Election 2004: Democracy in Lockdown

Despite the historic dimensions of the 2008 presidential race, the possibility of mischief can’t be ignored, especially after the recount battle of 2000 and voting “irregularities” of 2004. After the 2004 election, the voting rights group Election Verification Project claimed that the record use of electronic voting machines had led to hundreds of anomalies that demonstrated the need for higher standards. Meanwhile, the Internet buzzed with charges that the mainstream media was attempting to suppress the story. UPI was no longer taking my columns, but, as I noted in the headline of a Vermont Guardian article, “Election Questions Build Toward a Recount.”

The Electronic Verification Project had reviewed nearly 900 reports of electronic voting problems on Election Day, ranging from lost votes in North Carolina to miscounted votes in Ohio and breakdowns in New Orleans that caused long lines and shut down polling places. A research team at the University of California at Berkeley said that irregularities associated with electronic voting machines may have awarded up to 260,000 or more excess votes to George W. Bush in Florida. That study showed an unexplained discrepancy between votes for Bush in counties where electronic voting machines were used versus counties using traditional voting methods.

The Berkeley team, led by Prof. Michael Hout, said discrepancies this large rarely arise by chance. Noting that the probability is less than 0.1 percent, they urged an immediate investigation. “The three counties where the voting anomalies were most prevalent were also the most heavily Democratic,” said Hout, “not the [conservative] Dixiecrat counties you’ve all heard about before, but the more heavily Democratic counties that used e-vote technology, including Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties, in order of magnitude.”

The disparity favoring Bush couldn’t be explained by other factors, Hout claimed. “The study shows that counties that used electronic voting resulted in disproportionate increases of votes for the president.”

Commenting on the difference between exit polls and official vote counts, John Zogby, president of the polling company that bears his name, said, “Something is definitely wrong.” It would have required “wrong sampling in wrong areas throughout the country,” or the purposeful manipulation of data to obtain exit poll results so significantly different from the official totals. Neither was a possibility, he argued.

University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven Freeman also compiled an analysis, “The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy,” noting that in three of the key battleground states — Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — the odds of Democratic challenger John Kerry receiving the percentage of votes recorded, given the exit poll findings, were less than three in 1,000, per state. The odds of any two of these states simultaneously reaching their stated vote tallies were “on the order of one in a million,” he added, and the odds of all three states arriving at the vote counts they did “are 250 million to one.”

On November 18, the League of Women Voters called for an investigation. Common Cause meanwhile teamed up with the National Voting Rights Institute, Demos, People for the American Way Foundation, and the Fannie Lou Hamer Project to support an Ohio recount request by the Green and Libertarian presidential candidates. They also urged election officials in every state to preserve, protect, and maintain all ballots from the election, whether cast on machine, by absentee, or by provisional ballot.

Despite John Kerry’s concession speech, Ohio’s Democratic Party launched a federal court fight over nearly 155,000 provisional ballots, contending that a proper accounting of those votes might decide who really won. A statewide recount looked possible after the results were certified in early December.

Explosive allegations were also circulating about a media cover-up. Fueling that theory was an e-mail about a CBS producer who allegedly complained that a news industry “lockdown” had prevented journalists from investigating voting problems. Bev Harris, executive director of Black Box Voting, Inc., said she received calls from network employees saying they had been told to lay off the subject of vote fraud.

A month later, just before the year-end holidays, electors in five states – Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina – broke with tradition and called for a congressional investigation of voting violations as they cast their votes. The next day, the Berkeley City Council adopted a resolution "supporting the request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of voting irregularities in the 2004 elections." Drafted by Berkeley's Peace and Justice Commission, the resolution also lists 17 measures to improve elections.

In Massachusetts, elector Cathleen Ashton demanded that "every vote be counted and every vote count." Maine's electors called for national voting reforms. Their statement pointed to Maine initiatives such as same-day registration, allowing felons to vote, and clean election reforms. "Our four electoral votes are held meaningless if our sister states cannot hold elections that are fair, accurate, and verifiable," said elector Lu Bauer after the ceremony at the Maine State House.

Massachusetts electors passed a motion urging members of Congress to object to the vote. It also requested an investigation of "all voting complaints that might have any validity" and remedies for "any voting rights violations or electoral fraud verified by its own agents or through the courts." Elector Tom Barbera said his life was threatened during get-out-the-vote efforts. Another elector spoke of being targeted for intimidation. Noting that many whose voting rights were violated were African American, Barbera, who presented the Massachusetts' motion, said, "we believe that as electors, we have a unique opportunity and obligation to ensure that justice does not again become so delayed as to be denied."

In North Carolina, Democratic electors and activists talked about local problems while Republicans voted inside. Elector Mary Roe mentioned problems she witnessed as an election observer in her own county. State officials admitted that 4,500 votes disappeared in a computerized voting machine crash. Vermont electors expressed concerns about a reported 57,000 complaints received by a congressional Judiciary Committee and called on Congress and Vermont's congressional delegation to investigate.

In California, one elector cast his ballot provisional upon "all votes being counted – provisional, absentee, under – and over-votes, computerized without paper ballots, even getting valid votes from those turned away illegally, intimidated, discouraged by incredibly long waits, etc." The goal was to get his message read on the floor of Congress prior to certification in early January when the ballots were opened.

"Never has such a vote been cast by an elector," said Grace Ross, an organizer of the national effort to support the rebel electors, and a member of Truth in Elections. "And without a parliamentarian to rule it in or out at the Electoral College level, we await whether Congress will acknowledge this type of provisional vote and address the issues this elector sought to raise, or whether they, too, will ignore provisional votes."

On January 6, 2005, although most people didn’t notice, we found out. For the first time in more than a century, electoral vote certification by the Congress was interrupted by a challenge to a state’s votes. U.S. Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Senator Barbara Boxes announced their objection “to the counting of the electoral votes of the State of Ohio on the ground that they were not, under all of the known circumstances, regularly given.”

The debate lasted two hours. Those backing the objection, mostly Democrats, pointed to problems with voting machines, vote suppression, and violation of State and Federal law by high-ranking election officials. Opponents charged that the move was “frivolous” and based on a “conspiracy theory,” and those behind it were “sore losers” attempting to overturn the results. In the end, the challenge was rejected by a 267-31 vote in the House. Not one other Senator supported Boxer’s objection.

Presidential Death Match 2004 was over and there was no turning back. A President who had been installed the first time by the Supreme Court was certified the second by a Congress that preferred not to rock the boat. What to call that story line? The Making of King George: Misdeeds, Madness, and the Assault on Democracy.

But now a new story begins, and along with it comes the chance to write a better ending.

Election Suspicions (My Last UPI Column)

A week after the 2004 Presidential election, as evidence accumulated that vote tallies in some states might have been manipulated, I forwarded my latest commentary to United Press International. I’d been working with UPI for a while, and wanted to lay out some of the information that wasn’t making it into newspapers or onto cable news. It turned out to be my last column for the wire service.

Voting analysis of selected precincts in Florida and Ohio revealed surprisingly high percentages for Bush, I noted, and critics were claiming that spoiled ballots and provisional votes, both disproportionately affecting minorities, could have made the difference in at least two states. On Election Day, exit polls showed John Kerry rolling to a clear victory nationally and carrying most of the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio. Polling also showed Republicans carrying the bulk of the tight Senate races. When the official results were tallied, however, the presidential exit polls proved wrong while the Senate polls were correct.

Exit polling gave Kerry a 3 percent lead over Bush in Florida and a 4 percent edge in Ohio, I noted. Yet he ended up losing Florida by 5.2 percent and Ohio by 2.5. That made the spread between the Florida poll and results 8.2 percent, more than double the standard error rate. In Ohio, the difference was 5.6 percent, also beyond the norm. In Baker County, Florida, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3 percent of them Democrats and 24.3 Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush. That was the opposite of what happened everywhere else in the country. In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5 percent of them Democrats and 15 percent Republicans, only 1,959 voted for Kerry while 4,433 supposedly picked Bush. Other small counties showed the same unusual outcome, and all the “irregularities” seemed to favor Bush.

Few news outlets pursued the story. Instead, most of the coverage was focusing on why the exit polling system had failed. Talking heads dismissed the polls as flawed, somehow favoring Kerry, and irrelevant to the outcome. To explain the discrepancies, some unconvincing theories were floated. One was offered by the architects of the sampling system used for exit polling. They claimed Kerry voters were simply more willing to answer the questions. It was labeled the “chattiness thesis,” but it sounded like a weak excuse.

Journalist Greg Palast suggested that the election results had been skewed by “spoilage,” the small part of the vote that was voided and thrown away. Others pointed to the legal challenges in several states, the long evening lines, and the large number of provisional ballots. But some went further, claiming to have evidence that the results, at the very least in Florida, had been manipulated through some form of information warfare.

Thus, the original lead of my UPI column, distributed under the title “Lingering Suspicions,” began this way:

Could sophisticated CIA-style “cyber-warfare” have helped George W. Bush change a three percent defeat, as measured by exit polls, into a victory of about the same margin? It’s possible, at least in theory, and some people already think it may have happened here.

There is as yet no solid proof that such a cyber-attack occurred on Nov, 2. For one thing, it would probably require hacking into multiple local computer systems, presumably from one or more remote locations. Nevertheless, suspicions are mounting to suggest that the US presidential election results were manipulated to some extent.

The gatekeepers at UPI weren’t pleased. Even though it was just a commentary, they wouldn’t publish it unless I agreed to change the lead and downplay the “cyber-warfare” angle. The opening sentence they substituted was this:

The Internet, that wonderful engine of democracy, is rife with messages purporting to demonstrate how the U.S. presidential election results were manipulated in ways benefiting the Republicans.

My suspicions had been transformed into a skeptical comment about the reliability of questions being posed in cyberspace. More troubling, the entire section of the column that explained how a cyber-attack might be accomplished was eliminated. Here’s what I wrote:

Could it be pulled off? As far as we know, the CIA’s successes in cyber-war include targeting specific bank accounts and shutting down computer systems. But stealing an election is considerably more difficult, requiring the alteration of data in many computers.

According to Robert Parry, writing for Consortium News, "a preprogrammed ‘kernel of brain’ would have to be inserted into election computers beforehand, or teams of hackers would be needed to penetrate the lightly protected systems, targeting touch-screen systems without a paper backup for verifying the numbers."

It’s a form of "information warfare," a hot item within the U.S. military since the mid-1990. The Pentagon has even produced a 13-page booklet, "Information Warfare for Dummies." Indirectly, this primer acknowledges considerable secret capabilities in these areas. It also recognizes the sensitivity of the topic. "Due to the moral, ethical and legal questions raised by hacking, the military likes to keep a low profile on this issue," it explains.

So, did it happen here? Perhaps time will tell. But as the Pentagon readily admits, cyber-warfare has considerable advantages over other tactics. "The intrusions can be carried out remotely, transcending the boundaries of time and space," the manual explains.

And, best of all, if the fraud is ever discovered, there is such a technological buffer between those responsible and those doing the deed you might say it’s the state-of-the-art in plausible deniability.

After the sanitized version of my column was published – even though charges of voter fraud continued to snowball – UPI lost interest in any future contributions.

Next: Democracy in Lockdown

Election 2004: Another Media Drag Race

As the world watches the main event of Presidential Death Match 2008, it would be wise to remember the last bout, particularly election night and the aftermath of the Bush-Kerry vote. “We want to be accuracy central,” Dan Rather explained at 1:30 a.m. on the November 3, 2004. He was trying to explain why CBS wasn’t ready yet to call Ohio’s 20 electoral votes – and thus the election – for George W. Bush. In Washington, DC, Karl Rove was already declaring victory and firing up the limos. But unlike 2000, when Al Gore almost conceded before it became clear that Florida would try to hold a recount, the Democrats promised that they would fight from the start this time.

Early in the evening, TV journalists began reminding their viewers that the watchword would be caution. On CNN, Lou Dobbs decried the “mad rush” four years earlier that “blew up in our faces.” Rather than promising answers this time, an ad for NBC news led with questions: Will all the votes be counted? Will there be a clear winner?

For a while it looked like the counting might go on for weeks. As expected, Bush swept the southern and mountain states, while John Kerry carried most of the two coasts. In overall election terms, very little had changed in four years. The president was leading in the popular vote but neither candidate could claim the required electoral majority.

As it emerged that Ohio might be the new Florida, ABC’s Cokie Roberts complained, “This could be the worst of all possible worlds.” She was referring to the prospect of weeks of litigation. Although Bush was ahead, the Democrats were challenging Republican tactics and holding out for the counting of provisional ballots, a process that could take at least a week. GOP operatives called the tactic “bizarre, absurd, and ludicrous.” Rather was ready with one of his characteristic quips. “It’s turning into a sauna for the candidates,” he said. “All they can do is wait and sweat.”

Despite the uncertainty, some of the coverage did help explain why the vote was so close. For example, former Clinton aide Dee Dee Meyers noted that one in seven people was voting for the first time. Commenting on the high turnout, George Will offered a disquieting Vietnam analogy. “When we have high turnout we tend to be an unhappy county,” he opined, adding that “1968 was one of the worst years in US history. It ran up turnout, but I don’t think we want to do that constantly.” Democracy, what a bummer.

State initiatives were also influential, bringing out social conservatives who tended to back Bush. Ballot items calling for the rejection of same-sex marriage passed convincingly in 11 states; of these, nine went for Bush. In Ohio, a rigid ban passed by a two-to-one margin.

According to the TV pundits, other key aspects of the campaign were Kerry’s comeback in Iowa during primary season, the emergence of the Internet as a fundraising machine, Kerry’s loss of momentum after his party’s convention, another comeback in the debates, and the overall importance of Iraq and the “war on terror” as mobilizing – and polarizing – issues.

According to exit polls, however, the top issue was “moral values,” apparently playing to Bush’s strength. News organizations frequently use such polls, taken outside key precincts, to put predictions in context. Despite claims they had learned their lesson in 2000, anchors and analysts still had to fight an urge to give away what they believed to be happening before polling places closed. Their polls said, for instance, that Bush had an edge in support among both men and women, as well as with voters who described themselves as independents.

Exit polls mainly give pundits something to gab about as they wait for more definitive results. In 2004, the polling and overall outcome basically showed that the country remained divided. As Chris Matthews put it, “it’s an election between north and south that will be decided in the Midwest.” Cute.

Using CNN’s new high-tech wall of graphics, Jeff Greenfield posed various electoral scenarios, including the possibility of a 269-269 tie. That prospect – an irresistible story line for many reporters – lingered well into the night, an option that meant the House of Representatives would choose the president. In a GOP-dominated House, of course, Bush would be the obvious choice.

As the night wore on, speculation began to pass as fact. Shortly after 1 a.m. MSNBC announced that Bush was only one electoral vote shy of victory, while Kerry would have to win every remaining state to create a tie. In fact, Bush had substantially fewer electors tied up at that point. The desire to present an exciting story had eclipsed the promise of caution.

By morning, Bush actually had 254 electoral votes to Kerry’s 252. That left only Iowa and New Mexico, two states where Bush was clinging to a slim lead, and Ohio, where the likelihood that Kerry would win looked slim. He conceded by early in the afternoon.

After the 2000 race, an independent report commissioned by CNN ripped the networks and the Voter News Service, the exit polling groups owned by a consortium of new departments and the Associated Press, for their reckless performance. They had engaged in a “collective drag race on the crowded highway of democracy,” and their haste to “be first” had led them to flawed reporting. For years later, the flaws remained. As polling places closed on November 2, TV anchors rushed to “call more states” and offer predictions that would be quietly dropped or corrected later. When they weren’t doing that, they frequently reminded viewers just how responsible they were being. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop some of them from questioning how long Kerry should wait before conceding defeat.

“Is this becoming the Right nation?” asked Peter Jennings at one point. And if so, was there any indication that Bush would be any more conciliatory in a second term? Without saying so directly, the second question acknowledged the obvious: The US remained a deeply divided country, yet there wasn’t much hope that the man from Crawford, Texas would decide to make peace and represent everyone. Four years on, let’s hope the answer to the first question turns out to be no.

Next: Post-Election Suspicions

Burlington Debates Dropping Al Jazeera

The municipally-owned telecommunications company launched two years ago by Vermont’s largest city – Burlington, also known as the “People’s Republic” – is struggling with a divisive dispute over whether to continue airing Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour news and public affairs channel headquartered in Qatar.

Al Jazeera English was added to the Burlington Telecom line up in December 2006, shortly after the channel started airing. Since then it has become one of the three largest global English language news sources, reaching an estimated 100 million households worldwide. According to the New York Times, it has distribution deals in markets as far-flung as Portugal, Ukraine and Vietnam.

The Burlington controversy escalated after BT General Manager Chris Burns decided to drop the channel in response to “dozens” of complaints from angry customers. Only a few other US cable systems – in Ohio, Texas, and Washington, DC – currently carry it, although Al Jazeera is available via broadband portals and some public access operations.

About 75 people attended a May 27 meeting at Burlington City Hall of the two citizen committees that monitor BT management. Comments from 28 area residents ran three-to-one in favor of keeping the channel on the air. Burlington’s Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss had suggested that a “broader discussion” should take place before a final decision is made.

Those in favor of keeping Al Jazeera cited the fact that the channel is extremely popular in Israel and provides a different perspective on international events. Rep. Bill Aswad, a Burlington Democrat, said the channel gives Burlingtonians the opportunity to learn about Muslims and Islam, and that "if someone doesn't want to learn more they can switch to a different channel." One person even pointed out that the channel is virtually the only news outlet that airs unedited speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Those opposed argued that Al Jazeera is intolerant and endorses terrorism, and that Burlington should “shun Jew hating.” One speaker called its local carriage as an insult to “any patriotic American.” In a report on the meeting, WCAX, the state’s largest commercial TV station, noted that some people blame the network for the deaths of US soldiers. Several on both sides of the issue threatened to drop their BT subscriptions if the decision went against their position.

Several speakers compared the Middle East-based channel with Fox News, arguing that Fox’s content is a greater “threat to liberty.” Regardless of how Burlington resolves the issue, a representative of RETN, the local educational channel, said that it will continue to air Al Jazeera broadcasts.

Frustrated with their cable company Adelphia (later purchased by Comcast) and phone company Verizon, Burlington citizens voted for a municipal fiber network in 1997. Two years later, the publicly-owned Burlington Electric Department partnered with Aptus Networks to build a citywide network. Since BT’s launch in 2006 it has attracted about 2100 customers and is rapidly expanding its reach. Basic service is available at half the cost of Comcast, and provides 20 channels, Internet service, and two cent per minute local phone calls.

Channels are selected based on what the competition offers, but so far BT has also included any channel that provides free content. That policy brought Al Jazeera’s English version to the city, but there is no contract between BT and the channel. Until recently, most of the opposition has come from blogs and people outside of Burlington.

According to the Boston Globe, Al Jazeera’s presence on Burlington TV screens became an issue due to the lobbying of the Defenders Council of Vermont. “The group, with 15 to 20 members, formed last year and says its mission is to ‘educate the citizens of Vermont about the nature, reality and threat of radical Islam,’ and to ‘honor the men and women of the armed services and their families,’ the Globe reported.

“In a city that gave both ice cream mavens Ben & Jerry their start in capitalism and socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders his start in politics, the debate over Al-Jazeera was bound to be a lively one,” the newspaper added.

The City Council has the authority to decide what channels are carried but has avoided becoming involved in content issues. When some subscribers complained about the titles of adult programs being available for anyone to see, BT decided to offer adult content only to those who wanted it, blocking even the channel listing for the rest.

Local roots and accountability to the community set BT apart from private companies. Both must provided funding and space for public access channels, but Burlington Telecom goes farther. When the community asked for additional channels for live coverage of events and a video-on-demand option for local programming, BT worked to provide it.

At the public forum the debate over Al Jazeera was described by some as a free speech issue. Others argued that the US is “at war” and that the channel is “a subtle way of undermining what we take for granted.” On its website, Al Jazeera English says that its purpose is to balance “the current typical information flow by reporting from the developing world back to the West and from the southern to the northern hemisphere. The channel gives voice to untold stories, promotes debate, and challenges established perceptions.”

Greg Epler-Wood, who chairs both the Citizens Advisory Committee and the Burlington Telecommunications Advisory Committee appointed by the City Council, says another public forum will be held in June before any recommendation is made. Epler-Wood also has invited written comments either via e-mail (greg@burlingtontelecom.net) or care of Burlington Telecom, 200 Church Street, Burlington, VT 05401. In the end, BT and Mayor Kiss will make the call.

Bad Vibes in Vermont’s Peaceful Valley

Satisfying as it was to watch the Nixon regime crumble – the Senate hearings were truly “must see” viewing on Public TV – I had my own dispute with the establishment to resolve in 1973. Unless I distanced myself from the youth program I’d worked hard to develop, the school board would refuse a state grant to fund it. The right thing to do was step down, I concluded. Fortunately, my boss appreciated what I’d accomplished already and offered a promotion. It meant working mainly upstate in Vermont’s beautiful Champlain Valley, but I could continue living in Bennington. There would even be an expense account generous enough to lease a new car. With a combination of regret and relief, I said “Hell, yes.”

Each week for the next year I drove north for three days, living in cheap hotels and spare bedrooms, writing grants and developing new para-professional programs. I apparently had a knack for it, and soon became a consultant on the side. Eventually, however, the arrangement grew tiring, especially the constant traveling. I needed one place to live – and a bit more intellectual stimulation. Fortunately, top administrators at the University of Vermont were impressed, and the College of Education offered an office, plus a spot in the graduate program.

Bidding farewell to Bennington and the gang, I took the offer and started a new life in northwestern Vermont. Five years and several jobs later, I returned to see how things had worked out down south. It was 1978, ten years after I first arrived in Vermont. Nixon was long gone, and Jimmy Carter was president.

The Benington Banner, my old paper, had recently reported that between 20 and 50 pounds of reportedly tainted marijuana was being sold locally. The article had prompted Bennington County State's Attorney Raymond G. Bolton to initiate a closed-door inquest. As a result, reporter Tim Powers and his co-author, an elfish 23-year-old named Woody Klein, were facing contempt citations and maybe jail for deciding to protect their sources. I was working for a newspaper again, the recently launched Vermont Vanguard Press, and it sounded like a great story.

Local police hadn't been looking for the lemon-yellow dope, possibly sprayed with the herbicide paraquat before its shipment from Mexico to Vermont. But two weeks after the story appeared a state trooper called the reporters for the names of "local drug dealers contacted by the Banner." Their refusal to provide the information had sparked the legal reaction.

Many things had changed since my time at The Banner, but the bad blood was still running pretty thick. In my day, the news had been school board fights, the village trustees, and power struggles between liberal and conservative parents. If anything, matters had gone from bad to worse. Now workers were being "poisoned" at the Globe Union battery plant and residents were feeling the effects of lead pipes around town.

Woody Klein thought the contempt charge against him might be a scare tactic. But if it wasn't, he was ready to make the trip. "The object of a free press," he told me, "is to assure the safety of the public. In this case we have to measure what privileges we would lose by revealing sources." Pretty spunky, I thought. He’d also been tracking the lead poisoning among Globe Union workers, and was worried about the health effects of the poisoned dope – possible liver, lung and kidney damage.

Powers was concerned about the cops. "People I talk to say there's been an awful lot of heat this year," he said, running down minor busts, a tally that showed prosecutor Bolton hadn't hit on much but users. Yet the paraquat scare was enough to give police a rationale for more raids. The final irony came in Powers' follow up report: separate lab tests of some golden maryjane from Bennington showed that it wasn't poisoned after all, just dyed to increase its price. The dealers, who temporarily pulled back on sales, had denied the contamination from the start.

I interviewed Bolton in his cramped office below the district court chamber. "Finding this marijuana is part of our overall effort,” he explained. “Of course, it's more important than small amounts would be otherwise." But he wouldn't guarantee anything without the names of local dealers. "This information can't be obtained by state agents. You know, people wholesaling drugs won't talk to the police." After three years on the job, he was adamant. "The Supreme Court says that there is no privilege which allows a reporter to withhold sources when criminal activity is involved. These reporters say it's better to write about an activity than to do anything about it."

Plenty of Benningtonians thought the real problem was Bolton. Even George Sleeman, an old nemesis and still superintendent, rapped the prosecutor for making vandalism a low priority. In the years since my departure, teen crime had reached epidemic proportions. Banner publisher Kelton Miller said, "Bolton's no great crusader, either with the Banner or drug dealing."

Surrounded by old photos of himself as a young Vermont legislator, the publisher talked about the case. "Bolton claims federal law supersedes Vermont law, which is more liberal on sources. The Vermont Supreme Court says a reporter must reveal sources, unless the information is available elsewhere." Miller wasn't fighting for absolute privilege, but he was ready to appeal. "If Bolton is right then newspapers will be on shaky ground whenever they look at any quasi or illegal activity. People would become reluctant to talk."

Miller did have one regret; that the issue might be tested on a "grubby case." In the end it wasn't. Bolton eventually dropped the charges.

Driving around town, I looked out the window and thought: damn, this used to be a gorgeous valley. Right next door to Mt. Anthony and the Bennington Battle Monument, the area loomed large in American Revolutionary lore. By the time I arrived in 1968 a low-level sprawl had already stretched out of Bennington Village toward North Bennington. They called it "the Flats." Yet Bennington was still essentially a clean and rolling space outside the urban web.

A grim new reality crept in as I tooled along the just-completed beltline. This place was being re-tailored for suburban growth. The new road was a prerequisite, a bypass for travelers from New York State and other Vermont communities. Once the first section was finished and the valley was covered with ramps and connectors, "obstructionists" had risen in horror. Their leader was Harvey Carter, the Republican lawyer turned Democrat environmentalist who had long ago recommended me for the Banner job. Launching a campaign to stop "Super 7," Carter had succeeded in halting construction. But that left Bennington with a road going nowhere.

Carter’s law partner Marshall Witten, another old friend and still a Republican, was meanwhile leading an attack on the proposed Ramada Inn scheduled to go up near "terminal beltline." Easy road access had jacked up land values outside the village and developers were ready to pounce. Witten spoke for local restaurant and motel owners guarding their downtown commercial interests. But the cause was lost. Next door to the Ramada site, construction was underway on a shopping center. The punch line was that the whole shebang would sit on a flood plain. Even though a flood channel had been built the area could be wiped out if the water levels rose substantially on the Roaring Branch and Furnace Brook. I imagined shoppers rowing to their cars and the whole project swept along into the new state office building down the road.

But this half-baked development was no fantasy and even I had played a part in decimating the peaceful valley. As a muckraking reporter I’d targeted the village trustees. They didn't do much, but did know one thing – they weren't hot on growth. Arrogantly concluding that they were out of touch and behind the times, I set out to discredit them. My weapons were a tape recorder and their own words.

Unfamiliar with local issues I’d decided to bring the recorder to meetings. But instead of putting the discussions in perspective I transcribed what was said. In print, the result was devastating: their meandering dialogues made the group look ridiculous.

Years later J. Duncan Campbell, one of the Town officials who had encouraged my attacks, still believed I had done the right thing. "You turned the light on when you taped the trustees,” he said, “and you showed people what a member of the counterculture was like," I wasn’t so sure. My exposure of the Village "fathers" as a group of backward, disorganized incompetents had helped convince the public that it was time for consolidated local government. The village had been “merged” into oblivion.

Looking back, I regretted it. Too inexperienced to realize what was happening – and blinded by my supposed power – I had been manipulated, becoming an unwitting accomplice in a campaign by local business leaders to set loose suburban growth.

Part Eight of Fragile Paradise: A Vermont Memoir.

Next: Signs of Contamination