Untitled Document
Casualties of the Bush Administration
In late August 2005, after twenty years of service in the field of military
procurement, Bunnatine ("Bunny") Greenhouse, the top official at the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of awarding government contracts for
the reconstruction of Iraq, was demoted. For years, Greenhouse received
stellar evaluations from superiors -- until she raised objections about
secret, no-bid contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) -- a subsidiary
of Halliburton, the mega-corporation Vice President Dick Cheney once presided
over. After telling congress that one Halliburton deal was "was
the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the
course of my professional career," she was reassigned from "the
elite Senior Executive Service... to a lesser job in the civil works division
of the corps."
When Greenhouse was busted down, she became just another of the casualties
of the Bush administration -- not the countless (or rather uncounted) Iraqis,
or the ever-growing list of American troops, killed, maimed, or mutilated in
the administration's war of convenience-- but the seemingly endless and ever-growing
list of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who
quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out,
demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming. Often, this
has been due to revulsion at the President's policies -- from the invasion of
Iraq and negotiations with North Korea to the flattening of FEMA and the slashing
of environmental standards -- which these women and men found to be beyond the
pale.
Since almost the day he assumed power, George W. Bush has left a trail of broken
careers in his wake. Below is a listing of but a handful of the most familiar
names on the rolls of the fallen:
Richard Clarke: Perhaps the most well-known of the Bush administration's
casualties, Clarke spent thirty
years in the government, serving under every president from Ronald Reagan
on. He was the
second-ranking intelligence officer in the State Department under Reagan and
then served in the administration of George H.W. Bush. Under Presidents Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush, he held the position of the president's chief adviser
on terrorism on the National Security Council -- a Cabinet-level post. Clarke
became disillusioned with the "terrible
job" of fighting terrorism exhibited by the second president Bush --
namely, ignoring evidence of an impending al-Qaeda attack and putting the pressure
on to produce a non-existent link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. (His
memo explaining that there was no connection, said Clarke, "got
bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. Do it again.'")
After 9/11, Clarke asked for a transfer from his job to a National Security
Council office concerned with cyber-terrorism. (The administration later claimed
it was a demotion). Quit, January 2003.
Paul O'Neill: A top official at the Office of Management and
Budget under Presidents Nixon and Ford (and later chairman of aluminum-giant
Alcoa), O'Neill served nearly two years in George W. Bush's cabinet as Secretary
of the Treasury before being asked to resign after opposing the president's
tax cuts. He, like Clarke, recalled Bush's Iraq fixation. "From
the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad
person and that he needed to go," said O'Neill, a permanent member of the
National Security Council. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That
was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this.'"
Fired, December 6, 2002.
Flynt Leverett, Ben Miller and Hillary Mann: A Senior Director
for Middle East Affairs on President Bush's National Security Council (NSC),
a CIA staffer and Iraq expert with the NSC, and a foreign service officer on
detail to the NSC as the Director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs, respectively,
they
were all reportedly forced out by Elliott Abrams, Bush's NSC Advisor on
Middle East Affairs, when they disagreed with policy toward Israel. Said Leverett,
"There
was a decision made… basically to renege on the commitments we had
made to various European and Arab partners of the United States. I personally
disagreed with that decision." He also noted, "[Richard]
Clarke's critique of administration decision-making and how it did not balance
the imperative of finishing the job against al Qaeda versus what they wanted
to do in Iraq is absolutely on the money… We took the people out [of Afghanistan
in 2002 to begin preparing for the war in Iraq] who could have caught"
al Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri. According to Josef
Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terror and Unconventional
Warfare, Abrams "led
Miller to an open window and told him to jump." He also stated that
Mann and Leverett had been told to leave. Resigned/Fired, 2003.
Larry Lindsey: A "top
economic adviser" to Bush who was ousted when he revealed to a newspaper
that a war with Iraq could cost $200 billion. Fired, December 2002.
Ann Wright: A career diplomat in the Foreign Service and a
colonel in the Army Reserves resigned on the day the U.S. launched the Iraq
War. In her
letter of resignation, Wright told then-Secretary of State Colin Powell:
"I believe the Administration's policies are making the world a more dangerous,
not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my
very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government
service as I cannot defend or implement them." Resigned, March
19, 2003.
John Brady Kiesling: A career diplomat who served four presidents
over a twenty year span, he tendered his
letter of resignation from his post as Political Counselor in the U.S. Embassy
in Athens, Greece on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. He wrote:
"…until this Administration it had been possible to believe that
by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests
of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer. The policies
we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values
but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is
driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's
most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson.
We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international
relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability
and danger, not security."
Resigned, February 27, 2003.
John Brown: After nearly 25-years, this veteran of the Foreign
Service, who served in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev and Belgrade, resigned from
his post. In his
letter of resignation, he wrote: "I cannot in good conscience support
President Bush's war plans against Iraq. The president has failed to: explain
clearly why our brave men and women in uniform should be ready to sacrifice
their lives in a war on Iraq at this time; to lay out the full ramifications
of this war, including the extent of innocent civilian casualties; to specify
the economic costs of the war for the ordinary Americans; to clarify how the
war would help rid the world of terror; [and] to take international public opinion
against the war into serious consideration." Resigned, March 10,
2003.
Rand Beers: When Beers, the National Security Council's senior
director for combating terrorism, resigned he declined to comment, but one former
intelligence official noted, "Hardly
a surprise. We have sacrificed a war on terror for a war with Iraq. I don't
blame Randy at all. This just reflects the widespread thought that the war on
terror is being set aside for the war with Iraq at the expense of our military
and intel[ligence] resources and the relationships with our allies." Beers
later admitted, "The
administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism.
They're making us less secure, not more secure… As an insider, I saw the
things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned
I became, until I got up and walked out." Resigned, March 2003.
Anthony Zinni: A soldier and diplomat for 40 years, Zinni
served from 1997 to 2000 as commander-in-chief of the United States Central
Command in the Middle East. The retired Marine Corps general was then called
back to service by the Bush administration to assume one of the highest diplomatic
posts, special envoy to the Middle East (from November 2002 to March 2003),
but his disagreement with Bush's plans to go to war and public comments that
foretold of a a
prolonged and problematical aftermath to such a war led to his ouster. "In
the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true
dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence
and corruption," said Zinni. Failed to be reappointed, March 2003.
Eric Shinseki: After General Shinseki, the Army's chief of
staff, told Congress that the occupation of Iraq could require "several
hundred thousand troops," he was derided by Deputy Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz. Then, wrote the
Houston Chronicle, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "took the unusual
step of announcing that Gen. Eric Shinseki would be leaving when his term as
Army chief of staff end[ed]." Retired, June 2003.
Karen Kwiatkowski: A Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force who
served in the Department of Defense's Near East and South Asia (NESA) Bureau
in the year before the invasion of Iraq, she wrote in her
letter of resignation:
"…[W]hile working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office
of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special
Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the environment in which
decisions about post-war Iraq were made… What I saw was aberrant, pervasive
and contrary to good order and discipline. If one is seeking the answers to
why peculiar bits of ‘intelligence' found sanctity in a presidential
speech, or why the post-Hussein occupation has been distinguished by confusion
and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office
of the Secretary of Defense."
Retired, July 2003.
Charles "Jack" Pritchard: A retired U.S. Army colonel
and a 28-year veteran of the military, the State Department, and the National
Security Council, who served as the State Department's senior expert on North
Korea and as the special envoy for negotiations with that country, resigned
(according to the
Los Angeles Times) because the "administration's refusal to engage
directly with the country made it almost impossible to stop Pyongyang from going
ahead with its plans to build, test and deploy nuclear weapons." Resigned,
August 2003.
Major (then Captain) John Carr and Major Robert Preston: Air
Force prosecutors, they quit their posts in 2004 rather than take part in
trials under the military commission system President Bush created in 2001 which
they considered "rigged against alleged terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba." Requested and granted reassignment, 2004.
Captain Carrie Wolf: A
U.S. Air Force officer, she also asked to leave the Office of Military Commissions
due to concerns that the Bush-created commissions for trying prisoners at Guantanamo
Bay were unjust. Requested and granted reassignment, 2004.
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: He retired from the U.S. Army and
stated: "I
love the army and I was sorry to leave it. But I saw no possibility of fundamentally
positive reform and reorgani[z]ation of the force for the current strategic
environment or the future… It's a very sycophantic culture. The biggest
problem we have inside the… Department of Defense at the senior level,
but also within the officer corps -- is that there are no arguments. Arguments
are [seen as] a sign of dissent. Dissent equates to disloyalty." Retired,
June 2004.
Paul Redmond: After a long career at the CIA, Redmond became
the Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis at the Department of Homeland
Security. When, according
to Notra Trulock of Accuracy in Media, he reported, at a congressional hearing
in June 2003, "that he didn't have enough analysts to do the job…
[and] his office still lacked the secure communications capability to receive
classified reports from the intelligence community… [t]hat kind of candor
was not appreciated by his bosses and, consequently, he had to go."
Resigned, June 2003.
John W. Carlin: According to the Washington Post,
Carlin, the "Archivist
of the United States was pushed by the White House… to submit his
resignation without being given any reason, Senate Democrats disclosed…
at a hearing to consider President Bush's nomination of his successor."
"I asked why, and there was no reason given," said Carlin, but the
Post reported that some had "suggested Bush may have wanted a new archivist
to help keep his or his father's sensitive presidential records under wraps."
Although he had stated his wish to serve until the end of his 10-year term,
and 65th birthday in 2005, Carlin surrendered to Bush administration pressure.
Resigned, December 19, 2003.
Susan Wood and Frank Davidoff: Wood was the Food and Drug
Administration's Assistant Commissioner for Women's Health and Director of the
Office of Women's Health; Davidoff was the editor emeritus of the journal Annals
of Internal Medicine and an internal medicine specialist on the FDA's Nonprescription
Drugs Advisory Committee. Wood resigned in protest over the FDA's decision to
delay yet again, due to pressure from the Bush administration, a final ruling
on whether the "morning-after pill" should be made more easily accessible
-- despite a 23-4 vote, back in December 2003, by a panel of experts to recommend
non-prescription sale of the contraceptive, called Plan B. In an email to colleagues,
Wood, the top FDA official in charge of women's health issues, wrote, "I
can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully
evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been
overruled." Days later, Davidoff quit over the same issue and wrote in
his resignation letter, "I
can no longer associate myself with an organization that is capable of making
such an important decision so flagrantly on the basis of political influence,
rather than the scientific and clinical evidence." Wood: Resigned,
August 31, 2005. Davidoff: Resigned, September, 2005.
Thomas E. Novotny: A deputy assistant secretary at the Department
of Health and Human Services and the chief
official working on an international treaty to reduce cigarette smoking
around the world, Novotny "stepped down," claimed Bush administration
officials, "for personal reasons unrelated to the negotiations"; but
the Washington Post reported that "three people who ha[d] spoken with Novotny…
said he had privately expressed frustration over the administration's decision
to soften the U.S. positions on key issues, including restrictions on secondhand
smoke and the advertising and marketing of cigarettes." Resigned,
August 1, 2001.
Joanne Wilson: The commissioner of the Department of Education's
Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), she quit, according to the
Washington Post, "in protest of what she said were the administration's
largely unnoticed efforts to gut the office's funding and staffing" and
attempts to dismantle programs "critical to helping the blind, deaf and
otherwise disabled find jobs." On February 7, 2005 the Bush administration
announced that it would close all RSA regional offices and cut personnel in
half. Quit, February 8, 2005.
James Zahn: According to an article by Robert F. Kennedy,
Jr. in the Nation magazine, Zahn, a "nationally respected microbiologist
with the Agriculture Department's research service" stated
that "his supervisor at the USDA, under pressure from the hog industry,
had ordered him not to publish his study," which "identified bacteria
that can make people sick -- and that are resistant to antibiotics -- in the
air surrounding industrial-style hog farms"; and that "he had been
forced to cancel more than a dozen public appearances at local planning boards
and county health commissions seeking information about health impacts of industry
mega-farms." As a result, "Zahn resigned from the government in disgust."
Resigned, May 2002.
Tony Oppegard and Jack Spadaro: Oppegard and Spadaro were
members of a "team of federal
geodesic engineers selected to investigate the collapse of barriers that
held back a coal slurry pond in Kentucky containing toxic wastes from mountaintop
strip-mining." According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this had
been "the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern
United States." Oppegard, who the headed the team, "was fired on the
day Bush was inaugurated… All eight members of the team except Spadaro
signed off on a whitewashed investigation report. Spadaro, like the others,
was harassed but flat-out refused to sign. In April of 2001 Spadaro resigned
from the team and filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Labor
Department… he was placed on administrative leave--a prelude to getting
fired." Two months before his 28th anniversary as a federal employee, and
after years of harassment due to his stance, Spadaro
resigned. "I'm just very tired of fighting," he said. "I've
been fighting this administration since early 2001. I want a little peace for
a while." Oppegrad: Fired, January 20, 2001. Spaddaro: Resigned,
October 1, 2003.
Teresa Chambers: After speaking with reporters and congressional
staffers about budget problems in her organization, the U.S. Park Police Chief
was placed on administrative leave. Then, according
to CNN, just "two and half hours after her attorneys filed a demand
for immediate reinstatement through the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent
agency that ensures federal employees are protected from management abuses,"
Chambers was fired. "The American people should be afraid of this kind
of silencing of professionals in any field," said Chambers. "We should
be very concerned as American citizens that people who are experts in their
field either can't speak up, or, as we're seeing now in the parks service, won't
speak up." Fired, July 2004.
Martha Hahn: The state director for the Bureau of Land Management,
"responsible for 12 million acres in Idaho, almost one-quarter of the state"
for seven years, Hahn found her authority drastically curtailed after the Bush
administration took office. She watched as the administration blocked public
comment on mining initiatives and opened up previously protected areas to environmental
degradation. After she locked horns with cattle interests over grazing rights,
she received a letter stating she was being transferred from her beloved Rocky
Mountain West to "a
previously nonexistent job in New York City." "It's been a shock,"
she said. "I'm going through mental anguish right now. I felt like I was
at the prime of my career." Hahn
was told to accept the involuntary reassignment or resign. Resigned,
March 6, 2002.
Andrew Eller: Eller "spent many of his 17 years with
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service protecting the [Florida] panther. But when
his research didn't jibe with a huge airport project slated for the cat's habitat
-- and Eller refused to play along--he was given the boot," wrote the
Tucson Weekly. "I was fired three days after President Bush was re-elected,"
said Eller. "It was obviously reprisal for holding different views than
[U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] management on whether or not the panther was
in jeopardy, and pointing out that they were using flawed science to support
their view." Fired, November 2004.
Mike Dombeck: The chief of the Forest Service resigned after
a 23-year government career. In his resignation letter, the pro-conservation
Dombeck stated, "It
was made clear in no uncertain terms that the [Bush] administration wants to
take the Forest Service in another direction ...." Resigned, March
27, 2001.
James Furnish: A
political conservative, evangelical Christian, and Republican who voted
for George W. Bush in 2000 as well as the former Deputy Chief of the U.S. Forest
Service (who spent 30 years, across 8 presidential administrations working for
that agency), Furnish resigned in 2002 due to policy differences with the Bush
administration. "I just viewed [the administration's] actions as being
regressive," said Furnish. In acting according to his conscience, instead
of waiting a year longer to maximize retirement benefits, Furnish lost out
on about $10,000 a year for the rest of his life. Resigned, 2002.
Mike Parker: In early 2002, Parker, the director of the Army
Corps of Engineers testified before Congress that Bush-mandated budget cuts
would have a "negative impact" on the Corps. He also admitted to holding
no "warm and fuzzy" feelings toward the Bush administration. "Soon
after," reported the
Christian Science Monitor, "he was given 30 minutes to resign or be
fired." In the wake of the devastation caused by hurricanes Katrina and
Rita, Parker's clashes with Mitch Daniels, former director of the Office of
Management and Budget, can be seen as prophetic. Parker remembered one such
incident in which he brought Daniels, the Bush administration's budget guru,
a piece of steel from a Mississippi canal lock that "was completely corroded
and falling apart because of a lack of funding," and said,
"Mitch, it doesn't matter if a terrorist blows the lock up or if it falls
down because it disintegrates -- either way it's the same effect, and if we
let it fall down, we have only ourselves to blame." He recalled of the
incident, "It made no impact on him whatsoever." Resigned,
March 6, 2002.
Sylvia K. Lowrance: A top Environmental Protection Agency
official who served the agency for over 20 years, including as Assistant Administrator
of its Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance for the first 18 months
of the Bush administration, Lowrance retired, stating, "We will see more
resignations in the future as the administration fails to enforce environmental
laws." she
said, "This Administration has pulled cases and put investigations
on ice. They sent every signal they can to staff to back off." Retired,
August 2002.
Bruce Boler: An EPA scientist who resigned from his post because,
he said,
"Wetlands are often referred to as nature's kidneys. Most self-respecting
scientists will tell you that, and yet [private] developers and officials [at
the Army Corps of Engineers] wanted me to support their position that wetlands
are, literally, a pollution source." Resigned, October 23, 2003.
Eric Schaeffer: After twelve years of service, including the
last five as Director of the Office of Regulatory Enforcement, at the Environmental
Protection Agency, Schaeffer submitted a
letter of resignation over the Bush administration's non-enforcement of
the Clean Air Act. He later
explained:
"In a matter of weeks, the Bush administration was able to undo the
environmental progress we had worked years to secure. Millions of tons of
unnecessary pollution continue to pour from these power plants each year as
a result. Adding insult to injury, the White House sought to slash the EPA's
enforcement budget, making it harder for us to pursue cases we'd already launched
against other polluters that had run afoul of the law, from auto manufacturers
to refineries, large industrial hog feedlots, and paper companies. It became
clear that Bush had little regard for the environment--and even less for enforcing
the laws that protect it. So last spring, after 12 years at the agency, I
resigned, stating my reasons in a very public letter to Administrator [Christine
Todd] Whitman."
Resigned, February 27, 2002.
Bruce Buckheit: A 30-year veteran of government service, Buckheit
retired in frustration over Bush administration efforts to weaken environmental
regulations. When asked by NBC reporter
Stone Phillips, "What's the biggest enforcement challenge right now
when it comes to air pollution?," the former Senior Counsel with the Environmental
Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, and then Director of
EPA's Air Enforcement Division, was unequivocal: "The Bush Administration."
He went on to note that "this administration has decided to put the economic
interests of the coal fired power plants ahead of the public interests in reducing
air pollution." Resigned, November 2003.
Rich Biondi: A 32-year EPA employee, Biondi retired from his
post as Associate Director of the Air Enforcement Division of the Environmental
Protection Agency. He
stated, "We weren't given the latitude we had been, and the Bush administration
was interfering more and more with the ability to get the job done. There were
indications things were going to be reviewed a lot more carefully, and we needed
a lot more justification to bring lawsuits." Retired, December
2004.
Martin E. Sullivan, Richard S. Lanier and Gary Vikan: Three
members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee, they all resigned
from their posts to protest the looting of Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities.
In his
letter of resignation, Sullivan, the Committee's chairman, wrote, "The
tragedy was not prevented, due to our nation's inaction," while Lanier
castigated "the administration's total lack of sensitivity and forethought
regarding the Iraq invasion and the loss of cultural treasures." Resigned,
April 14, 2003.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, eyes began to focus on the Federal Emergency
Management Agency and the political appointees running it. What had happened
to the professionals who once staffed FEMA? In 2004, Pleasant Mann, a 17-year
FEMA veteran who heads the agency's government employee union told Indyweek:
"Since last year, so many people have left who had developed most of
our basic programs. A lot of the institutional knowledge is gone. Everyone
who was able to retire has left, and then a lot of people have moved to other
agencies."
Disillusionment with the current state of affairs at FEMA was cited as the
major cause for the mass defections. In fact, a February 2004 survey by the
American Federation of Government Employees found that 80% of a sample of remaining
employees said FEMA had become "a poorer agency" since being shifted
into the Bush-created
Department of Homeland Security. What happened to FEMA has happened, in
ways large and small, to many other federal agencies. In an article by Amanda
Griscom in Grist
magazine, Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, made reference to the "unusually high" rate of replacement
of scientists in government agencies during the Bush administration. "If
the scientist gives the inconvenient answer they commit career suicide,"
he said.
However defined, the casualties of the Bush administration are legion. The
numbers of government careers wrecked, disrupted, adversely affected, or tossed
into turmoil as a result of this administration's wars, budgets, policies, and
programs is impossible to determine. Although every administration leaves bodies
strewn in its wake, none in recent memory has come close to the Bush administration
in producing so many public statements of resignation, dissatisfaction, or anger
over treatment or policies. The aforementioned list of casualties includes among
the best known of those who have resigned or left the administration under pressure
(although not necessarily those who have suffered most from their acts). Perhaps
no one knows exactly how many government workers, at all levels, have fallen
in the face of the Bush administration. Those mentioned above are just a few
of the highest profile members of this as yet uncounted legion, just a few of
the names we know.
[NOTE: If you know of others, or are one of the "fallen
legion" yourself, please send the information (and whatever supporting
material you would care to supply) to fallenlegionwall@yahoo.com with the subject
heading: "fallen legion" to add another name to the "wall."
This is a subject TomDispatch would like to return to in the future.]