Even at the height of World War II, citizens of the United States could take comfort in the following:
Nazi Germany had a capitol–Berlin–and a single, all-powerful leader–Adolf Hitler. Once Berlin was occupied and Hitler dead or captured, the war would be over.
And, for all their ferocity, German soldiers were easy to recognize: They wore gray uniforms, spoke German and waved flags emblazoned with swastikas or imperial eagles.
Wehrmachtsoldiers marching through conquered France
Today, Western nations under attack by Islamic “holy warriors” face none of those advantages. Islam has no single capitol city–or leader.
Nor do Islam’s jihadist legions wear uniforms. Many of them don’t speak Arabic or wear clothing associated with Arabs, such as flowing robes and headdresses.
More ominously, millions of Islam’s potential “warriors” live within the very Western nations they despise. They can get all the instruction and inspiration they need to wreck havoc simply by going to the Internet.
Or, if they have the money, by traveling overseas to such terrorist-recruiting centers as Syria or Afghanistan.
And yet, faced with an unprecedented threat to their security, many Western leaders refuse to publicly acknowledge this fundamental truth:
Even if the West isn’t at war with Islam, Islam is at war with the West.
Leaders like President Barack Obama, who insisted, at a White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February, 2015: “We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”
David Cameron
And leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said on August 29, 2014: “Islam is a religion observed peacefully by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a poisonous ideology observed by a minority.”
On June 20, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a censored version of gunman Omar Mateen’s call to a 9-1-1 operator. While taking a break from slaughtering 49 defenseless men and women and wounding another 53, Mateen pledged his loyalty to ISIS.
Fortunately for the United States, the Bureau hasn’t always been so craven.
Ronald Kessler, author of the 2011 book,The Secrets of the FBI, quotes Arthur M. Cummings, the Bureau’s then-executive assistant director for national security:
“I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in [Washington] D.C. And he said, ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’”
“I can name the homegrown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom were seeking to kill Americans,” replied Cummings. “It’s not the Irish, it’s not the French, it’s not the Catholics, it’s not the Protestants. It’s the Muslims.”
Occasionally, Muslims will condemn Al Qaeda. But “rarely do we have them coming to us and saying, ‘There are three guys in the community that we’re very concerned about,’” said Cummings.
“They don’t want anyone to know they have extremists in their community. Well, beautiful. Except do you read the newspapers? Everybody already knows it. The horse has left the barn.”
Cummings has no use for such Politically Correct terms as “man-caused disasters” to refer to terrorism. Nor does he shy away from terms such as “jihadists” or “Islamists.”
“Of course Islamists dominate the terrorism of today,” he says bluntly.
In May, 2014, Steven Emerson, a nationally recognized expert on terrorism, posted an ad inThe New York Times, warning about the dangers of PC-imposed censorship. And he posed the question: “How can we win the war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”
He has a point–and a highly legitimate one.
Imagine the United States fighting World War II–and President Franklin Roosevelt banning the use of “fascist” in referring to Nazi Germany or “imperialist” in describing Imperial Japan.
Imagine CNN-like coverage of the Nazi extermination camps, with their piles of rotting corpses and smoking gas ovens, while a commentator reminds us that “Nazism is an ideology of peace.”
Then consider these Islamic terrorist outrages of our own time:
The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., which snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans.
The 2004 bombing of Madrid’s commuter train system.
The attack on the London subway in 2005.
The killing of 13 U.S. Army personnel at Fort Hood, Texas, by a Muslim army major in 2009.
The bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013.
The kidnapping of 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014.
The slaughter of 12 people at a Paris satirical magazine that had published cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed in 2015.
The murders of more than 100 people in ISIS attacks across Paris in 2015.
A series of deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels, killing 31 and injuring 270 in 2016.
In every one of these attacks, the perpetrators openly announced that their actions had been motivated by their Islamic beliefs.
In his groundbreaking book,The Clash of Civilizations(1996) Samuel Huntington, the noted political scientist at Harvard University, noted:
“The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
The West may not be at war with Islam–as countless Western politicians repeatedly assert. ButIslamicshave no qualms about declaring thattheyare at war with the West.
On June 12, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old former security guard, slaughtered 49 men and women and injured 53 more insidePulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Mateen was then shot to death by Orlando police after a three-hour standoff.
Omar Mateen
It was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in American history–and the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001.
The massacre was widely decried as an act of Islamic terrorism. But many others insisted it was simply a hate crime.
Among those opting for the latter: Officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
This despite the fact that:
Mateen, born in New York in 1986 to Afghan parents, praised the highjackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks that slaughtered 3,000 Americans. At the time, he was attending an alternative high school for problem students.
He also said that Osama bin Laden was his uncle who had taught him how to shoot an AK-47–this while it was not known that bin Laden had masterminded the attacks.
During the night of the Orlando massacre, Mateen stopped killing long enough to call 9-1-1, take responsibility for the attack and pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
In releasing a transcript of the 9-1-1 call, the Justice Department claimed that it would withhold some details to avoid putting the victims through any more pain–and to not further the propaganda efforts of ISIS.
The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice
“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups and further his propaganda,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told moderator Chuck Todd on the June 19 edition of Meet the Press.
“We will hear him talk about some of these things, but we are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance.”
On the morning of June 20, the FBI released the following edited version of the transcript:
MATEEN:Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [in Arabic]. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.
OPERATOR: What’s your name?
MATEEN: My name is I pledge of allegiance to [omitted].
OPERATOR: OK, what’s your name?
MATEEN: I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted].
A firestorm of protest erupted from Republican Congressional leaders, most notably Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Since Mateen’s pledge to ISIS had become widely known, they demanded, what was the point of censoring it in the transcript of his phone call?
“We know the shooter was a radical Islamist extremist inspired by ISIS,” Ryan said in a statement. “We also know he intentionally targeted the LGBT community. The administration should release the full, unredacted transcript so the public is clear-eyed about who did this, and why.”
An additional reason for the fury aimed at the Justice Department:On June 12, ISIS had claimed responsibility for the massacre:
“The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.”
Flag of ISIS
Finally, buckling to pressure, on the afternoon of June 20, the FBI released the full, uncensored transcript of Mateen’s call to 9-1-1:
OPERATOR: Emergency 911, this is being recorded.
MATEEN: In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficent [Arabic]
OPERATOR: What?
MATEEN:Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [Arabic]. I wanna let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.
OPERATOR: What’s your name?
MATEEN: My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State.
OPERATOR: OK, what’s your name?
MATEEN: I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may God protect him [Arabic], on behalf of the Islamic State.
OPERATOR: Alright, where are you at?
MATEEN: In Orlando.
OPERATOR: Where in Orlando?
[End of call]
J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building
Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department apologized for having censored the transcript.
“Unfortunately, the unreleased portions of the transcript that named the terrorist organizations and leaders have caused an unnecessary distraction from the hard work that the FBI and our law enforcement partners have been doing to investigate this heinous crime,” both the DOJ and FBI said in a statement.
Since September 11, 2001, Americans have been actively at war with Islamic nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Yet high-ranking officials in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have repeatedly and loudly denied that America is at war with Islam.
Even if this is true,a large portion of the Islamic world is at war with the United States.
Only Donald Trump–alone of the 2016 Presidential candidates–has dared to say what the vast majority of Americansknow: America is at war with Islamics who openly proclaim that their actions are motivated by their Islamic religious beliefs.
And it’s a major reason why Trump is about to receive the Republican nomination for President.
Today, America has two major candidates running for President: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Trump is a billionaire businessman. Clinton is a former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State.
Despite the great differences in their backgrounds, they both share one thing in common: Extremely high negatives among voters.
Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric has deliberately or unintentionally offended almost every major American voting group, including:
Mexicans: “They’re bringing drugs.They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” He’s also promised to “build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”
Prisoners-of-War: Speaking of Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain, a Vietnam POW for seven years: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
Women:“If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?”
These insults delight his white, uneducated followers. But they have alienated millions of other Americans who might have voted for him.
As for Clinton: She continues to be dogged by charges that she used her position as Secretary of State (2009-2013) to enrich herself.
Countries that made large contributions to the Clinton Foundation got an increase in State Department-approved arms sales.
For example: In 2011, the State Department green-lighted a $29 billion arms deal to Saudi Arabia, despite its dismal record on human rights.
Years before Clinton became Secretary of State, Saudi Arabia donated $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. And Boeing, the biggest defense contractor involved, donated $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation just two months before the deal was finalized.
But 48 years ago, Senator Robert Francis Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort.
Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished–while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.
As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’
“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.
“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”
Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4–when he was shot in the back of the head. His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel. He died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6.
On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.
Little Leaguers clutched their baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.
A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy
Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”
The Kennedy family never again roused the same passions among voters as it did during RFK’s short-lived run for the Presidency.
And America has never again since seen a Presidential candidate who combined toughness on crime and compassion for the poor.
Republican candidates have waged war on crime–and the poor. And Democratic candidates have moved to the Right in eliminating anti-poverty programs.
RFK had the courage to fight the Mafia–and the compassion to fight poverty. At a time of rising rates of income inequality and corporate crime, his kind of politics are sorely missed.
The ad opened with ominous music–and the face of a snarling Donald Trump.
“I would like anyone who is listening to consider some thoughts that I’ve paraphrased from the words of German pastor Martin Niemoeller.”
The voice belonged to Tom Moe, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force–and a former Vietnam prisoner-of-war.
It was a video produced by the 2016 Presidential campaign for John Kasich, the governor of Ohio. He had been peddling a message of creating jobs, balancing the Federal budget and disdain for Washington, D.C.
John Kasich
But he remained far behind in the polls. Meanwhile, Trump, the New York billionaire developer, was backed by increasingly large numbers of Republican primary voters.
So, with nothing to lose, Kasich decided to take off the gloves.
“You might not care if Donald Trump says Muslims must register with the government, because you’re not one,” continued Moe.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one.
Donald Trump
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s OK to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care of Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one.
“But think about this:
“If he keeps going, and he actually becomes President, he might just get around to you. And you’d better hope that there’s someone left to help you.”
The above is indeed a paraphrase of a famous quote by Martin Niemoeller (1892–1984), a prominent Protestant pastor. Although he had been a U-boat commander during World War 1, he became a bitter public foe of Adolf Hitler.
A staunch anti-Communist, he had initially supported the Nazis as Germany’s only hope of salvation against the Soviet Union. But when the Nazis made the church subordinate to State authority, Niemoeller created the Pastors’ Emergency League to defend religious freedom.
Martin Niemoeller
For his opposition to the Third Reich, Niemoeller spent seven years in concentration camps. With the collapse of the Reich in 1945, he was freed–and elected President of the Protestant church in Hesse and Nassau in 1947.
During the 1960s, he was a president of the World Council of Churches.
He is best remembered for his powerful condemnation of the failure of Germans to protest the increasing oppression of the Nazis:
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Neither “Adolf Hitler” nor “Nazi Party” was mentioned during the one-minute Kassich video. But it infuriated Trump, who threatened to sue Kasich if he found anything “not truthful” in the ad.
The Kasich ad was the darkest attack made against Trump by any candidate–Republican or Democrat. And it raises a disturbing question:
If Donald Trump is America’s Adolf Hitler, who will be its Claus von Stauffenberg?
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg was the German army officer who, on July 20, 1944, tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941).
While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943 when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg
Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’sFuehrer.
His reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellowWehrmachtsoldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.
Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that notall Germans–even members of the Wehrmacht–were criminals.
Stauffenberg wanted Hitler dead. A live Fuehrer might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
But–how to do it?
Hitler was a closely-guarded target. He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.
Adolf Hitler
Several attempts had already been made on Hitler’s life–all of them with time-bombs. But one of the bombs–smuggled onto Hitler’s plane–hadn’t exploded. Another bomb had–45 minutes after Hitler left the beer hall where he had been making a speech.
Stauffenberg decided to carry his bomb–hidden in a briefcase–into a “Hitler conference” packed with military officers.
But Stauffenberg didn’t intend to be a suicide bomber. He intended to direct the government that would replace that of the Nazis. He would plant his time-bomb in the conference room–and find an excuse to leave.
Then, the coup–“Operation Valkyrie”–would be on.
Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. The British and Americans would then be informed of Germany’s willingness to surrender.
The 1983 TV mini-series, Blood Feud, chronicles the decade-long struggle between Robert F. Kennedy (Cotter Smith) and James R. Hoffa (Robert Blake), president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union.
With Kennedy as Attorney General and facing relentless pressure from the Justice Department, the Mafia despairs of a solution. At a swanky restaurant, several high-ranking Mafiosi agree that “something” must be done.
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Blood Feud clearly implies that the Mafia was responsible.
[The House Assassinations Committee investigated this possibility in 1978, and determined that Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss of New Orleans, had the means, motive and opportunity to kill JFK. But it could not find any conclusive evidence of his involvement.]
Even with the President dead, RFK’s Justice Department continues to pursue Hoffa. In 1964, he is finally convicted of jury tampering and sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment.
U.S. Department of Justice
Hoping to avoid prison, Hoffa phones Robert Kennedy, offering future Teamsters support if RFK runs for President. To prove he can deliver, he tells Kennedy that the Teamsters have even penetrated the FBI.
[In March, 1964, Kennedy met with Hoffa on an airfield at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. He was accompanied by two Secret Service agents from the detail assigned to ex-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
[FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, no longer afraid to cross RFK, had withdrawn the agents previously assigned to guard Kennedy.
[Accompanying Hoffa were two muscular bodyguards–at least one of whom was packing two pistols in shoulder holsters.
[While the Secret Service agents watched from a respectful distance, Kennedy spoke quietly with Hoffa. The Attorney General showed a document to Hoffa, and the Teamsters leader at times nodded or shook his head.
[The agents drove Kennedy back to Washington. During the ride, he said nothing about the reason for the meeting.
[David Talbot, in his book, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, speculates that it could have been to discuss Hoffa’s conviction for jury tampering.
[But Gus Russo–author of Live By the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK–writes that the reason might have been Dallas.
[Perhaps, he speculates, RFK had wanted to look into Hoffa’s eyes while asking him: Did you have anything to do with the assassination? RFK had, in fact, done this with CIA Director John McCone almost immediately after his brother’s death.]
In Blood Feud, Kennedy confronts J. Edgar Hoover (Ernest Borgnine) and accuses him of illegally planting wiretaps in Mob hangouts all over the country.
J. Edgar Hoover and Robert F. Kennedy
Hoover retorts that this had been the only way to obtain the prosecution-worthy intelligence Kennedy had demanded: “You loved that flow of information. You didn’t want it to stop.”
Kennedy: Why did you keep the FBI out of the fight against the Mob for decades?
Hoover: “Every agency that came to grips with them got corrupted by their money.”
[So far as is known, Hoover never made any such confession. Historians continue to guess his reason for leaving the Mob alone for decades.]
Ernest Borgnine as J. Edgar Hoover
RFK then mentions the CIA’s plots to employ the Mob to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro
[The agency had wanted to please President Kennedy, and the Mafia had wanted to regain its casinos lost to the Cuban Revolution. The role the Kennedy brothers played in the CIA’s assassination plots remains murky, and has been the subject of endless speculation.]
“The CIA, doing business with the Mob,” says Kennedy. “The FBI, leaking information to its enemies [the Teamsters].” Then, sadly: “I guess it’s true–everyone does business with everyone.”
[So far as is known, the FBI did not pass on secrets to the Teamsters. But during the 1970s, the Mafia penetrated the Cleveland FBI office through bribes to a secretary. Several FBI Mob informants were “clipped” as a result.]
In 1967, Hoffa goes to prison. He stays there until, in 1971, President Richard Nixon commutes his sentence in hopes of gaining Teamsters’ support for his 1972 re-election.
Kennedy leaves the Justice Department in 1964 and is elected U.S. Senator from New York. In 1968 he runs for President. On June 5, after winning the California primary, he’s assassinated.
In Blood Feud, just before his assassination, RFK asks: “How will I ever really know if the Mob killed Jack because of my anti-Mob crusade?”
Hoffa schemes to return to the presidency of the Teamsters–a post now held by his successor, Frank Fitzsimmons. He runs the union in a more relaxed style than Hoffa, thus giving the Mob greater control over its pension fund.
And the Mafia likes it that way.
On July 30, 1975, Hoffa disappears from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant near Detroit. He had gone there to meet with two Mafia leaders.
Almost 41 years after the death of James R. Hoffa, and almost 48 years after that of Robert F. Kennedy:
Labor unions are a shadow of their former power.
The threat they once represented to national prosperity has been replaced by that of predatory corporations like Enron and AIG.
The war RFK began on the Mafia has continued, sending countless mobsters to prison.
Millions of Americans who once expected the Federal Government to protect them from crime now believe the Government is their biggest threat.
The idealism that fueled RFK’s life has virtually disappeared from politics.
The 1983 TV mini-series, Blood Feud, chronicles the decade-long struggle between Robert F. Kennedy and James R. Hoffa.
Having “helped” Kennedy (Cotter Smith) to oust corrupt Teamsters President Dave Beck, Hoffa (Robert Blake) believes that Kennedy should now be satisfied: “He’s got his scalp. Now he can move on to other things while I run the union.”
But Hoffa has guessed wrong–with fatal results. Realizing that he’s been “played” by Hoffa, a furious Kennedy strikes back.
He orders increased surveillance of Hoffa and his topmost associates. He subpoenas union records and members of both the Teamsters and the Mafia to appear before his committee in public hearings.
And he tries to enlist the aid of legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Ernest Borgnine). But Hoover wants no part of a war against organized crime, whose existence he refuses to admit.
Meanwhile, Kennedy’s confrontations with Hoffa grow increasingly fierce. In open hearings, Kennedy accuses Hoffa of receiving kickbacks in the name of his wife. Hoffa damns him for “dirtying my wife’s name.”
Kennedy secures an indictment against Hoffa for hiring a spy to infiltrate the Senate Labor Rackets Committee. He’s so certain of a conviction that he tells the press he’ll “jump off the Capitol building” if Hoffa beats the rap.
But Hoffa’s lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams (Jose Ferrer) puts Kennedy himself on the witness stand. There he portrays Kennedy as a spoiled rich man who’s waging a vendetta against Hoffa.
Hoffa beats the rap, and offers to send Kennedy a parachute. But he jokingly warns reporters: “Hey, Bobby, you better have it checked. I don’t trust myself!”
By 1959, Robert Kennedy’s work as chief counsel for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee is over. But nothis determination to send Teamsters President James Hoffa to prison.
Cotter Smith as Robert Kennedy
Throughout 1960, he manages the Presidential campaign for his brother, John F. Kennedy (Sam Groom). By a margin of only 100,000 votes, JFK wins the election.
Hoffa thinks that his troubles are over, that “Bobby” will move on to other pursuits and forget about the Teamsters.
Hoffa is partly right: Kennedy moves on to another job. But it’s the office of United States Attorney General.
JFK, needing someone in the Cabinet he can trust completely, browbeats Robert into becoming the the nation’s top cop.
For Hoffa, it’s a nightmare come true.
As Attorney General, Kennedy no longer has to beg J. Edgar Hoover to attack organized crime. He can–and does–order him to do so.
Throughout the country, the Mafia feels a new heat as FBI agents plant illegal electronic microphones (“bugs”) in their innermost sanctums. Agents openly tail mobsters–and send them to prison in large numbers.
And Kennedy sets up a special unit, composed of topflight prosecutors and investigators, to go after just one man: James Riddle Hoffa. The press comes to call it the “Get Hoffa” squad.
Hoffa continues to beat federal prosecutors in court. But he believes he’s under constant surveillance by the FBI, and his nerves are starting to crack.
Convinced that the FBI has bugged his office, he literally tears apart the room, hoping to find the bug. But he fails to do so.
What he doesn’t know is he’s facing a more personal danger–from one of his closest associates.
He tells a trusted colleague, Edward Grady Partin (Brian Dennehy) how easy it would be to assassinate Kennedy with a rifle or bomb.
Later, Partin gets into a legal jam–and is abandoned by the Teamsters. Hoping to cut a deal, he relays word to the Justice Department of Hoffa’s threats against the Attorney General.
Now working for the Justice Department, Partin sends in reports on Hoffa’s juror-bribing efforts in yet another trial. Hoffa again beats the rap–but now Kennedy has the insider’s proof he needs to put him away for years.
Meanwhile, the Mafia despairs of the increasing pressure of the Justice Department. At a swanky restaurant, several high-ranking members agree that “something” must be done.
[Although this scene is fictional, it’s clearly based on an infamous outburst of Carlos Marcello, the longtime Mafia boss of New Orleans.
Carlos Marcello
[In 1961, Marcello was deported to his native Guatemala on orders by RFK. After illegally re-entering the country, he swore vengeance against the Attorney General.
[In September, 1962, during a meeting with several mob colleagues, he flew into a rage when someone mentioned Kennedy.
“Take the stone out of my shoe!” he shouted, echoing a Sicilian curse. “Don’t you worry about that little Bobby sonofabitch. He’s going to be taken care of!”
[When one of his colleagues warned that murdering RFK would trigger the wrath of his brother, President John F.Kennedy, Marcello replied: “In Sicily they say if you want to kill a dog you don’t cut off the tail. You go for the head.”
[Marcello believed that the death of President Kennedy would render the Attorney General powerless. And he added that he planned to use a “nut” to do the job.]
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Blood Feud clearly implies that the Mafia was responsible.
Today, America has four major candidates running for President: Donald Trump, Rafael Edward Cruz, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Trump is a billionaire businessman; Cruz is a U.S. Senator from Texas; Clinton is a former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State; and Sanders is a U.S. Senator from Vermont.
Despite the great differences in their backgrounds, they all share one thing in common: Extremely high negatives among voters.
But 48 years ago, Senator Robert Francis Kennedy aroused passions of an altogether different sort.
Kennedy had been a United States Attorney General (1961-1964) and Senator (1964-1968). But it was his connection to his beloved and assassinated brother, President John F. Kennedy, for which he was best known.
Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
Millions saw RFK as the only candidate who could make life better for America’s impoverished–while standing firmly against those who threatened the Nation’s safety.
As television correspondent Charles Quinn observed: “I talked to a girl in Hawaii who was for [George] Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama]. And I said ‘Really?’ [She said] ‘Yeah, but my real candidate is dead.’
“You know what I think it was? All these whites, all these blue collar people who supported Kennedy…all of these people felt that Kennedy would really do what he thought best for the black people, but, at the same time, would not tolerate lawlessness and violence.
“They were willing to gamble…because they knew in their hearts that the country was not right. They were willing to gamble on this man who would try to keep things within reasonable order; and at the same time do some of the things they knew really should be done.”
Campaigning for the Presidency in 1968, RFK had just won the crucial California primary on June 4–when he was shot in the back of the head. His killer: Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian furious at Kennedy’s support for Israel.
On June 8, 1,200 men and women boarded a specially-reserved passenger train at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. They were accompanying Kennedy’s body to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
As the train slowly moved along 225 miles of track, throngs of men, women and children lined the rails to pay their final respects to a man they considered a genuine hero.
Little Leaguers clutched their baseball caps across their chests. Uniformed firemen and policemen saluted. Burly men in shirtsleeves held hardhats over their hearts. Black men in overalls waved small American flags. Women from all levels of society stood and cried.
A nation says goodbye to Robert Kennedy
Commenting on RFK’s legacy, historian William L. O’Neil wrote in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“…He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and, through error and tragic accident, failed at….He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That too must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death something precious disappeared from public life.”
Eleven years earlier, as a young, idealistic attorney, Kennedy had declared war on James Riddle Hoffa, the president of the Mafia-dominated International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union.
As chief counsel for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee, Kennedy was appalled at the corruption he discovered among high-ranking Teamster officials. As he saw it, under Hoffa’s leadership, the union was nothing less than “a conspiracy of evil.”
Robert Francis Kennedy as Chief Counsel, Senate Labor Rackets Committee
Hoffa, in turn, held an equally unflattering view of Kennedy. “A rich punk,” said Hoffa, who didn’t know or care about “the average workingman.”
In 1983, Blood Feud,a two-part TV mini-series, depicted the 11-year animosity between Kennedy and Hoffa. Although it took some dramatic liberties, its portrayal of the major events of that period remains essentially accurate.
Today, labor unions are a rapidly-vanishing species, commanding far less political influence than they did 50 years ago. As a result, young viewers of this series may find it hard to believe that labor ever held such sway, or that the Teamsters posed such a threat.
James Riddle Hoffa testifying before the Senate Labor Rackets Committee
And in an age when millions see “Big Government” as the enemy, they may feel strong reservations about the all-out war that Robert F. Kennedy waged against Hoffa.
Blood Feud opens in 1957, when Hoffa (Robert Blake) is a rising figure within the Teamsters. Kennedy (Cotter Smith) is chief counsel for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee.
At first, Hoffa tries to ingratiate himself with Kennedy, telling him: “I know everybody who can help me and anybody who can hurt me.”
Robert Blake as James R. Hoffa
A wily Hoffa decides to parley Kennedy’s anti-corruption zeal into a path to power for himself. Via his attorney, Eddie Cheyfitz, he feeds Kennedy incriminating evidence against Dave Beck, president of the Teamsters.
Confronted with a Senate subpoena, Beck flees the country–paving the way for Hoffa to assume the top position in the union. Hoffa believes he has solved two problems at once.
On May 28, 2015, Hastert, the former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives (1999-2007) was indicted for violating Federal banking laws and lying to the FBI.
He had tried to conceal $3.5 million he had paid since 2010 to a man whom he had molested as a high school student. The student had been on the wrestling team that Hastert had coached.
The relationship had occurred while Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Ill.
Later, in 1981, Hastert entered Congress.
On October 28, 2015, Hastert pleaded guilty to structuring money transactions in a way to avoid requirements to report where the money was going.
Dennis Hastert
“I felt a special bond with our wrestlers,” Hastert wrote in his 2004 memoirs, Speaker: Lessons From Forty Years of Coaching and Politics. “And I think they felt one with me.”
Apparently that “special bond” extended to activities outside the ring.
In the pre-sentence report, Justice Department prosecutors charged that Hastert had abused four young boys when he was their wrestling coach. One was only 14 years old.
Hastert had claimed that a coach should never strip away another person’s dignity.
But, said federal prosecutors, “that is exactly what defendant did to his victims. He made them feel alone, ashamed, guilty, and devoid of dignity.”
Hastert’s sentencing, delayed because of health problems, is now scheduled for April 27.
Thus, irony: By giving in to blackmail, Hastert:
Lost $3.5 million;
Unintentionally engineered his arrest and indictment; and
Ensured that his darkest secret would be revealed.
There is a lesson to be learned here–one that longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover well understood: Giving in to blackmail only empowers the blackmailer even more.
As William C. Sullivan, the onetime director of the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Divison, revealed after Hoover’s death in 1972:
“The moment [Hoover] would get something on a senator, he’d send one of the errand boys up and advise the senator that ‘we’re in the course of an investigation, and we by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.
“‘But we wanted you to know this. We realize you’d want to know it.’ Well, Jesus, what does that tell the senator? From that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”
“Boy, the dirt he [Hoover] has on those Senators!” John F. Kennedy–a former Senator now President–gushed to his journalist-friend, Benjamin C. Bradlee.
Kennedy soon came to know that even Presidents could be targeted for blackmail.
In May, 1962, Hoover privately informed Kennedy that the FBI had learned that Judith Campbell, the mistress of Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana, had another bedmate: JFK himself.
John F. Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover and Robert F. Kennedy
Hoover had feared being retired by the President’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. It had been RFK who had ordered Hoover to attack the Mafia as he had long attacked the Communist Party USA.
Now, as a result of that anti-Mob effort, the FBI had picked up evidence linking the President with the mistress of a top Mafia boss.
Hoover’s tenure as FBI director was thus assured–until his death on May 2, 1972, of a heart attack.
Narcotics agents have their own methods of blackmail in dealing with informants.
When a drug-abuser and/or dealer is coerced into becoming a “snitch,” the narcotics agent orders him to call another user/dealer he knows.
The agent then tapes the call–and makes sure his new informant knows it. From that moment, the “snitch” knows there’s no way out except cooperating with his new master.
The only effective way of handling blackmail was demonstrated by Arthur Wellesley, known to history as the Duke of Wellington.
The Duke of Wellington
In 1815, he had defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo, ending France’s longstanding threat to England. With that victory came the honors of a grateful nation.
Then, in December, 1824, Wellington found himself the target of blackmail by Joseph Stockdale, a pornographer and scandal-monger.
“My Lord Duke,” Stockdale write in a letter, “In Harriette Wilson’s memoirs, which I am about to publish, are various anecdotes of Your Grace which it would be most desirable to withhold….
“I have stopped the Press for the moment, but as the publication will take place next week, little delay can necessarily take place.”
Wilson was a famous London courtesan past her prime, then living in exile in Paris. She was asking Wellington to pay money to be left out of her memoirs.
From Wellington came the now-famous reply: “Publish and be damned!”
Wilson’s memoirs appeared in installments, naming half the British aristocracy and scandalizing London society.
And, true to her threat, she named Wellington as one of her lovers–and a not very satisfying one at that.
Wellington was a national hero, husband and father. Even so, his reputation did not suffer, and he went on to become prime minister.
But wait! There’s something even more demoralizing awaiting these “heirs of tomorrow.”
The discovery that for all the “we hire only the brightest” rhetoric by employers, having a college degree actually means little to most CEOs.
A new report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity concludes that nearly half of the nation’s recent college graduates hold jobs that don’t require a degree.
In short, many of the jobs they have aren’t worth the price of their diploma.
From that report:
Increasing numbers of recent college graduates are ending up in relatively low-skilled jobs that, historically, have gone to those with lower levels of educational attainment. This study examines this phenomenon in some detail, concluding:
About 48% of employed U.S. college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggests requires less than a four-year college education. And 11% of employed college graduates are in occupations requiring more than a high-school diploma but less than a bachelor’s. Another 37% are in occupations requiring no more than a high-school diploma;
The proportion of overeducated workers in occupations appears to have grown substantially; in 1970, fewer than one percent of taxi drivers and two percent of firefighters had college degrees, while now more than 15% do in both jobs;
About five million college graduates are in jobs the BLS says require less than a high-school education;
But a glance at their accompanying photos offers the real appeal of this site.
Consider the profile of “Eric, The Actor”:
With his shirt unbuttoned down to his chest in the classic Fabio style, he claims:
I’m an award winning NYC actor who has traveled the World for movies and for pleasure.
I recently founded my own production company. I have a vision of not only entertaining people but also of getting people to think and hopefully help foster social change.
I also love the outdoors and sustainable culture. I am also active in social causes.
And he’s also available–for $200 an hour.
So if you’re a college graduate who can’t find a willing-to-hire employer within your chosen profession–such as pharmacy of engineering– there’s always Rent-A-Gent.
Or some similar agency catering to the whims of the American plutocracy, for whom $200 an hour means what buying a Snicker’s candy bar means for the fast-disappearing middle class.
It should be enough to make you hesitate before signing up for a loan to cover the average $57,000 cost of a public college education.
Or an even larger loan to cover the $132,000 cost of a private college education.
But if you’re still thinking that “employers really respect that degree,” consider this: Job recruiters spend exactly six seconds examining your resume.
According to The Ladders research, recruiters spend an average of “six seconds before they make the initial ‘fit or not fit’ decision” tointerviewyou.
Not hire you–just to meet you. You’ll still have plenty ofchances to get shot down during or after the interview.
According to the study, when scanning a resume, recruiters looked at the following items:
Your name
Current title and company
Current position start and end dates
Previous title and company
Previous position start and end dates
Education
American employers should be legally compelled to hire as responsibly as college students are expected to pursue an education.
Until this happens, those young men and women thinking of committing a big chunk of their time and going into massive debt to pursue a college degree should think twice before doing so.
“Yesterday they were ruffians. Today they control our lives. Tomorrow they will wind up as keepers of the public lavoratories.”
So wrote the ancient Roman poet Juvenal about the brutal non-entities who reigned at the court of the Caesars.
Roman Emperor Nero
Yet he could have been writing about the rise and fall of a onetime American Caesar named Dennis Hastert.
On May 28, 2015, Hastert, the former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives (1999-2007) was indicted for violating Federal banking laws and lying to the FBI.
He had tried to conceal $3.5 million he had paid since 2010 to a man whom he had molested as a high school student. The student had been on the wrestling team that Hastert had coached.
The relationship had occurred while Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Ill.
Later, in 1981, Hastert entered Congress.
On October 28, 2015, Hastert pleaded guilty to structuring money transactions in a way to avoid requirements to report where the money was going.
Dennis Hastert
“I felt a special bond with our wrestlers,” Hastert wrote in his 2004 memoirs, Speaker: Lessons From Forty Years of Coaching and Politics. “And I think they felt one with me.”
Apparently that “special bond” extended to activities outside the ring.
In the pre-sentence report, Justice Department prosecutors charged that Hastert had abused four young boys when he was their wrestling coach. One was only 14 years old.
Hastert had claimed that a coach should never strip away another person’s dignity.
But, said federal prosecutors, “that is exactly what defendant did to his victims. He made them feel alone, ashamed, guilty, and devoid of dignity.”
Hastert’s sentencing, delayed because of health problems, is now scheduled for April 27.
Hastert wasn’t indicted for having had a sexual relationship with underage students. The statute of limitations had long ago run out on those offenses.
He was indicted for trying to evade federal banking laws and lying to the FBI.
Shortly after his indictment, Hastert resigned from the board of Wheaton College, an evangelical university in Chicago known for its anti-gay policies.
The FBI began investigating the cash withdrawals in 2013.
The Bureau wanted to know if Hastert was using the cash for criminal purposes or if he was the victim of a criminal extortion.
When questioned by the FBI, Hastert said he was storing cash because he didn’t feel safe with the banking system: “Yeah … I kept the cash. That’s what I’m doing.”
One part of Hastert’s life was not secret: His opposition to homosexual rights.
From 1997 to 2007, Hastert voted for the Marriage Protection Act, which “forbids requiring any state or any other political subdivision of the United States to credit as a marriage a same-sex relationship treated as marriage in another state or equivalent government.”
Hastert also voted in favor of a Constitutional amendment to “establish that marriage shall consist of one man and one woman.”
He also voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which banned companies from discriminating against employees “on the basis of sexual orientation.”
Owing to Hastert’s “deeply conservative” voting record, in 1998, he received perfect scores of 100 from
Hastert, who concealed his past as a sexual predator while claiming to be a man of virtue, wrote in his autobiography:
“I was never a very good liar. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough. I could never get away with it, so I made up my mind as a kid to tell the truth and pay the consequences.”
Hastert makes the third Republican “family values” Speaker of the House to become ensnared in an ethics scandal.
Newt Gingrich was the first Speaker (1985-1999) in the history of the House to be reprimanded and punished for ethics violations. His offense: Claiming tax-exempt status for a college course run for political purposes.
He successor, Bob Livingston, was forced to resign when Hustler publisher Larry Flynt revealed his sexual infidelities.
And now there’s Dennis Hastert, whose conduct involved neither money nor women–but a series of male high school students.
Of course, Democrats have had their sex scandals as well–as President Bill Clinton can thoroughly attest. But Democrats usually don’t suffer as badly from them.
The reason: Republicans portray themselves as moral examples for the nation. So for them, being caught literally with their pants down proves a double-whammy.
They are condemned for their specific illegal/immoral acts–and for the sheer hypocrisy of their false claims of sainthood.
Ironically, Right-wingers like Hastert would fare better when caught in homosexual affairs if they simply admitted their sexual tastes and registered as Democrats.
But in heavily Right-wing states like Texas and Oklahoma, they wouldn’t stand a chance of being elected as a Democrat.
And Red-state voters, feeling themselves moral arbiters of the nation, wouldn’t elect anyone they thought was “unnatural.”
So Right-wingers will continue pretending to be moral paragons–and will continue paying the price when they’re exposed as fallible humans.
Steffen White’s Email: Sparta480@aol.com Former reporter, legal investigator and troubleshooter. Columnist at Bureaucracybuster.com. Fighting political and bureaucratic arrogance, incompetence and/or indifference.
When making complaints in writing, carefully review your email or letter before sending it. Remove any words that are vulgar or profane. Don't make sweeping accusations: "Your agency is a waste."
Don't attribute motives to people you've had problems with, such as: "The postal clerk refused to help me because he's a drunk." If the person actually appeared to be drunk, then be precise in your description: "As he leaned over the counter I could smell beer on his breath. Behind him, in a waste basket, I saw an empty bottle of Coors beer."
Show how the failure of the official to address your problem reflects badly on the company or agency: "This is not the level of service your ads would lead potential customers to expect."
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FBI SPELLS “PC”: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2016 at 12:01 amEven at the height of World War II, citizens of the United States could take comfort in the following:
Wehrmacht soldiers marching through conquered France
Today, Western nations under attack by Islamic “holy warriors” face none of those advantages. Islam has no single capitol city–or leader.
Nor do Islam’s jihadist legions wear uniforms. Many of them don’t speak Arabic or wear clothing associated with Arabs, such as flowing robes and headdresses.
More ominously, millions of Islam’s potential “warriors” live within the very Western nations they despise. They can get all the instruction and inspiration they need to wreck havoc simply by going to the Internet.
Or, if they have the money, by traveling overseas to such terrorist-recruiting centers as Syria or Afghanistan.
And yet, faced with an unprecedented threat to their security, many Western leaders refuse to publicly acknowledge this fundamental truth:
Even if the West isn’t at war with Islam, Islam is at war with the West.
Leaders like President Barack Obama, who insisted, at a White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February, 2015: “We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”
David Cameron
And leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said on August 29, 2014: “Islam is a religion observed peacefully by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a poisonous ideology observed by a minority.”
On June 20, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a censored version of gunman Omar Mateen’s call to a 9-1-1 operator. While taking a break from slaughtering 49 defenseless men and women and wounding another 53, Mateen pledged his loyalty to ISIS.
Fortunately for the United States, the Bureau hasn’t always been so craven.
Ronald Kessler, author of the 2011 book, The Secrets of the FBI, quotes Arthur M. Cummings, the Bureau’s then-executive assistant director for national security:
“I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in [Washington] D.C. And he said, ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’”
“I can name the homegrown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom were seeking to kill Americans,” replied Cummings. “It’s not the Irish, it’s not the French, it’s not the Catholics, it’s not the Protestants. It’s the Muslims.”
Occasionally, Muslims will condemn Al Qaeda. But “rarely do we have them coming to us and saying, ‘There are three guys in the community that we’re very concerned about,’” said Cummings.
“They don’t want anyone to know they have extremists in their community. Well, beautiful. Except do you read the newspapers? Everybody already knows it. The horse has left the barn.”
Cummings has no use for such Politically Correct terms as “man-caused disasters” to refer to terrorism. Nor does he shy away from terms such as “jihadists” or “Islamists.”
“Of course Islamists dominate the terrorism of today,” he says bluntly.
In May, 2014, Steven Emerson, a nationally recognized expert on terrorism, posted an ad in The New York Times, warning about the dangers of PC-imposed censorship. And he posed the question: “How can we win the war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”
He has a point–and a highly legitimate one.
Imagine the United States fighting World War II–and President Franklin Roosevelt banning the use of “fascist” in referring to Nazi Germany or “imperialist” in describing Imperial Japan.
Imagine CNN-like coverage of the Nazi extermination camps, with their piles of rotting corpses and smoking gas ovens, while a commentator reminds us that “Nazism is an ideology of peace.”
Then consider these Islamic terrorist outrages of our own time:
In every one of these attacks, the perpetrators openly announced that their actions had been motivated by their Islamic beliefs.
In his groundbreaking book, The Clash of Civilizations (1996) Samuel Huntington, the noted political scientist at Harvard University, noted:
“The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
The West may not be at war with Islam–as countless Western politicians repeatedly assert. But Islamics have no qualms about declaring that they are at war with the West.
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