Palast the Iconoclast

By Ed Rampell, AlterNet. Posted July 17, 2003.

Greg Palast, author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and investigative reporter for the UK's The Guardian, The Observer and the BBC, is once again raking the muck for the truth about our current leaders, using English media platforms to report stories the mainstream American press won't touch. His latest foray, a one-hour BBC3 special, "Bush Family Fortunes," which first ran June 19th, allowed British audiences to watch reportage virtually forbidden to American viewers -- but revealed, in part, here.

With a tongue-in-cheek film noir-ish style, the documentary discloses damning new information regarding President Bush's dubious Texas Air National Guard stint. Wearing a private eye's trench coat and fedora, Palast went to the Lone Star State, "To find out how George Bush got the cushy job of defending Houston, Texas from Viet Cong attack..."

Palast interviews retired Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett of the Texas Air National Guard (TANG), who states on camera that shortly after George W. became Texas' governor in the 1990s, he witnessed a speakerphone call from the Texas governor's office to TANG, and overheard the caller tell Guard officers to "clean [Bush's] records from his files." Palast says that after the call, Burkett "asked the officers if they'd carried out the questionable orders, and they said 'absolutely.' They pointed, and Burkett saw in the [shredding designated] trashcan George W. Bush's ... pay [and retirement points] records."

Controversy has simmered for decades over George W.'s Vietnam era service record; critics have long charged he went AWOL from the Guard for long periods of time. The allegedly trashed documents, which had been undisclosed for years, could have proved whether or not G.W. had been absent without leave while he was in TANG.

If Bush went AWOL, this would have been desertion during wartime. "Punishment for Air National guardsmen who missed two days of work was to be sent to Vietnam," Burkett also said, according to Palast, interviewed in Santa Monica, California, before flying to London to broadcast the expose.

Bush detractors also contend that back in 1968, his father, wealthy oilman and then-Rep. George Herbert Walker Bush, pulled strings to cut a behind-the-scenes deal ensuring Junior was not sent to Vietnam -- Palast says he received a rare, coveted Texas Air National Guard spot "12 days before G.W. was to be drafted."

Palast adds he recently interviewed "an extremely well-known Texan at the center of" President Bush's alleged draft-dodging, who was a key participant in maneuvers to get him into the Air Guard. This source not only confirmed that getting G.W. into the Texas Air National Guard "was a fix," but that "it was Daddy Bush himself who made the initial call to get his son out of the war," Palast says. Although the figure would not agree to go on camera or be named, Palast said he interviewed the source in front of a high-ranking BBC producer.

Previously, says Palast, he had considered G.W.'s draft evading story unverified. However, he now believes he has confirmed it.

"The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," subtitled "The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters," helped put Palast on the U.S. map, particularly the first chapter, 'The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida.' Palast returns to the scene of the crime in "Bush Family Fortunes," wherein G.W.'s kid brother, Sunshine State Gov. Jeb Bush, and fellow GOPer, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, disenfranchised 57,000 citizens by removing them from election 2000's voter registries.

Supposedly deprived of voting rights because they were felons, Palast asserts that 90 percent of the would-be voters were innocent -- their real "crime" was voting while black, and probably for Democrats. BBC researchers found Gore lost 22,000 votes due to this computerized voter scrub for Shrub; the Democratic contender lost Florida's electoral votes -- and the presidency -- by only 537 ballots. Palast reported these findings on BBC's Newsnight, but contends the story was largely censored in the U.S. corporate press, although he repeated the charges in the powerful independent documentary "Unprecedented").

Palast's rise has been fuelled by his probes' panache -- both in content and style, as he backs his investigative work with a colorful private dick/Sherlock Holmes persona, complete with breathless descriptions of the crimes of the powerful. His status as one of the new People's Pundits has been magnified by articles like this one in the alternative media, as well as through the support of cultural icons as disparate as Jello Biafra and Hustler magazine.

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