in Newsweek online. An unnamed aide to White House General Counsel Alberto Gonzales told the magazine's Daniel Klaidman, "The memo was actually penned not by Gonzales but by Dick Cheney's top lawyer, David Addington, a hard-charging hawk."

This news service has independently confirmed the accuracy of the Newsweek story, through several intelligence and legal community sources, familiar with the deliberations that preceding the writing of the January 2002 document, which President Bush approved.

According to one specialist in military law, familiar with the proceedings, Addington participated in all of the meetings that led to the drafting of the memo. Another intelligence community source confirmed that Newsweek had obtained on-the-record statements from Bush White House officials close to General Counsel Gonzales, in anticipation of an Administration effort to spike or discredit the story. One week after the Newsweek release, the Bush White House has made no effort to challenge the account of Addington's role.
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Latest From LaRouche

LaRouche Calls for Policy Debate: Open the Convention!

Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche were the guests for 90 minutes on The LaRouche Show internet radio broadcast on July 3. The program was hosted by Harley Schlanger, and included LaRouche Youth Movement leaders Cody Jones in Los Angeles and Michelle Lerner in Philadelphia.
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This Week in History

July 12-18, 1787

The Northwest Ordinance

Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance, and endorses a development policy for the new nation.

On July 13, 1787, while the Constitutional Convention was meeting in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress, in session in New York, passed a momentous piece of legislation entitled, "An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North-West of the River Ohio." By that document, the territory of the present Midwest was added to the original 13 states, under a republican form of government which was dedicated to the agricultural and industrial development of the nation.

By the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which formally ended the American Revolution, the Northwest Territory was admitted to belong to America. The Kentuckians, led by Daniel Boone, had first secured its southern flank after the French & Indian War, and then George Rogers Clark and his men had captured the former French towns in the Illinois Country. But the British, even after the Treaty, refused to evacuate their major northern posts at Niagara, Oswego, and Detroit, as well as several other more minor forts. Instead, they aimed their Indian allies at the American frontiers, still hoping to limit the new republic to the Atlantic seaboard.

Even during the uncertain days of the American Revolution, the idea of creating a Federal territory which would help to unite the nation was being voiced. Over the years 1781-1786, the four states which claimed land to the west—New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut—ceded their claims to the Confederation Government. At the same time, while the Continental Army was encamped at Newburgh, New York, General Washington and his officers developed a plan for the settlement of the Ohio Country. George Washington had traversed it extensively before and during the French & Indian War, and had travelled as far as the Falls of the Ohio (between Indiana and present-day Louisville, Kentucky), after peace was declared. When military affairs seemed hopeless during the early days of the Revolution, and soldiers would ask him what the alternative to surrender would be, Washington answered that the Continental Army could cross the mountains and set up a base in the Ohio Valley.

So when Congress, because of its limited powers under the Confederation, was unable to raise enough funds to pay the Army during the difficult encampment at Newburgh, many of the soldiers agreed that they would accept western land instead, and emigrate there together to set up a new state. In June 1783, two hundred and twenty-eight officers of the Continental Line signed a memorial to the Continental Congress indicating their willingness to settle the Ohio Country. George Washington seconded their memorial, and as soon as the Treaty of Paris took effect he embarked on a project to develop the transportation infrastructure which would link the Northwest Territory with the settled eastern states. His efforts included the Potomac Canal, plans for a canal to link the Ohio River with Lake Erie, and the sponsorship of James Rumsey's steamboat experiments.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson presented an ordinance for governing the new territory. It provided for its erection into states and their entrance into the Confederacy on equal terms with the rest, but a provision prohibiting slavery there after 1800 was defeated. In 1785, an act was passed by Congress which laid out how the western lands would be divided and sold after they were purchased from the Indians. Included was the famous provision that Lot 16 of each township would be used to finance the erection and maintenance of public schools.

In parallel with these government efforts, the veterans of the Continental Army published notices inviting all those interested in settling the Northwest Territory to meet in Boston. On March 3, 1786, at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern of Revolutionary War fame, the officers founded the Ohio Company of Associates, naming Gen. Rufus Putnam as chairman and Major Winthrop Sargent as secretary. The group proposed to use both the veterans' certificates from the Confederation government and a fund of $1 million, raised from subscriptions, to buy a large tract of land in southeastern Ohio and to settle it with Revolutionary War veterans and their families.
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