Were We Lied Into War? (Justin Raimondo asks)

[Octafish]

Were We Lied Into War?

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

by Justin Raimondo
AntiWar, February 19, 2016

Donald Trump threw down the gauntlet at the last GOP presidential debate with his declaration that the Bush administration lied us into war, and the reverberations are still roiling the political waters on both the right and the left. If his candidacy does nothing else, it will have performed a great service to the nation by re-litigating this vitally important issue and drawing attention to the outrageous lack of accountability by the elites who cheered as we turned the Middle East into a cauldron of death and destruction. Trump has ripped the bandage off the gaping and still suppurating wound of that ill-begotten war, and the howls of rage and pain are being heard on both sides of the political spectrum.

On the neoconservative right, Bill Kristol’s sputtering outrage is a bit too studied to be taken at face value: is he really shocked that no one is coming to the defense of himself and his fellow neocons, who elaborated (with footnotes) the very lies that led us down the primrose path to what the late Gen. William E. Odom called “the worst strategic disaster in our history”?

Kristol’s Weekly Standard magazine promoted every conceivable narrative pointing to Saddam Hussein as the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks, no matter how fantastic and bereft of evidence. Here he is accusing the Iraqis of being behind the dissemination of anthrax through the mails. Here is his subsidized magazine denying that the forged Niger uranium documents – the basis of George W. Bush’s claim in his 2003 State of the Union that Iraq was building a nuke – were an attempt to lie us into war. Here is neocon propagandist Stephen Hayes retailing a leaked “secret” memo to give credence to the debunked story of a meeting between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence.

Every single one of these tall tales has been so thoroughly disproved that it’s enough to recall them in order to embarrass the perpetrators beyond redemption. Kristol & Co. served as a clearing house for these outright fabrications, which were then utilized by the Bush administration to make the case for war. And yet we have Peter Suderman, a senior editor over at Reason magazine, deriding Trump’s calling out of George W. Bush and his neocon intelligence-fabricators as a “conspiracy theory” on a par with birtherism and the weirdo 9/11 “truth” cult:

“(H)e is flirting with a kind of 9/11 trutherism when he accuses the Bush administration of having knowingly lied in order to push the country into war in Iraq, as he did in Saturday’s GOP debate.

“Now, as Byron York wrote on Twitter yesterday, you can reasonably interpret that charge as a general nod toward the idea that the Bush administration hyped the war effort beyond what the actual evidence could support, that the case for the war was, well, trumped up and ultimately misleading, built on insufficient proof, overconfidence, and mistaken assumptions. But Trump’s attack also leaves room for more radical, less grounded conspiracies about Bush and the war as all, and I suspect this is not an accident.

CONTINUED w/links, sources, etc....

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/02/18/were-we-lied-into-war/

Bush lied America into war. It's about time someone mentioned it in public.

Personally, I hope it dispels a taboo against pointing out criminality and treason. Remember when BFEE Judge Laurence Silberman said those who say Bush lied America into war were like the NAZIs?

[Electric Monk]

1. It's not a question in my mind. It's why they stole the election in the first place. nt.

[madokie]

7. Without a doubt

"It's why they stole the election in the first place." Just about as plain as it can be put, thanks for typing those words.

[Octafish]

9. ''You don't steal elections to do good things.'' -- someone on DU in 2001.

Earliest I can find, from the great DUer beetwasher in 2003:

You don't steal an election in order to do GOOD things

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=60987&mesg_id=61032

[maxsolomon]

2. It was a special kind of lie

Pretty much everyone knew it was pretense, yet America largely chose to believe it because they wanted to kick someone's ass.

[abelenkpe]

3. +1000 nt

[Octafish]

10. Except most everyone who knew was against using it as a pretext for wars without end.

For profits without cease, coincidentally, of course.

"Commercial interests are very powerful interests," said George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007 White House press conference in which he added, "Let me put it this way, ah, sometimes, ah, money trumps peace." And then he giggled and not a single member of the callow, cowed and corrupt press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.

Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention back in 2007. I don't recall even one reporter from the national corporate owned news seeing it fit to comment. Certainly not many have commented on how three generations of Bush men -- Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush, President George Herbert Walker Bush and pretzeldent George Walker Bush all had their eyes on Iraq's oil.

I wish the Press had done its job. Those in authority would have to do their job. Millions might still be alive, the People might use the money spent on wars in better ways, and the Republic might see a return to Justice. To get that started requires jailing those who lied America into war, not making them into heroes cough Bush.

[arcane1]

4. And we can count Hillary Clinton and John Kerry among the liars. n/t

[Octafish]

11. As a citizen, I think I'm entitled to know why our elected officials acted as they did.

I wonder if NSA blackmail has anything to do with it?



The late Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) explained why in 1975. A patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American, the guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, of course, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.

And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy? He got the Treatment.

In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committee’s responsibility for Welch’s death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.

SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1

From GWU's National Security Archives:

"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.

Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era

Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted – September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).

SNIP...

Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]

SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/

I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-CT) also got the treatment from NSA? He was about the last Liberal Republican brave enough to make waves.

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to 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.” — Senator Richard Schweiker on “Face the Nation” in 1976.

Lost to History NOT

[maxsolomon]

13. I'd call them typical centrist politicians, rather than liars.

they made a (craven) political calculus not to stand in the way of the steamroller. the vote happened 13 months after 9/11. only 21 democratic senators opposed the measure, out of 50.

Based on re-election worries, or based on genuine belief in the transparent lies the Bush Admin was selling, IDK. But Clinton and Kerry had plenty of company in not wanted to be painted as cowards in the midterm elections that followed 2 weeks later.

That was a fool's errand, regardless.

[arcane1]

17. "That was a fool's errand, regardless" indeed.

[SidDithers]

5. ...

Justin Raimondo (born Dennis Raimondo;[1] November 18, 1951)[2] is an American author and the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He describes himself as a "conservative-paleo-libertarian."

Sid

[Octafish]

14. So, nothing to say about Bush lying American into war from SidDithers of DU.

It's like a family tradition:

Poppy LIED America into GULF WAR 1

That was in 2005, when DUers pointed this out routinely. You must not have been here, I'm sure you'd have contributed something.

[onecaliberal]

6. Resounding yes!!

[Octafish]

15. Harold Pinter - Nobel Lecture on Truth, War and the Big Lie

Last edited Tue Apr 5, 2016, 09:53 AM - Edit history (2)

[malaise]

8. Bookmarked

Great post

[Octafish]

16. The Phony ‘Bad Intel’ Defense on Iraq

Exclusive: Jeb Bush’s stumbling start to his presidential bid has refocused attention on Official Washington’s favorite excuse for the illegal, aggressive and disastrous war in Iraq – that it was just a case of “bad intelligence.” But that isn’t what the real history shows, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern recalls.

By Ray McGovern
ConsortiumNews, May 15, 2015

Presidential aspirant Jeb Bush this week may have damaged his chances by flubbing the answer to an entirely predictable question about his big brother’s decision to attack Iraq.

On Monday, Fox’s Megyn Kelly asked the former Florida governor: “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?” Jeb Bush answered, “I would’ve. And so would’ve Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody, and so would’ve almost everybody who was confronted with the intelligence they got.”

SNIP...

It is a safe bet that, by Thursday, Iraq War champion Paul Wolfowitz, now a senior adviser to Jeb Bush, had taken him to the woodshed, admonishing him along these lines: “Jeb, you remembered to emphasize the mistaken nature of pre-war intelligence; that’s the key point; that’s good. But then you need to say that if you knew how mistaken the intelligence was, you would not have attacked Iraq. Got it?”

It was then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz — together with his boss Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and a string of neocon advisers — who exploited the tragedy of 9/11 to make war on Iraq, which they had been itching for since the 1990s. They tried mightily (and transparently) to link Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks. Following their lead, the fawning corporate media played up this bum rap with such success that, before the attack on Iraq, polls showed that almost 70 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein played some kind of role in 9/11.

SNIP...

But it is too late for denial. We might take to heart Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning: “… there is such a thing as being too late. … Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’”

SOURCE: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/15/the-phony-bad-intel-defense-on-iraq/

[Gregorian]

12. Very interesting. Beneficiaries of war.

And Donald Trump of all places. I watched that live. I literally did a double take.

Thanks.

[Octafish]

20. The Hitler wannabe did Democracy a favor.

The "pundits" say Drumpf strayed into "conspiracyville," simply for stating that Bush lied America into war.

Donald Trump: Bush Lied, People Died

by Will Rahn
The Daily Beast, Feb. 14, 2016

The Donald strayed deep into conspiracy-ville during the latest GOP debate, saying George W. Bush deliberately misled us about Iraq’s WMDs. Then he kinda blamed Bush for 9/11.

SNIP...

The fireworks really started with a question about Jeb’s brother, George W. Bush, who is set to join his brother on the campaign trail on Monday. Moderator John Dickerson asked Trump point blank if he stood by his 2008 comments that Bush deserved to be impeached for allegedly misleading the public about the reasons for going into Iraq, a reminder that Trump has spent much of his life as a left-leaning critic of the GOP.

Trump didn’t restate his call for impeachment. But he didn’t disavow it, either. “You do whatever you want,” he said, seeming to provide Dickerson with the option of impeaching Bush himself. “You call it whatever you want."

Then Trump went on to say something even more unusual in a Republican primary. He suggested that the former GOP president, George W. Bush, directly lied to the American public in order to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

“I will tell you. They lied. And they said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction,” Trump said.

Trump’s assertion was bizarre for a Republican—or, for that matter, anyone running for president. While the conventional wisdom may hold that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was mistaken, or even disastrous, it’s rare to hear any politician insist that George W. Bush willingly misled the American people into war. “Bush lied, people died,” is a sentiment rejected by even the most ardent opponents of the Iraq War, a fringe belief usually embraced by cranks on the far-right and far-left. On Saturday, Donald Trump brought that conspiracy theory to a presidential debate.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/14/donald-trump-bush-lied-people-died.html

Says a lot about the role of the news media in our "democracy" and the role of the military industrial complex in what passes for leadership -- traitors, banksters, arms merchants and warmongers are above the law. Everyone else is subject to the Flint Treatment. So far, the only one who's managed to lift the lid off that since September 11 on the national stage is a blond fraudster with a comb-over .

[Gregorian]

21. Evidently, Donald didn't keep the loyalty oath.

It does speak volumes about the media, in a way I hadn't realized until you just mentioned it. I realize they don't tell the truth, but had kind of glossed over how they also don't report the crimes.

[JEB]

18. Sick MFers deserve to be rotting the rest of their worthless lives

in one of the black site hell holes they favored.

[Octafish]

24. Trump also questioned whether ''Bush kept us safe.''

Donald Trump Blames George W. Bush for 9/11

Jeb fought back.

by Delphine d'Amora
MotherJones | Sat Feb. 13, 2016

During the CBS debate in South Carolina on Saturday, GOP front-runner Donald Trump blamed former President George W. Bush for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

After Florida senator Marco Rubio said that Bush had "kept us safe," Donald Trump shot back: "How did he keep us safe when the World Trade Center came down?"

"I lost hundreds of friends, the World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush," Trump said, while the crowd's boos nearly drowned him out. "That is not safe, Marco, that is not safe,"

Trump has made this claim before, but this time Bush's brother Jeb pushed back. "This is a man who insults his way to the nomination," he said. "I am sick and tired of him going after my family."

CONTINUED w/video...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/donald-trump-blames-george-w-bush-911

James Hatfield wrote that Bush was afraid of bin Laden aerial attack at G-7 summit in Geneva in April 2001. Bush was too chicken to sleep in the anti-aircraft missile protected luxury hotel on land, so the little coward stayed offshore aboard a U.S. destroyer. Hatfield wrote all about it:

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?

By James Hatfield

Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:

July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?

CONTINUED...

http://web.archive.org/web/20060906150015/http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

That was the last thing Hatfield, author of "Fortunate Son," wrote that got published in July, 2001, a few weeks before his suicide cough murder.

I'd download the copy off of the Wayback Machine. For some reason, I can no longer find it at Online Journal.

The amazing Amy Goodman still hosts an interview with the feller.

The BFEE have a lot to answer for.

[JEB]

19. Anybody half way paying attention knew they were lying.

That was my assessment at the time and I'm a gone to seed working stiff out here in rural Oregon. Fucking A, it pure bullshit they aren't clapped in irons.

[Octafish]

28. Remember Johnny Ashcan and his fishin' rod in hand at the airport?

The AG stopped flying commercial in July 2001.

Ashcroft Flying High

CBS News
WASHINGTON, July 26, 2001

Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.

A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.

"I don't do threat assessments myself and I rely on those whose responsibility it is in the law enforcement community, particularly the FBI. And I try to stay within the guidelines that they've suggested I should stay within for those purposes," Ashcroft said.

Asked if he knew anything about the threat or who might have made it, the attorney general replied, "Frankly, I don't. That's the answer."

CONTINUED...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ashcroft-flying-high/

George W Bush kept John Ashcroft safe in July 2001. The rest of America, not so much.

[bemildred]

22. Our government, or rather parts of it, lies to us deliberately and systematically.

In other words it is in the habit of gaslighting it's own citizens. All the while claiming it is for our own good.

[Octafish]

26. Gaslighting used to be against the law.

U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans

BY JOHN HUDSON
Foreign Policy - The Cable, JULY 14, 2013

For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government’s mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?

SNIP...

A former U.S. government source with knowledge of the BBG says the organization is no Pravda, but it does advance U.S. interests in more subtle ways. In Somalia, for instance, VOA serves as counterprogramming to outlets peddling anti-American or jihadist sentiment. "Somalis have three options for news," the source said, "word of mouth, al-Shabab, or VOA Somalia."

This partially explains the push to allow BBG broadcasts on local radio stations in the United States. The agency wants to reach diaspora communities, such as St. Paul, Minnesota’s significant Somali expat community. "Those people can get al-Shabab, they can get Russia Today, but they couldn’t get access to their taxpayer-funded news sources like VOA Somalia," the source said. "It was silly."

Lynne added that the reform has a transparency benefit as well. "Now Americans will be able to know more about what they are paying for with their tax dollars — greater transparency is a win-win for all involved," she said. And so with that we have the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which passed as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect this month.

But if anyone needed a reminder of the dangers of domestic propaganda efforts, the past 12 months provided ample reasons. Last year, two USA Today journalists were ensnared in a propaganda campaign after reporting about millions of dollars in back taxes owed by the Pentagon’s top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan. Eventually, one of the co-owners of the firm confessed to creating phony websites and Twitter accounts to smear the journalists anonymously. Additionally, just this month, the Washington Post exposed a counter-propaganda program by the Pentagon that recommended posting comments on a U.S. website run by a Somali expat with readers opposing al-Shabab. "Today, the military is more focused on manipulating news and commentary on the Internet, especially social media, by posting material and images without necessarily claiming ownership," reported the Post.

But for BBG officials, the references to Pentagon propaganda efforts are nauseating, particularly because the Smith-Mundt Act never had anything to do with regulating the Pentagon, a fact that was misunderstood in media reports in the run-up to the passage of new Smith-Mundt reforms in January.

CONTINUED...

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/

[bemildred]

27. And now it is the law. nt

[Octafish]

30. Everything Changed after 9-11: Democracy Disappeared.

And many young people today find it "normal" to be surveilled 24/7.

They'll never hear what Sen. Frank Church said about the NSA in 1975 on tee vee (nor, likely, in school):

Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American.

The guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:

[font color="green"]“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”[/font color]

-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, he narrowly lost re-election the next cycle.

And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:

In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committee’s responsibility for Welch’s death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.

SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1

From GWU's National Security Archives:

"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.

Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era

Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted – September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).

SNIP...

Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]

SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/

I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-CT), a liberal Republican, also got the treatment from NSA?

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to 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.” — Senator Richard Schweiker on “Face the Nation” in 1976.

Lost to History NOT, thanks to people who care. Sorry to cut and paste from previous stuff you know, bemildred, but that's why DU matters. Most people would never know without DU.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

23. Yes, but a different lie, and a different president

A young lady said that Iraqis were dumping premature Kuwaiti babies from their incubators, and nobody exposed her as a Kuwaiti Royal on a mission.

And so it started.

George H.W. Bush started the war in the M.E. in 1991. Based on a lie.

[Octafish]

25. Absolutely, Poppy: George Herbert Walker Bush lied America into war in 1991.

She was the Kuwait ambassador's daughter. She testified under oath to Congress that she was a nurse at a Kuwaiti City hospital and saw Iraqi soldiers take babies from their incubators and leave them on the cold, hard floor to die so that the Iraqis could steal the incubators for Baghdad.



"If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it." -- Kuwait Ambassador

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

Based on a lie.

[BillZBubb]

29. Is the Pope Catholic?

Sure, we were lied in the war. But, so many people wanted to believe the lies that it was simple to do. And it was also very easy to destroy anyone who stood against the lies.

A lot of Americans were complicit, including Democratic politicians.