SECOND AND THIRD THOUGHTS

It has been over three months since my last blog entry, and this blog is about why I stopped blogging.

It happened that as I went over my previous blog entries, I felt that something was wrong with them, but I wasn't sure as to what that something was. It was enough to stop me from blogging, while I tried to understand what was bothering me.

My first thought was that a blog on the idea of "a pox on both their houses" was perhaps no longer needed. As I read other blogs I realized that I did not own the idea, and I was not alone in feeling that way. Many other blogs echoed the same idea as well or better than my own. I might be filling a need that was already met.

I saw that polls show that neither political party has been able to benefit from the mistakes of the other. The decline of Bush did not translate to more support for the Democrats. This told me that the Great Middle of America was fed up with both parties. Both their political houses were sliding off their foundations.

The purpose of my blog was already acheived, so why do it.

My second thought came as I read over my previous blogs and found myself dissatisfied with them. At the time I wrote them I was happy with all the facts that I was marshalling to my cause. I found that while they were still true, they did not have the impact that I thought they did. Something was missing.

While I pondered this I watched our leaders fight for power and position as Bahgdad burned and New Orleans drowned. I heard the Mayor of New Orleans plead for the dispersed residents of the Big Easy to return to the city where their homes and jobs were gone. They were gone because those same leaders placed canal retaining walls only ten feet in the soil when seventeen feet was required. Those who put in the walls either did not know or did not care, or both.

While I watched Katrina and heard the endless hawk and dove debates on Iraq, I realized at last that we are all now on our own. This is what all the facts are really saying, or trying to say.

I can shout "a pox on both your houses" until I am hoarse, but what good does that do if I am, if we are, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian or whatever, on our own.

The question is, do we have the guts to admit the truth. We are in the house alone, the parents are gone and have taken the car and the credit cards with them.

That's a different blog entirely. I don't know if I can write that.

LET'S YOU AND HIM FIGHT, PART 2

In my last post, Richard Sorge and Harry Dexter White, both spies for Stalin, worked to bring America and Japan to war. Sorge used his contacts within the Japanese military, White used his position in the Dept. of Treasury.

Here I will point out that there may have been a similar operation to bring America into the war with Iraq. The intelligence is not yet enough to confirm it, but there is intelligence to suggest it.

The first part is that we know, from Tariq Aziz, that "Russia, France, and Germany assured Saddam that America would not attack him, since they would support America in the UN Security Council. This led Saddam to a false sense of security. He then did nothing to difuse the situation.

The second part is the forged Niger documents, which helped to convince Bush that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger.

It is still not clear who was behind the forgery, but we know that the agent who sold the documents was in the pay of French Intelligence. We also know that British Intelligence insists that they had real intelligence given them by "the intelligence service of another country" showing Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium. They cannot reveal the source, at the request of the source, but we know that Niger uranium is mined and processed by a French consortium, which makes French intelligence the most likely source.

If Tariq Aziz is telling the truth, then the same source that told Saddam America would not attack would be the source that gave Bush and Blair the smoking gun for WMD in Iraq.

What would be the motive? We now know about the collusion of France, Germany, Russia, and the UN in the Oil For Food scandal. But this does not explain the WMD intell. To drive America into a war with Iraq would stop the gravy train of oil vouchers.

This leaves the motive of leading America into a unilateral war with Islam, in the hopes of getting America bogged down in a guagmire, a new VietNam, and a drain on its economy. At the same time, Europe could then position itself as a friend of Islam, increasing its influence and position both with Muslim nations and with Muslims living in Europe.

This is still too early to call. Some others see the CIA as the source of the Niger forgeries. This does not change what Tariq Aziz tells us, not does it change what the Brits have form their secret source on Nigeria-Iraqi contacts.

It is fairly clear that Saddam trusted the European promises that Bush would fail to get UN support. Of course he knew about the oil vouchers, so he would believe he held the cards.

American resolve is weakening, but not as quickly as some may have wished. The success of American arms as had unforeseen effects in the Middle East, creating a desire for more freedom that has been surprising. In the end, it may not turn out as some clever men may have hoped.

LET'S YOU AND HIM FIGHT

MERCUTIO: A [pox] on both your houses.
(with apologies to w. shakespeare)

DON CORLEONE: All my life I have tried not to be careless. Women and children can be careless, not me


In the previous post I talked about Richard Sorge, Stalin's agent in Japan, who helped push Japan to attack America. At the same time, Stalin had a spy in America, Harry Dexter White. Read this LINK on how White pushed America into war with Japan.

So, using both White and Sorge in tandem, Stalin was able to steer Japan to fight America, and not invade the Soviet Union.

It was White, not Morgenthau, who drafted the Hull Ultimatum, "which was used by the Japanese War Party to argue against those who thought they should not attack the United States."

After the war, White continued to work for Stalin, this time to keep Europe from REBUILDING.

If White had succeeded with the Morgenthau Plan, then most of Europe would have gone communist.

In my next post, I will try to show how this time-honored technique, Let's You and Him Fight, might have been brought out of retirement to be used in our own time and place.

DEJA VU (PART 2)

There is more on Agnes Smedley, and it makes it very hard for Ruth Price to say that Smedley "was a spy, but not a traitor."

Please read the NOVA
piece devoted to Smedley.

I want to focus on the end of the NOVA piece, where it is revealed that she gave Richard Sorge invaluable help in setting up his spy network in Japan. One of Sorge's goals, given him by Stalin, was to steer the Japanese High Command toward war with America. In this he succeeded.

During WW ll Smedley served as an advisor to General Stilwell in China. She convinced him to secretly give military supplies to Mao Tse Tung, in case of a Japanese attack. These were used against Chiang Kai-shek instead, America's ally.

I fail to see how Ms. Price can conclude that Agnes Smedley did not work against the United States.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Mercutio: A [pox] on both your houses.
(with apologies to w. shakespeare)

Don Corleone: All my life I have tried not to be careless. Women and children can be careless, not men.


Just when I think that Joseph McCarthy is old history, THEY KEEP PULLING ME BACK!

We don't know about Agnes Smedley these days, but someone named Ruth Price has dug up her bones.

Bones can be used by shamans to predict the future. What I find interesting here is how reluctant Ms. Price is to read the runes.

Anyway, what she has to say HERE is not the usual history lesson. Read it now and then I will comment.

COMMENT: Yes. It was a long piece, but my interest is at the end, where Ms. Price talks about the reaction of other liberals to her scholarship. She apologizes for it. Her goal was to "vindicate her reputation from what I believed to be unjust accusations of Soviet espionage, for I was a good progressive...But the documents do not lie."

What is important here is that the documents are not from the CIA or the FBI. They are from
"a newly released set of declassified Comintern messages." Agnes was a spy. Big time.

Note: Roger Baldwin founded the ACLU. Willi Muenzenberg initiated the Soviet operations in Hollywood.

After Price has proven the case against Agnes, she then minimizes her actions. "I refuse to cede the moral high ground to the right." Ms. Price points out that "her activities were not directed against the United States. She was a spy, but not a traitor..."

In 1929 Willi Muenzenberg posted her to China where she helped the Soviets set up Mao Tse Tung's Red Army. By 1941 she returned to the U.S. and died in 1950, just a few years after the U.S. "lost China" to the Communists.

Agnes was working for the Comintern when Stalin killed millions in the Ukraine. She was in China when Mao began his killing spree. She was there, but Ms. Price does not want to cede any high ground.

Ruth Price now finds herself shunned by both camps. "Those on the right...rejoiced at what I had found. My contemporaries on the left, however, wanted none of it. Outing Soviet spies was the province of conservative scholars, not a left-wing biographer.'

Price is surprised by the left's reaction to her finding the truth. She is intelligent but naive. How can Smedley not be a traitor? Her actions in China were against the United States. How can Price ignore the millions that were murdered in the name of Communism, first by Stalin, then by Mao? Ideas cause actions, and those actions are the marks left as history. Bloody marks make bloody history, wet or dry.

If this isn't ceding the moral high ground, then what is?

Price and other will have to get used to it, since we are now being given access to the broken code traffic and the KGB memoirs that will reveal how right, or wrong, Joseph McCarthy was.

But Joseph McCarthy is not the moral high ground here, either. He played into the hands of the left, due to his own ego. He was like a dumb cop messing up the evidence at a crime scene by contaminating it. His heavy-handed methods let the guilty claim the bloody tracks as their blood, that they were victims. But now we have the DNA test of the Venona traffic and the KGB archives.

And since the bloody glove doesn't fit Joe McCarthy's hamfist, those who shed the blood for Stalin and Mao must wear it.

As I said in my first blog, a Pox on both their houses.

SO MANY DOTS

Photo: serious Garfield booties. Couldn't resist.

I want to talk about intelligence gathering. I spent my last year of military service at the National Security Agency, so I have had a little experience with it. It's been a long time, but some things never change.

Intelligence begins with collecting the dots. The next part is connecting the dots. The first takes time, and the second takes time. The other side tries to keeps their dots hidden, and also tries to give out false dots to cover up the real ones.

With regard to the War on Terror, we have been collecting dots since 9/11/2001. With the capture of documents and Iraqi intelligence agents after the fall of Baghdad, we collected a great many more dots.

At some point, the amount of dots should then translate into success in connecting them. We should be at that point now. Here's why.

1. Ramzi Yousef is in custody.
2. His "uncle", Khalid Sheik Mohammed is also in custody.
3. Mr. Hijazi, the head of Iraqi intelligence, is
also in custody.
4. Mr. Al Ani is in custody. He was the agent in Prague who was said to have met with Atta.

5. Tariq Aziz is in custody.
6. Saddam Hussein is in custody.

We also now have the documents that tell us that the United Nations was part of an Oil for Food scandal involving many nations.

We have Rocco Martini in protective custody, an agent of France who sold forged papers that said Iraq had bought uranium in Niger. This pertains to the Valerie Plame affair.

We have the testimony of those who trained terrorists at Salman Pak.

We have in custody the Iraqi intelligence liason to Al Zarqawi before the war.

We no not have Yassin, who worked with Yousef. We do not have Shakir, who had phone numbers on his person that tie 9/11 to the '93 WTC bombing, and both to Iraq.

We should, with all these dots, be able to answer the question as to whether Iraq was part of 9/11, Oklamoma City, and the '93 WTC bombing. Or not.

We should be able to determine whether Al Queda is a state-sponsered terrorist organization, a false-flag cover, or a combination of both (as I beleive).

We should now know which states are sponsors of terrorism, and who within those states are involved, both directly and indirectly.

The War on Terror has lost its unity over the issue of Iraq. Democrats and the Left insist that Iraq had no connection to Al Queda. The nation has divided itself on this issue, and this gives aid and comfort to the enemy. The question is why the intelligence assessment that would decide the issue one way or the other has not been made public.

It is my belief that the anwer is there. I do not know why it has not been made public. My best guess is that neither the Left or the Right are ready to make it public for fear of an angry backlash over the incompetence and failure that it might reveal. Clinton might look too weak in dealing with Iraq and Al Queda, even worse than he does now. And Bush might look too close to the Saudis who financed Al Queda. In short, a standoff. I hope I'm wrong, but I do feel that the dots have been collected and connected, and put away in a safe place.

For those who think the 9/11 Commission resolved this issue, I refer to the PDR dated August 6, which the Commission released to the public to answer the question of whether the President had prior warning of the attack.

The real importance of the PDR was not commented on. The first four sentences affirm that there were no Al Queda attacks on American soil prior to 9/11. Ramzi Yousef was not Al Queda. I repeat not Al Queda. Then neither was Khalid Sheik Mohammad, though he may have joined Bin Ladin after. So if not Al Queda, who? This is not answered by the 9/11 Commission. The dots have not been connected. The Commission does not even ask the question, which is the tell that it doesn't want to know the answer, or worse, already does.

A DEFINING MOMENT?

I have been following the battle over Ground Zero and the WTC Memorial. The Liberal elite of Moscow-on-the-Hudson have their version of 9/11, and the victim's families have theirs. Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg are caught in the middle, but this may be changing.

This may be the defining moment, or tipping point, but it certainly will affect the outcome:


Apparently, the LMDC is willing to help Mr. Bernstein put together his 9/11 collection. The LMDC's exhibition designers, Howard + Revis, have retained curator consultants who are out looking for 9/11 related items to display in the IFC. We've also been informed someone at the LMDC asked New York City's St. Vincent's Hospital to donate the 'missing persons' display that was spontaneously created outside their entrance and hospital staff lovingly preserved. St. Vincent's is said to have declined the request. Thank you, St. Vincent's for preserving the posters many family members, including my own, placed in your care and also for not letting them be used as lures into Mr. Bernstein's IFC.


LMDC is the Lower Manhattan Development Committee, which gave the contract for the Memorial to the IFC. It has the money. It is the body in charge of everything. Yet, St. Vincent's declined to give them the spontaneous memorial that grew in front of the hospital on 9/11 and the days after. I wonder why they did that. Maybe the people of New York are on the side of the 9/11 families. Do ya think?

The fight may go on, but I think the war for hearts and minds is over.

KIPLING WARNS US

Poxhouse visits Christian on Grandparent's Day.

I came across a weblog that takes its name from Rudyard Kipling's poem, GODS OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS. I quote from one stanza, but read the whole thing here.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed they sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said:
"Stick to the Devil you know."

Read the whole poem and decide for yourself how relevant it is today.

Ask yourself this question. Let's agree, for argument's sake, that terrorism is caused by poverty, or by support of Israel, or by our actions in Iraq. Even if that were true, how would that change anything? Does it follow automatically that terrorism will end if we give $3Billion to the PA, or pull out of Iraq, or vote sanctions against Israel?

Or is it true that we still have to beat them, no matter what the fault? Is our sense of guilt so great that we are prepared to sell ourselves out and deliver each other bound to our foe? Or, to put it another way, does confessing and admitting our own evil deeds only help to conceal and hide a Greater Evil? If so, then our guilt serves that Evil. What is the good in that?
Man is not ideal. He does both good and evil in his lifetime. The question is, COMPARED TO WHAT? COMPARED TO WHO? We are not Mother Teresa. Nor are we Hitler. We have done bad and good, but we have done better than most, and by a rather large margin.

If that is true, then it follows, as night follows day, that we have to beat them. In the end, we deserve to beat them. Our soldiers on the ground have looked around them, and they know it to a man. We need to learn from them.

it's not poverty, or Israel, or Iraq that brought us here. But here we are, all of us, and it is time to make our stand.

LESSON FROM LONDON

Your humble blogger with his granddtr Briana.

In a previous post I talked about the judicial and martial metaphors in the War on Terror. The judicial metaphor says that we are in a Courtroom trying terrorists as criminals.

The martial metaphor says that we are in the alley behind the courthouse, in a brick fight.

So far we have been divided as to how to fight the terrorists. Bush has embraced the martial metaphor, while Democrats have followed the judicial metaphor. They have criticized Gitmo and other abuses of what they consider to be due process.

In this regard the attack on London is instructive. After visiting VODKAPUNDIT and THE COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG, I was struck by two stories.

VODKAPUNDIT reported that one of the bombers had recently been released from GITMO. This may turn out to be a rumor. However, given the large number of surrveillance cameras in London, it might be that a camera captured a bomber getting on the bus, or leaving the Tube.
Also, an alumnus of Gitmo would have had watchers assigned to him. So it might be true.

Also, this might explain why and how there was some prior warning. A watcher of Al Gitmo may have observed something out of his routine that set off alarms.

Then at COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG there is the Moroccan Mohamed Guerbouzi, who is being sought by the British "in connection with the attacks." Mr. Guerbouzi, peace be upon him, has been living in Britain for ten years, but that didn't stop him from being "connected" to a 2003 suicide bombing in Morocco and the Madrid train bombings.

The design of the timers found in London are similar to the Madrid attacks, an important fact.

Also, the Madrid attack was politically astute, as it caused the Spanish government to lose the election three days later. Spain then removed their troops from Iraq. This new attack is timed to the G8 meeting and to the trial of Al-Hamzi in London. The political skill suggests the same group that did Madrid. This also ties it to 9/11, as we now know that Mohamed Atta met in Spain in July of 2001 with the same group.

As long as the judical metaphor is used we will be much more at risk. The idea of having to release terrorists if we can't convict them of a crime makes sense in terms of the judicial metaphor. It doesn't make sense of we define terrorists as soldiers rather than criminals. We detain them during wartime as we detained POWs in previous wars. If we release them, as soldiers it is their duty as soldiers to return to the battlefield. We should expect them to do so, as our soldiers would do in the same situation. The Gitmo'd terrorists tip the balance in favor of the Martial Metaphor.

As for the Moroccan, the judicial metaphor makes it standard procedure to wait for a known terror suspect to actually commit his crime before detaining him. He has now done so. We can all rejoice that we have collected such good evidence, such as the Double Decker Bus. And my Lord, so many witnesses! Any court in the world would love such an easy case.

Of course, in the Martial Metaphor, it's a defeat, a battle lost. The enemy has attacked us on our own field of battle, killed our people, and escaped unharmed. Mr. Guerbouzi and his fellow soldiers are currently in safehouses unknown to us, and await further orders from their commanders. The judical metaphor tipped the battle in their favor. In the martial metaphor Mr. Guerbouzi would have been detained long ago, as a soldier of jihad.

There is a scene in THE GODFATHER where Michael Corleone is having a war council and tells Tom Haden, his lawyer and advisor, to go to Las Vegas. Tom objects, and Michael says:

Sorry, Tom, you're out. You're not a wartime consiglierie.

The lawyer, and the judicial metaphor, have no place in war, or in a brick fight. To think otherwise is to die.
Of course, many will object to this, and have. To them we must reply as Michael replied to his peaceloving brother Fredo in Moe Green's casino:

Fredo, you're my brother and I love you. But never take sides against the family again.

Choosing the judical response to terror has only given aid and comfort to the enemy. They have used it as a weapon against us, in the UN, the EU, and in our own courts. We must deny this weapon to them by making the judicial serve the martial metaphor in wartime. This is the legal precedent we already have in the SCOTUS decisions of WWll and the Geneva Convention rulings regarding unlawful combatants who use sanctuary as a tactic (posing as a citizen).

As for the Democrats at home and our allies in Europe, they hate war and hate Bush for following the Martial Metaphor of the War on Terror. This is why they cannot be trusted as our wartime consiglierie. No matter how many times they come to in the alley with a brick in their skull, they will refuse to fight. They will instead file a complaint, and then wait in the alley for the trial to begin. My bet's they get another brick-fight.

Sorry Fredo.

PS: Some have noted that the attack in London was in a Muslim part of the city. They deduced from this that Muslims were as much a target as anyone. I must differ with this conclusion. Al Queda anticipates this human response, and uses it to deflect anger toward local Muslims. Remember that the Madrid cell of Al Queda is politically astute.

A POX ON HOUSES

This is my grandson Christian. He has a certain smile...or grimace...or je ne sais quois. And that is our dog Frankie getting a cookie in the background.


I started this blog with the idea that I don't have to pick between the liberals and the conservatives. I reject both.

Now I have two new reasons to maintain my position.

The first is the decision of SCOTUS with respect to the use of eminent domain to seize private property for public purposes.

The decision speaks for itself.

The fallout
is broadbased and includes both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.

But why are they upset? Don't the liberals get the "public good" they seek? And don't the Republicans get the corporate expansion they espouse? Hasn't SCOTUS given both what they say they want?

The moral here is to be careful what you wish for. Working together, they have managed to make a new law that rations private property to those who have the ear of local governments. Private property is now something that is permitted. It is no longer a right but only a privilege. A privilege for the privileged at that. It's not your right if others give it to you. What other rights might now devolve to the state?

This was the Liberal fiasco. For the Conservatives we have the House of Representatives passing a constitutional amendment banning the burning of the American Flag.

I think that burning the flag is stupid. I also think that making it against the law is stupid. The flag is a symbol of freedom. How can you take away a freedom in the name of freedom?

The flag is not a koran. The Muslims kill people for mistreating the koran. Do we really want to go there? Given all the attention in the media to the koran, I should think we would, again, be very careful for what we wish for. Those who love freedom will love the flag. Those who burn the flag never burn it in the name of freedom, they burn it in the name of whatever cause they are free to promote but not free to question.

So, as I said, a pox on both their houses. This is why I am never going to be a Liberal or a Conservative. Just when I think I'm turning Conservative, they do something like the flag law or Terry Schiavo, and I pull back my "burnt, bandaged finger wobbling toward the fire."

I think I'll just be an American, born and bred. I'll buy and fly my own American flag, and I will support the troops. I will question Authority, since it will never question itself.

MORE ABOUT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

In my previous blog entry MAD ABOUT THE BULLY I said that political correctness is a subtle and indirect form of bullying. It is usually done by the entourage of the bully, and is therefore a feature of collectivism.

I gave the example of how Social Scientists pretend to study culture objectively, while in fact they tend to replace culture with their own values.

One specific example of this would be the Kinsey Report. Who would deny today that the Kinsey Report did not just study American sexual culture but instead was a major causal factor in what was called the Sexual Revolution?

We now know the details of Kinsey's personal, subjective role. Social Science AS CULTURE.

The claim of Social Scientists is that they are NORMATIVE. Their ethics are derived from the relative process of finding the norm and making that the ethical guidepost.

This is in contrast to the ethical system of the cultures studied by the Social Scientists. Culture has always been based upon PRESCRIPTIVE ethics, where the ethical rule is derived from God, or from long custom. It is not relative to the behavior of others.

The secular culture of the Social Sciences calls a thing ethical when the majority call it ethical.
This is the root of Political Correctness.

The process goes like this. Social Science replaces a prescriptive cultural ethic with its own normative ethic. Once that has occurred, the normative ethic fills up the void left by the loss of prescriptive authority. At some point it magically transforms itself into a prescriptive ethic, and becomes political correctness. Normative Anakin becomes Prescriptive Darth.

This process is gradual and subtle, but in the end all normative systems will become prescriptive. This will always be denied by its adherents, and they will always be blind to the truth. They truly do detest prescriptive ethics, even after they embrace it.

The "tell" is the statement "Everybody knows that..." or "There can be no doubt that..."
Everybody knows that there is Global Warming. Everybody knows that AIDS is spread by unprotected heterosexual sex. Everybody knows that there is no connection between Iraq and 9/11.

What about everybody knows there is no such thing as Global Warming? Everybody knows that there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11?
Prescriptive is prescriptive.

Normative ethics is a myth. it does not exist. To the extent it claims to be normative it is dishonest, and therefore unethical. And as prescriptive ethical systems go, being inherently dishonest, it is the worst.

this is why any culture, and American culture especially, does well to defend itself against it.
The fact that it has become the norm does not make it right. I knew God, and I can tell you, Kinsey is no God.

AN OPEN LETTER TO GOV. GEORGE PATAKI

Dear Governor Pataki,

I was heartened by your recent remarks in defense of the Memorial. However, I want to share with you my feeling that there is no way that the IFC will be able to share the same space with Ground Zero.

A few days ago I saw Debra Burlingame and Richard Tofel on FOX. After they left the set and went back to the Green Room, Mr. Tofel went up to Ms. Burlingame as she was trying to compose herself after her emotional confrontation on air, touched her shoulder and said "nice try." The FOX guy almost decked him. Mr. Tofel wouldn't leave the Green Room until she left.

I also noticed something about Mr. Tofel that gives him away. While Ms. Burlingame was the same person both on the set and in the Green Room, Mr. Tofel was not. He was one way in public, but the opposite in private. Which is the real Mr. Tofel?

My point is clear. Two members of the Memorial Commission can't even share the space of a Green Room for a few minutes. Apparently, Mr. Tofel is the best the IFC can field to the media, perhaps because he looks the least reactionary. His vague responses only serve to confirm everyone's worst fears. He won't say exactly what will or what will not be on exhibit. This is the tell that it will be bad, since if it wasn't the IFC would want to say so as quickly as possible to put an end to it.

The fact that they don't also tells us that they think this will all go away eventually. That may be true, but I don't think the IFC has bothered to read the Guestbook comments at Debra's blog. It is amazing. Almost every comment contains a personal experience expressed with sincere emotion. I don't think many at the IFC personally know someone who was in the Gulag, or the Holocaust, or Abu Ghraib. I think they would have to look around for awhile to find a presentable victim to protect or protest for.

Wait. I just got it. They already found their victim. Heck yes, They've found themselves. Nice try, Mr. Tofel.

I wouldn't want to be in your shoes right now, Governor. Now you know how James Buchanan felt just before the Civil War started. Despite his heroic efforts to stop the south from seceding, despite his skillful use of the usually effective tools of partisan politics, it happened anyway. Business-as-usual back-room compromises were not adequate to the task. When the dust settled, his party was nowhere to be seen. It tried to treat the reactionary forces equally, and that was not what was needed by history. So the Whigs became history instead. Read the Guestbook. Help you it will.

Durbin's Dilemma

When I saw Senator Durbin's apology video the other day, I flashed back to the 80's. The most famous apology until now was Jimmy Swaggert, a Babtist Minister with a large television following who was arrested with a prostitute. I think it was near Palm Desert, but I could be wrong.

At any rate, he apologized on his TV show, and it was amazing. Looking up toward heaven, tears gushing down his face, crying like a child, he said, quote: Father, I have sinned against Thee. Then he went on about how merciful and forgiving God was to those who repent, blah, blah, blah. He must not have really repented, judging from the drop in his ratings and donations. It seems that God was more forgiving than his fellow Babtists.

For Durbin, the voice from the Heavens was not the voice of God. Worse, it was the voice of Mayor Richard Daley. The son, not the father, but still the Mayor of Chicago, the head of the Democratic political machine that Durbin will need if he wishes reelection.

Mayor Daley, it turns out, has a son serving in Iraq, and is ill-disposed to anything that might put him any further in harm's way. Despite the requirements of Democratic solidarity, Mayor Daley expressed his sentiments, and as if my magic the Senator reversed himself and apologized to the Nation.

Swaggert cried more convincingly, and his apology was better written. He said "Father, I have sinned against Thee." He didn't go with "Father, IF I have sinned against Thee." Swaggert apologized to his flock, to ALL of them, not to SOME of them.

Swaggert didn't pull it off, and if he couldn't I don't see how Durbin can. The MSM can downplay it all they want, but Al-Jazeera has the tapes to do with as they will. They may play his apology, but FOR SURE they will replay his equating our troops with Nazis. Someone may be recruited by this, or someone may donate money to jihad, and if so, some future damage to our troops or to Iraqis will be blood on the Senator's hands. Senator Durbin can only hope that Mayor Daley's son will not be nearby.

PEERING DOWN DEEP THROAT

Now we know who Deep Throat is. Mr. Mark Felt, who was the number two man at the FBI. Now that we know, we can put Watergate into a sharper perspective, and so we should.

There is an important piece by Edward Jay Epstein that provides a crucial key to understanding Watergate, or anything a reporter reports, for that matter. I link here to his lead entire entry, but I will quote from lead paragraph:

"Every source who has supplied a journalist with a part of a story has selected that bit of information...for a particular purpose...That purpose may be to advance (or subvert) the interests of the agency he works for, to discredit an enemy, to advance an ideological agenda, or simply to assist a reporter...One must know who made the disclosure and ideally, why he made it to that particular individual at that particular moment in history."

What Epstein says here is consistent with my own experience, which I will now share for the first time.

In 1963, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was sent from my post in Japan to the NSA in Maryland. I stayed there for my third and last year in the Army. I transcribed Russian intercepts into English, and also did some grunt-work intelligence analysis when I had the time. I had personal knowledge of events that were reported in the press. One of the sargeants I knew, Sgt. Dunlap, turned out to be a soviet spy. One day, while working on KP detail where he was the non-com in charge I recall that he had a speedboat hitched to his car, a real nice speedboat. Another soldier asked him how he could afford such a nice boat on his salary. He said that he inherited some property from an uncle. His “uncle” turned out to be Uncle Nikita Krushchev, and the boat caused the FBI to also wonder how he could afford such a nice toy, and the new car as well. A few months later Sgt. Dunlap drove down a rural dirt road, followed by the FBI, who waited some distance behind him, too far to see him hook up the hose to his exhaust and run it into the car. After a few hours the FBI approached the car to find Sgt. Dunlap dead of carbon monoxide poisoning. Sometime after that reporters from all over descended upon us, asking questions about the Soviet spy from the Deep South. We told them we knew nothing, following orders.

The other story I had personal knowledge of had to do with my transcribing of Russian intercept traffic. One of the more interesting tapes was the voice of a Soviet tank commander giving orders to his men by radiotelephone. His unit was on one side of a river, with Chinese forces massed on the other side. These were Russian Chinese border clashes, something that the world would not even know of until 1967, four years later.

In 1967, four years after I got out of the Army, I was reading the newest issue of Life magazine. It had two articles that grabbed my interest. One article was about the Topaz Spy Ring, which was a major Soviet ring that was centered in Paris, but had agents in the US. One of the agents pictured was Sgt. Dunlap, with a few paragraphs devoted to him. The detail was extensive and accurate. I wondered how the writer of the article obtained such classified information, after so many reporters had tried and failed four years before.

The second article was about Russian-Chinese border clashes, something unthinkable even four years after they happened, since they were both Communist states and allies against the West. I was surprised to find two stories involving highly classified information in the same issue of a popular magazine.

The slant of the Topaz story was that the Soviets were not being closely watched by the French, whose leader, Charles DeGaulle, was leading France in a direction that was not in the best interest of America. DeGaulle set up his Force de Frappe, a nuclear arsenal independent of NATO. The slant of the article was an attack on DeGaulle, to discredit his policy by tying it to the Topaz spy scandal.

I understood at that point that when a story appears in which classified or privileged information is revealed, it means that someone has given that information to the reporter. The reporter has not gotten it through any investigation or research or luck. He is picked, and his paper or magazine is picked, when and where it serves someone’s purpose to have a certain story about a certain thing. The reporter who is picked has to take what he is given, or there will be no story, no possible Pulitzer, no scoop. If he refuses, someone else will accept, and will have a good career.

Sometime later Nixon and Kissinger went to China and established diplomatic relations with the “ally” of the Soviet Union. That explained the article about the Russian-Chinese border clashes. It helped prepare the American public to accept the idea of a Chinese-American detente.

Then came the book by Leon Uris,TOPAZ, a bestseller that inspired the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. The point is that for every story a reporter writes there are two stories he doesn’t write. First he doesn’t write the story of who gives him the story and why. Second, he doesn’t write the story of why he doesn’t share that information.

This brings us back to Deep Throat. We know that Mr. Felt was defending the FBI, and also himself, since he was in danger of being indicted for his own illegal break-ins and wiretaps. We know that one of the Watergate burglars, Alfred C. Baldwin, was former FBI. He is the only one who intersects both the White House and the FBI. He is the only Watergate burglar who was not indicted. We don’t know if he ever worked with Felt on illegal ops, or knew other FBI agents who did. We don’t know if Felt was worried about what Baldwin might have known that could expose him. At any rate, my gut feeling is that there may have been a Baldwin-Felt connection of some kind. This might explain Felt’s sending Woodward and Bernstein on a false trail regarding other White House black-bag operations, kind of a fishing expedition to find out what Baldwin was revealing about FBI black-bag ops. We don’t know, but then why the false trail?

I googled Baldwin but found nothing to shed light on this question. If anyone else has anything about Baldwin let me know. What happened to him after Watergate? It’s as if he was sanitized from the information stream after Watergate, which would be interesting in itself.

Frankly, I don’t think Felt was Deep Throat. He was, but not the only one. He couldn’t have known about the erased Nixon tapes, since that happened after he was gone from the FBI, and he had no access. Woodward once worked for Alexander Haig, who did know about the erased tapes. My money's on Haig.