Dr. David Acer, Dentistry and the AIDS Crisis

"Three years into the Acer investigation, I had fallen deeply into a U.S. Government cover-up... [t]he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Florida health officials had covered up almost all of the incriminating evidence linking Dr. Acer to thirty six serial killers studied by the FBI."

"I was forced to conclude the authorities covered up the evidence implicating Dr. Acer to prevent the media, and subsequently the public, from probing into his background. The legal testimony in the case indicated he believed he was dying of a virus that the government had created. Dr. Acer, his best friend testified, believed that the virus had been unleashed for genocide against America's gay community and Third World Blacks."

Dr. Len Horowitz

FOR three years, medical sleuths have been trying to figure out how Dr. David J. Acer, a Florida dentist, infected six of his patients with the AIDS virus. But they are stumped, and the case has become one of the most disturbing unsolved mysteries in the annals of medicine.

Now, some are asking whether it should be considered a murder mystery.

The late Dr. Acer is the only health care worker anywhere known to have infected even one of his patients. Last month, a teen-aged girl became his sixth patient to test positive for the same strain of the virus that killed him. Fifty-seven other health-care professionals have told the authorities that they are H.I.V.-positive; 19,000 of their patients have been tested. Not one has caught the virus from medical treatment.

Because of publicity about Dr. Acer and his patient Kimberly Bergalis, who died of AIDS in 1991, legislators and public health officials have come under enormous pressure to restrict infected health-care workers.

Before Miss Bergalis died at age 23, she and her family waged a crusade for laws mandating that all medical workers get AIDS tests and be forced to tell their patients if they were infected. Her father, George, argued that "someone who has AIDS and continues to practice is nothing better than a murderer."

Some groups that represent medical workers call the testing an invasion of privacy and say such disclosures would empty the practices of infected dentists and slam the operating room doors shut on infected surgeons. Now perplexed scientists are asking in public what they had only whispered before: Could Dr. Acer have done it deliberately? And if so, how? And why?

And the very asking of those questions raises another: If a convincing case can be made that Dr. Acer murdered his patients, is it fair to write restrictions on every medical and dental worker in the United States because of the actions of one lunatic?

Before he died of AIDS in 1990, Dr. Acer wrote an open letter to his patients saying: "I am a gentle man, and I would never intentionally expose anyone to this disease. I have cared for people all my life, and to infect anyone with this disease would be contrary to everything I have stood for."

The Federal General Accounting Office, which looked into the case at Congress's request, has said that "no good evidence suggests that the dentist deliberately infected his patients."

Nevertheless, with news of the latest infection, the case for murder is being argued again -- largely because there is no other plausible way to explain what happened, and growing disbelief that a dentist could have accidentally infected so many people.

The American Dental Association has not formally considered the question since there is no evidence against Dr. Acer, said its director, Dr. John S. Zapp.

But Dr. Harold W. Jaffe, an epidemiologist who headed the team that investigated the case for the Federal Centers for Disease Control, says people asking him about the case now often assume it was murder.

"You present the negative evidence," he said, "and people just shrug and say, 'That is not really evidence -- all you are really saying is you haven't found out how he could have done it.' "

He notes that the C.D.C. isn't a police agency and that Florida prosecutors have twice declined to open a criminal investigation. The Case for Calling It Murder

One dentist who believes Dr. Acer murdered his patients, and who discussed the case with colleagues at a recent meeting, is Dr. Stanley N. Turetzky, who practices in Hicksville, N.Y. "How else could it happen except by some deliberate method?" he asked in an interview. "Everybody seems to think that, but no one has proof."

A possible motive was suggested by Edward Parsons, a nurse who was a friend of Dr. Acer. He told The Palm Beach Post last year that Dr. Acer had said to him in 1988 that mainstream America was ignoring AIDS because it affected mostly homosexuals like himself, hemophiliacs and drug addicts. "When it starts affecting grandmothers and younger people, then you'll see something done," Mr. Parsons said Dr. Acer told him.

Dr. Acer knew he was infected as early as 1986. The six patients, all of whom were probably infected by mid-1988, include four women and two men ranging in age from about 15 to about 65.

There are several ways he might have infected them, accidentally or deliberately.

The initial assumption was that his equipment had blood on it, passing the virus from him to patients or from patient to patient. But the investigating team virtually ruled that out.

All the strains of the virus are the same as his.

No pattern in the dates of appointments is apparent; as far as can be told from Dr. Acer's records, no more than two of the infected patients were ever in his office on the same day. When they were, it seemed unlikely the same instruments would have been used on them.

Investigators said Dr. Acer did not always sterilize his equipment but that he was no more sloppy than other dentists in the area.

A second theory is that he accidentally cut his own finger while working and bled into his patients' mouths, or jabbed himself with a hypodermic without noticing it and injected his blood along with the anesthetic.

But that explanation has been weakened by the latest case; the teen-ager only had fillings done, something unlikely to cut a dentist's fingers. The others had extractions, crown placement or other invasive work.

Many AIDS patients suffer nerve damage in their fingers; but Dr. Acer's medical records do not show that he had.

Moreover, no infected patient or office worker recalled Dr. Acer hurting himself that way, and no one suggested that he suffered AIDS-induced dementia that would have led him to ignore injuries.

"It seems very unlikely that these patients could have been infected simply by having a drop of Dr. Acer's blood falling into their mouths," Dr. Jaffe said.

Transmission through sex or rape was ruled out -- his infected patients denied having sex with him and none were under general anesthesia.

Another possibility is that Dr. Acer used instruments on himself, say at lunchtime, then did not sterilize them. No staff member reported seeing him do so -- and the idea seems a little far-fetched. It's not easy to do dental work on oneself.

If Dr. Acer did it deliberately, he has outwitted his investigators. They cannot figure out how.

Almost certainly, he would have had to inject patients with his own blood. The Case Against

His staff said he used a fresh vial of clear-colored lidocaine -- a local anesthetic injected in the gums -- for each patient. No one noticed a reddish tinge to it. No one noticed any second hypodermics that might have contained blood or other infectious fluids. His staff said nothing in his behavior made them suspicious.

And even if he did inject blood, epidemiologists are baffled by his success rate. Health-care workers have been infected by accidental needle sticks while treating AIDS patients -- but studies have shown that only about one stick in 300 transmits the infection.

Anecdotes have been cited of some AIDS victims who were so furious at having contracted the disease that they seduced other people and then taunted that that they'd passed on the infection. But no one suggested that Dr. Acer harbored such anger. He kept his homosexuality largely secret, but that may not be surprising in a city of under 10,000 people.

And Dr. Acer's friends and colleagues said he was -- as he described himself -- a gentle man, and they could not believe he would have knowingly infected patients.

He cooperated with investigators, giving them a blood sample when asked, knowing that new molecular tests would show whether his patients had the same H.I.V. strain he did.

Some have suggested that his strain was unusually virulent or that his blood unusually full of the virus. But virulence can't be tested in fatal human infections, and tests for virus concentrations weren't performed.

In a way, the Acer case was a long time coming.

Infectious disease experts had predicted that a health worker would someday give AIDS to a patient, because it has happened with hepatitis B, a liver-damaging virus spread, like AIDS, through blood or semen.

But no one expected the example to be such an anomaly -- one dentist with six cases versus 57 professionals with no cases.

And yet, none of the doctors who have lobbied legislators and officials to stop them from restricting H.I.V.-infected workers have suggested during testimony or from convention podiums that Dr. Acer could be a murderer and should not be used as a standard to judge others by. Although "deliberate infection" was sometimes on the lists scientists drew up at meetings, it was swiftly discarded, and no expert interviewed could recall a discussion that focused on murder.

The National AIDS Commission never held a session to discuss deliberate infection. Its co-chairman, Dr. David E. Rogers, who is a critic of attempts to restrict the practice of H.I.V.-infected health workers, said he now believes the omission was a serious mistake.

"It is so unthinkable to view another health professional as doing something dastardly that I guess I shied away from it," Dr. Rogers said. "But it certainly should have been on the table. It is a perfectly logical reason for not promulgating those Draconian solutions."

Lyndon Johnson Sometimes Did the Right Thing

This is very interesting - I had never before seen this prior to right now.

This is an excellent example of Lyndon Johnson actually doing something right and, at a key moment refusing to be handled. Contrary to popular myth.

LBJ's brief initial statement at Andrews is rightly deemed to be completely forgettable - what I find extremely interesting and frankly rather surprising is that he has clearly personally amended the prepared remarks the staff, and done so in such a way as to completely excise the entire Cold War dimension and all hints of nationalism from the words so as to correctly characterise the day's events as a global tragedy rather than merely an American loss.

Which was absolutely the right thing to do.

Mind you, he was also trying to avert a global thermonuclear war from breaking out;

Afghanistan

The Brezezinski Doctrine

INTERVIEW WITH INTERVIEW WITH DR ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI-(13/6/97)

(Preliminary talk)

INTERVIEWER: Thank you very much for being willing to do an interview. I'll start by asking about arms control: what were the Administration's arms control objectives when they came into office?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: It was essentially to limit, first of all, the arms race, and then, if possible, to scale it down. I remember vividly how committed the newly elected President was to the idea of a significant cut in the nuclear weapons on both sides. That was kind of a central goal of his.

INT: How were these ambitions received by the Soviets?

ZB: Hah, with some ambiguity. They, I suspect in retros...

INT: Can you say "the Soviets" in your answer, because you'll never hear my question?

ZB: All right. And the Soviets received these proposals with some ambiguity and indeed suspicion. I suspect myself that they felt that Carter was not sincere, that he was merely trying to put them on the defensive, and that he was trying to back out of the earlier Vladivostok agreement that had been concluded between President Ford and Mr. Brezhnev. This, incidentally, was not Carter's inten(tion) - he really was very sincere; if anything, he was over-ambitious.

INT: Can you describe Brezhnev's response to the proposals, the letter that he sent in February of 1977, what your own reaction was to that?

ZB: I thought Brezhnev's letter was excessively negative, close to hostile, somewhat patronizing.

INT: The next thing I want to ask you about is SS-20s, and how much of a threat to the security of Europe was the Soviet deployment of SS-20s.

ZB: The Soviet deployment of the SS-20s worried the Europeans - frankly, initially more than us. I remember being somewhat startled when Chancellor Schmidt started making a big issue out of the SS-20s, but then I came to realize that in a sense he was right: namely that the SS-20, while perhaps not a decisive military weapon, posed the risk of de-coupling Europe's security from America's; namely, of posing before us the dilemma that maybe Europe was threatened by nuclear devastation, but that we were not, and therefore, should we risk the devastation of our own people and our own cities in order to protect Europe? That was the element of potential de-coupling involved in the Soviet deployment, and in that sense it posed a serious challenge to NATO, to which we had to respond, and to which we did respond.

INT: How?

ZB: By deploying the Pershings and the ground-launch cruise missiles, which put the Soviets very much on the defensive, and the Pershings particularly gave us the capacity to devastate the Soviet command and control centers in the very first few minutes of any conflict.

INT: What was your response to Chancellor Schmidt when he accused the Americans of not taking sufficient account of the Europeans' fears?

ZB: I think it's an exaggeration to say he accused us. I think he posed the dilemma, the possibility of a de-coupling of American and European security. And as I said earlier, after initially thinking that perhaps this was not a real issue, we came to the conclusion that indeed it was and that we should respond to it seriously. So we did. The President sent me to Europe; I talked to Chancellor Schmidt at length, and we came up with a formula: namely, that we would deploy the Pershings, which were theatre missiles, shorter range but very fast, very accurate, and the ground-launch cruise missiles - slower, but extraordinarily accurate: we could put one right through a window in the Kremlin, and if it had a nuclear tip on it, it would make a bit of a bang.

(Request in b/g re: next question)

INT: Yes. Could you reflect on the dual-track policy of NATO for us?

ZB: Well, essentially our position was that if the Russians want to discuss it, we will discuss; if not, we'll deploy.

INT: The neutron bomb - why did President Carter decide to cancel the project of the neutron bomb?

ZB: The President decided to cancel the neutron bomb, I think for two reasons, though one was emphasized. First, there wasn't sufficient support in Europe for it, and there was a great deal of reluctance in Europe to it. But secondly, I think the President personally found it morally abhorrent.

INT: SALT II - there was a lot of opposition to SALT II. Can you explain why opposition built up to SALT II?

ZB: The opposition in the United States to SALT II was the result both of serious concerns over some of the technicalities, specifics of the agreement - it was a very complicated agreement - and therefore some feeling that perhaps we weren't getting as good a bargain as we should; and maybe also of a more pervasive suspicion within some quarters that President Carter wasn't tough enough with the Russians. So these two things kind of coalesced and built up a degree of opposition to SALT II that shouldn't have been there. Now, in addition to that, before too long there was a third factor at play: namely, the Soviets started acting in a way that made movement forward on SALT II very difficult, culminating eventually in the occupation, invasion of Afghanistan.

INT: That leads on to the Soviet expansionism. How far did you believe the Soviets were becoming an expansionist threat and were undermining American influence, really from '77 onwards?

ZB: The Soviets at that time were proclaiming over and over again that the scales of history were tipping in the favor of the Soviet Union: the Soviet Union would outstrip us in economic performance, the Soviet Union was getting a strategic edge, the Soviet Union was riding the crest of the so-called national liberation struggles. The Soviet Union was moving into Africa, it had a foothold in Latin America; it was using that foothold, and particularly Castro himself, to see if something couldn't be done on the mainland of [the] Southern hemisphere. So all of that made it quite essential, in my view, to demonstrably show that these analyses were false: that the scales of history were not tipping, that Soviet assertiveness will not pay, that we can compete effectively, eventually put the Soviets on the defensive, if necessary.

INT: What was your view, particularly in Africa...? I'm thinking of the arc of crisis and your response to that.

ZB: My view of Soviet activities in the arc of crisis in Africa, so to speak, was that it was incompatible with the notion of détente to which we were subscribing, to which we thought the Soviets had subscribed in the course of their negotiations with Presidents Nixon and Ford; that you can't have your cake and eat it too. And that if that's what they were going to be doing, then clearly we are entitled to play the same game, wherever we can, to their disadvantage. But then we'll not have détente: we'll have competition across the board. So there is a real choice: either détente across the board, or competition across the board, but not détente in some areas and competition in those areas in which we were vulnerable.

INT: Moving on to Poland, what support you could give to Solidarity from 1980 onwards?

ZB: We gave them a great deal of political support. We encouraged Solidarity as much as we could. We made it very clear as to where our sympathies are. We of course had certain instruments for reaching Poland, such as Radio Free Europe; we had a very comprehensive publication program; we had other means also of encouraging and supporting dissent. And when the critical moment came in December of 1980, when the Soviets were poised to intervene in Poland, we did everything we could to mobilize international opinion, to galvanize maximum international pressure on the Soviets, to convince the Soviets that we will not be passive. And by then we had some credibility, because the Soviets knew that already for a year we were doing something that we had never before been done in the entire history of the Cold War: we were actively and directly supporting the resistance movement in Afghanistan, the purpose of which was to fight the Soviet army. So the notion that we wouldn't be passive, I think had somcredibility by then.

INT: How important was the Iran hostage crisis to Carter's prestige?

ZB: I think it was devastating. I think the Iran hostage crisis was one of the two central regions for Carter's political defeat in 1980, the other reason being domestic inflation. Iran and inflation - both were politically devastating.

INT: The downfall of the Shah and the Iranian hostage crisis - how much did they influence Americans' reaction to Soviet policy in Afghanistan?

ZB: I think the crisis in Iran heightened our sense of vulnerability in so far as that part of the world is concerned. After all, Iran was one of the two pillars on which both stability and our political preeminence in the Persian Gulf rested. Once the Iranian pillar had collapsed, we were faced with the possibility that one way or another, before too long, we may have either a hostile Iran on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf facing us, or we might even have the Soviets there; and that possibility arose very sharply when the Soviets marched into Afghanistan. If they succeed in occupying it, Iran would be even more vulnerable to the Soviet Union, and in any case, the Persian Gulf would be accessible even to Soviet tactical air force from bases in Afghanistan. Therefore, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was viewed by us as of serious strategic consequence, irrespective of whatever may have been the Soviet motives for it. Our view was the objective consequences would be very serious, irrespective of what may or may not have been the subjective motives for the Soviet action.

INT: Before the actual invasion, how much do you think the exit of the Shah affected Soviet plans for that area of the world?

ZB: The collapse of the American position in Iran had to have a rather strikingly reinforcing impact on Soviet expectations. This was a major setback for the United States. There's no doubt that from the standpoint of the Soviet analysis of the situation, the collapse of the regime in Iran meant that the position of the United States north of the Persian Gulf was disintegrating.

INT: How did you interpret Soviet behavior in Afghanistan, such as the April revolution, the rise of... I mean, what did you think their long-term plans were, and what did you think should be done about it?

ZB: I told the President, about six months before the Soviets entered Afghanistan, that in my judgment I thought they would be going into Afghanistan. And I decided then, and I recommended to the President, that we shouldn't be passive.

INT: What happened?

ZB: We weren't passive.

INT: But at the time...

(Interruption)

INT: Right, describe your reaction when you heard that your suspicions had been fully justified: an invasion had happened.

ZB: We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again - for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.

INT: How united or divergent were the views in the Carter Administration, responding to the invasion of Afghanistan?

ZB: They were surprisingly uniform. That is to say, I remember that the State Department, which earlier had opposed taking a very tough stand on Afghanistan, and certainly didn't want us to be issuing any public warnings directed to the Soviet Union, came in with a long list of something like 26 or 28 proposed sanctions against Soviet Union, including the most severe ones that subsequently were adopted by the United States. So once the Soviets had acted, some of the hesitations and reticence regarding how we should respond to the Soviet challenge, dissipated almost instantly.

INT: But you managed to increase the powers of the National Security Council?

ZB: Well, I didn't increase the powers of the National Security Council, but obviously what the Soviets did confirmed what we were arguing for some time: namely, that if we don't draw the line clearly enough, we're going to get an escalation in Soviet misconduct, that simply acquiescence was not good enough. And in that sense, yes, I suppose one could say the political scales within the US Government were somewhat tipped in the favor of the NSC.

(B/g talk)

INT: How tough was President Carter's approach to the Cold War?

ZB: I think, on balance, it was much tougher than most people realize. Not only did he take some historic decisions which no other president had before - such as the decision to aid directly the Mujaheddin against the Soviet army - but he took a very tough position in December 1980, when the Soviet Union was poised to invade Poland. He took that decision, and it was a very tough decision, and we did all sorts of things to convince the Soviets that we wouldn't be passive. In addition to it, he took the decision to engage in a strategic relationship with the Chinese, and it was again directed at Soviet expansionism. But what is even less known is that even in the early years, when he was generally perceived as being soft and overly accommodationist, he took some very tough-minded decisions which were simply not known publicly. Robert Gates, the subsequently director of the CIA, and at that time a member of my staff, reveals in his book that as early as 1978, President Carter approved proposals prepared by my staff to undertake, for example, a comprehensive, covert action program designed to help the non-Russian nations in the Soviet Union pursue more actively their desire for independence - a program in effect to destabilize the Soviet Union. We called it, more delicately, a program for the "delegitimization of the Soviet Union". But that was a rather unusual decision. He took some others along these lines, too. So his public image to some extent was the product of his great emphasis on arms reductions and a desire to reach an agreement on that score with the Russians. But it didn't quite correspond to the reality, and it certainly didn't correspond even to the public reality in the second half of the Carter Administration.

INT: Could you summarize the reasons for the shift that seems apparent from the 1977 détente and co-operation, inordinate fear of communism, through to the Carter doctrine in 1980?

ZB: Well, that question was prepared before my answer to the previous question. (Laughs)

INT: Can you give me a summary?

IN BACKGROUND

The reasons for it.

ZB: I don't think there was a shift. As I said, I think even prior to the public realization that he was much tougher than most people had assumed, he was taking some decisions privately in the first two years of his presidency which were quite tough-minded. The reason he was perceived by a lot of people as not being tough enough, was rooted largely in his passion for arms control, for arms reductions, and that I think created an image that was somewhat one-dimensional and not entirely accurate.

INT: Well, following on that, how successful was Carter at laying the foundations for increased defense and security which the next administration inherited?

ZB: Any answer by me in that respect is inevitably self-serving. But I think you would find a good answer tothat question in the book written by the Republican head of the CIA, Robert Gates, who says that Carter deserves enormous credit in responding assertively, energetically and in an historically significant fashion, to the kind ochallenge that the Soviets -erroneously - thought they were ready to pose before us, when they assumed in the mid-Seventies that the scales of history were really tipping in their favor and they could now act assertively in keeping with that shift. It was our response in those years which provided the basis for what subsequently was done by Reagan, and this is what is being said by Robert Gates and not by me.

INTERVIEW WITH INTERVIEW WITH DR ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI-(13/6/97) 

Continue

INT: How did you interpret Soviet behavior in Afghanistan, such as the April revolution, the rise of... I mean, what did you think their long-term plans were, and what did you think should be done about it?

ZB: I told the President, about six months before the Soviets entered Afghanistan, that in my judgment I thought they would be going into Afghanistan. And I decided then, and I recommended to the President, that we shouldn't be passive.

INT: What happened?

ZB: We weren't passive.

INT: But at the time...

(Interruption)

INT: Right, describe your reaction when you heard that your suspicions had been fully justified: an invasion had happened.

ZB: We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again - for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.

INT: How united or divergent were the views in the Carter Administration, responding to the invasion of Afghanistan?

ZB: They were surprisingly uniform. That is to say, I remember that the State Department, which earlier had opposed taking a very tough stand on Afghanistan, and certainly didn't want us to be issuing any public warnings directed to the Soviet Union, came in with a long list of something like 26 or 28 proposed sanctions against Soviet Union, including the most severe ones that subsequently were adopted by the United States. So once the Soviets had acted, some of the hesitations and reticence regarding how we should respond to the Soviet challenge, dissipated almost instantly.

INT: But you managed to increase the powers of the National Security Council?

ZB: Well, I didn't increase the powers of the National Security Council, but obviously what the Soviets did confirmed what we were arguing for some time: namely, that if we don't draw the line clearly enough, we're going to get an escalation in Soviet misconduct, that simply acquiescence was not good enough. And in that sense, yes, I suppose one could say the political scales within the US Government were somewhat tipped in the favor of the NSC.

(B/g talk)

INT: How tough was President Carter's approach to the Cold War?

ZB: I think, on balance, it was much tougher than most people realize. Not only did he take some historic decisions which no other president had before - such as the decision to aid directly the Mujaheddin against the Soviet army - but he took a very tough position in December 1980, when the Soviet Union was poised to invade Poland. He took that decision, and it was a very tough decision, and we did all sorts of things to convince the Soviets that we wouldn't be passive. In addition to it, he took the decision to engage in a strategic relationship with the Chinese, and it was again directed at Soviet expansionism. But what is even less known is that even in the early years, when he was generally perceived as being soft and overly accommodationist, he took some very tough-minded decisions which were simply not known publicly. Robert Gates, the subsequently director of the CIA, and at that time a member of my staff, reveals in his book that as early as 1978, President Carter approved proposals prepared by my staff to undertake, for example, a comprehensive, covert action program designed to help the non-Russian nations in the Soviet Union pursue more actively their desire for independence - a program in effect to destabilize the Soviet Union. We called it, more delicately, a program for the "delegitimization of the Soviet Union". But that was a rather unusual decision. He took some others along these lines, too. So his public image to some extent was the product of his great emphasis on arms reductions and a desire to reach an agreement on that score with the Russians. But it didn't quite correspond to the reality, and it certainly didn't correspond even to the public reality in the second half of the Carter Administration.

INT: Could you summarize the reasons for the shift that seems apparent from the 1977 détente and co-operation, inordinate fear of communism, through to the Carter doctrine in 1980?

ZB: Well, that question was prepared before my answer to the previous question. (Laughs)

INT: Can you give me a summary?

IN BACKGROUND

The reasons for it.

ZB: I don't think there was a shift. As I said, I think even prior to the public realization that he was much tougher than most people had assumed, he was taking some decisions privately in the first two years of his presidency which were quite tough-minded. The reason he was perceived by a lot of people as not being tough enough, was rooted largely in his passion for arms control, for arms reductions, and that I think created an image that was somewhat one-dimensional and not entirely accurate.

INT: Well, following on that, how successful was Carter at laying the foundations for increased defense and security which the next administration inherited?

ZB: Any answer by me in that respect is inevitably self-serving. But I think you would find a good answer tothat question in the book written by the Republican head of the CIA, Robert Gates, who says that Carter deserves enormous credit in responding assertively, energetically and in an historically significant fashion, to the kind ochallenge that the Soviets -erroneously - thought they were ready to pose before us, when they assumed in the mid-Seventies that the scales of history were really tipping in their favor and they could now act assertively in keeping with that shift. It was our response in those years which provided the basis for what subsequently was done by Reagan, and this is what is being said by Robert Gates and not by me.

INT: But in your own book, you do stress that Carter laid good foundations for strengthening ...

ZB: Well, as I think is evident from my answer, I don't disagree with Robert Gates, but I think...

INT: Tell me (Overlap) from your own point of view...

ZB: ... but I think Robert Gates may be a better judge and more dispassionate judge of that than I, because obviously I would be accused of engaging in a self-serving diagnosis.

INT: OK.

(Request in b/g re: next question)

INT: Why was the Horn of Africa so important to America?

ZB: The Horn of Africa was not important to America as of itself, but it was important as a measure and a test of how the Soviets were interpreting détente; and it seemed to us, given the strategic location of the Horn of Africa, that the Soviets were engaged in activities which they should know would be a sensitive concern to us. And if they were, notwithstanding that, doing precisely that, then obviously they were exploiting détente to try to attain some significant geopolitical gains, and that we simply could not tolerate.

INT: Did America underreact to start with to the activities of the Soviets in Africa?

ZB: Absolutely, I think we underreacted, and that's why they gradually escalated, and eventually, as I have said earlier, SALT was buried in the sands of Ogaden, the sands that divide Somalia from Ethiopia, and eventually led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which then precipitated a very strong, overtly so, American response. I would have preferred us to draw the line sooner, and perhaps some of the things that subsequently happened wouldn't have happened.

INT: Just to follow on to that, is how events in Afghanistan affected the US relationship with Pakistan.

ZB: There was a certain coolness and distance in the American-Pakistan relationship prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After that invasion, we collaborated very closely. And I have to pay tribute to the guts of the Pakistanis: they acted with remarkable courage, and they just weren't intimidated and they did things which one would have thought a vulnerable country might not have the courage to undertake. We, I am pleased to say, supported them very actively and they had our backing, but they were there, they were the ones who were endangered, not we.

INT: Reflecting on that whole situation in Afghanistan, do you think it was worth all the suffering that was involved?

ZB: I think the Soviets made a tragic mistake, and therefore it wasn't worth their while to go in. I think it would have been a tragedy if we had allowed them to overrun the Afghans.

INT: Well, I would like to ask about détente. ... By 1980, the principle of détente was dead. Can you explain why détente died, how it died, and for what reasons?

ZB: Détente of the kind that existed in the mid-Seventies was really undermined by the Soviets, who thought that they could have détente and a fundamental shift in the balance of power at the same time. Instead of accepting détente as a relationship designed to stabilize the relationship between the two major countries, they viewed détente essentially as an umbrella under which a fundamental shift in the correlationship of power could be effected, and they thought they could do so both on the strategic level and on the geopolitical level, via their activities in the Third World. This is what contributed to the collapse of détente. I fail to see how anyone can argue that it was up to us to maintain détente at a time when the Soviets were very reluctant to accept any reductions in strategic arms, and felt themselves free to engage in military activities in the Third World, ranging from Africa through to Central America, and eventually culminating in Afghanistan. That is not the definition of détente in my book.

INT: The Vance mission in March 1977 - was that a turning point in any way on that route that you've just been describing?

ZB: The Vance mission in 1977, the March mission to the Soviet Union in order to conclude an arms control agreement, was a big disappointment to us, and it's not well understood, because most people assume that Vance went to Moscow all of a sudden confronting the Russians with a proposal for deep cuts in the strategic arms relationship, and that the Russians, annoyed by this sudden development, turned him down. The fact of the matter is, he went there with that proposal, but also with another one: namely, "If you're not prepared to have deep cuts, then let's have essentially the kind of deeps cuts - but less deep, much less deep - that were agreed to in Vladivostok," with two issues yet to be resolved, which in our view had not been resolved: the question of the cruise missiles and of the long-range new Soviet bomber called the Backfire, and these two issues we had to resolve. And the Russians took the position: "We don't accept deep cuts, but we also don't accept your fall-back position, unless you accept our definition of what the agreement ought to be regarding the cruise missiles and the Backfire." And of course, we couldn't do that, because that would have placed in jeopardy our own strategic position, and I doubt very much that Congress would have approved any such agreement. So the Russians adopted a very intransigent attitude, and that was a disappointment to those who thought that perhaps we could start a new administration, the Carter Administration, with some wide-ranging agreement with the Russians. It became clear that this would be much more difficult, and that in fact perhaps the Russians have a very one-sided, distorted, self-serving definition of what détente really ought to be.

INT: One side only.

(A bit of discussion)

INT: Why did President Carter take up the issue of human rights, especially on the Soviet Union, and what effect did this have on Soviet-American relations?

ZB: The President should really speak for himself on that, but President Carter, in my view, was deeply committed to human rights as a matter of principle, as a matter of moral conviction, and he was committed to human rights across the board. I mean, he felt very strongly about human rights in Argentina, as well as in the Soviet Union. I was deeply committed to human rights; I felt this was important, but I will not hide the fact that I also thought that there was some instrumental utility in our pursuit of human rights vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, because at the time the Soviet Union was putting us ideologically on the defensive. They saw themselves as representing the progressive forces of mankind, marching toward some ideologically defined future; and raising the issue of human rights pointed to one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Soviet system: namely, that it was a system based on oppression, on mass terror, on extraordinary killings of one's own people. Focusing on human rights was in a way focusing on a major Soviet vulnerability. So, while I was committed to human rights - and I am committed to human rights - I do not deny that in pushing it vis-à-vis the Soviets, I saw in this also an opportunity to put them ideologically on the defensive at a time when they saw themselves rightfully on the offensive.

INT: Thank you very much.

(End)

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

* There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version.

The above has been translated from the French by Bill Blum author of the indispensible, “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” and “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” Portions of the books can be read at: <http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm>

Trouble Brewing.

Pity the Liberals - by Mort Sahl

"The road to fascism is paved with liberal bricks. While our job is to give the young people time enough to become radicals, the job of the liberals is to castrate them before they can get to the radical side, before they can save America." 

—Mort Sahl

I Stand with Russia

"No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. 

Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored."

Vladimir Putin,

September 11th 2013,

New York Times.

Solidarity with Russia - We have a Common Enemy!

A Plea for Caution From Russia

What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria

By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN

Published: September 11, 2013

MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.

From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.

No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.

The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.

We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.

I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.

If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Vladimir V. Putin is the President of Russia.

Hands off Russia.

Hands off Russia.

Hands off Russia.

Hands off Russia.

Hands off Russia.

Hands off Russia.

Hands off Russia.

Hamdeen Sabahi - Nasserite

"I appreciate the American people and we are very keen to hold serious talks with them based on equality, not subordination ... 

Our approach towards western governments and administrations will differ according to our interests under an Egyptian foreign policy that will revive Egypt and raise its international status."