Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
In 1964, during Barry Goldwater’s race for the White House, a book became a runaway best seller and it was titled “None Dare Call It Treason”. Its’ premise, typical of the thinking of many of that time, was that the United States was being sold out to Communism by its “liberal elites” who were pro-communist and thus wanted the USSR to win the “Cold War”. As the title clearly illustrates the book’s author, John A. Stormer, believed that the “elite” were traitors, liberal of course, who were so powerful that their “treasonous actions” couldn’t be challenged. I remember the popularity of the book at that time and how many who supported Barry Goldwater were believers in the books veracity. Goldwater himself seemed to be echoing Stormer’s theme of rooting out pro Communists in his Convention speech which produced the memorable phrase: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” It is thus a meme that in many different ways has been played and re-played through our Country’s history by those of a more Conservative persuasion. That meme is that the true American patriots are those who are of Right Wing political persuasion.
An article I came across about a month ago made me think of that 1964 book and how if one is to play the “treason” card, the finger might point to those who mantle themselves in the cloak of conservatism just as well, if not more so than those of liberal persuasion. This article details turning points in American history where the “treason” label might well be pointed at those who deem themselves to be “conservative protectors of the American Way”. I write this not as a liberal flogging my perspective, but as someone whose view of American politics has become so jaundiced through the years that I’m fully aware that liberals have contributed equally, through a combination of compliance, cowardice and inaction, to what is becoming the destruction of the United States Constitution and the ideals of our Founding Fathers. The incidents I am writing about represent the failure and corruption of our political system, the blame for which falls upon those that let it happen, either through the sin of active participation, or via the sin of inaction.
The article that provided the germ for this guest blog is titled: “Shocking New Evidence Reveals Depths of ‘Treason’ and ‘Treachery’ of Watergate and Iran-Contra” by Robert Parry, of Consortium News and published at Alternet.com. http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/shocking-new-evidence-reveals-depths-treason-and-treachery-watergate-and-iran?paging=off
The author presents new evidence about two landmark disturbances of the American political fabric and puts them into context of what is already known. In both the instances described, I’ve long been aware of the fact that while their result has momentous consequences for the political fabric of this country, their eventual “resolutions” left much to be desired and many unanswered questions. Using material from this article and using many years of my own thought and research, I will try to weave together a narrative of the effect of those incidents and why the obvious truths about them have been smothered from the public consciousness.
The Senate Watergate hearings coincided with the first extended cross country trip that I made. My inspiration for this trip was my favorite book: Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and indeed I was on the road from New York to California and back for eight weeks. In my 1973 Gremlin I discovered just how wide this country is for motor travel and spent at times up to ten hours a day driving through vast tracts of farm country, with few sights to see. I was thus obsessed with the radio broadcasts of the Watergate Hearings and their recaps in the evening that I watched in a variety of cheap motel rooms. As much as I absorbed the information it seemed to me that there were many aspects of the story that trailed off out of the consciousness of the Senate Committee and thus out of the spotlight of American History.
One of those aspects was just what were these “burglars” looking for at Nixon’s behest? Considering the risk/reward of the situation, it made little sense that such a chance was being taken in a general hunt for intelligence on Democratic Party strategy. Did they really need Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatric records in order to discredit him and then too what was the fascination with Dita Beard and IT&T? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dita_Beard . As the hearings went on there was also some perplexity about these “burglars”, who were not some ragtag clowns, but CIA operatives of long term status dating back to at least “The Bay of Pigs” invasion. Yet their behavior in their burglary at the Watergate was unprofessional and ludicrous in its execution. From my outsider’s perspective somehow, even though I despised Nixon, the whole affair, at least the official story, didn’t make sense. I’ve come to believe as you will see developed in a link to one of my previous blogs at the end of this piece, that Watergate was more than Nixon’s aberration, but that he too was being set up by the CIA, perhaps as payback by LBJ supporters. While through the years I’d developed some similar suspicions regarding Watergate from various items that were made public, only to disappear with media non-interest, the article by Mr. Parry somehow “clicked” it all into place.
“A favorite saying of Official Washington is that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But that presupposes you accurately understand what the crime was. And, in the case of the two major U.S. government scandals of the last third of the Twentieth Century – Watergate and Iran-Contra – that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Indeed, newly disclosed documents have put old evidence into a sharply different light and suggest that history has substantially miswritten the two scandals by failing to understand that they actually were sequels to earlier scandals that were far worse. Watergate and Iran-Contra were, in part at least, extensions of the original crimes, which involved dirty dealings to secure the immense power of the presidency.
Shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed him of the existence of the file containing national security wiretaps documenting how Nixon’s emissaries had gone behind President Lyndon Johnson’s back to convince the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris Peace Talks, which were close to ending the Vietnam War in fall 1968. In the case of Watergate – the foiled Republican break-in at the Democratic National Committee in June 1972 and Richard Nixon’s botched cover-up leading to his resignation in August 1974 – the evidence is now clear that Nixon created the Watergate burglars out of his panic that the Democrats might possess a file on his sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968.
The disruption of Johnson’s peace talks then enabled Nixon to hang on for a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. However, as the new President was taking steps in 1969 to extend the war another four-plus years, he sensed the threat from the wiretap file and ordered two of his top aides, chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, to locate it. But they couldn’t find the file.”
Think about the idea that a Presidential candidate would sabotage peace talks to end a devastating war in order to gain the Presidency. Add to that the fact that Nixon actually escalated the war he had promised to end, causing death and maiming in the hundreds of thousands and to me at least we have a picture of treason. Mr. Parry presents evidence in the article that Lyndon Johnson became aware of Nixon’s sabotaging the Viet Nam Peace Talks, but kept it quiet in the interest of national unity. However, it also must be understood that LBJ and Nixon we in truth quite friendly to each other and both had knowledge of the other’s involvement in scandalous peccadillo’s, via their mutual ally J.Edgar Hoover. “The Bay of Pigs Invasion” for instance was an example of their mutual dirty work. Perhaps LBJ thus felt constrained to blow the whistle fearing mutually destructive payback. It seems to me that the sabotage of the Viet Nam Paris Peace Talks, beyond treason, could also rank as a war crime considering the slaughter that followed.
We move along in history only a brief seven years. We find Jimmy Carter a beleaguered President dealing with the captivity of 52 American Embassy hostages. for 444 days, by the Iran revolutionaries. The coverage of this crisis, particularly on ABC’s Nightline gave a picture of President Carter as being too weak to stand up for our country. Ex Actor and former California Governor Ronald Reagan ran this perception to an overwhelming victory in the Electoral College, even though he only receives 50.7% of the popular vote. Without the “hostage crisis” Reagan’s victory would have been far more problematic since he was perceived at the time by almost 50% of Americans as too Right Wing and not experienced. For me the most disturbing aspect of his victory was that the 52 hostages were released exactly at the end of Reagan’s inaugural speech. Coincidences bother me.
The Parry article contains two interesting quotes which I’ll let speak for themselves..
“There is something I want to tell you,” [Yassir] Arafat said, addressing [Jimmy] Carter in the presence of historian Douglas Brinkley. “You should know that in 1980 the Republicans approached me with an arms deal [for the PLO] if I could arrange to keep the hostages in Iran until after the [U.S. presidential] election,” Arafat said, according to Brinkley’s article in the fall 1996 issue of Diplomatic Quarterly.”
Also from the article:
“As recently as this past week, former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr reiterated his account of Republican overtures to Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis and how that secret initiative prevented release of the hostages.”
We know that later in the Reagan Administration the “Iran-Contra Scandal” arose and the nation was temporarily shocked that the U.S. has sold weaponry to our Iranian enemies, using Israel to transship them and converting the money received into aid for the Contra rebellion in Nicaragua. Those hearing were the cause of much “sturm und drang”, but in the end came to nothing due to the media’s love affair with and protection of the mentally faltering Ronald Reagan.
There are many facts and much information to be read in the source story which I’ll link again here:
“Shocking New Evidence Reveals Depths of ‘Treason’ and ‘Treachery’ of Watergate and Iran-Contra” by Robert Parry, of Consortium News and published at Alternet.com. http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/shocking-new-evidence-reveals-depths-treason-and-treachery-watergate-and-iran?paging=off . To get the full picture I urge the reader to take the time to pore through it.
For my purpose here though I’ll just state that I find the evidence convincing and that the points I wish to make are being proposed in the light of my finding the full story believable. I want to look not at the full factual evidence, but at the implication for us if that evidence is true. To me I see evidence that people have achieved the Presidency of the United States through fraud that has delayed the end of disastrous national situations, for personal gain. To be fair, there certainly is more than a whiff of evidence that JFK’s election in 1960 was tainted by votes paid for by Joe Kennedy. We also know that George W. Bush’s election in 2000 also seems to have involved a great deal of skullduggery. By a loose definition one might deem fraud in our electoral process “treason” and though I disdain that fraud I wouldn’t go as far as to call it treason.. However, in the two instances I discussed I believe that there truly was treason committed by people seeking power and that the results of those treasonous acts have harmed our country. There is nothing that we can do that will undo these treasonous acts except to bring them into the realm of knowledge.
I must note that the branding of people as being traitors is an old tradition in this country that has mostly been the tactic of demagogues, as in the McCarthy Era. Perhaps it is time to focus on the actual treason that has been committed by those entrusted with governmental power. While the 2000 Election certainly had whiffs of fraud all over it, many on all parts of the political spectrum might cynically chalk it up to the way politics is done here. Perhaps though, with the knowledge of hindsight, we might see a purposeless war in Iraq, foisted upon us with specious evidence, as treasonous behavior? I’ve included two links below where I’ve expounded on this general theme and perhaps you might be interested in them for further insight to my thinking.
We are a Country made ignorant by the actions of a Corporate Media and complicit politicians that have re-written the history many of us have lived through. They have used propaganda techniques to foster the mythology of a fair political system that exists only in theory and certainly not in fact. I believe we are in a time where via the information age; people are beginning to see through these false myths. When things such as this occur, despite the political source, I believe we must dare to call it treason.
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/17/a-real-history-of-the-last-sixty-two-years/
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/11/17/democracy-in-america-what-does-it-mean/
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
Anyone read SILENT COUP
the “Cowboys” VS the intelligence operatives. SC says Woodward was an intelligence asset who helped basically frame Nixon, along with Dean. Why? Because Nixon’s overtures to peace w/ USSR & China were done with too much secrecy…. & deemed a threat to those wanting total war
ap,
I would guess that there will be some “interesting” finds in that trove of information on Kissinger.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/9/headlines#499
Julian Assange Hails WikiLeaks’ Release of “Kissinger Cables” in Video
Julian Assange: “Orwell once said that ‘He who controls the present controls the past. And he who controls the past controls the future.’ Our analysis shows that the U.S. administration cannot be trusted with its control of the past. We have pulled together two million documents, 250,000 documents from our previous release Cablegate, 1.7 million documents pulled from the National Archives, and put them together into an integrated format, a search system that we are very proud of.”
Robin H, It seems you might have some good things to say if you didn’t lose focus & ramble on in lower case. Its not clear whose comment you are replying too; no Bill Mc on my screen. But the Titanic insurance is interesting; never seen the thread on that; for 9/11 I’m sure the insurance was a big deal, but not the biggest or only reason that’s for sure. Keep it up; shorter, clearer to the point; you never know, someone may be paying attention! CIA driver makes more sense than anything else I’ve seen, but they sure got that JFK assassination story convoluted & mixed up! We have enough going on right now though. Know any American political assassination that was not an inside job from one side or another? I can’t think of any. Hinkley was set up, psychiatric drugs for certain & CIA style mind control likely. (that’s why these guys lie about Dianetics & Scientology; it can undo this stuff in minutes, though it might take a week or so to get off the drugs & undo it right) Spindell, whose blog this is, will rant & rave about that last sentence, as will others, but no blogger has any right to trash real solutions, not if he gives a tinker’s cuss about his country & where its going.
Bill McWilliams missing off your list from the beginning is..
1. the titanic like the towers was a insurance scam.
2. we havent had a president of american breed since eisenhower.
3.jfk was actually killed by his cia driver. and yes there is witnesses and a video to prove it
4. votes don’t count either person who makes it to a high office is already bought,owned, or blackmailed into their positions whether is a demorat or a repubke
5. any po lie trickster who refuses to do as told is first publicly destroyed, then either suicided or killed. during the public destruction they are given a chance to redeem themselves to their masters if they still refuse say goodbye to them. many pols have tried to warn the people of what was and is going on during speeches mainly as their time is beginning or ending. all have said many times there is a government behind the government whose reach is beyond anything we have or will ever see face to face. but they are the ones who run the government. all you have to do is look all of them are billionaires and think its their right to own the world.
every war that was fought was for their benefit either to steal a countries resources or to force a country to bend to their will. how is it that there is no money for education, youth or senior centers, food pantries or housing but they have plenty of money to spend buying specialized military weapons. i read a story yesterday about a bus stop in arlington va that cost the tax payers 1million. and the riders arent even protected from the elements.
during the recession many triple digit numbers of people lost their jobs, homes, and some their lives but not one banker or stock broker went to jail, they were and still are being rewarded with double digit high numbers of bonuses while the rest of us try to squeeze out a living. the mta just received a 193 million grant for a couple of buses and trains that wasn’t working long before the man made sandy storm. yet the insurance companies are still refusing to give the people BACK their money to rebuild their homes and lives. the list is long. oh and last but not least the cia/mossad is but one of the hundreds of 3 letter agencies but they are the main ones involved in any and all false flag attacks, drug deals, and much more. i would suggest if you really want to know the truth from those who were involved and somehow found their conscious along with the strength to break free. begin by researching
1. brice taylor Thanks for the memories
2. Phil Schneider
3. Al Bielek
4. Ted Gunderson
5. James Casbolt
6. and Don Nicholson
there are many others and you will soon learn more then you ever thought you wanted to know about the corporation formerly known as the government. and the reason behind everything happening as for the msm they were bought back in the 50’s all of them hence the bs. the lies, and the reason they have all been turned into gossip papers there is nothing about NEWS in them at least the news we need to know about.
Mr Spindell i have learned much from you and many others here on the blogs and i Thank you very much for the education you provide me and many like me and as always this is a educating blog from you
WikiLeaks publishes 1.7m US diplomatic records
Julian Assange says 1973-76 reports, including many by Henry Kissinger, show vast range and scope of US activity
Monday 8 April 2013 04.30 EDT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/08/wikileaks-publishes-us-diplomatic-records
Excerpt:
WikiLeaks has published more than 1.7m US records covering diplomatic or intelligence reports on every country in the world.
The data, which has not been leaked, comprises diplomatic records from the beginning of 1973 to the end of 1976, covering a variety of diplomatic traffic including cables, intelligence reports and congressional correspondence.
Julian Assange said WikiLeaks had been working for the past year to analyse and assess a vast amount of data held at the US national archives before releasing it in a searchable form.
WikiLeaks has called the collection the Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD), describing it as the world’s largest searchable collection of US confidential, or formerly confidential, diplomatic communications.
Assange told Press Association the information showed the vast range and scope of US diplomatic and intelligence activity around the world.
Henry Kissinger was US secretary of state and national security adviser during the period covered by the collection, and many of the reports were written by him or were sent to him. Thousands of the documents are marked NODIS (no distribution) or Eyes Only, as well as cables originally classed as secret or confidential.
Assange said WikiLeaks had undertaken a detailed analysis of the communications, adding that the information eclipsed Cablegate, a set of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks from November 2010 and over the following year. He said WikiLeaks had developed sophisticated technical systems to deal with complex and voluminous data.
Top secret documents were not available, while some others were lost or irreversibly corrupted for periods including December 1975 and March and June 1976, said Assange.
End of excerpt
Lets not forget the other book too, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. In the 80s I joined the John Birch Society. They had a lot of good info, most of it accurate. They went overboard on thinking that getting the USA out of the UN would do a lot of good. They lost me on that one as our own government was at least as corrupt as the UN. Contrary to popular belief by those who subscribe to obvious conspiracy facts, I still believe in keeping the UN in place but moving it in a more positive direction. Besides, violent revolution begets a worse regime to what you had. The American revolution was somewhat an exception but never complete enough ( they stuck with the Illuminati didn’t they?) & so short lived! So you don’t peg me left or right in those silly elephant & donkey boxes, I tried to run a bit of an “Anybody But Bush!” campaign 2004 (illegally jailed & charged for that one) & my current T shirt says on the front:
Is OBAMA O
More Dangerous
Than ADOLF H? The back has three of his most heinous & treasonous crimes. I have the silkscreen if anyone is interested. One thing we all need to thank the JBS for is their Con Con rallies; if not for them the Constitution would not just be ignored but rewritten, in 1984 newspeak by now.
Let others wallow in Watergate. The poor schmuck did do some constructive things while in office such as the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet forty years later we are wallowing in Watergate. We used to call it WaterGoat back in the days when Tricky was still around being the Trickster. Of course, I recall some constructive things that Ike did such as the Interstate Highway system. But no one talks about Ike. He does not have a foundation like the Kennedys do to yak him up 24/7. Truman was a great President but he will always be referred to as the “failed haberdasher” by the esteemed historians of Harvard and Yale. FDR was sainted by the same group of esteemed historians. Hoover is forgotten. Hoovervilles still exist but he does not get credit. Hoover critics are still out there yelling about President Obama trying to extend credit to the unworthy. Some things do not change in politics. Coolidge was some Calvinist. Woodrow Wilson got us into a War we did not need to get into and started a trend of the 20th Century. Woodrow was a true bigot who resegregated all aspects of Washington DC life and the military. Virginia boy ya know, who hailed from New Jersey. Never the Twain should meet. Before that we had Theodore who was a bright light. I will take Teddy, Truman and Obama as the best of the past hundred plus years. Dogs dont wallow in Watergate or goat.
The peculiar ting about these treasonous acts is that most of the information about them is actually known at the time they happen. Over and over again, we see things portrayed in a knowingly “whitewashed” light and we are denied access to the information — which is not terribly difficult to find or analyze — that would reveal just how corrupt and traitorous our govt. officials behave. It is NOT a big inaccessible secret most of the time.
We are practiced in the art of unknowing.
Mike,
That was a horrible night and I’ll never forget Rosie Grier … God bless him.
I dared to call what Barack Obama did treason To the press secretary’s twitter line when he signed into law enabling the president to indefinitely detain American citizens without charges. I was extremely manic at the time and kept tweeting, so they finally shut the line down. Both he and any member of Congress who voted for that act deserves to be impeached. Can you impeach a member of Congress? Then there was that umpteen trillion dollars loans to the banks at infinitesimal interest rates rewarding them for their bad behavior. I really had to hold my nose when I voted for Barack Obama and I did. There’s more but why should I even bother. You Read the book if you didn’t already help write it.
And what the GOP is been up to is even worse! South Carolina Alabama Arkansas Michigan & The list of GOP controlled statehouses goes on. If they want the government to control less I’m the Easter Bunny. Not only are they in my vagina telling me what to do with it & when. They want to establish a state religion in South Carolina? And they claim the Constitution is okay with that. And if students want to vote their parents have to pay a poll tax. Now each party in their own ways are rendering the very fiber of our Constitution apart.
Too many judges on the Supreme Court are completely GOP oriented not just conservative leaning.
I am NOT going to proof this because I’m too disgusted to care. I am glad there are people like you at Jonathan Turley blog who are thinking conscientious people. Unfortunately, after having looked high and low, there are far too few of you.
On Apr 6, 2013 8:15 AM, “JONATHAN TURLEY” wrote: > > jonathanturley posted: “Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger In 1964, during Barry Goldwaters race for the White House, a book became a runaway best seller and it was titled None Dare Call It Treason. Its premise, typical of the thinking of many of that time, was th” >
Mike,
I wish he would have told what he knew as I think it would have influenced enough voters to give Humphrey the election as many were looking for an excuse to not vote for Nixon. But that’s speculative hindsight and maybe just plain ol’ wishful thinking on my part as I supported RFK and then Humphrey.
It was, never the less, an incredibly dangerous and sad year for all Americans.
“It was, never the less, an incredibly dangerous and sad year for all Americans.”
Blouise,
Well I remember the night of the California Primary where the exultation of Bobby’s victory led to utter despair in a few short minutes. Couldn’t sleep that whole night, despite the pot and the booze, the desolation was unbearable.
Mike Spindell:
Sowell is a corporate tool?
Like Alinsky is a Leninist tool or Bill Ayers is a Stalinist tool?
I guess the tool is in the eye of the user. 🙂
“emotional bid” = emotional bind.
Bron,
Still hawking that corporate tool Sowell I see. 🙂
mespo:
“Take him out of the presidency and you have millions of African-Americans in poverty and disenfranchised.”
I respectfully disagree. There is more than enough evidence to say the experience of Americans of African decent was made worse by the war on poverty.
I refer you to Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams for starters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc3AokM_bpw