Kissinger: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Firemen remove victims from a car shattered by a September 21, 1976, bomb blast on Embassy Row in Washington. Orlando Letelier, Chilean exile, and Ronne Karpen Moffitt, his aide, were both killed in the blast.

It's hard to believe, but Henry Kissinger is still making news in 2010. Nearly 35 years after what everyone assumed would become an irrelevant retirement followed by death, the former Secretary of State continues to break through the headlines. Kissinger's latest news making, granted, isn't from an order he recently issued. Nonetheless, the fact that it is just coming out now - and the fact that the man is still alive - make it very relevant today.

The item of which I speak is a recently declassified document that seems to indicate that Kissinger - while President Ford's Secretary of State - stopped his own plan to end a secret CIA-advised program of international assassinations known as 'Operation Condor'. Why an American Secretary of State would want to cancel a plan to stop a bunch of South American dictators - the orchestrators of Condo - from killing their real and perceived enemies may seem unfathomable in 2010. It is hard to imagine Secretary of State Clinton doing such a thing.

But that's because it is not 1976. And we're not still in the middle of the Cold War. I'll get into the actual declassified document in a moment, but first I think it important to give some background on Condor. During the Cold War - when international communism was seen as a global threat - it was American foreign policy to do whatever possible to keep communists from taking over any country in Central or South America [we won't even get into Korea and Vietnam]. One of the most tried and true ways to keep a country from going communist was to support a brutal dictator who would terrorize his population, kill communists, and generally support the U.S. in the U.S./U.S.S.R. showdown.

Now, the theory was faulty. For one thing, a terrorized population generally tends to resent the guy who is terrorizing them. They particularly resent foreign countries [i.e. America] who are supporting the guy who's terrorizing them. So, far from preventing communism and Left-wing governments, the policy did the opposite in many countries. Cuba is the most famous, but there were Leftist uprisings throughout Central and South America as a result of the American foreign policy [we won't even get into what it did in Iran].

In return for tamping down communism, the U.S. agreed to provide boatloads of cash - both to the country and the personal bank accounts of the dictators. The U.S. also agreed to stay out of any "internal" strife in said country [i.e. political assassinations of "enemies" of the dictator].

It is with that backdrop that Operation Condor took flight. The plan was officially implemented in 1975 by Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil. The leaders/dictators of those countries - with CIA supervision - went after socialists and communists, jailing many, torturing many more, and killing even more. The plan was so secretive that Kissinger himself only learned about it from the CIA nearly a year after it was officially created. It is impossible to know exactly how many died under Condor, but the 'unofficial' death toll is at least over 60,000 and probably more.

Now, Condor was hardly the first intelligence program that was assassinating opposition members in these countries. Two years previously Argentina's dictator, Augusto Pinochet, unleashed an era of terror the likes of which the continent had never seen. In fact, many trace Condor back to years before it's formal "launch" in 1975. They claim that the 1975 agreement merely formalized a plan that had been in effect as far back as 1968.

So, with that background, we move forward to 1976 and Kissinger. By this point, Ford was in the middle of a neck-and-neck race with former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter [D] for a term in his own right, after succeeding Richard Nixon two years earlier. The House of Representatives was investigating many of the clandestine U.S. government activities - particularly those of the CIA - of the 1960s and early 1970s. There was a palpable movement in government to peel back from the kind of international clandestine operations of which Condor was the most "successful."

Indeed, when Kissinger himself was told about Condor he issued an order to U.S. ambassadors in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and other countries involved in the network to issue what are called demarches, or formal diplomatic presentations, warning leaders that "Condor activities would undermine relations with the United States." In the past, Kissinger has said, "The instructions were never rescinded." The declassified cable, however, seems to refute that [more on that in a moment].

The U.S. ambassadors to Chile and Uruguay were not pleased with Kissinger's order. Not necessarily because they disagreed with it but because they didn't want to be the ones to have to go to the dictator and tell him he could no longer count on U.S. support. Indeed, the U.S. envoy in Uruguay feared for his own safety if he had to confront the new President of Uruguay, Aparicio Méndez Manfredini.

Thus we return to the cable. After getting over his initial anger about not being told about Condor, Kissinger thought better about his order. The result was the declassified cable released by National Security Archive [NSA] analyst Peter Kornblush, on April 10, 2010. Kissinger fired off a cable on September 16, 1976 to his top Latin American deputy demanding that U.S. diplomats put a stop to any efforts to warn the governments involved in Condor that the United States would no longer support Condor. In the cable, Kissinger rejects delivering his earlier proposed warning to the government of Uruguay about Condor operations and ordered that "no further action be taken on this matter" by the State Department.

The reason why the cable matters 34 years later is that five days after it was issued - in one of the most brazen attacks ever carried out in Washington, D.C. - one of those Condor targets - Chilean exile Orlando Letelier - was blown up in a car bomb in Embassy Row, mere blocks from the White House. Afterwards, it was determined that the murder - which also took the life of an American, Ronne Karpen Moffitt, who was a passenger in the car with Letelier - was the work of the Chilean secret police working through the Condor network.

Since that day in 1976, many have believed that Kissinger, the State Department and the CIA were all - minimally - accomplices to the murders. The just-released cable, said the NSA analyst Kornbluh, "confirms that it's Kissinger's complete responsibility for having rescinded a cease-and-desist order to Condor killers." For his part, Kissinger issued a statement late Saturday night, saying Kornbluh had "distorted" the meaning of the cable and said it was intended only to disapprove a specific approach to the Uruguayan government, not to cancel the plan to issue warnings to other nations in the Condor network.

That might be a plausible explanation...if every former State Department official who had worked under Kissinger was dead. They are not, however. And many former State Department officials who worked under Kissinger during that period now say that the newly released cable did interrupt the U.S. effort to rein in Operation Condor, not just with Uruguay but with other countries in the region.

Indeed, shortly after Kissinger's order that "no further action be taken" to stop Condor, his top Latin America deputies moved to cancel U.S. warnings to other countries as well. On September 20,1976, then-Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Harry Shlaudeman told his deputy, William Luers, to inform U.S. ambassadors in countries involved in Condor not to convey Washington's concerns about the operation. The Letelier bombing occurred the next day.

Now, there is no evidence that Kissinger knew of the Letelier plot or the specifics of any other assassination plans. But the delays in issuing the demarches meant Chile apparently received no high-level U.S. warning about Condor before the bombing.

I'm not sure I agree with the premise - held by many on the Left - that had the demarches been delivered as Kissinger had originally ordered, the deaths of Letelier and Moffitt would have been prevented.

Nonetheless, the declassified memo provides Kissinger foes with the "smoking gun" they've been waiting 34 years to find in the deaths that occurred in the neighborhood around of the White House.


copyright 2010 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Identity

The U.S. Census is supposed to be confidential. That's true...unless you happen to be the President of the United States [above].

I have to shake my head about this "news" that Barack Obama identifies himself on the 2010 U.S. Census as 'African-American'. People of mixed races are up in arms over the fact that Obama did not select one or more of the other options available to him and every American. Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father, deals extensively with the inner-struggle he faced - and faces - being multiracial and finding an identity. So, I don't mean to make light of that struggle - his or others' - by any means. But I do think it a bit ridiculous for people to be so focused on having Obama self-identify himself with the their particular group.

Why? Well, I guess it's because of the way I see the world. Since I fall into one of the following groups, I can say this: my general rule of thumb is this, if the Klan wants you dead, then you're African American [or Jewish, gay, Catholic, or literate]. You can identify yourself as whatever the hell you want, but in the end, as far as the Klan and the rest of the racist world, you're African American. Well, actually, that's not what they'd call you but I won't repeat what they'd call you.

So, the fact that the queries grew so loud that the White House felt compelled to issue an official statement on Obama's Census response - remember, that information is supposed to be confidential - seemed a bit too much for me. The White House's confirmation was simple: "President Obama checked only the racial box that says 'Black, African Am., or Negro'."

The queries were whether he checked other boxes as well. According to the rules of the Census, he could have checked "White", "Some other race" or even written in "Multiracial". That he didn't do so has a lot of people upset, particularly those who self-identify as multiracial. This despite the fact that the whole point of the question on the Census is to "self-identify". Apparently, the information is to be confidential for everyone but the President of the United States.

Fortunately - at least to this point - no one has sought to know how Obama - whom the White House said actually filled out the document - identified his daughters Malia and Sasha. I suppose that would be going too far - even for 21st century media hacks. Just to keep the record straight, Obama added his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, who lives with the family in the White House.

As a private citizen - before his successful run for the U.S. Senate in 2004 - Obama always self-identified as African American. The First Lady is descended from a South Carolina slave, and Obama himself reportedly takes great pride in being the first African American President of the United States, even if he refuses to publicly display it [in the interest of removing race from his political identity.

While Obama has struggled with the issue of self-identification, he also has a famous sense of humor and dry wit. At the White House Correspondents' dinner last year, he nearly fell over laughing at the opening remarks of comedian Wanda Sykes. Turning to face the President, Sykes said, "You are a black President. I'm proud to be able to say that. That's unless you screw up. And then it's going to be, 'What's up with the half-white guy?'"

copyright 2010 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

That A Way

Rest assured, my airport looks nothing like this (above).




Things worked so much better when the Mafia ran the airport nearest my home [and I use the term 'nearest' loosely, as it's about an hour away]. Granted, you paid $34 for a Pepsi and $150 to park your car, but at least you had a place to park near the airport. Now, you have to park - literally - a mile away from the airport and wait for a shuttle bus to pick you up.

It's not just that, though. Since the Mafia left, there is no one at the entrance to the airport to try to shake you down. You might think that's a good thing, but it ain't: at least under the Mafia people were there to answer questions for a fee. "Are you lost, sir?" For a mere $10 the guy'd get you to wherever you needed to go. "The restrooms, sir?" For another Hamilton you'd be peeing in comfort [well, the bathrooms were cesspools, now that I think of it; but at least you were peeing where you were supposed to]. I mean, those were the days.

Since they drove the Mafia out of the airport, however, it's been a fucking lonely nightmare. Sure, the place is cleaner than a virgin's you-know-what, but good luck figuring out just where the fuck you're supposed to go or finding someone to tell you where the fuck you're supposed to go. Sure, the Pepsi is back to an only semi-laughable $8, but good luck finding a place to get one once you pass through security.

One of the fears we all had back when the government created the Transportation Safety Administration [TSA] was that they'd grow into a typical government bureaucracy staffed by losers, shiftless daydreamers, hopeless ne'er do-wells and people incompetent to do anything else. Sure enough, eight years later, we're there. And good luck firing anybody. At least when the Mafia ran the place it was pretty simple to... how shall I put it?, Terminate an employee.

All of this is a prelude to an ode about my recent trip. Thanks to Osama bin-Laden, I have to get up at 3 am to catch a 7:30 am flight. Just for that they should kill him. As I say, it's about an hour's drive to the airport from my house, plus they want you to get there at least 2 hours beforehand because they readily admit they don't know what the fuck they are doing at those security check points.

So, I get to the entrance and get ready to get in line for the security/anal penetration check. It's a longer line than I'd like, but I'd listened to my government and gotten there early enough. Just as I was about to get to what I assumed was the back of the line, an enormous TSA person - to call him a "worker" would imply that he did, in fact, work - put a big fucking paw on me and said, "The line begins back there." I looked to where his Rush Limbaugh-like stubby finger was pointing and saw a line of people with about 100 to 150 awfully pissed-looking would-be travelers in it. TSA Man had cleared the space in front of the roped off area so people could walk [where to, I've no idea, since the checkpoint was up against a wall], separating it essentially into two very long lines instead of one enormous cattle train. I took one look and instantly realized I was going to miss my flight despite getting up at 3 am.

Just as I started to trudge back to the end of the line, this Gabourey Sidibe-looking TSA Woman waddles past and says to the first fat bastard - the one who put his chubby paws on me a second earlier - "That fuckin' door ain't workin'. Shouldn't we send 'em to Gate C or D?" She was talking about the one security scan that was open [the other two were unstaffed and closed]. It was responsible for the long line. She had asked this question loud enough for me and the first few people in the line to hear, but soft enough so that no one else could. I nearly knocked Gabourey over - no small feat, mind you - to race [at least what passes for racing in my condition] to Gate C or D. Whew! Almost no line and I got through security with only a minor anal probing and this time without a catheter sweep [one day I'll write about that trip].

I figured, "Hmmm. My luck is changing. Normally, I'd have been waiting in that line for 3 hours only to later find out I could've gone to Gate C or D." So, I start walking to my gate. Naturally my flight is leaving from the one gate at the airport that they built so far away from the rest of the terminal [I'll grant you, that was the Mafia's doing; but everyone makes mistakes] that you - again, literally - take a bus to it.

I start walking expecting to see the signs for the "Bus to Gate F" - which is the most appropriately named Gate in the airport because you are Fucked if you have to fly out from there. Instead, I see signs pointing directly to Gate F - not a bus to Gate F, but the real Gate F. Now, since the Mafia left, they've been building additions to this airport. I figure, "Hmm, they must've built a walkway to Gate F so you don't need a bus." I keep walking, and walking. A mere 15 minutes later I see a set of glass doors that read, "Gate F". I get ready to walk though them when I notice an itsy-bitsy little sign the size of a postage stamp that reads, "Hey Asshole: If You walk Through These Doors You Have to Go Back Through Security Again and Get Your Ass Probed."

I turned on my heel and reversed myself. Now, I noticed another enormous TSA employee [don't ask me how I missed him the first time] sitting in a big go-cart-like kind of thing, seemingly taking a nap. "Excuse me, how do I get to Gate F," says I. Looking at me as if I just asked him how many times he'd banged his sister, the TSA guy mutters, "There." and points to the doors I just passed. I replied, "But, uh, that thimble-sized warning sign says I'll need to go through security again." Again, TSA Guy looks at me like I'm trying to goad him into a fistfight. "Oh, yeah, you'll need to go through security again." This was getting me nowhere. "OK, " I said, starting to lose my famous temper [they don't call me Evil for nothing]. "Let me rephrase this: How do I get to Gate F without having to go through security again?" Now he smiled. When a government employee smiles at you it's like a spider smiling at something it has just caught in its web. "You need to walk a way back down that hallway to Gate C. There's a bus that picks you up." I couldn't believe it. "But, there's no sign there for the bus." I could tell that the concept of actually putting a sign there telling people where to go was a completely foreign idea to this asshole. "There is a sign. Just like that one," he said, smiling and pointing to the postage stamp.

So, now I'm doing a slow burn. I walk the 15 minutes back from whence I came and found the microscopic sign and got on the bus. One bus ride later, I get off at Gate F. I'm looking for F-44. I see a big, big sign that says "Gates 41-49 This A Way". So I walk 'this a way'. I get to the end of the terminal and simply cannot find Gate F-44. Then I notice: all of the gates on this side are odd numbers. These fuckers put the odd numbers on one side of the terminal and the even numbers on the other side. "But", I thought, "that sign distinctly said that Gates F 41-49 were 'this a way'." I walked back to where the bus dropped me off and, taking a second look at the sign, I see what they've done: the sign I saw did say 'Gates 41-49..." But now I see another sign. This one says "Gates 40-50 This A Way". What the two signs don't say, however, is that "Gates 40-50" means Gates 40, 42, 44, 46, 48 and 50; while "Gates 41-49" means 41, 43, 45, 47 and 49. Shaking my head, I caught my flight.

Now, if I went through my airport to leave, I am obviously going to have go back through it again when I come back. I remind you of what I said earlier: back when the Mafia ran the place, there was ample parking everywhere. Since then, they have knocked down a couple of parking garages. That's why I had to park a mile away. Ok, you say, what went up in place of the parking garages? Well, they put up some green space, with a fountain, couple of benches. Very nice. Except no one is allowed to use it. It was built in a part of the airport that is now off-limits for "security reasons". So, in place of useful parking spaces they now have the Hanging Gardens of Babylon where no one can go.

Back to my return trip home. I left, obviously, from another airport. I arrived super-early, as I had no idea what their security check points would be like. Naturally, then, my flight home was delayed. Hours later, I finally boarded. Now, this was a weather thing, and no one can control that - not even the Mafia. So, I finally land home a few hours later. Late? Yes. But, it could've been much worse.

Then I notice what gate we're pulling into... You guessed it, Gate Fuck You. This means that I'm going to have to get back on that damned bus to the regular terminal from which I'm going to need to catch yet another bus to get to my car. I'd have rather made a crash landing on the nearby interstate, closer to my car.

So, I start walking to where I think the bus is. Then I notice a huge sign - biggest one there - says, "This A Way to Parking Lot Bus". Hmmm, thought I: they actually run the parking lot bus to Gate F. Who woulda thunk it? So, I walk and walk and walk a bit more until - finally - I'm outside at what looks like a pick-up point.

By this point, it was about 30 degrees colder than what it had been in the city I'd just left. So, wearing only a Unabomber-type hooded sweatshirt, I waited. And waited. There were half a dozen TSA mothers sitting around drinking and smoking, kind of looking at me. I guessed they were on break - shocker.

Twenty five minutes pass. The TSA workers and I are still there. "This is some fucking break these assholes are on," think I. Just then, I see the parking lot bus. "Thank Christ!" I think. I get my stuff ready and prepare to make the last leg of the trip. The bus slows down.....and then immediately speeds up when it sees me and takes off right past me. "You fucking motherfucker where the fuck are you going!" I screamed. "Mother Fucker!" I screamed again, making sure to make them two separate words. I turned to the cadre of TSA wastes-of-space still on break. "Where the fuck can I get the parking lot bus?" At first, I thought the big guy in the group was getting ready to punch me. Instead, he simply was pulling out a lighter from his pocket to light his 15th cigarette of the break. "Ya gotta go a way up that a way [pointing to where I had just come from....30 minutes and a case of pneumonia ago] and cross over that thing [pointing to a walking bridge that takes you over the Hanging Gardens you can't use] and go through that thing [pointing to what looks strangely like another terminal] and it's there."

Now, I didn't really know where I was going. But I knew that it involved more walking and that I'd just lost 30 minutes of my life that I'd never get back. "Mother Fucker!" I screamed, again, making sure to say them as two separate words. "What the fuck!" Just then, the guy calls after me, "Well, sir," for some reason the politeness from someone who I know is a complete prick in real life just really pisses me off. "You coulda just taken a bus back to the terminal." I was going to get into an argument and say something like, "You douchebag: don't you think I would have?! You assholes put a fucking sign up telling me to come here." But I realized he was just going to tell me that there was another post-it note-sized sign back where I'd gotten off my plane telling to catch the bus there.

So, I blurted out something that I think was "Cocksucker!" but I can't swear to it. It might've been "Asshole!' or "Douche bag!" For the continuity of the story, however, I think "Cocksucker1" works best. Just then a TSA cop was at my side, "Can I help you sir," says Barney Fife. "Yes, you can get that fucking bus to stop and come the fuck back here to take me to the fucking parking lot!" Barney looked disturbed. "I don't really like being spoken to like that, sir." For some reason, that just made me mental. "Really?! Well I don't like having my chain yanked for 30 fucking minutes waiting out here for a bus that these assholes [pointing to the TSA workers who were still on break]] obviously knew wasn't going to stop here." Just then Barney got real serious-looking. There was still a fraction of my brain functioning normally - well, normal for me - telling me "Feets don't fail me now!". It was pulling me away from what was probably going to be an unpleasant confrontation. "Sir, you need to lower your voice and calm down." God, I wished, he hadn't said that. I was going to walk away without saying another word, honest-to-God I was. Then Barney had to go and say 'calm down'.

"Calm fucking down?" I said, although I did so while walking away. "Fucking goddamned motherfucking cocksucking pigfucking motherfucker!" I managed to get that out before being out of earshot of everyone. Fortunately for me, TSA Man didn't mace me and drag me into a holding cell. I was steamed. Then I realized something else: I always tell my employees that I don't give a damned what they do on their own time - including drunk driving, public urination, aggravated sexual assault - whatever. Just for God's sake make sure you're not wearing anything that has the company's name on it when you get arrested and booked. Just then, I looked down and realized that the Unabomber-type sweatshirt and the polo shirt peeking from under it both had our company's name big and bright and bold out front. If I'd have pushed that TSA Cop a little further, it might've meant more than an arrest. It could've meant my job.

For some reason, this made me angrier. At least, though, I was walking away from the situation without handcuffs. I finally found the spot where the parking bus will pick you up. 25 minutes later - again spent out in the cold - the fucking bus came by. One hour after I'd gotten off the plane. That was, itself, a few hours late. I was finally getting to my car.

I had flown instead of driving to my destination because a 7 1/2 hour drive was just too much for me. As I was driving away from the airport, I looked at my watch and realized....it was exactly 7 1/2 hours after I'd first gotten to the airport to begin my journey home 450 miles away. Time saved? Zero.

Somewhere, Osama bin Laden was laughing his terrorist ass off.
copyright 2010 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

...They Got Nothin' But Their Jeans...

"I LOVED YOU IN DIFF'RENT STROKES!" Vice President Joe Biden brought down the house - with the exception of the President - this time without even dropping a 'fuck bomb'. Biden's 'Diff'rent Strokes' quip was directed at 8-year old Macelas Owens of Seattle (standing in front of Biden), who was at the signing ceremony as a guest of the President's. Obama's expression says all that needs to be said as to what he thought about his Vice President's sledgehammer wit.


copyright 2010 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

Getting Rid of Migraines

A still from the rough cut of the Stop Kennedy Smears video by Robert Greenwald feature Kennedy adviser Theodore Sorensen [above].

Inspired by the New York Times, February 16, 2010

It's hard to believe there is still anyone alive who knew President Kennedy. The man himself would have been 93 years old this May. As tragic as it was that he died so young, based on his medical history and his propensity for falling into women who weren't his wife, the odds are he wouldn't have made 73 let alone 93. Yet, there are a few from Camelot still around. And they are pissed. The reason is a new History Channel 'mini-series' [whatever happened to when they just showed the greatest hits of World War II?] that hasn't even been cast for yet, but that has aging Kennedy aides getting their Depends in a bunch. Although there isn't even a date selected yet to even start shooting - let alone airing - the series, Kennedy adviser Theodore Sorensen says he's read the script and that it is about as factual as Oliver Stone's rewrite of history in JFK.

Called - brilliantly, I might add - The Kennedys, the series is a project of 24 creator Joel Surnow. Therein, probably, lies some of Sorensen's angst. Surnow is an avowed political conservative. The fact that Kennedy himself was a conservative Democrat - despite his elevation to sainthood - always seems to escape the remaining Kennedy loyalists. The fact is, John Kennedy wouldn't have recognized the politics of his little brother Teddy. Bobby was too liberal for JFK. And Bobby was no liberal while JFK was alive.

In answer to a series that hasn't yet been cast, a liberal documentary filmmaker went to the Internet with a short in which historians of the era say the script is scandalous and inaccurate. My guess is it is scandalous and a bit accurate. Having not read the script, though, I've no idea.

“It was political character assassination,” the anti-series filmmaker, Robert Greenwald, told the New York Times. “It was sexist titillation and pandering, and it was turning everything into a cheap soap opera of the worst kind.” Greenwald further told the Times that he is hoping that his 13-minute video and an accompanying petition, at stopkennedysmears.com, will convince the History Channel to kill the project before it even begins.

Unless the series depicts Kennedy blowing up churches in Alabama, I think the thing should go forward, personally. Unlike JFK the movie, about three people will even see The Kennedys. And that will break a ratings record for the History Channel. Indeed, were it not for the outcry against the series, you can almost guarantee that neither you nor I would even know it existed. And that, folks, may be what this is all about. It wouldn't surprise me if the makers of the project leaked salacious versions of the script, knowing damned well that Kennedyphiles would go ballistic and actually help them in promoting it.

Ostensibly, those involved in creating the series feign shock and sorrow over the hullabaloo. They also lend some credence to my theory above by claiming that - no matter what Sorensen thinks he read - the scripts for the 8-part series [Jesus, the man was in office for less than three years; do we need eight episodes?] haven't been finalized. In fact, they claim the scripts are still being rewritten.

“Next year, when it’s done and it’s on the air, if people want to criticize it, so be it,” said Stephen Kronish, the screenwriter of The Kennedys, told the Times. Kronish, who actually told the Times he identifies himself as a liberal Democrat concluded, “But at this stage of evolutionary development it seems that Greenwald’s agenda becomes all the more obvious.”

The angle of the Times article is that the whole tempest is a Left vs. Right thing. Project creator Surnow is an Emmy Award-winning producer and friend of prominent conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh. Right there, you know his judgment is questionable. Anyone who is friends with that fat bastard is suspect. On the other hand, I like Surnow because - during his tenure as executive producer on 24 [a show, believe it or not, that I still haven't seen despite word that "you'd love it] - Surnow was criticized for what the Left called the show's permissive attitude toward torture. Sounds good to me.

Then there is the stopkennedysmears guy, Greenwald. He is the founder of the advocacy media company Brave New Films. His company has created documentaries like Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism [again, never saw it but heard I'd love it], a condemnation of the Fox "News" Channel, and Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers. So, he sounds a bit credible, too. Generally when you have two credible adversaries, the truth to their argument lies somewhere in the middle.

The story of how Sorensen got his liver-spotted fingers on the script is that from Greenwald's days as a director and producer of those God-awful made-for-television movies [that's one thing I'll say for reality TV - at least it killed the acting career of Meredith Baxter Birney and Lindsay Wagner] Greenwald started hearing about the project. Based on what he read, he lost his mind. He dug up Sorensen and a group of historians. To his credit, though Greenwald didn't just choose Kennedyphiles. Appearing in his video is Nigel Hamilton, whose 1992 JFK: Reckless Youth [which I think I read on my honeymoon, or thereabouts] drove the Kennedy family insane.

Among the errors they cite in the scripts are factual ones that would drive someone like me nuts. If there's one thing I cannot stand it's when a movie, TV show, play whatever gets a tiny fact wrong. It undermines - for crazy people like me, anyway - the credibility of the whole project. Among those kinds of things these critics say are found in the scripts include references to exit polling for the 1960 presidential election. Which would be fine, except exit polling had not yet been invented. Another is that President Kennedy introduced the Peace Corps during the Bay of Pigs crisis in April 1961. Which, again, is fine except for the inconvenient fact that he signed an executive order creating the corps one month earlier. Again, to normal people that's no big deal. To me, I'm already done with the thing.

I'm not a big fan of historical fiction, which is what this project sounds like. The average person may be ok with script scenes that never occurred [such as an exchange that suggests Kennedy came up with the idea for the Berlin Wall]. At age 82, you have to wonder if Sorensen remembers how he got into his chair, but you do have to pause when he bluntly says in the video, “Every single conversation with the President in the Oval Office or elsewhere in which I, according to the script, participated, never happened.” Since older folks tend to have great long-term memory [ok, they have no short-term memory], Sorensen is either lying or they really didn't happen.

Some of the other scenes the Kennedyphiles are complaining about, however, are inconvenient facts as far as I'm concerned. There are too many sources who have reported over the years about how Kennedy enjoyed banging young ladies in the White House pool for there not to be a whole lot of truth to it. So, when critics complain about a scene where a Secret Service agent approaches the President while he is banging a young lady, I have to say that Kennedyphiles no doubt don't want that portrayed, but it happened so it's ok by me. There is also a story - possibly apocryphal although more than one person has said Bobby Kennedy repeated it to them - where JFK asks Bobby “What do you do when you’re horny?” JFK then tells his younger brother that if he doesn’t have sex with unfamiliar women “every couple of days I get migraines.” I've finally discovered the cause of 20 years of headaches!

For his part, screenwriter Kronish told the Times that the History Channel’s standards for producing its mini-series are more rigorous than the broadcast networks’, and that his finished scripts will require bibliographic annotations and legal vetting before filming proceeds. Kronish can also cite his own historians like Seymour Hersh, Robert Dallek, David Talbot and others from whom - he says - he developed his personality sketch of the main characters. “If I’m wrong,” he told the Times, “I guess all of them are wrong.” No, I wouldn't say that. But I would say that Hersh's work in particular borders on the salacious-as-history. Still, Dallek and Talbot are pretty sound.

Kronish loses me, however, when he acknowledged that some factual details, like the date that the Peace Corps was established, were changed for concision or dramatic license, but not with malicious intent. His argument - “This is not a documentary,” he said. “It is a dramatization.” - is crapola. There's no such thing as dramatic license when writing about historical figures. At least not in my world.

copyright 2010 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

In Charge

Fellow-Cabinet members so disliked Alexander Haig, they let him go before a world-wide audience disseminating incorrect information on Presidential succession even though they knew he was wrong [above]. His "I'm in control" performance on March 30, 1981, instead made him look like a mad-man.

Alexander M. Haig Jr. - who once attempted to merge two of the three branches of the federal government by judicially interpreting the Constitution while serving in the executive branch - is still dead. The four-star general who served as a commanding White House Chief of Staff as the Nixon Administration crumbled and then later served as a confrontational Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan , died this past Saturday at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. There is no truth to the rumor that he died after telling his surgeon during an operation that "I'm in charge."

Haig not only merged the judicial and executive branches but also merged the executive with the military. A political general, Haig's bids for the presidency quickly came undone although his ambition to be President never wavered. A brilliant man with a savvy wit, Haig knew his foibles and once joked to Reagan’s aide Lyn Nofziger that he knew that - no matter what else he did -the third paragraph of his obituary would detail his conduct in the hours after President Reagan was shot, on March 30, 1981.

That day, Secretary of State Haig wrongly interpreted the Constitution, declaring himself the Acting President. “The helm is right here,” he told stunned members of the Reagan Cabinet in the White House Situation Room, “and that means right in this chair for now, Constitutionally, until the Vice President gets here.” His words were taped by Richard V. Allen, then the National Security Adviser. The only problem was - Haig was wrong. And his colleagues knew it. They so disliked Haig, however, that they said nothing when he said he wanted to address the media to "let them know I'm in charge."

In Haig's defense, his belief that the Secretary of State was third in line of succession was - at one time - true. The whole concept of Presidential succession has been changed three times in our history. For one thing, the Constitution says nothing about it beyond the Vice President's ascendancy in the event of the President up-and-dying. The Presidential Succession Act of 1792 stated that - in the event of the removal, resignation, or death of both the President and Vice President - the President Pro Tempore of the Senate was next in line of succession after the Vice President, followed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. In 1886, following the very timely death of Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks in the previous year, a new Presidential Succession Act was adopted. This is the one Haig was thinking of on that March afternoon. The 1886 act replaced the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House on the list with the members of the Cabinet. The order of succession was determined by the order in which each cabinet department had been created - with the Secretary of State being first in line after the Vice President [as six former Secretaries of State had gone on to be elected President in their own right and as only one Congressional leader, Speaker of the House James K. Polk, had done so by 1886, the change was widely accepted].

Haig must have been napping, however, when the succession was changed a third time. Following World War II and the death of President Roosevelt, President Truman lobbied for a revision of the law, believing that an elected official - not a Presidential appointee - should be third in line behind the Vice President and President. This 1947 act remains in effect today and - obviously - was in effect on that March day 29 years ago. The law restored the Congressional officers to places directly after the Vice President, but switched their order from the 1792 Act, placing the Speaker of the House first and the President Pro Tempore second. The Cabinet officers then followed, again in the order in which their respective departments were created with one exception: the Secretary of Defense (a department created in 1947 following a merger of the Departments of War and Navy) was placed fifth in the line of succession, directly after the Secretary of the Treasury. This placed the Secretary of Defense in the place that had been held by the Secretary of War.

So, in fairness to Haig, had he been speaking in 1891 - and not 1981 - he would have been correct. Unfortunately, he wasn't. “There were three others ahead of Mr. Haig in the constitutional succession,” then-NSA head Allen wrote in 2001 - still angry about it 20 years after the fact. “But Mr. Haig’s demeanor signaled that he might be ready for a quarrel, and there was no point in provoking one.”

After informing Cabinet of his interpretation, Haig then asked, “How do you get to the press room?” His colleagues let him go without correcting him. Haig raced upstairs and went directly to the lectern before a television audience of millions - including yours truly, just back from his first [in a long line of] blood tests. Haig - his knuckles whitening and his arms shaking - declared to the world, “I am in control here, in the White House.” He did not give that appearance, however, and instead looked like a crazed mad-man.

That image of Haig has largely overshadowed his brilliant national service in the preceding years. Seven years before that March day, in fact, Haig really had been in control: he was practically the Acting President during the final months of the Nixon Administration. Indeed, Haig kept the White House running as the distraught, despondent, and very drunk Commander-in-Chief was driven from power by the threat of impeachment in 1974. “He was the President toward the end,” William B. Saxbe, the United States Attorney General in 1974, was quoted as saying in Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency. “He held that office together.”

Henry A. Kissinger, his mentor and master in the Nixon White House, also said the nation owed Haig its gratitude for steering the ship of state through dangerous waters in the final days of the Nixon era. “By sheer willpower, dedication and self-discipline, he held the government together,” Kissinger wrote in the memoir Years of Upheaval.

Haig took pride in his cool handling of a Constitutional crisis without precedent, using it as a major argument in support of his confirmation to Secretary of State in 1981. “There were no tanks [in 1974],” he said during the hearing on his nomination. “There were not any sandbags outside the White House.”

Serving the Nixon White House from 1969 to 1974, Haig went from colonel to four-star general without holding a major battlefield command, an extraordinary rise with few if any precedents in American military history. Despite that - and the political arrows shot at Haig by opponents who argued he was largely an "imaginary" general - Haig really was a war hero. More on that later.

And anyway, the White House was its own battlefield in those years. Haig won his stars through his tireless service to President Nixon and Nixon’s National Security Adviser, Kissinger. Indeed, Nixon had privately suggested to the Reagan transition team that Haig would make a great Secretary of State. Upon his appointment, though, Reagan began to have doubts. It didn't help when Haig declared himself “the vicar of foreign policy”. In the Roman Catholic Church, to which Haig belonged, the Pope is the “vicar of Christ”. Reagan didn't like the religious alliteration.

Indeed, Haig soon alienated his affable Commander-in-Chief and the Vice President, George H. W. Bush. Bush's national security aide, Donald P. Gregg, described Haig as “a cobra among garter snakes.”

As a result, Haig served for only 17 months before Reagan uncharacteristically fired him in a one-page letter on June 24, 1982 [Reagan couldn't stand personal confrontation. When Haig refused to resign in a one-on-one meeting with Reagan, the President simply had the letter drafted rather than fire him right at the meeting].

Haig's months at the State Department were marked by a largely covert paramilitary campaign against Central American leftists, a heightening of nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union, and dismay among American allies about the lurching course of Reagan's new American foreign policy.

“His tenure as Secretary of State was very traumatic,” John M. Poindexter, later Reagan’s National Security Adviser, whined in the oral history Reagan: The Man and His Presidency. “As a result of this constant tension that existed between the White House and the State Department about who was going to be responsible for national security and foreign policy, we got very little done.” Considering Poindexter's entire career was traumatic for the rest of us, his choice of the word is ironic.

Haig said President-elect Reagan had assured him that he “would be the spokesman for the U.S. government.” But he came to believe — with reason — that the White House staff had banded together against him. He blamed in particular the troika of James A. Baker III, Edwin Meese III and Michael K. Deaver I. Considering the weasel-like nature of each of those cretins, Haig was a veritable saint.

While not saintly, Haig's pre-1981 career was worthy of respect. He graduated from West Point in 1947 and, as a young lieutenant, went to Japan to serve as an aide to Gen. Alonzo P. Fox, deputy chief of staff to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the supreme allied commander and American viceroy of the Far East.

Haig’s first taste of war was brutal. In the first months of the Korean War, he served on the staff of Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond, chief of staff of the Far Eastern Command. Official Army histories depict General Almond as a terror to his underlings and as one of General MacArthur’s most uncompromising disciples. Following orders, General Almond sent thousands of American soldiers north toward the Chinese border in November 1950. They met a ferocious surprise counterattack from a far larger Chinese force. In response, General Almond and Lieutenant Haig flew to the forward outpost of an American task force on November 28, 1950, where the general pinned a medal on Haig's parka, told him the Chinese were only stragglers, and then flew off leaving Haig and 2,500 to do the fighting. Of that task force, some 1,000 were killed, wounded, captured or left to die. In all, within two weeks, American forces in Korea took 12,975 casualties, in one of the worst routs in American military history.

After the Korean War, Haig served at the Pentagon and eventually become a deputy special assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. He served in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967 as a battalion and brigade commander of the First Infantry Division, and received the Distinguished Service Cross.

In 1969, Haig - by then a colonel - became a military assistant on the staff of Kissinger’s National Security Council. He distinguished himself as the hardest worker in an ambitious and talented cohort. Soon he was a brigadier general and Kissinger’s deputy.

Vietnam consumed General Haig. He made 14 trips to Southeast Asia from 1970 to 1973. He later said that Kissinger “got snookered” in negotiations with the enemy, and that he would have chosen to be more forceful. “That is how Eisenhower settled Korea,” Haig said. “He told them he was going to nuke them. In Vietnam, we didn’t have to use nuclear weapons; all we had to do was to act like a nation.”

Then Watergate consumed the White House. In 1973, after a brief stint as the Army’s vice chief of staff, General Haig was summoned back as Chief of Staff, replacing the worm-like H. R. Haldeman, who - in a burst of good taste - was later went to prison.

As the new Chief of Staff, Haig had quite a first few weeks at the White House in the fall of 1973. First, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew pleaded no contest to taking bribes. The next man in line under the Constitution, House Speaker Carl Albert, was being treated for alcoholism. The President was an untreated drunk by this point. War broke out in the Middle East. Then Nixon wanted to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, rather than surrender his secret White House tapes. As a result, the Attorney General, Elliot L. Richardson, and his deputy, William D. Ruckelshaus, resigned in what is lovingly remembered as "The Saturday Night Massacre". Meanwhile, impeachment loomed.

What began with the arrest of several men breaking into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington in June 1972 had poisoned Nixon's Presidency. Days after the break-in, the President and his closest aides had discussed how to cover up their role and how to obtain hush money for the burglars. The discussions, secretly taped by Nixon, were evidence of obstruction of justice. Haig was one of the first people, if not the very first person, to read transcripts of the tapes the President had withheld from the special prosecutor. “When I finished reading it,” he says in Nixon: An Oral History, “I knew that Nixon would never survive — no way.”

On August 1, 1974, Haig went to Vice President Gerald R. Ford and discussed the possibility of a pardon for the President. Nixon left office a week later; the pardon came the next month. Public outrage was deep. Haig soon departed, but only after doing a great service to his nation.

Haig was a colorful character, even beyond his "I'm in control" fiasco. He had - to put it mildly - a unique way with words. In a 1981 “On Language” column, William Safire of the New York Times, a veteran of the Nixon White House, called it “haigravation.” Nouns became verbs or adverbs: “I’ll have to caveat my response, Senator.” (Caveat is Latin for “let him beware.” In English, it means “warning.” In Haig’s lexicon, it meant to say something with a warning that it might or might not be so.) Haigspeak could be subtle: “There are nuance-al differences between Henry Kissinger and me on that.” It could be dramatic: “Some sinister force” had erased one of Nixon’s subpoenaed Watergate tapes, creating an 18 1/2- minute gap. Sometimes it was an emblem of the never-ending battle between politics and the English language: “careful caution,” “epistemologically-wise,” “saddle myself with a statistical fence.”

But Haig was no fool. While perhaps not as brilliant as he thought he was, he was an astute operator of governmental power. In addition to his malapropisms, Haig could also speak with clarity and conviction to the Presidents he served. He could also speak about them. Nixon would always be remembered for Watergate, Haig said, “because the event had such major historic consequences for the country: a fundamental discrediting of respect for the office; a new skepticism about politics in general, which every American feels.” Reagan, Haig said, would be remembered for having had “the good fortune of having been President when the Evil Empire began to unravel.” But, he went on, “to consider that standing tall in Grenada, or building Star Wars, brought the Russians to their knees is a distortion of historic reality. The internal contradictions of Marxism brought it to its knees.”

While his bitterness over Reagan's firing of him may explain his interpretation of the end of the Cold War, it was also based on serving in government for nearly 20 years. While not a terribly efficient Secretary of State - and an even worse Presidential candidate - Haig's service to his country was great. Without Haig, Watergate may have played out much, much differently - and far more dangerously.

For that alone, a grateful nation thanks you, Al. RIP.

copyright 2010 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.

WTF

An alien looking in on the screen shot above would assume the man at the podium had committed the most heinous of acts with the children of the members of the gathered audience before him.

Spinky is an alien from the planet Triptor. In an unfortunate [for him] twist of timing, his arrival on Earth was completely overshadowed Friday by the Tiger Woods' Apologia Concerto [in A-minor, in Three Movements]. Arriving on Earth, Spinky clearly figured he'd be greeted - minimally - with a fighter jet escort from frazzled Earthlings. Instead? Nothing. He couldn't believe it. "WTF?!" he texted back to his commander on planet Triptor.

Spinky happened to land just outside a large mall. Seeing the parking lot was full of cars, he went in to scare the shit out of some humans. He also went in hoping to find out exactly "WTF". The walkways of the mall were empty with the exception of an enormous crowd gathered around a seemingly endless row of high definition televisions, all tuned to the aforementioned Concerto. Spinky decided to idle on up to the crowd and see what was happening. By this point, thoroughly disappointed with the anticlimactic nature of his arrival, he was not shocked that no one in the crowd even batted an eyelash at an alien among their midst. This despite the fact that Triptorians - by the same quirk of genetics that turn caterpillars into butterflies - develop 16-inch penises [peni?] on their foreheads at maturity. Worse, the penises are flaccid, making them nothing more than conversation pieces - minimally - or huge distractions when trying to put on a hat.

"What's going on?" Spinky asked an enormous human - he couldn't figure out the gender. "He's apologizing," said the large human mid-way through an enormous Angus burger it had just purchased at the Burger King across from the television displays. Good Lord, thought Spinky, all of these people are fat! Indeed, the human on the televisions - while looking as if someone had been hitting him with a 2x4 for the past two months - was the only human he saw who weighed less than 200 pounds. That included the two 11-year old twin boys at the sides of the enormous Angus-burger-chewing human, both of whom were finishing off their own second burgers.

"Apologizing for what?" Spinky asked. Now the human looked surprised. "What, are you from outer space or something," the human said. Before he could answer, Spinky finally heard what the human on television was saying. "... I am also aware of the pain my behavior has caused to those of you in this room." Ok, so clearly he's done something to these people. But what?

Now Spinky understood. "So, he killed someone, right?" Spinky said. He'd remembered his Human History course at college and learning about a human named Orenthal who'd been a very famous celebrity and then became even more famous and celebrated after decapitating his ex-wife and a waiter. Not getting a response. Spinky said, "He molested some kids, right?" Spinky remembered from his Human Mythology course that many humans believed in a supreme being and that some humans belonged to a group that - at one time - believed an old Polish former school teacher was this supreme being's representative on Earth. The teacher was so revered that - even though he condoned pedophilia in his ranks - some still wanted to give him his own talk show. Or something like that. Spinky wasn't good on details.

Spniky couldn't get an answer. The longer this human on Earth talked, the worse Spinky figured he'd done. By the time the human was finished, Spinky concluded that this must be the famous Hitler he'd read about. Finally, annoyed at his constant questioning, the large human with the vanishing Angus burger said, "He cheated on his wife, asshole. And, he lied to me and everyone else here."

Spinky figured he must have missed something. Clearly the man must have done something while cheating on his wife, right? Perhaps he blew up a school bus? Slaughtered an entire kennel of dogs? Stolen the Tonight Show from Conan O'Brien? Something. Clearly he couldn't possibly be delivering this mea culpa to an entire world - an entire planet - because he cheated on his wife, could he?

Now. having read that, do you understand how completely fucking ridiculous this crucifixion of Tiger Woods is? As the great philosopher, Allen Iverson, once said about practice: "Cheating!?!? We're talkin' 'bout cheating? Cheating? Cheating?!?!?" Unless I'm missing something, Tiger Woods cheated on his wife multiple times. Like most men, he loves sex and likes doing it with new partners. Like most men who are wealthy, he is able to do this - as opposed to the rest of us who simply have to settle for fantasizing about it. Also, like most men who are wealthy and get caught in the process of liking "strange", he has been deemed a "sex addict" and forced to go to something called a sexual rehabilitation clinic. To quote Spinky, WTF????!?!?!

Watching Woods' apology, I sat there stunned at what I was seeing. O.J. never apologized like this. Charlie Sheen has never apologized like this. Charles Manson hasn't. Nor has Mark Chapman, Sirhan Sirhan, Edi Amin, Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, the aforementioned Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden or Jay Leno [for that violently horrible prime time network television debacle that set the industry back 50 years].

Yet we're making Tiger Woods repent like he killed more than the combined number of people the assholes above? Sponsors are "outraged". Fellow golfers are "mortified". Get over yourselves, people. Tiger shouldn't be forced to apologize to us. His wife? Yeah, he probably owes her that and a huge ring or sports car, too. His children? Yeah, they're going to be none-too-pleased when they get old enough to go on Wikipedia and learn about Daddy's extracurriculars. His immediate family deserves an apology. I assume the others gathered in front of him were extended family members and friends, I suppose. He owes them nothing. The only things he owes his sponsors is to keep hitting that stupid little ball [I hate golf]. Keep hitting that ball and help the sponsors sell their crap. Whether or not Tiger beds every Nordic-like goddess from here to Palm Beach isn't going to effect the sales of their crap. As long as Tiger's hitting that stupid little ball, they'll sell they're stupid little pieces of crap.

After all - isn't that WTF they hired him for in the first place?

copyright 2010 by EBBP Redux. If you are reading this on a blog or website other than EBBP Redux or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.