RAW STORY– According to a new Zogby poll, less than half of Americans are convinced that that the events of September 11 have been thoroughly investigated.

In the telephone survey of 1200 individuals, just 47% agreed that “the 9/11 attacks were thoroughly investigated and that any speculation about US government involvement is nonsense.” Almost as many, 45%, indicated they were more likely to agree “that so many unanswered questions about 9/11 remain that Congress or an International Tribunal should re-investigate the attacks, including whether any US government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success.”

The poll is the first survey that has attempted to gauge the level of Americans’ doubts about 9/11 and was carried out for the “9/11: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future” conference to be held in Chicago in June.

Not surprisingly, Republicans as a group were the most supportive of existing investigations, with 70% expressing their satisfaction- about the same percentage that has expressed approval of Bush’s performance in recent polls. Sixty-four percent of those earning over $75,000 were also skeptical of doubts about 9/11. The groups most likely to want the attacks re-investigated were Hispanics at 67% and African-Americans at 64%.

Other groups also skewed one way or another, but with the majority position generally not above 58%. Overall, the breakdown on the question closely followed the usual political divisions in the country: Republicans vs. Democrats and independents, whites vs. minorities, the wealthier and better-educated vs. the poorer and less educated, people over fifty vs. those under fifty, men vs. women.

This rough balance in opinions is itself a striking finding. It suggests that doubts about the officials accounts of 9/11, far from representing an extreme fringe position, have become a standard component of anti-establishment attitudes.

When asked specificially if they thought there had been a government coverup of evidence that contradicts the official story, the results were again not far from an even split, with 48% rejecting the idea of a deliberate coverup and 42% supporting it. Belief in a coverup was the majority position among Democrats, 18-29 year olds, and a few other groups.

Read more about the Dissatisfaction with the 9/11 Investigation.

FULL POLL HERE.

© RAW STORY 2006

Photo by flickr user lmaji

TRUTHOUT– Today Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. George Miller, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, and other senior Democrats released a new Government Accountability Office report finding that the Bush Administration spent more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in a two and a half year span.

“The government is spending over a billion dollars per year on PR and advertising,” said Rep. Waxman. “Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush Administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States.”

“No amount of money will successfully sell the Bush Administration’s failed policies, from the war in Iraq, to its disastrous energy policy, to its confusing Medicare prescription drug benefits,” said Democratic Leader Pelosi. “The American people know the Bush Administration is on the wrong track and the White House PR machine won’t change that fact.”

“The extent of the Bush Administration’s propaganda effort is unprecedented and disturbing,” said Rep. Miller. “The fact is that after all the spin, the American people are stuck with high prescription drug prices, high gas prices, and high college costs. This report raises serious questions about this Administration’s priorities for the country and I would hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle would agree that changes need to be made to reign in the President’s propaganda machine.”

“It is unbelievable that the Administration, on several occasions, has used limited taxpayer dollars to secretly promote initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, while underfunding money for our schools, books, technology, and after school programs,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings.

Democrats requested that GAO conduct the study after evidence emerged last year that the Bush Administration had commissioned “covert propaganda” from public relations firms. Several federal departments had hired firms to develop “video new releases” to promote department initiatives which appeared to television viewers to be independent newscasts. Other revelations that triggered the GAO report included the disclosure that the Department of Education paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind Act on the radio and in his columns.

To conduct its study, GAO obtained information from seven federal departments on all public relations, advertising, and media contracts during 2003, 2004, and the first two quarters of 2005. GAO found that during that time:

-The Administration spent $1.6 billion on contracts with advertising agencies ($1.4 billion), public relations firms ($197 million), and media organizations and individual members of the media ($15 million).The Department of Defense spent the most on media contracts, with contracts worth $1.1 billion. The Department of Health and Human Services spent more than $300 million on these contracts, the Department of Treasury spent $152 million, and the Department of Homeland Security spent $24 million during this period.

-The Administration’s public relations and advertising contracts spanned a wide range of issues, including Administration priorities like “marriage-related research initiatives,” message development presenting “the Army’s strategic perspective in the Global War on Terrorism,” and an FDA contract to warn the public of the consequences and potential danger of importing prescription drugs from other nations.

The detailed list of contracts provided by the Air Force demonstrates the wide range of public relations and advertising contracting entered into by the federal government. This list included $179 million for a recruitment advertising campaign, more than $35,000 for promotional materials for a golf program, including “golf towel with embroidered design and golf tees with imprint,” and $10, 212 for “prize giveaways, such as cruises to Mediterranean and to Canada/New England.”

GAO’s accounting of the Bush Administration’s public relations and advertising contracts is limited. GAO surveyed only seven of the 15 cabinet-level departments, relied on self-reported information from the agencies, and did not include subcontracts, task orders on existing contracts, or public relations work done by government employees.

For a fact sheet on the GAO report and the report itself, visit www.democrats.reform.house.gov.

© TRUTHOUT 2006

Photo by flickr user purpleslog

SALON– Halfway through Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” host Tim Russert, interviewing Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, asked about a secret, top-level British government memorandum. Consisting of minutes from a July 23, 2002, meeting attended by Prime Minister Tony Blair and his closest advisors, the memo revealed their impression that the Bush administration, eight months before the start of the Iraq war in 2003, had already decided to invade and that Washington seemed more concerned with justifying a war than preventing one.

The memo was leaked this year to the Times of London, which printed it on May 1. The story, coming on the eve of Blair’s reelection, generated extensive press coverage in Britain. In setting up his question to Mehlman on Sunday, Russert said, “Let me turn to the now famous Downing Street memo” (emphasis added).

Famous? It would be famous in America if the D.C. press corps functioned the way it’s supposed to. Russert’s June 5 reference, five weeks after the story broke, represented the first time NBC News had even mentioned the document or the controversy surrounding it. In fact, Russert’s query was the first time any of the network news divisions addressed the issue seriously. In an age of instant communications, the American mainstream media has taken an exceedingly long time — as if news of the memo had traveled by vessel across the Atlantic Ocean — to report on the leaked document. Nor has it considered its grave implications — namely, that President Bush lied to the American people and Congress during the run-up to the war with Iraq when he insisted over and over again that war was his administration’s last option.

And yet, as Russert’s weeks-late inquiry illustrates, the Downing Street memo story has also refused to simply fade away. Championed by progressive activists, media advocates, nearly 100 Democratic members of Congress, liberal radio hosts and bloggers, ombudsmen, a handful of columnists and an army of newspaper readers — who have flooded editors with letters demanding that the story be reported — the British memo continues to enjoy a peculiar afterlife. A small band of protesters, led by a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, even held a sidewalk vigil outside a Tampa, Fla., television station over the weekend, demanding that it “Air the truth!” about the memo.

At Tuesday’s joint White House press briefing, Bush and Blair were finally asked about the memo in public, an event that the press dutifully chronicled. But the two leaders, not accepting follow-up questions, simply denied the accuracy of the memo’s contents, while circumventing the central question of why Blair’s most senior intelligence officer believed the White House had already decided on war in the summer of 2002. (Bush finished his response to the memo question with his well-worn catchphrase, “The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.”)

The fact that it took five weeks for more than a handful of Washington reporters to focus on the memo highlights a striking disconnect between some news consumers and mainstream news producers. The memo story epitomizes a mainstream press corps that is genuinely afraid to ask tough questions and write tough stories about the Bush administration. Worse, in the case of the Downing Street memo, it simply refuses to report on the existence of a plainly newsworthy document.

Continue reading on SALON.

Written by Eric Boehlert

© SALON 2005

Photo by flickr user Editor