verbena-19

Tomgram: Nick Turse on Bush's Expanding "Fallen Legion"

Back in mid-October, I noted that informal "walls" and exhibits to honor those Americans (and sometimes Iraqis) who fell -- and continue to fall -- in the Bush administration's war and occupation of choice in Iraq have been arising on and off-line for some time. I suggested then that "the particular dishonor this administration has brought down on our country calls out for other ‘walls' as well. Perhaps, for instance, we need some negative walls built, stone by miserable stone, to cronyism, corruption, and incompetence." At that moment, Tomdispatch author (and Associate Editor) Nick Turse began to build a verbal "wall" of honor to those who have "fallen" in government service while fighting in some fashion to hold the line against this administration. A previously hardly noted "Legion of the Fallen," these other "casualties" -- men and women who were honorable or steadfast enough in their government duties that they found themselves with little alternative but to resign in protest, quit, retire, or simply be pushed off the cliff by cronies of this administration -- turned out to be far larger than we initially imagined. Here, then, is the second installment in Nick Turse's "Fallen Legion" series. The names for a third installment, meant for January, are already largely in place and we're hoping that, by then, we might have an actual on-line wall to go with it. Tom


Bush's Burgeoning Body Count
Fallen Legion II
By Nick Turse

About six weeks ago, at the urging of fellow TomDispatch author Rebecca Solnit, I undertook the beginnings of an on-line memorial to the Fallen Legion of the Bush administration. It was, in effect, a proposal for a virtual "wall" made up of the seemingly endless and ever-growing list of top officials as well as beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who had quit their government posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by administration strong-arm tactics, cronyism, and disastrous policies. As a start, I offered 42 prospective names for a Fallen Legion (and brief descriptions of their fates). These ranged from well-known figures like the President's former chief adviser on terrorism on the National Security Council, Richard Clarke, former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to the archivist of the United States, the state director of the Bureau of Land Management in Idaho, and three members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee (who resigned over the looting of Iraq after Baghdad fell to U.S. troops). I also called upon readers to aid my future efforts and to send suggestions to: fallenlegionwall@yahoo.com. (And I renew that call in this piece.)

The response has been, in a word, overwhelming. Hundreds of letters poured in -- from readers who took me to task for the omission of their own personal picks for such a "Wall" to notes of encouragement from courageous former officials already included in my listing (like Teresa Chambers, the U.S. Park Police Chief who was fired for speaking out and now has a website documenting her long struggle). Some of the fallen whose stories, sad to say, I hadn't even heard of, wrote in as well.

Here, then, is the second installment in what is by now an ongoing series at Tomdispatch dedicated to continuing to build the Fallen Legion Wall, "brick" by "brick." Included in this installment is one honorary legionnaire, former NFL football player Pat Tillman, and a consideration of some officials picked by readers for spots of honor whose departure from government service was less than clear cut. This new installment adds approximately 175 additional casualties to the rolls of "the Fallen." But bear in mind that this list is not yet close to being finished. Many suggested Fallen Legionnaires (even some who wrote in personally) do not appear below, but will take their bows in future follow-ups.

Additional Casualties

Jesselyn Radack: An attorney in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office who worked on the case of John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, Radack warned federal prosecutors that interrogating him without his attorney present would be unethical. When the FBI interviewed Lindh anyway, Radack told Tomdispatch, she "then recommended that [the transcript] be sealed and only used for intelligence-gathering purposes, not for criminal prosecution." Again, her advice was ignored. Later, when Lindh was on trial, Radack learned that the judge in the case had requested copies of all internal correspondence concerning Lindh's interrogation. Although Radack had written more than a dozen e-mails on the subject, she discovered that only two of them had been turned over and neither reflected her contention that the FBI had committed an ethics violation.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

posted by Annamarie at 7:06 PM