Rewarding the Dark Side:

CIA Praises Dubious Accomplishments of Former Central America Station Chief
By Jack Healey

Prizes for human rights work in the West for westerners are few and far between, as it should be. If any, they usually are saved for the victims of human rights abuses who survived and came back from the graves and suicides. The Nobel Peace Prize goes to organizations that stand for the victims, the disappeared, the medically wounded and the abused civilians in wars. The Nobels also go to individuals for great human rights activism like Sean Mac Bride, Bishop Tutu and Elie Wiesel. These are strong people who represent the best in all of us and who saved many a life with their extraordinary behavior. Other awards like the R.F. Kennedy, Reebok and Carter/D'Menil bring light and attention to the wounded and the weak and highlight international unseen conflicts.

During the Reagan years, I was the Executive Director of Amnesty International in the USA. I had the responsibility of representing the thousands and thousands of innocent people being killed in that period in Central America, among others. The death toll in conservative terms reached three hundred and fifty thousand people, mostly of the Central American Indian population. This death count occurred within the two terms of President Reagan. American backing for those doing the massive amount of the killings, disappearances and torture went to over a million dollars a day. The deaths of the six Jesuits in the middle of the capitol of El Salvador woke the average American up to the reality of the killing squads of our American allies. It was a real shame that it took these six American deaths instead of the thousands of Central Americans to do that, but we human rights people will take any edge we get from this kind of terrible tragedy. Edges count in human rights work.

To feel the depth of the agony and pain of Central America today, one needs a comparison to fully grasp the past. For instance, in the Vietnam Warn the US suffered 59 thousand deaths from our population of over 250 million. This war still haunts our soldiers, and us and brings us over and over to our monuments for those who died. The death toll in Guatemala and El Salvador was roughly 350,000 out of 17 million in their wars. It means that 2% of the population was lost. If we Americans had lost the same ratio in Vietnam as did the citizens of Central America, it would have meant the loss of 5 million soldiers. This gives one a sense of the breadth and length of what Central America went through and how long it will take to get over this trauma, given our unforgettable experience with the Vietnam War over 25 years ago.

All this to say that the Central America station chief of the CIA is just about to receive an award from that institution for his work in Central America in this deathly time frame. The Washington Post cited this story in an article by Vernon Loebon and followed it with another article on March 14 by Tom Blanton. It brought back my memories of dealing with Elliot Abrams, the Asst. Sect. of State for Human Rights re the human rights issues of that administration. Abrams not only did not stop shipments shock batons to apartheid South Africa, he also arranged the funding pattern for those doing the most damage in Central America. He and Dick Chancy, the Secy. of Defense said that they were not clear re who killed the Jesuits in San Salvador and they took their good old time in admitting that their allies did the killings.

My suggestion is that these governmental awards by the CIA might be for those who support the dark side of what our government does and is proud of the results. These award winners would accept fall responsibility for what they did, or did not do, in the name of the American people. Thus, this CIA award to their Central American Station Chief would then be fair arid appropriate. I would then support the CIA and its chosen agent for this dark award. In fact, we could name it after him or some other deserving dark sider.�

For the Sake of Peace,

Trimble Should Be Unionists' Choice May 20
By Jack Healey

As in any relationship, personal or political, motion shifts from one side to the other to keep basic integrity within that bond. May 20 is the Orangemen's turn in Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army has agreed to the decommissioning of their arms under the direction of General DeChastlain of Canada as authorized by the Good Friday Agreement. This long awaited and hesitant decision marks a historical moment for the minority community of Northern Ireland. The roles played by Prime Ministers Blair and Ahern with backing from President Clinton were patient and sure handed. The visit from Nelson Mandela, the former Prime Minister of South Africa, to Dublin brought a sense of reality of the value of compromise as only Mandela can bring. Change, he said, was inevitable and that meant both sides must change, personally and collectively. Mandela told all who would hear it that "leaders must lead." The IRA heard him and responded with an alternative to "no more guns." The removal of the guns is under an international agreement and thus not an obstacle to the peace moving forward. That was the issue for the majority and it is gone. It is now time for the Unionists on May 20 to support their leader David Trimble and the agenda he brings to them for an endorsement. The question of integrity shifts now to the Unionists.

Unionists, like the IRA, must endorse the basic fact of the governments' role in the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement in all its aspects, including Christopher Patton's recommendations on policing in Northern Ireland. In short, like Nelson Mandela told the IA, change is here. The Unionists must adjust to the needs of a real peace. Cultural identity, a basic human right guaranteed by international law, continues through schools, churches, manners and family values. Both sides of this conflict will only lose their identity if they choose to do that themselves. Cultural identity travels with the person, within the shadow of each of us. Examples of major shifts have occurred all over the world; communism disappearing without bloodshed, Southern Africa moving from minority rule to majority rule; changes in law and living brought by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the United States; and the removal of almost all military dictatorships in Latin America.

The Unionists' formerly poor neighbor to the south is now a land of high technology, music and poetry and a member in the Common Market. The Republic of Ireland has agreed to give over a huge track of land to another jurisdiction in the Good Friday Agreement This generosity is singular in history and is an expression of the people of the south that they dearly want peace in the north and want to play a role in making that happen. Prime Ministers Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair have taken political risks to achieve this agreement and have been generous with their time and persons to make it happen. The devotion of these two heads of state continues after the fact of the Good Friday Agreement and will bring added grants, finances and new businesses. A new day is near for all in the North of Ireland if the Unionists vote to support David Trimble's leadership. A vote against Trimble would be a slap to the leaders of Ireland, United Kingdom and United States as well to the substantial number of voters in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Personal views are important but voting is sacred and the vote is in and it was positive.

Both communities would do well to get copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to order to reset their local and worldview. This document sets forth standards by which both sides could advance into this century and be a model for the world, which is still unsettled in many countries by similar civic problems. All of Ireland would become a haven for new business, tourism and a land of beautiful languages where culture is sacred but not bloody. The world would welcome Ireland and Northern Ireland as models of peace and prosperity where lessons of history can be learned and seen and studied. Its children, then, can honor the heroes of peace as well as the heroes of war.

The people of Northern Ireland voted for the Good Friday Agreement. It is time for the Unionists to honor that agreement by endorsing their leader David Trimble on May 20. Anything else falls short of decency and fairness.�

Not One More Dime for Violence in Northern Ireland

By Jack Healey

The Irish diaspora entered the new century with a belief that peace would come to Northern Ireland. Now it finds itself in deep sorrow that it will not be so.

Killings will start again, jobs will be unavailable to Catholics, soldiers will roam Northern Ireland, and innocent people of both faiths will fear one another again, with good reason. Children will carry guns and messages and become little-league pretenders of great intrigue. The battle will rage on.

Why this is so and who is responsible are now necessary questions. We must be brutal in our search. When peace is bypassed, we need to know the culprits and expose them for what they are.

For the first time in Northern Ireland, the British government, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, seeks a true peace. President Bill Clinton's leadership has been tenacious and caring. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland has set a new high-water mark by letting a huge tract of Irish land go over to another jurisdiction. Governmental leadership under the patient former Senator George Mitchell could not have been better.

The Good Friday agreement was the expression of all the people of Northern Ireland and three governments. But it has gone wrong, and failure is in sight.

How could this have happened when there was so much backing and powerful involvement? The answer must be found and the truth be told. Who and what caused this historical moment to dissolve into a matter of "Who said and did what to whom"?

While I am a human rights activist and care only for a just world of all faiths and all people, I was raised in a Catholic family with a deep sense of grievance against the role of England in Ireland. This feeling has never left me, but Tony Blair has changed it.

Once he acted, I knew peace was possible.

The killings that occurred between the Hutus and Tutsis, between Serbs and Muslims, were clear signs to me that this kind of hatred must stop. They show what happens if the dogs of war are left to run.

Yet somehow, within some governments and nongovernmental bodies too, there is a still an abiding belief that the gunners, the dirty hands, are to be trusted and dealt with.

Rather than sending money for basic education of the people who believe in human rights and equality - the massive majority of Northern Ireland—these forces aid the gunners. Attention, meetings and media turn toward them. And the unfortunate truth is that the final decision is left with the violent instead of the nonviolent, whether in Haiti, Bosnia or Northern Ireland.

Entering the process of peace, true peace, means giving up the guns. Both sides. Same day. All of them. This must be done as a first step, not the last.

As a Catholic, I had hoped that the leadership of the guns would see the lessons of the last century, in which hundreds of millions were killed by government action, and would come to their senses about guns and militarism. I thought that in this new century giving up guns would be seen as winning, not losing, the conflict.

History needs such models of decency. There are few. The world should see gunners who willingly gave up their weapons as the heroes and real leaders.

We need to say: Not one more dime for violence. Money from the Irish must go only to the nonviolent. Give only to groups that honor the dead with respect; find a way for the decent to walk the Earth in peace.

The writer, executive director of the Human Rights Action Center, wrote this for The Washington Post.�


(This article was published in the International Herald Tribune, March 23, 2000)

Rallying Rock 'n' Roll Anew

Irascible Jack Healey is back, gathering musical heavyweights to help fight world hunger.

By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
A series of concerts in the Seattle area represent a major new effort by Amnesty International organizer Jack Healey, here speaking with Dave Matthews.

JEFF REINKING, SEATTLE—He's dumped the T-shirt and put on a good sport coat for this, a tie, for God's sake, good shoes. But his gray hair is still splaying out of his ponytail. He's still urgent, still mad. It's like they say: You can take the man out of the street, but you can't take the street out of the man. Jack Healey isn't about to let the world forget its shortcomings.

You can hear people stop shuffling in their chairs when he starts speaking to students and the media this week, and when he stands there, looking balefully around the room with long silences in between his words, you start forgetting he's a rock producer for the moment and start remembering he used to be a Franciscan monk.

"Do we know what the hell we're doing? What we're about?" he asks, and when no one raises a hand, he goes on. "I'd like to think that in the last century, governments didn't do very well, and we the citizens, the average, the poor, the wounded, the confused, we are [now] going to make it work the way it never did before…a citizen boom that would reach out to the whole world. My God! Wouldn't that be a moment? An earthquake. An earthquake of decency, a century of such uncommon decency that we can all look each other in the eye with equality, and justice-and something to eat."

Healey is back. After a decade of lying low in the '90s-let's face it, was there a place for a Jack Healey in the Microsoft moment?—the man who spearheaded the unprecedented Amnesty International pop-rock tours in the 1980s has put together a concert series again, this one on behalf of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's Groundwork 2001 anti-hunger campaign.

The six-night concert series in Seattle concludes Monday with a sold-out KeyArena event featuring Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Maná, Alanis Morissette and Femi Kuti. It will cap off a week that included such artists as Emmylou Harris, Dave Matthews, Philip Glass and Daniel Lanois for a cause (world hunger) that has absolutely nothing to do with global terrorism. Or at least, FAO liaison officer Bob Patterson says, not until you think about it.

"I think clearly we had the biggest and best articulated cause-related musical event of the year-until Sept. 11. We've lost impact," Patterson said, referring to the celebrity-studded musical events of the past month that raised more than $150 million to aid victims of the World Trade Center disaster.

"But people are going to be looking for positive ways to engage with the world. And there's a very key element here," Patterson said. "Hatred and violence are desperate acts. When people have hope, when desperation cannot breed, those acts don't take place."

It was Healey's charisma and, frankly, impudence (he tracked down Bono in Dublin and started the conversation by declaring the U2 singer "wasn't Irish enough") that lined up acts such as U2, Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel and Sting for what became one of the defining moments in pop-rock activism, the Amnesty International human rights tours. The three years of concerts reached places as far away as Ivory Coast and India. They were unprecedented in their ambition and, emerging with events like Farm Aid and Live Aid out of the age of disco, conscience.

Then came the '90s, an era when rock took everything from the family farm to land mines to rain forests on its back, and Healey departed his job as executive director of Amnesty International for a lower profile. Oh, he kept his hand in-rebuilding a factory in Bosnia to employ war widows, producing a benefit concert for detained Myanmar resistance leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Bangkok, putting together a "Punks for Human Rights" album with Jason Rothberg in Los Angeles.

Mostly, he was depressed. "I'm deeply troubled by the drive for wealth and the immensity of human suffering of the '90s, deeply troubled," he says. "Everyone had high hopes for the Clinton administration, but I found them mostly to be smug and uncaring… I'd run into 'em on the street, and I couldn't even look 'em in the eye."

Maybe it was fate, maybe it was a coincidence, but when Patterson started looking for people to help him put together a benefit concert for the FAO's Telefood program—it provides small-scale assistance such as grain silos, chicken houses and fish smokers directly to food producers, shunning major food and cash aid-somebody in Los Angeles applying for the job (Patterson won't say who) put down Healey as a reference.

Because Healey lived near Patterson's office in Washington, D.C., Patterson drove over and knocked on his door. "He came out and we stood on his step, and he said, 'What are you thinking of?' And, of course, he worked with the FAO Freedom from Hunger campaign way back in the '60s. He knew all the issues. He was really the godfather of marrying together causes with celebrity in this country. But he had a funny phrase. He said, 'I don't do rock 'n roll anymore.' But he kind of changed his mind."

From the beginning, Healey made it clear he would handle the vision and the logistics, but he wasn't going to book the talent. Life was simply too short to spend it dealing with managers, he said. So Patterson thought of producer-composer Lanois, who seemed to know a lot of people in the business. He has worked with U2 and Bob Dylan, for starters.

"I had $17 in my pocket. I took $14 and bought a Daniel Lanois CD in the hope there would be a contact there. There was. It was Brian Eno's wife, and when I called her up, she said, 'Call Melanie, she manages Daniel.' "

Patterson called Melanie Ciccone in South Pasadena. "I said, 'My name's Bob Patterson, and I work with FAO. You probably don't know what that is.' And she said, 'Of course I know what FAO is. I grew up on a farm. I studied international economics.',"

In fact, Ciccone had worked in the barrios in Brazil, Chile and the Dominican Republic, and when Lanois said he wasn't up to taking on Groundwork, Ciccone volunteered.

"We had about a six-week telephone friendship," Patterson recalls, when he expressed his concern about lining up big-name acts. "I know a lot of people in this business," Ciccone reassured him. "I said, 'Of course, you're Dan Lanois' manager.' She said, 'You don't get it. I know a lot of people in this business.' I said I know. She said, 'You may have heard of my sister, Madonna Ciccone.' I felt really stupid at that point."

Ciccone had never taken on such a massive project, but as she started, she realized that she already knew what to do. Not only was her sister Madonna, but her husband is singer Joe Henry, and he "has lots of friends in the music business," she said. "I made a list. I said, 'Gee, I think I know how to get to these people.' And I just started calling managers and agents." Jakob Dylan was the first to sign on. "Joe was talking to him, and something came up that I was doing this thing, and Jake said, 'Tell her if she needs me, I'm there.' "

When it was clear the concerts would be held in Seattle—its international connections, lively music scene, agricultural setting and strong political consciousness made it a natural, not to mention a less-tapped-out donor market than L.A. or New York—Ciccone went to Pearl Jam
manager Kelly Curtis. "We said, 'Hey, we're doing this concert right in your backyard, and it seems so right to have you and so wrong not to have you.' We met immediately and his whole
staff became available to us."

Madonna agreed to act as honorary chairwoman and to contribute a track to the Groundwork CD, which also features cuts from Tom Waits, Youssou N'Dour and Sheryl Crow, among others, on sale at Starbucks for $17 ($14 of which goes to FAO). There's also a potential TV broadcast, and Adobe Systems of San Jose kicked in $1.5 million for production costs.

With luck, Ciccone is hoping to get Pakistani qawwali singer Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to perform as a surprise guest Monday night, maybe even doing a duet with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who recorded a song with Rahat's legendary late uncle, Nusrat, for the "Dead Man Walking" soundtrack before he died in 1997.

"Our job is to create a bridge over a big river of who has and who has not, and America versus non-America. It's an opportunity to make a statement. I mean, you gotta do it," Ciccone said. "Would I love to have Paul McCartney? Yeah. Do I think it's critical to have a Pakistani
performing on the stage with an American? I think it's more important than anything."

Healey says he'll be happy if they can start at $1 million raised—what do you expect, when Pearl Jam says they'll back out if the tickets go over $50?—and he admits that might not sound like a lot. On the other hand, it doesn't cost a lot to buy farm tools for people to grow their own food, he says. The main point is to get people listening again.

"If you can get the word out to some little girl or boy through music, you can reach that heart," he says.

"What we're going through now, it's terrible about innocents dying in New York and D.C. And we don't have a prophet, we don't have a Dr. King, to say, 'This can be changed.' So we're doing what a citizen can do, to say, hey, we're gonna change that."

(This article was published October 19, 2001)