text:
Home » Context of 'Summer 2004: Former Counterterrorism Chief Debunks Ties between Iraq, 9/11, and '93 WTC Attacks'
Context of 'Summer 2004: Former Counterterrorism Chief Debunks Ties between Iraq, 9/11, and '93 WTC Attacks'
This is a scalable context timeline. It contains events related to the event Summer 2004: Former Counterterrorism Chief Debunks Ties between Iraq, 9/11, and '93 WTC Attacks. You can narrow or broaden the context of this timeline by adjusting the zoom level. The lower the scale, the more relevant the items on average will be, while the higher the scale, the less relevant the items, on average, will be.
Page 1 of 30 (2996 events)
previous | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 | next
October 3, 1926 - 1942: Father Coughlin, Anti-Communist and Nazi Supporter, Dominates American Discourse via Radio Broadcasts
Father Charles Coughlin. [Source: Spartacus Schoolnet]Father Charles Edward Coughlin, an ordained Catholic priest, hosts what may be the first politically oriented national radio broadcast in US history. Coughlin, who started his political involvement as a supporter of President Roosevelt's New Deal, quickly becomes a virulent Roosevelt critic, calling Roosevelt's economic policies "socialism." By 1930, CBS broadcasts Coughlin's weekly radio show nationwide. Coughlin's harsh criticism of communist and socialist governments, such as the Soviet Union, widens to encompass the US government and many aspects of American life. He accuses the citizenry of "scorn[ing] the basic family and national doctrine of Jesus Christ," citing divorce statistics as "proof" of his assertions. He does not spare the corporations, blasting them for treating working families unfairly and warning of the dangers of the "concentration of wealth in the hands of the few." Coughlin begins claiming that American communists have infiltrated many levels of government and corporate leadership, and lashes out at what he calls the "Bolshevism of America." In April 1931, CBS refuses to renew his contract, and Coughlin organizes his own radio network which eventually claims over 30 radio stations and some 30 million listeners. In 1936, Coughlin, who has grown disillusioned with Roosevelt over his administration's failure to take over the nation's banking system and other of Coughlin's suggested reforms, forms a hardline anti-Communist, isolationist organization called the "Christian Front." When the US begins publicly opposing the German Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, Coughlin turns on Roosevelt entirely, accusing him of advocating "international socialism or Sovietism," and praising Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini as "anti-Communist fighters." By 1940, according to playwright Arthur Miller, Coughlin is "confiding to his 10 million Depression-battered listeners that the president was a liar controlled by both the Jewish bankers and, astonishingly enough, the Jewish Communists, the same tribe that 20 years earlier had engineered the Russian Revolution.… He was arguing… that Hitlerism was the German nation's innocently defensive response to the threat of Communism, that Hitler was only against 'bad Jews,' especially those born outside Germany." Coughlin echoes Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels in claiming that Marxist atheism in Europe is a Jewish plot. He claims that America is overrun by "Jewry," resulting in critics labeling him a "fascist." Boston police discover that for several years Jewish youths in the city have been beaten and terrorized by what the Christian Science Monitor calls "Coughlinites and the Christian Front"; other assaults on American Jews are later found to have been carried out by people who support Coughlin, often with the complicity of local law enforcement and Catholic officials. The Christian Front collapses in January 1940 when the FBI raids its New York branch and finds a cache of weapons; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tells the press that the organization is planning the assassinations of a number of prominent Jews, communists, and "a dozen Congressmen." Coughlin's influence is badly damaged by the FBI's claims, and Coughlin's rhetoric continues to move to the extreme. By September 1940, he is calling Roosevelt "the world's chief warmonger," and in 1941 says that the US, not Germany or the Soviet Union, is the biggest threat to impose its domination on the world. "Many people are beginning to wonder who they should fear most," he says, "the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination." When the US enters World War II at the end of 1941, the National Association of Broadcasters arranges for Coughlin's broadcasts to be terminated. At Roosevelt's behest, the US Post Office refuses to deliver his weekly newspapers. And in May 1942, Coughlin is ordered by Archbishop Francis Mooney to cease his political activities or be defrocked. Although Coughlin will continue to write pamphlets about the dangers of communism until his death in 1979, his influence on American political thought ends in the first months of the war. [New York Times, 1/21/1940; Dinnerstein, 1995, pp. 132-133; Spartacus Schoolnet, 2010]
Entity Tags: Christian Science Monitor, Benito Mussolini, Arthur Miller, Adolf Hitler, CBS, Christian Front, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph Goebbels, National Association of Broadcasters, Francis Mooney, Charles Edward Coughlin
August 23, 1934 and After: American Liberty League Opposes New Deal, Social Security
American Liberty League logo. [Source: David Pietrusza]Prominent Democrats and Republicans join together to form the American Liberty League (ALL). The organization, according to the founders, exists "to combat radicalism, preserve property rights, uphold and preserve the Constitution." ALL spokesman Jouett Shouse says ALL will fight to preserve "traditional American political values." According to the Encyclopedia of the Great Depression, ALL was organized by "disgruntled business conservatives, Wall Street financiers, right-wing opponents of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, and defeated rivals within Roosevelt's Democratic Party." ALL is financed by, among others, industrialists Pierre, Irenee, and Lammot du Pont; former Democratic Party chairman John J. Raskob; financier E.F. Hutton; and executive Sewell Avery of the department store chain Montgomery Ward. Most of the politicians in the organization are Republicans, but these are joined by anti-Roosevelt Democrats such as Alfred E. Smith, who ran for president in 1928. Many ALL members were once part of the Association against the Prohibition Amendment, which fought to re-legalize the US liquor industry. ALL unsuccessfully fights to block federal regulations and additional taxes on business, the creation of public power utilities, pro-labor barganing rights, agricultural production controls and subsidies, New Deal relief and public jobs programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Social Security, and other Roosevelt-era programs and initiatives. According to the Encyclopedia, "critics effectively lampooned league members as champions of privilege, ungrateful critics of an administration that had saved capitalism, and vindictive and selfish individuals seeking revenge on a president for betraying his social class." ALL works diligently, but unsuccessfully, to unseat Roosevelt in 1936, backing Republican contender Alfred M. Landon. After Landon loses in a landslide to Roosevelt, the organization fades in prominence. The Encyclopedia concludes that ALL's "legacy of fund-raising tactics, ideology-driven issues research and public education, and coordination with partisan legislative and electoral campaigns foreshadowed today's political action committees and independent-expenditure organizations." [New York Times, 8/23/1934; Encyclopedia of the Great Depression, 1/1/2004] In 2003, columnist Ralph De Toledano will write, "The Liberty League was laughed out of existence by New Yorker cartoonists, who depicted its members looking out over Fifth Avenue and snorting that doomsday was here and Josef Stalin lurked in the bushes." [Insight, 9/2/2003] In 2010, writer Kevin Drum will compare the American Liberty League to the tea party movement (see September 2010). [Mother Jones, 9/2010]
Entity Tags: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, E.F. Hutton, Alfred M. Landon, Alfred E. Smith, Works Progress Administration, Sewell Avery, Pierre du Pont, American Liberty League, Jouett Shouse, John J. Raskob, Irenee du Pont, Kevin Drum, Lammot du Pont, Ralph De Toledano
Late 1930s - 1950s: Neoconservative Philosophy Grows from Communist Intellectuals' Disenchantment with Soviet Ideology
The philosophy that becomes known as "neoconservativism" traces its roots to leftist ideologues in New York City who, before World War II, begin sorting themselves into two camps: those who support Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic "New Deal" policies, and more radical individuals who consider themselves followers of Soviet communism. Many of these radical leftists are Jews who, staunchly opposed to Nazi-style fascism, find themselves finding more and more fault with Stalinist Russia. In their eyes, Josef Stalin's Soviet Union has betrayed the ideals of the original Russian Revolution, and has instead created a monstrous regime that is as bad towards Jews and other ethnic and cultural minorities as Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini. The betrayal they feel towards the Soviet Union, author J. Peter Scoblic will later write, cannot be overestimated. Seminal movement figures such as Irving Kristol (see 1965) lead a small cadre of academics and intellectuals far away from their former leftist-Communist ideology, instead embracing what Scoblic will call "an ardent nationalism" that they see as "the only feasible counterweight to the Soviet monster." The USSR is as evil as Nazi Germany, they believe, and as committed to world domination as the Nazis. Therefore, the USSR cannot be negotiated with in any form or fashion, only opposed, and, hopefully, destroyed. During the 1950s, Scoblic will write, "these intellectuals adopted a strict good-versus-evil outlook—and a scorn for radical elements of the American Left—that was not unlike that of the ex-communists… who were defining modern conservatism." But unlike their conservative counterparts, Kristol's neoconservatives either espouse a more liberal social construct similar to Roosevelt's New Deal, or care little one way or the other about the entire skein of issues surrounding economic and social policy. The neoconservatives will drive themselves even farther right during the social upheaval of the 1960s, and, according to Scoblic, will hold leftist leaders in contempt in part because they remind the neoconservatives of their Stalinist compatriots of thirty years ago, colleagues whom they have long since abandoned and held in scorn. The fact that some antiwar New Left figures will support Soviet, Chinese, and Vietnamese communism will further enrage the neoconservatives. [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 83-85]
Entity Tags: J. Peter Scoblic, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Irving Kristol
1940 and After: Koch Industries Founder Becomes Influential Right-Wing Backer, Shapes Political Vision of Sons
Koch Industries logo. [Source: Koch Industries / Wikipedia]Oil magnate Fred Koch co-founds Wood River Oil and Refining Company, later renamed Koch Industries. The firm will grow to become one of the largest energy conglomerates in the US, and Koch will become an influential backer of right-wing politics. Koch is a virulent anti-Communist who will be one of the first members of the John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), a far-right organization that reflects his hatred of Communism (he believes both the Republican and Democratic parties are irretrievably infilitrated by Communists) and opposes almost every aspect of governance in general. Koch will write glowingly of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's murderous suppression of Communists during World War II. Both Koch and the JBS have little use for minorities; of African-Americans, Koch will write, "The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America," and he will say that government welfare programs were designed to attract large numbers of blacks to the cities, where they would foment "a vicious race war." In 1963, using language that reporter Jane Mayer will later say "prefigures the Tea Party's talk of a secret socialist plot," Koch will warn that Communists would "infiltrate the highest offices of government in the US until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us." Koch's two sons, David and Charles, will have their father's political views deeply ingrained into them (see August 30, 2010). In 2007, David Koch will tell a reporter: "He was constantly speaking to us children about what was wrong with government.… It's something I grew up with—a fundamental point of view that big government was bad, and imposition of government controls on our lives and economic fortunes was not good." Gus diZerega, once a close friend of Charles's, will later say that the brothers transfer their father's hatred of Communism to the US government, which they will come to view as a tyranny. DiZerega will write that the Kochs, like many other hard-right conservatives, redefine "socialism" as almost any form of government which taxes citizens and regulates businesses. [New Yorker, 8/30/2010]
Entity Tags: Jane Mayer, Fred Koch, Koch Industries, David Koch, Gus diZerega, John Birch Society, Charles Koch
September 11, 1941: Construction on the Pentagon Begins
Brehon B. Somervell. [Source: Public domain]Construction begins on the Pentagon. The structure was conceived at the request of Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell in 1941, in order to provide a temporary solution to the growing US War Department's critical shortage of space. The groundbreaking ceremony takes place on September 11, 1941. [Fine, 1972, pp. 265-266, 348-351, 431-432, 434; PR Web, 1/16/2018] Exactly 60 years later, Flight 77 will crash into the Pentagon as part of the 9/11 attacks (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001).
Entity Tags: Pentagon, Brehon B. Somervell
Timeline Tags: US Military
Timeline Tags: US International Relations
July 17, 1943: Marine Interrogator Recommends Courtesy, Respect towards Detainees for Maximum Intelligence Extraction
Sherwood F. Moran (right) interrogating a Japanese prisoner during the battle of Guadalcanal. [Source: Associated Press]Marine interrogator Major Sherwood F. Moran writes an informal memo for use by other interrogators. Moran is a legendary figure among Marines, renowned for his ability to coax information from the most reluctant or resistant Japanese captive, even during the height of battle, and often using his knowledge of, and respect for, Japanese culture to his advantage. His memo will remain relatively unknown outside the Marine Corps until the summer of 2003, when it will be included in the archives of the Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association. The memo, titled "Suggestions for Japanese Interpreters Based on Work in the Field," is remarkable for its insistence that treating prisoners with humanity and respect works far better than "harsh" interrogation methods. Author Ulrich Straus, an expert on Japanese POWs held in US captivity during World War II, will later write that Moran "was a particularly effective interrogator because he treated each prisoner as another human rather than as the enemy." In 2005, after the Abu Ghraib scandals become media fodder, military historian Stephen Budiansky will write: "Six months before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison broke into public view, a small and fairly obscure private association of United States Marine Corps members posted on its Web site a document on how to get enemy POWs to talk. The document described a situation very similar to the one the United States faces in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan: a fanatical and implacable enemy, intense pressure to achieve quick results, a brutal war in which the old rules no longer seem to apply.… Moran, the report's author, noted that despite the complexities and difficulties of dealing with an enemy from such a hostile and alien culture, some American interrogators consistently managed to extract useful information from prisoners. The successful interrogators all had one thing in common in the way they approached their subjects. They were nice to them. Moran was writing in 1943, and he was describing his own, already legendary methods of interrogating Japanese prisoners of war. More than a half century later his report remains something of a cult classic for military interrogators." [David R. Moran, 2005]
Human-to-Human Attitude - Moran writes that the best interrogators (whom he says should consider themselves "interviewers") become "wooers" of their captives, coaxing information rather than attempting to force confessions. Most important, Moran writes, is the interrogator's attitude towards his prisoner. "Many people, I suppose, would on first thought think 'attitude' had nothing to do with it; that all one needs is a knowledge of the language, then shoot out questions, and expect and demand a reply," he writes. "Of course that is a very unthinking and naive point of view." Just as important, Moran writes, is a sympathy and understanding of the captive's culture. A superior or demeaning attitude breeds nothing but antagonism and resistance.
Speaking the Language of the Captive - Almost as important, Moran notes, is the interrogator's ability to speak directly to the captive in his own language, without the need for translators. An interrogator should speak the language fluently and idiomatically, or, when that is not possible, to at least have some command over common phrases. "After all, the first and most important victory for the interviewer to try to achieve is to get into the mind and into the heart of the person being interviewed," he writes.
Hidden System - Fellow feelings and warm sympathy towards the captive are necessary, but not the entire package. While the captive, or an outside observer, might believe that the interrogator is merely indulging in friendly chit-chat, the interrogator must have an agenda and a plan in place at all times. "[I]n the workings of your mind you must be a model of system," Moran says. "You must know exactly what information you want, and come back to it repeatedly. Don't let your warm human interest, your genuine interest in the prisoner, cause you to be sidetracked by him! You should be hard-boiled but not half-baked. Deep human sympathy can go with a business-like, systematic, and ruthlessly persistent approach."
Short-Circuiting Patriotic Defensiveness - To emphasize that your side, your nation, or your culture is superior—in essence, the "conquerors" of the captive's military or his nation—is counterproductive, Moran writes. "To emphasize that we are enemies, to emphasize that he is in the presence of his conqueror, etc., puts him psychologically in the position of being on the defensive, and that because he is talking to a most-patient enemy and conqueror he has no right and desire to tell anything," he writes.
Breaking Recalcitrant Prisoners - Sometimes even the best interrogators come up against recalcitrant prisoners who flatly refuse, for patriotic reasons or what Moran calls "conscientious scruples," to give any information. In these cases, Moran writes, harsh or physical techniques of intelligence extraction are counterproductive. Instead, he writes, with his Japanese captives he is often able to shame the prisoner into cooperating. Reminding the captive that he has been treated humanely, has been treated with kindness and courtesy, implies a quid pro quo—not the threat of having this treatment withdrawn if cooperation is not forthcoming, but a matter of the captive returning the interrogator's courtesy with information. [Moran, 7/17/1943 ]
Entity Tags: US Marine Corps, Ulrich Straus, Stephen Budiansky, Sherwood F. Moran, Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association
1945 and After: US Water Fluoridation Program Spurs Backlash from John Birch Society; Group Claims Program Evidence of 'Creeping Socialism' in America
Portion of a 1955 cartoon warning against the evils of three government health programs, including water fluoridation. [Source: Spectator]As World War II is coming to a close, the US Public Health Service (USPHS) begins a pilot program in Michigan to add fluoride to selected cities' water supply, as a tooth-decay preventative. By 1950, 87 American towns and cities volunteer to have the agency fluoridate their water supply. By the early 1950s, water fluoridation is compulsory. Studies show that children between the ages of 5 and 9 show significantly smaller rates of cavities and tooth decay when they regularly drink fluoridated water, though studies of older children and adults are less clear. As the federal government begins rolling out its mandatory fluoridation program, far-right organizations such as the John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011) and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) begin taking rigid stances against it. The JBS, a staunchly anti-Communist organization, accuses the federal government of imposing "creeping socialism" and "Soviet Communism" on the nation by making fluoridated water mandatory, and warns Americans against the government "polluting our precious bodily fluids." (In 1993, JBS member Murray N. Rothbard differentiates between the brands of communism at work, saying, "[N]o, not Bolsheviks, guys: but a Menshevik-State Capitalist alliance.") The JBS, in accusations later echoed by Rothbard, accuses the government of working with aluminum manufacturer Alcoa to dump sodium fluoride, a byproduct of aluminum manufacturing, into the nation's water supply and rid Alcoa of the cost of disposing of the substance. The 1964 satirical film Dr. Strangelove features a character, General Jack D. Ripper, shouting, "Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face?" [New American, 1/1993; Reason, 12/5/2001; Hileman, 5/2008] In 1988, the Fluoride Action Network notes that the two opposing camps—fluoridation is beneficial and has no side effects vs. fluoridation is useless and harmful—have fought to an argumentative standstill, with no middle ground between the two. Jacqueline Warren, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, says, "Neither side has given the other one rational moment." [Hileman, 5/2008] In the early 1990s, environmentalist and public health safety groups begin calling for new examinations of the impact of fluoride on the human body, pointing to "valid concerns" about fluoride having a toxic impact on the human body and on the environment. In 2008, one JBS member warns, perhaps sardonically, "Don't be surprised if we learn soon that the fluoride in Chinese toothpaste is nuclear waste from North Korea." [Reason, 12/5/2001; Mother Jones, 5/2008]
Entity Tags: Murray Rothbard, Jacqueline Warren, John Birch Society, Fluoride Action Network, Ku Klux Klan, US Public Health Service
February 1946 and After: Fraudulent 'Communist Rules for Revolution' Published, Used to Argue against Gun Control, Sex Education, Other Ideas
The New World News, a British Moral Rearmament publication, prints what it calls the "Communist Rules for Revolution," claiming that the "rules" were captured during a raid on a German Communist organization's headquarters in Dusseldorf in 1919 by Allied forces during World War I, and published in the Bartlesville, Oklahoma (US) Examiner-Enterprise that same year. In 1946, the NWN writes, the attorney general of Florida, George A. Brautigam, obtained them from a known member of the Communist Party, who told him that the "Rules" were then still a part of the Communist program for the United States. According to the NWN, the "Rules" are as follows:
Corrupt the young; get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial; destroy their ruggedness.
Get control of all means of publicity, thereby:
Get people's minds off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books, plays, and immoral movies.
Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance.
Destroy the people's faith in their natural leaders by holding the latter up to contempt, ridicule, and obloquy.
Always preach true democracy, but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible.
By encouraging government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce years of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.
Incite unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders, and foster a lenient and soft attitude on the part of government toward such disorders.
Cause breakdown of the old moral values—honesty, sobriety, self-restraint, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness.
Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with a view to confiscating them and leaving the populace helpless.
The "Rules" are a hoax invented by NWN writers: there was no German Communist "Spartacist" headquarters in Dusseldorf, the Examiner-Enterprise never published such a document, and Russian experts at the University of Chicago will label them an "obvious fraud," "an obvious fabrication," and "an implausible concoction of American fears and phobias." In 1970, the New York Times will investigate the document; no copies of it exist in the National Archives, the Library of Congress, or any of the university libraries it examines. Montana Senator Lee Metcalf (D-MT) will look into the document's existence around the same time, and will learn that both the FBI and CIA have already investigated it and found it to be "completely spurious." (Brautigam did endorse the "Rules," and his statement and signature avowing the legitimacy of the "Rules" will give the document a veneer of legitimacy.) However, the "Rules" will continue to be used to claim that Communists are for a number of ideas unpopular among European and American conservatives, most frequently gun control and sex education. The National Rifle Association is one organization that frequently cites the "Rules" in its arguments against gun-control legislation, citing the Communists' "secret plans" to "confiscate" Americans' guns and thus "leav[e] the populace helpless." American and British lawmakers regularly receive copies of the "Rules" in letters and faxes citing their opposition to gun control, sex education, support for labor, or other "Communist" ideals or entities. In 1992, University of Oklahoma political science professor John George and his co-author Laird Wilcox will write in their book Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe, "Widely distributed since the mid-forties, the 'rules' have been trundled out at various times when they 'fit' or 'explain' the issues of the day, especially to argue against firearms control and sex education." In April 1996, George will say: "These people [meaning far-right American extremists] would love for the document to be real. But it has been exposed again and again as a phony." Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand will write: "The rules have to do with dividing people into hostile groups, encouraging government extravagance, and fomenting unnecessary 'strikes' in vital industries. What we have lost, the list suggests, is a world without dissent, budget deficits, inflation, and labor unrest. I just can't remember any such Golden Age." [Stickney, 1996, pp. xx; Free Inquiry, 1999; Rosa Luxemburg, 2003; Snopes (.com), 7/10/2007]
Entity Tags: George A. Brautigam, John George, Jan Harold Brunvand, Lee Metcalf, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, National Rifle Association, University of Chicago, Laird Wilcox, New York Times, New World News
1947: Japanese Soldier Who Waterboarded US Civilian Convicted of War Crime
In the aftermath of World War II, Japanese officer Yukio Asano is charged by a US war crimes tribunal for torturing a US civilian. Asano had used the technique of "waterboarding" on the prisoner (see 1800 and After). The civilian was strapped to a stretcher with his feet in the air and head towards the floor, and water was poured over his face, causing him to gasp for air until he agreed to talk. Asano is convicted and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Other Japanese officers and soldiers are also tried and convicted of war crimes that include waterboarding US prisoners. "All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," reporter Evan Wallach will later write. In 2006, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), discussing allegations of US waterboarding of terror suspects, will say in regards to the Asano case, "We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II." [Washington Post, 10/5/2006; National Public Radio, 11/3/2007]
Entity Tags: Yukio Asano, Evan Wallach, Edward M. ("Ted") Kennedy
August 27, 1949: Left-Wing Activist Concert Featuring African-American Singer Disrupted by Orchestrated Attacks
Paul Robeson. [Source: Paul Robeson Community Center]A concert organized by various left-wing organizations and slated to take place at a picnic ground near Peekskill, New York (see Mid-August - August 27, 1949) never happens. Instead, the organizers and audience members are attacked by an angry, violent mob.
Mob Attacks - Novelist Howard Fast, who is slated to emcee the concert, arrives at the grounds, and, hearing reports of a mob gathering under the rubric of a "parade," organizes some 40 "men and boys," both white and African-American, to defend the women and children coming together in the hollow for the concert. Fast's fears are quickly realized: a large mob of American Legion members and local citizens, and largely fueled by alcohol, as evidenced by the hundreds of liquor bottles later found strewn throughout the grounds, moves to attack Fast's group with billy clubs, broken bottles, fence posts, and knives. More by chance than by strategy, Fast's group finds itself in a defensible position, where it cannot be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Its members manage to beat back three separate assaults; Fast hears screams from the mob: "We're Hitler's boys—Hitler's boys!" "We'll finish his job!" "God bless Hitler and f___ you n_____ b_stards and Jew b_stards!" "Lynch Robeson! Give us Robeson! We'll string that big n_____ up! Give him to us, you b_stards!" "We'll kill every commie b_stard in America!" "You're never going out!" "Every n_____ b_stard dies here tonight! Every Jew b_stard dies here tonight!" (Singer and activist Paul Robeson, the concert headliner, is unable to approach the concert venue, and is never in any real danger.) During the assaults, state and local police stand by and do nothing to intervene; local and national reporters jot down notes and take photographs. Late in the evening, someone sets a cross ablaze, prompting Fast's group to link arms and sing "We Shall Not Be Moved." Later inquiries by the concert organizers will show that at least three different times during the violence, individuals were able to escape the riots and phone the local and state police, the state attorney general's office, and the office of the New York governor, "all without result." No arrests are made and no one is held for questioning, even though, the organizers will find, "14 cars were overturned and at least 13 people were hurt seriously enough to require medical attention." [Fast, 1951; White Plains Reporter Dispatch, 9/5/1982]
Book Burnings - The fourth and final assault of the night comes in the form of a barrage of rocks and other missiles. Fast's group runs for the concert venue, where its members mount the platform and once again link arms. Fast and others see some members of the mob find the books and pamphlets brought by the concert organizers; the mob members make a huge pile and set it ablaze. Fast later writes: "[T]o crown our evening, there was re-enacted the monstrous performance of the Nuremberg book burning which had become a world symbol of fascism. Perhaps the nature of fascism is so precise, perhaps its results on human beings are so consistently diseased, that the same symbols must of necessity arise; for standing there, arms linked, we watched the Nuremberg memory come alive again. The fire roared up and the defenders of the 'American' way of life seized piles of our books and danced around the blaze, flinging the books into the fire as they danced." (Upon revisiting the site two days later, Fast will note "at least 40" flashbulbs in and around the ashes, indicating that many photographs were taken of the book burning, but in 1951, he will write that he has yet to see any of those photographs.) [Fast, 1951]
Law Enforcement Intervenes - Three of the most severely wounded of Fast's group are escorted to safety by federal law enforcement officials, who had watched the proceedings without intervening. The rest are forced to sit while local law enforcement officials investigate the stabbing of one of the mob members, William Secor. (Evidence will show that Secor had been accidentally cut by one of his fellows.) Later, state police escort members of Fast's group to their vehicles and allow them to drive away. No arrests are made and no one is held for questioning, even though, the organizers will find, "14 cars were overturned and at least 13 people were hurt seriously enough to require medical attention." The head of the Peekskill American Legion, Milton Flynt, says after the riot, "Our objective was to prevent the Paul Robeson concert, and I think our objective was reached." [Fast, 1951; White Plains Reporter Dispatch, 9/5/1982] Author Roger Williams will later write of Fast's descriptions, "Fast's account, although marred by exaggeration and Marxist rhetoric, is substantially supported by other participants and eyewitnesses." [American Heritage, 3/1976]
Initial Media Responses Relatively Favorable to Mob - The first media reports and commentary about the concert are far more supportive of the mob (see August 28, 1949, and After) than later examples (see Mid-September 1949).
Second Attempt - Within hours, Fast and the concert organizers decide to reschedule a second concert, this time to be protected by large numbers of burly union workers (see September 4, 1949, and After).
Entity Tags: William Secor, Paul Robeson, American Legion, Milton Flynt, Howard Fast, Roger Williams
Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, US Domestic Terrorism
August 28-30, 1949: Plans for Second Peekskill Concert Made
After the mob riots and attacks at Peekskill, New York, that disrupted a concert featuring left-wing activists Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger (see August 27, 1949), novelist Howard Fast, another activist who had successfully organized the concertgoers into resisting the mob attacks, takes part in an August 28 meeting to assess the situation and discuss whether the concert should again be attempted. The meeting attracts over 1,600 people. (One apparently impromptu attack on the group, mounted by what Fast calls "a dozen young hoodlums from Peekskill," is easily driven back.) The organization behind the concert, People's Artists, joins with Labor Party and trade union members in deciding to try a second time. Fast agrees to organize the defense. The group gives itself the name "Westchester Committee for Law and Order." On August 30, Fast joins a large gathering of at least 3,000 people at a Harlem ballroom, where Robeson speaks movingly of the struggle for recognition and against repression.
Organizing for Battle - By week's end, organizing on both sides is taking place. The local unions are bringing hundreds of brawny workers to the area concert grounds, while the local American Legion, Fast learns, has put out a call for 30,000 veterans to come to the concert and disrupt the proceedings, though as Fast later writes, only about a thousand protesters appear, and he has no way of knowing how many of them, if any, are veterans. A friend, whom Fast does not name, explains why the area's people may be so willing to answer the mob's call: "This is a funny neighborhood.… You know, there's no real industry here except the railroad, and the kids grow up in these river towns with no jobs and no future—just a rotten, perverted petty-bourgeois outlook. They get a job at a gas station or a grocery store or a lunch wagon or with the fire department or some other political handout—or they don't work and just scrounge around and live off the few dollars they pick up. They get twisted with bitterness, and they don't know what causes it or where to direct it. Then they hate, and it's easy for the Legion and the local Chamber of Commerce to use that hate. They're using it now." [Fast, 1951; White Plains Reporter Dispatch, 9/5/1982; National Public Radio, 9/5/1999] Announcing the second concert, Communist Party leader Ben Davis says, "Let them touch a hair of Paul Robeson's head, and they'll pay a price they never calculated." [American Heritage, 3/1976] The second concert will be successful (see September 4, 1949) but the audience is attacked, and over 100 injured, upon trying to leave the venue (see September 4, 1949, and After).
Entity Tags: Ben Davis, Paul Robeson, Howard Fast, People's Artists, American Legion, Pete Seeger, Westchester Committee for Law and Order
September 4, 1949: Second Peekskill Concert Held Successfully
Hundreds of volunteers, mostly union members, form a "human wall" to defend the concert and its audience from the mob. [Source: Howard Fast]Left-wing activists make a second attempt at holding a concert outside of Peekskill, New York, featuring African-American singer and activist Paul Robeson. After the first one was disrupted by angry mobs (see August 27, 1949), organizers plan for a much more strongly defended second event (see August 28-30, 1949). The venue for the first concert is heavily damaged by the mob's depredations, so a German-American landowner named Stephen Szego, who escaped Hitler's Germany years before, agrees to let the concert take place at the now-abandoned Hollow Brook Country Club ground. (Activist and novelist Howard Fast, who helps organize the event and documents it, will later note that Szego will suffer an attempt to burn down his house and has bullets fired through his walls as a result of his generosity.) The defense, organized by dozens of trade union workers, is designed to be unique, Fast will write: "a defense without weapons, a defense, if possible, without a blow being struck, a defense which would achieve its purpose through the highest type of discipline and restraint." As the opening of the concert approaches, some 25,000 people—far more than the organizers had anticipated—begin streaming into the country club's grounds; outside the grounds, a large mob begins to grow. In addition, a large and well-armed police contingent is on hand. According to Fast, the opening salvo of rock-throwing from the mob is ordered by the police: "Backed by hundreds of laughing cops, the American Legion heroes lined the road and heaved rocks at our defense line." The violence escalates when several carloads of latecomers, all African-Americans, are attacked by the mob, pulled out of their cars, and beaten. An apparent assassination attempt against Robeson is thwarted when union workers flush two mob members from what is apparently a sniper's nest; both are found with high-powered rifles. When Robeson takes the stage to sing, 15 union workers surround him, providing a "human wall," in Fast's words, to defend him from any possible sniper's bullet. Robeson, folk singer Pete Seeger, and other musicians are able to play successfully, even though a police helicopter hovers over the sound truck, apparently trying to drown out the music with the sound of its rotors. Seeger later recalls: "We heard about 150 people standing around the gate shout things like 'Go back to Russia! K_kes! N_gger-lovers!' It was a typical KKK crowd, without bedsheets." [Fast, 1951; American Heritage, 3/1976; White Plains Reporter Dispatch, 9/5/1982; National Public Radio, 9/5/1999] Concertgoers are attacked, beaten, and pelted with rocks by the mob as they attempt to leave the grounds (see September 4, 1949, and After).
Entity Tags: Pete Seeger, American Legion, Stephen Szego, Howard Fast, Paul Robeson
September 4, 1949, and After: Second Peekskill Riots Ensue, over 100 Injured
Eugene Bullard being beaten by police officers and rioters. [Source: Howard Fast]The second Peekskill concert, organized by left-wing activists and featuring African-American singer Paul Robeson (see September 4, 1949), takes place successfully after the first was disrupted by a large, angry mob (see August 27, 1949). But another mob has gathered, and though they are unsuccessful in stopping the concert from taking place, they are ready for the audience and participants at the concert's end.
Rock Attacks, Roadblocks - The audience members, with many women and children in their ranks, attempt to leave, mostly by car, and are told by security guards to roll up their windows as they are driving out, as the mob is apparently throwing rocks and other missiles. (A New York Times reporter later writes of the large piles of stones piled up about every 20 feet down one road, apparently placed their ahead of time for use as missiles.) However, the long, slow procession of cars attempting to leave the venue is halted when a small group of police officers attack the cars, including the vehicle bearing Robeson. None of the cars' occupants are injured, though many windshields are smashed and fenders beaten in. Novelist and concert organizer Howard Fast, driving his own car, turns onto a secondary road to attempt to leave the venue, but his car is assaulted by a knot of six or seven rock throwers, accompanied by two police officers who do not throw rocks. Fast believes the police officers are there to protect the assailants if any of the cars stops to launch a counterattack. Fast will later learn that all of the secondary roads have similar knots of rock-throwing people in place to inflict damage on cars; some are blocked by piles of logs and boulders. He drives through several such ambushes, but he and the people with him escape injury.
145 Reported Injuries - Others are not so lucky; many people, including women and children, are seriously injured by rocks and broken glass. One concert goer, Eugene Bullard, is spat upon by a veteran and spits back; he is thrown to the ground and badly beaten by a group of police officers. Afterwards, Fast will report, the area hospitals quickly fill up with victims of the barrages, "the blinded, the bleeding and the wounded, the cut, lacerated faces, the fractured skulls, the infants with glass in their eyes, the men and women trampled and beaten, the Negroes beaten and mutilated, all the terribly hurt who had come to listen to music." A union trademan, Sidney Marcus, is wounded so badly by a rock to the face that he requires weeks of reconstructive surgery. Fast later learns that approximately a thousand union workers had chosen to stay behind as something of a "rear guard" to protect the last of the audience members; they were assaulted by a combination of mob members and police officers, badly beaten, and threatened with incarceration. (Twenty-five were indeed arrested and taken away.) For Fast, the night ends when he returns to the area to look for a group of stranded audience members, and is shot at. He does not find the stranded people. The final tally is 145 concert-goers injured. [Fast, 1951; White Plains Reporter Dispatch, 9/5/1982; National Public Radio, 9/5/1999]
Arrests and Lawsuits - Twelve protesters are arrested; five later plead guilty to minor offenses. No one among the concert-goers and "Robesonites" is arrested. Author Roger Williams will later write: "As the victims of the violence they were hardly subject to arrest, except that the prevailing local attitude held them guilty of provoking the attacks made upon them. As the Peekskill mayor, John N. Schneider, put it, the responsibility 'rests solely on the Robesonites, as they insisted on coming to a community where they weren't wanted.'" Numerous civil lawsuits will be filed on behalf of groups of victims; none will be successful.
History Professor: Peekskill Becomes an 'Endorsement of ... Persecution' - Much later, history professor James Shenton will say, "Peekskill opened up what was to become extensive public endorsement of the prosecution and persecution of so-called Communists."
Trying to Forget - Years later, the memory of the riots still haunts the area and intimidates many residents, according to Williams's 1976 report. Residents refuse to discuss the riots, some for fear of reprisals even decades later. Williams will recount the story of one high school teacher, Anne Plunkett, who was amazed that her children knew nothing of the riots, even though some of them were the children of participants. But when she assigns her students the riots as an optional class project, as Plunkett will recall: "The first time, librarians wouldn't give the kids access to the back newspapers. The next time, I was called to the principal's office and told that parents had been telephoning to complain about my 'upsetting and exciting the children unnecessarily.'" [American Heritage, 3/1976]
Entity Tags: Roger Williams, Sidney Marcus, John N. Schneider, James Shenton, Howard Fast, Eugene Bullard, Anne Plunkett, Paul Robeson
Mid-September 1949: Press Condemns Mob Attacks at Peekskill Concerts
New York Herald Tribune masthead, from 1941. [Source: Andrew Cusack]In the days and weeks after the Peekskill riots (see August 27, 1949 and September 4, 1949, and After), many newspapers condemn the violence that marred the two concerts. The New York Herald Tribune writes that "true Americans must feel deep shame and concern for the quality of citizenship that believes it is defending its country by catcalls and boos and rocks thrown at passing automobiles." The New York Times writes, "Civil rights are rarely threatened except when those who claim them hold views hateful to the majority." The New York Sun blames local law enforcement officials: "The local and county police clearly let the demonstration against the concert degenerate into a riot." The New York Post calls the rioters "hoodlums" who "proclaim[ed their] contempt for democratic process, inflicting violence on real and alleged Communists and innocent bystanders with fine and frenzied impartiality." The Christian Science Monitor says the rioters used the same tactics used by "Fascist[s]" and the "Ku Klux Klan." Speaking of the main target of opprobrium, singer, avowed Communist, and African-American Paul Robeson, the Fort Wayne News Sentinel observes, "Whether or not Mr. Robeson follows the Kremlin manual is of less concern than that Americans shall not forget the First Amendment to the Constitution." The Des Moines Register states: "Those who gathered at Peekskill to hear Robeson were entirely within the law in doing so. Those who provoked the violence repudiated the Constitution, the government, and those things which Americans have long prided themselves on—fairness and freedom." And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes, "Veterans' organizations in Westchester County, New York, lowered themselves to the level of the Ku Klux Klan." [Fast, 1951]
Entity Tags: New York Sun, Christian Science Monitor, Des Moines Register, Fort Wayne News Sentinel, New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Paul Robeson, New York Times
Late 1949: ACLU Finds Peekskill Riots Caused by Anti-Communist Rioters, Also Fueled by Anti-Semitism
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) releases the findings of its investigation into the Peekskill riots (see August 27, 1949 and September 4, 1949, and After). The report concludes, in part:
"There is no evidence whatever of Communist provocation… on either occasion."
"While the demonstrations were organized to protest against and express hatred of Communism, the unprovoked rioting which resulted was fostered largely by anti-Semitism, growing out of local resentment against the increasing influx of Jewish summer residents from New York." Some of the violence was triggered, the ACLU finds, by resentment left over from earlier attacks on a local Ku Klux Klan chapter. One of the buses used by the rioters carried a bumper sticker that read: "COMMUNISM IS TREASON. BEHIND COMMUNISM STANDS—THE JEW! THEREFORE, FOR MY COUNTRY—AGAINST THE JEWS."
"The local press bears the main responsibility for inflaming, possibly through sheer irresponsibility, Peekskill residents to a mood of violence."
"[Leftist activist and singer Paul] Robeson's concerts were not an intrusion into Peekskill but were private gatherings held five miles outside of Peekskill, which were disrupted deliberately by invading gangs from nearby localities."
"Terrorism was general against all who advocated freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and preservation of constitutional rights."
"The evidence proves beyond question that the veterans intended to prevent the concerts from being held."
"Effective police protection at the first concert was deliberately withheld."
"Preparations to police the second concert appeared adequate; therefore, there was reason to believe that the concert-goers would be protected.… These preparations were largely a sham insofar as the Westchester County police were concerned and left the concert-goers undefended."
"The wounding of William Secor, rioting veteran, occurred while he was assisting in the commission of a crime." Secor, one of the rioters who attacked the concert-goers, was apparently the victim of an accidental knifing by one of his own colleagues.
"The evidence indicates that at least some of the state troopers honestly tried to preserve law and order while county police fraternized with the rioters."
"There is strong indication that the initial violence was planned and was carried out according to plan." The report details eyewitness accounts of veterans and locals filling the trunks of their cars with rocks. "The wide extent of the stoning indicates careful planning on the part of some person or persons. It can hardly be coincidence that, as cars with broken windows streamed down the county towards New York, they were met with volleys of stones in community after community through which they passed."
"Terrorism spread over the whole area and included threats against private individuals, against their safety, lives, property, and business."
"National condemnation has been the chief factor causing residents of the Peekskill area to question this action. The local clergy have joined in this denunciation.… Sentiment in the area is now sharply divided and there is evidence that the legal authorities are moving toward restriction of freedom of speech and assembly, presumably in violation of the Constitution." [Atkinson et al., 1949 ; Fast, 1951]
Entity Tags: American Civil Liberties Union, William Secor, Paul Robeson
1950s: The First Zippe-Type Centrifuge is Produced
The first "Zippe-type" gas centrifuge, named after one of its main developers, German scientist Gernot Zippe, is produced. The centrifuge uses duralumin rotors. Centrifuge rotors are thin-walled tubes that spin at high speeds producing enriched uranium 235. Centrifuge rotors are highly sensitive and must be made from specialized high-strength material. [Albright, 10/9/2003]
Entity Tags: Gernot Zippe
1951-1967: Building Contractor Becomes Anti-Tax Protester, Hero to 'Tax Protest Movement'
Arthur Porth, a Wichita, Kansas, building contractor, files a claim in a Kansas court to recover his income tax payment of $151. Porth argues that the 16th Amendment is unconstitutional because it places the taxpayer in a position of involuntary servitude contrary to the 13th Amendment. The court rules against Porth, but the defeat does not stop him. For 16 years Porth continues battling the income tax requirement, finding new and inventive challenges to the practice. He claims that the 16th Amendment "put[s] Americans into economic bondage to the international bankers," a claim that the Southern Poverty Law Center will call "a thinly veiled anti-Semitic reference to the supposed 'international Jewish banking conspiracy.'" He also argues that because paper money is not backed by gold or silver, taxpayers are not obligated to pay their taxes because "Federal Reserve notes are not dollars." In 1961, Porth files an income tax return that is blank except for a statement declaring that he is pleading the Fifth Amendment, essentially claiming that filling out a tax return violates his right of protection from self-incrimination, a scheme that quickly becomes popular among anti-tax protesters. Porth becomes an activist and garners something of a following among right-wing audiences, traveling around the country distributing tax protest literature that includes a book, A Manual for Those Who Think That They Must Pay an Income Tax. He even issues his own "arrest warrants" against "bureaucrats" whom, in his view, violate the Constitution. In 1967, Porth is convicted of a number of tax evasion charges, but, as the Anti-Defamation League will later write, "he had already become a grass-roots hero to the nascent tax protest movement." His cause is championed by, among others, William Potter Gale, who will go on to found the racist, anti-government Posse Comitatus movement (see 1969). Gale uses the newsletter of his Ministry of Christ Church, a church espousing the racist and anti-Semitic theology of Christian Identity (see 1960s and After), to promote Porth and the early tax rebellion movement. Porth exhausts his appeals and goes to jail; though sentenced to five years' imprisonment, he only serves 77 days. One of Porth's most active followers is his lawyer, Jerome Daly, whose activism eventually leads to his disbarment (see December 9, 1968 and After). Daly meets Porth in 1965 and files his own "protest" tax return just days before Porth is indicted by a grand jury. Daly is also convicted of tax evasion; in 1969, a federal appeals court will issue a ruling invalidating what has by then become known as the "Porth-Daly Fifth Amendment Return." Porth receives the support of several far-right organizations, many of whom tie their racist views into his anti-tax protests. In a 1967 article for the far-right American Mercury magazine, tax protester and editor Martin A. Larson writes, "The negroes in the United States are increasing at a rate at least twice as great as the rest of the population," and warns that the tax burden posed by blacks "unquestionably doomed… the American way of life." Larson will later write regular columns for the white supremacist magazine The Spotlight, in which he will call black women prostitutes whose "offspring run wild in the streets, free to forage their food in garbage cans, and grow up to become permanent reliefers, criminals, rioters, looters, and, in turn, breeders of huge litters of additional human beings belonging to the same category." He will also write several books promoting Porth's anti-tax protest strategies. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Anti-Defamation League, 2011]
Entity Tags: William Potter Gale, Arthur Porth, Jerome Daly, Martin A. Larson, Southern Poverty Law Center, US Federal Reserve
March 12, 1956 and After: 101 Southern Congressmen Sign Document Declaring States Must Defy 'Brown v. Board' Court Decision, Says States Can Ignore Federal Law
Senator Strom Thurmond (right) supervises the typing of an early draft of the document that will come to be known as the 'Southern Manifesto.' [Source: Strom Thurmond Institute]A hundred and one congressmen, mostly conservative Southern Democrats, sign a document forwarded to President Eisenhower that becomes known as the "Southern Manifesto." The document, formally entitled "The Declaration of Constitutional Principles," is prompted by the recent Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision mandating the desegregation of American public schools, and is designed to pressure wavering Southern lawmakers into defying the Court's decision as part of what researcher Tony Badger will later call "the massive resistance strategy so passionately advocated by the conservatives." It is read aloud on the floor of the Senate by Walter George (D-GA), and was originally conceived by Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) with the assistance of his colleague Harry Byrd (D-VA), though the final version was tempered by a rewrite overseen by Senator Richard Russell (D-GA). The "Manifesto" declares that in certain instances, states are free to ignore federal laws and court decisions such as Brown v. Board. The document declares the Court decision an attempt to "substitute naked power for established law," calls it "a clear abuse of judicial power," and says that the states can and must defy the Court's decision in the interest of establishing the rights of the states against the federal government. The principle of "separate but equal" treatment of white and black Americans, codified in an 1849 case and upheld by the 1896 Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, is, the signers state, "the established law of the land" and cannot be overturned by the current Court. It is up to the states, not the federal government, to determine if and when they will desegregate their separate school systems. Far from mandating equal treatment, the signers state, the Brown decision "destroys the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races," and "has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding." The "judicial encroachment" of the decision must be resisted by "any lawful means," they write. The signers conclude, "Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, we have full faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and will in time demand that the reserved rights of the States and of the people be made secure against judicial usurpation," and ask their supporters not to give in to the "agitators" determined to sow chaos and disorder in the name of desegregation. [US Senate, 3/12/1956; Time, 3/26/1956; Badger, 4/1997]
Disparate Group of Non-Signers - Cambridge University scholar Tony Badger will later write of the Southern lawmakers who refuse to sign the document, "The evidence from Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and North Carolina highlights the diversity of political opinion among the non-signers—from New Deal liberal to right-wing Republican ideologue—and the disparate sources for their racial moderation—national political ambitions, party loyalty, experience in the Second World War, Cold War fears, religious belief, and an urban political base." [Badger, 4/1997]
Thurmond Calls NAACP 'Professional Racist Agitators,' Says Southern Whites Are Nation's 'Greatest Minority' - After the reading, Thurmond delivers a far less measured television address, calling the organization that brought the original lawsuit, the NAACP, a group of "professional racist agitators" and saying: "All of us have heard a great deal of talk about the persecution of minority groups. The white people of the South are the greatest minority in this nation. They deserve consideration and understanding instead of the persecution of twisted propaganda." After his speech, one Georgia woman praises Thurmond's "courage and wisdom," and asks: "Wouldn't it be possible to remove much of the Negro population from the South? I sincerely wish that this might be done, and would be glad to even contribute personally to the expense of such a plan." [Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300]
Counterattack in Congress - In the following days, a succession of Northern Democrats lambast the manifesto on the Senate and House floor, and none of the signatories rise to speak in its defense. Wayne Morse (D-OR) says the document advocates nothing less than the "nullification" of the federal government, and if taken to its logical conclusion, the dissolution of the United States into 50 disparate entities. "If the gentlemen from the South really want to take such action," he says, "let them propose a constitutional amendment that will deny to the colored people of the country equality of rights under the Constitution, and see how far they will get with the American people." [Time, 3/26/1956; Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300] One Southern senator says shortly after its reading, "Now, if these Northerners won't attack us and get mad and force us to close ranks, most of us will forget the whole thing and maybe we can pretty soon pretend it never happened." [Time, 3/26/1956] The "Manifesto" heralds a split in the Democratic Party, between conservative, segregationist "Dixiecrat" Southerners and the moderate-to-liberal remainder of the party's lawmakers. Thurmond will lead an exodus of the segregationists from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party shortly thereafter. [Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300]
Entity Tags: Richard Russell, Jr, Walter George, Tony Badger, Harry Byrd, Dwight Eisenhower, Strom Thurmond, Wayne Morse
1960s and After: Racist, Separatist 'Christian Identity' Theology Spreads across US
One of a number of semi-official 'Christian Identity' logos. [Source: KingIdentity (.com)]The "Christian Identity" theology, formerly a fairly benign expression of what is known as "British-Israelism" or "Anglo-Israelism," begins to spread throughout the US and Canada, particularly on the west coasts of these nations. This belief holds that white Americans and Canadians are the real descendants of the Biblical tribes of Israel. In 2003, author Nicole Nichols, an expert on far-right racist and religious groups in America, will define the concept of "Christian Identity" as practiced by many white supremacist and separatist groups. Christian Identity is not an organization, she will write, but an ideology that many organizations have adopted in some form or fashion. Christian Identity "elevates white supremacy and separatism to a Godly ideal," she will write, calling it "the ideological fuel that fires much of the activity of the racist far right." According to Christian Identity theology, Jews are neither the "true Israelites" nor the true "chosen people" of God; instead, Christian Identity proponents claim, Jews are descended from an Asiatic people known as the Khazars, who settled near the Black Sea during the Middle Ages. [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005; Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 5/30/2006] In 2005, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance will write, "Followers tend to be involved in political movements opposing gun control, equal rights to gays and lesbians, and militia movements," and quote Michael Barkun, an expert on radical-right groups, as saying, "This virulent racist and anti-Semitic theology… is prevalent among many right-wing extremist groups and has been called the 'glue' of the racist right." [Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 5/30/2006]
Beginnings; 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' - In the 1920s, William J. Cameron, editor of the Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper, popularized the anti-Semitic hoax manuscript called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which purported to detail the "secret teachings" of Judaism, including the planned takeover of the world's governments, the subjugation of non-Semitic races, and the bizarre, cannibalistic rituals supposedly practiced by Jews. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Wesley Swift and 'Mud People' - In the 1940s, a former Methodist minister, Wesley Swift, started his own church, later known as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Swift had deep ties to a number of radical right-wing groups including the Ku Klux Klan; Swift and his associates set the stage for the mutation of the Christian Identity into a loosely organized set of virulently anti-Semitic, racist belief systems that will come to be grouped together under the "Christian Identity" rubric. Swift himself taught that only the white race was created in the form of God, while Asian and African races were created from the "beasts of the fields," and thusly are subhuman creations. In Swift's version of Genesis, Eve, the wife of the first "true" man Adam, was seduced by The Serpent, who masqeueraded as a white man. Eve bore a son, Cain, who is the actual father of the Jewish people. This reinterpretation, sometimes called the "two-seed" or "seedliner" theory, supports the Christian Identity propensity to demonize Jews, whom Swift and others labeled the "spawn of Satan." Today's white Europeans and their American and Canadian descendants, Swift taught, are descended from the "true son" of Adam and Eve, Abel, and are the actual "chosen people" of God. Some Christian Identity adherents go even farther, claiming that subhuman "pre-Adamic" races existed and "spawned" the non-white races of the world, which they label "mud people." [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Permeates Racist, Far-Right Groups - By the 1960s, a new group of Christian Identity leaders emerges to spread the Identity theology through the radical, racist right in America and Canada, popularizing the once-obscure ideology. Most prominent among them are three disciples of Swift: James K. Warner, William Potter Gale, and Richard Butler. Warner, who will move to Louisiana and play a leading role in the fight against civil rights, founds the Christian Defense League and the New Christian Crusade Church. Gale, an early leader of the Christian Defense League and its paramilitary arm, the California Rangers, goes on to found the Posse Comitatus (see 1969), the group that will help bring about the sovereign citizen movement. Gale will later found the Committee of the States and serve as the "chief of staff" of its "unorganized militia." Butler moves Swift's Church of Jesus Christ Christian to Idaho and recasts it as the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s). Under the leadership of Butler, Gale, Warner, and others, Christian Identity soon permeates most of the major far-right movements, including the Klan and a racist "skinhead" organization known as the Hammerskins. It also penetrates many extreme anti-government activist groups. The Anti-Defamation League will write, "The resurgence of right-wing extremism in the 1990s following the Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992) and Waco standoffs (see April 19, 1993) further spread Identity beliefs." [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] Nichols will write: "Christian Identity enclaves provide a trail of safe havens for movement activists, stretching from Hayden Lake in northern Idaho (the Aryan Nations stronghold) to Elohim City on the Oklahoma/Arkansas border (see 1973 and After). Many white supremacists on the run from federal authorities have found shelter and support from Christian Identity followers." Some organizations such as the Montana Militia are headed by Identity adherents, but do not as a group promote the theology. [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Bringing Forth the Apocalypse - Many Christian Identity adherents believe that the Biblical Apocalypse—the end of the world as it is currently known and the final ascendancy of select Christians over all others—is coming soon. Unlike some Christians, Identity adherents do not generally believe in the "rapture," or the ascendancy of "saved" Christians to Heaven before the Apocalypse ensues; instead, Identity followers believe Jesus Christ will return to Earth only after the time of the "Tribulation," a great battle between good and evil, which will set the stage for the return of Christ and the final transformation of the world. Identity followers believe it is their duty to prepare for the Apocalypse, and some believe it is their duty to help bring it about. They tend to cast the Apocalypse in racial terms—whites vs. nonwhites. Identity adherents believe that worldly institutions will collapse during the "end times," and therefore tend to distrust such institutions, making Identity theology appealing to anti-government ideologies of groups such as militia, "Patriot," and sovereign citizens groups. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
21st Century Identity - In the 21st century, Christian Identity groups are strongest in the Pacific Northwest of America and Canada, and the US Midwest, though Identity churches can be found throughout the US and in other parts of Canada. Identity churches also exist in, among other nations, Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, and South Africa (see June 25, 2003). The Anti-Defamation League will write: "Yet while spread far it is also spread thin. Estimates of the total number of believers in North America vary from a low of 25,000 to a high of 50,000; the true number is probably closer to the low end of the scale. Given this relatively small following, its extensive penetration of the far right is all the more remarkable." [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Identity Violence - Identity adherents commit a number of violent acts, often against government and/or financial institutions, in an outsized proportion to their small numbers. In 1983, Identity adherent Gordon Kahl kills two US Marshals who attempt to arrest him on a parole violation, and kills an Arkansas sheriff before finally being gunned down by authorities (see February 13, 1983 and After). The white supremacist terrorist group The Order (see Late September 1983) contains a number of Identity members, including David Tate, who kills a Missouri Highway Patrol officer while attempting to flee to an Identity survivalist compound (see April 15, 1985). During the 1980s, small Identity groups such as The New Order (or The Order II) and the Arizona Patriots commit bombings and armored car robberies. After the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), Identity minister Willie Ray Lampley attempts a number of bombings (see November 9, 1995). In 1996, the Montana Freeman, led by Identity members, "stands off" federal authorities for 81 days (see March 25, 1996). Between 1996 and 1998, Eric Robert Rudolph, who has connections to Identity ministers such as Nord Davis and Dan Gayman, bombs an Atlanta gay bar (see February 21, 1997), several abortion clinics (see October 14, 1998), and the Atlanta Summer Olympics (see July 27, 1996 and After). In 1999, Identity member and former Aryan Nations security guard Buford Furrow goes on a shooting spree at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles (see August 10, 1999). [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]
Entity Tags: Eric Robert Rudolph, David Charles Tate, Willie Ray Lampley, William Potter Gale, Committee of the States, Church of Jesus Christ Christian, Christian Defense League, California Rangers, Anti-Defamation League, William J. Cameron, Arizona Patriots, Buford Furrow, Aryan Nations, Wesley Swift, New Christian Crusade Church, The New Order, Nord Davis, Nicole Nichols, Ku Klux Klan, The Order, Michael Barkun, Montana Militia, James K. Warner, Hammerskins, Richard Girnt Butler, Posse Comitatus, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, Gordon Kahl, Dan Gayman, Freemen
March 10, 1961: Time Magazine Profiles John Birch Society, Calls Organization 'Tiresome'
A Time magazine profile lambasts the racist, anti-Communist John Birch Society (JBS—see December 2011), in what is many Americans' first exposure to the group. It delineates the organization's penchant for secrecy, its domination by its "dictatorial" leader, Robert Welch, and its hardline battle against almost every element of the federal government as "agents of Communism." Forty to 60 percent of the federal government is controlled by Communism, the JBS believes. Time calls the organization "a tiresome, comic-opera joke" that nonetheless has cells in 35 states and an ever-widening influence. In Wichita, Kansas, JBS student members are trained to inform their cell leaders of "Communist" influences they may detect in their classroom lectures, and the offending teacher is berated by parents. A Wichita businessman who wanted to give a donation to the University of Wichita decided not to donate after being hounded by local JBS members, who wanted the university to fire professors and remove selected books from its library. "My business would be wrecked," the businessman explains, "if those people got on the phone and kept on yelling that I am a Communist because I give money to the school." Nashville, Tennessee, JBS members organize community members to verbally attack neighbors whom they suspect of Communist affiliations. JBS's current priority, Time writes, is to bring about the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Welch, who obtained his wealth from his brother's candymaking business, believes that Social Security and the federal income tax are all part of the "creeping socialism" that is taking over the federal government. He retired from the business in 1957 and founded the JBS shortly thereafter, naming it for a US Navy captain killed by Chinese Communist guerrillas after the end of World War II. Welch's seminal tract, "The Politician," accuses President Eisenhower and his brother Milton Eisenhower of being Communist plants, and accuses both men of treason against the nation. [Time, 3/10/1961]
Entity Tags: Milton Eisenhower, John Birch Society, Time magazine, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Welch, Earl Warren
1962: Cold-War Thriller Notes Plane-as-Weapon Scenario; Features Neoconservative Defense Planner
The illustration for the DVD of the 1964 film. [Source: Sony Pictures]Fail-Safe, a military thriller by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler about over-confidence in the reliability of military technology, is published at the height of the Cold War. The book's plot hinges on a computer error sending American nuclear bombers to destroy Moscow, and the efforts of the US president and his advisers to call them back before they can complete their mission. The book notes that US military strategists believe that civilian planes as well as military planes are matters of concern, as a civilian pilot could try "hara-kiri over New-York or Montreal." The idea of using a civilian plane to destroy a target is obviously of real concern to military planners.
Neoconservative Prototype - One distinctive character in the book is Walter Groteschele, a famous "nuclear philosopher" and anti-communist hawk who has argued that nuclear weapons are not just for deterrence but for actual use. The pre-emptive use of nuclear bombs would kills millions, he acknowledges, but the US would still win the war. Groteschele is Jewish and his hard-line views are in reaction to Jewish helplessness during the Holocaust. Jewish neoconservatives have often linked their views with the Holocaust (see Early 1970s). In the novel, Groteschele argues that the president should not attempt to call back the bombers, but should instead let them finish off the Soviets. [Burdick and Wheeler, 1962]
Film Versions - In 1964, the novel will be made into a film; [Sidney Lumet, 1964] in 2000, the novel will be adapted for television. [Stephen Frears, 2000]
Entity Tags: Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler
1963: JBS Supporter Accuses Time Magazine of Being Part of Communist Conspiracy to Destroy John Birch Society
W. Cleon Skousen. [Source: Skousen2000 (.com)]Author W. Cleon Skousen, a supporter of the John Birch Society (JBS—see December 2011), writes an article attacking the Time profile of the JBS (see March 10, 1961) as being part of an orchestrated Communist attack on the organization. The article came about after the international Communist Party "ordered" the "annihilation" of the JBS, Skousen says. Skousen denies the group's penchant for secrecy, saying that it was openly set up in 1958 as a network of "study groups" examining the threat of Communism to American society. The organization, he writes, is nothing more than "a study group program with a strong bias in favor of traditional American constitutionalism." By 1960, the JBS earned the enmity of competing conservative groups, Skousen says, because the organization "had rallied together most of the best informed and hardest working patriots in many cities." However, he writes, JBS members tend to be part of other conservative movements as well. The JBS worked to defeat a bill, slated to be introduced in January 1961, that would largely defund the House Committee on Un-American Activities "so it could not investigate the Communist Party." Skousen says that JBS efforts derailed the bill, handing the American Communist Party "an overwhelming defeat." After the bill was defeated, Skousen says, "a manifesto… from Moscow" ordered the destruction of the JBS, as it posed the primary danger to "Communist progress" in the US. The Time magazine profile of the JBS was part of that effort, Skousen says, after the organization was attacked in the pages of the Daily People's World, a West Coast publication that Skousen says was "the official Communist newspaper" of that area. Within days, the information in the article was reprinted in Time's own article, which reached far more people than the People's World. "[T]he thing which astonished me," Skousen writes, "was the rapidity with which the transmission belt began to function so that this story was planted in one major news medium after another until finally even some of the more conservative papers had taken up the hue and cry." Skousen calls the article a Communist plant filled with fabrications and lies. He says that JBS leader Robert Welch's accusations that President Eisenhower and other pro-American world leaders are Communists were made in "private communication[s] to his friends" and were never part of official JBS principles, and took place well before Welch founded the JBS in 1957; therefore, Skousen writes, to report Welch's characterizations is to smear the JBS. Skousen also denies any racism or anti-Semitism on the JBS's part, and uses a sympathetic 1963 report by the California Senate Factfinding Committee to "prove" his claims. The report concluded that Welch and the JBS have "stirred the slumbering spirit of patriotism in thousands of Americans, roused them from lethargy, and changed their apathy into a deep desire to first learn the facts about communism and then implement that knowledge with effective and responsible action." Skousen concludes that while Americans are free to disagree with JBS principles and actions, any criticism of the organization should be considered potential Communist propaganda designed to smear the organization and reduce its effectiveness. If the criticism does not come from Communists themselves, it plays into Communist hands. As he claims to have been told by "[a] former member of the Communist Party National Committee," "The Communist leaders look upon the stamping out of the John Birch Society as a matter of life and death for the Party." [Our Republic, 1963]
Entity Tags: W. Cleon Skousen, Robert Welch, Daily People's World, Dwight Eisenhower, John Birch Society, Time magazine
November 1963: Racist Anti-Communist Organization Distributes Posters Accusing President Kennedy of Treason
Part of a poster distributed by the John Birch Society in Dallas in the days before President Kennedy's motorcade travels through that city. Kennedy will be assassinated while in the motorcade. [Source: Spartacus Schoolnet (.com)]The John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), an anti-Communist organization that embraces racist and white supremacist ideologies, distrubutes posters throughout Dallas accusing President Kennedy of committing treason against the United States. The poster distribution is timed to coincide with Kennedy's visit to Dallas, where he is scheduled to drive through the city in a motorcade on November 22. Kennedy will be assassinated during that motorcade. The poster, designed to appear as a "Wanted" notice, enumerates the following "charges" against Kennedy:
"Betraying the Constitution (which he swore to uphold). He is turning the sovereignty of the US over to the Communist controlled United Nations. He is betraying our friends (Cuba, Katanga, Portugal) and befriending our enemies (Russia, Yugoslavia, Poland)."
"He has been WRONG on innumerable issues affecting the security of the US (United Nations, Berlin Wall, Missile Removal, Cuba, Wheat deals, Test Ban Treaty, etc.)."
"He has been lax in enforcing the Communist Registration laws."
"He has given support and encouragement to the Communist-inspired racial riots."
"He has illegally invaded a sovereign State with federal troops."
"He has consistently appointed Anti-Christians to Federal office. Upholds the Supreme Court in Anti-Christian rulings. Aliens and known Communists abound in Federal offices."
"He has been caught in fantastic LIES to the American people (including personal ones like his previous marriage and divorce)." [Spartacus Schoolnet, 2008]
Entity Tags: John F. Kennedy, United Nations, John Birch Society
1965: Former RAND Analyst Gathers Young, Nascent Neoconservatives
Albert Wohlstetter in 1969. [Source: Bettmann / Corbis]Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, gathers a cadre of fiery young intellectuals around him, many of whom are working and associating with the magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965). Wohlstetter's group includes Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Paul Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter, himself a protege of the Machiavellian academic Leo Strauss, is often considered the "intellectual godfather" of modern neoconservatism. Formerly an analyst at the RAND Corporation, Wohlstetter wielded a powerful influence on the US's foreign policy during the heyday of the Cold War. Wohlstetter, who is believed to be one of several analysts who became a model for director Stanley Kubrick's title character in the 1968 film Dr. Strangelove, added dramatic phrases like "fail-safe" and "second strike" capability to the US nuclear lexicon, and pushed to increase the US's military might over what he saw as the imminent and lethal threat of Soviet nuclear strikes and the Soviet Union's plans for global hegemony. He was such a powerful figure in his hundreds of briefings that he projected far more certainty than his facts actually supported. Though his facts and statistics were often completely wrong, he was so relentless and strident that his ideas gained more credence than they may have warranted. By 1965, he is known in some circles as a "mad genius" who is now collecting and molding young minds to follow in his footsteps. Author Craig Unger writes in 2007, "To join Team Wohlstetter, apparently, one had to embrace unquestioningly his worldviews, which eschewed old-fashioned intelligence as a basis for assessing the enemy's intentions and military capabilities in favor of elaborate statistical models, probabilities, reasoning, systems analysis, and game theory developed at RAND." An analyst with the Federation of Atomic Scientists will write in November 2003: "This methodology exploited to the hilt the iron law of zero margin for error.… Even a small probability of vulnerability, or a potential future vulnerability, could be presented as a virtual state of emergency." Or as one-time Wohlstetter acolyte Jude Wanninski will later put it, "[I]f you look down the road and see a war with, say, China, twenty years off, go to war now." Unger will observe, "It was a principle his acolytes would pursue for decades to come—with disastrous results." [Unger, 2007, pp. 42-46]
Entity Tags: University of Chicago, Stanley Kubrick, Richard Perle, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, RAND Corporation, Leo Strauss, Albert Wohlstetter, Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, Federation of Atomic Scientists, Craig Unger, Jude Wanninski
1967 - 1973: Anti-Semitic Mechanic, Oilfield Worker Joins Posse Comitatus
Farmer and mechanic Gordon Kahl, a World War II veteran who earned two Purple Hearts while flying bombing missions and a convert to the Christian Identity "religion" (see 1960s and After), now embraces the burgeoning anti-tax protest ideology (see 1951-1967). He writes a letter to the IRS telling it that he will never again "give aid and comfort to the enemies of Christ" by paying income taxes, which he calls tithing to "the synagogue of Satan." Kahl is a virulent anti-Semite who believes that World War II was engineered by Jewish bankers who had "created" and backed Adolf Hitler in order to subjugate "the feisty German people." Kahl denies that the Holocaust ever occurred, calling the concentration camps "mostly work camps" where less than 50,000 Jews died. Communism, he writes, is a "smoke screen" for "world Jewry," which uses every means at its disposal—including the Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs—to deceive and undermine Christians. To his friends and family, Kahl is a loving father and husband and a scrupulously honest businessman, but as author Daniel Levitas will write in 2003: "These virtuous aspects of his character did not extend beyond his small Anglo-Saxon circle, however. Kahl's world was divided strictly into opposites and he felt only murderous contempt for those who fell on the other side of the line—satanic Jews, nonwhites, and the Christian lackeys of the International Jewish Conspiracy." Kahl is a firm believer in ZOG, the "Zionist Occupied Government" of the United States, and he believes that most law enforcement officials are either unwitting dupes of this "conspiracy" or knowing members. Kahl leaves California for the West Texas oilfields, and in 1973 joins the anti-tax, anti-government Posse Comitatus (see 1969). [Levitas, 2002, pp. 193] Kahl will be convicted of tax evasion (see 1975 - 1981) and, fleeing incarceration, will kill two police officers in a shootout and later die himself after killing a third (see February 13, 1983 and After and March 13 - June 3, 1983).
Entity Tags: Internal Revenue Service, Daniel Levitas, Gordon Kahl, Posse Comitatus
January 21, 1968: US Soldier Convicted of Waterboarding North Vietnamese Prisoner
The Washington Post runs a front-page photo of a US soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption says the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." Because of the photo, the US Army initiates an investigation, and the soldier is court-martialed and convicted of torturing a prisoner. [National Public Radio, 11/3/2007]
Entity Tags: Washington Post, US Department of the Army
1969: Young Neoconservatives Intern with Cold War Think Tank
Influential policy analyst Albert Wohlstetter (see 1965) sends two of his young proteges, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, to work on the staff of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), a conservative hawk committed to working on behalf of the US defense industry. That summer, Wohlstetter arranges for Wolfowitz and Perle to intern for the Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy, a Cold War think tank co-founded by former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and former Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze. [Unger, 2007, pp. 44]
Entity Tags: Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Albert Wohlstetter, Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Policy, Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle
(Between December 1969 and January 1970): Trainee Army Officer Imagines Scenario of Suicide Pilot Crashing Plane into US Capitol
Dan Hill. [Source: Amanda Gordon / Bloomberg]Dan Hill, a US Army Ranger who is undergoing officer training, comes up with a hypothetical plan by which the Soviet Union could start a nuclear war with the United States, which involves a suicide pilot crashing a military transport plane into the US Capitol building in Washington, DC.
Trainees Tasked with Imagining How to Start a World War - After his tour in Vietnam came to an end in mid-1969, Hill was chosen for the career officer training program at Fort Benning, Georgia. He is currently taking a course in nuclear weapons deployment. Toward the end of the semester, he is given the assignment of imagining he is a Soviet premier who wants to start World War III against the US. Hill and his fellow trainees are told to prepare a written plan, describing how they would initiate the war.
Plan Involves Crashing Plane into Capitol Building - Hill comes up with a plan, which he gives the code name "State of the Union." It involves recruiting and training a suicide pilot, obtaining a C-47 transport plane, and filling it with explosives. Then, as journalist and author James B. Stewart will describe: "On the night of the State of the Union, the pilot would fly the plane straight into the Capitol building, through the rotunda, and into the House of Representatives, where the bombs on the plane would be set to explode. He'd take out the president, his cabinet, the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and most senators and representatives. At that moment, the Soviet Union would unleash its nuclear missiles." According to Hill, everyone in the US would be "watching TV, there's no air defense around the Capitol; by the time anyone realized an aircraft was near, it would be too late."
Commander Questions Hill about His Plan - On the Monday after Hill submits his plan, a lieutenant colonel in intelligence stops him on his way to class and says, "I've got some people who would like to talk to you." Hill is taken to a room where Major General John Carley, the assistant commander of the infantry school, is waiting, along with six men in uniform and several other men who are dressed in dark suits, all of them looking serious. Carley is holding Hill's paper and asks, "How did you come up with this?" Hill replies, "This is my area of expertise," and explains that he has been trained in unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, the use of explosives, and demolition. He is then questioned for almost an hour about his plan. Finally, Carley says, "We'd prefer you forget you ever did this." Hill agrees to do so and is then dismissed.
Hill Informs Friend about His Plan - Hill writes to his friend Rick Rescorla, who has also served in the Army, about the incident. In his reply, Rescorla writes: "You evil-minded b_stard! When you have these thoughts, don't publicize them to anyone. The plan is tactically and technically proficient; it makes sense, but only to people like you and me. To the rest of the world, it looks like the workings of a deviant mind. This kind of thing terrifies people." [Stewart, 2002, pp. 152-153] Rescorla will subsequently work as the head of security for a company at the World Trade Center. [New Yorker, 2/11/2002] While he is in that position, he will be drawing from Hill's plan when, after the 1993 bombing, he determines that terrorists will likely target the WTC again by crashing a cargo plane into it (see Shortly After February 26, 1993). [Stewart, 2002, pp. 193-194] Hill will learn that, shortly after his meeting with Carley, enhanced air defenses were installed for Washington. He will therefore think that some good may have come from the meeting. [Stewart, 2002, pp. 153]
Entity Tags: Rick Rescorla, John Carley, Daniel J. Hill
Early 1970s: Neoconservatives Coalesce around Conservative Democratic Senator
Henry 'Scoop' Jackson. [Source: US Congress]The recently formed neoconservatives, bound together by magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965), react with horror to the ascendancy of the "McGovern liberals" in the Democratic Party, and turn to conservative senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA) for leadership. Jackson calls himself a "muscular Democrat"; others call him "the Senator from Boeing" for his strong support of the US defense industry. Jackson merges a strong support of labor and civil rights groups with a harsh Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union. Jackson assembles a staff of bright, young, ideologically homogeneous staffers who will later become some of the most influential and powerful neoconservatives of their generation, including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Abram Shulsky, and Paul Wolfowitz. Jackson's office—"the bunker," to staffers—becomes a home for disaffected, ambitious young conservative ideologues with a missionary zeal for change. Jackson presides over the cadre in an almost fatherly fashion.
History of Two Dictators - Many of Jackson's neoconservative disciples came of age either fighting two foreign dictators—Stalin and/or Hitler—or growing up with family members who fought against them. [Unger, 2007, pp. 35-41] Wolfowitz's father's family perished in the Holocaust; he will later say that what happened to European Jews during World War II "shaped a lot of my views." [New York Times, 4/22/2002] Feith will tell the New Yorker in 2005, "[My] family got wiped out by Hitler, and… all this stuff about working things out—well, talking to Hitler to resolve the problem didn't make any sense." Most neoconservatives like Feith and Wolfowitz tend to look to military solutions as a first, not a last, resort. To them, compromise means appeasement, just as Britain's Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler. Stefan Halper, a White House and State Department official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, will say of the neoconservatives, "It is use force first and diplomacy down the line."
Former Trotskyites - On the other hand, many neoconservatives come to the movement from the hardline, socialist left, often from organizations that supported Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky (see Late 1930s - 1950s). Trotskyites accused Stalin of betraying the purity of the Communist vision as declaimed by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. "I can see psychologically why it would not be difficult for them to become [conservative] hard-liners," says Harvard Sovietologist Richard Pipes, himself a hardliner whose son, Daniel Pipes, will become an influential neoconservative. "It was in reaction to the betrayal." Many neoconservatives like Stephen Schwartz, a writer for the Weekly Standard, still consider themselves to be loyal disciples of Trotsky. Richard Perle is a Trotskyite socialist when he joins Jackson's staff, and will always practice what author Craig Unger calls "an insistent, uncompromising, hard-line Bolshevik style" of policy and politics. Like Trotsky, Unger writes, the neoconservatives pride themselves on being skilled bureaucratic infighters, and on trusting no one except a small cadre of like-minded believers. Disagreement is betrayal, and political struggles are always a matter of life and death. [Unger, 2007, pp. 35-41]
Entity Tags: Stefan Halper, Stephen Schwartz, Richard Pipes, Richard Perle, Neville Chamberlain, Abram Shulsky, Douglas Feith, Daniel Pipes, Craig Unger, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Elliott Abrams, Leon Trotsky, Irving Kristol
Summer 1970: Nixon Media Consultant Details Plan for Dominating Television News Coverage; Plan Will Form 'Prototype' of Fox News
Roger Ailes, the senior media consultant for the Nixon administration (see 1968), writes, or helps write, a secret memo for President Nixon and fellow Republicans outlining a plan for conservatives to "infiltrate and neutralize" the mainstream American media. The document will not be released until 2011; experts will call it the "intellectual forerunner" to Fox News, which Ailes will launch as a "fair and balanced" news network in 1996 (see October 7, 1996). John Cook, the editor of the online news and commentary magazine Gawker, will call the document the outline of a "nakedly partisan… plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the 'prejudices of network news' and deliver 'pro-administration' stories to heartland television viewers." The document is entitled "A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News." Ailes, currently the owner of REA Productions and Ailes Communications Inc., works for the Nixon White House as a media consultant; he will serve the same function for President George H.W. Bush during his term. Ailes is a forceful advocate for using television to shape the message of the Nixon administration and of Republican policies in general. He frequently suggests launching elaborately staged events to entice favorable coverage from television reporters, and uses his contacts at the news networks to head off negative publicity. Ailes writes that the Nixon White House should run a partisan, pro-Republican media operation—essentially a self-contained news production organization—out of the White House itself. He complains that the "liberal media" "censors" the news to portray Nixon and his administration in a negative light. Cook will say the plan "reads today like a detailed precis for a Fox News prototype." The initial idea may have originated with Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, but if so, Ailes expands and details the plan far beyond Haldeman's initial seed of an idea. [Roger Ailes, 1970; Gawker, 6/30/2011] In 2011, Rolling Stone journalist Tim Dickinson will write: "This is an astounding find. It underscores Ailes's early preoccupation with providing the GOP with a way to do an end run around skeptical journalists." [Rolling Stone, 7/1/2011]
Focus on Television - Ailes insists that any such media plan should focus on television and not print. Americans are "lazy," he writes, and want their thinking done for them: "Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you." Ailes says the Nixon administration should create its own news network "to provide pro-administration, videotape, hard news actualities to the major cities of the United States." Other television news outlets such as NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and PBS News, are "the enemy," he writes, and suggests going around them by creating packaged, edited news stories and interviews directly to local television stations. (Years later, these kinds of "news reports" will be called "video news releases," or VNRs, and will routinely be used by the George W. Bush administration and others—see March 15, 2004, May 19, 2004, March 2005, and March 13, 2005. They will be outlawed in 2005—see May 2005.) "This is a plan that places news of importance to localities (senators and representatives are newsmakers of importance to their localities) on local television news programs while it is still news. It avoids the censorship, the priorities, and the prejudices of network news selectors and disseminators." Ailes and his colleagues include detailed cost analyses and production plans for such news releases. In a side note on the document, Ailes writes: "Basically a very good idea. It should be expanded to include other members of the administration such as cabinet involved in activity with regional or local interest. Also could involve GOP governors when in DC. Who would purchase equipment and run operation—White House? RNC [Republican National Committee]? Congressional caucus? Will get some flap about news management."
Dirty Tricks - Ailes suggests planting "volunteers" within the Wallace campaign, referring to segregationist George Wallace (D-AL), whose third-party candidacy in 1968 almost cost Nixon the presidency. Ailes knows Wallace is planning a 1972 run as well, and is apparently suggesting a "mole" to either gather intelligence, carry out sabotage, or both. (Wallace's plans for another run will be cut short by an assassination attempt—see May 15, 1972.) Ailes also suggests having his firm film interviews with Democrats who support Nixon's Vietnam policies, such as Senators John Stennis (D-MS) and John McClellan (D-AR). Though Stennis and McClellan would believe that the interviews were for actual news shows, they would actually be carried out by Ailes operatives and financed by a Nixon campaign front group, the "Tell it to Hanoi Committee." In June 1970, someone in the Nixon administration scuttles the plan, writing: "[T]he fact that this presentation is White House directed, unbeknownst to the Democrats on the show, presents the possibility of a leak that could severely embarrass the White House and damage significantly its already precarious relationship with the Congress. Should two powerful factors like Stennis and McClellan discover they are dupes for the administration the scandal could damage the White House for a long time to come."
Volunteers to Head Program - Ailes writes that he wants to head any such "news network," telling Haldeman: "Bob—if you decide to go ahead we would as a production company like to bid on packaging the entire project. I know what has to be done and we could test the feasibility for 90 days without making a commitment beyond that point." Haldeman will grant Ailes's request in November 1970, and will give the project a name: "Capitol News Service." Haldeman will write: "With regard to the news programming effort as proposed last summer, Ailes feels this is a good idea and that we should be going ahead with it. Haldeman suggested the name 'Capitol News Service' and Ailes will probably be doing more work in this area." Documents fail to show whether the "Capitol News Service" is ever actually implemented. [Roger Ailes, 1970; Gawker, 6/30/2011]
Television News Incorporated - Ailes will be fired from the Nixon administration in 1971; he will go on to start a similar private concern, "Television News Incorporated" (TVN—see 1971-1975), an ideological and practical predecessor to Fox News. Dickinson will write: "More important, [the document] links the plot to create what would become Television News Incorporated—the Ailes-helmed 'fair and balanced' mid-1970s precursor to Fox News—to the Nixon White House itself." [Gawker, 6/30/2011; Rolling Stone, 7/1/2011] A former business colleague of Ailes's will say in 2011: "Everything Roger wanted to do when he started out in politics, he's now doing 24/7 with his network [Fox News]. It's come full circle." [Rolling Stone, 5/25/2011]
Entity Tags: John Cook, George C. Wallace, Fox News, Bush administration (43), Ailes Communications, H.R. Haldeman, George Herbert Walker Bush, Tim Dickinson, Television News Incorporated, Tell it to Hanoi Committee, REA Productions, John Stennis, John Little McClellan, Nixon administration, Roger Ailes
Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence
March 1971: 'Pentagon Papers' Leaked to New York Times
Book cover of the Pentagon Papers. [Source: Daniel Ellsberg]The New York Times receives a huge amount of secret Defense Department documents and memos that document the covert military and intelligence operations waged by previous administrations in Vietnam (see January 15, 1969). The documents are leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official who worked in counterintelligence and later for the RAND Corporation while remaining an active consultant to the government on Vietnam. Ellsberg, a former aide to Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and a member of the task force that produced the Defense Department documents, has, over his tenure as a senior government official, become increasingly disillusioned with the actions of the US in Vietnam. [Herda, 1994] The documents are given to Times reporter Neil Sheehan by Ellsberg (see May 1969). [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 313]
Ellsberg Tried to Interest Senators - After he and his friend Anthony Russo had copied the documents (see September 29, 1969), Ellsberg had spent months attempting to persuade several antiwar senators, including William Fulbright (D-AR), Charles Mathias Jr (R-MD), George McGovern (D-SD), and Paul "Pete" McCloskey (R-CA), to enter the study into the public record, all to no avail. But McGovern suggested that Ellsberg provide copies of the documents either to the New York Times or the Washington Post. Ellsberg knew Sheehan in Vietnam, and decided that the Times reporter was his best chance for making the documents public. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 333; Moran, 2007] Ellsberg originally gave copies of the documents—later dubbed the "Pentagon Papers"—to Phil Geyelin of the Washington Post, but the Post's Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee decided not to publish any of the documents. Ellsberg then gave a copy to Sheehan.
Documents Prove White House Deceptions - The documents include information that showed former President Dwight D. Eisenhower had made a secret commitment to help the French defeat the insurgents in Vietnam. They also show that Eisenhower's successor, John F. Kennedy, had used a secret "provocation strategy" to escalate the US's presence into a full-blown war that eventually led to the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident. The documents also show that Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, had planned from the outset of his presidency to expand the war [Spartacus Schoolnet, 8/2007] , and show how Johnson secretly paved the way for combat troops to be sent to Vietnam, how he had refused to consult Congress before committing both ground and air forces to war, and how he had secretly, and illegally, shifted government funds from other areas to fund the war. Finally, the documents prove that all three presidents had broken Constitutional law in bypassing Congress and sending troops to wage war in Vietnam on their own authority. [Herda, 1994]
Times Publishes Against Legal Advice - The Times will begin publishing them in mid-June 1971 (see June 13, 1971) after putting Sheehan and several other reporters up in the New York Hilton to sift through the mountain of photocopies and the senior editors, publishers, and lawyers argued whether or not to publish such a highly classified set of documents. The management will decide, against the advice of its lawyers, to publish articles based on the documents as well as excerpts from the documents themselves. [Moran, 2007]
Entity Tags: Paul McCloskey, Washington Post, Phil Geyelin, RAND Corporation, New York Times, Johnson administration, Kennedy administration, Charles Mathias, Jr, Ben Bradlee, Anthony Russo, Neil Sheehan, Daniel Ellsberg, Henry A. Kissinger, George S. McGovern, Katharine Graham, J. William Fulbright, US Department of Defense
June 27, 1971, and Beyond: Nixon Campaign 'Agent Provocateur' Funded by White House
Donald Segretti. [Source: Spartacus Educational]Three attorneys—one the assistant attorney general of Tennessee, Alex Shipley—are asked to work as so-called "agent provocateur" for the Campaign to Re-elect the President (CREEP), an organization working to re-elect President Nixon (see October 10, 1972). The three tell their story to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein in late September 1972, and Bernstein's colleague Bob Woodward learns more from his FBI source, "Deep Throat," days later (see October 7, 1972 and October 9, 1972). They all say they were asked to work to undermine the primary campaigns of Democratic presidential candidates by the same man, Donald Segretti, a former Treasury Department lawyer who lives in California. Segretti will later be identified as a CREEP official. Segretti, the attorneys will say, promises them "big jobs" in Washington after Nixon's re-election (see November 7, 1972). All three says they rejected Segretti's offers (see June 27-October 23, 1971). Segretti himself will deny the allegations, calling them "ridiculous."
Part of a Larger Pattern? - Bernstein and Woodward connect the Segretti story to other Nixon campaign "dirty tricks" they are already aware of, including efforts by Watergate burglar James McCord (see June 19, 1972) to "investigate" reporter Jack Anderson, attempts by Watergate surveillance man Alfred Baldwin (see June 17, 1972) to infiltrate Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt's successful attempts to electronically "bug" Democratic campaign headquarters (see May 27-28, 1972) and his investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Edward Kennedy (see June 19, 1972), and McCord's rental of an office next to the offices of Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. To the reporters, the Segretti story opens up speculation that the Nixon campaign had undertaken political espionage efforts long before the Watergate burglary. In their book All the President's Men, Bernstein and Woodward write, "Watergate could have been scheduled before the president's re-election chances looked so good and perhaps someone had neglected to pull the plug." Bernstein has heard of CIA operations such as this mounted against foreign governments, called "black operations," but sometimes more colloquially called "mindf_cking." [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 114-115]
Segretti a 'Small Fish in a Big Pond' - An FBI official investigating CREEP's illegal activities will call Segretti "a small fish in a big pond," and will say that at least 50 undercover Nixon operatives have worked around the country to disrupt and spy on Democratic campaigns. The political intelligence and sabotage operation is called the "offensive security" program both by White House and CREEP officials. FBI investigators will find that many of the acts of political espionage and sabotage conducted by Segretti and his colleagues are traced to this "offensive security" program, which was conceived and directed in the White House and by senior CREEP officials, and funded by the secret "slush fund" directed by CREEP finance manager Maurice Stans (see September 29, 1972). FBI officials will refuse to directly discuss Segretti's actions, saying that he is part of the Watergate investigation (see 2:30 a.m.June 17, 1972), but one FBI official angrily calls Segretti's actions "indescribable."
White House Connections Confirmed - In mid-October 1972, the Washington Post will identify Dwight Chapin, President Nixon's appointments secretary, as the person who hired Segretti and received reports of his campaign activities. Segretti's other contact is Hunt. Segretti also received at least $35,000 in pay for his activities by Nixon's personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach. [Washington Post, 1/31/1973]
Entity Tags: Donald Segretti, Alex Shipley, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Herbert Kalmbach, Richard M. Nixon, E. Howard Hunt, US Department of the Treasury, Dwight Chapin, Campaign to Re-elect the President
Timeline Tags: Nixon and Watergate, Elections Before 2000
June 28, 1971: Ellsberg Surrenders, Charged with Theft, Conspiracy, and Espionage
Daniel Ellsberg. [Source: PBS / Corbis]The source of the Pentagon Papers leak, former defense consultant Daniel Ellsberg (see March 1971), surrenders to police. He is indicted for theft, conspiracy, and espionage. [National Security Archives, 6/29/2001; Online Highways, 8/18/2007] Almost two years later, all the charges against Ellsberg will be dismissed because of government misconduct (see May 11, 1973).
Entity Tags: Daniel Ellsberg
September 9, 1971: 'Plumbers' Burglarize Psychiatrist Office
Eugenio Martinez. [Source: public domain]President Nixon's "Plumbers" unit, tasked to plug media leaks from administration officials and outsiders to the media, burglarizes the Los Angeles office of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding to find damaging information on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst and patient of Fielding who leaked the "Pentagon Papers" to the media. [Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, 7/3/2007] Ellsberg is a former Marine captain in Vietnam and protege of Henry Kissinger who had a change of heart over the war; he then leaked a secret set of Pentagon documents to the New York Times detailing how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations had secretly escalated the war in Vietnam (see June 13, 1971).
Watergate Connection - One of the burglars is Eugenio Martinez, who later is arrested as one of the five Watergate burglars (see 2:30 a.m.June 17, 1972). Martinez and two others—Felipe de Diego and the mission leader, E. Howard Hunt, who will supervise the Watergate burglary—are all old "CIA hands" heavily involved in anti-Castro activities. Martinez is still active in the CIA, as is Hunt, whom he often refers to by his old CIA code name of "Eduardo." Another Watergate burglar, CIA agent Bernard Barker, is also involved in the Ellsberg burglary.
Martinez: Burglary a Near-Disaster - Hunt tells Martinez and Diego that they are to burglarize the offices of a "traitor" who is spying for the Soviet Union, and that the mission was ordered by the White House, where Hunt is now an aide. Barker tells the Cubans, "We have to find some papers of a great traitor to the United States, who is a son of a b_tch ." The men will become a unit outside the normal law enforcement and intelligence channels, operating within but not part of the CIA, FBI, and "all the agencies," Martinez will later recall. They buy photographic equipment at Sears, and Hunt and Diego use disguises—wigs, fake glasses, false identification, and voice-altering devices. "Barker recognized the name on Hunt's false identification—Edward J. Hamilton—as the same cover name Eduardo had used during the Bay of Pigs," Martinez will recall. The planning, Martinez will recall, is far looser and less meticulous than "anything I was used to in the [CIA]." A disguised Hunt and Diego, masquerading as delivery men, deliver the photographic equipment to the office; later that night, they and Martinez break in and rifle the office. Martinez will write that Hunt and de Diego looked "kind of queerish" in their disguises, with their "Peter Lorre-type glasses, and the funny Dita Beard wigs" (see February 22, 1972). Before the break-in, Barker, who does not enter, whispers to Martinez, "Hey, remember this name—Ellsberg." Martinez does not recognize the name. [Harper's, 10/1974; Reeves, 2001, pp. 369]
Comedy of Errors - The burglars wait for hours until the cleaning lady leaves for the night, and find the door to the building locked. At that point, a fifth man, "George," whom Martinez learns is G. Gordon Liddy, another of the Watergate burglars also involved in the Ellsberg planning, appears and tells them to break in through a window. [Harper's, 10/1974] Three burglars—Bernard Barker, Felipe de Diego, and Eugenio Martinez—perform the actual break-in, while Hunt and Liddy act as lookouts. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 369] The burglary is quickly turning into a comedy of errors, Martinez will recall. "This was nothing new. It's what the Company did in the Bay of Pigs when they gave us old ships, old planes, old weapons. They explained that if you were caught in one of those operations with commercial weapons that you could buy anywhere, you could be said to be on your own. They teach you that they are going to disavow you. The Company teaches you to accept those things as the efficient way to work. And we were grateful. Otherwise we wouldn't have had any help at all. In this operation it seemed obvious—they didn't want it to be traced back to the White House. Eduardo told us that if we were caught, we should say we were addicts looking for drugs." Martinez finds nothing concerning Ellsberg in the office except for Fielding's telephone book, which Martinez photographs. Before leaving, Martinez spills some pills from Fielding's briefcase—"vitamin C, I think"—over the floor to make it seem as if the burglars had broken in looking for drugs. As they leave the office, Martinez spots a police car trailing them, but they are not stopped. "I thought to myself that the police car was protecting us. That is the feeling you have when you are doing operations for the government. You think that every step has been taken to protect you."
Failure; Training for Bigger Mission? - Martinez feels that the burglary is a failure, but Hunt insists that they celebrate anyway. Martinez tells Diego that the break-in must either be a training exercise for a more important mission to come, or it was a cover operation for something else. "I thought to myself that maybe these people already had the papers of Ellsberg. Maybe Dr. Fielding had given them out and for ethical reasons he needed to be covered. It seemed that these people already had what we were looking for because no one invites you to have champagne and is happy when you fail," he will write. Martinez's CIA supervisor is strangely uninterested in the incident. "I was certain then that the Company knew about his activities," Martinez will write. "But once again my CO did not pursue the subject." [Harper's, 10/1974] Hunt telephones Plumbers supervisor Egil Krogh at 4 a.m. to report that the burglary was a success but they found no files on Ellsberg. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 369]
Entity Tags: 'Plumbers', Dita Beard, Central Intelligence Agency, E. Howard Hunt, Daniel Ellsberg, Richard M. Nixon, Egil Krogh, Henry A. Kissinger, Eugenio Martinez, Lewis Fielding, Felipe de Diego, Federal Bureau of Investigation, G. Gordon Liddy, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
May 15, 1972: Third Party Candidate Shot; White House Orders Gunman's Apartment Broken Into
Arthur Bremer being restrained after shooting George Wallace. [Source: Kansas City Star]Around 4 p.m, gunman Arthur Bremer shoots Alabama Governor George Wallace in a Maryland shopping center. Wallace, mounting a third-party bid for the presidency, survives the shooting, but is crippled for life. He is also essentially out of the race. The political ramifications are powerful: Wallace, a segregationist Democrat, is doing well in many Southern states. With Wallace out of the picture, his voters will almost uniformly go to Richard Nixon, and whatever threadbare chance of victory Democratic candidate George McGovern has of defeating Nixon is over.
Lone Gunman - There is no evidence to connect Nixon or the GOP with Bremer—all evidence will show that Bremer is a classic "lone gunman" who stalked several presidential candidates before gunning down Wallace—but Nixon and his campaign officials know that even a hint of a connection between the Nixon campaign and Bremer would be politically devastating.
Break-in - On the night of the shooting, Nixon aide Charles Colson orders campaign operative E. Howard Hunt (see 2:30 a.m.June 17, 1972) to break into Bremer's Milwaukee apartment to discover if Bremer had any political connections (hopefully Democratic or liberal connections, though none are ascertained). [Woodward, 2005, pp. 47-50] Interestingly, by 6:30 p.m., White House communications official Ken Clawson calls the Washington Post to announce that "left-wing" literature had been found in Bremer's apartment, and that Bremer may have been associated with the presidential campaign of George McGovern. No such evidence is found. Colson tells reporters that Bremer is a dues-paying member of the Young Democrats of Milwaukee, a lie that makes it into several newspapers. Post editor Howard Simons will consider the idea that Wallace was assassinated on the orders of the White House—"the ultimate dirty trick"—but no evidence of that connection ever surfaces. [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 326; Reeves, 2001, pp. 480]
FBI Leaves Apartment - Hunt will claim in his autobiography, Undercover, that he refused the order to burglarize Bremer's apartment. The FBI finds both left-wing and right-wing literature in Bremer's apartment, as well as a diary whose opening line is, "Now I start my diary of my personal plot to kill by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace." Local reporters will later claim that the FBI leaves Bremer's apartment for about 90 minutes, during which time reporters and other unidentified figures are able to spirit away papers and other materials. It is not clear whether Hunt is one of those "unidentified figures." [Spartacus Schoolnet, 8/2007]
Deep Throat - Top FBI official W. Mark Felt provides useful information for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's profile of Bremer, operating as a "deep background" source. It is the first time Felt, who will become Woodward's "Deep Throat" Watergate source (see May 31, 2005), gives important information to Woodward. [Woodward, 2005, pp. 47-50]
Entity Tags: Richard M. Nixon, Howard Simons, W. Mark Felt, George S. McGovern, Ken Clawson, E. Howard Hunt, Arthur Bremer, Bob Woodward, Charles Colson, George C. Wallace
September 1972: Most Sensitive White House Files Separated for Destruction in Case of Election Loss
Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman orders the White House files to be culled and the most sensitive, and potentially embarrassing, documents removed. Designated "White House Special Files," these are to be destroyed if President Nixon loses the election (see November 7, 1972). They will not actually be destroyed; eventually they will be seized by the FBI as part of its Watergate probe. Historian Richard Reeves will write, "Many White House papers were destroyed or disappeared during the Watergate investigations, but much more survived for history than Richard Nixon ever intended." [Reeves, 2001, pp. 17]
Entity Tags: Richard Reeves, H.R. Haldeman, Richard M. Nixon
September 15, 1972: Nixon Pleased over Indictments Going No Farther
Shortly after the Watergate indictments are handed down (see September 15, 1972), White House counsel John Dean is summoned to the Oval Office. He arrives to find President Nixon and chief of staff H. R. Haldeman "all grins," as Dean will recall for his Watergate grand jury testimony. They are pleased the indictments have only gone as far as the seven burglars. "Great job, John," Nixon tells Dean. "Bob told me what a great job you're doing." [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 312]
Nixon Encouraging Cover-up, Illegal Influence of Judge - According to Dean's later testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee (see June 25-29, 1973), Nixon "told me that Bob had kept him posted on my handling of the Watergate case. The President told me I had done a good job and he appreciated how difficult a task it had been and the President was pleased that the case had stopped with Liddy.… I responded that I could not take credit because others had done much more difficult things than I had done." Dean will say that he is thinking of senior campaign official Jeb Magruder, who had perjured himself to keep the Watergate grand jury from learning of higher involvement (see August 1972). "I also told him that there was a long way to go before this matter would end, and that I certainly could make no assurance that the day would not come when this matter would start to unravel." Dean tells Nixon that there is a good chance to delay the Democrats' civil suits against the Nixon campaign (see June 20, 1972) until after the election because campaign lawyers are talking out of court to the judge, Charles Richey, who is "very understanding and trying to accommodate their problems" (see August 22, 1972). Nixon says, "Well, that's helpful." If Dean's testimony is accurate, Nixon is encouraging the cover-up of criminal activity, and is supportive of attempts to illegally influencing a judge in a civil suit. [Time, 7/9/1973]
Nixon: Is Everyone Together 'to Stonewall?' - Nixon says he particularly enjoyed the burglars' assertions to reporters that they would not inform on any superiors, and their memorized tirades about the Communist threat. He then asks, "Is the line pretty well set now on, when asked about the Watergate, as to what everybody says and does, to stonewall?" Haldeman responds that the burglars, particularly the four Cubans, "really believe" what they're saying. "I mean, that was their motivation. They're afraid of [Democratic candidate George] McGovern. They're afraid he'll sell out to the communists, which he will." Dean predicts that "nothing will come crashing down" between now and the elections (see November 7, 1972). Nixon is already planning his post-election vengeance. "I want the most comprehensive notes on all those that tried to do us in," he orders. "They are asking for it and they are going to get it…. We have not used the power in the first four years, as you know… but things are going to change now." "That's an exciting prospect," Dean replies. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 526-527]
Entity Tags: H.R. Haldeman, John Dean, George S. McGovern, Senate Watergate Investigative Committee, Richard M. Nixon
October 16-November, 1972: White House, Other Republicans Attack Washington Post over Watergate Coverage
Ron Ziegler. [Source: San Diego Union Tribune]The White House, the Nixon re-election campaign, and Republican supporters begin publicly attacking the Washington Post over its Watergate coverage.
'Character Assassination' - White House press secretary Ron Ziegler says, when asked about the Watergate conspiracy: "I will not dignify with comment stories based on hearsay, character assassination, innuendo or guilt by association.… The president is concerned about the technique being applied by the opposition in the stories themselves.… The opposition has been making charges which have not been substantiated." Ziegler later calls the Post reports "a blatant effort at character assassination that I do not think has been witnessed in the political process in some time."
'Political Garbage' - The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Senator Robert Dole (R-KS) attacks what he calls "political garbage" printed about Watergate: "The Washington Post is conducting itself by journalistic standards that would cause mass resignations on principle from the Quicksilver Times, a local underground newspaper," and accuses the Post of essentially working for the Democrats. (Six months after his attacks, Dole will say that the credibility of the Nixon administration is "zilch, zero." Years later, Dole will apologize to Post reporter Bob Woodward for his comments.)
CREEP Accusations - Clark MacGregor, the chairman of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), holds a press conference to say, "The Post has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate—a charge the Post knows—and a half dozen investigations have found—to be false." (MacGregor fields angry questions from the gathered reporters, some of whom bluntly challenge his credibility and his truthfulness, with stoicism, refusing to answer any of them, and instead sticking with his prepared statement.) MacGregor demands to know why the Post hasn't investigated apparent campaign "dirty tricks" carried out against the Nixon campaign. Like Dole, MacGregor accuses the Post of collaborating with the Democrats, and even charges that Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern encouraged former defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg to leak the "Pentagon Papers" to the press (see March 1971).
Post Thinks Campaign Orchestrated by White House - Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, examining the statements by Ziegler, Dole, and MacGregor, is certain that the entire attack was orchestrated by the White House and perhaps by President Nixon himself. Bradlee issues a statement saying that everything the Post has reported on Watergate is factual and "unchallenged by contrary evidence." He tells reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward that "this is the hardest hardball that has ever been played in this town," and warns them to keep out of any compromising situations that could be used by the White House to challenge their credibility. After Nixon's landslide presidential victory (see November 7, 1972), the attacks continue. Senior White House aide Charles Colson says, "The charge of subverting the whole political process, that is a fantasy, a work of fiction rivaling only Gone With the Wind in circulation and Portnoy's Complaint for indecency." [Washington Post, 5/1/1973; Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 161-166; Woodward, 2005, pp. 83-84]
Entity Tags: Robert J. ("Bob") Dole, Washington Post, Richard M. Nixon, Ron Ziegler, Republican National Committee, George S. McGovern, Bob Woodward, Ben Bradlee, Nixon administration, Carl Bernstein, Clark MacGregor, Daniel Ellsberg, Committee to Re-elect the President, Charles Colson
November 7, 1972: Nixon Wins Landslide Re-Election Victory
New York Times headline announcing Nixon victory. [Source: New York Times]Richard Nixon defeats Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in the largest landslide in modern electoral history. Nixon wins over 60 percent of the votes and 49 of the 50 states. [Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, 7/3/2007] Democrats retain control of the House and Senate. Nixon's victory breaches traditional Democratic strongholds in the Northeast, and his "Southern strategy" creates a "Solid South" of Republican support. Harry Dent, a White House aide involved in the "Southern strategy" of targeting conservative Democrats who once supported segregationist candidate George Wallace (see May 15, 1972), says, "[T]he Southern strategy is working—in fact, it's working all over the country." Democrats, on the other hard, were sharply divided throughout the campaign, with many traditional Democratically aligned organizations such as trade unions refusing to back the McGovern candidacy, problems with finding and keeping a suitable vice-presidential running mate, and McGovern surviving a challenge to his primary victory at the Democratic convention. [Washington Post, 11/8/1972] The simmering Watergate investigations apparently have little drag on the Nixon re-election efforts.
Entity Tags: Richard M. Nixon, George S. McGovern, George C. Wallace, Harry Dent
November 8, 1972: Nixon Demands Mass Resignation Letters; Will Decide Who Stays and Who Goes
The day after the elections (see November 7, 1972), President Nixon, appearing somber and even angry, calls a morning meeting with his White House staff. He briefly addresses the gathering, talking about how people can "exhaust themselves in government without realizing it," then turns the meeting over to his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, and leaves. Haldeman informs the group that they will all submit letters of resignation by November 10. Nixon will decide which staffers will lose their jobs in a month's time. An hour later, the two hold an identical meeting with the Cabinet. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 541-542]
Entity Tags: H.R. Haldeman, Richard M. Nixon
Mid-November, 1972: Hunt Threatens White House with Breaking of Silence if He and Other Burglars Are Not Paid
White House aide Charles Colson and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt discuss Hunt's demand for "hush money" (see June 20-21, 1972 and March 21, 1973) in a telephone call. Hunt says he called "because the commitments that were made to all of us [Hunt and the other six burglars, all of whom are facing trial] have not been kept." He continues: "There's a great deal of concern on the part of the seven defendants. There's a great deal of financial expense here that is not covered. What we've been getting has been coming in very minor drips and drabs. We're now reaching a point at which—" "Don't tell me any more," Colson interjects. Hunt says, "[T]his thing should not break apart for foolish reasons," which Colson interprets as a veiled threat that Hunt will begin talking to prosecutors about his involvement in the Watergate conspiracy. Colson seems to get the message: "Christ no.… You've told me all I need to know… the less I know really about what happened, the more help I can be to you." Hunt says: "We've set a deadline now for the close of business on November 25 for the resolution, the liquidation of everything that's outstanding.… I'm talking about promises from July and August. We could understand some hesitancy prior to the election (see November 7, 1972), but there doesn't seem to be any of that now. Of course, we're well aware of the upcoming problems of the Senate" (see February 7, 1973). Colson replies, "That's where it gets hairy as hell." Hunt continues: "We're protecting the guys who were really responsible. That's a continuing requirement. But this is a two-way street.… We think now is the time when some moves should be made, and surely your cheapest commodity is money." [Reston, 2007, pp. 186-190] Shortly thereafter, Hunt receives more money from secret White House sources (see January 8-9, 1973).
Entity Tags: E. Howard Hunt, Charles Colson
1973: Neoconservative Aids Colleague to Gain Position with Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
Richard Perle, a senior staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and an aide to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (see Early 1970s), uses his position to help fellow neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz gain a position with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). Neoconservatives such as Perle and Wolfowitz do not believe in either arms control or disarmament (see 1965 and August 15, 1974). In 2004, author Stephen Green will write, "Wolfowitz also brought to ACDA a strong attachment to Israel's security, and a certain confusion about his obligation to US national security" (see 1978). [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]
Entity Tags: Stephen Green, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul Wolfowitz, Senate Armed Services Committee, Richard Perle
1973-1979: US Starts to Provide Support to Islamists Opposing the Soviets in Afghanistan
In 1973 Afghan Prince Muhammad Daoud ousts the Afghan king with help from the Soviet Union, and establishes an Afghan republic. The CIA in turn begins funding Islamist extremists, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as a resistance movement opposing the Soviets. US allies Iran, with its intelligence agency SAVAK, and Pakistan, with its intelligence agency the ISI, play an important role in funneling weapons and other forms of assistance to the Afghan Islamist militants. After the pro-Soviet coup in April 1978, the Islamic militants with the support of the ISI carry out a massive campaign of terrorism, assassinating hundreds of teachers and civil servants. [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 260 - 263]
Entity Tags: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Organization for Intelligence and National Security (Iran), Muhammad Daoud, Central Intelligence Agency
January 22, 1973: 'Roe v. Wade' Legalizes Abortion in US
Headline from the New York Times regarding the 'Roe' decision. [Source: RubeReality (.com)]The US Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, legalizes abortion on a federal level in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade. The majority opinion is written by Justice Harry Blackmun; he is joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices William O. Douglas, William Brennan, Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall, and Lewis Powell. Justices Byron "Whizzer" White and William Rehnquist dissent from the opinion. Blackmun's majority opinion finds that the 14th Amendment's guarantees of personal liberty and previous decisions protecting privacy in family matters include a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy. White's dissent argues that the Court has "fashion[ed] and announce[d] a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invest[ed] that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes." The decision does not make abortion freely available to women in any stage of pregnancy. It places the following constraints:
No restrictions on availability are made during the first trimester (three months) of a woman's pregnancy.
Because of increased risks to a woman's health during the second trimester, the state may regulate the abortion procedure only "in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health."
In the third and final trimester, since the rate of viability (live birth) is markedly greater than in the first two trimesters, the state can restrict or even prohibit abortions as it chooses, "except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother."
Originally brought to challenge a Texas law prohibiting abortions, the decision disallows a host of state and federal restrictions on abortion, and sparks an enormous controversy over the moral, religious, and legal viability of abortion that continues well into the 21st century. [ROE v. WADE, 410 US 113 (1973), 1/22/1973; CNN, 1/22/2003; National Abortion Federation, 2010] In a related case, Roe v. Bolton, the Court strikes down restrictions on facilities that can be used to provide abortions. The ruling leads to the establishment of so-called "abortion clinics." [CBS News, 4/19/2007]
Entity Tags: Potter Stewart, Byron White, Lewis Powell, Harry Blackmun, William Rehnquist, US Supreme Court, William O. Douglas, Warren Burger, William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall
Timeline Tags: US Health Care, Civil Liberties
Early March, 1973: Washington Post and GAO Discover Nixon Campaign's 'Kiddie Corps' of Spies
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward is steered to a George Washington University student named Craig Hillegass. The student tells Woodward that his fraternity brother, Theodore Brill, was paid $150 a week by the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) to infiltrate the group of Quakers who maintain a 24-hour a day "peace vigil" in front of the White House. Brill reported information on the protesters' demonstration plans and personal lives, and then helped plan and execute raids for drug possession. The Washington police eventually did raid the vigil, but found nothing. Brill, the chairman of GWU's Young Republicans chapter, was terminated by CREEP two days after the Watergate burglary (see 2:30 a.m.June 17, 1972). "The idea," Hillegass tells Woodward, "was to create an embarrassment to the Democrats, because any embarrassment to radical groups would be considered an embarrassment to liberal politics and Senator [George] McGovern," the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972 (see November 7, 1972). Hillegass recalls that the method of paying Brill was almost cartoonish in its covert nature: "Ted said he once was told to meet a woman in a red dress with a white carnation, carrying a newspaper. He exchanged his written report for an envelope containing his pay." Woodward is most interested in Hillegass's recollection that Brill's campaign "dirty tricks" were connected to higher-level officials in CREEP—and the number of other "agents provacateurs" being employed by the campaign. Donald Segretti (see June 27, 1971, and Beyond) was only one of 50 or so provacateurs employed by the campaign, and the Post has always wanted to know who the other 49 were. Brill was definitely small fry, but, Woodward believes, part of a larger pattern. When Woodward speaks with Brill himself, the student confirms his former job with CREEP, and says that he was hired by George Gorton, CREEP's national youth director. He was paid five times—four times in cash and once with Gorton's personal check, never in a way that could be traced back to the campaign. Brill says he was supposed to go to Miami and join other campaign operatives in similar operations to the Quaker infiltration, but the Watergate burglary brought that to an abrupt close. Gorton confirms that Brill worked for him in the campaign, but denies he or Brill ever did anything illegal. Interestingly, Gorton initially boasts that he had people gathering information on "radicals" in 38 states, then backs off and says Brill was his only operative. Gorton says he reported to Kenneth Rietz, the director of CREEP's Youth Vote Division. Rietz had been recommended by H. R. Haldeman to take over as the head of the Republican National Committee. The Posts prints a story based on Woodward's information, and notes that Brill's salary was not reported in CREEP's financial disclosures. The General Accounting Office (GAO) will audit CREEP's finances and discover that the campaign had maintained a clandestine "Kiddie Corps" of young spies working around the country. [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 262-265]
Entity Tags: George S. McGovern, Committee to Re-elect the President, Bob Woodward, Craig Hillegass, Donald Segretti, H.R. Haldeman, Kenneth Rietz, George Gorton, Republican National Committee, Theodore Brill, General Accounting Office
April 14, 1973: Angry Arguments at White House Correspondents Dinner
Tempers flare at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner. President Nixon and his entourage (including H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Henry Kissinger—see April 14, 1973) sit stolidly through the evening's entertainment, which contains plenty of biting Watergate humor, but the real fireworks take place between members of the press and Nixon officials. Edward Bennett Williams, the eminent lawyer whose firm represents both the Washington Post and the Democratic National Committee, gets into a heated sparring match with Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan. Buchanan is gloating over the November 1972 re-election landslide (see November 7, 1972), calling Williams a "sore loser." Williams retorts: "But you did it dirty, Pat. You had to do it dirty. You won, but you had to steal it." Buchanan says: "The Watergate's all you had. Some Cubans going in to look at Larry O'Brien's mail.… You blew it out of proportion." Williams responds: "Dirty, Pat, dirty election. Aren't you ashamed? You're a conservative, and all this law-breaking. And the Washington Post really sticking it to you. Oh, that must have hurt the most." Buchanan counters: "A little spying. That's politics." Buchanan continues by attacking Williams's client list, which includes ex-Senate aide Bobby Baker and former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. "There's a big difference," Williams says. "I didn't run any of my clients for president." [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 285-287]
Entity Tags: Henry A. Kissinger, White House Correspondents Association, H.R. Haldeman, Washington Post, Patrick Buchanan, John Ehrlichman, Richard M. Nixon, Lawrence O'Brien, Edward Bennett Williams
June 8-9, 1973: Colson Planned to Firebomb Brookings Institution, Post Reports
Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein learns of White House aide Charles Colson's plan to burglarize the Brookings Institution (see June 30-July 1, 1971 and June 1974), and, alarmingly, of Colson's plans to actually firebomb the building. An associate of former White House counsel John Dean tells Bernstein that Colson did not want to just burglarize the Institute: "Chuck Colson wanted to rub two sticks together."
Urgent Trip to See Nixon - Colson could not have been serious, Bernstein says, but the associate replies: "Serious enough for [White House aide] John Caulfield to run out of Colson's office in a panic. He came straight to John Dean, saying he didn't ever want to talk to that man Colson again because he was crazy. And that John better do something before it was too late. John caught the first courier flight out to San Clemente [President Nixon's home in California] to see [then-White House aide John] Ehrlichman. That's how serious it was." Ehrlichman indeed shut the operation down before it could start, but the associate implies Ehrlichman's decision may have been based more on the fact that Dean knew about it than over any shock or outrage over the firebombing plan.
Reasoning behind Attack - Colson wanted to firebomb Brookings because former Kissinger aide Morton Halperin, a Brookings fellow, may have had classified State Department documents at the Institute that the White House wanted back. A fire at the Institute would cover up a burglary of Halperin's office.
Confirmation from Associate - Bernstein confirms the story from an associate of Caulfield's, who clarifies: "Not a fire, a firebombing. That was what Colson thought would do the trick. Caulfield said, 'This has gone too far' and [that] he didn't ever want anything to do with Colson again in his life." Both Dean and Caulfield told FBI investigators about the plan, Caulfield's associate says.
Woodward Calls Colson - When Bernstein's colleague Bob Woodward calls Colson for a comment on the story, Colson jokes: "There's no question about that. There is one mistake. It was not the Brookings, but the Washington Post. I told them to hire a wrecking crane and go over and knock down the building and Newsweek also.… I wanted the Washington Post destroyed." When Woodward tells him the newspaper is printing the story, Colson retorts: "Explicitly, it is bullsh_t. I absolutely made no such statement or suggestion. It is ludicrous.… [T]his one has gone too far." Colson calls back and says he may have made such a suggestion, but he was not serious. The Post prints the story. [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 324-325]
Confirmation by Dean - In 2006, Dean will write that when he "learned of [Colson's] insane plan, I flew to California… to plead my case to John Ehrlichman, a titular superior to both Colson and myself. By pointing out, with some outrage, that if anyone died it would involve a capital crime that might be traced back to the White House, I was able to shut down Colson's scheme." [Dean, 2006, pp. xxiii]
Entity Tags: Washington Post, John J. 'Jack' Caulfield, John Ehrlichman, Brookings Institution, Carl Bernstein, Charles Colson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Dean, Morton H. Halperin, Nixon administration
October 19-20, 1973: 'Saturday Night Massacre;' Public Demands Impeachment
Washington Post headline of firings. [Source: Washington Post]After Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox refuses President Nixon's offer of a "compromise" on the issue of the White House tapes (see October 19, 1973), Nixon orders (through his chief of staff Alexander Haig) Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refuses the presidential order, and resigns on the spot. Haig then orders Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also refuses, and resigns also. Haig finally finds a willing Justice Department official in Solicitor General Robert Bork, who is named acting attorney general and fires Cox. (Of the firing, Bork tells reporters, "All I will say is that I carried out the president's directive.") White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler announces that the Office of the Special Prosecutor has been abolished. FBI agents are sent to prevent Cox's staff from taking their files out of their offices. Ziegler justifies the firing by saying that Cox "defied" Nixon's instructions "at a time of serious world crisis" and made it "necessary" for Nixon to discharge him. After his firing, Cox says, "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." The press dubs Cox's firings and the abolishment of the OSP the "Saturday Night Massacre," and the public reacts with a fury unprecedented in modern American political history. In a period of ten days, Congress receives more than a million letters and telegrams (some sources say the number is closer to three million), almost all demanding Nixon's impeachment. Congress will soon launch an impeachment inquiry. Former Washington Post editor Barry Sussman writes in 1974 that Cox's firing was not a result of impetuous presidential anger. Nixon had been more than reluctant to accept a special prosecutor for Watergate. Cox, named special prosecutor in the spring of 1973, had quickly earned the ire of White House officials and of Nixon himself, and by October 7, Nixon had announced privately that Cox would be fired. [Washington Post, 10/21/1973; Sussman, 1974, pp. 251; Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, 7/3/2007]
Entity Tags: John Sirica, Archibald Cox, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Barry Sussman, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Richard M. Nixon, William Ruckelshaus, John Stennis, Elliot Richardson, Robert Bork, Ron Ziegler
November 21, 1973: 18 1/2 Minute Gap Discovered in Tape; Result of Deliberate Erasure
Rose Mary Woods. [Source: Genevieve Naylor / Corbis]A gap of 18 and ½ minutes is found on the tape of a conversation between President Nixon and his aide, H. R. Haldeman, from June 20, 1972 (see July 13-16, 1973). Nixon lawyer Fred Buzhardt says he has no explanation for "the phenomenon." Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, denies any deliberate erasure. But electronics experts will eventually find that the tape has been deliberately erased at least five separate times. White House chief of staff Alexander Haig will blame "some sinister force" for the erasure.
Watergate Discussed - Former Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox's subpoena of the tape (see July 23-26, 1973) says that "there is every reason to infer that the meeting included discussion of the Watergate incident." That supposition is bolstered by previous testimony from former White House aide John Ehrlichman (see July 24, 1973). Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski says he is considering having all the remaining Watergate tapes placed under guard to prevent any further tampering. [Washington Post, 11/22/1973; Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, 7/3/2007]
Three Suspects - Evidence later shows that only three people could have made the erasure: Woods; Stephen Bull, Nixon's assistant; and Nixon himself. [Reston, 2007, pp. 33]
Washington Post Learns of Gap - Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward learned of "deliberate erasures" in the first week of November from his FBI source, W. Mark Felt (see May 31, 2005). White House sources confirmed that the tapes were often of poor quality, and that some inadvertent gaps existed, but, as press secretary Ron Ziegler tells Woodward's colleague Carl Bernstein, to say that those gaps were deliberate would be "inaccurate." When the deliberate gap is reported, Ziegler calls Bernstein to say that he did not know about the gap beforehand. Neither Bernstein nor Woodward doubt Ziegler—by this time, it is obvious that Nixon's paranoia and penchant for secrecy extends even to the most trusted members of his staff. [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 333-334]
Symbolic - In 2005, Woodward will write: "The missing 18 1/2-minute gap soon becomes a symbol for Nixon's entire Watergate problem. The truth had been deleted. The truth was missing." [Woodward, 2005, pp. 103]
Entity Tags: Rose Mary Woods, Stephen Bull, Richard M. Nixon, W. Mark Felt, Leon Jaworski, Ron Ziegler, H.R. Haldeman, Archibald Cox, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., John Ehrlichman, Carl Bernstein, Fred Buzhardt, Bob Woodward
1974: Anti-Tax Protester Founds Group Opposing 16th Amendment, OSHA, Gun Control Laws
Tax protester Ardie McBrearty founds the United States Taxpayers Union (USTU), an organization dedicated to abolishing the 16th Amendment (see 1951-1967 and 1970-1972), and also the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), consumer protection statutes, gun control laws, and other "unconstitutional" legislation. McBrearty, an avowed Christian Identity follower (see 1960s and After), will abandon tax protest in favor of armed white supremacist militancy, joining The Order (see Late September 1983 and August 1984 and After). He will eventually earn 40 years in prison for his role in The Order's violent actions. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001] In a 1982 lawsuit, McBrearty will argue that a 1977 agreement with UTSU mandated that the group should pay "all necessary personal and family obligations of said individual [and] all costs incurred in the defense of a client member." McBrearty will be convicted for tax law violations in 1979 and will sue the UTSU shortly thereafter. The courts will dismiss the lawsuit because such an agreement "contravene[s] public policy and [i]s therefore unenforceable." [OpenJurist, 1/18/1982] It is unclear whether McBrearty's loss of the lawsuit triggers his desire to join a more actively violent organization, such as The Order.
Entity Tags: The Order, Ardie McBrearty, United States Taxpayers Union
March 7, 1974: Nixon Aides Charged with Ellsberg Break-In
Former White House aides John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, and G. Gordon Liddy, and three Cuban-Americans, including two of the convicted Watergate burglars (see January 8-11, 1973), Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez, are charged with planning and executing the burglary of the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist (see September 9, 1971). Colson will quickly reach a plea-bargain agreement, promise to cooperate with the prosecution, plead guilty to one count of obstruction of justice, and serve approximately seven months in prison. [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 335; Billy Graham Center, 12/8/2004] He will also be disbarred. In the guilty plea agreement, Colson admits to having devised "a scheme to obtain derogatory information about Daniel Ellsberg," who himself was facing criminal charges relating to the Pentagon Papers leak. Colson wanted to smear Ellsberg's reputation in the media, in essence having Ellsberg "tried in the newspapers" even though this would have an "adverse effect on his right to a fair trial." Colson also admits to having written a "scurrilous and libelous memorandum" about one of Ellsberg's attorneys. He does not admit to actually taking part in the planning of the Fielding burglary. [Time, 6/17/1974] In 2006, White House counsel John Dean will write that Colson's promise of cooperation is virtually worthless: "[I]n the end he proved to be utterly useless as a government witness, since the government could not vouch for his honesty." [Dean, 2006, pp. xxiii]
Entity Tags: Lewis Fielding, John Dean, Daniel Ellsberg, Eugenio Martinez, G. Gordon Liddy, Bernard Barker, Charles Colson, John Ehrlichman
March 23, 1974: Liddy Convicted in Ellsberg Break-in
G. Gordon Liddy, one of the "Plumbers," is convicted of an array of crimes related to the Ellsberg break-in (see September 9, 1971), and is sentenced from six to twenty years in prison. He faces concurrent charges of violating the civil rights of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding (see March 7, 1974). [O.T. Jacobson, 7/5/1974 ]
Entity Tags: 'Plumbers', Lewis Fielding, G. Gordon Liddy, Daniel Ellsberg
June 1974: Charles Colson Sentenced after Pleading Guilty to Watergate Crimes; Testifies about Nixon Involvement
Former Nixon White House aide Charles Colson, later described by reporter David Plotz as "Richard Nixon's hard man, the 'evil genius' of an evil administration," is sentenced to jail after pleading guilty (see March 7, 1974) to taking part in the plan to break into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office (see September 9, 1971) and interfering with Ellsberg's trial (see June 28, 1971). Colson also, according to Watergate historian Stanley Kutler, tried to hire Teamster thugs to beat up antiwar demonstrators, and plotted to either raid or firebomb the Brookings Institution (see June 8-9, 1973). Colson will serve seven months in jail (see September 3, 1974). [Slate, 3/10/2000] Colson tells the court: "I shall be cooperating with the prosecutor, but that is not to say that the prosecutor has bargained for my testimony, that there is any quid pro quo: there was not. I reached my own conclusion that I have a duty to tell everything I know about these important issues, and a major reason for my plea was to free me to do so." Colson's testimony against Richard Nixon is damning, as he tells the court Nixon had "on numerous occasions urged me to disseminate damaging information about Daniel Ellsberg." Vice President Ford defends Nixon, saying, "There's a big difference between telling Chuck Colson to smear Ellsberg and ordering—or allegedly ordering—a break-in." Colson will later become a born-again Christian evangelist, and found an influential prison ministry. [Slate, 3/10/2000; Werth, 2006, pp. 273-274]
Entity Tags: Brookings Institution, David Plotz, Stanley Kutler, Richard M. Nixon, Daniel Ellsberg, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Charles Colson, Nixon administration
June 15, 1974: 'All the President's Men' Published
Cover for 'All the President's Men.' [Source: Amazon (.com)]Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward publish the book All the President's Men, documenting their 26-month coverage of the Watergate scandal. The Post will win a Pulitzer Prize for its Watergate reporting and the book will be made into an Oscar-winning film of the same name. Between the book and the film, All the President's Men will become the touchstone for defining the complex, multilayered Watergate conspiracy. [Washington Post, 1996]
Entity Tags: Washington Post, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
August 8, 1974: Nixon Resigns Presidency
Richard Nixon announcing his resignation to the country. [Source: American Rhetoric.com]President Richard Nixon, forced to resign because of the Watergate scandal, begins his last day in office. The morning is marked by "burn sessions" in several rooms of the White House, where aides burn what author Barry Werth calls "potentially troublesome documents" in fireplaces. Nixon's chief of staff, Alexander Haig, is preparing for the transition in his office, which is overflowing with plastic bags full of shredded documents. Haig says all of the documents are duplicates. Haig presents Nixon with a one-line letter of resignation—"I hereby resign the office of president of the United States"—and Nixon signs it without comment. Haig later describes Nixon as "haggard and ashen," and recalls, "Nothing of a personal nature was said… By now, there was not much that could be said that we did not already understand." Nixon gives his resignation speech at 9 p.m. [White House, 8/8/1974; White House, 8/8/1974; American Rhetoric, 2001; Werth, 2006, pp. 3-8] On August 7, Haig told Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski that Congress would certainly pass a resolution halting any legal actions against Nixon. But, watching Nixon's televised resignation speech, Jaworski thinks, "Not after that speech, Al." Nixon refuses to accept any responsibility for any of the myriad crimes and illicit actions surrounding Watergate, and merely admits to some "wrong" judgments. Without some expression of remorse and acceptance of responsibility, Jaworski doubts that Congress will do anything to halt any criminal actions against Nixon. [Werth, 2006, pp. 30-31] Instead of accepting responsibility, Nixon tells the nation that he must resign because he no longer has enough support in Congress to remain in office. To leave office before the end of his term "is abhorrent to every instinct in my body," he says, but "as president, I must put the interests of America first." Jaworski makes a statement after the resignation speech, declaring that "there has been no agreement or understanding of any sort between the president or his representatives and the special prosecutor relating in any way to the president's resignation." Jaworski says that his office "was not asked for any such agreement or understanding and offered none." [Washington Post, 8/9/1974]
Entity Tags: Nixon administration, Leon Jaworski, Richard M. Nixon, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Barry Werth
August 16-17, 1974: Rockefeller Asked to Accept Vice Presidency
Republican political adviser and corporate lobbyist Bryce Harlow recommends former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller over former ambassador and current Republican National Committee chairman George H.W. Bush to serve as vice president (see August 20, 1974). Bush may be a better choice for party harmony, Harlow says, but that choice would be considered indecisive and overly partisan. On the other hand, Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, would be considered a "bold" choice and "would be hailed by the media normally most hostile to Republicans." Rockefeller's selection would also "encourage estranged groups to return to the Party and would signal that the new president will not be captive of any political faction."
Watergate Allegations against Rockefeller - Rockefeller's naming as vice president, strongly supported by President Ford, is briefly held up by unfounded allegations that Rockefeller hired thugs to disrupt the 1972 Democratic National Convention, and that the papers to prove the allegations were stolen from the offices of convicted Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt. The charges are leveled by an elderly anti-Communist activist named Hamilton Long. The story leaks to the press, and Ford, taking no chances, orders the FBI to investigate Rockefeller, Bush, and senior staff aide Donald Rumsfeld for possible selection as the vice president. Long's allegations prove baseless when Watergate investigators locate the safety deposit boxes in which Long says the documents are stored, and find the boxes empty.
Ford Offers VP - After learning that Rockefeller is free of any Watergate taint, Ford privately asks him to accept the vice presidency. Rockefeller will have strong influence on the Ford administration's domestic and economic policies, Ford promises, and, additionally, Rockefeller will be Ford's vice presidential choice in the 1976 presidential elections. The last obstacle is the press, which is all but convinced that the White House is involved in another Watergate cover-up, this time with Ford at the helm. A White House source tells reporters that the so-called "Rockefeller Papers" are nothing more than a hoax concocted by "right-wing extremists who decided it would be useful to blacken the name of Governor Rockefeller." The explanations by press secretary Jerald terHorst, himself a former reporter, and terHorst's acceptance of the blame for giving confusing and somewhat misleading information about the Rockefeller allegations, somewhat mollifies the press. White House counsel Robert Hartmann recalls the Long incident and its handling as an example of the inexperience of the Ford staff and of Ford himself. "[W]e were all babes in the White House," he later writes. "We had done the right thing and truthfully told what we had done, but it was unfair to Rockefeller to give presidential credence to Long's hearsay. And of course, the press castigated us for that the next day." [Werth, 2006, pp. 93-105]
Entity Tags: Robert Hartmann, Nelson Rockefeller, Hamilton Long, Jerald terHorst, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bryce Harlow, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, E. Howard Hunt, Ford administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Donald Rumsfeld
September 3, 1974: Former White House Counsel Dean Begins Prison Sentence
One of the outbuildings at Fort Holabird. [Source: Hugh D. Cox]Former White House counsel John Dean begins a one-to-four-year term in prison for his role in the Watergate coverup. Dean's sentence would have been far longer had he not cooperated so completely with the Watergate investigators. He is the 15th Watergate figure to go to jail, but the first to be asked whether Richard Nixon should join him in prison. (Dean refuses to comment.) Privately, Dean is shaken that Nixon is still insisting on his innocence. Later, Dean will write that he believes a number of reasons—hubris, victimization, self-pity, belief that history will exonerate him, and fear of jail—is all part of Nixon's recalcitrance, but Dean does not believe that Nixon made a deal with President Ford for any sort of clemency. Dean will serve his term at Fort Holabird, a former army base just outside Baltimore used for government witnesses. Dean will mingle with three fellow Watergate convicts—Charles Colson, Jeb Stuart Magruder, and Herbert Kalmbach—and a number of organized crime figures in the government's witness protection program. [Werth, 2006, pp. 269-270] Colson, who has provided damning testimony against Nixon as part of his plea agreement (see June 1974), leads the others in reaching out to Dean in prison. Dean, who is held in relative isolation, briefly meets Magruder in the hallway. Magruder is preparing to testify against the "Big Three" of John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman, and H. R. Haldeman in their upcoming trial. Magruder says to Dean: "Welcome to the club, John. This place looks just like the White House with all of us here." [Werth, 2006, pp. 269-270]
Entity Tags: Richard M. Nixon, John Ehrlichman, Jeb S. Magruder, H.R. Haldeman, John Mitchell, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, John Dean, Charles Colson, Herbert Kalmbach
September 21, 1974 and After: Rumsfeld, Cheney Take Power in White House
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld speaking to reporters, 1975. [Source: Gaylinkcontent (.com)]President Ford asks Donald Rumsfeld to replace the outgoing Alexander Haig at the White House (see September 16-Late September, 1974). Rumsfeld has long been Haig's choice to replace him (see August 14, 1974). Ford does not want to give Rumsfeld the official title of "chief of staff," and instead wants Rumsfeld as "staff coordinator." The difference is academic. Ford wants the aggressive, bureaucratically savvy Rumsfeld to help him regain control over a White House that is, in the words of author Barry Werth, "riven with disunity, disorganization, and bad blood." Rumsfeld agrees, and names former Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney as his deputy (who makes himself valuable by initially doing the lowest forms of bureaucratic scutwork). Rumsfeld and Cheney will eventually wield almost Nixonian power in Ford's White House, successfully blocking the "in-house liberal," Vice President Rockefeller, from exerting any real influence, and hobbling Henry Kissinger's almost-limitless influence.
Blocking of Rockefeller and Kissinger for Ideological and Political Reasons - Rumsfeld begins his in-house assault in classic fashion: trying to cause tension between Kissinger and White House officials by snitching on Kissinger to any White House official who will listen. Kissinger eventually tells Ford: "Don't listen to [Rumsfeld], Mr. President. He's running for president in 1980." Rumsfeld and Cheney do their best to open the White House to hardline defense hawks and the even more hardline neoconservatives led by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (D-WA) and Jackson's aide, Richard Perle. (Though Rumsfeld and Cheney are not considered neoconservatives in a strict sense, their aims are almost identical—see June 4-5, 1974). Kissinger's efforts to win a negotiated peace between Israel and Palestine in the Middle East are held in contempt by Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the neoconservatives; using Ford's press secretary Ron Nessen as a conduit, Rumsfeld and Cheney leak information about the negotiations to the press, helping to cripple the entire peace process. Rumsfeld and Cheney have larger personal plans as well: they want to secure the White House for Rumsfeld, perhaps as early as 1976, but certainly by 1980. One of their methods of winning support is to undercut Kissinger as much as possible; they believe they can win support among the GOP's right wing by thwarting Kissinger's "realpolitik" foreign policy stratagems.
Rumsfeld as 'Wizard of Oz' - According to the chief of Ford's Economic Policy Board, William Seidman, Rumsfeld's bureaucratic machinations remind him of the Wizard of Oz: "He thought he was invisible behind the curtain as he worked the levers, but in reality everyone could see what he was doing." Rumsfeld and Cheney will make their most open grasp for power in orchestrating the "Halloween Massacre" (see November 4, 1975 and After). [Werth, 2006, pp. 336-337; Unger, 2007, pp. 49-52]
Entity Tags: William Seidman, Ron Nessen, Richard Perle, Barry Werth, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Henry A. Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller, Alexander M. Haig, Jr.
December 19, 1974 and After: Rockefeller Sworn in as Vice President; Influence Blocked by Rumsfeld, Right-Wingers
Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as vice president (see August 20, 1974). [Rockefeller Family Archives, 6/7/2007]
Bad Blood and Confirmation Difficulties - Rockefeller has trouble even before taking office. Branded as a liberal by many in the Republican Party, and winning as many enemies as friends with his outsized ego and gladhanding demeanor, Rockefeller garnered swift and obdurate resistance particularly from the right wing both outside the White House (see August 24, 1974) and in (see September 21, 1974 and After). During the Senate's confirmation hearings, many Democrats and some Republicans relished forcing Rockefeller, one of the wealthiest men in the country, to open his finances to public scrutiny. Even President Ford privately expresses his astonishment. "Can you imagine?" he asked during the hearings. "Nelson lost $30 million in one year and it didn't make any difference." When it was revealed that Rockefeller had given huge personal contributions to lawmakers and government officials—including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger—in the form of "loans" that never needed repaying, the Senate hearings became even more inquisitorial. The hearings dragged on for months until Ford personally intervened, telling House and Senate leaders that it was "in the national interest that you confirm Rockefeller, and I'm asking you to move as soon as possible." [US Senate, 7/7/2007]
Cheney Wanted Reagan - Deputy Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, far more conservative than either Ford or Rockefeller, opposes Rockefeller's influence from the start, and works with his boss, Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, to minimize Rockefeller's influence. In 1986, Cheney will say that Ford "should have thought of Ronald Reagan as vice president in the summer of 1974, if you are talking strictly in political terms." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 38]
Domestic Squabbles - Both Ford and Rockefeller want the new vice president to be what Ford calls "a full partner" in his administration, particularly on domestic issues. Ford appoints him to chair the Domestic Council, but behind the scenes, Rockefeller's implacable enemy, Rumsfeld, who sees Rockefeller as a "New Deal" economic liberal, blocks his influence at every term, both from personal and ideological dislike and from a desire to keep power in the White House to himself and his small, close-knit aides. (Cheney, ever attentive to indirect manipulations, inflames Rumsfeld's dislike of Rockefeller even further by suggesting to his nakedly ambitious boss that if Rockefeller was too successful in implementing domestic policy, he would be perceived as "the man responsible for drafting the agenda of 1976," thus limiting Rumsfeld's chances of being named vice president in Ford's re-election campaign (see November 4, 1975 and After). When Rockefeller tries to implement Ford's suggested policy that domestic policymakers report to Ford through Rockefeller, Rumsfeld interferes. When Rockefeller names one of his trusted assistants, James Cannon, to head the Domestic Council, Rumsfeld slashes the Council's budget almost to zero. When Rockefeller proposes a $100 billion Energy Independence Authority, with the aim to reduce and perhaps even end the nation's dependency on foreign energy sources, Rumsfeld joins Ford's economic and environmental advisers to block its creation. When Rockefeller proposes an idea for the president to Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld hands it off to Cheney, who ensures that it dies a quiet, untraceable bureaucratic death.
Rockefeller Neutralized - Cheney later recalls that Rockefeller "came to a point where he was absolutely convinced that Don Rumsfeld and myself were out to scuttle whatever new initiatives he could come up with." Rumsfeld and other Ford staffers ensure that Rockefeller is not involved in key policy meetings; when Ford proposes large cuts in federal taxes and spending, Rockefeller complains, "This is the most important move the president has made, and I wasn't even consulted." Asked what he is allowed to do as vice president, Rockefeller answers: "I go to funerals. I go to earthquakes." He says, only half sardonically, that redesigning the vice-presidential seal is "the most important thing I've done." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 38-39; US Senate, 7/7/2007]
Following in Rockefeller's Footsteps - Ironically, when Cheney becomes vice president in 2001, he uses what Rockefeller intended to do as a model for his own, extremely powerful vice presidency. James Cannon, who came into the Ford administration with Rockefeller, will marvel in 2006, "Cheney is now doing what he and Rumsfeld blocked Rockefeller from doing—influencing policy." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 39-40]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Ford administration, Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Henry A. Kissinger, James Cannon
May 25, 1975: Journalist Reveals US Spy Program; Cheney Recommends Burglaries and Indictments as Retaliation
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh publishes an explosive story in the New York Times, revealing that US submarines are tapping into Soviet communications cables inside the USSR's three-mile territorial limit. Hersh notes that his inside sources gave him the information in hopes that it would modify administration policy: they believe that using submarines in this manner violates the spirit of detente and is more risky than using satellites to garner similar information. The reaction inside both the Pentagon and the White House is predictably agitated. Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, traveling in Europe with President Ford, delegates his deputy Dick Cheney to formulate the administration's response. Cheney goes farther than most administration officials would have predicted. He calls a meeting with Attorney General Edward Levi and White House counsel Philip Buchan to discuss options. Cheney's first thought is to either engineer a burglary of Hersh's home to find classified documents, or to obtain search warrants and have Hersh's home legally ransacked. He also considers having a grand jury indict Hersh and the Times over their publication of classified information. "Will we get hit with violating the 1st amendment to the constitution[?]" Cheney writes in his notes of the discussion. Levi manages to rein in Cheney; since the leak and the story do not endanger the spying operations, the White House ultimately decides to let the matter drop rather than draw further attention to it. Interestingly, Cheney has other strings to his bow; he writes in his notes: "Can we take advantage of [the leak] to bolster our position on the Church committee investigation (see April, 1976)? To point out the need for limits on the scope of the investigation?" [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 34-35]
Entity Tags: Seymour Hersh, US Department of Defense, Ford administration, Edward Levi, Donald Rumsfeld, Church Committee, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Philip Buchan, New York Times, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr
November 4, 1975 and After: 'Halloween Massacre' Places Rumsfeld, Cheney in Power
President Ford fires a number of Nixon holdovers and replaces them with "my guys… my own team," both to show his independence and to prepare for a bruising 1976 primary battle with Ronald Reagan. The wholesale firings and reshufflings are dubbed the "Halloween Massacre." Donald Rumsfeld becomes secretary of defense, replacing James Schlesinger (see November 4, 1975). George H. W. Bush replaces William Colby as director of the CIA. Henry Kissinger remains secretary of state, but his position as national security adviser is given to Brent Scowcroft. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld's deputy chief of staff, moves up to become the youngest chief of staff in White House history. Perhaps the most controversial decision is to replace Nelson Rockefeller as Ford's vice-presidential candidate for the 1976 elections. Ford's shake-up is widely viewed as his cave-in to Republican Party hardliners. He flounders in his defense of his new staffers: for example, when Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) asks him why he thinks Rumsfeld is qualified to run the Pentagon, Ford replies, "He was a pilot in the Korean War." The ultimate winner in the shake-up is Rumsfeld, who instigated the moves from behind the scenes and gains the most from them. Rumsfeld quickly wins a reputation in Washington as a political opportunist, gunning for the vice presidency in 1976 and willing to do whatever is necessary to get it. Rockefeller tells Ford: "Rumsfeld wants to be president of the United States. He has given George Bush the deep six by putting him in the CIA, he has gotten me out.… He was third on your [vice-presidential] list (see August 16-17, 1974) and now he has gotten rid of two of us.… You are not going to be able to put him on the [ticket] because he is defense secretary, but he is not going to want anybody who can possibly be elected with you on that ticket.… I have to say I have a serious question about his loyalty to you." Later, Ford will write of his sharp regret in pushing Rockefeller off the ticket: "I was angry at myself for showing cowardice in not saying to the ultraconservatives: It's going to be Ford and Rockefeller, whatever the consequences." [Werth, 2006, pp. 340-341] "It was the biggest political mistake of my life," Ford later says. "And it was one of the few cowardly things I did in my life." [US Senate, 7/7/2007]
Entity Tags: Ronald Reagan, William Colby, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, James R. Schlesinger, Barry Goldwater, Donald Rumsfeld, Brent Scowcroft, George Herbert Walker Bush, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr, Henry A. Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller
December 26, 1976: CIA Director Bush Discusses Team B Findings with Press
After CIA Director George H. W. Bush meets with the New York Times's David Binder, the Times publishes a front-page story about the "Team B" analysis experiment (see November 1976). Up till now, Bush has been foursquare against leaking information to the press, especially classified information such as the Team B affair. Dr. Anne Cahn, who will serve in President Carter's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, later writes that Bush's sudden about-face may be sparked in part by President-elect Carter's refusal to assure Bush that he would continue as CIA director in the new administration. Bush soon appears on NBC's Meet the Press, and because of Bush's media leaks and other Team B press revelations (see Late November, 1976), three separate Congressional committees announce their intention to hold hearings on the entire exercise. [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 4/1993]
Entity Tags: New York Times, George Herbert Walker Bush, Central Intelligence Agency, 'Team B', David Binder, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., Anne Cahn
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence, War in Afghanistan
1978-1996: Texas Representative Ron Paul's Newsletters Contain a Host of Bigoted Claims and Observations
Masthead of one of Ron Paul's newsletters. [Source: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education]A number of newsletters released by Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), a self-described libertarian and strict Constitutionalist, contain what many believe to be racially objectionable remarks and claims. Paul's monthly newsletters are published under a variety of names, including "Ron Paul's Freedom Report," "Ron Paul Political Report," and "The Ron Paul Survival Report." The newsletters are published by several organizations, including Paul's non-profit group the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, and a group called Ron Paul & Associates. For a time, Ron Paul & Associates also publishes "The Ron Paul Investment Letter." In 1996, a challenger for Paul's House seat, Charles "Lefty" Morris (D-TX) makes public some of the racially inflammatory content in Paul's newsletters. The newsletters will be publicly exposed in a 2008 article in the New Republic (see January 8-15, 2008). The content, culled from years of newsletters, includes such claims and observations as:
From a 1992 newsletter: "[O]pinion polls consistently show only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action." Politically "sensible" blacks are outnumbered "as decent people." The same report claims that 85 percent of all black men in the District of Columbia have been arrested, and continues: "Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the 'criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.… [W]e are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, [but] it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."
The same 1992 edition has Paul claiming that the government should lower the age at which accused juvenile criminals can be prosecuted as adults. "We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23," the newsletter states. "That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary, and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such." The newsletter also asserts that sophisticated crimes such as "complex embezzling" are conducted exclusively by non-blacks: "What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn't that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?"
Another 1992 newsletter states, "[I]f you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."
An undated newsletter excerpt states that US Representative Barbara Jordan (D-TX), who is African-American, is "the archetypical half-educated victimologist" whose "race and sex protect her from criticism."
The newsletters often use disparaging nicknames and descriptions for lawmakers. Jordan is called "Barbara Morondon." Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is a "black pinko." Donna Shalala, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration, is a "short lesbian." Ron Brown, the head of the Department of Commerce during the Clinton administration, is a "racial victimologist." Roberta Achtenberg, the first openly gay public official confirmed by the US Senate, is a "far-left, normal-hating lesbian activist."
Newsletter items through the early 1990s attack Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., renaming him "X-Rated Martin Luther King" and labeling him a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours," "seduced underage girls and boys," and "made a pass at" fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridicules black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" were better alternatives. The same year, King is described as "a comsymp [Communist sympathizer], if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration." One 1990 excerpt says of the King holiday: "I voted against this outrage time and again as a congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day!"
An undated excerpt from a newsletter entry titled "Needlin'" says: "'Needlin',' a new form of racial terrorism, has struck New York City streets on the tony Upper West Side. At least 39 white women have been stuck with used hypodermic needles—perhaps infected with AIDS—by gangs of black girls between the ages of 12 and 14. The New York Times didn't find this fit to print for weeks and weeks, until its candidate David Dinkins [New York City's first African-American mayor] was safely elected. Even then the story was very low key, with race mentioned many paragraphs into it. Who can doubt that if this situation were reversed, if white girls had done this to black women, we would have been subjected to months-long nationwide propaganda campaign on the evils of white America? The double standard strikes again." The excerpt is presumably published sometime after 1989, when Dinkins is elected mayor of New York City. In 2011, NewsOne reporter Casey Gane-McCalla will write, "I could find no evidence of this 'epidemic' and the article seems to have no point other than to make white people scared of black people."
A December 1989 "special issue" of the Investment Letter addresses what it calls "racial terrorism," and tells readers what to expect from the 1990s: "Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities" because "mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white 'haves.'" In February 1990, another newsletter warns of "The Coming Race War." In November 1990, an item advises readers: "If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it." In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood is titled, "Animals Take Over the DC Zoo," calling the disturbances "the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s."
In June 1992, the Ron Paul Political Report publishes a "special issue" that explains the Los Angeles riots, claiming, "Order was only restored in LA when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began." The looting, the newsletter writes, is a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with "'civil rights,' quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black TV shows, black TV anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda." It also denounces "the media" for believing that "America's number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks." The newsletter praises Asian merchants in Los Angeles for having the fortitude to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans, the newsletter writes, are "the only people to act like real Americans" during the riots, "mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England." Another newsletter entry from around the same time strikes some of the same chords in writing about riots in Chicago after the NBA's Chicago Bulls win the championship: "[B]lacks poured into the streets in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot, even breaking through protective steel shutters with crowbars to steal everything in sight." The entry goes on to claim that black rioters burned down buildings all along Chicago's "Magnificent Mile," destroyed two taxicabs, "shot or otherwise injured 95 police officers," killed five people including a liquor-store owner, and injured over 100 others. "Police arrested more than 1,000 blacks," the newsletter claims. In 2011, Gane-McCalla will write that the newsletter entry falsely accuses blacks of perpetuating all of the violence, when in reality, the violence was perpetuated by people of all ethnicities. One thousand people—not 1,000 blacks—were arrested. And, he will write, "two officers suffered minor gunshot wounds and that 95 were injured in total, but the way Paul phrased it, it would seem most of the 95 officers injured were shot."
An undated newsletter entry says that "black talk radio" features "racial hatred [that] makes a KKK rally look tame. The blacks talk about their own racial superiority, how the whites have a conspiracy to wipe them out, and how they are going to take over the country and wipe them out. They only differ over whether they should use King's non-violent approach (i.e. state violence) or use private violence."
An undated newsletter entry discusses "the newest threat to your life and limb, and your family—carjacking," blaming it on blacks who follow "the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos." The entry advises potential carjacking victims to shoot carjackers, then "leave the scene immediately [and] dispos[e] of the wiped-off gun as soon as possible." The entry concludes: "I frankly don't know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming." [Houston Chronicle, 5/21/1996; New Republic, 1/8/2008; NewsOne, 5/6/2011]
According to author and militia/white supremacist expert David Neiwert, much of Paul's information about black crime comes from Jared Taylor, the leader of the American Renaissance movement (see January 23, 2005). Taylor, Neiwert will write, cloaks his racism in "pseudo-academic" terminology that is published both in a magazine, American Renaissance, and later in a book, The Color of Crime, both of which make what Neiwert calls "unsupportable claims about blacks." [David Neiwert, 6/8/2007]
Conspiracies, Right-Wing Militias, and Bigotry - The newsletters often contain speculations and assertions regarding a number of what reporter James Kirchick will call "shopworn conspiracies." Paul, as reflected in his newsletter, distrusts the "industrial-banking-political elite" and does not recognize the federally regulated monetary system and its use of paper currency. The newsletters often refer to to the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1978, a newsletter blames David Rockefeller, the Trilateral Commission, and "fascist-oriented, international banking and business interests" for the Panama Canal Treaty, which it calls "one of the saddest events in the history of the United States." A 1988 newsletter cites a doctor who believes that AIDS was created in a World Health Organization laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. In addition, Ron Paul & Associates sells a video about the Branch Davidian tragedy outside Waco (see April 19, 1993) produced by "patriotic Indiana lawyer Linda Thompson" (see April 3, 1993 and September 19, 1994), as a newsletter calls her, who insists that Waco was a conspiracy to kill ATF agents who had previously worked for President Clinton as bodyguards. Kirchick will note that outside of the newsletters, Paul is a frequent guest on radio shows hosted by Alex Jones, whom Kirchick will call "perhaps the most famous conspiracy theorist in America."
Connections to Neo-Confederate Institute - Kirchick goes on to note Paul's deep ties with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank in Alabama founded by Paul's former chief of staff, Lew Rockwell; Paul has taught seminars at the institute, serves as a "distinguished counselor," and has published books through the institute. The von Mises Institute has a long history of support for white-supremacist neo-Confederate groups, including the League of the South, led by Confederate apologist Thomas Woods (see October 14, 2010). Paul will endorse books by Woods and other neo-Confederates. Paul seems to agree with members of the von Mises institute in their view that the Civil War was the beginning of a horrific federal tyranny that ran roughshod over states' rights. Paul, in his newsletters and speeches, has frequently espoused the idea of states' secession as protest against the federal government.
Lamenting the South African Revolution - In March 1994, a newsletter warns of a "South African Holocaust," presumably against white South Africans, once President Nelson Mandela takes office. Previous newsletters call the transition from a whites-only government to a majority-African government a "destruction of civilization" that is "the most tragic [to] ever occur on that continent, at least below the Sahara."
Praise for Ku Klux Klan Leader's Political Aspirations - In 1990, a newsletter item praises Louisiana's David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, for coming in a strong second in that state's Republican Senate primary. "Duke lost the election," the newsletter says, "but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment." In 1991, a newsletter asks, "Is David Duke's new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?" The conclusion is that "our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom." Duke will in return give support to Paul's 2008 presidential candidacy.
Attacking Gays, AIDS Research - Paul's newsletters often praise Paul's "old colleague," Representative William Dannemeyer (R-CA), a noted anti-gay activist who often advocates forcibly quarantining people suffering from AIDS. Paul's newsletters praise Dannemeyer for "speak[ing] out fearlessly despite the organized power of the gay lobby." In 1990, one newsletter mentions a reporter from a gay magazine "who certainly had an axe to grind, and that's not easy with a limp wrist." In an item titled, "The Pink House?" the newsletter complains about President George H.W. Bush's decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite "the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony," adding, "I miss the closet." The same article states, "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." If homosexuals are ever allowed to openly serve in the military, another newsletter item concludes, they, "if admitted, should be put in a special category and not allowed in close physical contact with heterosexuals." One newsletter calls AIDS "a politically protected disease thanks to payola and the influence of the homosexual lobby," and alternates between praising anti-gay rhetoric and accusing gays of using the disease to further their own political agenda. One item tells readers not to get blood transfusions because gays are trying to "poison the blood supply." Another cites a far-right Christian publication that advocates not allowing "the AIDS patient" to eat in restaurants, and echoes the false claim that "AIDS can be transmitted by saliva." The newsletters often advertise a book, Surviving the AIDS Plague, which makes a number of false claims about casual transmission and defends "parents who worry about sending their healthy kids to school with AIDS victims."
Blasting Israel - Kirchick will note that the newsletters are relentless in their attacks on Israel. A 1987 issue of the Investment Letter calls Israel "an aggressive, national socialist state." A 1990 newsletter cites the "tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise." Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993), a newsletter said, "Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little." Another newsletter column criticizing lobbyists says, "By far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort is the Israeli government" and that the goal of the "Zionist movement" is to stifle criticism.
Violent Anti-Government Rhetoric - In January 1995, three months before the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), a newsletter lists "Ten Militia Commandments," describing "the 1,500 local militias now training to defend liberty" as "one of the most encouraging developments in America." It warns militia members that they are "possibly under BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] or other totalitarian federal surveillance" and prints bits of advice from the Sons of Liberty, an anti-government militia based in Alabama—among them, "You can't kill a Hydra by cutting off its head," "Keep the group size down," "Keep quiet and you're harder to find," "Leave no clues," "Avoid the phone as much as possible," and "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
Slandering Clinton - Newsletters printed during President Clinton's terms in office claim that Clinton uses cocaine and has fathered illegitimate children. Repeating the rumor that Clinton is a longtime cocaine user, in 1994 Paul writes that the speculation "would explain certain mysteries" about the president's scratchy voice and insomnia. "None of this is conclusive, of course, but it sure is interesting," he states.
Distance from Newsletter - In 2008, Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton will attempt to distance Paul from the newsletters, saying that while Paul wrote some of their content, he often did not, and in many instances never saw the content. Benton will say that the frequent insults and vitriol directed at King are particularly surprising, because, Benton will say, "Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero." In 1996, Paul claims ownership of the content, but says that Morris took the newsletter quotes "out of context" (see May 22 - October 11, 1996). In 2001, Paul will claim that he did not write any of the passages, and will claim having no knowledge of them whatsoever (see October 1, 2001). Most of the newsletters' articles and columns contain no byline, and the Internet archives of the newsletters begin in 1999. In 2008, Kirchick will find many of the older newsletters on file at the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Kirchick will note the lack of bylines, and the general use of the first person in the material, "implying that Paul was the author." Kirchick will conclude: "[W]hoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul's name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him—and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays." Paul, Kirchick writes, is "a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics." Kirchick will conclude: "Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naive, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically—or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point—over the course of decades—he would have done something about it." [New Republic, 1/8/2008; NewsOne, 5/6/2011] In 2008, Paul will deny writing virtually any of his newsletters' various content (see January 8-15, 2008 and January 16, 2008).
Entity Tags: David Rockefeller, Sr., William Jefferson ("Bill") Clinton, David Duke, US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Trilateral Commission, Thomas Woods, World Health Organization, David Neiwert, David Dinkins, Council on Foreign Relations, Alex Jones, Barbara Jordan, Bilderberg Group, Casey Gane-McCalla, Charles ("Lefty") Morris, The New Republic, Sons of Liberty, William Dannemeyer, Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, Linda Thompson, Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, Jesse Benton, Lew Rockwell, Samuel Jared Taylor, League of the South, Eleanor Holmes Norton, James Kirchick, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Donna Shalala, Ron Paul and Associates, Ron Paul, Roberta Achtenberg, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ronald H. Brown
May 25-26, 1978: Northwestern Security Guard Injured by 'Unabomber' Exploding Package
A photograph of Theodore 'Ted' Kaczynski, taken in 1968 while Kaczynski was a young faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley. [Source: George M. Bergman / Wikimedia]An unmailed package is found in a car park at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and brought to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, because of its return address; the addressee now teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Buckley Crist, the material sciences professor named in the return address on the package cannot identify it, and turns it over to campus security. When Northwestern police officer Terry Marker opens it, it explodes, injuring him slightly. The package contains a pipe bomb packed in a carved wooden box. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 4/14/1996; Washington Post, 1998] The bomb is made of a nine-inch pipe filled with explosive powders and triggered by a nail held by rubber bands that strikes and ignites match heads when the box is opened. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The package contains 10 $1 commemorative Eugene O'Neill stamps on its outer wrapper. Authorities will later speculate that the bomber may have chosen the O'Neill stamps because the playwright was an ardent supporter of anarchists. [Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). It is believed to be Kaczynski's first bomb. [New York Times, 4/7/1996]
Entity Tags: Terry Marker, Northwestern University, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Buckley Crist
May 9, 1979: 'Unabomber' Targets Northwestern University with Second Bombing
A graduate student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, John Harris, is injured when he opens a box left at the University's Technological Institute. The box contains a bomb that explodes when opened. Harris suffers minor cuts and burns. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] Authorities recognize fundamental similarities between this and a previous Northwestern University bombing (see May 25-26, 1978). This bomb is quite similar in construction to that one, though more sophisticated in construction and design. It consists of a cigar box and a pipe bomb, triggered by a battery-operated filament that ignites explosive powders. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] However, the package contains a number of small, finger-sized pieces of wood glued to its outer container. [Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see May 25-26, 1978 and April 3, 1996).
Entity Tags: Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Northwestern University, John Harris
July 3, 1979: President Carter Approves Covert Aid to Anti-Soviet Forces in Afghanistan
President Carter authorizes covert aid for opponents of the Communist government in Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Adviser, will state in 1998, "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujaheddin began… after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan… But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.… We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would." [Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 1/15/1998] After Brzezinski's confession, other US officials who denied US involvement prior to the Soviet invasion will change their story as well. For instance, Charles Cogan, who is head of the CIA covert aid program to Afghanistan at this time, will call Carter's approval on this day a "very modest beginning to US involvement." [Cooley, 2002, pp. 10] In fact, even this is not correct because the CIA had been aiding the rebels since at least the year before (see 1978 and 1973-1979). The Soviets invade Afghanistan by the end of 1979 (see December 8, 1979).
Entity Tags: Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., Charles Cogan
Timeline Tags: US International Relations, Domestic Propaganda
November 15, 1979: 'Unabomber' Explosive on Plane Fails to Detonate, Catches Fire Instead
A parcel mailed from Chicago catches fire in a mailbag aboard American Airlines Flight 444 from Chicago to Washington, DC. The package contains a bomb which was apparently constructed to explode inside the cargo hold. Twelve passengers are treated for smoke inhalation; the flight conducts an emergency landing at Dulles Airport near Washington. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The bomb does not ignite because instead of explosive powder, it contains barium nitrate, a powder often used to create green smoke in fireworks. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The bombing is later shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). After the airline bombing and the subsequent bombing of a United Airlines executive (see June 10, 1980), the FBI ties the previous bombings (see May 25-26, 1978 and May 9, 1979) to this one and code-names the file UNABOM, for "UNiversity and Airline BOMber." The media will soon dub the unknown assailant the "Unabomber." [Washington Post, 4/4/1996; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Kaczynski will later express regret for trying to bomb the plane (see April 24, 1995).
Entity Tags: Washington Dulles International Airport, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski, Federal Bureau of Investigation
December 8, 1979: Soviet Forces, Lured in by the CIA, Invade Afghanistan
Soviet tanks entering Afghanistan in late 1979. [Source: Banded Artists Productions]The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. The Russians were initially invited in by the Afghan government to deal with rising instability and army mutinies, and they start crossing the border on December 8. But on December 26, Russian troops storm the presidential palace, kill the country's leader, Haizullah Amin, and the invitation turns into an invasion. [Blum, 1995, pp. 342] Later declassified high-level Russian documents will show that the Russian leadership believed that Amin, who took power in a violent coup from another pro-Soviet leader two months before, had secret contacts with the US embassy and was probably a US agent. Further, one document from this month claims that "the right wing Muslim opposition" has "practically established their control in many provinces… using foreign support." [Cooley, 2002, pp. 8] It has been commonly believed that the invasion was unprovoked, but the Russians will later be proven largely correct. In a 1998 interview, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, will reveal that earlier in the year Carter authorized the CIA to destabilize the government, provoking the Russians to invade (see July 3, 1979). [Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 1/1998; Mirror, 1/29/2002] Further, CIA covert action in the country actually began in 1978 (see 1978), if not earlier (see 1973-1979). The US and Saudi Arabia will give a huge amount of money (estimates range up to $40 billion total for the war) to support the mujaheddin guerrilla fighters opposing the Russians, and a decade-long war will ensue. [Nation, 2/15/1999]
Entity Tags: United States, Saudi Arabia, Haizullah Amin, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Central Intelligence Agency
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
December 26, 1979: Memo to President Carter Gives Pakistan Green Light to Pursue Nuclear Weapons Program
Front row: Pakistani President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq (left) and President Carter (right). Zbigniew Brzezinski is in the center of the back row. [Source: Wally McNamee / Corbis]National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski writes a memo to President Jimmy Carter about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which has just begun (see December 8, 1979). Brzezinski focuses on fears that success in Afghanistan could give the Soviets access to the Indian Ocean, even though Afghanistan is a landlocked country. He suggests the US should continue aid to the Afghan mujaheddin, which actually began before the war and spurred the Soviets to invade (see 1978 and July 3, 1979). He says, "This means more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels and some technical advice." He does not give any warning that such aid will strengthen Islamic fundamentalism. He also concludes, "[W]e must both reassure Pakistan and encourage it to help the rebels. This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and alas, a decision that our security problem toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy." Carter apparently accepts Brzezinski's advice. Author Joe Trento will later comment, "With that, the United States agreed to let a country admittedly in turmoil proceed to develop nuclear weapons." [Trento, 2005, pp. 167-168] Trento and fellow author David Armstrong will add: "Once [Pakistan] became a partner in the anti-Soviet Afghan campaign and the Carter administration adopted a more lenient view of Pakistan's nuclear activities, the [procurement] network [run by A. Q. Khan] expanded its operations dramatically. It would soon evolve into a truly global enterprise, obtaining the vast array of sophisticated equipment with which Pakistan would eventually build a bomb." [Armstrong and Trento, 2007, pp. 99]
Entity Tags: James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., David Armstrong, Joseph Trento, Zbigniew Brzezinski
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, A. Q. Khan's Nuclear Network, War in Afghanistan
Early 1980s: FBI Encounters Problems Passing Intelligence Information to Criminal Prosecutors, 'Wall' Arises
Due to apparent problems with the use of intelligence information in criminal proceedings, a set of procedures that later becomes known as the "wall" begins to take shape. The FBI, which performs both criminal and counterintelligence functions, normally obtains two types of warrants: criminal warrants and warrants under the recently passed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA warrants are thought to be easier to obtain, as the FBI only has to show that there is probable cause to believe the subject is a foreign power or an agent of one. Sometimes a case begins as an intelligence investigation, but results in a criminal prosecution. In court the defense can then argue that the government has abused FISA and obtained evidence by improperly using the lower standard, so any evidence obtained under FISA should not be allowed in court. Although the government can use information it happens to obtain under a FISA warrant for a criminal prosecution, if the purpose of obtaining information under a FISA warrant is for a criminal prosecution, this is in violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against warrantless searches. To combat this apparent problem, the special FISA Court decides that for a warrant under FISA to be granted, collecting intelligence information must be the primary purpose, although such information can be used in a criminal investigation provided the criminal investigation does not become the primary purpose of the surveillance or search. As a result of these procedures, when the FBI is conducting an intelligence investigation and uncovers evidence of criminal activity, it no longer consults local United States Attorneys' Offices, but prosecutors within the Justice Department's Criminal Division. The prosecutors then decide when the local attorney's office should become involved. [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 21-24 ] The wall will be extended in the 1990s (see July 19, 1995) and will be much criticized before and after 9/11 (see July 1999 and April 13, 2004).
Entity Tags: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
January 23, 1980: Invasion of Afghanistan Leads to Build Up of US Forces in Persian Gulf
In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (see December 8, 1979), President Carter declares in his annual State of the Union address, "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." This will become known as the Carter Doctrine. [Scott, 2007, pp. 69, 303] The US immediately follows up with a massive build up of military forces in the region. New military arrangements are made with Kenya, Oman, Somalia, Egypt, and Pakistan. In March 1980, a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force is created, which will be renamed US Central Command (or Centcom) several years later. [Scott, 2007, pp. 78-79, 308-309]
Entity Tags: James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr., US Central Command
Timeline Tags: US Military, Complete 911 Timeline, War in Afghanistan
June 10, 1980: 'Unabomber' Package Injures United Airlines President
In his Lake Forest, Illinois, home, United Airlines president Percy Wood opens a package that apparently contains a book. It contains both a book and a bomb in the book's hollowed-out pages. It explodes, causing Wood to suffer cuts and bruises. The initials "FC" are found etched on, or punched into, a piece of pipe from the bomb. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, the so-called "Unabomber" (see April 3, 1996). "FC" will later be found to stand for "Freedom Club." [Washington Post, 1/23/1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Authorities will later speculate that Wood may have been targeted in part because of Kaczynski's strange fascination with wood; he often uses wood in the construction of his bombs. The hollowed-out book, Ice Brothers, is published by Arbor House, whose symbol is a tree leaf. [Associated Press, 4/25/1995] The package contains a note asking Wood to read the enclosed book, and noting, "You will find it of great social significance." The author of Ice Brothers, Sloan Wilson, also wrote The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which, according to a 1959 biography of Wilson, "was the definitive epithet for the commuting suburbanite, the status-hungry conformist from Madison Avenue." Like an earlier bomb (see May 25-26, 1978), this bomb's package is mailed using postage stamps commemorating the playwright Eugene O'Neill; authorities will speculate that Kaczynski may have chosen the stamps because of O'Neill's ardent support of anarchists. [Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995]
Entity Tags: Percy Wood, Theodore J. ("Ted") Kaczynski
September 1980: Pro-American Military Coup Takes Place in Turkey
General Kenal Evren leads a military coup in Turkey. Richard Perle, in a 1999 article, will justify the pro-American coup as "a response by the Turkish armed forces to the breakdown of order and security and the rise of terrorism and widespread random violence in Turkey." According to Perle, the wave of terrorism in Turkey "threatened to undermine American support, both popular and official, for Turkey and for close cooperation in security affairs between the United States and Turkey." [Foreign Policy Research Institute, 9/1999] Perle says Turkey's civilian government failed to maintain law and order. Conveniently, the clampdown that follows the coup enables the new government to begin implementing the pro-US strategic agenda that was laid out during the 1979 meeting arranged by Perle's mentor, Albert Wohlstetter (see 1979). It is now known that the terrorism that destabilized Turkey in the late 1970s was predominately the work of secret groups run by the Turkish military in conjunction with the CIA and NATO. [Progressive, 4/1997; Covert Action Quarterly, 6/1997; Ganser, 12/17/2004]
Entity Tags: Kenal Evren, Richard Perle, Albert Wohlstetter
September 30, 1980: Iran Bombs Iraqi Nuclear Facility
Iran conducts a limited air strike against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, after being publicly exhorted to do so by Israel's chief of Army intelligence. The Osirak reactor is at the same site as the Iraq Nuclear Research Center, in al-Tuwaitha, where Israeli intelligence believes the first Arab atomic bomb will be assembled. The strike is part of a larger strike by Iran against a conventional electric power plant near Baghdad. The strike inflicts only minor damage, and the plant is quickly repaired and brought back online. Iran will not conduct any further air strikes against Iraqi nuclear facilities throughout the entire Iran-Iraq War. In fact, it is not clear whether the Iranian strike is a pre-planned bombing raid by Iranian war planners, or an air strike by two pilots with a chance at a target of opportunity. [New Yorker, 11/2/1992; Institute for National Strategic Studies, 5/1995] In June 1981, Israel will obliterate the Osirak facility (see June 7, 1981).
Entity Tags: Israeli Field Intelligence Corps
Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran