BLUF (bottom line up front)
(in memories of the living who mourn for the in far away places.
── Speaker for the Dead.
)
([ argumentative, conclusion after the facts; all wars lead to spending; blood and treasure is the nature of war; whose blood? and whose treasure?; follow the money and profit; ... ]) ([ is it about the war, or, is it about the money and profit; both, one can not exist without the others; take away the money and profit, there could still be war, but the money and profit incentive would and could be taken away; take away war (conflict), then there is no opportunity for money and profit; money and profit has to exist in a web of transactions and activities; warfare and conflicts generate lots transactions and activities, thus opportunities for money and profits. ])
([ what are we trying to do here? ])
([ what do I want say ])
([ what am I trying to say ])
in conclusion,
(1) the death of John F. Kennedy (JFK), enable the Vietnam-American war to go on, to the tune of
Vietnam 1965-1975 739,000 million *†† (Constant FY2011 $) dollar,
([ assuming that Kennedy was going issue an executive order to get all personnels out of vietnam ])
([ does not sound compelling, kind of blaa, so we spend 739,000 millions on the Vietnam-American war over ten years, plus interest, and Kennedy was going to pull out of Vietnam, what's special about that? ])
([ motives, means, opportunities ])
([ who (a group of people) would have the motives to kill Kennedy?
who would have the means to kill Kennedy?
who would have the opportunties to kill Kennedy?
])
([ why was Kennedy assassinate? ])
(2) the omission of activities and, the commision of activities leading up to the event on September 11, 2001 enable
Iraq 2003-2010 784 billion *††
Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 321 billion *††
total post-9/11──Iraq, Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 1,147 billion *††
military-industrial complex spending;
all these are positive, if you are at the receiving end of government funding (tax). ([ this one is stronger; although Iraq is not related to the September 11, 2001 incident, the September 11, 2001 incident enable the u.s. to invade Iraq, because the u.s. had plan for Iraq, and because Iraq has proven oil & gas reserve, under exploited. Congressional approval. Congressional funding. UN approval (the first resolution). UN did not approved the second resolution. Excuse (pretext): weapon of mass destruction, chemical, biological, nuclear. Was everything about justification to invade Iraq, as the reason for the invasion and intervention, turned out to be false. There was no atomic nuclear program. There was no biological ... ])
Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010
(Constant FY2011 $)
American revolution 1775-1783 2,407 million
war of 1812 1812-1815 1,553 million
Mexican war 1846-1849 2,376 million
Civil war: union 1861-1865 59,631 million
Civil war: confederacy 1861-1865 20,111 million
Spanish american war 1898-1899 9,034 million
World war I 1917-1921 334 billion
World war II 1941-1945 4,104 billion
Korea 1950-1953 341 billion
Vietnam 1965-1975 739 billion *††
Persian gulf war 1990-1991 102 billion *††
Iraq 2003-2010 784 billion *††
Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 321 billion *††
total post-9/11──Iraq, Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 1,147 billion *††
──
Sources: All estimates are of the costs of military operations only and do not reflect costs of veterans’ benefits, interest on war-related debt, or assistance to allies. Except for costs of the American Revolution and the Civil
War costs of the Confederacy, all estimates are based on U.S. government budget data. Current year dollar estimates of the costs of the War of 1812 though World War II represent the increase in Army and Navy outlays during the period of each war compared to average military spending in the previous three years. For the Civil War costs of the Confederacy, the estimate is from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994. For the American Revolution, the estimate is from an unofficial financial history of the United States published in 1895. For the Korean War, the estimate represents increased expenditures of the DOD during the period of the conflict compared to the projected trend from the average of three years before the war to three years after. For the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf War, figures are DOD estimates of the incremental costs of operations, meaning the costs of war-related activities over and above the regular, non-wartime costs of defense. For operations since September 11, 2001, through FY2009, figures reflect CRS estimates of amounts appropriated to cover war-related costs. For FY2010, figures are DOD estimates of war-related appropriations. The current-year dollar estimates are converted to constant prices using estimates of changes in the consumer price index for years prior to 1940 and using Office of Management and Budget and DOD estimates of defense Costs of Major U.S. Wars Congressional Research Service 3 inflation for years thereafter. The CPI estimates used here are from a data base maintained at Oregon State University. The data base periodically updates figures for new official CPI estimates of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
*†† ── Costs of Major U.S. Wars
── congressional research service
── June 29, 2010
── Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010
── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf
──
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf
____________________________________
the purpose:
to prevent Vietnam-American (Southeast asia-indo china-pacific) war;
to prevent post 9/11-Afghanistan-Iraq-other GWOT war;
these two wars can not be changed, however there will be more wars, and another one after that, and another one after that, so on and so forth; the wars that are yet to be, we can work to prevent those wars; ...
(1) the death of John F. Kennedy (JFK) is water under the bridge, but the lesson to be relearned for each new American generation from that event should not be forgotten (and what is that lesson?);
(2) the four aircrafts crashing into things on September 11, 2001 is also water under bridge, but ... see 9/11 commission report ...
no one person can stop or end the Vietnam-American war, but John F. Kennedy could have (in my fictional story) if he had more help;
no one person can prevent the post 9/11-Afghanistan-Iraq-other GWOT war, by preventing four aircrafts from crashing into things on September 11, 2001; the argument being
four aircrafts crashing into things on September 11, 2001
==> post 9/11-Afghanistan-Iraq-other GWOT war and accompanying defense spending;
____________________________________
for the price of a secured door for all the aircrafts to the pilot cockpit, and that is alot of money to spend for an imaginary threat; I mean who would storm four passenger aircrafts, all on one day, take over the cockpit, and use the aircraft as missile (impossible), but that cost is priceless in comparison to
Iraq 2003-2010 784 billion *††
Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 321 billion *††
total post-9/11──Iraq, Afghanistan/other 2010-2010 1,147 billion *††
on the other hand, if you want to make it easier for ... never mind ... that could never happen; a thing that is unimaginable, that could never happen, once it happen, no longer need to be imagined, it happened; most things are preventable after the facts.
([ if a secured door was retrofitted for all the aircrafts, then it would have been more difficult and taken longer to break into the cockpit. ])
([ what would be the technical difficulties and the cost for a secured door to the cockpit for all the passenger aircrafts in service; and how do you prevent the door from locking the pilot out of his or her cockpit ])
([ to get into the cockpit might then require deception or threat (blackmail) to gain entry ])
([ the difficulties of a suicidal threat in an aircraft ])
([ for every measure put in place, would require a counter-measure to gain entry ])
____________________________________
([ minority view ])
•─ In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy.[a]
•─ On November 24, nightclub owner Jack Ruby killed Oswald.
•─ the brother to John F Kennedy was also assassinated, further reinforcing the smelly fish theory; ...
•─ the statement (if it is true): Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy ... is code ... for those in the know; if you want the mission to work, you do not have a lone sniper; you want to have at least two teams; the second sniper team would be the back up; of course, this is a trade off, because a second team would increase the chance of getting detected (to be found out); one shooter can fire one bullet; two shooter can fire two bullets; two bullets timed to fire at the same time would sound very much like a single rifle shot to a human ears; if you want to down a jet plane, you do not plan to fire only one missile; you plan to fire at least two missiles; you plan to fire as many missile as is needed to hit the aircraft ...
•─ In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated in a conspiracy and that Oswald did not act alone.[7][8][9][10] The HSCA concluded that a second gunman also fired at Kennedy, based on acoustical evidence—but that evidence was later discredited.[11][12][13][14][15][16]
•─ Walter Cronkite, CBS News anchor, said, "Although the Warren Commission had full power to conduct its own independent investigation, it permitted the FBI and the CIA to investigate themselves – and so cast a permanent shadow on the answers."[74]
•─ United States Senator and U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence member Richard Schweiker said, "The fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was to not use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up."[75] Schweiker also told author Anthony Summers in 1978 that he "believe[d] that the Warren Commission was set up at the time to feed pablum to the American public for reasons not yet known, and that one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time".[76]
([ the majority view is there is something fishy with Kennedy assassination. ])
([ look up : pablum ])
⭐️Pablum [ < pabulum] a trademark for a soft, bland cereal food for infants
── n. any over simplified or tasteless writing, ideas, etc.
Shenon, Philip. "Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up". Politico Magazine. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/jfk-assassination-john-mccone-warren-commission-cia-213197
"One JFK conspiracy theory that could be true". CNN. November 18, 2013.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/16/us/jfk-assassination-conspiracy-theories-debunked/
HSCA Report, Vol. 11 (PDF) (Report). p. 14.
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_WC_1_Operations.pdf
"Findings". Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations U.S. House of Representatives. August 15, 2016 – via National Archives.
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c.html
"Summary of Findings and Recommendations". Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. 1979. p. 3.
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/summary.html
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/
HSCA Final Report (Report). pp. 65–75.
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0048a.htm
Hunter, Marjorie (December 31, 1978). "House Panel Reports a Conspiracy 'Probable' in the Kennedy Slaying". The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/31/archives/house-panel-reports-a-conspiracy-probable-in-the-kennedy-slaying.html
"Summary of Findings". August 15, 2016.
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/summary.html
Langer, Gary (November 16, 2003). "John F. Kennedy's Assassination Leaves a Legacy of Suspicion" (PDF). ABC News. Retrieved May 16, 2010.
https://abcnews.go.com/images/pdf/937a1JFKAssassination.pdf
Orbis Books, JFK and the Unspeakable
http://www.orbisbooks.com/jfk-and-the-unspeakable.html
source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories
____________________________________
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 spawned numerous conspiracy theories.[1] These theories allege the involvement of the CIA, the Mafia, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of these individuals and entities. The original FBI investigation and Warren Commission report, as well as an alleged "benign CIA cover-up", have led to the claim that the federal government deliberately covered up crucial information in the aftermath of the assassination.[2][3][4]
source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories
____________________________________
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_Sarti
Allegations of involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy
The Murderers of John F. Kennedy and The Men Who Killed Kennedy
In November 1988, Steve J. Rivele's French-published book The Murderers of John F. Kennedy named Sarti as one of three French gangsters involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[7] Rivele claimed Sarti fired the fatal shot from Dealey Plaza's "grassy knoll".[7] According to Rivele, Sarti, Roger Bocagnani, and Sauveur Pironti were contracted by organized crime in the United States to protect their drug interests.[7][8] The British two-hour television special The Men Who Killed Kennedy was based on Rivele's book, but preceded its release airing on October 25, 1988.[7][8] In the French newspaper Le Provençal published the day following the special, Pironti denied the allegation, stating that he believed at the time of the assassination that Sarti was held in Marseille's Baumettes Prison and that Bocagnani was in Bordeaux's Fort du Hâ.[8] He also showed the paper military records proving that he was serving on a minesweeper from October 1962 to April 1964.[8] The French Ministry of Justice stated that Bocagnani was in prison on the day of Kennedy's assassination and officials from the French Navy confirmed Pironti's military service.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_Sarti
____________________________________
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
In spite of vigorous objections by CIA management to the findings, CIA Director Allen Dulles, CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and deputy director for Plans Richard M. Bissell Jr. were all forced to resign by early 1962.[103]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
____________________________________
November 22, 1963
the following is fiction:
it would be a stretch of the imagination that an established political class (a shadow government), the Industrial-military power structure, and industrial-military business interest would would go through the decision-making process and planning to setup Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gun man to kill John F. Kennedy, and then to have a nightclub owner Jack Ruby killed Oswald, and then to have someone else killed the brother to John F Kennedy (Robert?), who was running for the POTUS position;
John F. Kennedy was killed (this is true)
Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald (this is true)
John F. Kennedy's Brother was killed (this is true)
(] when we have three closedly related people to an incident, all died from a violent death, with each death being a dot, and when you connect the dots, what we have is a curve (line), or, a squiggly mess; this is a pattern. [)
one possible explanation for this Big cabal - it is a possibility - is that on the day of John F. Kennedy's political public killing (November 22, 1963), later in the day, or during his visit to Texas (look at the presidential schedule and activity for the Dallas, Texas visit, to follow up), he (JFK) was going to make a public statement that all U.S. personnel (not just the military advisors, but also the CIA personnels) was to leave Southeast Asia (Vietnam); the implication being, that once he made that statement, John F. Kennedy (JFK) was going to follow through on what he said; a complete pull out of Southeast Asia (Vietnam in particular) was not what the hidden political class, the Industrial-military power structure, and the industrial business interest wanted to do (again, this is fiction; I do not know), because that would be mean a Big lost of mucho money and profit for the Military-Industrial complex (MIC)(Mickey mouse) [see Dwight D. Eisenhower last speech to the American people, for the phrase - military industrial complex (MIC)]
[[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address ]]
([ money and profit just work better in comparison to other explanation; you have the increase in defense spending for the Vietnam-American war (an estimates) as a number you can hold on to; you have the money and profit angle; people get that motivation; money and profit can get people to do things that normally they might not considered; the other example is the trans Atlantic slave trade (money and profit); it might be easier to work backward; what was John F. Kennedy (JFK) plan on doing and saying in the near future that would threaten the flow of money and profit to the Military-industrial complex; would this threat be big enough to prompt the assassination. ])
([ the assassination did happen; so what was the plan for countering the risk of getting caught; unless they know they are the established power, and know they can get away with it, suggesting an inside job; an inside job does not prevent you from getting find out; it is palace coup ...; Kennedy was considered an outsider?, making it easier to kill him; ... ])
([ this make for good a screenplay, lots of interesting twist in the deliberation ])
([ the Bay of Pig incident could shed some light into this; what if John F. Kennedy refusal to send in u.s. military intervention into Cuba is illustrative of the Kennedy possible refusal to escalate (further investment of blood and treasure) in Southeast Asia-Indo-China-Vietnam; internal CIA deliberation to ...; a mission plan for failure, knowing that it would fail, anticipating the failure to force the decision-maker into sending in the military to take over the mission, and turn it into a possible success ])
([ wikipedia Bay of Pig ])
([ the other explaination is the Diem's brothers killing by South Vietnam military, a coup; the death of the Diem's brothers, the death of John F. Kennedy, the timing of the two events, the u.s. involvement in Vietnam seem to tie the two events together; if it was an external force without inside help, how much planning does it take to kill the president of the united states; the need for insiders help favor the money and profit angle. ])
Military-Industrial complex (MIC)(Mickey mouse) (this exist, verify)
I mean it would stretched the imagination, right, to imagine a hidden political class, and a selected few chosen people in:
the CIA,
former CIA operatives,
CIA assets,
maybe, the FBI,
the driver,
the personal presidential protective detail (secret service),
all coordinating to enable the killing of John F. Kennedy, a few chosen activities of omission (not doing a thing), some chosen activities of commission (doing a thing); not possible; of course, it would be crazy; of course it would be a stretched of the imagination; ...
1950
Vietnam War: began November 1, 1955 ── ended April 30, 1975
Result: North Vietnamese victory
source: https://www.bing.com/search?q=vietnam+war
── additional defense spending for war in Vietnam
──
── Vietnam 1965-1975 739 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††
<< lost train of thought >> To assassinate the president of the united states (POTUS) for a Big pot of money and profit, or, for the potential lost of a big pot of money and profit, like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; I mean that would be unimaginable, right, that would not be plausible, that would be conspiratory;
739 billion *†† in constant Fiscal Year 2011 U.S. dollar is certainly not enough to kill the president of the united states (POTUS); of course, no one person was going to get $739 billion; the money would be spread out to many military-industrial businesses; those businesses would employed the people; the money would be spreaded out over ten years 1965-1975; and, of course, at the time of the John F. Kennedy's death, no one actually know it was going to be $739 billion, or, $739,000 million; that is like 739,000 babies getting one million dollar each, right?;
source:
it would be just as crazy if the political leadership of a country would go through the decision-making process and planning to setup a bunch [of] Islamic Arabic men (patsy) to fly four jumbo jet passengers aircrafts into two buildings, the pentagon, and an empty field, so that the Western power like the U.S. can invade a foreign land and gain an undisputed control over the 2nd largest known and proven oil & gas reserve on the planet, right?; yeah, that would be crazy, right?; I mean it would stretched the imagination, right, to imagine aircraft being used as attack vectors; unless, you were a 2nd world war veterans, serving in the Pacific theatre on one of those boats that got Kamikaze by suicide flying Japanese Zero aircraft in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign; yeah, no one would or could imagine such an event; world war II is such a long time ago; hindsight is 20/20;
____________________________________
I mean, don't you think it is crazy that a bunch of Arabic men from the Middle East got together, took flight training in the United States, and flew one jumbo jet passenger aircraft into the 1 World Trade Center building, and then flew the 2nd jumbo jet passenger aircraft into the 2 World Trade Center building, and then flew a 3rd jumbo jet passenger aircraft into the Pentagon, and then few a 4th jumbo jet passenger aircraft to an unnamed destination, because "The fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed down in a field in rural Pennsylvania, never reaching its intended target because its crew and passengers fought back against the terrorists." - bing.com; and on that same September day in the year of our Lord 2001, 7 World Trade Center building simply turn into a pile of rubble; did you know that?; that was not reported in the main stream news output (outlet)?; gosh darn it, damn Lucifer, Jesus Christ, may the good Lord strike me dead with her lighting bolt; they must have missed that, right? ; I mean, what's the big deal about 7 World Trade Center building turning into a pile of rubble when 1 World Trade Center building and 2 World Trade Center building turn into rubble; I mean the jumbo jet passenger aircraft can not turn steel reinforced concrete buildings into two piles of rubble; no, they can not; yet, it happened anyway; I'll be a monkey's uncle; that is crazy, right? ; that is a crazy world that we are living in, right? ; doesn't it feels like, it is more like a movie production than real life; I mean come on; this is not The Matrix; why would a bunch of sane and rational or irrational Middle Eastern chicken-eating Arabs do this? ; what is their beef? ; really, I want to know; why are you guys doing this? ;
it would be just as crazy if the political leadership of a country would go through the decision-making process and planning to setup a bunch [of] Islamic Arabic men (patsy) to fly four jumbo jet passengers aircrafts into two buildings, the pentagon, and an empty field, so that the Western power like the U.S. can invade a foreign land and gain an undisputed control over the 2nd largest known and proven oil & gas reserve on the planet, right?; yeah, that would be crazy, right?; I mean it would stretched the imagination, right, to imagine aircraft being used as attack vectors; unless, you were a 2nd world war veterans, serving in the Pacific theatre on one of those boats that got Kamikaze by suicide flying Japanese Zero aircraft in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign; yeah, no one would or could imagine such an event; world war II is such a long time ago; hindsight is 20/20;
____________________________________
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
As Allen Dulles later stated, CIA planners believed that once the troops were on the ground, Kennedy would authorize any action required to prevent failure – as Eisenhower had done in Guatemala in 1954 after that invasion looked as if it would collapse.[195] Kennedy was deeply depressed and angered with the failure. Several years after his death, The New York Times reported that he told an unspecified high administration official of wanting "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." However, following a "rigorous inquiry into the agency's affairs, methods, and problems... [Kennedy] did not 'splinter' it after all and did not recommend Congressional supervision."[196] Kennedy commented to his journalist friend Ben Bradlee, "The first advice I'm going to give my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn."[197]
[197] Dallek (2003) An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963, p. 368.
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/milan-miskovsky.html
Jack Pfeiffer, who worked as a historian for the CIA until the mid-1980s, simplified his own view of the failed Bay of Pigs effort by quoting a statement which Raúl Castro, Fidel's brother, had made to a Mexican journalist in 1975: "Kennedy vacillated," Raúl Castro said. "If at that moment he had decided to invade us, he could have suffocated the island in a sea of blood, but he could have destroyed the revolution. Lucky for us, he vacillated."[203]
[203] Kornbluh, Peter. Volume IV and V. Top Secret CIA Official Story of the Bay of Pigs: Revelations. George Washington University National Security Archive, accessed 15 July 2016. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB355/
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB355/
Looking at both the Survey of the Cuban Operation and Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes by Irving Janis, it identifies the lack of communication and the mere assumption of concurrence to be the main causes behind the CIA and the president's collective failure to efficiently evaluate the facts before them. A considerable amount of information presented before President Kennedy proved to be false in reality, such as the support of the Cuban people for Fidel Castro, making it difficult to assess the actual situation and the future of the operation. The absence of the initiative to explore other options of the debate led the participants to remain optimistic and rigid in their belief that the mission would succeed, being unknowingly biased in the group psychology of wishful thinking as well.[citation needed]
[205] Hart, Paul't (1991). "Irving L. Janis' Victims of Groupthink" (PDF). Political Psychology. 12 (2): 247–278.
http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aea2/2b1d20013932e7fdc7567b39e3652b912078.pdf
[209] NSA press release, 23 March 2001 Bay of Pigs: 40 Years After
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/agenda.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion
____________________________________
p.379, p.380
p.379
June 30, 2009
As it turned out, only BP and a Chinese partner (the China National Petroleum Corporation, CNPC) won their bid for one of the major blocks, the Rumaila field, with estimated reserves in excess of 17 billion barrels.
p.380
By the end of July 2009, the BP contract was approved, and Sahrastani was fast putting together plans for a next round of bids.
... [...] ...
In November 2009, oil company executives again converged on the al-Rashid Hotel and one by one approached the Plexiglas urn with envelopes containing their bids in hand. This time 32 firms were involved in the bid, and several of the largest came away with a field: The Brits and Dutch (Shell), the French (Total), and the Russians (Lukoil), the Italians (ENI), the South Koreans (Kogas), and the Americans with Exxon Mobil and Occidental. Several of these bids were ultimately changed as some oil companies sold them and others wanted in. As a Total executive said, "It is difficult for any major oil company not to be in Iraq."
(Outpost, a memoir by chistopher r. hill, copyright © 2014, simon & schuster )
the China National Petroleum Corporation, CNPC
Brits and Dutch (Shell)
French (Total),
Russians (Lukoil),
Italians (ENI),
South Koreans (Kogas),
Americans with Exxon Mobil and Occidental
____________________________________
([ the importance of oil to u.s. strategy ])
Chomsky explains who U.S. leaders work for and what they have done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBI9mC77igo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBI9mC77igo
NOAM CHOMSKY: Strategic reasons. I mean, economic and strategic, which are impossible to distinguish. But since the Second World War, I'll quote the State Department, the Middle East oil producing regions have been regarded, I'll quote the words, "a stupendous source of strategic power." George Kennan, State Department, head of the planning section said control, not access, control over the Middle East oil gives us "veto power" over what our rivals might do, other industrial powers. You control the spigot, have your hand on the spigot, you have a lot of world control. It's not even access to oil. The first, roughly, 30 years after the Second World War, the U.S. was - North America was the major oil producer. It wasn't using Middle East oil, never the less we had to keep an iron hand of control on Middle East oil and if the U.S. were to go to solar energy, they'd still want to control Middle East oil because that's a lever of world control. Everyone understands it but we're not allowed to think about it.
Before U.S. officials dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they fire bombed Japanese cities. But what few people know is that AFTER the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. officials carried out even more fire bombing of several Japanese cities.
Incredibly, there was a "1000-plane raid five days after Nagasaki on what remained of major Japanese cities, a triumph of military management skills designed to be "as big a finale as possible," the official Air Force history relates; even Stormin' Norman would have been impressed. Thousands of civilians were killed, while amidst the bombs, leaflets fluttered down proclaiming: "Your Government has surrendered. The war is over." General Spaatz wanted to use the third atom bomb on Tokyo for this grand finale, but concluded that further devastation of the "battered city" would not make the intended point. Tokyo had been removed from the first list of targets for the same reason: it was "practically rubble," analysts determined, so that the power of the bomb would not be adequately revealed.
____________________________________
([ there is oil in Vietnam ])
([ the oil angle ])
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%A1ch_H%E1%BB%95_oil_field
Bạch Hổ oil field
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bạch Hổ oil field
White Tiger
An oil rig offshore Vungtau in Bạch Hổ field.
Country Vietnam
Region East Sea
Location Cuu Long basin
Offshore/onshore Offshore
Operators Vietsovpetro
Field history
Discovery 1975
The Bạch Hổ oil field (White Tiger oilfield) is a major oil field in the Cuu Long basin of the East Sea located offshore due east of the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The field contains major reserves hosted within highly fractured granitic basement rocks. The Cuu Long basin is a rift zone developed during the Oligocene to Early Miocene. The rift occurred in Jurassic to Late Cretaceous granite to granodiorite intrusions.[1][2] The fractured granitic rocks occur as a horst overlain and surrounded by Upper Oligocene lacustrine shale source rocks.[1]
Bạch Hổ is not the only oil field convincingly shown to be hosted in granite;[3] however, inspection of the seismic profile of the area shows faulted basement passive margin which is sealed by an onlapping sedimentary sequence.[4][5]
It is plausible that the oil has migrated laterally from the lowermost, mature sediments into the fault systems within the granite. The seismic profile shows a definite basement horst with onlapping sedimentary source rocks, draped by a reservoir seal.[6] This trap view would see the oil migrate up the horst bounding faults from the lower source units, into the trap unit draped over the top.
Mobil struck oil in the Bạch Hổ field in February 1975, shortly before the Fall of Saigon.[7] It was later developed by the joint Vietnamese-Russian entity Vietsovpetro in the 1980s and 1990s.[3] Upon examination of the source rock and oil content, petrogeologists have emphasized that the oil's components indicate a lacustrine organic facies with lipid-rich, land-plant debris and fresh-water algal material, refuting theories of abiogenic origin in this area.[4]
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https://www.offshore-technology.com/data-insights/oil-gas-field-profile-bach-ho-white-tiger-and-rong-dragon-conventional-oil-field-vietnam/
Bach Ho (White Tiger) and Rong (Dragon) is a producing conventional oil field located in shallow water in Vietnam and is operated by Vietsovpetro JVC. According to GlobalData, who tracks more than 34,000 active and developing oil and gas fields worldwide, the field is located in block Block 09-1, with water depth of 197 feet
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Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace, creativity, inc., 2014 [ ]
p.177
The problem is, the phrase is dead wrong. Hindsight is not 20-20. Not even close. Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future. While we know more about a past event than a future one, our understanding of the factors that shaped it is severely limited. Not only that, because we THINK we see what happened clearly--hindsight being 20-20 and all--we often aren't open to knowing more. ...[...]... The past should be our teacher, not our master.
p.178
We build our story--our model of the past--as best we can. We may seek our other people's memories and examine our own limited records to come up with a better model. Even then, it is still only a model--not reality.
(creativity, inc. : overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration / Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace., 1. creativity ability in business2. corporate culture, 3. organizational effectiveness, 4. pixar (firm), © 2014 by Edwin Catmull, 658.4071 Catmull, p.177, p.178)
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cui bono (for whose benefit, who will benefit, ... )
cui bono (in criminal law context: the person who commit the act gain ... benefit; therefore, the focus of the investigation is not on the act of commission, but on the benefit and beneficiary from the criminal enterprise.)
the focus of the investigation is not on the act of commission, but on the benefit and beneficiary from the [assassination] enterprise.
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According to Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, in a 1933 speech, WAR is a racket, he said,
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
1. We must take the profit out of war.
2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
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Anne M. Jacobsen, The pentagon's brain : an uncensored history of DARPA, America's top secret military research agency, 2015
p.229
Pentagon Papers
([ look up the official name of this RAND report ])
a secret history of the war in Vietnam
three thousand narrative pages of war secrets accompanied by four thousand pages of classified memos and supporting documents, organized into 47 volumes
Robert McNamara had commissioned the RAND Corporation to write a classified “encyclopedic history of the Vietnamese War”
Revealed in the papers were specifics on how every president from Truman to Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had misled the public about what was really going on in Vietnam.
Anne M. Jacobsen, The pentagon's brain : an uncensored history of DARPA, America's top secret military research agency, 2015
([ a similar scenario possibility imaginary thought experiment can be made as followed: to follow up on Kennedy - about to be made - public statement to get out of Southeast Asia (Indo-China-Vietnam), Kennedy (JFK) was going to stop the whole Vietnam thing, that got started from Truman to Einsenhower; (again, this is fiction) if they (the mysterious hidden hand) got rid of Kennedy, somehow, like removing him from the chessboard, then "what was really going on in Vietnam" would continued with Johnson, and Nixon; to which it did, because Kennedy was removed from the chessboard. ]) ([ the assumption here is that Kennedy would not escalate and that he was more interested in fighting an insurgency war; basically, you trained the local to fight their own battle, you provide them with equipment, support, and training, like in Afghanistan, which did not turn out so well; ... ])
([ another big assumption here is that Kennedy wanted to pull out Vietnam; lastly, if Kennedy was alive, and Johnson remained in the VP position; given the Gulf of Tonkins, what would Kennedy do?; ... Robert MacNamara ... ]) ([ we do not know the truth; the truth is not reveal for a reason; so we work with what we got; ... ])
([ stick to following the money; ... ])
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Gulf of Tonkins
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Accords
The negotiations that led to the accord began in 1968, after various lengthy delays.
Nixon government
After winning the 1968 presidential election, Richard Nixon became president of the U.S. in January 1969.
([ during the Johnson administration to Nixon administration transition, Johnson administration was in ... peace negotiation (talk) in between South Vietnam and North Vietnam; there is strong supporting evidence that the incoming Nixon administration sabotage the Jonhson's vietnam peace talk, killing any possibility of u.s. military personnels coming home from the Vietnam-American war; to connect the dots:
==> no JFK (Kennedy)
==> Vietnam-American war continued with Johnson
==> Johnson administration working on peace talk
==> incoming Nixon administration sabotaged peace talk
==> Vietnam-American war continued with Nixon
==> Operation Barrel Roll was a covert U.S. Air Force 2nd Air Division and U.S. Navy Task Force 77 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barrel_Roll)
==> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjZ_pFsWYAg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjZ_pFsWYAg
==> money and profit for Military-Industrial complex (MIC)
==> 739 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††
most of the dots are real (verify),
•─ no JFK (Kennedy)
•─ they killed him
•─ Vietnam-American war continued with Johnson
•─ it did
•─ Johnson administration working on peace talk
•─ he, and his team, did
•─ incoming Nixon administration sabotaged peace talk
•─ the peace talk could have fail all on its own
•─ Vietnam-American war continued with Nixon
•─ Nixon won and continued with the conflict
•─ Operation Barrel Roll was a covert U.S. Air Force 2nd Air Division and U.S. Navy Task Force 77 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barrel_Roll)
•─ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjZ_pFsWYAg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjZ_pFsWYAg
•─ yes, a covert air force and navy bombing
•─ money and profit for Military-Industrial complex (MIC)
•─ yep
•─ 739 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††
•─ estimates
the connections are fictional and imaginary.
])
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nixon-prolonged-vietnam-war-for-political-gainand-johnson-knew-about-it-newly-unclassified-tapes-suggest-3595441/
Nixon Prolonged Vietnam War for Political Gain—And Johnson Knew About It, Newly Unclassified Tapes Suggest
Nixon ran on a platform that opposed the Vietnam war, but to win the election, he needed the war to continue
Colin Schultz
March 18, 2013
In 1968, the Paris Peace talks, intended to put an end to the 13-year-long Vietnam War, failed because an aide working for then-Presidential candidate Richard Nixon convinced the South Vietnamese to walk away from the dealings, says a new report by the BBC’s David Taylor.
Nixon’s Presidental campaign needed the war to continue, since Nixon was running on a platform that opposed the war. The BBC:
Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.
… In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris – concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'
Published
22 March 2013
Declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations - he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks... but said nothing.
After the Watergate scandal taught Richard Nixon the consequences of recording White House conversations none of his successors has dared to do it. But Nixon wasn't the first.
He got the idea from his predecessor Lyndon Johnson, who felt there was an obligation to allow historians to eventually eavesdrop on his presidency.
"They will provide history with the bark off," Johnson told his wife, Lady Bird.
The final batch of tapes released by the LBJ library covers 1968, and allows us to hear Johnson's private conversations as his Democratic Party tore itself apart over the question of Vietnam.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
They also shed light on a scandal that, if it had been known at the time, would have sunk the candidacy of Republican presidential nominee, Richard Nixon.
By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks - or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands".
The BBC's former Washington correspondent Charles Wheeler learned of this in 1994 and conducted a series of interviews with key Johnson staff, such as defence secretary Clark Clifford, and national security adviser Walt Rostow.
But by the time the tapes were declassified in 2008 all the main protagonists had died, including Wheeler.
Now, for the first time, the whole story can be told.
It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.
He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.
At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.
In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.
Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.
So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out.
He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to "just hang on through election". ([ fictional speculation: FBI bugging the South Vietnamese embassy would [to be] a cover story for the NSA intercept; a more plausible explaination is that the source of the call transcript is from a routine NSA intercept, prioritized for processing ... ])
Johnson was told by Defence Secretary Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives - quite apart from the lives of the Laotians, Cambodians and Vietnamese caught up in the new offensives - before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968.
The White House tapes, combined with Wheeler's interviews with key White House personnel, provide an unprecedented insight into how Johnson handled a series of crises that rocked his presidency. Sadly, we will never have that sort of insight again.
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[[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address ]]
Despite his military background and being the only general to be elected president in the 20th century, he warned the nation with regard to the corrupting influence of what he describes as the "military-industrial complex".
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.[1]
[[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address ]]
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*†† ── Costs of Major U.S. Wars
── congressional research service
── June 29, 2010
── Table 1. Military Costs of Major U.S. Wars, 1775-2010
── https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf
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defense spending graph
heritage foundation
heritage institute
en.wikipedia.org
https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/images/reports/2010/b2418_chart1_1/b2418_chart1_2.jpg
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look up John Stockwell open letter to Stansfield Turner (10th April, 1977)
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKstockwellJ.htm
https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https%253A//spartacus-educational.com/JFKstockwellJ.htm
(2) John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard: The US Role in the New World Order (1991)
([ how to verify the following ])
The President was perfunctorily warned of the threats against him, but the usual vigilant efforts to protect him were not taken. The Secret Service, FBI, and local police certainly can protect presidents. They do it continuously not only inside the United States but in foreign capitals around the world. Numerous, almost routine, techniques are involved, like bringing extra security forces to blanket problem areas, moving in caravans of cars at a brisk 45 miles an hour, and using, whenever possible, unannounced routes that do not include sharp, slow turns.
When President Kennedy and his wife visited Dallas on November 22, 1963, nearly all of the protections were lifted. Available Texas Guard units were not called into the city and available Dallas policemen were temporarily released from duty. The result? A team of CIA, Cuban exile, and Mafia-related renegades organized a simple military ambush in Dallas and successfully gunned him down. The ambush and its coverup were brazen and astonishingly open. In fact several plots, in Chicago, Miami, and Houston, to kill Kennedy had misfired or been thwarted. The plot that succeeded in Dealey Plaza was so open that various people were reported prior to the event to have said that Kennedy would be killed with a rifle and a patsy would be blamed for the crime. Individuals like Joseph Milteer, the "umbrella man," and a CIA pilot Robert Plumlee went to Dealey Plaza on the 22nd of November to watch.
Obviously, most CIA personnel were not involved and did not know of the plot since sensitive operations are compartmentalized in order to protect their security. Moreover, the great majority of the coat-and-tie people inside CIA headquarters would never have put up with a hit on the President. A great deal of the success of the CIA is due to its ability to attract patriotic, good soldiers who believe in the general rightness of what they do, and then insulate them through compartmentalization from the heavier activities.
The OPMONGOOSE renegades, however, included assassins, terrorists, and people who had been involved in the drug traffic from Cuba into the United States. The team set up a military-style ambush in Dealey Plaza, with shooters on the tops of buildings and the famous grassy knoll. The route of the President's convoy included a 120-degree turn which slowed the car to a near stop. There was cooperation of elements of the Secret Service, of the Dallas Police, and of other law enforcement agencies.
When the shooting began, the Secret Service driver put on - the brakes (home movies of the scene show the brake lights on). Anyone who has been through that kind of training - and I have been through their "bang and burn" courses - is drilled to react. When the bullets start flying in such a situation, you mash down on the gas and you get the hell out of the area; you do not slow down and look around as the seasoned Secret Service driver in fact did. In ten seconds of rifle fire, only one of the Secret Service agents in the trail car moved to the President's aid. The one agent who did move was Jackie Kennedy's personal guard, in Dallas at her request, not part of the team that was there to protect the President.
Kennedy was shot at very close range from firing stations, probably four of them, where the assassins fired eight to ten shots. He was hit in the back, throat, and twice in the head, two bullets each from the front and from the back. Texas Governor John Connally was hit twice. Two bullets were fired into the concrete, one on each side of the convoy. After the shooting stopped, the convoy raced away. The FBI and other branches of the government immediately launched the coverup. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, ordered the limousine in which Kennedy was killed be flown to Chicago and destroyed. The announced goal of President Johnson was to "reassure" the nation by proving that the killing was the work of lone assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. It was variously suggested that an investigation that turned up Soviet involvement might lead to nuclear war; it might embarrass the Kennedy widow; it might lead to domestic unrest. In fact; it might have led to a sizeable number of very important people and organizations being implicated in a presidential assassination. That might very well have exercised the population sufficiently to provoke a serious investigation of CIA, FBI, and Mafia activities in the country, and to demand some changes.
The evidence was extensively tampered with. The President's body was altered; the photographs of the autopsy were altered; and over 100 witnesses were killed or died mysterious and violent deaths. To this day, despite the House Committee's 1979 conclusion that there was a conspiracy, there has been no formal, official investigation. Neither have all the documents been released.
Even among the majority that acknowledge that there was abroad conspiracy, many find it difficult to believe that the CIA itself could have been involved. Perhaps, they reluctantly concede, "renegades" might have had something to do with it.
In fact, there is strong evidence that both the FBI and the CIA high commands had prior knowledge of and direct involvement in the conspiracy. After the Dallas Police had arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, but before they could have positively identified him (he had false identification papers in his wallet) much less interrogate him and reasonably confirm his (alleged) guilt, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover telephoned Bobby Kennedy in Washington to tell him that the assassin had been caught. Hoover gave Kennedy biographic information that he could only have had prior to the assassination. Clearly he was waiting with information about Lee Harvey Oswald, to blame him for the killing.
Similarly, CIA operatives far from Dallas were waiting with biographic information about Oswald to feed to the media. Some time after the Warren Committee hearings, journalist Seth Kantor found himself broadly suspected of being somehow a secret agent because, researchers found, the Warren Commission had classified part of his testimony. Puzzled, he checked and found that the Commission had in fact classified telephone calls he made during the afternoon of the killing. In addition to checking his own notes, he succeeded in forcing the Warren Commission to return his testimony to him, and identified the calls. One was to the managing editor of the Scripps-Howard news service bureau in Washington. Mid-afternoon, again long before the police could have interrogated Oswald, made a positive identification, concluded what had happened, and eliminated the possibility of accomplices in a conspiracy to kill the President, the editor told Kantor that Oswald had been identified as the assassin and instructed him to call Hal Hendricks, a journalist who gave Kantor detailed biographic information about Oswald. Years later, in the CIA-engineered coup in Chile, Hendricks was positively identified as a CIA operative working under journalistic cover. Moreover, the Warren Commission's move to classify the phone calls is proof positive that it knew there was an intelligence connection with Hendricks and strongly suggests that it was willfully covering up the assassination conspiracy.
In sum, the FBI Director and CIA media operatives were waiting, primed, before the assassination to launch the coverup and pin the blame on the pre-selected patsy, Oswald.
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKstockwellJ.htm
https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https%253A//spartacus-educational.com/JFKstockwellJ.htm
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([ until this article, the general opinion and majority view was that, if Kennedy was not assassinated, he would've escalated in a similar way that Johnson did; ... ])
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/
Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam
In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam.
James K. Galbraith
History, Politics, U.S.
September 1, 2003
President and Mrs. Kennedy arrive at Love Field, Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, White House, in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
Forty years have passed since November 22, 1963, yet painful mysteries remain. What, at the moment of his death, was John F. Kennedy’s policy toward Vietnam?
A more thorough treatment appeared in 1992, with the publication of John M. Newman’s JFK and Vietnam.1 Until his retirement in 1994 Newman was a major in the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records—a talent he later applied to the CIA’s long-hidden archives on Lee Harvey Oswald.
Newman’s argument was not a case of “counterfactual historical reasoning,” as Larry Berman described it in an early response.2 It was not about what might have happened had Kennedy lived. Newman’s argument was stronger: Kennedy, he claims, had decided to begin a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, that he had ordered this withdrawal to begin. Here is the chronology, according to Newman:
(1) On October 2, 1963, Kennedy received the report of a mission to Saigon by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The main recommendations, which appear in Section I(B) of the McNamara-Taylor report, were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965 and that the “Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 out of 17,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam by the end of 1963.” At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal.
(2) On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day:
The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.)
The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was in fact made on that day, and (b) that despite the earlier announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended3) but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or his reactions.
(3) On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263, which states:
The President approved the military recommendations contained in section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.
In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam.
The alternative would have been to withdraw the troops while acknowledging failure. And this, Newman argues, Kennedy was prepared to do if it became necessary. He saw no reason, however, to take this step before it became necessary. If the troops could be pulled while the South Vietnamese were still standing, so much the better.4 But from October 11 onward the CIA’s reporting changed drastically. Official optimism was replaced by a searching and comparatively realistic pessimism. Newman believes this pessimism, which involved rewriting assessments as far back as the previous July, was a response to NSAM 263. It represented an effort by the CIA to undermine the ostensible rationale of withdrawal with success, and therefore to obstruct implementation of the plan for withdrawal. Kennedy, needless to say, did not share his full reasoning with the CIA.
(4) On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the assassination of Diem and Nhu. At a press conference on November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. They were “to intensify the struggle” and “to bring Americans out of there.” Victory, which had figured prominently in a similar statement on September 12, was no longer on the list.
(5) The Honolulu Conference of senior cabinet and military officials on November 20–21 was called to review plans in the wake of the Saigon coup. The military and the CIA, however, planned to use that meeting to pull the rug from under the false optimism which some had used to rationalize NSAM 263. However, Kennedy did not himself believe that we were withdrawing with victory. It follows that the changing image of the military situation would not have changed JFK’s decision.
(6) In Honolulu, McGeorge Bundy prepared a draft of what would eventually be NSAM 273. The plan was to present it to Kennedy after the meeting ended. Dated November 21, this draft reflected the change in military reporting. It speaks, for example, of a need to “turn the tide not only of battle but of belief.” Plans to intensify the struggle, however, do not go beyond what Kennedy would have approved: A paragraph calling for actions against the North underscores the role of Vietnamese forces:
7. With respect to action against North Vietnam, there should be a detailed plan for the development of additional Government of Vietnam resources, especially for sea-going activity, and such planning should indicate the time and investment necessary to achieve a wholly new level of effectiveness in this field of action. (Emphasis added.)
(7) At Honolulu, a preliminary plan, known as CINCPAC OPLAN 34-63 and later implemented as OPLAN 34A, was prepared for presentation. This plan called for intensified sabotage raids against the North, employing Vietnamese commandos under U.S. control—a significant escalation.5 While JCS chief Taylor had approved preparation of this plan, it had not been shown to McNamara. Tab E of the meeting’s briefing book, also approved by Taylor and also not sent in advance to McNamara, showed that the withdrawal ordered by Kennedy in October was already being gutted, by the device of substituting for the withdrawal of full units that of individual soldiers who were being rotated out of Vietnam in any event.
(8) The final version of NSAM 273, signed by Johnson on November 26, differs from the draft in several respects. Most are minor changes of wording. The main change is that the draft paragraph 7 has been struck in its entirety (there are two pencil slashes on the November 21 draft), and replaced with the following:
Planning should include different levels of possible increased activity, and in each instance there be estimates such factors as: A. Resulting damage to North Vietnam; B. The plausibility denial; C. Vietnamese retaliation; D. Other international reaction. Plans submitted promptly for approval by authority.
Planning for these actions began therewith, and we now know that an OPLAN 34A raid in August 1964 provoked the North Vietnamese retaliation against the destroyer Maddox, which became the first Gulf of Tonkin incident. And this in turn led to the confused incident a few nights later aboard the Turner Joy, to reports that it too had been attacked, and to Johnson’s overnight decision to seek congressional support for “retaliation” against North Vietnam. From this, of course, the larger war then flowed.
As McNamara’s 1986 oral history, on deposit at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, makes clear (but his book does not), he was himself in the second group, who favored withdrawal without victory—not necessarily admitting or even predicting defeat, but accepting uncertainty as to what would follow. The denouement came shortly thereafter:
After much debate, the president endorsed our recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by December 31, 1963. He did so, I recall, without indicating his reasoning. In any event, because objections had been so intense and because I suspected others might try to get him to reverse the decision, I urged him to announce it publicly. That would set it in concrete. . . . The president finally agreed, and the announcement was released by Pierre Salinger after the meeting.
“All planning” is an unconditional phrase. There is no contingency here, or elsewhere in this memorandum. The next paragraph reads:
c. Execute the plan to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963 per your DTG 212201Z July, and as approved for planning by JCS DTG 062042Z September. Previous guidance on the public affairs annex is altered to the extent that the action will now be treated in low key, as the initial increment of U.S. forces whose presence is no longer required because (a) Vietnamese forces have been trained to assume the function involved; or (b) the function for which they came to Vietnam has been completed. (Emphasis added.)
This resolves the question of how the initial withdrawal was to be carried out. It was not to be a noisy or cosmetic affair, designed to please either U.S. opinion or to change policies in Saigon. It was rather to be a low-key, matter-of-fact beginning to a process that would play out over the following two years. The final paragraph of Taylor’s memorandum underlines this point by directing that “specific checkpoints will be established now against which progress can be evaluated on a quarterly basis.” There is much more in the JCS documents to show that Kennedy was well aware of the evidence that South Vietnam was, in fact, losing the war. But it hardly matters. The withdrawal decided on was unconditional, and did not depend on military progress or lack of it.
Conclusion
John F. Kennedy had formally decided to withdraw from Vietnam, whether we were winning or not. Robert McNamara, who did not believe we were winning, supported this decision.10 The first stage of withdrawal had been ordered. The final date, two years later, had been specified. These decisions were taken, and even placed, in an oblique and carefully limited way, before the public.
* * *
Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam was, as Jones writes, “unconditional, for he approved a calendar of events that did not necessitate a victory.” It was also part of a larger strategy, of a sequence that included the Laos and Berlin settlements in 1961, the non-invasion of Cuba in 1962, the Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Kennedy subordinated the timing of these events to politics: he was quite prepared to leave soldiers in harm’s way until after his own reelection. His larger goal after that was to settle the Cold War, without either victory or defeat—a strategic vision laid out in JFK’s commencement speech at American University on June 10, 1963.
And that was, partly, a question of atomic survival—a subject that can only be said to have obsessed America’s civilian leadership in those days, and for very good reason. The Soviet Union, which had at that time only four intercontinental rockets capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, was not the danger that rational men most feared. The United States held an overwhelming nuclear advantage in late 1963. Accordingly, our nuclear plans were not actually about deterrence. Rather, then as evidently again now, they envisioned preventive war fought over a pretext.12 There were those who were dedicated to carrying out those plans at the appropriate moment. In July 1961, the nuclear planners had specified that the optimal moment for such an attack would come at the end of 1963.
And yet, standing against them (as Daniel Ellsberg was told at the time), the civilian leaders of the United States were determined never, under any circumstances, to allow U.S. nuclear weapons to be used first—not in Laos or Vietnam, nor against China, not over Cuba or Berlin, nor against the Soviet Union. For political reasons, at a moment when Americans had been propagandized into thinking of the atomic bomb as their best defense, this was the deepest secret of the time.
Was it also a deadly secret? Did LBJ have reason to fear, on the day he took office, that he was facing a nuclear coup d’etat?13 Similar questions have engendered scorn for 40 years. But they are not illegitimate—no more so, let me venture, than the idea that Kennedy really had decided to quit Vietnam. Perhaps someday a historian will answer them as well as Howard Jones has now resolved the Vietnam puzzle. Meanwhile, let us hope that we might learn something about the need to recognize and cope with policy failure. And as for the truth behind the darkest state secrets, let us also hope that the victims of September 11, 2001, don’t have to wait as long. <
James K. Galbraith, a 2003 Carnegie Scholar, holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr., Chair of Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin.
Notes
1 JFK and Vietnam has an odd story, in which I should acknowledge a small role. On release, it received a front-page review by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the New York Times Book Review. But of some 32,000 copies printed (in two printings, according to Newman) only about 10,000 were sold before Warner Books abruptly ceased selling the hardcover—a fact I discovered on my own in the fall of 1993, when I attempted to assign it to a graduate class. I met Newman in November 1993, partly through the good offices of the LBJ Library. I carried his grievance personally to an honorable high official of Time Warner, whose intervention secured the return of his rights. Still, the hardback was never reissued, and no paperback has appeared.
2 “Counterfactual Historical Reasoning: NSAM 263 and NSAM 273,” mimeo for a conference at the LBJ Library, 14–15 October 1993, published as “NSAM 263 and 273: Manipulating History” in Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, eds., Vietnam: The Early Decisions (University of Texas Press, 1997).
3 Reeves, author of President Kennedy: Profile of Power, made this argument in a televised lecture at the LBJ Library in early 1995.
4 In a contribution to Vietnam: The Early Decisions, Newman adds a further reason: Kennedy had, on October 2, allowed McNamara and Taylor to announce, as their recommended target date, that the withdrawal be completed by 1965. It would have been awkward to follow just three days later with a presidential decision making clear that the timetable was, in fact, a firm one.
5 The fate of these commandos surfaced in the New York Times of 14 April 1995, where it was reported that after 30 years in prison, many were denied immigration to the United States because of a lack of service records.
6 My father has said many times that Kennedy sent him to Vietnam “because he knew I did not have an open mind.”
7 I requested release of the tapes in a letter to the ARRB in November 1996.
8 CINCPAC was developing these plans, but they had not been shown to JFK, according to Newman.
9 According to Newman, LBJ took a belligerent tone at his first Vietnam meeting as President on November 24, and McGeorge Bundy attributed the escalatory language in NSAM 273 to this. However, by any standard the CIA moved quickly, and by this account it relied on the discussions at Honolulu—which occurred while JFK was still alive.
10 I have in this narrative deliberately underplayed the role of my own father, who was repeatedly called upon by Kennedy to deliver arguments in favor of disengagement from Vietnam, and whose 1962 recommendation for phased withdrawal was probably the basis of the 1963 orders. My father did not know that the actual decision was taken in October 1963, but he is in no doubt as to Kennedy’s determination: he recalls Kennedy in 1962 saying to him privately and unmistakably that withdrawal from Vietnam, as that from Laos and the detachment from Cuba, was a matter of political timing.
11 My father retains a distinct, chilling recollection of LBJ’s words to him, in private, on one of their last meetings before the Vietnam War finally drove them apart: “You may not like what I’m doing in Vietnam, Ken, but you would not believe what would happen if I were not here.”
12 Heather Purcell and I documented these nightmares in an article published in 1994 entitled “Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?” It is still available on the website of the American Prospect. When once I asked the late Walt Rostow if he knew anything about the National Security Council meeting of July 20, 1961 (at which these plans were presented), he responded with no hesitation: “Do you mean the one where they wanted to blow up the world?”
13 There is no doubt that the danger of nuclear war was on Johnson’s mind. It also explains important points about his behavior in those days, including his orders to Earl Warren and Richard Russell (the latter in a phone call, a recording of which has long been available on the C-SPAN website) as to how they would conduct their commission. The point to appreciate is that there is only one way a war could have started at that time: by preemptive attack by the United States against the Soviet Union.
© 1997–2003 by James K. Galbraith. All rights reserved.
Originally published in the October/November 2003 issue of Boston Review
James K. Galbraith is the author of Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know. He is a son of John Kenneth Galbraith.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/
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https://harpers.org/archive/2019/06/the-pentagon-syndrome/
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON — From the June 2019 issue
The Military-Industrial Virus
How bloated defense budgets gut our armed forces
By Andrew Cockburn
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For a country that spends such vast sums on its national security apparatus—many times more than the enemies that supposedly threaten it do—the United States has a strangely invisible military establishment. Military bases tend to be located far from major population centers. The Air Force’s vast missile fields, for instance, are hidden away in the plains of the northern Midwest. It is rare to see service uniforms on the streets of major cities, even Washington. Donald Trump did dream of holding a “beautiful” military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, complete with “a lot of planes going over and a lot of military might,” but the Pentagon nixed the scheme by putting out word that the extravaganza would cost $92 million. The estimate was surely inflated—it was four times greater, in real dollars, than the price tag for the 1991 Gulf War victory parade—suggesting that the military prefers a lower profile. It often takes an informed eye to appreciate signs of defense dollars at work, such as the office parks abutting Route 28 south of Dulles Airport, heavily populated with innocuously titled military and intelligence firms.
Illustrations by Shonagh Rae
Illustrations by Shonagh Rae
Largely out of sight, our gargantuan military machine is also increasingly out of mind, especially when it comes to the ways in which it spends, and misspends, our money. Three decades ago, revelations that the military was paying $435 for a hammer and $640 for an aircraft toilet seat ignited widespread media coverage and public outrage. But when it emerged in 2018 that the Air Force was now paying $10,000 for a toilet-seat cover alone, the story generated little more than a few scattered news reports and some derisive commentary on blogs and social media. (This was despite a senior Air Force official’s unblushing explanation that the ridiculous price was required to save the manufacturer from “losing revenue and profit.”) The Air Force now claims to have the covers 3-D–printed for $300 apiece, still an extravagant sum.
Representative Ro Khanna of California, a leading light of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who has spearheaded the fight to end U.S. participation in the Saudi war of extermination in Yemen, told me recently that he sees this indifference as a sign of the times. “There’s such cynicism about politics, such cynicism about institutions,” he said, “that the shock value of scandals that in the past would be disqualifying has diminished.” We were discussing another apparent defense rip-off, in which a company called TransDigm has been deploying a business model pioneered by the pharmaceutical industry. TransDigm seeks out unique suppliers of obscure but essential military components, such as a simple cable assembly, and buys the firm, quickly boosting the component’s price (by 355 percent in the case of the assembly). Khanna was particularly depressed that the Defense Department’s inspector general—whom he, along with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ohio Representative Tim Ryan, had prompted to investigate the company—had concluded that TransDigm’s way of doing business was, in his words, “awful, but legal.” (Unsurprisingly, Wall Street loves the company; its stock price has doubled in the two years since Khanna first raised the issue.)
At a time when defense spending accounts for fifty-three cents out of every dollar appropriated by Congress, one might expect that the Pentagon would be under intense scrutiny by those who believe that the money is urgently needed elsewhere. Yet this is evidently not the case. Outrageous examples such as the toilet-seat cover or TransDigm come and go almost without comment, as does the ongoing trillion-dollar overhaul of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which surely poses as great an existential threat to the planet as climate change. True, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Tulsi Gabbard among the Democratic presidential contenders are campaigning for cuts in defense spending, but they all have spotty records when it comes to votes on military budget bills. The Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives has indeed pressed for a freeze on the Pentagon’s budget, along with “greater accountability and transparency in our Department of Defense,” but the former effort has been stymied by opposition from centrist Democrats and the latter demand lacks specifics. Justice Democrats, a leftist PAC that has recently emerged as a potent force behind newly elected progressives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, offers little detail on defense policy in its published platform beyond pledging to “End Unnecessary Wars and Nation Building.”
When I asked Khanna what it means to be progressive on defense, he responded with similar language. “It means,” he answered, “to understand that our recent unconstitutional wars have not made America safe. That our military is overstretched. That we are in too many battlefields overseas. That we need far greater restraint in the use of our military.” For Khanna, the fault clearly lies with our aggressive foreign policy. “The reason the military budget is bloated,” he continued, “is because we’ve got too large a presence and footprint overseas in a way that isn’t making us safer.” But why should a handful of comparatively small-scale operations “overstretch” a military with its largest budget since World War II? All indications are that the actual reason behind the military’s bloated budget goes far beyond the ill-starred ventures of our twenty-first-century presidents, and has far more serious implications for both our defense and our society.
In 1983, Chuck Spinney, a thirty-seven-year-old analyst in the Pentagon’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation, testified to Congress that the cost of the ever-more complex weapons that the military insisted on buying always grew many times faster than the overall defense budget. In consequence, planes, ships, and tanks were never replaced on a one-to-one basis, which in turn ensured that the armed forces got smaller and older. Planes, for instance, were kept in service for longer periods of time and were maintained in poor states of repair owing to their increasing complexity. As to be expected, the high command did not react favorably to these home truths. They allowed Spinney to keep his job but stopped assigning him anything of importance. He spent the rest of his career ensconced in a Pentagon office at the heart of the military-industrial machine, pondering and probing its institutional personality. Retiring in 2003, he maintained a steady output of pungent analyses of its workings. In a 2011 essay, “The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War,” he discussed the pattern of “military belief systems and distorted financial incentives” that produced “a voracious appetite for money that is sustained by a self-serving flood of ideological propaganda.” Delving deep into the historical details of Pentagon spending, Spinney illustrated his analyses in the form of intricate charts that not only tracked the actual dollar amounts expended but also showed how the projected budgets for various ambitious weapons-buying plans had never materialized, at least never to the degree necessary to buy the projected number of weapons systems—hence the shrinking forces.
Late in 2018, Spinney’s longtime friend Pierre Sprey, a former Pentagon “whiz kid” revered for codesigning the highly successful A-10 and F-16 warplanes, and a trenchant critic of defense orthodoxy, suggested to Spinney that he add a novel tweak to his work by depicting budget changes from year to year in terms of percentages rather than dollar amounts. The analysis that Spinney produced at Sprey’s suggestion revealed something intriguing: although the U.S. defense budget clearly increased and decreased over the sixty years following the end of the Korean War, the decreases never dipped below where the budget would have been if it had simply grown at 5 percent per year from 1954 on (with one minor exception in the 1960s). “Amazingly,” emphasized Spinney,
this behavior even held true for the large budget reductions that occurred after the end of the Vietnam War and, more significantly, after the end of the Cold War. It is as if there is a rising floor of resistance, below which the defense budget does not penetrate.
Only during Obama’s second term did it first dip below this level with any degree of significance. Even more interestingly, every single time the growth rate had bumped against that floor, there had been an immediate and forceful reaction in the form of high-volume public outcry regarding a supposedly imminent military threat. Such bouts of threat inflation invariably induced a prompt remedial increase in budget growth, regardless of whether the proclaimed threat actually existed. As General Douglas MacArthur remarked, as far back as 1957: “Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters never seem to have happened, never seem to have been quite real.”
In 1960, for example, as President Eisenhower was getting ready to denounce the dangerous power of what he would christen the military-industrial complex, the growth rate was pressing against the 5 percent floor. On cue, there appeared the fraudulent specter of a “missile gap” favoring the Soviets. The incoming Kennedy Administration duly opened the budgetary tap. A slowdown a few years later, as Kennedy tried to apply the brakes and free up money for domestic initiatives, was reversed under Johnson with the first major escalation in Vietnam. The end of that war again brought the rate down to 5 percent. True to form, there arose a chorus of alarms about the rising menace of Soviet military power: the CIA upwardly revised its estimates of enemy weapons prowess and spending; the Pentagon asserted that our nuclear forces faced a “window of vulnerability.” The consequent spend-up accelerated sharply in the Reagan years, ultimately peaking at a record growth rate of 10 percent.
The end of the Cold War, which had underpinned the entire enterprise, might have been expected to bring a change. But no, the 5 percent limit held firm, and before too long the growth rate rose again as Clinton expanded NATO, thereby ensuring tense relations with Russia for the foreseeable future. The 9/11 attacks and the Bush–Obama wars pushed the year-on-year increases into overdrive until the rate dipped slightly below the 5 percent line in 2015. Donald Trump, for all his bombast about restoring the military, was at first apparently unwilling to undo this particular aspect of the Obama legacy—his initial budget plan for 2020 even featured an absolute decline in spending, from $717 billion to $700 billion. This aberration was brief, however. Following outcry from the military’s representatives in Congress, Trump reversed course and dutifully boosted the projected amount to $750 billion, just shy of the historical status quo.
Now that the Democratic establishment, long wedded to the notion that Vladimir Putin somehow engineered the election of Donald Trump, have become as obsessively hawkish on the subject of Russia as any Republican, it seems likely that the line will soon climb north of 5 percent and stay there for years to come. Reports that the Russians, despite having a defense budget less than a tenth the size of ours, are somehow outpacing us in the development of weapons such as chimerical hypersonic missiles go largely unchallenged. Moscow’s latest submarines, ships, tanks, cyberweapons, and supposed mastery of “hybrid” warfare are regularly invoked to justify a level of spending that, even accounting for inflation, now runs almost double the Cold War average.
This entire process, whereby spending growth slows and is then seemingly automatically regenerated, raises an intriguing possibility: that our military-industrial complex has become, in Spinney’s words, a “living organic system” with a built-in self-defense reflex that reacts forcefully whenever a threat to its food supply—our money—hits a particular trigger point. The implications are profound, suggesting that the MIC is embedded in our society to such a degree that it cannot be dislodged, and also that it could be said to be concerned, exclusively, with self-preservation and expansion, like a giant, malignant virus. This, of course, is contrary to the notion that our armed forces exist to protect us against foreign enemies and impose our will around the globe—and that corruption, mismanagement, and costly foreign wars are anomalies that can be corrected with suitable reforms and changes in policy. But if we understand that the MIC exists purely to sustain itself and grow, it becomes easier to make sense of the corruption, mismanagement, and war, and understand why, despite warnings over allegedly looming threats, we remain in reality so poorly defended.
That latter point may seem counterintuitive. Pentagon critics like Khanna tend to focus on the misuse of our military power, such as in the wars in Yemen or Afghanistan, and on the need to reallocate money away from defense to address pressing social needs. These are certainly valid approaches, but they overlook the fact that we’ve been left with a very poor fighting force for our money. The evidence for this is depressingly clear, starting with our bulging arsenal of weapons systems incapable of performing as advertised and bought at extraordinary cost. Some examples, such as the F-35 Lightning II fighter planes bought by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, have achieved a certain muted notoriety and served as the occasional butt of jokes made by comedians on cable TV. Yet there is little public appreciation of the extent of the disaster. The F-35 first saw combat last year, seventeen years after the program began. The Marines sent just six of them on their first deployment to the Middle East, and over several months only managed to fly, on average, one combat sortie per plane every three days. According to the Pentagon’s former chief testing official, had there been opposition, these “fighters” could not have survived without protection from other planes. The most expensive weapons program in history at a projected cost of $406 billion, the F-35 initially carried a radar whose frequent freezing required the pilot to regularly switch it on and off. While the radar problem was eventually corrected, the Air Force version of the plane still features an unacceptably inaccurate gun that remains to be fixed, though the Air Force claims to be working on it.
The Navy is in possibly worse shape. Mines, to take one striking example, are a potent naval weapon and ubiquitous among our potential enemies. Fear of mines caused the United States to cancel a major amphibious landing during the Korean War, and concerns over possible Iraqi mines prevented a planned seaborne assault on Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. A single mine (and Iran has thousands of them) in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a third of the world’s oil transported by sea passes every day, would throw markets into total chaos. Yet the Navy currently possesses a mere eleven minesweepers, dilapidated vessels long past retirement age, with just four available for the entirety of the Middle East. Fifteen of the new and failure-ridden class of Littoral combat ships, known to crews as “little crappy ships,” will supposedly be dedicated to mine-hunting and minesweeping, but none of their specialized equipment—designed to detect and disable mines, including underwater drones—has been found to work. A July 2018 report from the Defense Department’s inspector general found that the Navy deployed the relevant systems “prior to demonstrating that the systems were effective.” Asked to comment, the Navy nevertheless claimed that everything works or, as in the case of the underwater drone, insisted they are “on track” to produce something that does.
Thus the lion’s share of our defenses against mines must be borne by a small, decaying fleet of huge MH-53E helicopters that search and destroy mines by towing large sensor-laden sleds through the ocean. The MH-53E, and its variant for the Marines, the CH-53E, are lethal machines—lethal, that is, to those who operate them. According to the journalists behind the documentary Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn, the helicopters have crashed 58 times and killed 132 crew and contractors since their introduction in the 1980s, making them the most dangerous aircraft in the U.S. military.
The Navy’s shortcomings have been most vividly highlighted by a plethora of scandals in the Seventh Fleet, which operates in the western Pacific. In recent years, Leonard Glenn Francis, a contractor known as “Fat Leonard” who serviced the fleet’s port visits around Asia and held over $200 million in contracts, was found to have been bribing
a wide range of officers, among them senior admirals, with lavish entertainment—including drunken parties that lasted days and featured a group of prostitutes known as the “Thai SEAL team”—as well as cash, to secure overpriced contracts. It also emerged that fleet movements had at times been dictated not by the Navy’s strategic requirements but by officers repaying Francis’s hospitality by directing ships to ports where he stood to make the most money. Though whistle-blowers had been sounding the alarm for years, their complaints were routinely suppressed by officers on Francis’s payroll. When the Navy finally got around to investigating his activities, in 2010, no fewer than sixty admirals fell under suspicion. To date, sixteen officers, serving and retired, have been found guilty of bribery, fraud, and related crimes, while a further twelve are awaiting trial. Another 550 active-duty and retired military personnel were investigated, although the statute of limitations precluded prosecution in some cases.
Meanwhile, the fleet itself has been progressively deteriorating, as became tragically evident when two destroyers, the U.S.S. Fitzgerald and the U.S.S. John S. McCain, collided with merchant vessels in Asian waters in 2017, leaving a total of seventeen sailors dead. The disasters were found to be the direct consequence of incompetent commanders and ill-trained, overworked, shorthanded crews struggling to operate broken-down equipment they did not know how to repair. The failures in leadership, investigations revealed, extended all the way to the top of the chain of command.
The Army and Marines present a hardly less depressing picture. For decades, the Army has been engaged in an expensive struggle to supply troops with reliable radios. One recent portable model, which the Institute for Defense Analyses found would cost $72,000 each, is called the Manpack. Not only is the Manpack twice as heavy as the model it replaces, with a shorter range, but it has displayed a tendency to overheat and severely burn the unfortunate infantrymen carrying it. The helmets worn by soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan have also been shown to be faulty. As the authors of the recent book Shattered Minds have demonstrated, their design can actually amplify the effects of an explosion on one’s brain. Furthermore, many of the helmets have been found to be dangerously vulnerable to bullets and shrapnel, thanks to a corrupt contractor skimping on the necessary bulletproof material. As is common with those who speak up about official malpractice, the whistle-blowers who exposed this particular fraud were viciously harassed by their superiors and driven out of their jobs.
Scholarly commentators and pundits generally shrink from ascribing base pecuniary motives to the military-industrial complex. Thus, one recent academic study of the reasons behind declining force numbers finds the answer in “an American cultural disposition favoring technology,” suggesting that our military leadership is driven to pour funds into technologically complex weapons systems, thereby skimping on troops’ basic needs, by some innate cultural imperative. The reality would seem to be somewhat simpler: the MIC has a compulsion to demand and receive more of our money every year. Contrary to common belief, this imperative does not mean that the budget is propelled by foreign wars. Rather, the wars are a consequence of the quest for bigger budgets. Recently, the Pentagon even proposed a war budget that won’t be spent on a war. The proposed 2020 budget includes $165 billion for “Overseas Contingency Operations” (O.C.O.), a special category invented in 2009 to support ongoing wars, rather as if a police department demanded extra money for catching criminals. In previous years, large chunks of this money have been quietly diverted to more urgent Pentagon priorities, such as funding new weapons programs. But now the diversion has become official—the budget request acknowledges that $98 billion of the O.C.O. money is for routine “base requirements,” rather than fighting abroad.
In other words, it’s all about the Benjamins. Understanding this fundamental fact makes it easier to understand the decisions underlying our defense policy. Why, for example, was the Seventh Fleet sent to sea on unnecessary deployments with shorthanded crews and broken equipment? The answer, according to an investigation by ProPublica, was that senior officials in Washington, led by Ray Mabus, secretary of the Navy throughout the Obama presidency, and the chief of naval operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, were determined to funnel as much money as possible into building more ships, a decision that proved quite profitable for politically influential shipyards. Why do we maintain a vulnerable land-based missile force as well as an invulnerable submarine-based one? Because eliminating the Air Force’s ICBMs would entail a severe blow to the Air Force budget and defense contractors’ balance sheets.
We’re left with a fighting force that needs to rely on loved ones for vital needs such as armor and night-vision goggles, while we throw hundreds of millions of dollars at exotic contraptions such as the Compass Call NOVA, a completely dysfunctional aircraft tasked with detecting I.E.D.s. The pattern such boondoggles follow is predictable: the services insist that new weapons are needed to replace our rapidly obsolescing fleets. Inevitably, unforeseeable and rapid enemy advances require new and more “capable” weapons, costing 50 to 100 percent more than their predecessors. The presumption that more capable weapons must cost more generally goes unquestioned, despite the fact that prices for more advanced personal computers and other civilian technologies have moved in the opposite direction. Once budgets for an optimistically priced new weapon are approved by the Pentagon leadership and Congress, a program schedule is devised so that no single failure to meet a deadline or pass a test can threaten the flow of funding. In addition, the contract, inevitably of crushing complexity, is designed to ensure the contractor gets paid to cover any and all technical and management failures, which generally guarantees another doubling or tripling of the cost beyond the originally inflated estimate.
This process is little understood by the outside world, which is why taxpayers are prepared to accept a $143 million price tag on an F-22 fighter (that’s just the Lockheed sticker; the real price per plane was over $400 million) as somehow justified by its awesome technological capabilities. The late A. Ernest Fitzgerald, who was fired from his job as a senior Air Force cost-management official on the direct orders of President Nixon for divulging excessive spending on an Air Force program, used to point out that $640 toilet seats and $435 hammers (he was the first to bring these to public attention) were merely emblematic of the whole system, and that items such as a $400 million fighter were no more reasonably priced than the toilet seat.
The beauty of the system lies in its self-reinforcing nature. Huge cost overruns on these contracts not only secure a handsome profit for the contractor but also guarantee that the number of weapons acquired always falls short of the number originally requested. For example, the Air Force first planned to buy 750 F-22s at a projected cost of $139 million apiece, but rising costs compelled the defense secretary at the time, Robert Gates, to cancel the program in 2009, capping the fleet at 187. With reduced numbers, weapons systems are kept in service longer: the Air Force’s planes average twenty-eight years in service, and some still in use were built well over half a century ago. The F-35, for example, costs almost six times more than the F-16 it is replacing, while the Navy’s Zumwalt-class destroyer ($7.5 billion each) costs four times more than the Arleigh Burke destroyers it was supposed to replace. (The Zumwalt’s overruns were so enormous that although the original plan called for thirty-two ships, production was cut to just three.) On occasion, the system reaches the ultimate point of absurdity when gigantic sums are expended with no discernible results. Such was the case with Future Combat Systems, a grandiose Army program to field ground forces of manned vehicles, robots, and assorted weaponry, all linked via electronic networks, and with Boeing as the prime contractor. Twenty billion dollars later, the enterprise was shuttered, an extensive exercise in futility.
Enormous outlays for marginal or even nonexistent returns attract little attention, let alone objection, among our politicians. Congress routinely waves through the Pentagon’s budgets with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. Part of the reason for this must lie in the belief that defense spending is a bracing stimulant for the economy and for the home districts of members of Congress. This point was spelled out with commendable clarity in a March New York Times op-ed by Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. The occasion was Trump’s impending visit to the Lima, Ohio, plant that manufactures the U.S. Army’s Abrams tank. Touting Donald Trump’s role in expanding tank production (though the Army already has a huge surplus of tanks in storage), Navarro laid out the economic benefits for both Lima and Ohio, claiming the plant would employ more than one thousand people there and thousands more across the nation. “Consider,” he wrote, “the ripple effects of the Lima plant. In Ohio alone, 198 of its suppliers are spread out across the state’s 16 congressional districts.” Few elected representatives could miss the point, including the state’s liberal Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown, who had worked alongside Republican lawmakers to boost funding for the project. Major contractors have turned the distribution of defense contracts across as many congressional districts as possible into a high art. Contracts and subcontracts for Lockheed’s F-35, for example, are spread across 307 congressional districts in forty-five states, thus ensuring the fealty of a commensurate number of congresspeople as well as ninety senators.
The jobs argument holds sway even when an embrace of defense spending would seem to violate alleged political principles. For example, the F-35 is due to be stationed in Vermont at Burlington International Airport, home of the Vermont Air National Guard. Because the F-35 is at least four times noisier than the F-16s it will replace, large swaths of the surrounding low-cost neighborhood, by the Air Force’s own criteria, will be rendered unfit for residential use, trapping some seven thousand people in homes that will only be sellable at rock-bottom prices. Nevertheless, the F-35 proposal enjoys political support from the state’s otherwise liberal elected leadership, notably Senator Bernie Sanders, who has justified his support on the grounds that, while he is opposed to the F-35, he supports its being stationed in Vermont from the perspective of job creation.
Yet deeper scrutiny indicates that defense contracts are not particularly efficient job generators after all. Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have calculated the number of jobs spawned by an investment of $1 billion in various industries, ranging from defense to health care, renewable energy, and education. Education came in first by a wide margin, producing 26,700 jobs, followed by health care at 17,200. Defense, generating 11,200 jobs, ranked last. “All economic activity creates some employment,” Pollin told me. “That isn’t at issue. The relevant question is how much employment in the U.S. gets created for a given level of spending in one area of the economy as opposed to others.” The fact is that defense spending generates fewer jobs than green energy, education, and other critical industries.
Studies such as these are rare. Research on the impact of defense spending on the U.S. economy as a whole is rarer still, even though weapons account for about 10 percent of all U.S. factory output. A generation ago, Seymour Melman, a professor of industrial engineering at Columbia, devoted much of his career to analyzing this very subject. He concluded that defense spending’s impact on the broader economy was wholly harmful, a consequence of the bad habits injected into the bloodstream of American manufacturing management by a defense culture indifferent to cost control and productivity. The U.S. machine-tool industry, for example, had powered postwar U.S. manufacturing dominance thanks to its cost-effective productivity that in turn allowed high wage rates for workers. But, Melman wrote, as more and more of its output shifted to defense contracts, the industry’s relationship with the Pentagon
became an invitation to discard the old tradition of cost minimizing. It was an invitation to avoid all the hard work . . . that is needed to offset cost increases. For now it was possible to cater to a new client, for whom cost and price increase was acceptable—even desirable.
In consequence, as Melman detailed, the U.S. machine-tool industry gradually ceased to compete effectively with nations such as Germany and Japan, where cost control still reigned supreme.
Of course, some sections of postwar U.S. manufacturing indebted to defense dollars still led the world, most notably civilian aircraft as represented by the Boeing Company. The airliners that rolled out of its Seattle plant were well designed, safe, and profitable. Boeing had a huge defense component as well, but senior management reportedly enforced an unwritten rule that managers from the defense side should never be transferred to the civilian arm, lest they infect it with their culture of cost overruns, schedule slippage, and risky or unfeasible technical initiatives.
That began to change in 1997, when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, a defense company. In management terms, the merger was in effect a McDonnell takeover, with its executives—most importantly CEO Harry Stonecipher—assuming command of the combined company, bringing their cultural heritage with them. The effects were readily apparent in the first major Boeing airliner initiative under the merged regime, the 787 Dreamliner. Among other features familiar to any student of the defense industry, the program relied heavily on outsourcing subcontracts to foreign countries as a means of locking in foreign buyers. Shipping parts around the world obviously costs time and money. So does the use of novel and potentially risky technologies: in this case, it involved a plastic airframe and all-electronic controls powered by an extremely large and dangerously flammable battery. All this had foreseeable effects on the plane’s development schedule, and, true to form for a defense program, it entered service three years late. This technology also had a typical impact on cost, which exceeded an initial development estimate of $5 billion by at least $12 billion—an impressive overrun, even by defense standards. Predictably, the battery did catch fire, resulting in a costly three-month grounding of the Dreamliner fleet while a fix was devised. The plane has yet to show a profit for the corporation, but expects to do so eventually.
The two recent crashes of the Boeing 737 Max, which together killed 346 people, were further indications that running civilian programs along defense-industry lines may not have been the best course for Boeing. The 737 had been a tried and true money-spinner with an impressive safety record since 1967. Several years ago, however, under the auspices of CEO Dennis Muilenburg, previous overseer of the Future Combat Systems fiasco, and Patrick Shanahan (currently the acting secretary of defense), who had headed up Boeing’s Missile Defense Systems and the Dreamliner program before becoming general manager of Boeing’s commercial airplane programs, the airliner was modified in a rushed program to compete with the Airbus A320. These modifications, principally larger engines that altered the plane’s aerodynamic characteristics, rendered it potentially unstable. Without informing customers or pilots, Boeing installed an automated software Band-Aid that fixed the stability problem, at least when the relevant sensors were working. But the sensors were liable to fail, with disastrous consequences. Such mishaps are not uncommon in defense programs, one such instance being Boeing’s V-22 Osprey troop-carrying aircraft (supervised for a period by Shanahan) in which a design flaw, long denied, led to multiple crashes that killed thirty-nine soldiers and Marines. But the impact of such disasters on contractors’ bottom lines tends to be minimal, or even positive, since they may be paid to correct the problem. In the commercial market, the punishment in terms of lost sales and lawsuits are likely to be more severe.
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, before tensions with Russia were reignited, the BDM Corporation, a major defense consulting group, received a Pentagon contract to interview former members of the Soviet defense complex, very senior officials either in the military or in weapons-production enterprises. Among the interesting revelations that emerged (which included confirmation that U.S. intelligence assessments of Soviet defense policy had been almost entirely wrong throughout the Cold War) was an authoritative account of how disastrous the power of the military-industrial complex had been for Soviet defense and the economy. BDM learned that “the defense-industrial sector used its clout to deliver more weapons than the armed services asked for and to build new weapons systems that the operational military did not want.” A huge portion of Soviet industrial capacity was devoted just to missile production. “This vast industrial base,” according to one former high-ranking bureaucrat, “destroyed the national economy and pauperized the people.” Calls for cuts in this unnecessary production were dismissed by the Kremlin leadership on grounds of “what would happen to the workers.” The unbearable burden of the Soviet military-industrial complex was undoubtedly a prime cause of the ultimate collapse of the Soviet state—the virus had consumed its host.
The BDM contract had been issued in the belief that it would confirm a cherished Pentagon thesis that the sheer magnitude of U.S. spending, particularly the huge boost initiated in the Reagan years, had brought down the Soviets by forcing them to try to compete—a welcome endorsement for mammoth defense budgets. But the ongoing BDM project, even before the researchers finished their work, made it clear this was not what had happened; the Soviet burden was entirely self-generated for internal reasons, such as maintaining employment. When Pentagon officials realized that BDM’s research was leading toward this highly unwelcome conclusion, the contract was abruptly terminated. The system knows how to defend itself.
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September 2, 2014
The Zero-Sum Game of Perpetual War
by Bill Blunden
Readers with a morbid sense of curiosity can visit a web site called NukeMap that allows visitors to witness the devastation caused by nuclear weapons of varying yields on a city of their choosing[i]. Herman Kahn, who was an armchair theorist from RAND during the Cold War, insisted that nuclear war was winnable[ii]. But a few hours with NukeMap will disprove Kahn’s folly and the baleful smiley face that he tried to slap over human extinction.
Against this backdrop it’s no wonder that recent developments in the Ukraine have been known to cause night terrors. Your author can vouch for this. Last week there was an earthquake in the Bay Area and at the outset I woke up mistaking it for a shock wave from sub-megaton warhead hitting Silicon Valley.
One could posit that what’s happening in Eastern Europe offers a look-see into the nature of the groups that are calling the shots in the United States. Do they care that their destabilization program in Ukraine provokes a nuclear-armed country or enables neo-Nazis to assume vital positions in government[iii]? So far almost 2,600 civilians have been killed in the ongoing humanitarian crisis[iv]. While the corporate press does its best to create the impression of a “shining city upon a hill” which aims to “spread democracy” and conduct “humanitarian intervention[v],” a different sort of world power is clearly visible to those who look carefully.
The appalling savagery of radical groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) reflects the appalling savagery of American military incursions[vi]. Or perhaps the collective consciousness of the United States has already forgotten over hundreds thousand dead Iraqi civilians [vii] and the long trail of drone induced “bug-splats[viii].” Ruthless men like Genghis Khan didn’t vanish into history books. Oh no, they’re still around. Some of them are right here in the good old U.S.A. It’s just that they’ve replaced scepters with hand-tailored suits and have traded thrones for seats on corporate boards.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Such men often go unnoticed because they tend to exercise power discreetly, standing behind a veil of propaganda[ix]. For instance Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Steve Coll has called ExxonMobil an “invisible company” thanks to a disciplined and well-funded public relations division[x]. This underscores the fact that the narratives put forth by the press are under the influence of an extensive subversion apparatus that CIA officer Frank Wisner referred to as the Mighty Wurlitzer[xi]. Powerful groups build consensus behind closed doors and then, as Chomsky and Herman explain, coax the rest of society along by manufacturing consent[xii]. Thus enabling what’s known as democratic elitism.
Despite all the filtering that occurs, readers will still, occasionally, get a glimpse of politicians dutifully lining up to kiss the boots of plutocrats[xiii]. Political leaders like Barack Obama and George W. Bush are merely hired help, useful lightning rods who draw our attention away from the men working the levers of power in Washington D.C.
Pluralists contend that we, the voters, own these levers. Published research says otherwise.
Who Are Those Guys?
So just who are the “deciders”? American philosopher John Dewey answered this question in one crisp sentence[xiv]: “Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.”
A number of sociologists have arrived at the same basic conclusion. For example, back in the 1950s a professor at Columbia named C. Wright Mills described national policy decisions as being forged by a small group of power elite who were bound together by shared class interests. The work of contemporary sociologists like G. William Domhoff[xv] and Peter Phillips[xvi] further substantiate the conclusions of Mills.
It’s alleged that when Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office told labor activists “I agree with you, now go out and make me do it.”
[Image: blunden]
Which, if true, is a reminder that most politicians could care less about genuine social justice and are far more concerned about doing whatever it takes to stay in office.
A natural corollary of this is that lawmakers respond to those groups which are capable of rewarding and punishing them. This is in line with the Investment Theory of Party Competition, a model devised by political scientist Thomas Ferguson. Ferguson’s theory describes the political process as being dominated by corporate interests which coalesce into factions and compete to guide policy. A couple of researchers, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, have published a paper that offers quantitative validation of Ferguson’s model concluding that[xvii]:
“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
Note the mention of “organized groups” in the previous excerpt. Although political mobilization is typically associated with unions and social movements, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson explain in their book Winner Take All Politics that corporations have used similar collective strategies to coordinate their efforts and instrument policy changes. The media likes to portray political contests as one individual versus another (as American culture is rooted in the myth of rugged individualism) but it’s more accurate to view political struggle as a form of conflict between organizations. A billionaire like George Soros isn’t just a lone citizen, he represents a small army of people.
Let’s take a look at some of these corporate sets.
Corporate Emperors: The Banks
The late Michael Ruppert once stated that “The CIA is Wall Street. Wall Street is the CIA[xviii].” There’s definitely something to this as the figures responsible for creating the CIA, men like Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, were heavily linked to Wall Street[xix]. This is only logical as the global nature of espionage during World War II required people who were steeped in the nuances of international law and trade. Both Allen and John Foster were partners in Sullivan and Cromwell, a Wall Street law firm that remains one of the most profitable legal practices in the world.
Is it any surprise that both subcultures ─spies and bankers─ exhibit indications of being above the law? For example, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper perjured himself on camera with little or no fallout[xx]. The Director of the CIA outright lied about monitoring the Senate Intelligence Committee and in return received the full backing of POTUS[xxi].
Spies by virtue of their work break laws in other countries on a regular basis. Some intelligence officers become rather adept at it. It would be naïve to think that agencies like the CIA, answering only to the President and shielded by official secrecy, might be tempted to take shortcuts with the legal system here in the United States. Journalist Gary Webb, who investigated the CIA’s connection to drug smuggling, arrived at this conclusion. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Twice[xxii].
Likewise Bank of America was recently fined over $16 billion for mortgage fraud and the company’s stock price jumped 4 percent[xxiii]. The CEO of JPMorgan presided over various scams that resulted in $20 billion worth of fines and, for his trouble, he was awarded a 74 percent raise[xxiv]. No one outside of a few sacrificial lambs like Bernie Madoff is serving jail time. Hunter S. Thompson disciple Matt Taibbi points out the obvious: rule of law has broken down[xxv]:
“In the case of a company like HSBC, which admitted to laundering $850 million for a pair of Central and South American drug cartels, somebody has to go to jail in that case. If you’re going to put people in jail for having a joint in their pocket or for slinging dime bags on the corner in a city street, you cannot let people who laundered $800 million for the worst drug offenders in the world walk.”
In addition to their role in the origins of U.S. intelligence, large financial institutions maintain a special position in the power structure because they’re the primary architects of the West’s economic model, driven by an ideological vision of open markets and accessible resources. As custodians of the world’s reserve currency they work diligently to realize this vision. Bankers have demonstrated the ability to shape history and spur military engagement[xxvi]. When push comes to shove, as we saw during the 2008 financial crisis, they can hold entire economies hostage[xxvii].
This isn’t necessarily surprising given the amount of assets that they have at their disposal. For instance, Richard Fisher of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank has reported that 12 American megabanks control something on the order of 70% of the American banking industry’s assets[xxviii]. Or consider the investment management company BlackRock which holds over $3 trillion in assets[xxix]. This figure is on par with the 2013 U.S. Federal Budget.
Corporate Emperors: Other Sectors
Rivaling the banks are the fossil fuel companies. For example oil monolith ExxonMobil, a corporate descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, brings in annual revenue on the order of half a trillion dollars.[xxx] Thus making ExxonMobil roughly as big as the economy of Poland.
Over the past two decades the company has spent more than $200 million lobbying on the D.C. beltway[xxxi]. Modern society runs on oil and this translates into a mountain of money and a comparable level of influence. Like the bankers[xxxii], the executives of the fossil fuel industry has the resources to reward those politicians who attend to their needs[xxxiii].
Finally there’s the defense industry and its hi-tech offshoots. This is a sector of the economy that has held sway since the end of World War II, when Charles Wilson, then the president of General Electric, promoted the idea of a permanent war economy[xxxiv]. Not only does the defense industry arm and equip the most powerful military on the planet, whose budget for 2014 is over $500 billion[xxxv], but it also dominates the international arms market. In 2012 the New York Times reported that United States weapons exports were more than 75% of the global market[xxxvi].
Defense companies in the United States sell heavy weaponry to repressive governments in Saudi Arabia[xxxvii], Egypt[xxxviii], and Israel[xxxix]. Business is thriving, enough so that taken in aggregate defense contractors like Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon form a prevalent lobbying force in Washington.
Think of it this way, these are businesses that manufacture the weapons which can level cities. Defense companies are intimately connected to people who wield such weapons both in the government and in the mercenary outfits of the private sector. The defense industry embodies the primeval archetype of unencumbered raw violence, the tip of the imperial spear, the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about as he left office. No one crosses these executives, not even allegedly progressive political candidates who promise “change.”
An Elite Backdoor: The Deep State
How is it that influential corporate factions, with no constitutional authority whatsoever, are able to exercise state power? Congressional staff member Mike Lofgren claims that the corporate elite go through a Deep State[xl]. An extension of the visible state that resides below the surface of the body politic.
The derin devlet, or “deep state”, was a term coined in Turkey to describe a shadow government that existed as an outgrowth of covert operations launched during World War II. It consisted of government officials, spies, and organized crime elements[xli]. The Turkish Deep State served as a means to quash countervailing power centers that threatened the established secular order.
The ongoing instability in Egypt has also revealed the presence of a deep state in that country[xlii]. Powerful interests anchored in the nation’s military and security services have aggressively attacked anyone and anything that represents a threat, as a court ruling which sentenced hundreds of people to execution for the death of a single police officer demonstrates[xliii].
Like Turkey and Egypt, Ukraine also has a deep state. The New York Times describes it as being choreographed by a league of oligarchs[xliv]:
“The ultra-wealthy industrialists wield such power in Ukraine that they form what amounts to a shadow government, with empires of steel and coal, telecoms and media, and armies of workers.”
It’s interesting that although the New York Times openly refers to oligarchs in Ukraine in its headlines, the editors are far more demure in terms of how they refer to the ruling class here in the United States.
The American Deep State, or what Colonel Fletcher Prouty called the Secret Team, is a structural layer of political intermediaries: non-governmental organizations (e.g. National Endowment for Democracy, Ford Foundation), lobbyists (e.g. Chamber of Commerce, AIPAC), media outlets (e.g. Time Warner, News Corp), dark money pits (e.g. Freedom Partners, NRA), and private sector contractors (e.g. Booz Allen, SAIC) that interface with official government organs (CIA, Department of Defense)[xlv]. This layer establishes a series of informal, often secret, backchannels and revolving doors through which profound sources of wealth and power outside of government can purchase influence.
As in Turkey, Egypt, and Ukraine, the American Deep State is a fundamentally anti-democratic apparatus that caters to the agenda of heavily entrenched elites. CIA Officer John Stockwell explains what ties the Deep State together[xlvi]:
“The CIA and the big corporations were, in my experience, in step with each other. Later I realized that they may argue about details of strategy – a small war here or there. However, both are vigorously committed to supporting the system. Corporate leaders fight amongst themselves like people in any human endeavor. They raid and hostilely take over each other’s companies. Losers have been known to commit suicide. However, they firmly believe in the capitalist system”
WAR IS PEACE
Looking back at the past two decades, U.S. intervention in the Middle East has failed to “spread democracy” or win the “war on terror.” It has only succeeded in creating more instability, more conflict, and more enemies[xlvii]. After spending $25 billion to equip and train Iraqi security forces[xlviii], our military ends up bombing its own equipment[xlix] to fend off CIA-armed jihadist forces[l] in anticipation of providing even more military aid to the Kurds[li].
One thing is certain: the Middle East is awash with armaments supplied by the United States.
There are those who would argue that this incongruous state of affairs is intentional, that stated claims about WMDs and nurturing democracy are a mere pretext for a more ominous stratagem. More than a decade ago John Stockwell presciently pointed out an unsettling logic, an instance of Hegelian Dialectic where the ruling class creates its own enemies to feed off of the ensuing carnage[lii]:
“Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn. If the world were peaceful, we would never put up with this kind of ruinous expenditure on arms at the cost of our own lives. This is where the thousands of CIA destabilizations begin to make a macabre kind of economic sense. They function to kill people who never were our enemies-that’s not the problem-but to leave behind, for each one of the dead, perhaps five loved ones who are now traumatically conditioned to violence and hostility toward the United States. This insures that the world will continue to be a violent place, populates with contras and Cuban exiles and armies in Southeast Asia, justifying the endless, profitable production of arms to ‘defend’ ourselves in such a violent world”
The defense industry thrives from regional conflicts like this, a constant stream of flash points in America’s self-perpetuating campaign to eradicate terrorism. The cost for the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan reaches into trillions of dollars and much of that funding ends up covering military expenses[liii]. About a year ago, back when President Obama announced he was thinking about bombing the Assad regime, Raytheon’s stock jumped[liv].
And the defense executives aren’t alone, the fossil fuel industry also extracts its pound of flesh[lv]. It’s the failed state model for neocolonialism[lvi]. Non-nuclear countries that have been ravaged by war are more susceptible to opening their doors and yielding nationalized resources on behalf of corporate pressure. Before the United States invaded Iraq its oil wells weren’t accessible to outside firms. After the invasion Western oil interests like Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil have all gained entry to one of the world’s largest sources of oil[lvii]. In March of 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iraq’s oil output was at its highest point in more than 30 years[lviii].
SLAVERY IS FREEDOM
As perennial conflict abroad is leveraged as a tool of empire, at home it leads to repression. The late Chalmers Johnson, who studied this phenomenon as a professor at UC San Diego, characterized this with the adage “Either give up your empire, or live under it.”
With the public exposure of the NSA’s global surveillance apparatus there are intimations that this process is already underway. In 2005 there were revelations of warrantless wiretapping under President George W. Bush[lix], a story that the New York Times sat on for months[lx]. Then a slew of NSA whistleblowers like Russell Tice[lxi], Thomas Drake[lxii] and William Binney[lxiii] publicly came forward with allegations that the NSA’s monitoring programs were unconstitutional. And in May of 2013 the other shoe dropped when a Booz Allen contractor named Ed Snowden handed over a large set of classified documents[lxiv] to journalists in Hong Kong.
The purpose of the NSA’s panopticon is to further the interests of the corporate elite. In an open letter to Brazil Ed Snowden clearly states as much[lxv]:
“These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.”
Yet it’s important to keep in mind that the origins of the emerging police state can be traced much farther back[lxvi]. For example, in the late 1960s the Department of Defense conceived Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, code named Operation Garden Plot, which included “plans to undercut riots and demonstrations” using “information gathered through political espionage and informants.[lxvii]”
In 1971 an instructor for the U.S. Army, a man named Christopher Pyle, revealed that the military had been tracking civilian political activists and demonstrations for several years. A few years later in 1974 Seymour Hersh, writing for the New York Times, exposed a CIA program called CHAOS (aka MCHAOS) which targeted antiwar activists in the United States[lxviii].
Though the trend of militarization is hard to dismiss[lxix], how exactly does military action overseas incite civilian persecution within our borders? George Orwell in his timeless book 1984 provides a succinct explanation:
“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”
American society cannot endure perpetual war and maintain a healthy middle class. Especially when plutocrats[lxx] and executives[lxxi] do everything in their power to avoid[lxxii] paying taxes[lxxiii]. The decree of maximizing profit requires them to extract value from the commons and then fail to offer anything in return, to the tune of trillions of dollars a year. Hence the burden of supporting an endless series of bloody military campaigns falls on the rest of us.
So while the public eye is distracted with military shock and awe overseas the middle class fails to grasp its inevitable decline. A captive state strips away civil liberties, divests in social programs, infrastructure, education, and anything else that might help normal people cope as wages stagnate and jobs go offshore. Resources that could be devoted to sustaining and growing the middle class are diverted to the extractive Deep State. The masters of mankind, as Adam Smith referred to them in The Wealth of Nations, witness record profits[lxxiv].
Denouement
By the end of World War II the United States had replaced Britain as global hegemon. Over the course of the Cold War the one countervailing world power that represented an alternative ideology, the Soviet Union, dissolved. Since German unification NATO has gradually expanded into former Soviet territory (Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, etc.) despite explicit verbal guarantees to Mikhail Gorbachev that it would not[lxxv]. And now the plutocrats standing behind Victoria Nuland want Ukraine. Never mind that Ukraine is a border country which Russian leadership views as vital to their national security.
In 2006 journalist John Pilger spoke with Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, a CIA officer who supervised agency operations in Latin America back in the 1980s. Pilger queried Clarridge as to what gave the CIA the right to overthrow foreign governments, Clarridge responded[lxxvi]: “Like it or lump it, we’ll do what we like. So just get used to it, world.”
There you have it. When they want something they take it. Native Americans can attest to the veracity of this statement. This, dear readers, is the mindset of the ruling class, the true face of empire. Blind ambitious of this sort has always existed. Only now the CIA is up against an adversary that is just as skilled and just as heavily armed (a scenario, by the way, which past U.S. leaders have studiously avoided). Late at night in some far corner of the Pentagon the ghost of Herman Kahn chuckles.
Bill Blunden is an independent investigator whose current areas of inquiry include information security, anti-forensics, and institutional analysis. He is the author of several books, including The Rootkit Arsenal , and Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation, and the Malware-Industrial Complex. Bill is the lead investigator at Below Gotham Labs.
End Notes
[i] http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
[ii] Louis Menand, “Fat Man: Herman Kahn and the nuclear age,” New Yorker, June 27, 2005, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/fat-man
[iii] Jim Naureckas, “Denying the Far-Right Role in the Ukrainian Revolution,” FAIR, March 7, 2014,
Denying the Far-Right Role in the Ukrainian Revolution
[iv] “Ukraine Crisis Escalates as Russian Forces Cross Border, NATO Moves to Expand in Region,” Democracy Now! August 29, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/29/ukraine_crisis_escalates_as_russian_forces#
[v] “Glenn Greenwald on Iraq: Is U.S. “Humanitarianism” Only Summoned to Control Oil-Rich Areas?” Democracy Now!, August 13, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/13/glenn_greenwald_on_iraq_is_us#
[vi] Garry Leech, “The Beheading of James Foley,” Counterpunch, August 22-24, 2014, https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/22/the-beheading-of-james-foley/print
[vii] Sabrina Tavernise And Donald G. Mcneil Jr., “Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says,” New York Times, October11, 2006,http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casualties.html
[viii] http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/drones-graphs/
[ix] Psywar, Directed by Scott Noble, Metanoia Films, 2010, http://www.openfilm.com/videos/psywar-remastered
[x] “ExxonMobil’s Dirty Secrets, from Indonesia to Nigeria to Washington: Steve Coll on ‘Private Empire’,” Democracy Now!, May 7, 2012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/7/exxonmobils_dirty_secrets_from_indonesia_to#
[xi] Wilford, Hugh, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, Harvard University Press, 2008.
[xii] Excerpts from Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky interviewed by various interviewers, http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1992—-02.htm
[xiii] David Firestone, “The Line to Kiss Sheldon Adelson’s Boots,” New York Times, March 31, 2014, http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/the-line-to-kiss-sheldon-adelsons-boots/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
[xiv] Robert Brett Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy, Cornell University Press, 1991, page 440.
[xv] G. William Domhoff, “C. Wright Mills, Power Structure Research, and the Failures of Mainstream Political Science,” New Political Science 29 (2007), pp. 97-114, http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/theory/mills_critique.html
[xvi] Peter Phillips, “Inside Bohemian Grove,” Counterpunch, August 13, 2003, https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/08/13/inside-bohemian-grove/print
[xvii] Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics, Fall 2014, https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf
[xviii] Michael Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, New Society Publishers, 2004, Chapter 3.
[xix] Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War, Times Books, 2013.
[xx] Glenn Kessler, “James Clapper’s ‘least untruthful’ statement to the Senate,” Washington Post, June 12, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/james-clappers-least-untruthful-statement-to-the-senate/2013/06/11/e50677a8-d2d8-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_blog.html
[xxi] Mark Mazzetti, “Obama Expresses Confidence in CIA Director,” New York Times, August 1, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/us/obama-expresses-confidence-in-cia-director-brennan.html
[xxii] Sam Stanton, “Reporter’s suicide confirmed by coroner,” Sacramento Bee, December 15, 2004, http://web.archive.org/web/20080507054818/http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/news/story/11772749p-12657577c.html
[xxiii] Peter Eavis and Michael Corkery, “Bank of America’s $16 Billion Mortgage Settlement Less Painful Than It Looks,” New York Times, August 21, 2014, http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/bank-of-america-reaches-16-65-billion-mortgage-settlement/?ref=todayspaper
[xxiv] James Stewart, “Accounting for Dimon’s Big Jump in Pay,” New York Times, January 31, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/business/accounting-for-jamie-dimons-big-pay-raise.html
[xxv] “Who Goes to Jail? Matt Taibbi on American Injustice Gap from Wall Street to Main Street,” Democracy Now! April 15, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/15/who_goes_to_jail_matt_taibbi#
[xxvi] Nomi Prins, All the Presidents’ Bankers, Nation Books, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/8/all_the_presidents_bankers_nomi_prins#
[xxvii] Michael Kirk, “Inside the Meltdown,” FRONTLINE, February 17, 2009, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/etc/script.html
[xxviii] Richard W. Fisher, Ending ‘Too Big to Fail’: A Proposal for Reform Before It’s Too Late (With Reference to Patrick Henry, Complexity and Reality), Dallas Federal Reserve, January 16, 2013, http://www.dallasfed.org/news/speeches/fisher/2013/fs130116.cfm
[xxix] Peter Phillips and Kimberly Soeiro, “The Global 1%: Exposing the Transnational Ruling Class,” Project Censored, August 22, 2012, http://www.projectcensored.org/the-global-1-exposing-the-transnational-ruling-class/
[xxx] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000003408814000012/xom10k2013.htm
[xxxi] Top Spenders 1998-2014, OpenSecrets.org, https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s
[xxxii] David Corn, “Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs Problem,” Mother Jones, June 4, 2014, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/hillary-clintons-goldman-sachs-problem
[xxxiii] Matea Gold, “Koch-backed political network, built to shield donors, raised $400 million in 2012 elections,” Washington Post, January 5, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/koch-backed-political-network-built-to-shield-donors-raised-400-million-in-2012-elections/2014/01/05/9e7cfd9a-719b-11e3-9389-09ef9944065e_story.html
[xxxiv] Doug Henwood, “NBC: The GE Broadcasting Co.,” FAIR, November 1, 1989, http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/nbc-the-ge-broadcasting-co/
[xxxv] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2014/assets/defense.pdf
[xxxvi] Thom Shanker, “U.S. Arms Sales Make Up Most of Global Market,” New York Times, August 26, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/world/middleeast/us-foreign-arms-sales-reach-66-3-billion-in-2011.html
[xxxvii] Thom Shanker, “U.S. Arms Deal With Israel and 2 Arab Nations Is Near,” New York Times, April 18, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/world/middleeast/us-selling-arms-to-israel-saudi-arabia-and-emirates.html
[xxxviii] Steve Kenny, “Egypt: U.S. to Deliver Helicopters,” New York Times, April 23, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/world/middleeast/egypt-us-to-deliver-helicopters.html
[xxxix] Jeremy Sharp, “U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel,” Congressional Research Service, April 11, 2014, http://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
[xl] Mike Lofgren, “Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State,” Bill Moyers and Company, February 21, 2014, http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
[xli] Dexter Filkins, “The Deep State,” New Yorker, March 12, 2012, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/12/the-deep-stae
[xlii] Sarah Childress, “The Deep State: How Egypt’s Shadow State Won Out,” FRONTLINE, September 17, 2013, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/egypt-in-crisis/the-deep-state-how-egypts-shadow-state-won-out/
[xliii] David D. Kirkpatrick, “Hundreds of Egyptians Sentenced to Death in Killing of a Police Officer,” New York Times, March 24, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/world/middleeast/529-egyptians-sentenced-to-death-in-killing-of-a-police-officer.html
[xliv] Andrew Kramer, “Ukraine Turns to Its Oligarchs for Political Help,” New York Times, March 2, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/world/europe/ukraine-turns-to-its-oligarchs-for-political-help.html
[xlv] http://www.belowgotham.com/DeepState-Graphic.pdf
[xlvi] John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World Order, South End Press, 1999, page 59.
[xlvii] Patrick Cockburn, “Why Washington’s War on Terror Failed,” Counterpunch, August 21, 2014, https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/21/why-washingtons-war-on-terror-failed/print
[xlviii] Eric Schmitt and Michael Gordon, “The Iraqi Army Was Crumbling Long Before Its Collapse, U.S. Officials Say,” New York Times, June 12, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/world/middleeast/american-intelligence-officials-said-iraqi-military-had-been-in-decline.html
[xlix] Jason Fields, “COLUMN-In Iraq, U.S. is spending millions to blow up captured American war machines,” Reuters, August 19, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/19/fields-weapons-idUSL2N0QP0WS20140819
[l] C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” New York Times, March 24, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html
[li] Helene Cooper and Alissa Rubin, “Pentagon Says Airstrikes Have Slowed but Not Stopped Sunni Militants,” New York Times, August 11, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/world/middleeast/pentagon-says-airstrikes-have-slowed-but-not-stopped-sunni-militants.html
[lii] John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard: The U.S. Role in the New World Order, South End Press, 1999, page 93.
[liii] Neta Crawford, “U.S. Costs of Wars Through 2014: $4.4 Trillion and Counting,” Boston University, June 25, 2014, http://costsofwar.org/sites/default/files/articles/20/attachments/Costs%20of%20War%20Summary%20Crawford%20June%202014.pdf
[liv] John Bennett, “Analysts: Spurred by Syria Talk, Raytheon’s Stock Price to Remain High,” Defense News, August 28, 2013, http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130828/DEFREG02/308280028/Analysts-Spurred-by-Syria-Talk-Raytheon-s-Stock-Price-Remain-High
[lv] Antonia Juhasz, “Why the war in Iraq was fought for Big Oil,” CNN, April 15, 2013, edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html
[lvi] Gilbert Mercier, “Engineering Failed States: The Strategy of Global Corporate Imperialism,” News Junkie Post, February 18, 2014, http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/02/18/engineering-failed-states-the-strategy-of-global-corporate-imperialism/
[lvii] Dahr Jamail, “Western oil firms remain as US exits Iraq,” Al Jazeera, January 7, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/12/2011122813134071641.html
[lviii] Sarah Kent, “Iraq’s Oil Output Surges to Highest Level in Over 30 Years,” Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579438860227481506
[lix] James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” New York Times, December 16, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html
[lx] Michael Kirk & Mike Wiser, “United States of Secrets (Part One): The Program,” Frontline, May 13, 2014, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/#part-one—the-program
[lxi] “EXCLUSIVE: National Security Agency Whistleblower Warns Domestic Spying Program Is Sign the U.S. is Decaying Into a ‘Police State’,” Democracy Now! January 3, 2006, http://www.democracynow.org/2006/1/3/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_warns#
[lxii] Jane Mayer, “The Secret Sharer,” New Yorker, May 23, 2011, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/23/the-secret-sharer#ixzz1MXdUFeE9
[lxiii] “Exclusive: National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance,” Democracy Now! April 20, 2012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william#
[lxiv] https://edwardsnowden.com/revelations/
[lxv] Mike Masnick, “Ed Snowden Sends Open Letter To Brazil… Which The Press Blatantly Misrepresents,” Tech Dirt, December 17, 2013, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131217/10080925588/ed-snowden-sends-open-letter-to-brazil-which-press-blatantly-misrepresents.shtml
[lxvi] “Chris Pyle, Whistleblower on Domestic Spying in 70s, Says Be Wary of Attacks on NSA’s Critics,” Democracy Now! June 13, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/13/chris_pyle_whistleblower_on_cia_domestic#
[lxvii] Frank Morales, “U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning: The War At Home,” Covert Action Quarterly, #69 Spring/Summer 2000, http://cryptome.org/garden-plot.htm
[lxviii] Seymour Hersh, “Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years,” New York Times, December 22, 1974, http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/238963-huge-c-i-a-operation-reported-in-u-s-against.html
[lxix] ACLU, War Comes Homes, June 2014, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-rel1.pdf
[lxx] David de Jong and Robert LaFranco, “The Super-Rich’s Offshore Tax Avoidance Strategies,” Businessweek, May 2, 2013, http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/113870-the-super-richs-offshore-tax-avoidance-strategies
[lxxi] “The Biggest Tax Scam Ever: How Corporate America Parks Profits Overseas, Avoiding Billions in Taxes,” Democracy Now!, August 28, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/8/28/the_biggest_tax_scam_ever_how#
[lxxii] Tim Dickinson, “The Biggest Tax Scam Ever,” Rolling Stone, August 27, 2014, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-biggest-tax-scam-ever-20140827?page=4
[lxxiii] Zachary Mider, “Tax Dodge Used by Bain Escapes Scrutiny on Inversions,” Bloomberg, August 25, 2014, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-08-25/tax-dodge-used-by-bain-escapes-scrutiny-on-inversions.html
[lxxiv] Robin Sidel and Saabira Chaudhuri, “U.S. Bank Profits Near Record Levels,” Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-banking-industry-profits-racing-to-near-record-levels-1407773976
[lxxv] Peter Beinart, “No, American Weakness Didn’t Encourage Putin to Invade Ukraine,” Atlantic, March 3, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/no-american-weakness-didnt-encourage-putin-to-invade-ukraine/284168/
[lxxvi] John Pilger, “In an Age of ‘Realists’ and Vigilantes,” Counterpunch, September 19, 2013, https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/19/in-an-age-of-realists-and-vigilantes/
Bill Blunden is a journalist whose current areas of inquiry include information security, anti-forensics, and institutional analysis. He is the author of several books, including “The Rootkit Arsenal” and“Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation, and the Malware-Industrial Complex.” Bill is the lead investigator at Below Gotham Labs and a member of the California State University Employees Union, Chapter 305.
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50 years later, we're still ignoring Ike's warning
By Susan Eisenhower
Sunday, January 16, 2011; B03
I've always found it rather haunting to watch old footage of my grandfather, Dwight Eisenhower, giving his televised farewell address to the nation on Jan. 17, 1961. The 50-year-old film all but crackles with age as the president makes his earnest, uncoached speech. I was 9 years old at the time, and it wasn't until years later that I understood the importance of his words or the lasting impact of his message.
Of course, the speech will forever be remembered for Eisenhower's concerns about a rising "military-industrial complex," which he described as "a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions" with the potential to acquire - whether sought or unsought - "unwarranted influence" in the halls of government.
The notion captured the imagination of scholars, politicians and veterans; the military-industrial complex has been studied, investigated and revisited countless times, including now, at its 50th anniversary. Looking back, it is easy to see the parallels to our era, especially how the complex has expanded since Sept. 11, 2001. In less than 10 years, our military and security expenditures have increased by 119 percent. Even after subtracting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the budget has grown by 68 percent since 2001. In 2010, the United States is projected to spend at least $700 billion on its defense and security, the most, in real terms, that we've spent in any year since World War II.
However, at this time of increased concerns over our fiscal deficit and the national debt, Eisenhower's farewell words and legacy take on added significance.
Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower continually connected the country's security to its economic strength, underscoring that our fiscal health and our military might are equal pillars of our national defense. This meant that a responsible government would have to make hard choices. The question Eisenhower continued to pose about defense spending was clear and practical: How much is enough?
Early on, he realized that if the United States were to prevail in its existential standoff with the Soviet Union, we would have to prepare for a long game. Unlike our experience in World War II, which lasted less than four years, the Cold War would last many decades. Eisenhower understood that we were facing a marathon, not a sprint.
Moreover, the logic of nuclear deterrence made the conventional wars Ike had commanded in the 1940s obsolete. Now, there could be no margin for error; the Cold War brought with it different calculations, which were very costly by nature. These new realities meant that the United States would not only need to project power and resolve, but also had to ensure national solvency - no easy task for a country that had to modernize while assuming, for the first time, the mantle of global leadership.
The pressures Eisenhower faced during his presidency were enormous. Over the years, as the Soviet Union appeared to reach military parity with the United States, political forces in Washington cried out for greater defense spending and a more aggressive approach to Moscow. In response, the administration publicly asserted that there was no such thing as absolute security. "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without," Eisenhower said. And he followed through, balancing the budget three times during his tenure, a record unmatched during the Cold War.
This theme was introduced at the start of Eisenhower's first term. On April 16, 1953, the new president spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, just weeks after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's death. In this "Chance for Peace" speech - one as important as the farewell address but often overlooked by historians - he seized the moment to outline the cost of continued tensions with the U.S.S.R. In addition to the military dangers such a rivalry imposed, he said, the confrontation would exact an enormous domestic price on both societies:
"This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. . . . We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Contrary to many historians' suggestions, Ike's farewell speech was not an afterthought - it was the bookend to "Chance for Peace." As early as 1959, he began working with his brother Milton and his speechwriters to craft exactly what he would say as he left public life. The speech would become a solemn moment in a decidedly unsolemn time, offering sober warnings for a nation giddy with newfound prosperity, infatuated with youth and glamour, and aiming increasingly for the easy life.
"There is a reoccurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties," he warned in his final speech as president. ". . . But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs . . . balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future."
While the farewell address may be remembered primarily for the passages about the military-industrial complex, Ike was rising above the issues of the day to appeal to his countrymen to put the nation and its future first. "We . . . must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
As I see my grandfather's black-and-white image deliver these words, a simple thought lingers in my mind: This man was speaking for me, for us. We are those grandchildren. We are the great beneficiaries of his generation's prudence and sacrifice.
Until today, perhaps, we have taken American leadership, dominance and prosperity for granted. In those intervening years, we rarely asked if our policies were sustainable over the long haul. Indeed, it has only been since the catastrophic financial meltdown in 2008 that we've begun to think about the generational responsibilities we have for our grandchildren's prosperity and welfare.
Eisenhower's words, from the beginning of his presidency to the end, come back to us from the mists of another era. They remind us, sadly, that sometimes we must revisit our past to learn what we have always known.
Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower, is an energy and international affairs expert and chairman emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute.
© 2011 The Washington Post Company
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market making, trading with both sides, dialectics
____________________________________
the people in the u.s. government was working both sides
on the one hand, the u.s. government assisted in the development of the Soviet union economic, up to world war II, and in some aspects continued after world war II; see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton
the following books by Antony C. Sutton:
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1917–1930. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution (1968)
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1930–1945. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution (1971)
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1945–1965. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution (1973)
National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House (1973)
while working with the Soviet union, after the 2nd world war, the u.s. government was telling the American public that the Western world is in a Cold war with the Soviet union, justifying the defense and military spending on the other hand; we must keep up with the Soviet union military spending; and who helped developed the Soviet union military-industrial base?; the u.s. industrial machinery businesses and her Western allied.
who were kept in the dark? The America public
the conflicts of the Cold War were “not fought to restrain communism” but were organised in order “to generate multibillion-dollar armaments contracts”, since the United States, through financing the Soviet Union “directly or indirectly, armed both sides in at least Korea and Vietnam.”[8]
Antony C. Sutton
── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton
____________________________________
(C) Anthony C. Sutton [ ]
VII. What the politicians told American Citizens
All this Soviet-building activity recorded in the Lusk Committee and State Department files was carefully concealed from the American public. What the public was told can only be described as a pack of lies, from beginning to end.
To demonstrate the degree of falsehood, we reprint here a page on Russia from a document "Excerpt from a statement entitled 'Foreign Relations' by the Honorable Frank B. Kellogg, Secretary of State, published by the Republican National Committee, Bulletin No. 5, 1928."
Among the falsehoods promoted by Secretary Kellogg is the following: ". . . the Government of the United States has maintained the position that it would be both futile and unwise to enter into relations with the Soviet Government."
In fact, at this very time the United States, with implicit government approval, was involved in planning the First Five Year Plan in Russia. The planning work was done actively by American Firms.(1)
Construction of the Soviet dialectic arm continued throughout the 1930s up to World War II. In 1941 W.A. Harriman was appointed Lend Lease Administrator to assure the flow of United States technology and products to the Soviet Union. Examination of Lend Lease records shows that U.S. law as violated. The law required military goods only to be shipped. In fact, industrial equipment in extraordinary amounts was also shipped and Treasury Department currency plates so that the Soviets could freely print U.S. dollars.
Since World War II the United States has kept the Soviets abreast of modern technology. This story has been detailed elsewhere.
[...]
But above all, this story has been concealed from the American public ...
(America's Secret Establishment, An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones, Antony C. Sutton, How The Order creates War and Revolution, Trine Day, Update Reprint 2002, April 1984)
.(1) This story has been described in my Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1917-1930 and 1930-1945, published by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Memorandum Number Two: Operational Vehicles For Conflict Creation
I. A UNIVERSAL MIND SET
[...]
...a report by Ambassador Harriman in Moscow to the State Department, dated June 30, 1944:
"Stalin paid tribute to the assistance by the United States to Soviet industry before and during the war. He said that about two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprise in the Soviet Union has been built with United States help or technical assistance."1
Stalin could have added that the other one-third of Soviet industry had been build by British, German, French, Italian, Finnish, Czech and Japanese companies.
In brief, Harriman knew first hand back in 1944 at that the West had built the Soviet Union. Now examine Harriman's official biography with its string of appointment relating to NATO, Mutual Security Agency, State Department, foreign policy, and so on. In these posts Harriman actively pushed for a military build-up of the United States. But if the Soviet Union was seen to be an enemy in 1947, then we had no need to build a massive defense.
[...]
1 Original in the U.S. State Department Decimal File 033.1161 Johnston Eric/6-3044 Telegram June 30, 1944.
(America's Secret Establishment, An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones, Antony C. Sutton, How The Order creates War and Revolution, Trine Day, Update Reprint 2002, April 1984)
____________________________________
1950
Vietnam War: began November 1, 1955 ── ended April 30, 1975
Result: North Vietnamese victory
source: https://www.bing.com/search?q=vietnam+war
── Vietnam 1965-1975 739 billion (Constant FY2011 $)*††
BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front):
the conflicts of the Cold War were “not fought to restrain communism” but were organised in order “to generate multibillion-dollar armaments contracts”, since the United States, through financing the Soviet Union “directly or indirectly, armed both sides in at least Korea and Vietnam.”[8]
Antony C. Sutton
── https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton
([ the fear of communism, rather than communism itself; and if communism does not exist, then some thing like communism must be created; in one era it was communism, in the next it is terrorism, foreign and domestic; ])
([ what they really mean is not the „Cold war and the communism“ themselves, but the role that „Cold war and the fear of communism“ played; in that era the role was played by „Cold war and fear of Communism“; in the next era the role would most likely be played by the FEAR of some thing else; if that something else does not exist, then it must be created, then the FEAR of it must be manufactured ... ])
([ But [Pierre-Simon Laplace] wasn't nearly as interested in [Cold war and communism] [or fear of communism] as he was in the human [observed interpretation] of those mechanics. ])
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton
At the Hoover Institution, he wrote the study Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (in three volumes), arguing that the West played a major role in developing the Soviet Union from its beginnings until the then-present year of 1970. Sutton argued that the Soviet Union's technological and manufacturing base, which was then engaged in supplying North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, was built by United States corporations and largely funded by US taxpayers. Steel and iron plants, the GAZ automobile factory, a Ford subsidiary in eastern Russia, and many other Soviet industrial enterprises were built with the help or technical assistance of the United States government or US corporations. He argued further that the Soviet Union's acquisition of MIRV technology was made possible by receiving (from US sources) machining equipment for the manufacture of precision ball bearings, necessary to mass-produce MIRV-enabled missiles.[non-primary source needed]
In 1973, Sutton published a popularized, condensed version of the sections of the forthcoming third volume relevant to military technology called National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union, after which he was forced out of the Hoover Institution.[7][better source needed] His conclusion from his research on the issue was that the conflicts of the Cold War were “not fought to restrain communism” but were organised in order “to generate multibillion-dollar armaments contracts”, since the United States, through financing the Soviet Union “directly or indirectly, armed both sides in at least Korea and Vietnam.”[8][non-primary source needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1917–1930. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution (1968)
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1930–1945. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution (1971)
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1945–1965. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution (1973)
National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House (1973)
____________________________________
A national suicide: military aid to the soviet union, Antony C. Sutton, 1974
A
NATIONAL SUICIDE:
Military Aid to the Soviet Union
Antony C. Sutton
Arlington House New Rochelle, N.Y.
Sutton, Antony C
National suicide
1. technical assistance, American--Russia.
2. military assistance, America--Russia.
3. Russia--Defenses.
4. United States--Defenses.
HC336.24.S97
355.03'2'47
Fourth printing, June 1974
copyright © 1973 by Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York.
[pp.91-92, pp.92-93, pp.94-96, p.97, pp.99-100, p.100]
[pp.91-92]
Bryant Chucking Grinder Company of Springfield, Vermont
Soviet dependence on the West for ball bearings technology peaked after the years 1959-61, when the Soviets required a capability for mass production, rather than laboratory or batch production, of miniture precision ball bearings for weapons systems. The only company in the world that could supply the required machine for a key operation in processing the races for precision bearings (the Centalign-B) was the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company. The Soviet Union had no such mass-production capability. Its miniature ball bearings in 1951 were either imported or made in small lots on Italian and other imported equipment.
In 1960 there were sixty-six such Centalign machines in the United States. Twenty-five of these machines were operated by the Miniature Precision Bearing Company, Inc., the largest manufacturer of precision ball bearings, and 85 percent of Miniature Precision's output went to military applications. In 1960 the USSR entered an order with Bryant Chucking for forty-five similar machines. Bryant consulted the Department of Commerce. When the department indicated its willingness to grant a license, Bryant accepted the order.
[pp.92-93]
The Department of Defense entered a strong-objection to the export of the machines on the following grounds:
In the specific case of the granting of the export license for high-frequency grinders manufactured by Bryant Chucking Grinder, after receiving the request for DOD's opinion from the Department of Commerce, it was determined that all the machines of this type currently available in the United States were being utilized for the production of bearings utilized in strategic components for military end items. It was also determined from information that was available to us that the Soviets did not produce a machine of this type or one that would be comparable in enabling the production of miniature ball bearings of the tolerances and precision required. A further consideration was whether machines of comparable capacity and size can be made available from Western Europe. In this connection, our investigation revealed that none was in production that would meet the specifications that had been established by the Russians for these machines. In the light of these considerations it was our opinion that the license should not be granted.
[pp.94-96]
The testimony of Horace Gilbert to the Senate summarizes the position on the Centalign machines:
Mr. Chairman, I am Horace D. Gilbert, of Keene, N.H., and I am president of Miniature Precision Bearings, Inc., and I would like to express my appreciation for having an opportunity to be here with you and come particularly at this time, when I know that everyone is busy, and at such short notice. As the name implies, my company produces miniature ball bearings of precision quality, 85 per cent of which are used in the national defense effort. All but 1 per cent of our sales are within the United States, and more of these bearings are produced by machines manufactured by Bryant Chucking Grinder Co., of Springfield, Vt.
Our company owns about 25 of these machines out of the 66 which, I believe, presently exist in the United States. This machines was developed over a long period of years, and much of the know-how, Mr. Chairman, in the latest model, was contributed by our company.
[...] <see book for the skipped TEXT> [...]
I am here because I think that this is folly which would undermine our defenses.
The Department of Commerce has attempted to justify its decision with four or five arguments, none of which, in our opinion, appears to be valid, and I would like to touch on these.
First, they say these machines could be purchased in Europe, and consequently, Bryant might as well benefit by their sale here.
I am thoroughly familiar with the machines which are in production in Europe. Part of my knowledge has been gained by three trips to Europe in the last 11 months, and I can assure you that no European manufacturer in fact does produce comparable machines with the accuracy of that which is used by Bryant. I would suggest that, if the Russians could buy this machine in any other market, they would indeed do so. In fact, an American competitor of Bryant, Heald Machine Co., of Worcester, has been attempting for 3 years to imitate and produce a comparable machine, and they have not been successful.
[...] <see book for the skipped TEXT> [...]
Thirdly, the Department of Commerce has suggested that these machines require a skilled operators who need substantial training; and I can assure you this is not true, sir. Even if it were, I am confident that the Russians have skilled technicians who, in a short time, would be able to master the operation of this machine, were it complicated, which it is not, and that is part of the magic of the machine, that it is not complicated. There is a certain amount of skill required to set up the machine, but under contract with Bryant, I understand that the machine must be disassembled and re-assembled in the presence of Russian inspectors who are not at their doorstep. Consequently, they will have whatever knowledge they need to put this machine into immediate operation.
[p.97]
Bryant Chucking Grinder Company
Model "B" Centalign machines with spindle speeds up to 120,000 r.p.m.
[pp.99-100]
1. At least 85 per cent of the bearings manufactured with the help of the Bryant machine are used by defense industries:
Subject machine is a key factor in the economical production of the highest precision for many important Department of Defense applications, such as the latest guidance systems, navigation, fire control, computer, synchro and servo mechanisms used for aircraft, ordnance, ships, missiles and other space vehicles (statement of Mr. J. R. Tomlinson, president, and Mr. B. L. Mims, vice president in charge of engineering, the Barden Corp., Danbury, Conn.).
2. The function performed by the Bryant machine is of critical importance:
The outer ball track grinding operation is one of the last and most vital of those performed on the bearing outer ring. It is the operation which, until the advent of this machine, could probably be called the bottleneck opposing the precision performance of miniature bearings. The necessary perfection of other operations had been achieved 5 to 20 years ago (statement by Mr. H. B. Van Dorn, vice president in charge of engineering, Fafnir Bearing Co., New Britain, Conn.).
3. The Bryant machine is unique in its field; [...] A careful check has revealed that none of the companies named by Mr. Fisk produce machines that can be considered equal or "substantially comparable" to the Bryant machine.
[p.100]
In 1972, just before the presidential election, Nicholaas Leyds, general manager of the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company, announced a contract with the Soviets for 164 grinding machines. Anatoliy I. Kostousov, Minister of the Machine Tool Industry in the Soviet Union, then said they had waited twelve years for these machines, which included mostly the banned models: "We are using more and more instruments of all kinds and our needs for bearings for these instruments is very great. In all, we need to manufacture five times more bearings than 12 years ago."
(Sutton, Antony C, National suicide, 1. technical assistance, American--Russia., 2. military assistance, America--Russia., 3. Russia--Defenses., 4. United States--Defenses., copyright © 1973 by Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York., pp.91-92, pp.92-93, pp.94-96, p.97, pp.99-100, p.100 )
[pp.252-263]
Appendix B
Testimony of the author before subcommittee VII of the platform committee of the Republican party at Miami Beach, Florida, August 15, 1972, at 2:30 P.M.
This appendix contains the testimony presented by the author before the Republican party national security subcommittee at the 1972 Miami Beach convention. The author's appearance was made under the auspices of the American Conservative Union; the chairman of the subcommittee was Senator John Tower of Texas.
Edith Kermit Roosevelt subsequently used this testimony for her syndicated column in such newspaper as the Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.). Both major wire services received copies from the American Conservative Union; they were not distributed. Congressman John G. Schmitz then arranged for duplicate copies to be hand-delivered to both UPI and AP. The wire service would not carry the testimony although the author is an internationally known academic researcher with three books published at Stanford University, and a forthcoming book from the U.S. Naval Institute.
The testimony was later reprinted in full in Human Events (under the title of "The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex") and Review of the News (under the title of "Suppressed Testimony of Antony C. Sutton"). It was also reprinted and extensively distributed throughout the United States by both the American party and the Libertarian party during the 1972 election campaign.
The following is the text of this testimony as it was originally presented in Miami Beach and made available to UPI and AP:
The Soviet military-industrial complex
The information that I am going to present to you this afternoon is known to the Administration.
The information is probably NOT known to the Senator from South Dakota or his advisers. And in this instance ignorance may be a blessing in disguise.
I am not a politician. I am not going to tell you what you want to hear. My job is to give you facts. Whether you like or dislike what I say doesn't concern me.
I am here because I believe--and Congressman Ashbrook believes--that the American public should have these facts.
I have spent ten years in research on Soviet technology. What it is--what it can do--and particularly where it came from. I have published three books and several articles summarizing the work.
It was privately financed. But the result have been available to the Government. On the other hand I have had major difficulties with the U.S. Government censorship.
I have 15 minutes to tell you about this work.
In a few words: there is no such thing as Soviet technology. Almost all--perhaps 90-95 percent--came directly or indirectly from the United States and its allies. In effect the United States and the NATO countries have built the Soviet Union. Its industrial and its military capabilities. This massive construction job has taken 50 years. Since the Revolution in 1917. It has been carried out through trade and the sale of plants, equipment and technical assistance.
Listening to Administration spokesmen--or some newspaper pundits--you get the impression that trade with the Soviet Union is some new miracle cure for the world's problems.
That's not quite accurate.
The idea that trade with the Soviets might bring peace goes back to 1917. The earliest proposal is dated December 1917--just a few weeks after the start of the Bolshevik Revolution. It was implemented in 1920 while the Bolsheviks were still trying to consolidate their hold on Russia. The result was to guarantee that the Bolsheviks held power: they needed foreign supplies to survive.
The history of our construction of the Soviet Union has been blacked out--much of the key information is still classified--along with the other mistakes of the Washington bureaucracy.
Why has the history been blacked out?
Because 50 years of dealing with the Soviets has been an economic success for the USSR and a political failure for the United States. It has not stopped war, it has not given us peace.
The United States is spending $80 billion a year on defense against an enemy built by the United States and West Europe.
Even stranger, the U.S. apparently wants to make sure this enemy remains in the business of being an enemy.
Now at this point I've probably lost some of you. What I have said is contrary to everything you've heard from the intellectual elite, the Administration, and the business world, and numerous well-regarded Senators--just about everyone.
Let me bring you back to earth.
First an authentic statement. It's authentic because it was part of a conversation between Stalin and W. Averell Harriman. Ambassador Harriman has been prominent in Soviet trade since the 1930's and is an outspoken supporter of yet more trade. This is what Ambassador Harriman reported back to the State Department at the end of the World War II:
“Stalin paid tribute to the assistance rendered by the United States to Soviet industry before and during the War. Stalin* said that about two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union has been built with the United States' help or technical assistance.”
* He, in original.
I repeat: “two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union has been built with the United States' help or technical assistance.”
Two-thirds.
Two out of three.
Stalin could have said that the other one-third of large industrial enterprises were built by firms from Germany, France, Britain and Italy.
Stalin could have said also that the tank plants, the aircraft plants, the explosive and ammunition plants originated in the U.S.
That was June 1944. The massive technical assistance continues right down to the present day.
Now the ability of the Soviet Union to create any kind of military machine, to ship missiles to Cuba, to supply arms to North Vietnam, to supply arms for use against Israel--all this depends on its domestic industry.
In the Soviet Union about three-quarters of military budget goes on to purchases from Soviet factories.
This expenditure in Soviet industry makes sense. No Army has a machine that churns out tanks. Tanks are made from alloy steel, plastics, rubber and so forth. The alloy steel, plastics and rubber are made in Soviet factories to military specifications. Just like in the United States.
Missiles are not produced on missile-making machines. Missiles are fabricated from aluminum alloys, stainless steel, electrical wiring, pumps and so forth. The aluminum, steel, copper wire and pumps are also made in Soviet factories.
In other words the Soviet military gets its parts and materials from Soviet industry. There is a Soviet military-industrial complex just as there is an American military-industrial complex.
This kind of reasoning makes sense to the man in the street. The farmer in Kansas knows what I mean. The salesman in California knows what I mean. The taxi driver in New York knows what I mean. But the policy makers in Washington do no accept this kind of common sense reasoning, and never have done.
So let's take a look at the Soviet industry that provides the parts and the materials for Soviet armaments: the guns, tanks, aircraft.
The Soviet have the largest iron and steel plant in the world. It was built by McKee Corporation. It is a copy of the U.S. Steel plant in Gary, Indiana.
All Soviet iron and steel technology comes from the U.S. and its allies. The Soviets use open hearth, American electric furnaces, American wide strip mills, Sendzimir mills and so on--all developed in the West and shipped in as peaceful trade.
The Soviets have the largest tube and pipe mill in Europe--one million tons a year. The equipment is Fretz-Moon, Salem, Aetna Standard, Mannesman, etc. Those are not Russian names.
All Soviet tube and pipe making technology comes from the U.S. and its allies. If you know anyone in the space business ask them how many miles of tubes and pipes go into a missile.
Soviets have the largest merchant marine in the world--about 6,000 ships. I have the specifications for each ship.
About two-thirds were built outside the Soviet Union.
About four-fifths of the engines for these ships were also built outside the Soviet Union.
There are no ship engines of Soviet design. Those built inside the USSR are built with foreign technical assistance. The Bryansk plant makes the largest marine diesels. In 1959, the Bryansk plant make a technical assistance agreement with Burmeister & Wain of Copenhagen, Denmark, (a NATO ally), approved as peaceful trade by the State Dept. The ships that carried Soviet missiles to Cuba ten years ago used the same Burmeister and Wain engines. The ships were in the POLTAVA class. Some have Danish engines make in Denmark and some have Danish engines made at Bryansk in the Soviet Union.
About 100 Soviet ships are used on the Haiphong run to carry Soviet weapons and supplies for Hanoi's annual aggression. I was able to identify 84 of these ships. None of the main engines in these ships was designed and manufactured inside the USSR.
All the larger and faster vessels on the Haiphong run were built outside the USSR.
All shipbuilding technology in the USSR comes directly or indirectly from the U.S. or its NATO allies.
Let's take one industry in more detail: motor vehicles.
All Soviet automobile, truck and engine technology comes from the West: chiefly the United States. In my books I have listed each Soviet plant, its equipment and who supplied the equipment. The Soviet military has over 300,000 trucks--all from these U.S. built plants.
Up to 1968 the largest motor vehicle plant in the USSR was at Gorki. Gorki produces many of the trucks American pilots see on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Gorki produces the chasis for GAZ-69 rocket launcher used against Israel. Gorki produces the Soviet jeep and half a dozen other military vehicles.
And Gorki was built by the Ford Motor Company and the Austin Company--as peaceful trade.
In 1968 while Gorki was building vehicles to be used in Vietnam and Israel further equipment for Gorki was ordered and shipped from the U.S.
Also in 1968 we had the so-called "FIAT deal"--to build a plant at Volgograd three times bigger than Gorki. Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow told Congress and the American public this was peaceful trade--the FIAT plant could not produce military vehicles.
Don't let's kid ourselves. Any automobile manufacturing plant can produce military vehicles. I can show anyone who is interested the technical specification of a proven military vehicle (with cross-country capability) using the same capacity engine as the Russian FIAT plant produces.
The term "FIAT deal" is misleading. FIAT in Italy doesn't make automobile manufacturing equipment--FIAT plants in Italy have U.S. equipment. FIAT did sent 1,000 men to Russia for erection of the plant--but over half, perhaps well over half, of the equipment come from the United States. From Gleason, TRW of Cleveland and New Britain Machine Co.
So in the middle of a war that has killed 46,000 Americans (so far) and countless Vietnamese with Soviet weapons and supplies, the Johnson Administration doubled Soviet auto output.
And supplied false information to Congress and the American public.
Finally, we get to the 1972 under President Nixon.
The Soviets are receiving now--today, equipment and technology for the largest heavy truck plant in the world: known as the Kama plant. It will produce 100,000 heavy ten-ton trucks per year--that's more than ALL U.S. manufacturers put together.
This will also be the largest plant in the world, period. It will occupy 36 square miles.
Will the Kama truck plant have military potential?
The Soviets themselves have answered this one. The Kama truck will be 50 per cent more productive than the ZIL-130 truck. Well, that's nice, because the ZIL series trucks are standard Soviet army trucks used in Vietnam and the Middle East.
Who built the ZIL plant? It was built by the Arthur J. Brandt Company of Detroit, Michigan.
Who's building the Kama truck plant? That's classified "secret" by the Washington policy makers. I don't have to tell you why.
The Soviet T-54 tank is in Vietnam. It was in operation at Kontum, An Loc, and Hue a few weeks ago. It is in use today in Vietnam. It has been used against Israel.
According to the tank handbooks the T-54 has a Christie type suspension. Christie was an American inventor.
Where did the Soviets get a Christie suspension? Did they steal it?
No, Sir! They brought it. They brought it from the U.S. Wheel Track Layer Corporation.
However this Administration is apparently slightly more honest than the previous Administration.
Last December I asked Assistant Secretary Kenneth Davis of the Commerce Department (who is a mechanical engineer by training) whether the Kama trucks would have military capability. In fact I quoted one of the Government's own inter-agency reports. Mr. Davis didn't bother to answer but I did get a letter from the Department and it was right to the point. Yes! we know the Kama truck plant has military capability, we take this into account when we issue export licenses.
I passed these letters on to the press and Congress. They were published.
Unfortunately for my research project, I also had pending with the Department of Defense an application for declassification of certain files about our military assistance to the Soviets.
This application was then abruptly denied by DOD.
It will supply military technology to the Soviets but gets a little uptight about the public finding out.
I can understand that.
Of course, it takes a great deal of self confidence to admit you are sending factories to produce weapons and supplies to a country providing weapons and supplies to kill Americans, Israelis and Vietnamese. In writing. In an election year, yet.
More to the point--by what authority does this Administration undertake such policies?
Many people--as individuals--have protested our suicidal policies. What happens? Well, if you are in Congress--you probably get the strong arm put on you. The Congressman who inserted my research finding into the Congressional Record suddenly found himself with primary opposition. He won't be in Congress next year.
If you are in the academic world--you soon find it's OK to protest U.S. assistance to the South Vietnamese but never, never protest U.S. assistance to the Soviets. Forget about the Russian academics being persecuted--we mustn't say unkind things about the Soviets.
If you press for an explaination what do they tell you?
First, you get the Fullbright line. This is peaceful trade. The Soviets are powerful. They have their own technology. It's a way to build friendship. It's a way to a new world order.
This is demonstrably false.
The Soviet tanks in An Loc are not refugees from the Pasadena Rose Bowl Parade.
The "Soviet" ships that carry arms to Haiphong are not peaceful. They have weapons on board, not flower children or Russian tourists.
Second, if you don't buy that line you are told, "The Soviets are mellowing." This is equally false.
The killing in Israel and Vietnam with Soviet weapons doesn't suggest mellowing, it suggests premediated genocide. Today--now--the Soviets are readying more arms to go to Syria. For what purpose? To put in a museum?
No one has ever presented evidence, hard evidence that trade leads to peace. Why not? Because there is no such evidence. It's an illusion.
It is true that peace leads to trade. But that's not the same thing. You first need peace, then you trade. That does not mean if you trade you will get peace.
But that's too logical for the Washington policy makers and it's not what the politicians and their backers want anyway.
Trade with Germany doubled before World War II. Did it stop World War II?
Trade with Japan increased before World War II. Did it stop World War II?
What was in this German and Japanese trade? The same means for war that we are now supplying the Soviets. The Japanese Air Force after 1934 depended on U.S. technology. And much of the pushing for Soviet trade today comes from the same groups that were pushing for trade with Hitler and Tojo 35 years ago.
The Russian Communist Party is now mellowing. Concentration camps are still there. The mental hospital take the overload. Persecution of the Baptists continues. Harassment of Jews continues, as it did under the Tsars.
The only mellowing is when a Harriman and a Rockefeller get together with the bosses in the Kremlin. That's good for business but it's not much help if you are a G.I. at the other end of a Soviet rocket in Vietnam.
I've learned something about our military assistance to the Soviets.
It's just not enough to have the facts--these are ignored by the policy makers.
It's just not enough to make a common sense case--the answers you get defy reason.
Only one institution has been clearsighted on this question. From the early 1920's to the present day only one institution has spoken out. That is the AFL-CIO.
From Samuel Gompers in 1920 down to George Meany today, the major unions have consistently protested the trade policies that built the Soviet Union.
Because union members in Russia lost their freedom and union members in the United States have died in Korea and Vietnam.
The unions know--and apparently care.
No one else cares. Not Washington. Not big business. Not the Republican Party.
And 100,000 Americans have been killed in Korea and Vietnam--by our own technology.
The only response from Washington and the Nixon Administration is the effort to hush up the scandal.
These are things not to be talked about. And the professional smokescreen about peaceful trade continues.
The plain fact--if you want it--is that irresponsible policies have built us an enemy and maintain that enemy in the business of totalitarian rule and world conquest.
And the tragedy is that intelligent people have brought the political double talk about world peace, a new world order and mellowing Soviets.
I suggest that the man in the street, the average taxpayer voter thinks more or less as I do. You do not subsidize an enemy.
And when this story gets out and about the United States, it's going to translate into a shift of votes. I haven't met one man in the street so far (from New York to California) who goes along with a policy of subsidizing the killing of his fellow Americans. People are usually stunned and disgusted.
It requires a peculiar kind of intellectual myopia to ship supplies and technology to the Soviets when they are instrumental in killing fellow citizens.
What about the argument that trade will lead to peace? Well, we've had U.S.-Soviet trade for 52 years. The 1st and 2nd Five Year Plans were built by American companies. To continue a policy that is a total failure is to gamble with the lives of several million Americans and countless allies.
You can't stoke up the Soviet military machine at one end and then complain that the other end came back and bit you. Unfortunately, the human price for our immoral policies is not paid by the policy maker in Washington. The human price is paid by the farmers, the students and working and middle classes of America.
The citizen who pays the piper is not calling the tune--he doesn't even know the name of the tune.
Let me summarize my conclusions:
One: trade with the USSR was started over 50 years ago under President Woodrow Wilson with the declared intention of mellowing the Bolsheviks. The policy has been a total and costly failure. It has proven to be impractical--this is what I would expect from an immoral policy.
Two: we have built ourselves an enemy. We keep that self-declared enemy in business. This information has been blacked out by successive Administrations. Misleading and untruthful statements have been made by the Executive Branch to Congress and the American people.
Three: our policy of subsidizing self-declared enemies is neither rational nor moral. I have drawn attention to the intellectual myopia of the group that influences and draws up foreign policy. I suggest these policies have no authority.
Four: the annual attacks in Vietnam and the war in the Middle East were made possible only by Russian armaments and our past assistance to the Soviets.
Five: this worldwide Soviet activity is consistent with Communist theory. Mikhail Suslov, the party theoretician, recently stated that the current detente with the United States is temporary. The purpose of the detente, according to Suslov, is to give the Soviets sufficient strength for a renewed assault on the West. In other words, when you've finished building the Kama plant and the trucks come rolling off--watch out for another Vietnam.
Six: internal Soviet repression continues--against Baptists, against Jews, against national groups and against dissident academics.
Seven: Soviet technical dependence is a powerful instrument for world peace if we want to use it.
So far it's been used as an aid-to-dependent-Soviets welfare program. With about as much success as the domestic welfare program.
Why should they stop supplying Hanoi? The more they stoke up the war the more they get from the United States.
One final thought.
Why has the war in Vietnam continued for four long years under this Administration?
With 15,000 killed under the Nixon Administration?
We can stop the Soviets and their friends in Hanoi anytime we want to.
Without using a single gun or anything more dangerous than a piece of paper or a telephone call.
We have Soviet technical dependence as an instrument of world peace. The most humane weapon that can be conceived.
We have always had that option. We have never used it.
(Sutton, Antony C, National suicide, 1. technical assistance, American--Russia., 2. military assistance, America--Russia., 3. Russia--Defenses., 4. United States--Defenses., copyright © 1973 by Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York., [pp.252-263])
____________________________________
Institute for the Future
Menlo Park, California
AUG 11 1976
Paul Baran, Chapter Nine, Computer Communications for the community information utility, AUG 11 1976
HE
8700.7
C6
B3x
p.220
If you must bet, gamble on avarice, not altruism; it has a longer and more consistent track record.
(Paul Baran, 1970, Chapter Nine, Computer Communications for the
community information utility, Paul Baran, 1970, Institute for the Future
Menlo Park, California, AUG 11 1976, )
____________________________________
Sebastian Mallaby., More money than god : hedge funds and the making of a new elite, 2010.
fear is a stronger emotion than greed,
p.461
18. Jones interview. Jones adds, “From a trading perspective, fear is a much stronger emotion than greed, which is why things go down twice as fast as they go up. And that's also just the law of nature. How long does it take for a tree to grow, and how quickly can you burn it down? It's much easier to destroy things than to build them up. So from a trading perspective, the short side is always a beautiful place to be because quite often when you get paid, you get paid in vertical no-pain type of moves.”
Sebastian Mallaby., More money than god : hedge funds and the making of a new elite, 2010.
____________________________________
── greed, fear, fear of loss
44:12 fear of loss is the number one driving
make them think about thing that they do not want to have happen
a lot of psychologists believe the fear of loss is the number one thing that drives our decisions
either one or two camps
we make every decision based on either fear or love
fear or fear of loss are a big determinant of how people think
https://youtu.be/guZa7mQV1l0?t=2635
44:21 we make every decision based on either fear or love.
44:25 Others say you make your decision based on fear of loss.
44:29 Whichever of those two areas that you fall into,
44:33 the bottom line is fear and fear of loss
44:35 are a big determinant in how people think.
Never Split the Difference | Chris Voss | Talks at Google
https://youtu.be/guZa7mQV1l0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guZa7mQV1l0
source:
Never Split the Difference | Chris Voss | Talks at Google
https://youtu.be/guZa7mQV1l0
https://youtu.be/guZa7mQV1l0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guZa7mQV1l0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guZa7mQV1l0
50:43
May 27, 2016
Everything we’ve previously been taught about negotiation is wrong: people are not rational; there is no such thing as ‘fair’; compromise is the worst thing you can do; the real art of negotiation lies in mastering the intricacies of No, not Yes. These surprising tactics—which radically diverge from conventional negotiating strategy—weren’t cooked up in a classroom, but are the field-tested tools FBI agents used to talk criminals and hostage-takers around the world into (or out of) just about any scenario you can imagine.
In NEVER SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator Chris Voss breaks down these strategies so that anyone can use them in the workplace, in business, or at home.
This talk was moderated by Mairin Chesney.
a moment can be three seconds (3 sec)
it's okay to say no
yes is committment
no is protection (feel protected, feel safe)
positive frame of mind (positive frame of mind made you smart, in comparison with tunnel vision)
is now a bad time to talk? (get a schedule time to talk)
that's right (get the other person to say, this, summarized the situation how the other person see things)
Talh Raz,
three basic approach to conflict: fight, flight, or make friend
the deal is secondary
most people fall in one of three camps
1. I want to know, you know, what I mean (assertive )
2. if we don't make a deal that's fine, they want to maintain the relationship, I like you and you like me
3. analytical (highly pracmatic), as long as they get to share their ... with you, they are happy
you need all three camps: you need to be able to assert your best position; you need to be able to get along with people (relationship)(you are okay, I am okay); you need to be able to analyze
ask the right person, do what they tell you to do (volunteer for suicide hotline), but you've to ask the right person,
FBI hostage negotiation school
Harvard law school negotiation course
same techniques, different stakes, basically, that means I had better stories
hostage negotiation does apply to business and personal negotiation
what is the most effective high-value trade?
everybody has patterns
you are worry about loosing something
Getting to Yes
tell me why you want this? (...??)
empathy is the tool for negotiation effectiveness
getting to the point where the other is comfortable sharing information
until you said it, I didn't know it was true
in the eye of the beholder
44:02
44:12 fear of loss is the number one driving
a lot of psychologists believe the fear of loss is the number one thing that drives our decisions
either one or two camps
we make every decision based on either fear or love
fear or fear of loss are a big determinant of how people think
most people do not like to be laugh at
____________________________________
Terry Goodkind, "Wizard's First Rule", 1994 [ ]
p.580
"The first step to believing something is wanting to believe it is true ... or being afraid it is."
____________________________________
"The first step to believing something is wanting to believe it is true ... or being afraid it is."
([ a recap of the fictional scenario and speculation:
in simple term, they (whoever they may be) were afraid, fearful, fill with greed, and the sense of lost that the flow of money and profit would come to an abrupt end, if and when John F. Kennedy (JFK) announced the pull out of Vietnam (Southeast Asia-Indo-China territory) during his presidential visit to Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.; in my opinion, money and profit is a more compelling explanation and fear factor (as one of several factors) for JFK assassination than other explainations.
])
Quotations of wit and wisdom: know or listen to those who know
John W. Gardner & Francesca Gardner Reese
p.233
Veritas temporis filia.
Truth is the daughter of Time.
——Latin
(Quotations of wit and wisdom: know or listen to those who know / John W. Gardner & Francesca Gardner Reese, copyright © 1975, 808.882, ——, )
____________________________________
p.29, p.30, p.30
p.29
Homines libenter quod volunt credunt (men believe what they want to), wrote Terentius;
p.30
Seneca said that fallaces sunt rerum species (the appearances of things are deceptive).
p.30
Marcus Tullius Cicero knew that state of mind well: Utinam tam facile vera invenire possem quam falsa convincere (I only wish I could discover the truth as easily as I can uncover falsehood).
(Why america is not a new rome, vaclav smil, 973 Smil, copyright © 2010, p.29, p.30, p.30)
____________________________________
As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
____________________________________
What get us into trouble
is not what we don't know
It's what we know for sure
that just ain't so.
――Mark Twain
____________________________________
────────────────────────────────────
• adjusting their beliefs incrementally.
• one of the things that he notices superforecasters doing a lot more than other people is adjusting their beliefs incrementally.
• A lot of people will never update their view at all or they'll do a 180 where they're like, "Well, all right, I guess I'll give up on that idea because of counter evidence. And the superforecasters did a much more subtle thing where they'd have this view and then they'd read some more news articles and they'd go, "Hmm, that makes me a little less confident."
• Or some new development would happen and they'd go, "Actually, this makes war more likely." And so, they'd adjust their confidence upwards from 65 to 75 or something like that. So, it was this very careful, delicate process. And by the end of it, the percentage they eventually landed on was much more accurate than the norm.
source:
https://thedecisionlab.com/podcasts/soldiers-and-scouts-with-julia-galef
____________________________________
Quotations of wit and wisdom: know or listen to those who know
John W. Gardner & Francesca Gardner Reese
p.233
Veritas temporis filia.
Truth is the daughter of Time.
——Latin
(Quotations of wit and wisdom: know or listen to those who know / John W. Gardner & Francesca Gardner Reese, copyright © 1975, 808.882, ——, )
____________________________________
p.29, p.30, p.30
p.29
Homines libenter quod volunt credunt (men believe what they want to), wrote Terentius;
p.30
Seneca said that fallaces sunt rerum species (the appearances of things are deceptive).
p.30
Marcus Tullius Cicero knew that state of mind well: Utinam tam facile vera invenire possem quam falsa convincere (I only wish I could discover the truth as easily as I can uncover falsehood).
(Why america is not a new rome, vaclav smil, 973 Smil, copyright © 2010, p.29, p.30, p.30)
____________________________________
As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
____________________________________
What get us into trouble
is not what we don't know
It's what we know for sure
that just ain't so.
――Mark Twain
____________________________________
────────────────────────────────────
• adjusting their beliefs incrementally.
• one of the things that he notices superforecasters doing a lot more than other people is adjusting their beliefs incrementally.
• A lot of people will never update their view at all or they'll do a 180 where they're like, "Well, all right, I guess I'll give up on that idea because of counter evidence. And the superforecasters did a much more subtle thing where they'd have this view and then they'd read some more news articles and they'd go, "Hmm, that makes me a little less confident."
• Or some new development would happen and they'd go, "Actually, this makes war more likely." And so, they'd adjust their confidence upwards from 65 to 75 or something like that. So, it was this very careful, delicate process. And by the end of it, the percentage they eventually landed on was much more accurate than the norm.
source:
https://thedecisionlab.com/podcasts/soldiers-and-scouts-with-julia-galef
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