'Impolite' Questions for Gen. Myers

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Tuesday evening offered an unusual opportunity to question the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2001-2005), Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, at an alumni club dinner.

Ray McGovern
May 13, 2009 - Consortiumnews.com

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He was eager to talk about his just-published memoir, Eyes on the Horizon (and I was able to scan through a copy during the cocktail hour). Myers's presentation, like his book, was thin gruel.

After his brief talk, he seemed intent on filibustering during a meandering Q & A session. He finally called on me since no other hands were up. Some were yawning, but it was too early to simply leave.

I introduced myself as a former Army intelligence officer and CIA analyst with combined service of almost 30 years.

I thanked him for his stated opposition to interrogation techniques that go beyond "our interrogation manual"; and his conviction that "the Geneva Conventions were a fundamental part of our military culture"—both viewpoints emphasized in his book.

I then noted that the recently published Senate Armed Services Committee report, "Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody," sowed some doubt regarding the strength of his convictions.

Why, I asked, did Gen. Myers go along when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized harsh interrogation techniques and, earlier, when President George W. Bush himself issued an executive order arbitrarily denying Geneva protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees?

I referred Gen. Myers to the Senate committee's finding that he had nipped in the bud an in-depth legal review of interrogation techniques, when all interested parties were eager for an authoritative ruling on their lawfulness. (The following account borrows heavily from the Senate committee report.)

Background: The summer of 2002 brought to interrogators at Guantanamo fresh guidance, plus new techniques adopted from the Korean War practices of Chinese Communist interrogators who had extracted false confessions from captured American soldiers.

On Aug. 1, 2002 a memo signed by the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee, stated that for an act to qualify as "torture":

--"Physical pain … must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.

--"Purely mental pain or suffering … must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years."

During the week of Sept. 16, 2002, a group of interrogators from Guantanamo flew to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for training in the use of these SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, & Escape) techniques, which were originally designed to help downed pilots withstand the regimen of torture employed by China. Now, SERE techniques were being "reverse engineered" and placed in the toolkit of U.S. military and CIA interrogators.

As soon as the Guantanamo interrogators returned from Fort Bragg, senior administration lawyers, including William "Jim" Haynes II (Department of Defense), John Rizzo (CIA), and David Addington (counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney), visited Guantanamo for consultations.

And, just to make quite sure there was no doubt about the new license given to interrogators, Jonathan Fredman, chief counsel to CIA's Counterterrorist Center, arrived and gathered the Guantanamo staff together on Oct. 2, 2002, to resolve any lingering questions regarding unfamiliar aggressive interrogation techniques, like waterboarding.

Fredman stressed, "The language of the statutes is written vaguely." He repeated Bybee's Aug. 1 guidance and summed up the legalities in this way: "It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

More Authoritative Guidance

Small wonder that on Oct. 11, 2002, Gen. Michael Dunlavey, the commander at Guantanamo, saw fit to double check with his superior, SOUTHCOM commander Gen. James Hill and request formal authorization to use aggressive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.

On Oct. 25, 2002, Hill forwarded the request to Gen. Myers and Secretary Rumsfeld, commenting that, while lawyers were saying the techniques could be used, "I want a legal review of it, and I want you to tell me that, policy-wise, it's the right way to do business."

Hill later told the Army Inspector General that he (Hill) thought the request "was important enough that there ought to be a high-level look at it … ought to be a major policy discussion of this and everybody ought to be involved."

Gen. Myers, in turn, solicited the views of the military services on the Dunlavey/Hill request.

The Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force all expressed serious concerns about the legality of the techniques and called for a comprehensive legal review. The Marine Corps, for example, wrote, "Several of the techniques arguably violate federal law, and would expose our service members to possible prosecution."

The Defense Department's Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) at Guantanamo joined the services in expressing grave misgivings. Reflecting the tenor of the four services' concerns, CITF's chief legal advisor wrote that the "legality of applying certain techniques" for which authorization was requested was "questionable."

He added that he could not "advocate any action, interrogation or otherwise, that is predicated upon the principle that all is well if the ends justify the means and others are not aware of how we conduct our business."

Myers's Legal Counsel, Captain (now Rear Admiral) Jane Dalton, had her own concerns (and has testified that she made Gen. Myers aware of them), together with those expressed in writing by the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force.

Dalton directed her staff to initiate a thorough legal and policy review of the proposed techniques.

The review got off to a quick start. As a first step, Dalton ordered a secure video teleconference including Guantanamo, SOUTHCOM, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army's intelligence school at Fort Huachuca.

Dalton said she wanted to find out more information about the techniques in the request and to begin discussing the legal issues to see if her office could do its own independent legal analysis.

Under oath before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Captain Dalton testified that, after she and her staff had begun their analysis, Gen. Myers directed her in November 2002 to stop the review.

She explained that Myers returned from a meeting and "advised me that [Pentagon General Counsel] Mr. Haynes wanted me … to cancel the video teleconference and to stop the review" because of concerns that "people were going to see" the Guantanamo request and the military services' analysis of it.

Haynes "wanted to keep it much more close-hold," Dalton said.

Dalton ordered her staff to stop the legal analysis. She testified that this was the only time that she had ever been asked to stop analyzing a request that came to her for review.

Asking Myers

I asked Gen. Myers why he stopped the in-depth legal review. He bobbed and weaved, contending first that some of the Senate report was wrong.

"But you did stop the review, that is a matter of record. Why?" I asked again.

"I stopped the broad review," Myers replied, "but I asked Dalton to do her personal review and keep me advised."

(Myers had a memory lapse when Senate committee members asked him about stopping the review.)

I asked again why he stopped the review, but was shouted down by an audience not used to having plain folks ask direct questions of very senior officials, past or present.

Haynes told the Senate committee that "there was a sense by DoD leadership that this decision was taking too long."

On Nov. 27, 2002, shortly after Haynes told Myers to order Dalton to stop her review – and despite the serious legal concerns of the military services – Haynes sent Rumsfeld a one-page memo recommending that he approve all but three of the 18 techniques in the request from Guantanamo.

Techniques like stress positions, nudity, exploitation of phobias (like fear of dogs), deprivation of light, and auditory stimuli were all recommended for approval.

On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld signed Haynes's recommendation, adding a handwritten note referring to the use of stress positions: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

I too remained standing, as the shouting by my distinguished colleagues died down, reminding myself that I had wanted to say a word about the Geneva Conventions, "for which you, Gen. Myers, express such strong support in your book."

I waved a copy of the smoking-gun, two-page executive memorandum signed by George W. Bush on Feb. 7, 2002. That's the one in which the President declared that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees, who would nonetheless be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva."

I then made reference to "Conclusion 1" of the Senate committee report:

"On Feb. 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees.

"Following the President's determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions … were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody."

"Gen. Myers," I asked, "you were one of eight addressees for the President's directive of Feb. 7, 2002. What did you do when you learned of the President's decision to ignore Geneva?"

"Please just read my book," Myers said. I told him I had; and I read a couple of sentences aloud from my copy:

"You write that you told Douglas Feith, 'I feel very strongly about this. And if Rumsfeld doesn't defend the Geneva Conventions, I'll contradict him in front of the President.'

"You go on to explain very clearly, 'I was legally obligated to provide the President my best military advice — not the best advice as approved by the Secretary of Defense.'

"So, again, what did you do when you read the President's executive order of Feb. 7, 2002?"

Myers said he had fought the good fight before the President's decision. The sense was, if the President wanted to dismiss Geneva, what was a mere general to do?

In this connection, Myers included this curious passage in his book:

"By relying so heavily on just the lawyers, the President did not get the broader advice on these matters that he needed to fully consider the consequences of his actions. I thought it was critical that the nation's leadership convey the right message to those engaged in the War on Terror.

"Showing respect for the Geneva Conventions was important to all of us in uniform. This episode epitomized the Secretary's and the Chairman's different statutory responsibilities to the President and the nation. The fact that the President appeared to change his previous decision showed that the system, however, imperfect, had worked."

Enter Douglas Feith

Interestingly, Myers writes, "Douglas Feith supported my views strongly … noting that the United States had no choice but to apply the Geneva Conventions, because, like all treaties in force for the country, they bore the same weight as a federal statute."

Myers goes on to corroborate what British lawyer/author Philippe Sands writes in The Torture Team about the apparent twinning of Feith and Myers on this issue. Sands says Feith portrayed himself and Myers as of one mind on Geneva.

Just before the President issued his Feb. 7, 2002 executive order, Feith developed this line of reasoning: The Geneva Conventions are very important. The best way to defend them is by honoring their "incentive system," which rewards soldiers who fight openly and in uniform with all kinds of protections if captured.

In his book, Myers notes approvingly that this is indeed the line Feith took with the President at an NSC meeting on Feb. 4, 2002, to which Feith had been invited, three days before President Bush signed the order that has now become a smoking gun.

According to Feith, the all-important corollary is to take care not to "promiscuously hand out POW status to fighters who don't obey the rules."

"In other words, the best way to protect the Geneva Conventions is to gut them," as Dahlia Lithwick of Slate put it in a commentary last July.

I suppose it could even be the case that this seemed persuasive to President Bush, as well. Which would mean that Doug Feith has at least two contenders for the unenviable sobriquet with which Gen. Tommy Franks tagged him — "the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

It is not really funny, of course.

While researching his book, Sands, a very astute observer, emerged from a three-hour session with Myers convinced that Myers did not understand the implications of what was being done and was "confused" about the decisions that were taken.

Sands writes that when he described the interrogation techniques introduced and stressed that they were not in the manual but rather breached U.S. military guidelines, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled.

Author Sands came to the conclusion that Myers was "hoodwinked;" that "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him."

There is no doubt something to that. And the apparent absence of Myers from the infamous torture boutiques in the White House Situation Room, aimed at discerning which particular techniques might be most appropriate for which "high-value" detainees, tends to support an out-of-the-loop defense for Myers.

I imagine it should not be all that surprising, given the way general officers are promoted these days, that a vacuous mind like Myers's could rise to the very pinnacle of our entire military establishment.
Certainly, nothing Myers said or did Tuesday evening would contradict Sands's assessment regarding naïveté.

My best guess is that it is a combination of dullness, cowardice and careerism that accounts for Myers' behavior — then and now. And, with those attributes well in place, falling in with bad companions as Richard Myers did, can really do you in.

Myers still writes that he found Rumsfeld to be "an insightful and incisive leader;" the general seems to have been putty in Rumsfeld's hands — one reason he was promoted, no doubt.

As we said our good-byes Tuesday evening, one of my alumni colleagues lamented my "ugly" behavior, although it was no more ugly than it was on May 4, 2006, during my four-minute debate with Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta. (Sadly, my encounter with Myers was not broadcast live on TV.)

A Plaudit From the Press

In attendance was a reporter from the Washington Post, but his note-taking was confined to computing whether he should take the Post's buyout, or try to hang around for the newspaper's inevitable funeral in a couple of years. (So don't bother looking for a print story on the Myers event.)

As we departed, the Post-man gave me what he seemed to think was the ultimate compliment — I should have been a journalist, he said.

I told him thanks just the same — that my experience has been that, unless they promise not to ask "ugly" questions, journalists of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) do not get to hang around long enough to qualify for a meager 401k — much less an eventual buyout.

At least I was consistent, retaining with such groups an unblemished winning-no-friends-and-influencing-no-people record, originally set three years ago when I had a chance to ask an "ugly" question or two of Donald Rumsfeld.

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst, and more recently is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Cheney's Role Deepens

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Robert Windrem
May 14, 2009 - The Daily Beast

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At the end of April 2003, not long after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi who Bush White House officials suspected might provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime. Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi was the head of the M-14 section of Mukhabarat, one of Saddam's secret police organizations. His responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.

"To those who wanted or suspected a relationship, he would have been a guy who would know, so [White House officials] had particular interest," Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraqi Survey Group and the man in charge of interrogations of Iraqi officials, told me. So much so that the officials, according to Duelfer, inquired how the interrogation was proceeding.

In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from "some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA)," who thought Khudayr's interrogation had been "too gentle" and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. "They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used," Duelfer writes. "The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature."

Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: "The language I can use is what has been cleared." In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. Cheney, of course, has vehemently defended waterboarding and other harsh techniques, insisting they elicited valuable intelligence and saved lives. He has also asked that several memoranda be declassified to prove his case. (The Daily Beast placed a call to Cheney's office and will post a response if we get one.)

Without admitting where the suggestion came from, Duelfer revealed that he considered it reprehensible and understood the rationale as political-and ultimately counterproductive to the overall mission of the Iraq Survey Group, which was assigned the mission of finding Saddam Hussein's WMD after the invasion.

"Everyone knew there would be more smiles in Washington if WMD stocks were found," Duelfer said in the interview. "My only obligation was to find the truth. It would be interesting if there was WMD in May 2003, but what was more interesting to me was looking at the entire regime through the slice of WMD."

But, Duelfer says, Khudayr in fact repeatedly denied knowing the location of WMD or links between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda and was not subjected to any enhanced interrogation. Duelfer says the idea that he would have known of such links was "ludicrous".

This proposed use of enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture, in Iraq was not the only time these methods were actually used to derive information for a purpose other than the stated one-to derive intelligence about imminent threats to the United States following the 9/11 attacks.

An extensive analysis I conducted as a reporter for NBC News of the 9/11 Commission's Final Report and its monograph on terrorist travel showed that much of what was reported about the planning and execution of the terror attacks on New York and Washington was based on the CIA's interrogations of high-ranking al Qaeda operatives who had been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques."

More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report's most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.

The NBC analysis also showed-and agency and commission staffers concur-there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, specifically conducted to answer new questions from the 9/11 Commission after its lawyers had been left unsatisfied by the agency's internal interrogation reports.

Human-rights advocates, including Karen Greenberg of New York University Law School's Center for Law and Security and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, have said that, at the least, the 9/11 Commission should have been more suspect of the information derived under such pressure.

Commission executive director Philip Zelikow (later counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) admitted, "We were not aware, but we guessed, that things like that were going on. We were wary...we tried to find different sources to enhance our credibility." (Zelikow testified before the Senate on Wednesday, May 13, that he had argued in a 2005 memo that some of the tactics used on suspected terrorists violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.)

A former senior U.S. intelligence official told me the Commission never expressed any concerns about techniques and even pushed for a second round of interrogations in early 2004, as the Commission was finishing up its work. The second round of interrogations sought by the Commission involved more than 30 separate interrogation sessions.

"Remember," the intelligence official said, "the Commission had access to the intelligence reports that came out of the interrogation. This didn't satisfy them. They demanded direct personal access to the detainees and the administration told them to go pound sand."

"As a compromise, they were allowed to let us know what questions they would have liked to ask the detainees. At appropriate times in the interrogation cycle, agency questioners would go back and re-interview the detainees. Many of [those] questions were variants or follow-ups to stuff previously asked."

At least four operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being "tortured." Those claims came during their hearings in the spring of 2007 at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For Duelfer, an experienced interrogator, the details now being laid out in CIA and White House memoranda and in congressional hearings cannot be justified. While admitting that the interrogators faced enormous pressure in 2002 and 2003, he said he had problems with the overall strategy.

"Interrogation is about two humans who are face to face, sweat to sweat. Is your hand going to hit them?" he notes. "That's a relationship that becomes very deep. If you are going to reach someone at an intellectual or emotive level, it's hard to see how you can do that and still be the person who accosts that person. I don't know how to do that."

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Robert Windrem is a Senior Reserach Fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security. For three decades, he worked as a producer for NBC News. During that time, he focused on issues of international security, strategic policy, intelligence and terrorism. He is the winner of more than 40 national journalism awards for his work in print, television, and online journalism, including a Columbia-duPont Award, mostly for his work on international security issues.

For Explorer Scouts, Good Deeds Have Whole New Meaning

Photo: In a training exercise run by Border Patrol agents, Explorer scouts from Visalia, Calif., prepare to storm a "hijacked" bus. (Todd Krainin)

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Jennifer Steinhauer
May 14, 2009 - The New York Times

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IMPERIAL, Calif. - Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers - eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 - face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots - BAM! BAM! - fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

"United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!" screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence - an intense ratcheting up of one of the group's longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

"This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl," said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff's deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. "It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts."

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out "active shooters," like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

"Put him on his face and put a knee in his back," a Border Patrol agent explained. "I guarantee that he'll shut up."

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked "the discipline of the program," which was something he said his life was lacking. "I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed," he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns - known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets - in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

"I like shooting them," Cathy said. "I like the sound they make. It gets me excited."

If there are critics of the content or purpose of the law enforcement training, they have not made themselves known to the Explorers' national organization in Irving, Tex., or to the volunteers here on the ground, national officials and local leaders said. That said, the Explorers have faced problems over the years. There have been numerous cases over the last three decades in which police officers supervising Explorers have been charged, in civil and criminal cases, with sexually abusing them.

Several years ago, two University of Nebraska criminal justice professors published a study that found at least a dozen cases of sexual abuse involving police officers over the last decade. Adult Explorer leaders are now required to take an online training program on sexual misconduct.

Many law enforcement officials, particularly those who work for the rapidly growing Border Patrol, part of the Homeland Security Department, have helped shape the program's focus and see it as preparing the Explorers as potential employees. The Explorer posts are attached to various agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police and fire departments, that sponsor them much the way churches sponsor Boy Scout troops.

"Our end goal is to create more agents," said April McKee, a senior Border Patrol agent and mentor at the session here.

Membership in the Explorers has been overseen since 1998 by an affiliate of the Boy Scouts called Learning for Life, which offers 12 career-related programs, including those focused on aviation, medicine and the sciences.

But the more than 2,000 law enforcement posts across the country are the Explorers' most popular, accounting for 35,000 of the group's 145,000 members, said John Anthony, national director of Learning for Life. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many posts have taken on an emphasis of fighting terrorism and other less conventional threats.

"Before it was more about the basics," said Johnny Longoria, a Border Patrol agent here. "But now our emphasis is on terrorism, illegal entry, drugs and human smuggling."

The law enforcement posts are restricted to those ages 14 to 21 who have a C average, but there seems to be some wiggle room. "I will take them at 13 and a half," Deputy Lowenthal said. "I would rather take a kid than possibly lose a kid."

The law enforcement programs are highly decentralized, and each post is run in a way that reflects the culture of its sponsoring agency and region. Most have weekly meetings in which the children work on their law-enforcement techniques in preparing for competitions. Weekends are often spent on service projects.

Just as there are soccer moms, there are Explorers dads, who attend the competitions, man the hamburger grill and donate their land for the simulated marijuana field raids. In their training, the would-be law-enforcement officers do not mess around, as revealed at a recent competition on the state fairgrounds here, where a Ferris wheel sat next to the police cars set up for a felony investigation.

Their hearts pounding, Explorers moved down alleys where there were hidden paper targets of people pointing guns, and made split-second decisions about when to shoot. In rescuing hostages from a bus taken over by terrorists, a baby-faced young girl screamed, "Separate your feet!" as she moved to handcuff her suspect.

In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. "If we're looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like," he said, "then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don't know, would you call that politically incorrect?"

Authenticity seems to be the goal. Imperial County, in Southern California, is the poorest in the state, and the local economy revolves largely around the criminal justice system. In addition to the sheriff and local police departments, there are two state prisons and a large Border Patrol and immigration enforcement presence.

"My uncle was a sheriff's deputy," said Alexandra Sanchez, 17, who joined the Explorers when she was 13. Alexandra's police uniform was baggy on her lithe frame, her airsoft gun slung carefully to the side. She wants to be a coroner.

"I like the idea of having law enforcement work with medicine," she said. "This is a great program for me."

And then she was off to another bus hijacking.

Charlie Crist's Secret

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Reihan Salam
May 14, 2009 - The Daily Beast

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No, it's not that he's gay, though those rumors remain. Rather, says The Daily Beast's Reihan Salam, the Republicans' best hope in 2010 might be derailed by his shabby governing legacy.

Is he or isn't he? After almost two decades in public life, Florida Governor Charlie Crist is still dealing with questions about his sexual preferences. Every time Crist is asked if he's gay, he gives the same answer: a simple no. There's nothing defensive or cagey about it. But the questions persist nevertheless, even after Crist married a strikingly attractive woman late last year. To diehard believers in the Crist-is-closeted theory, the marriage is further evidence of Crist's dishonesty—a naked attempt to distract the voting public from the truth. Similarly, a short-lived scandal over a 1989 paternity claim against Crist is dismissed by the conspiratorial as yet another effort to dupe Floridians.

Crist is not a conservative. With his permanent tan and slick white mane, he's more like a kinder, gentler Latin American caudillo, who wants nothing more than to be cheered on by adoring throngs.

Like the notion that President Obama is a secret Muslim, the idea that Crist is gay will never go away. Assuming the NSA hasn't invented a long-distance sexual brain probe that I don't know about, it is impossible to determine whether or not Crist's late-night fantasies star a young Jaclyn Smith or a young Tom Selleck. A number of observers are openly wondering if the gay rumor will sink Crist's chances of holding Mel Martinez's Senate seat for the GOP. The theory, advanced mostly on the left-of-center, is that gay-hating right-wingers will try to bring Crist down.

It turns out, though, that Florida's Republican primary voters are more interested in another "is he or isn't he?": A growing number of conservatives want to know if Crist is the next Arlen Specter. For a party on the ropes, you'd think Republicans would be less interested in ideological purity. Without Crist or former Governor Jeb Bush in the race, Democrats have long expected Martinez's seat to fall into their hands like a ripened papaya. But with Crist as the Republican candidate, no Democrat stands a chance. Crist's Senate run is already being touted as the beginning of a Republican comeback.

Given that GOP high command is praising Allah for delivering Crist unto them, it's worth noting that conservatives are buzzing about Marco Rubio, the youthful former Speaker of the Florida House. A fluently bilingual 37-year-old Cuban-American evangelical from a blue-collar immigrant background with an ex-cheerleader wife, four children, a deep belief in the healing power of tax cuts, and square-jawed all-American looks, Rubio is a caricature of the ideal 21st-century Republican. With possible behind-the-scenes support from Jeb Bush, Rubio is planning a scorched-earth campaign against Crist as a firebrand conservative standing against the forces of big-government RINOism.

And Rubio, a rare political talent, might actually pull it off, or at least he might leave Crist just bloodied enough to give Democrats the Senate seat in November. Getting there, however, will mean jettisoning much of what is most appealing about Rubio. In the State House, Rubio developed a reputation as a policy wonk interested in overhauling the state's public sector along the lines that centrist Republicans have pursued in the good-government paradise that is Indiana. This isn't very sexy, and it isn't very ideological. But it did suggest that Rubio was more than a Reaganite automaton. The same goes for Rubio's gutsy and contrarian decision to back the real Republican maverick of 2008, Mike Huckabee. There's a world in which Rubio should absolutely crush and destroy Crist—a world in which Rubio ran a truly innovative, policy-heavy campaign. Instead, depressingly, we'll probably see Rubio attack Crist as a Chardonnay-sipping socialist.

One of the key conservative charges against Crist is that his decision to back President Obama's stimulus package was utterly bankrupt. Crist seemed more interested in currying favor with the state's army of public-sector workers than keeping the faith with conservative principles. And honestly, that's exactly right. Crist is not a conservative. With his permanent tan and slick white mane, he's more like a kinder, gentler Latin American caudillo, who wants nothing more than to be cheered on by adoring throngs. Crist would be right at home with Juan and Eva Peron, dancing the night away and promising free T-bone steaks to the impoverished masses. As governor, Crist has enjoyed tremendous popularity—he has Obama-like job-approval numbers—and he's done it by hardly ever making tough calls.

There's no question that Florida is trending Democratic, and it doesn't help that the state's economy is sinking into the marshy deep from whence it came. Crist is keenly aware of this, and he's moved accordingly. In flush times, a decent number of Florida's must-win Latinos, notably Miami's highly influential Cuban-American community, were open to small-government Republicans. A punishing wave of foreclosures—which hit Latino families particularly hard—has changed all that. Earlier in his political career, when hard-edged conservatism was on the rise, Crist was known as "Chain Gang Charlie" for backing extreme punishments for convicted felons. Now he's better known for his efforts to fight climate change and save the Everglades. There's little doubt that Crist looks himself in the mirror every morning and sees a future president. So why not run for reelection as governor?

Spending has increased steadily throughout Crist's tenure, yet he has managed to avoid raising taxes. Normally this is a feat that can only be pulled off during a boom, but Obama's stimulus package gave this strategy, if you can call it that, a new lease on life. Backing the stimulus bill wasn't just about high-fiving a popular president. It was a way to keep Florida's Ponzi scheme going. But because the state's economy is still sinking into the marshy deep, economic pain is guaranteed to sandbag whoever serves as governor for the next four years. Crist, who loves to be loved, intends to make sure that it's not him.

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Reihan Salam is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the co-author of Grand New Party

Baby Boomer Alert: The Truth Behind Social Security Propaganda

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Robert B. Reich
May 13, 2009 - Robert Reich's

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What are we to make of yesterday's report from the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds that Social Security will run out of assets in 2037, four years sooner than previously forecast, and Medicare's hospital fund will be exhausted by 2017, two years earlier than predicted a year ago?

Reports of these two funds' demise are not new. Fifteen years ago, when I was a trustee of the Social Security and the Medicare trust funds (which meant, essentially, that I and a few others met periodically with the official actuary of the funds, received his report, asked a few questions, and signed some papers) both funds were supposedly in trouble. But as I learned, the timing and magnitude of the trouble depended a great deal on what assumptions the actuary used in his models. As I recall, he then assumed that the economy would grow by about 2.6 percent a year over the next seventy-five years. But go back into American history all the way to the Civil War -- including the Great Depression and the severe depressions of the late 19th century -- and the economy's average annual growth is closer to 3 percent. Use a 3 percent assumption and Social Security is flush for the next seventy-five years.

Yes, I know, the post-war Baby Boom is moving through the population like a pig through a python. The number of retirees eligible for benefits will almost double to 79.5 million in 2045 from 40.5 million this year. But we knew that the Boomers were coming then, too. What we didn't know then was the surge in immigration. Yet immigrants are mostly young. Rather than being a drain on Social Security when the Boomers need it, most immigrants will be contributing to the system during these years, which should take more of the pressure off.

Even if you assume Social Security is a problem, it's not a big problem. Raise the ceiling slightly on yearly wages subject to Social Security payroll taxes (now a bit over $100,000), and the problem vanishes under harsher assumptions than I'd use about the future. President Obama suggested this in the campaign and stirred up a hornet's nest because this solution apparently dips too deeply into the middle class, which made him backtrack and begin talking about raising additional Social Security payroll taxes on people earning over $250,000. Social Security would also be in safe shape if it were slightly more means tested, or if the retirement age were raised just a bit. The main point is that Social Security is a tiny problem, as these things go.

Medicare is entirely different. It's a monster. But fixing it has everything to do with slowing the rate of growth of medical costs -- including, let's not forget, having a public option when it comes to choosing insurance plans under the emerging universal health insurance bill. With a public option, the government can use its bargaining power with drug companies and suppliers of medical services to reduce prices. And, as I've noted, keep pressure on private insurers to trim costs yet provide effective medical outcomes.

Don't be confused by these alarms from the Social Security and Medicare trustees. Social Security is a tiny problem. Medicare is a terrible one, but the problem is not really Medicare; it's quickly rising health-care costs. Look more closely and the real problem isn't even health-care costs; it's a system that pushes up costs by rewarding inefficiency, causing unbelievable waste, pushing over-medication, providing inadequate prevention, over-using emergency rooms because many uninsured people can't afford regular doctor checkups, and spending billions on advertising and marketing seeking to enroll healthy people and avoid sick ones.

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Robert Reich is professor of public policy at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.