Posts Tagged ‘FBI’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 12, 2024 at 12:08 am
Where does loyalty leave off and conscience begin?
Specifically: If you’re a bodyguard for a man you know represents a genuine threat to democracy, what are your obligations to defend him? Should you be as willing to “take a bullet” for him as for someone you truly admire?
Members of Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard faced no such qualms. Right up to the bitter end, with Russian forces only blocks from the Fuhrerbunker, they manned their posts, ready to die for the man who had led them—and Germany—into the ultimate catastrophe.
They made Hitler a closely-guarded target.
He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.
But his single greatest protection—he claimed—was an instinct for danger. He would suddenly change his schedule—to drop in where he was least expected. Or suddenly depart an event where he was expected to stay a long time.
Adolf Hitler
It wasn’t Hitler’s bodyguards who posed a threat to his life. It was the colonels and generals of the German General Staff.
On August 20, 1934, members of the German army, navy and air force were required to swear the “Law On The Allegiance of Civil Servants and Soldiers of the Armed Forces.”
Whereas members of the armed forces had previously sworn loyalty to Germany, the new law required them to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler personally.
In coming years, this would prove a deadly trap for many German officers—forcing them to choose between betraying a sacred oath and remaining loyal to a man who was clearly driving Germany to ruin.
For those officers who could not abide Germany’s coming destruction, the choice was simple: Hitler had to go.
A series of assassination attempts were made against Hitler. All of them involved time-bombs. And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff.
In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode. In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off. He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it exploded.
Hitler came closest to death on July 20, 1944.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg was the driving force in a plot to assassinate Hitler with a time bomb.
Claus von Stauffenberg
He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941). While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943, when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.
For most of his fellow officers, the motive was craven: The “happy time” of German victories was over. Germany was losing the war it had unleashed on the world in 1939—and now they feared the worst.
This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive.
The Wehrmacht in Russia
The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians. Many had died in combat. Others had been murdered as captives. Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the notorious Russian winter.
For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.
Thus, Stauffenberg—more than many Germans—knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect if the “Thousand-Year Reich” fell. Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans—even members of the Wehrmacht—were criminals.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces—well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany. Stauffenberg didn’t want to arrest Hitler; he wanted to kill him. A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
Stauffenberg intended to carry his bomb—hidden in a briefcase—into a “Hitler conference” room packed with military officers. Rigged with a time-fuse, it would be left there while he found an excuse to leave. After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.
Stauffenberg intended to direct the new government that would replace that of the Nazis—and open peace talks with the British and Americans. With Hitler dead, the coup—“Operation Valkyrie”—would be on.
Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. They would inform the British and Americans of Germany’s willingness to surrender. Provided, of course, that the vengeance-seeking Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it—appropriately enough—“Wolf’s Lair.”
Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler—who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table. Then he excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.
At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 11, 2024 at 12:22 am
In the classic 1969 Western, The Wild Bunch, the outlaw gang is pursued by a posse led by Deke Thornton, one of its own former members.
This triggers a furious exchange between the gang’s two leaders:
DUTCH ENGSTROM: Damn that Deke Thornton to hell!
PIKE BISHOP: What would you do in his place? He gave his word.
DUTCH ENGSTROM: He gave his word to a railroad!
PIKE BISHOP: It’s his word!
DUTCH ENGSTROM: That’s not what counts! It’s who you give it to!
Where does loyalty leave off and conscience begin?
Specifically: If you’re a bodyguard for a man you know represents a genuine threat to democracy, what are your obligations to defend him? Should you be as willing to “take a bullet” for him as for someone you truly admire?
In October, 2016, Kerry O’Grady, a senior agent in the Denver field office of the United States Secret Service, found herself facing such a quandary.
She had made a series of now-deleted postings on Facebook during the 2016 Presidential campaign saying that she supported Democrat Hillary Clinton and that she would not honor a federal law that prevents agents like her from publicly airing their political beliefs.
Kerry O’Grady
“As a public servant for nearly 23 years, I struggle not to violate the Hatch Act. So I keep quiet and skirt the median,” she wrote in one Facebook post. “To do otherwise can be a criminal offense for those in my position. Despite the fact that I am expected to take a bullet for both sides.”
She had also suggested on Facebook that she would not defend President Donald Trump should someone try to shoot him.
“But this world has changed and I have changed. And I would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be disaster to this country and the strong and amazing women and minorities who reside here. Hatch Act be damned. I am with Her [Hillary Clinton],” she wrote.
The Secret Service said in a statement that it could not comment on a specific personnel matter but that it was “aware of the postings and the agency is taking quick and appropriate action.
“All Secret Service agents and employees are held to the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct. Any allegations of misconduct are taken seriously and swiftly investigated.”
Secret Service agents
O’Grady was placed on administrative leave on January 28, 2017 and suspended with pay in February. The disciplinary action took months because of her high rank.
In March, 2019, she retired from the Secret Service.
During the next four years—2017 to 2021—Donald Trump came perilously close to becoming an absolute dictator.
Among his infamies and crimes:
- Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press as “the enemy of the American people” for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters.
- Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
- Attacking and alienating America’s oldest allies, such as Canada and Great Britain.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump—and continuing to investigate Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
Donald Trump
- Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his useless “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay for 35 days.
- Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, killing 400,000 Americans by the time he left office.
- Repeatedly lying—while still in office and afterward—that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him by massive voter fraud.
- Illegally trying to pressure state legislatures and governors to stop the certification of the vote that had made Joe Biden the president-elect.
- Inciting his followers to attack the Capitol Building where Senators and Representatives were meeting to count the Electoral Votes won by himself and Joseph Biden. His objective: Stop the count, which he knew would prove him the loser.
In the classic 1981 crime drama, Prince of the City, Danny Ciello (Treat Williams) turns federal witness against his fellow crime-committing police officers.
His mobbed-up cousin, Nick, warns him that the Mafia wants him dead—but that his greatest danger might come from the bodyguards now surrounding him: “Anyone can be hit. You know that. All a guard has to do is look the wrong way for a second.”
Had that happened while Trump occupied the White House, American democracy would not now be imperiled by a second Trump administration.
Bodyguards for Adolf Hitler faced no such qualms. Right up to the bitter end, with Russian forces only blocks from the Fuhrerbunker, they manned their posts, ready to die for the man who had led them, Germany and the world into the ultimate catastrophe.
Within six years, Hitler had:
- Ignited World War II in 1939 through his invasion of Poland.
- Directly or indirectly caused the deaths of 50 million people worldwide.
- Exterminated six million Jews throughout Eastern Europe and Russia through mass shootings or gassings in a vast system of concentration camps.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 5, 2024 at 12:16 am
Commentators have long speculated on why millions of Americans remain fanatically committed to Donald Trump.
There has been far less speculation on why so many law enforcers have turned a blind eye to Trump’s decades of criminality, if not treason.
Among those guilty:
- The Justice Department did not indict Trump for the series of threats he made—directly and indirectly—against Republicans and Democrats throughout the 2016 Presidential campaign.
- The United States Secret Service did not charge him with threatening the life of Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: “Hillary [Clinton] wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her [Supreme Court] judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
- The Justice Department did not prosecute Trump for treason, even though he solicited aid from Russia, a nation hostile to the United States. On July 27, 2016. Trump publicly invited “Russia”—i.e., Vladimir Putin—to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails: “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
There are at least two reasons why Trump has been allowed to insult and even threaten prosecutors and judges without facing the punishment an ordinary citizen would:
Cowardice: They fear Trump will slander them by claiming he’s the victim of a “witch hunt” to remove him from the 2024 Presidential race.
And/or they fear physical attack from his legions of fanatical followers.
Awe of the Presidency: They fear their careers will be tainted by prosecuting or judging a man who won the votes of 70 million Americans.
There are, however, remedies for both cowardice and awe:
Cowardice: Prosecutors and judges should expect threats and slanders from Trump. This is how he has traditionally responded to attempts to hold him legally accountable.
If judges and prosecutors fear violence from Trump’s fanatical followers, they can easily obtain round-the-clock protection by local and/or federal law enforcement agencies.
Awe: Trump is no longer President. He no longer commands Presidential immunity nor the powers of that office—such as being able to cite “executive privilege” to prevent the release of documents or testimony.
His refusals to accept this reality should be bluntly ignored.
More importantly, as President, he:
- Took no action to protect Americans from the deadly COVID-19 virus;
- Constantly sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the United States;
- Attacked the independent judiciary and free press;
- Praised Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen;
- Fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump and turn the agency into Trump’s private police force;
- Used his position as President to further enrich himself in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution;
- Attacked and alienated America’s oldest democratic allies, such as Canada and Great Britain;
- Refused to accept the results of a legitimate Presidential election; and
- Incited a deadly attack on Congress so he could illegally remain in office.
Those are only some of the despicable actions he took while in office.
The Presidency has long held most Americans in awe. This is largely because the man (and it’s always been a man) who holds it is elected by all Americans, and not just those of a particular city or state.
And he alone has control of America’s enormous military—the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force—as well as a nuclear arsenal that can literally destroy all life on Earth.
Americans have long assumed that a victorious Presidential candidate has been blessed by God, and thus automatically commands a respect—if not reverence—denied to ordinary mortals.
But respect must be earned. And anyone guilty of even a small number of the crimes committed by Donald Trump long ago forfeited any right to such regard.
Once a President leaves office, he should be treated as any other American citizen—and held to the same standards as an ordinary citizen.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman and father of modern political science, has eloquently warned of the dangers of ignoring this truth:
…No well-ordered republic should ever cancel the crimes of its citizens by their merits. But having established rewards for good actions and penalties for evil ones, and having rewarded a citizen for conduct who afterwards commits a wrong, he should be chastised for that without regard to his previous merits. And a state that properly observes this principle will long enjoy its liberty, but if otherwise, it will speedily come to ruin.
For if a citizen who has rendered some eminent service to the state should add to the reputation and influence which he has thereby acquired the confident audacity of being able to commit any wrong without fear of punishment, he will in a little while become so insolent and overbearing as to put an end to all power of the law.
Putting an end to “all power of the law” and setting himself up as “The Law” is precisely what Donald Trump tried to do after losing the 2020 Presidential election—and is still trying to do.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 4, 2024 at 12:13 am
Donald Trump has lost the Presidential immunity shielding him from a wide range of civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions.
He now faces unprecedented challenges from a legal system that had long ignored his rampant criminality.
Thus, regaining that Presidential immunity is arguably the biggest reason why he wants to become President again.
Although he no longer holds the Presidency, Trump repeatedly acts as though he does. He has asserted “executive privilege” on behalf of former members of his administration to block their testimony before courts, grand juries and even the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith.
He hid behind layers of Secret Service protection while attacking Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and even New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over his arraignment and trial in the Stormy Daniels hush money payment case.
Juan Merchan
“The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of grand jury information,” Trump told supporters at Mar-a-Lago. “For which he should be prosecuted, or at a minimum he should resign.”
As for Merchan: “I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter work[ed] for Kamala Harris.”
In Trump’s vocabulary, “Trump-hating” is the absolute worst sin/crime that can be committed.
Another man he has attacked as a “Trump hater” is Special Counsel Jack Smith, who’s also investigating Trump’s role in inciting his followers to attack Congress on January 6, 2021.
Jack Smith
The purpose of that attack: To stop the Electoral College vote count that would certify former Vice President Joseph Biden as the actual winner of the 2020 Presidential election.
In a July 4, 2023 post on his website, Truth Social, Trump falsely claimed:
“As my Poll numbers go higher & higher, the Communists, Marxists, & Fascists get more & more CRAZY with their ridiculous Indictments & Election Interference plans & plots, all controlled by an out of control, & very corrupt, DOJ/FBI. They have WEAPONIZED Law Enforcement in America at a level not seen before.”
Trump’s reference to “Communists, Marxists, & Fascists” as his enemies is particularly noteworthy.
He was, after all, the President who:
- Defended Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against findings by the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency that Russia had interfered in the 2020 Presidential election;
- Boasted that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un “fell in love” after an exchange of letters; and
- Praised Chinese strongman Xi Jinping for making himself “President-for-Life: “No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
Given his subsequent efforts to remain in office despite losing the 2020 Presidential election, it’s clear that he had himself in mind when he “joked” about “giving that a shot some day.”
In his post, Trump continued: “Deranged Jack Smith, who is a sick puppet for A.G. Garland & Crooked Joe Biden, should be DEFUNDED & put out to rest. Republicans must get tough or the Dems will steal another Election. MAGA!”
By “A.G. Garland” Trump meant Attorney General Merrick Garland. By “put out to rest,” he meant that his followers should assassinate Smith.
Despite all this, Trump’s millions of Right-wing followers remain fanatically loyal to him.
Why?
On August 30, 2017, an article in Salon examined why Donald Trump’s base supports him so fanatically: “Most Americans Strongly Dislike Trump, But the Angry Minority That Adores Him Controls Our Politics.”
It described these voters as representing about one-third of the Republican party:
“These are older and more conservative white people, for the most part, who believe he should not listen to other Republicans and should follow his own instincts….
“They like Trump’s coarse personality, and approve of the fact that he treats women like his personal playthings. They enjoy it when he expresses sympathy for neo-Nazis and neo-Confederate white supremacists.
Supporters giving the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute to Trump
“They cheer when he declares his love for torture, tells the police to rough up suspects and vows to mandate the death penalty for certain crimes. (Which of course the president cannot do.)
“…This cohort of the Republican party didn’t vote for Trump because of his supposed policies on trade or his threat to withdraw from NATO. They voted for him because he said out loud what they were thinking. A petty, sophomoric, crude bully is apparently what they want as a leader.”
What is harder to explain is why so many law enforcers have turned a blind eye to Trump’s decades of criminality, if not treason. Among those who have:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates. After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
- Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who says he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons. After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 3, 2024 at 1:09 am
On May 30, 2024 former President Donald Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury of all 34 charges of falsifying business records He thus became the first current or former president to be convicted of a felony.
He’s also the first major-party presidential nominee to be convicted of a crime in the midst of a campaign for the White House.
On April 1, CNN reported/editorialized: “The Manhattan district attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election.”
Throughout the trial—which began on April 15—Trump aggressively attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as pursuing a leftist agenda to prevent him from running for President in 2024.
“If they can do this to me,” he has thundered in countless fund-raising appeals to his Right-wing followers, “they can do this to you.”
Which raises the question: How many others have tried to illegally pay hush-money to a porn “actress” to silence her during a Presidential campaign?
Nor is that the end of Trump’s prosecutorial troubles.
On June 13, 2023, he became the first ex-President to be formally booked by the Justice Department on federal charges.
Seal of the Department of Justice
He’s now facing 40 felony charges based on his retaining and hiding classified government documents from authorities.
These charges include:
- Willfully retaining national defense information: Storing 31 classified documents at his estate at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.
- Conspiring to obstruct justice: Conspiring to keep those documents from the grand jury.
- Withholding a document or a record: Misleading one of his attorneys by moving boxes of classified documents so the attorney could not find or introduce them to the grand jury.
- Concealing a document in a federal investigation: Hiding Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago from the FBI and causing a false certificate to be submitted to the FBI.
- Scheme to conceal: Hiding his continued possession of documents from the FBI and the grand jury.
Donald Trump
Each charge carries a maximum fine of $250,000, with maximum prison sentences between five and 20 years.
According to Trump, facing 40 felony charges is “an honor because I’m doing it for you, I’m doing it for our country, to show how evil and sinister a place it has become. Make America great again! We’re not going to let them get away with it.”
In short: To save America, Trump has volunteered for this indictment. He isn’t the one who illegally removed and tried to retain almost 300 highly classified documents.
You did.
And he, like Jesus, is taking your sins upon himself.
Trump has repeatedly tried to make himself appear the victim of “a Democratic-led witch hunt.” But if politics has tainted the dispensing of justice in Trump’s case, it’s been on his behalf.
As President, he had immunity from criminal and civil lawsuits. He couldn’t be tried at local, state and federal levels.
And he had good reason to avoid facing trial at any level. He was facing at least five cases while he held office:
- The Manhattan District Attorney’s criminal case against the Trump Organization: For falsifying New York business records to conceal his hush money payoff to porn “star” Stormy Daniels for his extramarital tryst with her.
- The New York Attorney General’s civil investigation into the Trump Organization: For engaging in years of financial fraud to obtain a host of economic benefits.
- The E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit: For calling her a liar after she claimed he raped her in the 1990s.
- The Mary Trump lawsuit: For defrauding his niece out of millions of dollars.
- The Trump Tower lawsuit: Five people claim that Keith Schiller, the Trump Organization’s then chief of security, hit one of them on the head when they were protesting outside the company’s Manhattan headquarters in 2015.
Since leaving the White House, Trump has seen additional cases pile up against him. Among these:
- The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election.
- The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s inciting an attack on Congress on January 6, 2021.
- The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s illegally taking classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate and refusing to return them to the government.
- The House of Representatives’ January 6 lawsuit for trying to prevent Congress from certifying the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021.
- The Eric Swalwell lawsuit by the California Representative for trying to block the Electoral College vote count.
- The Capitol Police January 6 lawsuits for emotional and physical injuries sustained by officers during the January 6, 2021 attack by Trump’s followers.
- The Michael Cohen lawsuit by Trump’s former attorney and fixer. He claims Trump retaliated against him after he said he was writing a tell-all about his years working for Trump.
- The Class Action lawsuit against the Trumps [Donald, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric] and their business. This alleges that “the defendants used their brand name to defraud thousands of working-class individuals by promoting numerous businesses in exchange for ’secret payments.’”
Now his Presidential immunity is gone and he faces unprecedented challenges from a legal system that had long ignored his rampant criminality.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 23, 2024 at 12:36 am
The upcoming 2024 Presidential election has raised serious issues which demand addressing.
Unfortunately, it’s too late to apply such remedies to this election. But they could be in place by the time the 2028 election occurs.
Reform #1: Institute mandatory FBI background investigations on all declared Presidential candidates.
Donald Trump’s trial for hush money payments to porn “star” Stormy Daniels has highlighted an issue that should have been addressed long ago: Americans don’t know as much about their candidates for President as they think they do.
- As the trial testimony of former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker has revealed: In August, 2015, he met with Trump at Trump Tower and offered to use the Enquirer to catch and kill any allegations of extramarital affairs against Trump.
- Later he personally facilitated a $150,000 payment to former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal to keep her affair with Trump hushed up.
- This came in addition to Trump’s paying $130,000 in hush money to Daniels to ensure his 2006 tryst with her didn’t emerge during the campaign.
Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels
- Similarly, in 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy successfully ran for President while concealing his affliction with Addison’s Disease—an insufficiency of the Adrenal glands that can prove fatal.
Thus, all future candidates for President should be required to submit to full FBI background investigations at least one year before election time—with the results released before the election. Any candidate refusing to participate should be barred from competing.
You’re not allowed to become an FBI agent or Cabinet Secretary without passing a background investigation. You shouldn’t be allowed to become President without one, either.
Reform #2: No Presidential candidate can be over 70 at the time s/he leaves office.
The Federal Aviation Administration mandates that commercial airlines cannot employ pilots after they reach the age of 65.
FBI agents have a mandatory retirement age of 57.
Commissioned officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps must retire by 64.
Yet Donald Trump is 77 and will turn 78 on June 14. Joseph Biden is 81 and will turn 82 on November 20.
If Trump wins, he will be 82 in 2028, his last year in office (assuming he doesn’t stage another—and successful—coup attempt). If Biden wins re-election, in 2028 he will be 86 (assuming he’s still alive by then).
Funeral for Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev – 1982
The Presidency is notorious for prematurely ageing its occupants: “The typical president ages two years for every year they are in office,” said Dr. Michael Roizen. He used presidential medical records from the 1920s through today to reach this conclusion.
The United States Presidency is becoming a mirror-image of the former Soviet Union:
- In 1982, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev died at age 75.
- He was succeeded by Yuri Andropov—who died, in 1984, at age 69.
- He, in turn, was followed by Konstantin Chernenko—who died in 1985 at age 73.
Finally, the Politburo—tired of replacing the General Secretary every two years—elected 54-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev, who lived to leave office six years later at age 60.
In the United States, having two geriatric Presidential candidates has become comic fodder for late-night TV hosts. Yet voters fear that neither candidate can handle the strains of another four years as President—or even survive a full term.
Reform #3: Abolish the honorific title of “Mr. President” for ex-Presidents.
This used to be offered as a tribute to a former President for having won the support of the majority of Americans.
But Donald Trump has corrupted this phrase, as he has so much else in American life. Since losing the 2020 Presidential election, he has continued to insist that he is the legitimate President of the United States, and Joseph Biden is a usurper.
When his fanatical followers refer to him as “President Trump,” that is what they mean—thus trying to de-legitimize Biden’s Presidency and elevate Trump as the rightful victor.
The 2005 Stolen Valor Act makes it a federal misdemeanor for anyone to falsely claim to have received any U.S. military decoration or medal—such as the Medal of Honor or Purple Heart. Violating the law can lead to fines, up to a year in prison, or both.
Thus, Congress should mandate that only the current holder of the Presidency has the legal right to call himself “Mr. President”—and that right ends when he no longer occupies the White House.
Reform #4: Require millionaire ex-Presidents to pay for Secret Service protection.
Every ex-President since Dwight D. Eisenhower—even Jimmy Carter—has been a millionaire.
Assigning a platoon of elite Secret Service agents to watch over every ex-President 24/7 is a huge expense.
The case of Ronald Reagan is instructive: At a cost to the government of $10 million annually, Reagan—while living in a 7,200 square-foot mansion overlooking Beverly Hills—received lifetime Secret Service protection from 40 fulltime agents.
United States Secret Service
It’s also an unnecessary expense. There has never been an attack on an ex-President in all of American history.
Still, if the powers-that-be consider this essential, then millionaire ex-Presidents should be required to pay for their protection—just as moguls and Hollywood celebrities do.
As the situation now exists, the government is simply providing welfare for the rich. Whereas the poor face strict limits on how high their income can be and still receive welfare.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 15, 2024 at 12:14 am
On September 2, 1964, the FBI launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Ku Klux 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.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.”
William C. Sullivan
According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:
“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.”
A similar effort, focusing on Right-wing terrorism, could include the following:
- The FBI’s designating Right-wing political and terrorist groups as the Nation’s #1 enemy.
- Reviving the FBI’s legendary COINTELPRO (“Counterintelligence Program”) that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1960s. Among the methods that can be used:
- Turning the Bureau’s powerful arsenal—bugs, wiretaps, informants, SWAT teams—on them.
- Buying the cooperation of informants within Right-wing organizations.
- Conducting “black bag jobs” to steal membership lists of of Right-wing organizations.
- Breaking up the marriages of prominent Right-wingers by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
- Informing the employers of known Right-wing terrorists of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them.
- Contacting the news media to publicize the arrests of prominent Right-wing leaders.
- When Right-wing terrorists target Federal law enforcement agents and/or their families for harassment or worse, they can be targeted for similar intimidation or removal.
FBI SWAT member
A revised COINTELPRO could be supplemented by the following:
- Creating tip hotlines for reporting illegal Right-wing activities—and offering rewards for information that leads to arrests.
- Prosecuting militia groups for violating Federal firearms laws.
- Treating calls for the murder of members of Congress—as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has done-–as felonies punishable by lengthy imprisonment.
- Prosecuting Right-wing leaders involved in the treasonous assault on the United States Capitol Building.
- Prosecuting as “accessories to treason” all those Republican members of Congress who stoked Right-wing anger by lying that the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, although every objective news source proved he had lost.
- Directing the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) at fundamentalist Christian churches that finance Right-wing terrorism—just as it halts the financing of Islamic terrorist groups by Islamic organizations.
- Using drones, planes and/or helicopters to provide security against similar Right-wing terror demonstrations—especially in Washington, D.C.
- Using the Federal Communications Commission to ban Fox News—the Nation’s #1 Right-wing propaganda network—from representing itself as a legitimate news network, and requiring that its stories carry labels warning viewers: “This is Right-wing propaganda, NOT news.”
- Encouraging victims of Right-wing hate-speech to file libel/slander lawsuits against their abusers—such as the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School successfully did against Alex Jones.
- Using Federal anti-terrorist laws to arrest, prosecute and imprison Right-wingers who openly carry firearms and threaten violence, even if states allow such display of firearms.
- Seizing the assets of individuals and organizations found guilty of Right-wing terrorism offenses.
When you are constantly looking over your shoulder, your enemies are winning. When your enemies are constantly looking over their shoulder, you are winning.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 14, 2024 at 12:10 am
Donald Trump’s followers are doing what even the Mafia has never dared: Threatening the lives of FBI agents and openly challenging the authority of the Justice Department.
On August 8, 2022, the FBI, under a search warrant issued by the Justice Department, seized 11 sets of classified documents from the former President’s home at Mar-a-Lago. These included four sets that were classified as “top secret,” according to the unsealed search warrant.
Since then, Trump’s legions of fanatical Right-wing followers have vented their fury at a wide range of their self-declared enemies: President Joe Biden, Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department—-and especially the FBI.
On August 12, 2022, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security [DHS] issued a joint Intelligence bulletin warning of the increased threats aimed at federal law enforcement agencies.
FBI seal
“Since 8 August 2022, the FBI and DHS have identified multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant.
“The FBI and DHS have also observed the personal identifying information of possible targets of violence, such as home addresses and identification of family members, disseminated online as additional targets.”
“These threats are occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites, web forums, video sharing platforms, and image boards. The FBI and DHS would like to ensure that law enforcement, court, and government personnel are aware of the range of threats and criminal and violent incidents.
“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion.'”
Even the Mafia—with one or two exceptions—has never threatened the lives of FBI agents. And when individual mobsters did, they found the consequences frightening.
In April, 1963, four New York mobsters knocked FBI agent John Foley to the ground, and then severely beat and kicked him. Foley had been conducting surveillance at the Brooklyn funeral of Carmine “The Doctor” Lombardozzi, a capo in the Gambino Mafia Family.
The FBI retaliated by launching an all-out war against the Gambinos. Agents leaned on the cartel’s boss, underboss, counselor and lieutenants. The Bureau also intensified the use of illegal electronic surveillance (wiretaps and hidden microphones) against the mobsters.
Map of Mafia families
Angelo Bruno, the boss of the Philadelphia crime syndicate, unwittingly informed a hidden microphone about how the FBI brutally drove home the message to “boss of all bosses” Carlo Gambino:
BRUNO: “They [the FBI] went to Carlo and named all his capos [lieutenants] to him. The FBI asked him: “Did you change the laws in your family, that you could hit FBI men, punch and kick them? Well, this is the test—that if you change the laws, and now you are going to hit FBI men, every time we pick up one of your people we are going to break their heads for them.’
“And, really, they picked up our guy, they almost killed him, the FBI. They don’t do that, you know. But they picked up one of his fellows and crippled him. They said, ‘This is an example. Now, the next time anyone lays a hand on an FBI man, that’s just a warning. There’s nothing else we have got to tell you.'”
Word traveled quickly through the nationwide organized crime network—and its leaders decreed there should be no further assaults on FBI agents.
The FBI may be gearing up to declare war on the radical Right. And it could be done the same way the FBI destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1960s.
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.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 13, 2024 at 1:22 am
After taking office as President, Donald Trump openly waged war on his own Justice Department—and especially its chief investigative agency, the FBI.
FBI headquarters
Among his attacks on federal law enforcers:
- Fired James Comey, the FBI director pursuing an investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 Presidential race to ensure Trump’s election.
- Threatened to fire Independent Counsel Robert Mueller, who continued that investigation after he fired Comey.
- Repeatedly attacked—verbally and on Twitter—his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.
- (Sessions did so after the press revealed that, during the 2016 race, he twice met secretly with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.)
- Repeatedly attacked the integrity of the FBI, raising the possibility of his firing more of its senior leadership for investigating his ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
- Forced House Republicans to release a memo falsely accusing the FBI of pursuing a vendetta against him.
But the FBI could have refused to meekly accept such assaults.
A February 2, 2022 episode of the popular CBS police drama, “Blue Bloods,” offered a vivid lesson on bureaucratic self-defense against tyrants.
A shootout erupts in a crowded pub between a gunman and NYPD officers. Results: One dead gunman and one wounded bystander.
Problem: The bystander is an aide to New York Governor Martin Mendez.
Mendez visits One Police Plaze, NYPD headquarters, for a private chat with Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck). From the outset, he’s aggressive, rude and threatening.
MENDEZ: I know you guys like to whitewash officer-involved shootings.
REAGAN: I do not.
MENDEZ: That’s not going to happen here. I want the cop who shot my guy fired and charged.
REAGAN: If the grand jury indicts, my officer could be terminated.
MENDEZ: We all want to protect our people, but mine come first.
Governor Mendez leaves Commissioner Reagan’s office. Later, he returns:
MENDEZ: We’ve got a serious problem.
REAGAN: Why? The grand jury declined to indict my officer.
MENDEZ: Your cop fired into a crowded room.
REAGAN: She returned fire, took out the shooter and likely saved lives.
MENDEZ: What are you going to do?
REAGAN: Our Internal Affairs investigation supports the grand jury’s finding, so the case is closed.
MENDEZ: Either you fire this cop, or I’ll order the Attorney General to investigate every questionable police shooting in the past 10 years and hold public hearings out loud and lights up.
REAGAN: Everybody loves a circus.
MENDEZ: Except the guy who’s got to shovel up afterwards.
At the end of the episode, a third—and final—meeting occurs in a restaurant between Reagan and Mendez.
MENDEZ: Have you dumped the cop who shot my guy?
REAGAN: No.
MENDEZ: Bad news.
REAGAN: Depends on what you compare it to. It turns out that your aide wasn’t drinking alone the night he was shot.
MENDEZ: So what? He’s single.
REAGAN: He was with a married woman.
MENDEZ: That’s on her, not on him.
REAGAN: Except she is married to his boss, your Chief of Staff.
MENDEZ: Sheesh!
REAGAN: Turns out this has been going on for over a year.
MENDEZ: So what are we doing?
REAGAN: If this gets out, the circus comes to Albany [where the governor has his office].
MENDEZ: Who else knows?
REAGAN: Right now it’s safe in the notebook of my lead detective. Whether or not it finds its way into an arrest report that’s subject to a Freedom of Information Act request—that’s a judgment call.
MENDEZ: Your judgment?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: And if my investigation goes away?
REAGAN: Neither of us is shoveling up after the circus.
MENDEZ: I have your word on that?
REAGAN: Yes.
MENDEZ: You have a good evening, Commissioner.
J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director, used Realpolitik to ensure his reign for 48 years.
J. Edgar Hoover
As William C. Sullivan, the onetime director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division, revealed after Hoover’s death in 1972:
“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator, he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.
“‘But we wanted you to know this. We realize you’d want to know it.’ Well, Jesus, what does that tell the senator? From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”
Donald Trump has long pursued a strategy of intimidation. But when people have refused to be cowed by his threats, he’s backed off.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, more than a dozen women accused Trump of sexual misconduct, ranging from inappropriate comments to assault.
Trump responded: “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
Yet he didn’t file a single slander suit.
Similarly, when New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued Trump for running a fraudulent university, Trump initially said he would fight the charge.
Instead, he settled the case by paying $25 million to compensate the 3,700 students Trump University had defrauded.
“You never have to frame anyone,” says Governor Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 novel, All the King’s Men. “Because the truth is always sufficient.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on May 9, 2024 at 12:05 am
And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever.
—Plutarch, “Life of Alexander”
Hope Hicks served in President Donald Trump’s administration as White House Director of Strategic Communication from January to September, 2017.
Today she’s a prominent witness at his trial for concealing hush money payments in 2016 to porn “actress” Stormy Daniels.
On January 6, 2021, Hicks had a problem: She feared she might never work again.
From 2017 to 2018 she served as White House Communications Director. After leaving the White House, she returned to serve as Counselor to the President from 2020 to 2021.
Hope Hicks
And then came the Trump-inspired attack on Congress on January 6.
Among the infamies and crimes Trump committed—and Hicks witnessed—during his four years as President:
- Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press as “the enemy of the American people” for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters.
- Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
- Giving highly classified CIA Intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
- Using his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump—and continuing to investigate Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
- Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his useless “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay for 35 days.
- Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, killing 400,000 Americans by the time he left office.
- Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves against the deadly COVID-19 virus.
- Repeatedly lying—while still in office and afterward—that the 2020 election had been “stolen” from him by massive voter fraud.
- Illegally trying to pressure state legislatures and governors to stop the certification of the vote that had made Joe Biden the president-elect.
- Inciting his followers to attack the Capitol Building where Senators and Representatives were meeting to count the Electoral Votes won by himself and Joe Biden. His objective: Stop the count, which he knew would prove him the loser.
So Hope had plenty to feel tormented about.
Yet it wasn’t any of these offenses that upset her.
It was something far more personal: She feared that the public’s association of her with Trump’s attack on Congress would doom her, at age 32, to permanent unemployment.
On January 6, 2021, she exchanged a series of texts with Julie Radford, First Daughter Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff.
HICKS: “In one day he [Trump] ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boys [sic] chapter
“And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed
“I’m so mad and upset
“We all look like domestic terrorists now”
RADFORD: “Oh yes I’ve been crying for an hour”
HICKS: “This made us all unemployable
“Like untouchable
“God I’m so fucking mad”
RADFORD: “I know there isn’t a chance of finding a job
“Visa also sent me a blow off email today
“Already”
HICKS: “Nope. Not being dramatic, but we are all fucked.
[Referring to Trump]: “Attacking the VP [Vice President Mike Pence]?
“Wtf is wrong with him”
Albert Speer, former architect and Minister of Armaments for his late Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, would have fully empathized.
Albert Speer
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146II-277 / Binder / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
With the collapse of the Third Reich, he found himself hurled from power and facing trial as a war criminal at Nuremberg.
His prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, said: “Speer joined in planning and executing the program to dragoon prisoners of war and foreign workers into German war industries, which waxed in output while the workers waned in starvation.”
Yet Speer falsely claimed he had simply been an apolitical architect who had been drafted into serving as Minister of Armaments—and hadn’t known about the Holocaust.
The prosecution couldn’t prove he had. So he escaped a death sentence—and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.
Emerging from prison in 1966, Speer lamented that no architectural firm in postwar Germany would hire “Hitler’s architect.”
So he spent the rest of his life writing—at great profit—about his 12 years as a high-ranking official in the Third Reich. As “The Good Nazi,” he portrayed himself as a political innocent deceived into hell by a Mephistopheles-like Hitler.
Like Speer, Hope Hicks has repudiated her own former Fuhrer—after serving him during his worst infamies.
And, like Speer, she isn’t facing the dangers of poverty. Her net worth is estimated at $1 million, owing to her past work as a model and public relations agent.
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LOYALTY VS. CONSCIENCE: PART TWO (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 12, 2024 at 12:08 amWhere does loyalty leave off and conscience begin?
Specifically: If you’re a bodyguard for a man you know represents a genuine threat to democracy, what are your obligations to defend him? Should you be as willing to “take a bullet” for him as for someone you truly admire?
Members of Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard faced no such qualms. Right up to the bitter end, with Russian forces only blocks from the Fuhrerbunker, they manned their posts, ready to die for the man who had led them—and Germany—into the ultimate catastrophe.
They made Hitler a closely-guarded target.
He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.
But his single greatest protection—he claimed—was an instinct for danger. He would suddenly change his schedule—to drop in where he was least expected. Or suddenly depart an event where he was expected to stay a long time.
Adolf Hitler
It wasn’t Hitler’s bodyguards who posed a threat to his life. It was the colonels and generals of the German General Staff.
On August 20, 1934, members of the German army, navy and air force were required to swear the “Law On The Allegiance of Civil Servants and Soldiers of the Armed Forces.”
Whereas members of the armed forces had previously sworn loyalty to Germany, the new law required them to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler personally.
In coming years, this would prove a deadly trap for many German officers—forcing them to choose between betraying a sacred oath and remaining loyal to a man who was clearly driving Germany to ruin.
For those officers who could not abide Germany’s coming destruction, the choice was simple: Hitler had to go.
A series of assassination attempts were made against Hitler. All of them involved time-bombs. And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff.
In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode. In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off. He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it exploded.
Hitler came closest to death on July 20, 1944.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg was the driving force in a plot to assassinate Hitler with a time bomb.
Claus von Stauffenberg
He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941). While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943, when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.
For most of his fellow officers, the motive was craven: The “happy time” of German victories was over. Germany was losing the war it had unleashed on the world in 1939—and now they feared the worst.
This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive.
The Wehrmacht in Russia
The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians. Many had died in combat. Others had been murdered as captives. Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the notorious Russian winter.
For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.
Thus, Stauffenberg—more than many Germans—knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect if the “Thousand-Year Reich” fell. Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans—even members of the Wehrmacht—were criminals.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces—well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany. Stauffenberg didn’t want to arrest Hitler; he wanted to kill him. A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
Stauffenberg intended to carry his bomb—hidden in a briefcase—into a “Hitler conference” room packed with military officers. Rigged with a time-fuse, it would be left there while he found an excuse to leave. After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.
Stauffenberg intended to direct the new government that would replace that of the Nazis—and open peace talks with the British and Americans. With Hitler dead, the coup—“Operation Valkyrie”—would be on.
Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. They would inform the British and Americans of Germany’s willingness to surrender. Provided, of course, that the vengeance-seeking Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it—appropriately enough—“Wolf’s Lair.”
Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler—who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table. Then he excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.
At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.
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