Posts Tagged ‘SOVIET UNION’
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 8, 2022 at 9:43 am
The Kennedy administration’s unprecedented attack on organized crime has led some law enforcement experts to believe the Mob engineered President Kennedy’s assassination.
One of these is G. Robert Blakey, father of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. As the former Chief Counsel and Staff Director to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations (1977–1979) he oversaw the second official inquiry into the Kennedy assassination.
As a result, he believes the Mob had ample means, motive and opportunity to arrange for a “nut” to kill the President.
In his 1980 book, The Plot to Kill the President, Blakey asserted:
- Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy.
- An unknown confederate of Oswald’s, firing from the “grassy knoll,” also shot at Kennedy but missed.
- The conspiracy was rooted in organized crime and involved Mafia boss Santos Trafficante of Miami and/or Mafia boss Carlos Marcello of New Orleans.
The 1983 TV mini-series, “Blood Feud,” clearly implied that the Mob was responsible. At its heart lay the 10-year conflict between Robert F. Kennedy and James R. Hoffa, then president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union.
This was also the plot of American Tabloid, a 1995 novel by James Ellroy.
But investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that during the five years he researched The Dark Side of Camelot, his expose of the hidden life of President Kennedy, he didn’t uncover any evidence of such a plot.
After Robert Kennedy left the Justice Department in 1964 to run for the post of U.S. Senator from New York, the Justice Department slacked off its push against the crime syndicates.
But the war was resurrected during the Nixon administration and has remained a top priority ever since.
Perhaps the most controversial legacy of the Kennedy administration remains the President’s dealings with the South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.,
In 1954, the French—who had controlled Vietnam for 80 years—were forced to withdraw their military forces from the country. Their army had suffered a humiliating defeat at Dienbenphu and the French citizenry—still recovering from defeat and Nazi occupation during World War II—demanded an end to the disastrous conflict.
Into this political vacuum stepped the victorious North Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh.
Kennedy—then U.S. Senator from Massachusetts—had visited Vietnam while the French were still trying to hold onto one of their last colonial possessions. And he had urged them to withdraw and allow the Vietnamese to govern themselves.
But President Dwight D. Eisenhower was aware of Ho’s overwhelming popularity throughout Vietnam due to his battles against Japanese and French colonialists. In any nationwide election, Ho was certain to win the presidency.
But Eisenhower felt he couldn’t allow an avowed Communist to rule Vietnam. With the North under firm Communist control, America focused its attention on the South.
Searching for an acceptable alternative, Eisenhower found him in Ngo Dinh Diem—a mandarin in a nation swept by revolution, a Catholic in a nation with an 80% Buddhist population.
In 1954, America began backing Diem. Although his first years were marked by social progress, he later became increasingly oppressive toward the Buddhist majority. Corruption openly flourished among government and army officials.
Ngo Dinh Diem
In 1960, North Vietnam launched an aggressive campaign of infiltration and assassination across South Vietnam.
In 1961, President Kennedy sent 400 Green Berets and 100 other military advisers to South Vietnam to offer support.
Diem requested American financing of a 100,000-man increase in his army. Kennedy agreed to an increase of 30,000. Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that 40,000 U.S. troops would be needed to “clean up the Vietcong threat.”
Kennedy underestimated the reaction of North Vietnam, whose forces were fighting what they believed was a crusade. As American troop strength increased, the North escalated its own commitment.
From 1961 to 1963, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam steadily rose from 685 to 16,732. American minesweepers patrolled the coasts while their aircraft engaged in surveillance.
For the first time, Americans became casualties of the war–especially those in helicopter combat-support missions.
Meanwhile, Diem—urged by his influential brother, Nhu, who ran the secret police—cracked down on the Buddhists.
Government troops fired on a peaceful demonstration in May, 1963. In protest, Buddhist monks burned themselves to death before TV cameras.
Nhu’s beautiful and powerful wife, Madame Nhu, fed growing world outrage by her ridicule of “monk barbecue shows.”
American efforts to stop Diem’s anti-Buddhist campaign failed. On August 21, 1963, Diem’s police shot their way into Buddhist pagodas, killing scores and arresting hundreds.
This finally convinced the Kennedy administration that Diem would never gain the popular support he needed to win the war against the Communist North.
As a result, the administration offered support to South Vietnamese military officers planning a coup against Diem.
On November 1, 1963, South Vietnamese army units stormed the presidential palace. Diem and Nhu fled, but were caught and shot. Madame Nhu, visiting the U.S. at the time, escaped death, accusing Kennedy of supporting the coup.
The administration issued a flat denial.
Diem’s assassination was followed 21 days later by Kennedy’s own.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 7, 2022 at 9:24 am
John F. Kennedy became President when civil rights suddenly became a burning issue throughout the Nation.
At Kennedy’s request, dozen of law firms sent lawyers South, so civil rights demonstrators would not lack counsel.
Prominent blacks such as Thurgood Marshall, Robert C. Weaver and George L.L. Weaver were appointed, respectively, to the Supreme Court, the Housing and House Finance Agency and the office of Assistant Secretary of Labor.
But Kennedy was highly reluctant to push for a civil rights bill addressing the overall issues of racial discrimination.
The reason: Most of the chairman of House and Senate committees were deeply conservative Southern racists–whether Republican or Democrat. They decided whether Kennedy’s foreign policy initiatives would be approved or opposed–especially his bills for increased foreign aid.
Kennedy believed he could not offend such men without jeopardizing the legacy he wanted to achieve in foreign policy.
This timidity, in turn, led many prominent blacks—such as Martin Luther King and Malcom X—to believe they would see no innovative moves on Kennedy’s part.
But events forced Kennedy’s hand.
On September 30, 1962, the President sent deputy U.S. marshals and National Guardsmen into Mississippi to restore order. Rioting had erupted when, by federal court order, James Meredith, a black, was enrolled at the state university.
Kennedy’s problems in winning support for his civil rights program arose in the folkways of the Nation. When laws run counter to a nation’s folkways, the laws lose.
In backing the admission of Meredith, the President chose an incident which would set off shockwaves for black rights.
Kennedy held mixed emotions about the demand for civil rights by blacks. On one hand, as an Irish Catholic, he grew up with stories about longtime discrimination against his ancestors (such as the “No Irish Need Apply” signs posted by numerous employers).
On the other hand, he had been born into a world of power and wealth, and he had to grope his way toward understanding the problems of the oppressed.
Another major confrontation broke out between Kennedy and the forces of segregation on June 11, 1963. Alabama Governor George C. Wallace personally blocked the entrance of two black pupils to the University of Tuscaloosa.
The President, watching on TV, federalized the Alabama National Guard, which Wallace had used to ring the school. Wallace withdrew and the students were admitted and enrolled.
That same day, Kennedy addressed the nation on the need for genuine equality for all Americans: “The question is whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.”
JFK addresses the nation on civil rights
And he called on Congress to pass his civil rights bill, which had been stalled by the legislators.
On August 28, 1963, 200,000 civil rights demonstrators flooded Washington, D.C., for a massive rally.
Fearing that violence would erupt—embarrassing his administration and setting back the cause of civil rights—Kennedy had sought to persuade Dr. Martin Luther King, the march’s chief figure, to cancel the proposed march.
But King and his fellow organizers were determined to go through with it. They had, they said, waited too long for justice to be satisfied with anything less.
The dignity and peacefulness of the rally–and, most especially, King’s soaring “I Have a Dream” speech–won tremendous sympathy throughout the country. Kennedy met with civil rights leaders afterward to offer his support.
Martin Luther King during the March on Washington
But Kennedy’s civil rights bill remained stalled in Congress until 1964. President Lyndon B. Johnson used the assassinated Kennedy’s new status as a martyr to gain enough support for its passage.
Meanwhile, on yet another front, the Kennedy administration was waging an unprecedented war against organized crime.
This was primarily the work of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. As chief counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (1957–59), he had interrogated about 800 mobsters who had been summoned by subpoena.
And he had learned, firsthand, how ineffective the FBI and Justice Department were at bringing such powerful criminals to justice. The FBI had long steered clear of organized crime investigations, largely because its director, J. Edgar Hoover, feared corruption of his agents.
Upon taking office as Attorney General, he greatly expanded the number of attorneys assigned to the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Section. And, more important, he used his status as brother to the President to jawbone FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover into attacking the Mob.
The FBI installed illegal microphones in Mob hangouts throughout the country and started building cases against such mobsters as Sam Giancana, Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello.
The administration’s attack on the Mob has led some historians to believe the assassination of President Kennedy was Mob-orchestrated.
The reasons:
- Joseph P. Kennedy, the family patriarch, solicited Mob money and influence for his son’s 1960 Presidential campaign.
- Through singer Frank Sinatra, the elder Kennedy assured Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana that the mob would get a free ride if his son were elected President.
- The CIA, seeking any way to topple Fidel Castro, enlisted the Mafia to assassinate him.
- But Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, ignored the Mob’s “contributions” and pressed his war against the syndicates
- As a result, mobsters felt betrayed and lusted for vengeance.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 6, 2022 at 10:46 am
By October, 1962, Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, had supplied Cuba with more than 40,000 soldiers, 1,300 field pieces, 700 anti-aircraft guns, 350 tanks and 150 jets.
The motive: To deter another invasion.
Khrushchev also began supplying Castro with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
Their discovery, in October, 1962, ignited the single most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War.
John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis
On October 16, Kennedy was shown photographs of nuclear missile sites under construction on the island. The pictures had been taken on the previous day by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane.
Suddenly, the two most powerful nuclear countries—the United States and the Soviet Union—appeared on the brink of nuclear war.
Kennedy officials claimed they couldn’t understand why Khrushchev had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. “Maybe Khrushchev’s gone mad” was a typical musing.
The Kennedy administration never admitted that JFK had been waging a no-holds-barred campaign to overthrow the Cuban government and assassinate its leader.
Kennedy convened a group of his 12 most important advisers, which became known as Ex-Comm, for Executive Committee.
For seven days, Kennedy and his advisers intensely and privately debated their options. Some of the participants—such as Air Force General Curtis LeMay—urged an all-out air strike against the missile sites.
Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General (and the President’s brother) opposed initial calls for an air strike.
It would be, he said, “a Pearl Harbor in reverse.” And, he added: “I don’t want my brother to go down in history as the Tojo of the 1960s.”
Robert F. and John F. Kennedy
Others—such as Adlai Stevenson, the United States delegate to the United Nations—urged a reliance on quiet diplomacy.
It was Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara who suggested a middle course: A naval blockade—a “quarantine” in Kennedy’s softened term—around Cuba. This would hopefully prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island.
The President insisted that the missiles had to go—by peaceful means, if possible, but by the use of military force if necessary.
Kennedy finally settled on a naval blockade of Cuba. This would prevent additional missiles from coming in and give Khrushchev time to negotiate and save face.
On October 22, President Kennedy appeared on nationwide TV to denounce the presence of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba.
He demanded their withdrawal, and warned that any missile launched against any nation in the Western hemisphere would be answered with “a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
Kennedy ordered American military readiness raised to a level of Defcom-2—the step just short of total war.
The United States had about 27,000 nuclear weapons; the Soviets had about 3,000. In a first nuclear exchange, the United States could have launched about 3,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviets about 250.
Nuclear missile in silo
On October 28, Khrushchev announced that the missile sites would be destroyed and the missiles crated and shipped back to the Soviet Union.
In return, Kennedy gave his promise—publicly—to lift the blockade and not invade Cuba
Privately, he also promised to remove obsolete Jupiter II nuclear missiles from Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union. Those missiles were, in effect, the American version of the Russian missiles that had been shipped to Cuba.
The world escaped nuclear disaster by a hair’s-breath.
Khrushchev didn’t know that Kennedy had intended to order a full-scale invasion of Cuba in just another 24 hours if an agreement couldn’t be reached.
And Kennedy and his military advisors didn’t know that Russian soldiers defending Cuba had been armed with tactical nuclear weapons.
If warfare of any type had broken out, the temptation to go nuclear would have been overwhelming.
The Cuban Missile Crisis marked the only time the world came to the brink of nuclear war.
The Right attacked Kennedy for refusing to destroy Castro, thus allowing Cuba to remain a Communist bastion only 90 miles from Florida.
The Left believed it was a needless confrontation that risked the destruction of humanity.
For Kennedy, forcing the Soviets to remove their missiles from Cuba re-won the confidence he had lost among so many Americans following the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
It also made him face the brutal truth that a miscalculation during a nuclear crisis could destroy all life on Earth.
He felt he could now move—cautiously—toward better relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Ironically, the crisis had the same effects on Khrushchev—who had witnessed the horrors of Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union and the subsequent loss of at least 22 million Soviet citizens.
Slowly and carefully, Kennedy and Khrushchev negotiated the details of what would become the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
Underground tests would continue, but the amounts of deadly strontium-90 radiation polluting the atmosphere would be vastly reduced.
The treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union on July 25, 1963.
Kennedy considered it his greatest achievement as President, saying in a speech: “According to a Chinese proverb, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. My fellow Americans, let us take that first step.”
2012 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, ALTERNET, AP, BARACK OBAMA, BAY OF PIGS, BBC, BERLIN WALL, BILL CLINTON, BRUCE GREENWOOD, BUZZFEED, CARLOS MARCELLO, CBS NEWS, CIA, CIVIL RIGHTS, CLIFF ROBERTSON, CNN, CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, DAILY KOS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DONALD J. TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIDEL CASTRO, FRANK SINATRA, HERMAN CAIN, ICH BEN EIN BERLINNER SPEECH, INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE, J. EDGAR HOOVER, JAMES MARSDEN, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MAFIA, MALCOM X, MARTIN LUTHER KING, MARTIN SHEEN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MOVIES, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NEWT GINGRICH, NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, NPR, NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY, POLITICO, PT-109, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RICK PERRY, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, ROBERT S. MCNAMARA, SALON, SAM GIANCANA, SANTOS TRAFFICANTE, Sarah Palin, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOVIET UNION, THE ATLANTIC, THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST, THE BUTLER, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE MISSILES OF OCTOBER, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RAT PACK, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, THIRTEEN DAYS, TIME, TWILIGHT ZONE, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VIETNAM WAR, WILLIAM DEVANE, WILLIAM PETERSON
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 5, 2022 at 9:31 am
During the 1960 Presidential campaign, then-Senator John F. Kennedy promised to build a Peace Corps to train people in underdeveloped nations to help themselves.
John F. Kennedy
In March, 1961, the program went into effect, with the President’s brother-in-law, Sergent Shriver, as director.
Starvation, illiteracy and disease were the enemies of the Corps. Any nation wanting aid could request it. The first group of volunteers went to the Philippines, the second to Ecuador and the third to Tanganyika.
The problems of the underdeveloped world were too great for any single organization to solve. But the Corps lifted the spirits of many living in those countries. And it captured the imagination of millions of Americans—especially those of thousands of idealistic youths who entered its ranks.
To combat the growing Communist threat to Latin America, Kennedy established the Alliance for Progress. He defined the Alliance’s goal as providing “revolutionary progress through powerful, democratic means.”
Within two years he could report:
“Some 140,000 housing units have been constructed. Slum clearance projects have begun, and 3,000 classrooms have been built. More than 4,000,000 school books have been distributed.
“The Alliance has fired the imagination and kindled the hopes of millions of our good neighbors. Their drive toward modernization is gaining momentum as it unleashes the energies of these millions.
“The United States is becoming increasingly identified in the minds of the people with the goal they move toward: a better life with freedom,” said Kennedy.
Critics of the program, however, charged that the President was trying to “dress up the old policies” of Franklin D. Roosevelt in new rhetoric. Since FDR’s time, the United States has believed in giving economic aid to Latin America.
Much—if not most—of these billions of dollars has wound up in the pockets of various right-wing dictators, such as Anastasio Somoza and Rafael Trujillo.
Meanwhile, Kennedy was urging action on another front—that of outer space.
“This generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space,” declared the President. He committed the United States to putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
As indeed it happened less than six years after his death—on July 20, 1969.
Kennedy’s idealistic rhetoric masked his real reason for going to the moon: To score a propaganda victory over the Soviet Union.
Another of his anti-Communist goals: To remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba at almost any cost.
Fidel Castro
Immediately after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert–who was then the Attorney General—to oversee a CIA program to overthrow Castro.
The CIA and the Mafia entered into an unholy alliance to assassinate Castro—each for its own benefit:
- The CIA wanted to please Kennedy by overthrowing the Communist leader who had nationalized American corporate holdings.
- The Mafia wanted to regain its lucrative casino and brothel holdings that had made Cuba the playground of the rich in pre-Castro times.
The mobsters were authorized to offer $150,000 to anyone who would kill Castro and were promised any support the Agency could yield.
“We were hysterical about Castro at about the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter,” then-former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara testified before Congress about these efforts. “And there was pressure from JFK and RFK to do something about Castro.”
Nor was everyone in the CIA enthusiastic about the “get Castro” effort.
“Everyone at CIA was surprised at Kennedy’s obsession with Fidel,” recalled Sam Halpern, who was assigned to the Cuba Project. “They thought it was a waste of time. We all knew [Fidel] couldn’t hurt us. Most of us at CIA initially liked Kennedy, but why go after this little guy?
“One thing is for sure: Kennedy wasn’t doing it out of national security concerns. It was a personal thing. The Kennedy family felt personally burnt by the Bay of Pigs and sought revenge.”
It was all-out war. Among the tactics used:
- Hiring Cuban gangsters to murder Cuban police officials and Soviet technicians.
- Sabotaging mines.
- Paying up to $100,000 per “hit” for the murder or kidnapping of Cuban officials.
- Using biological and chemical warfare against the Cuban sugar industry.
- Planting colorful seashells rigged to explode at a site where Castro liked to go skindiving.
- Trying to arrange for his being presented with a wetsuit impregnated with noxious bacteria and mold spores, or with lethal chemical agents.
- Attempting to infect Castro’s scuba regulator with tuberculous bacilli.
- Trying to douse his handkerchiefs, cigars, tea and coffee with other lethal bacteria.
But all of these efforts failed to assassinate Castro–or overthrow the Cuban Revolution he was heading.
“Bobby (Kennedy) wanted boom and bang all over the island,” recalled Halpern. “It was stupid. The pressure from the White House was very great.”
Americans would rightly label such methods as ”terrorist” if another power used them against the United States today. And the Cuban government saw the situation exactly the same way.
So Castro appealed to Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, for assistance.
Khrushchev was quick to comply: “We must not allow the Communist infant to be strangled in its crib,” he told members of his inner circle.
2012 PRESIDENTIAL RACE, ALTERNET, AP, BARACK OBAMA, BAY OF PIGS, BBC, BERLIN WALL, BILL CLINTON, BRUCE GREENWOOD, BUZZFEED, CARLOS MARCELLO, CBS NEWS, CIA, CIVIL RIGHTS, CLIFF ROBERTSON, CNN, CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, DAILY KOS, DAVID HALBERSTAM, DONALD J. TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FBI, FIDEL CASTRO, FRANK SINATRA, ICH BEN EIN BERLINNER SPEECH, INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE, J. EDGAR HOOVER, JAMES MARSDEN, JOHN F. KENNEDY, JOSEPH MCCARTHY, JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MAFIA, MALCOM X, MARTIN LUTHER KING, MARTIN SHEEN, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MOVIES, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NEWT GINGRICH, NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, NPR, NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY, POLITICO, PT-109, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RICK PERRY, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, ROBERT S. MCNAMARA, SALON, SAM GIANCANA, SANTOS TRAFFICANTE, Sarah Palin, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOVIET UNION, THE ATLANTIC, THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST, THE BUTLER, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE MISSILES OF OCTOBER, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE RAT PACK, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON POST, THIRTEEN DAYS, TIME, TWILIGHT ZONE, TWITTER, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, VIETNAM WAR, WILLIAM DEVANE, WILLIAM PETERSON
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 4, 2022 at 11:55 am
This October 16 – 28 will mark 60 years since the world hovered on the brink of nuclear oblivion.
It was the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. And it was the supreme test of John F. Kennedy’s leadership as the 35th President of the United States.
He served as President for only two years, ten months and two days.
Yet today—-61 years since he took office, and 59 years since his assassination—millions of Americans still remember Kennedy with reverence, even awe. This despite decades of highly embarrassing revelations about his scandalous private life.
Some have called the Kennedy administration a golden era in American history. A time when touch football, lively White House parties, stimulus to the arts and the antics of the President’s children became national obsessions.
John F. Kennedy
Others have called the Kennedy Presidency a monument to the unchecked power of wealth and ambition. An administration staffed by young novices playing at statesmen, riddled with nepotism, and whose legacy includes the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam war and the world’s first nuclear confrontation.
The opening days of the Kennedy Presidency raised hopes for a dramatic change in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
But detente was not possible then. The Russians had not yet experienced their coming agricultural problems and the setback in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. And the United States had not suffered defeat in Vietnam.
Kennedy’s first brush with international Communism came on April 17, 1961, with the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. This operation had been planned and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency during the final months of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s term as President.
The U.S. Navy was to land about 1,400 Cuban exiles on the island to overthrow the Communist government of Fidel Castro. They were supposed to head into the mountains—as Castro himself had done against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1956—and raise the cry of revolution.
The invasion would occur after an American air strike had knocked out the Cuban air force. But the airstrike failed and Kennedy, under the pressure of world opinion, called off a second try.
Even so, the invasion went ahead. When the invaders surged onto the beaches, they found Castro’s army waiting for them. Many of the invaders were killed on the spot. Others were captured—to be ransomed by the United States in December, 1962, in return for medical supplies.
It was a major public relations setback for the newly-installed Kennedy administration, which had raised hopes for a change in American-Soviet relations.
Kennedy, trying to abort widespread criticism, publicly took the blame for the setback: “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan….I’m the responsible officer of the Government.”
The Bay of Pigs convinced Kennedy that he had been misled by the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Out of this came his decision to rely heavily on the counsel of his brother, Robert, whom he had installed as Attorney General.
The failed Cuban invasion—unfortunately for Kennedy—convinced Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev that the President was weak.
Khrushchev told an associate that he could understand if Kennedy had not decided to invade Cuba. But once he did, Kennedy should have pressed on and wiped out Castro.
Khrushchev attributed this to Kennedy’s youth, inexperience and timidity—and believed he could bully the President.
On June 4, 1961, Kennedy met with Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss world tensions. Khrushchev threatened to go to nuclear war over the American presence in West Berlin—the dividing line between Western Europe, protected by the United States, and Eastern Europe, controlled by the Soviet Union.
Kennedy, who prized rationality, was shaken by Khrushchev’s unexpected rage. After the conference, he told an associate: “It’s going to be a cold winter.”
Meanwhile, East Berliners felt they were about to be denied access to West Berlin. A flood of 3,000 refugees daily poured into West Germany.
Khrushchev was embarrassed at this clear showing of the unpopularity of the Communist regime. In August, he ordered that a concrete wall—backed up by barbed wire, searchlights and armed guards—be erected to seal off East Berlin.
As tensions mounted and a Soviet invasion of West Berlin seemed likely, Kennedy sent additional troops to the city in a massive demonstration of American will.
Two years later, on June 26, 1963, during a 10-day tour of Europe, Kennedy visited Berlin to deliver his “I am a Berliner” speech to a frenzied crowd of thousands.
JFK addresses crowds at the Berlin Wall
“There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world,” orated Kennedy. “Let them come to Berlin.”
Standing within gunshot of the Berlin wall, he lashed out at the Soviet Union and praised the citizens of West Berlin for being “on the front lines of freedom” for more than 20 years.
“All free men, wherever they may live,” said Kennedy, “are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich ben ein Berliner.’”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 10, 2022 at 12:15 am
Sixty years before an American congress failed to remove a ruthless dictator from its midst, a Russian congress successfully removed their own.
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, 2021.
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.
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.
- 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.
- On May 24, David Perdue, Trump’s chosen candidate for Governor of Georgia, failed to secure the nomination over Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
- A September 2020 AP poll shows that 56% of Republicans want him to run for president in 2024; 44% don’t want Trump to run.
- A special grand jury will determine whether Trump broke the law by unsuccessfully pressuring Georgia officials to throw out President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
- New York state Attorney General Letitia James stated in a court filing that her office uncovered evidence that Trump used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of his golf clubs, skyscrapers and other property to secure loans and tax benefits.
- Federal prosecutors are investigating fake certificates sent to the National Archives with made-up slates of electors who wrongly declared Trump the winner in seven states he lost to Biden.
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 June 9, 2022 at 12:10 am
On January 13, 2021, 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, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 23, 2022 at 1:06 am
On February 28, CNN’s website published the following headline: Russia faces financial meltdown as sanctions slam its economy.
The story opened:
“Russia was scrambling to prevent financial meltdown Monday as its economy was slammed by a broadside of crushing Western sanctions imposed over the weekend in response to the invasion of Ukraine.”
That unprovoked attack opened on February 24, with missile and artillery attacks, striking major Ukrainian cities, including Kiev.
Ukraine vs. Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin had every reason to believe that the conquest of Ukraine would be a cakewalk. Intent on restoring the borders of the former Soviet Union, he had swept from one successful war to the next:
- In 1999-2000, he waged the Second Chechen War, restoring federal control of Chechnya.
- In 2008, he invaded the Republic of Georgia, which had declared its independence as the Soviet Union began to crumble. By war’s end, Russia occupied 20% of Georgia’s territory.
- In 2014, Putin invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launched only verbal condemnations.
The reasons:
- Fear of igniting a nuclear war;
- Belief that Russia was simply acting within its own sphere of influence; and/or
- Then-President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on NATO and displays of subservience to Putin.
NATO emblem
Russia had began massing troops on the Ukrainian border in 2021.
When the invasion came, the United States and its Western European allies retaliated with unprecedented economic sanctions.
Among the resulting casualties:
- The ruble crashed.
- Russia’s central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20%.
- The Moscow stock closed for the day.
- The European subsidiary of Russia’s biggest bank was about to collapse in a massive Depression-era run by savers.
- Economists predicted the Russian economy could decline by five percent.
- The West—especially the United States—has frozen at least half of the $630 billion in international reserves that Putin had amassed to stave off tough sanctions.
On the battlefield, the war has bogged down for Russia:
- Kiev remains unconquered.
- Ukrainian forces have driven Russians from the second-largest Ukrainian city of Kharkov.
- The Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, was sunk on April 14 after being struck by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles.
In short: The war is not going the way Putin assumed it would.
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This is not the first time a dictator has guessed wrong about the results of his actions.
On September 1, 1939, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler ordered his armies to invade Poland.
Almost a year earlier—on September 29, 1938—he had bullied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier into surrendering the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
The Munich Agreement—which Chamberlain boasted meant “peace in our time—only whetted Hitler’s appetite for greater conquests.
It also led him to hold France and England in contempt: “Our enemies are little worms,” he said in a conference with his generals. “I saw them at Munich.”
He believed he could conquer Poland, and Chamberlain and Daladier would meekly ratify his latest acquisition.
Adolf Hitler
So he was stunned when, on September 3, 1939, Britain and France—however reluctantly—honored their pledged word to Poland and declared war on Germany.
“What now?” Hitler furiously asked his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Ribbentrop had no answer.
Hitler knew that Germany didn’t have the resources for a long war. He had intended to fight a series of quick, small wars, gobbling up one country at a time. Now he found himself locked in an endless war with heavyweights France and England.
In time, he would fatally add the Soviet Union and the United States to his list of enemies.
And he stayed locked into that war until he committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and the Third Reich officially collapsed on May 7.
Fast forward to March 21, 2003 and President George W. Bush’s launching of an attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
George W. Bush
The war got off to an impressive start with 1,700 air sorties and 504 Cruise missiles.
Within roughly two weeks, American ground forces entered Baghdad, and after four days of intense fighting, the Iraqi regime fell. By April 14, the Pentagon reported that major military operations had ended.
On May 1, 2003, Bush declared that the war was won.
But then American forces became embroiled in an endless, nationwide guerrilla war. Eighteen years later, the United States was still fighting in Iraq.
The war that Bush had deliberately provoked:
- Took the lives of 4,484 Americans.
- Cost the United States Treasury at least $2 trillion.
- Created a Middle East power vacuum.
- Allowed Iran—Iraq’s arch enemy—to eagerly fill it.
- Frightened and repelled even America’s closest allies.
- Killed at least 655,000 Iraqis.
- Frightened China and Russia into expanding the size of their militaries.
Bush came to a better end than Adolf Hitler: He retired from office with a lavish pension and full Secret Service protection.
And Putin?
His attack on Ukraine was reportedly motivated, in part, to ensure that Ukrainians did not join NATO.
If true, he must be enraged and disturbed that his invasion has frightened Sweden and Finland into joining NATO.
And NATO is now fully revitalized to meet future Russian threats.
Thus can the worst intentions of hubristic dictators come undone.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 21, 2022 at 12:10 am
Next hero: Marie Yovanovitch, the former United States ambassador to Ukraine (2016 – 2019). She had joined the Foreign Service in 1986, and served as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan (2005 – 2008) and Armenia (2008 – 2011).
In May 2019, on President Donald Trump’s orders, the State Department recalled Yovanovitch as ambassador to Ukraine. She had earned respect from the national security community for her efforts to encourage Ukraine to tackle corruption.
But she had been criticized by Right-wing media outlets—notably Fox News Network-–and by Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Marie Yovanovitch
CNN reported that Yovanovitch stopped Giuliani from interviewing witnesses in his search for politically damaging information against former Vice President Joe Biden, whose son, Hunter, had had business dealings in Ukraine.
On October 11, 2019, she appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA). She did so in defiance of orders by the White House and State Department to not attend.
“She was a hero even before she hit the hearing room,” wrote Charles Pierce for Esquire magazine.
“She told them to stuff their directives, she would answer a congressional subpoena like a citizen is supposed to do. And she didn’t sneak in through the basement. She walked into the Capitol through the front doors, and she didn’t do so to fck around.”
Testifying for nearly 10 hours, Yovanovitch said that Trump had removed her from her post owing to “unfounded and false claims” and “a concerted campaign against me.”
She believed that associates of Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani, might have thought “that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
And she warned that the State Department was being “attacked and hollowed out from within. State Department leadership, with Congress, needs to take action now to defend this great institution, and its thousands of loyal and effective employees.”
Another victim on Trump’s hate-list was Chis Krebs.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda had played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Trump didn’t win a majority of the popular vote. But he got enough help from Russian President Vladimir Putin to triumph in the Electoral College.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And point man for this was Chris Krebs.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
Now he was director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. Among his duties:
- Sharing Intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
- Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
- Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Trump’s—the November 3, 2020 election went very smoothly.
As a result of the vast increase in election security, Trump not only failed to win the popular vote again but couldn’t get the help he expected from Putin.
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
The reason: Krebs had not only countered Russian propaganda lies—he had dared to counter Trump’s as well. For example: He rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud: There “is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
In a November 17 story on the CNN website, CNN reporters Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc bluntly concluded:
“[Krebs’] dismissal underscores the lengths Trump is willing to go to punish those who don’t adopt his conspiratorial view of the election.
“Since CNN and other outlets called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump has refused to accept the results, instead pushing baseless conspiracies that his second term is being stolen.”
Yet, by depriving Trump of Russian help, Krebs ensured a victory for democracy.
On January 6, the House and Senate counted the Electoral Votes—and pronounced Joseph Biden the winner—bringing an end to Trump’s reign of criminality and treason.
In his 1960 poem, “Conversation With an American Writer,” the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko spoke for those Russians who had maintained their integrity in the face of Stalinist terror:
“You have courage,” they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives in the face of Trump terror.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 20, 2022 at 12:10 am
Next up: Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev (pronounced Zill-lay-ev) was a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers.
Among these: Dimitri Shostakovich (September 25, 1906 – August 9, 1975)
Among his friends—to his ultimate misfortune—was Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, the former military hero now falsely condemned and executed as a traitor by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
In 1938, Zhilayev (November 18, 1881 – January 20, 1938) also became a casualty of what has become known as The Great Terror.
In his posthumously-published memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich, his pupil and friend, described how Zhilayev faced his end with a calmness that awed even the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) secret police sent to arrest him.
Dimitri Shostakovich
“He had a large picture of Tukhachevsky in his room, and after the announcement that Tukhachevsky had been shot as a traitor to the homeland, Zhilayev did not take the picture down.
“I don’t know if I can explain how heroic a deed that was….As soon as the next poor soul was declared an enemy of the people, everyone destroyed in a panic everything connected with that person….
“And naturally, photographs flew into the fire first, because if someone informed on you, reported that you had a picture of an enemy of the people, it meant certain death.
“Zhilayev wasn’t afraid. When they came for him, Tukhachevsky’s prominently hung portrait amazed even the executioners.”
“What, it’s still up?” one of the secret police asked.
“The time will come,” Zhilayev replied, “when they’ll erect a monument to him.”
As, in fact, has happened.
Meanwhile, Stalin has been universally condemned as one of history’s greatest tyrants.
Third hero—Brett Crozier, the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Graduating from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1992, he received his Master’s Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in 2007.
From 2017 to 2018 he commanded the USS Blue Ridge. In November, 2019, he was given command of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
On March 24, 2020, reports circulated that three members of the crew had tested positive for COVID-19. The next day the number of stricken sailors increased to eight. A few days later, it was “dozens.” The sailors reportedly became ill at sea, two weeks after a port call at Danang, Vietnam.
The initial cases were airlifted to a military hospital. The Roosevelt was ordered to Guam. After the ship docked on March 27, 2020, all 5,000 aboard were ordered to be tested for the virus. But only about 100 stricken sailors were allowed to leave the ship. The rest remained on board.
On March 30, Crozier emailed a four-page internal letter to multiple Naval officials, pleading to have the majority of the crew evacuated and quarantined on shore. Given the crowded sleeping quarters and narrow passageways of the vessel, Crozier wrote that it was impossible to follow social distancing and quarantine procedures:
“This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do. We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset—our Sailors….
“This is a necessary risk. Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.”
Brett Crozier
Crozier sent his letter via a non-secure, unclassified email to 20 to 30 recipients, as well as the captain’s immediate chain of command. He reportedly believed that his immediate supervisor would not allow him to send it.
And his superior later confirmed that he would not have allowed Crozier to send it.
On March 31, someone leaked the letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, which published it.
On April 1, the Navy ordered the aircraft carrier evacuated. A skeleton crew of 400 remained aboard to maintain the nuclear reactor, the fire-fighting equipment, and the ship’s galley.
On April 2, Crozier was relieved of command by acting United States Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly.
By that time, about 114 crew members—out of a total of around 4,000—reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.
As Crozier disembarked, sailors loudly saluted him with a standing ovation: “Cap-tain Cro-zier!”
Modly claimed that Crozier’s letter “raised alarm bells unnecessarily. It undermines our efforts and the chain of command’s efforts to address this problem, and creates a panic and this perception that the Navy’s not on the job, that the government’s not on the job, and it’s just not true.”
Actually, the Trump administration had frittered away January and February, with President Donald Trump giving multiple—and misleading—press conferences. In these, he played down the dangers of COVID-19, saying that “we’re on top of it”—even as the virus spread across the country.
“It was a betrayal. And I can tell you one other thing: because he did that he put it in the public’s forum and it is now a big controversy in Washington, DC,” continued Modly. [Italics added]
This was the United States Navy under Donald Trump—who threw “betrayal” and “treason” at anyone who dared reveal the truth about institutional crimes and failures.
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JFK: ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER: PART FIVE (OF TEN)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 8, 2022 at 9:43 amThe Kennedy administration’s unprecedented attack on organized crime has led some law enforcement experts to believe the Mob engineered President Kennedy’s assassination.
One of these is G. Robert Blakey, father of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. As the former Chief Counsel and Staff Director to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations (1977–1979) he oversaw the second official inquiry into the Kennedy assassination.
As a result, he believes the Mob had ample means, motive and opportunity to arrange for a “nut” to kill the President.
In his 1980 book, The Plot to Kill the President, Blakey asserted:
The 1983 TV mini-series, “Blood Feud,” clearly implied that the Mob was responsible. At its heart lay the 10-year conflict between Robert F. Kennedy and James R. Hoffa, then president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union.
This was also the plot of American Tabloid, a 1995 novel by James Ellroy.
But investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that during the five years he researched The Dark Side of Camelot, his expose of the hidden life of President Kennedy, he didn’t uncover any evidence of such a plot.
After Robert Kennedy left the Justice Department in 1964 to run for the post of U.S. Senator from New York, the Justice Department slacked off its push against the crime syndicates.
But the war was resurrected during the Nixon administration and has remained a top priority ever since.
Perhaps the most controversial legacy of the Kennedy administration remains the President’s dealings with the South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.,
In 1954, the French—who had controlled Vietnam for 80 years—were forced to withdraw their military forces from the country. Their army had suffered a humiliating defeat at Dienbenphu and the French citizenry—still recovering from defeat and Nazi occupation during World War II—demanded an end to the disastrous conflict.
Into this political vacuum stepped the victorious North Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh.
Kennedy—then U.S. Senator from Massachusetts—had visited Vietnam while the French were still trying to hold onto one of their last colonial possessions. And he had urged them to withdraw and allow the Vietnamese to govern themselves.
But President Dwight D. Eisenhower was aware of Ho’s overwhelming popularity throughout Vietnam due to his battles against Japanese and French colonialists. In any nationwide election, Ho was certain to win the presidency.
But Eisenhower felt he couldn’t allow an avowed Communist to rule Vietnam. With the North under firm Communist control, America focused its attention on the South.
Searching for an acceptable alternative, Eisenhower found him in Ngo Dinh Diem—a mandarin in a nation swept by revolution, a Catholic in a nation with an 80% Buddhist population.
In 1954, America began backing Diem. Although his first years were marked by social progress, he later became increasingly oppressive toward the Buddhist majority. Corruption openly flourished among government and army officials.
Ngo Dinh Diem
In 1960, North Vietnam launched an aggressive campaign of infiltration and assassination across South Vietnam.
In 1961, President Kennedy sent 400 Green Berets and 100 other military advisers to South Vietnam to offer support.
Diem requested American financing of a 100,000-man increase in his army. Kennedy agreed to an increase of 30,000. Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that 40,000 U.S. troops would be needed to “clean up the Vietcong threat.”
Kennedy underestimated the reaction of North Vietnam, whose forces were fighting what they believed was a crusade. As American troop strength increased, the North escalated its own commitment.
From 1961 to 1963, the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam steadily rose from 685 to 16,732. American minesweepers patrolled the coasts while their aircraft engaged in surveillance.
For the first time, Americans became casualties of the war–especially those in helicopter combat-support missions.
Meanwhile, Diem—urged by his influential brother, Nhu, who ran the secret police—cracked down on the Buddhists.
Government troops fired on a peaceful demonstration in May, 1963. In protest, Buddhist monks burned themselves to death before TV cameras.
Nhu’s beautiful and powerful wife, Madame Nhu, fed growing world outrage by her ridicule of “monk barbecue shows.”
American efforts to stop Diem’s anti-Buddhist campaign failed. On August 21, 1963, Diem’s police shot their way into Buddhist pagodas, killing scores and arresting hundreds.
This finally convinced the Kennedy administration that Diem would never gain the popular support he needed to win the war against the Communist North.
As a result, the administration offered support to South Vietnamese military officers planning a coup against Diem.
On November 1, 1963, South Vietnamese army units stormed the presidential palace. Diem and Nhu fled, but were caught and shot. Madame Nhu, visiting the U.S. at the time, escaped death, accusing Kennedy of supporting the coup.
The administration issued a flat denial.
Diem’s assassination was followed 21 days later by Kennedy’s own.
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