*LA Times Cover-Up? New Publisher w/Rumsfeld & Reagan connection*

[cynatnite]

New Publisher Was Rumsfeld Friend & Part Of Controversial Reagan Administration U.S. Immigration Policy Calling For 'Concentration Camps'

There is no bigger 'hot button' issue than the U.S. immigration policy, especially in California. But the Los Angeles Times appears to be covering up new publisher David Hiller's past role in helping formulate that policy during the Reagan administration. Today's LA Times profile of Hiller mentions only his "two years at the Reagan Justice Department (where his colleagues included current Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani)" without providing any background. But I have some DOJ document copies and old news articles revealing details about

Hiller's work back then, especially regarding immigration. Let's start with this: a June 12, 1981 Washington Post story detailing the "drastic action" which a Reagan presidential task force on immigration and refugee policy suggested to deal with the influx into the United States. Written by Charles R. Babcock, the article reports that "a presidential task force has decided to recommend that the Reagan administration take drastic action to prevent any new flood of Cuban and Haitian refugees into Florida by stopping boats on the high seas and detaining the newcomers in what they recognize could be called 'concentration camps.'"

The article goes on, "the task force option paper prepared by David Hiller, a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith." I'm told that Hiller was in charge of the task force on immigration for the Justice Department and was instrumental in dealing with all sorts of policy initiatives including plans for mass deportations back to Mexico of Mexicans in the U.S., illegal alien internment camp proposals, and calls for indefinite imprisonment for Cuban boatlift refugees. All this tested the waters for the Reagan administration and eventually laid the legal framework for the Bush administration's present-day Guantánamo policy. (One specific forerunner was the legal brief Hiller helped write to keep a Cuban in the Mariel boatlift imprisoned in a U.S. federal penitentiary in perpetuity.)

In other areas, too, Hiller, along with now Supreme Court Judge John Roberts and Clinton/Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, helped serve as funnels for the right-wing think tanks to shape Reagan Administration social agenda. Hiller's role inside the Reagan Justice Department was described to me as one of "legal hatchet man". It was under Hiller's LA Times predecessor Jeff Johnson that the newspaper's opinion and editorial sections were moved out of the editor's domain and into the publisher's purview. I have written extensively on the right-versus-left political maelstrom that’s sucking subscribers out of the newspaper, and the continuing push-pull of conservative vs progressive ideas espoused and embraced in those sections of the paper. (See The Michael Kinsley Experiment Ends and The Andres Martinez Mystery.)

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/la-times-cover-up-new-publisher-was-part-of-controversial-reagan-administration-immigration-policy-call-for-concentration-camps/

Last night David Hiller, from the Chicago Tribune came into town to replace Jeffrey Johnson and Times Editor Dean Baquet because they "publicly opposed a corporate demand for a stringent cost-cutting plan last month," In other words they were fired. Johnson would not bow down to the right wing Chicago Tribune.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/06/new-la-times-publisher-is-a-right-wing-hatchet-man-with-ties-to-judge-roberts-and-ken-starr/

[nealmhughes]

1. Evidently, the LA Times no longer needs reporters in great number:

just get the wire feeds, the handouts from the State Dept., White House, DOD, etc. and add some local flavor on traffic conditions, what is going on in Sacramento, and voila, there is the news; and now add pre-written opinion pieces from AEI, Heritage, etc. and one has an editorial page. Case closed. No fuss, no muss, no news....