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Dear Editor,
For Bill Buckley to write a novel about McCarthy is about as preposterous as for me to do so. Buckley has upheld McCarthy all his life. I cut the senator's balls off, plus Roy Cohn's for dessert, live on national TV, when they subpoenaed me in 1953. NBC Radio cancelled its popular "Music at Midnight" to re-run forty minutes of our set-to, and TV news re-ran excerpts till noon the next day. 

The NEW YORK TIMES front-paged it: "Mr. McCarthy became the target of bitter, angry charges and personal attack that at one time prompted him to call a Capitol policeman to stand ready to eject Mr. Mandel. Mr. McCarthy reddened at times." 

TIME MAGAZINE quoted my line that became the nationally-accepted label for what was happening: "This is a bookburning. You lack only the tinder to set fire to the books as Hitler did twenty years ago!" 

THE NATION, afraid as always of guilt by association, omitted my name in editorializing: "A large audience" [in fact, the whole goddam country was glued to the screen] "heard one witness demand that the Senate find out how McCarthy 'was able to bank 175,000 bucks while making a salary of $15,000 a year'." 

The Hearst press [New York then had the JOURNAL-AMERICAN] put in bold-face my words: "You, Senator McCarthy, murdered [Major] Raymond Kaplan by driving him to the point where he jumped under a truck." UPI, for which I had been Russian Expert during World War II, reported, "Mandel was the most outspoken of the three" witnesses that day. I had contempt for McCarthy, but I hated Roy Cohn as a traitor to the people from which we both sprang. 

At the outset, when he asked my name, I stated it, and then, because another senator had been non-so-subtly anti-Semitic in dealing with the previous witness, added: "and I would like to make clear that I am a Jew." Cohn: "So am I." Mandel: "A Jew who works for McCarthy is thought of very ill by most of the Jewish people in this country." 

THE TIMES described what followed: "Mr. McCarthy paid tribute to Jews and contended that the witness [myself], while apparently trying to speak for them, did not. 'Every race has its renegades,' Mr. McCarthy said. 'It certainly does,' snapped the witness, glaring at Mr. Cohn'." 

Of course, all this cost me my Madison Avenue advertising job, a profession to which I had retreated after being blacklisted from academe (post-doctoral Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, by invitation, despite having no degree: I was expelled from CCNY in 1933 for opposing ROTC); from publication: after having books published in 1944 and 1946, one of them the second volume on Soviet affairs ever used in American higher education, no publisher would touch me for the next eighteen years); lecturing (I was under the same management as Eleanor Roosevelt). 

But I had my rewards. A few weeks later, when I spoke to a Bronx neighborhood group, strangers to me, in the very modest apartment of a clothing worker, a toil-worn immigrant woman said to me: "Du bist der bester Yid in die gantse Velt" - you are the best Jew in the whole world. And thirty-five years later, Los Angeles' respected repertory Odyssey Theater ran for seven months a play, "McCarthy," in which an actor performed my testimony. I also had the satisfaction that it ran for a month in Milwaukee, the biggest city in the state that had sent McCarthy to the Senate. 

By wild coincidence, although clearly not accident, the play was written by a very young man, unknown to me until after I saw it, who was the son of the chief engineer at Pacifica's KPFA who had recorded my testimony before HUAC, seven years after McCarthy, that many have seen in "Berkeley in the Sixties." The playwright's fiancee later asked me to become a minister of the Universal Life Church to marry them! I did. The whole McCarthy story, and the later HUAC story, appear in my autobiography, SAYING NO TO POWER, for which Howard Zinn has written the introduction, and Pete Seeger and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as well as Matthew Lasar, historian of Pacifica, have written jacket comments. Out November 15th. 
William (Bill) Marx Mandel

Los Angeles - August 19, 1999 1830hrs 
- In the July 28 issue of "From The Wilderness" I reported on recent statements made in Los Angeles by author Terry Reed concerning his participation in a 1985 DEA drug sting with legendary drug smuggler Barry Seal. In that DEA operation, set up after receiving information from an FBI informant placed close to the highest levels of the Medellin cartel, George W. and Jeb Bush were videotaped at Tamiami airport outside of Miami. They arrived on the Bush family King Air from Texas, presumably piloted by George W., to pick up two kilos of cocaine which was delivered for the Bushes by Seal after flying from the Intermountain Regional airport located at Mena Arkansas. Reed was the unwitting co-pilot. At the time the sting was arranged the "buyers" of the cocaine were unknown.

As documented in previous issues of "From The Wilderness", President George Bush went to great lengths to eradicate top leaders of the Medellin Cartel and lent support to efforts which ultimately killed Medellin founders Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa and subsequently saw co-founder Carlos Lehder and affiliate Manuel Noriega sentenced to life prison terms. George Bush also ordered the 1989 invasion of Panama which toppled Noriega and replaced many Medellin allied bankers with political and financial leadership more closely allied with the rival Cali Cartel.

As indicated in Reed's best selling book 1995 "Compromised" both Barry Seal and the Medellin Cartel believed that they had a blackmail lock on the Bush family, especially the sons.

Coincidentally, Carlos Lehder was released from prison in 1996 in a move which I personally suspect was connected to the leaking of critical information regarding CIA cocaine operations connected to the elder Bush during the Contra era. Key information which sparked the San Jose Mercury News "Dark Alliance" stories by Pulitzer Prize winner (and now very vindicated) Gary Webb was provided to Webb by Coral Marie Baca. Baca is the wife of Carlos Lehder and now resides with him in the Bahamas where she recently delivered a son to the cartel founder who is reportedly "back in business" according to several sources.

Coincidentally, the sentence of Medellin ally Manuel Noriega has also been recently reduced and sources indicate he may be out of prison before Bill Clinton leaves office.

At the time he made his public statements Reed indicated that he had both the tail number of the Bush Aircraft and the DEA (NADDIS) file number of the investigation at his home in Missouri. He also said, as I well know from LAPD experience, that once the tape had been logged in and a number issued, it cannot easily disappear from law enforcement records.

Reed is currently in Los Angeles working on a feature film project based upon "Compromised."

What made Reed's story so compelling to me was that he and I both shared the long-term friendship of retired Army CID investigator Bill McCoy. McCoy had been almost a ubiquitous feature in some of the greatest CIA intelligence related investigations of the last fifteen years including the Cristic Institute case, the theft of PROMIS software from Washington, DC's INSLAW corporation, the murder of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro, Mena Airport and several others.

I visited the home of Bill McCoy in Fairfax, Virginia on many occasions and I recall him describing to me in 1995 how he too had spoken with the FBI agent/informant in the case, Darlene "N". McCoy told me that he had spoken to Darlene several times and that she had advised him of videotaped evidence which would sink the Bushes if either one of them (Jeb or George W) attempted to run for the White House.

I am aware if the full name of this informant who, to my understanding was not present in Florida when the incident occurred. I have reached out through a mutual friend to her but am not releasing her full name until I hear from her. Bill McCoy died, under what I consider to be very suspicious circumstances, nearly two years ago. I miss him.

News stories in the major media concerning possible drug use by Presidential front-runner George W. Bush began surfacing this week after the Bush juggernaut bulldozed the field in Iowa. My story on the DEA operation was mailed to my paying subscribers approximately two weeks earlier.

Yesterday, at approximately, 0830 EDT I was a guest of Joe Maddison on WOL, a major Washington, D.C. station and we discussed my Bush story. Apparently reaction was swift for both Joe and From The wilderness. I had over 200 sessions on the FTW web site (www.copvcia.com) yesterday from the Washington area and about half of them were from inside government agencies including Justice, NASA, the EPA, the Senate and the House. Today George W. Bush appears to be back pedaling on earlier statements about drug use and indicates that, if it happened, it happened before his father's term as President. Well, 1985 was indeed before his father's term as President.

Joe told me today that he had received calls from CNN and other major media outlets asking for further information on my interview yesterday. What Joe told them was that I will be on WOL (1450 AM) tomorrow morning at 0800 EDT to describe what the majors "Should" do if they really want this story. It's not real difficult.

George W. needs to put this story to rest quickly or it will kill him. Joe Maddison and I figure that he has about 48 hours to do it.

>From The Wilderness has had some bragging rights before but I think we do have a small claim to saying, "The damn tape exists and if the media wants it bad enough, they can damn well get it and we should damn well see it. You heard it here first"

Michael Rupert

On Monday, August 30, some 450,000 registered voters in East Timor will participate in a referendum to choose between autonomy within Indonesia or independence. After 24 years of brutal military occupation, few doubt that the vast majority will opt for independence if conditions for the vote are free and fair. But just days before the long-awaited referendum, the people of East Timor face escalating paramilitary threats, intimidation and outright attacks. Independent international observers from the International Federation for East Timor (IFET) and other projects, and UN mission staff have also been threatened in a macabre series of recent events.

To further maintain U.S. and international focus on East Timor in these critical days before and immediately following the vote, when Indonesian military-backed paramilitaries have threatened "a bloodbath" in East Timor, the East Timor Action Network (ETAN) has scheduled a series of Washington events.

When voting begins on Sunday evening at 9 pm, human rights advocates will gather at the Indonesian Embassy (2020 Mass Avenue NW) for a candlelight vigil. Speakers will include Dr. Dan Murphy recently deported from Indonesia after spending 9 months victims of paramilitary attacks in East Timor.

On August 30th at 10 am at the National Press Club's Morning Newsmakers Program (Zenger Room), Dr. Dan Murphy will join Allie Epstein, a recently returned UN-accredited observer from the International Federation for East Timor (IFET) and Lynn Fredriksson of the East Timor Action Network (ETAN). Their press conference will analyze the events of the day in East Timor, as the vote is completed.

Human rights advocates will bring street theatre and music to the Indonesian Embassy at 5 pm on the August 30th, to mark the close of voting in East Timor.

Additionally, on the eve of East Timor's vote, 54 representatives of human rights and religious non-governmental organizations have written President Clinton strongly urging him to do more for East Timor. Their letter encouraged the President to "strictly hold Indonesia to all of its obligations under the May 5 UN agreement." They stated: "All paramilitary units should be contained and disarmed immediately. Indonesian military units should be returned to barracks, and a genuine and monitored troop withdrawal should begin immediately. Nothing short of these measures will ensure post-vote violence can be avoided." They called on President Clinton to speak out publicly to prevent further violence, and asked that U.S. intentions to withhold further military and financial assistance to Indonesia, if they don't secure the vote in East Timor, be made explicit.

John Miller
ETAN

Re: Your question; "Why do you think the media has been allowed ____"

I answer, *Because the media is NOT controlled-by any entity other than the Constitution and the Supreme Court's interpretations of same!

People apparently enjoy reading about the "Dirt," more than reading about the {all to few} "Clean" events in print. The people have the power to change that equation by not purchasing the periodicals and papers that print 'objectionable' material and by turning off the TV news media reporting "stuff" they object to..... .... But it hasn't happened YET!

AND ... With enough 'bad-stuff' *accuratlely* reported, the people may just decide to 'get involved' at the ballot box and change things!

Ed O'Toole Jr.

In the wake of the horrific shooting of small children at the Los Angeles Jewish Childcare Center this week, many of us are asking how the gunman could have possibly come to think such a thing would be acceptable. Perhaps looking at what happened at Camp Yawgood, a Rhode Island Boy Scout camp last week can provide a clue.

The Providence Journal Bulletin reported on August 11th that an adult Scout Leader was asked to leave the camp after it was learned that while on the camp's rifle range he had used for a target a newspaper picture of James Dale, the Eagle Scout recently ordered reinstated into Scouting by the New Jersey Supreme Court. I can't help but wonder what kind of statement was made on young impressionable minds after seeing one of their "morally straight" leaders shooting the head off of a picture of a gay man.

The Boy Scouts would do well to cleanse their ranks of those who don't live up to Scouting ideals. But they should also understand that sexual orientation has nothing to do with morality or immorality.

Paul Barwick Mill Valley, CA 

You stated in a recent editorial that "Poverty is the worst crime in America." I will agree, ...but hold the view that the cause is based on a cause that you did not mention. While you seem to think that "prisoners" should be provided with the education they lack or the skills needed to rise above poverty. You omit from mention that these things, i.e., *schooling*, WERE available to them BEFORE they chose to commit crimes in search of the 'easy-bucks.'

Your statement "People must unite and demand their rights to subsistence," is a little confusing ... are you suggesting we all quit our jobs and 'demand' that the government feed us? But there is more to "subsistence" isn't there? Maybe we should "unite" for government housing too!

"Resist corruption," "organize against abuse," "stand up and be counted" are attainable goals by people, but they require the *education* sometimes omitted, by choice, in their early years! ...And which while "standing shoulder to shoulder with [their] fellow workers" [note "work!' ERs.] they must ALSO reenter the education system, AFTER LEAVING the criminal system and "catch-up"!

Your suggestion that we "remain a thorn in the side of the Wealthy" is commendable and by way of adding to the success of getting "a little of what we make as a nation, back to us," I will additionally suggest, that the vast financial differences in the 'pay-scales' of Corporate CEO's, Business owners, Management employees and *Labor* be brought to a more equitable and standardized distribution ! ...

E.O'Toole

In response to the story slandering the faith of Creationists:

This pseudo-intellectual way of thinking would have us believe that the parts of a watch were put in a box and well shaken until the watch just happened. The universe, like the watch, is well designed, and if designed, has a Designer. Today's intellectual scientific choice is to believe in evolution or the Laws of Thermodynamics. You cannot believe in both. Evolution is a dying faith because it does not stand the test of real science. Every piece of matter on earth [including plant and animal] supports the Laws of Thernodynamics. Show me one piece of matter any size [including plant or animal] that supports evolution. There are none. 
J. C. Spencer

I am a stranger to New York City as far as residency is concerned.As a frequent visitor and future resident, I have however, been following the Great City's life through local and international publications, such as The Gazette's online edition and others.

I have been appalled by Mayor Guiliani's way of conducting things. Of course, he diminished crime in New York and cleaned up Times Square, and that is what has kept him in office for so long. That does not, however, give him the right to have people arrested for simple protesting.

This collumn made remember of a recent story about police abuse under Giuliani, when several celebrities such as Susan Sarandon were arrested simply for picketing against police violence in NYC.

Some may argue that the city is cleaner and safer now. I couldn't agree more, but if the cost for safety is being shut under Mafia-like fear techinques, I'd rather stay home on a Saturday night

All the best

Ernest Barteldes Fortaleza, Brazil
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