Le Show; 2021-10-24

From deep inside your audio device of choice. From New Orleans, Louisiana, I'm Harry Sharer, welcoming you to this week's edition of Lesho. Ladies and gentlemen, this week I'm sure you remember, I'm sure you remember, it was this week. It began with a fuselage of Encomiums, or Encomia, well deserved to a fallen pioneer. First black joint chiefs of staff, chairman, first black national security adviser, first black secretary of state. But as Colin Powell himself said, he had a blot on his record. That quote came from among other places, an interview general Powell did with Al Jazeera on the 10th anniversary of 9-11. I gave that speech on four days notice, and every word in that speech was gone over by the

director of Central Intelligence and his deputy director and all of their experts. And up till two o'clock in the morning of that day, they verified. Everything was in that speech. So it was nothing that I made up. It was nothing that I stuck in there. And in fact, some people tried to stick extra things in there that the intelligence community wouldn't verify with multi-sourcing, and I said no. And so when I presented that information, it was information that the president believed in, information that my colleagues in government believed in in the national security world, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Dr. Rice, was information that the United Kingdom and other nations believed in. And so I presented the best evidence that we had. It came from an actual intelligence estimate, agreed to by the intelligence community. There may have been one or two dissents. And when the words of dissent, I included that. The aluminum tubes, thought they were for centrifuges, but I noted in my presentation, there are

other points of view about that. And so within your intelligence services in our intelligence services, the Department of Energy had a different view. My guys were not sure. Now, because it was media and because it was the UN, it became a huge event, which is what we wanted it to be. And chiefly because it was you and your standing in the country, that's why I was sent to do it. But it turned out, as we discovered later, that a lot of the sourcing that had been attested to by the intelligence community was wrong. I imagine how I felt the day that they finally came in and said to me, well, you know, we don't have four independent sources for that biological warfare van. It's one guy, and he's loopy, and he's in a German jail, and we've never talked to him. Hello? And I'm sitting here.

Well, how did you feel? I felt terrible. And six months later, the intelligence community is still standing behind their original judgments, even though nothing has been found. I understood the consequences of that failure, and as I've said in many occasions, I deeply regret that the information, some of the information, not all of it, some of the information I presented, which was multi-source, was wrong. And it is a lot on my record. But, you know, there's nothing I can do to change that plot. Well, on today's list show, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to add too much effing perspective to that statement about what Colin Powell did know, or could have known, and when, with the help of Greg Tillman, he focused on nuclear non-proliferation in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

That was the State Department's own in-house intel agency, until he left in late 2002. When I spoke to him in 2013 on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, I began by playing for him a different clip from Colin Powell when he apparently wasn't feeling so terrible. He was appearing on Meet the Press in 2013 on the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. We were basing all of our actions on an national intelligence estimate that the Congress asked for. It was provided to the Congress by the CIA, and all of us in the Bush administration at that time accepted the judgment of our 16 intelligence communities. I presented it to the UN. We subsequently found out that a lot of that information was not accurate. And that is very unfortunate, but that's the way it unfolded.

The President had more than sufficient basis to believe that there were weapons of mass destruction that were a danger to the world, and the possibility of those weapons going to terrorists. And so he undertook military action. I think that was the correct thing to do, and it was well-supported by the intelligence. Is that an accurate statement? I'm very sorry to hear him put it that way, because I had a lot of respect for Colin Powell as Secretary of State. I felt honored working for him as Secretary of State. One of the things that I particularly dislike about what he just said was, in the fall of 2002, there was a national intelligence estimate on Iraqi WMD. On the most important assessment in that estimate, concerning the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. When there was a nuclear weapons program prior to the first Gulf War, but 15 agencies in that estimate said that Iraq had reconstituted the nuclear program which had been dormant

and had ended after the first Gulf War. One agency, Colin Powell's own agency, the intelligence bureau of the State Department, said that the evidence did not support that conclusion. The evidence showed that Iraq had not reconstituted the nuclear weapons program. Of all the various assessments about chemical weapons, about biological weapons, about missiles, that was the most critical assessment. The State Department not only dissented, as the State Department would sometimes do with an asterisk and a one-liner, it was basically a dissent with the entire judgment, requiring a lot of words, and was on the front page of the executive summary of the estimate. It was on the one page that went to the President of the United States. That should raise alarm bells, not because the State Department tell the bureau was always right, although I would argue that INR, which is its acronym, INR was more often right

than not when we descended from the majority, but that Colin Powell in particular, who knew or should have known from our memorandum, from his conversations with the head of our bureau, the reasons, the detailed reasons why the evidence was not sound behind that conclusion is very disappointing that he would put it this way. I have a little bit of sympathy for his political position at the time. Colin Powell had been arguing that we had to take this to the United Nations if we were going to have international support for something as risky and dangerous as invading Iraq. The rest of the Bush administration was very reluctant to do that, but Powell prevailed. And then we got UN support for returning the UN inspectors to Iraq. They had just hit the ground when one week later, the Bush administration said that these fabulous inspectors are not going to be able to find anything. In fact, the inspectors found out a great deal of information when they were on the ground.

They found out that the claims that there was a mobile biological weapons lab was untrue. They found out that what the president had said almost exactly 10 years ago about the Iraqis obtaining uranium from Africa, that that was also untrue based on a forged document. They succeeded in getting Saddam Hussein to destroy the short range ballistic missiles that had gone over the range that they were permitted. And on the nuclear front, the inspectors found out that the aluminum tubes that the intelligence community had said was being used to spin an enriched uranium so that it could be made into weapons grade material. These aluminum tubes were as we in the intelligence bureau assessed at the time were being used for artillery rockets, having nothing at all to do with nuclear weapons. Why is the nuclear part of it so important?

Because in the fall of 2002, Condoleezza rise, the national security adviser, Dick Cheney, the vice president of the United States, and various others of the administration were conjuring up images of mushroom clouds. George Bush was saying that we cannot wait five years until the first indication of a nuclear capability is a mushroom cloud. So they were very much using this kind of scare tactic to win support for an invasion of Iraq when the evidence, particularly on the nuclear side of the question, was very weak. And it was very frustrating for me as a recently retired intelligence analyst who had seen all the information who knew that there were differences of opinion on this to not only hear the administration try to sell this line, but for it to be received with such credulity by the Congress and by much of the press, even though members of the Congress, some members of the Congress on the intelligence committees had access to the details.

In fact, very few people read the detailed intelligence assessment that got into some of these details and got into some discussion of what the evidence was. You read the intelligence assessment. You said a moment ago I think that the front page contained a reference to the State Department Bureau's dissent. How would you characterize their reference to your Bureau's dissent? The way it appears in the estimate is that the Assistant Secretary of State for intelligence disagrees with the judgment rendered. So it's not as Condoleezza Rice said on Meet the Press in the fall of 2002, or perhaps it was 2003 when she was read a statement that I had made about the administration ignoring the dissent on this issue. She said, I cannot be responsible for what everyone in the bowels of the bureaucracy thought about this issue.

Well, this wasn't the bowels of the bureaucracy. This was the head of one of the 16 intelligence bureaus, and in fact one of the very few bureaus who renders analytical judgments on all sources of intelligence. I mean, the defense intelligence agency, the central intelligence agency, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research are the three principal agencies that look at all the intelligence and render these kind of judgments. Condoleezza Rice, I think, said at the time that she didn't even read the INR dissent from the majority opinion, which is rather odd as the President's National Security Advisor as the nation is getting ready to go to war. How can one from the outside assess the Secretary of State's relationship to this intelligence agency, to the head of INR meet with the Secretary of State on a regular basis? Does he get briefed on a regular basis by the head of INR or just INR just work away in the bowels of the bureaucracy and hope that their stuff gets read? There are two ways that the product of the State Department's intelligence bureau reaches

the Secretary of State. The head of the bureau does meet on a daily basis with either the Secretary of State and other senior officials in the building meet on a daily basis with the intelligence bureau. The reason for that is not so much that there is such a keen respect for the brilliant minds in the bureau, although there certainly are brilliant minds in the bureau, but rather much of the intelligence that all of the intelligence agencies of the U.S. government collect is in the vernacular top secret code word, and there are special handling instructions for that intelligence. And when I was in the State Department, the only bureau that could carry that intelligence and store it overnight was the intelligence bureau. So it was a very necessary connection between the senior officials and the intelligence bureau to make sure that on a daily basis they got the intelligence, not just the headlines and the raw data, but some analytical content.

Those of us in the bureau who were familiar with the subjects would both explain what the raw intelligence coming in said and also what it meant. And Colin Powell was in general receptive, interested in the intelligence product. He actually even gave instructions to the State Department that he would like it to be organized a little bit more like a military command. So in the military you have a G2 function, the intelligence function, and every commander has a G2 officer to turn to, and he wanted the intelligence bureau, the State Department, be very much on this model. Now I had personal problems with that when under Powell's instructions I would appear each day to Under Secretary John Bolton. On the fourth day Bolton's staffer informed me that the Under Secretary decided that he wanted to keep these briefings inside the family, to which I responded something like,

well I thought I was in the family, moreover the Secretary of State has asked that we do this, but that was the end of our daily personal contact. It was not the end of the intelligence flow. I mean every day John Bolton received a very thick collection of intelligence reports. Some of them direct from the agency, some of them with some value added by the State Department Intelligence Bureau. There was no cutoff to the intelligence, but let's say there was a certain disinterest in certain quarters in what the State Department was trying to share with the senior officials. Why do you think, correct me if I'm wrong, the INR was correct about the aluminum tubes in advance of the inspectors, I think you just said that. The INR, I don't recall whether they had weighed in correctly on the yellow cake issue of a Saddam, supposedly trying to buy you right now.

Even our had sent a memorandum in the winter of 2002 to the Secretary of State, basically warning him off that piece of intelligence. We suspected a forgery or something that didn't ring right, and we expressed great skepticism about it. And frankly, as the supervisor of the analyst who was rendering that judgment, I really almost forgot about the issue, because I thought everyone in the intelligence community accepted that as a not very credible report. And so I was personally shocked then, months later, after I had retired, and the President included a line in his State of the Union address referring to the uranium from Africa. And my first reaction was, well, there must be some new intelligence received since I left. And then I slowly realized that he was talking about the same discredited intelligence that we had told Secretary Powell about that I thought had been already thoroughly discounted

at the time. But I'm afraid that there were many in the Bush administration who wanted to go to war, and saw intelligence not as a way to objectively understand what was happening, but to cherry pick the intelligence. And anytime there was something, whether it was of high credibility or not, if it was something that would make the case that Saddam had to be stopped through military action, that would be used. And the ears were plugged if we explain about something that seemed not to be very credible, like the curveball source that the West Germans had used on biological weapons laboratories. So you, I guess, have partly answered my question, the question was going to be, why among all the intelligence agencies did the INR not get the memo? Well, I sometimes joke to my friends that would rather be a feckless and ignored than wrong and unobjective.

And it was a very bright line in the tradition of INR written between the policy bureaus of the State Department, the Americans, the Foreign Service officers and civil servants who would try to carry out the policies of the President of the United States in various regions of the world. And the analyst in the intelligence bureau, whose job was to try to do their best to objectively describe what was happening in the world and how that impacted U.S. interests. And there were certainly a lot of times when the policy bureaus of the State Department disagreed strenuously with our analysis, and they didn't want to hear it, and they would become less interested in hearing any more of it. But that was okay. I mean, obviously, intelligence analysts want their products read, but we tried very hard when I was at the State Department of Intelligence Bureau not to let policy reactions affect analytical content.

And I would even argue that we were more successful in doing that than the central intelligence agency, who I think is pretty clear now, George Tennant very much valued his daily meetings with President Bush and knew that telling the President, reminding the President repeatedly that he was not really accurately conveying the intelligence as the CIA understood it was not something that Tennant seemed particularly interested in doing. Okay, let's widen the scope a little bit because we get into the nutty coincidence area here. At around the same time, Dr. Brian Jones, who was head of the WMD analysis branch of the defense intelligence services in Great Britain, says that the intelligence advice received by the government that Iraq possessed significant stocks of WMD was wrong. Real intelligence analysts did their best to ensure a balanced assessment, reflecting the

uncertainty about this, to ensure that that emerged to the public. But they were overruled at the most senior level by those without the appropriate experience and expertise. That's a quote from Dr. Brian Jones, who passed away last year about the process of preparing the so-called dodgy dossier that was the British government's chief public defense for the war in September of 2002. And then Andrew Wilkie, who was in the Australian Office of National Assessment, and his now member of parliament, said, quote, and he said this in May of 2003, some in the Australian intelligence community had latched onto the dodgy American intelligence, resulting in partial contamination of assessments with an overestimation of Iraq's WMD capability. But Australian intelligence agencies made it clear to the government, the Australian government all along, that Iraq did not have a massive WMD program. So this seems to be almost an echoing in America's two major English-speaking allies of

the same thing that was going on in Washington. Is it just a nutty coincidence? It's certainly more than a coincidence. It's a fascinating subject because the US, the British and the Australians have a very deep and intimate intelligence-sharing relationship. The intelligence seen by British analysts or Australian analysts is virtually identical to that seen by American analysts. We obviously have a much larger intelligence establishment and can, particularly on a technical level, produce a lot more into the system. But I know Wilkie personally have great respect for him, have delved obviously with the British and Australian counterparts. And there was a very similar thing happening in all three countries. There was some bad intelligence trade craft.

I would certainly be free to admit on the US side. Much of that has been, I think, successfully addressed after the Iraq WMD fiasco. But more troubling than the bad trade craft was the way that the political leadership, in all three countries, really, spun the information that they had, the already flawed information, made it far worse in terms of jumping to conclusions or exaggerating what the intelligence actually said. And I very much see a parallel story going on in the three countries at the time. And one of the wonderful things that historians have to try to sort out this whole episode is the results of British context with the Americans in the summer of 2002, when very senior British agency heads, intelligence officials, foreign and defense ministry officials came to the United States, met with their counterparts, and then prepared a report

for the British Prime Minister on what was going on in the United States with respect to Iraq. It's now called the Downing Street Memo. And it is uncanny in its accuracy and the vividness of the picture that it portrays. And it has a very descriptive sentence in it about the American administration is fixing the intelligence around the policy. This is a devastating indictment by one of our closest friends about what was actually going on here. And the worst part of it is, of course, the British were a later complicit in that fixing in a sense. But that only came out, of course, after the invasion. And even when it came out a couple of years later, it took one week after the story broken Britain for it even to get into the American press. And it was treated the American press as some sort of a British domestic issue. When, in fact, it was one of the most damning pieces of evidence against what was going

on inside the U.S. administration about the use of intelligence and the determination to attack Iraq, no matter what the intelligence said. One more question about the working inside the State Department. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was a, I guess chief aide to Colin Powell, said publicly in a couple of years after the event that he participated in a hoax in those were his words in the preparation of Colin Powell's remarks before the United Nations, the mobile bio weapons van and other wonderful demonstrations. What was your assessment of Colonel Wilkerson at the time and why do you think that Secretary Powell continues to act as if Colonel Wilkerson never said that? Well, it's kind of a damning comment. I have respect for Colonel Wilkerson.

I didn't have a lot of contact with him inside the State Department. I've actually seen him up close and personal more since that time. One of the oddest things at the time was that Colin Powell, Colonel Wilkerson, disappeared for like four days into the CIA and relied exclusively at that point on CIA analysts for packaging this intelligence and they're the ones who really prepared the remarks that Powell would give. There are two things to say about this and both of them really come from one of the little known things that happened at the time and that is that Powell provided drafts of his remarks to the analysts who had been working for me. This was after several months after I had retired but those analysts wrote back to him some warnings about what to use, where things were not faithfully rendered on the base

of the intelligence and anyone in the public can now read this. It was part of the unclassified Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the whole Iraq WMD fiasco and it's an annex to one of these reports. You can actually see the memoranda written by these mid-level I&R intelligence analysts warning the Secretary of State not to say this, not to say that, not to put it this way because that would be misleading and so to Powell's credit, he didn't just seclude himself with the CIA, he actually did get a text back for comment. One only wishes that he would take in the head of his bureau along for this experience and that could have saved him a lot of grief. The speech that he gave in February of 2003 was a lot better than the speech that he was given but it was certainly not purged of the exaggerations and the unfortunate characterizations of the intelligence and there's no way but to hold Secretary Powell partly guilty for

doing that even though one has to be very sympathetic about the position that he was put in. It's easy for me to say but I dearly wish that Powell would have gone to the President at that point and said that you were asking me to do something I cannot in good conscience do. I will either have to resign or you will have to change the way we put this. That is not really what I think Colin Powell understood his job to be, his job was to be to argue forcefully behind closed doors for what he thought was right and then if the President makes the decision he's saluted smartly and carried out his orders that is pretty much what he did and I think it's kind of a model now of what not to do. There is a time when you have to be able to say I cannot in good conscience do this I've got to go. Greg Tealman of the Arms Control Association, thank you very much for joining us to the show, you're welcome Mary.

I'm going to be happy, but I don't know what you're saying, lies, lies breaking my heart. You think that you're such a smart girl and I'll believe what you say or who do you think you are girl to lead me on this way. Hey, lies, lies, I can't believe what you say lies, lies are going to make you sad someday someday you're going to be your own way, but you won't end me the world lies

I'm going to be happy, but I don't know what you're saying, lies, lies, lies, lies are going to make you sad, but I don't know what you're saying, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies are going to make you sad someday someday you're going to be your own way, but you won't end me the world lies, lies, lies are going to make you sad, but I don't know what you're

saying, lies, lies, lies are going to make you sad someday someday you're going to be your own way, but I don't know what you're saying, lies are going to make you sad someday you're going to be sad someday you're going to be your own way, but you won't end me the world lies, lies, lies are going to make you sad so that you don't end me the world lies are going to make you sad every day what you're saying, lies, lies, lies are going It's a thing. You know, get used to it. Uranium mines were built and worked between the years of 1944 and 1986. So those were the years according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, over 30 million tons of uranium. That's a lot of uranium. We're extracted from the mining sites on Navajo lands during that time.

Today, well, yeah, it's all different today. There are 524 abandoned uranium minesites on the land that constitutes the Navajo Nation. You might say, you know, go for the Navajo stay for the abandoned mines. The Navajo Environmental Protection Agency estimates there could be far more. Wow, stay the weekend. Let's report from KSL Radio and Salt Lake City, the largest release of radioactive material in US history. Well, that sentence ends mid-sentence. The presence of the mines on Navajo land has had catastrophic effects in July of 1979. The church rock mines released the most significant amount of radioactive material in US history. So they did finish the sentence after all. The event known as the church rock uranium mill training spill falls right off the tongue, don't it?

Released radioactive material in bulk, the presence of over 500 abandoned mines has and continues to contaminate groundwater and threaten public, occupational, and environmental health. According to the Navajo Nation, which I shoot, hey, listen, we taught them one thing. They shoot a press release. There is currently funding for cleanup efforts at only 219 of the known mines leaving 305 known sites on Navajo land to harden the surrounding areas, resources, and people. So we didn't just take their kids. The Community Association of the area spoke to a president Nez, Jonathan Nez, of the Navajo Nation, about their opposition to the transfer of uranium mine waste from the abandoned mines to the mill site,

a disposal location that is closer to members' residences. Let's get it right by you. So you can remember it always. Clean cheap. Walking distance. I friend the atom. And that leads now, ladies and gentlemen, to a copyrighted feature of this program, which we call News of the Godly. Also in the great Southwest of the United States. It's been nearly three years since the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico filed for bankruptcy. With a proud moment, letters sent to a federal judge reflect impatience with the pace of the proceedings,

according to the Associated Press, at least 16 letters have gone to the US bankruptcy judge, David Summa, since the case began, most being sent by the same few people, still the Santa Fe Mexican reports that the letters appear to give a voice to victims or the relatives of victims of sexual abuse, as the case drags on. One letter sent three months ago, nothing is happening. Victims are frustrated with the case at a standstill. Please help, unquote. Around 385 victims, most of whom suffered child's sexual abuse by priests and other clergy members are represented by numerous attorneys. That's a shocker, isn't it? Hey, you've got to represent somebody. Nine of the claimants make up a community that also speaks

for the victims, the Reverend Glenin Jones, the Archdiocese, Vicar General. I guess they don't have a Vicar admiral. Wrote on the institution's website at the end of September that the Archdiocese is collecting money to pay the victims. The Archdiocese also is negotiating with insurance companies, but the Reverend Glenin Jones, the Vicar General, acknowledged that it, quote, may take a while, unquote. And an Idaho-based bankruptcy attorney representing the Archdiocese Ford Elsesser, I think that's an electric Ford. He represents the diocese. And he says this week, the frustration of the survivors is understandable. While the ongoing work with the insurance companies is confidential, he says it's critical to the case. Nationwide numerous dioceses and Catholic orders have filed for bankruptcy in the sex abuse thing

in New Mexico. Victims, attorneys accuse the Archdiocese of shifting assets to parishes and trust funds ahead of the bankruptcy filings to make those assets inaccessible to victims. That complaint is unhold. I guess it's listening to music, not good music. It's not clear how much money and insurance the Archdiocese is trying to collect participants in the case, have declined to disclose that. Thuma wrote in January that February, sorry, but more than 150 million could be involved. And that was only for a portion of the assets the victims could potentially receive. But meantime, sit tight. Now that's my advice, not theirs. News of the land of 15,000 princes now are freedom-loving friends in Saudi Arabia.

10,000 Yemeni children have been killed or maimed since a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened in the Civil War in Yemen in March 2015. This was after the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels ousted the government. And that number comes from the United Nations Children's Agency, UNICEF, this week, according to Reuters. Quote, the Yemen conflict has just hit another shameful milestone. We now have 10,000 children who have been killed or maimed since March 2015, according to the UNICEF spokesperson in a briefing in Geneva after coming back from Yemen. Quoting him, that's the equivalent of four children every single day. Adding many more child deaths or injuries went unreported. Four out of every five children, totaling 11 million, need humanitarian assistance in Yemen. 400,000 are suffering from acute malnutrition.

More than two million out of school. I know, but Yemeni schools, come on. UN led efforts to engineer a nationwide ceasefire. They're stalled, Saudis and Houthis both resist compromise, much like our Congress. So who are we to say who we are? Saudi Arabia has issued stern rules and a controversial dressing code, dress code, we would call it, for Formula One players and support staff set to take part in the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix in Jeddah in December this year. Saudi Arabia, you may realize it's hosting a Formula One race for the first time in a history of Formula One. The Saudi Grand Prix is set to take place at the Jeddah Street Circuit in December 5. It's the first ever Formula One event in the country. Ahead of the race, Saudi Arabia, as I say,

strict set of rules come from the government and a controversial dress code, dress code for females, in line with the directives of Saudi Arabia, government Formula One teams and personnel have been asked to cover their arms and legs at all times during the event. The women cannot wear clothes that rest above their knee and have been advised to ensure their shoulders and legs above the knee are not visible. Women have also been asked to wear minimal makeup in the Formula One guidelines. And women cannot wear backless dresses, mini skirts or bikinis. The men, well, you know, the list is less restrictive when it comes to the dress code. Men are advised to cover their arms and legs at all times. Participants support staff and personnel cannot wear shorts, tank tops, or remain shirtless. This could be particularly problematic for support staff who will have to work in searing heat in Jeddah

during the race and clothes that may not be particularly appropriate for the climate. Other rules for the people taking part in the Grand Prix, people should refrain from showing affection in public or using profane language. OK, that should be easy. It's a Grand Prix. News of a freedom-loving friends, the land of 15,000 princes. Saudi Arabia. And now more data, more data, we need more data. Come on, more data, more data. I get some data for me, more data, more data, more data. We need more, more. All right, we got some more. The ride-hailing app lift received more than 4,000 reports of sexual assaults during rides from 2017 to 2019. The company revealed in a new report, 1,800 reports

in 2019 alone. Who did they think they are, a church? Lift revealed the numbers this week after having pledged two years ago to do so. Company said the number of sexual assault reports collected through its app had risen. Every year, 1,096 in 2017, 1,255 in 2018, 1,807 in 2019. More than half of the incidents in that year were reported as, quote, non-consensual touching of a sexual body part, unquote. Another 156 reports involved, non-consensual sexual, you know what? It also listed 10 fatal assaults during that two-year period, including four in 2019. This is two years after its rival, Uber put out a similar report showing more than 3,000 sexual assaults reported in the rides within the US just in 2018.

Ride-hailing companies have come under increasing scrutiny over safety issues, especially sexual assaults. Yeah, it's worth getting rid of taxing companies so you can have that. Left was sued by more than a dozen women in 2019 who alleged the company had failed to enact basic safety measures that would have prevented the alleged assaults. Women also said the company downplayed the seriousness of the attacks when they were reported. Left says it screens all drivers with initial and annual background checks, and it monitors criminal and driving records. The company said that from 2017 to 2019, more than 99% of rides occurred without any reported safety-related incident. That's about 1% fewer rides without incident than I have in my car. More data, always more data.

And now, the Apologies of the Week. Deadline New York, Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams, he's the presumptive next mayor, but there's still going to be a election. Publicly apologize this week to a former transit cop whose reputation he smeared with words and pictures after she accused members of a police fraternal group he once co-led of cheating on a police exam. Way back in 1991, Adams attacked the integrity of then-office Lizette LeBron, labeling her a scorned lover of another cop and parading photos of her in a bathing suit to the press, a hundred underminer claims of corruption by members of the Guardian's Association, a fraternal organization of black cops, according to a New York City publication called The City

During a news conference, this week, Adams, a former cop and current Brooklyn burrow president, apologized when the city asked about the episode. 30 years ago, while being a spokesperson for the Guardian's Association, it was inappropriate what we did and so a clear apology. I was wrong and when I'm wrong, I'm wrong. And I don't have a problem acknowledging that I was wrong. I was wrong, Adams said. I guess he was wrong. The apology came two days after the city first to tail the mayoral frontrunner's attacks on LeBron and a day after his Republican rival, Curtis Sleewa, formerly head of the Guardian Angels, different group from the Guardians, held the news conference to demand that Adams apologize. This was her life's dream to be a member of the Transit Police of New York City and as a result of the character assassination wedged by Eric Adams, calling her a disgruntled lover, which she was not. He effectively drove her out of the Transit Police and he left her a destroyed soul, said Curtis Sleewa.

Dreamed of being in the Transit Police. The University of Southern California announced last week it will make amends for its discrimination against Japanese Americans during World War II. That's when the US government deemed the community a national security threat. USC president, Carol Folt, will award post-Humus degrees and apologize to the students of Japanese descent whose schooling was interrupted when they and their families were forcibly displaced and put into concentration camps. That will disrupt your schooling. At the time, the University refused to release transcripts for students who wanted to transfer out of USC, sabotaging their chances to complete their educations. USC is now trying to identify the families of about 120 students who were affected, 1941 through 1942. Quote, I think we're starting to understand

there's things that have happened in the past that are not things that we're proud of. Folt said, it only does good to acknowledge that to find the source of problems to apologize, but maybe even more importantly, to make sure that these sorts of issues do not happen. Unquote, well, it's USC after all. Yes, I went to UCLA. Many college students were left with uncertain futures after FDR signed the order, mandating the removal and subsequent incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent who lived in the designated military zones along the west coast. They were encouraged were schools in other parts of the country to accept students of Japanese descent, most of whom children of Japanese immigrants known as Nisei, the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council was largely successful. Schools on the west coast relocated students transcripts,

helping many graduate from other colleges. The council allowed for some thousand of Nisei students to leave camp and continue with their education on the outside. Some students chose to remain with their families in concentration camps, and others joined the military to prove their loyalty to the US. But some of them wanted to continue their studies found that schools like USC, older or no schools like USC, stood in their way. Not only were many USC students forced to abandon their studies during the war, but when Japanese American students tried to re-enroll at USC, that's how missing their education. So, missing their education, they were to obtain their transcripts afterward. They were also allegedly told to start all over again. Some said officials at USC claimed their paper work had been lost. USC previously gave honorary degrees to surviving students

in 2012 after a law required California public universities to do so. But the school wouldn't give the same honor to those who had died. Under fault, the current president, it made an exception. The USC policy was attributed to the then president, Rufus von Kleinsmied, his name has since been stripped from campus buildings because of his racist beliefs and his support for eugenics. So the students didn't deserve transcripts because they weren't. They weren't going to be allowed to breed anyway. Dateline Modpelje Vermont, legislative leaders, formally apologized this week for Vermont's speaking of eugenics, early 20th century state sanctioned eugenics movement, which targeted, guess who? Indigenous people and other groups, Speaker of the House and Senate President Pro Tem, read the apology from the floor of the House,

standing before approximately 30 members of the public, including a number of Indigenous people, some from the Abanaki tribes of that region. Quote, while eugenics practices and policies are no longer in existence, the impact and legacy feels deeply remains today, said the Speaker of the House, for those who were directly impacted or the descendants and for all of the communities involved, we cannot undo the trauma that this moment has caused. But we can start by formally acknowledging this dark period in this state's history. We publicly apologize for the little, Tom, are you glad you're there? Yeah, that's what happened to me too. The legislature's role in allowing for this to happen, we are sorry, said the Speaker of the House, and I am sorry, unquote. Case you missed it, the eugenics movement used forced sterilizations and other practices in an attempt to wipe out targeted populations who were destined and deemed unfit to procreate, including, here's the list, some of them,

your indigenous people, your French Canadians, your mixed race people, your people with disabilities, and your low income families, among others. In 1931, the Vermont legislature passed a bill endorsing a eugenics survey by a university zoologist to sanction such practices. Earlier this year, the legislature passed a joint resolution to apologize for those actions and the enduring harm. The apologies of the week, ladies and gentlemen, it is a copyrighted feature. Yeah, say it with me, sure, why not, of this very broadcast. And now, the next slide. Sure, it's wacky music, it's a smart world, and it's a wacky world.

Facebook announced in a corporate blog that it will hire 10,000 workers in the European Union to build out its plans for the quote, Metaverse. One quote, the tech giant describes the Metaverse as a new phase of interconnected virtual experiences that makes use of virtual and augmented reality. No, of course they won't sell ads on it. Executives are the company that have touted the Metaverse, and needs reverb next time I say. While continuing with that, I trust crackdowns whistle-blowing former employees who will let grievous harms to society and individuals caused by the company's suite of apps. And it's a total crash of its services in recent weeks. Calling this an exciting time for European tech, the company also paid homage to European regulatory efforts in the areas of free speech and data privacy.

Facebook said the company shares those values. Beyond emerging tech talent, the EU also has an important part role to play in shaping the new rules of the internet. European policy makers are leading the way in helping to embed European values like free expression, privacy, transparency, and the rights of individuals into the day-to-day workings of the internet. Said Facebook, which has faced increasing criticism over its business and user data practices, and European regulators have tried to lay out strict rules for tech giants to do business in the block. Interestingly, Facebook had previously warned that more regulation could prompt the company to move away from Europe, which could cause jobs. But now it's going to bring jobs, it'll do something to jobs. We know that because the metaverse told us. And Dateline Washington, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said this week, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk should directly raise with him any issues about the hiring

of a senior safety adviser who had been critical of Tesla. He's welcome to call me if he's concerned, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week confirmed a writer's report that Duke University Engineering and Computer Science Professor Missy Cummings is coming aboard at NHTSA and Musk wrote on Twitter, Objectively, her track record is extremely biased against Tesla. She said to Musk, happy to sit down and talk with you any time, that's a good talk. You got to talk with Elon Musk, because it's a smart, smart, smart, smart, smart world. Or she could talk with him as a virtual Facebook metaverse avatar, I might even be cooler.

The avatar might talk more sense. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this week's edition of the show The Product Work Returns is what it does next week at the same time on these radio stations and on your audio device of choice whenever you want it. And it'll be just like talking to Elon Musk if you'd agree to join with me then, but you already thank you very much, uh-huh, a tip of the show, Shepo, The List Show, Shepo. I left out the article. To the San Diego desk, to Pam Hallstead and Thomas Walsh, here at WWW, and on New Orleans. And it would be just like talking to Elon Musk if you'd agree to join with me then, but you already thank you very much, uh-huh.

Did I already say that? Well, this time I really meant it. The email address for this program, the playlist of the music heard here on, and your chance to get ever more scarce cars, cars I talk to you sure it's all at harryshare.com. And me, thanks for asking on Twitter at the harryshare. Thanks. The show comes to you from Century Progress Productions and originates through the facilities of WWW N.O. New Orleans, flagship station of the Changes Easy Radio Network, so long from New Orleans.