Sidebars

The Dark Side By Jane Mayer: Reviewed by Bob Sanders

Seven years after the attacks of September 11, only one terror suspect held outside of the U.S. criminal court system, has been tried and sentenced.  Salim Hamdin, Osama bin Laden’s driver, was sentenced in August to five and one-half years and eligible for parole in five months.  The prosecution in the military trial of limited rights had asked for 30 years. Of the 759 detainees acknowledged to have been held in Guantanamo, approximately 340 remain with but a handful charged as a result of the Bush Administration’s controversial anti-terrorism program. 

Exhaustively researched by New Yorker staff writer and best-selling author Jane Mayer, The Dark Side examines how key people in the Bush Administration took advantage of this country’s state of chaos and fear to make radical decisions while destroying constitutional protections. 

Hardly a page can be viewed without a reference to or, at the very least, acquiring a sense of the lurking shadows of Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s creepy lawyer David Addington and, to a lesser degree, cocksure Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.  Addington, a humorless loner and true believer, develops a relationship with the VP much as Cheney with Bush and becomes known to his peers as “Cheney’s Cheney.”

Appearing on Meet the Press on the Sunday after the attacks, Cheney offered insight into how the administration viewed the threat and how it planned to respond.  Cheney also provided the book’s title.

“We’ll have to work sort of the dark side, if you will,” Cheney explained on the TV program. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world.  A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agendas---if we are going to be successful.  That’s the world these folks operate in.  And, uh, so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal basically, to achieve our objectives.”

Those means quickly became torture in such places as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo with Cheney, Addington and others including the loyal and highly inept Roberto Gonzales spending a remarkable amount of time writing self-serving letters to prove their innocence should their agenda to generate greater presidential powers be short-circuited.

The challenge of how to bring terror suspects to justice was accomplished by creating a shadowy War Council, then excluding much of the government with a series of end runs  involving nearly all of the administration’s most experienced experts in military and international law.  What they came up with was an alternative legal system run by the executive branch.  Cheney was in full flight.

Addington’s legal excesses permitted him to, as White House lawyer Jack Goldsmith put it, influence the administration’s legal positions “to a remarkable degree.”  According to Mayer, “some Bush Administration lawyers came to believe the President and Vice President were deeply ill-served by Addington.  ‘He was more like Cheney’s agent than like a lawyer.  A lawyer sometimes says no,’ one lamented.  ‘Addington never said, ‘There is a line you can’t cross.’”   

When Abu Ghraib torture photos and stories were released in the U.S. in April, 2004, it wasn’t long before the public became aware of Guantanamo with the Supreme Court shattering the suggestion that the prison was not under U.S. control but, rather, of existence in some kind of legal black hole.  The Court’s decision, giving detainees a chance to challenge their imprisonment, found arch conservative Justice Antonin Scalia voting against the Bush Administration.  Scalia even thundered at the White House: “Indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive” strikes at “the very core of liberty.”

If The Dark Side has a minor shortcoming, it’s a failure of attribution in some key situations--understandable since the subject is the most secretive White House in history.  Some revealing observations include Colin Powell‘s observation about Addington (“He doesn’t believe in the Constitution”) and from Rumsfeld who, up to his eyeballs in trying to distance himself from charges that torture directives emanated at the top rather than the other way around, comments about Guantonamo: “I don’t do detainees.”

Powell’s take on Bush not being stupid but easily manipulated, while somewhat reassuring, also is alarming.  A confidant suggests that Powell thought it was easy to play on Bush’s wish to be seen as doing the tough thing while making “hard” choices.  “He has these cowboy characteristics, and when you know where to rub him, you can really get him to do some dumb things.  You have to play on those swaggering bits of his self-image.  Cheney knew exactly how to push all his buttons,” Powell confided to a friend.

At the heart of the Bush Administration’s lust for expanded presidential authority is the hardly surprising seeking of power.  According to conservative legal scholar and former Justice Dept. official Jack Goldsmith, they spoke often of a desire for “maximum flexibility.”  Lost, in Mayer’s view, was “any appreciation for the legitimacy in a democracy that stems from winning consensus, including the consent of the governed.  Also overlooked was the original reason for checks and balances; they were designed to offset human fallibility.”

Goldsmith is one of the heroes of the book and there aren’t nearly enough.  Many of the good guys are conservative lawyers who knew better than to subvert laws and deeply held American ideals in this wickedly disturbing book about bullying at the highest levels of government.  Goldsmith, once the President’s private lawyer, was an early whistle-blower on the Bush/Cheney approach to domestic spying “the way they dealt with other laws they didn’t like: They blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations.”  Goldsmith eventually was forced to quit following a series of humiliations by Addington.  In a turn of high irony, Goldsmith was greeted with protests when he started teaching law at Harvard.  His problem was the painful linkage to the Bush Administration.

If, as has been suggested, the measure of a society is the way its prisoners are treated, then this country’s abandonment of the Geneva Convention is a chilling indictment of an infamy that will stand as George W. Bush’s legacy.

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God’s Harvard By Hanna Rosin Reviewed by Bob Sanders

During a time of negative politics and tell all stories about candidates, it’s reassuring to know that an eminently fair book about the evangelical movement as it pertains to government has been published. God’s Harvard, a look at tiny Patrick Henry College, a Christian school just outside the Nation’s capital, is a riveting read.

Authored by Hanna Rosin of the Washington Post, the book takes the reader inside the halls and dorms of the school where young homeschooled evangelicals are molded into tomorrow’s conservative elite. Richly detailed, Rosin’s book is about the involvement of largely naïve young people trying to remake a world about which they have limited knowledge. Regardless of your politics, the book is an insightful and vibrant look at students and their teachers whose instruction doubtless someday will help put them into key positions in our government. 

Patrick Henry, which opened its doors to 300 students in 2000 (current enrollment is around 500), was founded by Michael Farris. A home-schooling activist, Farris determined that his school would enlist the purest of born-again Christians in a war to “transform America” by training them to occupy the “highest offices in the land.” Christian majority rule would come with a sufficient number of congressmen, governors, and federal judges.

While Farris’ dream seemed a bit delusional then, George Bush’s successful run for the presidency as a born-again former alcoholic made it appear less so. Inspired by Bush’s election, Patrick Henry has become a hot-bed of political activism on behalf of the Republican Party. Much like fraternity hazing, campaign participation is a rite of passage with the best awarded a White House internship. There are 100 such given each year to the school.  

While God’s Harvard concentrates on the students, their learning processes, and confrontations with the real world, a sub-plot keeps the reader additionally involved. The highly-complex Farris wants to train his children to take over the world while shielding them from its evils.  Corruption appears in the form of a few of the teachers he has hired. One, Robert Stacey, is the academic wild card loved by his students and eventually reviled by Farris. Stacey is simply possessed of too much knowledge while delighted to share such information as George Washington’s and Thomas Jefferson’s lack of religious enthusiasm.  

Students (their SAT scores are on a par with the University of Virginia) at Patrick Henry, which bills itself as a liberal arts college, live highly organized and well-behaved lives. The showing of a bra strap (actually, an undershirt) results in a confrontation with the school’s dean; dancing and the singing of improper lyrics are forbidden on campus; and a pro-snitching policy comes off reminiscent of Hitler youth stuff. Rebellious students, flummoxed by the rules, create a “den of sin” for those too drunk from nights on the town to risk running into a Resident Advisor (RA). RAs are snitches with the highest batting averages. The safe harbor is eventually found out with, perhaps, the book’s most dramatic scenes following. 

One of the sinners, Chris, is forced to make a public apology. In an absorbing piece of political damage control worthy of Bill Clinton, Chris both accepts blame and then deflects it completely. His final comment, worthy of a masterful politician, is a powerfully nuanced message: “You can judge me, it’s okay. But now put yourselves in the judgment seat and turn those same eyes back on yourself and say, ’Am I blameless before the Lord?’”

One of the more revealing scenes involves Derek Archer, a freshman of commanding conviction.  His volunteer efforts for failed Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore in the race for Virginia’s governorship find him directing a group of 10-year-old foot soldiers. Placing flyers under windshield wipers of cars parked in a church lot, the youngsters are interceded by a deacon who indicates the worshippers inside would “like a break from all this.” It had never occurred to Archer that a church would consider campaigning and worship to be at odds with each other.

During one year of investigation, Rosin had unlimited access to students in their dorms, classes, at school events, and at the internships. Michael Farris also made it possible for Rosin to seek out professors and administrators. Most were cooperative. 

Throughout the book, Rosin displays deep respect for the subject and those who contributed so richly in its telling. Thoroughly researched, God’s Harvard is reporting at its best. 

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"The Billionaire’s Vinegar" by Benjamin Wallace (book review) by Bob Sanders

My only brush with expensive wine was, in truth, not even a near miss. Marshall Field V, whose holdings in 1976 included newspapers (Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News), Encyclopedia Britannica and real estate, wished to bring attention to a just-completed rental high rise. River Plaza, of 56 stories, was located next door to the Sun-Times/Daily News Building. 

A member of Field Enterprises Public Relations Department, I had begun a search for the world’s largest bottle of champagne (or, at least, one really big) that would lend attention to a  celebration; the beribboned bubbly, linked to an enormous crane by a lengthy rope, would be catapulted in dramatic fashion by Mayor Richard J. Dailey, famous for the 1968 Democratic Party riots and father of the current mayor. 

The christening never happened. In the midst of a search for appropriate juice of the grape, I learned my exploitive plan would not be in keeping with the Field family attitude toward what they regarded as obvious vulgarity. No one enjoys being labeled vulgar so I’ve been inclined to blame an earlier celebratory event deeply imbedded in the American psyche: that of President Harry Truman’s wife Bess attempting to break a bottle (not nearly as impressive as the one I envisioned) on a World War II battleship.

Wine is what The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine” is all about and it’s a captivating tale even if you care little about the subject. In that respect, the book by Benjamin Wallace is reminiscent of Tracy Kidder’s House, and Susan Orleans’ The Orchid Thief. Of seemingly narrow subject matter, all three books deliver fascinating tales that transcend their topics.   

 In truth, The Billionaire’s Vinegar” is a mystery although whodunit becomes pretty apparent early on. And, as one might suspect, the book’s characters are full of quirkiness as they move about in the wine world’s rarified atmosphere. The McGuffin, were Alfred Hitchcock still around to make a film of the book, is a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux purchased in 1985 at a Christie’s auction. The buyer was the son of the late publisher/multi-millionaire Malcolm Forbes. The younger Forbes paid $156,000 at a heated auction for the bottle, reportedly once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Daddy was not happy with the purchase, a Guinness Record then and now. 

With past as prologue, Wallace details Jefferson’s travels through the major wine fields of France where, incognito, he studies grapes and becomes entranced by the reds of Bordeaux. The conundrum concerns purchases of Lafite Jefferson might have ordered upon his return to Monticello. All bear his initials and, as the plot develops, the number of Jefferson bottles becomes a major part of the mystery. 

The man who knows most about the bottles is Hardy Rodenstock, a charming yet volatile pop-band manager turned wine collector who found the bottles in a Paris cellar. Rodenstock’s discovery and its attendant publicity sets the ancient wine world slavering and it’s not long before the most respected palates are singing praises of a 200 year-old product not likely to be drinkable. In telling a tale of gullibility and facile scamming, the author simply offers the facts while never descending to derision as the experts offer such comments as the wine tasting “so much younger” than they expected; scientific evidence eventually proves that the chances of the greatest 200 year-old wine being anything other than vinegar are slim to none. 

One of the plot developments involves American billionaire Bill Koch who becomes something of an eccentric hero in taking Rodenstock to court as laboratory tests pile up evidence. You’ll like Koch much better as Rodenstock’s pursuer than the guy who introduced billionaire’s money and bad manners to the 1992 America’s Cup. 

The Billionaire’s Vinegar, written with literary intelligence, is a mesmerizing story about a sub-culture whose structure and self-indulgence make for rapid fire page turning. It will make a fine film and Dustin Hoffman a terrific Rodenstock.             

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