Lawrence Toppman: A Delightful Flight With Spirit Behind Peter Pan

The Charlotte Observer
Published: Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Who'd have thought the best Christmas movie of the decade would be one that never mentions the holiday, doesn't contain a flake of snow or a strip of tinsel, and takes place a century ago during a warm British summer?

Miramax is releasing "Finding Neverland" at Thanksgiving so it'll be fresh in the minds of Oscar voters. Yet the timing is ideal for audiences, too. "Neverland" embodies concepts we associate with this season: the ability to retain childlike optimism and hope, the notion that people are essentially good if you trust and encourage them, the faith that a life after death will reunite believers.

We begin not in a church but a London theater, where the latest farce by J.M. Barrie has failed to please. American-born producer Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman) frets over lost money and Barrie's lost reputation. Barrie (Johnny Depp), the least dour Scotsman on earth, brushes off the failure, just as he's brushed off marital difficulties with his stifled wife, Mary (Radha Mitchell).

The childless author looks up from his park bench one day to see his Newfoundland romping with four kids, who turn out to be the sons of recently widowed Sylvia Davies (Kate Winslet). Barrie improvises a scene where the Newfie becomes a dancing bear and he its trainer, and all but stubbornly literal Peter Davies (Freddie Highmore) are enchanted.

Barrie and the boys inspire each other over the succeeding months. He renews their interest in play and provides a father figure for all but Peter; they stimulate him to begin a children's show about pirates, fairies, Indians and a boy who can fly but will never grow up. Two people don't share in this joy: Mary, who feels ever more isolated, and Sylvia's mother (Julie Christie), who believes her daughter should look for a real husband and dump this whimsical, sexless surrogate.

David Magee's script adapts Allan Knee's play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan." It plays fast and loose with facts: There were five Davies boys, and Barrie knew them for many years before writing "Peter Pan." More crucially, Davies' husband was alive when "Pan" premiered on Dec. 27, 1904.

If this were a biographical film, its most serious omission would be Barrie's sexual attitudes; his marriage was reportedly unconsummated, and Barrie - who was physically almost the exact opposite of the tall, handsome, assured Depp - may not have been interested in women. (That would explain the totally platonic connection between the playwright and Sylvia Davies in this film.)

But "Neverland" is not a biography. It's an allegory about creativity and imagination, about seeking in art a happiness we cannot sustain in life. (That was a common theme in Barrie's novels and plays.) It's also about the value of retaining a childlike wonder while acquiring a mature understanding of the world. On those levels, it succeeds superbly.

Director Marc Forster makes a smooth transition from the gritty Southern tragedy "Monster's Ball" to the top-hatted gentility of Edwardian England. He lets the movie slip into full-blown fantasy sequences often enough to reveal the fertility of Barrie's brain while keeping us grounded in reality.

Johnny Depp has finally won me over to rabid support after "Neverland" and "Pirates of the Caribbean." He gives the most controlled, least mannered performance of his career, staying sweet and rueful while suggesting unseen emotional depths. He also has an excellent rapport with serious young Highmore, which bodes well for their remake of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" under director Tim Burton.

Winslet, who seems maternal for the first time, stretches successfully here. The elegant Mitchell and self-possessed Hoffman fill out their small roles properly, and Christie is quietly severe as the dragon lady who finally drops some of her protective scales.

Forster and Magee are wise enough not to insist on a scene of reconciliation or apology for this old lady; she simply bursts into spontaneous applause to save Tinkerbell's life during a performance of "Peter Pan." The implication is clear: The oldest and most hidebound among us can become joyful children again, if we have proper stimulation and a mind that hasn't slammed shut.

Thomas Sowell: Cynicism Exposed

http://www.townhall.com/
Thomas Sowell (archive)
March 15, 2005

Back in the 1980s a White House staffer told about a revealing incident on Capitol Hill. The staffer was walking down the corridors of one of the buildings on the Hill when a Senator motioned to him to step inside his office. "I'm going to make a speech next week, denouncing the effect of the President's policies on my constituents," the Senator said. He added: "Pay it no mind."

My own experience with political cynicism in Washington came a few years earlier, back in 1976, when I was nominated to the Federal Trade Commission by President Ford. At a private meeting with a Democratic Congressional staffer for the Senate committee in charge of confirming my nomination, the staffer gave me the word. "We have gone over your record with a fine-toothed comb," he said frankly, "and, since we could find nothing to object to, we are just not going to hold hearings at all."

He explained that, since this was an election year and they expected their candidate -- Jimmy Carter -- to win, they would just sit on my nomination until Carter became President, so that he could then appoint his own man to the FTC. Which he did.

Anyone who does not understand the utter cynicism of politics does not understand politics. An education on that subject can be found in Mona Charen's incisive new book, "Do-Gooders."

Ms. Charen's book is about the enormous damage done by liberal social policies from the 1960s on, but it is also about the shameless demagoguery unleashed against those who have dared to oppose the liberal agenda or reveal its failures. Examples range from cynical lies about judicial nominees to the biggest big lie of our time, the claim that black voters were "disenfranchised" by Republicans in Florida during the 2000 elections.

Depicting judicial nominees as being against civil rights -- and therefore implicitly racist -- is a political tactic that has been used cynically and successfully, even against judges with a history of being in favor of civil rights and who have even had the endorsements of civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall and Charles Evers, brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

The most famous example was the use of the anti-civil rights charge against Judge Robert Bork during his confirmation hearings as a nominee for the Supreme Court in 1987. It is a matter of public record that, before he became a judge, Robert Bork had filed briefs on the side of the NAACP in a number of civil rights cases.

Even though Judge Bork was endorsed by the most famous civil rights attorney in history -- Thurgood Marshall -- that meant absolutely nothing politically. His opponents couldn't care less about his civil rights record, except as something to twist in order to deny him a place on the Supreme Court.

The same game was played, years later, when Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering was nominated to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and rejected by the Democrats who controlled the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002.

Back in the days of the civil rights struggle in Mississippi in the 1960s, Charles Pickering not only risked his political career by speaking out for civil rights, he risked his life. When Judge Pickering's nomination came under political attack in Washington, decades later, local black leaders in Mississippi came to his defense. One said: "I can't believe the man they're describing in Washington is the same one I've known for years."

Pickering's actual civil rights record, which had been praised by Mississippi civil rights leader Charles Evers, had nothing to do with the opposition to him. Liberals were afraid that someone with Judge Pickering's judicial philosophy might not rule in favor of abortion -- their real litmus test -- and if depicting him as someone opposed to civil rights would stop him, so be it.

The most successful political demagoguery of our time has been the claim that black voters were "disenfranchised" in Florida during the 2000 elections. Mona Charen's book examines that claim in detail. The Civil Rights Commission issued a report repeating that claim -- after hearings in which not a single black voter testified to being personally denied the vote.

"Do-Gooders" shows not only the destructive consequences of liberal policies on crime, education and welfare, it shows the corrupting cynicism used to try to keep the liberal agenda afloat.

©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell Read Sowell's biography

Mike Lupica: Congress Champs at Playing Politics

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Tuesday, March 15th, 2005

Commissioner Bud Selig contacted Rep. Tom Davis yesterday and officially told him that he would testify in front of Davis' Government Reform Committee about steroids in baseball. It is the first and only congressional committee that will ever be convened because of a book written by somebody who not only dated Madonna once, but bragged about it.

"I decided it was the right thing to do," Selig was saying yesterday afternoon.

The conventional wisdom, of course, was that any good citizen, or good commissioner, would jump at the chance to appear in front of a congressional committee convened because of Jose Canseco's book. If they didn't, they were chicken. Or at least hiding.

"No one pressured me," Selig said. "I made this decision on my own."

Selig will not show up in Washington and defend the recent past in baseball where steroids and performance-enhancing drugs are concerned. No one can do that. He plans to stick to his story, talk about the present and the future now that baseball finally has a drug policy in place, then let Davis and Rep. Henry Waxman, another guy who read the excerpts from Canseco's book and decided to throw the book at baseball, worry about what they can get out of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Jason Giambi.

Davis and Waxman want Selig to tell what he knows about steroids in baseball. They want Donald Fehr of the Players Association, the world leader in opposing any kind of drug testing in baseball, to do the same, along with McGwire and Sosa and the rest of baseball's muscle boys.
But first Davis and Waxman should tell us the real reason they have not issued a subpoena to Barry Bonds. Because if the best Davis can do is telling Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" that one of the reasons that Bonds didn't get a subpoena is because they didn't want these hearings to be about just one player, then it is Davis who looks like a ballplayer telling a cheap lie about steroid use. It is Rep. Davis who ought to think about taking the Fifth the next time somebody like Russert asks him a tough question.

You want the truth, tell the truth.

If Bonds isn't being hauled in front of the Congress of the United States because Davis and Waxman have been asked not to destroy some case against Bonds being built by the U.S. attorneys in the BALCO case, say that. If you're going to hold more hearings later with Bonds as your only witness, say that.

Davis and Waxman get what they want now. They get Bud Selig to testify in front of their committee. All the people who have been yelling for a week that Selig has to testify get their way as well. Somehow this chorus included Selig's predecessor, Fay Vincent, who only became commissioner because Bart Giamatti dropped dead after his Pete Rose investigation.

Vincent never had a drug plan for baseball, or a revenue-sharing plan, or one that involved standing up to the Players Association. He never had much of a plan for anything, outside of getting George Steinbrenner good. Now someone who once threatened Buck Showalter and Gene Michael with their baseball lives because they had the audacity to defend Steve Howe wants to sit on the sidelines and act even more like the conscience of baseball than someone from the House of Representatives.

Here is the greatest truth Vincent ever spoke as baseball commissioner, talking to one of his owners one day.

"This is the best job I ever had!" he said.

So there was no drug policy under him, and no drug policy under Selig until the last collective bargaining agreement, and even then, Fehr and Eugene Orza of the Players Association fought against meaningful testing until the bitter end.

Now we have come to this moment in baseball history, where a congressional hearing about drugs in baseball begins two weeks before Opening Day. And we will begin to see whether Congress is sincerely interested in how we got to this moment, or just getting headlines. Or bracing people like Giambi and McGwire, forcing them to take the Fifth rather than incriminate themselves.

All because of Jose Canseco's book.

Not because of what Giambi is supposed to have said under oath, according to grand jury testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. Not because of Ken Caminiti, the first real steroids whistle-blower before his heart exploded. Canseco wrote a bestseller about the drugs he said he used and the ones he said he injected into Mark McGwire, the home run king of baseball before Bonds became the home run king of baseball, and now Congress wants answers.
We have a right to get honest answers out of them, or at least as honest as any elected official is capable. We have a right to ask about Bonds, now more than ever, ask why the commissioner of baseball has to go to Washington this week and Bonds does not.

Rep. Davis and Rep. Waxman swear they want the truth. They can start by telling the truth about Barry Bonds, not some lame story about how they don't want this thing to turn into a circus. Because it makes them look like clowns.

We all want answers, the problem is that the wrong people in Washington are asking the questions.

NY Daily News: Muscling Inside Ring of Steroids

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

BY T.J. QUINN, CHRISTIAN RED and MICHAEL O'KEEFFE
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
Monday, March 14th, 2005

In April of 1992, Bill Randall arrived at Curtis Wenzlaff's Oakland, Calif., condo to make a routine steroids buy. Randall — an undercover FBI agent who was known at the time as Eddie Schmidt — spotted a photograph of Wenzlaff flanked by a good-looking, casually dressed man and an attractive woman.

Randall played dumb.

"I looked at it and said, 'Hey, who is that? I know that guy,'" Randall says. "(Wenzlaff) says, 'That's Jose Canseco. He's a friend of mine. I was his personal trainer.'

"We got on the subject of juice and steroids and he said that Canseco was on (steroids) and had been on a cycle, but he had to go off because his wife wanted to get pregnant. (Canseco) was having some problems as a result of steroid use."

Randall has always maintained that "Operation Equine" — the early '90s steroid trafficking investigation that is still the largest of its kind in U.S. history — was about targeting and eventually convicting steroid dealers, not users. But the meeting with Wenzlaff that day was one of several instances during which prominent athletes' names surfaced in the three-year stretch of the investigation.

"This was a one-of-a-kind operation," says Randall, a 33-year FBI veteran who is now retired from the Bureau. The sting operation originated in Ann Arbor, Mich., but soon reached as far as California, Mexico, Florida and Canada. "We took about 10 million dosage units off the street. There was a need for it to be addressed."

As the Daily News reported yesterday, one of the traffickers convicted in Operation Equine, Curtis Wenzlaff, supplied steroids to admitted juicer Jose Canseco and his former Oakland A's "Bash Brother" Mark McGwire, as well as several other major league ballplayers. The names of hundreds of other athletes — bodybuilders, wrestlers, Olympians, NCAA football players and players from every major professional sport except the NBA — also came up during the course of the investigation, Randall said. So did the names of firemen, cops, even two Academy Award winners.

The goal of Operation Equine, initiated when legendary Michigan coach Bo Schembechler asked Ann Arbor-based Special Agent Greg Stejskal to investigate steroid use by college football players, was to shut down major steroid dealers. The FBI didn't pursue prosecutions against Canseco, McGwire and most of the other athletes whose names surfaced during the inquiry, Randall adds, because they were users, not traffickers.

While Randall is proud of his work in Operation Equine — he spent 2 1/2 years undercover during the case, working with Stejskal — in hindsight, he says, maybe the FBI should have gone after some big-name jocks.

"If we had gone after Canseco, maybe we would have forestalled some things. We did end up getting some pretty good, sizable dealers," Randall says. "The word got out on the street that we were doing this. For a long period of time, at least a year or so, I think it really did have a chilling effect on the market.

"We did major league baseball a short-term favor by not going after players, but it was to baseball's long-term detriment. We could have cleaned up major league baseball."
Here are some scenes from Operation Equine:

****
Flint, Mich., was a crumbling industrial town with little to offer young guys in the 1980s. Curtis Wenzlaff's ticket out, he hoped, was a football scholarship. Wenzlaff and his friends were gym rats, and he worked out furiously to build his body to Division I proportions. It didn't take long for them to learn that pumping iron wasn't the only way to build muscle. "Drugs were everywhere," says one of Wenzlaff's associates, who eventually became an FBI informant in Operation Equine and has requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

By the end of the decade, Wenzlaff had moved to northern California and had become an expert in a wide variety of drugs that make users bigger, leaner and stronger. That knowledge eventually led him to Jose Canseco and a rock star lifestyle, hanging out in exclusive clubs and chasing beautiful women.

Wenzlaff's associate, however, wasn't faring so well. The Michigan State Police arrested him in early 1992 and threatened to charge him with steroid trafficking. The cops told him they were going to hit him hard — they wanted to make him an example in the war against steroids.
Wenzlaff's associate turned to a man he had met in a Michigan gym, Eddie Schmidt, looking for help. He didn't know that Schmidt's real name was Bill Randall, or that he was an undercover FBI agent working on his own investigation. The associate spent four days in jail before Randall came up with an alternative.

"Randall and Stejskal met with me and asked, 'Have you ever been bowling? Now you are the ball and you are going to take people down,'" the associate says. "They had three or four stacks of pictures of me selling drugs out of a car, at the gym. They had done a lot of surveillance. They wanted sacrificial lambs. So it was either go to jail for several years or roll on several people. I ended up working for the FBI."

One of the lambs he sacrificed was the longtime associate who had moved out West and was living the good life — Curtis Wenzlaff.

****
Steroids, it has been widely reported, have serious health consequences. Just last week, at a congressional hearing, three-time Olympian Jim Ryun — now a representative from Kansas — told his colleagues that steroids have been linked to liver tumors, cancer, jaundice, fluid retention, high-blood pressure, severe acne and kidney tumors — among other problems.
But like cocaine, heroin and other drugs, they might sap your long-term health, but they can make you feel like Superman in the short term.

"It's the best," Wenzlaff's friend says. "I was just reminiscing the other day with some guys about when we used to use steroids. You felt like a million dollars. You could drink like a fish. You didn't get hangovers."

But mostly, he says, steroid users live dull, regimented lives. Most of their time revolves around working out, eating constantly to maintain their bulk and sleeping to recover from their workouts.

Then there were the mood swings, the 'roid rage. "I was also the biggest a------," Wenzlaff's associate says.

He says he's glad he finally ended his Faustian bargain with steroids. "I was a dumb kid taking a lot of drugs," he says. "Bill Randall turned out to be a role model to me. The only other role models I had were goons in the gyms."

****
Wenzlaff and his associate sold steroids to each other for years, but otherwise they had taken very different paths in life. The associate shared an apartment with three other guys, drove a car that belonged in a junkyard and scraped for money. Wenzlaff, meanwhile, hung out with elite athletes, partied with beautiful women and enjoyed the finer things in life.
Wenzlaff's flashy lifestyle soon made him a target for the FBI.

"Wenzlaff had a big mouth," the associate says. "He would try to entice me by always dropping names. 'This is going to so-and-so.' When you're making $3,000 to $4,000 a week, you think you are invincible."

****
The life of an undercover agent, Bill Randall says, is full of stress, frustration and regret. "You lose your life," he says. "You totally immerse yourself in this. It played a mind game on me.
"How do you explain it? Does it have an effect on your family? You bet," Randall says. "A lot of sacrifices were made. But in order to do a case as long as we did, we had to arrange an undercover. I was undercover for two and a half years, sometimes juggling three or four different cases. That's why I had to be so careful with the sources, not give too much away.
"I missed the births of both of my kids. I was constantly away from my family."

It's also emotionally taxing, he says, to become close to a guy you will eventually arrest, maybe throw in prison, maybe take his car, his home, his career, his dignity.

"I deceived this guy," he says, nodding at Wenzlaff during an interview at an Ann Arbor tavern last week with The News in which the two saw each other for the first time since Randall helped bust Wenzlaff. "Is he a bad guy? No. Does it play a mind game on you? Yeah. They (the Bureau) wanted to relocate me and my family. But because of my respect for (Stejskal) as a fellow FBI agent, we went as far as we did. The fact is, I trust Greg Stejskal 100%."

Randall also corroborated a report in The News last month that Stejskal had met with MLB security chief Kevin Hallinan shortly after Operation Equine concluded, with the warning that baseball was tainted with steroid users, most notably, Canseco.

"'Did anybody say anything?'" Randall recalls, mimicking how Hallinan and MLB officials reacted when they heard Canseco and other players' names were linked to steroids. "'Phewww!'"

****
The life of an informant may be even more stressful than that of an undercover cop. Wenzlaff's associate says he was kicked out of the college where he was enrolled in an athletic training program. That was hard to explain to family and friends, since the FBI forbade him from telling anybody about his bust or his arrangement with them.

Dealers he set up for the FBI, meanwhile, were sending him death threats. He recalled one harrowing instance during a trip across the Mexican border to purchase steroids.

"That's when it got f------ scary. Twice at least, I was on my own, wired, no gun, no nothing. I remember I was trying to get this border patrol agent who dealt steroids, to go out on a boat. A lot of times, I had to pressure these guys when I would do deals. "We had some special agents (women) in bikinis, wired and we were all trying to get (the border agent) on a fishing boat to cross the border. He didn't know my background when I first met him, but by that time word got around that I had been busted (back in Michigan), so things got really touchy. That's when I wanted to get the ---- out of there."

The associate says he prefers to remain anonymous about that part of his life — he was only in his early 20s — because of the possible repercussions.

"I have nothing to gain but negative notoriety. I don't want people to have to question my integrity," he says. "I'm pretty much a hermit. Others may enjoy attention. I don't."

****
In late summer of 1992, about a month after Wenzlaff was busted, the associate and Wenzlaff ran into each other at a Michigan gym. Wenzlaff was told by Randall to stay away from the associate, but his anger took over. "Curtis says, 'I ought to kill you,'" the associate says. "He had every right to come after me."

They ran into each other at the gym several times after that. Finally, Wenzlaff figured it was time to bury the hatchet. "I said to the guy who set me up, 'Buy me a can of protein powder and what's done is done,'" Wenzlaff says. "I left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table after I was arrested from people who owed me money. And I lost out on millions of dollars in potential future earnings. But at that point, I just wanted to walk away."

Asbury Park Press: Boss Stays Local to Rehearse For Upcoming Tour

Springsteen greets fans in Asbury Park

Published in the Asbury Park Press 03/11/05
By MICHAEL RILEY, STAFF WRITER

ASBURY PARK — It was a well-kept secret, but not a perfectly kept one.

The only clue yesterday afternoon was a road-salt-encrusted Range Rover parked at the Asbury Park Convention Center. That, and the muffled sounds of guitar and vocals coming from the Paramount Theater.

Bruce Springsteen was in the house rehearsing for his upcoming tour in support of his new album, "Devils and Dust," to be released on April 26. At least one other member of the E Street Band, guitarist Nils Lofgren, was said to be rehearsing with him, although the forthcoming album is said not to include the band.

Manny DeCastro, 21, and his friend Sam Constantino, 20, both of Lacey, were waiting outside the Paramount to get a listen and maybe a look at their musical hero.

"I'm a mail carrier, and people on my route were telling me that Bruce was going to be here today," DeCastro said. "I had the day off and thought I'd come."

Constantino admitted that some would find it strange that they would stand for hours in near-freezing temperatures for a brief encounter with The Boss. "It's stupid," he said, "but it is something to do."

Four hours after their vigil began, their patience was rewarded.

Springsteen walked out a little before 6 p.m.

By that time, they had been joined by just a couple of other curious and in-the-know Springsteen fans.

"Hey Bruce," said one of them, "can you sign some autographs?"

"Let's see what you got," Springsteen said with a familiar growl.

As he signed autographs, DeCastro said, "We've been waiting 3 1/2 hours."

Springsteen paused, and shook his head.

"You kids need to get a life," he said, with a smile.

NY Daily News: Hitting the Mark

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Hitting the Mark
By MICHAEL O'KEEFFE, CHRISTIAN RED & T.J. QUINN
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS Saturday, March 12th, 2005

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The recipe called for 1/2 cc of testosterone cypionate every three days; one cc of testosterone enanthate per week; equipoise and winstrol v, 1/4 cc every three days, injected into the buttocks, one in one cheek, one in the other.

It was the cocktail of a hardcore steroids user, and it is one of the "arrays," or steroid recipes, Mark McGwire used to become the biggest thing in baseball in the 1990s, sources have told the Daily News.

Long before Jose Canseco claimed he injected McGwire in the behind in his tell-all autobiography "Juiced," the man known as Big Mac denied ever using illegal steroids. But according to FBI sources, McGwire's name came up several times during "Operation Equine," a landmark anabolic steroids investigation that led to 70 trafficking convictions in the early 1990s. No evidence against McGwire or any other steroid user was collected, and one former agent who worked undercover in the case says McGwire was not a target.

But two dealers caught in Operation Equine told the Daily News that a California man named Curtis Wenzlaff provided Canseco and McGwire, among others, with illegal anabolic steroids. One informant in the case says Wenzlaff injected McGwire at a gym in Southern California on several occasions, and established "arrays" of performance-enhancing drugs such as the aforementioned cocktail.

"Curtis was an expert on how to take drugs," one of the informants in the case says. "The West Coast - that was the Mecca of drugs back then. And Curtis was involved with some serious people. Curtis gave me the same cycle that Mark McGwire (allegedly) was on. The best cycle (of steroids) I ever did came from Curtis."

Reached by the News, a former member of the gym where Wenzlaff and McGwire allegedly worked out together - Racquetball World in Fountain Valley, Calif. - said he saw them work out together "maybe five times" and that the two discussed using steroids in his presence.
"No comment," said Wenzlaff when asked to confirm the accounts.

A month-long review by the News of court documents, FBI records and interviews with sources on both sides of the law found that Operation Equine was a massive warning sign of what was to come in the American sports landscape. Dealers like Wenzlaff were befriending ballplayers like Canseco all over the country, and those players were passing on their new-found expertise to friends in the game.

"In hindsight, we could have gotten the big names - (Michigan State lineman) Tony Mandarich, Canseco - the problem is, where do you draw the line?" says Bill Randall, who was the FBI undercover agent during Operation Equine. "You have to remember, there was no benchmark, nothing for us to model the investigation on. We wanted to get to the root of the problem, that's all we were after. We could have hammered Canseco, but again, that wasn't the thrust. And if we had started going after Major League Baseball players, we'd never get up to these big-time dealers."

Representatives for Canseco and McGwire said the former players did not remember meeting Wenzlaff, and were not aware their names came up in the FBI's investigation, although an FBI source provided the News with previous telephone numbers for Canseco and McGwire and a pager number for Canseco from Wenzlaff's old phone book.

"We're not going to comment on anything at this time," said Marc Altieri, McGwire's representative, "but we believe one should consider the sources of such allegations."
"Jose doesn't want to deny knowing him, but he just doesn't remember the guy," said Robert Saunooke, Canseco's attorney.

However, Wenzlaff's longtime friend Reggie Jackson, who Wenzlaff insists never used steroids or knew he was dealing them, says he saw Wenzlaff and Canseco work out and socialize together.
"Yes, they had spent some time together," says Jackson, who met Wenzlaff after his career ended with the Oakland A's in 1987.

"Curt's a good guy that got mixed up in steroids at a very young age. He's a good, solid, stand-up guy and he's honest."

Jackson, who let Wenzlaff stay in his Oakland home for long stretches in the late 1980s, says he was not aware that Wenzlaff had allegedly supplied steroids to Canseco or anyone else until last year when Wenzlaff testified before a Senate subcommittee investigating steroid use in pro, college and high school sports.

The two convicted sources who connected Wenzlaff to Canseco and McGwire declined to be named, saying they feared retribution from some of the steroid dealers they informed on. But two FBI sources confirmed the men's identities and said they provided credible information throughout the operation and, like Wenzlaff, avoided jail time for their cooperation. One FBI source also said the men's fears about retribution are well-founded.

"That's why I'm amazed at what Jose said in the book," Wenzlaff says. "There are some people who might come after him."

****
A man in an overcoat and a sharp charcoal gray suit enters the Old Town tavern in Ann Arbor last week, and Wenzlaff recognizes the face instantly.

He extends his right hand to the shorter man with slicked-back black hair and smiles as they share a vigorous handshake.

"Eddie Schmidt," Wenzlaff says.

"I haven't heard that name in a while," the other man says. He grins.

The last time these two men saw each other, "Schmidt" and Special Agent Greg Stejskal were putting handcuffs on Wenzlaff, explaining to him that his life had just changed. Wenzlaff was being charged with conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids and was told he had best cooperate.
"We were in a hotel room in Santa Monica, and all of a sudden there's a knock on the door, and there's (Stejskal)," Wenzlaff says. "I just said, 'Oh, dirty word.'"

Schmidt's real name is Bill Randall, and for 33 years he was an FBI agent, based mostly in Ann Arbor. Fifteen years ago he went undercover for 21/2 years posing as a Chicago gym owner looking for new steroid connections.

To this day the 70-plus convictions Randall and Stejskal helped secure are considered the standard in steroid law enforcement. The BALCO case, for the sake of comparison, has rocked the sports world and may end up doing far more to change the steroid culture in this country. But in the BALCO case only four men have been indicted; BALCO has drawn far more attention because of the witnesses against those four men, including Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield.

Wenzlaff is now 41, married, a father of three, working in "strategic alliances" for a renewable energy company and living in Flint, Mich. His hair is almost gone, but he still has the build of an NFL free safety. He still lifts - more than his doctors want him to - and is fanatical about his diet.
He orders a grilled chicken sandwich on a dry bun. He drinks chai tea, but later in the evening will have an Amstel Light.

Wenzlaff doesn't take steroids anymore, he says, unbuttoning his shirt to show a thin white line that runs the length of his sternum. "They cracked my chest three times - open heart," he says.
He told his doctors about all the steroids he had taken - "You don't lie to your doctor, you don't lie to your attorney," he says - and was told he had a congenital problem.

"Unrelated," he says.

As he sits with his sandwich and tea, Wenzlaff says he will discuss one name from his past: Jose Canseco.

"I supplied a bunch of players, but I'm not going to name any other names," he says. "Jose's different because he opened the door with his book."

He will not discuss McGwire or anyone else. But yes, Wenzlaff says, he helped turn Canseco from a dabbler into a maestro of performance-enhancing drugs.

"On a scale of one to 10, he was a four. When I left, he was an eight," Wenzlaff says. He adds that they haven't spoken in years. "That would square with what Wenzlaff told us," Stejskal told the News last month. "He was sort of Canseco's guru."
****
Wenzlaff's arrest on July 7, 1992, was the end of a life in steroids that began in the early 1980s when Wenzlaff was playing high school football, he says. He began going to a World Gym in Fountain Valley, Calif., where he met a trainer - he won't identify him - and asked him what steroids could do for his body.

He went to the gym not just with his father's blessing, but with his father, he says.
"I wouldn't go in and train until the gym closed at 10 o'clock at night," Wenzlaff says. "It was a private affair. My dad would be working out and I would come in. This is where I gained all this knowledge."

He would sleep in a sensory deprivation tank for 45 minutes between workouts while his trainer's voice was piped in, telling him to imagine doing leg extensions or some other workout without tiring.

"I mean the water is absolutely body temperature. It's so perfect that you don't know where the water line started on your body. Totally dark. And I was told then - whether this is true or not, I don't know - one hour of sleep is equivalent to six hours solid sleep in a bed. I don't know, but in between workouts, I would sleep in there at the gym."

The after-hours workout group, a catch-all for power lifters, body builders and athletes, was a cult unto itself that made the extreme the norm. The members would tape each other's hands to weight bars, making it impossible to let go. They would lift weights while breathing pure oxygen from a tank.

They also shot up, swallowed and rubbed steroids on their bodies, experimenting with doses and combinations and sharing results. "You could use the term guinea pig on me. There were other guinea pigs that we hung out together and everybody was doing something different," Wenzlaff says.

"And I was one of the first to be trained with a cattle prod."

The cattle prod, he says, was a motivational technique.

"I remember my first night they brought it in I was on the leg extension machine," he says. "They took two weightlifting belts and tied me in so I couldn't get up."

Then he'd start lifting the weight while one of his workout mates counted reps with a hand clicker.

"He'd yell, 'Come on, come on, come on! Do more!' I start to slow down," Wenzlaff says. "He would set the cattle prod on my thigh. 'I can't do any more! I can't (deleted) do any more!' ZAP! I did some more."

Eventually, he says, the prod wasn't necessary. His mind had been trained to push his body to new limits.

"It gets you here," he says, pointing to his head.

He earned a football scholarship to Cal State University, kept up the workouts and graduated in 1987. Wenzlaff became a local legend, setting gym power records in multiple categories. That fall, Wenzlaff says a mutual friend introduced him to a baseball player who had just retired after his final season with the Oakland A's, Reggie Jackson.

"I think he was as excited to meet me as I was honored to meet him," Wenzlaff says. "I had every power record in the gym."

Jackson asked Wenzlaff if he would work with him when he returned to town. At the time, Wenzlaff says he was living in his car - "by choice" - because he had a one-way ticket to Hawaii.
His plan was to find work in a gym and he knew someone with his expertise would not need to wait long for an opening. But the chance to work with a future Hall of Famer changed everything, he says, and he decided to temporarily move in with a woman he had just met the night before so he could give Jackson a number to call.

"There were no cell phones in those days," Wenzlaff says. "I had to have a number to give him."
Jackson called after a week, and after they began working out together Jackson offered Wenzlaff a job up in the Bay Area as a sort of public liaison. Wenzlaff not only accepted the job, he moved into Jackson's house on and off for several years. California property records confirm they lived on Yankee Hill in Oakland.

Wenzlaff says he never told Jackson about the steroids he used and sold. "No way. He's like a father figure to me. I didn't have a home; I wasn't going to (mess) that up," he says.

It was Jackson who introduced Wenzlaff to the A's, bringing him around during trips to the Oakland Coliseum. Wenzlaff says he visited the clubhouse on several occasions, but said any steroid use took place away from the stadium, in private gyms.

Because of his friendship with Jackson, Wenzlaff says he met professional athletes and actors, turning some into clients he would train.

"Reggie knew everybody," Wenzlaff says.

Wenzlaff claims he provided Canseco with steroids and taught him how to use them properly. They hung out together, chased women together and worked out together for a brief time - he says he can't remember how long - and then Canseco went his own way. "I was just a small window in his career. That's all," Wenzlaff says.

****

Stejskal, the agent who told the News last month that he warned Major League Baseball about a rising steroid problem at least 10 years ago, declined interview requests for this story. After he was quoted last month he was told not to speak to the media anymore. But before he was admonished, he told the Daily News what he learned about Canseco during the investigation.

"Canseco was one of those people that we heard would take orders from other people who would say 'Hey, can you get me some of this?' and he would do that. We didn't characterize that as being a dealer. That was just somebody acting as a middle man," said Stejskal, who put Major League Baseball security in touch with Wenzlaff to discuss Canseco's burgeoning steroid allegations about a year ago. "We were a little skeptical at first because Wenzlaff kinda comes off as he has a high opinion of himself. So consequently we weren't quite sure. But as we did some more checking and we were able to get his phone records and things like that, it was clear he did have a relationship with Canseco."

In addition, an undercover agent saw a photo of Wenzlaff with Canseco, recorded Wenzlaff on a wiretap talking about providing steroids to Canseco, and the FBI found Canseco's private phone number in Wenzlaff's phone book after they arrested him.

Stejskal and Wenzlaff actually grew close over the years - "Hey, he kept my ass out of jail," Wenzlaff says - but one area in which they differ is whether steroids have any legitimate role for people who don't have a medical need for them.

Because of Wenzlaff's heart problems, taking steroids now would be too dangerous, he says, but otherwise, yes, Wenzlaff would still be using them.

"But I don't have anything to prove anymore. I'm not trying to get a scholarship. It was satisfying to walk on the beach and know you look like you could have gone into a bodybuilding contest. That was good enough for me," Wenzlaff says.
"Now, I have no reason to."

Cheat Sheet

Here's a look at the steroid cocktail FBI informants say Mark McGwire took to become big in the '90s:
1/2 cc of testosterone cypionate every three days
1 cc of testosterone enanthate per week
1/4 cc of equipoise and winstrol v every three days, injected into the buttocks, one shot for one cheek, one shot for the other

Coming tomorrow: Inside the sting

The Daily News looks deep into "Operation Equine" and examines the roles the FBI agents, the dealers and the users played in the largest steroids bust in history.

Feuer & Rashbaum: Blood Ties

March 12, 2005
Blood Ties: 2 Officers' Long Path to Mob Murder Indictments
By ALAN FEUER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
The New York Times

It looked at first like a classic gangland hit.

A Mercedes sat abandoned on a Brooklyn highway. A bullet-riddled corpse lay slumped across the seat. The dead man was Edward Lino, a Gambino family captain, who had helped kill Paul Castellano, the boss of bosses, and vault John Gotti into power. It was November 1990 and made men were dying. There was a dead mobster on the Belt Parkway. Business as usual, it seemed. It was the height of the Mafia's brutal civil war.

In the months and years that followed the shooting, the police, the Brooklyn district attorney and the federal prosecutor's office scoured the underworld for sources, tapping their informants for anything they had - a tip, a lead. One of them, a murderous Brooklyn turncoat, gave a scandalous report in 1994 that two corrupt detectives had, in fact, killed Mr. Lino, but the investigation, pursued for months, eventually stalled.

Eleven years of silence slowly followed.

This week, however, the silence was broken with a stunning indictment as investigators accused the two men of acts that their colleagues could have never fathomed 13 years ago when they first appeared at the scene of the blood-soaked car: that the men who held the guns that murdered Mr. Lino were not their rivals but their cousins, not cold-blooded Mafiosi but men, like them, in blue.

When Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa were arrested Wednesday night at a dark-wood, white-clothed trattoria in Las Vegas, it brought to light some of the most shocking allegations of police corruption in New York City's history. The two were accused of being paid killers for the mob, charged with having taken part in at least eight murders - most while one or both were still on the New York force.

At their arraignment in Las Vegas, both men appeared yesterday in orange jump suits before their families in the courtroom to enter pleas of not guilty. A federal magistrate ordered them held without bail in Las Vegas pending their return to Brooklyn - where the story begins.

Louis Eppolito put on the patrolman's uniform in 1969. He had a fairly interesting background for a man who was sworn to uphold the law.

His father, Ralph, was a Gambino family soldier known in the underworld as Fat the Gangster. His uncle James was a Gambino captain who went by Jimmy the Clam.

Mr. Eppolito, however, loved his badge.

On the force, he wrote, a man could be a man. "You could swear and you could brawl and it was all in the name of helping other people," he said in "Mafia Cop" - a book he wrote with a co-author, Bob Drury. "I liked that. It was honorable."

His first assignment was the 63rd Precinct in Marine Park, Brooklyn, a quiet post in a well-kept middle-class neighborhood. By 1973, however, he had been sent to the 71st Precinct, which encompassed Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, East New York and East Flatbush, where he was born.

It was a "scum hole," Mr. Eppolito wrote, filled with drugs and pimps, prostitutes and guns. As a body builder (who had once been named Mr. New York City), he moved through the streets, imagining himself as some avenging angel, sometimes twisting arms, sometimes banging skulls.
The newspapers followed his career: "A tough cop's persistence and skill with gun, muscle and handcuffs were credited yesterday..." The Daily News once wrote. "A lone detective chased three hardened criminals..." it wrote another time. On Nov. 30, 1973, Detective Eppolito was splashed across its cover. "EPPOLITO," the headline ran, "DOES IT AGAIN."

Still, he was haunted by his family and his past. One night while Detective Eppolito was out for dinner with his wife, a mobster named Todo Marino picked up the check, he wrote in his book. He kissed the old man on the cheek in thanks, but the F.B.I. was watching. Mr. Eppolito was hauled down to meet with federal agents and answer for the kiss, he wrote. He was hauled down again years later when he was seen attending Mr. Marino's wake.

Even in his first years on the force, he would sometimes have informal meetings with gangland figures in his squad car, he recounted in his book: "I figured who was it going to hurt to stop and commiserate with an old Mustache Pete about his lumbago?"

Mr. Caracappa joined the force the same year as Mr. Eppolito, 1969. It was a time of civil and political unrest when the city rushed to get patrolmen on the streets. Rookies were hurried from the academy. There were shortened training regimens and abbreviated background checks. A number of officers hired in 1969 were later arrested or dismissed from the force.

The pair met working at the Brooklyn Robbery Squad and Mr. Eppolito coyly wrote they sometimes "used their brand of gentle persuasion to glean information from stoolies on minor raps." Mr. Caracappa eventually moved on to the elite Major Case Squad where he helped form the Organized Crime Homicide Unit and where he suddenly had access to a flood of secret information on the mob.

His specific assignment: investigate the Luchese crime family.

A Family Near Upheaval

By 1985, court papers say, the two detectives, had abandoned the idea of policing the mob, and instead had developed what prosecutors have called "a business relationship" with organized crime - chiefly with Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso, the Luchese family underboss.

At that point, the Luchese family was on the verge of upheaval. The family's boss, Anthony (Ducks) Corallo (so named for his knack for ducking subpoenas and convictions), would soon wind up indicted and prosecuted in federal court in Brooklyn as part of what was known as the commission trial, a sort of Waterloo for the New York mob.

In the end, the trial - one of the first to focus on the upper echelons of the Mafia - led to the conviction of the entire leadership of the Luchese family on racketeering charges, along with the conviction of two other Mafia dons.

It also led to a power vacuum in the family, which Mr. Casso and his new boss, Vittorio Amuso, were happy to fill.

Brutal and paranoid about traitorous informants, Mr. Casso - who later became a government witness and admitted his role in 36 murders - ruled with an iron fist,
He promoted vicious mobsters like George (Georgie Neck) Zappola and George (Goggles) Conte to the rank of captain. He was the sort of man who would breezily pick up $1,000 dinner bills or spend double that on an evening's worth of wine. But he also had a vicious bent: He was known for shooting pigeons off the rooftops and once used a forklift to drop 500 pounds of cargo on a dockworker's foot after hearing the man boast about his reinforced boots.

Nonetheless, under his control, the Lucheses prospered. They ran labor unions in the building trades and at the airports. And in a partnership with the Columbo family, they ran what was known as the Bypass Gang - a crew of seasoned burglars who would bypass sophisticated alarm systems, sometimes tunneling into banks from nearby stores.

Then on Sept. 6, 1986, Mr. Casso was the target of an attempted hit - shot and wounded in his car as it sat parked in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn. He escaped into a nearby restaurant, the Golden Ox.

When the investigators showed up at the crime scene, they were rocked by what they found in Mr. Casso's car: a list of license plate numbers.

And not just any license plate numbers. The numbers belonged to the unmarked cars the police themselves used while on surveillance.

The two detectives, is seems, had already begun to provide Mr. Casso with police information, according to prosecutors.

But after the 1986 shooting of Mr. Casso, the two detectives were asked to step up their efforts. Mr. Casso, who has since been imprisoned, wanted the two detectives to work on retainer: "$4,000 per month by Casso for NYPD and governmental information" - the names of informants, the timing of arrests - according to court papers.

"Any additional 'work,' " the papers charge, "was extra."

The extra work, prosecutors assert, came to include murder. In 1986, prosecutors have charged, the two detectives kidnapped an enemy of Mr. Casso, and delivered him up for execution. And then in 1990, according to the federal indictment, they pulled that Mercedes over on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. It was Mr. Caracappa, prosecutors say, who pulled the trigger.
The hit, prosecutors said, netted the pair $65,000, but they paid for it later. The turncoat who first told prosecutors of their crimes in 1994 was Mr. Casso himself.

Suspicions About Murder

About 18 months ago, five veteran investigators - four of them current or retired police detectives - came together to once again focus on what were some of the most sobering accusations they had ever heard about fellow officers.

Each man had special skills: Douglas Le Vien had worked undercover, convincing mobsters that he was a corrupt officer; Robert Intartaglio and Thomas Dades had long investigated mob figures; Joseph J. Ponzi specialized in murders; and William Oldham was an expert in building racketeering cases.

But the group, according to several law enforcement officials, had at least one thing in common: disgust with police detectives committing crimes for the mob. And some of them had long harbored suspicions that two of their retired colleagues - Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa - really had committed some of the worst sorts of crimes: murder.

Mr. Intartaglio, for his part, had a particular passion about the case, according to a colleague. It grew out of frustration he experienced more than a decade earlier, when one of his investigations seemed to keep stalling.

Then a city police detective, he was investigating the Luchese family's Bypass Gang, and it seemed like the mob was often one step ahead of him. "An informant was killed, matters were getting compromised," recalled a colleague, and it was unclear why.

Mr. Dades, for his part, had his suspicions strengthened when he stumbled across evidence in an unrelated mob case that seemed to raise the likelihood that Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa were guilty.

So, armed with frustration, anger and determination, they set about reviewing old files, and interviewing witnesses.

Because the accusations against the men were not new - they had first came to light in 1994 when Mr. Casso himself became a government witness and detailed what he said were their crimes - the men had a wealth of material to review. There were police and F.B.I. reports, the evidence from the earlier homicides, and other records. They set up what they came to call their War Room, in Brooklyn, to store the records and compare progress.

And, most critically, they came to secure the cooperation of a witness, who, according to the government's detention memo, is expected eventually to testify against the detectives.

Offficials in the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, which along with federal prosecutors was instrumental in making the case, would not discuss the witness.
But with the witness and that mixed band of investigators, the authorities were able to do what their predecessors in 1994 had not: Convince a grand jury to indict the two men on racketeering, murder and other charges.

An Actor Playing Wiseguys

Las Vegas was the perfect place for a detective to retire. There were golf courses and casinos, pretty women and plenty of sun.
Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito went there in the early 1990's after leaving the force. The former kept his fingers in the old life, finding work as a private investigator. The latter traded on his heritage, beginning a new career as a bit actor playing wiseguys, and drug dealers in movies like "Goodfellas" and "State of Grace."

They settled across the street from each other on Silver Bear Way, a bland block in a gated community that, in 1996, still lay on the edges of the desert. Eventually, the city's construction boom caught up with them and Silver Bear Way, like the rest of Las Vegas, was surrounded by the sprawl.

Mr. Eppolito lived with his wife and 89-year-old mother-in-law in a nice house adorned with the trappings of his new life. In his office, one official said, there was a wall of photographs that showed him posing with the stars: Robert De Niro, Charles Durning, Ray (Boom Boom) Mancini, the former lightweight champion who produced "Turn of Faith," a film that Mr. Eppolito wrote.
His roles in Hollywood were mostly small and colorful and of the sort that one could easily miss bending down to set one's popcorn on the floor. He was mentioned in the credits as "assassin" or "raid cop No. 1" or "waterfront hood." Still, in his book, Mr. Eppolito recalls being asked by Mr. De Niro himself for authentic pointers on the mob.

When the authorities raided Mr. Eppolito's house, they found more than a hundred guns, including two AK-47 assault rifles and a gold Luger pistol in a pair of safes, a law enforcement official said. His son, Anthony Eppolito, was also arrested in the case and charged with selling methamphetamines, the law enforcement official said.

Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa were themselves arrested Wednesday night at Piero's Restaurant, where Jerry Lewis often celebrates his birthday. Freddie Glusman, Piero's owner, was once married to the actress Diahann Carroll for a couple of weeks.

Their sojourn out west, it seems, had come to an end, Las Vegas style.

Joe Schoenmann, in Las Vegas, contributed reporting for this article.

Passion Recut Hits Theaters This Friday

Thursday, Mar. 10, 2005
By Justin Camacho
The Christian Post
Posted: 4:16:15PM EST
http://www.christianpost.com

In celebration of this year’s Easter holiday, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which hit box offices exactly one year ago to this week, will be re-released into theaters this Friday in a new edited form. The new version of "The Passion,” which will be left unrated, will have an age 15 certificate instead of the original 18 --something that Gibson hopes will allow a larger audience to embrace the film.

"What came up again and again was that a lot of people were turned away because of the brutality in the film and were afraid to watch," Gibson told Raymond Arroyo on EWTN’s "World Over Live" Friday night. "So I thought if I softened it up a bit, I could have a wider audience. Essentially it’s the same film, but what I’ve done is to excise some of the aspects of it,” he explained. "The trick was to excise or imply some of the aspects of it that were pretty much in your face, without actually showing them."

Gibson, who received "truckloads of cards and letters" upon the film's original release, revised approximately six minutes of the more violent and gory parts in "The Passion," including the scene where Christ receives the crown of thorns.

"You see it, but it’s farther away," Gibson said, adding that viewers no longer see the nails being driven into Christ’s hands."And it still works," concluded Gibson, who's passion for "The Passion" (http://www.passionrecut.com) hasn't been phased by the recent snub at the Oscar awards ceremony. "

I didn’t expect one," said Gibson, who called the ceremony, "a celebration of mediocrity." "I knew exactly what was going to happen. I didn’t try to market the film. People are spending 15 or 20 million dollars to market their films. That’s a lot of money for a little gold statue."

While "The Passion" will have Gibson occupied until Easter, the actor/director also has a few future projects planned out that involve him both behind and in front of the camera.As a director, Gibson is currently working on a film based on the infamous Fatima visionary, Sister Lucia of Portugal. Gibson met with the famous nun in September of 2003 to honor her request for a private screening of "The Passion of the Christ." Gibson described Lucia as "incredibly childlike" and her convent, "pretty austere and spartan."

Sister Lucia, who passed away last month at 98 years of age, was a cloistered nun who as a child saw and spoke with the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. Her visions and those of her two childhood friends, both since passed away, were both prophetic and apocalyptic and have been accepted by the Catholic Church accepted as authentic.

Along with continuing his directorial career, Gibson has also decided to begin acting again. "Under and Alone," a film based on a true story, will star Gibson as a Vietnam veteran who works for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and infiltrates a motorcycle gang. The film will be the actors first since 2002's suspense thriller "Signs."

Gibson, sporting a scruffy beard from his biker role, joked about his previous decision not to act again, saying he'd rather be, "a slob behind the camera...watching other people look good." "The difference here is I get to be a slob in front of the camera again. So there's a major difference," he said. "Under and Alone," directed by Antoine Fuqua, is currently in production, with no scheduled start date.

Justin Camacho
justin@christianpost.com
Copyright © 2005 The Christian Post.
Click for reprint information

Ann Coulter: Come Back, Liberals!

By Ann Coulter
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
March 10, 2005

Liberals have been completely intellectually vanquished. Actually, they lost the war of ideas long ago. It's just that now their defeat is so obvious, even they've noticed. As new DNC Chairman Howard Dean might say, it's all over but the screaming.

In an editorial last week, the New York Times gave President Bush credit for democracy sweeping through the Middle East or, as the Times put it, "a year of heartening surprises." Yes, the Middle East's current democratization would come as quite a surprise to anyone who puts his hands over his ears and hums during the president's speeches.

Rolling Stone magazine is making fun of "moveon.org" for having no contact with normal Americans. Their Bush-hating cause has become so hopeless that moveon.org is on the verge of actually moving on.

Marking the first time Walter Cronkite and I have agreed on anything, Cronkite is ridiculing Dan Rather, saying he should have retired a long time ago.

No one, not even Chris Matthews, is defending the Italian communist who claims American forces intentionally shot at her in Iraq. (But to be fair, Keith Oberman has been on vacation this week.) She may have lost some credibility when she backed her claim that Americans were targeting her by quoting her kidnappers. She said her kidnappers had warned her to stay away from the Americans because they would only hurt her. And then my rapist said, "Whatever you do, don't cry out for the police! They won't help you!"

Consider that less than 20 years ago, ABC's Peter Jennings and CBS' Mike Wallace announced at an "Ethics in America" panel that they would not intervene to prevent the slaughter of American troops while on duty as journalists – especially during sweeps. As Wallace said: "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!" It almost makes you wonder if U.S. troops have ever targeted American journalists in the field during wartime. Maybe Eason Jordan would know something about that.

Now liberal journalists are pretending to support the troops. They hardly ever call them "baby killers" anymore, at least to their faces.

Democrats are even pretending to believe in God – you know, as they understand Her.

The only people liberals can find to put up a fight these days are ex-Klanners and other assorted nuts.

There's former KKK "Kleagle" and Democratic Sen. Bob Byrd, who compared the Republicans to Hitler last week. Byrd having been a charter member of a fascist organization himself, no one was sure if this was intended as a critique or a compliment.

Aspiring first lady Teresa Heinz claims the election was stolen through the machinations of a vast conspiracy involving Republican polling machine manufacturers. We eagerly await a Michael Moore documentary to flesh out the details. It's only a matter of time before Heinz announces that anti-Bush insurgents control most of the Red States, and that the sooner the U.S. pulls out of those quagmires, the better.

Howard Dean – chairman of the party that supports murder, adultery, lying about adultery, coveting other people's money, stealing other people's money, mass-producing human embryos for spare parts like an automotive chop shop and banning God – has called the Republican Party "evil." One Democrat in the audience, a preschool teacher no less, complained that Dean was soft-pedaling his message.

Teddy Kennedy's big new idea is to wheel out his 18th proposal to raise the minimum wage. He's been doing this since wages were paid in Spanish doubloons (which coincidentally are now mostly found underwater). Kennedy refuses to countenance any risky schemes like trying to grow the economy so people making minimum wage get raises because they've been promoted. Kennedy's going down and he's taking the party with him! (Recognize the pattern?)

I keep expecting the real Democrats to appear and drag these nuts out of the room, saying, Oh sorry, he's escaped again – don't worry, he does this all the time, and then Howard Dean will stand up and have no pants on.

So now, the entire country is ignoring liberals. I'm the canary in the coal mine. Twenty-six congressmen have signed a letter denouncing me for a column I wrote two weeks ago; for the past two weeks, I've been attacked on MSNBC and CNN, in the Detroit Free-Press and on every known liberal blog and radio show. (I especially want to thank Pacifica Radio in this regard.) I personally have shouted their complaints from the rooftops. Liberals had fallen into my trap!

But there was no point in responding because no one had heard about the liberal denunciations in the first place. It was like explaining a joke: OK, and then they said, "Call me a cab," and then I said, "You're a cab! Are you following this? ... Sorry, let me start over again."

This is like beating Dennis Kucinich in an untelevised presidential debate. That and $8.50 will get you a cup of coffee at Starbuck's. I'm tired of helping liberals publicize their attacks on me. Liberals are going to have to do better than that if they want a response from me.

It's not just that we're a divided nation, with liberals watching only CNN and conservatives watching only Fox News. I'm pretty sure liberals are aware of me, and I haven't appeared on CNN for months. It's liberals the country is ignoring. No one knows or cares what they're carrying on about in their media outlets. Liberals can't get arrested. They're even letting Martin Sheen off with a warning now.

I hate to sound selfish at such a great moment for the country, but this is nothing short of calamitous for completely innocent right-wing polemicists. Liberals are too pathetic to write about. I have nothing to do; my life is over. Where have all the flowers gone?

I'm confident they'll stage a comeback someday. In lieu of common sense, liberals have boundless energy. But I'm getting bored waiting. In the interest of good sportsmanship, I have some proposals for liberals. I think Democrats might want to drop the contract all Democrats apparently have to sign pledging to pretend to believe insane things. Also, if you could just get the base of your party to not participate anymore and maybe be a little less crazy, people might listen to you. Barring that, you're just going to have to scream a little louder.

Ann Coulter is a bestselling author and syndicated columnist. Her most recent book is How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).

Mike S. Adams: A Good Catholic Education

Mike S. Adams (archive)
March 11, 2005
http://www.townhall.com

Recently, pro-life activist Camille De Blasi wrote a letter accusing me of irresponsible journalism which, according to her, has contributed to slander against Gonzaga University President Robert Spitzer.

In the letter, De Blasi falsely claims that I wrote an editorial which “compares Father Spitzer to the KKK.” The line from my editorial actually reads as follows: “Gonzaga University is committed to Catholic values like the KKK is committed to racial equality.”

The comparison doesn’t attack (or even mention) Spitzer. It simply characterizes Gonzaga University as out of step with Catholic values. I stand by that statement. And so do others. That is why the College Republicans have invited me to speak at Gonzaga University in April. Needless to say, I have accepted the offer.

De Blasi’s mischaracterization of the KKK reference raises questions about her ethics, if not her literacy. And the following quote leaves no doubt that her incompetence as a researcher in no way impedes her self-righteous condescension:

“A little bit of research at Gonzaga reveals that, although there are some pro-choice students who gather at Gonzaga's Law School (something which is impossible to prevent), no group which promotes or advocates abortion has received recognition or financing from the university. We trust that the news sources which have been spreading these false rumors will conduct the same research that we did and correct this serious error in their reporting.”

But Gonzaga Law School does recognize a student chapter of the ACLU. Does De Blasi contend that the ACLU is not a “group which promotes or advocates abortion?” Note that my original article referred to “homosexual and abortion rights and the student clubs that support these causes.”

Because I referred to “groups advocating abortion rights,” instead of abortion (as De Blasi suggests) my point about the ACLU chapter at Gonzaga cannot be seriously challenged. Perhaps De Blasi will “correct this serious error in (her) reporting.”

Interestingly, De Blasi makes no mention of the other Gonzaga law school groups one discovers by engaging in “just a little research.” If she did, she might better comprehend the central thesis of my two articles on the subject. For example:

The Sexual Orientation Diversity Alliance. This group seeks to foster “a sense of community among students and staff of all sexual orientations by providing support and promoting visibility…”. What was I saying about Catholic values?

The Multicultural Law Caucus. This is “a non-profit student run organization focused on community building.” Remember; Catholic values are no better than any other values! Celebrate diversity!

Black Law Student Association (BLSA). What? Is there also a White Law Student Association? How dare those Christians try to discriminate on the basis of religion at a Catholic School? That’s much worse than racial segregation! (I wonder whether Gonzaga has separate water fountains, too.)

Hispanic Law Caucus. Comments same as above.

The Asian/Pacific Islanders Law Caucus. Comments same as above.

Thanks to the expert research of Camille De Blasi, I’m no longer misled into thinking that GU law school is a bastion of liberalism. But those Christians sure are villains because they aren’t inclusive!

De Blasi also stated in her letter that “Father Spitzer has long been a champion of the pro-life movement. This alone should have caused the editors to pause before publishing the attacks that they did.”

I suppose this was needed to correct my direct references to Spitzer’s character, which are quoted here in their entirety: “President Spitzer is pro-life. He is also a good man. And he will become a great man as soon as he is willing to bear the ostracism of the Leftists activists who presently control Gonzaga Law School.”

It is now becoming clear that President Spitzer will not take the steps necessary to reaffirm Gonzaga’s commitment to Catholic values. In fact, he will not even answer my phone calls.
But Spitzer’s supporters will continue to distort my reporting. They will send me personal attacks (via email) nearly as childish as the ones I get from gay activists. Some will conduct themselves more like members of the mafia than members of the body of Christ.

Clearly, the time has come for Catholics to abandon their support of “Catholic” institutions like Gonzaga. Many in Washington State have flocked all the way to Christendom College in Virginia http://www.christendom.edu/ to escape Gonzaga. For law school, many Catholics are choosing Ave Maria School of Law in Michigan. http://www.avemarialaw.edu/home.cfm.

Clearly, it takes more than a good president to get a good Catholic education.

©2005 Mike S. Adams
Contact Mike S. Adams Read Adams's biography

CAIR's Radical Nexus

By Josh Lefkowitz and Erick Stakelbeck
http://www.FrontPageMag.com March 10, 2005

Later this month, in a Dallas courtroom, the U.S. government’s efforts to dismantle the terrorist group Hamas’s American infrastructure will face an important test. Five Palestinian brothers, the Elashis, face charges that their computer company, Infocom—which was shut down by federal investigators in 2001—received $250,000 from accounts controlled by Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook.

This is the second time in less than a year that the brothers will be tried on federal charges. In July, a federal court convicted them of, among other counts, violating U.S. sanctions against Syria.

From the outset of the Elashis’ legal troubles, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the most influential radical Islamist group in the United States, has been their most vocal supporter. Both the national headquarters and Dallas-Fort Worth branch of CAIR—a partially Saudi-funded organization that claims to “build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding”— have made defending the Elashis a top priority.

For example, on September 6, 2001, the day that federal agents first raided Infocom’s Richardson, TX headquarters, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad appeared at a press conference outside the company’s offices and blasted the government for “tak[ing] us back to the McCarthy era.”

Similarly, CAIR’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter labeled the Elashis’ December 2002 indictment “a war on Islam and Muslims” and alleged that the brothers were convicted “for their crime of being Muslims in America.”

CAIR's passionate defense of the Elashis is no coincidence. In fact, the incestuous connections between CAIR, the Elashi family, and two key players in Hamas's U.S. network, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), are well-established. One of the Elashi brothers, Ghassan, even helped found IAP and CAIR branch offices in addition to serving as HLF national chairman.

The IAP/HLF nexus ultimately leads back to Musa Abu Marzook, who is married to the Elashis’ cousin and who was himself indicted in Chicago in August 2004 for conspiring to finance Hamas. Although he currently lives in Damascus—where he serves as Hamas’s deputy political chief—Marzook spent over a decade in the U.S. and was instrumental in building Hamas’s American network.

For instance, Marzook provided $210,000 to HLF, which was indicted last summer for funneling over $35 million to Hamas. He also helped found IAP and provided it with $490,000. In December, a Chicago judge included HLF and IAP in a $156 million libel judgment related to the 1996 Hamas murder of an American citizen in the West Bank.

Just as CAIR has defended the Elashis throughout their legal troubles, it has also publicly supported IAP, HLF and Marzook against either government or media scrutiny.

But this should come as no surprise given CAIR’s close ties to IAP and HLF. For instance, before founding CAIR together in 1994, Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad both had held leadership positions with IAP. And shortly after its incorporation, CAIR received $5,000 from HLF. CAIR returned the favor by soliciting funds for HLF until its closure in 2001.

These dizzying connections were solidified in Philadelphia’s Marriot hotel in October 1993 when—under the watchful eye of an FBI surveillance team—Ghassan Elashi, future CAIR Chairman Omar Ahmad and leadership from IAP, HLF, and Hamas came together to plot the direction of Hamas’s U.S. network and develop a strategy to defeat the Oslo peace accords.

Tellingly, just a few months after the Philadelphia meeting, CAIR's current Executive Director, Nihad Awad, stated, “I am in support of the Hamas movement” during a speech at Florida’s Barry University.

Despite its nefarious links and public statements, CAIR has never been subject to government action. In fact, since 9/11, its officials have met with President Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell and have regularly provided “sensitivity training” to the FBI.

CAIR’s well-documented history of extremism is what makes this continued mainstream acceptance so troubling. For instance, just last April, former CAIR employee Randall “Ismail” Royer was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “participation in a network of militant jihadists centered in Northern Virginia,” according to the Department of Justice.

But a recent civil suit filed by the estate of 9/11 victim and former high-ranking FBI counter-terrorism agent John O’Neill, Sr. may have best described CAIR’s true agenda, stating: “their goal is to create as much self-doubt, hesitation, fear of name-calling, and litigation within police departments and intelligence agencies as possible so as to render such authorities ineffective in pursuing international and domestic terrorist entities.”

These are words to remember when the Elashi brothers stand trial this month.

Josh Lefkowitz is a terrorism analyst and Erick Stakelbeck is senior writer at the Investigative Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counterterrorism research institute.

Michelle Malkin: Floridians Don't Like Bush's Guestworker Program

[This little nugget is from Malkin's blog...Bush' stance on illegal immigration is ridiculous...we're supposed to be fighting a "War on Terror" and yet we continue to have jarringly little control over our own borders while National Guardsmen are deployed en masse in Iraq. Recently heads of a number of intelligence organizations spoke about the possibilty of terrorists paying people to sneak them across the Southwestern border...why have I known about this for months and months? Why are these people only now talking about this? The cynical among us would suggest that we had to wait until the November elections were over before we mentioned the idea that our Mexican border situation was extremely troubling. - jtf]

March 09, 2005 07:50 AM
http://michellemalkin.com

A poll sponsored by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Florida Times-Union found strong opposition in Florida to President Bush's guestworker/amnesty proposal:

Two-thirds of likely voters in Florida would oppose a plan to allow some undocumented immigrants to live and work legally in the United States, according to a new poll conducted for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Florida Times-Union.

That puts them at odds with President Bush, who has advocated a guest-worker program that would allow at least some undocumented immigrants the right to live and work legally in the United States.

The survey also found that likely voters oppose, by a more than 50-point margin, allowing states to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Last week, a Field Poll found that Californians also oppose (62% to 35%) giving driver's licenses to illegal aliens.

At least Bush's Open Borders policies will help Republicans pick up crucial Hispanic votes, right? Apparently not in Florida:

In the Sun-Sentinel poll, Hispanics, who made up 15 percent of the respondents, were no more supportive of pro-immigration changes than other groups polled. Only two in 10 Hispanics favored a law allowing undocumented immigrants to work legally in the country. Only two in 10 favored issuing driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. And only 38 percent of Florida's Hispanics who are likely voters said they thought immigration helped the United States.

Robert Spencer on the Armanious Murders in New Jersey

March 09, 2005
From Spencer's blog- http://www.jihadwatch.org

Why I will not bow to the Internet Torquemadas

Many people from across the political spectrum have criticized me harshly in recent days for not apologizing or admitting I was wrong for my reporting on the Armanious murders. Numerous Internet Torquemadas are firing up their torches, demanding I recant. Some have resorted to the time-honored smear tactic of quoting comments at Jihad Watch as if I wrote them.

Much of this, of course, is politically motivated: Lefties in bed with the global jihad, or at least unwilling to resist it, have seized on this as a new stick with which to beat Jihad Watch.
I will not apologize because there is nothing to apologize for: I was not wrong. I said that Copts had contacted me and given me information about the killings, and that that information was being investigated. I reminded readers on several occasions that I did not know whether or not these allegations were true, and I never asserted that they were. I waited a considerable time after receiving this information before posting anything about it, and only did after some details were confirmed by a reporter.

Some are accusing me of being disappointed that the killers are apparently not Muslim. That's a despicable charge, and not worth dignifying; the arrests are a relief, and I am glad that this was apparently not a jihadist killing on American soil. Still, we should not deceive ourselves into thinking that therefore such killings cannot happen, or forget that there have already been such killings: Rashad Khalifa and Mohammed Ali Alayed come to mind. However, some questions remain, as I have outlined here. I am confident that there will be entirely reasonable explanations forthcoming, but they haven’t yet.

My information came not from third-hand rumors, but from people who asserted they were privy to plans to kill the Armanious family. Perhaps this information was complete fantasy on their part; perhaps it is an unfortunate coincidence -- a case of people talking big and doing nothing. The information I received about these plans seemed to coincide with what was reported about Hossam Armanious receiving a death threat on the Net; many have pointed out how common threats are in Internet discussions, but I would remind readers that around the same time we discovered posters at Barsomyat.com taking the further step of posting names, addresses and photos of Coptic Christians, along with hopes that Allah would grant them the privilege of allowing them to be the murderers of the people pictured.

Copts know all too well from their experience in Egypt that Muslims do indeed do carry out such threats -- and that is why these stories spread so quickly through the Coptic community in New Jersey.

I don’t know why these Copts passed on to me such detailed and apparently well substantiated information that turned out to be false. I am trying now to find out the full story. But in any case that is just how I reported it all here at Jihad Watch: as information from Coptic sources that may or may not be true. I called for it to be investigated, and as far as I know it was. Consequently there is simply nothing for which I should apologize.

Posted by Robert at 12:02 PM Comments (3) Email this entry Print this entry

Ben Shapiro: Jada Pinkett Smith Angers Harvard's BGLTSA

The radical homosexual agenda and the destruction of standards

Ben Shapiro (archive)
March 9, 2005

The Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) of Harvard University is fighting mad. Last week, actress Jada Pinkett Smith won an award from the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. During her acceptance speech, she told women in the audience, "you can have it all -- a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career … To my men, open your mind, open your eyes to new ideas." Rather sweet, no? Not to the BGLTSA, which called for an apology from the organizers of the Cultural Rhythms show, explaining that Smith's statements were "extremely heteronormative."

"Heteronormative," for those who don't speak the radical homosexual lingo, may be defined as the viewpoint that heterosexual relationships are normal, and others are not. The organizers immediately complied with the BGLTSA's demand, issuing a mea culpa stating, "She wasn't trying to be offensive. But some felt she was taking a narrow view, and some people felt left out." The Foundation also pledged to "take responsibility to inform future speakers that they will be speaking to an audience diverse in race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender and class."

The BGLTSA, as a wing of the radical homosexual movement, is looking to broaden the definition of normality to include deviant behavior. They're not looking for passive tolerance. They're looking for active acceptance. Now, ignoring homosexuality is no longer allowable; we must instead champion it, equating it with heterosexuality. In fact, homosexuality must be prized over heterosexuality; an open homosexual may proclaim to his heart's content that "dreams can come true -- you can find a same-sex partner," but an open heterosexual may not state that marriage constitutes "having it all."

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted such a broad societal trend toward normalizing the deviant as early as 1993, when he coined the term "defining deviancy down." He posited that "the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can 'afford to recognize' and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the 'normal' level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard."

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer pointed out that alongside the movement to "define deviancy down," there was a concurrent movement to "define deviancy up": "As part of the vast social project of moral leveling, it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized," Krauthammer wrote. "The normal must be found to be deviant." One of the agendas of the "defining deviancy up" movement, Krauthammer noted, was promoting "an underlying ideology about the inherent aberrancy of all heterosexual relationships."

The Moynihan-Krauthammer prediction has come to pass. Straight men and women may no longer consider themselves normal, unless they also consider homosexuality normal. The rage against "heteronormalism" is rage against traditional societal standards as a whole. Exclusive morality has always offended the immoral. The only difference is that now offensiveness receives a stiffer societal sentence than blatant immorality. This is what political correctness -- the "live and let live" societal model -- has wrought.

The rise of the homosexual movement is a textbook example of societal amorality devolving into societal immorality. The rationale behind societal amorality is the myopic question: "How does my immoral behavior hurt you?" The answer is: It may not, in the short term. But when society sanctions your immoral behavior, that does hurt me. If millions of people accept the deviant as normal, that reshapes society in vastly destructive ways. Your moral self-destruction may have no consequences for me, but destruction of societal standards always has consequences.

When the stigma left single motherhood, society felt the sting in rising rates of single motherhood and juvenile crime. When the stigma left sexual licentiousness, society felt the sting in rising rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, emotional emptiness and nihilism. Your immoral personal behavior may not affect me, but exempting your immoral behavior from societal scrutiny certainly does. A society without standards is an unhappy, unhealthy society -- a society with no future. And all of us have to live in that society.

The BGLTSA isn't asking for tolerance on a person-to-person level. Instead, they're asking us to continue lowering societal standards. If we must choose between alienating the immoral and ravaging societal standards for the personal comfort of the immoral, then choosing the former is the only rational decision.

©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

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Frank J. Gaffney: Set America Free

The Washington Times
8 March 2005
http://www.washingtontimes.com

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi recently said he expected the price of oil to remain at unconscionably high levels of between $40 and $50 per barrel through 2005. Ironically, every American should be grateful.
Such gratitude is not, of course, due the Saudis — who, we are endlessly told, are among our most reliable "friends" in the Middle East — for working to drive down the price set by the OPEC oil racketeers. The Saudis seem content to keep prices exorbitantly high, though they are well aware of the adverse effect of such artificially inflated costs on the financial well-being of their principal protector, the United States.

Rather, we should appreciate what should be the proverbial camel's back-breaking straw: A final wake-up call, one that establishes unmistakably it is neither in the United States' strategic, national security nor economic interests for this country and other industrialized nations to continue relying on imported oil from those who wish to do us harm.

Fortunately, as Fareed Zakaria noted in the March 7 Newsweek, we can respond immediately to this call: "Tomorrow, President Bush could make the following speech: 'It is now possible to build cars that are powered by a combination of electricity and alcohol-based fuels, with petroleum as only one element among many. My administration is going to put in place a series of policies that will ensure that in four years, the average new American car will get 300 miles per gallon of petroleum. And I fully expect in this period to see cars in the United States that get 500 miles per gallon.' " Needless to say, the widespread availability of such cars — and the alternative fuels they would utilize — would change the world.

Our enemies would be denied the geostrategic leverage they currently enjoy, as indigenously produced energy sources derived from coal, biomass and garbage knock the pegs out from under the cartel's control of the commodity upon which our transportation sector heavily depends.

We would particularly no longer need export tens of billions in petrodollars used, in part, to promote the Islamofascist ideology that animates many who are determined to kill us.

We can also greatly reduce our vulnerability to disruptions of critical energy infrastructures, at home and abroad. Our foes have learned how easy it is to cost us dearly by blowing up a pipeline or sinking a tanker. Creating diverse alternative fuel sources here at home is, simply, a national security imperative.

Not least, this is true because we are likely to find increasing competition from China for limited oil will become a flash point for future conflict, if not an actual casus belli. Already, China is frantically making strategic alliances with oil-exporting terrorist-sponsoring states like Iran, Sudan and Venezuela. It also is moving to buy up Canadian, Brazilian and Indonesian energy sources, transparently with a view to denying them to us as well as meeting their own burgeoning demands.

As Mr. Zakaria reports, there is now a blueprint for energy security (http://www.setamericafree.org/) that can translate available technologies into widely available fuel and automotive products and catalyze the sorts of outcomes described above.

Specifically, this blueprint envisions a new Manhattan Project on energy independence that will, for a federal investment of $12 billion over the next four years, reduce projected oil imports in 2025 by at least 50 percent.

This blueprint envisions allocating such expenditures in the following, practical ways:

"$2 billion for automotive manufacturers to cover one-half the costs of building flexible fuel vehicle-capability [[EnLeader] autos that can use ethanol or methanol based fuels] into their new production cars (i.e., roughly 40 million cars at $50 per unit)."

"$1 billion to pay for at least 1 out of every 4 existing gas stations to add at least one pump to supply alcohol fuels (an estimated incentive of $20,000 per pump, new pumps costing approximately $60,000 per unit). "

"$2 billion in consumer tax incentives to procure hybrid cars."

"$2 billion for automotive manufacturers to commercialize plug-in hybrid electric vehicles [that is, cars that can be plugged into the electrical grid to recharge their batteries]."

"$3 billion to construct commercial-scale demonstration plants to produce nonpetroleum-based liquid fuels (utilizing public-private cost-sharing partnerships to build roughly 25 plants to demonstrate the feasibility of various approaches to perform efficiently at full-scale production)."

And "$2 billion to continue work on commercializing fuel cell technology."

In the course of the 1988 presidential campaign, George H.W. Bush declared: "Detroit is ready now to make cars that would run on any combination of gasoline and alcohol — either ethanol, made from corn or methanol, made from natural gas or coal or even wood. ... Let us turn away from our dependence on imported oil to domestic products — corn, natural gas and coal — and look for energy not just from the Middle East but from the Middle West."

This was a sensible strategy before September 11, 2001. Today, it is absolutely mandatory. Like Nixon going to China, a president from Texas oil country is just the man to launch the Manhattan Project that Sets America Free.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy, a sponsor of the Set America Free initiative and a columnist for The Washington Times.