Gore Vidal on the "United States of Amnesia," 9/11, the 2000 Election and the
War in Iraq Gore Vidal is one of America¹s most prolific and best-known
writers. He has written more than 22 books and more than 200 essays -- a collection
of his essays won the National Book Award in 1993. Vidal is the author most
recently of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Dreaming War: Blood for Oil
and the Bush-Cheney Junta. Taken together, the books constitute a comprehensive
attack on America’s imperialist ambitions and the military industrial
complex. Writing in the Scotsman, critic Gavin Esler called Perpetual War "the finest
serious critique of America's use and abuse of power in the 21st century that
I have read." Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman recently met up with Gore Vidal
for an extensive interview. The interview aired on May 13, 2003. THIS IS A
RUSH TRANSCRIPT GORE VIDAL:The United States is not a normal country. We are a
homeland now under military surveillance and military control. The President
asked the Congress right after 9-11 not to conduct a major investigation. "As it
might deter our search for terrorism wherever it might be in the world." So
Congress obediently rolled over. There was, I remember, Pearl Harbor. I was a
kid then. And within three years of it I enlisted in the army. That's what we
did in those days; we did not go off to the Texas Air Force and hide. I realize
the country has totally changed, that the government is not responsive to the
people. Either in protecting us from something like 9-11, which they
should¹ve done, could¹ve done. Did not do. And then when it did happen, to
investigate, investigate, investigate. So I wrote two little books, one called Perpetual
War for Perpetual Peace, in which I try to go into the why Osama Bin Laden, if
it were he, or whoever it was, why it was done. And I wrote anther one,
Dreaming War, on why we were not protected on 9-11, which ordinarily would have led
to the impeachment of the President of the United States who had allowed it
to happen. They said they had no information. Since then every day the New York
Times prints another mountain of people that say they had warned the
government, President Putin of Russia, he had warned us, President Mubarek, of Egypt,
he had warned us, three members of Mossad claim they had come to the US to
warn us that sometime in September something unpleasant might come out of the sky
in our direction. Were we defended? No we were not defended. Has this ever
been investigated? No, it hasn't. There was some attempt at the midterm
election, there was a pro forma committee in Congress which has done nothing thus far,
and we¹re three years later. This is shameful. The media, which is controlled
by the great conglomerates, which control the political system, has done an
atrocious job of reporting, though sometimes good stories get in. I've worn my
eyes out studying the Wall Street Journal, which despite its dreadful
editorial policies is a pretty good newspaper of record, which the New York Times is
not. If you read the Wall Street Journal very carefully you can pretty much
figure out what happened that day. At the time the first hijacking, according to
law, FAA, it is mandatory within four minutes of a hijacking, fighter planes
from the nearest air military base go up to scramble, that means go up and
force the plane down, find out who they are, find out what's happening. One hour
and 50 minutes I think it was, no fighter plane went up. During that hour and
20 minutes, we lost the two towers, and one side of the Pentagon. Why didn¹t
they go up? No description from the government, no excuse, a lot of mumbling
stories which were then retracted, new stories replaced them. That to me was the
end of the republic. We no longer had a Congress which would ask questions,
which it was in place to do of the executive. We have a commander in chief who
likes strutting around in military uniform, which no commander ever did, as
they are supposed to be civilians keeping charge of the military. This thing is
surrealistic now and it is getting nastier and nastier, as we are more and more
kept in the dark about those things which most affect us, which are war and
peace, prosperity and poverty. These are the main things that the government
should look after. And we the people should be told about them. We have been
told nothing. And every voice is silent. So I wrote two little books, which were
then noticed by people who like to look at the Internet, and then a few
hundred thousand people have bought them. And I don't come out with conspiracy
theories, I never became a journalist, I am a historian. Because journalists give
you their opinions. And pretend they¹re facts. I don't give you my opinions
because they may be valuable to my mother, but they are of no value to anybody
else. But I give you the facts as I find them, and I list them and they're quite
deadly. This government is culpable of, if nothing less, negligence. Why were
we not protected with all the air bases' fighter planes up and down the
eastern seaboard? Not one of them went aloft while the hijackings took place.
Finally two from Otis Field in Massachusetts arrived at the twin towers I think at
the time the second one was hit. If anybody had been thinking, they would have
gone on the Washington to try to prevent the attack on the Pentagon. They
went back to Otis, back to Massachusetts. So I ask these questions, which
Congress should ask, does not ask, which the press should ask, but is too frightened.
It's a reign of terror now. AMY GOODMAN: A recent expose shows that even a
Congressional Committee that¹s looking into this can't get a hold of documents
that are classified, and even public testimony is now being reclassified. GORE
VIDAL: Well isn't it pretty clear that the dictatorship is in place. We¹re not
supposed to know certain things and we¹re not going to know them. They¹re
doing everything to remove our history, to damage the Freedom of Information Act.
Bush managed to have a number of Presidential papers, including those of his
father, put out of the reach of historians, or anybody for a great length of
time, during which they will probably be shredded, so they will never be
available. And what I have always called jokingly the United States of Amnesia will
be worse then an amnesiac it will have suffered a lobotomy, there will be no
functioning historical memory of our history. AMY GOODMAN: How has George Bush
accrued so much power? GORE VIDAL: Well, the election of 2000 was the end of
the republic. It was the second time that it happened that somebody who got the
popular vote did not get the election. 1876, when Governor Tilden, a Democrat
of New York, won the election. But they were able -- we still had troops in
the south -- they were able to turn the election around, the electoral college,
Tilden didn't want another Civil War, so he just withdrew, but there was no
sinister group taking charge, it was just a party group of Republicans who
wanted to continue the reign of General Grant. That was mildly sleazy. This is
major corruption. This is corporate America, as one, putting in place a president
who was not elected. Getting the Supreme Court to delay and delay, when under
the 10th amendment, every decision about the voting in Florida, should be
made by the Florida Supreme Court. Not the U.S. Supreme Court, which the
Constitution rules out in matters of election. AMY GOODMAN: How did that happen? Well
isn't he your relative, Al Gore? GORE VIDAL: That's nothing that I go through
the streets boasting of no, but yes, he's my cousin. And very un-Gore. The
Gores are known for their belligerence and he is not known for self-defense let
us say. He should have asked it¹s easy to say he should¹ve, but it was pretty
clear at the time. I would've, and I¹ve been in that situation to count the
total Florida vote. He has every right to demand that, and they couldnt¹ve
played games, cause it's too big of a vote. Instead he asked I think three
counties, Dade and Brower and one other, to do their count over again. AMY GOODMAN:
Concern that he wouldn't win outside of those? GORE VIDAL: No I think he
figured that he had won those, Dade is certainly a large minority vote, which had
all voted for him, there's a wonderful book by [John] Nichols, called Jews for
Buchanan, and it¹s a marvelous shot of four Jewish gentlemen looking terribly
alarmed, and you see Dade County goes for Buchanan. And even Buchanan goes
'these are not my votes down there, something's wrong.' And it was stolen by the
Secretary of State, that lady who now has been rewarded with a seat in
Congress, the president¹s brother, the losing president candidate¹s brother, was
governor, and he took part in it. And the court did by five to four. Two of the
five should have recused themselves, should have just withdrawn from the case
when Gore vs. Bush came before the court. Why? One of them, [Anthony] Scalia,
had a son, who was working for the Bush team of lawyers before the Supreme
Court. Did Justice Scalia recuse himself as he should because his son is arguing?
No. He wants to kill Gore. He wants to make sure that the bad guys win.
Thomas' wife was busy, getting Curricula Viti of potential people to serve in a Bush
administration. Clarence Thomas should have recused himself and withdrawn for
the case, in which case it would have been 4 to 3 for Gore, who would now be
president. And Iraq and Afghanistan I can guarantee would not have been
knocked down, in order to benefit Halliburton and Bechtel. AMY GOODMAN: Scalia
recently went to Cleveland, he spoke at the Cleveland City Club, which is known as
the oldest free speech forum in the country, he allowed no press in, and the
night before he spoke in the city, and he said that that vote, choosing George
Bush, was his proudest moment. GORE VIDAL: I would impeach him and in a
well-run country the Senate should make a move toward the trial of Justice Scalia.
And in back of that there¹s some interesting organization going on, which is
hard to determine, Opus Dei, both Scalia and Thomas have connections with Opus
Dei, a secret Catholic order, originally fascist. General Franco is Spain was
sort of a Godfather to it, and we don¹t know much about it, and it¹s all over
the place, about 80,000 worldwide, Louis Freeh of the FBI at that time was a
member, as was Mr. [Robert] Hanssen, the spy, who had been giving all of our
secrets, he was with the CIA, he had been giving our secrets to the Russians for
many years. I make no charges, but I simply bring up questions, why not ask
questions of these people. Does it suit Opus Dei that Bush is President? Now
we're getting into God territory, which I normally would stay away from as any
good American should, it¹s not my business other people¹s religions. But Bush is
Born Again, that¹s why he used biblical language. (imitating Bush) ³He's
evil! He¹s an evildoer!² Well that¹s theological language. You can say he's a bad
man, a dishonest man, a ruthless man. Evildoer? And he believes the end of the
world is coming. Born Agains believe in rapture, they don't care about this
world. When it ends George W. Bush will be lifted up in a state of rapture into
the bosom of our lord. Also among the born-again category, not that kind of
protestant, is Tony Blair, who has become likes his wife, Roman Catholic, which
is difficult for a British Prime Minister, since the Prime Minister is
supposed to be an Anglican what we would call Episcopalian -- as he picks the
Bishops of the Anglican Church, so you can¹t have a Roman Catholic picking
Anglican Bishops, but he is. So now we have two boys who think "Jesus wants them for
sunbeams," who are willing to put at risk -- I¹m extrapolating on my own just
from the evidence at hand. This is mostly humorous. You can judge it as you
may -- But two believers in our Lord¹s coming, an Armageddon and the end of the
world -- this is the way the Reagan used to talk -- and it made him very
popular with the southern states, that¹s why this big thing was just about South
Carolina that's the heart of it why? Well those states don¹t have much in the
way of population, but they have very strong born-again Evangelical
Protestants, and they believe in our Lord returning at any moment, and if you can
collect them all, by saying you hate abortion and this and that. They have a swing
vote in those states because of the Electoral College, they don¹t have much
population, but they have a lot of electoral votes among them. The Electoral
College was devised -- you call yourself democracy, you¹re very un-American, the
founding fathers did not want democracy in the US ever. They also did not want
tyranny, a king or Hitler, they wanted a Republic. And they devised the
Electoral College so the majority could never control anything. So you have a
popular vote out there and in those days it was just for congress, so there was one
electoral vote per congressmen, one per senator and the state, and they get
together and decide the election. So what Scalia was doing was going back to the
Electoral College in order to put together a majority to put in his candidate
who will probably hasten the end of the world. I don¹t know where Scalia will
be during rapture. He may be [points up and points down.] AMY GOODMAN: You¹re
talking about religion, you¹ve written about Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft.
GORE VIDAL: Yes I have, they are very religious men. The wall that Thomas
Jefferson thought that he had built, as did John Adams who was pretty much an
antagonist of Jefferson, but they were both agreed that religion ought not to in
any way intrude itself into politics, it was something quite separate,
whatever your religion, you obeyed its laws, if you believed in those laws and nobody
would stop you. But once you start raising money in tax free institutions,
who's tax-free money you use to influence elections, like Mr. Robertson, and Mr.
Falwell then you are out of the constitution, and you should be taxed anyway
before you use it, but they are free of taxation and with that the whole
country began to change and this very small minority of Evangelicals, mostly in the
south and southwest, have achieved great power, in states of small population
where their electoral college count, state by state, adds up to quite a lot,
in fact added up to a Bush "victory." AMY GOODMAN: Gore Vidal, you've said, I
don¹t see us winning this war, you¹ve also said that this will force Saddam
Hussein to use whatever weapons of mass destruction he may have. Maybe you were
prophetic, and maybe in fact that was true that if he had them he would have
used them, and he didn¹t. GORE VIDAL: Well, it's pretty plain he didn't have
them, nobody in Europe thought he did. The Europeans at least have a free press
which we don't, or most of the countries there do. I said he probably would,
if we pressed him hard enough. You see when you live with nothing but lies
being told to you in the media, nothing but lies, and it¹s done the way they do
advertising, it¹s repetition: "Weapons of mass destruction! He¹s got weapons of
mass destruction! Mass destruction! Mass destruction! Mass destruction!" When
you hear that 10,000 times a day, you finally think he must have, they can¹t
go on like this forever, well he didn¹t have them, now I'm sure we¹re busy
planting them all over the place, and we¹ll be: "Oh look what we found! Goodness
me! Here¹s at Atom Bomb! Made in USA. No, scratch that out, scratch that out.
He made that mark." I fully expect us to plant something or other, but as it's
the United States of Amnesia, why go to the trouble, it's expensive to have
troops going around looking for stuff. I think they think the public will have
forgotten it, I think the public is forgetting it, doesn't much care. I thought
when I said that we would lose the war, I still think we will. Afghanistan
the fighting is going on, rather rougher then it was during the so-called war.
It will keep right on going as long as we have a presence in Iraq. And we will
eventually be driven out. Somebody will have a bright idea, one of those
neo-conservatives, we know what they¹re like, and will decide to kill everybody
there, that this would be a very good thing to do. Gotta show force. And all
these sissies, all of whom who ran from the idea of going into the army, talk so
tough when they get together, we¹re gonna show our muscle , you look at Mr.
Crystal, and Mr., who¹s the sidekick who rides with him? Fat Boys With Asthma,
talking tough, it makes their blood run cold. So I think that we haven't a
chance of winning in the Middle East, nobody has, nobody except the Turks, with the
Ottoman Empire, which Woodrow Wilson, one of the great fools of our history,
decided to break up at the end of WWI, so we get Turkey, which turns out to be
really quite a formidable country now, and broke up bits and pieces, into
Syria, and Jordan, into this into that, which became British and French mandates,
and are now countries which are uneasy, with all sorts of warring religious
groups. AMY GOODMAN: Gore Vidal, you developed a relationship with Timothy
McVeigh. Can you talk about that? GORE VIDAL: I never met him, nor did we talk on
the telephone, but we did exchange letters, he read a piece I wrote in Vanity
Fair, about the shredding of the Bill of Rights, which has been further
shredded since his death, and he wrote me a letter, and I wrote him back, and he
wrote me some very informative letters about himself, he was very smart, knew the
constitution backwards and forwards. I was struck by reading about his trial,
at first I had no interest, he was the lone crazed killer, that our public
must always have, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, we all know that, you can get
the Warren Commission to say that, he was obviously not alone. But that worked
so well that, the people always fall for it every time, so they decided that
Timothy McVeigh, a rather slight young man, with no knowledge of explosives,
had put together this two ton bomb, which he himself, and this guy called
Nichols loaded on a Ryder truck -- it took at least 9 people it¹s been figured out,
to get that bomb onto that truck, and then a very careful, experienced driver
to get that thing without blowing himself up into Oklahoma City in front of
the building. He was not alone, and we have a pretty good idea of some of the
people he was associated with who might have been in on it. The FBI began quite
professionally, they had infiltrated a lot of these Patriot movements out
there in the middle-west, people who don¹t like the government and others who were
as angry, as was McVeigh at what the federal government had done to the
Branch Dividians at Waco, for McVeigh this was revenge upon at what he regarded was
an odious government, a tyrannical government, he had gone out there and
watched them using military, army stuff. And remember he was an army hero of the
Gulf War, and he watched them break the law. The Posse Commitus Act of 1876.
and in one of the letters to me, these are all reprinted in Perpetual War for
Perpetual Peace, if you want to read McVeigh's actual words about it. He said
You know soldiers are trained to kill. The police are trained to protect persons
and property. These are two different functions. The justice dept. called in
the army. They wanted tanks and all sorts of things, army material. With which
they shot up the buildings that fired oil and people died.' There was once
again no proper investigation. In the course of McVeigh's trial, which was a
kind of joke, the FBI behaved pretty well, they had a lot of interesting leads,
305s I think they¹re called, they take down the evidence that people give them,
directions in which to look and so on. They followed up nothing. And I wrote
Louis Freeh who was then the head of the FBI, a letter which I include in the
little book, a letter which I read aloud on the Today Show, just to make sure
that he saw it, no answer, but I said there's certain very interesting leads
here, and this is all from evidence at the pre-trials, which anybody can get
at, and I said these should have been investigated, but they weren¹t, they
decided it was McVeigh and that was it. Now a couple of days ago we find out that
the FBI was faking it, some anti-McVeigh stuff in their labs, trying to prove
that he built the bomb, that he had ammonia on his trousers or something. Well
he may well have been in on it, I don¹t know, I'm not a prophet, but my
impression is that he could not have done it alone. So there were others to follow
up, and on television I said you¹ve got to start doing your job, at the FBI, at
the Justice Department, your job is to protect persons and property. You
didn¹t follow up there may be 100 McVeighs out there, waiting to take another
crack at us. And you did nothing, cause you want to unload Gray¹s killer, and you
wanted the book shut (SHUTS A BOOK). So what sort of government is this. I'd
say a bad one. AMY GOODMAN: What effect do you thin that the Persian Gulf was
had on Timothy McVeigh? It said that he was involved with bulldozing people in
the highway of death, as Iraqi soldiers retreated after surrender. GORE VIDAL:
Well he was shocked by it, he also got the Bronze Star, he was a great
marksman, and he did his share of shooting soldiers, but he was appalled at the
civilians, the children. That¹s why it¹s so ironic, 'oh, he killed all those
children,¹ as though he got up in the morning to kill all the children in the
nursery in that building. He says in one of his statements, he finally says, I did
it, because he didn¹t want to spend the rest of his life in a box, he could
live 30-40 more years and then as he wrote me, I¹d rather have federally
assisted suicide, which is how he termed the injection in the arm, then a lifetime in
a box. Because he saw there was no way out. He could have sung, but he
didn¹t, he could have said who else was involved in this, but he did not. He was a
complex character, and endlessly interesting I thought, and he should have been
kept alive, so we could find out who these other people were. AMY GOODMAN:
Would you put Timothy McVeigh in the same category as Mohammed Atta? GORE VIDAL:
No no no. We don¹t know that story either. Mohammad Atta was obviously a
Muslim zealot. Also in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace there¹s another question
that goes unanswered, the head of the Pakistan Secret Service, was in
Washington a week or so before 9-11, while he was there, it was just a ceremonial
visit with the head of the CIA, they worked together, he sent back word to
Islamabad about one of his henchman, to wire $100,000 to Mohammad Atta in the United
States, which was duly done. The FBI, I think it was the Wall Street Journal
where I got the story from, only said American Secret Services found out about
this, they complained to the Pakistani Government. 'What is the head of the
Secret Service in Washington telling somebody to send $100,000 to a guy that we
now know was the lead bomber, lead hijacker just a week before 9-11.' Times of
India published the whole story, Wall Street Journal did a pretty good
version for them, now shouldn¹t that be examined? Wouldn¹t Congress be interested in
this guy in Washington meeting with all our top secret people? Says ok, send
him $100,000. Not one more word, not one more word. Now in a country with any
curiosity, in a public that was informed of anything, there would be a great
deal of outcry. I couldn¹t imagine this happening in England, maybe questions
in Parliament, the papers would be full of it until it was solved. It couldn¹t
happen in Italy, which dearly loves a conspiracy, or Germany. In the U.S.,
everybody listens to 19th Century Fox TV News. In which a bunch of loons just
scream and scream and scream. And with each scream they tell another lie. How are
we ever going to have an informed citizenry? Which means then how can we have
an informed election? AMY GOODMAN: So what¹s it like for you, Gore Vidal, to g
o back and forth between Italy and the United States through this period.
GORE VIDAL: Let¹s clear up one thing. The right wing has been desperate to
explain to Americans that I live in Italy, that I¹m an ex-patriot. "He hates
America." Just because I dislike them. I¹ve had a house in California for 30 years.
I¹ve had a house in Southern Italy for 30 years. Sometimes I¹m there when I'm
working, but I¹ve always been involved in American politics, and American
history. That's a fact that you can look at a long line of books, to attest to that
fact. The idea of geography is very exciting to people, because I think it¹s
only 7% of the American people have passports, only 7% have been abroad. Not
counting the ones who were sent in the military of course, but 7% have
voluntarily gone abroad. It's a tiny percent of those in congress who¹ve been abroad.
Bush had never set foot in Europe before he became President. He had spent 10
minutes in China when his father was Ambassador there, and obviously never
went outside of the compound. What I have to do lot of times in Europe is explain
to them that Americans are not stupid, when they meet them, they think
they¹re very stupid because they don't know anything, I have to explain the them
that we're not stupid, I think we¹re rather brighter then the average, but we¹re
ignorant, which means not knowing, we have no information because it isn't
given to us. Our public schools are a scandal, they stopped teaching geography in
1950 in most of the public schools, by which time we were a global empire, we
have a global empire and nobody knows where anything is, nobody knows any
languages, so our statesmen go abroad and people laugh at them, because they are
so dumb, or seem to be so dumb.
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are
evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
- Albert Einstein
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead
"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear
the government, you have tyranny."
- Thomas Jefferson
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"
- Edmund Burke
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