Ninth in blog series chronicling the administration push for war with Iraq, from lead-up to cover-up. May 2001:

 
May 1, 2001 – Barry D. Watts becomes director of Program Analysis and Evaluation, Office of the Secretary of Defense. Watts, an Air Force veteran, comes to government from Northrop Grumman, where he has been since 1986. His published writing includes a book on the military uses of space.

Paula Dobriansky is sworn in as Under Secretary for Global Affairs, State Department.

 
May 4, 2001 -- The United States is voted off the United Nations’ Human Rights panel. The loss will become more felt subsequently, in the wake of revealed abuses of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and other U.S. military prisons.

 
An interest in military expansion is thus not matched by a corresponding interest in diplomacy. Throughout the Bush administration, members of the PNAC chorus have kept up a steady campaign boosting U.S. dominance and Middle East intervention while downplaying or discrediting the United Nations and all its agencies, and sometimes doing the same to longtime professionals in the U.S. State Department. The neocon campaign to expand US military dominance, to increase military spending, and to maintain an aggressive presence in the Middle East verbalized by Kristol speaking to congress in March 2001, above, is boosted aggressively by the American Enterprise Institute, a D.C.-based think tank which is also PNAC’s landlord, supporting a number of writers and speakers hawking the same line. 

One representative publication is a newsletter called the “Iraq Crisis Bulletin,” published in the absence of any new Iraq crises since 1994, sometimes found in reputable university libraries and on their web sites. The “crisis bulletin” web site does not name a sponsor, but intelligence expert Col. Sam Gardiner discovered that its articles were written largely by personnel from the Voice of America. The VOA is prohibited by law from producing communications for the American press.

While insisting on a ‘crisis’ stemming from Iraq, however, the White House at this point somehow does not acknowledge the possibility of a security crisis closer to home. See below.

May 7, 2001 -- CNN reports that the White House is shortly to announce its rejection of several distinguished panels’ recommendations regarding domestic terrorism: “As CNN national security correspondent David Ensor reports, the White House this week will officially reject some key findings by several terrorism commissions.” 

Among the findings: “There are 46 different agencies in the U.S. government responsible for responding to terrorism. If it`s not paranoia, it is at least a lot of paperwork. Different commissions have studied the problem several times, and now it is being re-examined again.”

          The possibility of a security threat differing from those of the Cold War is broached: “In the wake of the bombings in Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center, and the attacks on the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia and the USS Cole, a half-dozen blue ribbon commissions have warned the U.S. faces more terrorism and is not ready.” Security threats are drawing attention on Capitol Hill. As CNN reports, “this week in Washington there will be hearings held by a group of Senate subcommittees.  They`re going to call up a dozen top Bush administration appointees and ask them what is the administration`s view on how to tackle this problem . . . the Achilles heel of a very powerful nation.”

May 8, 2001 -- The day after the CNN report, the White House announces its response to these warnings, which have reached near crescendo from January to May 2001. On May 8, Bush announces that Vice President Richard B. Cheney will be taking the reins of a new task force to study domestic terrorism. The task force, introduced by Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration officials, is actually a component of the Bush administration’s disagreement that sweeping measures against terrorism are needed. 

The president keeps existing structures in place, except for working groups that have already been abolished as of February, while creating an office of national preparedness and a task force under Cheney to look at federal, state and local anti-terrorism efforts. The task force is instructed to make recommendations on how to improve existing efforts by October, 2001.

As National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and others have testified to the independent commission on 9/11, the task force was scheduled to make its first report in the first week of September, 2001.

The White House has voiced security concerns from early on, but related mainly to “energy security.” Throughout January and February 2001, the White House has repeatedly expressed a need for “energy security,” sometimes using the California energy crisis -- before Enron’s market manipulations were revealed – as evidence of the need for “energy security.” Usually ‘energy security’ is cited in support of drilling above the Arctic Circle and sometimes in support of additional coal mining.

The overt argument is that the nation needs to become less dependent on ‘foreign oil.’ There is more than a suggestion, however, that the covert White House agenda is not less dependence on, but more control of, foreign oil.

Thus there is no emphasis on conservation of resources or on reduction in demand. Quite the reverse: the huge military-spending bonanza, emphasis on consumer spending to boost the economy, and tax cuts for conspicuous consumption in effect promote more oil-guzzling than ever. Predictably, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials and their allies push for more drilling on federal land, in the name of ‘energy security,’ throughout the spring of 2001.

‘Energy security’ is not used, however, to deter US oil companies like Condoleezza Rice’s former company, Chevron, or Cheney’s former oil-field services company, Halliburton, from dealing with the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, or Saddam Hussein. 

May 11, 2001 – John Bolton is sworn in as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, State Department.

May 14, 2001 -- Peter W. Rodman is named as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Rodman also signed the 1998 PNAC letter calling for ousting Saddam.

May 23, 2001 – Zalmay Khalilzad, swiftly promoted, is named Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues, National Security Council (NSC).