I just went to WikiLeaks' new website and typed in "oil" under its archived section on "Iraq and Afghan war logs." I found numerous mentions of military attacks against oil installations (pipelines, refineries) on the first page of 320 pages of archived documents, but for some reason my computer froze when I tried to gain access to the remaining pages. As for the diplomatic cables, the archives do not reveal leaks of "Top Secret" documents — and that's where the oil discussions are likely to happen. It's possible there are some juicy documents in there that have been suppressed by the newspapers that WikiLeaks cooperated with. The establishment press has consistently under-reported if not suppressed the crucial oil aspect of the War on Terror on grounds of national security. I've provided some key documentation in my own book, The People v. Bush (Chelsea Green, 2010) which seems to have been totally blacklisted by the mainstream media and widely ignored by the alternative press as well. Perhaps we will get the really hot information when WikiLeaks begins releasing, as promised, its files on banks and multinational corporations which would presumably include communications with oil companies.

But in the absence thus far (and correct me if I'm wrong) of any significant oil-related diplomatic and/or military analyses among the leaks, allow me to provide some declassified — but rarely seen — documents of my own, which were released to me by the CIA once I sued for my father's papers under the Freedom of Information Act. They relate to his activities as one of America's first master spies in the Middle East during World War II., but they are rich in insights for the modern era.

In fact, I begin with a reminder that one of the biggest diplomatic embarrassments of the 20th Century occurred when Russian Bolsheviks took power in the midst of World War I and promptly released to the press secret documents that revealed the true intentions of the Czar's erstwhile European allies in the Middle East. The documents, part of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 (and named after the negotiators) reveal how the French and the British agreed to divvy up the former Ottoman Empire into British and French spheres of influence — despite promises of independence to the Arabs for helping to drive out the Turks. The agreement gave the two European powers, then secretly certain of victory, control of the territory and pipeline routes connecting the oil of Iraq to two key Mediterranean terminal points. The British would control the land bridge and pipeline route connecting Iraqi with Haifa, Palestine (now Israel). The French would control the pipeline route connecting Iraq with Tripoli, in Syria, (now Lebanon). Somehow, the British were able to keep enough of a lid on these revelations to complete their occupation of Jerusalem with the assistance of Arab troops, and to later incorporate this agreement into the French and British mandatory system that ruled over these regions after World War I. They got away with it then, but have been living with the ramifications ever since. Indeed, as I point out in the People v. Bush, Saddam Hussein's resistance to the planned reconstruction of the Iraq-Haifa pipeline (closed in 1948) was a key motive for the Iraq war and his removal from power.

Fast forward to World War II. My father, the late Daniel C. Dennett, worked under diplomatic cover as U.S. cultural attaché in Lebanon for the Office of Strategic Services and later the Central Intelligence Group. He had been recruited because of his Harvard education in European History and Islam and his invaluable post-graduate education during the 1930s teaching English to Arabs at the American University of Beirut. In 1943, just prior to his departure for Beirut, he issued a warning to an audience of academics: "God help us if we ever send troops to the Middle East." And yet, once immersed in his espionage work, he found himself having to play the Great Game for Oil. That same year, 1943, he wrote an "Analysis of Work" (which I later released to The Village Voice) where he wrote — thanks to the inattention of some CIA-redactor who missed this line — that the oil of Saudi Arabia was so important that it "must be controlled at all costs." And when he said "all costs" he wasn't kidding. He had been trained to anticipate a post-war "free for all" among America's former WW II allies in their quest for Arab oil. His involvement in trying to secure the greatest oil reserves in the Middle East for the U.S. — the oil of Saudi Arabia — would cost him his life, as well as the lives of tens of millions of Arabs and Jews. But that is another story.

I never knew my father. He died under mysterious circumstances following a top secret mission to Saudi Arabia in 1947, when I was six weeks old. But I've done a lot of digging, and I invite you to go to the Voice article where you will find a World War II era government map that I obtained from the national archives in Maryland that says this: "World War II is largely a war by and for oil."

The War on Terror: In a rare example of forthrightness, my own Gannett-owned newspaper, the Burlington Free Press, reprinted a New York Times piece two weeks after 9/11 that made this prophetic observation: "Beyond American determination to hit back against the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, beyond the likelihood of longer, drawn out battled producing more civilian casualties in the months and years ahead, the hidden stakes in the war against terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil." It went on to point out that the war on terror coincided with "a map of the world's principal energy sources in the 21st century" in the Middle East and Central Asia. "The defense of these energy resources — rather than a simple confrontation between Islam and the West — will be the primary flash point of global conflict for decades to come, say observers in the region." I should point out that work on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline (TAPI) is scheduled to begin soon, with its completion projected to be the same year as the revised deadline of US troop removal: 2014.

When I spoke to The Village Voice in 2007 about my research into America's hidden oil history, I noted that "It's hard enough to get documents from the CIA, but post-9/11, it's 10 times more difficult. I am concerned that there is an effort to secretize our history." It's precisely for this reason that I appreciate what WikiLeaks' Julian Assange has been doing, and understand why his website quotes TIME Magazine as saying WikiLeaks "could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act." Like FOIA, the ability of WikiLeaks to act as a watchdog over government abuses will depend largely on whether an engaged public succeeds in protecting it — and the internet in general — from retaliatory actions by embarrassed governments. Meanwhile, I look forward to the next batch of releases, while at the same time expecting that the most revealing documents of the post-911 era are likely to remain under wraps for a long time.

Read the original article on The Huffington Post.

Charlotte Dennet is the author of The People v. Bush.

The growing accountability movement got a major shot in the arm recently when it learned that on April 19, an Argentinian judge sentenced the last of Argentina's dictators, Reynaldo Bignone, age 83, to 25 years in prison. Bignone's crime: kidnapping and torturing 56 victims in a concentration camp during the reign of terror known as the "dirty war" that gripped Argentina from 1976-1983. This is huge, surpassing the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in his hospital bed back in 1998. (Pinochet died before justice could be done). The conviction of a former head of state for crimes he committed while in office sends a powerful message to all those suspected war criminals still on the loose, including some of the top leaders of the Bush administration.

George W. Bush, who lied our country into war resulting in the deaths of over 4,000 American troops, heads the list. He, former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also authorized waterboarding of prisoners seized in Afghanistan, violating U.S. and international law against torture in the process. Worse yet, they authorized torture, at least initially, not to get actionable intelligence, but to get forced confessions from detainees about nonexistent links to Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, and 9/11 in a horrific attempt to strengthen their nonexistent case for sending troops to Iraq. Evidence abounds that all three are guilty of murder and war crimes.

Don't get me wrong. Barack Obama's famous mantra, "I prefer to look forward instead of backward" was a palliative signal to war criminals in the previous administration (including Bush and Cheney's architects of tyranny and torture in the Department of Justice, John Yoo and Jay Bybee), that the new president would not push for their prosecution. Obama's oft-quoted words succeeded, at least during his first year in office, in tamping down his supporters' well-documented desire for criminal prosecutions. But former vice president Dick Cheney, Bush "torture lawyer" John Yoo and Bush's close advisor Karl Rove must have felt a chill when they saw that the number-one wish citizens posted on the website that President-elect Obama created before he entered office was a full-fledged criminal investigation into their misdeeds and those of their boss. Ever since, all three have adopted the classic posture of "the best defense is an offense," with Cheney and his daughter Liz hitting the TV talk shows with a vengeance while Yoo and Rove have used their recently published books to burnish the Bush administration's image with their lies — no doubt hoping that if repeated enough, the American people will accept their version of events during the years 2000-2008.

Will they succeed? The jury is still out. For the most part, the Tea Party movement of angry middle-class Americans does not appear to be aligned to either Republicans or Democrats, despite Republican fear-mongering efforts to blame the Obama administration for their ills. The Cheneys' efforts to weaken the Obama administration's Department of Justice by attacking DOJ lawyers who defended detainees during the Bush administration actually backfired. John Yoo, now back at Berkeley where he teaches law, has reportedly had to revert to holding his classes in secret because of the unrelenting efforts of protestors who want him prosecuted for war crimes. Equally unnerving for his fellow co-conspirators, a federal judge recently allowed a lawsuit brought by an American torture victim to go forward against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And over 150 lawyers and human rights campaigners meeting in Beirut, Lebanon chose former US attorney General Ramsey Clark to head an international campaign to investigate Bush-era war crimes, with a commitment to prosecuting and indicting the defendants in the U.S.

As for Karl Rove, he has experienced some severely embarrassing moments as Code Pink activist Jodie Evans, with her wonderfully symbolic pink handcuffs, has twice attempted a much-publicized citizen's arrest during his book tour, once in Beverly Hills on March 30, again in Las Vegas on April 9. The first attempt, at a theater frequently used for celebrity events, was notable not just for the attempted arrest, but for the small crowd that came to hear Rove speak. When Al Gore came to speak there, the theater was filled to capacity. But when Rove appeared there, remarked Beverly Hills publicist Ilene Proctor, "not only couldn't he fill the theater, he couldn't even fill the lobby. There were only about 100 people there. At $25,000 a speaking gig, someone was losing money big-time."

And what, you may wonder, is going on with George W. Bush? He is apparently laying low, perhaps putting the final touches on his own memoir. The last time I know of his venturing out on a "pre-book" tour was in late October, before a safe, invitation-only audience of well-heeled Canadians at Montreal's posh Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Though throngs of Canadian protestors never got to see him, they succeeded in sending their own message by hurling shoes at the hotel. The fervor of that crowd was unmistakable: They shouted "Bush: Assassin! Terroriste! Criminel!" and even ended the event by burning him in effigy.

Having followed the ups and downs of the accountability movement over the last few years, and while writing The People v Bush, I can safely report that the battle to bring Bush and his top advisors to justice — for murder, war crimes, warrantless wiretapping, bank fraud, and shredding the Constitution — is far from over. In fact, it is becoming re-invigorated. We have Cheney, Yoo, and Rove to thank for keeping the battle for justice lively. And at some point, George W. Bush will have to enter the fray to promote his book. I look forward to reminding him of something he said when he let Cheney's top aid, Scooter Libby, go down in flames and into a federal prison for lying to federal investigators about Cheney's role in outing CIA agent Valerie Plame: "Our entire system of justice," Bush said, "relies on people telling the truth. If a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable."

President Bush, I couldn't agree more. See you in court.

 
Charlotte Dennett is an attorney and the author of The People v. Bush: One Lawyer’s Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encounters Along the Way (Chelsea Green).

This past year, Vermonters learned that the Health Department had failed to contact (as required by law) the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules about a change in the way it evaluated low level radiation emissions at the plant. By avoiding the Rules Committee, VDPH also avoided public hearings. Had the hearings occurred, an important issue of public health would have emerged: Once the plant increased its power output (beginning in 2006) by 20 percent, radiation levels at the plant's fence line also increased, surpassing acceptable legal limits. This could be serious. The department's own 2007 Surveillance Report on Yankee acknowledged that "ionizing radiation is a known human carcinogen…With radiation exposure, it is assumed that no dose is without risk."

When public hearings finally occurred last fall, the Rules Committee asked Dr. William Irwin of VDPH: "Who advised you not to contact us?" His response was barely audible: "Counsel." Afterwards, I asked Dr. Irwin if "counsel" meant the Vermont Attorney General's office. Answer: "Yes." Later that afternoon, I handed his counsel a request for information under Vermont's Public Records Law about this matter. I also asked how much money the Health Department received from Entergy, Yankee's corporate owner. Turns out VDPH received $93,784.64 in 2006 and $61,615.36 in 2007 to "reimburse costs related to the Oak Ridge Associates Universities study." Oak Ridge is the very research facility - funded by the nuclear industry - that came up with the new formula, or "conversion factor," for measuring radiation. It made Yankee's radiation levels appear to be in compliance with acceptable legal limits, when, in fact, they exceeded them.

Was there any independent oversight of how the Department of Health applied Oak Ridge's supposedly independent assessment? Legislators will be looking into this, as well as information provided by Kathleen Krevetski, a Rutland nurse, that Oak Ridge's "new" formula for measuring radiation is actually based on an outdated standard which was withdrawn in 2001 because no formal review of its accuracy had been performed.

Meanwhile, the aging plant, renowned for its collapsed water tower and numerous incidents of radiation leaks (including thousands of gallons of radioactive water from a leaking valve, which has still not been fixed) hums along, keeping Entergy's reported revenues of $5 million a month rolling in.

When I asked Governor Douglas last fall during an election debate to describe the health risks from low level radiation, he dodged the question, as if cancer was a dirty word.

In fact, data obtained from the VDPH by nurse Krevetski shows the incident rate of thyroid cancer among Vermont women alone has increased from 4.8 in 1996 to 19.5 in 2005 - an increase the Department acknowledged was "statistically significant." One can only imagine what that amount might be from 2006 on, when radiation levels started increasing. As VDPH states, "Thyroid cancers … are of particular interest because increased risk may be associated with excess radiation exposure." Remarkably, the VDPH 2008 report states, "There is no evidence of excessive radiation exposure" in the geographic areas around Vermont Yankee.

Perhaps not "excessive." But what about "excess" radiation exposure?

What makes low-level radiation so insidious is the fact that it is a) invisible and b) travels by wind currents. None of us is immune, despite what the VDPH or Entergy would have you believe. As the debate over Vermont Yankee heats up, it's time we put the health risks to Vermonters front and center.