Casualties of the Bush Administration

by Nick Turse

In late August 2005, after twenty years of service in the field of military procurement, Bunnatine ("Bunny") Greenhouse, the top official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of awarding government contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, was demoted. For years, Greenhouse received stellar evaluations from superiors — until she raised objections about secret, no-bid
contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) — a subsidiary of Halliburton, the mega-corporation Vice President Dick Cheney once presided over. After telling
congress that one Halliburton deal was "was the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career," she was reassigned from "the elite Senior Executive Service... to a lesser job in the civil works division of the corps."

When Greenhouse was busted down, she became just another of the casualties of the Bush administration — not the countless (or rather uncounted) Iraqis, or the
ever-growing list of American troops, killed, maimed, or mutilated in the administration’s war of convenience— but the seemingly endless and ever-
growing list of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out,
demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming. Often, this has been due to revulsion at the President’s policies — from the invasion of Iraq and negotiations with North Korea to the flattening of FEMA and the slashing of environmental standards — which these women and men found to be beyond the pale.

Since almost the day he assumed power, George W. Bush
has left a trail of broken careers in his wake. Below
is a listing of but a handful of the most familiar
names on the rolls of the fallen:

Richard Clarke: Perhaps the most well-known of the Bush
administration’s casualties, Clarke spent thirty years
in the government, serving under every president from
Ronald Reagan on. He was the second-ranking
intelligence officer in the State Department under
Reagan and then served in the administration of George
H.W. Bush. Under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush, he held the position of the president’s chief
adviser on terrorism on the National Security Council
— a Cabinet-level post. Clarke became disillusioned
with the "terrible job" of fighting terrorism exhibited
by the second president Bush — namely, ignoring
evidence of an impending al-Qaeda attack and putting
the pressure on to produce a non-existent link between
al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. (His memo explaining that
there was no connection, said Clarke, "got bounced and
sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. Do it again.’") After
9/11, Clarke asked for a transfer from his job to a
National Security Council office concerned with cyber-
terrorism. (The administration later claimed it was a
demotion). Quit, January 2003.

Paul O’Neill: A top official at the Office of
Management and Budget under Presidents Nixon and Ford
(and later chairman of aluminum-giant Alcoa), O’Neill
served nearly two years in George W. Bush’s cabinet as
Secretary of the Treasury before being asked to resign
after opposing the president’s tax cuts. He, like
Clarke, recalled Bush’s Iraq fixation. "From the very
beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein
was a bad person and that he needed to go," said
O’Neill, a permanent member of the National Security
Council. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That
was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a
way to do this.’" Fired, December 6, 2002.

Flynt Leverett, Ben Miller and Hillary Mann: A Senior
Director for Middle East Affairs on President Bush’s
National Security Council (NSC), a CIA staffer and Iraq
expert with the NSC, and a foreign service officer on
detail to the NSC as the Director for Iran and Persian
Gulf Affairs, respectively, they were all reportedly
forced out by Elliott Abrams, Bush’s NSC Advisor on
Middle East Affairs, when they disagreed with policy
toward Israel. Said Leverett, "There was a decision
made... basically to renege on the commitments we had
made to various European and Arab partners of the
United States. I personally disagreed with that
decision." He also noted, "[Richard] Clarke’s critique
of administration decision-making and how it did not
balance the imperative of finishing the job against al
Qaeda versus what they wanted to do in Iraq is
absolutely on the money... We took the people out [of
Afghanistan in 2002 to begin preparing for the war in
Iraq] who could have caught" al Qaeda leaders like
Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri. According to Josef
Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force
on Terror and Unconventional Warfare, Abrams "led
Miller to an open window and told him to jump." He also
stated that Mann and Leverett had been told to leave.
Resigned/Fired, 2003.

Larry Lindsey: A "top economic adviser" to Bush who was
ousted when he revealed to a newspaper that a war with
Iraq could cost $200 billion. Fired, December 2002.

Ann Wright: A career diplomat in the Foreign Service
and a colonel in the Army Reserves resigned on the day
the U.S. launched the Iraq War. In her letter of
resignation, Wright told then-Secretary of State Colin
Powell: "I believe the Administration’s policies are
making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place.
I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out
my very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to
resign from government service as I cannot defend or
implement them." Resigned, March 19, 2003.

John Brady Kiesling: A career diplomat who served four
presidents over a twenty year span, he tendered his
letter of resignation from his post as Political
Counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece on the
eve of the invasion of Iraq. He wrote:

"...until this Administration it had been possible to
believe that by upholding the policies of my president
I was also upholding the interests of the American
people and the world. I believe it no longer. The
policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible
not only with American values but also with American
interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is
driving us to squander the international legitimacy
that has been America’s most potent weapon of both
offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson.
We have begun to dismantle the largest and most
effective web of international relationships the world
has ever known. Our current course will bring
instability and danger, not security."

Resigned, February 27, 2003.

John Brown: After nearly 25-years, this veteran of the
Foreign Service, who served in London, Prague, Krakow,
Kiev and Belgrade, resigned from his post. In his
letter of resignation, he wrote: "I cannot in good
conscience support President Bush’s war plans against
Iraq. The president has failed to: explain clearly why
our brave men and women in uniform should be ready to
sacrifice their lives in a war on Iraq at this time; to
lay out the full ramifications of this war, including
the extent of innocent civilian casualties; to specify
the economic costs of the war for the ordinary
Americans; to clarify how the war would help rid the
world of terror; [and] to take international public
opinion against the war into serious consideration."
Resigned, March 10, 2003.

Rand Beers: When Beers, the National Security Council’s
senior director for combating terrorism, resigned he
declined to comment, but one former intelligence
official noted, "Hardly a surprise. We have sacrificed
a war on terror for a war with Iraq. I don’t blame
Randy at all. This just reflects the widespread thought
that the war on terror is being set aside for the war
with Iraq at the expense of our military and
intel[ligence] resources and the relationships with our
allies." Beers later admitted, "The administration
wasn’t matching its deeds to its words in the war on
terrorism. They’re making us less secure, not more
secure... As an insider, I saw the things that weren’t
being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more
concerned I became, until I got up and walked out."
Resigned, March 2003.

Anthony Zinni: A soldier and diplomat for 40 years,
Zinni served from 1997 to 2000 as commander-in-chief of
the United States Central Command in the Middle East.
The retired Marine Corps general was then called back
to service by the Bush administration to assume one of
the highest diplomatic posts, special envoy to the
Middle East (from November 2002 to March 2003), but his
disagreement with Bush’s plans to go to war and public
comments that foretold of a a prolonged and
problematical aftermath to such a war led to his
ouster. "In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later
conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction,
negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying,
incompetence and corruption," said Zinni. Failed to be
reappointed, March 2003.

Eric Shinseki: After General Shinseki, the Army’s chief
of staff, told Congress that the occupation of Iraq
could require "several hundred thousand troops," he was
derided by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
Then, wrote the Houston Chronicle, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld "took the unusual step of announcing
that Gen. Eric Shinseki would be leaving when his term
as Army chief of staff end[ed]." Retired, June 2003.

Karen Kwiatkowski: A Lieutenant Colonel in the Air
Force who served in the Department of Defense’s Near
East and South Asia (NESA) Bureau in the year before
the invasion of Iraq, she wrote in her letter of
resignation:

"...[W]hile working from May 2002 through February 2003
in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans
(USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the
environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were
made... What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary
to good order and discipline. If one is seeking the
answers to why peculiar bits of ‘intelligence’ found
sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-
Hussein occupation has been distinguished by confusion
and false steps, one need look no further than the
process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense."

Retired, July 2003.

Charles "Jack" Pritchard: A retired U.S. Army colonel
and a 28-year veteran of the military, the State
Department, and the National Security Council, who
served as the State Department’s senior expert on North
Korea and as the special envoy for negotiations with
that country, resigned (according to the Los Angeles
Times) because the "administration’s refusal to engage
directly with the country made it almost impossible to
stop Pyongyang from going ahead with its plans to
build, test and deploy nuclear weapons." Resigned,
August 2003.

Major (then Captain) John Carr and Major Robert
Preston: Air Force prosecutors, they quit their posts
in 2004 rather than take part in trials under the
military commission system President Bush created in
2001 which they considered "rigged against alleged
terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." Requested and
granted reassignment, 2004.

Captain Carrie Wolf: A U.S. Air Force officer, she also
asked to leave the Office of Military Commissions due
to concerns that the Bush-created commissions for
trying prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were unjust.
Requested and granted reassignment, 2004.

Colonel Douglas Macgregor: He retired from the U.S.
Army and stated: "I love the army and I was sorry to
leave it. But I saw no possibility of fundamentally
positive reform and reorgani[z]ation of the force for
the current strategic environment or the future... It’s a
very sycophantic culture. The biggest problem we have
inside the... Department of Defense at the senior level,
but also within the officer corps — is that there are
no arguments. Arguments are [seen as] a sign of
dissent. Dissent equates to disloyalty." Retired, June
2004.

Paul Redmond: After a long career at the CIA, Redmond
became the Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis
at the Department of Homeland Security. When, according
to Notra Trulock of Accuracy in Media, he reported, at
a congressional hearing in June 2003, "that he didn’t
have enough analysts to do the job... [and] his office
still lacked the secure communications capability to
receive classified reports from the intelligence
community... [t]hat kind of candor was not appreciated by
his bosses and, consequently, he had to go." Resigned,
June 2003.

John W. Carlin: According to the Washington Post,
Carlin, the "Archivist of the United States was pushed
by the White House... to submit his resignation without
being given any reason, Senate Democrats disclosed... at
a hearing to consider President Bush’s nomination of
his successor." "I asked why, and there was no reason
given," said Carlin, but the Post reported that some
had "suggested Bush may have wanted a new archivist to
help keep his or his father’s sensitive presidential
records under wraps." Although he had stated his wish
to serve until the end of his 10-year term, and 65th
birthday in 2005, Carlin surrendered to Bush
administration pressure. Resigned, December 19, 2003.

Susan Wood and Frank Davidoff: Wood was the Food and
Drug Administration’s Assistant Commissioner for
Women’s Health and Director of the Office of Women’s
Health; Davidoff was the editor emeritus of the journal
Annals of Internal Medicine and an internal medicine
specialist on the FDA’s Nonprescription Drugs Advisory
Committee. Wood resigned in protest over the FDA’s
decision to delay yet again, due to pressure from the
Bush administration, a final ruling on whether the
"morning-after pill" should be made more easily
accessible — despite a 23-4 vote, back in December
2003, by a panel of experts to recommend non-
prescription sale of the contraceptive, called Plan B.
In an email to colleagues, Wood, the top FDA official
in charge of women’s health issues, wrote, "I can no
longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical
evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval
by the professional staff here, has been overruled."
Days later, Davidoff quit over the same issue and wrote
in his resignation letter, "I can no longer associate
myself with an organization that is capable of making
such an important decision so flagrantly on the basis
of political influence, rather than the scientific and
clinical evidence." Wood: Resigned, August 31, 2005.
Davidoff: Resigned, September, 2005.

Thomas E. Novotny: A deputy assistant secretary at the
Department of Health and Human Services and the chief
official working on an international treaty to reduce
cigarette smoking around the world, Novotny "stepped
down," claimed Bush administration officials, "for
personal reasons unrelated to the negotiations"; but
the Washington Post reported that "three people who
ha[d] spoken with Novotny... said he had privately
expressed frustration over the administration’s
decision to soften the U.S. positions on key issues,
including restrictions on secondhand smoke and the
advertising and marketing of cigarettes." Resigned,
August 1, 2001.

Joanne Wilson: The commissioner of the Department of
Education’s Rehabilitation Services Administration
(RSA), she quit, according to the Washington Post, "in
protest of what she said were the administration’s
largely unnoticed efforts to gut the office’s funding
and staffing" and attempts to dismantle programs
"critical to helping the blind, deaf and otherwise
disabled find jobs." On February 7, 2005 the Bush
administration announced that it would close all RSA
regional offices and cut personnel in half. Quit,
February 8, 2005.

James Zahn: According to an article by Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr. in the Nation magazine, Zahn, a
"nationally respected microbiologist with the
Agriculture Department’s research service" stated that
"his supervisor at the USDA, under pressure from the
hog industry, had ordered him not to publish his
study," which "identified bacteria that can make people
sick — and that are resistant to antibiotics — in the
air surrounding industrial-style hog farms"; and that
"he had been forced to cancel more than a dozen public
appearances at local planning boards and county health
commissions seeking information about health impacts of
industry mega-farms." As a result, "Zahn resigned from
the government in disgust." Resigned, May 2002.

Tony Oppegard and Jack Spadaro: Oppegard and Spadaro
were members of a "team of federal geodesic engineers
selected to investigate the collapse of barriers that
held back a coal slurry pond in Kentucky containing
toxic wastes from mountaintop strip-mining." According
to the Environmental Protection Agency, this had been
"the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history
of the Eastern United States." Oppegard, who the headed
the team, "was fired on the day Bush was inaugurated...
All eight members of the team except Spadaro signed off
on a whitewashed investigation report. Spadaro, like
the others, was harassed but flat-out refused to sign.
In April of 2001 Spadaro resigned from the team and
filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the
Labor Department... he was placed on administrative
leave—a prelude to getting fired." Two months before
his 28th anniversary as a federal employee, and after
years of harassment due to his stance, Spadaro
resigned. "I’m just very tired of fighting," he said.
"I’ve been fighting this administration since early
2001. I want a little peace for a while." Oppegrad:
Fired, January 20, 2001. Spaddaro: Resigned, October 1,
2003.

Teresa Chambers: After speaking with reporters and
congressional staffers about budget problems in her
organization, the U.S. Park Police Chief was placed on
administrative leave. Then, according to CNN, just "two
and half hours after her attorneys filed a demand for
immediate reinstatement through the Merit Systems
Protection Board, an independent agency that ensures
federal employees are protected from management
abuses," Chambers was fired. "The American people
should be afraid of this kind of silencing of
professionals in any field," said Chambers. "We should
be very concerned as American citizens that people who
are experts in their field either can’t speak up, or,
as we’re seeing now in the parks service, won’t speak
up." Fired, July 2004.

Martha Hahn: The state director for the Bureau of Land
Management, "responsible for 12 million acres in Idaho,
almost one-quarter of the state" for seven years, Hahn
found her authority drastically curtailed after the
Bush administration took office. She watched as the
administration blocked public comment on mining
initiatives and opened up previously protected areas to
environmental degradation. After she locked horns with
cattle interests over grazing rights, she received a
letter stating she was being transferred from her
beloved Rocky Mountain West to "a previously
nonexistent job in New York City." "It’s been a shock,"
she said. "I’m going through mental anguish right now.
I felt like I was at the prime of my career." Hahn was
told to accept the involuntary reassignment or resign.
Resigned, March 6, 2002.

Andrew Eller: Eller "spent many of his 17 years with
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service protecting the
[Florida] panther. But when his research didn’t jibe
with a huge airport project slated for the cat’s
habitat — and Eller refused to play along—he was
given the boot," wrote the Tucson Weekly. "I was fired
three days after President Bush was re-elected," said
Eller. "It was obviously reprisal for holding different
views than [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] management
on whether or not the panther was in jeopardy, and
pointing out that they were using flawed science to
support their view." Fired, November 2004.

Mike Dombeck: The chief of the Forest Service resigned
after a 23-year government career. In his resignation
letter, the pro-conservation Dombeck stated, "It was
made clear in no uncertain terms that the [Bush]
administration wants to take the Forest Service in
another direction ...." Resigned, March 27, 2001.

James Furnish: A political conservative, evangelical
Christian, and Republican who voted for George W. Bush
in 2000 as well as the former Deputy Chief of the U.S.
Forest Service (who spent 30 years, across 8
presidential administrations working for that agency),
Furnish resigned in 2002 due to policy differences with
the Bush administration. "I just viewed [the
administration’s] actions as being regressive," said
Furnish. In acting according to his conscience, instead
of waiting a year longer to maximize retirement
benefits, Furnish lost out on about $10,000 a year for
the rest of his life. Resigned, 2002.

Mike Parker: In early 2002, Parker, the director of the
Army Corps of Engineers testified before Congress that
Bush-mandated budget cuts would have a "negative
impact" on the Corps. He also admitted to holding no
"warm and fuzzy" feelings toward the Bush
administration. "Soon after," reported the Christian
Science Monitor, "he was given 30 minutes to resign or
be fired." In the wake of the devastation caused by
hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Parker’s clashes with
Mitch Daniels, former director of the Office of
Management and Budget, can be seen as prophetic. Parker
remembered one such incident in which he brought
Daniels, the Bush administration’s budget guru, a piece
of steel from a Mississippi canal lock that "was
completely corroded and falling apart because of a lack
of funding," and said, "Mitch, it doesn’t matter if a
terrorist blows the lock up or if it falls down because
it disintegrates — either way it’s the same effect,
and if we let it fall down, we have only ourselves to
blame." He recalled of the incident, "It made no impact
on him whatsoever." Resigned, March 6, 2002.

Sylvia K. Lowrance: A top Environmental Protection
Agency official who served the agency for over 20
years, including as Assistant Administrator of its
Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance for the
first 18 months of the Bush administration, Lowrance
retired, stating, "We will see more resignations in the
future as the administration fails to enforce
environmental laws." she said, "This Administration has
pulled cases and put investigations on ice. They sent
every signal they can to staff to back off." Retired,
August 2002.

Bruce Boler: An EPA scientist who resigned from his
post because, he said, "Wetlands are often referred to
as nature’s kidneys. Most self-respecting scientists
will tell you that, and yet [private] developers and
officials [at the Army Corps of Engineers] wanted me to
support their position that wetlands are, literally, a
pollution source." Resigned, October 23, 2003.

Eric Schaeffer: After twelve years of service,
including the last five as Director of the Office of
Regulatory Enforcement, at the Environmental Protection
Agency, Schaeffer submitted a letter of resignation
over the Bush administration’s non-enforcement of the
Clean Air Act. He later explained:

"In a matter of weeks, the Bush administration was able
to undo the environmental progress we had worked years
to secure. Millions of tons of unnecessary pollution
continue to pour from these power plants each year as a
result. Adding insult to injury, the White House sought
to slash the EPA’s enforcement budget, making it harder
for us to pursue cases we’d already launched against
other polluters that had run afoul of the law, from
auto manufacturers to refineries, large industrial hog
feedlots, and paper companies. It became clear that
Bush had little regard for the environment—and even
less for enforcing the laws that protect it. So last
spring, after 12 years at the agency, I resigned,
stating my reasons in a very public letter to
Administrator [Christine Todd] Whitman."

Resigned, February 27, 2002.

Bruce Buckheit: A 30-year veteran of government
service, Buckheit retired in frustration over Bush
administration efforts to weaken environmental
regulations. When asked by NBC reporter Stone Phillips,
"What’s the biggest enforcement challenge right now
when it comes to air pollution?," the former Senior
Counsel with the Environmental Enforcement Section of
the U.S. Department of Justice, and then Director of
EPA’s Air Enforcement Division, was unequivocal: "The
Bush Administration." He went on to note that "this
administration has decided to put the economic
interests of the coal fired power plants ahead of the
public interests in reducing air pollution." Resigned,
November 2003.

Rich Biondi: A 32-year EPA employee, Biondi retired
from his post as Associate Director of the Air
Enforcement Division of the Environmental Protection
Agency. He stated, "We weren’t given the latitude we
had been, and the Bush administration was interfering
more and more with the ability to get the job done.
There were indications things were going to be reviewed
a lot more carefully, and we needed a lot more
justification to bring lawsuits." Retired, December
2004.

Martin E. Sullivan, Richard S. Lanier and Gary Vikan:
Three members of the White House Cultural Property
Advisory Committee, they all resigned from their posts
to protest the looting of Baghdad’s National Museum of
Antiquities. In his letter of resignation, Sullivan,
the Committee’s chairman, wrote, "The tragedy was not
prevented, due to our nation’s inaction," while Lanier
castigated "the administration’s total lack of
sensitivity and forethought regarding the Iraq invasion
and the loss of cultural treasures." Resigned, April
14, 2003.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, eyes began to focus
on the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the
political appointees running it. What had happened to
the professionals who once staffed FEMA? In 2004,
Pleasant Mann, a 17-year FEMA veteran who heads the
agency’s government employee union told Indyweek:

"Since last year, so many people have left who had
developed most of our basic programs. A lot of the
institutional knowledge is gone. Everyone who was able
to retire has left, and then a lot of people have moved
to other agencies."

Disillusionment with the current state of affairs at
FEMA was cited as the major cause for the mass
defections. In fact, a February 2004 survey by the
American Federation of Government Employees found that
80% of a sample of remaining employees said FEMA had
become "a poorer agency" since being shifted into the
Bush-created Department of Homeland Security. What
happened to FEMA has happened, in ways large and small,
to many other federal agencies. In an article by Amanda
Griscom in Grist magazine, Jeff Ruch, the executive
director of Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, made reference to the "unusually high"
rate of replacement of scientists in government
agencies during the Bush administration. "If the
scientist gives the inconvenient answer they commit
career suicide," he said.

However defined, the casualties of the Bush
administration are legion. The numbers of government
careers wrecked, disrupted, adversely affected, or
tossed into turmoil as a result of this
administration’s wars, budgets, policies, and programs
is impossible to determine. Although every
administration leaves bodies strewn in its wake, none
in recent memory has come close to the Bush
administration in producing so many public statements
of resignation, dissatisfaction, or anger over
treatment or policies. The aforementioned list of
casualties includes among the best known of those who
have resigned or left the administration under pressure
(although not necessarily those who have suffered most
from their acts). Perhaps no one knows exactly how many
government workers, at all levels, have fallen in the
face of the Bush administration. Those mentioned above
are just a few of the highest profile members of this
as yet uncounted legion, just a few of the names we
know.

[NOTE: If you know of others, or are one of the "fallen
legion" yourself, please send the information (and
whatever supporting material you would care to supply)
to fallenlegionwall@yahoo.com with the subject heading:
"fallen legion" to add another name to the "wall." This
is a subject TomDispatch would like to return to in the
future.]

[Special thanks to Rebecca Solnit for providing the
idea for this piece, and so "commissioning" it.]

Nick Turse works in the Department of Epidemiology at
Columbia University. He writes for the Los Angeles
Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Village Voice,
and regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-corporate
complex, the homeland security state, and various other
topics.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=28817