[Cvillemedia] Zelikow Has Got to Go

[David Swanson]

*Zelikow Has Got to Go*
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/42001
By David Swanson

Philip Zelikow may be best known as the guy who oversaw the 9-11 
Commission's utter failure to investigate George W. Bush's criminal 
negligence in the lead up to September 11, 2001.  He also directed the 
Carter-Baker commission on elections that led to the Help America Vote 
Act, which in turn led to the most high-tech but least credible system 
of elections yet devised and the dubious and disastrous outcome of the 
2004 presidential contest.

Zelikow served on Bush's transition team when he was first selected 
president, and then served on the president's foreign intelligence 
advisory board, and in 2002 drafted for Condoleezza Rice a major 
statement of Bush's foreign policy.  So, of course, he was the 
appropriately disinterested party who should have run any investigation 
of Bush and Cheney.  If President Obama creates a commission to review 
the crimes of his predecessors, don't be surprised if Zelikow's name 
pops up again.

But Zelikow is newly in the news, because he's now claimed that while 
working for the Bush administration, he objected to the use of torture.  
He went so far as to circulate a memo within the administration 
objecting to such criminal behavior.  But the White House collected all 
the copies of the memo it could and destroyed them.  And what did 
Zelikow do?  Did he go public?  Did he resign?  Did he protest?  No, he 
kept his head down and his mouth shut until this week.  He knew felonies 
were being committed and he kept silent, which means that he could be 
charged with the crime of misprision of felony.

Now, I'm glad that Zelikow is speaking out now, and I want to encourage 
other late-blooming whistleblowers to do the same.  If such people seem 
to receive too much gratitude, so be it.  We need the truth told, and 
it's better told late than never.

But Zelikow, in yet another conflict of interest, is teaching modern 
history at the University of Virginia, my alma mater.  UVA has an honor 
code.  If you know of wrong doing by others, you are required, on your 
honor, to report it.  An honor violation results in expulsion from the 
university.  These are the rules that students live by.  Students are 
permitted to take tests at home and trusted not to cheat because they 
have honor and maintain a system of honor. 

Zelikow can be thanked and lauded in the corporate media.  That's what 
the corporate media does.  Those are its standards.

But should the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, 
employ as a professor of history a man who facilitated through his 
silence the destruction of our Bill of Rights, a man whose principles 
have been so compromised that they appear more grotesque than the 
inhumanity of those lacking principles altogether?

I wouldn't send a child to learn from an institution that employs 
Zelikow as a history professor and plants big wet kisses on him in the 
form of profiles in alumni magazines.  I don't think Virginians' tax 
dollars should pay this man to teach what he considers to be our history.

The phone number for the office of the president of UVA is 434-924-3337.





-- 

David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the 
Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories 
Press and of the introduction to "The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the 
Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush" published by Feral House and 
available at Amazon.com.  Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy 
from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter 
and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary 
for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for 
the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as 
communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community 
Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of 
AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ProsecuteBushCheney.org and 
Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive 
Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace, a 
convenor of the legislative working group of United for Peace and 
Justice, and chair of the accountability and prosecution working group 
of United for Peace and Justice.

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