“I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all. ”
― Abraham Lincoln
Showing posts with label cryptocracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cryptocracy. Show all posts
Sunday 1 December 2013
Friday 22 November 2013
JFK50: JFK - A Conspiracy Theory
Lee Harvey Oswald was your typical America-hating communist from Louisiana, and like every Russkie-loving pinko from the South he grew up watching American spy dramas, volunteered for a Civilian Air Patrol run by a CIA contract agent and joined the US Marines. Nicknamed Oswaldski for his tendency to speak Russian and spout pro-Soviet propaganda, he was given special training and assigned to one of the most sensitive facilities in the world running the radar for the U2s spying on the Russkies and the ChiComs. After contracting gonorrhea in the line of duty, Oswald was tested for Russian proficiency before being honorably discharged to take care of his mother who wasn’t ill and flew to Europe using money he didn’t have on planes that didn’t exist to arrive at Helsinki, where he stayed at the most luxurious hotel in town before waltzing into the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. While there he kept a detailed log of Soviet facilities, made notes about microdots, and carried a CIA standard-issue Minox camera, before getting bored and returning to the United States on a military jet using money loaned to him from the US Embassy.
After waltzing back into the United States after supposedly defecting to the enemy at the height of the Cold War he settled back in New Orleans where he appeared in radio and TV interviews, got into fistfights on the street and handed out leaflets from a pro-Castro Cuban group sharing office space with an ex-FBI agent involved in government-sponsored anti-Castro Cuban groups. Moving to Texas and befriending a millionaire Russian oil man who helped get him a job at the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald made sure to let his murderous intent be known by attempting to assassinate a right-wing general in the area thus potentially jeopardizing any plot to kill the President and sent vanity photos of himself posing with his rifle to his close friends.
Luckily, on the morning of November 22nd, Lee Harvey Oswald went to work in the School Book Depository where the President just happened to be driving by. After somehow getting the secret service to stand down before entering Dealey Plaza, Oswald set up a makeshift sniper’s nest he got off three shots in six seconds leaving four bullets without leaving any nitrate on his cheek (a feat that has never been duplicated), including one bullet that managed to cause seven entry/exit wounds (a feat that has never been duplicated) penetrating 15 inches of tissue, 4 inches of rib and a radius bone to come out in almost perfect condition on a stretcher in the hospital while no one was looking. He then ran downstairs and got himself a Coke from the vending machine within seconds of the assassination before heading home, grabbing his things, walking down the street, shooting a police officer, ducking into a movie theatre and waiting to be arrested. After jumping up and pulling his gun on the police officers who swarmed the theatre, he was led out the front door (or the back) and taken into police custody. There he was not charged with the murder of the president, and, like any America-hating communist grandstander who just killed the President of the United States in a pinko rage, denied he had anything to do with it. Before being transferred to county jail he was shot on live tv by a two-bit union mafia stooge, supposedly torn by grief at the death of the President (whose brother he personally hated), later claiming that it was part of a conspiracy the world will never know.
Luckily, the crusading journalists of the unbiased media told the public the straight truth about what happened.
Hoover wrote a memo that weekend demanding that the public be convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, LBJ appointed a commission, telling Commissioner Warren that he had to find that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, and as luck would have it, that commission concluded exactly that.
This is the story of the JFK assassination as brought to you by the truth tellers in government and the media and if you have any questions about it you are a woo-woo, grassy-knoll, tin-foil, lizard-fearing America-hater.
If you love Jesus, sunshine, ponies, monster trucks, mini-skirts and the American flag, you will never ask any questions about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
This message has been brought to you by the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Warren Commission, and the MSM.
Because Ignorance is Strength!
Tuesday 15 October 2013
The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
The Assassination of Robert F.Kennedy - The Complete Pruszynski Tape Recording [RAW AUDIO] from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
The Sequence of gunshots (reports) can be heard from around 5 mins 30 seconds
21:00 "The negro gentleman says that there was another man, too..."
Source:
"Complete_Pruszynski_Recording.mp3"
Render unto Caesar.... from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
The story of the murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, told in music and pictures
Picutres which Life Magazine declined to publish until 2006.
It's a really complete and accurate accounting of that murder - Sirhan Sirhan doesn't feature in it.
Thane Eugene Caser, Michael Wein and the LAPD, however, do.
Render unto Caesar.... from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
The story of the murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, told in music and pictures
Picutres which Life Magazine declined to publish until 2006.
It's a really complete and accurate accounting of that murder - Sirhan Sirhan doesn't feature in it.
Thane Eugene Caser, Michael Wein and the LAPD, however, do.
Sunday 13 October 2013
Kennedy and Nixon
"People forget China, and your War on Cancer,
Yea, they all betrayed you,
And your country, too..."
"The Watergate break-in of 1972 (in which, I have always been convinced, Nixon was not so much a guilty perpetrator as a guilty victim) followed Nixon's secret negotiations with Hanoi for disengagement from Vietnam, significantly advanced by his May 1972 visit to Moscow, where he signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement."
- Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993)
- Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993)
The Hegelian Dialectic of 20th Century History.
The National Security State creates it's own Manichean duality, objects of ego identification and vilification.
Thesis: One ruler + one territory
(Oriental despotism)
Antithesis: Many rulers + many territories
(Greco-Roman democracy and aristocracy)
Synthesis: One ruler + many territories
(Prussia, or Hegel's Germanic monarchy)
Thesis: One ruler + one territory
(Unipolar - American Exceptionalism)
Antithesis: Many rulers + many territories
(Tripolar - Kissinger's Triple Detente )
Synthesis: One ruler + many territories
(NeoLiberalism and the Global Balkans)
=
New World Order
The Love of Richard Nixon from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
The love of Richard Nixon, yeah they all betrayed you
The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
Yeah they all betrayed you
Yeah and your country too
The love of Richard Nixon, death without assassination
The love of Richard Nixon, yeah they all betrayed you
People forget China and your war on cancer
Yeah they all betrayed you
Yeah and your country too
"In all the decisions I have made in my public life
I have always tried to do what was best for the nation"
"I have never been a quitter."
MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK
DATE: MAY 1, 1994
FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER.... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA.... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.
"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird."
---Revelation 18:2
Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."
I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.
Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said, "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you."
It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.
That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.
Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.
These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon's immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president's body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least 100 miles off the coast and at least 1,000 miles south of San Diego, so the corpse could never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.
The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable -- some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.
It would also play into the hands of those millions of self-stigmatized patriots like me who believe these things already.
If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern -- but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.
Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man -- evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him -- except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.
It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values."
Many were incensed about the howitzers -- but they knew there was nothing they could do about it -- not with the current president sitting about 50 yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon's last war, and he won.
The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow seized the No. 3 slot on the roster and uttered such a shameless, self-serving eulogy that even he burst into tears at the end of it.
Dole's stock went up like a rocket and cast him as the early GOP front-runner for '96. Wilson, speaking next, sounded like an Engelbert Humperdinck impersonator and probably won't even be re-elected as governor of California in November.
The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments -- most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H. P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.
Kissinger was only one of the many historians who suddenly came to see Nixon as more than the sum of his many squalid parts. He seemed to be saying that History will not have to absolve Nixon, because he has already done it himself in a massive act of will and crazed arrogance that already ranks him supreme, along with other Nietzschean supermen like Hitler, Jesus, Bismarck and the Emperor Hirohito. These revisionists have catapulted Nixon to the status of an American Caesar, claiming that when the definitive history of the 20th century is written, no other president will come close to Nixon in stature. "He will dwarf FDR and Truman," according to one scholar from Duke University.
It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard.
Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
Nixon's meteoric rise from the unemployment line to the vice presidency in six quick years would never have happened if TV had come along 10 years earlier. He got away with his sleazy "my dog Checkers" speech in 1952 because most voters heard it on the radio or read about it in the headlines of their local, Republican newspapers. When Nixon finally had to face the TV cameras for real in the 1960 presidential campaign debates, he got whipped like a red-headed mule. Even die-hard Republican voters were shocked by his cruel and incompetent persona. Interestingly, most people who heard those debates on the radio thought Nixon had won. But the mushrooming TV audience saw him as a truthless used-car salesman, and they voted accordingly. It was the first time in 14 years that Nixon lost an election.
When he arrived in the White House as VP at the age of 40, he was a smart young man on the rise -- a hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream with a heart full of hate and an overweening lust to be President. He had won every office he'd run for and stomped like a Nazi on all of his enemies and even some of his friends.
Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him). It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.
Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.
For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director -- who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.
That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says -- and he is, after all, the President of the United States.
Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."
Shit. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. He was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.
Unlike Nixon, Agnew didn't argue. He quit his job and fled in the night to Baltimore, where he appeared the next morning in U.S. District Court, which allowed him to stay out of prison for bribery and extortion in exchange for a guilty (no contest) plea on income-tax evasion. After that he became a major celebrity and played golf and tried to get a Coors distributorship. He never spoke to Nixon again and was an unwelcome guest at the funeral. They called him Rude, but he went anyway. It was one of those Biological Imperatives, like salmon swimming up waterfalls to spawn before they die. He knew he was scum, but it didn't bother him.
Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Richard Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his Presidency.
It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that -- but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.
Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.
Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives -- whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.
He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.
Copyright © 1994 by Hunter S. Thompson. All rights reserved.
Originally published in Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994.
Saturday 12 October 2013
9/11: The Plot to Kill Ted Kennedy
"I see these bumper-stickers everywhere: 'Bush Knew!'
This is an oxymoron.
Bush knows nothing."
- Webster G. Tarpley
It is therefore extremely significant that the Shadow Government attempted to murder his wife on the day of 9/11.
9/11 - The Attempted Assassination of Senator Ted Kennedy and First Lady Laura Bush from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
There has been endless debate as to what really took place and what really happened regarding Flight United 93.
What cannot be denied, however was that there was a plane-like object in-bound to Washington DC that never made it to to it's intended target.
Many have stated as blase fact that it was inbound to the White House - in the event of a Fascist NeoCon coup, however, all the Liberals and moderate Republicans were in the US Capitol and all the PNAC boys were at the White House in the bunker (with McCain, Jesse Helms and the others on-board the Doomsday Plane, heading for NORAD in Colorado.)
No one bothered to evacuate the Capitol - the First Lady, Ted Kennedy, Daschele, Lehey, Levin, Paul Wellstone and the rest were left up on Capitol Hill - like sitting ducks.
This also highlights another key point - if the planes are fake, and the people on the planes are either fake or not dead.... Those first two planes took off from Boston Logan International.
This meant that Ted Kennedy probably spent most of the remainder of his life talking with Crisis Actors.
And in the immediate, post 9/11 world, the legislative effectiveness of both the Junior and Senior Senator from Massachusetts was completely neutralised.
What would have been the chances of John Kerry in 2004 embracing the cause of 9/11 Truth if to do so meant ostensibly attacking his own constituents...?
What's vital to glean from this is at a time AFTER the Pentagon was hit, when Cheney and Norman Manetta are in the White House bunker, allowing the Flight 77 decoy to approach DC, at a point where "there are other planes in the air", and the US Capitol was an obvious target, the senior living Kennedy Family member, who is IN the Capitol, in the presence of Secret Service agents and Laura Bush's protection detail are doing absolutely NOTHING.
The Secret Service have EXTREMELY good and extensive secure Comms and this would have been exactly around the time of the "ANGEL IS NEXT" flash message to the fleeing Air Force One - I don't know what the protocol for protecting the First Lady would be, whether they pick her up and take her to the Bunker to wait with Cheney and his wife, but whatever it was - they weren't doing it.
9/11: The Doomsday Plane (E-4B) Takes Off From Ronald Reagan National Airport from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
Since the days of the Cold War, the United States has had a plan in place to continue the operation of the government following a catastrophic attack on the nation's capital. Because of its sensitive nature, details from the classified "Continuity of Government Plan" have been kept secret, even from Members of the House Homeland Security Committee. As further proof that the Obama Administration is the most open and transparent in history, the White House has decided to brief the American People on this important program.
National Continuity Plan
The 2007 "National Security Presidential Directive 51" directs the geographic dispersion of leadership, staff, and infrastructure in order to maintain the functions of the United States Government in the event the nation’s capital is “decapitated” by a terrorist attack.
Buried deep within the 98-page National Continuity Plan is the strategy for the mass evacuation and relocation of every federal government agency including The White House and the military in response to an exceptional catastrophic event within the National Capital Region. Each agency is required to have a detailed Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) in place.
The Shadow Government
Following a catastrophic national emergency, the President, or his successor can authorize the establishment of a temporary "shadow government" to maintain control of the essential functions of the Federal Government. President Bush activated the shadow government on September 11, 2001 shortly after the second attack on the World Trade Center.
Every federal agency has designated key individuals to be part of an "Emergency Relocation Group". These ERGs are assigned to an alternate secure location on a rotating basis and are ready to take over the duty of supporting the National Essential Functions of this nation in an emergency.
Presidential Line of Succession
The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 sets the order of Presidential Succession. This order is followed if the President dies or is incapacitated. The order of cabinet officers included in the list is determined by the dates on which each of their positions was created:
Vice President
Speaker of the House
President pro tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State
Secretary of Treasury
Secretary of Defense
Attorney General
Secretary of the Interior
Secretary of Agriculture
Secretary of Commerce
Secretary of Labor
Secretary of Health and Human Services
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Secretary of Transportation
Secretary of Energy
Secretary of Education
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Secretary of Homeland Security
Orders of succession are also established for each of above Cabinet officials within their own departments. Ten successors residing within the National Capital Region (NCR) and three successors outside the NCR are identified for all executive departments and agencies. Here is an example of a 2013 Secretarial Order of Succession.
Tracking Individuals in the Presidential Line of Succession
In the past, FEMA maintained the Central Locator System (CLS), which tracked the 24-hour movements of key government officials. This legacy system has been replaced by the Internet Protocol Locator (IPL). A real-time tracking system is incorporated into IPL to identify the location of key officials at all times using Location Based Services (LBS) available from cellular phones and GPS devices implanted in wearable accessories such as pins, earrings, and wristwatches. There are 24/7 Observer Stations responsible for monitoring the status of each key government official to determine his or her location in the event of an emergency.
Evacuating the Presidential Line of Succession
The U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) is responsible for evacuating government officials under the guidance of the classified Concept of Operations Plan CONPLAN 3600: Emergency Preparedness in the National Capital Region. The executive agency and department heads would be transported to classified locations around the country above ground, below ground, and at sea. An Emergency Action Alert sent by the FEMA Alternate National Warning Center in Olney would direct the 1st Helicopter Squadron from Andrews Air Force Base to the Capitol to evacuate the top congressional leaders to the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center.
http://whitehouse.gov1.info/continuity-plan/index.html
CNN has now learned from two government sources that the mystery plane was a military aircraft and has determined that the blurry image on video appears to match photos of the Air Force's E-4B (discussed here on Wikipedia), a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit.
"The E-4B is a state of the art flying command post," CNN explained, "built and equipped for one reason -- to keep the government running no matter what, even in the event of a nuclear war, the reason it was nicknamed the 'doomsday plane' during the Cold War."
9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton told CNN he was aware of the incident and that it had simply never seemed important enough to make it into the commission's report. He called conspiracy theories involving government complicity in 9/11 "ludicrous."
The plane was previously identified as the E-4B a year ago by one researcher on a forum associated with the 9/11 conspiracy film, Loose Change.
CNN acknowledges that, despite its identification, the absence of the aircraft from official investigations, together with the Pentagon's denial that it was a military plane and the insistence by the Pentagon, Secret Service, and FAA that they have no explanation for the incident, may continue to raise suspicions.
The above video is from CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, broadcast on September 12.
JFK: American University Commencment Speech: A Strategy of Peace - June 10th 1963
JFK: American University Commencment Speech: A Strategy of Peace - June 10th 1963 from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
At American University on June 10, 1963, President Kennedy proposed an end to the Cold War.”
Khrushchev called the American University Address “the greatest speech by any American President since Roosevelt.”
To work his way out of the arms race (and free from the kind of dilemma that arose from his science advisor knowing more about nuclear war, even its strategy, than his Defense Secretary), Kennedy decided to create a series of peace initiatives. He began with the American University address, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, National Security Action Memorandum 263 withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam, and a covert dialogue with Fidel Castro.
During his final months in office, he went further. Compelled by the near-holocaust of the Missile Crisis, he tried to transcend the government’s (and his own) disastrous Cold War assumptions by taking a visionary stand for general and complete disarmament.
On May 6, 1963, President Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum Number 239, ordering his principal national security advisers to pursue both a nuclear test ban and a policy of general and complete disarmament. . . .
Marcus Raskin has commented on the meaning of this document: “The President said, ‘Look we’ve really got to figure out how to get out of this arms race. This is just impossible. Give me a plan, the first stage at least of how we’re going to get out of the arms race.’
“This would be a 30% cut of arms. Then move from that stage to the next stage. He was into that. There’s no question about it.”
In the three paragraphs of NSAM 239, Kennedy uses the phrase “general and complete disarmament” four times—twice in the opening paragraph, once each in the final two paragraphs. It is clearly the central focus of the order he is issuing.
The president’s accompanying, secondary emphasis is on “a nuclear test ban treaty,” which he mentions three times. It is his secondary focus that shows just how strongly he is committed to to NSAM 239’s higher priority, general and complete disarmament. For we know that in the three months after NSAM 239 was issued, JFK concentrated his energy on negotiating a nuclear test ban agreement with Khrushchev, a goal he accomplished.`
General and complete disarmament is the more ambitious project in which he says he wants immediate steps to be taken: “an urgent re-examination of the possibilities of new approaches to significant measures short of general and complete disarmament,” such as the 30 percent cut in arms mentioned by Raskin.
In his American University address the following month, he reiterates: “Our primary long-range interest [in the Geneva talks] is general and complete disarmament—designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms.
The American University address and the test ban treaty opened the door to the long-range project that was necessary for the survival of humanity in the nuclear age. The test ban treaty was JFK’s critically important way to initiate with Khrushchev the end of the Cold War and their joint leadership in the United Nations for the redemptive process of general and complete disarmament.
In NSAM 239, Kennedy said why he was prepared to pursue such a radical program: “the events of the last two years have increased my concerns for the consequences of an un-checked continuation of the arms race between ourselves and the Soviet bloc.”
Having been shaken and enlightened by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy had the courage to recognize, as head of the most disastrously armed nation in history, that humanity could not survive the nuclear age unless the United States was willing to lead the world to general and complete disarmament.
“You believe in redemption don’t you?” Kennedy said to his Quaker visitors. As usual, his irony told the truth and doubled back on himself. Ted Sorenson observed that when it came to disarmament, “The President underwent a degree of redemption himself.”
- Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable
Friday 11 October 2013
SCADS - State Crimes Against Democracy
SCADS = State Crimes Against Democracy
This document caused quite a stir when it was discovered in 1977.
Dated 4/1/67, and marked "DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED", this document is a stunning testimony to how concerned the CIA was over investigations into the Kennedy assassination.
Emphasis has been added to facilitate scanning.
CIA Document #1035-960, marked "PSYCH" for presumably Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division "CS", the Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks" department.
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show similar, or possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active
a. To discuss the publicity problem with and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors) , pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the ideathat, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.
The Mossad on 9/11
The Mossad on 9/11: "Explosive Ordnance Units" Arrested on the George Washington Bridge from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
"We are not your problem - the Palestinians are your problem."
All lines are down at the FBI Joint Terrorism Taskforce in New York City.
Because they're all in Las Vegas attending a conference and can't get a flight back.
Thursday 10 October 2013
Hypatia
"There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions.
On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men.
For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.”
—Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History
The Egyptians taught that the most important relationship you can develop is that which you have with your divine Ka - your Higher Self.
Most people achieve this spiritual communion - if they do achieve it - around aged 40.
The age demonised as the the Mid-Life Crisis; also known as the Mid-Life Opportunity.
This is Hypatia. The only known relief of her true face.
She represented an existential threat to the New World Order.
"And, in those days, there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes, and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through Satanic wiles . . .
A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the Magistrate . . . and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the Prefect through her enchantments.
And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her . . . they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesareum. Now this was in the days of the fast.
And they tore off her clothing and dragged her . . . through the streets of the city till she died.
And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire."
"Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed.
For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop.
Some of them, therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home and, dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles.
After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them."
Friday 27 September 2013
Barack H. Obama and The Unspeakable
“...at a meeting of the Soviet leadership [Kruschev] made this unprecedented statement:
"We have to help Kennedy."
"What kind of peace do I mean, and what kind of peace do we seek?"
Obama: "I Spoke On The Phone With President Rouhani Of The Islamic Republic Of Iran" from Spike1138 on Vimeo.
This is potentially World Peace - this is MONUMENTAL.
MS-NBC immediately spins it away to childish trivia that has nothing to do with him anyway.
"Liberal Media", my arse.
Sergei Khrushchev (1935–), son of Nikita Khrushchev, writes in his book Nikita Khrushchev: Creation of a Super- power,
“When Father argued at a meeting of the Soviet leadership in favor of withdrawing the missiles, he made this unprecedented statement:
’We have to help Kennedy withstand pressure from the hawks [supporters of war]. They are demanding an immediate military invasion.’”
The Soviet Premier knew an invasion would lead to nuclear war.
Khrushchev agreed to a U.S. president’s “promise” not to invade Cuba again. According to Sergei Khrushchev, this would have been “inconceivable” only a few years earlier.
Excerpt from “Communiqué to President Kennedy Accepting an End to the Missile Crisis, October 28, 1962”
"Esteemed Mr. President:
I have received your message of October 27, 1962. I express my satisfaction and gratitude for the sense of proportion and understanding of the responsibility borne by you at present for the preservation of peace throughout the world which you have shown. I very well understand your anxiety and the anxi- ety of the United States people in connection with the fact that the weapons which you describe as “offensive” are, in fact, grim weapons. Both you and I understand what kind of weapon they are.
In order to complete with greater speed the liquidation of the conflict dangerous to the cause of peace, to give confidence to all peo- ple longing for peace, and to calm the American people, who, I am certain, want peace as much as the people of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Government, in addition to previously issued instructions on the cessation of further work at building sites for the weapons, has is- sued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you de- scribe as “offensive,” and their crating and return to the Soviet Union.
Mr. President, I would like to repeat once more what I had al- ready written to you in my preceding letters—that the Soviet Gov- ernment has placed at the disposal of the Cuban Government eco- nomic aid, as well as arms, inasmuch as Cuba and the Cuban people have constantly been under the continuous danger of an in- vasion [from the United States]....
We stationed them there in order that no attack should be made against Cuba and that no rash action should be permitted to take place.
I regard with respect and trust your statement in your message of October 27, 1962, that no attack will be made on Cuba—that no invasion will take place—not only by the United States, but also by other countries of the Western Hemisphere, as your message pointed out. Then the motives which promoted us to give aid of this nature to Cuba cease. They are no longer applicable, hence we have instructed our officers—and these means, as I have already stated, are in the hands of Soviet officers—to take necessary mea- sures for stopping the building of the said projects and their dis- mantling and return to the Soviet Union....
I note with satisfaction that you have responded to my wish that the said dangerous situation should be liquidated and also that conditions should be created for a more thoughtful appraisal of the international situation which is fraught with great dangers in our age of thermonuclear weapons, rocket technology ... global rockets, and other lethal weapons. All people are interested in insuring peace. Therefore, we who are invested with trust and great respon- sibility must not permit an exacerbation of the situation and must liquidate the breeding grounds where a dangerous situation has been created fraught with serious consequences for the cause of peace. If we succeed along with you and with the aid of other peo- ple of good will in liquidating this tense situation, we must also con- cern ourselves to see that other dangerous conflicts do not arise which might lead to a world thermonuclear catastrophe....
Mr. President, I trust your statement. However, on the other hand, there are responsible people who would like to carry out an invasion of Cuba at this time, and in such a way to spark off a war. If we take practical steps and announce the dismantling and evacua- tion of the appropriate means from Cuba, then, doing that, we wish to establish at the same time the confidence of the Cuban people that we are with them and are not divesting ourselves of the re- sponsibility of granting help to them.
We are convinced that the people of all countries, like yourself, Mr. President, will understand me correctly. We do not issue threats. We desire only peace. Our country is now on the upsurge. Our people are enjoying the fruits of their peaceful labor....
We value peace, perhaps even more than other people, because we experienced the terrible war against Hitler. However, our people will not flinch in the face of any ordeal. Our people trust their government, and we assure our people and the world public that the Soviet government will not allow itself to be provoked.
Should the provocateurs unleash a war, they would not escape the grave consequences of such a war. However, we are confident that reason will triumph. War will not be unleashed and the peace and security of people will be insured....
Khrushchev.
October 28, 1962.
The primary consequence of the Cuban Missile Crisis was that the American public now believed that the Soviet Union’s nuclear capabilities equalled those of the United States. Citizens would not listen to numbers that showed the United States with far more missiles. As far as Americans were concerned, each country could totally annihilate the other— or, for that matter, all life on earth. It was the last of the Cold War “missile bluff” diplomacies.
Both sides had so frightened the other during the Cuban Missile Crisis that the first serious negotiations in con- trolling nuclear weaponry began in August 1963. The United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain—which also had nuclear capabilities—signed the Limited Test-Ban Treaty to ban nu- clear testing underwater, in the atmosphere, and in outer space.
"I often think how necessary it is for men who are vested with trust and great power to be inspired with the understanding of what seems to be an obvious truism, which is that we live on one planet and it is not in man’s power—at least in the foreseeable future—to change that. In a certain sense there is an analogy here—I like this comparison—with Noah’s Ark where both the “clean” and the “unclean” found sanctuary. But regardless of who lists himself with the “clean” and who is considered to be “unclean,” they are all equally interested in one thing and that is that the Ark should successfully continue its cruise. And we have no other alternative: either we should live in peace and cooperation so that the Ark maintains its buoyancy, or else it sinks. Therefore we must display concern for all of mankind, not to mention our own advantages, and find every possibility leading to peaceful solutions of problems."
"In November 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum giving the Western powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin and make it a free, demilitarized city.
At the end of that period, Khrushchev declared, the Soviet Union would turn over to East Germany complete control of all lines of communication with West Berlin; the western powers then would have access to West Berlin only by permission of the East German government.
The United States, United Kingdom, and France replied to this ultimatum by firmly asserting their determination to remain in West Berlin and to maintain their legal right of free access to that city.
In May 1959 the Soviet Union withdrew its deadline and instead met with the Western powers in a Big Four foreign ministers' conference.
Although the three-month-long sessions failed to reach any important agreements, they did open the door to further negotiations and led to Premier Khrushchev's visit to the United States in September 1959.
At the end of this visit, Khrushchev and President Dwight Eisenhower stated jointly that the most important issue in the world was general disarmament and that the problem of Berlin and
"all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the application of force, but by peaceful means through negotiations."
Khrushchev and Eisenhower had a few days together at Camp David, the presidential retreat.
There the leaders of the two superpowers talked frankly with each other.
Khrushchev and Eisenhower had a few days together at Camp David, the presidential retreat.
There the leaders of the two superpowers talked frankly with each other.
"There was nothing more inadvisable in this situation," said Eisenhower, "than to talk about ultimatums, since both sides knew very well what would happen if an ultimatum were to be implemented."
Eisenhower admitted that the situation in Berlin was "abnormal" and that "human affairs got very badly tangled at times."
Khrushchev responded that he did not understand how a peace treaty could be regarded by the American people as a "threat to peace."
Eisenhower admitted that the situation in Berlin was "abnormal" and that "human affairs got very badly tangled at times."
Khrushchev came away with the impression that a deal was possible over Berlin, and they agreed to continue the dialogue at a summit in Paris in May 1960.
However, the Paris Summit that was to resolve the Berlin question was cancelled in the fallout from Gary Powers's failed U-2 spy flight on 1 May 1960."
Richard Bissell worked for the Ford Foundation for a while but Frank Wisner, persuaded him to join the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Its role was to evaluate intelligence reports and coordinate the intelligence activities of the various government departments in the interest of national security.
In 1954 he was placed in charge of developing and operating the U-2 spy plane. The U-2 was designed by Kelly Johnson, who had previously been responsible for the P-38 and the F-104 fighter planes. It was essentially a glider with a jet engine. It was so light it could fly at an altitude of 70,000 feet and travel over 4,000 miles. It took two years and $19m to develop. President Dwight Eisenhower gave permission for the U-2 to fly over Moscow and Leningrad for the first time on 4th July, 1956.
The U-2 spy plane was a great success and within two years Bissell was able to say that 90% of all hard intelligence about the Soviet Union coming into the CIA was "funneled through the lens of the U-2's aerial cameras". This information convinced Eisenhower that Nikita Khrushchev was lying about the number of bombers and missiles being built by the Soviet Union. Eisenhower now knew that United States enjoyed a major advantage over the Soviet Union and allowed him to control defence spending.
In December, 1956, Frank Wisner, head of the Directorate for Plans, an organization instructed to conduct covert anti-Communist operations around the world, suffered a mental breakdown and was diagnosed as suffering from manic depression. During his absence Wisner's job was covered by Richard Helms. The CIA sent Wisner to the Sheppard-Pratt Institute, a psychiatric hospital near Baltimore.
He was prescribed psychoanalysis and shock therapy (electroconvulsive treatment). It was not successful and still suffering from depression, he was released from hospital in 1958.
Wisner was too ill to return to his post as head of the Directorate for Plans (DPP). Allen W. Dulles therefore sent him to London to be CIA chief of station in England. Dulles decided that Bissell rather than Richard Helms should become the new head of the DPP. Helms became Bissell's deputy.
The Directorate for Plans was responsible for what became known as the CIA's Black Operations. This involved a policy that was later to become known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). This including a coup d'état that overthrew the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after he introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company.
Other political leaders deposed by Executive Action included Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, General Abd al-Karim Kassem of Iraq and Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam. However, his main target was Fidel Castro who had established a socialist government in Cuba.
As the end of his presidency approached, Dwight Eisenhower, decided to take a decisive step towards ending the Cold War by arranging a summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev. The two sides agreed to meet in Paris on 16th May, 1960.
On 1st May, 1960, a high-altitude American photographic reconnaissance aircraft, a Lockheed U-2, was shot down over the Soviet Union and the pilot, Gary Powers, was taken prisoner. Six days later Khrushchev announced to the world what had happened and demanded a full apology from the United States government. President Eisenhower replied by admitting that the Central Intelligence Agency had carried out these spying missions without his authority. However, he argued that the United States government had the right to protect its security by collecting the maximum of information about Soviet military strength.
On 15th May Nikita Khrushchev made another appeal to Dwight Eisenhower to apologize for carrying out aerial spying on the Soviet Union. When he refused, the Soviet delegation left Paris and the summit meeting never took place. Some suspected that some hardliners had purposely undermined Eisenhower's attempts to bring an end to the Cold War.
"This is an interesting story because so much of what we have heard and read has been contrived to cover actual events. For example: once the Paris Summit Conference of May 1, 1960 had been scheduled the CIA was ordered to ground all "Over" flights of Communist territory - worldwide". The U-2's were grounded. I was responsible for supporting a large number of "over" flights" primarily in Asia to support the Tibetans who were being invaded by the Chinese, and to support major lower-level reconnaissance programs operating out of Taiwan, Thailand, and a few other places. Despite the fact that many of our flights were solely humanitarian, especially for the Khambas in Eastern Tibet, my special request, to the National Security Council, for permission to continue those flights was denied until after the Paris meetings.
This was a strict and blanket order to us all. With that in mind, who was it then with the authority to "order the Powers U-2 flight"? It had to have been ordered from a very high echelon of the true power structure above the customary military or civilian elements of the government.
Think back:
a) Who (used here in the plural: WHO?) ordered that crashed U-2 in Japan to be repaired and to be refitted?
b) Who knew so much about the U-2 that they knew that the U-2 was equipped with the finest, and most valuable high-altitude camera, the "Lundahl"?
c) Who had the authority to order that precious camera to be saved in favor of a standard U.S.Air Force model that was used on May 1, 1960?
d) Who knew enough about the CIA-operated U-2s to know that they functioned at extreme altitude on a mix of regular jet fuel and pure hydrogen?
e) Who ordered the hydrogen bottle (like a fire extinguisher) to be half-filled, or half-empty?
f) Who was familiar enough with U-2 operations to know that all U-2 pilots before take-off had been stripped to the bone, and dressed in a specially made flight suit with no pockets, etc.?
g) Who was able to have someone else assemble Powers personal "pocket" belongings and other selected items such as gold rings, identification, etc. and pack them between the seat of Powers' chute and its folded fabric below?
h) who had the authority to set this whole train of events that involved so many other skilled people, in motion early that morning from Peshawar, Pakistan? "
In this ominous byplay, we see the shadow of hands behind the scenes. If Eisenhower did not order the flight, who did? If Dulles didn't know whether the men whom he said authorized the flight had that authority, who knew? If someone had the inside knowledge to get away with launching an unauthorized flight, who was it? And if those people knew that the cameras must be protected, who were they? By the time you answer those questions, even by the time you ask them, you can draw the strings tightly around that very small group who actually did operate the U-2's in 1960. There were only three or four men able to do those things, and their names are in the Pentagon telephone book of 1960. I will not name names as it is not my intention to jeopardize these men's lives.
Later in the hearings the Senators wanted to find out if any orders had gone out suspending overflights because of the summit conference schedule. Dulles waffled that question, so they asked about prior events and learned that flights had been cancelled when Khrushchev met with Eisenhower at Camp David.
Later on Gore said: "One of the big questions before the country in millions of peoples' minds is why this flight was undertaken so near the summit."
In reply to another question Dulles said: "I think the question could be raised, if it was done without the President's knowledge, as to who was directing the ship of state." [author's emphasis]
Now, there it is! This was a most crucial line. Allen Dulles was beginning to have some grave doubts himself about the series of events. His answer supports the notion that he too did not know what really had taken place. Following is a first-hand experience that will prove to even the greatest skeptic that the Director of the CIA does not always know of clandestine activities undertaken by his own organization.
I was with Dulles and Bissell the evening they found out that a plane was missing over the Soviet Union. They knew nothing about it, and they had told the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and the President that not a single U.S. aircraft -- military, Government, or commercial -- was missing, as the Soviets claimed. Dulles called me to his house to meet with him and Bissell to see if I could locate a missing plane. I went to the Pentagon Command Center where I was later able to discover and confirm that a plane carrying nine U.S. Air Force men on a CIA mission was shot down over the USSR. It turned out to be Allen Dulles' own CIA VIP airplane!
He did not know about that, just as he did not know about the Powers U-2.
During the first six months of 1960, I was the focal-point officer assigned by the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force to provide special Air Force support to certain clandestine CIA overflight operations. In April 1960, a member of the Chief's Pentagon office staff was in Thailand overseeing a major series of long-range overflights into Tibet and far northwestern China. Later that spring, orders came down to stop those overflights. The given reason was that the President wanted nothing to interfere with the success of his forthcoming Paris summit conference. Orders were sent from my office to ground the overflights.
These same orders applied to the U-2 program. We all took our orders from the same authorities. The U-2's were supposed to have been grounded along with the Tibetan overflights. So, when Allen Dulles himself wonders who was directing the ship of state, it becomes apparent that he did not know who was running the country!
The U-2 is nearly forgotten today, and there will perhaps never be any further investigation of this crucial event. Eisenhower and Khrushchev, both old warriors, might have pulled off a real peace agreement. We shall never know. But we do know some things. Many of the top-echelon men who were in the Pentagon during those fateful days of spring 1960 are back there now in the Carter Administration. Others are in top positions throughout Washington. It may be that they know how easy it was to pull the rug out from under Eisenhower, and they know how they could do the same thing again today.
"After the CIA in 1954 had overthrown President Arbenz in Guatemala, its first "solo flight" as a policy-maker *, President Eisenhower recognized that the Agency was dangerously out of control. He established a "President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities."
Its conclusion was that the CIA's clandestine services were "operating for the most part on an autonomous and free-wheeling basis in highly critical areas," in direct conflict with State Department policy; its recommendation was that Eisenhower fire Allen Dulles, or at the very least force him to accept an administrative deputy.
Eisenhower's reward was that the clandestine services, then run by Richard Bissell, former assistant of Frank Wisner, sabotaged the May 1, 1960 foray of the U-2 flown by Francis Gary Powers. The U-2 fleet had been dubbed "RBAF," which stood for "Richard Bissell's Air Force," one more indication of CIA arrogance.
The Agency lied directly to Eisenhower, insisting that should the plane be shot down, neither the aircraft nor the pilot would survive.
So Bissell would lie to John F. Kennedy and insist that "failure was almost impossible" at the Bay of Pigs.
Despite Eisenhower's reluctance, the CIA insisted upon a flight close to the time of Eisenhower's scheduled May 16th summit with Khrushchev, de Gaulle and Macmillan, arguing, with no discernible evidence, that this last flight was urgent. Years later, the CIA would admit in hearings before the Senate that this flight wasn't particularly necessary at all. The issue of CIA malfeasance in the failure of Powers' mission was not even raised.
Eisenhower, reluctantly, had declared that the cut-off date for U-2 flights was May 1st, assuming that meant the CIA would organize the flight during the last two weeks of April. But it was on May 1 that Francis Gary Powers was sent aloft. In insisting on that one additional overflight, Bissell succeeded in making policy, which meant destroying detente and with it Eisenhower's desire to cut the country's defense budget. Rapprochement with the Soviet Union meant for Eisenhower a subsequent redirecting of the country's resources to its domestic needs.
This was not to be.
Powers' mission seems to have been doomed. Both the circumstantial and the direct evidence that Powers' flight was interfered with by those in charge are overwhelming. "Powers came down because his aircraft was fixed to fail," stated retired Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who was in charge of providing military support for the clandestine services, and whose data should not be disregarded because of his speculations about a "secret team." Powers' flight was made to fail by a shortage of the proper fuel, Prouty concluded. Prouty was also alarmed that the flight violated standard procedure.
Powers was laden with identification, not least a Department of Defense identification card. The U-2 itself bore identifying marks, violating a National Security Council edict. Whereas Powers should have been bearing no identity, he was possessed of enough for the Soviets promptly to announce that he was a "spy" from the United States.
"That is why Powers survived and why they landed in good shape," Prouty reasoned. "They' equals Powers and the U-2."
Other evidence suggests that the CIA deliberately routed Powers into the path of nests of Soviet missiles it knew could shoot him down if he was flying too low. That Powers' top secret camera had been removed suggested that someone knew this plane was not coming home.
It was a catastrophe timed to thwart the May 16th summit with Premier Khrushchev that Eisenhower hoped would cap his presidency.
Seizing the high road, Khrushchev immediately demanded that Eisenhower admit he had no knowledge of the flight and fire Dulles and Bissell. The CIA had forced Eisenhower's hand, realizing that he "could not honestly say that he didn't know what was going on," Prouty writes in The Secret Team. "At the same time he had to announce to the world that he had known about the flight."
"The White House and the other agencies did not so much approve the flights as hold a veto power over them," David Wise and Thomas B. Ross write in their very cautious little book, The U-2 Affair.
When Eisenhower in his much-quoted farewell address warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, Prouty speculates, he had in mind his own Political sabotage at the hands of the CIA in the U-2 fiasco. During the summit that failed, a trigger-happy Pentagon man even put the U.o military on alert for ten hours, fanning the flames of Cold War belligerence Eisenhower had intended the summit to defuse"
[* NB., although Operation AJAX, the 1953 Iranian Coup to overthrow Muhammad Mosedeq was CIA funded for anti-Communist purposes, the idea and the oil interest in the country was British - Winston Churchill personally requested regional expert and adventurer Kermit Roosevelt (T.R.'s Grandson) to lead the effort, having successfully sold the scheme to Eisenhower by painting Mosedeq red and warning of the dangers of Soviet expansion into the Persian Gulf, affording them the use of a warm water port and access to the Indian Ocean.
PB-SUCCESS, the United Fruit Guatemalan Coup was indeed the Agency's first attempt at working without a net in the field of clandestine gunboat diplomacy - and the first field assignment of Mr. E. Howard Hunt.]
In his autobiography Nikita Khrushchev describes his first meeting with John F. Kennedy after he had beaten Richard Nixon to became president of the United States.
"I was impressed with Kennedy. I remember liking his face, which was sometimes stern but which often broke into a good-natured smile.
As for Nixon... he was an unprincipled puppet, which is the most dangerous kind. I was very glad Kennedy won the election...
I joked with him that we had cast the deciding ballot in his election to the Presidency over that son-of-a-bitch Richard Nixon.
When he asked me what I meant, I explained that by waiting to release the U-2 pilot Gary Powers until after the American election, we kept Nixon from being able to claim that he could deal with the Russians; our ploy made a difference of at least half a million votes, which gave Kennedy the edge he needed."
"In his book “Eisenhower in War and Peace,” biographer Jean Edward Smith wrote, “Two days later (on May 7) Khrushchev sprang the trap. Speaking once again to the Supreme Soviet, the chairman announced that they not only had the wreckage of the plane, but the pilot and the film. 'The pilot's name is Francis Gary Powers. He is 30 years old and works for the CIA.' Khrushchev then displayed some of the photos showing Soviet air bases with fighters lined up on the runway. 'The whole world knows that Allen Dulles is no weatherman,' said Khrushchev.”
Eisenhower now had no alternative but to admit the truth. He soon notified the press that indeed U-2 reconnaissance flights had been going on for four years, under his authority. “We will now just have to endure the storm,” Eisenhower said.
Smith writes, “Eisenhower's decision to accept personal responsibility for the U-2 flights may have been the finest hour of his presidency. Rather than force Dulles and (CIA official) Richard Bissell to walk the plank for reasons of state, Eisenhower acknowledged his own culpability.”
Eisenhower's belated confession would cost him dear.
Only a few days later Khrushchev, Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle of France, and Harold Macmillan of Great Britain met in Paris for a long-planned four-power summit. The recent crisis and Eisenhower's handling of it meant the summit was bound to fail. Khrushchev demanded an apology.
When none was forthcoming the Soviet premier stormed out of the conference. An offer to have Eisenhower visit the USSR was also rescinded.
“How can I invite as a dear guest the leader of a country which has committed an aggressive act against us?”
"A special division of the KGB was busy fabricating disinformation on the production in the United States of chemical and bacteriological weapons and the development of new means of mass destruction. Faked documents, innuendo, and gossip were used to undercut U.S. positions and influence among delegations of Afro-Asian and Latin American countries in the United Nations and "to promote disorganization of the American voting machine in the structures of the UN."
One name on the hit list was that of Allen W. Dulles, experienced in the espionage trade since the late 1930s and since 1953 presiding over the Central Intelligence Agency.
In 1960-1961, at the insistence of Khrushchev, Dulles became the chief target of the KGB's vendetta against the CIA. Khrushchev, in his typical manner, once engaged personally in a semi-public feud with Allen Dulles boasting that he read his briefing papers prepared for President Eisenhower and found them "boring."
In his opinion the U.S. president, though he accepted responsibility for the intelligence flights of the U-2, merely shielded the real culprit: Allen Dulles.
So Khrushchev, his considerable venom concentrated on the debonair socialite spy-master, evidently asked Alexander Shelepin, the KGBs chairman, to prepare a plan to discredit the CIA chief.
Three weeks after Khrushchev's return from Paris, Shelepin's plan was formally approved by the Secretariat of the Central Committee. The plan included hundreds of minute disinformation campaigns ranging from the forgery of letters from deceased diplomats regarding the authoritarian leadership of Dulles to a fake secret agent within Russia being captured and put on trial. It also plotted
"to arrange through a 'double' channel, known to the adversary, a transmittal from Washington of a real classified instruction signed by Dulles and obtained by the KGB."
However, after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, of which the Soviets had warned and supplied Cuba to defend against, Dulles retired on his own *.
One of the more imaginative strands in the web of Soviet strategic deception concerned the number and even existence of new types of arms and missiles..."
[* N.B. - I, and history, would beg to differ - we all know that this was retirement in name only...]
"Debonair socialite spy-master"....
Dulles practically originated the concept of plausible deniability, along with practically every other aspect of modern spycraft. And he was ideally and perfectly suited to the practice. And he practiced it everywhere.
The avuncular, doddery old college professor with two club feet who shuffled around his office in Langley with carpet slippers to match his pebble glasses, and collegiate grey moustache, puffing away on his pipe whilst examining an antique globe in his study, quietly plotting world domination.
But as early as 1956, Dulles astutely surmised the geostrategic benefit to be gained by favouring the establishment of fundamentalist political Islam as a bulwark to encircle and contain Soviet expansion on their Southern, Caspian flank, a natural and absolutely unyielding ally in the common struggle against the forces of Global Atheist Communism.
Dulles was an espionage genius and preternaturally skilful in ensuring that he never came to know anything that might incriminate him in anything - his denials were not only plausible, they were authentic - Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, who knew Dulles and worked side-by-side for him for almost a decade, and considered him at the time to be a friend, had absolutely no hesitation as the most devastatingly effective DCI in the history of the National Security State hands down, just by virtue of sheer raw ability alone.
He had a talent almost beyond comprehension for conveying totally incisive intent to his subordinate, without ever actually at any time entering into a state of awareness of ever knowing anything that could place him in the position of having to disavow an action that were the intelligence apparatus he headed was correctly functioning, he would surely have had to have known;
Dulles was out of the country for the weekend of D-Day of the Bay of Pigs, leaving Cabell in charge and enabling himself to appropriately sit on the investigating committee of enquiry into the disaster performing the official post-mortem free from any direct conflict of interest - why hadn't anyone told him what was going on, for goodness sake...?
Five decades later, DCI Gen. David Petraeus intrigued to be at the movies with his allegedly cuckholed spouse during the hours of crisis on distant Barbary shores as the Benghazi station house burned;
Two decades earlier, the Secretary of the Navy could not be located inside the beltway for duration of the assault on Pearl, and so likewise, the Shadow Government ajusted the schedules of Secretary Powell on that September day to guarantee he remained stranded down in Bogota for the duration, ensuring that General would see and hear nothing that day that might upset him.
As noted above, Prouty was with Dulles when he heard of the downing of the Powers flight over the Soviet Union - if Prouty is right, and it's never yet been known for him to have overstated or misjudge his case on a patchwork of evidence, Dulles' reaction to the news was that "he was as surprised as anyone".
We are told that when confronting Eisenhower with the smoking gun of his subordinates' treasonous own goal provocation, Khrushchev demanded only an apology and the firing of Dulles, Cabell and Bissell (some say Helms as well) as existential threads to the cause of peace in order to proceed with the summit meeting - he was dismayed when Ike took his cue from his immediate predecessor and took responsibility instead himself for Bissell's folly.
The above revisionist commentator does rhetorical summersaults on backflips to convince you that Khrushchev connived to create a world-class scene at the summit meeting, staging a public confrontation in the presence of the great world leaders, acquiescing to the grand conference only to wreck it wholesale with but a flick of his wrist. Why, though? Especially in light of the reality that Khruschev's boasts of thermonuclear superiority were just that, pure bluff and macho posturing to keep the wolf from the door.
So what, then, is the unspeakable truth again, here?
Excellent question.
In this excerpt from his testimony to the Senate on Foreign Relations regarding Gary Powers U2 flight. Allen Dulles confirms what Col. Prouty has known for years that the flight was sabotaged and CIA would be forced to take the blame.
Although he gave this statement May 31st 1960, the press has continued ignore that Powers plane was not shot down.
The Missiles of October
JFK and the Unspeakable author, Jim Douglass:
The White House tapes show Kennedy questioning and resisting the mounting pressure to bomb Cuba coming from both the Joint Chiefs and the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. At the same time, John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, the two men most responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis, seemed locked in a hopeless ideological conflict. The U.S. and Soviet leaders had been following Cold War policies that now seemed to be moving inexorably toward a war of extermination.
Yet, as we have since learned, Kennedy and Khrushchev had been engaged in a secret correspondence for over a year that gave signs of hope. Even as they moved publicly step by step toward a Cold War climax that would almost take the world over the edge with them, they were at the same time smuggling confidential letters back and forth that recognized each other’s humanity and hope for a solution. They were public enemies who, in the midst of deepening turmoil, were secretly learning something approaching trust in each other.
I re-read several of these letters yesterday. A man was asking me to read them to him over the radio. I was struck especially by the first things that Khrushchev says in his first letter to JFK when he is sitting by the Black Sea in his home.
He’s looking our over the water and it’s a very beautiful letter, beginning of the letter especially. He looks out over the water and he reflects on what he’s seeing and how what a contrast this is to what they’re trying to address.
He says I want to suggest to you Mr. President a symbol of our problem. This is Khrushchev, the communist:
‘It’s Noah’s Ark. Let’s not try to distinguish who are the clean and the unclean on this Ark Mr. President. We’re in a sea of nuclear weapons. Let’s just keep the Ark afloat.’
Kennedy, who after this letter was smuggled to him in a newspaper to his press secretary, wondered,
‘Why do I want a newspaper given to me by a KGB agent?’
He found out there was a 26-page letter to the President inside it from Nikita Khrushchev.
When Kennedy responded to this he was sitting by the Atlantic Ocean in Hyannis Port. He talks about the beauty there and says, ‘Yes, Mr. Chairman, Noah’ Ark – that’s our symbol. We have to keep the Ark afloat.’
So even in the midst of the missile crises these two men had begun to, through their secret communications, they had begun, almost beyond their intentions, to develop a bit of trust in each other.
On what seemed the darkest day in the crisis, when a Soviet missile had shot down a U2 spy plane over Cuba, intensifying the already overwhelming pressures on Kennedy to bomb Cuba, the president sent his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, secretly to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. RFK told Dobrynin, as Dobrynin reported to Khrushchev, that the president
“didn’t know how to resolve the situation. The military is putting great pressure on him . . . Even if he doesn’t want or desire a war, something irreversible could occur against his will. That is why the President is asking for help to solve this problem.”
In his memoirs, Khrushchev recalled a further, chilling sentence from Robert Kennedy’s appeal to Dobrynin:
“If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power.”
The editor to Khrushchev’s memoirs felt he had to stick a endnote in there and say, There’s no evidence of this. There’s no evidence of this. [Laughter] Well, apparently, the president thought there was some.
Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita’s son (who as you probably know is now in this country and is a citizen), has [recounted] the thoughts his father described to him when he read Dobrynin’s wired report relaying John Kennedy’s plea:
“The president was calling for help: that was how father interpreted Robert Kennedy’s talk with our ambassador.”
So at a moment when the world was falling into darkness, Kennedy did what from his generals’ standpoint was intolerable and unforgivable. JFK not only rejected [his] generals’ pressures for war. Even worse, the president then reached out to their enemy, asking for help. That was treason.
When Nikita Khrushchev had received Kennedy’s plea for help in Moscow, he turned to his Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko and said,
“We have to let Kennedy know that we want to help him.”
Khrushchev stunned himself by what he had just said: Did he really want to help his enemy, Kennedy? Yes, he did. He repeated the word to his foreign minister:
“Yes, help. We now have a common cause, to save the world from those pushing us toward war.”
How do we understand that moment? The two most heavily armed leaders in history, on the verge of total nuclear war, joined hands against those on both sides pressuring them to attack. Khrushchev ordered the immediate withdrawal of his missiles, in return for Kennedy’s public pledge never to invade Cuba and his secret promise to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey – as he would in fact do.
By the way, I was in Rome, Italy at this time. I didn’t know, of course, the secret pledge that Kennedy had given to Khrushchev or that he would in fact withdraw his missiles from Turkey. So I wrote an article for Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker newspaper – the most radical Catholic paper in the country if not in existence – and proposed what I thought was outrageous (and Dorothy published it right away), that what we should do is in exchange for Khrushchev withdrawing the missiles from Cuba, Kennedy should have had the guts to withdraw his missiles from Turkey.
This was outrageous for this to even be suggested in the most radical publication I could find in my particular community. Kennedy did it. Kennedy did it. I remember that history. I remember what was unthinkable for him to do such a thing.
The two Cold War enemies – both of them – had turned, so that each now had more in common with his opponent than either had with his own generals. As a result of that turn toward peace, one leader would be assassinated thirteen months later. The other, left without his peacemaking partner, would be overthrown the following year. Yet because of their turn away from nuclear war, today we are still living and struggling for peace on this earth. Hope is alive. We still have a chance.
What can we call that transforming moment when Kennedy asked his enemy for help and Khrushchev gave it?
From a Buddhist standpoint, it was enlightenment of a cosmic kind. Others might call it – from their perspective – a divine miracle. Readers of the Christian Gospels could say that Kennedy and Khrushchev were only doing what Jesus said: “Love your enemies.” That would be “love” as Gandhi understood it. Love as the other side of truth; a respect and understanding of our opponents that goes far enough to integrate their truth into our own. In the last few months of Kennedy’s life, he and Khrushchev were walking that extra mile where each was beginning to see the other’s truth.
Neither John Kennedy nor Nikita Khrushchev was a saint. Each was deeply complicit in policies that brought humankind to the brink of nuclear war. Yet, when they encountered the void – that Merton, for example, was talking about – then by turning to each other for help, they turned humanity toward the hope of a peaceful planet.
John Kennedy’s next “Bay of Pigs,” his next critical conflict with his national security state, was his American University Address. Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins summed up the significance of that remarkable speech: “At American University on June 10, 1963, President Kennedy proposed an end to the Cold War.”
I believe it is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance of President Kennedy’s American University address.
It was a decisive signal to both Nikita Khrushchev, on the one hand, and JFK’s national security advisers, on the other, that he was serious about making peace with the Communists. After he told the graduating class at American University that the subject of his speech was “the most important topic on earth: world peace,” he asked:
“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek?” He answered, “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.”
Kennedy’s rejection of “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war” was an act of resistance to the military-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex was totally dependent on “a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” That Pax Americana, policed by the Pentagon, was considered the system’s indispensable, hugely profitable means of containing and defeating Communism. At his own risk Kennedy was rejecting the very foundation of the Cold War system.
In its place, as a foundation for peace, the president put [forward] a compassionate description of the suffering of the enemy, the Russian people. They had been our allies during World War Two and had suffered mightily.[36] Yet even their World War Two devastation he said, would be small compared to the effects of a nuclear war on both their country and ours.
In his speech, Kennedy turned around the question – I heard this question all the time in the 1960s, every time in the peace movement we tried to suggest alternatives – that question that was always asked when it came to prospects for peace was, “What about the Russians?” It was assumed the Russians would take advantage of any move we might make toward peace.
Kennedy asked instead, “What about us?” He said, “[O]ur attitude [toward peace] is as essential as theirs.” What about our attitude toward war and the nuclear arms race?
Within the overarching theology [of our country] – the Cold War was a big theology – a theology of total good versus total evil (and you know who the total good is, it’s us), Kennedy was asking a heretical question, coming especially from the president of the United States.
Kennedy said he wanted to negotiate then, a nuclear test ban treaty. Where did he want to do it? With the Soviet Union in Moscow. He wants to go to Moscow. He doesn’t trust, trying to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty in Washington. He says I want to go to Moscow, in their capitol, not ours, as soon as possible.
So to clear the way for such a treaty what does he do? He said he was suspending U.S. atmospheric tests unilaterally. He is doing unilateral renunciation of his testing before anything with Khrushchev.
John Kennedy’s strategy of peace penetrated the Soviet government’s defenses far more effectively than any missile could ever have done. The Soviet press, which was accustomed to censoring U.S. government statements, published the entire speech all across the country. Soviet radio stations broadcast and rebroadcast the speech to the Soviet people. In response to Kennedy’s turn toward peace, the Soviet government even stopped jamming all Western broadcasts into their country.
Nikita Khrushchev was deeply moved by the American University Address. He said Kennedy had given “the greatest speech by any American President since Roosevelt.”
JFK’s speech was received less favorably – where? – in his own country. The New York Times reported his government’s skepticism: “Generally there was not much optimism in official Washington that the President’s conciliation address at American University would produce agreement on a test ban treaty or anything else.”
In contrast to the Soviet media that were electrified by the speech, the U.S. media ignored or downplayed it (as they’re done to the present). For the first time, Americans had less opportunity to read and hear their president’s words than did the Russian people. A turn-around was occurring in the world on different levels. Whereas nuclear disarmament had suddenly become feasible, Kennedy’s position in his own government had become precarious.
President Kennedy’s next critical conflict with his national security state, propelling him toward the coup d’etat he saw as possible (this was number 4), was the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that he signed with Nikita Khrushchev on July 25, 1963, just six weeks (if you can imagine that – six weeks to negotiate that treaty) after the American University Address.
The way he did it was he sent Averell Harriman as his representative to Moscow. Every time Averell Harriman had a question from the Soviet negotiators, he said, ‘Excuse me please.’ He ran to a telephone and he ran back with the answer. The telephone was directly to Kennedy. Kennedy negotiated that treaty point by point, personally, right straight through. That’s why it happened in six weeks.
The president did a total end run around his military advisers [the Joint Chiefs of Staff] who were opposed to it. He didn’t even consult them on it.
He was fiercely determined but he was not optimistic that the Test Ban Treaty [would] be ratified by the defense-conscious Senate. In early August, he told his advisers that getting Senate ratification of the agreement would be “almost in the nature of a miracle.” And we can understand, given what is happening in Congress today, what he faced in terms of at the height of the Cold War, getting a nuclear test ban treaty through the Senate. He said if a Senate vote were held right then, on August 7, it would fall far short of the necessary two-thirds.
What did he do? He initiated a whirlwind public education campaign on the treaty, coordinated by Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins, who directed a committee of – whom? – people like us – peace activists. He also got business leaders, he got labor leaders, he got editors of women’s magazines, he got everybody he could together with Norman Cousins doing all the coordinating. They went out and they did a job, a furious round of public education.
In September public opinion polls showed a turnaround – 80 percent of the American people were now in favor of the Test Ban Treaty. On September 24, 1963, the Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 80 to 19 – 14 more than the required two-thirds. No other single accomplishment in the White House gave Kennedy greater satisfaction.
On September 20, when Kennedy spoke at the United Nations, he suggested that its members see the Test Ban Treaty as a beginning and engage together in an experiment in peace:
“It makes you wonder what Nixon might have achieved had his presidency not been curtailed by Watergate,” said Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen, who runs a website cataloguing Nixon’s secret recordings, “these tapes contain some really startling exchanges.”
Among these is Nixon’s meeting with Brezhnev in the Oval Office in June 1973, which Nixon library officials say is the only Russian-American summit meeting ever recorded on a presidential taping system.
Professor Nichter said the exchanges between Nixon and Brezhnev showed surprising warmth and intimacy between the two leaders who both spoke about their family members, and joked about how Mr Brezhnev would get through the official dinner given his jet lag.
“You see, I have a cigarette box there. It has a special timing mechanism and I can’t – I won’t be able to open it for an hour,” says Brezhnev
“Oh, how’s it open?,” replies Nixon.
“See, the mechanism, the timing mechanism is now working and I won’t be able to open that for another hour. In one hour it will unlock itself.”
“That’s a way to discipline yourself,” says Nixon, laughing.
"As early as 1961, they knew Kennedy was not going to war in Southeast Asia. Like Caesar, he is surrounded by enemies and something's underway... but it has no face. Yet everybody in the loop knows..."
 |
| June 20, 1999 - President Clinton, Secretary Albright and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger meet with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and members of his delegation at Cologne’s Renaissance Hotel |
On 12th June 1999, Russian and NATO forces stood poised closer to the brink of war than at any point since the Able Archer exercise of 1983 and closer to a shooting war between the forces of East and West than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Following the relentless 11 week air war over Serbia, chiefly directed towards the peaceful civilian infrastructure of Yugoslav-Serbian society to force a withdrawl from the Serbian province of Kosovo (an action akin to a multilateral coalition carpet-bombing London in order to compel unilateral British military withdrawl and civic disengagement from Northern Ireland), NATO sent the troops in to Kosovo to "enforce the peace".
When the 30,000 KFOR personnel advanced into the province, however, they arrived to discover 200 Russian Army Special Forces occupying the airport at Pristina, having advanced forward from the East (with Serbian acquiescence) to secure the supply channels in and out during the occupation.
This plucky act of insurgency did not impress NATO commanders on the ground.
Not the American ones, at least.
Translated from the Serbian:
"Shortly after the 200 Russians from Ugljevik (without the knowledge of the Yeltsin Kremlin!) Occupied Pristina airport in 1999, a British unit led thirty thousand NATO troops received an order from the U.S. General Wesley Clark to take the airport, and if you disarm the Russians to open fire on them. "
The room at the G8 Conference in Frankfurt was as tense as it was possible to be - one week earlier, the forced within and behind Bill Clinton's administration, plotting his doom had brought the world to the brink of a Third World War, a shooting war between NATO and 200 Russian Troops acting either unilaterally or on their own recognisance to seize Pristina Airport and cease the Western assault on Belgrade and the Serbs.
Yeltsin has no idea and was rapidly loosing what grip he still retained on his country and his faculties.
Both men had lost control of their respective governments.
The Russian Delegation to Frankfurt arrived a day late.
Immediately, both Presidential national security teams went directly into closed door bilateral session with one another - in spite of Clinton's smiles, the scene could not have been more tense.
Thirty seconds after the above offial photo was taken, the door was closed, and the room sealed.
You could have cut the air with a knife.
Suddenly, Yeltsin reached below his desk and produced a yellowing loose leaf file of papers.
"A gift, for my old friend, Bill...!"
The file contained the original, unredacted KGB File on both Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy Assassination, along with full transcript and English translations - Yeltsin have strip-mined the KGB archive on ascent to the Russian presidency, offering out tidbits like the Soviet record of the Katyn Forest Massacre and the shoot down of KAL-007 in 1983.... But this was his ace in the hole.
Clinton's eyes widened like saucers - his only reply, was reportedly to exclaim, "Oh, I can use this...!"
Two weeks later, John F Kennedy Jr.'s plane went down off the tip of Martha's Vineyard.
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