FILE: May 2013: IRS official Lois Lerner on Capitol
Hill in Washington.
(AP)
It reads like another page out of a Hollywood script.
Former top IRS official Lois Lerner – at the center of a
well-orchestrated scheme targeting conservative organizations – used an
alias while at the IRS.
In new documents just released, an IRS attorney has
confirmed that Lois Lerner used another email to conduct IRS business –
under the name of “Toby Miles.”
That revelation prompts this question: why would the
director of the Exempt Organizations Unit use an alias – a secret,
personal email account while at the IRS?
You don’t have to think very long to come up with the answer.
Lois Lerner – who was permitted to retire from the agency
with a reported $100,000 a year pension paid by taxpayers – is under
investigation by Congress for her role in unlawfully targeting and
discriminating against conservative organizations.
We know that Lerner used her official IRS email to
participate in the orchestration of this targeting scheme – even
plotting with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to fabricate evidence –
to, as she put it, “piece together false statement cases” so the DOJ
could launch criminal prosecutions of law-abiding citizens in the
absence of any complaints or evidence of wrongdoing.
That stunning admission was communicated via Lerner’s
official IRS email account. A secret, personal email account gives her
cover – an opportunity to communicate even more outrageous and illegal
tactics – without her real identity tied to the emails.
We can only imagine what kind of information is included in emails from “Toby Miles.”
Of course, this newly discovered email account should
come as no surprise to anyone. As the Washington Times reports, this
email discovery underscores what’s become standard operating procedure
inside the Obama Administration:
“The use of secret or extra email accounts has bedeviled
the Obama administration, which is has tried to fend off a slew of
lawsuits involving former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and
her top aides, the White House’s top science adviser, top Environmental
Protection Agency officials and the IRS.”
The revelation of Lois Lerner’s alias while at the IRS is
certain to prompt even more questions by Congressional investigators –
including whether privacy laws were violated with the use of this
personal email account.
Earlier this month, the Senate Finance Committee released
its findings on the IRS targeting scheme concluding that in addition to
gross mismanagement at the IRS, the evidence showed partisan political
animus resulted in the unwarranted targeting of conservative groups
because of their political beliefs.
Lois Lerner wasn’t shy about putting her thoughts in
emails. In documents recently released, Lerner called Republican critics
“evil and dishonest” and “hateful.” She even chastised members of the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee following a hearing in
2014 – labelling their pursuit of the truth as “bad behavior.”
We know Lois Lerner used her official IRS email account
to communicate about the targeting scheme. And now, we look forward to
finding out what “Toby Miles” had to say about all of this, too.
Valerie Jarrett is President Obama’s most trusted and influential White House advisor. Newscom View Enlarged Image
Subversion: FBI
files confirm what we feared in 2008 — that the president and his
closest advisor come from a long line of Communists. Not liberals or
socialists, but Reds. And now we've all inherited their socialized
medicine.
FBI papers obtained by government watchdog Judicial
Watch document hard-core communism in the family of Valerie Jarrett,
President Obama's most trusted and influential White House advisor.
Here's what they reveal about her Chicago kin, who were known as
"concealed Communists":
Her late father, James E. Bowman, was
involved with Communist front groups and was in contact with a paid
Soviet agent in the 1950s — Alfred Stern — who was wanted for espionage.
Jarrett's
maternal grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor, was investigated by the FBI
for his membership in Communist groups and his business relationship
with the same Soviet agent tied to her father.
Her late
father-in-law, Vernon D. Jarrett, was assigned by the Communist Party
USA to a special cultural arts "cell" that spread "the Communist Party
line" and ran publicity for communist candidates and also raised money
for them, the FBI says.
He helped the cell spread communist
propaganda "among the middle class," indoctrinating them through
newspaper columns, radio shows, speeches, plays and other cultural
anesthesia.
Jarrett was such a threat as a Communist propagandist
that he was flagged by the FBI as an internal security risk to be
swiftly arrested in the event of a hot war with the Soviet Union. The
FBI also investigated his wife, Fernetta "Fern" Jarrett, for Communist
activities.
These FBI files on Jarrett's relatives are voluminous,
covering their un-American activities during the height of the Cold
War, when the FBI said the Communist Party USA sought to alter the
American form of government "by unconstitutional means." (Sound
familiar?)
That people running our country are the children of
Communists ought to trigger an avalanche of in-depth news stories. Yet
even with documentary evidence to safely guide them, the White House
press corps yawns.
"If her father was waving the Confederate flag,
I'm sure there'd be massive media interest in how that impacted
(Valerie Jarrett's) politics," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told
us.
Long before Obama was nominated in 2008, we ran a
controversial series called "The Audacity of Socialism," in which we
tried to warn voters that Obama and his ilk were a different breed of
Democrat.
These weren't garden-variety liberals, we argued, but
radicals orbiting anti-American subversives whom Democrats like Truman
and Kennedy once went after.
We also noted that Obama himself was
the son of a socialist anthropologist and Marxist economist who met in a
college Russian-language studies class. Now it turns out that his top
aide comes from the same Communist family. Connecting the dots further,
both the Jarrett and Obama clans are tied to Frank Marshall Davis. A
card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA, Davis worked in Chicago
in the same Soviet fronts with Jarrett's father-in-law, as well as her
grandfather Taylor, the first African-American head of the Chicago
Housing Authority.
Davis also worked with Harry and David Canter,
Soviet agents who took Obama political advisor David Axelrod, another
Red diaper baby (his mother worked for a Communist newspaper), under
their wing.
The FBI had Davis, who in Communist organs advocated
for socialized medicine, bashed Wall Street banks and demonized Winston
Churchill (sound familiar?), under surveillance for two decades.
After
it put him on its "security index," targeting him for arrest, he fled
Chicago for Honolulu. There, Davis befriended Obama's grandfather,
Stanley Dunham, a Communist sympathizer with an FBI case file. Dunham
arranged young Obama's indoctrination by Davis.
That Obama would
end up working as an agitator in Chicago — the birthplace of the
Communist Party USA — is no coincidence. Eventually, Jarrett would plug
him into her Hyde Park neighbors — Communist terrorists Bill Ayers and
Bernardine Dohrn — who launched his political career in a fundraiser
held in their living room.
Ayers is also a neighbor and friend of
Jarrett's mother, Barbara Taylor Bowman, who co-founded the leftist
Erickson Institute with fellow traveler Erik Erikson and sat on its
board with Ayers' father and daughter-in-law.
Communist nuts don't
fall far from the tree. Tragically for our country, which is seeing its
health care system ruined and its borders and national security erased,
the nuts fell into the White House.
Harry Hopkins was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
closest aide and confidante. Formally, his two top positions were first
as director of the Works Progress Administration and later as head of the
Lend-Lease Program. With his heavy involvement in key areas of both
domestic and foreign policy and his close association with the president and
especially with the very influential first lady, Eleanor, he was actually as
near to being an assistant president as anyone in the United States has ever
been. The evidence is accumulating that he was also an agent of the
Soviet Union.
Their evidence
is, first, that Soviet KGB defector, Oleg Gordievsky,
said that Hopkins was in regular communication with top Soviet covert
operative, IskhakAkhmerov, in New York City. This was more than
just a "back channel" for communication between Roosevelt and Stalin
because Hopkins had existing back channels at the Soviet embassy that he used,
and Akhmerov's identity as an operative was not supposed
to be known to the U.S. government. Second, the Venona
project decrypts of Soviet communications with its spies, which came to light
only in the 1990s, reveal a report on a Washington discussion between Roosevelt
and Winston Churchill by an "agent 19." Only Harry Hopkins among
suspected Soviet agents would have been privy to that conversation. Third,
former Communist Whittaker Chambers testified to Congress in 1948 about the
formation of Communist "study groups" within the U.S. government from
which espionage agents were recruited. One of those groups, led by Lee Pressman, was
established within the Department of Agriculture in late 1933, and Hopkins was
a member of that group. Fourth, his policies were strongly pro-Soviet,
particularly in his work as head of the Lend-Lease program.
The degree
to which he far exceeded any strategic necessity in aiding the Soviet Union in
that latter capacity is well described in the 1952 book by Major George Racey Jordan entitled FromMajor Jordan’s
Diaries. A summary, with key excerpts,
are in the previously referenced article, “How We Gave the Russians the Bomb.”
Now,
corroborating and entirely independent evidence of Hopkins’ likely treason has
come to light in the pages of an obscure book by Emanuel M. Josephson.
The title is The Strange Death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and while it
does have a very intriguing chapter on FDR’s demise, the main subject of the
book is better captured by the subtitle, A History of the Roosevelt-Delano
Dynasty, America’s Royal Family. The following passage is on pp.
145-146:
In later
years, Murray Garsson, the munitions manufacturer who was
convicted for bribery and irregularities in connection with war contracts,
reported that Harry Hopkins had been very helpful to him in securing and
handling those contracts. In return for his help, Hopkins had demanded
and received liberal payment for his influence. Garsson
regularly paid Hopkins’s numerous losses on bets on the horse races. But
one form of payment demanded by Hopkins stood out as most odd, Garsson said.
Garsson maintained quarters at
the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington in connection
with his war contracts. But he spent his weekends in New York with his
family. Harry Hopkins demanded of Garsson
that he permit him and his friends to use the quarters during the weekends, and
that he defray the cost of refreshments and entertainment. Garsson permitted Hopkins and his guests to charge their
expenses to his account.
In looking
over his bills, Garsson noted the names of the persons
who had signed the tabs charged to him. Among Harry Hopkins’s associates
who had signed tabs were Carl Aldo Marzani
and the whole array of the members of what was later proved to be the Hal Ware (Communist) cell that operated in the
Government. Garsson stated that he did not
become aware of the fact that he was acting as involuntary host to Hopkins’s
Communist cell until after Marzani had been convicted
and sent to jail for perjury in swearing in his State Department application
that he was not, and never had been, a member of the Communist Party.
Josephson,
who was hardly an admirer of Roosevelt and his New Deal, lacks references for
his allegations, but many factors militate in favor of their basic
accuracy. The strongest of these is that they dovetail perfectly with the
other Soviet-agent charges against Hopkins and, coming much earlier, they could
not have been influenced by them. In combination, the charges are much
stronger than any one of them is alone. Hopkins was also known to have a
number of personal weaknesses; he was a heavy drinker and gambler.
His first wife had divorced him, charging him with infidelity, and he was left
with large alimony and child support expenses. Combined with his taste
for luxury and the cost of his vices, those expenses are likely to have
outstripped his meager government income. A common acronym for the main
four reasons that people get involved in espionage is “MICE,” Money, Ideology,
Compromised, and Ego. Often it only takes one of them, but Hopkins would
appear to have been vulnerable on all four points.
Whatever
one’s character or vulnerability, a primary reason not to be a spy against
one’s own country is obvious enough. It is typically very risky.
The penalty can be quite severe, as we know from the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
case. But the official relationship with the Soviet Union and Communism
had changed radically by the time the Rosenbergs were
executed. Under Franklin Roosevelt, the attitude toward espionage by the
Soviet Communists was permissive in the extreme, and Harry Hopkins had to know
it. As we document in detail in “FDR Winked at Soviet Espionage,”
Communist defector Whittaker Chambershad told Roosevelt’s
security adviser, Adolf Berle, all about Harold Ware’s spy nest, which
included the infamous Alger Hiss, in 1939. Berle
had relayed the information to Roosevelt, and Roosevelt had blown him
off. Spying for the Reds under Roosevelt was essentially risk free. The results are well summed up by historian
Thomas Fleming on page 319 of his 2001 book, The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War
within World War II:
There was
scarcely a branch of the American government, including the War, Navy, and
Justice Departments, that did not have Soviet moles in high places, feeding
Moscow information. Wild Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, the
forerunner of the CIA, had so many informers in its ranks,
it was almost an arm of the NKVD. Donovan's personal assistant, Duncan
Chaplin Lee, was a spy.
The spy ring
also reached into the White House in the person of economic adviser, Lauchlin Currie,
according to Chambers. As with the evidence against Hopkins that came
initially from Garsson and from Major Jordan, the
evidence against Currie was later reinforced by the same Venona intercepts
that Romerstein and Breindel
used to conclude that Hopkins was also a spy.
David
Martin
February
11, 2011
Addendum
1
With
a search of the Internet using the terms “Harry Hopkins” and “David Niles” we
have turned up some additional evidence
connecting Hopkins to Communist subversion:
In
l936 James Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins invited David Niles to Washington from
Boston. In l94l or l942 he became a resident assistant to the President
at the White House. He retired in 1951 after serving Presidents Roosevelt
and Truman. He was bitterly attacked by anti-Israel factions as reported
in New York Times story May 5, l948. Active member of Ford Hall Forum in Boston, Never attended college.
Niles,
then, can be seen as something of a protégé of FDR’s son and of Harry
Hopkins. Niles, apparently, had his own connections to Communist
subversion. This passage is from page 181 of the aforementioned Romerstein-Breindel book, which we quote in “Who Killed James Forrestal?”
Whittaker
Chambers reported to the FBI an odd story about Niles that he had heard from a
fellow Soviet agent named John Hermann in 1934 or 1935. A Soviet agent named
Silverman (not George Silverman) was living in the next building from Alger
Hiss. This Silverman apparently had an obviously homosexual affair with David
Niles. Silverman had told Niles of the work of the underground apparatus in
Washington, and Niles later threatened to expose the activities of the
Communist group unless Silverman left his wife. To solve the problem, J.
Peters, the head of the American Communist underground, ordered Hermann and
Harold Ware to get Silverman to leave Washington, D. C. immediately.
As
for Niles’s other patron, we learn from Wikipediathat, “[James] Roosevelt
was one of the first politicians to denounce the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy. He was also the only
Representative to vote against appropriating funds for the House Un-American Activities
Committee.” One must wonder now if that might have been because
he feared what they might expose.
David
Martin
February
15, 2011
Addendum
2
More
evidence of Hopkins’ work on behalf of the Soviets
turns up in the case of defector, Victor Kravchenko.
In this instance he was in league with FDR’s extremely pro-Soviet ambassador to
the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies.
The following passage is from page 275 of The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russiaby Tim Tzouliadis (2008):
Victor
Kravchenko had been a Soviet Lend-Lease official who
defected in 1944, while stationed in New York. At the time, the Soviet
embassy had tried hard to force Kravchenko’s
extradition as a war-time “deserter,” and had engaged
the willing intervention of Ambassador Joseph Davies to its cause. What
followed was the farce of the FBI having to call up Kravchenko
anonymously to tip him off that “the heat was on” from the State Department,
and warn him that he should “carefully hide himself.”
But Kravchenko’s English was not yet up to such
head-spinning machinations, and the FBI agent had to repeat the whole
conversation to a friend, who took the appropriate evasive action on Kravchenko’s behalf. Joseph Davies, meanwhile,
appealed directly to the president and secretary of state to have Kravchenko sent back to Russia. The
moral issue of Kravenchenko’s inevitable execution
was elegantly sidestepped by Harry Hopkins, who argued that if he was returned,
no one would know what happened to him. Only
President Roosevelt had sensed a fast-approaching political calamity; “Will you
tell Joe that I cannot do this?” he instructed his secretary, and the
defector’s life was spared. (emphasis added)
Kravchenko’s very revealing book, I
Chose Freedom, was published in April of 1946, and even the formerly
pro-Soviet New York Times, reviewed
it favorably.
Hopkins’s
pro-Soviet leanings would be on further display in the Yalta records, where his
handwritten comments are available for viewing. Though seriously ill at
the time of the meeting, he continued to ply his influence with FDR, who
himself was mortally sick and susceptible to suggestion in ways that we can
only guess at. After FDR had made innumerable concessions to Stalin,
there occurred a deadlock on the issue of “reparations.” At this point,
Hopkins passed a note to Roosevelt that summed up the American attitude at
Yalta. “Mr. President,” this said, “the Russians have given in so much
at this conference I don’t think we should let them down. Let the
British disagree if they want—and continue their disagreement at Moscow
[in subsequent diplomatic meetings]” (Emphasis added by Evans and Romerstein).
One may
search the Yalta records at length and have trouble finding an issue of
substance on which the Soviets had “given in” to FDR—the entire thrust of
the conference, as Roosevelt loyalist [Robert] Sherwood acknowledged,
being in the reverse direction.
David
Martin
March
19, 2013
Addendum 3
New
doubt has arisen over the best evidence that Hopkins was actually a Soviet
agent.See my article “Harry Hopkins and FDR’s
Commissars.”
David
Martin
January
24, 2014
http://www.forbes.com/
Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit
Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had
just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times,
came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor
Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri
Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward
Kennedy.
“On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen.
Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in
Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former
Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged Tunney to
convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”
Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo.
Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In
return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in
challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real
potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and
Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues,
according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important
of the election campaign.”
Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.
First he offered to visit Moscow. “The main purpose of the meeting,
according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with
explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be
better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.”
Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to
brush up their propaganda.
Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a
few interviews on American television. “A direct appeal … to the
American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention
and interest in the country. … If the proposal is recognized as worthy,
then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have
representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact
Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. … The
senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as
coming from the American side.”
Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time–and
that they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.
Kennedy’s motives? “Like other rational people,” the memorandum
explained, “[Kennedy] is very troubled by the current state of
Soviet-American relations.” But that high-minded concern represented
only one of Kennedy’s motives.
“Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in
1988,” the memorandum continued. “Kennedy does not discount that during
the 1984 campaign, the Democratic Party may officially turn to him to
lead the fight against the Republicans and elect their candidate
president.”
Kennedy proved eager to deal with Andropov–the leader of the Soviet
Union, a former director of the KGB and a principal mover in both the
crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the suppression of the
1968 Prague Spring–at least in part to advance his own political
prospects.
In 1992, Tim Sebastian published a story about the memorandum in the London Times. Here in the U.S., Sebastian’s story received no attention. In his 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, historian Paul Kengor reprinted the memorandum in full. “The media,” Kengor says, “ignored the revelation.”
“The document,” Kengor continues, “has stood the test of time. I
scrutinized it more carefully than anything I’ve ever dealt with as a
scholar. I showed the document to numerous authorities who deal with
Soviet archival material. No one has debunked the memorandum or shown it
to be a forgery. Kennedy’s office did not deny it.”
Why bring all this up now? No evidence exists that Andropov ever
acted on the memorandum–within eight months, the Soviet leader would be
dead–and now that Kennedy himself has died even many of the former
senator’s opponents find themselves grieving. Yet precisely because
Kennedy represented such a commanding figure–perhaps the most compelling
liberal of our day–we need to consider his record in full.
Doing so, it turns out, requires pondering a document in the archives of the politburo.
When President Reagan chose to confront the Soviet Union, calling it
the evil empire that it was, Sen. Edward Kennedy chose to offer aid and
comfort to General Secretary Andropov. On the Cold War, the greatest
issue of his lifetime, Kennedy got it wrong. Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a former White House speechwriter, writes a weekly column for Forbes
Earlier this week, 47 Republican senators published an open letter
informing the leaders of Iran that any nuclear deal with the United
States that failed to be approved by the Senate would likely expire in
2017, once President Barack Obama’s term ended. You can read the full
letter here.
The letter enraged progressives, who immediately began accusing the
senators of treason for having the audacity to publish basic
constitutional facts about how treaties work. Here is but a small
sampling of the response from the outrage brigade:
If these progressives want to know what actual treason looks like,
they should consult liberal lion Ted Kennedy, who not only allegedly
sent secret messages to the Soviets in the midst of the cold war, he
also begged them to intervene in a U.S. presidential election in order
to unseat President Ronald Reagan. That’s no exaggeration.
According to Soviet documents unearthed in the early 1990’s, Kennedy literally asked the Soviets, avowed enemies of the U.S., to intervene on behalf of the Democratic party in the 1984 elections. Kennedy’s communist communique was so secret that it was not discovered until 1991, eight years after Kennedy had initiated his Soviet gambit:
Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris
Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the
London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by
Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed
to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen.
Edward Kennedy.
“On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen.
Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in
Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former
Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged Tunney to
convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”
Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo.
Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In
return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in
challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real
potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and
Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues,
according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important
of the election campaign.”
Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.
First he offered to visit Moscow. “The main purpose of the meeting,
according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with
explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be
better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA.”
Kennedy would help the Soviets deal with Reagan by telling them how to
brush up their propaganda.
Then he offered to make it possible for Andropov to sit down for a few
interviews on American television. “A direct appeal … to the American
people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and
interest in the country. … If the proposal is recognized as worthy, then
Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to have
representatives of the largest television companies in the USA contact
Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interviews. … The
senator underlined the importance that this initiative should be seen as
coming from the American side.”
Kennedy would make certain the networks gave Andropov air time–and that
they rigged the arrangement to look like honest journalism.
You can read the full KGB memo detailing Kennedy’s secret letter and request for electoral intervention here.
[A repost of a S&L article from December 2006.]
This letter which details Senator Edward Kennedy’s offer to help the
Soviet Union defeat Reagan’s efforts to build up the nuclear deterrent
in Europe was unearthed by a Times of London reporter in the 1990s after
the KGB files were opened.
It got little or no attention, however, until the publication of Paul Kengor’s book "The Crusader – Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism."
But even then the actual text of the letter (which is in the book’s appendix pp 317-320) has gotten short shrift:
Appendix TEXT OF KGB LETTER ON SENATOR TED KENNEDY_________________________________________
Special Importance Committee on State Security of the USSR 14.05. 1983 No. 1029 Ch/OV Moscow
Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Comrade Y.V. Andropov
Comrade Y.V. Andropov On 9-10 May of this year, Senator Edward
Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant J. Tunney was in Moscow.
The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through
confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Center Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.
Senator Kennedy, like other rational people, is very troubled by the
current state of Soviet-American relations. Events are developing such
that this relationship coupled with the general state of global affairs
will make the situation even more dangerous. The main reason for this is
Reagan’s belligerence, and his firm commitment to deploy new American
middle range nuclear weapons within Western Europe.
According to Kennedy, the current threat is due to the President’s
refusal to engage any modification on his politics. He feels that his
domestic standing has been strengthened because of the well publicized
improvement of the economy: inflation has been greatly reduced,
production levels are increasing as is overall business activity. For
these reasons, interest rates will continue to decline. The White House
has portrayed this in the media as the "success of Reaganomics."
Naturally, not everything in the province of economics has gone
according to Reagan’s plan. A few well known economists and members of
financial circles, particularly from the north-eastern states, foresee
certain hidden tendencies that many bring about a new economic crisis in
the USA. This could bring about the fall of the presidential campaign
of 1984, which would benefit the Democratic party. Nevertheless, there
are no secure assurances this will indeed develop.
The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and
Soviet-American relations. These issues, according to the senator, will
without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign. The
movement advocating a freeze on nuclear arsenals of both countries
continues to gain strength in the United States. The movement is also
willing to accept preparations, particularly from Kennedy, for its
continued growth. In political and influential circles of the country,
including within Congress, the resistence to growing military
expenditures is gaining strength.
However, according to Kennedy, the opposition to Reagan is still very
weak. Reagan’s adversaries are divided and the presentations they make
are not fully effective. Meanwhile, Reagan has the capabilities to
effectively counter any propaganda. In order to neutralize criticism
that the talks between the USA and the USSR are non-constructive, Reagan
will grandiose, but subjectively propagandistic. At the same time,
Soviet officials who speak about disarmament will be quoted out of
context, silenced or groundlessly and whimsically discounted. Although
arguments and statements by officials of the USSR do appear in the
press, it is important to note the majority of Americans do not read
serious newspapers or periodicals.
Kennedy believes that, given the current state of affairs, and in the
interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the
following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan and his
campaign to psychologically burden the American people. In this regard,
he offers the following proposals to the General Secretary of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Y.V.
Andropov:
1.
Kennedy asks Y.V. Andropov to consider inviting the senator to Moscow
for a personal meeting in July of this year. The main purpose of the
meeting, according to the senator, would be to arm Soviet officials with
explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they may be
better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA. He
would also like to inform you that he has planned a trip through Western
Europe, where he anticipates meeting England’s Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher and French President Mitterand in which he will exchange
similar ideas regarding the same issues.
If his proposals would be accepted in principle, Kennedy would send
his representative to Moscow to resolve questions regarding organizing
such a visit.
Kennedy thinks the benefits of a meeting with Y.V.Andropov will be
enhanced if he could also invite one of the well known Republican
senators, for example, Mark Hatfield. Such a meeting will have a strong
impact on American and political circles in the USA (In March of 1982,
Hatfield and Kennedy proposed a project to freeze the nuclear arsenals
of the USA and USSR and pblished a book on the theme as well.)
2. Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it
would be important to organize in August-September of this year,
televised interviews with Y.V. Andropov in the USA. A direct appeal by
the General Secretary to the American people will, without a doubt,
attact a great deal of attention and interest in the country. The
senator is convinced this would receive the maximum resonance in so far
as television is the most effective method of mass media and
information. If the proposal is recognized as
worthy, then Kennedy and his friends will bring about suitable steps to
have representatives of the largest television companies in the USA
contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interview.
Specifically, the president of the board of directors of ABC, Elton Raul
and television columnists Walter Cronkite or Barbara Walters could
visit Moscow. The senator underlined the importance that this initiative
should be seen as coming from the American side.
Furthermore, with the same purpose in mind, a series of televised
interviews in the USA with lower level Soviet officials, particularly
from the military would be organized. They would also have an
opportunity to appeal directly to the American people about the peaceful
intentions of the USSR, with their own arguments about maintaining a
true balance of power between the USSR and the USA in military term.
This issue is quickly being distorted by Reagan’s administration.
Kennedy asked to convey that this appeal to the General Secretary of
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is his
effort to contribute a strong proposal that would root out the threat of
nuclear war, and to improve Soviet-American relations, so that they
define the safety of the world. Kennedy is very impressed with the
activities of Y.V. Andropov and other Soviet leaders, who expressed
their commitment to heal international affairs, and improve mutal
understandings between peoples.
The senator underscored that he eagerly awaits a reply to his appeal,
the answer to which may be delivered through Tunney.
Having conveyed Kennedy’s appeal to the General Secretary of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Tunney
also explained that Senator Kennedy has in the last few years actively
made appearances to reduce the threat of war. Because he formally
refused to partake in the election campaign of 1984, his speeches would
be taken without prejudice as they are not tied to any campaign
promises. Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in
1988. At that time, he will be 56 and his personal problems, which
could hinder his standing, will be resolved (Kennedy has just completed a
divorce and plans to remarry in the near future). Taken together,
Kennedy does not discount that during the 1984 campaign, the Democratic
Party may officially turn to him to lead the fight against the
Republicans and elect their candidate president. This would explain why
he is convinced that none of the candidates today have a real chance at
defeating Reagan.
We await instructions.
President of the committee
V. Chebrikov
The
death of Sen. Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy this week marks the end of an
American political era colored in crayon by the media-generated notion
of American royalty. Ted Kennedy will be laid to rest at Arlington
Cemetery, the last of the three Kennedy brothers who once dominated the
American political landscape, and the only one of the four Kennedy
brothers to live to see his fifties.
As his fellow liberals attempt to shove the national takeover of
health care through Congress, even suggesting renaming the bill after
Kennedy in a memorial tribute, it becomes urgent to set aside the
perfunctory kind words one usually says about the departed — regardless
of truth. A whitewash of Kennedy’s history cannot be used as an
emotional power play to push through government-run health care in his
“honor.”
I will not belabor the story of Mary Jo Kopechne, the young woman
left behind in her own water torture at the hands of the late senator.
That particular miscarriage of justice has come to mind for many as we
all heard of Kennedy’s death this week and has even been reported as
part of his sordid legacy by a few media outlets.
But Kennedy’s private outreach to the KGB Soviet intelligence agency
in attempts to undermine first President Jimmy Carter then President
Ronald Reagan say as much as Chappaquiddick did about the man who
appeared to have no moral restraints whatsoever on his personal pursuit
of raw political power.
Documents found in Soviet archives after the fall of the Iron Curtain revealed a great deal about the character of Ted Kennedy.
As HUMAN EVENTS first reported on December 8, 2003:
One of the documents, a KGB report to bosses in the Soviet Communist
Party Central Committee, revealed that “In 1978, American Sen. Edward
Kennedy requested the assistance of the KGB to establish a relationship”
between the Soviet apparatus and a firm owned by former Sen. John
Tunney (D-Ca.). KGB recommended that they be permitted to do this
because Tunney’s firm was already connected with a KGB agent in France
named David Karr. This document was found by the knowledgeable Russian
journalist Yevgenia Albats and published in Moscow’s Izvestia in June 1992.
Another KGB report to their bosses revealed that on March 5, 1980,
John Tunney met with the KGB in Moscow on behalf of Sen. Kennedy. Tunney
expressed Kennedy’s opinion that “nonsense about ‘the Soviet military
threat’ and Soviet ambitions for military expansion in the Persian Gulf…
was being fueled by [President Jimmy] Carter, [National Security
Advisor Zbigniew] Brzezinski, the Pentagon and the military industrial
complex.”
Kennedy offered to speak out against President Carter on Afghanistan.
Shortly thereafter he made public speeches opposing President Carter on
this issue. This document was found in KGB archives by Vasiliy
Mitrokhin, a courageous KGB officer, who copied documents from the files
and then defected to the West. He wrote about this document in a
February 2002 paper on Afghanistan that he released through the Cold War
International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, found
contemporaneous KGB documentation and published a story in February of
1992 of an additional communiqué by Ted Kennedy to the Soviet
intelligence agency through Tunney. Full text of the letter from the
appendix of Paul Kengor’s book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism can be found here.
This time it was President Reagan in Kennedy’s crosshairs as he
attempted to arrange a meeting between Kennedy and General Secretary of
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Yuri
Andropov.
In this May 14, 1983, letter written by underling Viktor Chebrikov to
Andropov, he relayed Kennedy’s offer to meet, Chebrikov explaining that
Kennedy blamed poor American-Soviet relations not on the Communist
country, but on President Reagan. According to Chebrikov’s letter,
Kennedy said he wanted to stop Reagan’s re-election effort in 1984.
Chebrikov’s letter also claimed that Kennedy was “very impressed”
with Andropov and that Kennedy was reaching out to the Soviets to thwart
Reagan’s forceful defense policies. Kennedy suggested the Soviets
reach out specifically to Barbara Walters and Walter Cronkite to counter
in the American media what he said Kennedy considered Reagan
“propaganda.”
Chebrikov’s letter to Andropov also stated that Kennedy himself had
offered to travel to Moscow to meet with Andropov if he would extend an
invitation.
These revelations reported in 1992 suggest insight into a man so
obsessed with the acquisition of personal political power that he would
reach out to the communist Soviet Union for help in undermining not one
but two American presidents, one from his own political party.
Kennedy’s strong support for the government takeover of health care
and the effort to pass this legislation in memorial tribute fails to
warrant a second glance. Rep. Smith Prompts Senate Judiciary to Stop Perez Nomination
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the ranking member of the House Judiciary
Committee, requested in a letter to Senate colleagues yesterday that
they place a hold on the nomination of Tom Perez to be Assistant
Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division. Smith requested the
delay of the confirmation process until the Justice Department provides
Congress with sufficient information regarding the sudden dismissal of a
case alleging voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party on
Election Day 2008.
According to Smith, the Justice Department’s response to Congress was
“overly vague, raising concerns about possible political interference
in this case… If the Department’s political appointees applied pressure
to career attorneys to dismiss this case, then they have committed an
offense that undermines every American’s right to choose their elected
officials.”
Stay tuned.
Big business is as dominant as ever, particularly in the retail
sphere. Several huge companies now dominate the business landscape,
pulling in billions in revenues, providing jobs for millions, and
consistently pushing the envelope in terms of technology and
convenience. This has had many benefits for consumers in terms of
savings of both time and money, but has also has come with its costs —
mostly in less choice, as small businesses and startups face a smaller chance for survival than ever.
As a handful of big companies have pulled away from the pack, there
is a clear gulf not only in terms of sheer customer traffic, but on the
balance sheet as well.
A new analysis of the S&P 1500 by USA Today and S&P Capital IQ
of the past 12 months shows that even among the upper echelon of
American business, there are the elite of the elite — ten companies that
are by far and away outperforming all others, and in the process have
captured around two-thirds of all revenue generated in the retail
sector. You read that right — only ten companies are taking in 66% of
all retail dollars in the U.S. There’s a lot to be said about it, but
even if you were to take a look at the spending habits of the average
American, or even your own routines, it’s probably not all that
surprising.
What we’re seeing in the retail sector is indicative of more broad trends in the business world toward consolidation. We’re seeing it in many other areas as well, including the telecom industry, agriculture, and especially the tech sector. By eliminating competition through acquisition
or by simply having a broader reach, the country’s biggest companies
have been able to build themselves into seemingly impenetrable
behemoths.
Can you think of a company that could come around, with the exception
of Amazon, and make Wal-Mart executives lose sleep? The companies in
question have put together a serious wall of separation, so much so that
at this point it’s hard to imagine any real threats to their business. Wal-Mart pulled in $486 billion internationally last year, and it’s hard to think an innovative new approach to retail could threaten its model.
Unsurprisingly, the companies comprising the top ten are those that
you would expect. They are huge, multinational corporations that, in
many ways, try to be everything to everyone.
Take Amazon or Wal-Mart, for example. Both are giant retail businesses
that can provide customers with almost anything they need, whether it be
groceries or electronics. But they are both rapidly expanding into other areas. Amazon is providing innovative new approaches to delivery
and even producing television shows and movies, and Wal-Mart is looking
for ways to loosen Amazon’s death grip on online shopping.
Even companies like Walgreens and CVS, both of which are among the
top ten as well, possess similar qualities to their larger
counterparts. A Walgreens or CVS store can function as a smaller, more
convenient alternative to a grocery or retail store like Wal-Mart, while
also providing a slew of medical and pharmacy services in fast order.
In short, it’s not really a mystery as to how these ten businesses
have built themselves into the profit machines they are today, as it’s
the culmination of long-term strategizing, and continued attempts to
expand their business model to service the demands consumers have. With
the exception of maybe Sysco, and more specialized companies like Lowe’s
or The Home Depot, any of these companies can act as a one-stop shop
for a good percentage of consumers.
As for the full list, it can be seen below. Again, these ten
companies were found to have siphoned off roughly two-thirds of revenue
generated by publicly-traded firms according to a USA Today analysis of
the past year. Here they are, ranked in terms of percentage of revenue
captured, with Wal-Mart leading the way at more than 25%.
SECRET documents obtained via freedom of information requests reveal
the US military predicted the rise of IS well before the group began
making headlines around the world.
Over a 100 pages of classified reports from the Department of
Defence and the State Department obtained by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch paint a starkly different picture to what the Obama administration had previously portrayed to the public.
Among
the documents is an August 2012 report containing military intel which
predicted the rise of the Islamic State in the wake of regime change in
Syria. The document outlined
the “dire consequences on the Iraqi situation,” and potential
opportunity for the terrorist group, which grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Many of the “dire consequences” were redacted but the report
highlights the known intent to establish a caliphate in the country.
“This
creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) to return to
its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi,” the document states.
“ISI
(Islamic State of Iraq) could also declare an Islamic state through its
union with other terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria, which will
create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of
its territory.”
The intelligence is largely at odds with comments made by President Obama in a 60 Minutes interview in September last year in which he said the US intelligence underestimated IS.
“I
think they (US intelligence operatives) had underestimated what had
been going on in Syria,” he said while also suggesting his
administration over-estimated the strength of Iraqi government forces.
His
comments were slammed by Republican Senator John McCain at the time.
“We predicted this and watched it,” said the man Obama defeated in the
2008 Presidential elections.
“It was like watching a train wreck and warning every step of the way that this was happening.”
Islamic State ISIS video showing training of Child soldiers know as CubsSource: Supplied
The document is dated August 5, 2012. Seventeen months later, President Obama dismissed the terrorist group as a “JV team” — a high school sporting term used to imply something is second rate.
“The
analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a
JV (junior varsity) team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them
Kobe Bryant,” Obama said in January 2014.
His comments came months
before the 2012 Presidential election and were uncharacteristically
dismissive for an administration which has been careful not to
understate global security threats.
The release of the documents could also prove troubling for Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton.
Contained
in the reports is the information that the US had identified al-Qaeda
as the culprit of the 2012 attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi which
killed two American diplomats.
Secretary of State at the time,
Clinton had told the public the attack was a spontaneous one which grew
out of a protest and was not an organised terror plot.
However a report
obtained by Judicial Watch was sent to the office of Clinton on the
morning after the attack and made no mention of any demonstrations
taking place.
The handling and disinformation in the wake of the attack became a huge scandal in the US which culminated in Clinton’s fiery testimony to Congress over the issue.
An
October 2012 report also reveals the Obama administration was aware of a
shipment of weapons from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria.
“Weapons
from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of
Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam,
Syria. The weapons shipped during late August 2012 were Sniper rifles,
RPG’s, and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles,” the document states.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton reacts to a
question as she testifies on Capitol Hill over the
public
WASHINGTON (AP) — Iraqi troops
abandoned dozens of U.S military vehicles, including tanks, armored
personnel carriers and artillery pieces when they fled Islamic State
fighters in Ramadi on Sunday, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
A Pentagon
spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, estimated that a half dozen tanks were
abandoned, a similar number of artillery pieces, a larger number of
armored personnel carriers and about 100 wheeled vehicles like Humvees.
He said some of the vehicles were in working condition; others were not
because they had not been moved for months.
This
repeats a pattern in which defeated Iraq security forces have, over the
past year, left behind U.S.-supplied military equipment, prompting the
U.S. to destroy them in subsequent airstrikes against Islamic State
forces.
Asked whether the
Iraqis should have destroyed the vehicles before abandoning the city in
order to keep them from enhancing IS's army, Warren said, "Certainly
preferable if they had been destroyed; in this case they were not."
Warren also said that while the U.S. is confident that Ramadi will be retaken by Iraq, "It will be difficult."
The
fall of Ramadi has prompted some to question the viability of the Obama
administration's approach in Iraq, which is a blend of retraining and
rebuilding the Iraqi army, prodding Baghdad to reconcile with the
nation's Sunnis, and bombing Islamic State targets from the air without
committing American ground combat troops.
Security forces defend their headquarters against attacks by Islamic State extremists during sand st …
"The president's plan
isn't working. It's time for him to come up with overarching strategy to
defeat the ongoing terrorist threat," House Speaker John Boehner said.
White
House spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama has always
been open to suggestions for improving the U.S. approach in Iraq.
"It's something that he's talking about with his national security team just about every day, including today," Earnest said.
Derek
Harvey, a retired Army colonel and former Defense Intelligence Agency
officer who served multiple tours in Iraq, says that while the extremist
group has many problems and weaknesses, it is "not losing" in the face
of ineffective Sunni Arab opposition.
"They
are adaptive and they remain well armed and well resourced," Harvey
said of the militants. "The different lines of operation by the U.S.
coalition remain disjointed, poorly resourced and lack an effective
operational framework, in my view."
Map shows location of fighting across Iraq.;
One alternative for the
Obama administration would be a containment strategy — trying to fence
in the conflict rather than push the Islamic State group out of Iraq.
That might include a combination of airstrikes and U.S. special
operations raids to limit the group's reach. In fact, a Delta Force raid
in Syria on Friday killed an IS leader known as Abu Sayyaf who U.S.
officials said oversaw the group's oil and gas operations, a major
source of funding.
Officials have said containment might become an option but is not under active discussion now.
Gen.
Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued a written
statement Monday that suggested Ramadi will trigger no change in the
U.S. approach.
"Setbacks are regrettable but not uncommon in warfare," Dempsey said. "Much effort will now be required to reclaim the city."
It
seems highly unlikely that Obama would take the more dramatic route of
sending ground combat forces into Iraq to rescue the situation in Ramadi
or elsewhere. A White House spokesman, Eric Shultz, said Monday the
U.S. will continue its support through airstrikes, advisers and
trainers.
A Syrian opposition group, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, fighte …
The administration has
said repeatedly that it does not believe Iraq can be stabilized for the
long term unless Iraqis do the ground fighting.
Pentagon officials
insisted Monday the current U.S. approach to combating IS in Iraq is
still viable and that the loss of Ramadi was merely part of the ebb and
flow of war, not a sign that the Islamic State had exposed a fatal
weakness in the Iraqi security forces and the U.S. strategy.
Others are skeptical.
"We
don't really have a strategy at all," former Defense Secretary Robert
Gates said Tuesday on MSNBC. "We're basically playing this day by day."
Gates,
who headed the Pentagon for Obama as well as President George W. Bush's
administration before that, said "right now, it looks like they're
(Iraq) going the way of Yugoslavia," suggesting an eventual breakup of
the state.
The Institute for the Study of War, which closely tracks developments in Iraq, said Ramadi was a key Islamic State victory.
"This
strategic gain constitutes a turning point in ISIS' ability to set the
terms of battle in Anbar as well to project force in eastern Iraq," the
institute said.
___
Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.
