By PHK
I never thought that The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, or The Nation would top my investigatory reporting reading list, but from what I’ve come across in the last several months or more, these three New York-based magazines seem to have figured out what too many of our other supposedly illustrious mass circulation newspapers and news magazines have yet to realize: today’s real political stories cannot be summed up in superficial 30 second, 25 word sound-bites – ignored or played down because of a too often too cozy relationship between reporters, editors and publishers from major news outlets accredited to cover the White House, State Department and the Pentagon and their government handlers.
In essence, these unlikely magazines – two of the three owned by Conde Nast - are printing the stories that once-upon-a-time were the life and livelihood of the now quirky Washington Post and the overly complacent New York Times – not to mention the so called “news” magazines for whom “the back of the book became the front of the book” like Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report, magazines that I used to subscribe to until they went MIA in the policy department.
Meanwhile, the once-upon-a-time literary, gossip or opinion journals are publishing some first rate political journalism. These in-depth articles are written by people who know their subjects and sources, have done the research, and put the information in context. Too many of these writers would still be relegated to the political fringes of the left behind without such unlikely media outlets that have apparently crossed-over into covering W administration foreign affairs crimes, misdemeanors and other follies to fill the information vacuum.
Aegis Defence Services
Why is it that former CIA officer Robert Baer’s report on the tawdry life and times of Tim Spicer, the head of a company called Aegis Defence Services that “coordinates security for reconstruction projects, as well as support for other private military companies, in Iraq” thanks to a $293 million contract from the Pentagon appeared in the April edition of Vanity Fair – a magazine I used to read at the beauty parlor for fashion, not politics - and not in the New York Times Sunday Magazine?
SAIC – the brains not brawn contractor
Or how about Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele’s “Secrets: Washington’s $8 Billion Shadow” that also appeared in Vanity Fair just the month before. This article shines much needed light on and provides in-depth coverage about the super-secret 44,000 employee SAIC, a company with revenues of nearly $8 billion during fiscal year 2006 – mostly from the U.S. government. This stealth private sector "brain-trust"employs more people than the US Departments of Labor, Energy and Housing and Urban Development combined.
Packer and Hersh at the New Yorker
Meanwhile, George Packer and Seymour Hersh’s excellent investigative reports on US policy towards Iraq and Iran are found in The New Yorker at almost regular intervals. Kudos to chief editor David Remnick – but why aren’t they in The Washington Post?
Onward Christian Soldiers . . .
Then there’s Jeremy Scahill’s troubling “Bush’s Shadow Army” in the April 2 issue of The Nation that explains the consequences of the Rumsfeld “small footprints” doctrine that has ushered in “the widespread use of private contractors in every aspect of war, including combat.” Thank you editor-in-chief Katrina vanden Heuvel.
True, the fact that there are over 100,000 well paid private contractors in Iraq from bus drivers and dishwashers to paramilitary with no clear mission and little or no accountability is starting to rear its head even in the mainstream media as a result of the much needed Congressional investigations begun only after the Democrats took control of the House in January.
But the extent of the secretiveness of the war-related contracting-sub-contracting no-bid contracts maze not to mention the entangled relationships between avaricious war profiteering corporations that are making out like bandits at the American taxpayers’ expense is only really beginning to surface.
What has also been missed until now, however, is the importance of the inter-relationships among the neocons, the fundamentalist Christian right, W and several influential Republican members or former members of Congress. They make Teapot Dome and even Watergate look like a baby's christening party.
All told the privateering war effort rakes in 40 cents on every dollar spent on the Iraq occupation according to Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky who had been trying to unearth the number of civilian contractor casualties and deaths to no avail until the Democrats took over Congress in January. Even now, the numbers that come from the Labor Department are under-reported.
Much of Scahill’s article in The Nation focuses on Blackwater – an 11 year old company founded by Christian fundamentalist, ex-Navy SEAL and multimillionaire Erik Prince. To help solidify its niche at W’s corporate feeding trough, Blackwater employed among others J. Cofer Black (former head of Counterterrorism at the CIA whose hunt for Bin Laden after 9/11 didn’t turn up his quarry) and Joseph Schmitz, the all too complacent former Pentagon IG responsible for policing contractors like Blackwater before he became a public embarrassment and lost his government sinecure.
In 2003, Blackwater became a major State Department contractor. The company provided security for then Iraq proconsul Paul Bremer and US Ambassador Negroponte and now provides security for Ambassador Khalilzad. Prince, according to Scahill, is “the scion of a wealthy Michigan family whose generous political donations helped fuel the rise of the religious right and the Republican revolution of 1994.” Meanwhile over 770 private Americans employed by Blackwater and other contractors of its like have died in Iraq and at least 7,761 have been injured according to official statistics.
State’s contracts to Blackwater between June 2004 and today total $750 million for Iraq alone; who knows the total amount of the contracts from the black side of the US government's house. Blackwater, despite suits against it by families of former employees killed in Iraq, is also campaigning to be “sent into Darfur as a privatized peacekeeping force.” And it moved into the domestic scene on contracts related to the aftermath of the Katrina disaster – “at one time raking in more than $240,000 per day. Not only are Blackwater sales reps talking to Homeland Security but also have met with Governor Schwarzenegger in California.
Not to forget Iran
If you want to catch up on your Iran reading there’s Craig Unger’s “From the Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Iraq” also in the March 2007 Vanity Fair. I didn’t find much new here – but Unger put the pieces together nicely. He also described the terms of the 2003 Iranian proposal to the W administration. Sure it was a starting point, but this proposal did lay everything on the negotiating table including Iran’s nuclear program at a time Washington, not Iran had the upper hand. Too bad the administration not only dissed it but reprimanded the Swiss Ambassador who relayed the proposal from Tehran to Washington.
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Postscript
Yes, I also have a couple of recent newspaper reports – one by Howard Witt published in the March 26, 2007 Chicago Tribune on suits by families of civilian contractors killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and the other on March 19 (D-01) by Renae Merle in The Washington Post on Dyncorps $1.75 billion contract – the State Department’s largest – for training police officers in Iraq and Afghanistan and the problems that have arisen.
But for the in-depth stuff that requires more digging and longer column inches, the MSM news vacuum’s all too often filled elsewhere - if at all.