Politics > Politics-USA > GI bound for Iraq loses custody of his son because of military obligations
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Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
19 Dec 2004 08:25:11 PM |
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GI bound for Iraq loses custody of his son because of military obligations |
From The Associated Press, 12/19/04:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D872Q7R00.html
GI bound for Iraq loses custody fight
Associated Press
A North Texas soldier who will deploy to Iraq early next year is
furious that he recently lost custody of his son because of his
military obligations.
John Wertz must comply with a court order and deliver his 9-year-old
son to his ex-wife three days after Christmas.
"This is a big slap in the face," he said.
"I'm defending the country, and right behind my back, they're taking
things from me."
Wertz won primary custody of his son when his marriage to Lisa Roberts
dissolved in 1998.
He was called up by the National Guard for airport security after the
2001 terrorist attacks.
Active duty followed and he spent five months at Fort Knox, Ky., and a
year in South Korea.
During that time, Wertz's son lived in Mineral Wells with Wertz's new
wife.
Last summer, the Army moved Wertz to Fort Irwin, Calif., where he has
been preparing to deploy to Iraq with the 11th Armored Cavalry
Regiment.
John White Jr., Roberts' attorney, said Wertz gave her no warning that
he was moving to California and she filed for a change in custody in
August.
A judge awarded her custody until Wertz returns from Iraq.
The custody situation will be re-evaluated then.
It's difficult to gauge how often soldiers lose custody because of
deployment.
Officials at Fort Hood, the nation's largest Army post, said it isn't
common.
Mike Windsor, Wertz's attorney, said he doesn't think the judge picked
on his client because he is in the military.
In recent years, Texas family court judges have been increasingly
unwilling to allow children to be moved around the country by a
custodial parent.
___________________________________________________
Harry
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| User: "Blue Dawn" |
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| Title: Re: GI bound for Iraq loses custody of his son because of military obligations |
20 Dec 2004 10:20:24 AM |
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Harry Hope <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
From The Associated Press, 12/19/04:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D872Q7R00.html
GI bound for Iraq loses custody fight
Associated Press
A North Texas soldier...
<snip>
In Texas, all dumb things are possible...indeed, likely...
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| User: "The Last Liberal" |
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| Title: Re: GI bound for Iraq loses custody of his son because of military obligations |
20 Dec 2004 10:09:44 AM |
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On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 02:25:11 GMT, Harry Hope
<rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
From The Associated Press, 12/19/04:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D872Q7R00.html
GI bound for Iraq loses custody fight
Associated Press
A North Texas soldier who will deploy to Iraq early next year is
furious that he recently lost custody of his son because of his
military obligations.
John Wertz must comply with a court order and deliver his 9-year-old
son to his ex-wife three days after Christmas.
People who kill children in Iraq should not be given custody of
children.
"This is a big slap in the face," he said.
"I'm defending the country, and right behind my back, they're taking
things from me."
How is killing children and old ladies in Iraq "defending" any
country? He is defending Bush2's oil wealth.
---
http://lastliberal.org
"When the rain started, the mountains fled to high ground?" - David Rice
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| User: "The Last Liberal" |
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| Title: Hung Out to Dry: How Webb's Series Died |
20 Dec 2004 10:11:18 AM |
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http://consortiumnews.com/Print/2004/121604.html
Hung Out to Dry: How Webb's Series Died
By Georg Hodel
From the Consortiumnews.com's Archives
Editor's Note: We published the following story in 1997 when
senior editors at the San Jose Mercury News were pulling the plug
on Gary Webb's investigation into the Reagan-Bush administration's
contra-cocaine scandal. Our article was written by Georg Hodel, a
journalist working with Webb at the Mercury News. We are
republishing Hodel's story now to help readers better understand
how Webb's journalistic career was shattered, beginning his
decline toward suicide last week.
--Robert Parry, Editor, December 16, 2004
Hung Out to Dry (Summer 1997)
By Georg Hodel
The "Dark Alliance" contra-crack series, which I co-reported with
Gary Webb, has died with less a bang or a whimper than a gloat
from the mainstream press.
"The San Jose Mercury News has apparently had enough of reporter
Gary Webb and his efforts to prove that the CIA was involved in
the sale of crack cocaine," announced Washington Post media critic
Howard Kurtz, who has written some of the harshest attacks on
Webb. "Editors at the California newspaper have yanked Webb off
the story and told him they will not publish his follow-up
articles. They have also moved to transfer Webb from the state
capital bureau in Sacramento to a less prestigious suburban office
in Cupertino." [Washington Post, June 11, 1997]
Webb got the news on June 5, 1997, from executive editor Jerry
Ceppos, who had publicly turned against the series several weeks
earlier with a personal column declaring that the stories "fell
short of my standards" and failed to handle the "gray areas" with
sufficient care. [San Jose Mercury News, May 11, 1997]
In killing the new stories, Ceppos said Mercury News editors had
reservations about the credibility of a principal Webb source,
apparently a reference to convicted cocaine trafficker Carlos
Cabezas, who has claimed that a CIA agent oversaw the transfer of
drug profits to the contras. Ceppos also complained that Webb had
gotten too close to the story.
Ceppos then ordered Webb to the paper's San Jose headquarters the
next day to learn about his future with the newspaper. On June 6,
1997, as that final decision was coming down, I called Ceppos to
protest. I wanted him to understand the human as well as
journalistic costs of what he was doing, not just to Webb but to
other journalists associated with the story in Nicaragua where I
have worked for more than a decade.
I thought he should know that his decision to distance himself
from the "Dark Alliance" series -- combined with earlier attacks
from major American newspapers -- had increased the dangers to me
and others who have been pursuing this story in the field.
Just as Webb has been under personal attack in the United States,
I have faced efforts from former contras to tear down my
reputation in Nicaragua. Ex-contras also have harassed Nicaraguan
reporters who have tried to follow up the contra-cocaine evidence.
In one paid advertisement, Oscar Danilo Blandon, a drug trafficker
who has admitted donating some cocaine profits to the contras in
the early 1980s, called me a "pseudo-journalist" and accused me of
having some unspecified links to an "international communist
organization." Blandon also accused Nicaraguan reporters from El
Nuevo Diario of "trying to manipulate" members of the U.S.
Congress looking into the contra-cocaine charges.
Former contra chief Adolfo Calero declared in an article in La
Tribuna what he thought should be done to these politically
suspect Nicaraguan and foreign reporters. He used metaphorical
language that refers to leftist Nicaraguan journalists as "deer"
and fellow-traveling foreign reporters as "antelopes." "The deer
are going to be finished off," Calero wrote on Feb. 2, 1997. "In
this case, the antelopes as well." As a Swiss journalist, I would
be an "antelope."
Less subtly, there have been threatening phone calls to my office.
In late May 1997, a male voice shouted obscenities at me over the
phone and threatened to "screw" my wife who is a Nicaraguan lawyer
representing Enrique Miranda, one of the Nicaraguan cocaine
traffickers who has spoken with congressional investigators.
Earlier I had sent Ceppos a letter which complained that his May
11 "column provoked ... a series of very unfortunate reactions
that seriously affect my working environment and exposes
unintentionally everybody here who has been involved in this
investigation." In the phone conversation on June 6, 1997, Ceppos
first denied having received the letter, but then admitted that he
had it. Still, he refused my request that the letter be published.
A Clear Message
My appeal also did not stop Ceppos from informing Webb later that
day that the investigative reporter would be transferred to a
suburban office 150 miles from his home where he and his wife are
raising three young children. That would mean that Webb would have
to relocate from Sacramento or not see his family during the work
week. The message was clear and Webb did not miss its
significance: he saw the transfer as a clear message that the
Mercury News wanted him to quit.
The retributions against Webb were a sad end to the "Dark
Alliance" series which has been enveloped in controversy since it
was published in August 1996. The series linked contra-cocaine
shipments in the early 1980s to a Los Angeles drug pipeline that
first mass-marketed "crack" cocaine to inner-city neighborhoods.
The series drew especially strong reactions from the
African-American community which has been devastated by the crack
epidemic. In fall 1996, however, The Washington Post and other
major newspapers began attacking the series for alleged
overstatements. The papers also mocked African-Americans for
supposedly being susceptible to baseless "conspiracy theories."
The furor obscured the fact that "Dark Alliance" built upon more
than a decade of evidence amassed by journalists, congressional
investigators and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration
who found numerous connections between the contras and drug
traffickers. Some of that evidence was compiled in a Senate report
issued in 1989 by a subcommittee headed by Sen. John Kerry. Other
pieces came out during the Iran-contra scandal and still more
during the drug-trafficking trial of Panamanian Gen. Manuel
Noriega in 1991.
But the contras were always defended by the Reagan-Bush
administrations which saw the guerrillas as a necessary
geo-political counterweight to the leftist Sandinista government
that ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s. With a few exceptions, the
mainstream media joined the White House in protecting the contras
-- and the CIA -- on the drug-trafficking evidence. [For details,
see Robert Parry's Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press &
'Project Truth.']
http://gallery.bcentral.com/GID5113353DD419054-Shop.aspx
Contra Cocaine
Still, from time to time, even The Washington Post has
acknowledged legitimate concerns about contra drug trafficking. In
fall 1996, for instance, after initiating the attacks on "Dark
Alliance," the Post ran a front-page article describing how
Medellin cartel trafficker George Morales "contributed at least
two airplanes and $90,000 to" one of the contra groups operating
in Costa Rica. The story quoted contra leaders Octaviano Cesar and
Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro as admitting receipt of the contributions,
although they insisted that they had cleared the transactions with
their contact at the CIA. [Washington Post, Oct. 31, 1996]
The Post did not mention the name of that contact, an omission
that angered Chamorro. He told me that the CIA man was Alan Fiers,
who served as chief of the CIA's Central American Task Force in
the mid-1980s. Fiers has denied any illicit involvement with drug
traffickers, although he testified to the congressional
Iran-contra investigators that he knew that among the Costa
Rican-based contras, drug trafficking involved "not a couple of
people. It was a lot of people."
While admitting some truth to the contra-cocaine allegations, the
Post story stopped short of any self-criticism about the
newspaper's failure to expose the contra-drug problem in the 1980s
as the cocaine was entering the United States. In the Oct. 31,
1996, story, the Post only noted that "a broad congressional
inquiry from 1986 to 1988 ... found that CIA and other officials
may have chosen to overlook evidence that some contra groups were
engaged in the drug trade or were cooperating with traffickers."
The Post then added obliquely: "But that probe caused little stir
when its report was released." With that indirect phrasing, the
Post seemed to be shunting off blame for the "little stir" onto
the congressional report. The newspaper did not explain why it
buried the Senate report's explosive findings on page A20.
[Washington Post, April 14, 1989]. Instead, last fall, the Post
and other big papers focused almost exclusively on alleged flaws
in "Dark Alliance."
When that drumbeat of criticism began, Ceppos initially defended
the series. He wrote a supportive letter to the Post (which the
newspaper refused to publish). But the weight of the attacks from
major newspapers and leading journalism reviews eventually
softened up the Mercury News. Inside the paper, young staffers
feared that the controversy could hurt their chances of getting
hired by bigger newspapers. Senior editors fretted about their
careers in the Knight-Ridder chain, which owns the Mercury News.
New Leads
In the meantime, Webb and I continued following contra-drug leads
in Nicaragua and the United States. The new information eventually
became the basis for Webb's submission of four new stories to
Ceppos. Webb has described these stories as completed drafts
although Ceppos called them just "notes."
Though I have not seen Webb's drafts, I know they include two
stories relating to witnesses in Nicaragua who were part of the
cocaine networks of Norwin Meneses, a longtime Nicaraguan drug
trafficker who was based in San Francisco and who collaborated
closely with senior contra leaders.
Meneses's operation surfaced with the so-called Frogman case in
1983 when the FBI and Customs captured two divers in wet suits
hauling $100 million worth of cocaine ashore at San Francisco Bay.
The federal prosecutor ordered $36,020 captured in that case be
given to the contras who claimed it was their money.
For the new "Dark Alliance" stories, we interviewed Carlos Cabezas
who was convicted of conspiracy in the Frogman case. Cabezas
insisted that a CIA agent -- a Venezuelan named Ivan Gomez --
oversaw the cocaine operation to make sure the profits went to the
contras, not into the pockets of the traffickers.
Last year, Cabezas outlined his claims in a British ITV
documentary. "They told me who he [Gomez] was and the reason that
he was there," Cabezas said. "It was to make sure that the money
was given to the right people and nobody was taking advantage of
the situation and nobody was taking profit that they were not
supposed to. And that was it. He was making sure that the money
goes to the contra revolution."
The ITV documentary, which aired on Dec. 12, 1996, quoted former
CIA Latin American division chief Duane Clarridge as denying any
knowledge of either Cabezas or Gomez. Clarridge directed the
contra war in the early 1980s and was later indicted on perjury
charges in connection with the Iran-contra scandal. He was
pardoned by President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
The new "Dark Alliance" stories also would have examined the
claims of other contra-connected drug witnesses in Nicaragua as
well as the career problems confronted by DEA agents when they
uncovered evidence of contra drug trafficking. But prospects that
the full contra-cocaine story will ever be told in the United
States have dimmed with the shutting down of "Dark Alliance."
I am also afraid that Ceppos's decision to punish Webb will
strengthen the campaign of intimidation inside Nicaragua. But
beyond the personal costs to Webb and me, Ceppos's actions sent a
chilling message to all journalists who some day might dare
investigate wrongdoing by the CIA and its operatives.
What's especially troubling about this new "Dark Alliance" tale is
that the investigative spotlight was turned off not by the
government, but by the national news media.
Editor's Post-Script: For more on the aftermath of this betrayal
of the contra-cocaine investigation, see Consortiumnews.com
"America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/121304.html
---
http://lastliberal.org
"As far as I am concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious
virtue." --- Einstien
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