"President Obama is a committed Christian, and his faith is an important part of his daily life. . . The President's strong Christian faith is what guides him through these challenges but he doesn't wear it on his sleeve."
Do you care about your president's religious beliefs? Why do you think so many Americans believe (falsely) that Obama is Muslim? Why do you think that only one in three Americans know that President Obama is Christian?
Barack Obama says he's a Christian who came to develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in his mid-20's. But does he consider himself "evangelical?" That question was posed to him recently by a religion reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. Here is Obama's reponse:
"Gosh, I'm not sure if labels are helpful here because the definition of an evangelical is so loose and subject to so many different interpretations. I came to Christianity through the black church tradition where the line between evangelical and non-evangelical is completely blurred. Nobody knows exactly what it means. "Does it mean that you feel you've got a personal relationship with Christ the savior? Then that's directly part of the black church experience. Does it mean you're born-again in a classic sense, with all the accoutrements that go along with that, as it's understood by some other tradition? I'm not sure." He continued his answer: "My faith is complicated by the fact that I didn't grow up in a particular religious tradition. And so what that means is when you come at it as an adult, your brain mediates a lot, and you ask a lot of questions. "There are aspects of Christian tradition that I'm comfortable with and aspects that I'm not. There are passages of the Bible that make perfect sense to me and others that I go, 'Ya know, I'm not sure about that,'" he said, shrugging and stammering slightly.
Obama's response doesn't bother me at all, and probably won't bother most people. But some on the right have already made some repugnant insinuations about his religious beliefs and how they may affect his "loyalties," and I suspect his comments about not growing up in a particular religious tradition and not being comfortable with certain "aspects" of the Christian tradition will, unfortunately, only serve to keep those dark innuendos circulating.
Barack Obama's religious background is more diverse than that of most prominent politicians, but it may prove to be representative of future generations of Americans who grow up in an increasingly diverse America. His mother was raised by non-practicing Christians; his father was raised a Muslim but was an atheist by the time he had married Obama's mother. Obama's step-father was also Muslim, but of an eclectic kind who could make room for animist and Hindu beliefs. Neither Obama nor his mother were ever atheists, but she raised him in a relatively secular household where he learned about religion. Almost one in five Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, according to a new poll, despite his public statements about his Christian faith.
18% now say that the US president is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009. Forty three percent say they do not know Obama's religion.
Before Obama's recent comments about the proposed construction of a mosque near the site of the former World Trade Centre, which have landed him in political hot water. The president has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic centre there, but refrained from taking a position on whether or not it should actually be built two blocks from Ground Zero. The issue has become politically charged ahead of congressional races in mid-November, with Republicans accusing Obama of being out touch with mainstream America.
The belief that Obama is a Muslim has increased most sharply among Republicans, (up 14 points) since 2009, especially conservative Republicans (up 16 points). But the number of independents who say Obama is a Muslim has also increased significantly (up eight points). There has been little change in the number of Democrats who say Obama is a Muslim, but fewer Democrats today say he is a Christian.
The White House is concerned that beliefs about Obama's religion are linked to political judgments about him. Those who say he is a Muslim overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance, while a majority of those who think he is a Christian approve of the job Obama is doing. Those who are unsure about Obama's religion are about evenly divided in their views of his performance.
The White House blamed "misinformation campaigns" by the president's opponents.
"While the president has been diligent and personally committed to his own Christian faith, there's certainly folks who are intent on spreading falsehoods about the president and his values and beliefs," Obama's faith adviser, Joshua DuBois, told the Washington Post.
DuBois pointed to six speeches on faith that the president has given in which he talked about his beliefs, but said coverage of Obama's Christianity has been scant compared with news about the economic crisis, legislative battles and other issues.
Pew analysts attribute the findings to attacks by his opponents and Obama's limited attendance at religious services, particularly in contrast with presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. Andrew Kohut, the Pew Research Centre's director, said the confusion partly reflected "the intensification of negative views about Obama among his critics". Alan Cooperman, the Pew Forum's associate director for research, said that with the public hearing little about Obama's religion, "maybe there's more possibility for other people to make suggestions that the president is this or he's really that or he's really a Muslim".
Obama is the Christian son of a Kenyan, Barack Obama Sr. Obama Sr was raised Muslim.
Between the ages of six and 10, Obama lived in predominantly Muslim Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather.
During the election campaign, rightwing commentators such as Rush Limbaugh used his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, in an attempt to portray him as somehow un-American. Rightwingers also spread the false allegation that Obama had attended a madrassa in Indonesia.
Barack Obama does not appear to believe in a strict separation of church an state, which is a shame because opposition to church/state separation is a keystone in the Christian Right's assault on modernity and the Enlightenment. Barack Obama does not come out to openly deny that church and state should be separated, of course, but he liberally uses Christian Right rhetoric, misinformation, and even lies in a way that would tend to undermine confidence in and support for separation.
In his "Call to Renewal" Keynote Address of June 28, 2006, Barack Obama said:
But a sense of proportion should also guide those who police the boundaries between church and state. Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation - context matters.
Of course context matters — context always matters in every church/state separation issue. Barack Obama is being disingenuous because no one argues that "every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation." On the other hand, this claim is often used by Christian Nationalists to caricature and then dismiss church/state separation and those active on behalf of separation.
Barack Obama only seems to imagine a narrow context when evaluating church/state issues. He should look at the larger context which includes Christians harassing, intimidating, threatening, and sometimes assaulting minorities who do don't fall in line or who challenge "voluntary" religious observances.
Context matters, and the fact is the overall "context" is an America where Christians have been privileged, have abused their power over others, and have been accustomed to the idea that they and their religion should be treated as superior to all others. In recent years we've had incidents like Jews who were chased out of their homes by Christians who thought they owned the community. In Oklahoma, a community tried to chase an atheist family out of the state — and then tried to get the father convicted under false charges of assault when he stood his ground.
Christians are reacting so violently to challenges to government-endorsed religious rituals because they don't like losing those privileges — it's precisely the same sorts of reactions America saw when whites started to be denied their special race-based privileges. When a group is privileged long enough, members end up seeing their privileges as their rights (or stop seeing the privileges at all) — and when minorities demand equal treatment, they are derided as demanding "special rights."
What if Barack Obama had said "Not every expression of white privilege in public is an infringement of civil rights — context matters." Would he be right? Perhaps — but he wouldn't say it because he recognizes that white privilege is wrong. He doesn't yet recognize that Christian privilege is equally wrong. Every official government mention of "God" is an endorsement and expression of support for a particular conception of a particular god and, therefore, endorsement and support for a particular religious position held by some but not all Americans.
People who happen to share that conception of this god generally don't recognize the fact they are being privileged because their god usually plays an important role in everything they do — it's an unconscious ideology that prevents them from seeing anything amiss with one more expression of their beliefs from a different source. Such privileging of one religion is a problem, though, because it sends the message that adherents are politically privileged. In the long run, this message of privilege becomes a message of superiority, creating a situation in which people are willing to employ violence in defense of their privileges. It's only to be expected because people construct most of their personal and communal identities around those privileges.
Whites have used violence to defend white privilege; heterosexuals have used violence to defend heterosexual privilege; men have used violence to defend male privilege; Christians have used violence to defend Christian privilege. The story is always the same, all that changes is which group is being unjustly privileged. It's the duty of liberal, democratic governments to not only tear down such privileges, but to protect the minorities who might suffer from retaliation.
Why is Barack Obama using the rhetoric of Christian Nationalists? There is no indication that he himself is a Christian Nationalist, but this wouldn't be the only time that he used such rhetoric to disparage secularists and secularism. In a 2007 speech to United Church of Christ's Iowa conference, Barack Obama said:
Doing the Lord's work is a thread that runs through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that separation of church and state in America means somehow that faith should have no role in public life.
Once again, no one has actually said that "faith should have no role in public life," but that's a lie which Christian Nationalists love to repeat in order to encourage conservative opposition to church/state separation. Barack Obama here is misleading people in the same way that Christian Nationalists do by playing on multiple definitions of the word "public." There is "public life" in the sense of what people can easily see in public (as opposed to kept hidden in private) and then there is "public life" in the sense of the government.
The separation of church and state does not prevent people from expressing or practicing their faith in public, but it does prevent the integration of their personal religious faith into the government. Presumably Barack Obama knows that people's faith can be expressed and practiced in public, so that only leaves a desire for "faith" to play a role in the government. If Barack Obama is trying to say that his personal religion should be integrated into the government of all citizens — including those who reject his religion — then he is in effect denying that church and state should be separated.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Are all Catholics Domestic Terrorist in America ? McVeigh, was.
Timothy McVeigh,was brought up in a Roman Catholic household, and attended mass every Sunday. Does this make us look as Catholics, as terrorist ?, or is it that we are all of a mindset, that all terrorist are Muslim.....Who are we fooling, or who is fooling us ?
Fred Herrera
Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was a United States Army veteran and former security guard who was convicted of detonating a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. It was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks and is referred to as the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh, a militia movement sympathizer, sought revenge against the federal government for the Waco Siege, which had ended in the deaths of 76 people exactly two years earlier. He also hoped to inspire a revolt against a tyrannical federal government. He was convicted of 11 federal offenses, sentenced to death and executed on June 11, 2001. Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier were also convicted as co-conspirators in the plot.
Childhood
McVeigh was born in Lockport, New York, the only son and the second of three children of William and Mildred "Mickey" McVeigh, who were Irish Catholics. His parents divorced when he was 10 years old and he was raised by his father in Pendleton, New York.
McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school and that he took refuge in a fantasy world where he retaliated against those bullies. At the end of his life he would state his belief that the United States government is the ultimate bully.Most who knew McVeigh remember him as being withdrawn, with a few describing him as outgoing and playful as a young child but withdrawn as an adolescent. McVeigh is said to have had one girlfriend during his childhood, later stating to journalists he did not know how to impress girls. According to his authorized biography, "his only sustaining relief from his unsatisfied sex drive was his even stronger desire to die."
While in high school, McVeigh became interested in computers and hacked into government computer systems on his Commodore 64, under a handle – "The Wanderer" – borrowed from the song by Dion DiMucci. In his senior year, McVeigh was named Starpoint Central High School's "most promising computer programmer," but otherwise graduated from the school (on June 2, 1986) with relatively poor grades.
McVeigh was introduced to firearms by his grandfather and became increasingly fascinated by them. McVeigh told people he wanted to be a gun shop owner and sometimes took firearms to school to impress his classmates. McVeigh became intensely interested in gun rights after he graduated from high school, as well as the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and read magazines such as Soldier of Fortune. He briefly attended Bryant & Stratton College before dropping out.
Military career
At age 20, in May 1988, McVeigh enlisted in the United States Army. While in the military, McVeigh used much of his spare time to read about firearms, sniper tactics, and explosives. McVeigh was reprimanded by the military for purchasing a "White Power" T-shirt at a Ku Klux Klan protest against black servicemen who wore what he viewed as "Black Power" T-shirts around the army base.
McVeigh was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in the first Gulf War. He had been a top-scoring gunner with the 25mm cannon of the Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division to which he was assigned. He served at Fort Riley, Kansas, before Operation Desert Storm. At Fort Riley, McVeigh completed the Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC). McVeigh later would say that the Army taught him how to switch off his emotions.[7] He had special lifesaving training and may have saved the life of a comrade who had life-threatening shrapnel wounds.
McVeigh aspired to join the United States Army Special Forces (SF). After returning from the Gulf War, he entered the selection program to become an SF soldier, but was quickly dropped from the program after failing to meet the physical fitness requirements. Shortly thereafter, McVeigh decided to leave the army. He was discharged on December 31, 1991. McVeigh was given an honorable discharge from the Army Reserve in May 1992.
Post-military life
After leaving the army in 1992, McVeigh grew increasingly transient. At first he worked briefly near his hometown of Pendleton as a security guard, where he sounded off daily to his co-worker Carl Lebron, Jr. about his loathing for government. Deciding the Buffalo area was too liberal, he left his job and began driving around America, seeking out his old friends from the Army.
McVeigh wrote letters to local newspapers, complaining about taxes:
Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight. Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might.
McVeigh also wrote to Congressman John J. LaFalce, complaining about the arrest of a woman for carrying mace:
It is a lie if we tell ourselves that the police can protect us everywhere at all times. Firearms restrictions are bad enough, but now a woman can't even carry Mace in her purse?
It is claimed that while visiting friends in Decker, Michigan, McVeigh complained that the Army had implanted him with a microchip into his buttocks so that the government could keep track of him.
The long hours in a dead-end job, the feeling that he did not have a home and his failure to establish a relationship with a woman brought McVeigh to the breaking point. He sought romance, but was rejected by his co-worker Andrea Peters and still felt nervous around women. He felt he brought too much pain to his loved ones. He grew angry and frustrated at his difficulties acquiring a girlfriend and took up obsessive gambling. Unable to pay back gambling debts, he took a cash advance and then defaulted on his repayments. He then began looking for a state without heavy government regulation or high taxes. He became enraged when the government informed him that he had been overpaid $1,058 while in the army and he would need to pay back the money. He wrote an angry letter to the government inviting them to:
Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property.
McVeigh introduced his sister to anti-government literature, but his father had little interest in these views. He moved out of his father's house and into an apartment that had no telephone, which had the advantage of making it impossible for his boss to contact him. He also quit the NRA, viewing its stance on gun rights to be too weak.
1993 Waco siege and Gun shows
In 1993, he drove to Waco, Texas during the Waco Siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers, such as "When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw." He told a student reporter:
The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.
For the five months following the Waco Siege, McVeigh worked at gun shows and handed out free cards printed up with Lon Horiuchi's name and address, "in the hope that somebody in the Patriot movement would assassinate the sharpshooter." He wrote hate mail to the sniper, suggesting that "what goes around, comes around," and later considered putting aside his plan to target the Murrah Building to target Horiuchi, or a member of his family instead.
McVeigh spent more time on the gun show circuit,traveling to 40 of the 50 states and visiting about 80 gun shows in all. McVeigh found that the further west he went, the more anti-government sentiment he encountered, at least until he got to what he called "The People's Socialist Republic of California." McVeigh sold survival items and copies of The Turner Diaries. One author said:
In the gun show culture, McVeigh found a home. Though he remained skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being bandied around, he liked talking to people there about the United Nations, the federal government and possible threats to American liberty.
Arizona with Fortiers
McVeigh had a road atlas with hand-drawn designations of the most likely places for nuclear attacks and considered buying property in Seligman, Arizona, which he determined to be in a "nuclear-free zone." McVeigh lived with Michael Fortier in Kingman, Arizona, for a spell and grew so close to him that he served as best man at Fortier's wedding. McVeigh experimented with cannabis and methamphetamine, after first researching their effects in an encyclopedia; but he was not as interested in drugs as Fortier. One of the reasons they parted ways was McVeigh's boredom with Fortier's drug habits.
McVeigh defended the practice of owning multiple guns, saying it was like the common practice of keeping an assortment of screwdrivers in one's toolbox; one needed to be sure of having the right tool for the job. He said that five particular guns were essential: a semiautomatic, magazine-fed rifle (for defending against large mobs); a bolt-action hunting/sniper rifle (for killing large game or defending against an entrenched marauder); a shotgun (for fowl hunting); a .22 caliber rifle (to hone shooting skills and bag small game); and a pistol (for close-in self defense). He viewed guns as the first tool of freedom, necessary to protect supplies in the event America fell into chaos.
With Nichols, Waco siege, radicalisation and first explosives devices
In April 1993, McVeigh headed for a farm where co-conspirator Terry Nichols lived. According to McVeigh, he had a two-week affair with Marife Nichols, although she denies that it happened.[when?] In between watching coverage of the Waco siege on TV, Nichols and his brother began teaching McVeigh how to make explosives out of readily available materials; specifically, they combined household chemicals in plastic jugs. The destruction of the Waco compound enraged McVeigh and convinced him that it was time to take action. The government's use of CS gas on women and children angered McVeigh; he had been exposed to the gas as part of his military training and thus was familiar with its effects. The disappearance of certain evidence[when?], such as the bullet-riddled steel-reinforced front door to the complex, led him to suspect a cover-up. He believed that even if David Koresh had committed crimes, his followers did not deserve to be executed.
McVeigh's anti-government rhetoric became more radical. He began to sell ATF hats riddled with bullet holes and a flare gun, which, he said, could shoot down an "ATF helicopter." He produced videos detailing the government's actions at Waco and handed out pamphlets with titles like "U.S. Government Initiates Open Warfare Against American People" and "Waco Shootout Evokes Memory of Warsaw '43." He began changing his answering machine greeting every couple of weeks to various quotes by Patrick Henry such as "Give me liberty or give me death." He began experimenting with pipe bombs and other small explosive devices for the first time. The government also imposed new firearms restrictions in 1994 that McVeigh believed threatened his livelihood.
McVeigh dissociated himself from his boyhood friend, Steve Hodge, by sending a 23-page farewell letter to him. He proclaimed his devotion to the United States Declaration of Independence, explaining in detail what each sentence meant to him. McVeigh declared that:
Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly.
It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being.
I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.
McVeigh felt the need to personally reconnoiter sites of rumored conspiracies. He visited Area 51 in order to defy government restrictions on picture-taking and went to Gulfport, Mississippi to determine the veracity of rumors about United Nations operations. These turned out to be false; the Russian vehicles on the site were being configured for use in U.N.-sponsored humanitarian aid efforts. Around this time, McVeigh and Nichols also began making bulk purchases of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, for resale to survivalists, since rumors were circulating that the government was preparing to ban it.
Plan against Federal building or individuals
McVeigh told Fortier of his plans to blow up a federal building, but Fortier declined to participate. Fortier also told his wife about the plans. McVeigh composed two letters to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the first titled "Constitutional Defenders" and the second "ATF Read." He denounced government agents as "fascist tyrants" and "storm troopers" and warned:
ATF, all you tyrannical mother fuckers will swing in the wind one day for your treasonous actions against the Constitution of the United States. Remember the Nuremberg War Trials.
McVeigh also wrote a letter of recruitment to a customer named Steve Colbern:
A man with nothing left to lose is a very dangerous man and his energy/anger can be focused toward a common/righteous goal. What I'm asking you to do, then, is sit back and be honest with yourself. Do you have kids/wife? Would you back out at the last minute to care for the family? Are you interested in keeping your firearms for their current/future monetary value, or would you drag that '06 through rock, swamp and cactus...to get off the needed shot? In short, I'm not looking for talkers, I'm looking for fighters...And if you are a fed, think twice. Think twice about the Constitution you are supposedly enforcing (isn't "enforcing freedom" an oxymoron?) and think twice about catching us with our guard down – you will lose just like Degan did – and your family will lose.
McVeigh began announcing that he had progressed from the "propaganda" phase to the "action" phase. He wrote to his Michigan friend Gwenda Strider, "I have certain other 'militant' talents that are in short supply and greatly demanded."
McVeigh later said he considered "a campaign of individual assassination," with "eligible" targets including Attorney-General Janet Reno, Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. of Federal District Court, who handled the Branch Davidian trial and Lon Horiuchi, a member of the FBI hostage-rescue team who shot and killed Vicki Weaver in a standoff at a remote cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. He said he wanted Reno to accept "full responsibility in deed, not just words." However, such an assassination seemed too difficult, and he decided that since federal agents had become soldiers, it was necessary to strike against them at their command centers.Moreover, according to American Terrorist, ultimately he decided that he would make the loudest statement by bombing a federal building. After the bombing, he would come to have some ambivalence about his act, as expressed in letters to his hometown newspaper that he sometimes wished he had carried out a series of assassinations against police and government officials instead.
Oklahoma City bombing
Main article: Oklahoma City bombing
Timothy McVeigh about to be led out of a Perry, Oklahoma courthouse two days after the Oklahoma City bombingWorking at a lakeside campground near McVeigh's old Army post, he and Nichols constructed an ANNM explosive device mounted in the back of a rented Ryder truck. This site was regarded as suitable because a moving truck would not seem out of place, given the transient population of the area. The bomb consisted of about 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane, a motor-racing fuel.
On April 19, 1995, McVeigh drove the truck to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building just as its offices and day care center opened for the day. Before arriving, he stopped to light a 5 minute fuse. At 9:02 a.m., a large explosion destroyed the north half of the building. The explosion was so powerful that McVeigh, who was jogging away from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was lifted off the ground. The explosion killed 168 people and 450 were injured. Nineteen of the victims were small children and babies in the day care center on the second floor of the building.
McVeigh did not express remorse for the deaths of the children, what he referred to as "collateral damage", but said he might have chosen a different target if he had known the day care center was open.According to Michel and Herbeck, McVeigh claimed not to have known there was a day care center in the Murrah Building and said that if he had known it, in his own words:
It might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage.
Michel and Herbeck quote McVeigh, with whom they spoke for some 75 hours, on his attitude to the victims:
To these people in Oklahoma who have lost a loved one, I'm sorry but it happens every day. You're not the first mother to lose a kid, or the first grandparent to lose a grandson or a granddaughter. It happens every day, somewhere in the world. I'm not going to go into that courtroom, curl into a fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to do that.
According to the Oklahoma City Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), more than 300 buildings were damaged. More than 12,000 volunteers and rescue workers took part in the rescue, recovery and support operations following the bombing. In reference to theories that he had assistance from others, McVeigh responded:
You can't handle the truth. Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building and isn't it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?
Arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing
By tracing the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of a rear axle found in the wreckage, the FBI identified the vehicle as a Ryder Rental box truck rented from Junction City, Kansas. Workers at the agency assisted an FBI artist in creating a sketch of the renter, who had used the alias "Robert Kling". The sketch was shown in the area. That day, manager Lea McGown of the Dreamland Hotel (Junction City) identified the sketch as Timothy McVeigh.
Shortly after the bombing, while driving on I-35 in Noble County, near Perry, Oklahoma, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma State Trooper Charles J. Hanger from Pawnee, Oklahoma.Hanger had passed McVeigh's yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis and noticed that it had no license plate. McVeigh admitted to the police officer (who noticed a bulge under his jacket) that he had a gun and McVeigh was subsequently arrested for having driven without plates and illegal firearm possession; McVeigh's concealed weapon permit was not legal in Oklahoma. McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt at that time with a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the motto: sic semper tyrannis ('Thus, always, to tyrants'), the state motto of Virginia and also the words shouted by John Wilkes Booth after he shot Lincoln.On the back, it had a tree with a picture of three blood droplets and the Thomas Jefferson quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Three days later, while still in jail, McVeigh was identified as the subject of the nationwide manhunt.
On August 10, 1995, McVeigh was indicted on 11 federal counts, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosives and eight counts of first-degree murder. On October 20, 1995, the government filed notice that it would seek the death penalty.
On February 20, 1996, the Court granted a change of venue and ordered that the case be transferred from Oklahoma City to the U.S. District Court in Denver, Colorado, to be presided over by U.S. District Judge Richard Paul Matsch.
McVeigh instructed his lawyers to use a necessity defense, but they ended up not doing so,because they would have had to prove that McVeigh was in "imminent danger" from the government. (McVeigh himself argued that "imminent" did not necessarily mean "immediate.") They would have argued that his bombing of the Murrah building was a justifiable response to what McVeigh believed were the crimes of the U.S. government at Waco, Texas. The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidian members. As part of the defense, McVeigh's lawyers showed the jury the controversial video Waco: The Big Lie.
On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was found guilty on all 11 counts of the federal indictment.
McVeigh tried to calm his mother by saying, "Think of it this way. When I was in the Army, you didn't see me for years. Think of me that way now, like I'm away in the Army again, on an assignment for the military."
On June 13, 1997, the jury recommended that McVeigh receive the death penalty. The U.S. Department of Justice brought federal charges against McVeigh for causing the deaths of eight federal officers leading to a possible death penalty for McVeigh; it could not bring charges against McVeigh for the remaining 160 murders in federal court because those deaths fell under the jurisdiction of the state of Oklahoma. Because McVeigh was convicted and sentenced to death, the State of Oklahoma did not file murder charges against McVeigh for the other 160 deaths. Before the sentence was formally pronounced, McVeigh addressed the court for the first time and said simply:
If the Court please, I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.' That's all I have.
When the sentence was pronounced, he flashed a peace sign.
During his time in prison, McVeigh wrote various essays. An Essay on Hypocrisy describes the U.S. Government as hypocritical for justifying its attack on Iraq by stating that Iraq should not be allowed to stockpile weapons of mass destruction because it had used them in the past. He cited Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples of the U.S. using nuclear weapons in the past.[61] On April 26, 2001, he wrote a letter to the Clowns at FOX News, I Explain Herein Why I Bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which explicitly laid out his reasons for the attack. McVeigh read Unintended Consequences and noted that if it had come out a few years earlier, he would have given serious consideration to using sniper attacks in a war of attrition against the government instead of bombing a federal building:
If people say The Turner Diaries was my Bible, Unintended Consequences would be my New Testament. I think Unintended Consequences is a better book. It might have changed my whole plan of operation if I'd read that one first.
Incarceration and execution
Florence ADMAX USP, where McVeigh was incarceratedWhile incarcerated Timothy McVeigh had the Federal Bureau of Prisons register # 12076-064. McVeigh's death sentence was delayed pending an appeal. One of his appeals for certiorari, taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, was denied on March 8, 1999. McVeigh's request for a nationally televised execution was also denied. An internet company also sued for the rights to broadcast it. At ADX Florence, McVeigh was housed in the same cell block as Ted Kaczynski, Luis Felipe and Ramzi Yousef. Ramzi made frequent, unsuccessful attempts to convert McVeigh to Islam.
McVeigh maintained an upbeat attitude, noting that even after his execution, the score would still be "168 to 1" and thus he was the victor. He also said:
I am sorry these people had to lose their lives. But that's the nature of the beast. It's understood going in what the human toll will be.
He said that if there turned out to be an afterlife, he would "improvise, adapt and overcome", noting that:
If there is a hell, then I'll be in good company with a lot of fighter pilots who also had to bomb innocents to win the war.
He also said:
I knew I wanted this before it happened. I knew my objective was state-assisted suicide and when it happens, it's in your face. You just did something you're trying to say should be illegal for medical personnel.
McVeigh dropped his remaining appeals, giving no reason for doing so. On January 16, 2001 the Federal Bureau of Prisons set May 16, 2001 as McVeigh's execution date. Six days prior to that date, the FBI turned over thousands of documents of evidence it had previously withheld to McVeigh's attorneys. As a result, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced McVeigh's execution would be stayed for one month. His execution date was set for June 11, 2001. He was executed by lethal injection at 7:14 a.m. on June 11, 2001, at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. McVeigh stated that his only regret was not completely leveling the federal building.
McVeigh invited California conductor/composer David Woodard to perform a pre-requiem (a Mass for those who are about to die), on the eve of his execution. He had also requested a Catholic chaplain.
McVeigh chose William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus" as his final statement.His last meal was two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. McVeigh was the first convicted criminal to be executed by the United States federal government since Victor Feguer in Iowa on March 15, 1963. Jay Sawyer, relative of one of the victims, noted, "Without saying a word, he got the final word." Larry Whicher, whose brother died in the attack, described McVeigh as having "A totally expressionless, blank stare. He had a look of defiance and that if he could, he'd do it all over again."
Congress passed special legislation to bar McVeigh from being buried in any military cemetery. His body was cremated at Mattox Ryan Funeral Home in Terre Haute. The cremated remains were given to his lawyer, who scattered them at an undisclosed location. McVeigh had earlier written that he considered having his ashes dropped at the site of the memorial where the Murrah building once stood, but decided that would be "too vengeful, too raw, cold." He had expressed willingness to donate organs, but was prohibited from doing so by prison regulations.
"Psychiatrist John Smith concluded that [McVeigh] was a decent person who had allowed rage to build up inside him to the point that he had lashed out in one terrible, violent act." – from a BBC story on McVeigh. McVeigh's IQ was assessed at 126.
Political and religious views
McVeigh's only known political affiliations were his voter registration with the Republican Party of New York when he lived in Buffalo, New York, and a membership in the National Rifle Association while in the military.
In a recorded interview with Time magazine McVeigh professed his belief in "a god", although he said he had "sort of lost touch with" Catholicism and "I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs." Throughout his childhood, he and his father were Roman Catholic and regularly attended daily Mass at Good Shepherd Church in Pendleton, New York. The Guardian reported that McVeigh wrote a letter to them claiming to be an agnostic and that he did not believe in a hell. McVeigh once said that he believed the universe was guided by natural law, energized by some universal higher power that showed each person right from wrong if they paid attention to what was going on inside them. He had also said, "Science is my religion."
Motivations for the bombing
McVeigh claimed that the bombing was revenge for "what the U.S. government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge." McVeigh visited Waco during the standoff, where he spoke to a news reporter about his anger over what was happening there.
McVeigh frequently quoted and alluded to the white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries. It described acts of terrorism similar to the one he carried out. While McVeigh openly rejected the book's racism (a roommate said that McVeigh was not a racist and was basically indifferent to racist matters),he claimed to appreciate its interest in firearms. Photocopies of pages sixty-one and sixty-two of The Turner Diaries were found in an envelope inside McVeigh's car. These pages depicted a fictitious mortar attack upon the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
In interviews before his execution, documented in American Terrorist, McVeigh stated he decapitated an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire on his first day in the war and celebrated. But he said he later was shocked to be ordered to execute surrendering prisoners and to see carnage on the road leaving Kuwait City after U.S. troops routed the Iraqi army. In interviews following the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh said he began harboring anti-government feelings during the Gulf War. In 1998, while in prison, McVeigh wrote an essay that criticized US foreign policy towards Iraq as being hypocritical:
The administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons (“weapons of mass destruction”) – mainly because they have used them in the past.
Well, if that’s the standard by which these matters are decided, then the U.S. is the nation that set the precedent. The U.S. has stockpiled these same weapons (and more) for over 40 years. The U.S. claims that this was done for deterrent purposes during the “Cold War” with the Soviet Union. Why, then is it invalid for Iraq to claim the same reason (deterrence) — with respect to Iraq’s (real) war with and the continued threat of, its neighbor Iran?
If Saddam is such a demon and people are calling for war crimes charges and trials against him and his nation, why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of “mass destruction” — like those responsible and involved in dropping bombs on the cities mentioned above.
The truth is, the U.S. has set the standard when it comes to the stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction.
McVeigh had contemplated suicide on many occasions. Anticipating that he would probably be caught and executed, he referred to the bombing as "state-assisted suicide".
Accomplices
This section does not cite any references or sources.
(Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.) In addition to McVeigh, Terry Nichols was convicted and sentenced in federal court to life in prison for his role in the crime. At Nichols' trial, evidence was presented indicating that others may have been involved. Several residents of central Kansas, including real estate agent Georgia Rucker and a retired Army NCO, testified at Terry Nichols' federal trial that they had seen two trucks at Geary State Lake, where prosecutors alleged the bomb was assembled. The retired NCO said he visited the lake on April 18, 1995, but left after a group of surly men looked at him aggressively. The operator of the Dreamland Motel testified that two Ryder trucks had been parked outside her Grandview Plaza motel where McVeigh stayed in Room 26 the weekend before the bombing. Testimony suggested that McVeigh may have had several other accomplices, but no other individuals have been indicted for the bombing.
An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) informant, Carolyn Howe, told reporters that shortly before the bombing she had warned her handlers that guests of Elohim City, Oklahoma were planning a major bombing attack. McVeigh was issued a speeding ticket there at the same time. Other than this speeding ticket, there is no evidence of a connection between McVeigh and members of the Midwest Bank Robbers at Elohim City.
In February 2004, the FBI announced it would review its investigation after learning that agents in the investigation of the Midwest Bank Robbers (an alleged Aryan-oriented gang) had turned up explosive caps of the same type that were used to trigger the Oklahoma City bomb. Agents expressed surprise that bombing investigators had not been provided information from the Midwest Bank Robbers investigation. McVeigh was given a one-week delay prior to his execution while evidence relating to the Bank Robbers' gang was presented to a court.
McVeigh declined further delays and maintained until his death that he had acted alone in the bombing.
Alternative theories
Jose Padilla
Conspiracy theorists have speculated that Jose Padilla was an accomplice of McVeigh, based on a resemblance between Padilla and police sketches of an Oklahoma City bombing suspect known as "John Doe No. 2" and the resemblance in name with Lana Padilla, the former wife of Terry Nichols. Asked about the alleged "John Doe No. 2", an FBI official was quoted as saying: "We couldn't find any evidence to indicate there was a John Doe 2 despite what people were saying," then asked specifically about a possible link with Padilla he reacted, "You're kidding, right?"
Fred Herrera
Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was a United States Army veteran and former security guard who was convicted of detonating a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. It was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks and is referred to as the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh, a militia movement sympathizer, sought revenge against the federal government for the Waco Siege, which had ended in the deaths of 76 people exactly two years earlier. He also hoped to inspire a revolt against a tyrannical federal government. He was convicted of 11 federal offenses, sentenced to death and executed on June 11, 2001. Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier were also convicted as co-conspirators in the plot.
Childhood
McVeigh was born in Lockport, New York, the only son and the second of three children of William and Mildred "Mickey" McVeigh, who were Irish Catholics. His parents divorced when he was 10 years old and he was raised by his father in Pendleton, New York.
McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school and that he took refuge in a fantasy world where he retaliated against those bullies. At the end of his life he would state his belief that the United States government is the ultimate bully.Most who knew McVeigh remember him as being withdrawn, with a few describing him as outgoing and playful as a young child but withdrawn as an adolescent. McVeigh is said to have had one girlfriend during his childhood, later stating to journalists he did not know how to impress girls. According to his authorized biography, "his only sustaining relief from his unsatisfied sex drive was his even stronger desire to die."
While in high school, McVeigh became interested in computers and hacked into government computer systems on his Commodore 64, under a handle – "The Wanderer" – borrowed from the song by Dion DiMucci. In his senior year, McVeigh was named Starpoint Central High School's "most promising computer programmer," but otherwise graduated from the school (on June 2, 1986) with relatively poor grades.
McVeigh was introduced to firearms by his grandfather and became increasingly fascinated by them. McVeigh told people he wanted to be a gun shop owner and sometimes took firearms to school to impress his classmates. McVeigh became intensely interested in gun rights after he graduated from high school, as well as the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and read magazines such as Soldier of Fortune. He briefly attended Bryant & Stratton College before dropping out.
Military career
At age 20, in May 1988, McVeigh enlisted in the United States Army. While in the military, McVeigh used much of his spare time to read about firearms, sniper tactics, and explosives. McVeigh was reprimanded by the military for purchasing a "White Power" T-shirt at a Ku Klux Klan protest against black servicemen who wore what he viewed as "Black Power" T-shirts around the army base.
McVeigh was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in the first Gulf War. He had been a top-scoring gunner with the 25mm cannon of the Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division to which he was assigned. He served at Fort Riley, Kansas, before Operation Desert Storm. At Fort Riley, McVeigh completed the Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC). McVeigh later would say that the Army taught him how to switch off his emotions.[7] He had special lifesaving training and may have saved the life of a comrade who had life-threatening shrapnel wounds.
McVeigh aspired to join the United States Army Special Forces (SF). After returning from the Gulf War, he entered the selection program to become an SF soldier, but was quickly dropped from the program after failing to meet the physical fitness requirements. Shortly thereafter, McVeigh decided to leave the army. He was discharged on December 31, 1991. McVeigh was given an honorable discharge from the Army Reserve in May 1992.
Post-military life
After leaving the army in 1992, McVeigh grew increasingly transient. At first he worked briefly near his hometown of Pendleton as a security guard, where he sounded off daily to his co-worker Carl Lebron, Jr. about his loathing for government. Deciding the Buffalo area was too liberal, he left his job and began driving around America, seeking out his old friends from the Army.
McVeigh wrote letters to local newspapers, complaining about taxes:
Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight. Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might.
McVeigh also wrote to Congressman John J. LaFalce, complaining about the arrest of a woman for carrying mace:
It is a lie if we tell ourselves that the police can protect us everywhere at all times. Firearms restrictions are bad enough, but now a woman can't even carry Mace in her purse?
It is claimed that while visiting friends in Decker, Michigan, McVeigh complained that the Army had implanted him with a microchip into his buttocks so that the government could keep track of him.
The long hours in a dead-end job, the feeling that he did not have a home and his failure to establish a relationship with a woman brought McVeigh to the breaking point. He sought romance, but was rejected by his co-worker Andrea Peters and still felt nervous around women. He felt he brought too much pain to his loved ones. He grew angry and frustrated at his difficulties acquiring a girlfriend and took up obsessive gambling. Unable to pay back gambling debts, he took a cash advance and then defaulted on his repayments. He then began looking for a state without heavy government regulation or high taxes. He became enraged when the government informed him that he had been overpaid $1,058 while in the army and he would need to pay back the money. He wrote an angry letter to the government inviting them to:
Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property.
McVeigh introduced his sister to anti-government literature, but his father had little interest in these views. He moved out of his father's house and into an apartment that had no telephone, which had the advantage of making it impossible for his boss to contact him. He also quit the NRA, viewing its stance on gun rights to be too weak.
1993 Waco siege and Gun shows
In 1993, he drove to Waco, Texas during the Waco Siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers, such as "When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw." He told a student reporter:
The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.
For the five months following the Waco Siege, McVeigh worked at gun shows and handed out free cards printed up with Lon Horiuchi's name and address, "in the hope that somebody in the Patriot movement would assassinate the sharpshooter." He wrote hate mail to the sniper, suggesting that "what goes around, comes around," and later considered putting aside his plan to target the Murrah Building to target Horiuchi, or a member of his family instead.
McVeigh spent more time on the gun show circuit,traveling to 40 of the 50 states and visiting about 80 gun shows in all. McVeigh found that the further west he went, the more anti-government sentiment he encountered, at least until he got to what he called "The People's Socialist Republic of California." McVeigh sold survival items and copies of The Turner Diaries. One author said:
In the gun show culture, McVeigh found a home. Though he remained skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being bandied around, he liked talking to people there about the United Nations, the federal government and possible threats to American liberty.
Arizona with Fortiers
McVeigh had a road atlas with hand-drawn designations of the most likely places for nuclear attacks and considered buying property in Seligman, Arizona, which he determined to be in a "nuclear-free zone." McVeigh lived with Michael Fortier in Kingman, Arizona, for a spell and grew so close to him that he served as best man at Fortier's wedding. McVeigh experimented with cannabis and methamphetamine, after first researching their effects in an encyclopedia; but he was not as interested in drugs as Fortier. One of the reasons they parted ways was McVeigh's boredom with Fortier's drug habits.
McVeigh defended the practice of owning multiple guns, saying it was like the common practice of keeping an assortment of screwdrivers in one's toolbox; one needed to be sure of having the right tool for the job. He said that five particular guns were essential: a semiautomatic, magazine-fed rifle (for defending against large mobs); a bolt-action hunting/sniper rifle (for killing large game or defending against an entrenched marauder); a shotgun (for fowl hunting); a .22 caliber rifle (to hone shooting skills and bag small game); and a pistol (for close-in self defense). He viewed guns as the first tool of freedom, necessary to protect supplies in the event America fell into chaos.
With Nichols, Waco siege, radicalisation and first explosives devices
In April 1993, McVeigh headed for a farm where co-conspirator Terry Nichols lived. According to McVeigh, he had a two-week affair with Marife Nichols, although she denies that it happened.[when?] In between watching coverage of the Waco siege on TV, Nichols and his brother began teaching McVeigh how to make explosives out of readily available materials; specifically, they combined household chemicals in plastic jugs. The destruction of the Waco compound enraged McVeigh and convinced him that it was time to take action. The government's use of CS gas on women and children angered McVeigh; he had been exposed to the gas as part of his military training and thus was familiar with its effects. The disappearance of certain evidence[when?], such as the bullet-riddled steel-reinforced front door to the complex, led him to suspect a cover-up. He believed that even if David Koresh had committed crimes, his followers did not deserve to be executed.
McVeigh's anti-government rhetoric became more radical. He began to sell ATF hats riddled with bullet holes and a flare gun, which, he said, could shoot down an "ATF helicopter." He produced videos detailing the government's actions at Waco and handed out pamphlets with titles like "U.S. Government Initiates Open Warfare Against American People" and "Waco Shootout Evokes Memory of Warsaw '43." He began changing his answering machine greeting every couple of weeks to various quotes by Patrick Henry such as "Give me liberty or give me death." He began experimenting with pipe bombs and other small explosive devices for the first time. The government also imposed new firearms restrictions in 1994 that McVeigh believed threatened his livelihood.
McVeigh dissociated himself from his boyhood friend, Steve Hodge, by sending a 23-page farewell letter to him. He proclaimed his devotion to the United States Declaration of Independence, explaining in detail what each sentence meant to him. McVeigh declared that:
Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly.
It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being.
I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.
McVeigh felt the need to personally reconnoiter sites of rumored conspiracies. He visited Area 51 in order to defy government restrictions on picture-taking and went to Gulfport, Mississippi to determine the veracity of rumors about United Nations operations. These turned out to be false; the Russian vehicles on the site were being configured for use in U.N.-sponsored humanitarian aid efforts. Around this time, McVeigh and Nichols also began making bulk purchases of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, for resale to survivalists, since rumors were circulating that the government was preparing to ban it.
Plan against Federal building or individuals
McVeigh told Fortier of his plans to blow up a federal building, but Fortier declined to participate. Fortier also told his wife about the plans. McVeigh composed two letters to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the first titled "Constitutional Defenders" and the second "ATF Read." He denounced government agents as "fascist tyrants" and "storm troopers" and warned:
ATF, all you tyrannical mother fuckers will swing in the wind one day for your treasonous actions against the Constitution of the United States. Remember the Nuremberg War Trials.
McVeigh also wrote a letter of recruitment to a customer named Steve Colbern:
A man with nothing left to lose is a very dangerous man and his energy/anger can be focused toward a common/righteous goal. What I'm asking you to do, then, is sit back and be honest with yourself. Do you have kids/wife? Would you back out at the last minute to care for the family? Are you interested in keeping your firearms for their current/future monetary value, or would you drag that '06 through rock, swamp and cactus...to get off the needed shot? In short, I'm not looking for talkers, I'm looking for fighters...And if you are a fed, think twice. Think twice about the Constitution you are supposedly enforcing (isn't "enforcing freedom" an oxymoron?) and think twice about catching us with our guard down – you will lose just like Degan did – and your family will lose.
McVeigh began announcing that he had progressed from the "propaganda" phase to the "action" phase. He wrote to his Michigan friend Gwenda Strider, "I have certain other 'militant' talents that are in short supply and greatly demanded."
McVeigh later said he considered "a campaign of individual assassination," with "eligible" targets including Attorney-General Janet Reno, Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. of Federal District Court, who handled the Branch Davidian trial and Lon Horiuchi, a member of the FBI hostage-rescue team who shot and killed Vicki Weaver in a standoff at a remote cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. He said he wanted Reno to accept "full responsibility in deed, not just words." However, such an assassination seemed too difficult, and he decided that since federal agents had become soldiers, it was necessary to strike against them at their command centers.Moreover, according to American Terrorist, ultimately he decided that he would make the loudest statement by bombing a federal building. After the bombing, he would come to have some ambivalence about his act, as expressed in letters to his hometown newspaper that he sometimes wished he had carried out a series of assassinations against police and government officials instead.
Oklahoma City bombing
Main article: Oklahoma City bombing
Timothy McVeigh about to be led out of a Perry, Oklahoma courthouse two days after the Oklahoma City bombingWorking at a lakeside campground near McVeigh's old Army post, he and Nichols constructed an ANNM explosive device mounted in the back of a rented Ryder truck. This site was regarded as suitable because a moving truck would not seem out of place, given the transient population of the area. The bomb consisted of about 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane, a motor-racing fuel.
On April 19, 1995, McVeigh drove the truck to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building just as its offices and day care center opened for the day. Before arriving, he stopped to light a 5 minute fuse. At 9:02 a.m., a large explosion destroyed the north half of the building. The explosion was so powerful that McVeigh, who was jogging away from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was lifted off the ground. The explosion killed 168 people and 450 were injured. Nineteen of the victims were small children and babies in the day care center on the second floor of the building.
McVeigh did not express remorse for the deaths of the children, what he referred to as "collateral damage", but said he might have chosen a different target if he had known the day care center was open.According to Michel and Herbeck, McVeigh claimed not to have known there was a day care center in the Murrah Building and said that if he had known it, in his own words:
It might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage.
Michel and Herbeck quote McVeigh, with whom they spoke for some 75 hours, on his attitude to the victims:
To these people in Oklahoma who have lost a loved one, I'm sorry but it happens every day. You're not the first mother to lose a kid, or the first grandparent to lose a grandson or a granddaughter. It happens every day, somewhere in the world. I'm not going to go into that courtroom, curl into a fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to do that.
According to the Oklahoma City Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), more than 300 buildings were damaged. More than 12,000 volunteers and rescue workers took part in the rescue, recovery and support operations following the bombing. In reference to theories that he had assistance from others, McVeigh responded:
You can't handle the truth. Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building and isn't it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?
Arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing
By tracing the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of a rear axle found in the wreckage, the FBI identified the vehicle as a Ryder Rental box truck rented from Junction City, Kansas. Workers at the agency assisted an FBI artist in creating a sketch of the renter, who had used the alias "Robert Kling". The sketch was shown in the area. That day, manager Lea McGown of the Dreamland Hotel (Junction City) identified the sketch as Timothy McVeigh.
Shortly after the bombing, while driving on I-35 in Noble County, near Perry, Oklahoma, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma State Trooper Charles J. Hanger from Pawnee, Oklahoma.Hanger had passed McVeigh's yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis and noticed that it had no license plate. McVeigh admitted to the police officer (who noticed a bulge under his jacket) that he had a gun and McVeigh was subsequently arrested for having driven without plates and illegal firearm possession; McVeigh's concealed weapon permit was not legal in Oklahoma. McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt at that time with a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the motto: sic semper tyrannis ('Thus, always, to tyrants'), the state motto of Virginia and also the words shouted by John Wilkes Booth after he shot Lincoln.On the back, it had a tree with a picture of three blood droplets and the Thomas Jefferson quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Three days later, while still in jail, McVeigh was identified as the subject of the nationwide manhunt.
On August 10, 1995, McVeigh was indicted on 11 federal counts, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosives and eight counts of first-degree murder. On October 20, 1995, the government filed notice that it would seek the death penalty.
On February 20, 1996, the Court granted a change of venue and ordered that the case be transferred from Oklahoma City to the U.S. District Court in Denver, Colorado, to be presided over by U.S. District Judge Richard Paul Matsch.
McVeigh instructed his lawyers to use a necessity defense, but they ended up not doing so,because they would have had to prove that McVeigh was in "imminent danger" from the government. (McVeigh himself argued that "imminent" did not necessarily mean "immediate.") They would have argued that his bombing of the Murrah building was a justifiable response to what McVeigh believed were the crimes of the U.S. government at Waco, Texas. The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidian members. As part of the defense, McVeigh's lawyers showed the jury the controversial video Waco: The Big Lie.
On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was found guilty on all 11 counts of the federal indictment.
McVeigh tried to calm his mother by saying, "Think of it this way. When I was in the Army, you didn't see me for years. Think of me that way now, like I'm away in the Army again, on an assignment for the military."
On June 13, 1997, the jury recommended that McVeigh receive the death penalty. The U.S. Department of Justice brought federal charges against McVeigh for causing the deaths of eight federal officers leading to a possible death penalty for McVeigh; it could not bring charges against McVeigh for the remaining 160 murders in federal court because those deaths fell under the jurisdiction of the state of Oklahoma. Because McVeigh was convicted and sentenced to death, the State of Oklahoma did not file murder charges against McVeigh for the other 160 deaths. Before the sentence was formally pronounced, McVeigh addressed the court for the first time and said simply:
If the Court please, I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.' That's all I have.
When the sentence was pronounced, he flashed a peace sign.
During his time in prison, McVeigh wrote various essays. An Essay on Hypocrisy describes the U.S. Government as hypocritical for justifying its attack on Iraq by stating that Iraq should not be allowed to stockpile weapons of mass destruction because it had used them in the past. He cited Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples of the U.S. using nuclear weapons in the past.[61] On April 26, 2001, he wrote a letter to the Clowns at FOX News, I Explain Herein Why I Bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which explicitly laid out his reasons for the attack. McVeigh read Unintended Consequences and noted that if it had come out a few years earlier, he would have given serious consideration to using sniper attacks in a war of attrition against the government instead of bombing a federal building:
If people say The Turner Diaries was my Bible, Unintended Consequences would be my New Testament. I think Unintended Consequences is a better book. It might have changed my whole plan of operation if I'd read that one first.
Incarceration and execution
Florence ADMAX USP, where McVeigh was incarceratedWhile incarcerated Timothy McVeigh had the Federal Bureau of Prisons register # 12076-064. McVeigh's death sentence was delayed pending an appeal. One of his appeals for certiorari, taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, was denied on March 8, 1999. McVeigh's request for a nationally televised execution was also denied. An internet company also sued for the rights to broadcast it. At ADX Florence, McVeigh was housed in the same cell block as Ted Kaczynski, Luis Felipe and Ramzi Yousef. Ramzi made frequent, unsuccessful attempts to convert McVeigh to Islam.
McVeigh maintained an upbeat attitude, noting that even after his execution, the score would still be "168 to 1" and thus he was the victor. He also said:
I am sorry these people had to lose their lives. But that's the nature of the beast. It's understood going in what the human toll will be.
He said that if there turned out to be an afterlife, he would "improvise, adapt and overcome", noting that:
If there is a hell, then I'll be in good company with a lot of fighter pilots who also had to bomb innocents to win the war.
He also said:
I knew I wanted this before it happened. I knew my objective was state-assisted suicide and when it happens, it's in your face. You just did something you're trying to say should be illegal for medical personnel.
McVeigh dropped his remaining appeals, giving no reason for doing so. On January 16, 2001 the Federal Bureau of Prisons set May 16, 2001 as McVeigh's execution date. Six days prior to that date, the FBI turned over thousands of documents of evidence it had previously withheld to McVeigh's attorneys. As a result, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced McVeigh's execution would be stayed for one month. His execution date was set for June 11, 2001. He was executed by lethal injection at 7:14 a.m. on June 11, 2001, at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. McVeigh stated that his only regret was not completely leveling the federal building.
McVeigh invited California conductor/composer David Woodard to perform a pre-requiem (a Mass for those who are about to die), on the eve of his execution. He had also requested a Catholic chaplain.
McVeigh chose William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus" as his final statement.His last meal was two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. McVeigh was the first convicted criminal to be executed by the United States federal government since Victor Feguer in Iowa on March 15, 1963. Jay Sawyer, relative of one of the victims, noted, "Without saying a word, he got the final word." Larry Whicher, whose brother died in the attack, described McVeigh as having "A totally expressionless, blank stare. He had a look of defiance and that if he could, he'd do it all over again."
Congress passed special legislation to bar McVeigh from being buried in any military cemetery. His body was cremated at Mattox Ryan Funeral Home in Terre Haute. The cremated remains were given to his lawyer, who scattered them at an undisclosed location. McVeigh had earlier written that he considered having his ashes dropped at the site of the memorial where the Murrah building once stood, but decided that would be "too vengeful, too raw, cold." He had expressed willingness to donate organs, but was prohibited from doing so by prison regulations.
"Psychiatrist John Smith concluded that [McVeigh] was a decent person who had allowed rage to build up inside him to the point that he had lashed out in one terrible, violent act." – from a BBC story on McVeigh. McVeigh's IQ was assessed at 126.
Political and religious views
McVeigh's only known political affiliations were his voter registration with the Republican Party of New York when he lived in Buffalo, New York, and a membership in the National Rifle Association while in the military.
In a recorded interview with Time magazine McVeigh professed his belief in "a god", although he said he had "sort of lost touch with" Catholicism and "I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs." Throughout his childhood, he and his father were Roman Catholic and regularly attended daily Mass at Good Shepherd Church in Pendleton, New York. The Guardian reported that McVeigh wrote a letter to them claiming to be an agnostic and that he did not believe in a hell. McVeigh once said that he believed the universe was guided by natural law, energized by some universal higher power that showed each person right from wrong if they paid attention to what was going on inside them. He had also said, "Science is my religion."
Motivations for the bombing
McVeigh claimed that the bombing was revenge for "what the U.S. government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge." McVeigh visited Waco during the standoff, where he spoke to a news reporter about his anger over what was happening there.
McVeigh frequently quoted and alluded to the white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries. It described acts of terrorism similar to the one he carried out. While McVeigh openly rejected the book's racism (a roommate said that McVeigh was not a racist and was basically indifferent to racist matters),he claimed to appreciate its interest in firearms. Photocopies of pages sixty-one and sixty-two of The Turner Diaries were found in an envelope inside McVeigh's car. These pages depicted a fictitious mortar attack upon the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
In interviews before his execution, documented in American Terrorist, McVeigh stated he decapitated an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire on his first day in the war and celebrated. But he said he later was shocked to be ordered to execute surrendering prisoners and to see carnage on the road leaving Kuwait City after U.S. troops routed the Iraqi army. In interviews following the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh said he began harboring anti-government feelings during the Gulf War. In 1998, while in prison, McVeigh wrote an essay that criticized US foreign policy towards Iraq as being hypocritical:
The administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons (“weapons of mass destruction”) – mainly because they have used them in the past.
Well, if that’s the standard by which these matters are decided, then the U.S. is the nation that set the precedent. The U.S. has stockpiled these same weapons (and more) for over 40 years. The U.S. claims that this was done for deterrent purposes during the “Cold War” with the Soviet Union. Why, then is it invalid for Iraq to claim the same reason (deterrence) — with respect to Iraq’s (real) war with and the continued threat of, its neighbor Iran?
If Saddam is such a demon and people are calling for war crimes charges and trials against him and his nation, why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of “mass destruction” — like those responsible and involved in dropping bombs on the cities mentioned above.
The truth is, the U.S. has set the standard when it comes to the stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction.
McVeigh had contemplated suicide on many occasions. Anticipating that he would probably be caught and executed, he referred to the bombing as "state-assisted suicide".
Accomplices
This section does not cite any references or sources.
(Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.) In addition to McVeigh, Terry Nichols was convicted and sentenced in federal court to life in prison for his role in the crime. At Nichols' trial, evidence was presented indicating that others may have been involved. Several residents of central Kansas, including real estate agent Georgia Rucker and a retired Army NCO, testified at Terry Nichols' federal trial that they had seen two trucks at Geary State Lake, where prosecutors alleged the bomb was assembled. The retired NCO said he visited the lake on April 18, 1995, but left after a group of surly men looked at him aggressively. The operator of the Dreamland Motel testified that two Ryder trucks had been parked outside her Grandview Plaza motel where McVeigh stayed in Room 26 the weekend before the bombing. Testimony suggested that McVeigh may have had several other accomplices, but no other individuals have been indicted for the bombing.
An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) informant, Carolyn Howe, told reporters that shortly before the bombing she had warned her handlers that guests of Elohim City, Oklahoma were planning a major bombing attack. McVeigh was issued a speeding ticket there at the same time. Other than this speeding ticket, there is no evidence of a connection between McVeigh and members of the Midwest Bank Robbers at Elohim City.
In February 2004, the FBI announced it would review its investigation after learning that agents in the investigation of the Midwest Bank Robbers (an alleged Aryan-oriented gang) had turned up explosive caps of the same type that were used to trigger the Oklahoma City bomb. Agents expressed surprise that bombing investigators had not been provided information from the Midwest Bank Robbers investigation. McVeigh was given a one-week delay prior to his execution while evidence relating to the Bank Robbers' gang was presented to a court.
McVeigh declined further delays and maintained until his death that he had acted alone in the bombing.
Alternative theories
Jose Padilla
Conspiracy theorists have speculated that Jose Padilla was an accomplice of McVeigh, based on a resemblance between Padilla and police sketches of an Oklahoma City bombing suspect known as "John Doe No. 2" and the resemblance in name with Lana Padilla, the former wife of Terry Nichols. Asked about the alleged "John Doe No. 2", an FBI official was quoted as saying: "We couldn't find any evidence to indicate there was a John Doe 2 despite what people were saying," then asked specifically about a possible link with Padilla he reacted, "You're kidding, right?"
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Who is to Blame ? How soon we forget
I do not understand why the Obama administration is seen by the RIGHT as the creator of all this country has and is going through. We must remember that the bailouts started with the last administration. The Wall Street corruption, the Banking Bailouts, AIG, growing unemployment, Wars were all inherited. If not for the drastic actions of the Obama Administration that are seen by many as negligent we would be worst off today. To my recollection 2007-2008, was when the country was experiencing the start of the largest home foreclosures and of course it has trickeled down into 2009, as has unemployment. I remember when the United States was admired and liked by practically the world. We went to war with Iraq under falsified circumstances. I know Cheney (WAR MONGOR) assured the country Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction, or was it that George W. Bush had a score to settle with Saddam for the threats made by Saddam to the first George W.H., when in office. The country was assured that Saddam was affiliated with Osama BinLaden, affiliation never established. While the Bush Administration was so concerned with finding Saddam, BinLaden was planning further attacks on the United States like the one he was responsible for, 9-11-2001. If not for what is considered by many as senseless spending by the Obama Administration, today Jan 2010, we would be experiencing the worst GREAT DEPRESSION even worse than the " Great Depression of 1929 that continued into the 30's . As a Texan in Austin, I remember not one thing Bush did for this state. Seems as if Rick Perry, then Lt. Govenor was running the show while Bush was too busy campaigning for the Presidency. The man might have bunches of money but that has not made him smarter or classier. Though I do believe the former First Lady Laura Bush who I admire was the brain behind George Bush.
I am thankful for the Obama Administration for avoiding the demise of the USA, as we know it.
I believe Obama has done more in 12 month (productfully) than George Bush did in his rightfully first term and the stolen second term. We were left with the highest deficit ever in the history of the USA. We the Tax Payers are left with three wars many, many lifes lost on a senseless war. Washinghton is left with a fast growing Al Qaeda in the middle east that are being trained and exported to do us harm. As for the security failure of the would be BOMBER Christmas Day 2009, all measures implemented by the Bush administration were carried out, they spent billions on perfecting our security and when tested it failed.....So who do we blame ? Obama of course. I can still see Bush in a Helicopter flying over New Orleans after the Katrina disaster, never landing, never reassuring Louisiana. But when a hurricane hit Florida where his brother John E. Bush (JEB ) was Govenor he was there in a matter of hours, I do not comprehend the difference if someone does let me know. And now Dick Cheney is trash talking the Obama Administration, Who does he think he is......Yes he might of been the power behind President Bush, making all decisions, giving his company HALLIBURTON huge government contracts. Wish he would realize people are not stupid and stop the bullshit against the present administration. He and his daughter think they are the ones running this Administration, when he has proven what a failure he was in his own administration. And CONVICTED FELON LIDDY, should also bow his head and walk away, Go work for FOX, or maybe Co-Anchor with Comedian (9lives) Limbaugh. Take a vacation to Alaska with the Palins, or is he too trying to distant himself from the quitter Govenor.
My wish is that we all as Americans can come together and make it about us Americans and not divide ourselfs by party affiliation. There is things I do not agree with, with Washington but look at it this way the Stock Market is higher its been since 1996. Job loses are less, Retailers had a better season than expected. The Bailout beneficiaries are paying their debt to the government with a pretty hefty interest amount. Maybe we should go back to the CONTINENTAL CONSTITUTION, for those of you that don't know there was 14 presidents before George Washington. Each president served a one year term, until our present Constitution was written.
I am thankful for the Obama Administration for avoiding the demise of the USA, as we know it.
I believe Obama has done more in 12 month (productfully) than George Bush did in his rightfully first term and the stolen second term. We were left with the highest deficit ever in the history of the USA. We the Tax Payers are left with three wars many, many lifes lost on a senseless war. Washinghton is left with a fast growing Al Qaeda in the middle east that are being trained and exported to do us harm. As for the security failure of the would be BOMBER Christmas Day 2009, all measures implemented by the Bush administration were carried out, they spent billions on perfecting our security and when tested it failed.....So who do we blame ? Obama of course. I can still see Bush in a Helicopter flying over New Orleans after the Katrina disaster, never landing, never reassuring Louisiana. But when a hurricane hit Florida where his brother John E. Bush (JEB ) was Govenor he was there in a matter of hours, I do not comprehend the difference if someone does let me know. And now Dick Cheney is trash talking the Obama Administration, Who does he think he is......Yes he might of been the power behind President Bush, making all decisions, giving his company HALLIBURTON huge government contracts. Wish he would realize people are not stupid and stop the bullshit against the present administration. He and his daughter think they are the ones running this Administration, when he has proven what a failure he was in his own administration. And CONVICTED FELON LIDDY, should also bow his head and walk away, Go work for FOX, or maybe Co-Anchor with Comedian (9lives) Limbaugh. Take a vacation to Alaska with the Palins, or is he too trying to distant himself from the quitter Govenor.
My wish is that we all as Americans can come together and make it about us Americans and not divide ourselfs by party affiliation. There is things I do not agree with, with Washington but look at it this way the Stock Market is higher its been since 1996. Job loses are less, Retailers had a better season than expected. The Bailout beneficiaries are paying their debt to the government with a pretty hefty interest amount. Maybe we should go back to the CONTINENTAL CONSTITUTION, for those of you that don't know there was 14 presidents before George Washington. Each president served a one year term, until our present Constitution was written.
Send in the FOX News Clowns
"I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel."--Rupert Murdoch (Salon, 3/1/01)
Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of "liberal bias" in the media were part of "a strategy" (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."
But when Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable network, debuted in 1996, a curious thing happened: Instead of denouncing it, conservative politicians and activists lavished praise on the network. "If it hadn't been for Fox, I don't know what I'd have done for the news," Trent Lott gushed after the Florida election recount (Washington Post, 2/5/01). George W. Bush extolled Fox News Channel anchor Tony Snow--a former speechwriter for Bush's father--and his "impressive transition to journalism" in a specially taped April 2001 tribute to Snow's Sunday-morning show on its five-year anniversary (Washington Post, 5/7/01). The right-wing Heritage Foundation had to warn its staffers not to watch so much Fox News on their computers, because it was causing the think tank's system to crash.
When it comes to Fox News Channel, conservatives don't feel the need to "work the ref." The ref is already on their side. Since its 1996 launch, Fox has become a central hub of the conservative movement's well-oiled media machine. Together with the GOP organization and its satellite think tanks and advocacy groups, this network of fiercely partisan outlets--such as the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative talk-radio shows like Rush Limbaugh's--forms a highly effective right-wing echo chamber where GOP-friendly news stories can be promoted, repeated and amplified. Fox knows how to play this game better than anyone.
Yet, at the same time, the network bristles at the slightest suggestion of a conservative tilt. In fact, wrapping itself in slogans like "Fair and balanced" and "We report, you decide," Fox argues precisely the opposite: Far from being a biased network, Fox argues, it is the only unbiased network. So far, Fox's strategy of aggressive denial has worked surprisingly well; faced with its unblinking refusal to admit any conservative tilt at all, some commentators have simply acquiesced to the network's own self-assessment. FAIR has decided to take a closer look.
"Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment."--Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor, 3/23/01)
Fox's founder and president, Roger Ailes, was for decades one of the savviest and most pugnacious Republican political operatives in Washington, a veteran of the Nixon and Reagan campaigns. Ailes is most famous for his role in crafting the elder Bush's media strategy in the bruising 1988 presidential race. With Ailes' help, Bush turned a double-digit deficit in the polls into a resounding win by targeting the GOP's base of white male voters in the South and West, using red-meat themes like Michael Dukakis' "card-carrying" membership in the ACLU, his laissez-faire attitude toward flag-burning, his alleged indifference to the pledge of allegiance--and, of course, paroled felon Willie Horton.
Described by fellow Bush aide Lee Atwater as having "two speeds--attack and destroy," Ailes once jocularly told a Time reporter (8/22/88): "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it." Later, as a producer for Rush Limbaugh's short-lived TV show, he was fond of calling Bill Clinton the "hippie president" and lashing out at "liberal bigots" (Washington Times, 5/11/93). It is these two sensibilities above all--right-wing talk radio and below-the-belt political campaigning--that Ailes brought with him to Fox, and his stamp is evident in all aspects of the network's programming.
Fox daytime anchor David Asman is formerly of the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page and the conservative Manhattan Institute. The host of Fox News Sunday is Tony Snow, a conservative columnist and former chief speechwriter for the first Bush administration. Eric Breindel, previously the editorial-page editor of the right-wing New York Post, was senior vice president of Fox's parent company, News Corporation, until his death in 1998; Fox News Channel's senior vice president is John Moody, a long-time journalist known for his staunch conservative views.
Fox's managing editor is Brit Hume, a veteran TV journalist and contributor to the conservative American Spectator and Weekly Standard magazines. Its top-rated talkshow is hosted by Bill O'Reilly, a columnist for the conservative WorldNetDaily.com and a registered Republican (that is, until a week before the Washington Post published an article revealing his party registration--12/13/00).
The abundance of conservatives and Republicans at Fox News Channel does not seem to be a coincidence. In 1996, Andrew Kirtzman, a respected New York City cable news reporter, was interviewed for a job with Fox and says that management wanted to know what his political affiliation was. "They were afraid I was a Democrat," he told the Village Voice (10/15/96). When Kirtzman refused to tell Fox his party ID, "all employment discussion ended," according to the Voice.
Catherine Crier, who was perceived as one of Fox's most prestigious and credible early hires, was an elected Republican judge before starting a career in journalism. (Crier has since moved on to Court TV.) Pundit Mara Liasson--who is touted as an on-air "liberal" by Fox executives--sits on the board of the conservative human-rights group Freedom House; New York magazine (11/17/97) cited a Fox insider as saying that Liasson assured president Roger Ailes before being hired that she was a Republican.
"Who would be the most likely to cheat at cards-- Bill Clinton or Al Gore?"--Fox News Channel/Opinion Dynamics poll (5/00)
The most obvious sign of Fox's slant is its heavily right-leaning punditry. Each episode of Special Report with Brit Hume, for example, features a three-person panel of pundits who chat about the day's political news at the end of the show. The most frequent panelist is Fred Barnes, the evangelical Christian supply-sider who edits the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. He sits proudly on the rightward flank of the Republican party (and often scolds it for slouching leftwards).
The next most frequent guest is Mort Kondrake, who sits in the middle of the panel. Politically, Kondrake falls at the very rightward edge of the Democratic party-- if not beyond it. As he famously explained in a 1988 New Republic essay (8/29/88), he is a Democrat who is "disgusted with the Democratic Party" and whose main reason for not defecting to the Republicans is that they "have failed to be true to themselves as conservatives." (He was referring to Reagan's deficit spending.)
Rounding out the panel is its third-most-frequent pundit, Mara Liasson, who sits on the opposite side of the table from the conservative Barnes, implicitly identifying her as a liberal. But her liberalism consists of little more than being a woman who works for National Public Radio; she has proposed that "one of the roots of the problem with education today is feminism" (Talk of the Nation, 5/3/01); she declares that "Jesse Jackson gets away with a lot of things that other people don't" (Special Report, 6/21/00); she calls George W. Bush's reversal on carbon dioxide emissions "a small thing" (3/14/01), campaign finance reform "an issue that . . . only 200 people in America care about" (3/19/01) and slavery reparations "pretty much of a non-issue" (3/19/01).
Less frequent Special Report panelists include conservative Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon, centrist Fortune writer Jeff Birnbaum and NPR host Juan Williams. Williams, the only guest who could plausibly claim to be a liberal, was so outraged over attacks on his friend Clarence Thomas that he declared that "liberals have become monsters" (Washington Post, 10/10/91), denouncing the "so-called champions of fairness: liberal politicians, unions, civil rights groups and women's organizations." Indeed, Fox's crew of "liberal" pundits seems almost calculated to be either ineffective left-of-center advocates or conciliatory moderates. Ironically, perhaps the only Fox commentator who consistently presents a strong progressive perspective--that is, critical of corporate power and militarism, and sympathetic to progressive social movements--is FAIR founder Jeff Cohen, a weekly panelist on the weekend media show Fox News Watch.
Meanwhile, Barnes and Kondracke --the conservative Republican and conservative Democrat--make up the entire political spectrum on Fox's weekend political show, The Beltway Boys, where they are generally in agreement as they discuss the week's news.
Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game in which everyone knows which side is supposed to win.
On the right, co-host Sean Hannity is an effective and telegenic ideologue, a protégé of Newt Gingrich and a rising star of conservative talk radio who is perhaps more plugged into the GOP leadership than any media figure besides Rush Limbaugh (Hannity reportedly received "thunderous applause" when he spoke at a recent closed-door House Republican Conference meeting that is usually closed to the media--U.S. News & World Report, 5/7/01.)
On the left is Alan Colmes, a rather less telegenic former stand-up comic and radio host whose views are slightly left-of-center but who, as a personality, is completely off the radar screen of liberal politics. "I'm quite moderate," he told a reporter when asked to describe his politics (USA Today, 2/1/95). Hannity, a self-described "arch-conservative" (Electronic Media, 8/26/96), joined Fox when the network was started, and personally nominated Colmes to be his on-screen debating opponent (New York Times, 3/1/98). Before the selection was made, the show's working title was Hannity & Liberal to Be Determined--giving some idea of the relative weight each host carries, both on-screen and within the network. Fox sometimes sends a camera down to Hannity's radio studio during the network's daytime news programming, from which he holds forth on the news of the day. Needless to say, Colmes does not receive similar treatment.
"I think what's going on is the Democratic lawyers have flooded Florida. They are afraid of George W. Bush becoming president and instituting tort reform and their gravy train will be over. This is the trial association's full court press to make sure Bush does not win." --Fox News Channel anchor John Gibson (12/9/00)
Fox has had trouble at times hiding the partisanship of its main news personalities. In 1996, while already a Fox anchor, Tony Snow endorsed Bob Dole for president in the Republican National Committee magazine Rising Tide (New York, 11/17/97). A former speech-writer for the elder Bush, Snow often guest-hosts the Rush Limbaugh show and wrote an unabashedly conservative weekly newspaper column until Fox management recently pressured him to drop it to avoid the appearance of bias (Washington Post, 5/29/01).
At the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia, Snow--ostensibly present as a journalist covering a news event--jumped onstage to give a speech to the Republican Youth Caucus after organizers asked him to fill in for a speaker who couldn't make it. (He was later reprimanded by his bosses.) Trent Lott, whose speech directly followed Snow's, began with a cheer of "How about Tony Snow in 2008?" (New York Daily News 8/2/00; Federal News Service, 8/1/00).
Just three days earlier, near the GOP convention, Bill O'Reilly gave the keynote speech at David Horowitz's conservative "Restoration Weekend" event, where he was introduced by Republican congressmember Jack Quinn. Fox's Sean Hannity also spoke at the gathering, described by the Washington Times (6/30/00) as the "premiere political event for conservative thinkers." O'Reilly has had Horowitz on his show six times--to talk about everything from National Public Radio's "left" bias (12/20/00) to Hillary Clinton's "sense of entitlement" (6/22/00) to Horowitz's book on race relations, >Hating Whitey (10/4/99).
"There's a certain sameness to the news on the Big Three [networks] and CNN. . . . America is bad, corporations are bad, animal species should be protected, and every cop is a racist killer. That's where 'fair and balanced' [Fox's slogan] comes in. We don't think all corporations are bad, every forest should be saved, every government spending program is good. We're going to be more inquisitive."--John Moody, Fox News Channel's senior vice-president for news and editorial (Brill's Content, 10/99)
Some mainstream journalists have suggested that Fox's "straight news" is more or less balanced, however slanted its commentary might be. "A close monitoring of the channel over several weeks indicates that the news segments tend to be straightforward, with little hint of political subtext except for stories the news editors feel the 'mainstream' press has either downplayed or ignored," wrote Columbia Journalism Review's Neil Hickey (3-4/98). The fact that Fox's "chat consistently tilts to the conservative side," wrote the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz (2/5/01), "may cast an unwarranted cloud on the news reporting, which tends to be straightforward."
When a New York Times profile of Fox News ran with a headline calling it a "conservative cable channel" (9/18/00), the paper quickly corrected their "error" the following day, explaining that in "attributing a general political viewpoint to the network, the headline exceeded the facts in the article."
Putting aside the question of what genuine "balance" means, there are undoubtedly a few reporters in Fox's Washington bureau--such as White House correspondent Jim Angle--whose stories are more or less indistinguishable from those of their counterparts at the mainstream networks.
But an attentive viewer will notice that there are entire blocks of the network's programming schedule that are set aside for conservative stories. Fox's website offers a regular feature on "political correctness" entitled "Tongue-Tied: A Report From the Front Lines of the Culture Wars," whose logo is a scowling "PC Patrol" officer peering testily through a magnifying glass. It invites readers to write in and "keep us up on examples of PC excess you come across."
Recently the network debuted a weekly half-hour series--Only on Fox--devoted explicitly to right-wing stories. The concept of the show was explained by host Trace Gallagher in the premier episode (5/26/01):
Five years ago, Fox News Channel was launched on the idea that something was wrong with news media--that somehow, somewhere bias found its way into reporting. . . . And it's not just the way you tell a story that can get in the way of the truth. It's the stories you choose to tell. . . . Fox News Channel is committed to being fair and balanced in the coverage of the stories everybody is reporting--and to reporting stories you won't hear anywhere else. Stories you will see only on Fox.
Gallagher then introduced a series of stories about one conservative cause after another: from white firefighters suing Boston's fire department for discrimination, to sawmill workers endangered by Clinton-Gore environmental regulations (without comment from a single supporter of the rules), to property owners who feel threatened by an environmental agreement "signed by President Clinton in 1992." (The agreement was actually signed by George Bush the elder, who was president in 1992--though that didn't stop Fox from using news footage of a smiling Bill Clinton proudly signing an official document that was supposed to be, but wasn't, the environmental pact in question.)
Fox's news specials are equally slanted: Dangerous Places (3/25/01), a special about foreign policy hosted by Newt Gingrich; Heroes, an irregular series hosted by former Republican congressmember John Kasich; and The Real Reagan (11/25/99), a panel discussion on Ronald Reagan, hosted by Tony Snow, in which all six guests were Reagan friends and political aides. Vanishing Freedoms 2: Who Owns America (5/19/01) wandered off into militia-style paranoia, suggesting that the U.N. was "taking over" private property.
There is a formula to Fox's news agenda. "A lot of the people we have hired," Fox executive John Moody explained (Inside Media, 12/11/96) when the network was launched, "have come without the preconceptions of must-do news. There are stories we will sometimes forego in order to do stories we think are more significant. The biggest strength that we have is that Roger Ailes has allowed me to do that; to forego stores that would be 'duty' stories in order to focus on other things."
These "other" stories that Moody has in mind are what make up much of Fox's programming: An embarrassing story about Jesse Jackson's sex life. The latest political-correctness outrage on campus. A one-day mini-scandal about a Democratic senator. Much like talk radio, Fox picks up these tidbits from right-wing outlets like the Washington Times or the Drudge Report and runs with them.
To see how the formula works, consider the recent saga of right-wing activist David Horowitz and his "censored" anti-slavery reparations ad. When some college newspapers refused to carry the ad, and some campuses saw protests against it, the case instantly became a cause celebre on the right. It was the perfect story for Fox: The liberal academic establishment trampling on the free speech of a conservative who merely asked that his views be heard. Within less than a month, Horowitz was on nearly every major Fox show to discuss the issue. (See sidebar.)
Former CBS producer Don Dahler resigned from Fox after executive John Moody ordered him to change a story to play down statistics showing a lack of social progress among blacks. (Moody says the change was journalistically justified--New York, 11/17/97.) According to the Columbia Journalism Review (3-4/98), "several" former Fox employees "complained of 'management sticking their fingers' in the writing and editing of stories to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes." Said one: "I've worked at a lot of news organizations and never found that kind of manipulation."
Jed Duvall, a former veteran ABC reporter who left Fox after a year, told New York (11/17/97): "I'll never forget the morning that one producer came up to me, and, rubbing her hands like Uriah Heep, said, 'Let's have something on Whitewater today.' That sort of thing doesn't happen at a professional news organization." Indeed, Fox's signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume, was originally created as a daily one-hour update devoted to the 1998 Clinton sex scandal.
"In the D.C. bureau [at ABC], we always had to worry what the lead story would be in the New York Times, and God forbid if we didn't have that story. Now we don't care if we have that story." Stories favored by the journalistic establishment, Kim Hume says, are "all mushy, like AIDS, or all silly, like Head Start. They want to give publicity to people they think are doing good." --New York magazine(11/17/97) quoting Kim Hume, Fox News Channel Washington bureau chief
One of the most partisan features on Fox is a daily segment on Special Report called "The Political Grapevine." Billed as "the most scintillating two minutes in television," the Grapevine is a kind of right-wing hot-sheet. It features Brit Hume at the anchor's desk reading off a series of gossipy items culled from other, often right-wing, news outlets.
The key to the Grapevine is its story selection, and there is nothing subtle about it. Almost every item carries an unmistakable partisan message: Democrats, environmentalists and Hollywood liberals are the perennial villains (or the butts of the joke), while Republicans are shown either as targets of unfair attacks or heroes who can do no wrong. Political correctness run amok, the "liberal bias" of the mainstream media and the chicanery of civil rights groups all figure prominently.
When Rep. Patrick Kennedy tussled with airport security (3/21/01), Democrat Pete Stark used intemperate language (4/18/01) and California Gov. Gray Davis uttered a string of curse words (4/18/01), it made it onto the Grapevine. When the Sacramento Bee ran a series on the shortcomings of the big environmental groups, its findings earned a mention on the Grapevine (4/21/01). When it emerged that Al Gore booster Ben Affleck didn't bother to vote in last year's election, you heard about it on the Grapevine (4/25/01).
Republicans are treated differently. "Since [New York's] Rudolph Giuliani became the mayor," one item cheered (4/24/01), "the streets are cleaner and safer, and tourism reigns supreme in Times Square." When George W. Bush ordered men to wear a coat and tie to enter the Oval Office, Grapevine (5/14/01) noted that "his father had a similar reverence for the office," while "President Clinton used to come into the Oval Office in running shorts . . . and sometimes he did not remain fully clothed while he was there."
The success of the Grapevine has apparently inspired a spin-off on Fox's Sunday morning show. Fox News Sunday anchor Tony Snow recently inaugurated "Below the Fold," a weekly roundup of "unheralded political stories" that is basically identical to Grapevine, including the conservative spin. When one Below the Fold item (4/15/01) mentioned that Barbra Streisand was reportedly thinking of starting up "a cable TV network devoted exclusively to Democratic viewpoints," Snow couldn't resist adding that the singer came up with the idea "apparently believing such a thing doesn't exist already."
Fox News Channel is "not a conservative network!" roars Fox News Channel chairman Ailes. "I absolutely, totally deny it. . . . The fact is that Rupert [Murdoch] and I and, by the way, the vast majority of the American people, believe that most of the news tilts to the left," he says. Fox's mission is "to provide a little more balance to the news" and "to go cover some stories that the mainstream media won't cover."--Brill's Content (10/99) quoting Roger Ailes
To hear the network's bigwigs tell it, it's not Fox that's being biased when it puts conservative fare on heavy rotation. It's the "liberal media" that are biased when they fail to do so. Fox's entire editorial philosophy revolves around the idea that the mainstream media have a liberal bias that Fox is obligated to rectify.
In interviews, Ailes and other Fox executives often expound this philosophy, sometimes with bizarre results. Ailes once told the New York Times (10/7/96) that he and Fox executive John Moody had both noticed a pattern in the weekly newsmagazines: They often cover religion, "but it's always a story that beats up on Jesus." "They call him a cult figure of his time, some kind of crazy fool," Ailes continued. "And it's as if they go out and try to find evidence to trash him." Moody added that two recent Time and Newsweek articles on Jesus "really bordered on the sacrilegious."
But the core of Fox's critique is the notion that the mainstream media just don't tell the conservative side of the story. This is the premise Fox executives start from when they defend their own network: If Fox appears conservative, they argue, it's only because the country has grown so accustomed to the left-leaning media that a truly balanced network seems to lean right. "The reason you may believe it tips to the right is you're stunned at seeing so many conservatives," Ailes once told a reporter (Washington Post, 2/5/01).
But Ailes and his colleagues have trouble backing up these claims with actual facts. He's fond of calling Bob Novak the only conservative on CNN--"that's the only guy they hired that was to the right!" (Charlie Rose, 5/22/01) --but he ignores Tucker Carlson, Kate O'Beirne and Mary Matalin (who recently left for the White House), not to mention past conservative stars such as Lynne Cheney, Mona Charen, John Sununu and, of course, Pat Buchanan, perhaps the most right-wing figure in national politics and an 18-year veteran of Crossfire (minus the occasional hiatus to run for president).
According to Bill O'Reilly, Fox "gives voice to people who can't get on other networks. When was the last time you saw pro-life people [on other networks] unless they shot somebody?" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/10/01). O'Reilly's question is easily answered; in the last three years, the National Right to Life Committee's spokespeople have appeared on CNN 21 times (compared with 16 appearances for their main counterpart, the National Abortion Rights Action League).
In a 1999 Washington Post profile (3/26/99), Ailes offered another example. He said he was particularly proud of a three-part series on education that Fox had recently aired, which reported that "many educators believe self-esteem teaching is harmful" to students. "The mainstream media will never cover that story," Ailes told the Post. "I've seen 10,000 stories on education and I've never seen one that didn't say the federal government needed to spend more money on education."
But just weeks prior to Ailes' interview, CNN's weekly Newsstand series (2/28/99) aired a glowing profile of an upstate New York business executive who had turned around a troubled inner-city elementary school "by bringing the lessons of the boardroom into the classroom." CNN's report came complete with soundbites from a conservative education advocate ("the unions are a major impediment to education reform") and lines from host Jeff Greenfield like, "Critics have said that for decades, the public education system has behaved like an entrenched monopoly with little or no incentive to improve its performance." The piece would have warmed the heart of any conservative education reformer.
The difference between the two networks is that while such conservative-friendly fare airs on CNN some of the time, Fox has oriented its whole network around it. Contrary to what Ailes and other right-wing media critics say, the agenda of CNN and its fellow mainstream outlets is not liberal or conservative, but staunchly centrist. The perspectives they value most are those of the bipartisan establishment middle, the same views that make up the mainstream corporate consensus that media publishers and executives are themselves a part of. It's politicians who stake out centrist, pro-business positions within their parties who win the adulation of the Washington press corps, like John McCain and Joe Lieberman during the 2000 campaign. Both parties are constantly urged by the media to "move to the center."
Defenders of Fox might argue that its brand of conservative-tilted programming fills a void, since it represents a form of ideologically hard-edged news seldom seen in the centrist media. But the same point could be made on the other side of the spectrum: Just as conservative stories don't always make it onto CNN, neither do stories that matter to the left. A left-wing version of Fox might run frequent updates on the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, the dangers of depleted uranium weapons or the benefits of single-payer health care. That would contrast sharply with CNN--but it wouldn't justify calling CNN "right-wing" or "conservative." Fox's "leftist" accusations are equally unfounded.
At about the same time that Fox was taking a deep interest in the David Horowitz ad controversy, the Boston Globe refused to run an ad criticizing the office supply company Staples for its use of non-recycled paper. Though the Globe is arguably a more important venue for debate than any number of college papers, the case was not reported by either Fox or CNN. Indeed, until a FAIR letter-writing campaign forced the Globe ombudsman to address the issue (6/11/01), only one publication in the Nexis news database reported it at all (Sacramento Bee, 4/12/01).
"The media are not disposed toward Republican presidents--any Republican president--and really never have been." --Brit Hume, Fox News Channel managing editor (Washington Post, 9/25/00)
Fox is sometimes forced to juggle two identities--Republican and conservative--that are not always the same. A recent example was the standoff over the downed American spy plane in China. Following appearances on Special Report by conservatives William Kristol (4/9/01) and Fred Barnes (4/11/01), who were critical of Bush for his unexpectedly conciliatory handling of the crisis, Fox (4/13/01) was quick to run a slew of letters from outraged Republican viewers accusing the pundits of trying to "undermine a president of their own party." They "never cut him a bit of slack," one viewer wrote. "Who needs Dan Rather when you have Mr. Kristol to bring down our president?"
Fox's sensitivity to Republican complaints came into the open during the 2000 presidential campaign when Tony Snow was the target of a barrage of criticism from posters to the far-right website FreeRepublic.com, who accused him of being too negative about the Bush campaign in his columns and on Fox News Channel.
Snow responded to the Freepers, as the site's conservative contributors call themselves, with a long and detailed apologia, highlighting every pro-Bush aspect of his work in excruciating detail. Discussing his syndicated conservative column, he wrote:
I have found over the years that the best way to be friendly to any politician is to be honest. Having said that, I've hardly been hostile to Bush in recent columns. Yes, I have criticized him this year, but no serious reader could possibly believe Gore has gotten the best of the exchange.
Just check out the two most recent columns. A piece on "specifics" notes that Gore offers virtually no specifics to voters and the few he mentions are nuts. There's plenty of grist there for Bush fans and the Bush campaign. The most recent defends Bush in the Adam Clymer affair.
In response to a writer who was irate at a video clip showing a Bush gaffe, Snow replied: "Yes, we carried a Bush gaffe at the end. It was funny, not damaging to the candidate."
And perhaps most tellingly, he described the strategy he had recently used on Fox News Sunday (9/10/00) to interview a pair of guests about the presidential campaign-- the first an aide to Bill Clinton, the second the Republican governor of Pennsylvania:
1) We opened with a tough interview of John Podesta, taking Clinton to task for a series of things (including hate crimes legislation) and asking some tough questions about Gore's energy and health-care policies.
2) Tom Ridge came next. We tried to get him to fire away at Clinton/Gore corruption. He wouldn't do it. We tried to get him to urge a more openly conservative campaign by Bush. He wouldn't do it. If you have complaints about such matters, I suggest you write the Bush campaign, not Fox News Channel.
In other words, Snow admits he was trying to put the Democratic guest on the defensive about Clinton--while goading the Republican into playing offense against Clinton. (The episode is a perfect example of Fox's notion of balance: attacking Democrats and liberals on substance while challenging Repub-licans and conservatives only on tactics.) In closing the memo, Snow wrote, "Parting thoughts: I made fun of the United Nations." He concluded: "I have a hard time finding anything in that lineup that Freepers would consider treasonous."
"Fair and balanced, as always."--Fox News slogan
Some have suggested that Fox's conservative point of view and its Republican leanings render the network inherently unworthy as a news outlet. FAIR believes that view is misguided. The United States is unusual, perhaps even unique, in having a journalistic culture so fiercely wedded to the elusive notion of "objective" news (an idea of relatively recent historical vintage even in the U.S.). In Great Britain, papers like the conservative Times of London and the left-leaning Guardian deliver consistently excellent coverage while making no secret of their respective points of view. There's nothing keeping American journalists from doing the same.
If anything, it is partly the disingenuous claim to objectivity that is corroding the integrity of the news business. American journalists claim to represent all political views with an open mind, yet in practice a narrow bipartisan centrism excludes dissenting points of view: No major newspaper editorial page opposed NAFTA; virtually all endorse U.S. airstrikes on Iraq; and single-payer health care proposals find almost no backers among them.
With the ascendance of Fox News Channel, we now have a national conservative TV network in addition to the established centrist outlets. But like the mainstream networks, Fox refuses to admit its political point of view. The result is a skewed center-to-right media spectrum made worse by the refusal to acknowledge any tilt at all.
Fox could potentially represent a valuable contribution to the journalistic mix if it admitted it had a conservative point of view, if it beefed up its hard news and investigative coverage (and cut back on the tabloid sensationalism), and if there were an openly left-leaning TV news channel capable of balancing both Fox's conservatism and CNN's centrism.
None of these three things appears likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
SIDEBAR: Toeing the Line on Special Report
For some, the free market is a religion. That seems true for Fox News reporter Brit Hume, who has made no secret of what he thinks about the idea of caps on wholesale electricity prices in California. Hume commented on Fox (5/29/01) that "no one with an economics degree that I know" would support price caps for California.
In fact, 10 prominent mainstream economists wrote a letter to George W. Bush endorsing the idea. "We are mindful of the potential dangers of applying a simple price cap," they wrote (New York Times, 5/30/01). "But California's electricity markets are not characterized by effective competition." The letter added that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's "failure to act now will have dire consequences for the state of California." Paul Krugman, one of the country's most prominent economists, had by that point written six columns in the New York Times calling for energy price caps.
But on Fox, laissez-faire orthodoxy was enforced. When Jeff Birnbaum, Washington bureau chief of Fortune magazine and a frequent guest on Special Report with Brit Hume, suggested (5/29/01) that price caps "might help the blackouts through this summer," this view was rejected by both of the other panelists, Morton Kondracke and Bill Kristol. Hume, acting as moderator, derided Birnbaum for his deviation: "Did you ever have any economics in college? . . . There are books . . . that could help you."
A day later (5/30/01), Birnbaum came on the show to deliver what can only be described as a recantation: "I consulted my Economics 101, and I made a mistake last night when I spoke," he said. "Price caps are definitely the wrong economic answer. It could lead to a spreading energy gap and problem beyond California's borders and a long-term energy problem that would clearly be a serious political and substantive problem for the Bush administration."
"No apology required," was Hume's response. But one got the definite impression that toeing the ideological line is required on Special Report.
--Peter Hart
SIDEBAR:An Obsession That Only Goes So Far
One of Fox News Channel's favorite recent stories involved a newspaper ad that claimed African-Americans benefited from slavery, and owed America for the favor. The ad's author, conservative activist David Horowitz, claimed to be a victim of censorship and "political correctness" because a number of college newspapers refused to publish his ad, which argued against the idea of slavery reparations. Fox saw this as a major issue: Horowitz and his ad were mentioned at least 21 times on the network between March 6 and April 3.
On Fox News Sunday (3/25/01), the network's Sunday-morning equivalent of Meet the Press, interviews with Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Sen. Joseph Lieberman were incongruously followed by a segment featuring a largely unknown reparations activist and David Horowitz, in a Crossfire-style debate about Horowitz's rejected ad.
On Special Report with Brit Hume, the Horowitz ad became the subject of at least nine "Grapevine" items in less than a month. The ad was also the subject of Hume's lead question to conservative columnist John Leo when he appeared for a one-on-one interview (3/23/01). Afterward, Hume put the Horowitz issue to the show's all-star panel of pundits; all three pundits agreed that campus liberals were squelching debate. Mara Liasson argued that reparations are "pretty much of a non-issue" and Horowitz's ad was not "nearly as bad as the kind of hate speech you hear about in other cases," while Mort Kondracke explained that "there's nothing racist in this."
On Hannity & Colmes (3/26/01), the issue was: "Has David Horowitz's freedom of speech become a victim of political correctness?" On The O'Reilly Factor (3/6/01), it was Horowitz and host Bill O'Reilly interrogating a reparations activist from Mobile, Alabama. ("That's my tax money!" O'Reilly exclaimed.) The Edge with Paula Zahn brought Horowitz on three times within a month to discuss the same subject.
But there was one twist to the Horowitz story that Fox couldn't be bothered to report. When Horowitz's ad was offered to the Daily Princetonian in April, the paper ran it--along with an editorial (4/4/01) describing its ideas as racist and promising to donate the ad's proceeds to the local chapter of the Urban League. Horowitz, the free-speech crusader, refused to pay his bill unless the paper's editors publicly apologized for their hurtful words: "Its slanders contribute to the atmosphere of intolerance and hate towards conservatives," a statement from his office read.
Suddenly Fox lost interest in the Horowitz case. After a month of running twice-weekly updates about college papers that were refusing the ad, Special Report with Brit Hume ignored the Princeton episode. None of the network's major shows transcribed in the Nexis database reported Horowitz's tiff with the paper. No editor from the Princetonian was invited on The O'Reilly Factor to debate whether or not Horowitz was being a hypocrite. When their favorite free-speech martyr suddenly looked like a censor, it was a story Fox just didn't want to pursue.
--Seth Ackerman
See also the other two articles in FAIR's special report on Fox:
Fox's Slanted Sources: Conservatives, Republicans far outnumber others-- a comparison of Special Report with Brit Hume with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports.
Bill O'Reilly's Sheer O'Reillyness: Don't call him conservative-- but he is.
Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of "liberal bias" in the media were part of "a strategy" (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time."
But when Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable network, debuted in 1996, a curious thing happened: Instead of denouncing it, conservative politicians and activists lavished praise on the network. "If it hadn't been for Fox, I don't know what I'd have done for the news," Trent Lott gushed after the Florida election recount (Washington Post, 2/5/01). George W. Bush extolled Fox News Channel anchor Tony Snow--a former speechwriter for Bush's father--and his "impressive transition to journalism" in a specially taped April 2001 tribute to Snow's Sunday-morning show on its five-year anniversary (Washington Post, 5/7/01). The right-wing Heritage Foundation had to warn its staffers not to watch so much Fox News on their computers, because it was causing the think tank's system to crash.
When it comes to Fox News Channel, conservatives don't feel the need to "work the ref." The ref is already on their side. Since its 1996 launch, Fox has become a central hub of the conservative movement's well-oiled media machine. Together with the GOP organization and its satellite think tanks and advocacy groups, this network of fiercely partisan outlets--such as the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative talk-radio shows like Rush Limbaugh's--forms a highly effective right-wing echo chamber where GOP-friendly news stories can be promoted, repeated and amplified. Fox knows how to play this game better than anyone.
Yet, at the same time, the network bristles at the slightest suggestion of a conservative tilt. In fact, wrapping itself in slogans like "Fair and balanced" and "We report, you decide," Fox argues precisely the opposite: Far from being a biased network, Fox argues, it is the only unbiased network. So far, Fox's strategy of aggressive denial has worked surprisingly well; faced with its unblinking refusal to admit any conservative tilt at all, some commentators have simply acquiesced to the network's own self-assessment. FAIR has decided to take a closer look.
"Coming next, drug addicted pregnant women no longer have anything to fear from the authorities thanks to the Supreme Court. Both sides on this in a moment."--Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor, 3/23/01)
Fox's founder and president, Roger Ailes, was for decades one of the savviest and most pugnacious Republican political operatives in Washington, a veteran of the Nixon and Reagan campaigns. Ailes is most famous for his role in crafting the elder Bush's media strategy in the bruising 1988 presidential race. With Ailes' help, Bush turned a double-digit deficit in the polls into a resounding win by targeting the GOP's base of white male voters in the South and West, using red-meat themes like Michael Dukakis' "card-carrying" membership in the ACLU, his laissez-faire attitude toward flag-burning, his alleged indifference to the pledge of allegiance--and, of course, paroled felon Willie Horton.
Described by fellow Bush aide Lee Atwater as having "two speeds--attack and destroy," Ailes once jocularly told a Time reporter (8/22/88): "The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it." Later, as a producer for Rush Limbaugh's short-lived TV show, he was fond of calling Bill Clinton the "hippie president" and lashing out at "liberal bigots" (Washington Times, 5/11/93). It is these two sensibilities above all--right-wing talk radio and below-the-belt political campaigning--that Ailes brought with him to Fox, and his stamp is evident in all aspects of the network's programming.
Fox daytime anchor David Asman is formerly of the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page and the conservative Manhattan Institute. The host of Fox News Sunday is Tony Snow, a conservative columnist and former chief speechwriter for the first Bush administration. Eric Breindel, previously the editorial-page editor of the right-wing New York Post, was senior vice president of Fox's parent company, News Corporation, until his death in 1998; Fox News Channel's senior vice president is John Moody, a long-time journalist known for his staunch conservative views.
Fox's managing editor is Brit Hume, a veteran TV journalist and contributor to the conservative American Spectator and Weekly Standard magazines. Its top-rated talkshow is hosted by Bill O'Reilly, a columnist for the conservative WorldNetDaily.com and a registered Republican (that is, until a week before the Washington Post published an article revealing his party registration--12/13/00).
The abundance of conservatives and Republicans at Fox News Channel does not seem to be a coincidence. In 1996, Andrew Kirtzman, a respected New York City cable news reporter, was interviewed for a job with Fox and says that management wanted to know what his political affiliation was. "They were afraid I was a Democrat," he told the Village Voice (10/15/96). When Kirtzman refused to tell Fox his party ID, "all employment discussion ended," according to the Voice.
Catherine Crier, who was perceived as one of Fox's most prestigious and credible early hires, was an elected Republican judge before starting a career in journalism. (Crier has since moved on to Court TV.) Pundit Mara Liasson--who is touted as an on-air "liberal" by Fox executives--sits on the board of the conservative human-rights group Freedom House; New York magazine (11/17/97) cited a Fox insider as saying that Liasson assured president Roger Ailes before being hired that she was a Republican.
"Who would be the most likely to cheat at cards-- Bill Clinton or Al Gore?"--Fox News Channel/Opinion Dynamics poll (5/00)
The most obvious sign of Fox's slant is its heavily right-leaning punditry. Each episode of Special Report with Brit Hume, for example, features a three-person panel of pundits who chat about the day's political news at the end of the show. The most frequent panelist is Fred Barnes, the evangelical Christian supply-sider who edits the Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. He sits proudly on the rightward flank of the Republican party (and often scolds it for slouching leftwards).
The next most frequent guest is Mort Kondrake, who sits in the middle of the panel. Politically, Kondrake falls at the very rightward edge of the Democratic party-- if not beyond it. As he famously explained in a 1988 New Republic essay (8/29/88), he is a Democrat who is "disgusted with the Democratic Party" and whose main reason for not defecting to the Republicans is that they "have failed to be true to themselves as conservatives." (He was referring to Reagan's deficit spending.)
Rounding out the panel is its third-most-frequent pundit, Mara Liasson, who sits on the opposite side of the table from the conservative Barnes, implicitly identifying her as a liberal. But her liberalism consists of little more than being a woman who works for National Public Radio; she has proposed that "one of the roots of the problem with education today is feminism" (Talk of the Nation, 5/3/01); she declares that "Jesse Jackson gets away with a lot of things that other people don't" (Special Report, 6/21/00); she calls George W. Bush's reversal on carbon dioxide emissions "a small thing" (3/14/01), campaign finance reform "an issue that . . . only 200 people in America care about" (3/19/01) and slavery reparations "pretty much of a non-issue" (3/19/01).
Less frequent Special Report panelists include conservative Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon, centrist Fortune writer Jeff Birnbaum and NPR host Juan Williams. Williams, the only guest who could plausibly claim to be a liberal, was so outraged over attacks on his friend Clarence Thomas that he declared that "liberals have become monsters" (Washington Post, 10/10/91), denouncing the "so-called champions of fairness: liberal politicians, unions, civil rights groups and women's organizations." Indeed, Fox's crew of "liberal" pundits seems almost calculated to be either ineffective left-of-center advocates or conciliatory moderates. Ironically, perhaps the only Fox commentator who consistently presents a strong progressive perspective--that is, critical of corporate power and militarism, and sympathetic to progressive social movements--is FAIR founder Jeff Cohen, a weekly panelist on the weekend media show Fox News Watch.
Meanwhile, Barnes and Kondracke --the conservative Republican and conservative Democrat--make up the entire political spectrum on Fox's weekend political show, The Beltway Boys, where they are generally in agreement as they discuss the week's news.
Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game in which everyone knows which side is supposed to win.
On the right, co-host Sean Hannity is an effective and telegenic ideologue, a protégé of Newt Gingrich and a rising star of conservative talk radio who is perhaps more plugged into the GOP leadership than any media figure besides Rush Limbaugh (Hannity reportedly received "thunderous applause" when he spoke at a recent closed-door House Republican Conference meeting that is usually closed to the media--U.S. News & World Report, 5/7/01.)
On the left is Alan Colmes, a rather less telegenic former stand-up comic and radio host whose views are slightly left-of-center but who, as a personality, is completely off the radar screen of liberal politics. "I'm quite moderate," he told a reporter when asked to describe his politics (USA Today, 2/1/95). Hannity, a self-described "arch-conservative" (Electronic Media, 8/26/96), joined Fox when the network was started, and personally nominated Colmes to be his on-screen debating opponent (New York Times, 3/1/98). Before the selection was made, the show's working title was Hannity & Liberal to Be Determined--giving some idea of the relative weight each host carries, both on-screen and within the network. Fox sometimes sends a camera down to Hannity's radio studio during the network's daytime news programming, from which he holds forth on the news of the day. Needless to say, Colmes does not receive similar treatment.
"I think what's going on is the Democratic lawyers have flooded Florida. They are afraid of George W. Bush becoming president and instituting tort reform and their gravy train will be over. This is the trial association's full court press to make sure Bush does not win." --Fox News Channel anchor John Gibson (12/9/00)
Fox has had trouble at times hiding the partisanship of its main news personalities. In 1996, while already a Fox anchor, Tony Snow endorsed Bob Dole for president in the Republican National Committee magazine Rising Tide (New York, 11/17/97). A former speech-writer for the elder Bush, Snow often guest-hosts the Rush Limbaugh show and wrote an unabashedly conservative weekly newspaper column until Fox management recently pressured him to drop it to avoid the appearance of bias (Washington Post, 5/29/01).
At the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia, Snow--ostensibly present as a journalist covering a news event--jumped onstage to give a speech to the Republican Youth Caucus after organizers asked him to fill in for a speaker who couldn't make it. (He was later reprimanded by his bosses.) Trent Lott, whose speech directly followed Snow's, began with a cheer of "How about Tony Snow in 2008?" (New York Daily News 8/2/00; Federal News Service, 8/1/00).
Just three days earlier, near the GOP convention, Bill O'Reilly gave the keynote speech at David Horowitz's conservative "Restoration Weekend" event, where he was introduced by Republican congressmember Jack Quinn. Fox's Sean Hannity also spoke at the gathering, described by the Washington Times (6/30/00) as the "premiere political event for conservative thinkers." O'Reilly has had Horowitz on his show six times--to talk about everything from National Public Radio's "left" bias (12/20/00) to Hillary Clinton's "sense of entitlement" (6/22/00) to Horowitz's book on race relations, >Hating Whitey (10/4/99).
"There's a certain sameness to the news on the Big Three [networks] and CNN. . . . America is bad, corporations are bad, animal species should be protected, and every cop is a racist killer. That's where 'fair and balanced' [Fox's slogan] comes in. We don't think all corporations are bad, every forest should be saved, every government spending program is good. We're going to be more inquisitive."--John Moody, Fox News Channel's senior vice-president for news and editorial (Brill's Content, 10/99)
Some mainstream journalists have suggested that Fox's "straight news" is more or less balanced, however slanted its commentary might be. "A close monitoring of the channel over several weeks indicates that the news segments tend to be straightforward, with little hint of political subtext except for stories the news editors feel the 'mainstream' press has either downplayed or ignored," wrote Columbia Journalism Review's Neil Hickey (3-4/98). The fact that Fox's "chat consistently tilts to the conservative side," wrote the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz (2/5/01), "may cast an unwarranted cloud on the news reporting, which tends to be straightforward."
When a New York Times profile of Fox News ran with a headline calling it a "conservative cable channel" (9/18/00), the paper quickly corrected their "error" the following day, explaining that in "attributing a general political viewpoint to the network, the headline exceeded the facts in the article."
Putting aside the question of what genuine "balance" means, there are undoubtedly a few reporters in Fox's Washington bureau--such as White House correspondent Jim Angle--whose stories are more or less indistinguishable from those of their counterparts at the mainstream networks.
But an attentive viewer will notice that there are entire blocks of the network's programming schedule that are set aside for conservative stories. Fox's website offers a regular feature on "political correctness" entitled "Tongue-Tied: A Report From the Front Lines of the Culture Wars," whose logo is a scowling "PC Patrol" officer peering testily through a magnifying glass. It invites readers to write in and "keep us up on examples of PC excess you come across."
Recently the network debuted a weekly half-hour series--Only on Fox--devoted explicitly to right-wing stories. The concept of the show was explained by host Trace Gallagher in the premier episode (5/26/01):
Five years ago, Fox News Channel was launched on the idea that something was wrong with news media--that somehow, somewhere bias found its way into reporting. . . . And it's not just the way you tell a story that can get in the way of the truth. It's the stories you choose to tell. . . . Fox News Channel is committed to being fair and balanced in the coverage of the stories everybody is reporting--and to reporting stories you won't hear anywhere else. Stories you will see only on Fox.
Gallagher then introduced a series of stories about one conservative cause after another: from white firefighters suing Boston's fire department for discrimination, to sawmill workers endangered by Clinton-Gore environmental regulations (without comment from a single supporter of the rules), to property owners who feel threatened by an environmental agreement "signed by President Clinton in 1992." (The agreement was actually signed by George Bush the elder, who was president in 1992--though that didn't stop Fox from using news footage of a smiling Bill Clinton proudly signing an official document that was supposed to be, but wasn't, the environmental pact in question.)
Fox's news specials are equally slanted: Dangerous Places (3/25/01), a special about foreign policy hosted by Newt Gingrich; Heroes, an irregular series hosted by former Republican congressmember John Kasich; and The Real Reagan (11/25/99), a panel discussion on Ronald Reagan, hosted by Tony Snow, in which all six guests were Reagan friends and political aides. Vanishing Freedoms 2: Who Owns America (5/19/01) wandered off into militia-style paranoia, suggesting that the U.N. was "taking over" private property.
There is a formula to Fox's news agenda. "A lot of the people we have hired," Fox executive John Moody explained (Inside Media, 12/11/96) when the network was launched, "have come without the preconceptions of must-do news. There are stories we will sometimes forego in order to do stories we think are more significant. The biggest strength that we have is that Roger Ailes has allowed me to do that; to forego stores that would be 'duty' stories in order to focus on other things."
These "other" stories that Moody has in mind are what make up much of Fox's programming: An embarrassing story about Jesse Jackson's sex life. The latest political-correctness outrage on campus. A one-day mini-scandal about a Democratic senator. Much like talk radio, Fox picks up these tidbits from right-wing outlets like the Washington Times or the Drudge Report and runs with them.
To see how the formula works, consider the recent saga of right-wing activist David Horowitz and his "censored" anti-slavery reparations ad. When some college newspapers refused to carry the ad, and some campuses saw protests against it, the case instantly became a cause celebre on the right. It was the perfect story for Fox: The liberal academic establishment trampling on the free speech of a conservative who merely asked that his views be heard. Within less than a month, Horowitz was on nearly every major Fox show to discuss the issue. (See sidebar.)
Former CBS producer Don Dahler resigned from Fox after executive John Moody ordered him to change a story to play down statistics showing a lack of social progress among blacks. (Moody says the change was journalistically justified--New York, 11/17/97.) According to the Columbia Journalism Review (3-4/98), "several" former Fox employees "complained of 'management sticking their fingers' in the writing and editing of stories to cook the facts to make a story more palatable to right-of-center tastes." Said one: "I've worked at a lot of news organizations and never found that kind of manipulation."
Jed Duvall, a former veteran ABC reporter who left Fox after a year, told New York (11/17/97): "I'll never forget the morning that one producer came up to me, and, rubbing her hands like Uriah Heep, said, 'Let's have something on Whitewater today.' That sort of thing doesn't happen at a professional news organization." Indeed, Fox's signature political news show, Special Report with Brit Hume, was originally created as a daily one-hour update devoted to the 1998 Clinton sex scandal.
"In the D.C. bureau [at ABC], we always had to worry what the lead story would be in the New York Times, and God forbid if we didn't have that story. Now we don't care if we have that story." Stories favored by the journalistic establishment, Kim Hume says, are "all mushy, like AIDS, or all silly, like Head Start. They want to give publicity to people they think are doing good." --New York magazine(11/17/97) quoting Kim Hume, Fox News Channel Washington bureau chief
One of the most partisan features on Fox is a daily segment on Special Report called "The Political Grapevine." Billed as "the most scintillating two minutes in television," the Grapevine is a kind of right-wing hot-sheet. It features Brit Hume at the anchor's desk reading off a series of gossipy items culled from other, often right-wing, news outlets.
The key to the Grapevine is its story selection, and there is nothing subtle about it. Almost every item carries an unmistakable partisan message: Democrats, environmentalists and Hollywood liberals are the perennial villains (or the butts of the joke), while Republicans are shown either as targets of unfair attacks or heroes who can do no wrong. Political correctness run amok, the "liberal bias" of the mainstream media and the chicanery of civil rights groups all figure prominently.
When Rep. Patrick Kennedy tussled with airport security (3/21/01), Democrat Pete Stark used intemperate language (4/18/01) and California Gov. Gray Davis uttered a string of curse words (4/18/01), it made it onto the Grapevine. When the Sacramento Bee ran a series on the shortcomings of the big environmental groups, its findings earned a mention on the Grapevine (4/21/01). When it emerged that Al Gore booster Ben Affleck didn't bother to vote in last year's election, you heard about it on the Grapevine (4/25/01).
Republicans are treated differently. "Since [New York's] Rudolph Giuliani became the mayor," one item cheered (4/24/01), "the streets are cleaner and safer, and tourism reigns supreme in Times Square." When George W. Bush ordered men to wear a coat and tie to enter the Oval Office, Grapevine (5/14/01) noted that "his father had a similar reverence for the office," while "President Clinton used to come into the Oval Office in running shorts . . . and sometimes he did not remain fully clothed while he was there."
The success of the Grapevine has apparently inspired a spin-off on Fox's Sunday morning show. Fox News Sunday anchor Tony Snow recently inaugurated "Below the Fold," a weekly roundup of "unheralded political stories" that is basically identical to Grapevine, including the conservative spin. When one Below the Fold item (4/15/01) mentioned that Barbra Streisand was reportedly thinking of starting up "a cable TV network devoted exclusively to Democratic viewpoints," Snow couldn't resist adding that the singer came up with the idea "apparently believing such a thing doesn't exist already."
Fox News Channel is "not a conservative network!" roars Fox News Channel chairman Ailes. "I absolutely, totally deny it. . . . The fact is that Rupert [Murdoch] and I and, by the way, the vast majority of the American people, believe that most of the news tilts to the left," he says. Fox's mission is "to provide a little more balance to the news" and "to go cover some stories that the mainstream media won't cover."--Brill's Content (10/99) quoting Roger Ailes
To hear the network's bigwigs tell it, it's not Fox that's being biased when it puts conservative fare on heavy rotation. It's the "liberal media" that are biased when they fail to do so. Fox's entire editorial philosophy revolves around the idea that the mainstream media have a liberal bias that Fox is obligated to rectify.
In interviews, Ailes and other Fox executives often expound this philosophy, sometimes with bizarre results. Ailes once told the New York Times (10/7/96) that he and Fox executive John Moody had both noticed a pattern in the weekly newsmagazines: They often cover religion, "but it's always a story that beats up on Jesus." "They call him a cult figure of his time, some kind of crazy fool," Ailes continued. "And it's as if they go out and try to find evidence to trash him." Moody added that two recent Time and Newsweek articles on Jesus "really bordered on the sacrilegious."
But the core of Fox's critique is the notion that the mainstream media just don't tell the conservative side of the story. This is the premise Fox executives start from when they defend their own network: If Fox appears conservative, they argue, it's only because the country has grown so accustomed to the left-leaning media that a truly balanced network seems to lean right. "The reason you may believe it tips to the right is you're stunned at seeing so many conservatives," Ailes once told a reporter (Washington Post, 2/5/01).
But Ailes and his colleagues have trouble backing up these claims with actual facts. He's fond of calling Bob Novak the only conservative on CNN--"that's the only guy they hired that was to the right!" (Charlie Rose, 5/22/01) --but he ignores Tucker Carlson, Kate O'Beirne and Mary Matalin (who recently left for the White House), not to mention past conservative stars such as Lynne Cheney, Mona Charen, John Sununu and, of course, Pat Buchanan, perhaps the most right-wing figure in national politics and an 18-year veteran of Crossfire (minus the occasional hiatus to run for president).
According to Bill O'Reilly, Fox "gives voice to people who can't get on other networks. When was the last time you saw pro-life people [on other networks] unless they shot somebody?" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/10/01). O'Reilly's question is easily answered; in the last three years, the National Right to Life Committee's spokespeople have appeared on CNN 21 times (compared with 16 appearances for their main counterpart, the National Abortion Rights Action League).
In a 1999 Washington Post profile (3/26/99), Ailes offered another example. He said he was particularly proud of a three-part series on education that Fox had recently aired, which reported that "many educators believe self-esteem teaching is harmful" to students. "The mainstream media will never cover that story," Ailes told the Post. "I've seen 10,000 stories on education and I've never seen one that didn't say the federal government needed to spend more money on education."
But just weeks prior to Ailes' interview, CNN's weekly Newsstand series (2/28/99) aired a glowing profile of an upstate New York business executive who had turned around a troubled inner-city elementary school "by bringing the lessons of the boardroom into the classroom." CNN's report came complete with soundbites from a conservative education advocate ("the unions are a major impediment to education reform") and lines from host Jeff Greenfield like, "Critics have said that for decades, the public education system has behaved like an entrenched monopoly with little or no incentive to improve its performance." The piece would have warmed the heart of any conservative education reformer.
The difference between the two networks is that while such conservative-friendly fare airs on CNN some of the time, Fox has oriented its whole network around it. Contrary to what Ailes and other right-wing media critics say, the agenda of CNN and its fellow mainstream outlets is not liberal or conservative, but staunchly centrist. The perspectives they value most are those of the bipartisan establishment middle, the same views that make up the mainstream corporate consensus that media publishers and executives are themselves a part of. It's politicians who stake out centrist, pro-business positions within their parties who win the adulation of the Washington press corps, like John McCain and Joe Lieberman during the 2000 campaign. Both parties are constantly urged by the media to "move to the center."
Defenders of Fox might argue that its brand of conservative-tilted programming fills a void, since it represents a form of ideologically hard-edged news seldom seen in the centrist media. But the same point could be made on the other side of the spectrum: Just as conservative stories don't always make it onto CNN, neither do stories that matter to the left. A left-wing version of Fox might run frequent updates on the Mumia Abu-Jamal case, the dangers of depleted uranium weapons or the benefits of single-payer health care. That would contrast sharply with CNN--but it wouldn't justify calling CNN "right-wing" or "conservative." Fox's "leftist" accusations are equally unfounded.
At about the same time that Fox was taking a deep interest in the David Horowitz ad controversy, the Boston Globe refused to run an ad criticizing the office supply company Staples for its use of non-recycled paper. Though the Globe is arguably a more important venue for debate than any number of college papers, the case was not reported by either Fox or CNN. Indeed, until a FAIR letter-writing campaign forced the Globe ombudsman to address the issue (6/11/01), only one publication in the Nexis news database reported it at all (Sacramento Bee, 4/12/01).
"The media are not disposed toward Republican presidents--any Republican president--and really never have been." --Brit Hume, Fox News Channel managing editor (Washington Post, 9/25/00)
Fox is sometimes forced to juggle two identities--Republican and conservative--that are not always the same. A recent example was the standoff over the downed American spy plane in China. Following appearances on Special Report by conservatives William Kristol (4/9/01) and Fred Barnes (4/11/01), who were critical of Bush for his unexpectedly conciliatory handling of the crisis, Fox (4/13/01) was quick to run a slew of letters from outraged Republican viewers accusing the pundits of trying to "undermine a president of their own party." They "never cut him a bit of slack," one viewer wrote. "Who needs Dan Rather when you have Mr. Kristol to bring down our president?"
Fox's sensitivity to Republican complaints came into the open during the 2000 presidential campaign when Tony Snow was the target of a barrage of criticism from posters to the far-right website FreeRepublic.com, who accused him of being too negative about the Bush campaign in his columns and on Fox News Channel.
Snow responded to the Freepers, as the site's conservative contributors call themselves, with a long and detailed apologia, highlighting every pro-Bush aspect of his work in excruciating detail. Discussing his syndicated conservative column, he wrote:
I have found over the years that the best way to be friendly to any politician is to be honest. Having said that, I've hardly been hostile to Bush in recent columns. Yes, I have criticized him this year, but no serious reader could possibly believe Gore has gotten the best of the exchange.
Just check out the two most recent columns. A piece on "specifics" notes that Gore offers virtually no specifics to voters and the few he mentions are nuts. There's plenty of grist there for Bush fans and the Bush campaign. The most recent defends Bush in the Adam Clymer affair.
In response to a writer who was irate at a video clip showing a Bush gaffe, Snow replied: "Yes, we carried a Bush gaffe at the end. It was funny, not damaging to the candidate."
And perhaps most tellingly, he described the strategy he had recently used on Fox News Sunday (9/10/00) to interview a pair of guests about the presidential campaign-- the first an aide to Bill Clinton, the second the Republican governor of Pennsylvania:
1) We opened with a tough interview of John Podesta, taking Clinton to task for a series of things (including hate crimes legislation) and asking some tough questions about Gore's energy and health-care policies.
2) Tom Ridge came next. We tried to get him to fire away at Clinton/Gore corruption. He wouldn't do it. We tried to get him to urge a more openly conservative campaign by Bush. He wouldn't do it. If you have complaints about such matters, I suggest you write the Bush campaign, not Fox News Channel.
In other words, Snow admits he was trying to put the Democratic guest on the defensive about Clinton--while goading the Republican into playing offense against Clinton. (The episode is a perfect example of Fox's notion of balance: attacking Democrats and liberals on substance while challenging Repub-licans and conservatives only on tactics.) In closing the memo, Snow wrote, "Parting thoughts: I made fun of the United Nations." He concluded: "I have a hard time finding anything in that lineup that Freepers would consider treasonous."
"Fair and balanced, as always."--Fox News slogan
Some have suggested that Fox's conservative point of view and its Republican leanings render the network inherently unworthy as a news outlet. FAIR believes that view is misguided. The United States is unusual, perhaps even unique, in having a journalistic culture so fiercely wedded to the elusive notion of "objective" news (an idea of relatively recent historical vintage even in the U.S.). In Great Britain, papers like the conservative Times of London and the left-leaning Guardian deliver consistently excellent coverage while making no secret of their respective points of view. There's nothing keeping American journalists from doing the same.
If anything, it is partly the disingenuous claim to objectivity that is corroding the integrity of the news business. American journalists claim to represent all political views with an open mind, yet in practice a narrow bipartisan centrism excludes dissenting points of view: No major newspaper editorial page opposed NAFTA; virtually all endorse U.S. airstrikes on Iraq; and single-payer health care proposals find almost no backers among them.
With the ascendance of Fox News Channel, we now have a national conservative TV network in addition to the established centrist outlets. But like the mainstream networks, Fox refuses to admit its political point of view. The result is a skewed center-to-right media spectrum made worse by the refusal to acknowledge any tilt at all.
Fox could potentially represent a valuable contribution to the journalistic mix if it admitted it had a conservative point of view, if it beefed up its hard news and investigative coverage (and cut back on the tabloid sensationalism), and if there were an openly left-leaning TV news channel capable of balancing both Fox's conservatism and CNN's centrism.
None of these three things appears likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
SIDEBAR: Toeing the Line on Special Report
For some, the free market is a religion. That seems true for Fox News reporter Brit Hume, who has made no secret of what he thinks about the idea of caps on wholesale electricity prices in California. Hume commented on Fox (5/29/01) that "no one with an economics degree that I know" would support price caps for California.
In fact, 10 prominent mainstream economists wrote a letter to George W. Bush endorsing the idea. "We are mindful of the potential dangers of applying a simple price cap," they wrote (New York Times, 5/30/01). "But California's electricity markets are not characterized by effective competition." The letter added that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's "failure to act now will have dire consequences for the state of California." Paul Krugman, one of the country's most prominent economists, had by that point written six columns in the New York Times calling for energy price caps.
But on Fox, laissez-faire orthodoxy was enforced. When Jeff Birnbaum, Washington bureau chief of Fortune magazine and a frequent guest on Special Report with Brit Hume, suggested (5/29/01) that price caps "might help the blackouts through this summer," this view was rejected by both of the other panelists, Morton Kondracke and Bill Kristol. Hume, acting as moderator, derided Birnbaum for his deviation: "Did you ever have any economics in college? . . . There are books . . . that could help you."
A day later (5/30/01), Birnbaum came on the show to deliver what can only be described as a recantation: "I consulted my Economics 101, and I made a mistake last night when I spoke," he said. "Price caps are definitely the wrong economic answer. It could lead to a spreading energy gap and problem beyond California's borders and a long-term energy problem that would clearly be a serious political and substantive problem for the Bush administration."
"No apology required," was Hume's response. But one got the definite impression that toeing the ideological line is required on Special Report.
--Peter Hart
SIDEBAR:An Obsession That Only Goes So Far
One of Fox News Channel's favorite recent stories involved a newspaper ad that claimed African-Americans benefited from slavery, and owed America for the favor. The ad's author, conservative activist David Horowitz, claimed to be a victim of censorship and "political correctness" because a number of college newspapers refused to publish his ad, which argued against the idea of slavery reparations. Fox saw this as a major issue: Horowitz and his ad were mentioned at least 21 times on the network between March 6 and April 3.
On Fox News Sunday (3/25/01), the network's Sunday-morning equivalent of Meet the Press, interviews with Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Sen. Joseph Lieberman were incongruously followed by a segment featuring a largely unknown reparations activist and David Horowitz, in a Crossfire-style debate about Horowitz's rejected ad.
On Special Report with Brit Hume, the Horowitz ad became the subject of at least nine "Grapevine" items in less than a month. The ad was also the subject of Hume's lead question to conservative columnist John Leo when he appeared for a one-on-one interview (3/23/01). Afterward, Hume put the Horowitz issue to the show's all-star panel of pundits; all three pundits agreed that campus liberals were squelching debate. Mara Liasson argued that reparations are "pretty much of a non-issue" and Horowitz's ad was not "nearly as bad as the kind of hate speech you hear about in other cases," while Mort Kondracke explained that "there's nothing racist in this."
On Hannity & Colmes (3/26/01), the issue was: "Has David Horowitz's freedom of speech become a victim of political correctness?" On The O'Reilly Factor (3/6/01), it was Horowitz and host Bill O'Reilly interrogating a reparations activist from Mobile, Alabama. ("That's my tax money!" O'Reilly exclaimed.) The Edge with Paula Zahn brought Horowitz on three times within a month to discuss the same subject.
But there was one twist to the Horowitz story that Fox couldn't be bothered to report. When Horowitz's ad was offered to the Daily Princetonian in April, the paper ran it--along with an editorial (4/4/01) describing its ideas as racist and promising to donate the ad's proceeds to the local chapter of the Urban League. Horowitz, the free-speech crusader, refused to pay his bill unless the paper's editors publicly apologized for their hurtful words: "Its slanders contribute to the atmosphere of intolerance and hate towards conservatives," a statement from his office read.
Suddenly Fox lost interest in the Horowitz case. After a month of running twice-weekly updates about college papers that were refusing the ad, Special Report with Brit Hume ignored the Princeton episode. None of the network's major shows transcribed in the Nexis database reported Horowitz's tiff with the paper. No editor from the Princetonian was invited on The O'Reilly Factor to debate whether or not Horowitz was being a hypocrite. When their favorite free-speech martyr suddenly looked like a censor, it was a story Fox just didn't want to pursue.
--Seth Ackerman
See also the other two articles in FAIR's special report on Fox:
Fox's Slanted Sources: Conservatives, Republicans far outnumber others-- a comparison of Special Report with Brit Hume with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports.
Bill O'Reilly's Sheer O'Reillyness: Don't call him conservative-- but he is.
The truth on the Recession starting in 2007
Between December 2007 (when the recession officially began) and last month, more than 8 million Americans have lost their jobs, according to the government. Of those job losses, 700,000 stem from layoffs at just 25 companies, according to 24/7 Wall Street's analysis of data from employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Certain industries figure prominently on this list of layoff kings. The auto industry, for example, is estimated to have cut nearly 200,000 jobs in the U.S. since 2006. The industry's union, the United Auto Workers, has been able to preserve blue collar jobs in the industry for decades, but the recession and foreign competition have proven too formidable for the union to fight against.
The financial services sector is another culprit. The financial meltdown forced some banks to close (Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns) and others to be acquired (Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual), leaving hundreds of bankers, brokers and assistants without jobs.
A growing number of unemployed workers translated into slower sales of consumer products and the materials used to make them. Companies that turn commodities into finished products, such as Alcoa, DuPont and Dow Chemical, have felt the pressure of that shrinking spending. Each have been squeezed as prices for their end products fell by more than the underlying prices of raw materials, such as metals and chemicals.
Drugmakers have been facing another set of issues. Many have blockbuster drugs that either lost patent protection or will soon, opening the door for cheaper, copycat generics. The research and development efforts at the big pharmaceutical firms have largely been unable to create a new pipeline of billion-dollar drugs to replace those sales, resulting in cuts in both sales and R&D workers.
The recession is supposed to be over. But with unemployment at nearly 10% and long-term unemployment at an 80-year high, there's not much evidence that the downturn has ended. In fact, after a brief flirtation with recovery earlier this year, more signs are showing that the economy is worsening again. So while large-scale layoffs -- those in which a single company cuts thousands or tens of thousands of workers -- may be over, another deep recession may unfortunately lead to a repeat of the trend.
1. General Motors
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 107,357
The entire auto industry felt the pain of the recession -- U.S. car sales dropped from an average 16 million a year in 2005 to 11 million in 2009. GM was especially hard hit, forcing it to cut tens of thousands of workers. The largest layoffs came in February 2009, when the company let go of 50,000 people -- almost 20% of its workforce. Those cuts, however, weren't enough to keep the company solvent. GM ended up filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection four months later.
2. Citigroup (C)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 73,056
In October 2008, a desperate Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citi, said the financial firm had no alternative than to cut 50,000 jobs as part of a plan to knock down expenses by 20%. The bank was reeling from subprime mortgage losses that had driven its stock down from $35 to under $4 in less than a year. Lehman Brothers had just collapsed, and investors holding shares in America's largest banks were in a panic. Pandit began the downsizing process earlier in 2008 after severe criticism that his predecessor Chuck Prince had allowed Citi to become bloated with expenses.
3. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 47,540
The huge jobs cuts at HP will always be known at the Mark Hurd firings. Hurd, himself, was let go earlier this month. Much of Hurd's success at HP was based on cost-cutting. Previous CEO Carly Fiorina sharply expanded the company's employee and cost base with the acquisition of Compaq. The new CEO bought info-tech consulting firm EDS in 2008 and decided to dismiss 24,600 "redundant" employees. The world's largest tech company also let go almost 6,000 workers in 2009 as it combined two divisions and 9,000 in its struggling enterprise services operation in June.
4. Circuit City Stores
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 41,495
Circuit City slowly succumbed to pricing pressure and competition from both Best Buy and Wal-Mart. It began with aggressive layoffs in 2007 and completely shut its doors in 2009, bringing total layoffs to more than 40,000 after it closed 567 stores.
5. Merrill Lynch
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 40,650
In early 2008, the investment bank and brokerage cut 15% of its workforce as the credit crisis gripped the sector and the company's earnings dropped. When Bank of America (BAC) took over Merrill at the end of 2008, it announced that another 30,000 people would be out of work -- some of whom worked at Merrill and others at Bank of America.
6. Verizon Wireless (VZ)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 39,000
Verizon Wireless laid off a large number of employees after it bought Alltel in 2009. While the move was more about consolidating costs than about the recession, it couldn't have come at a worse time for the thousands of workers who found themselves without jobs.
7. Pfizer (PFE)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 31,771
Pfizer suffered from a slowdown in sales after many of its drugs went off patent and generic-drug companies poached sales. The drugmaker was forced to cut R&D spending and pare the size of its sales force in 2008. Then, after its mega-merger with Wyeth, Pfizer instituted even more layoffs. It now says it will continue major downsizing through 2012.
8. Merck & Co. (MRK)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 24,400
As a result of Merck losing patent protection on many of its major drugs, it has embarked on several rounds of jobs cuts.The biggest blow came when the company decided to cut 15,000 people who were considered "redundant" after Merck bought rival Schering-Plough.
9. Lehman Brothers
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 23,340
The investment bank went out of business. Everyone lost their jobs.
10. Caterpillar (CAT)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 23,024
Severely hurt by the downturn in construction and infrastructure building that occurred during the recession, Caterpillar cut staff to bring costs in line with revenue. The axe came down hard in January 2009 when the company cut 20,000 people.
11. JPMorgan Chase (JPM)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 22,852
The credit crisis caused the near-collapse of big mortgage lender Washington Mutual. JPMorgan bought most of the faltering company and cut redundant staff, including 9,200 workers in December 2008.
12. Starbucks (SBUX)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 21,316
Starbucks is a victim of its own success. Its rapidly expanding popularity caused it to open thousand of stores between 2000 and 2007. But when the recession sparked consumers to cut back on the $4 lattes, it started to feel the pain of sliding sales. The company even called back founder Howard Schultz to be CEO. To bring costs in line with falling revenue, Schultz closed 300 stores and fired 6,000 workers in January 2009.
13. AT&T (T)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 18,401
Another victim of the recession and the severe drop in its legacy landline business -- customers have moved to cell phones and Internet calling services. Ma Bell cut 12,000 people, announced at the end of 2008.
14. Alcoa (AA)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 17,655
Lower aluminum prices hit the world's third-largest aluminum company hard in early 2009, leading it to shed 13,500 people. "These are extraordinary times, requiring speed and decisiveness to address the current economic downturn," the company's CEO said. Unlike many of his employees, however, he kept his job.
15. Dow Chemical (DOW)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 17,530
A drop in commodities prices and the recession hurt Dow in much the same way as Alcoa. Dow decided to focus on highly profitable specialty chemicals and cut its workforce by 5,000 in early 2009. It made further cuts when it bought rival Rohm & Haas.
16. DuPont (DD)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 17,000
DuPont is yet another company that had its sales undermined by a drop in commodities prices and sales damaged in the global downturn. It canned 2,500 employees and 4,000 contractors in late 2008.
17. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 16,900
Berkshire Hathaway has over 80 operating units. It instituted layoffs at half of them in 2008 and 2009. Among the types of companies hardest hit: insurance and manufacturing.
18. Ford Motor (F)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 15,912
Like many other automakers, Ford felt the pain of nosediving sales. Not only did the company have to cut workers at its core business but also at its Ford Motor Credit unit, which recorded a net loss of $228 million in the last quarter of 2008. The company also had to write down $2.1 billion in leases and car loans.
19. KB Toys
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 15,100
KB Toys has posted weak numbers since 2004, when it cut 3,500 people and closed 375 stores. In December 2008, the company filed for bankruptcy, closing 431 stores and firing most of the balance of its workers.
20. United States Postal Service
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 15,000
Competition from faxes, email and overnight mail carriers, as well as rising costs, took a toll on the U.S. Postal Service. In March 2009, it closed eight of it 60 district offices, offered buyouts for the rank and file and sharply cut administrative staff.
21. DHL Express USA
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 14,900
DHL couldn't keep up with competition from UPS and FedEx, and it laid off almost 10,000 workers when it decided to exit the ground- and air-delivery business in U.S. completely in November 2008.
22. Sprint Nextel (S)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 14,500
The third-largest cellular service provider in the U.S. cut 4,000 people and closed 125 retail outlets in January 2008. News of the layoffs came on the heels of Sprint's quarterly report, which divulged that the carrier had lost 100,000 subscribers during the last three months of 2007.
23. Sun Microsystems
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 14,000
Sun Microsystems tried to cut its way to profitability for years before it was purchased by Oracle (ORCL) in 2009. The company's core server business couldn't compete with larger rivals IBM and HP. In November 2008, Sun cut almost 6,000 people -- over 15% of its workforce.
24. Boeing (BA)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 13,715
Slow sales in 2008 caused 10,000 layoffs in early 2009. The fact that the firm's flagship Dreamliner 787 delivery has been delayed half a dozen times didn't help matters.
25. Chrysler
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 13,672
The bad fortunes of the car industry caused the third-largest U.S. carmaker to lay off 12,000 people in late 2007. Later, the company fired another 5,000 employees -- or about 25% of its salaried workers. Unfortunately, even after all those cuts, Chrysler still filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Certain industries figure prominently on this list of layoff kings. The auto industry, for example, is estimated to have cut nearly 200,000 jobs in the U.S. since 2006. The industry's union, the United Auto Workers, has been able to preserve blue collar jobs in the industry for decades, but the recession and foreign competition have proven too formidable for the union to fight against.
The financial services sector is another culprit. The financial meltdown forced some banks to close (Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns) and others to be acquired (Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual), leaving hundreds of bankers, brokers and assistants without jobs.
A growing number of unemployed workers translated into slower sales of consumer products and the materials used to make them. Companies that turn commodities into finished products, such as Alcoa, DuPont and Dow Chemical, have felt the pressure of that shrinking spending. Each have been squeezed as prices for their end products fell by more than the underlying prices of raw materials, such as metals and chemicals.
Drugmakers have been facing another set of issues. Many have blockbuster drugs that either lost patent protection or will soon, opening the door for cheaper, copycat generics. The research and development efforts at the big pharmaceutical firms have largely been unable to create a new pipeline of billion-dollar drugs to replace those sales, resulting in cuts in both sales and R&D workers.
The recession is supposed to be over. But with unemployment at nearly 10% and long-term unemployment at an 80-year high, there's not much evidence that the downturn has ended. In fact, after a brief flirtation with recovery earlier this year, more signs are showing that the economy is worsening again. So while large-scale layoffs -- those in which a single company cuts thousands or tens of thousands of workers -- may be over, another deep recession may unfortunately lead to a repeat of the trend.
1. General Motors
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 107,357
The entire auto industry felt the pain of the recession -- U.S. car sales dropped from an average 16 million a year in 2005 to 11 million in 2009. GM was especially hard hit, forcing it to cut tens of thousands of workers. The largest layoffs came in February 2009, when the company let go of 50,000 people -- almost 20% of its workforce. Those cuts, however, weren't enough to keep the company solvent. GM ended up filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection four months later.
2. Citigroup (C)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 73,056
In October 2008, a desperate Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citi, said the financial firm had no alternative than to cut 50,000 jobs as part of a plan to knock down expenses by 20%. The bank was reeling from subprime mortgage losses that had driven its stock down from $35 to under $4 in less than a year. Lehman Brothers had just collapsed, and investors holding shares in America's largest banks were in a panic. Pandit began the downsizing process earlier in 2008 after severe criticism that his predecessor Chuck Prince had allowed Citi to become bloated with expenses.
3. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 47,540
The huge jobs cuts at HP will always be known at the Mark Hurd firings. Hurd, himself, was let go earlier this month. Much of Hurd's success at HP was based on cost-cutting. Previous CEO Carly Fiorina sharply expanded the company's employee and cost base with the acquisition of Compaq. The new CEO bought info-tech consulting firm EDS in 2008 and decided to dismiss 24,600 "redundant" employees. The world's largest tech company also let go almost 6,000 workers in 2009 as it combined two divisions and 9,000 in its struggling enterprise services operation in June.
4. Circuit City Stores
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 41,495
Circuit City slowly succumbed to pricing pressure and competition from both Best Buy and Wal-Mart. It began with aggressive layoffs in 2007 and completely shut its doors in 2009, bringing total layoffs to more than 40,000 after it closed 567 stores.
5. Merrill Lynch
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 40,650
In early 2008, the investment bank and brokerage cut 15% of its workforce as the credit crisis gripped the sector and the company's earnings dropped. When Bank of America (BAC) took over Merrill at the end of 2008, it announced that another 30,000 people would be out of work -- some of whom worked at Merrill and others at Bank of America.
6. Verizon Wireless (VZ)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 39,000
Verizon Wireless laid off a large number of employees after it bought Alltel in 2009. While the move was more about consolidating costs than about the recession, it couldn't have come at a worse time for the thousands of workers who found themselves without jobs.
7. Pfizer (PFE)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 31,771
Pfizer suffered from a slowdown in sales after many of its drugs went off patent and generic-drug companies poached sales. The drugmaker was forced to cut R&D spending and pare the size of its sales force in 2008. Then, after its mega-merger with Wyeth, Pfizer instituted even more layoffs. It now says it will continue major downsizing through 2012.
8. Merck & Co. (MRK)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 24,400
As a result of Merck losing patent protection on many of its major drugs, it has embarked on several rounds of jobs cuts.The biggest blow came when the company decided to cut 15,000 people who were considered "redundant" after Merck bought rival Schering-Plough.
9. Lehman Brothers
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 23,340
The investment bank went out of business. Everyone lost their jobs.
10. Caterpillar (CAT)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 23,024
Severely hurt by the downturn in construction and infrastructure building that occurred during the recession, Caterpillar cut staff to bring costs in line with revenue. The axe came down hard in January 2009 when the company cut 20,000 people.
11. JPMorgan Chase (JPM)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 22,852
The credit crisis caused the near-collapse of big mortgage lender Washington Mutual. JPMorgan bought most of the faltering company and cut redundant staff, including 9,200 workers in December 2008.
12. Starbucks (SBUX)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 21,316
Starbucks is a victim of its own success. Its rapidly expanding popularity caused it to open thousand of stores between 2000 and 2007. But when the recession sparked consumers to cut back on the $4 lattes, it started to feel the pain of sliding sales. The company even called back founder Howard Schultz to be CEO. To bring costs in line with falling revenue, Schultz closed 300 stores and fired 6,000 workers in January 2009.
13. AT&T (T)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 18,401
Another victim of the recession and the severe drop in its legacy landline business -- customers have moved to cell phones and Internet calling services. Ma Bell cut 12,000 people, announced at the end of 2008.
14. Alcoa (AA)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 17,655
Lower aluminum prices hit the world's third-largest aluminum company hard in early 2009, leading it to shed 13,500 people. "These are extraordinary times, requiring speed and decisiveness to address the current economic downturn," the company's CEO said. Unlike many of his employees, however, he kept his job.
15. Dow Chemical (DOW)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 17,530
A drop in commodities prices and the recession hurt Dow in much the same way as Alcoa. Dow decided to focus on highly profitable specialty chemicals and cut its workforce by 5,000 in early 2009. It made further cuts when it bought rival Rohm & Haas.
16. DuPont (DD)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 17,000
DuPont is yet another company that had its sales undermined by a drop in commodities prices and sales damaged in the global downturn. It canned 2,500 employees and 4,000 contractors in late 2008.
17. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 16,900
Berkshire Hathaway has over 80 operating units. It instituted layoffs at half of them in 2008 and 2009. Among the types of companies hardest hit: insurance and manufacturing.
18. Ford Motor (F)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 15,912
Like many other automakers, Ford felt the pain of nosediving sales. Not only did the company have to cut workers at its core business but also at its Ford Motor Credit unit, which recorded a net loss of $228 million in the last quarter of 2008. The company also had to write down $2.1 billion in leases and car loans.
19. KB Toys
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 15,100
KB Toys has posted weak numbers since 2004, when it cut 3,500 people and closed 375 stores. In December 2008, the company filed for bankruptcy, closing 431 stores and firing most of the balance of its workers.
20. United States Postal Service
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 15,000
Competition from faxes, email and overnight mail carriers, as well as rising costs, took a toll on the U.S. Postal Service. In March 2009, it closed eight of it 60 district offices, offered buyouts for the rank and file and sharply cut administrative staff.
21. DHL Express USA
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 14,900
DHL couldn't keep up with competition from UPS and FedEx, and it laid off almost 10,000 workers when it decided to exit the ground- and air-delivery business in U.S. completely in November 2008.
22. Sprint Nextel (S)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 14,500
The third-largest cellular service provider in the U.S. cut 4,000 people and closed 125 retail outlets in January 2008. News of the layoffs came on the heels of Sprint's quarterly report, which divulged that the carrier had lost 100,000 subscribers during the last three months of 2007.
23. Sun Microsystems
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 14,000
Sun Microsystems tried to cut its way to profitability for years before it was purchased by Oracle (ORCL) in 2009. The company's core server business couldn't compete with larger rivals IBM and HP. In November 2008, Sun cut almost 6,000 people -- over 15% of its workforce.
24. Boeing (BA)
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 13,715
Slow sales in 2008 caused 10,000 layoffs in early 2009. The fact that the firm's flagship Dreamliner 787 delivery has been delayed half a dozen times didn't help matters.
25. Chrysler
Number of jobs cut since recession began: 13,672
The bad fortunes of the car industry caused the third-largest U.S. carmaker to lay off 12,000 people in late 2007. Later, the company fired another 5,000 employees -- or about 25% of its salaried workers. Unfortunately, even after all those cuts, Chrysler still filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
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