Ron Suskind starts to release Price of Loyalty docs!

[Sliverofhope]

An Experiment in Transparency

These documents are drawn from a collection of 19,000 files of Paul H. O'Neill, the U.S. Treasury Secretary for the first two years of the Presidency of George W. Bush. Like all Treasury Secretaries, O'Neill was the top domestic appointment of the President and also a principal of the National Security Council. The files, which range from memoranda to the President to handwritten notes to "sensitive" internal reports, cover a sweeping array of foreign and domestic issues. They also display the attending political and personal matters that often determine policy. They were collected as part of a Treasury Department archiving process in which every item that crossed O'Neill's desk, from every department in government, was copied into a TIF, or image, file. Documents cited in the "The Price of Loyalty" are presented with explanations of context and little comment. They speak, as does all irrefutable evidence, for themselves. More files of compelling public interest will be released in the coming days and weeks.

http://thepriceofloyalty.ronsuskind.com/thebushfiles

Thanks to Wonkette for pointing out

http://www.wonkette.com/archives/f_you_w_012721.php

[nostamj]

1. kick!

been waiting for this!

[RobertSeattle]

2. Kick 2 - download these suckers!

(Before they get "disappeared")

God we need more of this - government transparency.

[Mari333]

6. BIG kick

:kick:

[Oilwellian]

3. Thanks so much for posting

Let's get busy and dig fellow DU sleuths. :D

[proud patriot]

4. yay ,,, Thank You Thank You

:bounce:

[Caution]

5. Kick again

GREAT STUFF

[tridim]

7. Skimming these.. What is this??

http://thepriceofloyalty.ronsuskind.com/thebushfiles/archives/000067.html

(2) Programmatic Issues -

-snip-

Money Laundering - Continued support for the Money Laundering strategy jointly implemented between Treasury and Justice.

What the hell? Can anyone explain this?

[RobertSeattle]

8. Don't have the book with me

Apparently if you know banking, you'll see LOTS of $9995 transactions to avoid the $10K threshhold for reporting. Didn't get much attention until AFTER 9/11 when we realized terrorists were using this loophole too.

[ignatius]

9. That is apparently what Rush was doing, withdrawing $9,000.

many, many times avoiding the law.

Thanks for this info, I am bookmarking it.

[never cry wolf]

10. Very interesting

I hope he adds the rest soon.

:kick:

[tridim]

11. Keep an eye on the directory listing

http://thepriceofloyalty.ronsuskind.com/thebushfiles/archives/

There are some unlisted files there. Hacking is fun. :)

[salin]

12. Item "Purging of Clintonians" - series of rather dire communiques from

Senator Hagel - urging purging of two admin folks tied to Kyoto. Interesting tone.

[SpiralHawk]

14. Now it's time to purge BushCo.

Let the truth be revealed. May justice prevail.

[ramapo]

13. Almost the Pentagon Papers

A fascinating insight into how things work in govt. The Iraq package backgrounders are really interesting. Shows that so much is scripted by the aides.

[KansDem]

15. I like this rationale for tax cuts...

The Bush Files : Economy

Page 150 - Trying to Keep O'Neill "On Message" (3 pages)

<snip>
6. We all know government is full of duplication--there are places we need to consolidate programs and spend the taxpayer's money more wisely. But we won't do that as long as we are awash in tax surpluses.

http://thepriceofloyalty.ronsuskind.com/thebushfiles/archives/000058.html

So do I infer from this that tax surpluses lead to program duplication? Silly me. I thought tax surpluses would be used to reduce the debt/deficit. So the Bushistas cut taxes (on the wealthy) and now we have the largest deficit in US history.

By the way, any DUers know how to "cut and paste" from these documents? The current format doesn't seem to allow this.

[Stephanie]

16. They're tiff files - pix

You can't cut and paste. You could paste the pix itself, or you could OCR to extract the text, but that is a process.

[KansDem]

17. Thanks...

:hi:

[Tracer]

18. Stay on message!! Stay on message!!

Had to laugh at the relentless harping of the importance of parrot-talking.

They even have "potential questions" and write out the answers O'Neil was supposed to spout. (In response to his NOT staying "on message").

[BlueEyedSon]

19. "Political-Military Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq Crisis"

The Bush Files : National Security

Page 83 - First Week's Plans For Iraqi Takeover (22 pages)
On most mornings, O'Neill received a package of documents from his aides to prepare him for the day's meetings. His papers for February 1, 2001, included an agenda for an NSC meeting to be held in the White House Situation Room that afternoon on U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf. The agenda -- an unclassified cover sheet to classified documents that were not included in O'Neill's papers -- refers to a secret paper on a "Political-Military Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq." It is one of several indications of how regime change in Iraq and handling post-war nation-building had come to dominate discussions of foreign policy in the first days of the administration. Click here to go directly to the agenda.

[TacticalPeek]

20. "Political-Military Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq Crisis" - January 31, 2001

Crisis? In Jan '01?

Their precognitive abilities are astounding! But the Amazing Randi's debunking prowess is not required here.

Rather, we need to keep searching until we find this doc:

"Political-Financial Plan for Post-Election Media/Congress Co-option"

That's the one they allowed them to 'create' their crises whenever the wanted one.

:grr:

[Karenina]

21. Kick!

:kick:

[TacticalPeek]

22. kick

[Beetwasher]

24. Contents of Tab C Revealed!

Executive Summary (IOW, boiled down for the Chimp's consumption)

Political-Military Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq Crisis

Section 1: Details

Don't worry about it, it's taken care of.

Section 2: Contingency

Just have faith.

Section 3: Conclusion

Think of all that sweet crude.

[Sliverofhope]

23. das kick

[remfan]

25. Gotta love this one...

http://thepriceofloyalty.ronsuskind.com/thebushfiles/archives/000046.html

bureaucratic chicken_ _ _ _.

[Sliverofhope]

26. yet another kick

[Sliverofhope]

27. another kick

Brad DeLong is going over some of these pretty well.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/

[JohnOneillsMemory]

28. Kick. Fascinating stuff. The budget is just a fantasy for politics. n/t