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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, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 29, 2021 at 12:06 am
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States. Donald Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
On January 6, 2021, Trump ordered thousands of his Stormtrumper followers to “stop the steal”—by stopping the count of Electoral College votes that would make Biden President.
Tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers attacked and breached the United States Capitol. Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized. One Capitol police officer was killed and more than 50 others were injured. Meanwhile, terrified legislators huddled behind locked doors.
Stormtrumpers attacking the Capitol
On February 8, 2021, Trump—although no longer President—will be impeached for a second time.
And, once again, Republican United States Senators are refusing to act on evidence that almost engulfed them—that of the January 6 mob that Trump sent to attack the United States Capitol.
A January 22 story in The Hill reports: “Only five or six Republican senators at the most seem likely to vote for impeachment, far fewer than the number needed, GOP sources say.”
And Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) claims that 45 Senate Republicans doubt the constitutionality of Trump’s impeachment trial.
A two-thirds majority vote would be necessary for a conviction, requiring at least 17 GOP votes if every Democrat votes to convict Trump.
Among the GO’s excuses for this:
- Trump didn’t pardon any of the insurrectionists. Said one anonymous GOP Senator: “If he pardoned people who had been part of this invasion of the Capitol…that would have said, ‘These are my guys,’”
- “He’s out of office and impeachment is a remedy to remove somebody from office,” said another Republican Senator.
- If Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refuses to preside, and the chair is instead occupied by Vice President Kamala Harris or Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont.), the process will appear like a partisan exercise.
- “It’s freedom of speech!” Said Senator Rand Paul: “Are we going to put every politician in jail—are we going to impeach every politician who has used the words ‘fight’ figuratively in a speech? Shame!”
![Image]Never let fear conquer you : GetMotivated](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSP5lnqsMt8F3Zq6hlDEaN5uqYT2c2mUezksA&usqp=CAU)
In answer to these excuses:
- It doesn’t matter that Trump didn’t pardon any of the seditionists. His lying tweets brought them to Washington, and his fiery, lie-studded rhetoric launched the attack.
- If a retired Senator or Supreme Court Justice was found to have violated the law, s/he could still be tried—so long as the statute hadn’t expired. The President should not be held above the law.
- Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has said he doesn’t want to preside over Trump’s second impeachment trial. So what? The Constitution dictates: “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” He should be required to live up to his assigned duty—or resign his position.
- The “freedom of speech” defense ignores a fundamental truth: Even the First Amendment doesn’t allow speech that incites deadly violence. When Trump proclaimed “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong” his supporters—many of whom had come with firearms, scaling devices and twist-ties for taking hostages—knew exactly what he wanted them to do.
* * * * * * * * * *
So why have Republicans almost unanimously stood by Donald Trump despite his having sent a mob to attack the Capitol—and threaten their own safety?
During the six-hour siege, they feared for their lives. But now they fear they will lose their powerful positions—and the privileges that go with them—to Trump’s angry supporters at the next election.
For them, that counts far more than protecting the country from a ruthless tyrant who nearly destroyed America’s most cherished democratic institutions:
- A free press.
- An apolitical Justice Department.
- The peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another.
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims. Germany will rule the world, our enemies will be our slaves….”
Like Hitler, Trump offered his Republican voters and Congressional allies intoxicating dreams: “I will enrich all of you. And I will humiliate and destroy those Americans you most hate.”
And, again like Hitler, his audience had always possessed those desires. Trump offered them nothing new. But as a lifelong opportunist, he realized that he could use those desires to catapult himself into a position of supreme power.
He despised his followers—both as voters and Congressional allies—for they were merely the instruments of his will.
In 1960, the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko, published “Conversation With an American Writer”—a stinging indictment of the cowardly opportunists who had supported the brutal tyranny of Joseph Stalin:
I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
Too many Republicans know all-too-well how it feels to stoop to the cowardice of their colleagues for a transitory goal.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 28, 2021 at 12:19 am
As trial proceedings unfolded in the 2020 impeachment of President Donald J. Trump, the majority Republican Senators consistently put their own partisan interests over those of their country.
Trump was facing charges of:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by smearing a potential rival for the White House.
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
Yet Republican Senators repeatedly made clear their determination to fully support him.
Among their actions:
- Refusing to hear from eyewitnesses who could prove that Trump had committed impeachable offenses,
- Refusing to provide evidence on Trump’s behalf—but attacking witnesses who had testified against him in the House.
- Attacking Joseph and Hunter Biden as if they were on trial—instead of having been the targets of Trump’s smear-attempt.
As Lead Impeachment Manager, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) held the role of a prosecutor.
Faced with the unwillingness of Trump’s Senatorial defenders to accept any evidence—no matter how damning—against him, Schiff warned: “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.”
Adam Schiff
On February 5, 2020, the Republican-dominated Senate—as expected—absolved him from trying to extort Ukraine into smearing a possible rival for the White House.
Only one Republican—Utah Senator Mitt Romney—had the moral courage to vote for conviction.
On January 6, 2021, Schiff’s prophecy came true.
On that date, members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives were meeting to count the Electoral Votes cast for then-President Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden.
For weeks Trump had ordered his legions of Right-wing Stormtrumpers to descend on Washington, D.C. on January 6.
On December 20, he had tweeted: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
In tweets, he promoted the rally again on December 27 and 30, and January 1.
And, as the House of Representatives would soon note: “In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials.”
Thus, through his lies, he had aroused the fury of his Right-wing supporters.
It would take only his command to send it hurtling at his perceived enemies: Those who would dare elect Joe Biden in his place.
Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers
On January 6, Trump appeared at the Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House fence and north of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
A stage had been set up for him to address tens of thousands of his supporters, who eagerly awaited him.
Trump ordered them to march on the Capitol building to express their anger at the voting process and to intimidate their elected officials to reject the results:
“And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police, who made little effort to arrest or shoot them.
- One attacker was shot as protesters forced their way toward the House Chamber where members of Congress were sheltering in place.
- Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents or lead pipes.
- A Capitol Hill police officer was knocked off his feet, dragged into the mob surging toward the building, and beaten with the pole of an American flag.
- Several rioters carried plastic handcuffs, possibly intending to take hostages.
- Others carried treasonous Confederate flags.
- Shouts of “Hang Pence!” often rang out.
- Improvised explosive devices were found in several locations in Washington, D.C.
- Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.
More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.
And Trump? After giving his inflammatory speech, he didn’t march with his followers to the Capitol.
Like the draft-dodger he had been during the Vietnam war, he kept himself out of harm’s way and returned to the White House.
There he watched his handiwork on television—and initially rebuffed requests to mobilize the National Guard.
This required intervention by Pat A. Cipollone, the White House Counsel, among other officials.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 27, 2021 at 12:18 am
On February 8, Donald J. Trump will face trial for impeachment for a second time—when he is no longer President of the United States.
He faces trial on one count—Incitement of Insurrection: “Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States.”
Specifically:
On January 6, 2021, the House of Representatives and the Senate met in the United States Capitol to count the Electoral College votes received by both Trump and his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, in the November 3 Presidential election.
United States Capitol
According to the Article of Impeachment: “President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials.
“Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, DC. There he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.’
“He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’
“Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to….interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”
Trump wanted his followers to stop that ballot counting, since he knew the final tally would give the victory to Biden. And his followers intended to give him another—and illegal—four years in office.
Donald Trump
The Article of Impeachment further cites that, on January 2, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and “urged” him to “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results. And he threatened Raffsnsperger with prosecution if he failed to do so.
Summing up its case against Trump, the Article states: “In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
“Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”
One year ago, Trump—as President—faced such trial on two counts: “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress.”
On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives had approved two Articles of Impeachment against Trump for:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by smearing a potential rival for the White House.
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
On September 9, 2019, the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight and Reform committees began investigating his attempted extortion of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On July 25, 2019, Trump had “asked” Zelensky to do him a “favor”: Find embarrassing “dirt” on former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter.
Hunter had had business dealings in Ukraine. And Joseph Biden might be Trump’s Democratic opponent for the White House in 2020.
To underline the seriousness of his “request,” earlier in July Trump had told Mick Mulvaney, his White House chief of staff, to withhold $400 million in military aid that Congress had approved for Ukraine, which faced an increasingly aggressive Russia.
Joseph Biden
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
But then a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the extortion attempt—and the media and Congress soon learned of it. And ever since, the evidence linking Trump to impeachable offenses had mushroomed.
On January 16, 2020, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced that the Trump administration broke the law when it withheld security aid to Ukraine.
The GAO, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, declared that the White House Budget Office violated the Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 law that limits the White House from withholding funds that Congress has appropriated.
“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO auditors wrote.
On October 3, 2019, while being investigated for trying to extort Ukraine to investigate Biden, Trump said on the White House lawn: “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.”
And he warned: “I have a lot of options on China, but if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.”
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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, Politics, Social commentary on January 15, 2021 at 12:10 am
Fifty-nine years ago, a Russian congress came face-to-face with the legacy of a ruthless dictator.
For almost 30 years, from 1924 to 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili—better known as Stalin—had ruled as absolute dictator over the Soviet Union. Hallmarks of his legacy included mass arrests, repeated purges, forced mass starvation and the imprisonment of millions. As many as 20 million men, women and children died as his victims.
His reign of terror ended only with his death, of a cerebral hemorrhage, on March 5, 1953, at age 74.
As historian Robert Payne wrote in his monumental 1965 biography The Rise and Fall of Stalin: “The son of an obscure cobbler, he had become during the last years of his life the most powerful man on earth. No emperor had ever enjoyed the power he possessed.
“He had taken the world by the throat, and forced it to do his will. He was one of the world-shakers, and when he died in 1953 it was thought proper that his remains should be exhibited as an object of reverence and worship in the Lenin mausoleum, the holy of holies of the Soviet empire.”
On February 25, 1956, his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, revealed Stalin’s litany of crimes to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The speech was the opening shot in Khrushchev’s “de-Stalinization” campaign. He intended to destroy the image of the late dictator as an infallible leader and rein in the infamous KGB secret police.
The speech gave rise to a period of liberalization known as the “Khrushchev thaw” (1956-1964). During this, censorship policy was relaxed, and for the first time books and articles appeared about the huge network of forced labor camps set up by Vladimir Lenin and reaching its peak under Stalin.
Nikita Khrushchev
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Thousands of political prisoners were released, and thousands more who had perished during Stalin’s reign were officially “rehabilitated.”
By 1961, Khrushchev and those seeking to reform the Soviet political system decided to condemn the horrors of the Stalinist decades in a forceful symbolic act.
On October 31, 1961, the body of Joseph Stalin was removed from its honored resting place in the Lenin mausoleum in Red Square. A new grave was dug for him—among the minor heroes of the Russian Revolution. The re-internment took place secretly—at night—without ceremonies. And his name was removed from the mausoleum.
Historian Robert Payne described that event—and its significance: “A dead god was being transformed into a dead man, a dead emperor was being dethroned, a dead criminal was being executed….
“But more than a ritual murder was at stake. The Supreme Soviet and the Central Committee, which decreed the punishment now being inflicted on the corpse of Stalin, were now attempting to absolve themselves from responsibility for his crimes.
“They were saying: ‘We are not responsible, we are casting him away, he is not one of us! He committed such terrible crimes that we will have none of him.’
“For nearly thirty years Stalin had ruled tyrannically over Russia. History, too, was being consigned to oblivion.”
A series of similar events has erupted within the United States since January 6.
On that day, thousands of Right-wing supporters of President Donald Trump—ignited by his fiery, lie-riddled rhetoric—overwhelmed police guarding the United States Capitol and occupied the building.
Donald Trump
Their intention: To halt the counting of Electoral College votes that would certify former Vice President Joseph Biden as the next President of the United States.
Americans who held that site sacred as the cradle of democracy were horrified to see rioters:
- Breaking windows and battering down doors;
- Beating police with fire extinguishers and an American flag pole;
- Carrying treasonous Confederate flags in the Capitol;
- Stealing treasures (such as the podium used by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) and
- Forcing members of Congress to crouch under chairs as police fought off rioters.
Since then, Trump’s fortunes have sharply declined:
- Twitter—whose platform he had used during his Presidency to ruthlessly attack hundreds of people—finally cut off his account.
- A series of Cabinet officials hurriedly resigned from his administration. Among these: Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf.
- Deutsche Bank, his business lender since the 1990s, announced that it would not continue to do business with him.
- The PGA of America cut ties with Trump by canceling plans to hold the PGA Championship at his New Jersey golf course in 2022.
- And on January 13—one week to the day after his Stormtrumpers attacked the Capitol Building—the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for the second time during his Presidency. No other President has ever suffered such a humiliation.
- Adding to this humiliation: Ten Republican House members voted to impeach him.
Herodotus, the Greek historian who chronicled the Greek-Persian wars, offers a still-timely explanation of such reverses of fortune—and a warning for those who dare to ignore history:
“Look to the end, no matter what it is you are considering. Often enough God gives a man a glimpse of happiness, and then utterly ruins him.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 14, 2021 at 12:08 am
On January 13, for the first time in its history, the United States House of Representatives voted to impeach a President—for the second time during his tenure.
On December 10, 2019, Democratic leaders in the House 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 Joseph 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.
On January 23, 2020, House Intelligence Committee Chairman and Lead Impeachment Manager Adam Schiff (D-CA) 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.”
Adam Schiff
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.
Schiff’s prophecy came true on January 6, 2021. On that day, Trump unleashed thousands of Right-wing terrorists on the United States Capitol.
Inside, members of Congress were tabulating the Electoral College votes cast in the 2020 Presidential election.
The winner had been former Vice President Joseph Biden. Trump, seeking a second term, had lost, getting 74,196,153 votes.to 81,255,933 for Biden.
Trump had made repeated—and false—claims of electoral fraud. Yet despite filing 60 court cases seeking to overturn the election’s results, his lawyers had failed to produce any proof of it.
Trump had often “joked” about how great it would be for the United States to have a “President-for-Life”—like China. Now his only hope of remaining in power lay in intimidating Congress into ignoring the election results.
Inspired by Trump’s violence-charged rhetoric, the Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside outnumbered Capitol Police.
- Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents or lead pipes.
- A Capitol Hill police officer was knocked off his feet, dragged into the mob surging toward the building, and beaten with the pole of an American flag.
- Several rioters carried plastic handcuffs, possibly intending to take hostages. Others carried treasonous Confederate flags.
Stormtrumpers scaling Capitol Building walls
- Shouts of “Hang Pence!” often rang out.
- Improvised explosive devices were found in several locations in Washington, D.C.
- Members of the House and Senate huddled anxiously behind locked doors barricaded with furniture as seditionists tried to break in.
- Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.
More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.
Meeting again that evening, members of the Senate and House resumed their vote-counting. In the end, Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris were named, respectively, the President-Elect and Vice-President Elect of the United States.
By the next day, members of the House—especially Democrats—were furious at their near-brush with death. And they were ready to seek retribution on the man responsible.
Their initial hope was that Vice President Mike Pence and a majority of Trump’s cabinet would invoke the 25th Amendment. But hopes for this quickly faded.
A growing number of Cabinet officials began resigning:
- Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
- Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao
- Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf
There was a very real danger there wouldn’t be enough Cabinet members left to invoke the Amendment.
But making the use of the Amendment even more unlikely was the obvious unwillingness of Vice President Pence to invoke it.
Mike Pence
This despite the fact that he could have been hanged as a “traitor” by the Stormtrumpers only days ago.
(He had likely been spared this fate by his Secret Service detail, whisking him out of the Senate—and leaving other government officials to their own fates.)
On January 11, Democrats introduced a single impeachment article charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection” in urging his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
They also introduced a resolution that called on Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove him from office before January 20.
On January 13, the House met to debate a single article of impeachment: “Incitement of Insurrection.” Its gist:
“Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”
Thus, the House sought to remove a President who intended to rule as a dictator.
Fifty-nine years earlier, a Russian congress had come face-to-face with the despotism of another tyrant.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 13, 2021 at 12:56 am
By January 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump had almost run out of options for illegally staying in power for the next four years.
On November 3, 2020, Joseph Biden had been elected the nation’s 46th President over Trump.
On January 6, the United States Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding, would certify states’ Electoral College results of that election.
That morning, Trump urged Pence to flip the results of the election to give him a win.
Pence replied that he lacked the power to overturn those results.
But as Pence went off to the Capitol Building housing the Senate and House of Representatives, Trump had one last card to play.
Mike Pence
For weeks Trump had ordered his legions of Right-wing Stormtrumpers to descend on Washington, D.C. on January 6.
On December 20, he had tweeted: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
In tweets, he promoted the rally again on December 27 and 30, and January 1.
On January 6, Trump appeared at the Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House fence and north of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
A stage had been set up for him to address tens of thousands of his supporters, who eagerly awaited him.
Trump ordered them to march on the Capitol building to express their anger at the voting process and to intimidate their elected officials to reject the results.
Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers
“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left Democrats which is what they are doing and stolen by the fake news media.
“Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal….
“Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back….And we’re going to have to fight much harder….
“And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police, who made little effort to arrest or shoot them.
Capitol Police facing off with Stormtrumpers
- One attacker was shot as protesters forced their way toward the House Chamber where members of Congress were sheltering in place.
- Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents or lead pipes.
- A Capitol Hill police officer was knocked off his feet, dragged into the mob surging toward the building, and beaten with the pole of an American flag.
- Several rioters carried plastic handcuffs, possibly intending to take hostages.
- Others carried treasonous Confederate flags.
- Shouts of “Hang Pence!” often rang out.
- Improvised explosive devices were found in several locations in Washington, D.C.
- Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.
Stormtrumpers inside the Capitol Building
More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.
And Trump? After giving his inflammatory speech, he returned to the White House—to watch his handiwork on television. He initially rebuffed requests to mobilize the National Guard.
This required intervention by Pat A. Cipollone, the White House Counsel, among other officials.
While the rioting was still erupting, Trump posted a video on Twitter: “I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us….But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order….So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
Hours later, in a video he released to social media, Trump described his “very special” followers in utterly different terms:
Donald Trump
“I’d like to begin by addressing the heinous attack on the United States Capitol. Like all Americans I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem.
“I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders. America is and must always be a nation of law and order.
“To demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol: you have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law: you will pay.”
In fact:
- Trump waited six hours to deploy the National Guard.
- He spent most of the day watching his unleashed mob attack the Capitol—and rage-tweeting against Pence.
- He was “delighted” at the attack—and surprised others weren’t, an angry Republican Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse said later.
- His administration was closing with the same contempt for law and democracy that had characterized it from its outset.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 12, 2021 at 12:20 am
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States.
President Donald J. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Yet more than two months after the election, Trump refuses to concede, insisting that he won—and repeatedly claiming falsely that he is the victim of massive vote fraud.
Immediately after the election, 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.
On November 13, nine cases attacking President-Elect Joe Biden’s win in key states were denied or dropped. A law firm challenging the vote count in Pennsylvania withdrew from the effort.
By November 21, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
Ultimately, 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.
Donald Trump
On November 19, losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House. The reason: 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.
Brian Kemp
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 were unconstitutional.
The Court’s order read, “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice [Samuel] Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.”
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.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the court said without further comment. It dismissed all other related claims as moot.
The request for their overturning came in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. A Trump ally, Paxton has been indicted on felony securities fraud charges.
Seventeen Republican state Attorney Generals—and 126 Republican members of Congress—supported the lawsuit. They feared Trump’s fanatical base would “primary” them if they didn’t publicly declare their loyalty—to a man they knew was slated to leave office within two months.
The Supreme Court
Had the Court acted on Paxton’s request, the results for democracy would have been catastrophic.
“Texas seeks to invalidate elections in four states for yielding results with which it disagrees,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told the justices in legal papers. “Its request for this court to exercise its original jurisdiction and then anoint Texas’s preferred candidate for president is legally indefensible and is an affront to principles of constitutional democracy.”
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 and 25 from the Senate could join him.
This would force Republicans to:
- Vote to reject Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud; or
- Disenfranchise millions of voters who had voted for Biden.
“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.”
Having lost in 59 court cases to overturn the election results, Trump opted for some old-fashioned arm-twisting.
On January 2, 2021, 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, because we won the state,” Trump lied.
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.”
Raffensperger insisted there hadn’t been any voter fraud—and refused to change the official results.
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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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