PREMEDITATED MERGER
Now Cheney chimes in: Ain't no superhighways
VP latest to make official denial, some call it 'gaming semantics'
Posted: July 29, 2007
5:00 p.m. Eastern
By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
 Vice President Cheney |
Despite evidence to the contrary, Vice President Dick Cheney says there is no "secret plan" to create a continent-crossing superhighway to help facilitate a merger of the United States, Mexico and Canada.
"The administration is not engaged in a secret plan to create a 'NAFTA super highway,'" asserts Cheney in a recent letter to a constituent, according to a copy of the message obtained by WND.
The vice president's letter quotes an Aug. 21 statement from the U.S. Department of Transportation that, "The concept of a super highway has been around since the early 1990s, usually in the form of a claim that the U.S. Department of Transportation is going to designate such a highway."
DOT then refutes the claim, stating, "The Department of Transportation has never had the statutory authority to designate a NAFTA super highway and has never sought such authority."
The DOT statement then retracts the absolute nature of that statement, qualifying that, "The Department of Transportation will continue to cooperate with the State transportation departments in the I-35 corridor as they upgrade this vital interstate highway to meet 21st century needs. However, these efforts are the routine activities of a Department that cooperates with all the state transportation departments to improve the Nation's intermodal transportation network."
The DOT statement cited by the vice president seems to model the denial recently fashioned by the North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc., or NASCO, on its website.
There NASCO states, "There a no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway – it exists today as I-35."
The coalition continues to distinguish its support for a North American "SuperCorridor" from a "NAFTA Superhighway," asserting that a "SuperCorridor is not 'Super-sized." The website then claims NASCO uses the term "SuperCorridor" to demonstrate "we are more than just a highway coalition."
In a July 21, 2006, internal e-mail obtained by WND under a Missouri Sunshine Law request, Tiffany Melvin, executive director of NASCO, cautions "NASCO friends and members" that, "We have to stay away from 'SuperCorridor' because it is a very bad, hot button right now."
As WND previously reported, Jeffrey Shane, undersecretary of transportation for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation got into a spirited exchange in January with congressmen after he asserted to a House subcommittee that NAFTA Superhighways were an "urban legend."
In response to questioning by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, before the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Shane asserted he was "not familiar with any plan at all, related to NAFTA or cross-border traffic."
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., then questioned aloud whether Shane was just "gaming semantics" when responding to Poe's question.
In June 2006, when first writing about NASCO, WND displayed the original homepage of NASCO, which used to open with a map highlighting the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada, arguing the trade group and its members were actively promoting a NAFTA superhighway.
 NASCO's original map highlighted the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada |
In what appears to be the third major revamping of the NASCO website since WND first began writing articles about NASCO, the Dallas-based trade group carefully removes identifying NASCO with the words behind the acronym, "North America's SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc.," which the original NASCO website once proudly proclaimed.
The current NASCO homepage displays a photo montage of intermodal highway scenes, presumably taken along I-35, but without any map displaying a continental I-35 super corridor linking Mexico and Canada.
NASCO currently relegates the continental I-35 map to an internal webpage that describes the North American Inland Ports Network as a "working group" within NASCO that supports inland member cities who have designated themselves as "inland ports," seeking to warehouse container traffic originating in Mexican ports on the Pacific such as Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas.
The beige and blue continental I-35 map now positioned on an internal page of the NASCO website was originally used as the second NASCO website, in make-over of the original NASCO blue and yellow continental I-35 map that made the continental nature of the I-35 appear graphically more pronounced.
WND has also previously reported that in a speech to NASCO on April 30, 2004, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta referred to Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94 – the core highways supported by NASCO as a prime "North American Super Corridor" – Mineta commented to NASCO that the trade group "recognized that the success of the NAFTA relationship depends on mobility – on the movement of people, of products, and of capital across borders."
WND has also reported Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a GOP presidential candidate, introduced an amendment to H.R. 3074, the Transportation Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2008, prohibiting the use of federal funds for participating in working groups under the Security and Prosperity Partnership, including the creation of NAFTA Superhighways.
On July 24, Hunter's amendment passed 362 to 63, with strong bipartisan support. Later, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3074 by a margin of 268-153. The bill has been sent to the Senate with Hunter's amendment included.
According to Freedom of Information Request documents obtained by WND, Jeffrey Shane has been appointed by the Bush administration to be the U.S. lead bureaucrat on the North American Transportation Working Group under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.
On July 23, 1997, the NAFTA Superhighway Coalition was formed to promote continental highway development in association with the Ambassador Bridge.
