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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2021 at 12:10 am
Before 9/11, the United States did not attack Islamic terrorism in a coordinated basis.
In the October 4, 2001 episode of the PBS investigative series, “Frontline,” legendary journalist Bob Woodward described the results that followed:
“These terrorist incidents—they used the tools that were available, but it was never in a coherent way. I know from talking to those people at the time, it was always, ‘Oh, we’ve got this crisis. We’re dealing with the Achille Lauro now,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Quaddafi,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Libyan hit squads,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Beirut.’
“And it never—they never got in a position where they said, ‘You know, this is a real serious threat,’ not just episodically, but it’s going to be a threat to this country throughout the administration, future administrations.
“We need to organize to fight it. It can’t be a back-bench operation for the FBI and the CIA. It’s got to be somebody’s issue, so it’s on their desk every day. What do we know? What’s being planned? What are the threats out there?”
Bob Woodward
The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center well illustrates what Woodward was talking about.
On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 pound urea nitrate-hydrogen device was supposed to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, bringing down both towers and killing tens of thousands of people.
It failed to do so, but killed six people, and injured over 1,000.
The attack was planned by a group of Islamic terrorists including Ramzi Yousef, Mohammed Salameh, Abdul Rachman Yasin, Mahmud Abouhalima, Ahmed Ajaj and Nidal A. Ayyad.
They received financing from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who later became the principal financier of the 9/11 attacks.
Instead of treating this as a declaration of Islamic war upon the United States, the newly-installed Bill Clinton administration chose to consider it a purely criminal matter.
In March 1994, four men were convicted of carrying out the bombing: Abouhalima, Ajaj, Ayyad, and Salameh. The charges included conspiracy, explosive destruction of property, and interstate transportation of explosives.
In November 1997, two more were convicted: Yousef, the organizer behind the bombings, and Eyad Ismoil, who drove the truck carrying the bomb.
On September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.
They did so by turning four commercial jetliners into fuel-bombs—and crashing them into, respectively, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.; and—unintentionally—a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
(The fourth airliner had been aimed at the White House or the Capitol Building. But its passengers, alerted by radio broadcasts of the doom awaiting them, resolved to take over the plane instead. The hijackers slammed the jet into the ground to avoid capture.)
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
But within less than a month, American warplanes began carpet-bombing Afghanistan, whose rogue Islamic “government” refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, the had of Al-Qaeda who had masterminded the attacks.
By December, 2001, the power of the Taliban was broken—and bin Laden was driven into hiding in Pakistan.
For more than 16 years, the United States—through its global military and espionage networks—relentlessly hunted down most of those responsible for that September carnage.
On May 1, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALS invaded bin Laden’s fortified mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan—and shot him dead.
And today—almost 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States continues to wage war against Islamic terrorists.
One by one, the leading figures of Taliban, Haqqani and Al-Qaeda have been identified, located with help from coerced or paid-off informants, and targeted for drone strikes. Taking a leadership position in any of these—or other—Islamic terrorist groups has become virtually a death-sentence.
A Predator drone
Nor is the Pentagon the only agency targeting Islamic terrorism. After 9/11, the Treasury Department initiated the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) to identify, track, and pursue terrorists and their networks.
The program tracks terrorist money flows, assists in uncovering terrorist cells and mapping terrorist networks within the United States and abroad.
Yet another result of 9/11 was increased cooperation between the FBI and the CIA.
The CIA’s mandate, prior to the September 11 attacks, had been to target foreign enemies. The FBI’s mandate had been to target domestic ones.
This often brought the two agencies into bureaucratic conflict when confronting foreign-based or -financed terrorists. Neither agency was certain where its jurisdiction ended and the other one’s began.
The 9/11 attacks forced the FBI and CIA—and, even more importantly, Congress—to recognize the need for sharing information.
Almost 20 years after the devastating attacks of September 11, no Islamic terrorist group has mounted a similar one in the United States.
But on January 6, thousands of Right-wing supporters of President Donald J. Trump—many of them armed—stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Inside, members of Congress were counting Electoral Votes cast in the 2020 Presidential election. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden was expected to emerge the winner.
For Trump—who had often “joked” about becoming “President-for-Life”—this was intolerable. And it must be prevented by any means—legal or otherwise.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 25, 2021 at 12:05 am
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln serves up a timely reminder that has long been obscured by past and current Southern lies that the Civil War was not about slavery.
From first to last, the cause of the Civil War was slavery.
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, arguments over “states’ rights” or economic conflict between North and South didn’t lead 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect” of their “peculiar institution”—i.e., slavery.
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
“It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was increasingly unwilling to do.”
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860. Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
The British author, Anthony Trollope, explained to his readers:
“It is no light thing to be told daily, by our fellow citizens…that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven. All this [Southerners] could partly moderate, partly rebuke and partly bear as long as political power remained in their hands.”
It is to Spielberg’s credit that he forces his audience to look directly at the real cause of the bloodiest conflict on the North American continent.
At the heart of Spielberg’s film: Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) wants to win ratification of what will be the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. An amendment that will forever ban slavery.
But, almost four years into the war, slavery still has powerful friends—-in both the North and South.
Many of those friends belong to the House of Representatives, which must ratify the amendment for it to become law. Some are hostile to Lincoln personally. One of them dubs him a dictator: “Abraham Africanus.” Another accuses him of shifting his positions for the sake of expediency.
Other members—white men all—are hostile to the idea of “equality between the races.
”To them, ending slavery means opening the door to interracial marriage—especially marriage between black men and white women. Perhaps even worse, it means possibly giving blacks—or women—the right to vote.
Members of Lincoln’s own Cabinet—such as Secretary of State William Seward—warn him: You can negotiate the end of the war immediately—if you’ll just let Southerners keep their slaves.
After the amendment wins ratification, Lincoln agrees to meet with a “peace delegation” from the Confederate States of America.
At the top of their list of concerns: If they persuade the seceded states to return to the Union, will those states be allowed to nullify the amendment?
No, says Lincoln. He’s willing to make peace with the South, and on highly generous terms. But not at the cost of allowing slavery to live on.
Too many men—North and South—have died in a conflict whose root cause is slavery. Those lives must count for more than simply reuniting the Union.
The South has lost thousands of men (260,000 is the generally accepted figure for its total casualties) and the war is clearly lost. But for its die-hard leaders, parting with slavery is simply unthinkable.
Like Nazi Germany 80 years into the future, the high command of the South won’t surrender until their armies are too beaten down to fight any more.
The major difference between the defeated South of 1865 and the defeated Germany of 1945, is this: The South was allowed to build a beautiful myth of a glorious “Lost Cause,” epitomized by the Margaret Mitchell novel, Gone With the Wind.
In that telling, dutiful slaves were well-treated by kindly masters. Southern aristocrats wore white suits and their slender-waisted ladies wore long dresses, carried parasols and said “fiddle-dee-dee” to young, handsome suitors.
One million people attended the premier of the movie version in Atlanta on December 15, 1939. The celebration featured stars from the film, receptions, thousands of Confederate flags, false antebellum fronts on stores and homes, and a costume ball.
In keeping with Southern racial tradition, Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors from the film were barred from attending the premiere. Upon learning this, Clark Gable threatened to boycott the event. McDaniel convinced him to attend.
When today’s Southerners fly Confederate flags and speak of “preserving our traditions,” they are actually celebrating their long-banned “peculiar institution.”
By contrast, post-World War II Germany outlawed symbols from the Nazi-era, such as the swastika and the “Heil Hitler” salute, and made Holocaust denial punishable by imprisonment.
America has refused to confront its own shameful past so directly. But Americans can be grateful that Steven Spielberg has had the courage to serve up a long-overdue and much needed lesson in past–and still current–history.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 22, 2021 at 12:10 am
Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is more than a mesmerizing history lesson. It’s a timely reminder that racism and repression are not confined to any one period or political party.
At the heart of the film: Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) wants to win ratification of what will be the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. An amendment that will forever ban slavery.
True, Lincoln, in 1862, had issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This—in theory—freed slaves held in the Confederate states that had seceded from the Union in 1861.
But Lincoln regards this as a temporary wartime measure. He fears that once the war is over, the Supreme Court may rule the Proclamation unconstitutional. This might allow Southerners to continue practicing slavery, even after losing the war.
To prevent this, Congress must pass an anti-slavery amendment. But winning Congressional passage of such an amendment won’t be easy.
The Senate had ratified its passage in 1864. But the amendment must secure approval from the House of Representatives to become law.
And the House is filled with men—there are no women members during the 19th century—who seethe with hostility.
Some are hostile to Lincoln personally. One of them dubs him a dictator—“Abraham Africanus.” Another accuses him of shifting his positions for the sake of expediency.
Other members—white men all—are hostile to the idea of “equality between the races.” To them, ending slavery means opening the door to interracial marriage—especially marriage between black men and white women.
Perhaps even worse, it means possibly giving blacks—or women—the the right to vote.
In fact, the possibility that blacks might win voting rights arises early in the movie. Lincoln is speaking to a couple of black Union soldiers, and one of them is unafraid to voice his discontent. He’s upset that black soldiers are paid less than white ones—and that they’re led only by white officers.
He says that, in time, maybe this will change. Maybe, in 100 years, he guesses, blacks will get the right to vote.
(To the shame of all Americans, that’s how long it will eventually take. Not until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 will blacks be guaranteed legal protection against discriminatory voting practices.)
To understand the Congressional debate over the Thirteenth Amendment, it’s necessary to remember this: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives.
The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic.
Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery—and opposing freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.
In short, in the 18th century, Democrats in the South acted as Republicans do now. The South went Republican only after a Democratic President—Lyndon B. Johnson—rammed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress.
Thus, the re-enactment of the 1865 debate in Lincoln casts an embarrassing light on the racial conflicts of our own time. The same mentalities are at work:
-
Those (in this case, slave-owners) who already have a great deal want to gain even more at the expense of others.
-
Those (slaves and freed blacks) who have little strive to gain more or at least hang onto what they have.
-
Those who defend the privileged wealthy refuse to allow their “social inferiors” to enjoy similar privileges (such as the right to vote).
During the 2012 Presidential race, Republicans tried to bar those likely to vote for President Barack Obama from getting into the voting booth. But their bogus “voter ID” restrictions were struck down in courts across the nation.
Listening to those opposing the amendment, one is reminded of Mitt Romney’s infamous comments about the “47%”:
“Well, there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what….
“Who are dependent upon government, who believe that—that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they’re entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it. But that’s—it’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.”
Put another way: “Who says people have a right to obtain medical care, food and housing? If they can’t inherit unearned wealth the way I did, screw them.”
In the end, it’s Abraham Lincoln who has the final word—and leaves his nation the better for it. Through diplomacy and backroom dealings (trading political offices for votes) he wins passage of the anti-slavery amendment.
The ownership of human chattel is finally an ugly memory of the American past.
The movie closes with a historically-correct tribute to Lincoln’s generosity toward those who opposed him—in Congress and on the battlefield. It occurs during Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all….To bind up the nation’s wounds. To care for him who shall have bourne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan….”
This ending presents a vivid philosophical contrast with the increasingly mean-spirited rhetoric and policies of today’s Republican Presidential candidates—and Presidents.
Watching Lincoln, you realize how incredibly lucky America was as a nation to have had such leadership when it was most urgently needed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 21, 2021 at 12:05 am
During the week of November 24 – 26, 2019, The Economist and YouGov conducted a poll of 1,500 American adults. The purpose of that poll: To compare President Donald Trump with President Abraham Lincoln—and find out who was more popular within the Republican party.
Lincoln served as President from 1861 to 1865, steering the United States through the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
Abraham Lincoln
Trump, by contrast, has largely made the United States a pariah nation throughout the world—and is now presiding over a pandemic which has killed more than 25,000 Americans.
So what was the result of the poll?
Fifty-three percent of Republicans believe that Trump is a better President than Lincoln.
This starkly contrasts with the verdict of both Democratic and independent voters. Ninety-four percent of Democrats preferred Lincoln—and so did 78% of independents.
Overall, 75% of poll respondents picked Lincoln; only 25% picked Trump.
Some Twitter users found this sardonically hilarious.
One of these was Billy Baldwin, the brother of Alec Baldwin, who portrays Trump as a befuddled tyrant on Saturday Night Live: “53% of Republicans apparently don’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was.”
Baldwin also posted an animated photo of the Lincoln Memorial with the Great Emancipator giving The Finger to Trump and First Lady Melania.
“Economist/YouGov Poll: 53% of Republicans believe Donald Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln was while 47% believe the president that got this country through the Civil War was better,” wrote Josh Jordan. “If you were wondering what segment of the population can not be swayed by facts.”
Political commentator Ashley Pratte took a more serious view of the matter.
Describing herself in a December 9, 2019 column as “a lifelong Republican before 2016,” she wrote: “According to a 2017 C-Span survey of the nation’s top presidential historians, Lincoln sits above all other presidents as the greatest of all time.
“The Republican party has strayed far since the days of Lincoln; it’s shameful to see how Trumpism has hijacked it. It’s truly shocking how Republicans are allowing him to carry the mantle of conservatism too with little-to-no hesitation.
“Trump’s years in office have been full of nepotism, scandal, profiting from his position as President and now he is about to become the third-ever president to be impeached.”
Donald Trump
Specifically:
- He gave unprecedented access to the Oval Office to unqualified members of his family and personal friends.
- When his son-in-law Jared Kushner was denied a security clearance, Trump pushed it through anyway.
- Republicans refused to accept the conclusion of the Mueller Report that Trump campaign officials colluded with Russian Intelligence agents to win the Presidency in 2016.
- They also acquitted him—against overwhelming evidence—of trying to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to run a smear campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden.
- Trump personally profited from his role as President. At least 250 officials in the executive branch made 630 visits to Trump properties, and 90 members of Congress have made 180 visits.
For Pratte, Trump’s worst offense is this: “Trump has also been the most divisive president in our nation’s history….. From his Twitter rants and off-color statements to his pursuit of a travel ban and destruction of Obamacare, he’s not even bothered to try to get support for his policies.
“Instead, he’s forged ahead, continually pressed to build an impossible wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement and threatened to withdraw from NAFTA as a way to negotiate a slightly new version of it.
“…Republican officials should be eager to uphold the ideals of accountability, no matter which political party controls the White House. The problem is that these so-called morals are just a sham, and abandoning them is the only way to defend the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
There are two major reasons why Republicans regard Trump more highly than Lincoln.
First: In 2002, Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott gave away the game at the 100th birthday party for racist South Carolina Republican Senator Strom Thurmond:
”I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
In short: If America had elected Thurmond—who ran ran for president in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate on a States Rights platform supporting racial segregation—we wouldn’t be having all these problems now with “uppity” blacks.
Thus, Lincoln—who freed blacks from slavery—is for Republican voters the root cause of “all these problems over all these years.”
Second, Lincoln waged a civil war to restore the Union—which meant sending Federal armies into the rebellious South.
Under the banner of “States’ rights,” today’s Republicans openly court millions of voters in the South who still wish the Civil War had ended differently: With a triumphant South still running its slave empire—and millions of blacks still held in bondage.
While these voters secretly regret that those “good old days” will never return, they can at least show their support for “States’ rights” by backing Trump—whose racism toward non-whites is universally known and applauded by white supremacist groups.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 20, 2021 at 12:08 am
Why are some Presidents remembered with affection, while others are detested—or forgotten altogether?
Generally, Presidents who are warmly remembered are seen as making positive contributions to the lives of their fellow Americans and being “people-oriented.”
Among these:
- Abraham Lincoln
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Franklin Roosevelt
- John F. Kennedy
Among the reasons they are held in such high regard:
- Abraham Lincoln ended slavery and restored the Union. Although he ruthlessly prosecuted the Civil War, his humanity remains engraved in stories such as his pardoning a soldier condemned to be shot for cowardice: “If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help their running away with him?”
Abraham Lincoln
- Theodore Roosevelt championed an era of reform, such as creating the Food and Drug Administration and five National Parks. Popularly known as “Teddy,” he even had a toy bear—the teddy bear—named after him.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt successfully led America through the Great Depression and World War II. He was the first President to insist that government existed to directly better the lives of its citizens: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
- John F. Kennedy supported civil rights and called for an end to the Cold War. He challenged Americans to “ask what you can do for your country” and made government service respectable, even chic. His youth, charisma, intelligence and handsomeness led millions to mourn for “what might have been” had he lived to win a second term.
John F. Kennedy
Presidents who remain unpopular among Americans are seen as unlikable and responsible (directly or not) for mass suffering.
Among these:
- Herbert Hoover
- Lyndon B. Johnson
- Richard M. Nixon
Among the reasons they are held in such low regard:
- Herbert Hoover is still blamed for the 1929 Great Depression. He didn’t create it, but his conservative, “small-government” philosophy led him to refuse to aid its victims. An engineer by profession, he saw the Depression as a machine that needed repair, not as a catastrophe for human beings. This lack of “emotional intelligence” cost him heavily with voters.
- Lyndon B. Johnson is still blamed as the President “who got us into Vietnam.” John F. Kennedy had laid the groundwork by placing 16,000 American troops there by the time he died in 1963. But it was Johnson who greatly expanded the war in 1965 and kept it going—with hugely expanding casualties—for the next three years. Unlike Kennedy, whom he followed, he looked and sounded terrible on TV. Voters compared LBJ’s Texas drawl and false piety with JFK’s wit and good looks—and found him wanting.
Lyndon B. Johnson
- Richard M. Nixon will be remembered foremost as the President who was forced to resign under threat of impeachment and removal from office. Like Herbert Hoover, he was not a “people person” and seemed remote to even his closest associates. Although he took office on a pledge to “bring us together” and end the Vietnam war, he attacked war protesters as traitors and kept the war going another four years. His paranoid fears of losing the 1972 election led to his creating an illegal “Plumbers” unit which bugged the Democratic offices at the Watergate Hotel. And his attempted cover-up of their illegal actions led to his being forced to resign from office in disgrace.
Richard M. Nixon
Which brings us to the question: How is President Donald J. Trump likely to be remembered?
Historian Joachim C. Fest offers an unintended answer to this question in his 1973 bestselling biography Hitler:
“An ancient tenet of aesthetics holds that one who for all his remarkable traits is a repulsive human being, is unfit to be a hero.”
Among the reasons for Hitler’s being “a repulsive human being,” Fest cites the Fuhrer’s
- “intolerance and vindictiveness”;
- “lack of generosity”; and
- “banal and naked materialism—power was the only motive he would recognize.”
Fest then quotes German chancellor Otto von Bismarck on what constitutes greatness: “Impressiveness in this world is always akin to the fallen angel who is beautiful but without peace, great in his plans and efforts, but without success, proud but sad.”
And Fest concludes: “If this is true greatness, Hitler’s distance from it is immeasurable.”
What Fest writes about Adolf Hitler applies just as brutally to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump
He has:
- Boasted about the politicians he’s bought and the women he’s bedded—and forced himself on.
- Slandered entire segments of Americans—blacks, Hispanics, women, journalists, Asians, the disabled.
- Attacked the FBI and CIA for accurately reporting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had intervened in the 2016 Presidential election to ensure Trump’s victory.
- Refused to effectively attack the Coronavirus pandemic, leaving 400,000 dead by the end of his Presidency.
- Refused to accept that Democratic nominee Joseph Biden legitimately won the 2020 Presidential election.
- Ordered a mob of his Fascistic followers to attack the Capitol Building and stop the certifying of Biden as the winner of Electoral College votes.
At this stage, it’s hard to imagine Trump joining that select number of Presidents Americans remember with awe and reverence.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 19, 2021 at 12:38 am
“At the time of the Civil War [white anger and resentment] took the form of Southern white men angry at the idea that the federal government would interfere with their right to own Black slaves.
“Today, I think this takes the form of white people who believe that Black and brown people are making gains, or getting special treatment, at their expense,” warns Nina Silber, co-president of the Society of Civil War Historians.
And California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters believes this anger could lead to civil war: “Since his first day in office, [Donald Trump] has spent four years abusing his power, lying, embracing authoritarianism (and) radicalizing his supporters against democracy.
“This corruption poisoned the minds of his supporters, inciting them to willingly join with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and paramilitary extremists in a siege of the United State Capitol building, the very seat of American democracy.”
Attack on the Capitol Building
But there is a way to abort that danger—provided that those who cherish democracy are willing to employ weapons as effective as those used by the Right.
Case in point: The FBI’s successful war on the Ku Klux Klan.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI, and ordered an all-out investigation: “I want you to have the same kind of Intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
Poster for missing civil rights workers
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, no President had been willing to give him the order to do so. But now a President had given him such an order.
In August, the FBI uncovered the bodies of the three missing civil rights activists—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.
On September 2, 1964, the Bureau launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Klan—COINTELPRO—WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.
A Ku Klux Klan meeting
“The FBI dangled small fortunes before potential Klan informers, offered outright bribes to Klansmen who could serve as double agents inside state and local police forces, planted bugs and wiretaps in Klaverns, carried out black bag jobs to steal membership lists….”
Other tactics included:
- Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders;
- Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them;
- Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
“My father fought the Klan in Massachusetts,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “I always used to be frightened when I was a kid and I saw the fiery crosses burning in the hillside near our farm.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan. When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.
“They were dirty, rough fellows. And we went after them with rough, tough methods.”
William C. Sullivan
According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:
In a rural county near Natchez, two Klansmen threatened to kill the next FBI agent who came to town. Agent Paul Cummings organized a squad of G-men and visited the Klansmen’s favorite bar. He dared the Klansmen to back up their threat. When none appeared, Cummings shot out the bar’s windows. There were no more threats on FBI agents in that area.
“A Klan Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was created to counter the FBI, and its members placed the wives and children of agents under surveillance, harassing them with taunts and anonymous phone calls,” wrote Welch in his memoir, Inside Hoover’s FBI.
“It was a serious miscalculation. The most dangerous members of the KBI were systematically identified and assigned to agents selected solely because they were comparatively dangerous. The agents had full discretion.
“During the next few months, a number of men previously involved in Klan violence around the state seemed, by remarkable coincidence, to experience misfortune. Some disappeared from the area. Some were forced to leave Mississippi for health reasons. A few took unplanned trips to places like Mexico and seemed to lose all interest in the Klan upon their return.”
The FBI’s counterintelligence war against the Klan ended in 1971.
Only when America has a President willing to wage all-out war on the Fascistic Right will the country be safe from this enemy within.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 18, 2021 at 12:06 pm
Donald Trump will leave a legacy of lies, racism, criminality and treason when he leaves the White House on January 20.
But his longest-lasting—and most destructive—legacy can now be seen in the nation’s Capitol.
Every Presidential Inaugural proves a nightmarish challenge for Federal military and law enforcement agencies charged with protecting the next President and Vice President of the United States.
Inauguration of President Barack Obama – January 20, 2009
But that is not the end of their assignment.
Also needing protection are the dignitaries—members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, invited foreign heads of state—and the crowd of thousands of onlookers attending.
But the January 20 swearing in of Joseph Robinette Biden as President and Kamala Devi Harris as Vice President will be like no other in recent American history.
The reason: The current President, Donald J. Trump, has fiercely resisted the peaceful transfer of power from himself to Biden.
On November 3,2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Since then, Trump has:
- Refused to concede;
- Claimed he was the victim of massive vote fraud;
- Ordered his attorneys to file at least 60 lawsuits to overturn the election results;
- Tried to strongarm governors and secretaries of state in contested states to give him the election; and
- Encouraged members of the House and Senate to contest the counting of Electoral College votes.
With all of that failed, Trump played his final card to illegally gain another four years of power: He summoned thousands of his Stormtrumper followers to Washington, D.C. And, on January 6, he ordered them to “fight like hell” and “stop the steal.”
Stormtrumpers attacking the Capitol Building
Tyler Merbler from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers attacked and breached the United States Capitol. They easily brushed aside Capitol Police, who made no effort to arrest or shoot them.
Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized. One Capitol police officer was killed and more than 50 others were injured.
Not until nightfall—hours later—did police finally restore order to the capitol.
That night, members of Congress once again met to count Electoral College votes—and certify Biden as the winner.
Nevertheless, Trump still refuses to concede and even attend the inauguration of his successor—something that every outgoing President has done with one exception.
In 1869, outgoing President Andrew Johnson refused to attend the inaugural ceremonies, as President-elect Ulysses S. Grant refused to sit with him in the carriage going to it.
Early on the morning of January 20, Trump reportedly intends to take Air Force One to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He doesn’t intend to meet with Biden or ask him for use of Air Force One to reach Mar-a-Lago.
As a result of the January 6 assault on the Capitol Building, Federal law enforcement is bracing for the worst.
Before that assault, plans had called for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Inaugural celebration. Now 25,000 are being deployed—more troops in Washington than in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their gear includes shields for COVID and combat.
Installing razor wire for security at Capitol
The FBI has warned of armed protests by Right-wing groups in Washington, D.C., and in state capitols across the country. Among the precautions taken:
- A seven-foot, non-scalable fence—topped with barbed wire—has been erected around the Capitol Hill complex.
- Road traffic in much of Washington has been halted.
- Streets have been closed through January 21, the day after the Inauguration.
- The closures are centered around downtown Washington, Capitol Hill, Union Station, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall and the White House.
- Vehicles entering these restricted zones will be swept for weapons and explosives before being allowed to proceed.
- Four major bridges between Virginia and Washington, D.C., will also be closed to all traffic for 48 hours.
- National Guard troops are patrolling the city in Humvees.
- Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, the National Parks Service, FEMA and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department will provide constant security until the event has concluded.
In addition, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement that the United States Army would supply troops to ensure a smooth transition of power.
The last time Washington, D.C. saw such heavy precautions imposed was on March 4, 1861—with the First Inaugural of President Abraham Lincoln. The South had warned that the election of an anti-slavery President would mean the dissolving of the Union
There was a frightening sense of tension as rumors floated of a plot to assassinate Lincoln before or during the ceremony.
Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
Historian Stephen B. Oates, in his highly acclaimed 1977 biography With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, writes:
“[The Presidential] carriage bumped over the cobblestones of Pennsylvania Avenue, part of a gala parade that featured horse-drawn floats and strutting military bands. Double files of cavalry road along the flanks of the carriage and infantry marched behind….
“And troops were everywhere, deployed by General [Winfield] Scott to guard against assassination. Cavalry on skittish horses cordoned off intersections. Infantry mingled with the sidewalk crowds, and sharpshooters peered over rooftops on both sides of the avenue. It was as though the country were already at war.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 11, 2021 at 12:08 am
On December 10, 2019, Sarah Jones, editor-in-chief of PoliticusUSA, did what Senate Republicans fear to do: She openly declared Donald J. Trump to be an illegitimate President whose removal is entirely justified.
She did so in an editorial titled, “Adam Schiff Tells Trump That He Won’t Be Allowed To Cheat In 2020.”
“On Tuesday as House Democrats made the formal announcement of articles of impeachment against President Trump, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff gave a perfectly accurate rebuttal to the plea that Democrats should ‘just wait’ on impeachment, saying that those who argue ‘just wait’ are actually arguing ‘just let him cheat in one more election’ and ‘let him have foreign help just one more time,’” wrote Jones. [Italics added]
Sarah Jones
“This matters because after three years of pretending that Trump is the rightful president, it is finally being acknowledged that not only is he trying to cheat in 2020, but it is again, because he cheated in 2016.
“For three years this nation has endured the abuses of this pretender and his entire party of lock step enablers, save for Rep. Amash of Michigan.
“For three long years those who suggested Trump was not a legitimate president were shamed and silenced, even after the Mueller report made it clear that the Trump campaign sought illegal help and took illegal help from Russia in the 2016 election….
“A cheating cheater.
“A loser.
“A man who can’t win an election and did not win an election of the people fairly.
“Donald Trump can’t win an election without cheating. He knows that, and that’s why it upsets him so much to be called out for his illegal actions.
Donald Trump
“Trump is used to getting away with his criminal entitlements, but today, even if just for a moment before Republicans in the Senate betray their country again by letting Trump off as he attacks the United States, justice has been spoken and served.” [Italics added]
In September, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee began investigating Trump’s attempt to coerce Ukraine to smear a 2020 political rival for the White House—former Vice President Joseph Biden.
And every day of its hearings, Republicans loudly and brutally defended that extortion.
- They didn’t offer any evidence that Trump didn’t try to extort an ally.
- They simply attacked the witnesses who dared to come forward and testify to their own knowledge of it.
- They attacked Schiff, who heads that committee, demanding self-righteously that he resign.
And they continued to do so throughout the Senate “trial”—where they banned witnesses from testifying about Trump’s impeachable behavior.
On February 5, 2020, the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Donald Trump on both impeachment articles: Obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
On January 2, 2021, Trump once again proved he couldn’t win without cheating: He called the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The reason: To pressure him to “find” enough votes to overturn former Vice President Joe Biden’s win in the state’s presidential election.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”
Actually, he didn’t.
He even threatened Raffensperger with criminal prosecuted if he did not change the vote count in Trump’s favor: “That’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen.”
But there is a way to put the impeachment effort into historical perspective.
In 1960, David Hackworth was a young Army captain stationed in West Germany. The end of World War II had revealed the horror of Nazi death camps and the extermination of millions. To everyone, that is, but the Germans.
David Hackworth
Dale Cruse. (Flickr profile.) / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
One winter’s day, Hackworth took his wife, Patty, to Dachau, the infamous concentration camp. In his 1989 memoir, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, he describes that experience:
“The horror of Hitler’s vision was alive and well in this grim death camp: the barracks, the ovens, the electrified barbed wire fences, remained intact. A mound here held the bones of 10,000 Jews; one over there held the bones of 12,000 more.
“The place was a monument to the darkest side of man, and yet—despite the smoke and ash that rained down on their homes from camp incinerators, despite the sickly smell of burning flesh and hair….the villagers claimed they hadn’t known. I couldn’t square it….”
Nor could Hackworth accept that “not one of the laughing, backslapping, congenial comrades I met…had fought the Americans in the West. All assured me they’d been on the Eastern Front, fighting ‘the real enemy,’ the Russians….
“In 15 years the Germans had come a long way in their rewrite of history. But at least there’s Dachau, I thought to myself, to remind them of the truth.”
So, too, will the impeachment of Donald Trump stand as a monument to the sheer evil and infamy of himself and the Republican party.
And it will remind future generations that there were decent Americans who dared to confront that evil in a stand as hopeless and glorious as that at Thermopylae and the Alamo.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 6, 2021 at 12:20 am
On December 10, 2019, Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives voted to send two Articles of Impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee.
Their purpose: To remove Donald J. Trump from office as the 45th President of the United States.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler read the charges:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging former Vice President Joe Biden, his possible Democratic rival.
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
But it was House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) who put the reason for impeachment in stark, easily understandable perspective:
Adam Schiff
“Why not just wait until you get the documents that the White House refuses to turn over, and people should understand what that argument really means.
“It has taken us eight months to get a lower court ruling that Don McGahn has no right to defy Congress. If it takes another eight months to get a second court or Supreme Court decision, that is not the end of the process.
“It comes back to us, and we ask questions because he no longer has immunity and he claims something else that his answers are privileged and we have to go to court for another eight or 16 months.
“The argument why don’t you just wait amounts to this: Why don’t you just let him [Trump] cheat in one more election? Why not let him cheat just one more time? Why not let him have foreign help just one more time? That is what that argument amounts to.”
Schiff was alluding to Trump’s infamous efforts during the 2016 Presidential campaign to enlist Russian aid against his rival, Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Among those efforts:
On July 9, 2016, high-ranking members of his Presidential campaign met at Trump Tower with at least two lobbyists with ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The participants included:
- Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr.;
- His son-in-law, Jared Kushner;
- His then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort;
- Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with ties to Putin; and
- Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of “having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence.”
The purpose of that meeting: To gain access to any “dirt” Russian Intelligence could supply on Clinton.
Donald Trump
On July 22, 2016, during his campaign for President, Trump said at a press conference in Doral, Florida: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you are able to find the 33,000 emails that are missing [from Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s computer]. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
This was nothing less than treason—calling upon a foreign power, hostile to the United States, to interfere in its Presidential election.
Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow targeted Clinton’s personal office and hit more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts.
On January 23, 2020, Schiff tweeted a prophecy—and a warning: “Donald Trump must be convicted and removed from office. Because he will always choose his own personal interest over our national interest. Because in America, right matters. Truth matters. If not, no Constitution can protect us. If not, we are lost.”
It was a concise summary of his closing argument to the Senate. And an accurate prediction of Trump’s future behavior if he escaped conviction and removal.
On February 5, 2020, the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Donald Trump on both impeachment articles: Obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
It was on a par with those racist, all-white juries which had freed Ku Klux Klansmen for the murders of blacks.
On January 2, 2021, Schiff’s prediction came true: Trump called the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The reason: To pressure him to “find” enough votes to overturn former Vice President Joe Biden’s win in the state’s presidential election.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”
Actually, Trump didn’t win the state. Biden carried Georgia by an 11,779-vote margin—which has been certified three times.
Trump repeatedly cited disproven claims of fraud in the election—and threatened Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, that they could be criminally prosecuted if they did not change the vote count in his favor: “That’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen.”
The phone call was recorded. And shortly afterward, the Washington Post obtained a copy of that recording—which, in turn, was soon leaked to CNN.
David Shafer, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, responded with two tweets after the Washington Post released excerpts from the recording:
“President @realDonaldTrump has filed two lawsuits – federal and state – against @GaSecofState. The telephone conference call @GaSecofState secretly recorded was a ‘confidential settlement discussion’ of that litigation, which is still pending.”
Thus, Trump’s reaction to being exposed for his latest illegal act was that of a Mafia boss finding out that his phone has been tapped: He doesn’t deny his evil; he simply wants the evidence of it suppressed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 5, 2021 at 12:05 am
It’s one of the pivotal moments in the classic 1962 movie, The Longest Day.
It’s June 6, 1944. The Allies have launched their long-expected attack on the French coast of Normandy.
This is an all-out assault on Adolf Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall,” to drive German armies out of the European countries they had conquered in 1940.
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, the commander of all German forces in France, fears the worst.
“We can’t take any chances. I want the reserve panzers moved forward,” he tells his subordinate commander, Major General Gunther Blumentritt.
“But we need permission from the Fuhrer’s headquarters,” replies Blumentritt.
Von Rundstedt: “They won’t dare refuse me! Call the Fuhrer’s headquarters and insist that the panzers be released to me.”
Blumentritt makes the call to Berlin.
The response is disastrous: Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Wehrmacht, refuses the request. He will not release the panzers without Adolf Hitler’s approval. And the Fuhrer—who stays up late at night and sleeps during much of the day—is still sleeping .
“This is history,” says Blumentritt to an aide. “We are living an historical moment. We are going to lose the war because our glorious Fuhrer has taken a sleeping pill and is not to be awakened.
“Think of it, Kurt. We are witnessing something which historians will say is completely improbable. And yet it is true. The Fuhrer is not to be awakened! I sometimes wonder which side God is on.”
Gunther Blumentritt
And just as Bluemtritt predicted, defeat came soon for the German forces in France.
Today, Gunther Blumentritt’s words have taken on a special meaning for American citizens: “We are witnessing something which historians will say is completely improbable. And yet it is true.”
On November 3, Joe Biden became President-elect of the United States by winning 81,283,495 votes, or 51.4% of the vote, compared to 74,223,755 votes, or 46.9% of the vote cast for President Donald Trump.
In the Electoral College—which actually determines the winner—the results were even more stunning: 306 votes for Biden, compared with 232 for Trump. It takes 270 votes to be declared the victor.
Joe Biden
From the moment Biden was declared the winner, Trump set out to overturn that verdict.
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
But states ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. None were supported by evidence of fraud—as even Trump’s lawyers admitted when questioned by judges.
From November 3 to December 14, Trump and his allies lost 59 times in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges.
On November 19, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House—to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Donald Trump
On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in votes were unconstitutional.
Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.
On December 10, the Supreme Court refused to let a Texas lawsuit overturn the results in four battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The majority of their votes had been cast for Biden.
With the Senate due to certify states’ Electoral College results on January 6, Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to flip the results of the election to give him a win. This despite the fact that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 limits the Vice President to a largely ceremonial role.
Then, on December 30, Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley announced that, on January 6, 2021, he would object to the certification of some states’ Electoral College results. As many as 140 House Republicans could join him.
This will force Republicans to:
- Vote to reject Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud; or
- Disenfranchise millions of voters who voted for Biden.
Never before has a losing Presidential candidate mounted a legal coup to overturn an election’s results.
“Josh Hawley and anyone who supports his effort are engaged in the attempted overthrow of democracy,” Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said.
“There is no evidence that there was any fraud. Senator Hawley apparently believes that if a Democrat wins the presidential race, it must be illegitimate by definition, even absent any actual evidence of misbehavior.”
Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse bluntly offered the reason for this effort: ‘”We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage. But they’re wrong—and this issue is bigger than anyone’s personal ambitions.”
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BRING THE WAR ON TERROR HOME: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2021 at 12:10 amBefore 9/11, the United States did not attack Islamic terrorism in a coordinated basis.
In the October 4, 2001 episode of the PBS investigative series, “Frontline,” legendary journalist Bob Woodward described the results that followed:
“These terrorist incidents—they used the tools that were available, but it was never in a coherent way. I know from talking to those people at the time, it was always, ‘Oh, we’ve got this crisis. We’re dealing with the Achille Lauro now,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Quaddafi,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Libyan hit squads,’ or ‘We’re dealing with Beirut.’
“And it never—they never got in a position where they said, ‘You know, this is a real serious threat,’ not just episodically, but it’s going to be a threat to this country throughout the administration, future administrations.
“We need to organize to fight it. It can’t be a back-bench operation for the FBI and the CIA. It’s got to be somebody’s issue, so it’s on their desk every day. What do we know? What’s being planned? What are the threats out there?”
Bob Woodward
The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center well illustrates what Woodward was talking about.
On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,336 pound urea nitrate-hydrogen device was supposed to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, bringing down both towers and killing tens of thousands of people.
It failed to do so, but killed six people, and injured over 1,000.
The attack was planned by a group of Islamic terrorists including Ramzi Yousef, Mohammed Salameh, Abdul Rachman Yasin, Mahmud Abouhalima, Ahmed Ajaj and Nidal A. Ayyad.
They received financing from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who later became the principal financier of the 9/11 attacks.
Instead of treating this as a declaration of Islamic war upon the United States, the newly-installed Bill Clinton administration chose to consider it a purely criminal matter.
In March 1994, four men were convicted of carrying out the bombing: Abouhalima, Ajaj, Ayyad, and Salameh. The charges included conspiracy, explosive destruction of property, and interstate transportation of explosives.
In November 1997, two more were convicted: Yousef, the organizer behind the bombings, and Eyad Ismoil, who drove the truck carrying the bomb.
On September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.
They did so by turning four commercial jetliners into fuel-bombs—and crashing them into, respectively, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.; and—unintentionally—a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
(The fourth airliner had been aimed at the White House or the Capitol Building. But its passengers, alerted by radio broadcasts of the doom awaiting them, resolved to take over the plane instead. The hijackers slammed the jet into the ground to avoid capture.)
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
But within less than a month, American warplanes began carpet-bombing Afghanistan, whose rogue Islamic “government” refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, the had of Al-Qaeda who had masterminded the attacks.
By December, 2001, the power of the Taliban was broken—and bin Laden was driven into hiding in Pakistan.
For more than 16 years, the United States—through its global military and espionage networks—relentlessly hunted down most of those responsible for that September carnage.
On May 1, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALS invaded bin Laden’s fortified mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan—and shot him dead.
And today—almost 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States continues to wage war against Islamic terrorists.
One by one, the leading figures of Taliban, Haqqani and Al-Qaeda have been identified, located with help from coerced or paid-off informants, and targeted for drone strikes. Taking a leadership position in any of these—or other—Islamic terrorist groups has become virtually a death-sentence.
A Predator drone
Nor is the Pentagon the only agency targeting Islamic terrorism. After 9/11, the Treasury Department initiated the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) to identify, track, and pursue terrorists and their networks.
The program tracks terrorist money flows, assists in uncovering terrorist cells and mapping terrorist networks within the United States and abroad.
Yet another result of 9/11 was increased cooperation between the FBI and the CIA.
The CIA’s mandate, prior to the September 11 attacks, had been to target foreign enemies. The FBI’s mandate had been to target domestic ones.
This often brought the two agencies into bureaucratic conflict when confronting foreign-based or -financed terrorists. Neither agency was certain where its jurisdiction ended and the other one’s began.
The 9/11 attacks forced the FBI and CIA—and, even more importantly, Congress—to recognize the need for sharing information.
Almost 20 years after the devastating attacks of September 11, no Islamic terrorist group has mounted a similar one in the United States.
But on January 6, thousands of Right-wing supporters of President Donald J. Trump—many of them armed—stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Inside, members of Congress were counting Electoral Votes cast in the 2020 Presidential election. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden was expected to emerge the winner.
For Trump—who had often “joked” about becoming “President-for-Life”—this was intolerable. And it must be prevented by any means—legal or otherwise.
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