BOO!!!!!

A Coservative's Message to a Monarch Named George....

MotherJones.com / News / MoJo Blog

Edmund Burke Speaks Out About Blogs and the Failure of the Democrats

What did the famous British parliamentarian and political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797) have to say about the internet and our current political circumstances? Quite a bit, it turns out.

Burke is beloved by conservative intellectuals. George Will, for instance, mentions him all the time. Quoting Burke gives their pronouncements a nice glossy sheen.

Yet their Burke-worship is genuinely bizarre. Few people understand this, since few people (including conservative intellectuals) bother to read what Burke wrote. Anyone who does, though, will immediately understand how strongly Burke would have opposed today's conservative movement, since he strongly opposed their 18th century equivalents.

This is particularly clear in Burke's 1770 pamphlet, "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents." It's not merely that Burke was writing during a time of uprisings in overseas colonies, and in opposition to a monarch named George who was trying to expand executive power and neuter the legislative branch. Almost every sentence Burke wrote applies precisely to today.

For instance, in one passage Burke sounds like he's describing current efforts by MoveOn and blogs to prevent Congress from granting telecom companies immunity for violating FISA:

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Burke also covers George's insistence on appointing incompetent hacks to positions of power, to habituate Parliament to impotence; the way the King's cabal is mired in the "deepest and dirtiest pits of corruption" yet purports to be motivated by the "most astonishing prudery, both moral and political"; and the "futility, the weakness, the rashness, the perpetual contradiction, in the management of our affairs" in colonies across the sea. Then there's his description of a corrupted, weak legislature, which could have been written yesterday:

A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy; an anxious care of public money, an openness, approaching towards facility, to public complaint: these seem to be the true characteristics of an House of Commons. But an addressing House of Commons, and a petitioning nation; an House of Commons full of confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony with Ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments; who are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account; who, in all disputes between the people and Administration, presume against the people; who punish their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the provocations to them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this constitution.

Parliament cannot with any great propriety punish others, for things in which they themselves have been accomplices. Thus the controul of Parliament upon the executory power is lost; because Parliament is made to partake in every considerable act of Government. Impeachment, that great guardian of the purity of the Constitution, is in danger of being lost, even to the idea of it.

So if we truly want to remember the past, rather than repeat it, Burke's pamphlet is a good place to start. As another old dead guy, Thomas Jefferson, said:

...experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny...the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.

- Jonathan Schwarz
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.
© 2007 The Foundation for National Progress

Tickle Me Please...........

Integrative Way: Go ahead and laugh – it's good for you

By Dr. Kay and Dr. Max -

This story is taken from Sacbee
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, October 28, 2007

The idea of using laughter and humor for healing has been around since biblical times. Cultures from the ancient Greeks to American Indians have long recognized the power of humor to help us to heal. The healing power of laughter was reawakened during the 20th century, and research studies in mind-body medicine have confirmed that laughter produces positive changes in our bodies.

So what happens when we laugh? A good belly laugh seems to benefit multiple body systems. There have been a number of studies in the recent past looking at health outcomes with laughter therapy. They have shown the following:

• Laughter increases the activity of the immune system, especially IgA, which helps us to fight respiratory infections.

• Laughter increases natural killer cells that protect us from cancer and viral infections. One study showed that 30 minutes of watching funny videos produced positive immune changes that lasted for 12 hours!

• Laughter seems to relax and dilate our blood vessels, protecting us from heart disease and lowering our blood pressure; one study at Loma Linda University School of Medicine showed that heart attack survivors who watched a funny video for 30 minutes every day significantly reduced their risk of recurrent heart disease. Another study showed that people with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared with similar folks without heart disease.

• Laughter forces us to breathe more deeply and may help us to clear mucus from the respiratory tree; this can be beneficial for people with respiratory diseases, including asthma.

• Laughter relaxes our muscles and reduces spasm; this may be one of the reasons why hearty laughter seems to reduce musculoskeletal pain.

• Laughter also may boost endorphin production, which is our body's own natural pain-killer.

• Laughter reduces our stress hormones, including cortisol and epinephrine; this in turn also protects our immune system, as chronic stress weakens our cells and makes us more vulnerable to infection.

• Laughter helps us to maintain optimism and hope; this is enormously powerful in healing, and can also reduce the risk of anxiety and depression when we are facing illness or other challenges in our lives.

What should you do if you want to become more mirthful? You certainly don't have to become a stand-up comic. In fact, people who learn to find and appreciate the humor all around them seem to benefit the most (that's right – humor is a learned behavior – you too can do this).

So go ahead and laugh – you'll feel better. And who knows – you may get healthier, too.

Note: If it's tough for you to find pleasure in normally pleasurable activities, especially if this persists for more than a month, then you may be dealing with depression, and you should talk to your doctor.


Copyright © The Sacramento Bee

Eric Clapton, Cream and us Old Farts Still Rockin...............

Clapton is.......Alive and Well!

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll: Clapton After 'Cocaine'


Listen to the story here

Listen to "Layla"

Listen to "Wonderful Tonight"


Second of a two-part interview.
All Things Considered, October 18, 2007 ·

In 1977, Eric Clapton released a version of the J.J. Cale song "Cocaine." At the time, Clapton was consuming copious amounts of cocaine — and alcohol — and had only recently kicked a heroin habit.

Now 62, the legendary guitarist looks back and wonders how he survived his decades of drug and alcohol addiction. Sober for 20 years, Clapton is the father of three young daughters, ages 6, 4 and 2.

Clapton writes about his many years of addiction in his new autobiography, Clapton. He calculates that he was spending the current equivalent of 8,000 pounds — about $16,000 — a week on heroin.

Drug-Filled Days, Nights

"Financially, it was ridiculous," Clapton tells Melissa Block in the second of a two-part interview.

"The thing about that kind of addiction that's pretty funny, on reflection, is that I always thought, 'I'm handling this. I can handle it. I can stop anytime. I just don't want to stop right now,'" he says.

During the three-year period that he was most deeply involved with heroin, Clapton says he stayed home a lot and did not perform live very often.

Later, when he had overcome his heroin addiction but was still battling alcohol abuse, he once performed lying down on the stage.

"It didn't seem that outlandish to me, and in fact, probably was all I was capable of. It was either that or just laying down somewhere else. The fact that I was laying down on stage means at least I showed up," Clapton says.

He characterizes the mid-1970s as a time that was "extremely casual and crazy … when anything was possible."

"I think in the book I did refer to the fact that there were people who were moving through that period with respect and dignity, and I just didn't run into them that often," he continues.

Music as Salvation

Even during these dark days, the music kept him going.

"The presence of music in my life has always been the salvation element of it. Not necessarily the playing, as much as just being conscious of it, listening to it, has kept me moving," Clapton says.

Clapton says he doesn't think his music suffered that much as a result of his addiction — he thinks if it had, it would have brought him to recovery earlier — and he expresses mixed emotions about his past.

"I don't know that I can honestly regret any of it safely, because it's brought me to where I am. My life would not be the same, and I would not have what I have today, were [it not] for the fact that I went through all this stuff," Clapton says.

"But I suppose if I do have any regrets, it is that musically I lost something there."

Life After Drugs

Sobriety brought its own challenges.

Making music without drugs and alcohol was very difficult initially — everything sounded so loud and rough to him — as was sex.

"It was funny because both [of] those things were things that I took for granted. And yet, without alcohol, both of them became very, very difficult and unmanageable," Clapton says.

He says that his earliest experiences with women were always fueled by alcohol.

"And so when you took it away, I just didn't know what to do and actually was, for quite a while, physically impotent. I was terrified. I would be paralyzed with fear. And I think, musically, it was the same," he says.

Despite his age, Clapton says he plans to continue touring ("It's something I will ways need"), although the days of huge tours are probably behind him.

"I don't think those big world tours are possible for me anymore, nor are they desirable, because there's somewhere else I'd rather be — with my kids and my wife. The home life has a lot of power for me now, and it's where I get most of my satisfaction," Clapton says.

Eric Clapton is GOoD!

Eric Clapton Looks Back at His Blues Roots

First in a two-part interview.
Listen Here

All Things Considered, October 17, 2007 ·

Eric Clapton has been reinventing himself musically for more than 40 years. But the strong pulse of the blues has powered his guitar playing since the beginning: from the Yardbirds when he was 18, through his stints with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Derek and the Dominoes, to today.

Now 62, the legendary guitarist is the author of a new autobiography, Clapton.

In the first of a two-part interview, Clapton talks to Melissa Block about his musical influences as a young man.

'Uncle Mac' and the Blues

His first guitar, which he got when he was 13, was a steel-string Hoyer made in Germany. It was about as big as he was, Clapton recalls.

"It was a very cheap guitar. And most cheap guitars, as anyone will tell you who tries to play a cheap guitar … they hurt to play," Clapton tells Block.

"It sounded nice, but it was just such hard work, I gave up. So I started when I was 13 and gave up when I was 13 and a half," he says.

Clapton's introduction to the blues — the music that would forever influence his own work — came from an unlikely source: a children's radio show in the 1950s and '60s hosted by "Uncle Mac" (aka Derek McCulloch).

The show's usual fare was novelty children's music, such as "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?"

But every now and then, Clapton says, Uncle Mac would slip in some blues.

"I don't know what this guy was on; I can't imagine how it would get snuck in, whether it was his taste or someone else's, his wife, who knows?" Clapton says.

'I Got What They Were Trying to Do'

Clapton even remembers the first blues song he heard on the show: "Whoopin' the Blues" (full song audio) by harmonica player Sonny Terry and singer and guitarist Brownie McGhee.

"That's where it started for me," he says.

"It got to me on a level that nothing else did. I got what they were trying to do," Clapton says.

"I think the purity of what they were trying to do undercut everything else that you could hear on the radio. Aside from great classical music or great opera, there was a seriousness about it that none of this other music had."

Listening to, Learning from the Greats

Other guitarists that Clapton listened to — and learned from — in those early years include Big Bill Broonzy and Muddy Waters.

Broonzy was "just an extremely good technician" and a "great player."

As he listens to a recording of Broonzy's "Hey Hey" (full song audio), Clapton notes the audible sound of the guitarist's foot tapping.

"His rhythm — it's absolutely perfect," Clapton marvels.

Waters' Playing Acted as 'Milestone'

Perhaps the blues guitarist who influenced Clapton the most is Muddy Waters.

"Muddy was there at a time when, really, the music was getting to me. I was really trying to grasp it and make something out of it," Clapton says.

Clapton says he would listen to a Waters' song such as "Honey Bee" (song clip audio) and try to emulate the guitar great's technique and the effect he created with his playing — in this instance, the chime-like sound of a bell.

"It was a hook to me. And I made this as a sort of milestone for me, for my learning capabilities," Clapton says.

"If I can get that, I'm one rung up the ladder. And I did, finally, manage to do it one day, and I thought, well, you know, I think I can probably do this."

A Mentor and Friend

The two guitarists played together later and became very close. In his book, Clapton describes Waters as "the father figure I never really had." Until his death in 1983, Waters was a part of Clapton's life.

Even so, Clapton says he was not comfortable enough — and perhaps too proud — to ask Waters technical questions about his playing.

"I wish I had," he says now.

But there was more than just professional pride at work.

"When I got to know Muddy, unfortunately, my drinking career was in full sway," Clapton says.

"He liked to drink, too, he wasn't really down on it or anything, but I was definitely not really there as much as I wish I had been."

There Must Be Some Way Outta Here.....Said The Joker To The Thief...

Bush's Catastrophic Rhetoric
By RALPH NADER (from Counter Punch)

Mired in the disastrous Iraq quagmire, opposed by a majority of Americans, George W. Bush has reached new depths of reckless, belligerent bellowing. At a recent news conference, he volunteered that he told our allies that if they're "interested in avoiding World War III," Iran must be prevented from both developing a nuclear weapon or having "the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

To what level of political insanity has this Washington Caesar descended? Only two countries can start World War III-Russia and the United States. Is Bush saying that if Russia, presently opposed to military action against Iran, persists with its position, Bush may risk World War III? If not, why is this law-breaking warmonger, looking for another war for American GIs to fight, while his military-age daughters bask in the celebrity lime light?

Why is he using such catastrophic language?

Surely he does not think Iran could start World War III. His own intelligence agencies say that, even assuming that the international inspectors are wrong and Iran is moving toward developing the "knowledge" of such weapons, it can't build its first such weapon before 3 to 5 years at the earliest.

Why would a regime ruling an impoverished country risk suicide, surrounded as it is by countries armed to the nuclear teeth, such as Israel and the United States? This nation of nearly 80 million people hardly needs to be reminded that the U.S. overthrew its popular premier in 1953, installing for the next 27 years the brutal regime of the Shah.

They recall that President Reagan and his Vice President, George Herbert Walker Bush urged, funded and equipped Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Iran-a nation that has not invaded any country in over 250 years-which took around 700,000 Iranian lives.

Moreover, the undeniable historical record shows that U.S. companies received licenses from the Department of Commerce, under Reagan, to ship Saddam the raw materials necessary to make chemical and biological weapons. Saddam used such lethal chemical weapons, with the tolerance of Reagan and Rumsfeld, on Iranians to devastating effect in terms of lives lost.

Then George W. Bush labels Iran a member of the "axis of evil" along with Iraq, ignoring a serious proposal by Iran in 2003 for negotiations, and shows what his language means by invading Iraq.

The authoritarian Iranian government is frightened enough to hurl some defiant rhetoric back at Washington and widen its perimeter defense. Seymour Hersh, the topflight investigative reporter for the New Yorker magazine has written numerous articles on how the crowding of Iran, including infiltrating its interior, has become an obsession of the messianic militarist in the White House.

The Pentagon is more cautious, worrying about our already drained Army and the absence of any military strategy and readiness for many consequences that would follow Bush's "bombs away" mentality.

Then there is the matter of the Democrats in Congress. After their costly fumble on Iraq, the opposition Party should make it very constitutionally clear, as recommended by former New York Governor, Mario Cuomo in a recent op-ed, that there can be no funded attacks on any country without a Congressional declaration of war, as explicitly required by the framers of our Constitution.

But the Democrats are too busy surrendering to other Bush demands, whether unconstitutional, above the law or just plain marinated in corporate greed. Some of this obeisance was all too clear in the Democrats questioning of Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey.

After the two days of hearings, no Democrat has yet announced a vote against Mukasey, even after he evaded questions on torture and argued for the inherent power of the President to act contrary to the laws of the land if he unilaterally believes he has the inherent constitutional authority to do so.

This position aligns Mukasey with the imperial views of Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Gonzales on the "unitary Executive." In short, reminiscent of the divine right of Kings, the forthcoming Attorney General believes Bush can say that 'he is the law' regardless of Congress and the judiciary.

After two recent lead editorials demonstrating its specific exasperation over the Democrats' kowtowing to the White House, the New York Times added a third on October 20, 2007 titled "With Democrats Like These" The editorial recounted the ways Democrats, especially in the Senate, have caved on critical constitutional and statutory safeguards regarding the Bush-Cheney policies and practices of spying on Americans without judicial approval and accountability.

Accusing the Democrats of "the politics of fear," the Times concluded: "It was bad enough having a one-party government when the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues."

There is more grist coming for the Times' editorial mill. Last week, the first African-American chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, Charles Rangel (D-NY), declared that Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, Jr., fresh from Wall Street, had persuaded him, during a decade of increasing record profits, to lower the porous corporate income tax rate from 35% to 25%.

"We can live with that," Chairman Rangel declared.

Would the working families in his District, who would be paying a higher tax rate on their modest income, agree?

Ralph Nader is the author of The Seventeen Traditions

Inner Peace, World Peace

Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
The Daily Dharma

October 21, 2007

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don't make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace. Without inner peace it is impossible to achieve world peace, external peace. Weapons themselves do not act. They have not come out of the blue. Man has made them. But even given those weapons, those terrible weapons, they cannot act by themselves. As long as they are left alone in storage they cannot do any harm. A human being must use them. Someone must push the button. Satan, the evil powers, cannot push that button. Human beings must do it.

- The Dalai Lama, in The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness, edited by Sidney Piburn
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

© Reproduction of material from anyTricycle pages without written permissionis strictly prohibitedCopyright 2005 Tricycle.com

Tricycle: The Buddhist Review,92 Vandam Street, New York, NY 10013Telephone 212.645.1143 Fax 212.645.1493

Don't you see their bodies burning?

Your empty walls...
Your empty walls...
Pretentious attention
Dismissive aprehension
Don't waste your time, on coffins today
When we decline, from the confines of our mind
Don't waste your time, on coffins today

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

I want you
To be
Left behind those empty walls
Don't
You see
From behind those empty walls

Those empty walls
When we decline, from the confines of our mind
Don't waste your time, on coffins today

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

I want you
To be
Left behind those empty walls
Don't
You see
From behind those empty walls
Want you to be
Left behind those empty walls
Don't
You see
From behind those empty walls

From behind those empty walls
From behind those empty walls
The walls
From behind those empty walls

I loved you, yes
Though they be
For you killed my family

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

Don't you see their bodies burning?
Desolate and full of yearning
Dying of anticipation
Choking from intoxication

I want you
To be
Left behind those empty walls
Told you
To see
From behind those empty walls
Want you to be, left behind those empty walls
Told you
To see
From behind those empty walls
From behind those empty walls
From behind those empty walls
From behind those empty walls
Those walls...
Those walls...

All We Are STILL Saying is GIVE PEACE A CHANCE...

Yoko Ono on the New Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, Art & Politics, the Peace Movement, Government Surveillance and the Murder of John Lennon


Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/16/1344219

Yoko Ono, musician, artist, and peace activist. Last week she unveiled the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, dedicated to her late husband John Lennon. More info: ImaginePeace.com.


Excerpts From "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"



AMY GOODMAN: Today, we spend the hour with Yoko Ono, artist, musician, peace activist. She’s here in the firehouse studio with us, just days after returning from Iceland, where she unveiled a project forty years in the making: the Imagine Peace Tower. Dedicated to her late husband John Lennon, the tower shoots light into the sky and bears the inscription “Imagine Peace.” It will light up every year between October 9, the day of John Lennon’s birth, and December 8, the day of his death.

Today, we speak with Yoko Ono about this latest project and her long and sometimes overlooked career as a prolific artist and innovator. We’ll also talk about her husband, John Lennon, and how their political activism together led to government surveillance and deportation attempts from the Nixon administration. But first, this is an excerpt of Yoko Ono's speech, unveiling the Imagine Peace Tower one week ago today.

YOKO ONO: We are here together, billions of us, standing at the dawn of a new age, determined to shift the axis of the world to health, peace and joy by loving and caring for all lives on earth.

Some of us are here physically, some are joining us in spirit. Some of us are imprisoned, tortured, maimed and silenced, but they are also here today with us. Some of us have passed away before being able to enjoy a new age of love and peace. But we are all here today, standing together with hope.

The light is the light of wisdom, healing and empowerment. Even in the moments of confusion, fear and the darkness of your souls, hold the light in your hearts, and you will know that you are not alone, that we are all together in seeing the light of peace.

AMY GOODMAN: Yoko Ono, speaking a week ago in Reykjavik, Iceland. Among those joining her to unveil the statue was Sean Lennon, her only childe with John Lennon. John Lennon’s fellow Beatle, Ringo Starr, was also there. Yoko Ono joins us now in the firehouse studio for the hour. Welcome to Democracy Now! Thanks so much.

YOKO ONO: Good morning, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to be with you. Tell us about this monument in Iceland.

YOKO ONO: Well, about forty years ago -- I think in 1965, so it was forty-two years ago -- I thought of this idea of having a lighthouse, a light tower, and that only emerges when the environment and the weather and everything is right. And I just liked that concept, that there’s a tower that isn’t just staying there, but depends on the environment that it just comes out. And right now, I think, because it’s a peace tower, and it’s kind of blinking, which is very, very, I think, real and true to what’s going on now. It’s blinking in a sense that it comes out only from John's birthday to John’s -- the day that he passed away. And so, it’s a small -- but, you know, it just shows how life is short, but light and the concept of light is eternal.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And why Iceland?

YOKO ONO: Well, the reason is because Iceland is a very, very unique country. And right now, everywhere, all different countries are suffering because of oil and the shortage of oil, and they’re fighting over oil. I mean, oil is always this sort of like -- the reason to go to war, something like that. But in Iceland, 80% of the energy is done by geothermal, meaning water. Water is supplying the energy, instead of oil.

And it’s a very, very interesting thing that they’re doing. What happened was, in the Depression,1930s, around then, they realized that they were using coal as the energy source, and they realized that they couldn’t buy any more coal, and just the whole country would just dissipate. So they found a way at the time how to use their resources, which was the geothermal energy. And from then on, they started geothermal energy instead of oil. And so, they're very independent from that sort of a struggle of getting oil, and it’s very beautiful.

AMY GOODMAN: So you conceived of this before John was killed? He knew about this idea?

YOKO ONO: No, he didn’t know about this idea. We didn’t know anything about this. Oh, what we knew was that I thought of building a light tower, and John loved that idea, this light tower that just emerges once in awhile. And so, he actually invited me in 1967, the first time that he invited me to his house in Kenwood, and I was wondering what it was about. I thought it was a party or something, but, no, it was a very quiet day. And he said, “Well, actually, I invited you because I wanted to know if you can build the lighthouse in my garden,” which was -- and I said, “Oh, dear, no, no. It’s just a conceptual idea. I don’t know how to build anything,” and I was just laughing. But that’s when he wanted this light tower, and that was forty years ago. And now -- and that was ’67, and it’s a very strange numerological thing, you know, because this year is his sixty-seventh birthday. And I didn’t plan it that way; it just happened, you know, this sort of -- we’re having this unveiling of the lighthouse.

AMY GOODMAN: And “Imagine Peace” is written in twenty-four languages?

YOKO ONO: Twenty-four languages. And, you know, somebody -- I’m sure somebody will come out and say, “Well, what about this language, that language?” So we have about space for another ten languages on the wall.

AMY GOODMAN: And the response of the people of Iceland?

YOKO ONO: Oh, well, people in Iceland, I hope, and I saw this sort of -- I witnessed the fact that they were all very, very happy. They were ecstatic. The reason -- one of the reasons, because the winter is rather dark in Iceland, and, you know, they like the idea that there’s light in the winter.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Yoko Ono, musician, artist, peace activist, just back from Reykjavik, from Iceland, where she unveiled the Imagine Peace Tower. It’s a light tower dedicated her late husband John Lennon.

YOKO ONO: And, you know, there are many interesting things about this, surrounding this, because I think that they found out that Edgar Cayce said something about there will be a tower of light in the foremost northern country, which will spread peace to the world, something like that. I think Edgar Cayce said that. So I don’t know, you know. It seems like somehow I’m fulfilling the prediction or something. But I didn’t know that. And, you know, they told me about that in Iceland.

AMY GOODMAN: And you have a website, imaginepeace.com?

YOKO ONO: Ah, yes. Imaginepeace.com. Please, you know, click into imaginepeace.com, because it’s -- then you will know all the stories about it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, throughout your life, you’ve merged your political activism with your art.

YOKO ONO: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you talk about that and how you’ve tried to use your art to get messages out?

YOKO ONO: Well, I think that all of us, not just artists -- but, well, when I say “artists,” I think people who consider themselves artists -- I think that everybody, if they want to be an artist, they can be. And also we’re using this creative energy of being an artist to just fulfill what we have to do, in a sense that all of us live in this society, and we’re all responsible for what happens in society, not just the artists. And so, I’m just doing what I can do, so that’s all, you know.

But I just wanted to tell you this very interesting thing that happened, so in Toronto a couple days ago -- a couple of weeks ago, that a male student was wearing a pink shirt, and he was gay, and so he was harassed and he was ostracized. And so, the next day, his friends all wore pink shirts. And this is sort of like spreading. Now there are many people who are wearing pink shirts, and other school students are asking, “Well, what can we do?” You know?

And I think that this -- we’re living in a situation that there's a lot of fear and confusion, and, you know, some people are very pessimistic about the future. But I really think that we can do it. We can survive. And, you know, it’s so natural for us to want to survive. It’s a very strong sort of instinct in us. And we are going to do it. And I see that all sorts of beautiful things are starting to happen. And they’re all writing to me at imaginepeace.com, so I’d like you to, you know, click in, and then you'll see these things are happening.

There’s another thing that happened very recently. I don’t know if this is very recent -- well, I think it is, that -- well, I better read it so that it’s just sort of -- I’ll be very exact about it. In September, a project was launched with the aim “at storing CO2 in Iceland’s lavas by injecting the green-house gas into basaltic bedrock where it literally turns to stone.” Now, “carbon dioxide turning into calcite is a well known natural process in volcanic areas and now the scientists of the University of Iceland, Columbia University [in New York] and the CNRS in Toulouse[, France,] are developing methods to imitate and speed up this transformation of the gas that is the prevalent contributor to global warming.” So they're fighting global warming, and it’s very interesting. I saw this lava, a sort of kind of looking ugly kind of stone, and then they showed me how it was calcified into a beautiful, beautiful sort of like a crystal. And so, that’s what they're trying to do now and lessen the global warming. So, of course, we have to do more to lessen the global warming. But that’s another way they're trying to do it, and I think we’re going to hack it. I think we’re going to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: As we were playing that song [“Imagine”] for our TV viewers, Yoko Ono, we were showing images. One of them was a poster that said, “The war is over!” Explain.

YOKO ONO: Well, one day I thought, well, it’s great to say “War is over” and have all these people -- well, this was the first idea, that I would have many famous people partying in Ascot House, and then somebody would just come in and say, “War is over.” And they all say, “Oh, my god, the war is over, if you want it.” But the thing is, then, you know, we decided to do it as a poster, and then John decided to do it on a billboard. And it just became "War is over! If you want it." It was much better than having a party and then having some TV camera crew to come and film it and all that, because it was a much better idea, so we just did it that way.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go for a minute to a clip of a documentary called The U.S. vs. John Lennon. It was directed by John Scheinfeld. It chronicles, well, your husband John Lennon and also Yoko Ono, their political activism around the Vietnam War and other issues of social justice in the ’60s and ’70s, and how the activism led to government surveillance and persecution of them. This clip looks at how John and Yoko spent their honeymoon by staging a weeklong bed-in against the Vietnam War.

JOHN LENNON: We're going to stay in bed for seven days, sort of, instead of having a private honeymoon. This is a private protest.

YOKO ONO: For the violence that’s going in the world, you see?

JOHN LENNON: To say that --

YOKO ONO: Be sure that instead of making war, it’s better to just stay in bed. Let's just stay in bed for the spring.

JOHN LENNON: And grow your hair for peace. Let it grow ’til peace comes.

UNIDENTIFIED: What the press really wants is a picture of John and Yoko in bed on their honeymoon. And then they turned it around and said, “Well, in that case, let them have a picture of John and Yoko in bed their honeymoon, but put the word ‘peace’ in it.”

JOHN LENNON: So we’re going to make love in bed, you see, and all the press from all around the world came, and we opened the -- helpers opened the door, and they're fighting to get in there, you know, like this with their cameras. And then their faces dropped. We’re sitting like angels saying, “Hello. Peace, brother.” And all their faces dropped, and we were just in bed.

INTERVIEWER: You were wearing --

JOHN LENNON: We thought it was a great practical joke that most of the world’s headline newspapers, especially the European and British, was: “Married couple are in bed.”

DAVID FENTON: Oh, there had never been anything like it. It was completely original. The conscious use of one's myth to project a political and social poetic goal, it never happened before.

YOKO ONO: Up to then, people who were promoting world peace were kind of like intellectual, anemic kind of people, just sort of like passing out pamphlets that nobody wants to read, you know? And so, John was saying, “No, no.” That’s why we wanted to do it this way, you know? And I think we did a great job.

JOHN LENNON: [reading] “Please stop this nonsense. Go home. We don’t like people like you. Go to a doctor to be normal.” Like, you get this?

YOKO ONO: It’s great.

JOHN LENNON: “Go to a doctor to be normal.” Well, we're seeing a psychiatrist today, so maybe he’ll fix us up then. Bloody marvelous.

FELIX DENNIS: When people are creative geniuses, you have to cut them some slack. You really have to cut them some slack. England isn’t good at cutting slack for working-class boys.

DONALD ZEC: If it works, it’s right. If it doesn’t work, it’s wrong.

JOHN LENNON: Well, nobody has ever given it a chance before, you know, have they? Nobody has ever given peace a complete chance. Gandhi tried it, and Martin Luther King tried it. But they were shot. But nobody’s given --

DONALD ZEC: You can’t get peace in a king-sized divan on [inaudible].

JOHN LENNON: No, you can’t, but we don’t expect to. But, I mean, we're talking mainly to the revolutionaries who think they can get it overnight by breaking down the buildings, you know?

YOKO ONO: They can’t get it done.

JOHN LENNON: They can’t get it. We thought about this for months. This is the best possible, most functional and effective way of promoting and protesting against violence that our minds combined could think of.

YOKO ONO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: John Lennon and Yoko Ono in their bed-in, their honeymoon, that they shared with the world. It’s from the film The U.S. vs. John Lennon. Yoko Ono, you started the bed-in in Amsterdam?

YOKO ONO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you conceive of this?

YOKO ONO: Well, that’s something that John and I kind of discussed it and finally made it into a very practical kind of event together.

AMY GOODMAN: And the press response?

YOKO ONO: The press response wasn’t -- well, first of all, they thought that we were going to make love or something in front of people, and that’s why a lot of journalists came. But we weren’t doing that. We were just talking about peace in bed, and maybe that disappointed them or something, I don't know. But we didn’t think that we were going to get any flak, but we did. I think that the reports in papers were not very good. And we were surprised. We said, “Oh, dear,” you know.

AMY GOODMAN: But you took it on the road?

YOKO ONO: Yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You did it in Amsterdam. And here else?

YOKO ONO: Well, we did it in Canada. But the thing is, that’s all we were able to do, because we were going to Canada and then were going to go to United States, but somehow we couldn’t do it in the United States at the time.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And this whole issue of the government surveillance of your activities, at the time, to what degree did you realize the extent of the government's pursuit of you and your husband?

YOKO ONO: Well, you know, we knew it, and we didn’t, in a way. It’s a very strange situation. And we couldn’t tell anybody about it. We did tell some friends, but then they just thought that we were just being paranoid.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to another clip that talks about this, another clip from The U.S. vs. John Lennon, dealing with the FBI's spying on John Lennon and Yoko Ono, beginning with former Nixon administration official G. Gordon Liddy.

G. GORDON LIDDY: It was our perspective of Lennon that most of the time he was walking around stoned, whacked out of his mind. But he was a high-profile figure, and so his activities were being monitored.

PAUL KRASSNER: They knew for a fact that they didn’t want hundreds, thousands, millions of young people attending a counter-convention, especially where John Lennon would perform.

CHRIS CHARLESWORTH: I don’t think he realized the strength of the American political establishment and how much power it could exert onto him with regard to silencing him or covert ways in which they might follow his activities.

UNIDENTIFIED: We were certain the phones were all tapped. And it was, like most things, our wildest dreams did not begin to touch what they were actually doing against us.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think that they are kind of picking on you, John?

JOHN LENNON: Oh, yeah. They picked on me. I’m telling you, when it first started, I was followed in a car, and my phone was tapped. And I think they wanted me to know to scare me. And I was scared, paranoid, you know. And people thought I was crazy then. You know, I mean, they do anyway, but I mean more so. You know, “Lennon, oh, you big-headed maniac,” right? “Who’s going to follow you around?” Well, what do they want? You know, that’s what I’m saying. You know, what do they want? You know, I’m not going to cause them any problem.

JOHN DEAN: It surprised me when I heard that Lennon had been under surveillance, that he had been wiretapped, just as it did when I heard that Martin Luther King had been. These sort of things that came out of the FBI really caught me as being so unnecessary and so risky, and why?

JOHN LENNON: I can’t prove it, you know. I just know there’s a lot of repairs going on in the cellar. I know the difference between the phone being normal when I pick it up and when every time I pick it up there’s a lot of noises, you know. And I’d open the door, and there will be guys standing on the other side of the street. I’d get in a car, and they’d be following me in a car, and not hiding, you see? That’s why I got a bit paranoid, as well. They wanted me to see I was being followed, you know? Suddenly I realized this was serious. You know, they were coming for me one way or the other. You know, I mean, they were harassing me.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s John Lennon, and it’s from the film The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The harassment of you and John under the Nixon administration, as he was preparing to run for re-election in 1972, this tremendous fear that Nixon had, coming out in the Freedom of Information Act documents, that John Lennon would be holding these Get Out the Vote concerts. You had this massive concert in Ann Arbor to free John Sinclair --

YOKO ONO: Yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: -- and ultimately he was.

YOKO ONO: I know. Well, you know, that John Lennon vs. USA [sic] is a very good film, and it was produced by David Leaf and directed by John Scheinfeld, and I really wish people would just go and buy the DVD or something like that, because it’s -- ordinarily it might be circulating somewhere and maybe on internet, but it will show what John was doing. And after John’s passing, there were so many stories about John, all sort of negative stuff, you know, about, oh, when -- in childhood he was violent, or this, that and the other, and they never get around to what John was really doing. And he was really working for world peace and was doing a great job at it, really, you know. And because of that, that some people didn’t like it, you know, and it was very dangerous for him, but he just laid out all this stuff that he thinks was very important to the world.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And for those who are younger out there in the audience and know of you as -- the two of you as a famous couple, but don’t know much else, how did you meet originally?

YOKO ONO: Oh, well, it was -- I was just going to say it was just a coincidence or accidental meeting, which was true, but, you know, nothing is an accident or coincidence, I’m sure. And, well, we didn’t know that. And I went to London, leaving New York on September 1st, and John had a --

JUAN GONZALEZ: Of what year was this?

YOKO ONO: 1966. And John had a very difficult time in August of that year, because people thought that he made the remark of the Beatles will be the then-Jesus Christ or something, and they sort of mistook it in many ways. And so that I think it was really dangerous for his life and all that, too. I think maybe on a sort of level of subconscious or something that maybe he was asking for help, and, I don’t know, maybe I caught that message or something.

I was leaving on September 1st to London, and then we met in Indica Gallery, where I was doing my show. And before the opening, about an hour before the opening, he came into Indica Gallery. And I thought, why did the owner let him come in? You know, because I was telling the owner that nobody should come in before the opening, because I wanted to be very prepared, well prepared. And -- but this guy came in with the owner. So I said, “What is this?” You know, but then I thought, oh, well, he must be a very close friend of the owner or something, I should be nice about it. But I wasn’t that nice, really.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s how you met John Lennon. Before that, as we talk about war now and the context of your lives with another war, with Vietnam, you survived the firebombing of Tokyo.

YOKO ONO: I know. And it was really --

AMY GOODMAN: In World War II.

YOKO ONO: I remember, when I was a little girl, a young -- you know, when I was very young, one day I had high fever because of just a cold. You know, I had a cold. And so, my family all went down into the basement to make sure that, you know, they’re alright. It’s a kind of shelter that they created in the garden actually. But I couldn’t go. And I was just sort of in my bed, and I saw that all the houses next to us and all the places around me were just all fire. I go, “Oh.” But, you know, when you’re young, and that’s the only reality you’re working through, you don’t really get totally scared or anything. You know, you're just looking at it like an objective film or something like that. “Oh, this is what’s happening,” you know? And because of that memory of what I went through in the Second World War, I think that I really -- it embedded in me how terrible it is to go through war.

AMY GOODMAN: Your father was a prisoner of war, taken in China?

YOKO ONO: He was in French Indochina, which is Vietnam, actually. It’s a very strange sort of, you know, fate, isn’t it, that he actually was in Vietnam. It was called French Indochina, Indochina, in those days. And he was in Saigon. And he was in a concentration camp. And my mother and I and my brother and sister, younger brother and sister, we were all in Japan. And we were sort of concerned about him. And -- but also, we had very little to eat, you know? And then there was a little rice bowl that we would split between us or something. But before we split the rice bowl, rice in the rice bowl, my mother would just give the rice bowl to my father's photograph, you know, like dedicating it to him so he would have something to eat. And we were all just waiting. It was amazing, yeah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to get back to some of the art that you’ve done, in terms of getting out political messages. Back in 2000, you did art exhibitions both at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and in an Arab town in northern Israel.

YOKO ONO: Umm El-Fahim, yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: "Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?"

YOKO ONO: Yes, yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What was the reaction there at the time? And what were you hoping to do?

YOKO ONO: It was so --

JUAN GONZALEZ: And especially now that we're hearing about the possibility of another peace conference over the continuing conflict in the Occupied Territories.

YOKO ONO: Well, I really think that we're going to start to tap into our wisdom, open up to nature of wanting peace and wanting to survive. And I think we are going to do that. I don’t know when that’s going to happen, but I’m sure that it will happen very quickly. The way that we’re dealing with the global warming, how, you know, 140 countries are capable of doing the same thing, of changing their energy source to geothermal, which is water. Water. And when you do that, something very interesting happens. In Iceland, air is clean, the water is clean, and the earth is clean. And when I was there, my sister was saying, “Did you notice that there was no dust on the windowsill in the hotel?” “No dust?” I mean, we come from New York, where dust is sort of like a normal situation of the day. But anyway, so that’s what’s going to happen to the world. We are going to quickly make sure that we are not dependent on oil. Isn't that great? And that’s going to happen, of course. And meanwhile, we’re going to change the global warming in such a way like I told you about, the sort of -- “The project’s implications for the fight against global warming are considerable, since basaltic bedrock susceptive of CO2 injections are widely found on the planet.” And we’re going to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re very optimistic.

YOKO ONO: Well, you know, most people say, “Oh, you're so optimistic. I mean, what’s wrong with you?” I’m not really that optimistic. I am trying to make us survive. And in the course of survival, we don’t have the luxury to be negative. That’s a luxury that we can’t afford. And we just have to do what we can do. And I think that instead of getting so upset with some people, you know, or some countries which are doing this, doing that -- “How dare they,” whatever -- I think we should just do what we can do.

AMY GOODMAN: When you and John were in this country, President Nixon was trying to deport your husband.

YOKO ONO: Yes, he was.

AMY GOODMAN: For your opposition to the Vietnam War.

YOKO ONO: I know.

AMY GOODMAN: How did Paul McCartney feel about John speaking out on Vietnam?

YOKO ONO: Well, I think you’ll have to ask Paul about that.

AMY GOODMAN: Did John feel pressure from the Beatles not be so political?

YOKO ONO: Well, I think there was already maybe, when he made the remark about the Beatles were bigger than Christ or something like that, which actually was true at the time. And he was really concerned about that. He was an incredible sort of enthusiastic Christian, actually, and I think that he didn’t like that fact. But it was reported in a very strange way. And at the time, I think that the band was a little bit upset about that, you know? But other than that, they were never sort of critical, or criticizing us.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to another clip of the documentary, U.S. vs. John Lennon, which looks at the Nixon administration trying to have John Lennon deported on drug charges. It begins with Leon Wildes, John Lennon’s immigration attorney.

LEON WILDES: I sued the Attorney General Mitchell and a whole slew of other people who I claimed were involved in a conspiracy to deny John and Yoko's case and get them out of the United States improperly.

REPORTER: What do you think your chances are of remaining in this country?

JOHN LENNON: Ninety-nine to one.

REPORTER: For or against?

JOHN LENNON: For.

REPORTER: Why is that?

JOHN LENNON: Because I’m overconfident, as usual.

LEON WILDES: We ultimately were able to examine the records in the case, and, lo and behold, deep in John's immigration file, which was a high-security file, were documents reaching all the way up to President Nixon, showing improper interference in an immigration case and prejudgment.

UNIDENTIFIED: Probably the most important documents in the Lennon FBI file are reports addressed to the White House, signed by J. Edgar Hoover. No, these were not sent directly to Richard Nixon. They’re addressed to H.R. Haldeman, assistant to the President. Now, Haldeman was the most important person in the White House, if you wanted to get to Nixon. So when Hoover sends something to Haldeman saying, “Here’s our report on our progress in trying to kick Lennon out of the country,” the reason that he’s doing that is that Nixon wants to know.

UNIDENTIFIED: I would not say that it was integral to the politics of the Nixon administration to keep John Lennon from having residence in this country. I think it was of a piece with the general nastiness of the Nixon administration.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of U.S. vs. John Lennon. How scared were you that you were going to be kicked out, that John was?

YOKO ONO: Well, we weren’t that scared. It’s very interesting we were that naïve about it, but we thought that it’s going to be alright. And I think that Leon Wilde really did a very good job. He did a very Zen thing actually, and I think that maybe we should all learn from it. But instead of fighting the immigration or fighting the administration, he started to just postpone it, and kept postponing. And I think that that worked.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, John was not deported. We just saw one of the documents, classified documents, that said “John Winston Lennon.” As we were watching it, you said, “actually ‘John Winston Ono Lennon.’” But they didn’t say that.

YOKO ONO: Yes. Well, he changed his name to John Ono Lennon. There was a big sort of ceremony we did in London. And he changed his name, but we found out that they cannot really take out Winston, so it had to be John Winston Ono Lennon, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: How important is feminism to you?

YOKO ONO: Well, I think it’s very important for all of us, not just for women, but for men, as well. It’s a very important thing for the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

YOKO ONO: Well, because, you know, woman power is very, very strong, and by ignoring it or abusing it, the world is not getting any benefit from doing that.

JUAN GONZALEZ: This summer, you headlined the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago.

YOKO ONO: Yes, I did.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Most of the people there were in their twenties and thirties, and your message seems to be reaching across the generations now. The relevance of getting so many young people to hear you?

YOKO ONO: Well, you know, I don’t have a concept of young and old, in a way. I never ask people, “How old are you?” you know, because I really think that the age of that person is the age of that person’s spirit. And some people are very young, and some people are very old; even when they're eighteen, they can be very old.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the media. To say the least, your life has been framed by the media. But you also, you and John, were very good at dealing with the media.

YOKO ONO: I don’t know about that.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I wanted to go back to one last clip from the film U.S. vs. John Lennon, and it is Gloria Emerson of the New York Times challenging John Lennon.

JOHN LENNON: If I’m going to get on the front page, I might as well get on the front page with the word “peace.”

GLORIA EMERSON: But you’ve made yourself ridiculous!

JOHN LENNON: To some people. I don’t care.

GLORIA EMERSON: You’re too good for what you’re doing.

JOHN LENNON: If it save lives --

GLORIA EMERSON: You don’t think you -- oh, my dear boy, you’re living in a nether nether land.

JOHN LENNON: Well, then, you talk to the --

GLORIA EMERSON: You don’t think you’ve saved a single life. They go on the subway --

JOHN LENNON: Listen, will you tell me, what were they singing at the Moratorium?

GLORIA EMERSON: Which? Which? I mean, the Moratorium -- [inaudible] throughout the nation.

YOKO ONO: In Washington, D.C. in America.

JOHN LENNON: The one here, the recent big one. They were singing “Give Peace a Chance,” you know.

GLORIA EMERSON: A song of yours, probably.

JOHN LENNON: Well, yes, and it was written specifically for them.

GLORIA EMERSON: So they sang one of your songs. Great song, sure, but is that all you can say about that? The Moratorium?

JOHN LENNON: You were saying that in America they’re so serious about the protest movement.

GLORIA EMERSON: Yes, they are.

JOHN LENNON: But they were so flippant that they were singing a happy-go-lucky song, which happens to be one I wrote. And I’m glad they sang it. And when I get there, I’ll sing it with them.

AMY GOODMAN: John Lennon, responding to the New York Times’s Gloria Emerson. Yoko Ono, do you remember that interview?

YOKO ONO: Oh, of course, I remember that very well. These days, whenever I see that part of the film, I just feel sorry for Gloria Emerson. You know, we really have to understand that, you know, we make mistakes sometimes. And that’s sort of repeated all the time. It’s like -- well, we just have to know that all of us do make mistakes, and we have to forgive each other. And this is just part of it. I really want to forgive her, because I feel that she must be embarrassed by now and also her family, etc., etc. Yes, John was very upset about that situation, and rightly so. And if he was here now, I think he would be extremely upset.

AMY GOODMAN: About the situation in the world?

YOKO ONO: About the situation of the world, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What you think he would be doing today?

YOKO ONO: Well, I think that we’ll be doing exactly what we’ve been doing then. I think this time it’s not the bed-in; we can’t repeat the act. But probably he will be in Iceland with me, standing at the Imagine Peace Tower. And I really felt that he was standing with me. And Ringo was there, and I thought it was very nice that he came, but he even gave me a little sort of rubber bracelet. And it’s a white rubber bracelet. I said, “What is this for?” “Oh, it’s for peace, and I’m sort of giving it to people.” And that was very nice of him. And also Olivia, Olivia Harrison, she’s an incredibly intelligent woman, and somehow she was kind of overshadowed by George Harrison, of course, but they were doing things together. And I just know that now, because she's been so helpful with the awful situation in many ways.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Over the years, you’ve collaborated with many artists -- John Cage, the composer, Andy Warhol. Could you talk about some of your favorite collaborations that you’ve had?

YOKO ONO: Well, the most -- my favorite, of course, is with John Lennon. And before that, yes, I had some collaborations with people, and they were all very good, actually. You know, I enjoyed them. And I feel that I was very lucky to have had those encounters. Very interesting, isn't it, that most people would not have all that in different fields? I mean, Ornette Coleman was jazz, and John Cage was avant-garde, and John Lennon was rock ‘n’ roll, you know?

AMY GOODMAN: And what is your next plan, your next project?

YOKO ONO: Well -- oh, and then I have to tell you that I did collaborate -- I have collaborated with my son, as well. That’s my latest, I suppose. I don’t know. I mean, I have so many things that I’m still working on now, and if I started telling you that, you’ll just be nodding off.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you about how you feel, having really dealt with the Nixon administration in a very personal way, from the surveillance to the attempted deportation to the war, to the Vietnam War, how do think the Bush administration compares to the Nixon administration?

YOKO ONO: Well, I’m not that concerned about professional politicians, because I always believe that we can only change the world by grassroots movements, because in grassroots there are so many people, really, you know? And it’s a very important thing to do through grassroots. And so, I think that, you know, we're doing alright. I think it’s very -- a wasteful thing to focus our attention too much on other people's -- what other people are doing and being critical of it.

And when I am asked the same question in the world, in Europe or in Iceland, wherever, Asia, I always say that this is the first time that I realized that I respect Americans so much, because there are so many Americans standing up for peace and trying to change the world and trying to shift the axis of the world to peace, despite the fact that it’s rather dangerous to do that maybe, or -- and they are very courageous, and it’s a very courageous thing to do.

It’s -- well, I don’t want to compare with that, because it’s a different -- totally different thing. But whenever New York had a blackout, we found that the New Yorkers were very peaceful people and that we helped each other. It’s like that, you know. It’s like now there are so many beautiful people standing up courageously for world peace in the United States, and I want the world to know that. And I always say that, you know, whenever I go -- wherever I go. They say, “How do you like what’s going on with America now?” And I’m saying, “Well, there are many people who are standing up for peace. And for the first time I really strongly respect Americans, and proud of it, too.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: And -- but when you say that there are so many standing up for peace, certainly in terms of the numbers that are -- when it comes to war, coming out into the streets to try to stop this war, it’s certainly not at the level that it was in the period during Vietnam.

YOKO ONO: Wait a second, wait a second. In the Vietnam War, there were things that we did that were sort of effective maybe, marching and all that. And, you know, marching is not bad either. But I think that we’re learning other ways of really trying to affect the world. And, you know, like they say that people, all people in China, would just jump up and down at once, then they can shift the axis of the globe. Now, there are many, many people, all of us, are visualizing world peace and to survive, to want to survive, and, you know, by doing that together, like billions of us, we are going to shift the axis of the world to peace. And I believe that.

AMY GOODMAN: In the situation in Burma, your thoughts? Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest for so many years.

YOKO ONO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve got the US oil company Chevron continuing to do business with the military junta. You’ve got China's support, as well, of the regime, the rounding up of -- we don’t know how many -- Buddhist monks and other citizens of Burma.

YOKO ONO: Well, you see, in the old days, it was just the monks who were meditating and changing the world by meditation. Now, I send a message to all people who are in a situation where they are being persecuted by administrations and asking them to try to survive, because just the fact that they are in this world now and to exercise their spirit to influence other people with very powerful spirits that they have, we are benefiting from that. And I don’t want them to die. I want them to really try to survive. And I will do the same.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Yoko Ono, how did you cope with John's death, with his murder, at such a young age, at the age of forty?

YOKO ONO: I know. It was very difficult. Very, very difficult, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And in helping others who are dealing with this all over the world, whether through war, through natural causes, through murder, as your husband died so violently, what thoughts do you have today?

YOKO ONO: Well, you see, actually, when you said helping the world, I just remembered that after John's passing -- and I was feeling so depressed that I didn’t know if, you know, it was -- if there was any point in keeping and being alive, or something like that. But then I realized that there are so many girls who are jumping off the roof or something and trying to commit suicide because John died and everything, and suddenly it woke me up. I said, I have to help these people, these people who are in distress. And that really made me come out of the depression, in a way. And also, the other one was my son Sean. I could not sort of leave him alone. And that was a very strong element, but especially when I heard about -- when I read about the girls who were trying to sort of commit suicide.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for spending the hour with us today. Yoko Ono has been our guest, musician, artist, peace activist.


http://www.democracynow.org/

Stop Art Now to Preserve the American Way of Life.....

Conceptual Terrorists Encase Sears Tower In Jell-O

October 15, 2007 Issue 43•42 of The Onion

The Sears Tower

CHICAGO—In what is being called the first conceptual terrorist attack on American soil, the landmark Sears Tower was encased in 18 million tons of strawberry gelatin early Monday morning, leaving thousands shocked, angry, and seriously confused.

Authorities called to the scene of the senseless attack said they could do little to control the large crowds of dangerously bewildered citizens, many of whom searched desperately for some semblance of meaning in what had just taken place. As of press time, 11 night security guards were still trapped inside the famous structure, their rescue unlikely until the Jell-O melts.

"My God, it's just awful," said commuter Nick Dawson, one of countless Chicago residents who struggled to comprehend what had occurred. "Why would anyone do something like this?"

Tentative speculation that the dessert enclosure was in fact an act of terrorism was quickly confirmed after a group known only as the Prophet's Collective took credit for the attack in a three-hour-long video that surfaced on the Internet.

"Your outdated ideas of what terrorism is have been challenged," an unidentified, disembodied voice announces following the video's first 45 minutes of random imagery set to minimalist techno music. "It is not your simple bourgeois notion of destructive explosions and weaponized biochemical agents. True terror lies in the futility of human existence."

The terrorists' video made their message clear.

According to a 2007 CIA executive summary, the terrorists responsible for masterminding the attack are likely hiding somewhere in Berlin's vast labyrinth of cafés. Though officials said they didn't know if any of those involved in carrying out the plot were still in Chicago, several dozen local performance artists and interpretive dancers have been brought in for questioning.

"We believe that this is the same group responsible for the 2005 Saran-wrapping of the American embassy in Paris," CIA director Michael Hayden said. "This is an extremely dangerous organization with absolutely no regard for American tastes and sensibilities. If left unchecked, it could forever change the face of contemporary terrorism."

Hayden said the CIA is working closely with the National Endowment for the Arts to cut off all grants that may serve as funding for the group. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security has begun monitoring any large purchases of gravy, tinfoil, pig's blood, and barbed wire in hopes of preventing another aesthetic tragedy.

"We are calling upon all citizens to remain vigilant during this difficult and utterly peculiar time," Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley said during a press conference earlier today. "The city needs your help to ensure that the disturbing message sent to us by these terrorists today, whatever it was, never happens again."

Shocked and slightly damp rescue workers.

"If you see something weird, say something," Daley added.

While officials have yet to determine the purpose of the attack, a number of potential theories have emerged, including the sudden deregulation of the U.S. economy, the destruction of culturally significant landmarks, and maybe the fact that man, in his essence, is no more than a collection of irrational fragments, incapable of finding reason where no reason exists.

A secret communiqué leaked by the Prophet's Collective, however, decries these theories and several others as being "completely off," and goes on to call the American people "cultural infidels."

Though many Chicago residents are still attempting to wrap their heads around the attack, some in the Windy City have refused to classify the Jell-O encasement as a terrorist act at all.

"I'm no expert, but I know terrorism when I see it," said Kathy Atwood, a Hyde Park mother of four. "Where is the devastating loss of life and massive destruction of infrastructure? This doesn't move me to run for my life at all."

She added: "Real terrorism takes years of training and meticulous planning. My 6-year-old kid can make Jell-O."

The DHS said it has taken additional measures to secure the Brooklyn Bridge following today's Jell-O attack, as initial evidence suggests that the New York landmark may or may not be the site of "found terrorism."

Murder and Mayhem from the "Peace and Stability Industry"....

Peace Out: Blackwater Splits with Trade Group that Promotes the 'Peace and Stability' Industry
Mired in controversy after its operators killed 17 Iraqi civilians, Blackwater quietly dissociated itself with the International Peace Operations Association, an organization that reps for the private military industry's biggest players.

Bruce Falconer
MotherJones.com / washington_dispatch
October 11 , 2007

While its operators stand accused of firing indiscriminately on Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and wounding 24 in a September 16 shooting in Baghdad, Blackwater USA quietly withdrew its membership yesterday from the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that represents some of the private military industry's biggest players. "We have decided to take a hiatus from the [association]," a Blackwater spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story. "We, like many other organizations engaged in this type of work, are pursuing other aspects and methods of industry outreach and governance." The IPOA did not issue a public statement, but Blackwater's name and logo have been removed from the list of member companies appearing on the organization's website. Doug Brooks, the IPOA's founder and president, confirmed the decision by phone earlier today. He declined to comment on the details of Blackwater's departure, but denied it had resulted from any action undertaken by other IPOA members, either by companies uncomfortable with sharing an association with Blackwater or by those who may stand to gain commercially from its demise. "They were members in good standing when they pulled out," Brooks told me. "They made the decision."

Blackwater was a founding member of the IPOA, which currently represents 38 companies active in what it calls "the peace and stability industry." Having started with six companies in April 2001, the organization's membership has grown rapidly since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as private military companies have sought the sheen of legitimacy provided by the IPOA's well-intentioned, but largely unenforceable code of conduct, which emphasizes respect for human rights, ethics, transparency, and corporate accountability. The IPOA's commitment to these ideals stood to be tested by the recent involvement of Blackwater operators in several controversial shooting incidents in Iraq. Just last week the association issued a press release stating that it "does not condone reckless or dangerous behavior" and acknowledging that it was "actively working with Blackwater, both through our Standards Committee and our Executive Committee, to ensure that they are fully compliant with the IPOA Code of Conduct."

The company's sudden withdrawal from the association, however, further calls into question IPOA's ability to police its membership. According to Robert Young Pelton, author of Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror, who shadowed Blackwater operators working in Iraq as he researched his book, the company's abrupt departure from the trade group may be the result of pressure from the State Department, the company's primary contracting agency, to keep a lower profile following the September 16 shootings. "Doug Brooks is pretty vocal in the media," said Pelton. "State is usually the one that smacks Blackwater in the back of the head to say, 'Shut the fuck up! You're not supposed to talk while there's a pending investigation.' So, my guess is that this is a State-mandated decision, which is why Doug is saying nothing about it."

Blackwater did not return a call for comment. Apart from the company's initial statement to the Wall Street Journal, it has not commented publicly on its decision. But according to an associate of Blackwater founder and CEO Erik Prince, the company is not overly concerned about going it alone. "It doesn't surprise me that they may have pulled out," the source wrote in an email. "The IPOA doesn't have any particular influence over its membership or pull on the Hill. It's the fucking blind leading the blind."

Meanwhile, two other private military companies associated with Prince, Virginia-based Total Intelligence Solutions and Barbados-based Greystone Limited, remain IPOA members.

Bruce Falconer is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington, D.C., bureau.

This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.
© 2007 The Foundation for National Progress

The True Nature of Happiness

Tricycle's Daily Dharma
October 3, 2007


Lack of understanding of the true nature of happiness, it seems to me, is the principal reason why people inflict sufferings on others. They think either that the other's pain may somehow be a cause of happiness for themselves or that their own happiness is more important, regardless of what pain it may cause. But this is shortsighted: no one truly benefits from causing harm to another sentient being. Whatever immediate advantage is gained at the expense of someone else is shortlived. In the long run, causing others misery and infringing their rights to peace and happiness result in anxiety, fear, and suspicion within oneself. Such feelings undermine the peace of mind and contentment which are the marks of happiness.

True happiness comes not from a limited concern for one's own well-being, or that of those one feels close to, but from developing love and compassion for all sentient beings. Here, love means wishing that all sentient beings should find happiness, and compassion means wishing that they should all be free of suffering. The development of this attitude gives rise to a sense of openness and trust that provides the basis for peace.

--The Dalai Lama, from The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness, edited by Sidney Piburn

From Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

Don't you let nobody bring you down (they'll sho 'nuff try)

Higher Ground ( written by Stevie Wonder )

People keep on learnin'

Soldiers keep on warrin'

World keep on turnin'

Cause it won't be too long

Powers keep on lyin'

While your people keep on dyin'

World keep on turnin'

Cause it won't be too long

I'm so darn glad he let me try it again

Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin

I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then

Gonna keep on tryin'

Till I reach the highest ground

Teachers keep on teachin'

Preachers keep on preachin'

World keep on turnin'

Cause it won't be too long

Oh no

Lovers keep on lovin'



Believers keep on believin'

Sleepers just stop sleepin'

Cause it won't be too long

Oh no

I'm so glad that he let me try it again

Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin

I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then

Gonna keep on tryin'

Till I reach my highest ground...Whew!

Till I reach my highest ground

No one's gonna bring me down

Oh no

Till I reach my highest ground

Don't you let nobody bring you down (they'll sho 'nuff try)

God is gonna show you higher ground

He's the only friend you have around

Our Government Has Been Hijacked...And Vanity Fair Is The Magazine Reporting It????? Where Is The Washington Post?????

Secrets
Washington's $8 Billion Shadow


Mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government with brawn. But the biggest, most powerful of the "body shops"—SAIC, which employs 44,000 people and took in $8 billion last year—sells brainpower, including a lot of the "expertise" behind the Iraq war.


by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele / March 2007 Vanity Fair


One of the great staples of the modern Washington movie is the dark and ruthless corporation whose power extends into every cranny around the globe, whose technological expertise is without peer, whose secrets are unfathomable, whose riches defy calculation, and whose network of allies, in and out of government, is held together by webs of money, ambition, and fear. You've seen this movie a dozen times. Men in black coats step from limousines on wintry days and refer guardedly to unspeakable things. Surveillance cameras and eavesdropping devices are everywhere. Data scrolls across the movie screen in digital fonts. Computer keyboards clack softly. Seemingly honorable people at the summit of power—Cabinet secretaries, war heroes, presidents—turn out to be pathetic pawns of forces greater than anyone can imagine. And at the pinnacle of this dark and ruthless corporation is a relentless and well-tailored titan—omniscient, ironic, merciless—played by someone like Christopher Walken or Jon Voight.

To be sure, there isn't really such a corporation: the Omnivore Group, as it might be called. But if there were such a company—and, mind you, there isn't—it might look a lot like the largest government contractor you've never heard of: a company known simply by the nondescript initials SAIC (for Science Applications International Corporation), initials that are always spoken letter by letter rather than formed into a pronounceable acronym. SAIC maintains its headquarters in San Diego, but its center of gravity is in Washington, D.C. With a workforce of 44,000, it is the size of a full-fledged government agency—in fact, it is larger than the departments of Labor, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Its anonymous glass-and-steel Washington office—a gleaming corporate box like any other—lies in northern Virginia, not far from the headquarters of the C.I.A., whose byways it knows quite well. (More than half of SAIC's employees have security clearances.) SAIC has been awarded more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. The contracts number not in the dozens or scores or hundreds but in the thousands: SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion. The company's annual revenues, almost all of which come from the federal government, approached $8 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, and they are continuing to climb. SAIC's goal is to reach as much as $12 billion in revenues by 2008. As for the financial yardstick that really gets Wall Street's attention—profitability—SAIC beats the S&P 500 average. Last year ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, posted a return on revenue of 11 percent. For SAIC the figure was 11.9 percent. If "contract backlog" is any measure—that is, contracts negotiated and pending—the future seems assured. The backlog stands at $13.6 billion. That's one and a half times more than the backlog at KBR Inc., a subsidiary of the far better known government contractor once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Halliburton Company.

It is a simple fact of life these days that, owing to a deliberate decision to downsize government, Washington can operate only by paying private companies to perform a wide range of functions. To get some idea of the scale: contractors absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000. In other words, more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly to SAIC or some other contractor rather than to the IRS. In Washington these companies go by the generic name "body shops"—they supply flesh-and-blood human beings to do the specialized work that government agencies no longer can. Often they do this work outside the public eye, and with little official oversight—even if it involves the most sensitive matters of national security. The Founding Fathers may have argued eloquently for a government of laws, not of men, but what we've got instead is a government of body shops.

The unhappy business practices of the past few years in Iraq—cost overruns, incompetence, and corruption on a pharaonic scale—have made the American public keenly aware of the activities of mega-contractors such as Halliburton and Bechtel. Although SAIC takes on government projects such as those pursued by contractors like these, it does not belong in exactly the same category. Halliburton and Bechtel supply the government's brawn. They pour concrete, roll out concertina wire, build infrastructure. They call on bullnecked men to provide protection.

In contrast, SAIC is a body shop in the brain business. It sells human beings who have a particular expertise—expertise about weapons, about homeland security, about surveillance, about computer systems, about "information dominance" and "information warfare." If the C.I.A. needs an outside expert to quietly check whether its employees are using their computers for personal business, it calls on SAIC. If the Immigration and Naturalization Service needs new record-keeping software, it calls on SAIC. Indeed, SAIC is willing to provide expertise about almost anything at all, if there happens to be a government contract out there to pay for it—as there almost always is. Whether SAIC actually possesses all the expertise that it sells is another story.

What everyone agrees on is this: No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC. No contractor seems to exploit conflicts of interest in Washington with more zeal. And no contractor cloaks its operations in greater secrecy. SAIC almost never touts its activities in public, preferring to stay well below the radar. An SAIC executive once gave a press interview and referred to the enterprise as a "stealth company," a characterization that is accurate and that has stuck. "Nobody knows who they are," says Glenn Grossenbacher, a Texas lawyer who has battled SAIC in court on a whistle-blowing case. "Everybody knows Northrop Grumman and G.E., but if you went out on the street and asked who the top 10 [defense] contractors are, I can guarantee you that SAIC would not be one of them."

Which is all the more remarkable in light of two developments. The first is a mounting collection of government audits and lawsuits brought by former employees for a variety of reasons, some of them personal and some coming under federal whistle-blower statutes. In a response to written queries, SAIC characterized itself as a "highly ethical company and responsible government contractor, committed to doing the right thing." But a review by Vanity Fair of thousands of pages of documents, including corporate e-mail messages, offers disturbing revelations about the company's inner workings, its culture, and its leadership.

The second development is that several of SAIC's biggest projects have turned out to be colossal failures, failures that have occurred very much in public.

One involves the National Security Agency, America's intelligence-gathering "electronic ear" and for many years SAIC's biggest customer. The volume of telephone, e-mail, and other electronic communications that the N.S.A. intercepts worldwide is so massive that the agency urgently needs a new computer system to store it, sort it, and give it meaning—otherwise it will keep missing clues like the Arabic message "Tomorrow is zero hour," intercepted the day before 9/11 but not translated until the day after. SAIC won the initial $280 million, 26-month contract to design and create this system, called Trailblazer. Four years and more than a billion dollars later, the effort has been abandoned. General Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the N.S.A. and now the director of the C.I.A., blamed the failure on "the fact we were trying to overachieve, we were throwing deep and we should have been throwing short passes." Happily for SAIC, it will get the chance for a comeback in the second half. The company has been awarded the contract for a revised Trailblazer program called ExecuteLocus. The contract is worth $361 million.

Another failed effort involves the F.B.I., which paid SAIC $124 million to bring the bureau, whose computer systems are among the most primitive in American law enforcement, into at least the late 20th century. The lack of information-sharing is one reason why the F.B.I. failed to realize that in the year leading up to 9/11 two of the future hijackers—including one with known "jihadist connections"—were actually living in the San Diego home of an F.B.I. informant. SAIC set to work on a system called the Virtual Case File. V.C.F. was supposed to become a central repository of data (wiretap transcripts, criminal records, financial transactions) from which all F.B.I. agents could draw. Three years and a million lines of garbled computer code later, V.C.F. has been written off by a global publication for technology professionals as "the most highly publicized software failure in history." The failure was due in part to the bureau's ever shifting directives, which points up the perverse nature of government-by-contract. When the government makes unrealistic demands, the contractors go along anyway: they are being paid not to resist but to comply. If it turns out they can't deliver, new contracts will simply be drawn up. Responding to questions about the F.B.I. project, the company conceded that "there were areas in which SAIC made mistakes, particularly where we failed to adequately communicate our concerns about the way the contract was being managed."

These and other SAIC activities would seem to be ripe targets for scrutiny by the new Democratic Congress. But don't be surprised if you hear nothing at all: SAIC's friends in Washington are everywhere, and play on all sides; the connections are tightly interlocked. To cite just one example: Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of defense, whose confirmation hearings lasted all of a day, is a former member of SAIC's board of directors. In recent years the company has obviously made many missteps, and yet SAIC's influence in Washington seems only to grow, impervious to business setbacks or even to a stunning breach of security.

Much to the embarrassment of a company entrusted with some of the nation's most precious secrets, its San Diego offices were mysteriously burgled in January of 2005. A censored San Diego police-department report reveals the basic outline. The report notes that the building "is patrolled by DOD certified security" and that "the interior lights are on motion sensors and would have been activated by the suspects." Nevertheless, burglars managed to break into SAIC's headquarters, pry open 13 private offices, and walk out with one desktop-computer hard drive and four laptops. By SAIC's account, the computers contained personal data on thousands of present and past employees, presumably including the company's many former C.I.A. operatives, N.S.A. executives, and Pentagon officials. To date, the burglary remains unsolved.

SAIC has displayed an uncanny ability to thrive in every conceivable political climate. It is the invisible hand behind a huge portion of the national-security state—the one sector of the government whose funds are limitless and whose continued growth is assured every time a politician utters the word "terrorism."

SAIC represents, in other words, a private business that has become a form of permanent government.



A Plain Brown Envelope


On the evening of January 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower came down from the White House living quarters to the Oval Office and delivered his last address to the American people as president. This was the famous speech in which he warned against the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" in the hands of what he called "the military-industrial complex"—the sturdy hybrid formed by crossbreeding American corporate interests with those of the Pentagon and the intelligence community.

As Eisenhower spoke, a quietly ambitious man on the other side of the country, John Robert Beyster, was going about his business as head of the accelerator-physics department at the General Atomic corporation, in La Jolla, California, one of many secretive companies that sprouted early in the atomic era. Beyster had grown up outside of Detroit, served in the navy during World War II, and earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Michigan before migrating to Southern California in the 1950s. He was a lanky and nerdy-looking technocrat, but the tortoiseshell glasses concealed a driven personality. Beyster believed that General Atomic didn't appreciate his ideas, and he began to lay plans. Within a decade of Eisenhower's farewell speech, Beyster would create an enterprise epitomizing the military-industrial complex that caused Eisenhower such dismay. Now, four decades later, that company epitomizes something beyond Eisenhower's worst nightmare—the "military-industrial-counterterrorism complex."

Science Applications International Corporation was born in February of 1969 in a stucco office building in La Jolla next to a ballet studio overlooking the Pacific. "I was not the brilliant, flash-of-inspiration type of entrepreneur," Beyster would later recall; rather, he was more a "persistent builder type." The name he decided on for his company, though brilliantly opaque, reflected an assumption that the real future of national defense—or, at any rate, the real future profits to be had from national defense—lay in science and technology, not in boots on the ground. And a lot of that scientific work would necessarily be analytical; it would be about thinking as much as about making. Beyster's very first government contract came from the Defense Atomic Support Agency: he was given the task of calculating "the output of nuclear devices."

Beyster understood that this particular moment of the American Century was the perfect time for shrewd consultants to get into the war business. The conflict in Vietnam was still raging, and the Cold War seemed to have become a permanent fixture of the geopolitical landscape. The Nixon administration was promoting a missile-defense system to protect its ICBM installations. Scientists were hard at work on a host of nuclear projects, including the fabled neutron bomb. Although computers had yet to revolutionize government and business, visionaries like Beyster could see that eventually they would, and so, for SAIC, computer systems represented another target of opportunity.

Joined by research scientists from General Atomic and elsewhere, Beyster developed a straightforward business plan. As he later explained it, "People who came into the company went out and got contracts." Everyone who worked for SAIC had to carry his own weight. You might have a Ph.D. in physics or applied mathematics, but at SAIC your job fundamentally was to sell your high-tech ideas and blue-chip expertise to the army, navy, air force, C.I.A., N.S.A., Atomic Energy Commission, and any other government agency with money to spend and an impulse to buy. Contracts were everything. There is much to be said for SAIC's approach: in its four decades of existence, the company has turned a profit every single year.

Beyster aggressively packed his company with former generals, admirals, diplomats, spies, and Cabinet officers of every kind to fill the company's board of directors and the upper echelons of its staff. These were the kinds of people who would always have easy access to the agencies they had left behind—and who someday might even go back into government. To be sure, every Beltway defense contractor tries to bring retired generals and admirals into the fold, but Beyster offered an incentive that others couldn't match: an internal stock-ownership program, which promised to make government officials rich after they left public service. The stock-ownership program would eventually be expanded to include everyone on the company's payroll, but it began as Beyster's way of rewarding favored executives and board members, whose identities were kept secret. A lucky recipient would learn of his good fortune when a messenger appeared in his office carrying a plain brown envelope containing a newly minted stock certificate.

SAIC had its own brokerage subsidiary, licensed by the S.E.C., a kind of in-house Merrill Lynch called Bull, Inc. The name accurately predicted the stock's vitality. Beyster and his board managed every aspect of the stock—the number of shares, who received them, and, most important, the price. Unlike on Wall Street, where individual stock prices go up and down, the SAIC stock price, controlled by Beyster and his board, usually moved in one direction only: up. The more contracts you landed, the more stock you received. Even if you stayed at SAIC for only a short time, you could in the long run earn a lot of money. And if you left SAIC to go back into government service, you had considerable incentive to keep SAIC's continuing good fortunes in mind.

SAIC's internal stock market was instrumental in the company's early success. Peter Friesen, a San Diego attorney who has represented former SAIC employees in civil complaints against the company, says, "If you find somebody [in government] who wants a job with SAIC later, and he sees the steady rise in the stock price over the years and knows he can get a job with stock options and stock bonuses, then he's going to be sending business over to SAIC. And it worked."

SAIC opened its Washington office in 1970. Although San Diego would remain SAIC's home base, the workforce in the Washington area soon eclipsed the workforce everywhere else. To ensure support on Capitol Hill, corporate outposts were prominently set up in key congressional districts. Meanwhile, scores of influential members of the national-security establishment clambered onto SAIC's payroll, among them John M. Deutch, undersecretary of energy under President Jimmy Carter and C.I.A. director under President Bill Clinton; Rear Admiral William F. Raborn, who headed development of the Polaris submarine; and Rear Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who served variously as director of the National Security Agency, deputy director of the C.I.A., and vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

SAIC's relative anonymity has allowed large numbers of its executives to circulate freely between the company and the dozen or so government agencies it cares about. William B. Black Jr., who retired from the N.S.A. in 1997 after a 38-year career to become a vice president at SAIC, returned to the N.S.A. in 2000. Two years later the agency awarded the Trailblazer contract to SAIC. Black managed the program. Donald Foley, a current SAIC director, came out of a top position at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon group responsible for developing new military technology. SAIC might as well operate an executive shuttle service between its McLean, Virginia, offices and the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. Technically, federal ethics rules stipulate that former government officials must wait one year before contacting anyone in their former agencies. Sometimes they can't wait: Mark A. Boster left his job as a deputy assistant attorney general in 1999 to join SAIC, and was already calling Justice three months later on behalf of his new employers—a violation of federal law. Boster paid $30,000 in a civil settlement.



The Young-Boy Network


The driving force behind SAIC, the man who shaped its personality and culture across nearly four decades, until he was forced out in 2004, was of course Bob Beyster. From the beginning Beyster was indefatigable, constantly on the road, promoting SAIC to any government official who would listen. On a 10-day trip, he'd jam in as many as 80 appointments. If he had an hour between planes, he'd order his secretary to jam in one more. Beyster may have been a scientist by training, but he was a salesman at heart. He described himself as a "marketeer."

Although he could be an engaging companion when dealing with military brass and agency heads, around the office Beyster could also be distant and imperious, an autocrat who ruled with an iron hand. SAIC presented itself as a friendly "employee owned" company. Inside, everyone understood how the stock program was really used—to punish and reward. No one harbored any illusions about whose company it was. "In Bob Beyster's mind, that company was not the shareholders' company, it was Bob Beyster's company," said Gerald Pomraning, a nuclear physicist who helped Beyster set up SAIC, in a legal proceeding. "When I was on the board of directors, he told us many times that the board of directors was simply a legal entity that was required, but it was his company."

Beyster advocated a form of internal entrepreneurship that led to cutthroat competition for contracts. Operations were chaotic because divisions independent of one another frequently fought for the same business. Glenn Grossenbacher, the Texas lawyer, describes the dynamic as "eat what you kill." Chief financial officers, frustrated by Beyster's exacting and sometimes mercurial demands, came and went. The company's organizational chart was often in flux. According to one former executive, Beyster was known around the office as a "control freak" who undermined managers by going around them and dealing directly with their staffs. Bernice Stanfill King, a former SAIC executive who managed the company's internal stock program, says that Beyster would often assign a single job to two executives. "He would call in one high-level guy and put him on a project," she explains. "Then he would call another guy in a totally different part of the company and put him on the project. Then these guys would bump into each other and [wonder], 'What's he doing?' You never honestly knew what was going on inside. Nothing was ever in the open."

As befits a company with deep ties to the intelligence and national-security community, SAIC's culture has always had a military cast to it. Employees are expected to follow orders. Even former employees are wary of discussing SAIC. One former manager who has worked on sensitive, even dangerous assignments abroad spoke about SAIC only after receiving assurances of anonymity, saying, "This is a very powerful company."

In the years when most corporations had glass ceilings for women, few were lower or thicker than the one at SAIC. Although Beyster was married (and the father of three children), his behavior toward women often ranged from coolness to open hostility. His former secretary, Linda Anderson, once testified that Beyster was "uncomfortable with women." She recalled that when a woman came into a meeting Beyster's manner became stilted. "Even his posture changed," she said. King, who sued the company for sex discrimination and won, said in an interview with Vanity Fair that when passing Beyster in the hall she was not to speak to him or even to look at him. Women were made to address the boss as "Dr. Beyster"; men called him "Bob." When a woman made a mistake, Beyster typically called her on it, using words like "stupid" or "incompetent." When a man made a mistake—well, it was just that, a mistake. Beyster's former secretary testified that he once instructed her, on the eve of a major corporate function, to make sure he wasn't seated next to SAIC's one female board member, "because all women talked about was where they got their hair done."

Beyster's close associates within SAIC were a succession of young men. Known as aides-de-camp, they were usually handsome, well educated, and intelligent, with a facility for numbers and a willingness to perform personal tasks for their boss. Beyster was an ardent sailor, and in the summertime he liked to spend afternoons cruising the waters off San Diego aboard his yacht in the company of these young men. George Wilson, who once headed SAIC's public-relations operation, has stated in a legal proceeding that the young men provided a variety of personal services for Beyster, including using SAIC equipment to make copies of pornographic movies that Beyster would watch aboard his boat.

When Beyster traveled on business, he often took one of the aides-de-camp with him, and asked his secretary to arrange for them to stay in the same hotel room—this according to the secretary's courtroom testimony. Wilson said in a deposition that one of the young men he knew who slept in the same room with Beyster on these trips told him that he didn't like doing it, but that "it was part of traveling with Beyster." Some of the young aides-de-camp went on to become executives at SAIC. Bernice King testified that Beyster had a name for his young assistants: he called them his "baby boys." When asked about these assertions, which surfaced in a sex-discrimination case, Beyster declined to comment on any particulars, saying, "Although I cannot address the specific points you raise from court testimony, I will say that during this trial a number of very personal accusations were leveled against me that are not accurate."



Klondike on the Euphrates


Civilians at SAIC used to joke that the company had so many admirals and generals in its ranks it could start its own war. Some might argue that, in the case of Iraq, it did.

There isn't a politically correct way to put it, but this is what needs to be said: 9/11 was a personal tragedy for thousands of families and a national tragedy for all of America, but it was very, very good for SAIC. In the aftermath of the attacks, the Bush administration launched its Global War on Terror, whose chief consequence has been to channel money by the tens of billions into companies promising they could do something—anything—to help. SAIC was ready. Four years earlier, anticipating the next big source of government revenue, SAIC had established the Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis. According to SAIC, the purpose of the new unit was to take "a comprehensive view of terrorist threats, including the full range of weapons of mass destruction, more traditional high explosives, and cyber-threats to the national infrastructure." In October of 2006 the company told would-be investors flatly that the war on terror would continue to be a lucrative growth industry.

SAIC executives have been involved at every stage of the life cycle of the war in Iraq. SAIC personnel were instrumental in pressing the case that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the first place, and that war was the only way to get rid of them. Then, as war became inevitable, SAIC secured contracts for a broad range of operations in soon-to-be-occupied Iraq. When no weapons of mass destruction were found, SAIC personnel staffed the commission that was set up to investigate how American intelligence could have been so disastrously wrong.

It is Wednesday afternoon, March 25, 1998, and David A. Kay, who had been a U.N. official in Iraq in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, is on Capitol Hill testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Americans generally remember Kay as the head of the Iraq Survey Group, the man who showed that Saddam Hussein didn't possess W.M.D. when America invaded in 2003, and that the war was launched under false pretenses. But today, in 1998, he is not David Kay, weapons inspector, but David Kay, director of SAIC's Center for Counterterrorism Technology and Analysis. He is a stockholder in a company known to cognoscenti in the hearing room as a fraternal twin of the intelligence establishment. With great authority, Kay tells the committee that Saddam Hussein "remains in power with weapons of mass destruction" and that "military action is needed." He warns that unless America acts now "we're going to find the world's greatest military with its hands tied."

Over the next four years, Kay and others associated with SAIC hammered away at the threat posed by Iraq. Wayne Downing, a retired general and a close associate of Ahmad Chalabi, proselytized hard for an invasion of Iraq, stating that the Iraqis "are ready to take the war … overseas. They would use whatever means they have to attack us." In many of his appearances on network and cable television leading up to the war, Downing was identified simply as a "military analyst." It would have been just as accurate to note that he was a member of SAIC's board of directors and a company stockholder. (Downing was also the chief proponent of a weapons system called Metal Storm, capable of firing a million rounds of ammunition a minute; SAIC received $10 million from the Pentagon to develop prototypes, but in the last two years the Metal Storm company has lost millions.) In the run-up to the war, David Kay remained outspoken. He told NBC News in October of 2002, "I don't think it's possible to disarm Iraq as long as Saddam is in power and desires to maintain weapons of mass destruction."

On all these points Kay and Downing were buttressing the views of Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and others in the Bush administration. They were also echoing the assertions of Iraqi exiles living in the United States, who had been trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein for years. Many of those exiles—people like Khidhir Hamza, a onetime atomic-energy official in Iraq, who insisted that Saddam posed an imminent nuclear danger to the United States—would in time receive paychecks from SAIC. Although his evidence had long been discredited by weapons experts, Hamza was among about 150 Iraqi exiles designated by the Pentagon as members of the newly chartered Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council. The plan was that, once American troops secured Iraq, the I.R.D.C. recruits would move into influential positions in a rebuilt Iraqi government.

SAIC served as the paymaster for the Iraqi exiles under a $33 million government contract. It brought them all together in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, rented apartments for them, paid their living expenses, provided various support services, and, later, after the invasion and occupation, flew them to their jobs in the new, democratic Iraq. This SAIC operation reported to Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, a key assistant to Rumsfeld, and one of the architects of the Iraq invasion and occupation. Feith's deputy was Christopher "Ryan" Henry, a former SAIC senior vice president.

It was understood in Washington, long before the actual onset of "shock and awe," that the Iraq war would be a Klondike gold rush for contractors. Prior to the war, SAIC was awarded seven contracts, together worth more than $100 million, without competitive bidding. The Defense Department's justification for the no-bid contracts: "We need the immediate services of a fully qualified contractor who has the unqualified support and confidence of the Pentagon leadership." SAIC's personnel, designated "subject-matter experts," were expected to lend a hand on such matters as "business development, international and regional political relations, the role of women in government, and government reform." Among SAIC's subject-matter experts was Shaha Riza, an Arab feminist and communications adviser at the World Bank. Riza also happened to be the girlfriend of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

One week before the invasion, SAIC was awarded yet another no-bid contract, this one for $15 million, which within a year would balloon to $82 million. The contract gave SAIC the responsibility for establishing a "free and independent indigenous media network" in Iraq, and for training a cadre of independent Iraqi journalists to go with it. The selection of SAIC for this job may have seemed counter-intuitive. A year earlier, SAIC had been involved in a Pentagon program designed to feed disinformation to the foreign press. The program was overseen by a Pentagon entity with the Orwellian name of Office of Strategic Influence, and its aims proved sufficiently odious that someone inside the Pentagon leaked its existence to The New York Times. An unrepentant Donald Rumsfeld stated that he would shut down the Office of Strategic Influence—but in name only: "There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done."

To create its Iraqi Media Network, SAIC hired professional newsmen from the United States as consultants. One of them was a former NBC News staff member, Don North, who had launched his career as a cameraman in Vietnam and eventually rose to become the NBC News bureau chief in Cairo. North began with high expectations. Once Saddam Hussein was ousted, he and his colleagues hoped to create a BBC-like news operation, instilling "standards of international broadcasting and news reporting" that Iraqis had never known before. It soon became clear that the Pentagon and the Coalition Provisional Authority had other ideas. To them, the Iraqi Media Network represented an opportunity to push the U.S. agenda in Iraq in the most simplistic sort of way. With SAIC's cooperation, the network quickly devolved into a mouthpiece for the Pentagon—"a little Voice of America," as North would put it. Iraqis openly snickered at the programming. Every time North protested, he recalls, he was rebuffed by SAIC executives. "Here I was going around quoting Edward R. Murrow," North says, "and the people who were running me were manipulating and controlling a very undemocratic press and media that was every bit as bad as what Saddam had established." In the end the network was turned over to Iraqi control. Today it is a tool of Iraq's Shiite majority and spews out virulently anti-American messages day and night. "And to think we started it," says North. The SAIC-created television network may be the only functioning weapon of mass destruction in today's Iraq.

As everyone now acknowledges, no other such weapons have ever been found, although search teams ran through more than $1 billion looking for them. The closest they came was the discovery, in May of 2003, of a "mobile bioweapons lab" in the form of a tractor-trailer whose interior configuration looked suspicious. David Kay was on hand to lend credence to the notion that the trailer was a weapons lab. "This is where the biological process took place," he explained in one NBC News broadcast. "You took the nutrients. Think of it sort of as a chicken soup for biological weapons. You mixed it with the seed stock, which came from this gravity-flow tank up here into the fermenter, and under pressure with heat, it fermented." Kay outlined the process step by step. The discovery of the trailer was, as the NBC News interviewer allowed, "very close to that elusive smoking gun."

It turned out, however, that the mobile weapons lab was nothing of the kind. To be sure, the military, back in the United States, did have in its possession something that looked a lot like the Iraqi trailer. In advance of the invasion, SAIC had built its own version of a mobile bioweapons lab, intended to help U.S. troops recognize such a facility if they ever came across one. SAIC had built, in effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After failing to find the W.M.D., Kay told Congress in January of 2004: "Let me begin by saying we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here." The next month President Bush appointed a commission to look at how American intelligence managed to miss the truth about Iraq's weapons programs. The commission delivered its report one year later, and although it sternly pointed to obvious intelligence failures, it kept its gaze, as it had been told to do, at a very low level—and far away from the issue of whether senior policymakers had deliberately manipulated intelligence findings: "The Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the report concluded.

Three of the commission's staff members had direct ties to SAIC. One was Gordon Oehler, the commission's deputy director for review. When Oehler left the C.I.A., in October of 1997, after a 25-year career, he in essence walked down the street and into the McLean offices of SAIC to become a vice president for corporate development. A second commission staff member with ties to the company was Jeffrey R. Cooper, vice president for technology and chief science officer in one of SAIC's major sub-units. The third member was Samuel S. Visner, who holds a graduate degree in Washington's revolving-door system. From 1997 to 2001, Visner was an SAIC vice president for corporate development, and also a business-development manager. Next, he moved into a government spymaster job, becoming chief of signals-intelligence programs for the National Security Agency. During this time SAIC was one of several firms to receive a $280 million contract from the N.S.A. to develop one of its secret eavesdropping systems. In 2003, Visner returned to SAIC to become a senior vice president and the director of strategic planning and business development of the company's intelligence group.

As for General Downing, he has become a regular contributor on television as a military expert on the war in Iraq and America's options. Everyone seems to have forgotten his earlier bellicosity.



The Flying Hummer


SAIC's ability to prosper is all the more remarkable given its record of lawsuits, charges brought by whistle-blowers, allegations of profiteering, fines assessed by federal judges, and repeated investigations and government audits. According to one former executive, in a sworn deposition in 1992, the practice of "mischarging" became "institutionalized within the company." (SAIC denies such allegations.)

The job of establishing the Iraqi Media Network's infrastructure—cables, transmitters, dishes—was rife with corruption and waste. In one instance, government auditors questioned an SAIC invoice for approximately $10 million. (SAIC says it is unaware of the auditors' report.) In March of 2004 the Pentagon's inspector general found widespread violations of normal contracting procedures: improper payments to subcontractors, unsubstantiated equipment purchases, unauthorized personnel on the payroll. One of the more blatant transgressions concerned SAIC's overall manager of the media effort in Iraq. The investigators discovered that he had bought a Hummer and a pickup truck in the United States and then chartered a DC-10 cargo jet to fly them to Iraq. When a Pentagon official refused to allow the charge, the inspector general reported, "SAIC then went around the authority of this acquisition specialist to a different office within the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to gain approval and succeeded." SAIC's performance on the Iraqi Media Network contract is now, indirectly, at issue in a lawsuit brought by an employee who alleges that she was fired after she tried to draw the attention of SAIC executives to what she described in the suit as "unethical, illegal, and unsafe practices" by the company in Iraq. Because of the pending legal action, this employee declined to be interviewed, but considerable documentation is already part of the public record, including portions of her personnel file. SAIC's corporate priorities are suggested by one commendation the employee received, for her "excellent billing credentials."

This way of doing business has been an SAIC character trait for years. In 1991, SAIC was charged with falsifying data submitted to the E.P.A. on soil samples from Superfund toxic-waste sites. The law required the E.P.A. to identify toxic dumps and determine which ones posed the gravest risks. To perform the analysis, the E.P.A. contracted with independent labs, including SAIC's Environmental Chemistry Laboratory, in La Jolla. The lab was supposed to test soil and water samples within a certain number of days of their being received "to ensure the chemicals being tested for would not have dissipated in the interim." But technicians at SAIC's lab tested some samples after the deadline and then backdated the results. SAIC mounted a high-powered behind-the-scenes campaign to escape prosecution. A member of SAIC's board of directors, former secretary of defense Melvin R. Laird, wrote a personal letter to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. "I can assure you there was no wrongdoing on the part of the corporation," Laird stated. Criminal prosecution of SAIC, he went on, would be "entirely inappropriate." Ultimately the company was accused by the government of making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements," and pleaded guilty to 10 counts of making false statements or claims. SAIC paid $1.3 million in fines and restitution.

A few years later SAIC was in trouble again, this time over its efforts to design a flat-panel liquid-crystal-display screen to be used as a navigational device in the cockpits of air-force fighter jets. The initial contract had been awarded in 1987, but SAIC kept going back for more money. The government would shell out millions—even as SAIC assured the air force that steady progress was being made. And in fact air-force officials had no reason to believe otherwise: they had seen what they thought was a demonstration model when SAIC officials unveiled a slick-looking compact box with a backlit screen. SAIC officials traveled to military bases around the country to show off the prototype. A respected magazine, Engineering Design News, published a photograph of the display screen on its cover.

But the box was a fake. SAIC had been unable to develop the actual technology. The prototype—in effect, nothing more than a cheap video game—had been cobbled together with components taken from TV sets, computers, and everyday consumer appliances. When two SAIC employees complained to their superiors, both were fired. Two employees later filed whistle-blower lawsuits charging SAIC with defrauding the government. While denying any wrongdoing, in 1995 SAIC settled the suit with the government and paid a fine of $2.5 million.

The ill-fated cockpit-display project was hardly an isolated case. A recent case revealed one method SAIC employed to increase the profits on a contract. In San Antonio, the air force awarded SAIC a $24 million contract to clean up contaminated-waste sites at Kelly Air Force Base. Once the project was under way, the SAIC manager overseeing the job realized that the work would cost much less than the amount SAIC had negotiated. "It was massively overstaffed," Michael Woodlee, the former manager, said in an interview. "I didn't need that many [people]." Woodlee said he told one of his superiors that "there was no way under the moon we could spend all this money."

This is not what SAIC wanted to hear. Woodlee said that, because he couldn't spend everything in his budget, his SAIC superiors suggested that he "harvest money out of [his] project and send it up the corporate ladder." After he resisted, Woodlee contended, the project was taken away from him, and he was laid off.

In 2002, Woodlee filed a whistle-blower lawsuit charging SAIC with fraud under the federal False Claims Act. Working with air-force investigators, the U.S. attorney in San Antonio concluded that SAIC had in fact grossly understated profits on the contract: rather than the 8 to 10 percent profit the contract allowed, SAIC had, "unbeknownst to the Air Force," realized profits of three times that amount, and had submitted "false and fraudulent statements of its expected costs and profits."

SAIC's response was audacious. It told federal officials, in effect, that the government was right: the company does increase the profit margin beyond the terms of the contract. But there's a reason: risk is involved, and the additional profit is compensation for that risk. According to documents in the case, SAIC explained that it employs something called "Quantitative Risk Analysis" to identify potential business risks, and that it factors those costs into its contracts, although without ever mentioning the fact to customers. In a written response, the company stated that this kind of risk analysis is "commonly used throughout industry" and "such purely judgmental information was not required to be disclosed under [federal law] based on longstanding legal principles." But by failing to disclose that information to federal negotiators, the air force maintained, SAIC induced it "to agree to much higher prices than [the air force] would have agreed to had SAIC truthfully disclosed its cost and pricing data." After SAIC's "risk defense" surfaced, the air force issued a written alert to warn other agencies about SAIC's business methods, which it said SAIC "intends to continue using."

Although the amount of money in contention was relatively small, the principle involved was large, and it had potentially national implications. Was SAIC using the same formula in thousands upon thousands of other contracts it had with the government? We'll never know. For reasons that remain unclear, the Justice Department decided against expanding the probe beyond San Antonio. Is it possible that a call was made from one well-placed individual to another? In April of 2005, SAIC, while denying wrongdoing, settled the San Antonio lawsuit by paying a fine of $2.5 million.

More important, the company had forestalled a wider investigation. One of Woodlee's lawyers, Glenn Grossenbacher, who has represented other whistle-blowers against other companies, describes SAIC as unlike any other company he has ever confronted. "These guys handle things very differently than other people," he said. "They had better access to the Pentagon than the government's own attorneys. They are so well connected they were able to isolate this one case. This should have been a [national] case. The reason it wasn't was because of their political clout to shut it down and localize it."

Not every SAIC client is as forgiving as the United States government. When SAIC failed to deliver a highly touted security system for the 2004 Athens Olympics, the Greek government refused to make a final payment. SAIC had proposed the most extensive security shield in Olympic history: more than 100 command posts, vehicle-tracking devices and sensors everywhere, 1,600 video cameras, and a blimp loaded with "sensitive equipment" floating "silently overhead acting as an airborne surveillance center." As video feeds flowed to a central command post, SAIC's state-of-the-art software would link all these capabilities. The system was to remain in place as an anti-terrorism tool in Athens for years to come. But turmoil within SAIC plagued the effort from the start. Project managers came and went. On the eve of the games a source close to the Olympic planners stated that "the entire Committee without exception believe that the … system doesn't work."

The Olympics started up on schedule. SAIC's security system did not. A newspaper in Athens described the system as "operationally useless," and Greek officials improvised simply by adding more guards. Before the games began, SAIC and the Greek government had quietly come to an agreement that called for continued testing of the system and "final acceptance to occur no later than October 1, [2004]"—one month after the games ended. A payment of $23 million would follow. SAIC missed this deadline, too. After more wrangling the two sides, according to an Athens newspaper, reached an understanding that calls for SAIC to complete work by May 2008, almost four years after the Olympics. As of last fall, SAIC's losses on the project totaled a staggering $123 million, and the company acknowledges "our poor performance on the Greek Olympics contract." SAIC is trying to recoup some of its losses in an arbitration and so far has managed to keep the lid on potentially embarrassing revelations about the competence of a company whose operations are built on claims of technical expertise.



Radiation Sickness


Given that its founder came from a company called General Atomic it is hardly surprising that SAIC has been heavily involved in the nuclear business. One early project came in the 1970s and 80s, when SAIC received Pentagon contracts to reconstruct the amount of radiation absorbed by military personnel during atomic-bomb tests and other service-related exposures. The government's bookkeeping was so erratic from the early days of the Cold War that it was often difficult to tell how much radiation soldiers had received and whether it might have been responsible for their various cancers. When SAIC did the numbers, few veterans qualified for compensation. The Pentagon's nuclear testing was in effect off the hook, and ailing veterans were out of luck. After years of hearings, Congress in 1988 passed the Radiation-Exposed Veterans Compensation Act, which gave veterans the benefit of the doubt. It was presumed that their cancer was attributable to nuclear exposure without considering the radiation dose. By then many of the veterans were dead. A health physicist who testified later on behalf of the veterans spoke unkindly of the original SAIC work: "Atomic veterans have been deprived of benefits intended by Congress through [SAIC's] deceptive internal dose reconstructions and poor understanding of radioactive material distribution in the body." SAIC disagrees, saying that it "continues to work with the government to apply the best science to performing dose reconstruction for atomic veterans."

Periodically over the years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy, prodded by executives in the nuclear industry, have sought to ease the rules against re-using "lightly" contaminated radioactive waste. The impetus has been the inexorably growing stockpile of nuclear debris—much of it lethal—that has been accumulating at weapons sites and power plants in America for decades. One way to draw down the stockpile would be to recycle large volumes of discarded nickel, aluminum, copper, steel, and other irradiated metals into usable products. If slightly radioactive metal were combined with other metals, the resulting material could be made into all kinds of consumer items—knives and forks, baby strollers, chairs, rings, eyeglass frames, bicycles, reclining rockers, earrings, frying pans. It also could be used in construction.

Lest any of this sound improbable, in the 1980s radioactive table legs began turning up in the United States everywhere from restaurants to nursing homes. A radioactive gold ring cost a Pennsylvania man his arm. The public outcry was so great that in 1992 Congress set out to ban this form of recycling. The N.R.C., D.O.E., and nuclear industry saw the ban coming and were not happy about it, but they also saw a way out: maybe it would be possible to develop broad guidelines that would allow the contaminated waste to be recycled based on what were deemed "safe" exposure levels. Never mind that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation. Two months before the ban was signed into law, the N.R.C. gave the multi-million-dollar job of formulating the guidelines to an outside contractor. The contractor was SAIC.

As the years slipped by, across town, another federal agency, the Department of Energy, was handing out a $238 million contract to B.N.F.L. Inc., at that time the U.S. subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels, "to clean up and reindustrialize three massive uranium enrichment facilities" at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee. The agreement called for B.N.F.L. to recycle "hundreds of thousands of tons of metals." British Nuclear Fuels had a questionable track record in the nuclear industry. For decades it had dumped plutonium and other radioactive waste into the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic. Its workers had falsified critical quality-control data. When the D.O.E. announced the contract, SAIC was identified as a major subcontractor in the recycling of radioactive scrap metal.

Because the N.R.C. and the D.O.E. for some reason weren't talking to each other, the elegance of this arrangement escaped everyone's attention. To connect the dots: SAIC was writing the regulations for one government agency, the N.R.C., which would set the permissible limits of radioactive contamination for recycling, even as it partnered with another company, under contract to a different federal agency, the D.O.E., to recycle the radioactive metal for which it was drafting the regulations.

The synergy of this arrangement was discovered accidentally by a Washington lawyer, Daniel Guttman, whose longtime passion has been conflicts of interest that inevitably—purposefully—arise from government outsourcing. Guttman called attention in public hearings to what was happening, thoroughly embarrassing officials at the N.R.C. and the D.O.E. and stirring the ire of public-interest groups. The N.R.C. killed its contract with SAIC. The recycling project was put on hold. And the N.R.C. filed suit against SAIC, alleging "false and/or fraudulent representations to the effect that [SAIC] was providing services to the NRC which were free from bias." SAIC has denied the conflict-of-interest claims, and the suit is still pending.

But SAIC is by no means out of the nuclear business. It may be under a cloud at the N.R.C., but it's still a partner, with the construction giant Bechtel, in the largest nuclear project of all—the $3.1 billion effort to build a repository for America's high-level radioactive waste. The firm Bechtel SAIC is constructing the repository deep under Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where the buried waste will remain lethal for at least 10,000 years. It could provide a revenue stream for SAIC as far into the future as one can imagine.



The Permanent Government


Bob Beyster turned 79 in 2003. He was in his 34th year with the company. A writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune, granted a rare interview around this time, observed that Beyster was a "little more stooped now," but still vigorous. He continued to run three or four miles almost every day. Over the years numerous executives rumored to be his successor had come and gone as it became apparent that Beyster had no intention of relinquishing power. But the sheer size of the company and its aggressive, internally competitive style were catching up to Beyster. Even Pentagon officials had begun to complain that SAIC's overlapping divisions were creating confusion. When the Pentagon talks, contractors listen. In 2003, the SAIC board forced him out. By 2004, SAIC had a new chairman, Kenneth Dahlberg, a top executive at General Dynamics with long experience in the defense industry.

In October of 2006, SAIC carried out a long-anticipated I.P.O., selling 86 million shares at $15 a share in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $1.2 billion. Reflecting investor bullishness, shares rose to $21 in a matter of days. Its prospects have never looked brighter.

Unlike traditional wars, which eventually come to an end, the Global War on Terror as defined by the Bush administration can have no end: it is a permanent war—the perfect war for a company that has become an essential component of the permanent government. Political change causes scarcely a ripple. As one former SAIC manager observed in a recent blog posting: "My observation is that the impact of national elections on the business climate for SAIC has been minimal. The emphasis on where federal spending occurs usually shifts, but total federal spending never decreases. SAIC has always continued to grow despite changes in the political leadership in Washington."

And the revolving door never stops spinning. One of the biggest contracts ever for SAIC is in the works right now. It's for a Pentagon program called Future Combat Systems, which is described as "a complex plan to turn the U.S. Army into a lighter, more lethal, more mobile force" and also as "the most difficult integration program ever undertaken by the U.S. Department of Defense." The contract runs into the billions of dollars. The man who helped craft this program at the Pentagon was Lieutenant General Daniel R. Zanini. Zanini recently retired from the army, and he now has a new job. Can you guess where it might be?

Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele are Vanity Fair contributing editors.