shell game -saddam husein and the usa

IN THESE TIMES JANUARY 22,1395

R A Q C A T E

ihell game

How U.S.companiesstoked thebuildup of

SaddamHussein's war

machineand why

Americancitizens still

haven't heardthe full story.

By Peter Mantius.

n the cavernous sheet-metal warehouse thatserved as temporary bar-racks for 127 Americans inDhahran, Saudi Arabia,three soldiers had cornereda mouse. Army SpecialistVaughan Leer rolled off hisbunk anddelaying a visitto the outdoor latrinegroggily paused a momentto watch them make thecapture.

It was 8:42 p.m. on Feb-ruary 25, 1991, and Leerhad guard duty at midnight.

As he turned to go out-side to relieve himself, thebuilding suddenly fell into

absolute blackness, followed in an instant bya blinding blue flash. An Iraqi Scud missilehad pierced the thin metal roof and dropped20 feet to the floor before exploding. Theblast killed 28 soldiers and wounded 99 oth-ers from several units. For the United States,it was the most damaging incident in the Per-sian Gulf War.

Leer suffered perforated eardrums andshrapnel wounds to his throat and left side.The missile decimated Leer's unit, the 14thQuartermaster Detachment from Greens-burg, Pa., 25 miles east of Pittsburgh. Of its69 members, 13 died and 43 were wounded.

Long after his physical wounds had healedand he'd left the Army to study environmen-tal engineering, Leer could not shake offmemories of the tragedy. His lingering trau-ma was aggravated by disclosures that Amer-ican companiesencouraged by the U.S.government and financed by a tiny Atlantabankwere among Iraq's most valued mili-tary suppliers just before the war.

In the years leading up to the Persian Gulf War, a For-tune 500 corporation based only a few miles from the14th Quartermaster's headquarters secretly sold the Iraqismachine-tool parts used to manufacture armaments. Butthat company, Kennametal Inc. of Latrobe, Pa., wasn'talone. Before the August 1990 Iraqi invasion, a host ofU.S. firms cashed in as suppliers to the Iraqi war machine.The flow of weapons to Saddam Hussein started in theearly 1980s, when the White House quietly began helpingIraq fight its war against fundamentalist Iran. While offi-cially neutral in that grisly struggle, the United Stateshanded Iraq top-secret satellite photos of Iranian trooppositions, suspended rules governing exports of highly sen-sitive military gear, placed $5 billion of taxpayer funds atrisk to support Iraqi food imports and overlooked an ille-gal banking scheme at the Banca Nazionale del Lavorooffice in Atlanta that sent additional billions directly intoSaddam Hussein's war chest.

The White House has run similar games beforeand

In the months before the 1992 election, President George Bush was dogged by allega-tions that both he and Ronald Reagan had secretly provided support to Iraq throughoutthe 1980sand right up to its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. That invasion triggered congres-sional investigations that dug deep into the covert V.S. tilt toward Iraq. But many reporterslost interest in Iraqgate just after the '92 election, when the Bush Justice Department com-pleted an internal probe clearing the two GOP administrations of any wrongdoing. Foryears, the Iraqgate charges languished in obscurity. And when the Clinton administrationreleased a report last January that declared its Republican predecessors clean, the storyeffectively disappeared from public view. But a new book by Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreporter Peter Mantius raises troubling questions about the thoroughness of both the Clin-ton and Bush probes. In Shell Game, Mantius provides the most complete account yet ofthe United States' off-the-books relationship with Saddam Hussein. The following excerptfrom Shell Game contains some of the book's most explosive findings.

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORGELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED


sinceoutside the purview of congressional and publicapproval, in bids to influence foreign tyrants and to profitfrom them. Secret dalliances with the likes of AnastasioSomoza in Nicaragua, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippinesand Manuel Noriega in Panama all display the same pat-tern: Public money is secretly channeled to fund a question-able foreign policy. The history of American involvementwith Iraq is a cautionary tale of how our executive branch,working hand in hand with private business, ran an "off-the-books" foreign policya policy that would never beapproved through public channels.

C hristopher Drogoul was Saddam's principal bankerin the West. He worked out of an obscure officetucked away on the 20th floor of a Peachtree Centertower in downtown Atlanta. His employer, Italy's hugeBanca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), was a far-flung bankthat had a history of sticking its tentacles into internation-al arms deals. BNL was owned almost exclusively by theItalian government. Drogoul was the bank's Atlantabranch manager.

When the Iraqis first approached the Atlanta banker inlate 1984, Drogoul eagerly agreed to make loans to helpthem import wheat, rice and other foodstuffs. At the time,Iraq was fighting for its very survival against neighboringIran. To the U.S. government, Iraq was clearly the lesser oftwo evils. Under the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran had radical-ized to the point where its government was completely anti-thetical to U.S. political and business interests. Iraq, by con-trast, though troublesome itself, gained official, albeit low-key, U.S. backing. Most of BNL-Atlanta's agricultural cred-its to Iraq were guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agri-culture. The arrangement seemed to please everybody. Iraqgot its food. BNL-Atlanta had a major customerone thatborrowed $1.9 billion. U.S. farmers had a lucrative newmarket. The U.S. and Italian governments were nourishingIran's bitter enemy.

In 1989, after the Iran-Iraq war had ended, the Bushadministration discreetly edged even closer to Saddam Hus-sein. The strategic need to create a military counterweight toIran had receded, but the commercial impulse to chase prof-it had taken its place. General Motors longed to sell Saddammore cars and trucks; Continental Grain and Cargill wantedto ship more wheat; Mobil wanted to buy more cheap oil.They weren't alone. The U.S.-Iraq Business Forum, a power-ful business lobby based in Bush's second home of Houston,sprang up to extol the benefits of trade with Saddam.

Although many companies began increasing their tradewith Iraq, BNL-Atlanta's dealings with Saddam Husseincame to a close in August 1989. By then, Drogoul had madea series of illegal loans to Iraq, and FBI agentstipped off toBNL's questionable lending by a bank employeeraided itsPeachtree Center offices. Intrigued by a Wall Street Journalstory about the BNL affair, Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D-TX),chairman of the House Banking Committee, directed a keenyoung staff investigator named Dennis Kane to check it out

in July 1990. If the probe seemed mundane at first, Iraq'sinvasion of Kuwait in early August of 1990 instantly madeit a top priority. The Bush administration's touchy responseto questions about BNL only further incited the 74-year-oldGonzalez. He scheduled a Banking Committee hearing onthe matter for October.

That plan drew immediate fire from Attorney GeneralRichard Thornburgh. "As you should be aware," Thorn-burgh wrote Gonzalez on September 26, "this is a sensitivecase with national security concerns. ... [A] decision toproceed with these interviews and the hearing at this timesignificantly diminishes the department's ability to success-fully prosecute this matter." Gonzalez snapped back thathe was distressed about Thornburgh's "apparent lack ofunderstanding of the investigative and legislative functionsof the Congress."

In early 1991, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Fed,refused to give Gonzalez a report by the Bank of Italy onBNL's Atlanta branch on the grounds that Italy consideredit "highly confidential." The Justice Department withheldthousands of BNL-related documents from Congress on thebasis of "grand jury secrecy rules." Everyone, it seemed, hada good reason why Congress shouldn't be informed.

Even so, Gonzalez and Kane managed to gather enoughdocumentation to establish the secret flow of credit, technol-ogy and even satellite intelligence data from the UnitedStates to Iraq before the war.

A s weeks passed, White House officials grew concerned.Gonzalez's persistence was disquieting. National Secu-rity Adviser Brent Scowcroft was being asked to turn overNational Security Directive 26, President Bush's secret orderfrom October 1989 that called for closer commercial rela-tions with Iraq. There were hundreds of other embarrassingpapers Gonzalez wanted to get his hands on. Even worse,other congressmen, including Charlie Rose (D-NC) and SamGejdenson (D-CT), both of whom chaired congressionalsubcommittees, were also beginning to demand documentson prewar dealings with Iraq. Bush administration lawyersswung into action.

On April 8, 1991, Nicholas Rostow, special adviser tothe president and chief legal counsel for the National Securi-ty Council (NSC), met with senior administration lawyers totalk about how to handle congressional requests. It was thefirst of at least eight such meetings Rostow either ran orattended over the next several weeks. Ostensibly, the pur-pose of the meetings was to coordinate the release of infor-mation, to set ground rules. But notes by those who attend-ed suggest that discussions sometimes turned to legal strate-gies for withholding information.

After analyzing hundreds of items, Gonzalez and Kanebecame convinced that many had been classified for reasonsthat had nothing to do with national security. The congress-man addressed the problem with characteristic aggressive-ness. When he came across an important nugget, he simplymentioned it in a floor speech, or even placed the sensitive


IN THESE TIMES-JANUARY 22,1998

document itself in the Congressional Record. The Bushadministration was furious. In May 1992, Thornburgh'ssuccessor, Attorney General William Barr, threatened tostop giving Gonzalez any more classified documents if hekept passing them on to the public. Gonzalez replied thateverything he placed in the record discussed "past policies,not ongoing policies or operations." He insisted that theRepublicans were raising a red herring. According to Gon-zalez, they were the real abusers of the classification systemwhen they used the "secret"stamp to hide politicallyembarrassing information.

As the battle over intelli-gence documents heated upin 1992, Gonzalez picked upan unlikely ally in the media.William Safire, the formerspeechwriter for RichardNixon and Spiro Agnew,used his column in the NewYork Times to present Gon-zalez's theories to a nationalaudience. "The Democratshave their election-yearWatergate," Safire pro-claimed on April 28, 1992."But only Henry Gonzalez ofSan Antonio understands it."Pretty soon, other Democratsbegan to check it out.

Safire later trained hisattention on the JusticeDepartment and AttorneyGeneral Barr, after Barr turned down a request by Congressfor a court-appointed independent counsel in the case. Safirewrote that Barr's explanation for his decision "will beExhibit A in a future prosecution of obstruction of justice."

In October, congressional Democrats again pressuredBarr to call for an independent counsel. This time, Gonza-lez was back with reinforcements, including Sen. DavidBoren (D-OK), chairman of the Select Committee on Intel-ligence. Barr was in a corner. With the presidential electiononly three weeks away, he didn't want to fan the flames ofthose charging cover-up. But Barr preferred to avoid lettinga three-judge panel pick an independent counsel. Heclaimed to be philosophically opposed to such investiga-tions. So on October 16, he chose his own man, retiredFederal Judge Frederick Lacey of New Jersey, to determinewhether it was appropriate for the court to appoint anindependent counsel.

Gonzalez and company didn't buy it. They felt Laceywouldn't be independent of the Justice Department, andcalled his appointment a stalling tactic. As long as Laceyinvestigated, Barr was relieved of pressure to ask a court tomake an appointment. The Democrats accused the Republi-cans of trying to run out the clock before the election. A few

days after Lacey launched his probe, the BNL case inAtlanta seemed to vanish from the headlines.

The week of the election, internal orders to round upwayward BNL documents within the Justice Departmentcame from two sources. The first originated with DeputyAttorney General George J. Terwilliger III. His memo todepartment heads on election day, November 3, 1992, saidhe was collecting papers at Judge Lacey's request. The otherrequest for sensitive internal documents came from a man

who had quit the departmentmore than a year earlierRichard Thornburgh.

When he resigned inAugust 1991, Thornburghcarted off 156 boxes of doc-uments said to be "personaland nonrecord" in nature.One year later, Thornburghrequested an additional 102boxes of papers and twoboxes of microfilm for hisprivate storage facility inPittsburgh. According to theGeneral Accounting Office,the September 1992 requestwas for original documentsin several of the department'smost sensitive cases.

Justice Departmentemployees decided that inmost cases Thornburghshould receive copies ratherthan the originals he'd

requested. But some originalsenough to fill an estimated11 boxeswere released in December 1992 and January1993. In the laborious copying process FBI and Justiceemployees gave up trying to screen all surrendered docu-ments for those marked "sensitive." The GAO later spot-checked what Thomburgh's staff had carried away. Amongother files, it found papers on Iran-Contra and Inslaw, theWashington computer firm that claimed the Reagan JusticeDepartment had stolen its proprietary software.

Nancy Wilson, custodian of Thornburgh's papers,acknowledged that BNL documents were included. "There'shardly anything on [BNL]," Wilson insisted. "Anything hewould have had would have been newspaper articles, notthe file of the case."

Lacey personally interviewed Thornburgh as part of hisBNL investigation. But his report did not mention the for-mer attorney general's highly unusual post-election docu-ment huntone that may have competed with Lacey's own.

Toward the end of his grueling seven-week project. Laceybecame exhausted. He skipped sleep the night of Tuesday,December 8 to finish his report for Barr. At his press confer-ence in Washington the following day, he was irritable,defensive and patronizing. "At this point," Lacey told the



assembled media, "I know more about this case than any-one else in the United States.

"I tell you this, and I will tell the Congress this: Manydecent people have had their careers tarnished and their rep-utations stained by being charged with being corrupt, beingpart of a 'cover-up.' These are baseless charges. And youhave been taken in by them."

Barr immediately seized on Lacey's recommendation andrejected for a second time the congressional request for acourt-appointed independent counsel. Lacey had produced atwo-part report. The first section, which was released to thepublic, concluded that federal prosecutors had performedadmirably. The second section dealt with intelligence mat-ters and wasn't released to anyone who didn't possess a"Top Secret: Codeword" clearance. That classification isreserved for secrets of grave national importance. (A heavilyredacted version of Part II was later declassified.)

When asked, Lacey said he hadn't explored whether theCIA knew about BNL-Atlanta's lending to Iraq before theFBI searched its offices in August 1989. Neither did he men-tion BNL's ongoing legal dispute with Lloyd's of London,which happened to be employing as its general counsel inthe United States Lacey's law firm, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby &MacRae. Lloyd's had insured BNL against losses of up to$5 million due to errors and omissions by officers of itsAtlanta branch in late 1988. When BNL submitted a claimafter the FBI raid, the British insurance giant refused to payon grounds that BNL-Rome knew about Drogoul's Iraqilending schemes.

Lacey said he didn't know during his investigation ofBNL in 1992 that the bank was in the middle of a multimil-lion-dollar disagreement with Lloyd'sthe company hisown law firm was representing in other matters at the time.He said he wasn't aware of the legal proceedings betweenBNL and Lloyd's until it was pointed out to him by areporter in 1995. Given Lacey's claim that he knew morethan anyone in the country about the BNL affair, his igno-rance of the bank's disagreements with Lloyd's seemsremarkable. LeBoeuf's chairman, Donald J. Greene, hadurged Lacey to take on the BNL probe, and as many as 25LeBoeuf employees helped him carry it out.

Many observers of the BNL case had high hopes thatBill Clinton would crack Iraqgate wide open. On thecampaign trail in September 1992, Al Gore, Clinton's run-ning mate, drew an elaborate metaphor to describe Presi-dent Bush's role in the affair. "George Bush wants theAmerican people to see him as the hero who put out a rag-ing fire," Gore said, referring to Operation Desert Storm."But new evidence now shows that he is the one who set thefire. He not only struck the match, he poured gasoline onthe flames. So give him credit for calling the fire department,but understand who started the blaze."

Although Clinton the candidate never confronted Bushso squarely on the issue, he did endorse the idea of a court-appointed independent counsel for the case. Once elected,

"The Democratshave their

election-yearWatergate9"

conservativecolumnist

William Safireproclaimed in

1992. "But onlyHenry Gonzalezunderstands it."

however, Clinton andGore didn't seize the ini-tiative as many hadhoped. Meanwhile,Congressman HenryGonzalez had begun toslow down as chief Iraq-gate critic. Like a heavy-weight boxer laboringin the final rounds of atough fight, his flurriesof outrage about BNLwere separated bylonger and longer peri-ods of silence. By late1994, Clinton had yetto fully deliver on hisearlier pledge to"declassify and discloseto the public" docu-ments on Bush's policytoward Iraq. Perhapseven more surprisingly,Gonzalez failed to pro-duce a long-promised summary report on his BNL findings.

With Gonzalez out of the picture, the job of wrapping upthe Iraqgate affair fell to John Hogan, the Justice Depart-ment official assigned by Attorney General Janet Reno toinvestigate the matter. His final report, completed in Octo-ber 1994, was declassified and released to the public in Jan-uary 1995. Hogan wrote that further efforts to develop newindictments in the affair would be a waste of time. He foundnothing to support the broad conspiracy allegations that ourgovernment worked illegally with Italy and others to armIraq. According to Hogan, the White House consistentlyturned down proposals to sell arms to Iraq in the 1980s.And the CIA and NSC "informed us that no covert actionspursuant to a 'national security directive' were undertaken."He made no reference to the September 1989 Defense Intel-ligence Agency report that described a NATO-coordinated"BNL mechanism" and "arms trading to Iraq whichoccurred illegally as part of the cover trading of agriculturaland non-sensitive products."

As for persistent charges that Iraq bartered food shippedfrom the U.S. under Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC)guarantees, Hogan saw nothing illegal. He made no claim ofhaving tracked a single shipment of CCC commodities to itsfinal destinationin Iraq or anywhere else. But he said hereally didn't need to, given that it wasn't against U.S. lawfor a receiver of CCC commodities to barter or sell them.Even so, Hogan's task force probed the bartering reportsand uncovered cases in which Iraq did in fact swap food forweapons. Hogan said he wasn't able to establish that thefood originated in the United States or that it was shippedunder financing arrangements with the CCC. BecauseHogan argued that BNL-Rome did not direct or even know



about Christopher DrogouPs loan scheme in Atlanta, hisreport cleared the way for the Clinton Justice Department tolet BNL collect $400 million on its CCC loan guarantees.Hogan also investigated reports that two planned weaponssales to Iraqone for "Supergun" components, the otherfor Argentinean tanksdepended on U.S. Department ofAgriculture financing. But he said he wasn't able to confirmthe substance of either story.

In conclusion, Hogan praised his employer. "I havefound no evidence of corruption or incompetence in theconduct of the [BNL and Iraq] investigation," he wrote."On the contrary, the work of the [Justice] Department andother agencies has by and large been thorough, persistentand careful."

Hogan said the BNL task force also benefited from theCIA's "extensive cooperation." But he added an odd dis-claimer. He admitted that he was not confident the agencyhad turned over all relevant documents. He wasn't sug-gesting that anything was willfully withheld. Rather, heattributed the suspected information gap to the CIA's lim-ited ability to retrieve reports from its compartmentalizedrecords system. "In the course of our work," Hoganwrote, "we learned of 'sensitive compartments' of infor-mation not normally retrievable and of specialized officesthat previously were unknown to the CIA personnel whowere assisting us. In one instance, it took the CIA twomonths to identify the intended recipient country ofweapons shipped at the CIA's request." Hogan presumedthat the documents he wasn't allowed to see wouldn'thave had much impact on his investigation.

But Hogan's report wasn't the final word on Iraqgate. Inlate January 1995, Howard Teicher, a senior member ofPresident Reagan's NSC staff, filed a sworn affidavit in aMiami criminal case that raised new questions about thethoroughness of the Hogan inquiry. (See "The companythey keep," March 6, 1995.) Teicher gave his statement atthe request of defense attorneys for Teledyne, Inc., a U.S.firm that had been charged by the government in 1993 ofsupplying zirconium for Iraqi cluster bombs. Those bombshad been shipped to Iraq by Chilean arms dealer CarlosCardoen, a co-defendant in the case.

Teledyne had tried to dissuade the Justice Departmentfrom issuing the indictment on the grounds that the zirconi-um exports were part of a secret U.S. foreign policy. Thecompany's lawyers pointed to State Department telexesfrom the middle 1980s that explicitly referred to Cardoen'scluster bomb business with Iraq. In his affidavit, Teicherstated that he sat in on meetings in 1982 at which CIADirector William Casey described cluster bombs as perfect"force multipliers" that would allow Iraq to stop "humanwaves" of Iranian attackers. Teicher said Casey was com-mitted to helping Cardoen supply them. In 1983, Teicheradded, Casey intervened with the State and CommerceDepartments to see to it that licensing restrictions did notinterrupt the flow of Cardoen cluster bombs to Iraq.

Teicher also said President Reagan signed a secret nation-al security directive on Iraq in 1982. According to Teicher,the directive itselfeven its numberwas still classified. Heknew about it, he said, because he had helped draft it. Thenature of the aid contemplated by the directive included"making sure Iraq had the military weaponry [it] required"through legal means, the affidavit stated. Within a week, hisaffidavit was sealed and classified.

When Teledyne's lawyers sought to buttress theirdefense with classified documents, the prosecution resisted,saying: "In some cases a balance must be struck between adefendant's need for exculpatory classified information andthe public interest in preserving its secrecy."

Paul Henderson, the top man at an Iraqi weapons-buyingfront company in England, knew that argument well.Four British ministers had used it against him during his.1992 trial in London. Before the Gulf War, the British gov-ernment had winked at Henderson's exporting activitywhich was funded by BNL in Atlantain order to keep tabson Iraqi arms purchases. But when war broke out, Hender-son's government cut and ran. Great Britain denied it hadtolerated export violations and remained mum on the factthat it had used Henderson as a spy, leaving him exposed toa potential lengthy prison sentence.

Although Henderson's government had documents exon-erating him, the four ministers signed "public interest immu-nity" certificates to keep them sealed. A British judge wasasked to help hide the smoking gun. When he refused, hun-dreds of previously secret documents that backed up Hen-derson's story were released. The British governmentabruptly folded up its prosecution, and a profoundhypocrisy was exposed. There was no "public interest" atstake in preserving secrecy, only political reputation.

But Teledyne failed to gain access to classified U.S. docu-ments, and in January 1995 pleaded guilty to export viola-tions, agreeing to pay a $13 million fine. After settling its case,the company issued a statement. The U.S. government, Tele-dyne said, had "possessed knowledge and the administrativemechanisms to prevent the shipments but failed to do so.

"While this does not excuse the later lapses by the com-pany's operating division, criminal prosecution seems inap-propriate in such circumstances."

Inappropriate, perhaps. But in a court that enforces atight lid on classified documents, sustainable. So the extentof government "complicity" in illegal acts in support ofIraq lies just beyond the reach of legal discovery, both fordefendants in criminal cases and for the American publicat large. -4

Peter Mantius is a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.This article is excerpted from Shell Came: A True Story of Creed,Power, International Banking and Clandestine Politics. Copyright 1995 by Peter Mantius. Reprinted by permission from St.Martin's Press.


IN THESE TIMES JANUARV&IM6

N T H E A R T S

Pistol-packin'mania

Sally Fieldblows away

reality inAn Eye for

an Eye.

By David Armstrong

affling courts, bunglingcops, intrusive gun-controllawswhat's a mother todo when they stand in theway of rough justice? Get agun, that's what, and blowthe remorseless criminalwho haunts your dreams tokingdom come.

Such is the Americanfantasy of revenge, theAmerican infatuation withinstant and simple solu-tionsand the drivingimpulse behind a growingsubgenre of American films.The latest entry is Eye foran Eye, starring Sally Fieldas the gun-toting mother ofa murdered child who takesthe law into her hands andgets away with it.

The movie is noteworthychiefly for the high-profileacting and directing talentlanguishing within itsframesand for a few moredisturbing changes it intro-duces in the pathologicalpursuit of revenge on screen.

The revenge movie is not

new, of course. Charles Bronson and GlintEastwood forged careers out of playinghomicidal maniacs hell-bent on, um, justice.Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzeneg-ger play cartoonish versions of the same char-acter. Michael Douglas cleaned up Los Ange-les when his irate engineer in Falling Doumstepped out from behind his pocket protectorto become a killing machine.

What is newand this is Hollywood's,shall we say, unique take on feminismis thatthese days sisters are doing it for themselves.Annabella Sciorra's decent housefrau whackedRebecca De Mornay's vile nanny in The Handthat Rocks the Cradle; and Meryl Streep dis-patched white-trash bankrobber Kevin Baconwith preppy aplomb in The River Wild. Noweven wholesome Sally Field is getting into theact. What's more, some of Hollywood'sbrightest talent is joining her in a subgenreonce reserved for career bottom-feeders. Eyefor an Eye is as much a symptom as a movie.

The cast of Eye for an Eye includes EdHarris as Field's ineffectual husband, BeverlyD'Angelo as her clueless best friend and Joe

Mantegna as an inept police detective. All are strong actorswho have been fine in other films. The director is JohnSchlesinger, who helmed important work such as MidnightCowboy, Billy Liar and the delicate chamber piece An Eng-lishman Abroad.

But An Eye for an Eye, befitting the national mood, isabout as delicate as a snub-nosed .45 jammed in the ribs.Field plays Karen McCann, an upper-middle-class L.A. moth-er of two. In a nod to feminism, she is a career woman,though we never see her actually working, just huddling withoffice colleagues when tragedy strikes. In a scene of graphicand sickening brutality, Karen's oldest child, 19-year-oldJulie, is raped and murdered in her own home by a tattooedsociopath named RobertDoob (Kiefer Sutherland).

Doob symbolizes a justicesystem that in pop cultureand political discourse isreputed to have completelylost its moorings. He isarrested shortly after thecrime. But wouldn't youknow, the judge lets himwalk on a technicality due tosloppy police work, a la theO.J. Simpson trial. Eye forand Eye holds the same sortof disdain for namby-pambylaw enforcement officialsthat right-wing populistsusually reserve for politi-

Eye for an EyeDirected by

John Schlesinger


shell game -saddam husein and the usa

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