Monday, 1 September 2014

A War Which Would Kill 40,000,000 Americans in an Hour

LBJ: "Dick...it has already been announced and you can serve with anybody for the good of America and this is a question that has a good many more ramifications than on the surface and we've got to take this out of the arena where they're testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour. "


Johnson, had he been a Mason, could have pulled a little piece of handshake-style pressure, invoked the universal Masonic distress call, invoked the name of the Widow's Son to get Warren to comply and get with the program by agreeing to serve on the Commission and put his name to it for posterity - he didn't. 

Instead, he resorts to crude blackmail.

"Nope. I'm getting nothing back, here..."

One thing we can say about Lyndon Johnson is that while he may well have said certain things, done some deals and made certain promises to get to where he was, he certainly was no Freemason.

Even the WeHateJohnson, WeHateJohnson websites devote whole pegs (of stolen LaRouchian research) to proving and establishing that the top of the US Federal Government was absolutely swarming with Scottish Rite Freemasons, Johnson himself is never once mentioned in the article (an old lecture by Anton Chaitkin).

Johnson was no Freemason and was no Klansman.

J. Edgar Hoover was a Grandmaster Mason, and a Shriner, but never a Klansman, as was also the case with Johnson's political hero and personal role-model, Harry S. Truman.


One of the reasons for which I hold Lyndon Johnson in some high regard (beyond the fact that frankly, someone still has to) is the tendency by many, especially in recent years to more than overlook, but indeed to actively overlook just how skilfull and talented he truly was, both in terms of pure political ability, and as an actual leader.

Those who irrationally hate Johnson (which seems to be most people these days), or people who despise the New Deal values and political philosophy he genuinely espoused, and yet let fall as a consequence of the Vietnam War often refuse even to give him this - he is "ruthless", never "cunning"; he is a schemer, rather than a charismatic and ambitious flatterer, gifted with natural charm and a gift of the gab;

Most often he is just written off as a selfish, mass-murdering and talentless oaf, mad with power and ego, who somehow managed to achieve the highest office in the "Free" World despite lacking any of the necessary personal attributes or abilities and being totally hated by everyone.

I try my best every day to ignore all these people, but unfortunately, they clearly appear to be everywhere.

Outside of these hordes of raving irrationalists and NeoConservative think-tank historians, it sometimes seems that there now is only perhaps myself, Webster Tarpley and Joan Mellen left who remember the axiomatic truth of every Agatha Chrisite novel - the most obvious suspect is always the wrong one.

For example, the most obvious beneficiary of the abortive attempt on Reagan would clearly seem to have been Bush - but looking at a wider-angle snapshot of the broader social and and political scene at that moment, we might ask ourselves - "Who benefits most from Bush's son sitting down to break bread with the elder brother of the purported assassin the following day after the attempted shooting...?" 

Not Bush, clearly, but rather Haig, who wanted his job (and Reagan's) and enjoyed the full endorsement and support of Kissinger, Brzezinski, the Trilateralists and the CFR, as well as the Israeli Mossad, MI6, NATO Intelligence, the House of Rockefeller, and the B'nai Brith.

Beyond this, everyone ignores the direct, personal role played by Bobby Kennedy in bringing the Warren Commission into existence - Bobby asked Earl Warren to serve on the Commission, in person, TWICE, BEFORE LBJ asked him to. Warren told him no.

Bobby was not a Mason either.

LBJ summoned Warren to the White House, had a car bring him to the Oval Office, under duress, and blackmailed him. 

Not only blackmailed him, but on the basis of Warren's past military service and status as a reservist, gave him a direct, MILITARY order as his Commander in Chief to serve on the Commission, with which Warren complied (before bursting into tears).




RR: I may be wholly wrong, but I think Mr. Warren would serve on anything you'd give him any publicity on. 

LBJ: Well you want me to tell you the truth? You know what happened? 

Bobby and them went up to see him today and he turned them down cold and said "no." 

Two hours later I called him and ordered him down here and he didn't want to come. 

I insisted he come, he came down here and told me no twice and I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City and I say now, 'I don't want Mr. Khrushchev to be told tomorrow and be testifying before a camera that he killed this fellow and that Castro killed him and all I want you to do is look at the facts and bring in other facts you want in here, and determined who killed the President and I think you'd put on your uniform of World War I, fat as you are, and do anything you could to save one American life. 

And I'm surprised that you the Chief Justice of the United States would turn me down.' And he started crying and said, well I won't turn you down. I'll just do whatever you say, but he turned the Attorney General down.


KEY POINT - Earl Warren was a Mason.



In fact, at the time of this exchange, as well as being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Earl Warren was also (deep breath) 33rd Degree Soverign Grand Inspector General, Mother Supreme Council of the World.

Previously, he had been the Head Freemason of all of California at the same time as being the "gangbusting" Wartime Attorney General of California and then Governor of California, when he had insisted upon the Federal Government (via his Anglophile ally, Henry Stimson) round up the Japanese-Americans of his state, subject them to forced deportation and put them in Concentration Camps.

(Presumably, like his brother Mason J.Edgar Hoover, his "gangbusting" activities, with which his reputation was made were strictly confined to the Irish Mafia and the Lower-echolon Jewish mob - La Cosa Nostra, after all, does not exist.)

After suffering as surprise upset defeat as the Vice-Presidential running mate of hand-picked CIA/Wall Street Republican Thomas Dewey in 1948, Warren rapidly progressed through the Federal Court circuits, eventally attaining his seat on the Supreme Court of the United States in 1952.

Long before this time though, Warren had also ascended to the position of 33rd Degree Grand Master, Mother Supreme Council of the World, the Supreme Leader of World (Confederate) Freemasonry.

(or, to give it it's full, official Albert Pike designation, "The Supreme Council (Mother Council of the World) of the Inspectors General Knights Commander of the House of the Temple of Solomon of the Thirty-third Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America.")

Now, this is very important : because this is the best evidence, for one thing, that Lyndon Johnson was not a Freemason, and goes some way towards explaining the kicking that he, and only he, Kennedy, Nixon and Clinton take amongst the post-war presidents from revisionist Ivy League Quill & Dagger/Scroll & Key/Bonesmen-type historians and faux-Libertarians...

Johnson, had he been a Mason, could have pulled a piece of handshake-style pressure, invoked the universal Masonic distress call, invoked the name of the Widow's Son to get Warren to comply and get with the program by agreeing to serve on the Commission and put his name to it for posterity - he didn't. 

Instead, he resorts to crude blackmail.

Crude, but extremely effective blackmail, and Warren leaves his office in tears - not, presumably, due to having broken his oath of office, subverted the Constitution and it's separation of powers and debased his own personal moral compass - there is, after all, no evidence whatsoever that he shed so much as a single tear when he signed the order to deport and detain without charge or trial the Japanese - but rather because he had been forced to do so for reasons other than Masonic fidelity.



Hoover, of course, the 33rd Degree Master Mason in both the Royal Arch and Scottish Rite and brother Shriner, keeps his own hand well-hidden and indeed declines to directly participate in this part of the process - Warren, after all, does outrank him.

"As for Bill Clinton: A spokesman for the Freemasonic Grand Lodge of Arkansas told me that although Clinton was a member of Freemasonry’s Order of DeMolay as a young man, he is not now a Mason. I have been informed, however, that DeMolay membership is in fact a life membership."

Anton Chaitkin, 
1996

"Once you get past the 33rd Degree of Freemason-tree, they drop the Bible and switch to teaching from the Quraan - now, that's some heavy shit."

- Bro. Steve Cokely, 1991

"The Hon. Elijah Muhammad teaches us..." something other than Islam...



Nov 24, 4:00PM - Account of phone call between FBI Director Hoover and White House Aide Walter Jenkins

Hoover began by reporting that "There is nothing further on the Oswald case excerpt that he is dead." At the end of the call, Hoover noted the need to have "something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin," and that (Assistant Attorney General) "Katzenbach thinks that the President might appoint a Presidential Commission of three outstanding citizens to make a determination."

Nov 24, time unknown - Phone call between Eugene Rostow and Bill Moyers

Within hours of Oswald's murder, Yale Law School Dean Eugene Rostow suggests a President Commission to Bill Moyers of the White House. Rostow tells Moyers he has talked to Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach three times that day, and suggests "a commission of seven or nine people, maybe Nixon."

Nov 25, 10:30AM - Phone call between President Johnson and FBI Director Hoover

On Monday morning, the day of the Kennedy funeral, Johnson tells Hoover that "apparently some lawyer in Justice is lobbying the [Washington] Post because that's where the suggestion came for this Presidential Commission which would be very bad and put it right in the White House." When asked to intervene with the Post, Hoover says "I don't have much influence with the Post because I frankly don't read it. I view it like the Daily Worker."

So, all of Katzenbach's memo-writing on the Monday is ACTUALLY coming from Walt Rostow....

Eugene Rostow was the one who effectively became Johnson's Chief of Staff in his retirement after he left office - he controlled the flow of all information and messages between the White House and the LBJ ranch, ensuring Johnson said nothing about the Pentagon Papers or Watergate, liaising with Kissinger's people and making sure Johnson said absolutely nothing in support of Nixon's actions to silence Ellsberg and plug other (entirely legitimate) national security leaks about the war.


Walt Rostow was the one who went to Vietnam in 1961 and recommended (strongly) that Kennedy send in combat troops into the Delta under the pretence of conducting flood relief.

The one statement that Chomsky ever made that I totally agree with was when he said "Vietnam was a war entirely conceived by liberals", and Rostow was one of the chief architects of both Vietnam and the Korean War, via his junior position in the State Dept.

He BADLY wanted the war, and was a leading advocate of limited, regional/semi-proxy wars against the Communist world in Asia, as a constant challenge to the Soviet system.


From the NeoCon Miller Center (they hate Nixon more than Kennedy):

The Right Man

By lunchtime that day, Nixon had the name of the man who actually did give a copy of the Pentagon Papers to the Times—Daniel Ellsberg. It came from none other than Johnson’s former national security adviser, Walt W. Rostow.28 Haig had checked his suspicions with Rostow. “He said he doesn’t think it’s Gelb,” Haig told Nixon. “It may be, he says he doesn’t think so. And he doesn’t think it’s Halperin.” Nixon was unconvinced. “Gelb was in on it, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he in charge?”

Gelb ran the Pentagon Papers study and was strongly against the war, Haig said, but Rostow had “said whoever did this could not be a good Democrat. He said he would have to be a radicalized individual.”29 Only someone who was willing to lose his security clearance forever, to never work in government on foreign policy again, would engineer the largest leak in U.S. history. Halperin and Gelb were both advising Democratic presidential candidates, would both serve in future Democratic administrations.

Ellsberg was a former Marine. He’d gone to Vietnam himself, looking for ways to win the war. He didn’t find them. When he came back, he worked on the Pentagon Papers study, trying to figure out how things had gone wrong. He got permission from Halperin and Gelb to read the entire study and became convinced that getting it out to the public was essential. There’s no evidence he informed either man about his plans to leak the study, and it would have been stupid for him to tell them, since they’d have a strong incentive to turn him in just to protect themselves.

Rostow had told Nixon all he needed to know. If Nixon had listened, he might have saved his presidency. But this President was a conspiracy theorist."

28 Haig’s conversations with Nixon on June 13 and June 14 contradict an earlier published account, in which Haig purportedly learned of Ellsberg’s involvement by June 12, the day before the Times started publishing, and in turn informed Rostow. See Harrison E. Salisbury, Without Fear or Favor: The New York Times and Its Times (New York: Ballantine Books, 1980) p. 210. (↑)

29 Conversation 519–7, 14 June 1971, 12:26 pm - 1:09 pm, Oval Office. (↑)

30 Conversation 521-13, 15 June 1971, 5:13 pm - 6:03 pm, Oval Office. Oddly, Nixon had earlier this day told Haldeman that it was Kissinger who believed there was a conspiracy. See conversation 520–3, 15 June 1971, 9:56 am - 10:37 am, Oval Office. Since the tapes contain many unclear passages, I can’t rule out the possibility that Kissinger was the first to use the word “conspiracy” in connection with the Pentagon Papers, but the first recorded use of it is Nixon’s. (↑)

31 Conversation 524-27, 17 June 1971, 2:42 pm - 3:33 pm, Oval Office. Following the 1999 release of the Nixon tapes from February-July 1971, the New York Times ran an article on Nixon’s anti-Semitism quoting from this conversation and others. The article didn’t mention, however, Nixon’s characterization of Jews in the State and Defense Departments as “security situations,” or his reference to clearing Jews out of the NSC.New York Times, 7 October 1999, “In 1971 Tapes, Nixon Is Heard Blaming Jews for Communist Plots.” (↑)


36 See “How Paranoid Was Nixon?” by Kenneth J. Hughes, Jr., on the History News Network website. 

To summarize: Jews, intellectuals, and Ivy Leaguers were three constituent groups of the New Deal, which began when Nixon was 20 and didn’t end until he was 32. Nixon was a young Republican during the most Democratic period in American history, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and Franklin D. Roosevelt won four presidential landslides in a row. 

In Washington, there was a changing of the guard, and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., recorded the Republican bureaucracy’s displeasure with the newcomers: 

“There were too many Ivy League men, too many intellectuals, too many radicals, too many Jews.” 

The Hiss case provided Republicans with the perfect villains, a handful of Jewish, intellectual or Ivy League New Dealers who were Communist spies. The case fueled Nixon’s rise to the apex of politics, but the lessons he learned from it precipitated his downfall. (↑)


Notice how NeoCons cite Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (Who is hardly objective) to attack Nixon and call him paranoid.

Nixon wasn't paranoid.

There WAS a conspiracy, and these people WERE determined to destroy him and everything he stood for and had accomplished.

He was just looking in the wrong places.

Kay Griggs


Eugene Victor Debs Rostow
According to Kay Griggs: communist; part of Mob (probably says so because he's Jewish)
Involved with American Security Council. 
Another rare neocon eastern establishment person, like Paul Nitze, James Woolsey, etc.
Born in 1913. Son of Victor A. and Lillian (Helman) R.; m. Edna Berman Greenberg; children: Victor A. D., Jessica, Charles Nicholas. 
AB, Yale University, 1933. 
LLB, Yale University, 1937. 
AM, Yale University, 1944. Postgrad., King's College. 
Postgrad., Cambridge University, England, 1934. 
MA, Cambridge University, England, 1959. 
Practice in New York City, 1937-38. 
Member faculty Law School Yale, 1938–, professor law, 1944-84, professor emeritus, senior research scholar, from 1984, dean, 1955-65, Sterling professor law and pub. affairs, 1964-84. 
Master Trumbull College, 1966. 
Distinguished visiting research professor law and diplomacy National Defense University, 1984-90, 92—; 
under-sec. state for political affairs, 1966-69; 
president Atlantic Treaty Association, 1973-76; 
visiting professor University Chicago, 1941; 
Pitt professor Am. history and institutions, professorial fellow King's College, Cambridge University, 1959-60; 
William W. Cook lecturer Michigan University, 1958; 
John R. Coen lecturer University Colorado, 1961; 
Leary lecturer University Utah, 1965; 
Brandeis lecturer Brandeis University, 1965; 
Rosenthal lecturer Northwestern University, 1965; 
George Eastman visiting professor, fellow Balliol College, Oxford (England) University, 1970-71; 
Adviser Department State, 1942-44; 
assistant executive secretary Economic Commission for Europe, UN, 1949-50; 
member Judicial Council of Connecticut, 1955-66, 
Attorney Gen.'s National Committee Study Antitrust Laws, 1954-55. 
Chairman executive committee of the Committee on the Present Danger, 1976-81, 86-92. 
Director Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1981-83. 
Fellow Am. Academy Arts and Scis.; member Am. Law Institute, Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Delta Phi, Elizabethan Yale Club, Century Association New York City Club, Cosmos Club Washington. 
Democrat. 
Jewish. 
Died in 2002.
2003, Edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, Probe magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK , and Malcolm X: 
"It appears that the idea of a Presidential commission to report on the assassination of President Kennedy was first suggested by Eugene Rostow, Dean of the Yale Law School, in a telephone call to LBJ aide Bill Moyers during the afternoon of November 24th. 
Although the time of this call is missing from the White House daily diary, it is possible to identify the period during which the call was made. Rostow refers to the killing of Oswald, so the call had to be after 2:07 p.m. EST, the time Oswald was pronounced dead. 
The call appears in the White House daily diary prior to a conversation at 4:40 p.m. between President Johnson and Governor Pat Brown of California. 
Rostow tells Moyers that he is calling to make a suggestion that a "Presidential commission be appointed of very distinguished citizens in the very near future." ... 
Eugene Rostow is either the originator of the idea, the first active promoter, or both. We don't know the identity of the individual or individuals with whom he was discussing this on the afternoon of the 24th. ... 
In 1971 Lyndon Johnson himself provided important parts of the truth. 
His statement was closer to an accurate account than what was provided by the HSCA six years later. 
The Committee totally ignored LBJ's account and, as far as the author is aware, so did everyone else for over 20 years. 
In his book The Vantage Point, Johnson said that Eugene Rostow called the White House on November 24th and suggested a commission, and that Joe Alsop and Dean Rusk also recommended a commission. This account, although brief and incomplete, was closer to the truth than anything said about this between 1963 and 1993. 
Perhaps it is a tribute to LBJ's lack of credibility that no one paid any attention to this for over 20 years (including the author). 
The commission idea comes from Rostow, Alsop, and Acheson. 
It has immediate support from individuals at the Washington Post (James Wiggins) and the New York Times (James Reston). 
The idea is then supported by Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. "
Nicholas "Nick" Rostow
According to Kay Griggs: Friend of George; 
runs the Boston harbor mob with William Weld; 
Rostows are major bad guys; 
did all this "drug business" in Mexico for years with [William] Weld.
Born in 1950. Son of Eugene Debs Rostow (1913-2002). 
Full name is Charles Nicholas Rostow. 
BA from Yale in 1972. Ph.D. in History from Yale in 1979. 
JD from Yale in 1982. 
Went to the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris at some point. 
Associated with Shearman & Sterling, New York, 1982-1985. 
Member of the CFR since 1987. 
Aide to Abraham D. Sofaer, the State Department's legal advisor, from 1985 to 1987. 
Sofaer, who was supported by such individuals as Douglas Feith and Daniel P. Moynihan, reinterpreted the SALT treaties for the Reagan administration to find ways to legitimize Star Wars and related programs. 
Sofaer, a Jew and Zionist himself, also became controversial for his legal rationales for the 1986 Libya bombing and for keeping open the PLO's Washington offices. 
Deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council March - December 1987. 
April 1, 1987, New York Times: 
"Nicholas Rostow, who as the Tower commission's keeper of the detailed chronology of the Iran arms sales should be well familiar with the foibles of the National Security Council..." 
Married Ariana van der Heyden White in November 1987. 
Legal adviser to the National Security Council December 1987 - January 1993. 
Special Assistant to presidents Reagan and Bush for National Security Affairs December 1987 - January 1993. 
In April 1991, the White House established a vetting process directed by Rostow. Under his direction, administration lawyers refused to provide Congress with certain documents. In their place, Rostow offered oral briefings on the contents of the documents. 
Executive-branch departments were advised by the White House that "alternatives to providing documents should be explored." 
August 9, 1992, New York Times:
"Democratic lawmakers are also investigating whether Administration officials purposely misled Congress about Iraq policy, either in public testimony, correspondence or conversations, or by withholding documents. One line of inquiry involves the Commodity Credit Corporation program through which Iraq made grain purchases. 
In the fall of 1989 the Bush Administration was locked in a heated debate about whether to go forward with $1 billion in new credits for Iraq. State Department officials argued that the credits were crucial to improving relations with Baghdad... 
Democratic lawmakers charge that the Administration conspired to mislead Congress by withholding crucial documents. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, the Texas Democrat who has taken the lead in the investigations, has said there was a cover-up formulated in meetings held at the White House by lawyers from various Government agencies to coordinate answers to Congressional demands for documents. 
He has dubbed the group the "Rostow gang" because its chairman was C. Nicholas Rostow... White House officials call the charge absurd, saying that such coordination is routine. 
But a senior State Department official said that Mr. Baker was indeed upset to learn that Mr. Rostow was trying to control the flow of documents." 
July 7, 1992, House of Representatives, Henry B. Gonzalez (Hispanic Congressional representative from Texas): 
"Mr. Speaker, today I will provide an update on the Rostow gang which will reveal that President Bush, his legal adviser, Boyden Gray, and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, were all directly involved in the efforts to thwart the congressional investigation of the Iraq policy. I will also detail some of the more prominent examples of why the President is continuing to thwart the Banking Committee's inquiry of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro... 
the National Security Council and the State Department received a detailed secret CIA report on BNL indicating that BNL loans were used to fund Iraq's clandestine missile and nuclear weapons procurement program... 
In April 1991, the National Security Council's legal adviser, Mr. Rostow, called a high-level, interagency meeting to discuss congressional investigations of Iraq policy prior to the invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. The meeting was chaired by Nick Rostow... 
Mr. Rostow's previous experience includes playing a key role in the White House efforts to cover up the Iran-Contra scandal and to obstruct a 1988 GAO investigation of then-Vice President Bush's ties to Panamanian leader and drug lord, one Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. Also at the meeting were President Bush's General Counsel, Boyden Gray, and the top lawyers for the Departments of Justice, Defense, State, Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, and the CIA. 
Each of the agencies had received requests for information from the Congress, and these lawyers were responsible for overseeing the collection and submission of the information. That is where I referred to this high-level legal team as the `Rostow gang.' 
The Rostow gang established a process whereby a congressional investigation had to hurdle a series of increasingly difficult barriers in order to obtain information from an executive branch agency. 
Ostensibly the function of the group was to review documents and information applicable to congressional requests for Iraq-related information and to establish a coordinated approach for the dissemination of this information."
Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa College of Law 1993-1995. 
Executive director of the Massachusetts Office of International Trade and Investment (Boston) 1995- 1999. 
Panel member of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, better known as the Cox Committee, which existed from June to December 1998 and investigated the role China's illegal acquisition of dual-use technology from the United States. 
Among the other investigators with long experiences with national security was Lewis "Scooter" Libby 
(RAND; Northrop Grunman; Defense Policy Board under Perle; co-founder of PNAC; chief of staff to vice president Dick Cheney; indicted in October 2005 in the Valerie Plame affair; in his 1996 novel 'The Apprentice' the following text appears: 
"At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.")
Rostow agreed with the conclusions of chairman Christopher Cox that China had targeted major defense corporations and military installations in their spying endeavours. 
Staff director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 1999-2000. Held the Charles H. Stockton Chair in International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in 2001. 
General counsel and senior policy adviser to the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations October 2001 - October 2005. 
In these capacities, he was an integral member of the Mission's senior management and representation on the Security Council and in the General Assembly. Rostow's activities included, among other things, representation of the United States on the Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee, responsibility for matters involving international criminal tribunals, and participation in the negotiation of Security Council and General Assembly resolutions regarding the Middle East, including Iraq, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, African conflicts, including Sudan, Congo, Liberia, and Burundi. 
University counsel and vice chancellor for legal affairs of the State University of New York (SUNY) since November 2005. 
University Fellow at the Levin Institute of International Relations and Commerce of SUNY and senior counsel of SUNY's Research Foundation since November 2005. 
Since January 2006, director of Toreador Resource Corporation, an oil and gas company with interests in the Gulf of Mexico, Europe and Turkey. 
Religion: Jewish.
Walt Whitman Rostow
According to Kay Griggs: communist; 
his report (with General Taylor) got us into the Vietnam War because he wanted to sell weapons, just as Kissinger; 
Victor Krulak was Rostow's lackey
Born in 1916 in a Jewish family. 
Like Eugene, his brother, a son of Victor Aaron and Lillian (Helman) Rostow. 
BA, Yale University, 1936. 
Rhodes scholar Balliol College, 1936-38. 
PhD, Yale University, 1940. Instructor in Economics, Columbia University, 1940-41. 
Major in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Army of the United States, 1942-45. 
Assistant chief German-Austrian economic division of the Department State, 1945-46. 
Harmsworth professor American history Oxford (England) University, 1946-47. 
Assistant to executive secretary Economic Commission for Europe, 1947-49. 
Pitt. professor American history Cambridge (England) University, 1949-50. 
Professor economic history Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 1950-60. 
Staff member Center International Studies, 1951-60. 
Deputy special assistant to President for national security affairs National Security Council, 1961. 
Special assistant to President for national security affairs, 1966-69. 
Counselor, chairman policy planning council US Department State, 1961-66. U.S. rep., ambassador Inter-American Committee Alliance for Progress, 1964-66. 
Rex G. Baker Junior professor political economy, departments econs. and history University Texas, Austin, professor emeritus. 
Member Board Foreign Scholarships, 1969-72, Austin Project, 1982—. 
Hon. Order of the British Empire. 
Member Am. Academy Arts and Scis., Am. Philosophical Society, Massachusetts Hist. Society, Texas Philosophical Society, Cosmos Club, Elizabethan Club. 
Clubs: Cosmos (Washington); Elizabethan (New Haven). 
Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Member of the Georgetown Set (also called Wisner Gang), which consisted of a group of influential people living in Washington. 
At first the key members of the group were former members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). 
These included Frank Wisner, Philip Graham, David Bruce, Tom Braden, Stewart Alsop and Walt Rostow. Over the next few years others like George Kennan, Dean Acheson, Richard Bissell, Joseph Alsop, Eugene Rostow, Chip Bohlen, Desmond FitzGerald, Tracy Barnes, Cord Meyer, James Angleton, William Averill Harriman, John McCloy, Felix Frankfurter, John Sherman Cooper, James Reston, Allen W. Dulles and Paul Nitze joined their regular parties. 
Some like Bruce, Braden, Bohlen, McCloy, Meyer and Harriman spent a lot of their time working in other countries. 
However, they would always attend these parties when in Georgetown. The vast majority were members of the Democratic Party but John Sherman Cooper and Desmond FitzGerald were both left-wing Republicans. 
As Sally Reston pointed out: 
"We were liberal anti-Communist, intellectuals, precisely the class and breed that Joe McCarthy hated and whose careers he wanted to ruin. It was the same old battle: the Republican right versus the Democratic left."
William Weld
According to Kay Griggs: runs the Boston harbor mob with Nicholas Rostow; did all this "drug business" in Mexico for years with Walt Rostow (Friend of George)
Born in 1945. AB summa cum laude, Harvard University, 1966. Diploma with distinction, Oxford University, England, 1967. JD cum laude, Harvard University, 1970. Law clerk to Hon. R.A. Cutter, Supreme Judicial Court Massachusetts, 1970-71. Partner Hill & Barlow, Boston, 1971-81. Married Susan Roosevelt Weld in 1976 (until 2002), formerly a professor at Harvard University specialising in ancient Chinese civilization and law, and then General Counsel to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, who is a great granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt. Associate minority counsel US House of Reps. Judiciary Committee Impeachment Inquiry, Washington, 1973-74. Republican nominee for attorney general, Massachusetts, 1978. US attorney (District Massachusetts) US Department Justice, Boston, 1981-86, assistant attorney general, criminal division Washington, 1986-88. Senior partner Hale & Dorr, Boston, Washington, 1988-90. Governor Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston, 1991—1997. Weld resigned the governorship after being appointed United States Ambassador to Mexico by President Bill Clinton. He was never confirmed by the United States Senate, however, and hence never served as Ambassador. Republican nominee for US Senate, Massachusetts, 1996. Partner McDermott, Will & Emery LLP, New York City and Boston, 1997—. Actor: (films) Traffic, 2000 (about a Mexican drug cartel; a number of other Senators play in this movie). Principal Leeds Weld & Co., New York City, 2001—2006 (describes itself as the United States's largest private equity fund focused on investing in the education and training industry. Its board of advisors is chaired by Rudolph W. Giuliani). During the reelection campaign of President George W. Bush (in 2004), who was running against Weld's old foe John Kerry, Weld helped Bush to prepare for the debates. Weld publicly endorsed Mitt Romney for the presidency on January 8, 2007. Weld currently serves as the co-chairman for Romney's campaign in New York State. 1996, Robert Parry for The Consortium, 'The Kerry-Weld Cocaine War': 
"WASHINGTON -- The sudden uproar over a decade-old story -- cocaine smuggling linked to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels -- could reverberate with special intensity in Massachusetts, where the controversy has the potential for affecting the outcome of a close Senate race. That race pits John Kerry, the Democratic senator who led the investigation into contra drugs, against Republican William Weld, the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division when the contra-drug allegations were emerging as a national issue and when the Iran-contra scandal broke in the fall of 1986. In new testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Oct. 23, one of Kerry's former investigators, Jack Blum, fingered Weld as the "absolute stonewall" who blocked the Senate's access to vital evidence linking the contras and cocaine. "Weld put a very serious block on any effort we made to get information," Blum told a crowded hearing room. "There were stalls. There were refusals to talk to us, refusals to turn over data." Weld has denied those charges and insisted that he conscientiously pursued the allegations... An investigation by The Consortium has uncovered new evidence that buttresses Blum's charge that Weld stonewalled the contra-cocaine allegations... According to other internal Justice Department documents, Weld continued to just say no when it came to Senate requests for advancing the contra-cocaine inquiries. Later in November 1986, Weld personally edited a letter to Kerry denying federal protection to Wanda Palacio, the woman who claimed to have witnessed Medellin cartel cocaine shipments connected to the CIA and the contras. But by rejecting Palacio as not credible, Weld had blocked her attempts to become a federal witness. Into 1987, Weld and his criminal division continued the pattern of failing to follow leads from other potentially valuable CIA-cocaine witnesses, such as George Morales who alleged before the U.S. Senate that the Colombian cartel had given a ton of cocaine which the contras smuggled into the United States through Costa Rica... Weld's friendships with key Washington journalists also helped him fend off contra-cocaine damage to his reputation in the late 1980s. Not only was Weld pals with prominent Boston Globe writers, he had a close personal relationship with Newsweek bureau chief Evan Thomas and other influential members of the press corps from the Harvard alumni set. That story of a pro-Weld press remains pretty much the same today. The Globe hits Kerry for alleged decade-old ethical lapses after his marriage break-up, while Weld escapes any serious scrutiny over whether he shirked his public duty to enforce criminal drug smuggling laws for political reasons. Weld also has been one of the chief beneficiaries from the big-media attacks on the Mercury News contra-crack series. Over the past two weeks, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times joined The Washington Post in bashing that series, while continuing to accept the CIA's word about little or no contra drug trafficking."

Sunday, 31 August 2014

Couldn't Make it Up : "World Order", by Henry Kissinger - Published Sept. 9 2014


ESSAY

Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order

The concept that has underpinned the modern geopolitical era is in crisis


The concept of order that has underpinned the modern era is in crisis, writes Henry Kissinger. Above, a pro-Russian fighter stands guard at a checkpoint close to Donetsk, Ukraine in July. 

"Libya is in civil war, fundamentalist armies are building a self-declared caliphate across Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan's young democracy is on the verge of paralysis. To these troubles are added a resurgence of tensions with Russia and a relationship with China divided between pledges of cooperation and public recrimination. The concept of order that has underpinned the modern era is in crisis.

The search for world order has long been defined almost exclusively by the concepts of Western societies. In the decades following World War II, the U.S.—strengthened in its economy and national confidence—began to take up the torch of international leadership and added a new dimension. A nation founded explicitly on an idea of free and representative governance, the U.S. identified its own rise with the spread of liberty and democracy and credited these forces with an ability to achieve just and lasting peace. The traditional European approach to order had viewed peoples and states as inherently competitive; to constrain the effects of their clashing ambitions, it relied on a balance of power and a concert of enlightened statesmen. The prevalent American view considered people inherently reasonable and inclined toward peaceful compromise and common sense; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals, enrich societies and substitute economic interdependence for traditional international rivalries.

In the Middle East, religious militias violate borders at will.

This effort to establish world order has in many ways come to fruition. A plethora of independent sovereign states govern most of the world's territory. The spread of democracy and participatory governance has become a shared aspiration if not a universal reality; global communications and financial networks operate in real time.

The years from perhaps 1948 to the turn of the century marked a brief moment in human history when one could speak of an incipient global world order composed of an amalgam of American idealism and traditional European concepts of statehood and balance of power. But vast regions of the world have never shared and only acquiesced in the Western concept of order. These reservations are now becoming explicit, for example, in the Ukraine crisis and the South China Sea. The order established and proclaimed by the West stands at a turning point.

First, the nature of the state itself—the basic formal unit of international life—has been subjected to a multitude of pressures. Europe has set out to transcend the state and craft a foreign policy based primarily on the principles of soft power. But it is doubtful that claims to legitimacy separated from a concept of strategy can sustain a world order. And Europe has not yet given itself attributes of statehood, tempting a vacuum of authority internally and an imbalance of power along its borders. At the same time, parts of the Middle East have dissolved into sectarian and ethnic components in conflict with each other; religious militias and the powers backing them violate borders and sovereignty at will, producing the phenomenon of failed states not controlling their own territory.

The challenge in Asia is the opposite of Europe's: Balance-of-power principles prevail unrelated to an agreed concept of legitimacy, driving some disagreements to the edge of confrontation.

The clash between the international economy and the political institutions that ostensibly govern it also weakens the sense of common purpose necessary for world order. The economic system has become global, while the political structure of the world remains based on the nation-state. Economic globalization, in its essence, ignores national frontiers. Foreign policy affirms them, even as it seeks to reconcile conflicting national aims or ideals of world order.

This dynamic has produced decades of sustained economic growth punctuated by periodic financial crises of seemingly escalating intensity: in Latin America in the 1980s; in Asia in 1997; in Russia in 1998; in the U.S. in 2001 and again starting in 2007; in Europe after 2010. The winners have few reservations about the system. But the losers—such as those stuck in structural misdesigns, as has been the case with the European Union's southern tier—seek their remedies by solutions that negate, or at least obstruct, the functioning of the global economic system.

The international order thus faces a paradox: Its prosperity is dependent on the success of globalization, but the process produces a political reaction that often works counter to its aspirations.

A third failing of the current world order, such as it exists, is the absence of an effective mechanism for the great powers to consult and possibly cooperate on the most consequential issues. This may seem an odd criticism in light of the many multilateral forums that exist—more by far than at any other time in history. Yet the nature and frequency of these meetings work against the elaboration of long-range strategy. This process permits little beyond, at best, a discussion of pending tactical issues and, at worst, a new form of summitry as "social media" event. A contemporary structure of international rules and norms, if it is to prove relevant, cannot merely be affirmed by joint declarations; it must be fostered as a matter of common conviction.

The penalty for failing will be not so much a major war between states (though in some regions this remains possible) as an evolution into spheres of influence identified with particular domestic structures and forms of governance. At its edges, each sphere would be tempted to test its strength against other entities deemed illegitimate. A struggle between regions could be even more debilitating than the struggle between nations has been.

The contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept of order within the various regions and to relate these regional orders to one another. These goals are not necessarily self-reconciling: The triumph of a radical movement might bring order to one region while setting the stage for turmoil in and with all others. The domination of a region by one country militarily, even if it brings the appearance of order, could produce a crisis for the rest of the world.

A world order of states affirming individual dignity and participatory governance, and cooperating internationally in accordance with agreed-upon rules, can be our hope and should be our inspiration. But progress toward it will need to be sustained through a series of intermediary stages.

To play a responsible role in the evolution of a 21st-century world order, the U.S. must be prepared to answer a number of questions for itself: What do we seek to prevent, no matter how it happens, and if necessary alone? What do we seek to achieve, even if not supported by any multilateral effort? What do we seek to achieve, or prevent, only if supported by an alliance? What should we not engage in, even if urged on by a multilateral group or an alliance? What is the nature of the values that we seek to advance? And how much does the application of these values depend on circumstance?

For the U.S., this will require thinking on two seemingly contradictory levels. The celebration of universal principles needs to be paired with recognition of the reality of other regions' histories, cultures and views of their security. Even as the lessons of challenging decades are examined, the affirmation of America's exceptional nature must be sustained. History offers no respite to countries that set aside their sense of identity in favor of a seemingly less arduous course. But nor does it assure success for the most elevated convictions in the absence of a comprehensive geopolitical strategy."

— Dr. Kissinger served as national security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Adapted from his book "World Order," to be published Sept. 9 by the Penguin Press.

The Kursk Incident - The Second Occasion when Vladimir Putin PreventedWorld War III




It was US and UK that sank Russia's Kursk submarine?

Pravda
18.05.2012

Strategic submarine "Kursk" that sank in 2000 was sunk by the Americans. This theory discussed in Russia and abroad was once again raised by the Polish Wprost, referring to the information allegedly received from the Russian General Staff officer, "Lt. Col. Andrei."

According to the authors, the restraint of the Russians made it possible to avoid a full-scale nuclear war.

The fact that "Kursk" perished at the torpedo explosion was adopted as the official theory in Russia. The report of the Prosecutor General of Russia of 2002 stated that the torpedo was a teaching one, and it exploded on its own followed by a detonation of the ammunition.

Almost immediately after the accident a few admirals and officials claimed that "Kursk" was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine stationed in the area of the exercise.

Also, some military officials declared that Russian nuclear submarine collided with a foreign submarine.


The first information of any unexpected event that subsequently gets an official legend, as a rule, is the closest to the truth.

The same theory was also developed by French director Jean-Michel Carré in the movie "Kursk": "Submarine in turbid waters," (2005).

According to the movie, the Russian submarine was watched by two American submarines "Memphis" and "Toledo."

"Toledo" came dangerously close.

To prevent an attack of the Russian submarine at "Toledo", "Memphis" allegedly fired Mk-48 torpedo at "Kursk".


According to the Canadian History TV Channel, in the course of surveillance of "Kursk", "Toledo" tried to come closer, but by chance ran into the Russian nuclear submarine that was likely performing a maneuver.

The captain of "Memphis", thinking that "Kursk" attacked "Toledo" (presumably receiving an acoustic signal to open the torpedo locks), fired at the Russian submarine.


According to "Lieutenant Colonel Andrei", "small submarine AS-15 (apparently, "Kashalot" (Project 1910) - Ed.) quickly discovered "Kursk" after the accident. However, there was no decision on rescue operations - though, as the source claims, there were divers on board able to operate at depths up to 200 meters. "Kursk" was lying at a depth of 108 meters.

"Kashalots" are among the most secret Russian Navy submarines. To this day, it is unknown whether they obey the Navy command.

At least until 1986 (at the time the first submarine of this type was used for three years), they were registered with the GRU.*

*GRU,
Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye
(Soviet Military Intelligence)

"We thought that the crew was killed, there was no contact with them," continued lieutenant colonel.

"The phone rang, Korabelnikov picked up, listed, turned pale, and murmured:

"The U.S. (...) sunk the ship, there will be a war!" Supposedly said Korabelnikov.


Of course, the American side rejected both theories.

Against this background, the presence of a British boat "Splendid" in the area was forgotten.

In 1986 it encountered a Soviet submarine "Simbirsk" and in 1999 struck at Serbia, and was supposedly scared by "Kursk" surfaced in the Mediterranean.

After the explosion at "Kursk" submarine, it left for repairs at NATO bases.

The presence of two boats in the area of ​​the crash, along with the harmonization of positions on the force majeure between Moscow, Washington and London, as expected, could cause delays in the rescue operation of the Russian sailors.

Interestingly, it was possible to track down the route of the Americans after the incident, but the situation with the British nuclear submarine has not been clarified.

The idea of a possible involvement of "Splendid" in the death of "Kursk" concerns the British.
The British "Wikipedia" on the page devoted to this boat, made a very voluminous retreat.

It argues that the British submarine had nothing to do with the death of the Russian submarine.


"Although the charges were unfounded, the conspiracy theorists have developed them in different directions for a long time," said "Wikipedia".

Indeed, back in 2000, "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" published an opinion of one of the captain divers, according to which "Splendid" submarine found rest next to "Kursk" on the bottom of the Barents Sea, and was blown up during an operation aimed to raise the Russian submarine. The author suggests that we will soon hear of the death or retirement of this submarine.

In October of 2000, according to BBC, 12 nuclear submarines (including all submarines "Swiftsure") were removed from combat duty because of a leak in the cooling system of a nuclear reactor in a boat of Trafalgar class.

It is unknown how many boats later returned to the system.

According to "Jane's" catalog, the boat was written off in 2004.

Although it was the last and the newest boat of project "Swiftsure" (a total of six), it was the first one to be sent to scraps.




Six days after something went dreadfully wrong with the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk, another submarine quietly pulled into a Norwegian port, carrying some of the most detailed evidence so far of why the pride of Russia's navy sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea.
The other submarine was the Memphis, a nuclear-powered attack submarine based in Groton, Conn., and one of two American submarines that were spying on the largest Russian naval exercise in years when disaster struck the Kursk on the morning of Aug. 12.
By the time the Memphis reached Bergen, Norway, Russian officials, including the defense minister, Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, had said the Kursk had probably sunk after colliding with a foreign submarine or a World War II mine. So the arrival of the Memphis spawned news reports in Russia that a damaged submarine needing repairs had limped into port.
Publicly, the Pentagon still refuses to comment on the whereabouts or the mission of the Memphis. And they say the most likely cause of the sinking is the misfiring of one of the Kursk's torpedoes.

They insist that the Memphis was not damaged. Nor was it, the other American submarine or any other foreign submarine involved in any collision, they said. The Memphis's arrival in Norway was a long-scheduled liberty call, they said.
The call allowed the submarine to unload sonar tapes and other recordings that the Americans say captured two explosions that ravaged and sank the Kursk, killing all 118 people on board.
Those tapes, now being analyzed at the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Md., contain the strongest evidence, until now not discussed in detail, to support the leading American theory of what destroyed the Kursk.
And that theory, they said, does not include the collision that the Russians have said probably occurred. ''We have subs that hear everything that goes on,'' a senior officer in Washington said. ''It's pretty clear to us what happened.''
According to the American theory, a rocket-propelled torpedo being loaded or launched as part of an exercise misfired, its engine or its fuel exploding.
After 2 minutes and 15 seconds -- during which time the Kursk's captain either increased power from the nuclear reactor or blew ballast in an effort to surface -- a powerful explosion of the torpedo's warhead tore a gaping hole in the submarine's bow, killing most if not all of the crew instantly.
[In Vladivostok, Russia, today, a former submarine officer who is a member of a governmental commission investigating the explosion said a new weapons system was being tested on board the Kursk when it sank. But the former officer, Sergei V. Zhekov, would not elaborate on the system during a news conference, saying it was a state secret, the news agency Interfax reported.]
When the Kursk sank, the United States government knew within hours. The Americans collected telltale recordings by means of submarines and a surface ship, and even from shore.
They detected no sounds of a collision. And they monitored the Russian fleet's emergency radio transmissions closely during the aftermath.
In addition to two submarines, the Navy had a surface ship, the Loyal, in the Barents Sea.
The Loyal is one of a class of surveillance ships operated by civilian contractors, but with as many as 15 Navy sailors and officers aboard.
According to the Navy, ships like the Loyal have only a single mission: ''to gather underwater acoustical data'' in support of ''the antisubmarine warfare mission'' of fleet commanders.
The ship can tow an array of underwater listening devices that pick up the most minute data, and that, the officials said, was precisely what it was doing.
A senior American officer said the two submarines were ''a long ways away'' from the Kursk at the time of the explosions, but he declined to say how far. Another senior officer said that under the Navy's rules of engagement the submarines would not have gone any closer than five miles, especially because the Russian ships were testing weapons. The Loyal, whose presence would have been obvious to the Russian fleet, was presumably even farther away.
Still, the senior officer said, the submarines were close enough not only to detect the explosions with their sonar, but also to feel the underwater concussion caused by the second, larger blast.
Even so, there was no damage to the Memphis or the other submarine, all of the officials said. ''Not a teacup was rattled,'' the senior military officer said.
Britain, the other country whose submarines regularly prowl the Barents, has denied that it had a submarine in the area at the time.
Within hours of the explosions, both American submarines radioed messages back to fleet headquarters. ''They were alive and well and had no bumps,'' another senior officer said.
The American officials said that neither the two submarines nor the Loyal had detected any sounds that would suggest that the Kursk had been involved in a collision of any sort.
Even at great distances, the signals created by a collision or an explosion are easy to distinguish, the officials said.
One official also said that given the Kursk's immense size, larger than the American Trident ballistic missile submarines, it was unlikely that another vessel could have endured a collision without suffering significant, perhaps debilitating damage.
It is also unlikely, given the Kursk's double-hulled design intended to withstand crashes or torpedoes, that a collision alone could have caused the damage that doomed the Kursk, the officials and experts said.
Ever since the Kursk sank, Russian accounts of what happened have been imprecise and sometimes contradictory. Officials in Russia did not report the accident until early on Aug. 14, which was a Monday, a day after the they realized that something had gone wrong and nearly two days after the accident. Even then, they said it had happened on Sunday, rather than on Saturday.
The Russians do not deny that a massive explosion hit the Kursk. But they have insisted that the submarine first was involved in a collision with some huge object, possibly a submarine or a World War II mine.

The Russian assertions are based in part on five hours of underwater videotape now being examined by an investigative commission headed by Deputy Prime Minister Ilya I. Klebanov. Russians officials have cited external damage on the submarine's hull that they said could only have been caused by its scraping another large object, and they have reported detecting pieces from unknown foreign submarines on the ocean floor.
In a television interview a week ago, Marshal Sergeyev, the defense minister, said that Russian surface ships racing to rescue had detected a second vessel on the seabed near the Kursk and had found an unknown signal buoy like those used by submarines. Some Russian reports said the buoy's markers were green and white and did not match those of the Russian fleet. Mr. Sergeyev said the buoy had never been recovered.
American officials questioned the reports of a green and white buoy being found. They said rescue buoys on American and British submarines are orange, while emergency communication buoys are gray.
They also discounted the possibility that the second vessel the Russians claimed to have detected on the ocean floor could have been one of the two American submarines.
''They didn't go in that close to look at what happened,'' a senior intelligence official said.
But even after the explosion, the two submarines did not immediately leave the area, the officials said. They continued to gather intelligence, intercepting frantic, confused radio messages between the other Russian ships trying to determine what had happened to the Kursk and trying to coordinate a rescue effort, the officials said.
The officials and submarine experts said it was possible that some of the crew -- perhaps 15 men or more -- had survived the initial explosions if they had managed to shut the watertight doors to their compartments in the stern quickly.
The Russians said they had detected tapping sounds from within the Kursk at least two days after it had sunk, raising hopes that a rescue of some crewmen might be possible.
Some American officials said that neither the Loyal nor the American submarines had detected the sounds, though they might not have been able to do so if they had been too far away.
The officials said it also appeared likely that the force of the second explosion had torn the Kursk apart with the force of one to two tons of TNT. The Norwegian divers who reached the Kursk a week after the accident found the rear escape hatch deformed, suggesting that the force of the blast might have rocketed throughout the submarine's compartments.
One question is whether the American submarines could have done anything to help the rescue effort. The American officials said the American submarines had not carried the kind of rescue equipment, like a submersible vehicle, that could have helped.
While the Americans had a fair guess of what had happened to the Kursk early on, it was only after the Memphis unloaded its sonar tapes on Aug. 18 that officials in Washington began to offer the theory of the torpedo misfiring.
But how much the Pentagon will be prepared to say in public remains in question. The submarine fleet has been traditionally wrapped in silence, and even now, more than two weeks later, the Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged the presence of two submarines in the Barents. Officials privately confirmed the role of the Memphis only when the vessel surfaced in Norway, and they still will not disclose the name of the other submarine. Nor have the Americans provided information on the submarines' exact whereabouts when the Kursk went down.
Given that secrecy, and the likelihood that the Russians will not fully share what they learn even if they recover the wreckage, it will be difficult to learn with any certainty what happened to the Kursk.
In 1968 an American submarine, the Scorpion, sank in the Atlantic near the Azores. Like the Kursk, it may have have been destroyed in an accident involving a torpedo misfiring. Other experts have argued that a faulty battery led to a fire and explosion. But to this day there is no public explanation of what happened.

ADMIRAL POPOV, FORMER COMMANDER OF THE NORTHERN FLEET, HAS NEW APPOINTMENT
Kommersant, December 5, 2001, p. 2
Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, former Commander of the Northern Fleet, dismissed last Saturday by the president, has moved to the Nuclear Ministry. According to Kommersant, the admiral has been appointed chief of the department in charge of scrapping nuclear submarines. In other words, exactly he will be in charge of scrapping the Kursk submarine.
Vologda Governor Vyacheslav Pozgalev said: "The admiral is in rather optimistic spirits. He said he moves to Moscow where he has received a new apartment." Official representatives of the Nuclear Ministry do not know anything about the admiral's appointment. However, Kommersant's sources said on condition of anonymity that the admiral will control the department for scrapping nuclear submarines.
The admiral has been appointed to a very important post - his department will have to scrap over 150 nuclear submarines. Admiral Popov's new job will be linked with his previous responsibilities because the functions of scrapping nuclear submarines were passed over to the Nuclear Ministry from the Defense Ministry in 1998. Currently, the Navy has to pass over technical bases of the Northern and Pacific Fleets to the Nuclear Ministry's enterprises. The military do not want to part with their property because the maintenance of the bases is funded from the state budget. Admiral Popov will have to settle relations with his former subordinates.