of radiation into the ocean ever seen.”

Response to the massive Fukushima radioactive discharges has been a massive cover-up and outright denial. The Nuclear Energy Institute—an influential nuclear industry trade group—claims, “No health effects are expected among the Japanese people as a result of the events at Fukushima.” The American Nuclear Society proclaims on its Web site that “no public ill effects are expected from the Fukushima incident.” Mainstream media have become tired of covering the disaster even though radioactivity continues to stream from the Fukushima reactors. Mangano says that “the absurd belief that no one will be harmed by Fukushima is perhaps the strongest evidence of the pattern of deception and denial by nuclear officials in industry and government.”

And it’s not just a PR effort. There have been systematic moves to prevent scientists from getting the data to connect Fukushima radioactivity to illness and death. On May 3, 2011, after weekly monitoring of radioactivity provided the data that Dr. Sherman and Mangano linked to infant mortality, the EPA announced it would only gather readings every three months. Mangano’s opinion? “Outrageous!”

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said that with the Fukushima “situation still out of control and expected to continue that way for months, and with elevated radioactivity continuing to show up in the U.S., it is inexplicable that the EPA would shut down its radiation monitoring effort.”

Inexplicable, but in line with the nuclear industry’s traditional PR spin, according to Dr. Jeffrey Patterson, immediate past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “There has been a coverup, a minimization of the effects of radioactivity,” Patterson points out, “since the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology.” Will the nuclear establishment be able to get away with what would be one of the most outrageous Big Lies of all time—that no one has died because of Fukushima?

“I can’t believe this is going on,” said Professor Frank Daulton, who teaches economics and linguistics at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan, about the Fukushima catastrophe. “This is a nightmare. I’m just afraid this has dealt a nearfatal blow to Japan.”

And the consequences for the rest of the world? Thanks to the clout of the nuclear industry and its chokehold on our politicians, it’s doubtful we will ever get the truth about Fukushima. Of course, that could change if our citizens rise up and demand transparency. But how likely is that?
——————

Karl Grossman is an investigative reporter, board member of BeyondNuclear.org and professor of journalism at the State University of New York’s The College at Old Westbury. His six books include Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. Grossman, the longtime host of the nationally aired TV program Enviro Close-Up, has also written and narrated Three Mile Island Revisited, The Push to Revive Nuclear Power, Chernobyl: A Million Casualties and other documentaries.

CEOs Get Paid More Than Uncle Sam

By Kimberly Cheng for HUSTLER Magazine

CEOs nationwide are reaping lavish rewards for their aggressive tax dodging. Of America’s 100 corporations with the highest-paid CEOs, 25 paid their top executives more in compensation than they did in 2010 federal income taxes. These 25 CEOs averaged a salary of $16.7 million.

The most profitable of all the firms? General Electric. In 2010, GE alone received tax refunds of $3.3 billion despite a whopping $5.1 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits. CEO Jeff Immelt’s 2009 compensation nearly doubled in 2010 as he raked in $15.2 million. Meanwhile, GE shut down 31 factories, reduced its workforce by 19,000 and cut pay and benefits for employees. GE also surpassed all other corporations in lobbying and political campaign spending. Its total investment in swaying politics to their advantage: $41.8 million.

Click image to enlarge.

HOW OUR COUNTRY WAS BETRAYED BY THREE PRESIDENTS

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman for HUSTLER Magazine

The not-so-slow death of our nation by betrayal, bankruptcy and despair has not happened by accident. Three treasonous backstabs by Republicans Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan (in cahoots with George H.W. Bush) and George W. Bush have poisoned our body politic and bled us into chaos. The first act of treason came in 1968 as the Vietnam War reached a critical turning point. Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson was desperate for a truce between North and South Vietnam. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, was in a tight Presidential race against Richard Nixon. With demonstrators in the streets, Humphrey needed a cease-fire to get himself into the White House.

Johnson had it all but wrapped up. With a combination of gentle and iron-fisted persuasion, he forced the leaders of South Vietnam into an all-but-final agreement with the North. A truce was imminent, and Humphrey’s election seemed assured. But at the last minute the South Vietnamese pulled out.

In his 1983 book The Price of Power, Seymour Hersh revealed that Henry Kissinger—then LBJ’s adviser on Vietnam peace talks—secretly alerted Nixon’s staff that a cease-fire was looming. According to Hersh, Nixon “was able to get a series of messages to the [President Nguyen Van] Thieu government, making it clear that a Nixon presidency would have different [more favorable] views on the peace negotiations,” hence South Vietnam’s abrupt withdrawal from the Paris peace talks.

Johnson was livid. He even called the Republican Senate Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, to complain that “they oughtn’t be doing this. This is treason.” “I know,” Dirksen feebly replied.

Johnson blasted Nixon about this on November 3, 1968, just prior to Election Day. As Robert Parry of ConsortiumNews.com has written, “When Johnson confronted Nixon with evidence of the peace-talk sabotage, Nixon insisted on his innocence but acknowledged that he knew what was at stake.”

Said Nixon: “I would never do anything to encourage…Saigon not to come to the table. … Good God, we’ve got to get them to Paris or you can’t have peace.”

With the war still raging, Nixon claimed a narrow victory over Humphrey. He then named Kissinger as his National Security Advisor.

During Nixon’s first term, more than 20,000 U.S. troops died in Vietnam. More than 100,000 were wounded. More than a million Vietnamese were killed. But in 1973, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the same settlement in 1972 he’d helped sabotage four years earlier.

According to Parry, Johnson wanted to go public in 1968 with Nixon’s treason. But Clark Clifford, an architect of the CIA and a pillar of the Washington establishment, dissuaded him. In particular, Clifford told LBJ (in a taped conversation) that “some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”

In other words, Clifford told LBJ that the country couldn’t handle the reality that its President was a certifiable traitor eligible for the death penalty. Fittingly, Clifford’s upper-crust career ended in disgrace thanks to his entanglement with the crooked Bank of Credit and Commerce, which financed the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

Tormented by the disastrous war that destroyed his Presidency, Johnson died just four years after leaving the White House. Nixon was reelected in 1972, again with a host of dirty dealings, then became the first U.S. President to resign in disgrace. But along the way, Nixon trained a new generation of dirty tricksters that included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, William Casey and George H.W. Bush.

It was this Bush who engineered a second act of treason that put Ronald Reagan into the Oval Office with him as Vice President. What became known as “the October surprise” began in 1979 when Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American hostages, holding them deep into this country’s 1980 Presidential campaign. As Election Day neared, incumbent President Jimmy Carter announced he had a deal to bring them home.

Suddenly, however, the deal evaporated. The 52 Americans remained in Iran, and Reagan overcame unfavorable preelection polls to win a landslide victory. “Coincidentally” the hostages were released on January 20, 1981, as Reagan was being sworn in.

Very quickly a wide range of credible sources claimed the GOP had pulled off another game-changing act of treason. Gary Sick, a member of the National Security Council under Presidents Ford and Carter, wrote in the New York Times that the Reagan campaign had illegally interfered with Carter’s negotiations to bring the hostages home.

Sick’s devastating allegations were confirmed by Abholhassan Bani-Sadr, who was elected president of Iran during the hostage crisis. In his book My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals With the U.S., Bani-Sadr said ex-CIA Director George H.W. Bush and future CIA Director William Casey conspired with Iranian leaders to sabotage President Carter’s attempts to free the hostages.

According to what Bani-Sadr told author Barbara Honegger— a former Reagan-Bush campaign staffer and GOP White House a n a l y s t — t h e Iranians “made a deal with Reagan that the hostages should not be released until after Reagan became President. So then, in return, Reagan would give them arms. We have published documents which show that U.S. arms were shipped, via Israel, in March [1981], about two months after Reagan became President.”

Sergei V. Stepashin, a high-ranking Russian official, made the same claims and—according to reporter Robert Parry—released corroborating files to the U.S. Congress documenting the treason. (It was Parry who broke the Iran-Contra story for Newsweek and the AP.)

Arms dealer and CIA contract employee Richard Brenneke testified that he had flown Reagan’s campaign director, William Casey, to Paris for a series of secret meetings with the Iranians while Carter was also negotiating with them. Brenneke said Casey did the deal to keep the hostages captive until Reagan was sworn in.

Brenneke’s assertions were tested in court when he was found not guilty after being charged with perjury. Jury foreman Mark Kristoff said in an interview, “We were convinced that, yes, there was a meeting, and he [Brenneke] was there, and the other people listed in the indictment were there. … There never was a guilty vote. … It was 100%.”

Ari Ben-Menashe, purportedly an Israeli intelligence agent, swore under oath before Congress that he saw Bush in Paris over the weekend of October 18-19, 1980. Ben- Menashe told Congress that Bush and Casey were in a hotel and headed into negotiations with radical Iranian cleric Mehdi Karroubi. Parry points out in his book Trick or Treason that the late Yasser Arafat—head of the Palestine Liberation Organization—disclosed to President Carter that Republicans seeking help in arranging the logistics of the October surprise arms-for-hostages deal had contacted the PLO in 1980. Alexandre de Marenches, former chief of French intelligence, confided to his biographer that the French secret service had aided Casey in meeting with the Iranians in Paris in 1980.

It is legally treasonous for private citizens to interfere with official negotiations between the U.S. government and a foreign power. Thus, Reagan’s sabotage of Carter’s attempts to bring the embassy hostages home from Tehran—like Nixon’s sabotage of LBJ’s Vietnam peace talks—clearly qualifies as a capital crime.

George W. Bush threw his hat in the ring of “aiding and abetting the enemy” by illegally outing a covert CIA agent in 2003. The felony came as part of the cover-up of the lies he’d employed to suck America into an illegal war.

In the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush declared he would bring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to justice. Not long after that, however, Bush all but abandoned the search for Bin Laden. Instead, he told the American public, war was needed to rid Iraq’s U.S.-sponsored dictator, Saddam Hussein, of “weapons of mass destruction.”

Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. In fact, he was Bin Laden’s sworn enemy. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has since confirmed that Bush knew full well Hussein had no such WMDs. In his recent autobiography, Rumsfeld reveals that Bush’s real reason for going after the Iraqi dictator was to settle a deep psychological score with his father, George H.W. Bush.

Among other things, the younger Bush ordered Secretary of State Colin Powell to lay out before the United Nations a series of blatant falsehoods meant to win support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The key lie was a fabricated scenario in which Hussein supposedly tried to obtain uranium for nuclear weapons from an African country. As Bush put it in his infamous 2003 State of the Union address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

That White House lie led to a horrific war that has cost the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—not to mention a trillion or more U.S. dollars. The lie was accompanied by an impeachable felony—a blatantly illegal betrayal of a CIA agent.

On July 6, 2003—almost six months after Bush’s deceitful State of the Union address— former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV wrote a New York Times op-ed refuting Bush’s cover story for the Iraq War. In “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” Wilson—who had been sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the supposed British claims—said he had “little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

Wilson contradicted Bush’s claim that Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium from Niger to build a radioactive weapon. As Wilson put it, “Selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there’s simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.” To cover the lie he had told to get the United States into war, Bush decided to discredit and destabilize Wilson—by putting the life of the diplomat’s wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, in jeopardy. But as stipulated by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (passed while Bush’s father was Vice President), it is a felony to identify an undercover CIA agent.

The law reads in part that “whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent…shall be…imprisoned not more than ten years.” George H.W. Bush himself stated that any American revealing such info would be committing treason.

After Wilson’s op-ed appeared, senior White House adviser Karl Rove indirectly confirmed for syndicated Washington Post columnist Robert Novak that Plame was a CIA agent. On July 11, Rove did the same for Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper, according to the reporter’s subsequent grand jury testimony. Cooper had previously confirmed hearing about Plame from Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, but that Libby hadn’t mentioned her by name.

In his July 14, 2003, column titled “Mission to Niger,” Novak denounced Ambassador Wilson’s claim that the Bush Administration was manipulating data to sell an unjust war. Novak wrote: “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.”

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denied that Rove was Novak’s anonymous source. Following an FBI investigation and a grand jury hearing, Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, making false statements and two counts of perjury. Neither Libby nor Rove was ever indicted for disclosing Plame’s status as a covert CIA agent to Novak. Cheney later publicly excoriated Bush for not protecting Libby. And in 2008 McClellan toured the nation with his tell-all book What Happened , charging that Bush had authorized the unmasking of Plame’s identity. McClellan told CNN that Cheney should be forced to testify under oath about the Plame leak.

In his book Daybreak, David Swanson writes that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted Libby, had direct evidence—including a handwritten note by Cheney—that both the President and Vice President were involved in the Plame scandal. According to Swanson, Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentence “directly interfered with the Special Counsel’s ongoing investigation of Plame’s ‘outing’ and therefore constituted obstruction of justice.”

In all, George W. Bush lied to America and the world about weapons of mass destruction he knew were nonexistent. He then feloniously outed a CIA agent, putting her life and the lives of other intelligence agents at risk, an impeachable crime. Next, he abused his Presidential power by covering it all up, another impeachable offense.

Does this constitute treason? If it doesn’t, what does?

Despite knowing about Richard M. Nixon’s 1968 act of treason, Lyndon B. Johnson chose to remain silent. Although the realities of 1980’s October surprise have been widely published, Jimmy Carter has said nothing, and Bill Clinton took no action while he was President. Now Barack Obama has refused to prosecute George W. Bush and his henchmen Cheney and Rove for Plamegate and their treasonous crimes in Iraq. Through it all the United States has been transformed from the world’s most prosperous country to the most debt-ridden. From a nation built on hopeful democratic ideals to one dominated by large corporations that care about nothing but power and profit.

What it will take to reverse the damage remains to be seen—if indeed it’s even possible. But a good start would be to charge those who committed the acts of treason that made this nightmare happen.

——————————–
Ohio-based investigative reporters Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, who write columns for FreePress.org, have coauthored a number of books on the George W. Bush era and election theft. For more, visit Fitrakis.org and HarveyWasserman.com.

Report by Jordan David

November 30, 2011

Shortly after midnight a militarized police contingent, working with ruthless efficiency, evicted the occupants of the park around L.A.’s City Hall. The operation included approximately 1,800 members of the LAPD, plus officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Defiant protesters, hoping for an influx of supporters to stand in opposition to this massive show of force, were stymied when police shut down streets and highway off-ramps. Over 200 protesters were arrested.

While the mainstream media is largely reporting that the eviction was Peaceful, with the police acting in a restrained, professional manner, that was only true of the City Hall area, where the sectioned-off press
representatives were allowed to observe the takedown. Those brave enough to venture into the streets witnessed police swinging billy clubs at peaceful demonstrators simply because they refused to get onto the sidewalks.

The nationwide Occupy movement was launched in response to the growing income disparity between America’s rich and the working class. The protesters, who call themselves the 99%, recognize that the playing field is not level and that our politicians are owned by the 1%. It is a fact that the 400 wealthiest people in this country have more money then the bottom 150 million.

A complete report on the Occupy L.A. eviction, plus those in New York City and Denver, will appear in a future issue of HUSTLER Magazine.

Photo caption: Penned in press observe policeman arresting protester./Photo by Jordan David

Did the police provoke the peaceful crowd at Occupy Oakland? Watch the video and decide…

10/25/2011

“The police line prevented any movement of the marches further and then as you can see in the video the sudden unprovoked rush by the police into the crowd. This was at about 5pm on Tuesday 10/25/2011. This was the first use of force by the police on this infamous night. An hour or so later the use of tear gas and flash grenades was again used on broadway which severely injured the marine veteran.” – Occupier

OCT. 12. 2011

EXCLUSIVE TO HUSTLER: Reporter Jordan David, at the “Occupy Wall Street”
protest, interviews one of the two young men detained by New York City
police prior to the arrest of the couple seen in the previous video. (See
the video below.)

BREAKING NEWS: Hustler reporter Jordan David, on the scene at today’s “Occupy Wall Street” protest video taped an apparent act of unnecessary police aggression. According to David the NYPD officer ordered an older female demonstrator to move along, then repeatedly shoved her apparently because she wasn’t moving fast enough in the jam packed crowd. When the woman’s male companion came to her defense both the man and woman were hustled off by the officer, presumably to be arrested.

Just prior to this incident, two college age men were arrested and hustled away from the crowd. As this was happening the marching protesters came to a stop to see what had happened. That’s when the police moved in on the older woman and her companion.

Whether on the left or the right, we don’t see how anyone could have a problem with this movement. It’s the banks that caused the economic problems we are currently suffering through. It was their actions which forced us to bail them out with our tax payer dollars. How did they repay us? By continuing to do exactly what they did when they caused our economy to collapse in the first place. It’s called casino capitalism. They’re raking in billions of dollars while giving nothing back. They are, in fact, sucking the wealth out of our country and into their pockets. And our bought and paid for politicians on both sides of the aisle are letting them get away with it. Actually, they are helping them get away with it.

Reverand Billy at the Wall Street protest. Learn more about his mission at RevBilly.com.

Michael Moore at Wall Street Protests

Photo credit: All photos by Jordan David

IS AMERICA’S FAVORITE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER A GOVERNMENT OPERATIVE? POLITICAL COMMENTATOR RUSS BAKER OFFERS INTRIGUING EVIDENCE!

By Russ Baker
From HUSTLER MAGAZINE July 2011

In June 2009,Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward traveled to Afghanistan with General Jim Jones, then President Obama’s National Security Advisor, to meet with General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of forces there. Why did Jones allow this journalist to accompany him? Because he knew that Woodward could be counted on to deliver the company line—the military line. In fact, Jones was essentially Woodward’s patron.

The New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman pointed out that when Sally Quinn and Ben Bradlee hosted a 50th-birthday party for Woodward’s wife, reporter Elsa Walsh,“Jones was a guest of Woodward. ”According to Sherman, one attendee told him, “Woodward and Elsa were glued to Jones at the cocktail party before the dinner started.”

In September 2009, McChrystal (or someone close to him) leaked a document to Woodward that essentially forced Obama’s hand. The President wanted time to consider all options on what to do about Afghanistan. But the leak, publicizing the military’s “confidential” assertion that a troop increase was essential, cast the die, and Obama had to go along. Nobody was happier than the Pentagon—and, it should be said, its allies in the vast military-contracting establishment.

FireDogLake.com chronicled the developments in a pungent essay: “Apparently General McChrystal and the Petraeus cabal aren’t willing to wait for their Commander in Chief to set the strategy. Prior to the President’s interviews, McChrystal’s people were already telling journalists that they were ‘impatient with Obama,’ as Nancy Youssef reported. This ‘Power Play’… included a veiled threat that McChrystal would resign if he didn’t get his way.

“And, sure enough, just hours after the Commander in Chief was on the airwaves, somehow McChrystal’s classified report hit the Washington Post…compliments of Bob Woodward, no less. Wow, what a coincidence!”

This episode highlights a crucial aspect of Woodward’s career that has been ignored by most of the media. Simply put, Woodward is the military’s man and always has been.

For almost four decades, under cover of his supposedly “objective” reporting, Woodward has represented the viewpoints of the military and intelligence establishments. Often he has done so in the context of complex inside maneuvering of which his readers have little clue.

Typically, Woodward uses information he obtains from his main sources (much of it self serving) to gain access to others. He then gets more “secrets” from them, and so on down the line. Woodward’s unique persona as the main repository of this inside dope has been key to the relentless success machine that his media colleagues have perpetuated.

The New York Times’ review of his recent book on President Obama laid out the formula: “In Obama’s Wars, Mr. Woodward, as usual, eschews analysis and commentary. Instead, he hews to his I Am a Tape Recorder technique, using his insider access to give readers interested in inside-the-Beltway politics lots of granular detail…. As he’s done in his earlier books, Mr. Woodward acknowledges that attributions of ‘thoughts, conclusions or feelings to a person’ were in some cases not obtained directly from that person, but from ‘notes or from a colleague whom the person told’—a questionable but increasingly popular method, which means the reader should take the reconstructed scenes with a grain of salt.”

And then, thanks to all this attention and even with that grain of salt, Obama’s Wars went to number one.

Bob Woodward’s stature as the world’s most acclaimed investigative journalist is almost entirely based on his helping to end the Presidency of the reviled Richard Nixon. As the saying goes, the past is prologue, and that long-ago affair turns out to have direct relevance to events besieging another President, Barack Obama. For a sense of how, we go back to the beginnings of Woodward’s journalistic career.

The young Woodward did not fit the profile of the stereotypical daily print reporter with a deep suspicion of the establishment, particularly in the turbulent late ’60s and early ’70s. Midwestern and Republican, Woodward attended Yale University on an NROTC scholarship and then spent five years in the Navy. He had begun with a top-secret security clearance onboard the USS Wright, specializing in communications. Some of his duties involved communication with the White House.

Woodward’s commanding officer was Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander, who would later be implicated in a well-documented military spy ring in the Nixon White House. That subterfuge, generally referred to as the Moorer Radford affair, is a segment of American history that is known to serious researchers and documented in numerous books but still somehow almost completely missing from the narrative typically offered to the public.

It involves a behind-the-scenes power struggle pitting Nixon against his former allies in the military, intelligence and corporate worlds. It is this struggle that begins to reveal the outlines of a larger battle over the Presidency and democracy itself. It leads to truths so deeply disturbing that the general reaction has been—and continues to be—denial by those who decide what books and interpretations get heavy publicity and the stamp of establishment approval.

According to the 1991 book Silent Coup, Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin’s exhaustive study of the aforementioned military espionage scandal, Woodward left his ship in 1969 and arrived in Washington, D.C. There he worked on the staff of Admiral Thomas Moorer, chief of Naval operations, again as a communications officer, this time one who provided briefings and documents on national security matters to top brass in the White House. Colodny and Gettlin wrote that Woodward frequently walked through the basement offices of the West Wing with documents from Admiral Moorer to General Alexander Haig, who served under Henry Kissinger—then Nixon’s National Security Advisor.

In a 2008 interview with me, Woodward categorically denied having any intelligence connections. He also denied having worked in the White House or having provided briefings there. “It’s a matter of record in the Navy what I did, what I didn’t do,” Woodward said. “And this Navy intelligence, Haig and so forth, you know, I’d be more than happy to acknowledge it if it’s true. It just isn’t. Can you accept that?”

Journalist Len Colodny, however, has produced audiotapes of interviews by his Silent Coup coauthor Robert Gettlin with Admiral Moorer, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Pentagon spokesman Jerry Friedheim and even with Woodward’s own father, Al, discussing Bob’s White House service.

At a minimum, Woodward’s entry into journalism received a valuable outside assist, according to an account provided by Harry Rosenfeld, a retired Washington Post editor, to the Saratogian newspaper in 2004: “Bob had come to us on very high recommendations from someone in the White House. He had been an intelligence officer in the Navy and had served in the Pentagon. He had not been exposed to any [major] newspaper.”

In 2008, after I spoke to Woodward, I reached Rosenfeld. He remembered that Woodward had been recommended by Paul Ignatius, the Post’s president, who previously had served as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s secretary of the Navy.

In a subsequent interview, Ignatius told me: “It’s possible that somebody asked me about him, and it’s possible that I gave him a recommendation. I don’t remember initiating anything, but I can’t say I didn’t. ”When I asked Ignatius how a top Pentagon administrator such as himself would even have known of a lowly lieutenant—Woodward’s rank back in those days—he said he did not recall.

Yet even with this apparent high-level pressure to hire Woodward, the editors couldn’t justify putting in a complete novice. So Woodward was packed off to a Maryland-based weekly— the Montgomery County Sentinel—for a spell, then hired at the Post in September 1971. The eminent paper itself is steeped in intelligence connections. The Post’s owners, the Graham family, were aficionados of the apparatus and good friends of top spies such as longtime CIA Director Allen Dulles. Both the late publisher Philip Graham and Woodward’s boss and confidant, editor Ben Bradlee, had served in military intelligence during World War II.

As for Woodward’s initial introduction to the newspaper, nobody seems to have questioned whether a recommendation from someone in the White House would be an appropriate reason for the Post to hire a reporter. Nor does anyone from the Post appear to have put a rather obvious two and two together by noting that Woodward made quick work of bringing down the President of the United States, a feat that might have led to speculation about who at the White House had recommended Woodward in the first place—and with what motivation.

There was this, however: After Nixon aide Charles Colson met with Senator Howard Baker (the ranking Republican on the Senate Watergate Committee) and his staff—including legal counsel (and future senator) Fred Thompson—he recounted the session in a previously unpublished memo: “The CIA has been unable to determine whether Bob Woodward was employed by the Agency. The Agency claims to be having difficulty checking personnel files. Thompson says he believes the delay merely means that they don’t want to admit Woodward was in the Agency.

Thompson wrote a lengthy memo to Baker…complaining about the CIA’s noncooperation, the fact that they were supplying material piecemeal and had been very uncooperative.”

Senator Baker sent this 1974 memo directly to CIA Director William Colby with a cover note, and within a matter of a few hours an incensed Woodward called Baker. The memo had been immediately leaked to the Post reporter. Woodward’s good connections helped generate a series of exclusive-access interviews that would result in rapidly produced bestsellers. One was Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA,1981-1987,a controversial book that relied in part, Woodward claimed, on a deathbed interview—not recorded—with former Director of Central Intelligence William Casey. (Casey’s widow and former CIA guards said the interview never took place.)

The 543-page book, which came out as George H.W. Bush was seeking the Presidency in 1988,contained no substantive mentions of any role on the part of Poppy Bush in these “secret wars,” although Bush was both Vice President with a portfolio for covert ops and a former CIA director. Bush, like Woodward, had served in top-secret Naval operations in his younger days. Veil relied on Navy Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a rival of Casey’s, as its key source. (Inman,a Texan, was closely identified with the Bush clan.)

Asked how it was possible to leave George H.W. Bush out of such a detailed account of covert operations during his Vice Presidency, Woodward replied, “Bush was, well, I don’t think he was—what was it he said at the time? ‘I was out of the loop’?”

Woodward went on to be blessed with unique access to another Bush, Poppy’s son George W. Bush—a President who did not grant a single interview to America’s top newspaper, the New York Times, for nearly half his administration. This favoritism and the resulting exclusivity guaranteed a series of automatic smash bestsellers. Woodward would also draw attention to himself for knowing about the administration’s role in leaking the identity of CIA undercover officer Valerie Plame but not writing or saying anything about it despite an ongoing investigation and media tempest. When this was revealed, Woodward issued an apology to the Post.

To its credit, in the ’60s the Washington Post had staffers doing some of the best reporting on the intelligence establishment. Perhaps the most revealing work came prior to Nixon’s tenure, while Woodward was still a Naval officer. In a multipart, front-page series by Richard Harwood in early 1967, the Post began reporting the extent to which the CIA had penetrated civil institutions not just abroad, but at home as well. As Harwood wrote, “Intellectuals, students, educators, trade unionists, journalists and professional men had to be reached directly through their private concerns [organizations].”

“Journalists” too. Woodward’s Watergate reporting partner, Bernstein, later wrote about the remarkable extent of the CIA’s penetration of newsrooms, detailing numerous examples in a 1977 Rolling Stone article. As for the Post itself, Bernstein wrote: “When Newsweek was purchased by the Washington Post Company, publisher Philip L. Graham was informed by Agency officials that the CIA occasionally used the magazine for cover purposes, according to CIA sources. ‘It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from,’ said a former deputy director of the Agency. Some Newsweek correspondents and stringers continued to maintain covert ties with the Agency into the 1970s,CIA sources said.

“Information about Agency dealings with the Washington Post newspaper is extremely sketchy. According to CIA officials, some Post stringers have been CIA employees, but these officials say they do not know if anyone in the Post management was aware of the arrangements.”

When the Watergate burglary story broke in 1972, Bob Woodward got the assignment, in part, his editor Barry Sussman recalled, because he never seemed to leave the building. “I worked the police beat all night,” Woodward said in an interview with authors Tom Rosenstiel and Amy S. Mitchell, “and then I’d go home—I had an apartment five blocks from the Post—and sleep for a while. I’d show up in the newsroom around ten or 11 and work all day too. People complained I was working too hard.”

So when the bulletin came in, Woodward was there. The result was a front-page account revealing that E. Howard Hunt’s name appeared in the address book of one of the burglars and that a check signed by Hunt had been found in the pocket of another burglar, who was Cuban. It went further: Hunt, Woodward reported, worked as a consultant to White House counsel Charles Colson.

Yes, Woodward played a key role in tying the Watergate burglars to Nixon. Woodward would later explain in All the President’s Men (coauthored with Bernstein) that to find out more about Hunt he had “called an old friend and sometimes source who worked for the federal government.” His friend did not like to be contacted at his office and “said hurriedly that the break-in case was going to ‘heat up,’ but he couldn’t explain and hung up.”

Thus began Woodward’s relationship with “Deep Throat,” that mysterious source who, Woodward would later report, served in the executive branch of government and had access to information in the White House and Nixon’s reelection campaign committee.

Based on tips from Deep Throat, Woodward and Bernstein began to “follow the money,” writing stories in September and October 1972 on a political “slush fund” linked to Nixon’s reelection committee. One story reported that the fund had financed the bugging of the Democratic Party’s Watergate headquarters as well as other intelligence-gathering activities.

Eventually, of course, this reporting played a key role in Nixon’s forced departure from the White House in 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, then took a hard turn to the right on foreign policy and elevated to prominent roles three individuals who would later become household names: George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Amazingly, despite the overwhelming public sense that Nixon was somehow “behind” the scandals collectively referred to as Watergate, virtually no evidence ever emerged of Nixon’s involvement or prior knowledge, besides agreeing to bad advice on how to handle the affair once it became public through leaks via Woodward and others. Meanwhile, the collection of individuals whose “inside” testimony helped sink Nixon had, like Woodward, a history with military or civilian intelligence operations.

So let’s summarize: Young Bob Woodward, Naval intelligence officer, gets sent to work in the Nixon White House while still on military duty. Then, with no journalistic credentials to speak of and with a boost from White House staffers, he lands a job at the Washington Post. Not long thereafter he starts to take down Richard Nixon. Meanwhile, inside the White House, Woodward’s military bosses are running a spy ring that is monitoring Nixon and Kissinger’s secret negotiations with America’s enemies (China, the Soviet Union, etc.), stealing documents and funneling them back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They are then leaked to columnist Jack Anderson and others in the press.

That portrait clashes, of course, with the iconic Woodward of legend—so it takes a while for this notion to settle in the mind. But there’s more. Did you know there was really no “Deep Throat,” that the W. Mark Felt story was conjured up as yet another layer of cover in what became a daisy chain of disinformation? Did you know that Richard Nixon was loathed and feared by the military brass, that they and their allies were desperate to get him out and halt his rapprochement with the Communists? Or that a bunch of operatives with direct or indirect CIA/military connections—from E. Howard Hunt to Alexander Butterfield to John Dean—wormed their way into key White House posts and started up the Keystone Kops operations that would be laid at Nixon’s Oval Office door? Or that it was the CIA-connected Butterfield, for example, who revealed the secret Oval Office audio taping system whose carefully selected and artfully presented excerpts cooked Nixon’s goose?

If you want to learn more, Family of Secrets has several chapters on the real Watergate story. Other sources that have put pieces of this puzzle together include the previously mentioned Colodny and Gettlin, as well as James Rosen (The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate) and Jim Hougan (Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA).
———————————————————-
Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative reporter and founder and editor of the news site WhoWhatWhy.com. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. Some of this material is excerpted from Baker’s book Family of Secrets. For more on Baker’s work, visit FamilyOfSecrets.com and RussBaker.com.