Who Does Mayor Mike Hurt?
June 21, 2007 03:07 PM ET | Permanent Link

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has changed his party registration from Republican to Independent, which everyone is taking as a step toward running as a third-party candidate for president. Bloomberg, whose income is said to be about $500 million a year, is capable of self-financing a campaign, and he has very good job ratings as mayor of New York. A mayor or former mayor of New York has not been a serious candidate for president since DeWitt Clinton in 1812. Now we may have two of them in the 2008 race.

How serious is a Bloomberg candidacy? And who does he take votes away from? Speculation about these questions is interesting, but I think the answers depend on who the Republican and Democratic parties nominate.

Fox News has a national poll showing that in a three-way New Yorker race (a real subway series!), Bloomberg would get just 7 percent of the vote, to 41 percent for Rudy Giuliani and 39 percent for Hillary Clinton. With Bloomberg out of the race, Giuliani leads Clinton 45 percent to 42 percent. In a Quinnipiac poll of New York State released yesterday, in a three-way race Clinton gets 43 percent, Giuliani 29 percent, and Bloomberg 16 percent; in a two-way race, Clinton beats Giuliani 52 percent to 37 percent. In other words, both polls show Bloomberg taking about equal percentages from Clinton and Giuliani. Where Bloomberg is best known, in New York City and its suburbs, he gets 22 percent and 21 percent.

What these polls tell me is that Bloomberg would start off well below the critical mass of support that he needs to be competitive with the major parties—or at least with the candidates who are currently leading in all or almost all national polls of Democratic and Republican primary voters. It also tells me that Bloomberg votes tend to come about equally from Clinton and Giuliani both nationally, where he gets only a few votes, and in the state where all three are most well known.

But of course Bloomberg could become much better known: Money can do that. And a Bloomberg candidacy could become viable if the two major parties nominate winger candidates; indeed, a key Bloomberg adviser has hinted that Bloomberg will decide to run only if one or both major party candidates show significant weakness. This is, after all, what Ross Perot did in 1992. He announced he might run on the then No 1 cable news network, CNN, in February 1992, when he knew that the Republican nominee would be incumbent George H. W. Bush and that the Democratic nominee would most likely be Bill Clinton. Perot, who had quite an animus toward Bush, suspected that he was weaker than generally thought and believed, accurately, that as a successful entrepreneur and a retired military officer he would have credibility in attacking Bush. He knew that Clinton’s remaining rivals in the Democratic race, Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown, had serious weaknesses and that Clinton had serious vulnerabilities—Gennifer Flowers had been all over the airwaves the month before—as well.

Bloomberg, like Perot, doesn’t have to decide to run until he sees who the nominees are. It seems to me—and, I gather from news accounts, it seems to his chief political advisers—that his candidacy can be viable only if one or both parties nominate candidates identified as wingers. As the New York numbers referenced above suggest, Bloomberg is probably not a viable candidate if Giuliani and Clinton are the nominees. And probably not with Barack Obama or John McCain. A closer case comes if the culturally conservative Fred Thompson or the increasingly shrilly left-wing John Edwards is a nominee. And a Bloomberg candidacy might seem quite viable if the Republicans nominate a cultural conservative like Mike Huckabee or Sam Brownback or the Democrats nominate a seeming left-winger like Bill Richardson or Christopher Dodd. All those candidates have records that would allow them to argue that they are in one way or another mainstream. But it would be an uphill argument.

In that context, which party would a Bloomberg candidacy hurt most? His now abandoned affiliation as a Republican doesn’t tell us much; he enrolled as a Republican only because it enabled him to get elected mayor without going through a Democratic primary dominated by a relatively small, left-wing electorate heavily influenced by public-employee unions. His positions on cultural issues are well to the left, even to the left of most or all the Democratic presidential candidates. As Opinion Journal’s James Taranto points out, Bloomberg favors same-sex marriage, a very aggressive form of gun control, federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, and abortion rights; he opposed the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts. On foreign policy, his views are less well known and certainly not tested; presumably he would run as a competent executive who could make dispassionate decisions.

Bloomberg’s liberal stands on cultural issues suggest he would take more votes from the Democrat than the Republican. Veteran Democratic speechwriter and campaign consultant Bob Shrum thinks that Bloomberg, with his liberal stands on cultural issues and his willingness to raise taxes rather than cut spending, will take more votes away from the Democratic nominee and asks, a bit plaintively I think, “Does the pro-choice, socially liberal Bloomberg really want to be responsible for electing another Supreme Court-packing, gay-bashing, gun-loving, domestic-program-slashing President?” Conservative public relations guy Greg Mueller has a similar analysis. He E-mails that what he’s telling conservatives is: "If Bloomberg gets in the race, he will take more votes from the Democrat nominee, certainly if it is Senator Clinton or Senator Obama -- than a conservative GOP candidate. There are many, many independents, and some Democrats, who will simply not vote for Senator Clinton under any circumstances. And, there are still others who feel Senator Obama is too inexperienced. Bloomberg gives these voters a place to go, dividing the Democrat vote. Bloomberg could be to Senator Clinton or Senator Obama in ’08 what Ross Perot was to President George H.W. Bush in ’92."

But there’s countervailing evidence that a Bloomberg candidacy might take more votes from the Republican than the Democratic nominee. SurveyUSA pollster Jay Leve presents the following results from statewide polling, showing that a Bloomberg candidacy flips several Bush 2004 states with 43 electoral votes to Democrats against a couple of other Republicans (Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Ohio) and, if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee, several that everyone has assumed are safe Republican (Alabama, Kansas, Texas). (Here are Survey USA's numbers in the two-way races in these states and in three-way races, which deserve some further analysis.) But he also has numbers that show that if Giuliani is the Republican nominee, California and New York, with 86 electoral votes, are flipped toward the Republicans. Note: In all of these, Bloomberg still comes in third. The support for a candidate who is clearly finishing third in every state, with no chance of winning any electoral votes, will probably tend to evaporate in the last weeks before Election Day—although Perot still got 19 percent in 1992—which means that he'll be taking fewer votes from either major party.

I think there's one other factor to be considered. Would a Bloomberg candidacy change the dynamic of the race? I have long thought that if Ross Perot had been run down by a bus in 1991, George H. W. Bush would have been re-elected by a small and uninspiring margin (which might have led to a successful Bill Clinton candidacy in 1996). I remember that at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, the late Paul Tully, then deputy Democratic national chairman, told me that in the spring of 1992 "Perot departisanized the critique of Bush." He was able to lower Bush’s numbers in a way that Bill Clinton at the time could not possibly have done. Bloomberg, in the spring or the fall, might be able to do the same thing. David Frum, blogging at National Review Online, a pessimistic conservative, sees the following scenario:

Bloomberg's numbers will dwindle (as Nader's did). He will then face a stark choice: accept that he's been made a monkey of—or up the ante. Nobody gets to be as rich as Bloomberg if he is not a fierce competitor. So—assuming he has followed the path thus far—he will double down. He will go negative, filling the airwaves with harsh attack ads.

Against whom will those ads be aimed? A lot will ride on that question. Attack ads are dangerous things, because they damage both the attacker and the attackee. Their main effect is not to change votes from D to R or R to D, but to depress turnout among potential supporters of the targeted candidate. Candidates refrain from excess negativity for fear of damaging their own image. But a Bloomberg in the polling basement will feel no such constraint.

The ads will be a free gift to the candidate Bloomberg dislikes less at the expense of the candidate he dislikes more.

And the candidate he dislikes more will almost certainly be the Republican.

House Votes to Revive Iraq Study Group
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 22, 2007; A13

The Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel that mapped out an alternative U.S. strategy for Iraq last December, may be reconstituted for a sequel.

In a sign of the growing public pressure on Congress, the House voted 355 to 69 yesterday to revive the 10-member panel chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) to again review U.S. policy and offer new recommendations.

"I'm receptive to reconstituting the group, but I can only speak for myself as I don't know feelings of the group and Baker is traveling," Hamilton said in an interview. "If Congress thinks we can be constructive, then I think we should do it."

The House vote was on an amendment proposed by Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) to an appropriations bill providing $34.2 billion for State Department and foreign operations. Now that the House has voted, a bipartisan group within Congress -- including Shays and Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) -- will seek an alternative source of funding since the bill is not likely to pass quickly enough for the Iraq Study Group to report in the fall.

Shays said the Baker-Hamilton group could play a pivotal role again. "Last fall, the Iraq Study Group provided Congress a thoughtful assessment on one of the most important issues of our time," Shays said in an interview. "As we approach another crossroad in this conflict, having that thoughtful insight again will be invaluable."

The goal is to have the group make its new report within about a month of the assessments scheduled to be outlined to Congress in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker on military and political progress in Iraq, Shays said.

"You'll have two different reports and see where they complement and where they disagree. If they come to the same conclusion, then it gives endorsement to Petraeus or Crocker," Shays said. "If there's disagreement, then that is important as well."

The U.S. Institute of Peace is ready to run the project, as it did last time. "We are prepared to play the kind of facilitating role that we did in the initial round, but at this point it depends on the co-chairs agreeing to proceed on this new round," USIP President Richard H. Solomon said in an interview.

Several of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, initially rejected by the Bush administration, have since been adopted.

Among the three key proposals, the panel of five prominent Republicans and five Democrats urged diplomatic outreach to Iran and Syria in order to broaden regional cooperation in stabilizing Iraq. Last month, U.S. and Iranian diplomats had their first public bilateral meeting in almost three decades.

The panel also urged that benchmarks of progress for the Iraqi government be defined and that U.S. aid and military support be made conditional on performance. Pressing the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to meet political benchmarks is now a central aspect of administration strategy. The panel also said the primary U.S. military function should increasingly shift to training the new Iraqi military.

"In many ways the administration is coming our way," Hamilton said. "I don't look at it as vindication but as part of the policy process in trying to find a solution to a very difficult problem."

CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry
Assassination Attempts Among Abuses Detailed
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 22, 2007; A01

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.

In anticipation of the CIA's release, the National Security Archive at George Washington University yesterday published a separate set of documents from January 1975 detailing internal government discussions of the abuses. Those documents portray a rising sense of panic within the administration of President Gerald R. Ford that what then-CIA Director William E. Colby called "skeletons" in the CIA's closet had begun to be revealed in news accounts.

A New York Times article by reporter Seymour Hersh about the CIA's infiltration of antiwar groups, published in December 1974, was "just the tip of the iceberg," then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger warned Ford, according to a Jan. 3 memorandum of their conversation.

Kissinger warned that if other operations were divulged, "blood will flow," saying, "For example, Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro." Kennedy was the attorney general from 1961 to 1964.

Worried that the disclosures could lead to criminal prosecutions, Kissinger added that "when the FBI has a hunting license into the CIA, this could end up worse for the country than Watergate," the scandal that led to the fall of the Nixon administration the previous year.

In a meeting at which Colby detailed the worst abuses -- after telling the president "we have a 25-year old institution which has done some things it shouldn't have" -- Ford said he would appoint a presidential commission to look into the matter. "We don't want to destroy but to preserve the CIA. But we want to make sure that illegal operations and those outside the [CIA] charter don't happen," Ford said.

Most of the major incidents and operations in the reports to be released next week were revealed in varying detail during congressional investigations that led to widespread intelligence reforms and increased oversight. But the treasure-trove of CIA documents, generated as the Vietnam War wound down and agency involvement in Nixon's "dirty tricks" political campaign began to be revealed, is expected to provide far more comprehensive accounts, written by the agency itself.

The reports, known collectively by historians and CIA officials as the "family jewels," were initially produced in response to a 1973 request by then-CIA Director James R. Schlesinger. Alarmed by press accounts of CIA involvement in Watergate under his predecessor, Schlesinger asked the agency's employees to inform him of all operations that were "outside" the agency's legal charter.

This process was unprecedented at the agency, where only a few officials had previously been privy to the scope of its illegal activities. Schlesinger collected the reports, some of which dated to the 1950s, in a folder that was inherited by his successor, Colby, in September of that year.

But it was not until Hersh's article that Colby took the file to the White House. The National Security Archive release included a six-page summary of a conversation on Jan. 3, 1975, in which Colby briefed the Justice Department for the first time on the extent of the "skeletons."

Operations listed in the report began in 1953, when the CIA's counterintelligence staff started a 20-year program to screen and in some cases open mail between the United States and the Soviet Union passing through a New York airport. A similar program in San Francisco intercepted mail to and from China from 1969 to 1972. Under its charter, the CIA is prohibited from domestic operations.

Colby told Ford that the program had collected four letters to actress and antiwar activist Jane Fonda and said the entire effort was "illegal, and we stopped it in 1973."

Among several new details, the summary document reveals a 1969 program about CIA efforts against "the international activities of radicals and black militants." Undercover CIA agents were placed inside U.S. peace groups and sent abroad as credentialed members to identify any foreign contacts. This came at a time when the Soviet Union was suspected of financing and influencing U.S. domestic organizations.

The program included "information on the domestic activities" of the organizations and led to the accumulation of 10,000 American names, which Colby told Silberman were retained "as a result of the tendency of bureaucrats to retain paper whether they needed it or acted on it or not," according to the summary memo.

CIA surveillance of Michael Getler, then The Washington Post's national security reporter, was conducted between October 1971 and April 1972 under direct authorization by then-Director Richard Helms, the memo said. Getler had written a story published on Oct. 18, 1971, sparked by what Colby called "an obvious intelligence leak," headlined "Soviet Subs Are Reported Cuba-Bound."

Getler, who is now the ombudsman for the Public Broadcasting Service, said yesterday that he learned of the surveillance in 1975, when The Post published an article based on a secret report by congressional investigators. The story said that the CIA used physical surveillance against "five Americans" and listed Getler, the late columnist Jack Anderson and Victor Marchetti, a former CIA employee who had just written a book critical of the agency.

"I never knew about it at the time, although it was a full 24 hours a day with teams of people following me, looking for my sources," Getler said. He said he went to see Colby afterward, with Washington lawyer Joseph Califano. Getler recalled, "Colby said it happened under Helms and apologized and said it wouldn't happen again."

Personal surveillance was conducted on Anderson and three of his staff members, including Brit Hume, now with Fox News, for two months in 1972 after Anderson wrote of the administration's "tilt toward Pakistan." The 1972 surveillance of Marchetti was carried out "to determine contacts with CIA employees," the summary said.

CIA monitoring and infiltration of antiwar dissident groups took place between 1967 and 1971 at a time when the public was turning against the Vietnam War. Agency officials "covertly monitored" groups in the Washington area "who were considered to pose a threat to CIA installations." Some of the information "might have been distributed to the FBI," the summary said. Other "skeletons" listed in the summary included:

· The confinement by the CIA of a Russian defector, suspected by the CIA as a possible "fake," in Maryland and Virginia safe houses for two years, beginning in 1964. Colby speculated that this might be "a violation of the kidnapping laws."

· The "very productive" 1963 wiretapping of two columnists -- Robert Allen and Paul Scott -- whose conversations included talks with 12 senators and six congressmen.

· Break-ins by the CIA's office of security at the homes of one current and one former CIA official suspected of retaining classified documents.

· CIA-funded testing of American citizens, "including reactions to certain drugs."

The CIA documents scheduled for release next week, Hayden said yesterday, "provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."

Barred by secrecy restrictions from correcting "misinformation," he said, the CIA is at the mercy of the press. "Unfortunately, there seems to be an instinct among some in the media today to take a few pieces of information, which may or may not be accurate, and run with them to the darkest corner of the room," Hayden said.

Hayden's speech and some questions that followed evoked more recent criticism of the intelligence community, which has been accused of illegal wiretapping, infiltration of antiwar groups, and kidnapping and torturing of terrorism suspects.

"It's surely part of [Hayden's] program now to draw a bright line with the past," said National Security Archive Director Thomas S. Blanton. "But it's uncanny how the government keeps dipping into the black bag." Newly revealed details of ancient CIA operations, Blanton said, "are pretty resonant today."

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Iraq: Kurdish Official Says Kirkuk Normalization To Proceed

June 22, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Fu'ad Husayn, director of the presidential office for the Kurdistan regional government (KRG) told RFE/RL Iraq analyst Kathleen Ridolfo that the Kurds are confident Kirkuk will be integrated into the Kurdistan regional government. Husayn said on June 21 that he expects implementation of Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution on the normalization of Kirkuk to proceed on schedule.

RFE/RL: Kurdistan regional President Mas'ud Barzani was cited in the media this week as saying there is a possibility that the Kurds would accept a delay in the implementation of Article 140.

Fu'ad Husayn: No, he didn't say that. Actually, the media misinterpreted what he said. President Barzani said "We will never delay; we will never accept any delay in the implementation of Article 140." He said we will not accept any change in that article and we will not accept any delay.

[Barzani] said it is up to the [Kurdish regional parliamentary] committee on Article 140 [to decide] when they are going to implement the whole article. And if the committee says from a technical point of view we need a few months, then [the KRG] will discuss that. But, it will never be a political decision and it will never be a legal change [to the constitution]. So, [Barzani] made it clear. He will not accept a delay. He will not accept any change in the schedule of implementation of Article 140.

RFE/RL: Where does the schedule stand now?

Husayn: Of course, that's up to the committee on Article 140, but they have a time limit. And that time limit is the end of this year. But Article 140 has to do with various stages. One stage -- normalization -- which means resettling the Arabs brought to Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein to their original areas and returning the Kurds displaced from Kirkuk back to Kirkuk -- the committee on Article 140 has taken various decisions as far as this stage, and they are implementing it.

The second stage has to do with census -- and actually census doesn't mean to have information about everything -- but it means to know who is originally from the area, and who can vote. And that's easy to know because [since] 2003, we had various elections, so it is easy to go back to the [voter] registries and know who is [originally] from the area and who can vote. And from there, [we move] to the last stage which is a referendum [on whether to join the Kurdistan region or remain outside it].

RFE/RL: It was reported in the media that 100 billion dinars (nearly $80 million) was allocated to implement the first phase of Article 140. Where is this money going, and is it being spent?

Husayn: As far as the budget for the committee, it has been allocated to the committee. Part of that budget will be given to the Arabs [settled in Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein] so that they can go back and start their life in their original city. And part of [the budget] has to do with the work of the committee itself. So, the Iraqi government has already allocated an amount for the work of the committee and to help the Arabs go back.

RFE/RL: It is possible to move forward with implementation of Article 140 given the security situation in Kirkuk?

Husayn: Yes, yes. I think those people who are active now -- the terrorists and the supporters of the Ba'ath regime -- they are trying with their actions to delay Article 140. Their target is either to delete Article 140 or to delay it, delay the implementation. When the implementation will start -- and it started already -- it will help the population of the area to feel sure about their future. And we think that will reduce terrorist attacks.

Actually, there are people who think that implementation of Article 140 will lead to a civil war. We think the other way around, because at the end, those small groups that are now attacking the Kurds and attacking other government officials in Kirkuk, they are people who are against Article 140. They are people who were against the constitution. They are people who are against the new situation in Iraq.

So when the stage of implementation will begin, I think they will feel they are the losers. And the original people of Kirkuk, they will feel they are more secure, and [that] they will have a future.

RFE/RL: What will happen if some Arab families refuse to be repatriated to their original towns? Will they be allowed to stay in Kirkuk?

Husayn: According to my information, thousands of Arabs have already registered to go back to their original [towns]. So the Arabs who were brought by Saddam Hussein, they are ready to go back.

The original Arabs [from Kirkuk] -- of course we have Arabs who have been there for a long time -- of course they can stay and they will be part of the society, part of the community. But those who have been brought [by Saddam Hussein], their registration will be [transferred] to their original [town] and then they will leave Kirkuk.

RFE/RL: There was a proposal by some Arabs and Turkomans to have Kirkuk designated as a "special status" region where Kurds, Turkomans, and Arabs share power. What has been the KRG's response to this proposal?

Husayn: We are committed to Article 140 and the constitution. Article 140 says that at the end, the referendum will decide [Kirkuk's status]. By the way, it's not just about Kirkuk, it's the whole area -- Sinjar, Khanaqin, and many other Kurdish [populated] towns. So, it is up to the population of these areas to decide, and not [up] to a small group or a political party to decide. When a referendum is held, and when people vote, then we will know in which direction Kirkuk will go. It's not up to some people especially small political parties from the Arab side or the Turkoman side to decide.

By the way, there are many Turkomans who are ready to be part of this process, and they are supporting the implementation of Article 140. And there are other Arabs, even the original Arabs who say it will be better to be part of a secure area than to be part of a non-secure area -- meaning to be part of Kurdistan [region].

RFE/RL: What will the Kurdish reaction be if Baghdad fails to implement Article 140?

Husayn: We have the feeling that the Iraqi government is cooperating at this stage, and they are supporting the committee that has been formed in Baghdad -- committee on [Article] 140.

By the way, the majority of the members of the committee are ministers in the Iraqi government. The prime minister [Nuri al-Maliki] declared many times, "It is my duty to implement the constitution and 140 is part of the constitution."

RFE/RL: There is a committee in the Baghdad parliament that is working on amending some articles in the constitution, including Article 140.

Husayn: Yes, there is a committee that deals with a proposal of changing the article – changing the constitution. But changing the constitution must be within the mechanism of the constitution itself. As far as the Kurdish [bloc's position], we will not accept changing Article 140, because changing it means deleting it. Article 140 has to do with a time limit, and those who are talking about delaying it, in fact they are talking about deleting it. So, we will never accept that.

RFE/RL: Some people are blaming external forces for influencing the situation in Kirkuk...

Husayn: Kirkuk is part of Iraq -- as Irbil and other cities. It is part of Iraq. So, even if Kirkuk will be part of Kurdistan [region], we will stay part of Iraq. It is not up to foreign powers to decide the future of Kirkuk. It is up to the population of Kirkuk to decide the future of their city, and it is up to the Iraqi Constitution, which was voted on by 80 percent of the population of Iraq, including Article 140. So this is in an internal affair and has nothing to do with other [neighboring] countries.

May 23: 2954

June 12 3195 11:45 p
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June 15 3238
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June 18 3274 8 a.m.
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