Lessons Learned from Great NY Fires

Today marks the 100^th anniversary of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York in which 146 garment workers lost theirs lives.  But this wasn’t the only fire tragedy at the turn of the century that was made worse by a lack of safety standards.

On January 9, 1912, while battling a great blaze in New York City in which three firemen and six civilians would be killed, a Native American fireman Seneca Larke Jr. fought desperately to rescue more before they died.  His valor caught the public’s imagination.

On a cold morning the call had gone out for a fire at the Equitable Insurance Building in Manhattan, which housed stores, a restaurant, a lawyer’s club, and a bank. Upon arrival, Chief John Kenlon ordered his men into the building.

The weather was bitterly cold that day.  A steady, sharp wind blew and ice began forming on the equipment and the building.

William Giblin, the bank president and two employees, rushed to the basement vault to rescue millions of dollars in cash, bonds and securities.

Kenlon, his clothing and face icing up, looked on in despair as one of his chiefs, two firemen and six waiters in the club, plunged to their deaths.

Giblin and his colleagues, had become trapped in the basement but managed to call to firemen outside through a narrow, iron-barred window in the vault room.

As Kenlon and others watched, Larke started his desperate attempt to save Giblin and his colleagues.  He lay on his stomach on the ground at the basement window and sawed at the barred windows.

Water from the hoses showered onto him, turning him into an ice sculpture.  At one point, another firemen had to hammer ice off the arm of Larke’s firecoat so that he could continue.

After an hour, the bar finally gave way.  Giblin and another man crawled out through the opening, but the third was dead, overcome by smoke.

The story of Seneca Larke and the Equitable fire was a sensation.  Within three weeks, postcard photos of the fire were the most popular items on the newsstands.

For the New York City Fire Department, the lesson of the Equitable fire was that it needed specialized equipment, such as acetylene torches, breathing masks and grappling hooks to perform rescues.

The result was the creation of Rescue One and the rescue service, today the most elite civilian rescue service in the country.  The rescue companies were an immediate success.

Futurama -- Rethinking America's Car Companies

I wrote this as a pitch for a film in the wake of the auto industry's near collapse.  The goal was to prod the companies and the public to rethink the future of the car business.

It must have been a rude awakening for the corporate titans from Detroit to find out that a majority of Americans, who wouldn’t be directly affected by their demise, signaled that their long love affair with the car was finally over.  People have been had so many times by bad quality, broken promises of technology to come, lies about the impossibility of meeting government mandates for safety, emissions and mileage that they just said, “a pox on all your houses.”

These passions were unleashed as the executives of the Detroit 3 automakers faced intense grilling at the hands of combative Congressional inquisitors, focusing the world’s attention on the car industry in a way that hadn’t been seen since the days of Henry Ford.

It was high drama as mayors and governors, social service agencies, and millions of people whose fates are tied to the industry waited to see whether Congress would throw them a lifeline.  Ironically, Southern Republicans, who’d received generous campaign contributions from these same automakers, blocked a bailout in both the House and the Senate.  A last minute deal brokered with the help of the White House and the Treasury gave GM and Chrysler a few billion dollars in order to tide them over long enough for the next Administration to tackle the prickly questions wrapped up in the fate of these industrial giants.

The Chinese believe that chaos also brings opportunity and this is where “brilliant dreams are born.” I believe we must embrace this view and find a way for Detroit to become the “Engine of Change” as it once was the “Arsenal of Democracy.”

On the eve of World War Two, Walter Reuther (the head of the UAW at the time) and others convinced Roosevelt that Detroit’s factories could build armaments and be transformed into the “Arsenal of Democracy.”  It was this industrial might that defeated the Axis.  Initially, the auto companies didn’t want to give up making cars but when they were forced to put people to work building airplanes, guns, tanks and jeeps they found they could make enormous profits.  This is the money they used to expand and grow after the War, giving birth to an increasingly prosperous middle class.

We’re in a better position today to tap the industrial might of the automakers to help us fight different foes — global climate change and the perilous national security nightmares caused by our dependence on oil. 

Although continued auto production is necessary in the short- and long-term, we can seize this moment to rethink our manufacturing priorities.  Instead of supporting a simple bailout, we’ll be searching for ways to retool America's auto and auto-parts factories to produce goods that we need, and can sell to the world, in the 21st century.  Choose your own products and industries—sustainable means of transport, including mass transit and high-speed trains; solar, hydrogen, or other green-power infrastructure and consumer goods; next-generation telecommunications hardware, etc.

But it’s not just the automakers who need a plan, Congress, the United Nations and countries around the world need a plan shaped by vigorous input from the public.

Our film will tackle these issues, discover the people who are leading the charge for change, uncover the reasons we haven’t moved sooner, and acknowledge the enormous difficulties inherent in the necessary transformation as we set out a clear path for creating a sustainable future. 

This new vision must go beyond the immediate moment to imagine where we need to be 30 to 50 years hence. We can collaborate again, retool as if we were on a wartime footing and timetable, and lay the groundwork for the return of American prosperity.

If the U.S. auto industry can be steered in a new direction, it will provide jobs for people entering the workforce and for the hundreds of thousands of workers who have lost their jobs, thus revitalizing industrially ravaged communities and restoring hope to people now in despair.  New technology and new opportunities can mean thousands of green jobs in a reinvigorated industrial sector built on an auto industry that can become the engine of change. 

To develop our roadmap for the future we’ll turn the clock back to the 1939 World's Fair and GM’s legendary Futurama exhibition. Here, on display, was a vision of America's postwar future – millions of cars and trucks on sleek, high-speed highways carrying people and goods from coast to coast. Futurama's vision – with a good bit of auto-industry lobbying – became Eisenhower’s interstate highway system, the great "infrastructure" precedent we all love to talk about.

Rather than hanging on to this retro vision of America's future, we’ll fire up the American imagination again and create an equally visionary "Futurama" – a technological, industrial, and social conception of the United States for the next generation.

The clock is ticking and if China and India catch up to U.S. standards of consumption, which experts predict will occur by 2030, the concern over global climate change and the scarcity of every natural resource on the planet will make the tribulations about an auto bailout look quaint. Unlike the financial crisis, which hopefully will come to an end in a foreseeable future, concerns about the environment and our addiction to oil will not end soon.

This is hardly a piece of cake, whether in policy, economic, technological, or human terms. The details of transformation will require careful, multifaceted thinking and enormous resources; and, of course, we all know who lurks in the details. The auto industry shouldn't be allowed to die now; in fact, it is unlikely to disappear even in 50 years, but the transition can and should begin now. Worker and production dislocations could be minimized, as during World War II, by the strong support of government and a genuine partnership among government, industry, finance, and workers.

Our film will help Congress, the incoming Obama Administration and the public get serious about forging farsighted industrial, energy, and transportation policies that address the potential impact of unlimited growth of auto sales globally, our dependence on oil, environmental needs, and the need for a strong new industrial base. We’ll show that it is possible to provide good jobs and social benefits to the widest number of Americans possible. The U.S. government may have told the automakers to come back with a plan by March, but it’s actually time for us to create a roadmap to the future.

 

Too Cheap To Meter: The Top 10 Myths of Nuclear Power

"Our children will enjoy in their homes with electrical energy too cheap to meter.”

Lewis Strauss, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, 1954

Nuclear power was sold in the United States as being “Too cheap to meter.” This miracle power source that harnessed the might of the atom to light American homes and power their TVs was seen as a way to put a happy face on the horrors visited upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Lewis Strauss who chaired the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954, the predecessor of today’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC), spoke of an era when “atomic furnaces” from fission and fusion reactors would provide clean, safe, reliable, abundant and cheap power for generations to come.  It hasn’t been the panacea he foretold.  In fact, it’s been a train wreck of accidents, cost overruns, nuclear weapons proliferation and an ever-growing waste problem that is always on the verge of being solved.

This hasn’t stopped the nuclear power industry from promoting its product as the safe, clean alternative to coal for a green future.  Wrapping nukes in a green cloak and declaring their oneness with those concerned with climate change has helped to sway public opinion.  The banks are still skeptical but the industry, like their friends on Wall Street, has turned to the government for support.  The Bush and Obama administrations have kept the light on for nuclear power with loan guarantees, federal dollars for research and foreign policy initiatives like the treaty with India that forgave its transforming a research reactor into a bomb factory.

The impact on the industry of the Japanese reactors destruction as a result of the earthquake and tsunami may reverse the tide of support built by the nuclear industry.  But trust me they won’t give up.  They’ll try to spin the disaster as proof that nuclear power is still safe and that if anything can be learned it’s that we need newer nukes, with more safety features, not alternatives.  So, to arm the public with some mental shielding from the thought rays likely to be beamed by the misconstruers of fact and swayers of emotion here are 10 myths of nuclear power you need to know.

Myth #1: Nuclear Power is Safe

The experience at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex, the Russian reactor at Chernobyl and the meltdown at Three Mile Island in the United States, the nuclear Trifecta, are the most well known nuclear accidents but there have been thousands of accidents and near misses that could have led to a disaster.

The biggest fear, in all of these cases, stems from the fact that a nuclear power plant has about as much radioactivity inside it as the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.  There is more sitting in the adjacent pools where the used nuclear fuel rods are stored.  In Japan, we’ve seen what happens when there isn’t enough coolant to cover the fuel rods.  The rods start melting and, in a worst case scenario, the China Syndrome, the core melts down and breeches the containment facility.  The heat build up can stop short of a China Syndrome but can get hot enough to melt the metal around the fuel rods and create a reaction that produces hydrogen gas that triggers an explosion.  Which is what happened in Japan.  Having redundant safety measures, a plan B, C and D, doesn’t mean they can’t all fail.

“The only safe nuclear reactor is 93-million miles away, the sun,” said Daniel Hirsch, president of the nuclear policy research group, Bridge the Gap.

Myth #2 Nuclear power will help us kick our addiction to foreign oil.

Senator Charles Schumer (D, NY) on last Sunday’s Meet the Press cited our need to get off of foreign oil as a strong reason for pursuing nuclear power.  He’s wrong.  We don’t use a significant amount of oil to produce electricity in the United States we mainly use it to power our cars and trucks and to a much lesser degree, to heat our homes.  Unless we’re proposing to put a nuke under the hood of our cars this “argument makes no sense” said  Hirsch. 

Of course, if we all switched to electric cars we’ll need power to charge them but this can be provided by wind, solar and other sources.  We don’t need nukes.

Myth #3:  Without nuclear reactors, the US cannot hope to combat climate change.

“It would be like combating world hunger with caviar,” said Peter Bradford, former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner.  The least expensive and most productive way to reduce our carbon footprint is to be energy efficient not to build expensive nuclear power plants.

“The money that was sunk into building the reactors in Japan should have gone into something that would really have helped us combat global warming like solar or wind power,” and improving the national energy grid so that it’s integrated, said Hirsch. 

We can’t spend money on everything we should spend it on solutions and not on technology that creates more problems.

Myth #4: The US is in the midst of a nuclear renaissance

We’ve had a nuclear bubble but “when builders came to realize the costs it started to dissolve,” said Bradford.

The myth of the nuclear renaissance has been an effective public relations ploy of the nuclear industry but we’ve seen the operators at the Calvert Cliffs, Maryland reactor pull out and the backers behind a proposed reactor in Houston, Texas have also pulled out.  Things are sputtering.

“If this is what the original renaissance looked like then we never would have had Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci,” said Hirsch.

Myth #5:  Without new nuclear reactors, we won’t have enough power in the United States.

Dave Freeman, who calls himself the “green cowboy,” knows something about large-scale power generation.  He ran the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the municipal power department in Sacramento and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP).  He says this is completely false.  The best way to generate new power for the long term is not to build nukes but to invest in large scale solar and wind, coupled with natural gas as a transition in the short term. 

The problem has been coordinating the power produced when the wind blows and the sun shines, distributing the power and storage.  There are solutions to all of these.  “You need to link up the disparate sources to compensate for when the wind is blowing and the sun isn’t shining,” said Hirsch.  He also pointed to new ways that we can store excess energy in batteries or use it to create hydrogen, which can also be employed as a power source.

The problem is “old people have forgotten about the dangers of Three Mile Island and young people never knew,” said Freeman.

Nuclear power is a limited resource dependent on mining compared to solar power.  An unlimited amount of solar power exists, “which would you choose,” asked Freeman?

Myth #6  Why not fund nuclear power just to make sure we do have enough power since there’s practically no risk of losing any money with government loan guarantees?

The nuclear industry has asked for loan guarantees from the Federal government because the banks looked at the risk and took a pass.  With the loan guarantees in hand the companies can get financing and if they default, or walk away from the projects (which is what happened before) the taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.  “It’s the same as if you defaulted on your mortgage and the Federal government had to step in to pay the banks back,” said Hirsch.

The problem is that these plants are so expensive, and it’s not clear that they’d ever be profitable even with guarantees, that the likelihood of companies abandoning the effort mid way through is pretty high.  Look at what’s happened at Calvert Cliffs and in Houston.

Myth #7 The nuclear industry’s past problems were caused by overzealous environmentalists, regulators and the public’s fear after Three Mile Island.

“The industry’s problems were the result of trying to build too many plants too quickly,” said Bradford.

The industry couldn’t compete in the marketplace in the US or anywhere else in the world.  This is why it turned to loan guarantees that shift the risk to the taxpayers.

Pacific Gas and Electric (PGE) ignored the environmental concerns of one group, The Mothers for Peace, when it was building a reactor near Diablo Canyon in California.  The Mothers said that the plant was situated on an earthquake fault and the company just plowed ahead.  The Mothers were right and PGE had to go back and retrofit the plant to increase its safety.

“The safety of millions was put at risk to hubris,” said Hirsch.

Myth #8 Nuclear power will be an important source for jobs and economic development.

It’s true that building the reactors does create jobs but these disappear when the reactor is complete.  And there are staff positions for running the reactors, providing maintenance and security but not enough to warrant the high costs and risks. Building an alternative energy industry is a much better long-term proposition that will create more jobs in manufacturing and stimulate exports.  People will need to build the windmills, the photovoltaic cells, install them, maintain them and even replace them as they wear out. 

Ironically some fear that building new nukes will chase jobs away because electric rates will have to dramatically increase to pay them off.  “No state ever created a net increase in jobs by raising electric rates to commercial and industrial customers.  Such a policy drives jobs out of many businesses to create relatively few permanent jobs at the new reactor,” said Bradford.

Myth #9  France has found solutions to all of nuclear power’s problems.

France is pointed to as demonstrable proof that nuclear power can be affordable and safe.  While it’s true France gets about 75% of its electricity from nuclear power and it has avoided a large scale disaster, we don’t know very much about their accident record since its industry is nationalized and run behind a veil of secrecy.  We’ve been told that Japan runs its program much better than France and we've just seen what that means.  One can only assume that their aging reactors are just an “accident waiting to happen,” said Hirsch. “They are just playing a game of Russian roulette.”

As far as cost is concerned, the French pay about 20% more for electricity than we do here in the United States.

Many point to their ability to make nuclear waste disappear into easily stored glass balls while we continue to battle over where to bury our barrels of waste which keep piling up in temporary storage ponds next to the reactors.

“In high level waste they are no further along than anybody,” said Hirsch.  They just dissolve the waste in highly toxic acid and store it in warehouses in the glass.  Which is still radioactive and the glass eventually disintegrates and has to be replaced.”

The famous scene of 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley lovingly holding one of the glass balls came to mind.  “That was just a prop,” said Hirsch.

They also reprocess their fuel to create new fuel but this still leaves, “most of the radioactivity to disposed of,” explained Bradford.

It also adds to the costs of the producing nuclear power and creates plutonium that can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Myth #10  The growth of civilian nuclear power won’t promote the spread of nuclear weapons, or as it’s called, proliferation.

There is no “peaceful atomic power.  If promoting nuclear power you are promoting bombs,” said Freeman.

According to Victor Gilinsky, a former NRC commissioner, the “main obstacle to obtaining nuclear weapons is the material.   Robert Oppenheimer, the father of America’s nuclear program, feared that countries could too easily start with a civilian power program and then build a bomb.  He proposed, that an international authority handle all nuclear material.  Eisenhower reversed course and launched the Atoms for Peace program that spread civilian nukes around the world and taught the basics of nuclear engineering to people in countries like Iran.  This boosted the earnings of the contractors but laid the groundwork for weapons programs in all the countries that obtained nuclear weapons after the first five nuclear powers.  There’s “too much greed and too little fear,” said Gillinsky.  All civilian nuclear programs create spent fuel that can be reprocessed into weapons grade plutonium.  This is what Iran, North Korea, India and Pakistan have done.

It doesn’t take much.  At first you needed a chunk of plutonium about the size of a softball now it’s down to the size of a golf ball.  “If a country has done its engineering it can take about a week to go to a bomb,” said Gillinsky.  “Safeguard inspections are too late.”

Currently there are plans to build new nuclear power plants throughout many unstable parts of the world like Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kazakhstan and more.

We need to stop looking at nuclear power and concentrate on real clean energy sources like wind and solar.  But these aren’t really fun challenges for scientists.  Building a solar collector or an improved windmill is boring compared to unleashing the power of the atom.  Especially, dabbling in that chimera, the real Holy Grail, fusion power.  Can’t beat that for a fun brain twister that’s sucked up countless billions of federal research dollars but is still “the power of the future.” While scientists like to do what’s hard, exotic and new, people want and need what’s simple, effective, reliable and affordable.

To paraphrase President Eisenhower’s speech about the Military Industrial Complex, every dollar we spend on nuclear power is stolen from developing real solutions to our energy needs.  Nuclear power, once touted as “too cheap to meter” is now too expensive and dangerous to use.

Many thanks to Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission whose presentation “The Myths of the Nuclear Renaissance” inspired this piece, Daniel Hirsch who teaches nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz and runs the nuclear information group, Bridge the Gap, Victor Gilinsky, former NRC commissioner and David Freeman, an energy expert who as a Presidential adviser helped to establish the EPS and then ran the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and other large scale utilities.

Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune - New Documentary Opens In Los Agneles

John F. Kennedy brought Camelot to the country, the civil rights movement broke historic barriers between the races while singing We Shall Overcome and folk singers got involved as the bards of hope and change. 

But dark shadows appeared on the horizon.  Kennedy's assassination, the ongoing turmoil of resistance to integration and the escalation of the Vietnam War gave the singers a new identity.  No longer "folk" they were enlisted as protest singers as their voices swirled into the center of the cultural turbulence that roiled the country throughout the '60s.  At the center of the storm was Phil Ochs, a singer/songwriter who's been overlooked by many but who penned such anthems of the era as Joan Baez's signature song, There But For Fortune which is the title of a new feature length documentary about Ochs opening today, March 4 in Laemmle's theaters in Los Angeles.

The result is a compelling film that transcends the story of one person and tells the story of an era.  An era that continues to resonate today and the songs Phil Ochs sang sound as fresh as when he wrote them.

"Unfortunately, so much of what he wrote about is still relevant, " said the film's director Kenneth Bowser, who has been working on this project for twenty years.  "I made this film because I love Phil Ochs.  After 20-years, I'm still not bored."

Bowser grew up listening to Phil Ochs records but was really moved by the singer's commitment when he saw him perform at a benefit for grape pickers organized by Cesar Chavez in New York.  "He (Ochs) flew in from California just for the benefit and the plane ticket cost more than he got from the benefit.  That was Phil," said Bowser.  "His music meant so much to me and his values."

But it took his daughter Samantha, who shared her father's passion for Ochs, to suggest he make a film about the singer.  After listening to the Billy Bragg song, I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night, "She made all of her friends in New York listen to it," explained Bowser.  "She said I have to make this."

At the time, Bowser had only made one feature length documentary but given his marching orders he headed out to California to pitch his idea to Phil's daughter Meegan and brother Michael.

"I liked what he'd done," said Michael, "but it took years and no one was interested.  We stayed in touch." Then six years ago, "I got approached to by several other people to do a documentary about Phil and thought I should call Ken," said Michael.

Bowser was still interested and in the interim his career had taken off in large part due to Lorne Michaels commissioning him to produce a number of Saturday Night Live retrospectives.  "I became the Boswell of Saturday Night Live," he said.  Which was more lucrative than the PBS documentaries he'd been producing.  "I made enough money to shoot the interviews and move ahead," he said.

After banking most of the interviews and tracking down a lot of the archive footage and stills Ken and Michael were still looking at huge costs for rights clearances.

One clip, "where Phil is playing Jim Dean of Indiana on the David Frost show cost $55,000 for less than two minutes of footage," explained Bowser.

What John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans," applied to this project.

Michael, after managing his brother's career and serving as a music publicist, had built a successful still photo archive business that focused on popular music icons.  Looking at the music business he decided it was time to sell but the buyer he thought would snap it up threw him a curveball.

Music impresario, Michael Cohl, currently producing the Broadway rendition of Spiderman with Bono, is the former chairman of Live Nation, who'd managed tours for over 150 artists including the Rolling Stones and Michael Jackson.  He listened to Michael's sales pitch but took a pass.  A few weeks after the meeting he asked Michael what else he had in the hopper.  Ochs mentioned the film about his brother and Cohl's ears perked up.

"He said when he was starting out he ran a small folk club in Philadelphia and Phil played for him," said Michael.  "He liked his music and Phil as a person.  He wanted to back the film."

This meant, "we could make the film without any compromises," said Michael "He (Cohl) has a thing for superheroes - Spiderman and Phil Ochs."

The result is a film that "shows that change is possible," said Michael.

We see Phil's journey from a budding journalist at Ohio State University to folk singer after a fellow student turns him on to Peter Seeger and the Weavers.  His ability to write fast and his interest in politics combined with his sense that "music could affect change," said Michael.  His passion and his lyrical gifts thrust him into the center of the issues of the day - including the anti-war movement.

His song, I Ain't Marching Anymore, became the anthem of the protest movement.

Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason,"

Call it "Love" or call it "Reason,"

But I ain't marchin' any more,

No I ain't marchin' any more

Copyright Barricade Music with permission

In 1967, he was at the United Nations warming up the crowd with Pete Seeger and Peter Paul and Mary as over 100,000 anti-war marchers made their way from Central Park to the UN to hear Martin Luther King give the speech in which he said, "I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America."

The film makes it clear that Phil loved America too and he provided more than just the entertainment.  We see how he worked with Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner to found the Youth International Party (Yippie) as they organized the protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  He sang while the police sprayed the crowds with tear gas and swung their clubs, beating the protesters bloody while they were hauled away.

The cumulative effect of the assassinations of John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King and the election of Nixon as the war ground on and seeing the peace movement splintered by the bombings of the Weather Underground took its toll on Phil.

"They raise your hopes and then they smite them," said Michael.  "It was a depressing time.”

In the film we discover the death of his friend Victor Jara, the Chilean protest singer, who was brutally murdered by soldiers after he defiantly sang "Venceremos" (We Will Win) to a football stadium packed with 5,000 people they'd rounded up after the coup that toppled the government of President Allende accelerates the downward slide deeper into depression that marked Phil's end.

As the protest era waned his career had taken a different direction.  "He started to write more poetry and more elliptical lyrics that were less topical," said Michael.

One album from this era, for his new label A&M, Pleasures of the Harbor, was inspired by John Ford's adaptation of four Eugene O'Neill plays for a movie Long Voyage Home, starring John Wayne. 

"In the film the sailor (Wayne) taking respite from the dangers of the sea finds refuge in a harbor before the next voyage.  But you know they're going out to sea again," said Michael.

Unfortunately, his brother Phil became increasingly despondent about the state of the world as his manic depression spiraled out of control and went untreated.

Things might have turned out differently "if only more people had been educated about and aware of the problems of mental illness," said longtime friend Tom Hayden who shared his sense of loss after a special screening of the film at the Grammy Museum.  Hayden said the "stigma" attached to the disease and a lack of understanding kept him and others from giving Phil the help he needed.  "I wish I had intervened," he said, "but I didn't even know the word intervention at the time."

Phil committed suicide before he could set sail again. He left it to others to keep fighting.

"The Wisconsin protest is a start," said Michael. "Would Phil Ochs be playing in Wisconsin? For sure."

Released First Run Features, Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune, opens Friday, March 4 in four Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles and is booked in over seventy screens across the country.

Poster Girl Looks at the Impact of War on our Soldiers

We hear a lot about supporting our troops but not enough about the impact our endless wars have had on them.  In a short documentary nominated for an Academy award, "Poster Girl", filmmaker Sara Nesson and producer Mitchell Block shine a light on the impact combat had on Robynn Murray whose tour in Iraq left her struggling to cope with PTSD and the thoughts about what she'd seen while serving her country.  It will air on HBO later this year but will be showing up at certain festivals and special screenings before then.  See it.

http://www.postergirlthemovie.com/

Elvis Rocks the Motor City May of '56

An Elvis book I'm writing about a one week period in the Spring of '56 has garnered some welcome publicity courtesy of the Detroit News.

Elvis was wrapping up a long tour and the last legs when he stopped in Detroit for a one night, three concert gig at the fabulous Fox Theater.  Tickets were $1.50 but the steep price didn't keep people away.  The place was packed and Elvis would return six more times to the Motor City.

The book starts in Detroit, follows him to his next stop in Dayton, Ohio and wraps up with his week off at home in Memphis.

Inspired by a cache of never before published photos I stumbled on while researching my documentary, Elvis: Return to Tupelo, I wanted to explore this brief moment in time.

For a taste of what the book will be have a look at Susan Whitall's Detroit News article.

Nixon Foundation Releases Book About the Historic Meeting of the President and the King

Nixon Foundation Releases Book About the Historic Meeting of the President and the King

YORBA LINDA, Calif., Jan. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Day Elvis Met Nixon, a first hand account of Elvis Presley's historic meeting with President Nixon, has just been published by the Richard Nixon Foundation and is now available online http://store.nixonfoundation.org.

Released on the eve of Elvis's 76th  (January 8) and President Nixon's  98th (January 9) birthdays, the book is a trove of rare photos, original documents, and anecdotes from the December 21, 1970 encounter presented in a fun and interactive way for readers of all ages.

Told through the eyes of Egil "Bud" Krogh, White House aide and liaison to the Drug Enforcement Administration, The Day Elvis Met Nixon recounts the surprise of White House staffers when the King of Rock-n-Roll appeared at the front gates of the Executive Mansion to deliver a handwritten letter to the President.

LA Times Reporters Gotlieb and Vives to Receive LA Press Club's First Public Service Award

LA Times Reporters Gotlieb and Vives to Receive LA Press Club's First Public Service Award

Verizon -- the Worst Service In the World

What a nightmare.  How hard can it be to have one phone number roll over to another line if you're on a call on the first line?  Apparently, almost impossible without three home visits by techs with the wrong work orders, countless phone calls (hours spent on hold listening to messages about all the services we can buy) and a package for us to ship back containing set top boxes for our TV -- which had nothing to do with our request.

One of the tech visits included two guys who had to climb a tree in the neighbor's yard to attach a new box and some wires.  Turns out that wasn't necessary at all but they did get some much needed exercise.

The business order desk people are unfailingly polite it's just that they can't do anything without making a hash of it.

The tech who finally came out today to perform the install discovered that he really didn't have to do anything. It was a software change done by their service guys in the office.  Of course, he has the magic phone number that goes right through so he didn't have to be on hold while they performed the transfer.

Unfortunately, Verizon had shut off our internet and TV service in the meantime because they'd gotten the order wrong so he did have to work to get that back up and running.

The only thing he couldn't do was reauthorize all of our set top boxes.  Actually, the techs in the office could but not without authorization from the Order desk.

Just got a nice prerecorded call from Verizon saying our order is complete and hoping all went well.  Guess it's back to the phone -- now that it's working again.

Haven't checked to see if we did get the rollover.  My bet, probably not.

Filibuster -- Stop the Pirating

Filibuster, from the Dutch word for pirate.  Joyce Appleby, a renowned US historian argues that it's time to stop allowing the pirating of legislation using this arcane Senate rule.  A must read.  Pass it along.LA Times - The Senate Filibuster: Time for a Change

Favorite Movies for 2010

Movies I've liked this year; Animal Kingdom, Another Year, The City of Your Final Destination, Conviction, Howl, The Inside Job, The Kids Are All Right, The Kings Speech, The Last Station, Love & Other Drugs, Made in Dagenham, The Runaways, The Social Network, Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Need to see; Winters Bone, White Material, True Grit, Black Swan, The Fighter,  The Way Back and Rabbit Hole.

Any recommendations for others I've missed?

Ones to avoid -- Somewhere and The Tempest.

Bruce Meyers Christmas Party

Got to spend some time with the inventor of the dune buggy, Bruce Meyers and his wife Winnie last week at their home near Temecula, California.

Bruce is one of the original members of the first wave (no pun intended) of the California surf culture.  Growing up in Manhattan Beach in the '30s he spent his formative years fooling around on the beach and tinkering with cars.

This cross pollination of two sub cultures culminated in the invention of the classic Meyers Manx dune buggy and his many adventures in off road racing in Baja.

Late, as usual, I missed the sing along as Bruce and his buddies strummed guitars, ukeleles and singing just like they have been doing since they were boys hanging out on the beach.  There's even a section of the State beach at San Onofre named after these veteran beach rats, "old mans."  It's their section of the beach and you'll find them every Wednesday during the summer -- playing music, grilling some burgers, having some beers (not supposed to do that now that it's a State park), and paddling out to catch some waves.

Their sense of adventure and desire to live life to its fullest is infectious.  Another slice of the many California sub cultures -- surfing, hot rodders who set records at the dry lakes, the fly boys who soared over head with the right stuff, the rocket men at JPL who shot for the stars, the aviators like Douglas who invented an industry, hippies and poets that Howled, cooks who created Asian fusion or changed the culinary world with Chez Panisse, guys who cobbled together computers in their garages and gave us the PC, geeky engineering professors who linked computers together and gave us the internet, toy makers who begat Barbie and movie makers who've captured the imagination of the world -- Bruce is one in a long line of innovators that flourished in a State that's more than a physical place but a true state of mind that nurtures creativity and innovation.

It's a privilege to know Bruce and to have taken a ride in his dream -- the Meyers Manx.

NEH Bridging Cultures Through Film Grants Awarded

The first round of documentary filmmaker recipients of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) new Bridging Cultures through film initiative were announced today. 

“These were made, for a total of $1,116,715-- three for development, and two for production of documentary films,” said Paula Wasley, Public Affairs Specialist at the NEH.

These were the first Bridging Cultures through Film grant awards. The film grants are part of a larger Bridging Cultures initiative that was implemented by NEH chairman James Leach, who as a former member of Congress, developed an expertise in foreign affairs while chairing the House subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs.

The selected documentary film projects look at international and transnational themes in the humanities.

“Among the projects supported in this category is a film exploring the evolution of economic, social, and cultural relations between China and Africa from the fifteenth century to the modern day, and a documentary on the Balkan civil war and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’s prosecution of war crimes against women,” said Wasley.

And the winners are:

CALIFORNIA

Oakland

Raymar Educational Films, Inc.   Outright: $75,000

Project Director: Erica Marcus

Project Title: Africa's Freedom Train and Other China-Africa Tales

Project Description: Development of a 60-minute documentary film exploring the history of relations between Africa and China.

ILLINOIS

Chicago

Kartemquin Educational Films   Outright: $75,000

Project Director: Maria Finitzo

Project Title: Encounters with the Other

Project Description: Development of a documentary film examining the indigenous Tsimane people as they transition from a traditional to modern way of life.

MARYLAND

Takoma Park

JWM Productions, LLC   Outright: $517,330

Project Director: Christine Romero

Project Title: Besa: The Promise

Project Description: Final production of a 90-minute documentary on the history, culture, and beliefs of Albanian Muslims who worked to rescue Jewish refugees during World War II.

NEW YORK

New York

Arcadia Pictures Ltd   Outright: $43,675

[Bridging Cultures Through Film]

Project Director: Andrea Simon

Project Title: Angel Wagenstein: Art is a Weapon

Project Description: Development of a documentary film that explores the life and work of Angel Wagenstein, a Bulgarian filmmaker, war hero, and novelist.

WNET.ORG   Outright: $405,710

Project Director: Pamela Hogan

Project Title: Women, War and Peace: The Balkans

Project Description: Production of a one-hour documentary examining the impact of civil war in the Balkans on women and the first international trial for crimes of sexual violence in wartime.

For more information about Bridging Cultures and to read the press release with all of the NEH’s grant recients.

http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20101209.html

There is some more detail about the grant program in the Bridging Cultures Through Film grant guidelines:  

http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/BridgingCultures_Film.html

Condomgate -- Was Wikileaks Chief Leaker Set Up?

Wikileak's founder, Juilian Assange’s defenders are now claiming that the first woman that filed allegations against him for not wearing a condom while having sex is affiliated with the CIA and that obviously, this was an attempt to set him up by using what is known in the spy trade as a “honey trap.”

If the CIA was able to compromise him with a plot using a “seductress” who would later go to the police with false allegations, it would be because they knew of his susceptibility to flattery and insistence on unprotected sex. Knowing that, it seems unlikely to me that a woman could be convinced to have sex with someone who may very well be teeming with disease due to his reputation to engage in condom-less sex with numerous partners. In addition, his defenders ignore the inconvenient truth that two women filed a complaint with the police. 

Then there’s the tradition of accusing innocent women of being the bait in a honey trap.  The most famous is Mata Hari, who was executed by a French firing squad in 1917. After the war, French officials revealed there was no evidence to back up the charges. 

 

Assange’s allies are lining up as a self-appointed firing squad, hurling a volley of character assassinations in another time-honored tradition to kill the allegations, by defaming the victims and questioning their motives, reputations and veracity. Blame the victim, anyone?

They want us to believe that once a woman agrees to consensual sex with a man, she abdicates any control over the type of sex they have and her decision about whether or not to become pregnant or to be exposed to contracting a disease. If she complains, it’s because she’s been jilted, is a gold digger, a man hater, or now, a CIA operative.

CAIR: Anti-Muslim Hate Group Leader to Teach Islam at Oregon College

CAIR: Anti-Muslim Hate Group Leader to Teach Islam at Oregon College

Iconic Author Charles Bukowski in Spotlight at Huntington Library and New Memoir, CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S SCARLET, Written by Fiery Muse Pamela 'Cupcakes' Wood

Iconic Author Charles Bukowski in Spotlight at Huntington Library and New Memoir, CHARLES BUKOWSKI'S SCARLET, Written by Fiery Muse Pamela 'Cupcakes' Wood

Jimi Hendrix -- West Coast Seattle Boy

Just gifted by the Hendrix estate with the new amazing Hendrix boxed set, "West Coast Seattle Boy, The Jimi Hendrix Anthology," 4 CDs, 8 LPs (vinyl lives), a DVD and a beautiful 35 page, LP sized booklet. The booklet, LP jackets and CD covers feature a number of photos from our archives. It's great seeing them put to... such good use. Can't wait to listen to the 99 tracks, watch the DVD and read the booklet. What fun!!!

Boxed set info: http://www.jimihendrix.com/us/music/west-coast-seattle-boy-jimi-hendrix-anthology-8lp-box-vinyl

Distant Voyagers -- The Jet Propulsion Lab Story

Living in Southern California you learn that it's an area that's launched a thousand fads and nurtures numerous subcultures -- surfers, skateboarders, hot rodders, movie makers, artists and some you wouldn't think of -- like rocket scientists.  While Malibu beach attracted the surfers, Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratories became Mecca for the rocket men.  After doing some digging I discovered it was an amazing story.  But alas, no broadcaster seemed to agree.

Tales of Exploration and Discovery from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The remarkable and audacious people of JPL have been on the cutting edge of interplanetary exploration for over 40 years. From the fractured, steaming craters of Mercury, tortured by the sun close overhead; to the frozen ice falls of tiny Pluto, the sun a distant speck in a lonely sky, the machines of JPL have an unparalleled record in charting the unknown. Robotic emissaries, these remarkable craft have spent years cruising the unknown to bring pictures and huge streams of data to the Earthbound, leaving us amazed and enlightened, and a bit humbled, in their wake. These machines cover an incredible range, from the early Lunar probes, little smarter than a toaster, through the Pioneer probes to Jupiter, now silently cruising interstellar space, to the modern marvel of Galileo, currently navigating the torturous magnetic fields of Jupiter while charting its myriad moons.

But JPL is not just about spaceflight... there are spin-offs into our everyday lives. The Mars Pathfinder rover has resulted in a new design for the US army, a robot warrior of tomorrow. The artificial intelligence of the advanced Cassini probe to Saturn has blazed a path for previously inconceivable smart technologies that will soon permeate our everyday lives.

And behind the machines are the amazing people of JPL... the scientists, technicians, and engineers are all exceptional; many continue their space researches after hours on their own. We will meet these unusual and brilliant people as they narrate the history of space exploration and illuminate the mysterious worlds beyond Earth. There is Rob Staehle, the young scientist who developed the only probe to Pluto ever to gain NASA’s blessings, and all in his spare time at home. Then there is Donna Shirley, the recently retired chief of the Mars Pathfinder program who became a media darling. They range from suave and nattily attired to the classic caricature of the mad scientist, but they share a common passion: to share the most astounding and memorable moments of space exploration with us. Join us as we journey to the stars with the “Emissaries from Earth.”

PRODUCTION:

The shows will draw upon our archives of JPL and NASA photos and animations from the sun to Mars to Jupiter and beyond, but we will not stop there. We have sourced out computer simulations from universities around the world and will draw on the best they have to offer. Finally, under the supervision of the producers who have worked extensively in the visual effects field, we will draw upon our exclusive engagement with the effects staff of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” to create the incredible and the unimaginable. We will not simply look at Venus, Jupiter and the Andromeda galaxy; we will GO THERE. We will see Mariner 7 skirting past the blasted terminator of Mercury, and we will witness the air on Pluto freezing at nightfall and crashing to the icy ground in a devastating fusillade. Join us for a truly unforgettable journey through the solar system and beyond.

EPISODES:

THE ROCKET MEN: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory did not start as a huge, sprawling high-tech facility in the hills above Pasadena, California... nor did it begin life as a university or a secret military installation. It began as an idea in the minds of a few rebellious individuals who shot off hastily assembled rockets in the dry lake beds North of LA county in the late 1940’s, in a world weary of war but convinced that technology held the promise of tomorrow. Building on the work of Robert Goddard and Wherner von Braun, these unusual men took their US army mandate seriously and to heart: create a cadre of talented individuals to probe the outer reaches of propulsion science and, eventually, outer space. In less than ten years they were poised to do just that... and in less than 50, the entire solar system would be their own backyard.

FIRST IN SPACE: Before we knew anything about the moon, much less Jupiter or other galaxies, there was the dream. This dream of space exploration was enabled by the dawn of the Rocket Age. As the US and USSR were battling to get a man into space, a quieter war was being fought for the knowledge of other worlds. The untried but cutting-edge Jet Propulsion Laboratory was the American entrant into the gladiator’s arena, and waged a hard-fought campaign against their Soviet counterpart to be the first to the stars. From the earliest blurry images of the far side of the moon to a landing on the parched surface of Venus, we will witness the extremes to which the men and women of JPL would go to be First in Space.

THE SCORCHED PLATEAU: The story of the exploration of the inner planets, Mercury and Venus, is one of multiple failures, near misses, and finally triumph for both the US and the Soviets. In America were Dr. Bruce Murray and UCLA grad student Michael Minovich, who took the audacious stance of suggesting that we yank two Mariner-class probes off the shelf- where they awaited their mission to the Red Planet- and fly them off to Mercury. That year a unique opportunity existed to fly to Venus and, because of a unique alignment, coast on unpowered to the innermost planet Mercury. The objections were many- and the allies few. But through persistent efforts, unceasing cajoling, and the cultivation of just a little paranoia that the Russians would arrive first, the people of JPL were able to send one lonely Mars ship, heavily shielded against the terrifying heat of the sun, on a long and triumphal voyage to the scorched and desolate Mercury. From this victory we will witness the Soviet response, the brute-force landing of a heavily armored spacecraft on the acid-washed, crushing surface of Venus. Through the intense and patriotic efforts of the best scientists the Soviets could muster, the intrepid battleship of a probe lasted only a few moments on the blazing, hostile surface... but they were moments that would change scientific history, and propel the Soviet Union back to the forefront of space science.

THE GREAT GALACTIC GHOUL: What happens to spacecraft that vanish off the radar? That spin out of control after leaving earth orbit? Nothing put the grip of fear on a space scientist’s heart as much as the launch of an interplanetary probe into the unknown, for many of the early missions exploded, malfunctioned or simply vanished into thin air. In episode 3 we will look at the “missions that were not,” such as the early Mariner to Mars and Soviet Mars missions that were lost-in-space so often that Mariner project leader John Casani invented “The Great Galactic Ghoul” to explain who was grabbing and destroying the spacecraft. We will join the Viking lander in its lonely vigil on the surface of Mars, still living on its nuclear power supply 25 years after its spectacular mission on Mars, but now, through an error in programming, staring silently at its feet awaiting a command from JPL that will never arrive. We will visit the distant boundary between the orbits of Earth and Mars, where more spacecraft have vanished than any other place in space. Finally, we will look at the future and the many risky but exciting probes that are planned to the edge of the solar system and beyond, and the many risks that await them.

THE STARSHIPS: The age of interstellar travel has arrived. It began about ten years ago, when the Pioneer 11 spacecraft, veteran of the first mission to Jupiter in the 1970’s, crossed the edge of the solar system and entered interstellar space. This tiny craft, no smarter than a desktop calculator, operates to this day off its plutonium batteries and until budget cuts forced the end of the program was transmitting daily “space weather” reports to the earth. It is now on a slow trajectory to a star system many light-years distant. Famed sci-fi author and futurist Dr. Robert Forward will join our JPL personalities to discuss the ramifications of humanity’s entry into deep space and the message Pioneer caries buried deep inside its fuselage. Finally, we will examine other entrants into the interstellar contest, such as the exciting NASA Deep Space One probe, scheduled to launch later this year.

IN MANS IMAGE: The exploration of space is performed largely by robots. These are not Metal Men as envisioned by pulp authors of the 1930’s, but they are mechanical envoys just the same. We will meet the designers and makers of these high-tech wonders and come to understand their intense feeling of kinship to their mechanical “children,” who will so soon be roving some distant world. From the Mars Rover to the Russian Lunar buggy, from the Viking lander automated life science labs to the high-speed impact-driven comet penetrators of the future, we will see the gamut of robot science in space. And the earthbound spinoffs will be there too, from smarter automobiles to the US army’s new JPL-designed robotic warriors. Don’t miss this special look at the men and their machines who redefine how we look at technology and ourselves.

SPLENDOR IN THE SKIES; ARMAGEDDON ON EARTH... COMETS AND ASTEROIDS: In 1908 there was a huge explosion in Siberian Russia. In many respects it resembled a nuclear blast, and continues to stymie al efforts at identification. The most commonly held theory is that a small comet slammed into the Earth and obliterated a couple hundred square miles. That it missed a major city is just dumb luck. More recently, in 1989, a car-sized object entered the atmosphere over Montana and blazed so brilliantly for a few minutes that people on the ground in Bozeman had two shadows. There are many more near-missed every year. Here on Earth, the people of JPL are among the few who are charged with the mission of watching the skies for these cosmic battering rams. We will meet Elenor Helin, who has maintained a lonely vigil for the last 20 years as she locates, identifies and charts the movements of new asteroids at Mount Palomar. We will talk to the producers of the recent Hollywood extravaganzas “Armageddon” and “High Impact,” and we will visit with their advisors (also from JPL) and come to understand the real threats facing our planet.. and our species.

FIRE AND ICE: The last 20 years has been a watershed in the annals of exploration. We have moved beyond the comfort of our nearby rocky worlds, Venus, Mars and the Earth, and journeyed to the great outer planets. The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, with their many dozens of moons, violent magnetic fields and bizarre chemistry, have been charted with great accuracy. The distant blue twins of Neptune and Uranus have been overflown, until only tiny Pluto remains unexplored. We know these worlds better than mariners knew the Antarctic at the turn of the century. The people and machines that explored and continue to explore these distant worlds are as unusual and surprising as you might expect, and we will join them as they remember their past triumphs and as they continue to explore the realm of Jupiter and soon, the domain of Saturn.

POWERS OF TEN: Space is a study in incomprehensible distances. In the beginning man searched the skies with his naked eyes, searching for meaning and comfort. Later came the telescope, and improvements on this technology continue to this day. But it was the invention of the modern rocket and the interplanetary probe that finally allowed us to rise above our turbulent atmosphere and its obscuring effects and se the planets close-up and in all their breathtaking glory. Finally, recent advances like the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope have graced us with views of the ancient universe, at the very edge of time. But despite these amazing advances, many scientists and seekers, young and old, male and female, grizzled and prim, continue to peer through huge, often antique telescopes to probe distant mysteries and learn new secrets. Even high-tech facilities like NASA and JPL lean heavily on these direct and inexpensive observations to plan missions and probe the depths of space. We will visit some of the premiere facilities, some looking at light and others listening to sounds from space, to share the continuing allure of the first-hand view of the cosmos.

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS: Not so long ago an invasion from Mars was considered to be a possibility. As late as the 1930’s astronomers like Percival Lowell continued to theorize about the possibility of intelligent life on Mars. Perhaps this is one reason that it is the most visited world after the Earth and it’s moon. Half a dozen probes have landed on its sandy surface, some like the Mars Pathfinder have roved its terrain. The planet has also been blanketed by photographs from orbiting investigators, and more are planed at an record-setting pace. We will meet the men and women responsible for this American success story, from the makers of the fuzzy images of Mariner 4 in 1964 to the latest magicians of the Mars Global Surveyor, currently in orbit around the Red Planet. We will plumb the many mysteries of Mars too. Why are there huge floodplains on a planet that is as dry as a bone? Where did all the water go? What kind of life might exist there? Why is the surface so red? How does a relatively small planet host the largest canyons and volcanoes in the entire solar system? These and other questions will be investigated by our team of talented scientists, authors, artists and others in this special all-Mars show.

 

Disease Cowboys -- Riding in the Hot Zone

A short pitch for a series focusing on the medical/scientific teams that risk their lives going into the hot zones to keep the world safe from killer viruses.

Riding In The Hot Zone With The Disease Cowboys

Working with the Centers for Disease Control we’ll see how a small group of scientists, the so-called, Disease Cowboys, scour the globe to keep us ahead in the battle against life threatening infectious diseases.

Unpurified drinking water, improper use of antibiotics, local warfare, massive refugee migrations, changing social and environmental conditions around the world, have fostered the spread of new and mutated ancient viruses and diseases that are all potentially devastating.  In the battles against such virulent foes as HIV, Ebola, Lassa Fever, bubonic plague and others, we’ll see how these strike forces race to find the source and control these outbreaks before they spread around the globe.

It’s a dangerous job that runs counter to our notions of the lab-coated, nerdy scientist often seen in movies and on TV.  But these John Waynes, armed with test tubes not six guns, are our best hope for keeping these disease outlaws at bay.

 

Bio Terrorism -- The Secret Story of the Soviet Bio Weapons Program

Another TV project that went nowhere ---- but one that I still think has merit.  

Bio Terrorism – Pandora’s Box

Written by

Michael Rose

The devastating events of September 11, 2001 have been compared to Pearl Harbor.  While shocking, many fear that the worst is yet to come.  The next time, the attack may come from the “poor man’s hydrogen bomb,” killer pathogens like anthrax, smallpox and the plague released by bio terrorists. 

The attacks will be silent and untraceable.  Unlike a plane crash – there will be no cataclysmic event to signal that the assault has begun.  The nation will wake up to the nightmare of thousands of terminally ill citizens.  We’ll see horrors not known since the plagues of the Middle Ages.  It will be a calamity that we can barely comprehend.

The means of producing and delivering these catastrophic killers were developed by US and Soviet scientists whose Cold War mission was to invent the impossible and prepare for the unspeakable.  All of this work was done in secret.  What worries the experts is, that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the scientists who created these most lethal forms of ancient killers, and the means to deliver them, are now hawking their skills on an eager open market.

We’ll reveal, for the first time on television, how this situation came about.  The audience will learn how Western intelligence agencies were misled about the ongoing development of the massive Soviet bio weapons program colloquially known inside the government as “bugs and gas.”

The audience will be astonished to find out the enormity of the Soviet’s gigantic germ labyrinth that stretched from the Soviet Council of Ministers, to the Soviet Academy of Sciences, through the Ministries of Defense, Health and Agriculture and into an ostensibly civilian pharmaceutical agency, Biopreparat.

We’ll see how American and allied intelligence failed to see this develop and show that the consequences of this massive intelligence failure is the probable dissemination of deadly germ weapons.  This is a detective story.

To help us unravel this mystery, we’ll first turn to Ken Alibek, who worked for seventeen years in key positions in the Soviet bio weapons field before defecting to the West.  He left in order to alert the world about Moscow’s secret production of hundreds of tons of anthrax, smallpox and plague germs meant for hurling at the United States and its allies.  The amounts dwarfed anything US experts had ever imagined.  Alibek painted a clear picture of the biological war machine that employed thirty thousand people at more than forty sites across Russia and Kazakhstan.  We’ll then interview other former lab workers, scientists, intelligence officers, senior government officials, public health workers and journalists to help us understand how this threat developed and its consequences today. 

We’ll discover the dangerous remnants of this deadly trade and track the rogue scientists who may be selling their skills to the highest bidders.

We’ll see how vulnerable America is to a bio weapons attack and talk to those who are searching for a way to lure these evils back into Pandora’s Box.

Bio Terrorism – Pandora’s Box

POTENTIAL INTERVIEW SUBJECTS

Ken Alibek (Kanatjan Alibekov) defected to the United States in the early 1990s, after working for seventeen years inside the Soviet biological weapons program.  His detailed overview of the USSR’s efforts caused US experts to revise their assessment of the threat biological weapons pose.

William Broad is a senior science writer at The New York Times and has twice shared the Pulitzer Prize with colleagues there.  His most recent book is The Universe Below.

Gary Crocker joined the State Department’s intelligence arm in 1974 as a junior analyst.  He soon gravitated to the area of biological and chemical weapons and made it his mission to gather evidence that the Soviets had embarked on production of old-fashioned germ weapons like anthrax and futuristic research into bioengineered pathogens.

Richard Danzig was appointed undersecretary of the navy in 1993 and quickly turned his attention to the dangers of germ weapons.  Despite numerous warnings, the military was reluctant to grapple with the issue and budget cuts further undermined efforts to prepare for the possibility of germ warfare.  Partly due to Danzig’s efforts, the Joint Chiefs of Staff finally recommended vaccinations for anthrax and increased the budget for chemical and biological defense programs.

Stephen Engelberg is a senior investigative editor for The New York Times whose projects include a series of articles on germ warfare and terrorism.

David Kelly was among the first recruited by UNSCOM to conduct on-site biological weapons inspections in Iraq.  His skill as an interrogator had helped him uncover the Soviet Union’s experiments with smallpox.  Kelly spent nearly four years and made countless trips to Iraq to piece together the information about Iraq’s darkest weapons secrets, including the locations of buried biological bombs and missile warheads.

Joshua Lederberg has been predicting the future of germ weapons longer than anyone else has.  At 75 years of age, he’s been at it longer than almost anyone else.  A winner of the Nobel Prize in 1958 for his discovery of genetic exchanges in bacteria, he has long been an outspoken foe of biological and recombinant (genetically engineered) weapons.

Douglas MacEachin served as Head of the CIA’s Soviet analysis office from 1984 – 89.  He was on of the most determined skeptics about the existence of a Soviet biological weapons program.  The defection of Vladimir Pasechnik (see below), MacEachin changed his mind.  The zealots, he admitted, turned out to have had a point.

Matthew S. Meselson did pioneering research as a Harvard biologist in the early 1960s.  Brought to Washington by the Kennedy administration, he quickly became a devout critic of germ weapons.  He authored several papers arguing against the need to biological armaments.

Judith Miller is a senior writer for The New York Times.  Since joining the paper in 1977, she has reported extensively from throughout the world including the Middle East, where she served as Cairo bureau Chief.  Her most recent book is Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War.

Vladimir Pasechnik, a top Soviet scientist, defected to Britain in 1989.  He revealed that the Soviet Union had produced long-range missiles, and was working to modify cruise missiles, to spread germs; and that the USSR had succeeded in creating a new, genetically improved version of the bubonic plague.  His revelations shocked even the most hardened Soviet critics.

Bill Patrick started his career as a research microbiologist but joined America’s bio weapons program in 1951.  He rose to become chief of the Product Development Division and went on to become a germ warfare consultant to federal agencies and private clients.  He was the expert brought to Oregon to investigate the 1984 Rajneeshee germ assault on local citizens.  He warned the attack was a foretaste of things to come.  At a 1995 gathering of officials from the US, Canada, Britain and Japan, shortly after the sarin attack in Tokyo, Patrick detailed how a terrorist could mount a germ attack on the World Trade Center using a blender, cheesecloth, a garden sprayer and readily available hospital supplies.

Larry Seaquist was assigned to help coordinate defense against biological warfare as American troops were gathering in the deserts of Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm.  A career navy officer and aide to one of the Pentagon’s top policy officials, he prepared a highly classified memo outlining America’s vulnerability to biological weapons.  Some details of his report remain classified as secret to this day.

Richard Spertzel was recruited by UNSCOM, at age 61, to serve as a biological weapons inspector in Iraq after the Persian Gulf War.  His instant, almost photographic recall of names, dates and places, made him a natural-born weapons inspector.  It was Spertzel who made the connection that eluded American analysts and allowed UNSCOM to identify Al Hakam, a supposed animal feed factory, as Iraq’s most important germ production facility.

Andy Weber helped arrange and lead an unprecedented American mission in 1995 to a formerly closed Soviet germ weapons production, test and storage site in Kazakhstan.  Over the next several years, as a Pentagon official, he uncovered numerous attempts by Iran to court Russia’s best biologists.  Weber worked with allies at the Departments of State, and Energy, the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, to persuade skeptics in the Clinton administration to increase money for scientific collaborations with Russian scientists.  Senior officials, however, were more preoccupied with the possibility of “loose nukes: than the possibility of “loose bugs.”