Please help us find our cat.  “R” who loves Scott (our cat) as much or more than I do has this to say to whoever now has Scott: “Persians are especially prone to kidney disease.”  Also, their “inbred facial type, called `ultra face’ means their tear ducts get blocked easily and you have to clean their eyes nightly.”  You also have to understand, please, that Scott and cats like him “like serentity and stability and don’t like to climb or jump high.”

If you have Scott, please, we just want to make sure he is all right, and also, that he gets his special dish, with two hand painted goldfish on the side, one of whom is named Gaba. We know he would want it.

Also:  Martha Stewart is largely responsible for Scott having gone missing.  More on that later.  First, the inside trading, now this….  Shame on you Martha Stewart.  For now on, we go to the Pottery Barn.  Maybe even Ikea.

 More information and pictures about Scott to follow.  We love you.  We miss you, wherever you are.

If you have any information about Scott, please leave a comment below, at my Facebook page, or email me at murraywaas@gmail.com

There have so far been only 311 views of this on Youtube.  I doubt that number will go somewhat higher (I’ll be sending four or five readers their way…..)

From John M. Broder’s obituary in the NYT:

He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.

In an appointment that senior Justice Department officials say demonstrates the Obama administration’s commitment that the Department will reverse the Bush administration’s politicization of the Department, a U.S. attorney fired by President Bush was reappointed to his old job on Friday.

Danile Bogden,  who was fired in the fall of 2006 by the Bush administration from his position as U.S. attorney in Nevada,  was offered his old job back by the Obama administration, and  was formally nominated by President Obama for the position on Friday. 

Bogden’s confirmation by the Senate is all but assured:  He has spent his entire adult life in government service, and as a former U.S. attorney was confirmed by the Senate before.  He was also thoroughly vetted for his new position by the White House Counsel’s office prior to his most recent nomination even though he was vetted during his first appointment as U.S. attorney by the Bush administration.  Moreover, he has the backing of his two homestate Senators, Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a Republican.  That Reid is a Senate Majority Leader, and Reid personally suggested to the President that Bogden get his old job back probably won’t hurt matters.

Ironically, Bogden’s formal reappointment as U.S. attorney comes exactly one day after former Bush political adviser Karl Rove gave sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the firings of Bogden and eight other U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration.  A federal grand jury is currently investigating whether Bush administration officials and members of Congress obstructed justice in pressing for one or more of the firings, and also, whether they misled Congress as to why the prosecutors were fired.

Bogden’s firing in the fall of 2006 is referred to by many in the Justice Department as the firing that came about as a result of some sort of Immaculate conception:  For two years, the Justice Department’s two watchdog agencies, its Inspector General and Office of Responsibility, sepnt 18 months investigating the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys.  When it came to Bogden, however, the investigators were not only unable to determine why he was fired, but even who ordered his firing.  Every single Justice Department official and Bush administration official, disclaimed responsibility.

As I wrote in this dispatch for the Atlantic last April:

Dan Bogden, who served as the United States attorney from Nevada until he was abruptly dismissed from his job during the infamous wave of firings of U.S. attorneys in late 2006, hoped to someday learn why he was let go. By most accounts, Bogden had served his community and the Department of Justice with distinction: former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who had once directly supervised Bogden, would later testify before Congress that Bogden was one of his best prosecutors, and that he could not understand why anyone would want to fire him.

But more than two years later, Bogden still has no official explanation as to why he was fired, or even who made the decision.

Two Justice Department watchdog units, the Office of Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, studied the matter. For 17 months, from March 2007 to September 2008, lawyers there investigated the firings of nine U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration. Last September, they released a 358-page report detailing their findings… The final DOJ report contained enough information that most of the fired prosecutors were able to learn key details about why they were dismissed and who was responsible.

Dan Bogden got no such closure. An entire chapter of the report was devoted to his firing, but it concluded only that investigators “could not determine who was responsible for Bogden’s name being placed on the U.S. Attorney removal list.” His firing, if the accounts of senior DOJ officials responsible for terminating him are to be believed, was one of Immaculate Conception.

At the time of the firings, Alberto Gonzalez was attorney general. His chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, was in charge of compiling the list of names of U.S. attorneys to be fired – allegedly for poor performance (though those involved later admitted the firings were in fact made for political reasons). In interviews with investigators, according to the Justice Department report, Sampson “acknowledged that he must have physically placed Bogden’s name on the list.” But Sampson “denied that he made the decision to add Bogden to the list,” and asserted that “he did not remember who made the recommendation.”

Deputy attorney general Paul McNulty, who was the second highest-ranking official in the Department at the time, told investigators that he too “did not know why Bogden’s name was on the list of U.S. Attorneys to be removed.”

And Gonzales himself, who resigned in disgrace in large part over his role in the firings, denied to investigators that he had even wanted Bogden fired. Gonzales told federal investigators that he “did not have an independent basis for understanding why Bogden was to be removed.”

At least a half dozen lesser ranking Justice Department officials involved in the firings also were questioned, but they too said they had not recommended Bogden be fired, nor did they know why he made the list.

Karl Rove had previously refused to cooperate with the investigations by the Justice Department’s Inspector General and the OPR.  Rove’s deposition, taken Thurdsay by the House Judiciary Committee, will most probably shed little new light as to why Bogden was firing.  No evidence has previously surfaced that Rove was personally involved in Bogden’s firing, although he had played a role in the dismissal of other prosecutors.  Rove’s deposition will likely be made public later this month.

In reappointing Bogden, Justice Department officials believed they were not only putting an exceptional prosecutor back on the job, but that they were demonstrating to the public that they were committing to reversing the politicization of the Department by the Bush administration. 

At the Huffington Post,  Sam Stein got it about right when he wrote:  “That [Bogden] would be reinstated by a Democratic administration to the position he lost is undoubtedly meant to be a message from the Obama White House that they are elevating law above politics, or at least removing partisanship from the Department of Justice.”

More on Bogden’s reappointment from the New York Times.

Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Sun should have  more than a little egg on its face for writing Thursday– only one day before President Obama formally nominated Bogden to be U.S. attorney, that:

Four months after Sen. Harry Reid recommended bringing back a former Bush appointee as U.S. attorney for Nevada, the Obama administration is still vetting Daniel Bogden.

Jon Summers, a spokesman for Reid, maintains that the Democratic Senate majority leader has not had any second thoughts about Bogden.

But federal prosecutors and politically connected attorneys in Las Vegas who do not support Bogden say the lack of White House action is fueling speculation that Reid’s recommendation has run into trouble.

Since May, the White House has forwarded the names of 13 of the 93 potential U.S. attorney nominees to the U.S. Senate for confirmation. Bogden, one of the earlier recommendations, conspicuously has failed to make the list.

“There’s nothing in his background that would cause any issues,” a lawyer with Beltway ties said. “You would think that someone who already has been cleared for the job and who is from the majority leader’s home state would be easy to nominate, and that just hasn’t happened.”

A federal prosecutor added, “It’s obvious to everybody that something is afoot. Harry Reid is the most powerful person in Congress, and yet the name of his guy isn’t moving forward.”

The White House this week again declined to comment on the status of the recommendation.

If there was ever a news story that was so wrong, this one was.  But even if the reporter simply had sources steering him wrong, the writing and editing of the story contains too much surmise, innuendo, and supposition, for what should be published in a newspaper.  A reading of the article appears to indicate that the reporter’s sources were all people on the periphery of the action and had no real idea whether Bogden was going to renominated or not.  The paper should have made that clear to its readers– or better yet, not have written a story in the first place based on such since (and ultimately wrong) sources.

The same article goes on to say: “Bogden, who did not return phone calls from the Sun, has been criticized for his lack of leadership skills and outreach to the community.”  Quite an allegation, but there is little if any sourcing in the rest of the article to substantiate those charges.

In terms of disclosure, while writing a profile of Bogden, I spoke to a broad range of people– Justice Department officials,  assistant U.S. attorneys who had worked for Bogden, his fellow U.S. attorneys, other law enforcement officials, and defense counsel in Nevada– and a small number of people voice some of the same complaints that the Las Vegas Sun has given voice to.  But the complaints were a small majority, and after reviewing specifics of their complaints, the facts often showed something otherwise.  

Extraordinarily, the same story also did not quote a single person who had anything positive to say about Bogden.  Is it because the newspaper could not find anybody to say anything nice about Bogden?

In an earlier story taking aim at Bogden’s appointment, the Sun quoted some supporters of Bogden:

Following his firing, former Las Vegas FBI chief Ellen Knowlton said he was the finest U.S. attorney she had ever worked with in her 24 years with the FBI. And U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben described Bogden as a thorough and well-balanced prosecutor.

This week, Reno attorney Craig Denney, who worked as a prosecutor under Bogden, called him a “great boss” with the “highest integrity.”

One wonders why such people weren’t quoted more recently in the erroneous article suggesting that Bogden was not going to be named U.S. attorney.

Since Bogden’s nomination, the Las Vegas Sun continues to take shots at their former/soon to be U.S. attorney, writing this time:

President Barack Obama’s nomination of Daniel Bogden as U.S. attorney for Nevada was met Friday with initial disappointment from defense attorneys and prosecutors who had questioned his leadership abilities.

There was, however, hope that Bogden — a registered nonpartisan who headed the U.S. attorney’s office for more than five years under the Republican Bush administration — will be able to adapt to the policies of a more progressive Democratic White House.

“Many people within the U.S. attorney’s office do not see Bogden’s appointment as the type of ‘change you can believe in’ that Obama promised,” one prosecutor said. “But we’re hoping that Bogden has changed as a result of his experience under the Bush administration and will demonstrate a greater commitment to diversity in hiring and promoting within the office.”

During his previous tenure at the helm, Bogden also had developed a reputation of not being cordial with defense attorneys and the media.

But he loosened up after he was fired by the Bush administration with eight other U.S. attorneys in what some on Capitol Hill called a political purge.

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, had recommended Bogden, despite complaints from prominent Democrats who wanted Reid to promote someone within his own party for the plum assignment.

Bogden’s nomination is now about as close to a lock as it can be because it moves to the Senate, which Reid controls, for confirmation.

The nomination also is likely to hasten the departure of current U.S. Attorney Greg Brower, a Republican, who was appointed by the Bush administration last year to succeed Bogden.

The names of Brower and U.S. District Judge Brian Sandoval have been among those mentioned as possible Republican challengers to Reid in 2010.

This criticism, dressed up as straight news coverage,  is just all too strange, too– and for several reasons:

It is unclear exactly why Bogden was fired.  But at least seven of the nine U.S. attorneys purged by the Bush administration were fired because the Bush administration believed them to be out of step with the political and ideological agenda of the administration or the White House.  

Although the Justice Department’s report on the firings of the U.S. attorneys said it could not determine exactly why Bogden was fired, it presents evidence that he took a lot of heat from conservative allies of the Bush administration who said he was not aggressively enough prosecuting certain pornography cases.    

Goznales testified to the the Senate Judiciary Committee in April of 2007 that Bogden’s failue to press certain pornography cases as zealously as some in the Bush administration wanted was a central reason for Bogden’s firing: “There were concerns about the level of energy, generally, in a fast-growing district, concerns about his commitment to pursuing obscenity,” Gonzales said at the time.  (Bogden said he could do no more than follow the law and Gonzales later admitted to Justice Department investigators he did not really know why Bogden was fired, although he approved the firing.)

As for criticisms that Bogden might be ideologically out of step with an Obama administration, they are ironic in that his perceived ideological or political differences from some in the Bush administration might have lead to his firing.

U.S. attorneys, however, are charged with executing the law and prosecuting criminal, follow the law, and set aside politics.  That is what the Bush administration’s U.S. attorney scandal was all about in the first place.  There is absolutely reason to believe that anyone in the Obama administration wants their U.S. attorneys to toe some ideological or political line, as the story cited above asserts– quoting private attorneys and nobody in the Obama administration itself.  Presidents and Attorney Generals can set priorities for U.S. attorneys, but there is no reason to believe that Bogden, a government attorney his entire life, would not follow those. 

In the end, Dan Bogden will likely be the first U.S. attorney to be appointed and fired by the same President, only to be appointed U.S. attorney again by another President.  In that way, he will stand alone.

For updates on this story and others, friend me on Facebook. 

I have a new story this morning in the Hill:

In the fall of 2006, one day after the Justice Department granted permission to a U.S. attorney to place a wiretap on a Republican congressman suspected of corruption, existence of the investigation was leaked to the press — not only compromising the sensitive criminal probe but tipping the lawmaker off to the wiretap.

Career federal law enforcement officials who worked directly on a probe of former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) said they believe that word of the investigation was leaked by senior Bush administration political appointees in the Justice Department in an improper and perhaps illegal effort to affect the outcome of an election.

At the time of the leak, Renzi was locked in a razor-thin bid for reelection and unconfirmed reports of a criminal probe could have become politically damaging. The leaked stories — appearing 10 days before the election — falsely suggested that the investigation of Renzi was in its initial stages and unlikely to lead to criminal charges.

In fact, the investigation had been ongoing for some time and had already amassed enough evidence of alleged criminal misconduct to obtain approval from the highest levels of the Justice Department, including then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to seek an application from a federal judge to wiretap Renzi. In February 2008, a federal grand jury indicted Renzi on 36 felony counts of money laundering, extortion, insurance fraud and various other alleged crimes.

But the disinformation leaked to media outlets in October 2006 had the desired effect: Renzi won reelection by the narrowest of margins.

In defending the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys and countering other allegations of the politicization of the Justice Department, Gonzales and other former senior Bush White House officials have emphatically claimed that no political corruption investigations were ever compromised in any way.

This previously unreported episode, however, directly contradicts that claim and constitutes the first evidence that a political-corruption investigation was stymied for political reasons during the Bush administration.

As part of an apparent damage-control effort to assist Renzi’s reelection bid, information was leaked on the same day to three major news organizations: The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Associated Press. The articles reported that although there was an ongoing probe of Renzi, it was only in an early stage, no evidence of serious wrongdoing had been uncovered, and it might end up being much ado about nothing.

Yet Gonzales had already approved a request by the then-U.S. attorney leading the investigation, Paul Charlton, to seek an application from a federal judge to wiretap Renzi’s telephone.

Charlton said that while he could not discuss the particulars of the Renzi case because the congressman is awaiting trial, he could comment generally: “Any time you have a wiretap up and the subject or the target becomes aware that there is an investigation, the value of the information you glean from that wiretap will almost certainly be greatly diminished.”

From the Sacramento Bee: 

On March 7, 2007, Army Spc. Trevor Hogue was inside his barracks in Baghdad, describing his morning on the battlefield.

“I saw things today that I think will mess me up for life,” Hogue typed to his mother, Donna, as she sat at her computer thousands of miles away from Iraq, in Granite Bay.

That day the young soldier, whose assignment included driving a Humvee through perhaps the most dangerous ZIP code on the globe, saw his sergeant blown to pieces. He saw the bodies of half of the men in his platoon torn apart. Heads were cut off and limbs severed. It happened 30 yards in front of him, and he had never been so afraid, he told his mom.

“My arms are around you,” Donna Hogue wrote. “You’ll be alright.”

But Hogue never really recovered. Last week, he committed suicide by hanging himself in the backyard of his childhood home. He was 24 years old.

According to the Army, soldiers are killing themselves at the highest rate in nearly three decades, surpassing the civilian suicide rate for the first time since the Vietnam War.

At least 128 U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year, a number that has risen four years in a row. The death toll could be even higher this year. Through April, 91 soldiers had committed suicide.

Hogue’s death, because it occurred after he was discharged, is not included in those statistics. But his friends and loved ones believe he was a casualty of war as much as any soldier on active duty.

“You think that they are safe when they get back home,” Donna Hogue said, tearfully reading printed messages that she and her son exchanged while he was at war. “They’re not. The reality of the things that they experienced continues to haunt them.”

After his 15-month tour in Iraq ended and he came home the following February, Hogue suffered bouts of depression. He slept too much and uncharacteristically lashed out at strangers. Loud noises disturbed him. Responsible and law-abiding in the past, he became somewhat reckless and was charged with a DUI.

Read the rest of the article here. 

 NPR: “Miracle at the Wall”: Worth both a read and a listen.

Somerville, Mass, (originally posted June 28, 2008)–

The rules are simple enough for the kids playing in the stickball tournament this morning in Kelly Park: There are to be three people to a team. There are four innings per game. Two outs per inning. You walk on three balls. You strike out on two strikes. The second strike can be a foul ball.

Any ground ball not stopped or caught is a single. If you hit the ball over the double court line without it being caught or stopped, you have hit a double. If you smack the ball hard off the fence, you have a triple. And if you hit the ball entirely over the fence, of course, you have hit a home run. If you hit a deep foul ball over the fence, it is unclear whether it is to be counted as a foul ball or home run. In that case, the final decision is left to the whim of a grown up or the good will of the opposing team.

If you are eleven years old, and get a chance to bat, there are traditions to maintain: You must wear an oversized Red Sox jersey with the name Papelbon on the back. (That is the Sox’s closer for those not literate in such things. In an earlier time your jersey would have had the name Garciappara on it.) You dramatically roll your head from side to side to get the hair out of the eyes. Then you check the stick to make sure you are hitting at the ball from the right end. (This is very important; however, you hope that nobody sees you doing this.) Then you dig hard into the pavement with your converse high tops, lean way way back on your heels, and then smack at the ball—eyes closed allowed—with all of your eleven year old might. Whether you hit the ball or not, all is right with the world.

You hope you hit the ball of course. But if you don’t, you still get to have your face painted, hang with the older kids, have a hot dog with anything you want it on it– and then if you are really, really lucky you get to sit on your big brother’s shoulder to watch the dedication of the square to an older boy in the neighborhood.

The corner of Cragie and Summer is to be renamed in dedication for another little boy who once played stick ball in this park. There are two honor guards, one of which will fire off live rounds, interrupting the morning quiet and send singing birds scattering. A representative of the mayor will say a few words.

This is the unveiling of the new street sign dedicating Spc. Nicholas Peters Square.

Nick served a tour of duty in Iraq and came home in one piece. He survived the war but not the peace. Stationed at Ft. Hood, in Texas, someone in a bar did not like the fact that he was wearing a Red Sox jersey, and killed him.

Days after his killing, his baseball coach would say: “I can still see a 6 year old Nick skating at the rink and at 8 years old hitting a baseball.” Nick’s little niece, her mother, Shanna, told me the morning of the stickball tournament, still sees Nick all the time. She declares to her mom: “Uncle is laughing at you!” One day while coloring, she nonchalantly orders: “Uncle! Color in the lines!”

Who is to tell her that she is wrong to believe that her uncle is still with her?

When Nick was buried in a flag draped coffin, he was not buried in his military uniform. He was proud of being a soldier, but did not want to be known or remembered only for being a soldier. It was duty and service for him. But he did not want to be singled out for it. When he was told that he could watch a New England Patriots game from the sidelines if he were to wear his uniform, he said he would much rather dress in his civilian clothes and watch from the stands, his sister Shanna told me.

He had told his family before he left for the war that he did not want to be buried in his military uniform but rather in his Red Sox jersey. Nobody gave it a second thought after his tour of duty was over. Who could have thought that he would be killed at home or for the way he was dressed?

The stickball tournament in not just in honor of Nick, but also his friend, David Martini, who played stickball and baseball and hockey with Nick, and who too has died too young. David was family to Nick’s family and vice versa. Shanna, Nick’s sister, wanted Nick’s day to be David’s too.

All together, four other boys who played stickball with Nicholas Peters in Kelly Park have died too young deaths—the result of senseless violence, suicide, or drug overdoses. Casualties of an invisible war at home like the one in Iraq that has also been disappearing from our media.

When I return home from Somerville to Washington D.C., I find out that my friend Brian has been shot on the street because apparently the two kids robbing him did not think he was willing to hand over his cell phone fast enough. Even though he is shot three times, he is alright—although with one less spleen.

Unable to sleep, I go online and watch over and over again Bobby Kennedy’s speech on the menace of violence in America which he gave on April 5, 1968: “The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old famous and unknown. They are most important of all human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one can be certain who suffer next from senseless act of violence. And yet it goes on and on and on…

“Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily… Whenever we tear a the fabric of he lives which some other man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children—whenever we do this—the nation is degraded.”

The next morning I have to go visit Brian in the hospital to see with my own eyes that Brian is all right. He smiles, banters with friends, nods off, and we are all reassured.

But what amazes everyone is that despite being shot three times, Brian ran quite an entire block and a half away to put some distance between him and the shooter before the police and EMTs could arrive. It makes no sense and perfect sense. He wanted to get to a safe place.

My thoughts return to that eleven year old kid playing in the stickball tournament. You want him to be safe. You think maybe you should have a heart to heart and tell him that when he gets older all that he has to do is not wear that Red Sox jersey certain places. If only it were that simple.

Below here is a video of Bobby Kennedy’s speech. Please watch and comment. And for more, here is a Huffington Post column.

 

 

 

This is from a column I originally wrote for the Huffington Post a couple of years ago:

On the evening of January 14, 1991, shortly after I had watched the U.S. Senate authorize war against Saddam Hussein for the first time, the Vietnam War Memorial, at other end of the mall, is nearly abandoned. It is a chilly day and there is a soft rain. But then the soft rain turns into a heavy rain; it becomes even colder, and dusk descends.

But Steve Carlson, a Marine who had fought in Vietnam, and a good friend, a fellow Marine who served with him, are standing quietly at the Wall. They are looking at the names of friends whom they served with and who died. Carlson’s friend, who works for the government and lives near the Capitol, comes here often. For Carlson, this is his first time.

It does not take them long to find the names of their two friends: Randy Campbell and Carl Wenzel. At the time, there were 58,130 names on the Wall. The names are in exact chronological order, depending on when the person died. Campbell and Wenzel died in the earliest days of the war. So their names are on the first stone. And because they died together, at the same time, the names of Randy Campbell and Carl Wenzel are right next to each other.

During the debate in the Senate, which I watched from the gallery, supporters of the war resolution talked of minimal casualties, a quick victory, and a “short war.”

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who won a Silver Star and Bronze Star in Vietnam, only to come home to oppose that war, implored his colleagues:

“There has been a lot of talk on this floor about treaties, resolutions, principles… and all the strategic reasons for going to war… But sometimes… in the words we lose sight of the personal stakes…

“Our VA hospitals are already full of several generations of veterans who carry or wear daily reminders of the costs of war… They cannot care for those already needing help. So, are we ready to spend the money on a new generation of patients?”

The Kerry addressing the Senate that day was a very different man from the one who a decade later would vote for a war resolution with Iraq for reasons of political expedience and his own presidential ambitions. But on this occasion, he was speaking from the heart.

Then Sen. Mark Hatfield, of Oregon, one of the few Republicans to vote against the war resolution, rose to address a near empty chamber: “We have all heard the President’s promise: `This will not be another Vietnam’…

“Even the words are neat and tidy–body bags are not body bags anymore. Now body bags are `human remains pouches’. There, America, does that make you feel better? Your sons and daughters and mothers and fathers will have their faces blown off–their limbs ripped open, but they will not come home in body bags. They will come home in neat and tidy human remains pouches.”

Hatfield once again pleaded to a near empty chamber that his fellow Senators not “avert your eyes.” But to no avail. The Senate and House voted authorizations of war.

A short time later, I am talking to Steve Carlson and his friend about the two friends they have lost:

“Randy Campbell was a kind of golden boy. He was smart. He was sort of the all-American boy except he wasn’t really American. He was a Canadian who joined the U.S. Marine Corps out of a sense of adventure.

“He was intelligent. He could outrun everyone. He could probably beat up everyone in the entire platoon…. He was real statuesque, blond hair, blue eyes.”

Carlson and his friend are unsure how old Randy Campbell was when he was killed. He might have been seventeen or eighteen. Some in their platoon believed that he fudged on his age when he enlisted.

Carl Wenzel was a “quiet guy, kind of an obedient guy,” by contrast. “He did what he was told. . . and that is why he died. He was told not to load his gun. We were under orders not to load our weapons until we were shot at. Carl got shot directly between his eyes before his weapon was loaded.”

About ten or twelve of them had been on patrol, on a reconnaissance mission, looking for Viet Cong. They were radioed by a spotter plane and told there was a high concentration of enemy in the area and instructed to go atop a nearby hill, to settle into a defensive position.

“Randy didn’t want to wait for them to come up the hill and get him. He didn’t have that type of personality. So he went down to set up some booby traps as an early warning system.”

Carlson, his friend, and other Marines they served with are unsure what happened next. That they don’t really know how and why their friends died still causes them considerable pain–even more than twenty years later.

Some of them believe that Randy Campbell may have accidentally detonated his own booby trap: “He was stringing the wire across the trail, kind of like tripwire. We think what he did was that he hooked it to the grenade pin first and then tried to string his wire and thought [the pin] came out and it did. He wasn’t sure and so he went back and grabbed the grenade and that’s when it went off.” Seeing the explosion, the Viet Cong commenced firing, killing Carl Wenzel as well.

But others there that day believe that the Viet Cong simply spotted Randy and opened up on him when he still had the grenade in his hand. And when he was hit, the grenade exploded.

“Whatever the case, the grenade went off that he was holding in his hand. And he was blown to pieces.

“He no longer had any body. His hands were gone. His arms were gone. His chest was gone. Part of his legs were gone. Still, it took him two full minutes to die.”

I have seen too much of this grief in my years of journalism, interviewing too many families who have lost loved ones under the worst of circumstances. I have spent time with the families of murder victims. I once had to interview in a short time more than a dozen families of mentally retarded wards of the District of Columbia who had died because of abuse and neglect. I spent time in Palm Beach, Florida, interviewing the families of loved ones who died of cancer because they received substandard medical care from a corrupt HMO–kept in business over the objections of federal regulators because the owner of the HMO bribed and bought influence to keep operating.

But if there is one universal thing I have learned it is that the already unspeakable grief and pain are cruelly and exponentially compounded if there are unresolved issues as to how a loved one has died.

On this particular day, as Steve Carlson and his friend are telling me about the compounded grief they feel because they don’t know exactly how their friend died, Carlson’s companion tells me that for the looming Gulf War it will take a generation or longer before those who served or those of families who served and died know anything about how their nation came to this war, if they ever know.

“With Vietnam, you had the Pentagon Papers, but that was how many years into the war? What if we had known that stuff years earlier? The war would have ended earlier,” Carlson’s friend tells me.

Then he pledges: “I’ll support… the fighting men in [this] conflict. But if there was political manipulation to get us into this war… you will see me in the streets. You will see me at train stations. And at the military bases. I’m going to get clubbed. I’m going to resist.”

The year before, I had published a long investigative cover story for the Village Voice detailing how the covert foreign policies of Reagan and the first Bush administration had helped armed Saddam Hussein and brought us closer to war: “That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq is the most serious consequence of a foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American people,” I had written.

After listening to Carlson and his friend, I made a promise: I was going to write a series of articles about the government policies that had led the run-up to war. Those who served in the war and their families–and the families who had lost loved ones–wouldn’t have to wait a generation to learn the truth. I was going to write about the subject contemporaneously. And I was going to do it by obtaining the government’s own highly classified files and making them public.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized what a grandiose promise I had made and how improbable it was that I would be able to make good on it. But more confounding was why I was so intensely dedicated to this mission. I had no self-knowledge, and maybe I couldn’t afford to have any. And I had other things going on in my life:

At the time, most everyone around me believed I was dying of cancer.

In 1987, when I was diagnosed, one pathologist wrote in a report: “In my experience over 90 percent of patients with this variety of intestinal adenocarcinoma are dead by the end of two years.” This was the pathologist’s polite way of saying he saw no prospects of my surviving five years at all.

My attorneys were more blunt. In public court papers, they wrote that I faced a “terminal prognosis.”

Knowing that I had little chance of surviving, I filed a medical malpractice suit against George Washington University Hospital, and three doctors. My lawyers alleged that “as a result of the delay of the treatment and diagnosis of Mr. Waas’ cancer, his condition changed from a curable, precancerous condition, to an incurable stage C cancer.”

To put my prognosis and prospects in some perspective, I’ll recall an article by someone who lost a family member to cancer at the age of 42. The author noted that someone who dies at that age had their middle age at 21. If my original diagnosis proved correct. I would have lived out my middle age at 13 or 14.

Nobody expected me to be alive for the trial. And nobody had a reasonable expectation of us prevailing: Medical records turned over by the defense during the pre-trial stages appeared to exonerate those I accused.

Standing at the wall, I didn’t understand why I felt such a bond with two Vietnam Veterans, with whom I had a short, chance encounter, and whom I would never see again–or why I felt such affinity for their two fellow Marines who had been killed.

But like them, I knew that it was not good that there were unresolved questions when someone dies. I could see the pain that my family and friends were going through in anticipation of their loss. Unlike those who survived Randy Campbell and Carl Wenzel, I did not want people wondering what had happened to me twenty years later–although at the time I hardly knew this on a conscious level.

Through the litigation against the hospital, I would be able to learn the truth so there would be no loose ends regarding the medical negligence that was almost certain to take my life.

There was something else Carlson said to me that touched me, but once again I had no idea why, at least not then:

“Many veterans will never, never recover,” he told me, “You can see them down here all the time. They’re the walking wounded. For the rest of their lives, they’ve never fully integrated back into society. They never really came home.

“Some have post-traumatic stress disorders, they isolate themselves. They go through multiple relationships… They like to spend time with themselves in quiet dark places in their own bedrooms and close all the blinds in their apartments.

“They are what you call tree-line vets. You see them standing up near the trees. They won’t even come down to the wall. They’ll carry these emotional rocks in their haversacks until the day they die.”

Those words had a tremendous impact on me, and now I understand why. In those haunted vets, I was confronting a potential mirror of myself. Five years under a death sentence at a young age, followed by the aftermath of cancer, could have led me to place where I never returned home. Just as it was a miracle that I escaped death from cancer, so it was every bit a miracle that despite the psychological ravages and aftermath of the disease I had eluded a spiritual death.

After my conversation with the friends of Randy Campbell and Carl Wenzel, some extraordinary things happened in my life:

I did not die from cancer.

I was that one in a hundred, or that one in a thousand, or that one in ten thousand, or that one in the impossible.

Please don’t ask me. I just dunno.

As to the lawsuit against the hospital, once again there was an ending that no one could have expected: At trial we were able to demonstrate for the jury that some of the medical records at the core of the hospital’s defense were backdated, fabricated long after the lawsuit was filed.

One of the jurors later told me their deliberations went past the morning because they wanted the free lunch. The jury awarded $650,000 in damages. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals affirmed the jury’s verdict two years later, in 1994. The appeals court decision expanded patients’ rights.

And also in 1992, the fifth year out since my diagnosis of cancer, and the same year that I won my legal case, I was, along with Douglas Frantz, who is currently the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of Harvard University’s Kennedy School’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.

We had written more than a hundred stories about the covert foreign policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations that led to the first Gulf War with Iraq. The stories were based on thousands of pages of classified documents–from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, and even the National Security Council. It was considered the largest and most significant leak of classified government papers since the Pentagon Papers.

I had somehow kept a promise to two people I met at the Wall and would never see again.

Ironically, a decade later, I am virtually doing the same work:

The United States has gone to war a second time with Iraq. And it is now my job to write about whether intelligence was misused to take the nation to war, and if so, who was responsible. It’s my job to attempt to explain for American servicemen and their families how they have come to be placed in harm’s way. It’s the best job in the world. And if the media critics are right–people like Dan Froomkin, Howard Kurtz, Jay Rosen, and Jane Hamsher–I am doing just fine in covering the story.

And being able to write about how the U.S. went to war a second time has allowed me to reacquaint myself with some old friends.

While I was writing about the origins of the first Gulf War, it was a ritual, at least every other week, to sit at dusk, or dawn, with no one else around at the Vietnam War Memorial. Near the stone with the names of Randy Campbell and Carl Wenzel.

Now, covering the origins of the second war with Iraq, I have gone back to my ritual. One reason is that I simply feel fortunate. I survived cancer. I am not a name on a Wall or on a quilt.

One of the major problems with journalism today is that too many reporters care more about their constituencies, rather than their readers or their mission. We write for our peers and prize committees. We serve at the pleasure of corporate boards and stockholders. We are too often afraid to stray too far from the conventional wisdom.

If one were to catch a glimpse of me from some distance, at an early morning hour, at the Vietnam War Memorial, they would see someone sitting all by himself, alone. But I am hardly alone. And I am home. I am with my constituency.