NADER/ZEESE: The 'I' word

The ‘I’ word

By Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese | May 31, 2005

THE IMPEACHMENT of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, should be part of mainstream political discourse.

Minutes from a summer 2002 meeting involving British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveal that the Bush administration was ''fixing" the intelligence to justify invading Iraq. US intelligence used to justify the war demonstrates repeatedly the truth of the meeting minutes -- evidence was thin and needed fixing.

President Clinton was impeached for perjury about his sexual relationships. Comparing Clinton's misbehavior to a destructive and costly war occupation launched in March 2003 under false pretenses in violation of domestic and international law certainly merits introduction of an impeachment resolution.

Eighty-nine members of Congress have asked the president whether intelligence was manipulated to lead the United States to war. The letter points to British meeting minutes that raise ''troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war." Those minutes describe the case for war as ''thin" and Saddam as ''nonthreatening to his neighbors," and ''Britain and America had to create conditions to justify a war." Finally, military action was ''seen as inevitable . . . But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Indeed, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor any imminent threat to the United States:

The International Atomic Energy Agency Iraq inspection team reported in 1998, ''there were no indications of Iraq having achieved its program goals of producing a nuclear weapon; nor were there any indications that there remained in Iraq any physical capability for production of amounts of weapon-usable material." A 2003 update by the IAEA reached the same conclusions.

The CIA told the White House in February 2001: ''We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has . . . reconstitute[d] its weapons of mass destruction programs."

Colin Powell said in February 2001 that Saddam Hussein ''has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."

The CIA told the White House in two Fall 2002 memos not to make claims of Iraq uranium purchases. CIA Director George Tenet personally called top national security officials imploring them not to use that claim as proof of an Iraq nuclear threat.

Regarding unmanned bombers highlighted by Bush, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center concluded they could not carry weapons spray devices. The Defense Intelligence Agency told the president in June 2002 that the unmanned aerial bombers were unproven. Further, there was no reliable information showing Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons or whether it had established chemical agent production facilities.

When discussing WMD the CIA used words like ''might" and ''could." The case was always circumstantial with equivocations, unlike the president and vice president, e.g., Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002: ''Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

The State Department in 2003 said: ''The activities we have detected do not . . . add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing . . . an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons."

The National Intelligence Estimate issued in October 2002 said ''We have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against US territory."

The UN, IAEA, the State and Energy departments, the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center, US inspectors, and even the CIA concluded there was no basis for the Bush-Cheney public assertions. Yet, President Bush told the public in September 2002 that Iraq ''could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given." And, just before the invasion, President Bush said: ''Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

The president and vice president have artfully dodged the central question: ''Did the administration mislead us into war by manipulating and misstating intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to Al Qaeda, suppressing contrary intelligence, and deliberately exaggerating the danger a contained, weakened Iraq posed to the United States and its neighbors?"

If this is answered affirmatively Bush and Cheney have committed ''high crimes and misdemeanors." It is time for Congress to investigate the illegal Iraq war as we move toward the third year of the endless quagmire that many security experts believe jeopardizes US safety by recruiting and training more terrorists. A Resolution of Impeachment would be a first step. Based on the mountains of fabrications, deceptions, and lies, it is time to debate the ''I" word.


Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate. Kevin Zeese is director of DemocracyRising.US.

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Impeachment -- then and now

Now that we've solved the 30-year-old mystery of "Deep Throat," it may be an opportune moment to ponder some more current issues involving the man who now sits in the office that Richard Nixon once held.

George W. Bush hasn't authorized or covered up any two-bit break-ins, at least as far as we know. And if they're still making tapes in the Oval Office, they're probably not quite as colorful as the ones that ultimately forced Nixon to resign. But Bush and his administration are certainly guilty of other offenses, and some of them would seem to rise to the level of what the Constitution calls "high crimes and misdemeanors." This should go without saying, but apparently it doesn't: If lying about a blow job is an impeachable offense, then what can be said about telling lies that led a country into war?

Even before Vanity Fair brought back a flood of Watergate memories this morning, we had our minds on impeachment. Maybe it was the excerpt from John Harris' new Clinton book in the Washington Post this morning. Or maybe it was the Ralph Nader/Kevin Zeese op-ed in the Boston Globe, the one in which they said that revelations about the lead-up to the Iraq war suggest that it's "time to debate the I-word" again."

Whatever it was, we were thinking about impeachment this morning, and when the first rumblings of the W. Mark Felt story broke, we started to ask ourselves: "Where are the 'Deep Throats' of today?" But the thing is, they're there -- and they're not hiding. They go by names like Clarke and Wilson, like O'Neill and Taguba. They've told us some of the stories, connected some of the dots. The Downing Street memo takes us a long way down one trail, but how much further could we go? What would a real investigation, one conducted by an independent prosecutor or a House impeachment committee, tell us about Saddam Hussein's WMDs? What would someone like Colin Powell say under oath? What would we learn about what Bush knew and when he knew it?

We don't pretend to know all the facts about Iraq, but we do know this: If Bill Clinton were still the president, there isn't a Republican in Congress who would say that the facts we do know don't warrant at least some discussion about articles of impeachment. It's not going to happen, of course. The Republicans won't let it, and the American people won't demand it; there's such a weariness now, such an acceptance that the administration misled us into war, that the nation is incapable of working up the outrage that would be needed to embolden the Democrats and overcome the Republicans' partisan opposition. But as the country moves past the final lingering question about the last president driven from office, isn't it time to at least start asking serious questions about this one?

from Salon: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=
/politics/war_room/2005/05/31/impeachment/index.html

Seymour M Hersh — from My Lai to Abu Ghraib

The US’s foremost investigative journalist, Seymour M Hersh, spoke to Andrew Burgin of the Stop the War Coalition and Matthew Cookson from Socialist Worker about George Bush, US foreign policy and the “war on terror”

In 1968 you exposed the US massacre at My Lai in Vietnam. Last year you exposed the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. How can things like this happen when those prosecuting the war talk about bringing “freedom” and “democracy” to the world?

Unfortunately, this is what happens in warfare. We were censored during the Second World War — we never saw photographs of dead soldiers in the US. We never got a sense of how the war was.

For us, the war was about our boys fooling around with scarves, no helmets and sticking up their thumbs. The “nips” had their cockpits closed — they had these helmets. We had this amazing Hollywood version of war.

My Lai told us that the we don’t fight wars any better than the “nips” and the “krauts”. Nobody fights wars well — it’s always brutal and it always involves a lot of abuses. These things happen in war, and to think otherwise is madness.

So we in the US are always naive. We thought we could do it better. And what’s pernicious about Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan is that, as bad as we think it is, the whole story isn’t out yet. It’s even worse.

The American people are gradually getting into this. But John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, refused or wasn’t willing to deal with the war.

When people ask me what I think of Kerry not bringing up Abu Ghraib, I always have a pat answer, “You’ve got to admire his brilliance in not dealing with the war, because now he’s president, which shows he was right!” The only shot Kerry had was to make the war an issue — and he didn’t do it.

Tell us about US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to introduce a “special access programme” involving US forces snatching or assassinating suspected Al Qaida operatives.

That was an early decision, and it’s still going on. We still don’t understand the extent in the US of what we call “rendition”. This is the process of getting the name of someone, going in illegally, grabbing him illegally, taking him some place where the sun don’t shine, beating him up — and if he dies, so what?

It used to be called “disappearing” in Argentina and Brazil, where it caused an enormous outcry.

The real shock in the US is the weakness and the failure of congress. Yes, the president’s been awful, dubious and craven — but that’s a given.

Congress has been much worse. The Democrats have no power at all. The Republicans control everything. There has been no serious investigation into Abu Ghraib.

Insane legal papers that came out after the Abu Ghraib story said that the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply. It’s very troubling for me as an American, because it’s so profoundly against what the whole constitution says.

Although the prisoner abuse scandals in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have been big news, the British have had their own abuse scandals. Iraqi civilians have been kicked to death at Camp Breadbasket.

You’ve had the same problems here, although your press has been much better. The anti-war movement has been very intense here.

The marches that the novelist Ian McEwan was writing about, we don’t see them in the US. If anything, it’s backed down a little bit now after the election. People feel a little bit defeated.

I can’t decide whether our congress is supine or prone, but it doesn’t make much difference. In the US it’s the absolute failure of the constitution.

The Times in London published documents about when Bush made his decision to go to war on Iraq. We should be dealing with the issue that the president of the US might have made the decision up to one year before going into Iraq, and had been misleading us.

These are documents showing that the decision to go to war was taken in April 2002. In Britain we have families of servicemen killed in Iraq who are calling for a full public investigation into the decision to go to war.

I watched the British election and I saw Reg Keys, one of the fathers, make an amazing speech in Tony Blair’s home district. This got no attention in the US press.

But I think the worst times are ahead. The next few months are going to be very disturbing for all of us because Bush has got a real problem in Iraq, and he’s not aware of it.

I don’t see how you can avoid a civil war in Iraq. When that happens I don’t know what they’re going to do. I would guess the number of potential terrorists has gone up exponentially because of the war in Iraq.

It’s a question of time. We’ll start seeing more sophisticated people with better English, who will be able to penetrate visa and customs people in western Europe and the US. We could be in real trouble — we could see a spreading insurgency.

We don’t have any intelligence on the other side. We have no idea what’s going on in Iraq — we’re just in there diddling. At some point we might say we’ve had enough, declare peace and walk out — or be kicked out.

And we’re going to have a mess in Iraq. The Sunnis are going half mad worrying about the spread of Iranian democracy or theocracy into the south of Iraq. We’re seeing profound changes, and they’ve been triggered by the US without much forethought — and certainly no afterthought.

Your book, Chain of Command, shows quite clearly how a small group of neo-conservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, took up important positions in the US under Bush. They set about convincing people that the US had to invade Iraq. How could they get their way?

Democracy must be a hell of a lot more fragile than we think. A small group, a cult, can take control of the US so easily. The congress, the press and the military have all been so weak.

The federal bureaucracy, where millions of workers don’t agree with the president, has been weak. It’s staggering, and it says this isn’t as powerful and strong a democracy as we think.

What’s going to be the future of our democracy? What would happen in the US if three crazies walked into a mall and blew themselves up at noon on a Saturday in three cities? What would we do? Would constitutional rights be further atrophied? Yes.

I think this is the most important issue since the Second World War. Bush’s decision to go to war on Iraq was certainly the worst decision a US president has ever made. The consequences of this have not all been seen yet.

The war is enormously expensive, with hundreds of billions of dollars being spent. And there are very serious problems in the army.

Totally — but Bush is going to survive. We have billions of dollars of debt that need to be floated. I was convinced a year ago that with the dollar’s dive against the euro, the economy was going to collapse and the world market would start buying oil in euros.

Instead what happens is that oil prices double — a boon for Bush. Now the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have so much money, they’re throwing billions into our debt. Bush will get Undersecretary of state John Bolton as the US ambassador to the United Nations as well. We’ve got another year at least of this guy with full power.

What strategy do you think has led to the US being in such a mess in Iraq?

All the information was there. Everyone talks about General Shinseki, the US general who testified before the Iraqi war that it would take hundreds of thousands of troops. Wolfowitz immediately denounced and castigated him.

They weren’t mad at Shinseki because he used different numbers. They were mad at him because hadn’t he been to all those meetings in the Pentagon where the neo-cons assured him that you could win the war with 5,000 troops?

We’d go in and democracy would flow, Saddam would run away, Iran, Syria and what they call occupied Lebanon would fall, and there’d be a new Middle East. They believe all that stuff.

The problem with Shinseki was that he’d been deprogrammed. He had escaped from the clutches of the cult. That’s one way of looking at these guys.

If you agreed that in the months after 9/11 that the path to stopping international terrorism led to Baghdad, you were promoted.

But if you thought that it was the dumbest, most insane thing in the world to think that you were a traitor. You were cut off. You didn’t get the end of the year promotion, or face time with Condoleezza Rice.

That’s how they did what they did. They were ruthless. You were either on the team drinking the Kool Aid, like Jimmy Jones’s followers did in Guyana in 1978 to commit suicide, or you were out.

That’s what we have in my country. And a lot of the press also drank the Kool Aid in the first year.

The left has some impact, but they all just speak to each other. There’s no real anti-war movement like there is in Britain. There’s no ability to get over 100,000 people.

In every war there is a so called “tipping moment”, which decides whether it can be won or not. Do you think we’ve reached that point?

I don’t think this war has ever been winnable. What is “winning”? When the Shia leader Ayatollah Sistani sat out when we attacked Fallujah, the Sunnis knew there was going to be no peace with the Shia.

Sistani did nothing to stop the bombing of Fallujah. I don’t know why people put so much hope in him. What else can be done, besides recreating the Iraqi secret police?

So, you’re pretty pessimistic then?

Totally. The problem is that they’re not listening. In the US the Republicans have total control. I can’t think of a worse job than being a young Democrat in the houses. You can’t offer an amendment. You can’t have a hearing. All you can do is vote no.

It’s unbelievable what these guys have done. They’ve changed the basic structure.

It’s happened in front of us and everybody’s very passive about it. Abu Ghraib showed the way we treat prisoners and there’s been no investigation, nobody has lost their job. What’s to be optimistic about?

What about the strength of the anti-war movement and the fact that the Bush administration is in a very difficult position in Iraq?

They’re going to say that Iraq is better off because we came in and brought democracy. That’s the mantra, “Democracy needs to spread.” And their version of “democracy” means regime change.

I see nothing but expansion by my country. We’re doing operations in north Africa, there’s the whole “democracy” movement in the former central Soviet republics, which is very alarming. They’re getting rid of one guy for another guy.

A lot of people don’t accept the line that’s coming from the White House.

So what if they don’t accept it? These guys don’t change it. I’m not trying to say you should get out of the peace business. But I’m saying this is a more entrenched situation.

Vietnam was always tactical. No matter how big the numbers were, five years after it’s over, they want us to come over and play monopoly and build hotels and do tourism.

This is a war against Muslims. Five years after this war is over, people are still going to be dreaming about flying planes into our buildings.

This is different. It’s a strategic war in which we have very little concept of what we’re doing. We don’t have an endgame.

My country has declared war on people who are non-citizens. They are constantly diminishing the rights of non-citizens. They can be kicked out of the country for the most trivial of offences.

I’ve been in a black mood since September 2001, hanging over me like a penumbra. The press in the US got better over Abu Ghraib briefly, but it had no moral leadership.

But Bush and his people don’t react enough. Most of the time they just ignore me.

I read the transcripts of the Pentagon’s briefings. The first year of Rumsfeld was a real love-in. Someone would say, “Sy Hersh is at it again” and there would be laughter.

The war has become a given. There’s no weapons of mass destruction — well, it doesn’t matter because Saddam’s a bad guy. So they win. Nobody holds Bush to any standard of responsibility — the country’s in chaos, the economy is in chaos.

It troubles me that there’s not a bigger anti-war movement in the US. People in the US are just sleeping, for whatever reason. But I’m doing stuff. I’ve got more stuff to do.

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Chain of Command: The road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M Hersh

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From Downing Street to Minneapolis

The Star Tribune isn't exactly the Washington Post, but those of you still waiting for the mainstream media to dive into the Downing Street memo can take some solace in the fact that the newspaper from Minneapolis and St. Paul has done so -- and with an editorial timed to coincide with Memorial Day, no less. In an editorial entitled "Memorial Day: Praise bravery, seek forgiveness," the Star Tribune ties it all together: The American public, the paper says, has failed its fallen soldiers by allowing the Bush administration to spend "their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns" about Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. "President Bush and those around him lied," the Star Tribune says, "and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes." At the centerpiece of the paper's case? That memo from 2002. "At a time when the White House was saying it had 'no plans' for an invasion, the British document says [Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service,] reported that there had been a 'perceptible shift in attitude' in Washington. 'Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The ]National Security Council] had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.' "It turns out," the Star Tribune says, "that former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill were right. Both have been pilloried for writing that by summer 2002 Bush had already decided to invade." Both men, it now seems, were right. The Star Tribune will surely be taking flak for its editorial -- especially for its timing, on a holiday when unquestioning allegiance to the military cause seems to be the order of the day. But the paper says it's exactly the right time to make its point: "As this bloody month of car bombs and American deaths -- the most since January -- comes to a close, as we gather in groups small and large to honor our war dead, let us all sing of their bravery and sacrifice. But let us also ask their forgiveness for sending them to a war that should never have happened. In the 1960s it was Vietnam. Today it is Iraq. Let us resolve to never, ever make this mistake again. Our young people are simply too precious." Update: The Boston Globe devotes some ink to the Downing Street memo this morning, too, in the form of an op-ed piece by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese. Their conclusion: It's time to start talking about impeachment. [see post on this blog from Boston Globe] -- Tim Grieve [09:17 EDT, May 31, 2005]

AMNESTY RESPONDS TO BUSH

USA: Amnesty International Responds to President Bush

News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International
AI Index: AMR 51/087/2005 31 May 2005

President Bush again failed to address longstanding concerns regarding US detention policies and practices in the context of the "war on terror", Amnesty International said in response to his comments today.

At Guantánamo, the US has operated an isolated prison camp in which people are confined arbitrarily, held virtually incommunicado, without charge, trial or access to due process. Not a single Guantánamo detainee has had the legality of their detention reviewed by a court, despite the Supreme Court ruling of last year.

"Guantánamo is only the visible part of the story. Evidence continues to mount that the US operates a network of detention centres where people are held in secret or outside any proper legal framework -– from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond," said Amnesty International.

US interrogation and detention policies and practices during the "war on terror", have deliberately and systematically breached the absolute prohibition of torture and Ill-treatment. Individuals held in US custody have been transferred for interrogation to countries known to practice torture.

"If President Bush and his administration are serious about freedom and human dignity they should recommit to the rule of law and human rights."

Amnesty International continues to call on the US administration to:

• end all secret and incommunicado detentions;
• grant the International Committee of the Red Cross full access to all detainees including those held in secret locations;
• ensure recourse to the law for all detainees;
• establish a full independent commission of inquiry into all allegations of torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detentions and "disappearances";
• bring to justice anyone responsible for authorizing or committing human rights violations

Background Information

When asked to comment about Amnesty International’s report during a White House Briefing President Bush said: "I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. (…) The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world. When there's accusations made about certain actions by our people, they're fully investigated in a transparent way."

For more information, please see:
"Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power": http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maadzT2abhrAHbd90wNb/

"USA: Human dignity denied: Torture and accountability in the 'war on terror' ":
http://amnesty-news.c.topica.com/maadzT2abhrAIbd90wNb/


Past and current Amnesty news services can be found at
. Visit
for information about Amnesty International and for other AI
publications. Contact amnestyis@amnesty.org if you need to get
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CATHOLIC CHURCH PREPARES FOR COLD WAR WITH EVANGELISTS

ED. NOTE: Statements by Pope Benedict XVI and the appointment of San Francisco Archbishop William Levada signal a Holy See ready to counteract the expansion of evangelical groups worldwide. PNS contributor Paolo Pontoniere is a correspondent for Focus, Italy's leading monthly.

BY PAOLO PONTONIERE,
PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE

SAN FRANCISCO--On the day before the conclave to choose a new pope began, future pontiff Joseph Ratzinger led a liturgy that reassured the church's believers that the Holy See was not giving up on them and was prepared to fight for the salvation of their souls. He surely meant to allude to the fight against moral relativism, but he also had his sights set on evangelicalism.

Indeed, during the first mass held by Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, he strongly implied that the Catholic church is the rightful House of Christ, and said that his first commitment was toward "the full and visible unity of Christ's followers."

Today, to regain ground in the first world and continue to expand in the Third World, the Roman Catholic Church, more than fighting secularism, must counteract the expansion of evangelical groups. It is a silent clash that could be compared to the protracted, mostly slow-burning feud between capitalism and communism during the Cold War.

According to some researchers, evangelical Christianity is expanding three times faster than the world population and is the only existing religious group showing a significant growth through conversion. By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church is expanding at a slower pace than the population, which will mean an overall decrease in the number of Catholics worldwide.

In addition, the dissolution of the Berlin Wall not only reinvigorated the Orthodox church, but also saw huge numbers of believers from the former Socialist bloc -- where the church had been persecuted -- move into evangelical groups.

There are currently more evangelicals in Asia than in North America. Singapore's churches are among the most active in the world, sending one missionary abroad per every 1,000 members. Seven of the world's 10 largest evangelical churches can be found in Seoul alone, a city in which 110 years ago there was none.

In Latin America, a mostly Catholic region for the past 500 years, the number of evangelicals has grown from under 250,000 in 1900 to over 60 million in 2000. Critics of the Vatican say the vacuum left by Pope John Paul II's disavowal of the "basic Christian communities" movement has been filled by the evangelicals.

In 1960, the number of evangelicals living in the developing countries were one-half of those in the West; in the year 2000 they were four times more and in 2010 they will be seven times as numerous.

In America, where even Protestant groups have lost 5.4 million members over the last decade, evangelicals have enjoyed a growth rate of 40 percent. They have become the largest religious force in the United States, with 26 percent of all believers -- and they wield undeniable political clout.

"The current pope is a renovator. But there cannot be renovation without tradition," says Father Joseph Fazio, founder of St. Ignatius Press and Chancellor of Ave Maria University in Florida. "I don't have any doubt that he'll realize the full spirit of Vatican II, of unifying all of Christ's believers under the benevolent care of the Holy See.

"He has already laid the doctrinal ground for the renaissance of the church -- he did it when he was at the helm of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. Under Benedict XVI the world will know that the Roman Catholic Church has Christ's message at its core and follows his teachings closely," adds Fr. Fazio.

The battle for the soul of believers in developed countries, particularly the United States, is also critical -- most of the funds used by alternative evangelical churches to send missionaries and proselytize in the poorer countries come from there.

The appointment of San Francisco Archbishop William Levada to the previous position held by Pope Benedict XVI himself can be better appreciated in this light.

Levada's appointment sends the message that the church entrusts its doctrines to a prelate who had led a diocese in America's most secular humanist and morally relativistic city. Levada has dealt firsthand with the legacies of free love, feminism, the gay movement and the evangelical juggernaut.

"Benedict XVI has chosen Levada specifically because he knows how to face these challenges," says Father Labib Kobti, pastor at St. Thomas More in San Francisco and U.S. Representative for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

"When Levada expressed his surprise at his appointment, the Pope responded that he was in fact the right man for the task because he came from a world where evangelical groups were a challenge, where the message of Christ was being distorted, and that he had provided a compassionate but firm rebuttal to the many assaults that the church of San Francisco had faced during his years as head of the diocese."

Under Levada's almost decade-long tenure, San Francisco's Catholic church regained a religious presence that had been faltered under the more politically adaptable administration of Archbishop John Quinn.

Father Kobti, however, dismisses suggestions that the Vatican is more than alarmed at the growing influence of evangelicalism. "In the past the church has been given for dead more than once," he says. "Take for example the rise of the Baptists and of the Lutherans."

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