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Recorded on 10/26 and 10/29/2000.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the theft of Bush debate-preparation doc­u­ments and the mail­ing of those papers to the Gore cam­paign, this broad­cast ana­lyzes some aspects of the 2000 cam­paign that have not received as much cov­er­age as oth­ers. (“Bush Doc­u­ments Appear in Mail­box of Gore Cam­paign” by Katharine Q. Seelye; San Jose Mer­cury News; 9/14/2000; p.19A.)

2. This theft is remark­ably sim­i­lar to other events that have befallen Demo­c­ra­tic oppo­nents of Repub­li­can can­di­dates han­dled by Karl Rove, Bush’s chief han­dler in the 2000 cam­paign. (“Nei­ther Bush Nor Gore Are Can­di­dates for Mount Rush­more” by Molly Ivins; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; p. A21.)

3. Oppo­nents of Rove-managed Repub­li­cans have char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally ben­e­fited from dirty tricks osten­si­bly com­mit­ted by their oppo­nents, but prob­a­bly orches­trated by the Rove machine, in order to dis­credit the oppo­si­tion. (Idem.)

4. The pro­gram then turns to analy­sis of the race for con­trol of the con­gress. The New York Times noted that the Democ­rats had a slim chance to retain con­trol of the Sen­ate. (“Democ­rats Have Out­side Chance to Wrest Sen­ate” by David E. Rosen­baum; New York Times; 10/16/2000; p.1.)

5. One of the races that offered the pos­si­bil­ity of a Demo­c­ra­tic vic­tory was the cru­cial race for the Sen­ate seat held by John Ashcroft (R-Missouri.) (Idem.)

6. The day after that obser­va­tion was printed, Ashcroft’s Demo­c­ra­tic oppo­nent, Gov­er­nor Mel Car­na­han, was killed in the crash of a pri­vate plane. (“Gov­er­nor, 2 Oth­ers Fly­ing in Bad Weather” by Jim Salter; San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 10/17/2000; pp. A-1, A-12.)

7. An inves­ti­ga­tor noted that the wreck­age was found in “very small pieces spread over a large area,” more char­ac­ter­is­tic of a bomb explo­sion than the acci­den­tal crash of an air­craft. (Idem.)

8. The crash came too late for the Democ­rats to nom­i­nate an alter­na­tive can­di­date. (Idem.) The broad­cast under­scores con­tra­dic­tions in the offi­cial account of the tragedy.

9. The plane was ini­tially reported to have crashed in very bad weather and (pos­si­bly) to have been struck by light­ning. (Idem.)

10. Sub­se­quent accounts indi­cate that the weather was not par­tic­u­larly bad for fly­ing and that the pilot had reported gyro­scope trou­ble. (“Doomed Plane Appar­ently Had Instru­ment Trou­ble” by John W. Foun­tain; New York Times; 10/18/2000; p. A20.)

11. Analy­sis of Carnahan’s death sug­gested that his demise would lessen the Democ­rats’ chances of win­ning con­trol of the Sen­ate and less­en­ing Gore’s chances of win­ning Mis­souri, a cru­cial swing state. (“Equa­tion Changed by a Fatal Crash” by James Dao; New York Times; 10/18/2000; pp. A1, A20.)

12. The state Demo­c­ra­tic infra­struc­ture also was pes­simistic about the out­come for the Sen­ate race. (“Gov­er­nor Mourned as Pub­lic Ser­vant” by Stephanie Simon; San Jose Mer­cury News; 10/18/2000; p. 15A.)

13. The pro­gram notes the super­fi­cial sim­i­lar­ity to the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., who was men­tioned as a pos­si­ble run­ning mate for Al Gore. (See FTR-175.) The first half of the broad­cast con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of the impor­tance for a Gore vic­tory of a high turnout by African-Americans and notes apa­thy among many of them. (“For Many Blacks, Elec­tion Isn’t on Radar” by Mark Z. Barabak; Los Ange­les Times; 10/17/2000; pp. A1, A4.)

14. Nation of Islam leader Louis Far­rakhan presided over a rally in Wash­ing­ton D.C. and stated that he didn’t see much dif­fer­ence between the can­di­dates, obvi­ously work­ing at cross-purposes with the Gore cam­paign. (“Marchers Step For­ward for Fam­ily Unity” by Mar­lene Cimons; Los Ange­les Times; 10/17/2000; p. A4.)

15. The Far­rakhan event was co-sponsored by Sun Myung Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, an appar­ent front for Japan­ese fascism.

16. The pro­gram excerpts FTR-248, high­light­ing the elder George Bush’s well-paid pro­mo­tional work on behalf of the Moon orga­ni­za­tion after leav­ing the White House.

17. The sec­ond half of the pro­gram deals with events in the Mid­dle East and their poten­tial impact on the cam­paign. The broad­cast notes the sim­i­lar­ity between events unfold­ing in that part of the world in 1980 (when the elder George Bush was run­ning on the Repub­li­can ticket) and 2000 (when his son is run­ning.) The Iran­ian hostage cri­sis and the failed “Desert One” res­cue mis­sion doomed Jimmy Carter’s admin­is­tra­tion. (San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 10/13/2000; p. A-1.)

18. The pro­gram notes that oil prices are ris­ing, just as they did in 1979–80. As dis­cussed in FTRs 29, 214, that petro­leum price increase appears to have been the result of col­lu­sion between the oil com­pa­nies, ele­ments of the CIA, the elder George Bush and the Saudis. It may well be that the cur­rent price increase is also the result of col­lu­sion between the petro­leum indus­try (for which “Dubya” works) and OPEC. Ten­sions between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans esca­lated dra­mat­i­cally in the fall of 2000. One of the events that helped to touch off the renewed hos­til­ity and the break­down of the Oslo peace process was the visit by Likud Party stal­wart Ariel Sharon to Tem­ple Mount, held sacred by Mus­lims and Jews. (As noted in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Shows M-30, M-58, as well as FTRs 94, 252, there are his­tor­i­cal links between inter­na­tional fas­cism and the Israeli right wing.)

19. In the spring of 2000, Likud party mem­bers and Ital­ian fas­cists were con­fer­ring with each other, as well as for­mer U.S. ambas­sador to Italy Maxwell Rabb. (“Inter­na­tional Fas­cist Axis” by Gerry Gable; The Search­light; #304; 10/2000.)

20. The broad­cast high­lights the pos­si­bil­ity that the trou­bles in the Mid­dle East may have been delib­er­ately trig­gered, in order to help swing the elec­tion Bush’s way. (It should be noted that there are also strong links between the Pales­tin­ian national move­ment and other Arab states and inter­na­tional fascism.)

21. Hav­ing been Sec­re­tary of Defense dur­ing the Gulf War, Dick Cheney has polit­i­cal con­tacts that might be ben­e­fi­cial to the Repub­li­cans, in light of the tur­moil there. (“Cheney’s Work in Gulf War Could Help GOP in Light of Cur­rent Mideast Cri­sis” by Jackie Calmes; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 10/17/2000; p. A24.)

22. In turn, Hillary Clinton’s past recep­tiv­ity to the Pales­tin­ian cause has hurt her stand­ing among Jew­ish vot­ers in New York. (“The Mid­dle East Tells Us the Hawks Were Right” by Amity Shlaes; The Finan­cial Times; 10/17/2000; p. 17.)

23. Ten­sions in the region were height­ened by the bomb attack on the destroyer U.S.S. Cole. Ini­tial evi­dence sug­gested that Osama Bin Laden might have been behind the attack. (“U.S. Says Yemen Attack­ers Used Inside Infor­ma­tion” by David A. Vise and Ver­non Loeb; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 10/13/2000; p. A6.)

24. The pro­gram then excerpts FTR-186, review­ing infor­ma­tion about the prob­a­ble role of the Bin Laden fam­ily in sup­ply­ing a por­tion of the invest­ment cap­i­tal that was used to estab­lish George W. Bush’s first oil com­pany. (For ref­er­ences, see the descrip­tion for FTR-248.) The pos­si­bil­ity that petroleum-related ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence and what Mr. Emory calls “the Under­ground Reich” may have been behind the attack on the Cole should not be too read­ily cast aside. The attack was used by the Bush cam­paign to attack the Democrats.

25. Next, the pro­gram under­scores the sig­nif­i­cance of the increase in oil prices for the econ­omy, the stock mar­ket and the Gore cam­paign. Oil price increases have his­tor­i­cally led to reces­sions and a falling Dow Jones Indus­trial aver­age and, dur­ing Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion years, this has led to the incum­bent being voted out of office. (“Can Al Gore Sur­vive Ris­ing Oil Prices and Falling Stocks?” by Floyd Nor­ris; New York Times; 9/22/2000; p. C1.)

26. The Repub­li­can camp and their related petro­leum inter­ests have his­tor­i­cal links to some of the most mil­i­tant of the Arab petro­leum pro­duc­ing coun­tries. Repub­li­can Vice-Presidential can­di­date Dick Cheney’s Hal­ibur­ton Oil has been doing busi­ness with Iraq. (“U.S. Oil Groups Find a Dis­creet Way of Doing Busi­ness with Iraq” by Car­ola Hoyos; Finan­cial Times; 11/3/2000; p. 6.)

27. Iran­ian mil­i­tants have called for a hard­en­ing of the OPEC stance toward Israel and the U.S. and the use of the oil weapon on behalf of the Pales­tin­ian cause. (“Oil Prices Move Back Up as Iran Steps In” by Ruth Sul­li­van; Finan­cial Times; 10/18/2000; p. 28.)

28. The new speaker of the Iran­ian par­lia­ment has a “hard-line” past. (“Détente in Iran­ian Par­lia­ment: New Speaker Elected Unop­posed” by Ali Akbar Dareini; San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 6/12/2000; p. A-12.)

29. The broad­cast under­scores that the “mod­er­ate” speaker of the Iran­ian par­lia­ment, Mehdi Kar­rubi and his brother, have a his­tory of col­lu­sion with the Reagan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions in the Octo­ber Sur­prise and Iran-Contra imbroglios. (Trick or Trea­son: The Octo­ber Sur­prise Mys­tery; Robert Parry; copy­right 1993; Sheri­dan Square Press; ISBN 1–879823-08-X; pp. 82–3, 170, 261.)

30.The pro­gram asks if there may be col­lu­sion among these ele­ments in 2000, just as there was in 1980.